Monopoly Tactics

Posted by Markco at 8:00 AM

Written By: Leo

Hi there,
I enjoy your blog very much, and there is a lot to learn. I started seriously getting interested in gold making, during WTLK, when I was scraping to pay my repair bills and elixirs for raiding. I was actually running dailies for these.

Since then I've gotten:

• 6 x Artisan Riding (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=34091),
• 4 x Master Riding (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=90265),
• 1 x Mechano-Hog (http://www.wowhead.com/item=41508),
• 2 x Mekgineer's Chopper (http://www.wowhead.com/item=44413),
• 1 x Vial of the Sands (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=93328)
• and a bunch of other odds and ends.

I keep a minimum of 100.000 gold between my alts (one server), and at the moment I have 128.000 (cash). I don't raid anymore (no time ), so I am not interested in buying the latest piece of gear. Eventually I want to give every one in my guild a chopper so we can do battlegrounds in style.

Most of my gold I made with alchemy and jewelcrafting.

These days I have little time, and prefer to spend a short time every day to make some gold, like 30 minutes, and a bit more time to level a lower level alts. The dungeons queues for my end game DPS-es are just too long, tanking and healing is just not my favorite. Lower level dungeons are fun and short and to the point, even for tanking and healing.

My daily routine?


Jewelcrafting (horde and alliance):

Lately I find the margins very low, and not really worth the effort. You can still make gold, especially using the monopoly tactics (see below). The dailies are very easy, give guild points, XP and gold, and of course a token a day keeps the competition away. Profitable? Not really.

Alchemy (x3 toons) for transmutations.

This can make some nice gold. Depending on the markets, I do one of these:
Transmute: Living Elements (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=78866) (check what result is most profitable, and transmute in the zone for that).Buy for 15 x 4.5 gold, sell for 15 x 18 gold + 3 x 6 for extra's = 220g profit every day x each character. The air (Uldum) and water (Vashj'ir) sell best.

Transmute: Water to Air (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=17562). buy Essence of Water (http://www.wowhead.com/item=7080) for around 5 gold, sell Essence of Air  (http://www.wowhead.com/item=7082) for around 100 gold. Or use to make heirloom enchants, agility on weapons, with my enchanter. the transmutation recipe is back again for sale after patch 4.2. You can do this with lower level alts as well, since the recipe needs 275 Alchemy only. You will also proc extra's if you are a transmutation master (become one if not). Less profitable, but sometimes better than being stuck with lots of volatiles.

Transmute: Truegold (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=80243) this doesn't sell very well at the moment, most people try to sell them off at the moment, so I go for the other transmutations.

For a bit more gold, and for fun, I do what I call "Monopoly tactics":

In order to raise the price of certain items you want to craft and sell, I found one way of raising the prices, which is buying out ALL of one of the materials you need for them. I have a very large gold base, so investing 4000 gold in buying all Pyrium Bars (http://www.wowhead.com/item=51950) is not such a problem. What I did, for example, the price was around 15 gold, but most were closer to the bottom price, 15-17 gold, and only a few above them. I bought all off them, posted some back at 29 gold a piece. I made some nice money on bars that I re-sold, but this also resulted in less people transmuting truegold, because the mats were not available or too expensive, so I profitted there as well. I did the same thing with Carnelians (http://www.wowhead.com/item=52177), I used them to transmute and cut infernal rubies myself, and got a nice profit there as well.

You can really do this tactic with a lot of items. Lets say you want to sell a glyph, but the price is 3 gold, just spend 100 gold to buy them all, post a few of them for 58, 60 and 62 gold, and by the time you sell 3 you will have a nice profit. Also raw gems work nicely like this. Of course you can be left with a lot of stock that you don't know what to do with. Sometimes I just keep it, sometimes I overflood markets and sell them off lower than I bought them, bringing the markets down, so I can start the cycle again. And sometimes I loose out completely (money gone & no buyers), but that is just part of the game.

Regards,
Leo

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