Posts with tag ah

Like many, if not most, players, I regularly use the auction house to buy and sell items that I need or want in WoW. And, like many players, I regularly experience frustration in doing so -- either I can't find what I want and/or it's exorbitantly expensive, or I can't sell what I'm trying to get rid of! I'm not sure which scenario I'd rank as more annoying -- not being able to buy what I want versus not being able to sell what I want -- but I find the latter to be exasperating in a particular way, especially if I know that what I'm selling is something useful.

I admit it: I get really frustrated when things I want to sell don't sell. Relisting is annoying, and if I'm trying to sell an item, it's because I neither need nor want it, so carrying it around isn't something I feel inclined to do. Part of it is wanting to make gold -- who doesn't, after all -- but in addition, those bag slots are space I need for other things that I don't want to sell, like transmog gear. Hence, I am forced to admit that I can sometimes be one of the people that player Kidja complains about in this forum post. If I can't get a buyer on the AH for something at the price I think it deserves, I will sell it for as under-market as I dare simply to get the goods moving.

WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make gold on the Auction House. Check out Basil's gold making podcast, Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

Have you ever scanned the Auction House with TradeSkillMaster (the best auction management addon, well worth the trouble of learning) and not gotten a complete scan? Maybe you see an error message and your crafting window starts displaying unknown materials prices, even though you can see the prices right front of you when you search? This is a bug that affects anyone on a realm with a lot of auctions (more than 42554, according to the TSM error message). In essence, the GetAll scan that's used to grab a dump of the AH in a few seconds can be incomplete if there are a lot of auctions.

As far as I know, the traditional scans are immune to this, but they take a lot more time; like 20 minutes instead of 20 seconds. Even if the scans work perfectly on your realm, scanning is still an extra step that you have to do every time you want to update the prices before you queue up your crafting list. Luckily, there's a way you can get up to date price information without ever having to scan the AH again.

Lisa Poisso recently asked if player-made gear had become irrelevant. Many of the near 200 responses said yes. But The Godmother over at ALT:ernative disagrees. The 496 epic crafted gear market is alive and well on her server. She is making a healthy profit listing her creations on the Auction House.

A jewelcrafter, an alchemist and a scribe are my high level characters, so I can't make high end gear. But my pockets are overflowing from the profits I make selling green drops from questing. While I've been able to sell uncommon gear throughout leveling my pandaren monk, the armor that has dropped while in the 80s has been particularly lucrative. In general, the weapons aren't worth spending the inordinately expensive deposit to list, but most of my other green drops are selling after one or two listings. I can make some profits from my gems, potions and glyphs, but nothing compares to the uncommon gear market on my low pop server.

Now, I know people are reticent to give away their top money-making secrets. But there are enough servers with varying economies to make it relatively safe to reveal the items that make money for you. What works on your server may not work on another realm type or level of population. But I can still see where you may not want to risk it.

Yet I'm asking just the same. What is your big money maker on the Auction House? Does it vary according to what days of the week you list it? If you don't want to reveal your secret, at least tell us if you have a big money maker or if you're finding it hard to sell things you used to be able to sell.

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WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make gold on the Auction House. Check out Basil's gold making podcast, Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

One awesome side effect of the latest patch's new PvP gear is a way to make Enchanting materials much more cheaply. Since all the new gear is iLvl 458 blues, they disenchant into an Ethereal Shard. Sometimes two of them, although that is probably from the guild perk. By far, the most popular profession to use to craft this type of gear for disenchanting is Tailoring. Windwool Cloth is cheap and plentiful, and 20 of them make a single Crafted Dreadful Gladiator's piece that can be DEed.

The best pieces to make are the ones that take 4 Bolts of Windwool Cloth:

• Crafted Dreadful Gladiator's Cape of Cruelty or Prowess
• Crafted Dreadful Gladiator's Cloak of Alacrity or Prowess
• Crafted Dreadful Gladiator's Cuffs of Accuracy, Meditation, or Prowess
• Crafted Dreadful Gladiator's Drape of Cruelty, Meditation, or Prowess

After these, the materials start going up. That doesn't mean you can't use them, just that you'll have to live with a higher cost than all your competitors.

This hit my inbox the other day:

What's the most profitable thing to plant in a farm? I'd assume in most cases people plant for their profession or whatever raw material sells for the most. I, however, am a chronic alt-oholic and have every profession maxed and available to me. I don't raid and can't stand dailies, so I only have patterns available that are vendor trained, bought with spirits of harmony, or learned off a cooldown. So what's the start and end of the equation?

-Matt

So what is the most profitable thing to plant on your farm? Matt assumes correctly that the majority of people simply plant what they can use to avoid having to buy off the Auction House. There is plenty of opportunity to improve this, though!

Generally, the least profitable thing to farm is vegetables. This is only true because everyone else already farms them, and they're all you can farm until you get farther into the Tillers reputation grind. The reputation seeds for leather, ore, cloth, or enchanting mats are generally lower yield than simply getting Harmonies and trading those for what you need, and that's generally less than you'd get by planting Enigma Seeds, selling everything you get, and using that gold to buy leather, ore, cloth, or enchanting mats. In short, the most profitable thing to plant is usually Songbell Seeds or Enigma Seeds.

Songbell Seeds

Songbell Seeds provide you with Motes of Harmony, which provide Spirits of Harmony. If you have a profession that requires these to make items valuable to other players or allows you to use them to skip daily cooldowns, then you can figure out exactly how much one of them is worth and do the math.

Mists of Pandaria's economy has been characterized by having some of the recipes that make the most valuable items gated behind things that a main character would get: reputation, random world drops, and BoP Spirits of Harmony. Profession alts that you haven't leveled but have a maxed out profession are still very useful, but they won't be able to compete with people who happen to have that profession on a character they play.

Specifically, jewelcrafters won't get meta gem cuts, enchanters won't get the best bracer and weapon enchants, and other crafters won't get Harmonies that they can use to craft gear. If you have an alt that you don't have time to level and properly play, but still want to get some of these gated recipes, what can you do?

"Every" week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Basil's re-reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

After writing my Ironpaw Shuffle guide, JessicaHealy posted a very insightful tip in the comments, which I had actually missed from all the way back in November on the Consortium professions forum: the Cooking School Bell is an investment that's well worth the price of 50 Ironpaw Tokens. If you have completed To Be a Master and finished leveling your cooking, you can buy the bell which will let you summon Nomi, your very own trainee!

Nomi has his own reputation faction that you need to do daily quests to complete, and once that's done, he'll provide you with a one time gift of 5 of your choice of token-bought food, and then daily Tokens of Appreciation, which rewards a free Ironpaw Token.

Luphian, in the Wowhead comments, calculated the time it takes to get exalted:

Non-human, and no guild perk:

1000 reputation a day: 42 days, but four times through these quests, we will get two daily quests, because of the new gained friendship level. This 4000 reputation removes four days, so it will take 38 days to get exalted.

Human OR Guild-Perk (10% extra reputation):

1100 reputation a day: 39 days - but four times through these quests, we will get two daily quests, because of the new gained friendship level. This 4400 reputation removes four days, so it will take 35 days to get exalted.

Human AND Guild Perk (20% extra reputation):

1200 reputation a day: 35 days - but four times through these quests, we will get two daily quests, because of the new gained friendship level. This 4800 reputation removes four days, so it will take 31 days to get exalted.

Once this is done, in 50 days you will have the 50 tokens you spent to get the bell. If you're using the tokens to buy Soy Sauce, Rice Flour, or Black Pepper, it'll only take 45 days if you consider the reward you get for getting exalted.

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Maximize your profits with advice from Gold Capped. Want to know the very best ways to earn 10,000 gold? Top gold making strategies for auctioneers? How about how to reach 1 million gold -- or how one player got there and then gave it all away? Fox and Basil are taking your questions at fox@wowinsider.com and basil@wowinsider.com.

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If you're looking to get a Darkmoon Deck made before the end of the faire, you might be interested to know that despite a false start earlier this week, the Ink Traders and inscription vendors now accept trades of 10 Ink of Dreams for a Starlight Ink.

Ink Vendors finally updated. Very sorry for the delay.

- Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) October 12, 2012

The Darkmoon Faire is only around once a month, and the one on now is ending this Sunday, October 14th. Unless the Faire is going on, you can't trade, for example, a Crane Deck in for a Relic of Chi Ji.

This expansion, unlike in others, Darkmoon Cards require an item that can only be made once a day by scribes, the Scroll of Wisdom. Scribes who have been hanging onto their Scrolls should probably look into making them into cards now that the inks can be gotten cheaply, since by the time the next Faire rolls around, there will be 3 more weeks worth of daily cooldowns waiting to be turned into cards. These trinkets range from pretty good to among the best in slot for most classes, so almost everyone can use one, and many people really want one.

Additionally, since the Starlight Inks have been so expensive lately, the epic quality shoulder enchants have been quite expensive. Now that you can trade the much less expensive Ink of Dreams in for them, you should see the prices lower on the Greater Ox Horn Inscription, the Greater Crane Wing Inscription, the Greater Tiger Claw Inscription, and the Greater Tiger Fang Inscription.

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Maximize your profits with advice from Gold Capped. Want to know the very best ways to earn 10,000 gold? Top gold making strategies for auctioneers? How about how to reach 1 million gold -- or how one player got there and then gave it all away? Fox and Basil are taking your questions at fox@wowinsider.com and basil@wowinsider.com.

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The Auction House has undergone several improvements over the years, but it still has room for more, else we wouldn't need addons to get it to do what we want. Blizzard does tend to incorporate addon features into the game, and I'd like to see a few more integrated into the AH.

Frinka over at Warcraft St listed some features she would like to see added to the Auction House. My favorite is what she calls Offers or Bounties. Basil Berntsen calls these Buy Orders. Buyers would post an item they would like to purchase with the price they would like to pay. This way, buyers wouldn't have to keep searching the AH for the things they need to show up, and sellers could reduce the relisting of items.

I think that a bid option would enhance the system. The buyer would post a preferred price, but there would be an ability to bid as well. Giving the sellers the ability to make an offer would make the Buy Orders used more often.

Yes, you can get in trade chat and say "WTB [insert item here]" -- but, you know ... trade chat. Also, the buyer and seller have to be online at the same time for it to work. Trade chat offers the benefit of no AH fee but otherwise has too many obstacles to be very useful.

What changes would you like made to the AH?

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him or tweeting him at @foxvanallen.

There's nothing more American than the idea of making money off the labor of others. Wall Street was built on it. Presidential campaigns are built on it. Even World of Warcraft fortunes are built on it. If you want to be a member of the 1%, you have to do it off the labor of the 99%.

The whole process sounds a lot more unethical than it really is. After all, just about any sale of a physical good involves someone else's labor. You may have put a lot of work into building that lemonade stand yourself, but did you work the fields to harvest the sugar cane? And while you may be the one selling that Darkmoon Card: Volcano trinket, were you the one who collected the thousands of herbs and Volatile Lifes? Or did you visit the Auction House and profit off a farmer's efforts?

Profiting off of others is simply how money is made. But we have a social responsibility to make money the right way. Without an in-game legislature or an in-game court system, what rules and laws should we operate under? As the engines of the World of Warcraft economy, what are our ethical responsibilities? How do we make money without causing social harm?

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Fox and Basil's reboot of Call To Auction, and Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

Winter Veil is probably one of the most profitable game holidays. There are lots of achievements and quests people do, and some of these involve acquiring things that can be sold on the Auction House. The most interesting thing is that none of the things people will be needing require a maximum-level character to get and are, in fact, farmable by just about anyone over level 6 or so.

Small Eggs

Let's start with Small Eggs. Five of these are used to make the five Gingerbread Cookies required for the holiday quest Treats for Greatfather Winter. Small eggs are easily farmed, but the demand for them between Dec. 15 and Jan. 2 is more than can reasonably be farmed by any one person. People in the know have been preparing since last year and have stockpiled these eggs.

That said, the bulk needed to meet the demand generated by just about every single active player doing this quest on all their characters is pretty high, and these eggs don't come up on the Auction House that often for cheap. For the next few days until demand drops off a bit, people will buy these for between 2g and 5g, and if you have a character capable of killing level 6 monsters, you can farm hundreds an hour in Eversong Woods outside Silvermoon.

In today's Mists of Pandaria Live Developer QA, a player asked whether we'd see a Dalaran-like capital city on the new continent of Pandaria. Cory Stockton's answer reveals a surprising amount about the new Pandaria paradigm of exploration.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

Patch 4.3 will bring with it the ability to shatter Maelstrom Crystals into Heavenly Shards. This is unsurprising, as we have been able to shatter or transform the epic enchanting mats from other expansions. At this time, it looks like it will produce two Heavenly Shards per Maelstrom Crystal, and since it's not disenchanting, it's unlikely to be affected by the guild perk. This is going to be an opportunity for people to make some money, as well as provide a much needed sink for these Maelstrom Crystals, which have been piling up of late.

The market for Heavenly Shards is a little odd. In case you've forgotten, you can make one from 16 Elementium Ore and 8 Obsidium Ore. Despite this being "common" knowledge, the price for these enchanting mats has a consistently high profit margin. Maybe it's because of how long and annoying it is to turn ore into shards, or maybe it's because of the large volume taken by the popular enchants this expansion.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make money on the auction house. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

Neutral auction house sniping is the practice of lurking at the neutral auction house (which is usable by both factions) until someone tries to use it to move items from one of their characters to another across factions, and then stealing it. Unlike someone who ninjas a mount in a PUG, this type of theft is totally OK with Blizzard -- all the sniper is doing is buying a posted auction.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make money on the auction house. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

I've often downplayed the "buy low, sell high" aspect of the money-making game, instead focusing on using trade skills to create value and profits. There is, however, a lot to be said for brokerage. It can be much riskier but has a very good profit per hour when you win your bets. Unlike a game of cards, though, the odds are not stacked against you.

There's one key fact that can stack the odds of brokerage in your favor: People charge less for items in a trade window than others would pay on the auction house. The best strategy to take advantage of this is to buy low and sell long. Why long instead of high? They actually amount to the same thing, but the key here is that instead of immediately trying to find some buyer who will put more money into a trade window than you, you list the product on the auction house.

The auction house is the great differentiator between people looking to make a quick sale and those willing to wait for a high margin. If you see someone selling something in trade chat, chances are that no matter how much they're asking for, they're expecting a low-ball offer and are willing to sell somewhere in the middle. So what is it about the AH that makes stuff sell for more?