The Only Place I Farm

Farming is the bane of my existence 99% of the time.  Flying my shammy in constant circles looking for a node (only to find one and see a druid flying away) has never seemed like a good use of my time.  However, I have learned of a spot that doesn't make me feel like I'm going brain dead.

If your herbalist hasn't done the quests in Uldum, try going to the Cradle of the Ancients to pick up Whiptail.  Unfortunately it won't work if you've quested through the area, as after the riverbed isn't dried anymore the herbs don't spawn.  There's 3-4 nodes that respawn every 6/7 minutes or so that almost no one farms.  I've found that I can just hang out near my first spawn point and wait for them to pop back up while I tab out to read a blog, check my forums or email, or even write a blog post! (Which I'm totally not doing now... >_>)

7.5 Minutes was the longest I had to wait for a respawn, it was usually closer to 6.5

I just make sure I can see my minimap (I play windowed) and go about my business, going back to herbing when a node pops up on my minimap.  This nets me anywhere from 6-16 Whiptail (Plus Volatile Life) for about a minute of playing -- I usually get about 13 per pass of the area.  Works very well for if you need to write a paper or wanna read something else while still picking up some gold.

60/7.5 = 8 (About how many spawns per hour)

8x13 = 104 Whiptail

104x 8 (price per flower) = 832g/hour

So for me it's around 832g/hour.  Not fantastic, but pretty decent if you wanna add a bit of g while working on your other stuff.  Alternatively, you could do this while listing auctions, or while questing on a different character.  Post a bag full of stuff, log onto the herbalist to pick a round of herbs.  Finish a quest, log over.

It also works out quite well for me since my herbalist is also my alchemist. I don't have to move at all to do my Volatile Life transmute to Air each day, nor do I have to worry about not having enough Life if I do a few runs of this a day.

For me this method allows me to do some farming while letting me feel more productive than I otherwise would, so I love it.  Plus it's not anywhere near as boring since I'm barely spending any time doing the farming. Anyone know of any similar spots for mining or other herbs?

Flipping Adventure!

I've done something risky.  I managed to snag a Vial of the Sands for only 36k from someone desperate to move his fast yesterday.  He'd been trying to sell it for 42k and I talked him down to 36 after about an hour of him failing to sell it in trade.  I'm pretty excited about this, since it goes for at least 50k on the AH on my realm.  There's only one other seller right now, so I'm resetting the price up to 70k right now and am hoping I'll be able to sell it for at LEAST 55k.  This is by far the biggest thing I've ever tried to flip, but the profit should be really nice when I get it to sell.

I've also got a Hyacinth Macaw I snagged a few weeks ago for 4k, I've been trying to sell it for 10k but haven't had any luck.  If it's still not gone in a few more weeks I may lower my price, but I'm not sure if it's not selling because the price is too high or because no pet collectors have been buying right now.

Fortunately I'm back up to 40k liquid even with these tying up so much of my gold.  I'd dropped below 30k for the first time in a long while after buying the Vial and had been rather worried about not being able to continue buying up herbs for glyphs, but that's definitely not going to be an issue.  And my the camper I've been dealing with seems to have taken a day off, so that helped a huge amount in recovering from the purchase as well. =)  Though I'm still stocking up inks in case they come back so I can shake the market up a bit.  I found someone who'd just finished leveling herbing who sent me 300+ old world herbs for about 60 silver each, which was a helluva deal.  Most herbs go for a gold each, some a little less, so having so many CoD'd like that in bulk was nice.

Anyway, these two things are by far more expensive than anything else I've ever worked with, as until now I'd been going on a more slow and steady approach.  The chance to jump my gold by a lot is here, but I'm not sure how long it usually takes to move this kinda stuff.  What's your experience with expensive items like this?

Find: Adamantite Ore

Today I found upwards of 70 stacks of Adamantite Ore for only 12-13g each.  So, being curious, I went and checked out Wow Prospector and inputted the data for Adamantite.... and it came out with an average of 50g profit per stack. (This has me vendoring the blues uncut as I don't have any patterns nor do I even remember how to get them from BC.)  It's pretty highly dependent on the Adamantite Powder selling for what it says it does, but I'm willing to bet that it'll move, if slowly.  So I bought them all out and am gonna prospect them and see how this goes. =D  Hope for Golden Draenite!

~~

Just finished Prospecting 20 stacks, here's what I got:

20 stacks x 13g = 260g

16 blues x 3g = 48g

15 Golden Draenite x 20g = 300g

80 Adamantite Powder x9g = 720g

19 Azure Moonstone x3g = 57g

15 Blood Garnet x3g = 45g

12 Flame Spessarite x .5g = 6g

11 Shadow Draenite x 6g = 66g

10 Deep Peridot x 4g = 40g

Total Projected Income: 1282g

Total Projected Profit: 1022g

Not sure if the prices are completely accurate, or if they actually sell at that price, but I know the Golden Draenite should sell for at least 20g each, and that's already a small profit.  And then others should also sell to people leveling JC, and the Powder may sell to...stupid people.  If it works this could be a nice way to add a few thousand gold when I find cheap ore.

--

So far one of my stacks of Adamantite Powder has sold -- for almost 300g!

I really didn't think these would sell.  Sometimes I love being wrong!

This is quite a bit more than I was thinking it'd actually sell for, but I'm definitely happy! A few Golden Draenites have sold, mostly in singles, but one of the four stack I put up also sold.  Only a few of the other gems have sold, but I think if I give them enough time they'll move as well.  I'm definitely gonna be adding this to the stuff I normally do if the Ore stays this low.

--

I've sold almost 60 green gems over the past few hours to people powerleveling JC.  I have no idea why they're not buying the Adamantite Ore themselves as I've continued to pick it up for <13g/stack.  I guess there's either someone farming it for now or the numbers I'd been thinking of were from before cata hit.  Either way I plan to ride this as long as I can.

I love seeing this.

If it's viable on your realm I'd jump on this.  Tailors need the Draenite and leveling JCs need the gems and powder, and seem to be willing to pay through the nose to not prospect the stuff for themselves.  I love lazy players. =)

Oh Obsidium Shuffle

WHEW!  I just got done buying over 400 stacks of Obsidium Ore.  It was going for like 63/stack so I'm gonna use it to shuffle to chanting mats and green gems to sell for the JC daily.  This has been pretty lucrative for me so far, so I took a chance on this and spent more than 20k picking up all this ore.  I've never bought in such volume before, so this mass scale will be something new.  Hopefully it'll turn out well and I'll double what I spent as my handy little spreadsheet predicts!

I had a fantastic selling day yesterday, I had almost 30k in income (which I spent through the day on herbs and such) and I ended up at 76k before I went on my Obsidium spree.  Now I'm down to about 54k, so not too bad.

I'm really kinda excited at buying so much stuff at one time, I feel like I just passed a milestone. ^^

Also, I LOVE Saturday mornings.  This is the only time I can find deals this good with any reliability. =)

--

Sold 20 of the Greater Essences I got from DEing already, and was pleased to find that the dust market went back up while I was sleepin'. =D  So posted some dust and essences (various types and differing stack sizes for them all) and hopefully those will sell fairly fast too since I've got a ton of them to sell.

--

Sold a 10 stack of Nightstone and a few singles so far, along with some Hessonite I put up instead of crafting to DE.  I'll have to keep putting a few of those up for levelers, but the ones I prospected today are gone already.

I hadn't been doing my JC quest until a few days ago (as I had completely forgotten about it) but tomorrow I'll have enough to get my first metagem cut!  I'll probably go with Austure, as it seems to have the fewest sellers and is selling for a good price.  Plus even if it doesn't sell well I'll still need it to cut my tank meta.

--

Hessonite all also sold, along with a bunch of dust. =)  It's moving faster than I'd hoped, so I'll be prospecting some more tonight.  I'd been afraid that it'd take me weeks to put all I got out in the market, but I've sold a good quarter of what I got from the 1k ore I prospected this morning, so I'm quite hopeful. On the downside, I don't think I've ever seen one of my blue pieces move and am unsure if I should just DE them or what.  I suppose I'll keep listing them for now and see if they're just really slow moving.

What do you do with your blue jewelry?  If you sell it, how long does it usually take to see it move?  I've had 6 or so up for the past few weeks with nothing so far.

Cross Faction Markets

I noticed a while back that I could get a much better deal on the ally Argent Tourny pets by actually buying them on the ally AH, so I've had this human bank toon doing nothing for a few months.  Upon logging onto him a few days ago and looking at their AH I realized something -- there's a WHOLE other market over here for me to dip into!  Plus I think they may also have more players.  So I decided to try something.

Using my APM que and knowledge of my horde glyph market I decided on about 5 glyphs from each class that sell for a good profit and fairly fast, and then went and made myself two of each for this experiment.  I transferred them and a stack of Inferno Ink over to ally via my partner's account, and set to selling them.  I did all of this yesterday.

I have 5k on ally today, from the 60 something gold I started with yesterday.  Now, transferring the glyphs over here is a bit of a hassle, but I'm thinking I may continue transferring my extra ink, as well as perhaps enchanting mats.  This way I can post twice as much as I could otherwise, and not worry about flooding my market at all!  Plus the prices on chanting mats are higher over here. =)

...I might even keep doing glyphs, just not my full line up like I post on Horde.  3k of just glyph sales (about 2k was the Inferno Ink) in one day when posting such a small selection really isn't that bad.  It seems to be a good way to diversify without having to do all that much. =)

I'm gonna keep an eye out for other things I can move to this side to make a profit, and I'll use the gold I make over here to buy cheap mats to send Hordeside.  It's perfect, and it bypasses that nasty charge the neutral AH takes from you.

Plus I can keep sending the ally cooking recipes over.  I bought two of each and brought them over and they all sold for 65-50 gold within a day.  So I'll have to try doing three this time so I don't run out of stock as fast.  I'd do more, but they don't stack and this banker as scrub bags. >_>

Have any ideas for other cross faction markets?

Market Crashing?

Have I mentioned how much I love the glyph market?  No?  Well, let me tell you then!  It's been my biggest money maker (My natural one excluded =P) and a lot of fun to play around with for the past months.  And I learned a TON because of it.  Such as why Auctioneer is not suitable for posting them. >_>  Mind you, it took me a while, but I eventually discovered APM which I love.

Lately though, I've discovered something new in my market -- tons of competition and even a camper or two!  So after noticing my sales dropping for a few days in a row I checked it out and discovered them.  And I've been trying to decide what to do.  After a bit of thinking I have decided to go with something I have only heard people speak of and always wanted to try for myself: a glyph wall!  So I'll be preparing for that for a little bit, since my stockpile is almost completely used up right now and I'd only been milling enough to keep up the stock I was posting.

But that has changed.  Any Cinderbloom below 75g I'm buying out and milling, along with any other herbs that are 20g/stack or below.  I'm hoping to have 10 of each glyph I can make and at least 3k Blackfallow Ink and a few hundred of each of the actual inks used set aside in a stockpile.  The very first gold blog I was was Stokpile and I learned a TON from reading his blog, most notably is to stockpile like CRAZY!  I hadn't been thinking too much about that, but I'm paying attention and doing just that right now, so I'll be prepared to get control of my market back.

After buying and milling today my stockpile looks like this:

823 Blackfallow Ink

238 Ink of the Sea

254 Jadefire

218 Midnight

142 Shimmering

78 Celestial

10 Lion's

0 Ethereal

I need to craft tomorrow, and that'll take about 350 out of the stock, but it's coming along nicely.  If I keep picking up herbs like this I should be ready pretty fast. =)

I must confess, I'm not entirely sure of how to implement a glyph wall.  I've read about them in a few different places but haven't figured out if I should be trying to drive my competitor to leave by making him have constantly low sales (by posting just above his threshold) or by making him have no sales at all.

With the first one I won't have to worry so much about running through my stock before I can replenish it, and it keeps his profits low and may drive him out by annoyance of his lack of huge numbers.  It'll also force him to go through his stocks faster.  And I wouldn't need as many glyphs to wall with for this one I don't think.

On the other hand if I go beneath him he'll get pretty much no sales, which would be crippling since he doesn't seem to have many back up markets or even a good grasp of glyphs. (His fallback is 800.  Glyphs on my server don't sell if they go over 300.)  He'd hopefully either give up and drop out of the market, try and change his APM to drive ME out of the market, or try and buy me out.  I'd kind of hope for the last option even though my profits wouldn't be very good, cause I'd get to mess with him and he'd end up with 10+ of each glyph and no way to sell them any higher.

I'm fairly confident that I can outlast him, as I'm in more markets, think I have deeper pockets, and probably will have a larger stockpile.  But I'll be losing a ton of money for the duration of my time doing this either way, but especially with the second option.

...But it also seems like I'd have more fun doing that one and completely killing the glyph market for a little while is something I'd never had to power to do before, so I'd be rather excited to do it for the first time.

I'm leaning towards posting below him to screw with everyone, what do you think?  Also, I hope it's okay that I post this much for right now.  I have a lot of free time for right now, a ton of ideas since it's a new blog, and I've missed writing. XD;

The Start of an Army

Today I'd like to talk about farmers.  We know them, we love them, they power our businesses and ensure that WE don't have to go farming unless we feel like doing so.  Having my own suppliers was a big milestone for me when I first started making gold.  During Wrath I had a few farmers over the last months sending me leather to supplement what I got on the AH to power my LW crafting.  None of them lasted very long or gave me a very large supply, but every little bit helped.

Earlier today I began recruiting minions to farm for me.  I plan to get as many farmers as I can to keep my inscription going strong for as cheap as possible. ^^

There's a few things I've noticed when dealing with my farmers/potential farmers.  

-Being polite and literate goes a huge way.  I once had someone agree to a lower price because I was able to type and capitalize and use punctuation.  This one also goes when talking to a buyer/seller for high profile items.

-Don't be too friendly though.  I try to be nice to everyone, especially people who are helping me.  But if you get too close they think they can raise the price because they think you're friends.  It's good to draw a line somewhere -- I've learned that if they ask if I wanna run a dungeon I should probably decline so as to avoid giving the wrong signal.

-I still mess this up because I feel bad ripping people off, but start LOW.  It's much easier to offer to raise the price if they don't like it than it is to lower it after they've agreed to your maximum. >_<

-Be sure to watch the market price even if you use only farmers.  While not a huge deal if the price rises and neither one of you notice, you definitely don;t want to pay more than you would if you bought at the AH!  I had this happen for a short time with Jormungar Scales during Wrath, I felt reeeeeally smart about that... 

Having farmers is really wonderful thing though -- higher profits for you, and a steady supply of whatever they farm. =D  Plus you're helping them buy buying their goods constantly and without the auction house deposit.  So I highly suggest that you make a macro to occasionally use while you're doing your stuff in major cities.  "WTB herbs in bulk PST" Is what I've been using. =)

*Edit: Just snagged myself an Obsidium farmer as well*

Anyone know any other/better ways of recruiting farmers?