Low Risk Investing for Cataclysm

Posted by Markco at 8:00 AM

Image taken from http://www.risingnova.org

*Guest Post Written By: Just Another Goblin*

Several things are changing in Cataclysm and no matter what you plan to do - reroll alts, change guilds
or just continue as normal. One thing will remain constant, you need gold, everything costs money and
Cataclysm isn’t going to change that so don’t you want as much gold as possible? Of course you do!

Investing Before Cataclysm Hits

At this time of the current expansion, there are two kinds of people - People who have a plan and
continue to list sensibly and people who panic. You’re going to want to exploit the latter as much as
possible. Here are some items you should be looking at in regards to Cataclysm.

Saronite Ore - Everyone’s favourite ore and that’s not going to change until at least a few
months into Cataclysm and even then, at the prices it’s being sold now (around and less than
12g 50s per stack, where it can be smelted and vendored at no loss) it’s so low risk it’s perfect.
So why invest in this you ask? Well tradeskills, Engineers, Blacksmiths and even Alchemists will
be using this as cheap (Well cheap in comparison to the potential costs of the new materials)
way to get quick levels as the profession caps increase.



Other Tradeskill Materials - I could do a whole post on the things you could buy from the
tradeskill materials category however I’ll just throw a few examples to you and let your mind do
the rest - Blue gems, Dream Shards, Borean leather, all have potential to increase in price with
the demand for them.

Lower Level Materials - You need some intuition for this one, think about items that are
currently low priced that the demand could massively increase after the release. For example -
Runecloth’s price is currently in the gutter but due to the influx of new players, fresh 85’s and
new alts being rolls who want reputation with the home city factions people usually choose
to buy Runecloth instead of farming quests as it saves time, this could increase the price
exponentially.

Pets - For starters, Argent tournament pets are going to be amazing in my opinion, with no
one in Icecrown or Northrend as often, these pets are going to be in less supply but with
approximately the same demand if not more. Add to that the potential arbitrage to the
opposing faction and this seems like a perfect investment. Basically all pets that are slightly rare
will most likely give a return on investment. Some pets are also currently unknown as to ‘where
they are’ on the beta, for example we already know that the Black Tabby is no longer going to
be obtainable ingame, so that’s a solid investment but will take time to appreciate. However
there are unknown pets at the moment, Azure whelping may no longer be obtainable and I’m
not sure on this but no-one has seen Lil’ Timmy on the beta, maybe the Alliance counter part of
the Black Tabby will be going away too and considering these are selling for 100g on my alliance
server and potential arbitrage this seems like another solid investment.
Twinking items - Cold and many other bloggers have made posts on this, the sundering will also
change certain items, altering their stats and potentially increasing their value. I’m not to clued
in on these so you’ll have to do your own research but some of these items could be potentially
awesome investments.

WoTLK Recipes - Sunwell recipes still sell quite high today as do other epic recipes, apply this to
todays standards, WoTLK epic recipes could be high sellers in Cataclysm if the trend continues.
I’d like to take a moment to think Sterling over at the Consortium for posting this tip. It seems
like a genius idea

Conclusion

Most of these are very low risk and almost guaranteed time depending to turn a profit if not hold
neutral, very little will be lost. That’s the beauty of expansions, even if natural inflation doesn’t rocket
the prices to the sky then there’s very little to lose on certain items at the prices things have fallen to
this late in an expansion.

Of course there will always be slightly larger investments such as - Shadowmourne Loot Items, Rare
Recipes and items related to Legendaries and other high risk, high price items. You can use your
imagination if you have the gold to throw about on items such as these.