5 things you should be selling. Engineer Love

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 8:00 AM

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This week is going to be straight forward.   After receiving multiple questions in my email asking me how they should make money in a specific profession.   I am going to present to you five (sometimes more) things that you should be selling right now

First the rules of the road.

1.   All recipes have to be obtained by either Training,  purchasing from a vendor or via reputation.
2.   No World drops or items that would require a larger than life grind to obtain (ala Fireland dailies)
3.   Materials can be gathered or crafted,   not requiring BOP dropped items or boss farmed items.
4.   Each item should make a minimum of 30% profit over cost of crafting.

And now on with the show.

Deciding that the first one to tackle is going to be what many consider the most difficult to make money at.   Engineering started off as being only having items that were crafted for personal playing enjoyment,  with the occasional low level "toys".  Rarely was engineering considered to be a "serious" profession.

With Burning Crusade,  items were added to the fold to make some profits available.   It opened the crafting of high level guns,  scopes and even a mount that could be sold.  Having rare world patterns in the mix such as the [Lifelike Mechanical Toad] as well as a few other farmable pets from gnomeregan that were made easier to obtain as the game expansions continued.   Cataclysm opened a wide number of sales opportunities for engineers,  combined with the opportunities from the previous expansions to present gold making diamonds in the rough.  

So here is the list of engineer items you should be selling.


1.  [Plans:  Inlaid Mithril Cylinder]

This one is pretty straightforward.     You purchase the ink and common paper from the engineering vendor,   Craft,  then sell to blacksmiths.   The reason why it's so popular is because blacksmiths need it to craft the Inlaid Mithril Cylinders to sell right back to engineers for leveling,  as well as many items including the [Ultrasafe Transporter - Gadgetzan].  The recipe is taught by your local Engineer trainer.

2.  [Recipe: Goblin Rocket Fuel]

Another recipe that can be crafted and sold.  It's sold to alchemists,   many times for those that want to complete their collections.   Goblin Rocket fuel is a good seller for alchemist for the lower level toys.  It's also used for the [Firework launcher] and [Cluster Launcher] again for engineers.  This recipe is also taught by your local engineer trainer.

3.  [Tranquil Mechanical Yeti]

The end of a long,  involved quest line during Vanilla wow all the way to Wrath.  Cataclysm brought a quick shortening to the steps in the quest.   It is easily completed in around 30 minutes,  allowing you to be taught the pattern by Umi Rumplesnicker.    There are three quest lines that have to be completed,  starting with [Hammer Time] from Lillith the Lithe in Winterspring, ending with the quest [Are we there, Yeti?] from Umi.   The materials are easily farmable or purchasable from the auction house,  with a strong profit margin for new players as well as seasoned pet collectors.

4. Gnomish Army Knife

Another item from your trainer,   this item will be a decent seller now,  and will become more valuable  as we get closer to Mists of Panderia.  10 Saronite bars,  1 Skinning Knife,  1 Mining Pick and 1 Blacksmith Hammer nets you a decent sized profit.   I've sold these continuously from between 75g and 100g a piece,  more on days that multiple alt toons are created.   Giving a player access to multiple crafting tools,  as well as engineers getting access to a non combat resurrection attempt.   Making these very popular to have in players bags.

5.  [Mechano-hog] (Horde) or [Mekgineer's Chopper] (Alliance)

The bulk of your time to obtain the pattern requires your toon repuation to get to exalted with either Horde Expedition for the [Mechano-hog] or Alliance Vanguard for the [Mekgineer's Chopper].   The easiest way to gain exalted for either factions are to run wrath level heroics without a tabard for any faction,  or doing the dailies found in Icecrown,  Grizzly Hills and in Argent tournament.   The entire discussion on how to maximize your rep with these factions are on wowhead here.

The materials are both crafted and gathered,   the large ones being [Titansteel bar] from miners.  The Bind on Pickup items are only purchasable by engineers from the patrolling goblin Roxi Ramrocket found walking around the flight path in K3 in Storm Peaks.    Occasionally these can be found on the AH from runs in Ulduar,  engineers can deconstruct the mechanical bosses in Ulduar but are much easier to purchase from Roxi.   The BOE items cost approximately 11.4k (any type of personal or guild level bonus deductions can lower this price and gain more profit).    This is going to be again a big seller when Mists arrive due to the idea that many people will want this mount for their new Class/Race combination.    Many servers have these selling for 22k plus.

The Extras.

There are others engineer crafted items that can be sold for large profits.  The [Lil' Smoky] and [Pet Bombling] Schematics that drop from the last boss in Mekgineer Thermaplugg who is found at the end of gnomeregan.   This can be a difficult grind due the low drop rate (personally it took me 20+ runs for it to drop for my engineer.   Using real world materials,  these tend to have a acceptable profit margin as well as the other items mentioned previously.  Well worth taking the time to gain the two patterns.

I hope this will spark some profit making with your engineer.  What other items do you see as making money for your engineer?

Sunday. we take on cooking.  Bring your fire and your fish

Good Luck and Good Hunting


Want to get in contact with me? . Email me at Dragonbearjoe @ gmail. dOT com or find me on twitter at  "@Dragonbearjoe" or leave a comment here.   You can find me hanging out on the Shandris Server,  chat me up and I will buy you a glass of juice.


Dealing with Mid Sales Blahs


Love is in the air:  By the numbers

The Nerf, the nerf, the nerf is on fire

Love is in lunar fair

Just call me patch Mommar

Liquid Assets

There is a mote in your eye.. and more

Eat your vitamins and do your fireland dailies


Secret of my success

You got your jewelcrafter in my alchemist ....

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 8:00 AM

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On the day after a patch hits the realms, the jewelcrafting market provides many frustrations...

Which one of my crafters is going to make the most money?   Did i put enough materials away to ride
the wave of buyers to it's maximum?  How will I find the best way to replenish stock?  Is the elementium shuffle still valid at the inflated stack prices for ore?  Can I buy enough stock of blank gems to fill orders.

Inferno rubies sold out on many markets faster than people could restock the shelves.  Whether they
were cut or in raw form,  blank searches for inferno rubies were continual.  Same with many of the other colors (ember topazs and demoneyes seemed to be in the same predicament).

Across the board,  realms saw the depletion of the inferno rubies stock piled go quickly.   Six slots to stack their main statistic causes a lot of sales.   Not to count the need by multiple alternate toons etc.   Also included in this rush was the mass amount of shadowspirit diamond orders needed to be filled.

The problem with this issue is what could the jewelcrafter and alchemist combination use to maximize their profits?   With the stacks of elementium and obsidium ore dwindling,  the JC shuffle became much more expensive   On my server some of the ore stacks were going for over 250 a stack at it's highest.  The basic gems were going for obscene amounts (40g a piece of jaspers,  hessonites going for almost 50 and carnelians at 80g per).   Is transmuting inferno rubies and ember topaz the more economical way to use materials?  Would it be best to transmute shadowspirit diamonds (3 of each common gem needed) or transmute the rare gems that were selling and then wait for the market to balance itself and then sell inventory of the excess common and rare gems?

No doubt both would make large amounts of money.   You could easily just transmute the hessonites,  carnelians and even alicites into their respective gems with the needed herbalism materials and make a profit.  Or take all of them and transmute the respective shadowspirit diamonds.    At its heights on Tuesday and Wednesday on many servers even just listing the basic gems themselves you could make mass amount of gold.

So lets do a quick math review:

Assuming you are a transmute specialist (you did remember to change over before the more expensive
quest costs were put into effect right?),  you need 3 of each of the low level gems.

*these were basic figured from theunderminejournal.com.  As always your server may vary*

3 - hessonite  (40g+ selling raw)
3 - nightstone (40g+ selling raw)
3 - carnelian  (60g+ selling raw)
3 - alicite (20g+ selling raw)
3 - zephyrite (15g+ selling raw)
3 - jasper (20g+ selling raw)

Doing the math, crafting two shadowspirits you ended up with around 400g+ in materials.   That split to somewhere around 220g per diamond.  Now on my server the main shadow spirits were selling consistantly for around 360g per cut diamond.

Lets look at the transmutes we have available.

3  hessonites per transmute (@40g x 3 needed)+ 3 cinderbloom (@2g) =136 per ember topaz
3  carnelian per transmute  (@60g x 3 needed)+ 3 heartblossom (@4g) = 192 per inferno ruby
3  alicite per transmute (@20g x 3 needed) + 3 + 3 Whiptail (@2g) = 66 per amberjewel
3  zephyrite per transmute (@7g x 3 needed) + 3 Azshara's Veil (@2g) 28 per ocean sapphire
3  jasper per transmute (@20g x 3 needed) + 3 Stormvine @3g) = 69g per Dream Emerald
3  nightstone per transmute (@40g x 3 needed) + 3 Twilight Jasmine (3g) 120g per Demonseye

You can continue down the list,  and accepting the idea of variance between server fluctuations.  It
begins to come into light that the best way to maximize your profits is to transmute to the individual
rare items and cut them for a profit.   Even sales of the raw rare gems tend to hold onto this idea
for now.

A third option is just to sell the materials in their raw state.  This ends up being the quickest,  because it lists items without any crafting necessary.  But it also is the most limited in profit making.   You are susceptible to the rises and falls of the market.

Later on as the patch continues,  there will be a leveling out of the market.  Shadowspirit diamonds will begin to catch up and become the leading profit margin.   Elementium ore is already beginning to catch up from the large burst of need,  and many of the common gems will start to come down to a regular price.  As more and more jewelcrafters become comfortable resuming their normal crafting progression,  resuming their elementium/obsidium shuffle.   Pyrite ore on many markets didn't take as big of a nosedive as some had speculated.   Since there was multiple markets to relieve the stockpiles of pyrite ore (bars,  transmutes,  crafting ) it didn't shock the market as expected.   The possibility that an emptying of pyrite inventory later on in the next couple of weeks may also drive down many of the gem markets.

The need for the inferno rubies and ember topaz cuts,  as well as the other colored gems will equal out to levels similar to what they were at the end of patch 4.2.   If you keep these basic math formulas in your head,  then you will be ready for the switch and still keep on riding the profit wave.

Just keep a mental tally of how much you are putting into each transmute,  and decide which one will make you more profit.   For now the obvious choice on most servers is going to be the transmuting the inferno rubies,  ember topazs and other rare colored gems.  But be ready for the momentum shift to come.

Want to get in contact with me? . Email me at Dragonbearjoe @ gmail. dOT com or find me on twitter at  "@Dragonbearjoe" or leave a comment here.   You can find me hanging out on the Shandris Server,  chat me up and I will buy you a glass of juice.

Links to Previous articles by mommar

join the fun ... buy the t-shirt

Tools of the Trade

Goodbye Darkmoon Faire

Freud never said anything about warcraft gold

Between Deathwing and panda invasion

4.3 PTR announced. (First Glance)

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 12:08 AM

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Over the next few weeks we will have lots of information as the last reported major patch upgrade
for cataclysm appears on the PTR's.

Information on new patterns and new items were data mined by mmo-champion.   But it is a rough list
of items and models.

With the 4.3 data mining this gives us the first of many chances to start piecing together information
on what it will mean to both the beginning and advanced Power Auctioneers.


Stepping through the professions the biggest thing seen is that there appears to be another crafting
element introduced into the materials needed.

Essence of Destruction seems to be used in all of the new patterns that will be available with the new patch. This probably means that both this items and the patterns will drop either from the bosses or trash runs with the new raids.    As with the previous 4.2 raids,   this item will be very high priced for the first month or so when it's available on the AH.   This also means that living ember,  the 4.2 crafting material,  will probably start to be in higher demand.  Both from the nerfing of 4.2 raids,  plus the
want for added gear to be crafted to raise Item level for the new 4.3 raids.

Here is a list of the new patterns broke down under professions

Tailoring

World Mender Pants 
Bracers of Unconquered Power
Dreamwraps of the Light
Lavaquake Legwraps

All of these seem to be dps patterns,  with no healing patterns seen as of yet.   Where the potential for crafting and flipping both the items or the mats are high.   Healing classes may look at the lower 4.2
crafted items to finish off their Class Gear.   Nothing with the opening salvo of information shows that
the dreamweave timer or BOP status will be lifted.   So Investing in the pattern will end up being a high risk/high reward type of scenario.  As with all of these Epic level crafting recipes.

Blacksmithing

Bracers of Destructive Strength
Foundations of Courage
Pyrium Legplates of Purified Evil
Soul Redeemer Bracers
Titanguard Wristplates
Unstoppable Destroyer Legplates

As with the 4.2 Raid Patterns.  None of these appear to use truegold for their crafting.   Ghostcrawler announced in his explanation that there would be multiple patterns.  So it's assuming that these non raid level patterns will probably use truegold as their base instead of the Essence of Destruction.   So truegold as of now is still going to be a viable commodity to craft by alchemist or to save when demand is higher. Chaos Orbs will be used as a traditional material for crafting.   It's guessed that at some point one of the incremental patches will remove the BOP status of chaos orbs,  opening up another market for the non raiding crafter.     Mostly dps plate,  with two pieces of Healing plate has been added.    With the high amount of drops in the Fireland raids associated with healing items.   Healing plate crafted items may not be in high demand.

Leatherworking


Bladeshadow Leggings
Bladeshadow Wristguard
Bracers of Flowing Serenity
Bracers of the Hunter Killer
Deathscale Leggings of the Storm
Legging's of Nature's Champion
Rended Earth Leggings
Thundering Deathscale Wristguards

Each of these recipes take between 8 Pristine hides.   So look for both Heavy Savage Leather
and Pristine hides to be in high demand as these items begin to get crafted.    Stocking up on
Stacks of Heavy Savage Leather for conversion to pristine hide will set you farther ahead of the
Gold wars to come.

Jewelcrafting


The PTR notes are showing that the epic gems will be based on a 50 point seperation.  So epic gems will have either a full +50 to a stat,  or split between the two stats.   This ends up being good news for the non raiding jewelcrafter.  Most people will not spend a huge amount of money to gear for epic gems
with only +10 to their stats.   They are more apt to fill the gem slots with your Rare +40 stat gems or combinations of stats to reach their raiding mark.   With no information released yet on how to obtain patterns this will allow the non raiding jewelcrafter to feed the demand to gems they already have.   A wise jewelcrafter will look to purchase stock raw gems to either flip for profit.  Or to cut when the demand is high and the supply is low.   Also remember that with the new PVP season there will be a large spike for PVP specific Gems (+ resilience,  + resilience/haste,  residence/strength,  resilience/agi).   Stocking up on your raw gems in these categories may give a decent profit in the long term.

• Notice with blacksmithing there are no high level weapon crafting patterns.   There may be more introduced later.  But it means there will be a larger demand on crafted or dropped items from Deathwing raids themselves.
• There are multiple lists of items assumed to drop in the Deathwing lair raids.   Multiple boe items (including weapons and trinkets) where their demand will be high as well.
•  The Raid patterns are taking a high amount of volatile fire and volatile water for crafting.   With 4.2 and the dailies volatile fires were lowered in value.  This may be a good opportunity to purchase volatile fires for crafting while they are low.   And alchemists switching from transmuting volatile airs to volatile water.   
• Snowballs will no longer be used for summoning the Tiny Snowman,  Winter Reindeer, Winter's Little Helper

[addendum]

Maelstrom Shatter has been added to Enchanting.  Will split one maelstrom crystal into two heavenly shards.    Should drive down the prices for heavenly shards while raising maelstroms.

For the list of all the items known from the ptr datamining mmo-champion has given a sorted list here   

Want to get in contact with me? . Email me at Dragonbearjoe @ gmail. dOT com or find me on twitter at  "@Dragonbearjoe" or leave a comment here.   Would love to know how your experience with this tip works out.                    

First to Market

Posted by Aleithia at 8:00 AM

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1994. That’s the year that Netscape was first founded. Some of you may have no recollection of this once-great internet browser. At the time, they were the first and only real web-browser as we understand them today. As a result of being first to market, they had a huge advantage and all other browsers—including the now ubiquitous Internet Explorer—were struggling to keep up.

Of course, their reign at the top did not last as others caught up and eventually surpassed the internet giant. But what does this have to do with making gold? Well, being first to market can be a significant advantage in your gold-making endeavor, but don’t rely on it as your primary strategy. Find out how to take advantage of being first to market after the jump.

Click to Continue Reading...

Epic Gem Speculation, Not just for Breakfast Anymore

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 8:00 AM

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The Free online Dictionary at TheFreeDictionary.com gives the basic definition of speculation.

Engagement in risky business transactions on the chance of quick or considerable profit.

To the world of warcraft auction power seller.  This is the bread and butter of their fortune.   Some of the biggest sellers have discussed having over 35% of their income created in the first few days of new content patches.  Or major changes in the economy.

In this case we're going to center in on jewelcrafting and epic gems.   Both for the jewelcrafter and the non jewelcrafter.    It's important to understand that speculation is a high risk,  high reward scenario.   You can win big such as for glyphmas,  the introduction of new glyph slots for every character. It's also possible to lose big,  such as those that purchased multiple amounts of scarlet rubies waiting to transmute them to epic gems at the last patch of wrath.  Finding out that the transmute limitations were not removed as previously been speculated.  This is where you take chances and you enjoy why speculating can be very addicting win or lose. 

So let's get to the nuts and bolts of what we are speculating with Patch 4.3.

To understand logical speculation study the past and how patches have changed when it comes to epic gems.  Not just the raw gems themselves,  but also the recipes.  For many,  the recipes will be just as valuable to have as the gems themselves.

With Burning Crusade,   Epic gems were first drops from  raid and Heroic instance  bosses.  More powerful gem patterns were able to be purchased with Reputation rewards from Scale of the Sands Vendors.    Added in a later patch were vendors for the Shattered Sun Offensive.   Both of these required work and running instance or raids multiple times to get them.  (They were never an automatic drop except the last boss of the heroic instance or from a raid boss).

Why is this important to know?   Because it created a  limited amount of Gems on the Auction house.  Raiders purchased these quickly while the regular average player didn't spend the money it cost to buy them.    The Uncommon cuts still dominated sales due to supply and demand.

The warcraft expansion Wrath of the Lich King created a much different Jewelcrafting atmosphere.  Epic Gems were able to be acquired through multiple abilities. They were able to be mined from Titanium nodes (an ore that was introduced in patch 3.01 but the gems themselves were not available to patch 3.2).    Epic gems were also prospectable  by  jewelcrafters from the same ore.  Gems could later be purchased with Badges of Justice  and Honor Points in future patches.

It's important in this case to see that the creators of the game presented not just the ore to produce the epic gems from the start of the expansion.  But also gave multiple ways to propagate gems to even the average players.   Alchemists created Prisms that would give them the opportunity for epic gems.  They could directly transmute one gem per 20 hour period through a mix of gathered materials.    This caused a larger amount of the blank gems to be available to crafters  

Jewelcrafters were required to spend tokens earned via daily quests.   This gave them access to the patterns to cut the gem blanks and sell on the Auction House.   Also made available was the selling of titanium powder (Prospected from titanium ore) to further obtain tokens.   Purchasing all the epic patterns available a Jewelcrafter had to turn in (47 patterns x 4 tokens = 188 tokens).     PVP Jewel crafting Gem patterns  were also available for purchase from marks of wintergrasp (later to be converted to honor points). The Patterns were Bind on Pickup but the crafted gems were sellable on the Auction House.

In this case it's important to see that these gems had both multiple access points to get raw gems,  but crafted items always circled around the jewelcrafter.    With the introduction of all patterns needing to be purchased via Jewelcrafting tokens,  it created a balanced setting.   Do the dailies or prospect/purchase the titanium dust to get access to the patterns.  To many non raiding crafters it gave the opportunity to even the playing field for money making opportunities.

With the Cataclysm expansion,  the lessons of the past will spur the speculation of the future events.  It's assumed that patch 4.3 will be what introduces Epic Gems into the world. And the speculation has to start from there.  

So let use what we learned from the past from the game developers to come up with some logical conclusions.    Developers of warcraft have stated many times they want to give access to items for everyone.  So to me this would eliminate the idea of just having raw gems being mined or dropped from Raid only bosses/areas.

Developers have yet to ever have raid level gems accessible only through world drops. With the WOTLK expansion they used the Jewelcrafting token system to propagate the patterns to all jewelcrafters.    To me this created the best balance because it again made it accessible to everyone.  Not just Raiders or powersellers who could put multiple amounts of gold to be the first on the server to own a pattern.   Supply and demand will be your direct reasoning on what you should acquire first when they become available.

Developers have before used a current ore and created the ability for prospecting to be done for raw epic gems from the material    In this case the highest ore in the game is  Pyrite Ore,  which is used for multiple patterns in different crafting items.   Alchemists use it for Truegold transmutes.   Blacksmiths use it to craft ebonsteel belt buckles.  My personal belief is that this is the method that the developers will use to propagate raw epic gems into the warcraft marketplace.

It is possible that the developers will use a new type of ore to add raw epic gems into the game play.   This would be something new from their previous game models and would shake up a lot of the market.   It would create a large supply and demand for the new ore and miners would own the market for multiple weeks.

Another possibility is the introduction of a higher version of Jewelcrafting tokens with a larger set of dailies to level the playing field to everyone.   Again this would be a new step
in direction for the developers.   They limited the sales of cut gems with the introduction of armor level limits for socketing.   This prevented lower armor than Cataclysm armor to be socketed with the higher gems.  It is a possibility that they will do the same for 4.3
raid/instance armor and require only epic gems in this armor.   Or only allow epic gems to be put in this higher level armor.  Either way would limit the amount of gem sales and would shake the Auction house speculation to it's core. 

Also possible with the amount of power that is put in armor currently,  epic gems may be complete left out of future patches.    Considering that the developers usually end up creating epic gems one and a quarter more powerful than the uncommon gems.   For instance:  burning crusade gems went from +10 for their epic cuts such as Delicate Crimson Spinel to Delicate Cardinal Ruby during wrath epic gem availability.   This addition more than doubled the stats granted per gem socketing.     The developers may want to limit the power that the gems have and might eliminate the introduction of Epic Gems as a whole    Believing that this would be a very small possibility but still should be considered for your overall strategy.

So with that information I will introduce my overall strategy for both the Jewelcrafter and the non jewelcrafter.    This makes it available to every player instead of just a Maximum skilled Jewelcrafter or miner.

[Addendum:  Epic Gems drop in Raids Only.according to Ghostcrawler in an interview    I will keep the initial strategy up on this entry.    Blizzard has added before that their intentions were to do one major change in the production of content or raw materials.  Where later they offer a different production due to difficulty or user discussion.]

Jewelcrafting Strategy:

First step is to either restart or continue to do your daily token quests.   If inflation  continues like normal it will cost between 5-6 tokens per epic gem pattern.    I'm expecting approximately 200 tokens to be able to acquire every epic pattern for patch 4.3.    Even if these patterns become available from other methods,  there will be chimera eyes available for purchase for crafting as well as PVP patterns that have been introduced in the past patches.  With a low risk for these investments moneywise other than your time spent and the cost of the materials to finish the quests you end up being farther to your monetary goals.    As you continuing to do the Obsidium/Elementium shuffle (discussed in the JMTC forums here) then you should have multiple mats to use on these dailies.      When the information is first data mined and presented (keep an eye on JMTC to be one of the first journals to present breaking information to it's readers).  Plan ahead to make sure that you know exactly what ones you want to purchase first.   I always suggest purchasing the big three single stat gems patterns first (+agi,  +int and +str) then purchase your next stackable tanking gem (+stam).    Future purchases can be done using a supply and demand method depending on your server economy requirements.   Ultimately the strategy would be to have enough gem tokens to purchase most if not all of the patterns.   Preparing you to be able to supply anything on the Marketplace that is required.

My next suggestion is to start purchasing as much pyrite ore as you can at a set price depending on your server market.    My server (Shandris - US) goes for around 9 gold per ore but can consistently be found for 5-6 per ore.   This may seem like a large investment but this is going to be the bulk of your sales possibilities.   Also this will be your safety margin.    Pyrite will end up being in very short availability if epic gems are prospected from the ore.   This will cause not just a rise in the raw materials.  but also will cause the truegold and ebonsteel belt buckle prices to go higher.   Your safety net is that you will have this available to sell to not just Jewelcrafters,  but to blacksmiths,  and alchemists as well.    Your risk/reward is still large if something happens that no epic gems are introduced.  Or some other limitation is placed that limits access to Epic Gems.  But you will still have these items to sell to regain some of the losses.

On a non commodity strategy.  Be prepared to not sleep patch day.  At minimum  be prepared to post as much and as fast as possible.  You will be undercut that day quickly.   and continually.   Jewelcrafting will again be the belle of the ball when it comes to money making.    Patience is also a great weapon to have when it comes to making gold.  Let people burn through their stocks on patch day.  And then save your amount of pyrite for server raid days and weekends.    Time your stocking of raw materials and raw/cut gems for when they are at their highest demand.    Take the opportunity to know who your heavy hitters are on a server,  and add them to your friends list to keep an eye on when they continually add their auctions.   If you are the only one online,  post multiples of those Gems or Stacks of ore  that are selling well.      Assume that your sales will be out of date and undercut 2 hours after you have posted them.    If the item are not sold within that 2 hour period,  then the odds become less and less that it will sell on that posting cycle.   Cancelling and relisting the auction will give you a better sales average than letting the auction run it's normal timed course. 

Be prepared for people to list stacks of ore very low.    Undercutting is an art form to the power auctioneer.   Jumping on a low price will be very necessary if you want to maximize your profit.     Keep a 20% rule in mind.  If a stack of ore can be purchased and flipped for 20% profit.    Invest the money and reap the rewards.    Watch your server trade channel for people wanting to empty their stockpiles quickly.    With a heavily fluctuating market;  resourceful powersellers will be prepared to step back and regroup and let the other less experienced auction sellers eat at their own resources too quickly.    Then as the stocks dwindle control the prices for a larger profit.    You have an extended amount of time to show your profits while others will be faced with a panic of  a "get my money now" philosophy.

Non Jewelcrafter Strategy

The Non Jewelcrafter will have to rely on using stocking principles for Pyrite Ore and prepared to buy Raw Epic Gems to resell.    With limited revenue streams, there is a higher risk than for a Jewelcrafter.  But the same ideals apply when it comes to pyrite being a safe investment.  A smart investor will always have an "out" to limit losses if speculation does not occur exactly as hoped.

Another option would be to hire a jewelcrafter to prospect the ore for you.   Allowing you access to epic gem blanks.   I would suggest to work with a guild member.   They would appreciate the gold for a little work,  and would be less likely to take your materials and run to make a profit for themselves.    One of your chat channels should give you exactly what they "loot" from the prospected ore.  So there is no question of whether an item was obtained from the prospecting.     Offer a tip compensating the amount of work they did,  and then sell the raw epic gems on the auction house or through trade chat.

Continuing speculation will be going on as we march to patch 4.3 and beyond.  Part of the enjoyment is to be able to discuss not just what your planning on doing,  but why you think it will be a winning strategy.   Leave me a message to show just how you did.  Or offer a drink to those that didn't plan ahead and can only wish they were a part of Jewelmas.

Want to get in contact with me? . Email me at Dragonbearjoe @ gmail. dOT com or find me on twitter at "@Dragonbearjoe" or leave a comment here.   Would love to know how your experience with this tip works out.

Ultimate Cataclysm Gold Making Addon

Posted by Markco at 8:00 AM

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See for yourself:

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