Wednesday 23 April 2014

Money (That's What I Want)




In recent weeks I have been working towards mothballing my characters. In preparation for a new expansion, I take my characters as far as possible and then sell off all the expansion specific resources. The idea is to make space in my bags and bank so that I can fill them with impunity during the early days of Warlords of Daenor. The process normally yields a large amount of money, as I sell off large quantities of herbs, ores, gems and enchanting mats which I have been accruing for the last 2 years. If you need a mental image, imagine 11 smaller versions of Smaug rolling in Dwarven gold and gems (as seen in the Desolation of Smaug).


This expansion I am starting from a new low point, having got interested in Pet Battles to fill the void in my game time. This prompted the loosening of the purse strings on top of the purchasing of 44 x Royal Satchels (I did make some myself) and the result is that I spent 100K Gold in a few short weeks. The biggest expense was the Jewelcrafting mounts Jade, Sunstone, and Sapphire Panthers. The Ruby and Jewelled Onyx are too expensive for my tastes. The largest single cost in the process is the 18K Gold for the Orb of Mystery. The comment below comes courtesy of WoWHead:

"It will only cost 280k (252k with guild perk) to make all of the mounts that use this as a reagent. (including the 4 extra panthers for the Jeweled Onyx Panther.)"

It will only cost 280K, so what are you waiting for, go and make 5 mounts now. The Royal Satchels at least have a benefit, providing additional storage, I have plenty of mounts I don't use already. In case you are wondering how much Royal Satchels cost on my server, I only buy when they are less than 3K Gold but of course that soon adds up. Lets guess that I made 14 bags and bought the rest that would be a mind boggling 30 x 3000 = 90K Gold. Now I have done the maths I am pleased that I only overspent by 100K Gold.

I am not destitute by any means, but I have an irrational need to recuperate the money I have used from my nest egg. The problem is I am unsure the best way to make money at this point in the game. Google will throw up all kinds of suggestions but in my opinion some are time sensitive or are just plain wrong for myself.

  1. Heroic 5 Man
  2. Tiller Farm
  3. Pet Battle Dailies
  4. Daily Profession Cooldown
  5. Levelling Alts
  6. Solo Old Raids for Battle Pets
  7. Auction House
  8. Fishing
  9. Transmute
  10. Enchanting
  11. Shoulder Enchants
  12. Dailies
  13. Scenarios
  14. Bags
  15. Potions
Plenty of suggestions to have a go at, and I see some immediate problems.

Heroic 5 Mans

Apparently they are really easy. I have not done any Heroic 5 mans for at least 12 months. In my opinion as much as I like to do 5 Man content, I have no plans to start at this stage in the expansion

Tiller Farm

This is something that I have toying with for several months and unless you want to switch off now with TL:DR then I will save this another day.

Pet Battle Dailies

I am not quite up to this stage but I will be in a few days. Expect a post in the near future.

Daily Professions Cooldown

In my opinion the value in the cooldowns disappeared months ago, Living Steel and Imperial Cloth still have a value but the Belt and Pants combo that was available to Tailors, Leatherworkers and Blacksmith are not worth the effort and the mats.

Levelling Alts

Already plundered this rich vein of gold. Any new alts would be on another server, unless my Realm was connected in during my sabbatical, in which I can create another 10 character and a free level 90. A quick check reveals not yet, but a plan is now being hatched for such a time when I can.

Solo Old Raid Content for Battle Pets and Mounts

This was of immediate interest to myself and I quickly ran 2 hunters around Karazhan which was a lot of fun, but it was not very lucrative or rewarding. I still cannot solo Chess even with the nerfs. This is something that I might dabble with in the future.

Auction House

Very vague and I am afraid not very helpful. I have been, unable to offload Glyphs or Gems in recent weeks and Battle Pets sell even worse. Even Del Boy could not sell my surplus stock. I have rarely dabbled with the AH since my addon broke, and I was unable to get to grips with the new version.

Fishing

Yes it might provide a steady income, but I am not prepared to do that much fishing.

Transmute

Living Steel, one a day is not going to make me a Millionaire any time soon

Enchanting

This is one profession that I have never made much money on, with exception of selling D/E'd mats. One of the websites suggested the following as a good stable of enchants to start off with.
Enchant Gloves - Superior Mastery
Enchant Chest - Glorious Stats
Enchant Boots - Pandaren's Step
Enchant Cloak - Superior Intellect
Enchant Gloves - Superior Expertise
Enchant Bracer - Mastery
Enchant Chest - Mighty Spirit
Enchant Boots - Greater Haste
Enchant Chest - Superior Stamina

Shoulder Enchants

A limited market but a useful idea for using up spare Inscription inks.

Dailies

I think somebody is having a laugh at my expense. I thought the entire player base had enough of Dailies after this expansion. 

Scenarios/Heroic

Who stole the loot out scenarios? In my opinion Scenarios are good for a couple of runs. Which unfortunately makes them bad rewards for Developer time/playability ratio. Not sure it is a money spinner.

Bags

Specialist cloths have been on my hate list since WotLK having to visit a location to make one cloth a day is too much devotion. My Tailor seems to be one character without a bag full of Motes of Harmony. Another big mistake by Blizzard not making them BoA and then not using them at all in later recipes.

Potions

Never really made any money from potions in any expansion, and it is unlikely I will start now, even though I have a mound of herbs.

Summary

I intend to make 100K as quickly as possible, and my first step is to stop spending. If any of these methods make me a fortune I will report back after I have made my first Million.

4 comments:

  1. (haven't had to split a comment in quite a while...)

    :) I look forward to hearing about your first million! Got mine back in early Cat when herbs were selling for 30g/ea. I miss those days. I think I made 500K in the first month from herbs alone leveling a toon entirely via herbing.

    Some random thoughts toward low time investment &/or low difficulty brainless gold making that may work for you depending on your server economy (these work for me on all 3 of my servers but they may or may not on all).

    Profession Dailies:

    Living Steel - Still generally worth doing, especially if there's still a market for belt buckles (I'm selling a dozen a week), if you're still making Sky Golems, if you're still making the i502 weapons (they sell slowly but there's still a market) or if the LS itself is selling for more than twice mat cost (which for me means 300g+ although I typically don't sell for less than 400g). Conservatively, say 150g/day/xmute. If LS doesn't work look into the Volatile Life -> Volatile Air conversion (do it in Uldum) instead, on one of my services I'm selling as many Air as I can make for 10-15g/ea vs a Life cost of 2g/ea, that's ~150g/day as well.

    Bag Cloth - I have my tailors parked out in Silk Fields for quick/easy daily use, I'm ONLY doing that cloth, not the newer one... the market fell out of cloth crafted items within a month, you can make some gold but it's not worth the effort, IMO. Mat cost of 80g with cloth at 2g/ea, I'll either make spellthread or bags depending on prices (these days bags are usually worth more per cloth but not always). 100-150g/day/tailor.

    Pristine Hide - I do the original LW CD but not the new one (there's some gold in the LW crafted items but demand is horrible). The hide daily CD itself, though, is worth doing... if buying mats (either scales or leather, whichever is cheaper) for 1-2g/ea you're looking at a cost of 20-40g for the conversion and I'm generally selling hides for 120-200g. 100g profit/LW.

    Engineering - I'm still making Sky Golem mounts but that's more of a long term thing, with LS at 300g/ea it's basically break-even at 11K or so, I'm not willing to sell the mount for less than 20K so I'm basically stockpiling them... I'm expecting LS reserves will dry up in WoD since I expect that LS daily to be on the same CD as the WoD xmute daily which should drive up the price on LS and, as a result, the mounts. Time will tell and I can afford to be wrong, though. :)

    If you have 8 toons that fit into the categories above you're looking at over 1000g/day... you'll make your 100K in 3 months without doing anything else.

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    Replies
    1. However, do other things, too:

      Do both Timeless Isle world bosses (assuming you have a legendary, cut numbers in half otherwise) each week on all viable toons (85+ if those bosses get killed on your server, might be limited to 90 if you have to use the raid finder tool). Failbags seem to give an average of 50g/ea, bonus rolls similar, so that's 200g/week per toon from failbags alone... 8 toons, that's another 1.6K/week, plus maybe some nice loot. Do the other bosses if you can as well, especially if you collect mounts, but don't actually expect to get the mounts, that's a mug's game.

      Black Temple is the best old raid solo location I'm aware of... takes me about 45 minutes to clear, I kill and loot all the mobs... once I sell off trash items and gems I'm usually in the 750-800g range, plus some green items to DE and the elemental water (which sell oddly well for me, usually get 5g/ea for the motes), those mats are worth quite a bit. Do that weekly on a toon (or multiple) who can equip the legendaries out of there and kill two birds, plus rep for a faction you may not have exalted on.

      So... conservatively, say 7K for the profession dailies per week, plus 1.6K for world bosses, plus 1K for BT... that's ~10K/week. 100K in 10 weeks without much time or effort (world bosses are the biggest variable) and almost zero risk, plus possible legendaries, top-tier raid gear (even on sub-90 toons, I had 2pc tier and two warforged pieces on my L10 rogue at one point), rep, etc.

      Side note - if you're stockpiling enchanting mats, I'd suggest selling off most of it, either the base mats or various enchant items (avoid Chest - Spirit, though, that's part of the Ench leveling path... others might fit that too but that one in particular stands out). If your server has a shortage of Sha Crystals on the AH, though, consider selling those &/or the Dancing or Jade weapon enchants, I'm doing pretty well on those enchants on one of my servers (2.5K - 3K/ea) due to a crystal shortage.

      Also, the neat thing about actually getting to a million gold? You could, literally, blow 1K gold per day on NOTHING and it would take you almost 3 years to run dry. How great is that? :)

      Delete
  2. Good to see you back R. I will respond to your comments over the next few days in the form of Posts. It looks like you write more than I manage on the site.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ditto, had been wondering where you went off to. :) I'm more sporadic in my responses these days, I'm finding myself more and more annoyed with the same old misdirected annoyance that's going around, plus all the "female focus" discussions that, with a few exceptions, seem ridiculously overwrought and oversensitive (this whole "choppers" thing being just the latest... apparently motorcycles are sexist?). I wish people would stop hunting for insult when none is intended, if that's the biggest issue someone has they should be hugging the world in thanks.

    Plus, I'm spending significantly less time in-game myself, as with many others, so it just isn't as much of a focus for me as it was... that'll change but for now I'm enjoying the semi-break, my toons are mostly just in maintenance mode now.

    ReplyDelete