Insider Trader: Patch 3.1, profits and preparation
by Amanda Miller 
Mar 13th 2009 at 6:00PM
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.Patch 3.1 is looming ever closer, and things are about to change in a big way. Today I'll be discussing how the patch is going to affect your professions, and how you can take advantage of this by maximizing your profits on the Auction House.
Players have become increasingly bored with raiding because the content that was released with the expansion pack, Wrath of the Lich King, was too quickly conquered. Across the board, players are showing up to raids on an inconsistent basis, and many people now spend much of their time on the Public Test Realm playing through Ulduar.
This has contributed to falling prices on the Auction House for raiding materials and consumables, because not only have many people stopped raiding, many others have decided to save their gold and raid without being buffed to the gills.
What should you do in these tight times? Aside from the things for which you are currently saving, the patch will bring with it a 1000g bill to learn how to dual spec, costs to fund raid wipes, bring new consumables, and enchant and gem new gear.
By learning what to sell and purchase and when, you can minimize your post-patch costs and make some gold while you're at it.
Of all of the crafts(wo)men, Scribes may feel the effects of the patch the hardest. If you currently make your money by selling glyphs, then I would work on selling your entire stash off pre-patch.
Once dual-specs become a reality, people will no longer need to purchase new glyphs every time that they respec or spec back to their mains. They will simply glyph each spec once, and never need to purchase glyphs again unless they switch to their least-used spec, or a new one becomes available. At first, it seemed that you would be providing portable Lexicons of Power as a requirement for dual-speccing outside of a city, but that requirement has been removed.
Once you've sold off your stash, it is time to start building up a stash of inks. Patch 3.1 is introducing a whopping number of new glyphs as well as changes to existing glyphs. You'll want to be ready on day one to start cranking out the most popular glyphs, as well as the new ones, for a handsome profit. Everyone will be re-glyphing their main characters and pimping out their new offspec, and demand will temporarily spike.
When this subsides, hopefully Blizzard will introduce a new way to make some income!
Because of the widespread boredom over current raid content, the prices of herbs have been falling on the Auction House. If you aren't an Herbalist, or don't feel like gathering, then now is the time to buy in order to buff up your ink stocks.
You also might want to consider making your finest vellums. Either funnel them to a high-level Enchanting alt, or sell them. After all, post-patch, everyone will be clamoring for the new enchants, as well as constantly replacing their gear.
If you are an Enchanter, then I'd start looking for a cheap source of vellum! I would also recommend purchasing cheap Auction House greens now, rather than later, in order to build up a reserve of Enchanting materials.
Once the patch hits, Enchanters who sell materials rather than enchants will see increased profits. Everyone will be buying the materials for the enchants that they need, or the actual enchants on vellum. Enchanters will be buying up greens and mats to take advantage of the upswing in business.
If you want to be prepared, then start buying now, while the prices of greens and raw Enchanting mats aren't inflated. Start putting the most popular enchants onto vellum now, but save some materials for the new enchants that will come with the patch.
Your post-patch riches will not be restricted to patch day, as people will be plodding through Ulduar upgrading their gear for quite awhile. Having a stash of materials saved up beforehand will lower your overhead.
As mentioned above, herb prices have been falling lately, and now is the time to buy them. If you have a stash to sell, hold off on the days where prices are particularly low. Once Ulduar becomes playable on live realms, the demand for herbs will soar as people will be snatching up new glyphs, elixirs and flasks.
Frost Lotus in particular should see a huge spike in price. Ever since Blizzard nerfed the drop rate, my usual stack of 60-80 surplus Frost Lotus has dwindled to around 5-15. Purchase them now, and sell them later!
Herbalists may as well herb pre-patch. Once the patch hits, those who did not prepare ahead of time will begin a strict regimen of gathering in order to keep up with their own, and their guild's, alchemical needs. If you save up now, the increased competition won't hurt so much.
Alchemists, of course, might as well start making up flasks and elixirs while herbs are still cheap. Flasks will be important to raiders who do not like to fuss around after each and every wipe, while elixirs will be marketable to those who don't care about the increased cost as much as they care about stat customization.
Keep in mind that mana regeneration is also being nerfed into the ground. While you might be able to sell mana potions now, there will likely be an increased demand post-patch.
Now is also the time to maximize your First Aid and Cooking, and even Fishing, if you haven't yet. While cloth prices have lowered, new Tailoring recipes are being added.
Many people have stopped bothering with expensive food buffs, but Ulduar will require their use. Whether you ever see yourself making strong profits from food sales or not, you might be able to buy some stacks of food and/or meat and fish cheaply now. It also wouldn't hurt to make up several stacks, as each wipe on the Ulduar learning curve will consume more food.
The patch will mean that people are upgrading their new gear again, and this will increase demand for gems, belt buckles, spellthreads and leatherworking kits. Item customization is big business.
Whip up a few scopes, Eternal Belt Buckles, spellthreads and LW kits, in addition to some of the most popular gem cuts, depending on your profession. If there are any recipes for these items that you do not yet have, now is the time to grind the reputation for them.
Uncut gems and likely, raw ore, will sell for more post-patch. If you can, increase your Mining time, and start Prospecting! Red gems in particular should be saved.
Each week, Insider Trader takes you behind the scenes of the bustling sub-culture of professional craftsmen, examining the profitable, the tragically lacking, and the methods behind the madness. Check out the patch 3.1 profession changes.Filed under: Herbalism, Economy, Jewelcrafting, Features, Raiding, Guides, Making money, Buffs, Enchants, Insider Trader (Professions), Wrath of the Lich King, How-tos, Analysis / Opinion, Items, Fishing, Mining, Alchemy, Blacksmithing, Cooking, Leatherworking, Tailoring, Enchanting, First Aid, Patches, Inscription
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
netzoner Mar 13th 2009 6:14PM
thanks
vornsarth Mar 13th 2009 6:14PM
Something I'm banking on is that we'll see an huge surge in demand for Relics of Ulduar as people start buying those Storm Peaks Only flasks. Am I out to lunch?
JJV Mar 13th 2009 7:30PM
1 words: Titansteel Bars!!!!!
the new BS recipe demands for 10 per item! currently on my server they go for 130g per one, as soon as the patch hits, i bet they will skyrocket to atleast 300-400g PER BAR!!!
Buy/Craft all the ones you can now and sell them for pure sweet profit!!!
JJV Mar 13th 2009 7:30PM
meant 2 words**
(could have sworn i corrected that)
Plan Mar 13th 2009 6:37PM
Anyone else having a difficult time making money off LW/Skinning?
I find that all the leg armors actually sell for less than the value of the mats on my server's AH. The Frozen Orb requirement briefly bumped up prices, but now they've hit bottom again.
Likewise, stacks of Heavy Borean sell for less gold than Heavy Knothide sold in TBC. I attribute that to the lack of drums or other skinning-based raid consumables in WotLK, but it hurts, especially now that most other profession products have doubled or tripled in price.
Maybe we'll sell more of that stuff once Ulduar comes out, but unfortunately I don't see any reason the price will go up. Prices may even go down, if LWs are flooding the AH with kits in anticipation of people's gear upgrades. Same thing happened in TBC when Blizzard made old arena gear purchasable with honor.
And although it may not be directly related to the Ulduar patch, I've also been a bit dismayed that profession bags, quivers, BoE LW epics and other items don't sell.
I don't want to give up LW because of the potential awesomeness of new crafted gear, but...it's been very hard to make money off the LW/Skinning combo this expansion. If anyone's been making money off those profs, I'd love to hear about it.
Microtonal Mar 13th 2009 8:13PM
I gave up skinning for enchanting for that very reason, only to find that enchanting scrolls don't sell all that well, either. Almost half of the scrolls I make winds up getting sent to one of my alts or stuffed into the guild bank.
nbcaffeine Mar 13th 2009 10:23PM
If you have lots of Borean Leather lying around, look at the 350 skill northrend greens. They are cheap to make and if you produce enough of them, you can make a mint on enchanting mats from them.
Stone_Rhino Mar 14th 2009 12:56PM
"I gave up skinning for enchanting for that very reason, only to find that enchanting scrolls don't sell all that well, either. "
Enchanters have NEVER made money from selling enchants. That part of the profession is completely nonprofit, and with the cost of shards to buy recipes you'd be lucky if you didn't go into the red.
The only valuable part is being able to disenchant for mats.
Summer Mar 13th 2009 6:37PM
I'd suggest waiting on maxing Cooking & Fishing - both are supposedly being made easier to level in the patch.
Amaxe Mar 13th 2009 6:43PM
Glad I left Inscription. Seems to be the worst deal so far to make money
Saithir Mar 13th 2009 9:00PM
It's not that bad, but doesn't go so well in the peacefull times between patches with major changes to the classes.
Still, people always make alts. Few hundred gold a day may not be the same gold that I made in the beginning, but it's still something.
Stone_Rhino Mar 14th 2009 12:59PM
Nobles cards sell for 1k+ on my server. The decks as much as 12k.
You get about a 25% chance to make a nobles card using inscription, and it takes about an hour to farm the mats to make 5 random cards, one of which will most likely be a nobles card.
So for an hours worth of effort each day a scribe can make 1k, not even counting the value of the extra cards and inks produced.
Sound profitable to me.
Worcester Mar 13th 2009 6:59PM
Why do so many writers feel the need to create artificial words like "crafts(wo)men" these days? In the English language, words ending in -man and -men are gender-neutral. Of course a woman can be a craftsman, a councilman, a policeman, etc. When referring to the race of Man, it includes both sexes.
Altering the language in this way is confusing and overcomplicated. What's the point, and where does the trend stop? Should we also start singling out a person's age? What about their race? It's a slippery and unnecessary slope.
Matchu Mar 13th 2009 7:10PM
You'll find they're "police officers" for that very reason.
Aries Mar 13th 2009 9:30PM
This isn't language school, it's a video game blog. Why do people feel the need to point out every spelling error and grammatical mistake? Sheesh, get a life.
Worcester Mar 13th 2009 9:36PM
This was not a spelling error or a grammatical mistake.
Before you chime in with criticism, please at least have some minimal understanding of the argument at hand.
Ruth Mar 14th 2009 7:13AM
"Before you chime in with criticism, please at least have some minimal understanding of the argument at hand."
What? Do you mean much in the same way as someone raising an issue with the English language in a Gaming Forum?
Kinda have to agree with Aries. Might be time for you to look out the window and appreciate the sunshine for an hour or so. We are not saving babies here.
Worcester Mar 14th 2009 2:05PM
Saving babies? No. Saving the English language? Maybe.
I'm a writer, criticizing a fellow writer. Does it really matter that this is a gamers forum? Don't gamers deserve well-crafted articles? I think we do.
As to the "get a life" posters, the sweet irony is that you have succeeded in being MORE trivial than you accuse me of being. You've taken the time to write a post, and said NOTHING!
Adamanthis Mar 15th 2009 4:26PM
"Altering the language in this way is confusing and overcomplicated. What's the point, and where does the trend stop?"
Is adopting gender-inclusive language really so objectionable?
Yes, the traditional usage is that exclusively male terminology can refer to both men and women. But it never did so on equal terms. Look at the culture in which that usage derived. Women were legal non-persons under the care of their father or husband, barred from most vocations (so "craftsmen" WERE exclusively male). Men were considered the superior, prime specimen of the species, and women were viewed as an inherently flawed, sinful, weak, inferior variation.
And the English language developed reflecting and reinforcing that worldview. The inequality of women in society and the inequality of women in language is not some crazy coincidence. Most women, for the most part, no longer refer to themselves as "Mrs. John Smith", feeling they have their own identities and should therefore get to have their own names. Similarly, is it really so objectionable that they wouldn't want to identify as "men" or be referred to as "he"?
Adamanthis Mar 15th 2009 4:48PM
I'd like to propose an experiment to test the difference between the traditional English use of masculine terms where gender is unknown, and more modern, gender-inclusive, "artificial" terms, as you describe them.
Get 100 participants. Ask 50 of them, "Picture a craftsman, and describe him to me." Ask the other 50, "Picture a craftsperson, and describe that person to me." Compare the number of people in each group that described a male person, and the number that describe a female person.
Under the traditional rules of grammar, both "craftsman" and "he" can refer to women. So the ratio in each group describing men and women should be similar, right?