Patch 5.4 prep: Do You Know Where Your Tailor Is?

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 11:54 AM

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The most difficult part of having multiple professions is to know where to apply your time management skills.  Spending hours gathering, buying and producing for sales.  Dividing your limited time between multiple professions that you allot.  This becomes much more apparent when a new patch arrives.  Jumping on those opening week sales where players are upgrading new gear.  Players playing with new toys from professions and hunting new little niches in the Warcraft sales world.

Tailoring is peculiar because the main tent pegs for production is the Windwool Cloth.  Windwool Cloth is Being different than other raw materials (Ghost-Iron Ore and Exotic Leather) in that everyone can collect Windwool Cloth as they loot dead mobs.  The other materials have to be gathered by specific professions.  Taking this into consideration Windwool Cloth ends up being the lowest of the different raw materials in Pandaland.  And can end up being the most profitable.

But with 5.4 another tailoring cooldown is introduced for Epic 545 gear.  Celestial Cloth will require 10 bolts of Windwool Cloth with a daily timer per construction.  There is a work around using the new Spirit of War item that is obtained from DE'ing high raid gear.   The Spirit of War is also used for the actual crafting of the new 545 epic gear so using this for a simple timer would be a bad idea.

So will a new cooldown affect the amount of cloth on the Auction House?   Most tailors already have a large amount of cloth they have kept for their Imperial Silk daily.  This still will leave a good boost to the market for both the Windwool Cloth and Bolts of Windwool Cloth.  So buying and stocking inexpensive Windwool cloth and bolts can put you ahead.  This is especially important for current tailors who aren't stockpiled yet to last 30-60 days of daily transmutes.  As players again continue to explore the new areas the cloth will go back down to the levels they are now.  But taking chances to bank on a few gold savings isn't always wise.

Also with 5.4 older cloths are going to be that much more valuable.  Cloth from the Wrath of the Lich King expansion and Cataclysm expansion (Frostweave Cloth and Embersilk Cloth respectively).  There is still a nice steady stream of income from production of Netherweave Bags for new and alt toons.  Where a 50-60% profit might not always seem like a lot of gold overall.  Small amounts add up very quickly.  Selling 10 bags a day at a 30g profit (buying at 5g a stack of netherweave and selling at 38g)  can net a nice 1500g profit a week.  Some servers might not be as profitable but looking at when players are buying their bags on your server can give you that much more access to the stead bag making income.

Tailoring isn't a big mystery.  Just like all other professions it depends on supply and demand.  But the most important part is to make sure that you are the one supplying to the demand.  Players abandon professions as they continue to drift farther and farther away from Warcraft.  Jumping into those markets and being prepare will set you with your sewing machine ready to provide for the next raid tier.

Knit one.. pearl two..  

Good Luck and Good Sewing.

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Patch 5.4: Arise Scribe Arise!!!!!
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The Pitfalls of Trade Barking

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 8:36 AM

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Mommar here.

For the past couple of nights that I have logged onto my home server,  There has been a player that's been barking up trade chat to sell Ghost Iron Bars.

Now this is probably nothing new on your home server.   Trade Chat (never to be confused with Barrens chat) has been a lively market to buy and sell.  Memories of running clear across Azeroth to sell a gem cut or an armor piece still make me smile.   Even today I still will jump under one of my other toons and do a little sales in trade chat.

Something stood out with this salesman (at any time you step into the trade chat arena you should stand out).  They seemed to be receiving an inordinate amount of grief about pricing.  Their pricing was a little bit below what was available on the Auction House (both from Raw product and the bars themselves).   So something must have sparked someone to start offering them much lower offers for their goods.  To the point that others began to heap onto the grief.

I looked at my notes (yes,  I do keep notes on some salespeople that stand out) and hadn't seen anything that stuck out as a problem.   So I could only surmise that he had upset someone with a previous sale and the person was making it their personal goal to destroy their business.  The abuse became so bad that I almost did a pity buy and purchase all that he had in stock (1000 bars).  When doing the calculations I could easily break even through manufacturing gear and my daily Blacksmithing creation of Lightning Steel Ingots.

But something kept me from pulling the trigger.  Generally I consider myself a good listener to my gut feelings.  If they feel something is wonky,  then I go with that feeling.  (Probably why there is no Mrs Mommar or any little Mommar's running around camp JMTC).  So I decided to walk away and do other activities before shutting down the game for the night.

More and more players entering the auction house game make things exciting.  And many blogs,  journals,  players and 'experts' will tell you that making gold is about mechanics.  That's 85% true by my estimation.  But no matter how you automate gold (TSM is still excellent at doing this), there will always be that 15% that is your feelings and emotions.  You cannot and shouldn't eliminate that gut feeling you have that a deal is too good to be true.  Especially as we continue through 5.4 and more players look to sell off massive amounts of gear to prepare for the next expansion.

But then after tonight,  anyone want to buy 1000 bars for cost plus a 'little' profit?   We shall see

Good Luck and Good Hunting

7.7 Million Customers and Nothing Sells
Priorities in PVP Gear Pricing
Prep for Patch 5.4: Long Term Goals
Weekend Is Here
Take Me To Naxx
Profit Anonymous
Only Worth What Someone Will Pay
What i learned from Marvel Heroes....
Patch 5.4: Arise Scribe Arise!!!!!
Walking On The Dollars

Let The Stockpiling Begin

My Precious Transformer

Bang The Drum Slowly
Five Rules For Dating My Gold Stash
Transmog Me Baby

Distopian View Of Money

Dailies, Weeklies, Now yearlies

The Barrens Feel So So Barren

My Favorite Addon

I Need More Fun Sales

Prep for Patch 5.4: Long Term Goals

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 11:59 AM

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Mommar Here.

If the powers that be keep up their normal schedule,  We should be getting what could be the last patch to Mists of Pandaria in the next month or so.  Currently they are testing the new Raids (finally get to boot up Garrash's ample posterior).

Keeping an eye on the market and the changes have always kept gold goblins ahead of the curve.  Patch 5.4 should bring some interesting boosts in the economy for a short term.  That means getting your gear together,  your valor points maxxed and items in the bank ready to sell from the start.

The odds are that this will be the last patch before the introduction of a new expansion.  If you have been running instances even during patch 5.3 you've probably noticed a speed increase in completing them.   Unless you end up having a completely new level 90 geared players,  the tank and healing combo can blow through most of the instances between 20 minutes.   The benefit of this will allow players to get their new ALT toons that much quicker into high level raiding.

There has already been a slowdown on many servers for materials on the AH.  The ebb and flow of farmers and investors has kept the prices higher than normal.  Every so often you can find a pretty good deal on Gold Iron Bars (or ore) which can add to your profit margin.  Now is that a good idea to start your craft one/put materials away for a later technique that has been used many times for future profits.

The other thing to use is your lineup.   Setting your profit goals for your first week in the new patch,  your first month and even to the introduction of the next expansion will give you a base for your future professions. Do you want to make 10,000g a first week,  25,000g a first month or whatever your goals are.   Setting your goals now and expectations will guide you on what to invest in materials and time.

Time becomes your most important commodity with the next patch.   The idea is that you have to spend time to make gold changes.  You need to spend time wisely to make gold.  

Keep this in mind in the next few weeks while you're preparing for the next patch.

Good Luck and Good Hunting

Weekend Is Here
Take Me To Naxx
Profit Anonymous
Only Worth What Someone Will Pay
What i learned from Marvel Heroes....
Patch 5.4: Arise Scribe Arise!!!!!
Walking On The Dollars

Let The Stockpiling Begin

My Precious Transformer

Bang The Drum Slowly
Five Rules For Dating My Gold Stash
Transmog Me Baby

Distopian View Of Money

Dailies, Weeklies, Now yearlies

The Barrens Feel So So Barren

My Favorite Addon

I Need More Fun Sales

Weekend Is Here

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 11:26 AM

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Mommar here.

I've worked many different jobs as I was becoming an adult.   And with anything that happens in a person's life,  I choose to pay attention to see if I could learn anything.

One of the jobs that I had was as a morning prep and pizza delivery driver.  It was an interesting job for a young adult who didn't have a lot of requirements for cash other than pay the rent and make sure the pizza was in the refrigerator.

What I did pick up from the job was the beginning of understanding of how a business works.   In this case the pizza delivery/eat in business in a small town was interesting.  During the week there was a trickle of customers that ate in the restaurant.   Including in this was also the deliveries that were made to outside customers.  It would seem that during the week the store made enough money to keep the lights on,  pay the bills and pay the employees (my favorite part of course).

It was the weekend that the store made the bulk of its profitable income.  This was the normal difference between the weekday and the weekend.   The same occurs when dealing with income in World of Warcraft. During the week you will find many times that income will be much less than during the weekend.  Consider it in mind the idea of root beer and wing money during the week,  making the house and mortgage payments during the week.

The reason for this is very similar to what happens in the restaurant business.  A smaller percentage of players log on during the week.   Finding other activities including work,  family enjoyment, etc.  On the weekend players find more time for looting,  pillaging and upgrading their gear for the raiding exploits.

It bears repeating that knowing your clients can elevate yourself into a higher tax bracket.  Allowing you to expand and even franchise your gold goblin abilities.

Good Luck and Good Hunting

Take Me To Naxx
Profit Anonymous
Only Worth What Someone Will Pay
What i learned from Marvel Heroes....
Patch 5.4: Arise Scribe Arise!!!!!
Walking On The Dollars

Let The Stockpiling Begin

My Precious Transformer

Bang The Drum Slowly
Five Rules For Dating My Gold Stash
Transmog Me Baby

Distopian View Of Money

Dailies, Weeklies, Now yearlies

The Barrens Feel So So Barren

My Favorite Addon

I Need More Fun Sales

Profit Anonymous

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 1:42 PM

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There is a balance between the search for profit and enjoyment of the game.   Yes,  shockingly you read that sentence correctly.    I have many times talked about the fine balance between reputation and profit.   At some point if you are known as a person who will take advantage of anything it will creep up on you and players will stop making deals with you.

Every deal that is made between two players,  buying or selling or trading will give you a boost or a drop in your reputation.  Even the deal that I talked about yesterday hopefully left the player with the knowledge that I wasn't attempting to slight him on his offer.

The key is to approach every deal as if it was the first of many deals you will make with this person.   Granted that most players do not look at who they are buying from on the Auction House.  Their only concern is who has the lowest cost for the item that they want.   But when you get out into the wild wild west of trade chat, your reputation is your lifeblood.

There are players on the server that I do most of my work at that have stellar reputations.  They are known for beings good negotiators.  They are known to be able to give good deals (including the free with materials deal that many use as a loss leader to get customers in).  There are other players that are known to be troublesome in their deals.  This includes the buying of spots for epic raids.

As Mists start to drift toward middle age in respects to being an expansion,  more and more sales of 'raid spots' occur in trade chat.  500g for a guarantee mount all the way up to 10,000g.  You will also see the creation of gold runs where players will throw in 500g at first and then bid gold for an item they want.  At the end of the run the profits are split among the players that finished the raid.  This again can also be an excellent way of making gold over a 3 hour period. (I'm one of those people that will join the raid but rarely buy anything.)

The reputation that someone has for putting these raids together determine just how many players will join.  If they know that there are going to be troublesome spots,  including arguments and questions of integrity on dividing the spoils,  then players won't join.   This is where your reputation that you have built in your smaller trades can affect your larger more adventurous exploits.

Keep your own mental reputation in mind with every deal you do this weekend.  Did it go well?   What profit did you make and what did it really cost you?   You might be surprised at what answers you get.

Good Luck and Good Hunting

Only Worth What Someone Will Pay
What i learned from Marvel Heroes....
Patch 5.4: Arise Scribe Arise!!!!!
Walking On The Dollars

Let The Stockpiling Begin

My Precious Transformer

Bang The Drum Slowly
Five Rules For Dating My Gold Stash
Transmog Me Baby

Distopian View Of Money

Dailies, Weeklies, Now yearlies

The Barrens Feel So So Barren

My Favorite Addon

I Need More Fun Sales

Only Worth What Someone Will Pay

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 8:00 AM

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Mommar here.

This weekend was relatively successful.   As with many weekends the bulk of my gold ends up being purchased from weekend warriors (and weekend Mages,  weekend Shamans.. You get the point).

I received an in game email from a player who wanted to purchase one of my Lionheart Champion Reborn that I have crafted and listed.   Every so often I've picked up a couple that players have listed for what I felt was too low so that I could flip for a good profit.

It wasn't the first time that someone had sent me an email asking for a reduced price on my item.  I have a decent idea of what I've invested in everything I sell so if it's possible to be flexible for a sale I will be.  In this case I had the blade listed at 17k (I had sold one earlier in the week for this price) and they offered me 10k for the blade.

The 10k was the amount that he was willing to pay for the item.  So I mentally looked at the material requirements

First needing to craft the Lionheart Blade, Reborn

Lightning Steel Ingot x5
Living Steel x 3
Spirit of Harmony x 3

Then the materials Lionheart Champion, Reborn

Lightning Steel Ingot  x10
Living Steel x 6
Spirit of Harmony x 6

So to Craft the entire item you need

Lightning Steel Ingot x 15
Living Steel x 9
Spirit of Harmony x 9

The Living Steel and Spirit of Harmony are easily replaced through a little farming (Halfhill farming or just overall beating on mobs) but the Lightning Steel Ingots take 5 days to replace.   The makes these the real push of how much the item is worth to sell for me.   Between that and the previous sale earlier in the week at 17k I decided to politely decline the offer and counter offer for 15.5k.  

How the transaction ended isn't important (mostly because I still try to keep some of my transactions private) but the important lesson I hope people get is just how I calculated the worth of the item.  On my server a rough estimate to replace the Spirits of Harmony would take me about two hours at most.  Living Steel goes for between 350 and 400 per item.  So a total of 15 days if I craft everything on my own (I have purchased a premade  Lionheart Blade, Reborn and then proceeded to craft the Lionheart Champion, Reborn.  This saved me the original 5 days and some material costs.

But for our discussion let's just say I finished my daily Blacksmithing crafting of Lightning Steel Ingot every day for 15 days.   Give an approximate cost for the Spirit of Harmony at 100g.   My goal was to arrive at somewhere between the 12k-13k in mythical profit covering over the 15 days it takes to craft the item.

If I would have taken my new friends offer then my 'profit' would have dropped down to 7k to 9k for the same item.   That means that I was valuing every Lightning Steel Ingot at 900g per where his value was hitting approximately 700g per.   How much I was willing to sell the entire item determined just how much the individual rare crafting item was valued.

Neither of us are wrong with our pricing points.   If you have ever watched a version of Pawn Stars,  you come the realization that a value is an arbitrary number that is placed on an item.  The true value of an item is just how much someone is willing to pay.   That same sword could sell for 20k if I was able to find the right buyer.   Later on as more powerful items are offered,  it could be worth a dirty wet sock.

Keeping this in mind will help a lot with your price points and how much to sell an item.  You determine just how much value you have in an item simply by calculating the material cost and just what your time is worth. Once you have this ability in your arsenal to work these quick calculations in your head,  then you have the ability to explain your pricing point and be much more flexible.

Good Luck and Good Hunting

What i learned from Marvel Heroes....
Patch 5.4: Arise Scribe Arise!!!!!
Walking On The Dollars

Let The Stockpiling Begin

My Precious Transformer

Bang The Drum Slowly
Five Rules For Dating My Gold Stash
Transmog Me Baby

Distopian View Of Money

Dailies, Weeklies, Now yearlies

The Barrens Feel So So Barren

My Favorite Addon

I Need More Fun Sales

Walking On The Dollars

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 12:23 PM

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Mommar here.

One of the things that still amazes me is some of the simple things that can be crafted that people skip.   'It doesn't make enough money' is one of the biggest excuses to me.  

Now please understand just like everyone else I am continually hunting for the big score.  That one item that I can flip for 3 to 4 times the value and shower myself in virtual gold coins.   But those can be few and far between if you're not working the system continuously.

Netherweave Cloth and Netherweave Bags are one of the items that seem to get put by the wayside.  Purchasing a stack of cloth for 5g and selling the bag for 24-30g (especially on weekends) is just printing money for a tailor.  With players going on pet hunts in dungeons such as Karazhan and Tempest Keep, stacks of Cloth are continually being put on the market.

But look at the logic of why bags still sell?   You need 4 bags for your personal character to run around with and 8 bags to fill in your bank.   The next step up (Imbued Netherweave Bag) only has a storage capacity of 18 slots.  The Avg sales price for those are over 150g a piece.   So it would be relatively silly to stock all of your alts and bank toons with the Imbued Netherweave Bags or higher.   At some point Embersilk Bags might take over as the champ of the sales when it comes to personal storage.  But the materials still make them only good for main toons and players who just have to have extra storage.

There are other items that sell that may not seem like a lot of profit on individual sales.  But if you count all of the sales every day they can add up quickly.  Stacks of Runecloth,  Arcane Dust,  Scrolls and anything that players will continually use as they go through their trip through Azeroth,  Panderia and beyond.

So the next time you start looking for the big score,  look at what you have built your gold pyramid on the small scores that pop up from time to time.

Good Luck and Good Hunting

Let The Stockpiling Begin

My Precious Transformer

Bang The Drum Slowly
Five Rules For Dating My Gold Stash
Transmog Me Baby

Distopian View Of Money

Dailies, Weeklies, Now yearlies

The Barrens Feel So So Barren

My Favorite Addon

I Need More Fun Sales

Toxic Sales

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Why Warcraft Needs Microtransactions

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