Posts with tag gold-capped

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!

I got an email from someone recently about a new competitor.

I have recently returned to the blacksmithing armor and belt buckles market. When I researched my old stomping ground, I found that materials cost has increased, profits are almost non-existent, and competition was rampant! I didn't let that get me down, however. I watched the market, checked the reference data, got a good handle on the situation, then when the time was right, made my move! Competition dropped like flies, profits rose, and life was grand. Then one day, I got a new big-wig competitor.

If you'll allow me a moment to editorialize, I'm pretty damn sick of the Molten Front. This new questing area for level 85s, released with patch 4.2, is the grind-iest damn place I ever had the misfortune to grind lately.

Basically, how it works is this: First, you clear a solid chunk of the regular Mount Hyjal quests that have been available since Cataclysm's launch. This opens up a small new quest hub, the Sanctuary of Malorne, with a couple of non-repeatable quests and a few dailies. Grind those dailies long enough, and you'll get access to a new daily quest hub inside the Firelands. Grind those dailies (and the old ones), and in another week or so, you'll gain access to another set of dailies. Keep grinding, and ... yes, you guessed it, another set of dailies becomes available.

Eventually, after about 40 consecutive days of grinding dailies in the Molten Front, you'll gain access to your choice of three vendors: one with tailoring and leatherworking patterns, and one with blacksmithing plans and engineering schematics. The stuff you can make from the patterns, plans, and schematic are neat -- 36-slot profession bags and some epic i365 gear.

There's an awful lot of grind-y garbage keeping most players from these rewards. But for those of us who play the auction house, that's a good thing -- players are always willing to pay a premium to avoid a long, boring grind.

About the Bloggers introduces you to the people behind WoW Insider. You can find articles on more WI staffers in earlier About the Bloggers entries.

What do you do for WoW Insider?

I write Gold Capped. I used to write Time is Money and Insider Trader as well, but then I decided to stop trying to categorize my thoughts and simply dump them all into Gold Capped and let my editors sort it out.

What's your main?

I have exactly one level 85 character: my hunter. I raid and PVP with him, as well as use him for my alchemy and blacksmithing businesses. I will continue to have one max-level character until all the jewelcrafting dailies my JC mule does dings him 85 without having set foot outside Stormwind.

I have way too much on my plate to actually take care of my alts. For one, I hate leveling. Once you've seen it once, doing it again doesn't have enough reward to justify the time. Secondly, if I had more playtime to use, I'd use it to do more of what I already do. I could be doing 10-man extensions of my 25-man raid if I had another raid night per week, or I could do more than a rated BG now and then. Starting a second gear grind with another character isn't something that's on my radar.

There are hundreds of different strategies for making money once you've hit level 85, right? Max-level professions tend to be strong money-makers in the right hands, because they allow you to sell the latest and greatest items.

It's a bit of a different story while leveling, however. There are gathering professions, of course, and some can provide fledgling characters with a solid chunk of cash. There are crafting professions too, but often times low-level gear and items sell for less than the materials it takes to make them.

Making money while leveling isn't typically at the forefront of your mind when you're making your fifth alt on your home server -- after all, you can make more money running dailies at 85 than you can farming Wool Cloth. But if you're just starting out in World of Warcraft or are starting fresh on a new server without any of your main character's bank ... well, finding a way to make money while leveling is exceptionally important, especially so you can buy the much-needed conveniences that rich players take for granted, such as Flight Master's License and Expert Riding.

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!

Don't mind the intrusion, folks. It's me, Fox Van Allen. I'm filling in for Basil this week while he deals with the parasite that recently burst from his wife's stomach. (That's what those baby things are, right? Am I recalling seventh grade health class correctly?)

If any of you have been following me on Twitter (and if you haven't, for shame), you may already know that back in March, Heartbourne of Lore Hound challenged me to a race to the 999,999g 99s 99c gold cap. I immediately accepted. After coming up with some basic rules (no gold buying, no server transfers, no "borrowing," no interfering with each other's auctions), the race to a million was on.

During the contest, I was quiet about my gold-making activities -- I didn't want to tip off the competition. But now that the contest officially ended this past week, I'm free to talk about what happened. And so, my friends, what follows is the tale of how someone with virtually no gold-making knowledge went from next to nothing at the start of Cataclysm to, as of June 10, over one million gold.

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!

Aaron wrote in the other day to say:

Despite having played WoW for years I'm a complete gold-making newbie and my characters are all dirt-poor because of it. I decided it was time to start playing the gold-making meta game so I've been reading through issues of your Gold Capped column, and while I've really enjoyed what I've read I'm afraid I'm still at a loss as to where to get started. Obviously I don't have a lot of upfront capital to jump-start my endeavor, either. I was wondering if you've ever written or would consider writing an article for complete, absolute beginners such as myself.

Unless you started the game with rich friends, this is something that everyone has to go through. People getting into earning gold from scratch often don't have any clue where to start, and they often have a bunch of incorrect ideas about what they need to get going.

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, and Insider Trader, which is all about professions. For the inside line on crafting for disenchanting, transmutation, cross-faction arbitrage and more, check in here every Thursday, and email Basil with your comments, questions or hate mail!

I walk a strange line. There are two distinct extremes in the readers of this column: those who feel I shouldn't be telling people their "secrets" about how to make gold, and those who believe that anyone who uses the auction house to make gold is somehow bad (in skill or character -- I get both). While the majority of readers are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum between these extremes, let's look at the arguments.

Every week, Gold Capped (from Basil "Euripides" Berntsen) aims to educate players about how to make money on the auction house. For the inside line on crafting for disenchanting, transmutation, cross-faction arbitrage and more, check in every Wednesday. For half-arsed, last-minute mailbag posts, tune in every Thursday after Basil forgot his deadline because he was buying his wife stylish side tables at large Swedish furniture stores. Also, feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail!

I have a bunch of questions and comments piled up in my poor neglected inbox, so today we're going to jump right in and address some of the good ones.

Bernake (awesome name, by the way) writes:

Previously you have established that it is not profitable it to transfer gold frequently across faction. While this is generally true, I play on a server where the Horde population playing at peak hours is no more than 600 people, less than 2,000 active on the server. I was wondering (if that) warrants a change in this policy, as the Alliance have over 9,000 active players with at least 600 on throughout the day and over 2,000 playing at peak hours on any given day. I was considering moving into the Alliance glyph market, as the Horde glyph market is quite small. I was wondering if you would support this move as well as give some insight?

I believe you're talking about this post on cross-faction arbitrage. In fact, it can be extremely profitable to move money and products across the neutral AH. I may have sounded a little negative because it is risky; however, unless you're losing a chunk of your stock to snipers or 20 percent of your gold to the neutral AH cut, it's not a bad thing to do. You can just buy to resell, or if you're having trouble finding mats on your home faction, you can use stock from the other side to keep your costs in line.

Every week, Gold Capped (from Basil "Euripides" Berntsen) aims to educate players about how to make money on the auction house. For the inside line on crafting for disenchanting, transmutation, cross-faction arbitrage and more, check in every Wednesday. Also, feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail, as well as check out the long awaited 11th episode of Call to Auction!

I got an email from the creator of WoW Prospector asking me to cover it. After he assured me that his servers are housed in a fire proof room lined with asbestos and at least 300 meters from any residential zones, I agreed, mainly because it's an incredibly useful tool that has saved me a bunch of spreadsheet time. Essentially, the tool will tell you how much money you stand to make prospecting various ores, given the price of ore and what you can sell the raw gems for.

Here's a screenshot of it in action:

Want to get Gold Capped? Every week, Basil "Euripides" Berntsen takes a short break from building a raiding guild on Drenden (US-A) (we're recruiting!) to write up a guide that will help you make gold. Check out the Call to Auction podcast, and feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail. Basil is also soliciting questions for an upcoming Gold Capped series, "Ask an auctioneer" via email.

This post is best read while imagining me singing the title to the tune of "Where have all the cowboys gone" by Paula Cole. There -- good luck getting that out of your head!

Auctioneers rely on farmers for raw materials for various businesses. In fact, we rely very heavily on them, and there are quite a few markets that are only more profitable than farming in terms of gold per hour if we can do them on a very large scale ... much more than any one person can farm.

I've been flying circles around Sholazar Basin and boy, are my arms tired!

The interesting thing about the markets we work on is that it's almost no more actual work to make, for example, 150 Titansteel Bars than it is to make 20. The only difference is in how annoying it is to find mats, and the number of Dr. Who episodes you get to watch while AFK crafting. The difficulty of finding lots of cheap mats is really the only barrier we worry about. And any experienced auctioneer will tell you that, historically in Wrath of the Lich King, it's been no trouble at all.

For some reason, the majority of mornings I'd log in to do my buying, I'd see absolutely dumbfounding amounts of raw mats available for ridiculous prices. Cobalt Ore for under 20g a stack, Saronite Ore for as low as 7g a stack, Adder's Tongue for under 5g a stack and Eternal Shadow for as low as 15g a stack. I have access to unlimited storage and basically unlimited money, so I did what any opportunist with a basement full of toilet paper would do: I bought every last scrap every single time, reasoning that I'd eventually find time to use it.

Want to get Gold Capped? Watch this space every week as Basil (also of the Call to Auction podcast, the Hunting Party podcast and outdps.com writes about making gold in the World of Warcraft. Have questions, comments, or threats for him to get off your damned server? Email Basil!

The prices for all kinds of things fluctuate. I talked a little about this in my post for casual auctioneers, but there is serious money to be made with market timing for very little investment. Basically, the goal is to watch prices for a few weeks, try to predict their next swing, and take advantage by buying low and selling high.

Watching prices

Easier said than done, like most things worth doing. You might get hundreds of items you'd like to watch, and short of a photographic memory or a manual spreadsheet, you're going to need some help keeping track of it all. Enter Market Watcher. This is a nifty addon that, once configured, allows you to scan the auction house for just the things you're interested in, and will show you a graph of their prices over time once you get a couple scans done.

Want to get Gold Capped? This column will show you how, and is written by Basil "Euripides" Berntsen, also of outdps.com, the Hunting Party podcast, and the Call to Auction podcast.

Enchanting mats are a strange business. They are in constant massive demand, and can be made in a variety of ways. Every Tuesday, thousands of guilds get thousands of upgrades that need to be enchanted, every day, hundreds of thousands of players run PUG and PvP content that gives them upgrades they want to enchant, and every day, thousands of players buy things like Bolts of Imbued Frostweave, which require enchanting mats to make.

Want to get Gold Capped? This column will show you how, and is written by Basil "Euripides" Berntsen, also of outdps.com, the hunting party podcast, and the call to auction podcast.

Auctioneer is a wonderful addon I've mentioned a few times already, and today we're going to talk about how to use it to sell your goods efficiently. First up, go download and install it. Now, when you open the auction house, you will see a different interface. We'll be going over a bunch of other useful functionality this has in another post, but today, we're focusing on selling. Do a quick scan by clicking on the fast forward arrow:


You should make a point of scanning the AH this way as often as possible, but generally not more than a few times a day. I do it every two days, or whenever I need the data. This allows auctioneer to learn what items are worth in your economy, by keeping track of the listing price over time.

Want to get Gold Capped? This column will show you how, and is written by Basil "Euripides" Berntsen, also of outdps.com, the hunting party podcast, and the call to auction podcast.

Hi folks! Welcome to Gold Capped. There are many games to play in World of Warcraft: PvE, PvP, achievements, and today I'm going to introduce you to the one that people overlook-- gold making. Not just making enough to cover your expenses, but making unimaginably large quantities of gold. Making it easily, and enjoying the process.

Before I jump in, I want to introduce myself and learn a little about you guys. I have a gut feeling that the majority of players are living "paycheck to paycheck" and treat the auction house as an expensive vending machine where they can spend their hard earned dailies money. Am I right? Please select one of the options on my embedded poll!