Patch 5.4: Budgeting for the Patch

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 12:37 PM

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It is only days away from Patch 5.4 and the rush to whoop some Hellscream butt.   Players are going to finally get to see just how much work has gone into the last (possibly) patch for the MOP expansion and the end to an epic storyline.

If you have been keeping up with the joneses you already have a large amount of your materials stocked up for the two week push after the patch.  After purchasing your ore and your cloth and every item that can be sold for a buck you're raring to go.

But there are still a few that are looking at the last days to pick up deals.   The most important thing is to not get swept up in the hoopla of investment.   If you have already stockpiled you should be looking at just how much of your budget has been spent on your own crafters.  How much have you invested to flip for profits.  Whether it's in gold or percentage a budget can keep you from falling into the pit of overinvestment that players fall into. 

For the new patch I split my investments four ways.   I decided to budget 10,000g towards what I needed for my own crafters and 20,000g for resell.  The 10,000g was split among the four different raw materials (herbs,  ore,  cloth,  Misc), and the 20,000g was split among four investment types (weapons,  armor,  crafting flips,  Misc).   My goal with that two week period is to hit about 400% profit margin.  

Budgeting may seem tedious to perform.  Why not just throw money at something that looks good.  This ends up being a hit or miss strategy with more misses than hits.  The importance of being surgical in your investment is just as important as knowing what buttons to push when your raiding.

Speaking of raiding,  players are going to want to max out their justice points so tanks and healers can net a large profit just from offering to sell their services for gold.  Runs will be quick (especially with level 90's in good gear) so just grabbing a few sales from players and running 2-3 instances can net 1000g an hour easily (assuming 15 minute runs at 250g per player).

Budgeting your time is also as important as budgeting your gold.   If your not running instances look for flips and for sales.  Buying stacks off the auction house and barking in trade chat for a profit can net profits just as much as any other worth investment.  Just look outside the well worn box for what can bring in the gold.

This weekend will be interesting.  If you need me I'll be the dancing Tauren on the mailbox in Orgrimmar accepting tips.

Good Luck and Good Hunting

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

Get thee To a TradeSkillMaster 2.0
Patch 5.4 Prep:  No Sleep til Brooklyn
Customer First
You're Squishing My Items
The Ways of The Force Are Strange
It's a Date.. Maybe?
Kill The Death Knight.. Kill It Now
Time to Remodel The Financial House
Sense Of Entitlement
Patch 5.4:   Golden Lotus Beatdown
Four Levels of Wow Activity
Patch 5.4:  Preparing your Farmers
Patch 5.4:  Easy Gear.. Easy Go
Prepping for Patch 5.4: The Beginning
The End of a Pricing Era
Patch 5.4 prep:   Do You Know Where Your Tailor Is?

Get thee To a TradeSkillMaster 2.0

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 11:09 AM

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If you have ever looked over at Curse.com or Wowinterface.com there are a plethora (there is your quarter word for the day) of addons.   Addons that can change your view of the world.  Addons that can change how you attack,  defend, play pvp etc.   Just about anything you can dream about (other than farm for you).

One of the caveats I've always had is the attempt to automate gold making.  Addons can give you a large amount of information on the economy.  Addons cannot make those decisions for you with 100% accuracy.  No matter what the amount of information put into any gold making system,  there are peaks and valleys in a market that can cause hiccups in the system.

The other caveat I've always had with large money making addons is the idea that they are a jack of all trades and master of none. Addons becomes so large that it takes a college degree to be able to do the simplest of actions.  The Auctioneer addon fell into this trap.  The original version of Trade Skill Master also fell into this trap.  Both are excellent pieces of programming without the Blizzard API system.  But unless you spent hours and hours of tinkering most players would only use 2-3 parts of the system.

Now many journals ran reviews of the new Trade Skill Master.  I delayed mine the same reason that I delay jumping from one version of Windows to the 'upgrade'.  There are always bugs to work out even after an extensive beta testing.  Bugs are just going to happen with new software.  It is a part of having worked with computers for over 30 years (yes I'm that old).  I downloaded the beta version of the software and liked it.  Upgrading to the release version of the addon didn't change my like for the new interface and changes to increase productivity.   Now a couple of weeks ago version 2.1 was released that fixed many 'undisclosed software features' and made Trade Skill Master into a force to be reckoned with.

Sapu94, Bart39 and Drethic along with a large contingency of testers and developers have created the must have addon for any serious gold maker.  But fair warning:  It is still big and daunting.  It has a high learning curve to be able to put it through it's paces.  But it has improved many of the simple functions as well as made a complete overhaul for posting and storage.

There are already many tutorials and walk throughs on setting up your new toy properly.

TSM Official Forum from Sapu94
Cyan TSM has a good starting setup guide on TSM 2.0
TSM 2.0 video Tutorial by Phat Lootz

After you have all of your items ready for the patch day next week.  Take a look at TSM 2.0 and see if you're ready to take a dive into the deep end of the pool. 

Good Luck and Good Hunting

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

Patch 5.4 Prep:  No Sleep til Brooklyn
Customer First
You're Squishing My Items
The Ways of The Force Are Strange
It's a Date.. Maybe?
Kill The Death Knight.. Kill It Now
Time to Remodel The Financial House
Sense Of Entitlement
Patch 5.4:   Golden Lotus Beatdown
Four Levels of Wow Activity
Patch 5.4:  Preparing your Farmers
Patch 5.4:  Easy Gear.. Easy Go
Prepping for Patch 5.4: The Beginning
The End of a Pricing Era
Patch 5.4 prep:   Do You Know Where Your Tailor Is?

Trade Skill Master Goodies

Posted by Aleithia at 8:00 AM

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If you've been auctioning for a long time, you've undoubtedly heard about (and been using) the addon Trade Skill Master. Well, sapu and the gang have recently released their first "release" version, officially moving out of Beta. With the release came an entirely new interface and design. Here are some of the cool new features, or old features that I'm just discovering with the new interface. For a more comprehensive video guide to TSM, you should check out Faid's post.

Custom Post Scans

I've talked about multiple profiles before. The basic idea was that I could limit the items I was scanning for by setting up different profiles that contain different groups and pricing structures. If you right-click the Post Auctions button, you can create a custom post scan. Basically, this allows you to only post certain groups, or even just a few items in the group. Maybe you're not interested in posting your entire cycle and just want to do enchants and gems. Now it's easier than ever to do it.

Custom Cancels

Right-clicking Cancel Auctions also produces a custom process. It has the same functionality as the custom post scan, limiting the groups you want to scan for. It also has the option to cancel only items with short (30 minutes), medium (2 hours) or long (12 hours) durations. In my auction groups, some items are posted for only 12 hours total because there's high competition and I want to re-post more frequently. Some items I only post once/day for 24 hours, or even 48 in a few rare cases. One frustration I've had is posting auctions before leaving for work, then returning home and posting again, except not all of my 12 hour auctions are expired. I don't want to cancel everything, and now I don't need to. I can custom cancel short duration auctions and leave up my longer ones.

Automatic Database Updating

I love having up-to-the-minute data. I regularly update my Undermine Journal Addon so I can have accurate pricing that isn't dependent upon me logging in and scanning hourly. Now, TSM author Sapu has a separate program that runs in the background outside WoW and updates your AuctionDB data. Read this post for instructions. Some people are concerned about running executables from users, but I've had it running for a few days now with no problems. It worked right out of the box for me.

These are just a few of the hidden gems I've found. How is the new version working for you? Any tips to share with your fellow readers?