Jackpot!: The Obsidium Shuffle

Posted by Shockkmaister at 8:00 AM

The obsidium shuffle is one of the most known gold making strategies today. Many people do the shuffle, many people profit from it, but not much use all it's potential. The obsidium shuffle is a big part of the WoW economy, and a huge system, but most people only see what's on the surface, and can only make a little money from it (relatively speaking). This post will explain how the shuffle works, how it effects the economy, and how you can earn the most money from it.



The basics

Let's start at the beginning. The obsidium shuffle is the process of prospecting obsidium ore, and finding the best way to realize the gems. This can be done with elementium and pyrite ore too, but the most profitable is the obsidium. After prospecting the ore you will end up with uncut gems, both uncommon (green quality) and rare (blue quality). From here there are many ways to go. Usually people make the uncommons into jewellery, disenchant them, then make enchant scrolls, which they can sell for big profit, and cut and sell the rare ones. This is the textbook obsidium shuffle. It requires some time, but it's most likely profitable. Easy as pie. So what else is there to say?

The shuffle as a branch of industry

Economy in WoW is very similar to the real life economy in many ways. In order to fully understand the obsidium shuffle, we need to take a look at how an industry works in the real life and WoW.
Industry is the production of economic goods or services. Let's look at a specific branch of industry, let's call it baking. Baking requires certian raw materials, like flour, water, etc. and it requires certain tools, for example an oven. Baking is the act of putting these materials together and making them into another thing using the tools. This other thing is the product. In this case the product is bread. So how can baking be a profitable thing to do? Well, if I can sell the product for more then I bought the materials for, then it is profitable. Easy as pie. So, how can I make even more money from this genius idea? Well, I mastered bread-baking business, but there are other things that I could to with the same materials. I could bake bagels too. I could buy twice as many materials, bake both bread and bagels, sell them all and be happy, as I made twice the money. I could also bake someting that requires other materials such as bagels with sesame on top. It is the same principal. So how can I make even more money? Well I could make more breads, keep the overflow, make sandwiches, and sell those too. Okay then, so the bread is not a product (beacause I don't sell them)? Something's off here, it is supposed to be a product. Well, if I sell them, then it is a product, if I make sandwhiches, then it is not. It is not a material either, because I didn't buy it. It is a processed material. Hmmm, okay then I can hold on to my sandwhiches, put cheese in them, and sell them as cheeseburgers. The sandwhiches would be processed materials as well. I could go on and process my materials a billion times, and sell super-intelligent robots at the end as products. Every level of processing could require other materials, raw or processed. At the end this could become a massive net of processing materials over and over and over again. I could also sell any processed material. In real life, usually the price of the processed material is higher then the raw ones, in WoW it is not so easy, but more on that later.
Industry in WoW works the same way as it works in real life. The obsidium shuffle is a branch of industry. Most people also use elementium and pyrite too occasionally, so in this branch there are three raw materials. There are a few levels of processing, there are processed materials such as the uncut gems, and there are products such as the cut gems. So how does this particular net look like?

In this picture red are the raw materials, green are the products that you can produce with only the shown raw materials and easy-access (vendor) materials (jeweler's setting), blue are the products that are a part of a much bigger net as they require other materials, and yellow are the processed materials that are the a part of a bigger net.
So let's look at this closely. We have 4 levels of processing. Supposedly any products or processed materials at level X are more expensive then the products and materials on the levels below. This is what would keep the business profitable. In real life this is usually true, in WoW not so much. There are two reasons for this.

• First, people playing WoW are not businessmen. Most of the players are doing PvE/PvP progress, and they are not running a business on the AH. They either sell raw materials, because it dropped from mobs around the world while they were leveling, or they are selling products because they were leveling professions, and want to get rid of what they ended up with, or something like this. These people post on the AH just so they can sell, which can lower the prices.
• The second reason is that a realm is small. On a realm there are a couple of thousand players playing. Most of these players don't have any auctions up. On an average realm, there are a few hundred different people who have auctions at any given moment, there are 10-20 players who are actually running smaller businesses (1 or 2 professions, or reselling) in order to gain money either to fund their character's progress (enchants, gems, flasks, etc.) or to have more money, and there are 0-3 people who are actually mainly focusing on gold making in the game, and are running multiple businesses. This causes a great deal of instability in the game's economy (to understand why is it, read Going Retro).

So I can't always sell processed materials or products for profit, but in many cases I can. What this means is that even if I'm all stocked up on products, it would still be wise to get more materials, either for stocking up more, or for selling processed materials. If I have a million enchant scrolls, enough for months, I have even more cut rare gems, I'd still buy obsidium if it were cheap because not only the product can be profitable to sell. For example I usually sell hypnotic dust and greater cosmic essences for great profit too, while I also have enchant scrolls up on the AH. I often sell raw rare gems too, because I can't sell more cut ones, and I still have uncuts. The point is, try to find a way to realize your materials for more money then you bought them for. You could sell the ore in bars for profit (has happened). It could also be very profitable to sell folded obsidium, etc.

The math

One stack of obsidium ore prospects into 6 uncommon and 0,25-0,35 rare uncut gems on average. All the uncommon ones have the same chance to drop, (and the rare ones too) so this means that for every stack of obsdium ore you buy you will end up with one of each uncommon gems (on average) and a quarter of a random rare gem. Selling uncommon gems uncut is usually profitable, but not as much as processing them further. Zephyrite can't be processed further in this net, you can only cut them (not profitable with any uncommon gem), transmute them into oceans sapphire (which is usually the most profitable thing to do) or sell them to a vendor for 50s. As for the other uncommons, you can make jewellery (or weapon) from them. Carnelians are a pretty straightforward thing, because you will always get the same thing (Carnelian Spikes) which is usually not profitable to sell, but disenchanting it is. The other four are a bit tricky. You can make jewellery from them, usually uncommon jewellery, but sometimes it is rare. In the first case you are definitely better off disenchanting them, but in the second case, not so much. Rare alicite pendants and jasper rings are disenchanted into small heavenly shards. Usually you can sell the jewellery for more money then one third of an actual shard. Rare nightstone chokers and hessonite bands on the other hand are disenchanted into heavenly shards, which are in most cases more valuable then the jewellery, or much more easy to sell/realize. After disenchanting, you can sell them both as enchanting materials, or enchanting scrolls. The profitability of this level of processing varies on different realms, and over time, but it is usually good money.

The impact on the economy

As we've seen the obsidium shuffle is a big system of processing ores, a good way to earn money. The more you master dividing your resources between selling products and processed materials the more money you can make. However all this can be a dangerous thing. Ores, gems, and enchant materials are commodities with fluctuating prices. These prices are not so stable on their own because of reasons I explained earlier, and if you process massive amount of materials it can destabilize them further. The more of commodity X there is on the realm the less it's price it will be, and the less there is of said commodity the higher the price will be (for an explanaiton for this, see Supply & Demand Explained). So if you buy a certain amount of ore and sell them as enchanting scrolls, then you only lower the price of the scrolls, but if you sell too much enchanting materials then you lower the price of enchanting materials, and thereby lower the price of the scrolls too, because cheaper the material is the cheaper the product is. This is a very similar concept as market-overflow. To serve with an example, my biggest moneymaker is and always was the obsidium shuffle. I've been doing this for a long time, and at first I only sold scrolls. Then I started buying more ore then I can sell as scrolls, and sold the overflow as enchant materials. It was great for a while, but then I got overzealous and sold too much enchant materials. 2-3 weeks ago the enchant mats have began to drop in price drastically, followed shortly by the scrolls. I've been doing damage control for the past weeks and now it's back on track, prices are rising, but it shows how fragile the WoW economy can be, and how much you need to be careful not to damage your own business.