This month it is outside shat.

Today’s gold making tip is a response to an email I received a couple days ago. Mike wrote:

I’m sure a lot of people (including myself) would like to know how to tell how many stacks of items to AH and how many items should be in that stack.

This is a very good question that has a different answer depending on the item type.

For a lot of items I use 5. Mainly due to personal preference. I use it because it makes my total auction cheaper than 20 (so when people sort by price and I am near the top of the list). I also do it because it appeals to those who don’t want a lot (IE maybe they only want 5 bars for something they are crafting at 1 time, but at the same time, isn’t annoying to buy for someone who needs 20 or more to level something.

Here is a breakdown on how I list my most common things and why.

Armor kits – singly because most people do not need more than one

Herbs – By 5, so it is a decent size stack for Herbalists and in a perfect stack for Inscriptionist that just want “one more mill”

Ore – By 5, so it is a decent size stack for Blacksmithers, Engineers, and Smelters but is also in a perfect stack for Jewelcrafters that just want “one more prospect”

Enchanting mats

Shards and essences – Singly, It seems to be the best way to sell these becuase they are most likely not to be purchased in bulk

Dust – THis varys. If I am lazy for the day, I list stacks of 5. I like the smaller stacks because someone who is looking to buy an enchant and needs a small amoutn will be more likely to buy 5 and 20 (unless they are needing full stacks). Otherwise, I go down a list, I list 10 stacks of 1, 10 stacks of 2, 10 stacks of 5, 10 stacks of 10, and whatever is left in full stacks. This helps increase sales espeically if someone needs 7, they can buy the appropiate stacks that they ne

Flasks – stacks of 1 and 2 (most people only purchase for the night and dont buy large stacks ahead of time)

Pots – stacks of 5

Eternals and Crystals – single, they seem to sell the quickest this way

Cloth – Full stacks (but the only type of cloth I sell is wool, I use the rest to make money with tailoring)

Scrolls = Stacks of 5

I think that covers most of the items that are stackable, let me know if I missed anything that are of interest and I can share how I list those items.

Every market is different and maybe your server is different? I would like to hear how other readers list thier auctions to help spark ideas on better ways to list what we have.

Today’s gold making tip is a response to an email I received a couple days ago. The person wrote:

Hello !

I’m planning to level a second character on the other faction of my server, using a death knight as a banking alt.

And I was thinking, since that death knight can be leveled to 60 without blinking, and Grand Master <Profession> requires lvl 60, I could perhaps use it as a profession mule too.

What would you recommend as the best four-profession combo ? The main I would be leveling from 1-80 would be a rogue.

Thanks in advance,

Aeltyr

This is a very good question. First I will cover the Death Knight aspect. If you have a DK “bank alt” that you can get to level 60 that you do not plan on playing, there is one way you can make fairly good amount of gold. I would recommend Tailoring + enchanting. You are probably thinking WTFBBQ are you talking about?!?! There are 6 main reasons why I say this.

1. Tailoring and Enchanting go very well together. You can level Tailoring at no net loss if you sell the DE mats, or use those mats to level your enchanting.

2. There are also many ways to make gold off crafting tailoring items and DE’ing them for profit. (I DE Brown Linen Robes, Azure Silk Cloaks, White Bandit Masks, and Low level Netherweave items for a 50% profit margin)

3. Tailors can make gold crafting Netherweave Bags, I sell about 100 a week. This also gives you a cheap source to obtain bags for other alts/banks etc. (I will have a article on the numbers of this tomorrow)

4. You can Purchase items off the AH and DE them for profit if you don’t want to craft things.

5. You can take the cloth that you receive from leveling and turn it into something more valuable (enchant mats) and that have no listing fees.

6. You can DE all the greens you get and sell the enchant mats, again enchant mats have no listing fees while greens do.

However if you do not want tailoring as a profession on your alt, you can try inscription. This is a nice way to make gold (through Northrend Darkmoon Faire Cards, crafting glyphs etc).

For leveling, I always recommend Skinning + (Mining or Herbalism). I know some people say to do Mining and Herbalism, but I find it rather annoying to use macros to switch tracking etc. Skinning is easy money that you can get just for killing the mobs you need to xp and you don’t need to go out of your way.

If you want to be a leatherworker at 80, save the leather you skin. This will allow you to not have any upfront costs of leveling the profession. You can do this by having a bank alt with a bunch of bags, or use the mail system to send mails to your alt that you never open. (if in 30 days you haven’t cleared it out, it will be sent back to your main, but make sure you do something with it then or it will disappear when the mail expires)

Choosing between Herbalism and Mining depends on what you want to do when your 80 .

Do you want to be an Alchemist or Inscriptionists? Choose Herbalism. Herbalism also works great if you choose Inscription on your DK and Alchemy later on your main.

Do you want to be a Jewelcrafter, Engineer or Blacksmith? Choose Mining. However, do NOT smelt the ore, I repeat do NOT smelt it!!! Even if you’re going to choose Engineer or Blacksmith. Lower level ore sells for more than bars since it can be used for more professions (all three + someone leveling mining with smelting). Bigger market to sell too also means a quicker sale. If you choose to go Mining or Engineering, I recommend dropping skinning first to pick it up so you have your smelting ability still available to help speed up the process of leveling.

If you want to pick professions based on money making abilities I would choose Jewelcrafting and Leatherworking (assuming you already have tailoring and enchanting). There are several Leatherworking items you can DE, along with selling armor kits. Jewelcrafting is also a goldmine as well. However, with the increasing numbers of Jewelcrafters, you would need to be smart with the market. Save gems for big rush times (ie new seasons, new instances that provide lots of new gear)

If you have any questions your self, feel free to email me at webmaster@wowconomics.com and I will try my best to answer your questions.

Today’s quick economy tip is predicting changes for 3.0.8.

With some of the changes to recipes, certain items will raise in demand once the patch hits. Many players in the game don’t save up for a big event and instead go buy what they need when they need it.

One example was inscriptions. Herb prices shot up 3-6 times the normal prices. Those who pre-purchased the herbs to level were able to make quite a bit of gold. Other people (like me) purchased herbs the second the patch notes hit about which ones were useful at current market prices. I ended up making about 20k profitin one day. (50k profit total from all the herbs I purchased).

Here are some tips:

·         Buy items at the current market price, if nothing changes you can resell them again (don’t flood the market all at once!) and recoup most of your money back.

·         Don’t be the first to list the items, or list them slowly throughout the day after the patch hits. The highest prices I have seen happen about 12-24 hours after the patch goes live.

·         Not every prediction of the market changes will happen, it depends on your server, if there are other people doing it and how the market reacts with farming the items that shoot up in price. However, as with any major change in demand, something will happen to the market, the most likely response is prices going up

·         If you don’t want to “gamble” gold on the market buying up stuff that will go up in price later, then save the items that will increase in value until the patch hits. Sell off the items that will decrease ASAP.

And here are my predictions of what will happen:

Enjoy!

Picking the right quest reward is one trick I picked up when I level. Since most people will do around 1000+ quests, this tip will help out on a daily basis while leveling or questing without any actual work. It may seem like a minor gain but it adds up when you consider how many quests you will do while you level/grind rep/work towards achievements.

If your a Disenchanter, pick the item with the highest DE value. Usually all 2-4 quest rewards are the same type (ie all armor) but if don’t need any of the rewards, the weapons usually has a higher DE value.

When comparing Northrend gear, a high level armor piece may drop 3-5 dust which is roughly 10.5-17.5g on my sever right now but a weapon in the same level range will from 1-2 greater cosmic essence = roughly 25-50g. Even if you “need” dust, get the weapon, sell the essence and buy the dust you need.

What if your not an enchanter? Pick the plate items if you don’t need a quest reward. They have higher vendor values and it adds up. Add-ons that tell you the vendor value of an item also help with this. If its the choice between 4 weapons, one may be worth a gold more (ie a sword compared to an offhand item).

Patch 3.0.3

Mail mods

One important thing you will need if you spend a lot of time on the AH, will be a mail mod of some sort. I use Postal, but any mail mod that opens mails will do. If you List a couple hundred or more auctions every 2 days or so, you will have several sold auctions to open and whatever you don’t sell will need to be opened in an ended auction.

There are some mail mods that also help you remember the last person you mailed to (filling in the name in the new mail to send) which can be helpful when mass mailing a bunch of stuff to an alt. However be aware that you can send an item to the wrong person (if you forget to the change the name in the mail box).

Auctioneer

This is the most popular auction house mod. For information on how to use this mod I recommend going to their site and reading their how to guide.

Before you start relying on the data auctioneer provides, I recommend getting at least a weeks worth of data. Prices vary depending on the day of the week so making sure you scan each day helps give you a general idea of the average price during the week.

With some of its new features you can automate things like buying items for de profit, prospecting. This guide goes into more detail on how to do this in the Gold Guide under the Profession section.

Another important feature of this add on is the snatch list. I use this to buy things while I run my scans that I use for crafting to de, crafting for sale, and buy to restock my bank. This add-on helps make tremendous profits but having the knowledge behind the ideas will help increase those profits.

An Auto seller

There are several on wow.curse.com (Crap Away! and Sell-O-Matic) these add-ons help you sell the things you don’t want (grays) I have heard people say “I Don’t want to pick up grays because then I have to find them in my bags to vendor them” Well this solves that problem. With some grays being worth 1-2g a piece in outlands, it adds up. Also with the expansion coming up I am sure grays will increase in price which will end up being more gold in your pocket.

Bag mods

Bag mod’s can help you from going crazy with trying to find the items your looking for. I prefer Baggins since it sorts items by type ( And I am sure there are many others out there) I am able to quickly find my herbs/enchant mats/gems since they are sorted by type on the screen. Staying organized with many auctions is half the battle. Add ons that help you keep your sanity will help make you auction hours time less stressful.

Gathering Add-On

Do you have a gathering profession on any of your characters? Then a gathering mod is a must. They save the location of nodes/herbs so you can see where you previously picked/mined some. The one I have used in the past is Gatherer which can be found on wow.curse.com.