Lets fast forward a couple weeks or so, Patch 4.1 hits and shortly after so does 4.2, epic gems could be in that patch or Blizzard could just decide not to include them in the patch. What's the next big thing that will and should be coming in these patches? Everyone is worried about Epic Gems, I'm worried about Shattering Maelstroms.
Blizzard has always added a way to shatter the "crystals" of World of Warcraft, it's to keep their prices nice and high on them, it's their way to manipulate the enchanting market. It's always happened and I know, at least myself I've never been prepared to make money off shattering in the past
Lets take an indepth analysis on when the past crystal shatters were added, we'll start off with the Burning Crusade Shatter: Void Shatter. This was added in patch 2.4, it was a minor/major content patch. What 2.4 brought was the Isle of Sunwell, which came with a new raid and a daily quest location. Now let's think about Cataclysm, patch 4.2 is coming and with that comes The Firelands Raid, Blizzard has also stated that they're making a new zone or a quest hub location, so could Maelstorm Crystals be coming along with 4.2? Stop there, let's move onto the Wrath of the Lich King shatter.
The Wrath of the Lich King Shatter ( Abyssal Shatter ) was added in patch 3.2.2. It was released shortly after the release of the Call of the Crusade raid, which was the second major raid content in Wrath of the Lich King. Cataclysm isn't even close to it's second major content patch, we haven't even gotten our first, but the abyssal shatter was released in patch 3.2.2, and Firelands in coming in 4.2, so could Maelstrom shatter be coming shortly after the release of the Firelands Zone/Raid?
So I ask you this; Should we be picking up the cheap Maelstorms ( mainly when 4.1 hits due to them crashing ) and stockpile them for shattering? Or is it too early?
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20 comments: on "Enchanting and Shattering Crystals/Maelstorms"
Anonymous said... March 31, 2011 at 8:03 AM
If you will be able to get them from Justice/valor points as sugested the price of these will come downn drastically. I would not buy any now...
Faid said... March 31, 2011 at 8:28 AM
I believe that the prices won't dip low enough to warrant stockpiling in early 4.1. The supply will surge, compared to what we've had, but because there's not this horrific 2k per crystal wall blocking off the average player they will suddenly go for enchants they couldn't previously afford. I believe that this newfound supply will be met with a newfound demand. The crystals will undoubtedly drop in price, but I guarantee they won't bottom out for a while. As such I won't be stock piling much on them for quite a while.
Lifedream of Black Dragonflight said... March 31, 2011 at 8:39 AM
Hi guys,
Mageshadow; this is one of the best posts you have made, thank you. Very nice insite. Thought provoking to say the least.
Unknown said... March 31, 2011 at 8:49 AM
well your post got me thinking at least. I agree that the crystal shatter will come. but idk, i still have maelstrom's at 900+ on my server, what would they break down to? Celestial essence? heavenly shard? with the bot induced power shuffle's going on enchanting mat's are in a bad place right now, i'd say great question, for me and my server it wouldn't be do-able
Anonymous said... March 31, 2011 at 8:51 AM
Hi Bones here,
Way too early for this.
What are you going to do?
Take a 1-2.5k Maelstrom and shatter it into:
5G dust
25G GCE
25H H Shard
And these are current prices that are dropping by the week.
In essence, blizzard better let you Shatter into 50 GCE or 50 Shards in order for you to make a small profit, more if the value keeps going down. I just dont see it going that way, yet.
Maybe content patch 4.3 or 4.4 ... by that time the crystals should have dropped in price enuf to make shattering viable, until then there is just no point.
Torgal said... March 31, 2011 at 8:52 AM
Yes I do believe it's too early to speculate about stockpiling maeltromcystals after 4.1. We don't even know how deep they will fall in price so I can't think of a way to predict any profits past that point.
Thinking ahead one or two steps is a good thing, but speculating on something that we can only speculate about right now is a little too far fetched for me.
Shadowstep of bloodhoof said... March 31, 2011 at 8:55 AM
I would say shattering wont be around until at least 4.3 possibly later. It will be touch and go, if we see the crystals drop to sub essence levels like they have in past expansions than we can estimate the arrival of shattering. Somehow though i think they will drag it out for a while yet.
Dingalot said... March 31, 2011 at 8:59 AM
My first thought is this is too soon.
We are still on a very speculative level, and the profits will still be there even though we wait.
If it should be tried out, it should be with a limited amount of funds.
I know reacting early on new tendencies in a market is pure value-buffing. Still I lean to then one bird in hand is better than ten on the roof.
Kammler said... March 31, 2011 at 9:45 AM
Can't see shattering Maelstroms anytime soon. The value of the gem is already so high that it isn't worth it to craft and sell the high end scrolls.
I'm seeing guilds use these (Power Torrent, Landslide) as ways to attract and/or keep high level raiders.
Maybe if MCs got down to 500g each I would consider buying some. But at 1800g and up? No way.
Vayaz said... March 31, 2011 at 10:12 AM
I think it's too early, though this is an interesting but dangerous speculation.
Nexus Transformation was added at the beginning of TBC, Void Shatter at the very end of it (when everyone and their mother ran Karazhan for badges) and Abyssal Shatter after the probably most "popular" instance ever, in terms of players who ran that instance.
These were all times when the epic enchanting material was very common.
This is something I can't see happening to Cataclysm at the moment; it should take a few more patches until the Maelstrom Crystal is even roughly comparable with anything that was before.
The Lost Meeple said... March 31, 2011 at 10:12 AM
I'm not talking about buying them now, or even when they're 1k+, I'm saying once 4.1 hits and the prices hit rock bottom, I suspect they'll be as low as 3-4, maybe 500g, should we be buying them after they've crashed?
Harold said... March 31, 2011 at 10:47 AM
Depends on the price of the mats they shatter into. I doubt it will be worth it to shatter. But if you do want to shatter something and make gold... shatter Abysal Crystals. I make a ton of gold doing this right now.
Anonymous said... March 31, 2011 at 11:20 AM
I think for now it's unanimous that you should sell off all crystals prior to 4.1. Maelstroms will be under 100g within a week or two of 4.1.
As far as eventually being able to shatter them, I think keeping this in mind is good, however shattering has not always proven to be profitable. People will have to take a hard look at enchanting prices prior to stockpiling. In the past shattering simply took a 10g crystal and turned it into 10g worth of lesser enchanting mats. It's more of a trade than a profitable enterprise.
Vince said... March 31, 2011 at 1:54 PM
Obviously stockpiling them now is a terrible plan. Give Mage some credit, guys! But post 4.1? Not really sure... Prices will drop, but I'm not sure they'll bottom out too quickly. Like Faid pointed out, cheaper crystals means more people buying them to make BiS chants. Which means more demand. Which means less crystals. And buying them from vendors won't crash the prices as much as everyone thinks, considering they cost almost the max amount of JP you can have. My prediction is that prices will drop, but supply won't overwhelm demand for quite some time, so it'll take a while for prices to hit rock bottom.
Once they do start hitting rock bottom (I'm guessing ~100g each) *maybe* that'll be time to start stockpiling a few for the inevitable shatter. However, without knowing what it'll shatter in to, this could be risky. Void Shatter made 2 Shards, while Abyssal Shatter made a bunch of Essences or Dusts. Prices for shards on my server are absurdly cheap (usually below 20g), Dusts are also cheap (below 7g), and essences usually hover in the 30g range. At those prices and assuming 100g for a MC, the only way you'd make gold shattering that makes any sense is if you can average 4 GCE per shatter. While that's not totally out of the realm of possibility, it does seem like a bit of a stretch. So either MCs will have to become even cheaper (and keep in mind other enchanting mats will likely also drop in price), or somehow the other mats will become worth much more than they are now.
Out of curiosity, was shattering really worth it toward the end of Wrath? I remember hearing a bit about it, but I don't remember it being great profit at the time.
Anonymous said... March 31, 2011 at 2:35 PM
Shattering doesn't seem to become profitable until a new expansion comes out. All the past crystals become obsolete, the AH is full of them from everyone DE'ing their old gear and gbanks dumping their supply.
However I think most people can see that BC and even LK enchanting materials are already double/triple Cata material costs right now, makes shattering Abyss and Voids fairly profitable as a lot of those older weapon enchants are still highly desired, like mongoose.
Anonymous said... March 31, 2011 at 2:55 PM
(tl;dr)Way way way too early to stockpile for shattering. As several others have said, it's actually time to empty the stockpile before 4.1 sends prices plunging. (Not from JP purchases - from heroics that drop purples. That's the real source of cheap Maelstroms.)
Don't look at when Blizzard released the shatter formulas by content patch. *Everything* is released with some content patch or other. The key was: has the market for crystals tanked yet?
In vanilla, Nexus Crystals never tanked, and they only released Nexus Transformation in 2.2 once someone came up with the idea for how to deal with obsolete mats. In BC, Crystals started dropping in value by BT time, and Void Shatter came out in the last content patch. The devs explicitly said on forums that it was to prop up the value of Void Crystals, which were selling for less than Prismatic Shards at that time.
I suspect they planned for the same during Wrath, but the value of Crystals tanked earlier due to the ToC epic-fest heroics, so they dropped it earlier. Note that ToC is 3.2, and Abyssal Shatter was hotfixed in just prior to 3.3.
So, it's *way* too early to stockpile. When the price of Crystals drops to under 2x the price of shards, or 4x the price of GCEs, then you should start.
Archangel said... April 1, 2011 at 2:30 AM
Great post, Mage ! Thumb up.
I'll surely watch the price for the Maelstrom Crystals in the first month after the patch. And I'll tell you why.
As I said in a previous comment, until the 4.2 hits, the Maelstrom Crystal will the most valuable thing to spend the justice points on. Because once the 4.2 is here, there will be other items to spend the points on, like BoE boots to sell, or plain gear upgrades (remember the currency conversion valor -> justice with every new raid content).
Once people will not be spending their points on the crystals, we might experience a small increase in price again. So i'll surely watch the price just to be ready to buy some to use them for scrolls. not thinking about shattering yet.
And here is some history lesson : If we look at the Abyss Crystal history, checking the JMTC forum comments and Wowhead comments, they took exactly 1 month to settle at a low value: they were 100g at the start and sank to 20-30g in one month. This happened with the launch of 3.1 (Ulduar). Not to mention that Naxxramas and the Wotlk heroics (that dropped epics from the last bosses unlike now), were never complained about to be hard. So to sum it up: new patch, easy raid and dungeon (with epics) content, one month, 80% drop.
Anonymous said... April 1, 2011 at 4:17 AM
Right now the needs for maelstorm crystal is still very high. Shattering is just a way to get rid of unwanted extras and recycle them back into the market, and maelstorm will still remain certain value even after exchangeable from vendors in new patch. even for a price of 500, we need to know the approx outcome before start stocking up. Hope it'll be some thing like some good stuff with a slight chance of epic/unique items that cannot be obtained otherwise. Just dust/essence/shard doesnt look profitable at this moment.
Sok
Anonymous said... April 1, 2011 at 4:18 AM
This feels like a time-critical post. If it hadnt been posted today, there would be no reason to post it for six months or more.
Anonymous said... May 21, 2011 at 11:22 PM
Stockpiled 5 stacks... plan on having 25 stacks by 4.2 (late July)
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