Insider Trader: Inscription and glyphs in Cataclysm
by Basil Berntsen 
Sep 27th 2010 at 5:00PM
Glyphs and inscription are getting a serious overhaul in Cataclysm. I read an excellent write-up of the new system on my friend Kraklin's blog and realized that I haven't yet posted an Insider Trader on the new system! This will have an impact on people who make their money with inscription, as well as be a nice quality-of-life change for people who find themselves changing their spec and glyphs a lot.
As soon as the pre-expansion patch 4.0.1 launches, we're no longer going to have to buy glyphs more than once per character. Once you learn a glyph, you will always see it in your spellbook and will be able to switch between your known glyphs with a Dust of Disappearance, made by scribes from the same ink used to craft glyphs. While this won't mean much if you tend to stick with a single set of glyphs, if you change them around a lot, you will find it easier to manage and less expensive. On the live servers, every time you make the change, you often end up paying enormous markups on glyphs -- there can be sporadic supply due to the massive number of auctions that need watching if someone is selling glyphs. After 4.0.1, assuming we know the glyph already, we'll just have to buy a single dust, and every scribe in the auction house will be competing for that business.
Your glyph tab is going to look a little different too. We'll be able to learn and use three types of glyphs: minor, major and prime.
- Prime glyphs are going to be the new major glyphs; however, since our major glyphs currently seem split between min-maxing and stuff that doesn't change our raw numbers, Blizzard decided to put all the min-max type stuff into the prime category. Anything that directly makes you better at your job (more crit on an attack, added healing efficiency, defensive cooldown reduction, etc.) will probably be a prime glyph.
- Major glyphs will be everything that raiders typically pass up in favor of min-max glyphs now. This is where they're going to put stuff that can make you better at your job but isn't the blindingly obvious best and only choice. There is supposed to be room for personal preference in this tier.
- Minor glyphs will be similar to what they are now -- mostly cosmetic and fun, some minor utility, but it'll be rare.
The glyph market
How does this affect the glyph market? Obviously, everything's conjecture at this point. In fact, that's the hardest part about writing about the virtual economy: When there's a massive change like what we're expecting in Cataclysm, almost everything in the economy is going to be a toss-up. This is the one part of the game that we, as players, are mostly responsible for shaping.
The biggest shift is happening to one of the components of glyph demand on the live servers: people who reglyph. Whether it's because they're so hardcore that they min-max based on the content they're doing, or just because they bought sub-optimal glyphs that are being replaced, people change glyphs, and it's a significant part of the glyph business. This will change in Cataclysm. This demand will now be for dust, and you can't gain a competitive advantage with a one product market by having the best addons. This is a win for the game designers, who I suspect were never happy with the way the glyph market forced people to use addons to have a chance to compete.
Before all you glyph hawkers start dropping your profession for engineering, though, remember that there's a huge amount of business that comes from people buying glyphs for the first time on a character. Lots of people roll alts, and these alts usually get glyphs. The glyph market will be far from dead in Cataclysm. It will simply become one of those markets that caters to new characters only. In a way, it will be similar to the bag market: Netherweave Bags sell as well as they do because of all the new characters who need them. In addition, there should be a surge of demand for glyphs when 4.0.1 drops as people buy up all the glyphs for all the characters they plan on playing.
Of course, I imagine that there will be new cataclysmic versions of all the other revenue sources that scribes currently enjoy: trinkets like the Darkmoon Card: Greatness, off-hands like Faces of Doom and Iron-Bound Tome, as well as, of course, weapon and armor vellum.
Insider Trader takes you behind the scenes of the bustling subculture of professional craftsmen and auctioneers, examining the profitable, the unprofitable and everything in between.Filed under: Economy, Insider Trader (Professions), Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 4)
Adamanthis Sep 27th 2010 7:27PM
That's what I was planning on doing... stocking up on ink, then waiting for the 4.0 spike and making whatever is in highest demand as people complete their collections of known glyphs.
If the materials cost is going up to three inks, it might be best to make some ahead of time, but with all the changes, it would be hard to know what to make.
Pyromelter Sep 27th 2010 8:06PM
Just my opinion, but I would make glyphs, not just inks. I have a feeling that herbs will be more expensive, but inks and pigments will not, when the xpac drops, and that overall you'll make the most gold by selling glyphs on day 1. Or day 1-7. If you have the glyphs pre-made from cheaper raw mats, your mat cost will be lower (and hence higher profit for the finished product).
Adamanthis Sep 27th 2010 8:22PM
@Pyromelter
My concern is that if some glyphs are being removed entirely rather than converted, bizarre things could happen to your stockpiled inventory.
Uriul Sep 28th 2010 11:29AM
Do not, do not, do not wait until 4.0 to craft glyphs - you'll end up making 1/3 the profit you could if you make glyphs now. The price of all glyphs is increasing to 3 inks with the patch.
They're only removing about 15 glyphs (most are changing to a different glyph), so you can either look up that list or just make all glyphs - considering how many glyphs there are, losing your stock on 15 is a very small loss compared to only being able to make 1/3 as many glyphs come 4.0.
But yes, stockpile now; you want to grab as much as you can while we still have cheap adder's tongue etc and are able to trade Ink of the Sea for other inks.
dodgeballer2005 Sep 27th 2010 5:52PM
B-but, I use Inscription AND engineering!
JackOfAllGames Sep 27th 2010 11:03PM
You and me both. =) I've enjoyed being able to sell glyphs from the comfort of Dalaran (the few times that it has actually been profitable to do so on my server).
My alt, an engineer/jewelcrafter does quite well too. It's a small annoyance, having to switch to yet more alts when I want to farm ore/herbs/whatever, but not too big a deal.
I greatly enjoy the benefits that both inscription and engineering have brought, and I believe that inscription is only looking better in Cataclysm. =)
loop_not_defined Sep 27th 2010 6:11PM
I'm trying to figure out how this new system is going to work....
Replacing a glyph requires Dust of Disappearance. Dust of Disappearance requires level 81? Or do you only need the Dust for newer, Cataclysm-level (81+) glyphs (since the Dust refers specifically to "powerful glyphs")?
Would suck if you couldn't replace glyphs until level 81. :\
Pfooti Sep 27th 2010 7:34PM
There's another item like that called vanishing powder in the mmo-champ database that you make with midnight ink. I'm hoping that this is the recipe they use when 4.0 goes live because otherwise yeah- you won't be able to juggle glyphs between 4.0 and Cat. But that seems unlikely.
Boobah Sep 27th 2010 9:00PM
One powder is for level 80s and below. The other is for post-80 characters, and requires mats from the new Cataclysm zones to make.
quitterpants Sep 27th 2010 6:24PM
A point that I think has gone unmentioned: you won't have to *choose* which glyphs to have anymore .... you can buy them all.
Two questions: how many recipes do you know? How many recipes have you used in the last month?
Granted: it's a market changer; but, not necesarily a market *breaker*.
berry Sep 27th 2010 7:16PM
Yes it breaks the market. It turns something Consumable into something Learnable and re-usable. How is that not going to break the market? It's like buying a Flask and being able to re-use it all the time.
Bye Bye Inscription. I'm tired anyway of people whining about paying more than 5g for a Glyph.
Artificial Sep 27th 2010 7:53PM
@berry: You've never heard of durable goods? There's a substantial market for them. There are quite profitable markets for all kinds of non-consumable items.
vocenoctum Sep 27th 2010 11:56PM
Heck, think of it like this, while some folks might switch out glyphs here and there, they're mostly focused on the same 2-3 glyphs each time. With the new system, sure you'll not have that guy buying 2-3 glyphs every week, but the completionists will buy EVERY glyph, even if they never use it, they'll burn it into the "glyphbook".
Eirik Sep 27th 2010 8:41PM
@jbodar: Perhaps "nobody can get the meme right" because we have taken YOUR meme and made it our own. The meme has mutated, or perhaps forked. That's the thing about ideas. They don't always stay where you put them.
Boobah Sep 27th 2010 9:01PM
It's also one of the reasons people compare memes to virii, the mutations.
vocenoctum Sep 27th 2010 11:57PM
It's equally possible that it's not a meme, and someone was just making a comment, and no one gives a damn about this supposed meme but him...
It's an inside joke, but he doesn't realize he's the only one inside.
Eirik Sep 28th 2010 7:26PM
It's a bona fide meme. Or rather, set of memes. Only requirement on memes is that they're shared. That is, inside jokes qualify.
"Pretty good at predicting these things" gets kept alive fairly regularly on these threads, much like the "In Soviet Russia..." and "I welcome our (fill in the blank) overlords" memes on Slashdot.
And in this case, he is by no means the first person to complain in response to someone "getting it wrong". I've seen the complaint enough that it's coming close to being a meme of its own. Can't recall the particular thread right now, but saw perhaps 3-4 people grousing about this exact thing on an earlier blog post a week or two back.
Poltergeist Sep 27th 2010 10:32PM
There's also one aspect of the new market people are overlooking. Most lvl 85 characters will one to purchase most, if not all of the glyphs available to the class to have them on hand in case they ever need them.
This means that glyphs that almost never sell will have the same demand more or less as min-max glyphs.
Almost all of the 15 core raiders or so in my guild have stated they will craft/purchase every glyph available for each of their alts. It's quite common for people to have 3 to 10 max level characters now days.
Bill Sep 28th 2010 8:34AM
Ok quick math if a raider has 30 glyph slots that need to be filled and glyphs are selling for an average of 25 gold each. They spend 750 gold and are done. If the same raider is replacing 2 glyphs per week it only takes them 15 weeks to have spent the same 750 gold. The expansion will probably last more than 15 weeks and raiders will probably be changing their glyphs out the whole time. Consumables will always make more money in the long run then a durable good.
Poltergeist Sep 28th 2010 11:57AM
I can't speak for anyone outside my guild, but most of us never swap out our glyphs seeing as how min maxers know which glyphs will give them the best performance.
The only players that constantly swap out glyphs are pvp and niche players that have already used both of their dual specs and are forced to repspec.
Raiders generally tend to stick to the same glyphs unless a raid boss mechanic calls for it. Even then, it's usually only a handful of players who need to do so. Casual raiders are even less inclined to glyph swap once they've decided on what they like.