The Behemoth: The Lazy Man's LBRS

Large Brilliant Shards. Needed for almost all good heirloom enchants, these items are in high demand. The news that heirlooms will soon be able to sent to other accounts on your same Battle.net account may also spike demand a bit.  You've seen from my most recent Faidian Slip that I tend to farm my Large Brilliants in Lower Blackrock Spire.  

But what about that guy who doesn't want to farm? He just wants everything handed to him like some entitled, laz-- Oh, wait, there's an app for that. I mean, a rare spawn.

Flux at Power Word: Gold mentioned in the most recent JMTC Q&A session that he often found The Behemoth patting around the entrance to BRD.  I decided I would go find out just how quickly he respawned.

The Numbers

What I found was very encouraging!  After killing him about fifty times I have pegged his respawn between 6.5 and 7.5 minutes.  He always spawns in the exact same location and will always drop the Vilerend Slicer, a blue BoE fist weapon that DE's into a Large Brilliant Shard.

He sometimes will drop Runecloth, greens of various use, and basically anything else on that level's loot table for an added bonus.  

He's level 50 and hits pretty hard on a target of his level but anything higher or an alt with heirlooms should be able to handle him without much issue.

What This Means to You

So how do we use this information?  Well, it's not uncommon for people to camp an alt next to a vendor with valuable limited quantity items and the same can be done here.  Due to his fast respawn he is pretty much guaranteed to be up at any given time, assuming no one else on your server takes this advice!  Park an alt within the quarry and anytime you're switching characters, anytime you log in, and before you log out go give him a slap and get a Vilerend Slicer.  Once a week take the alt to a mailbox and mail them to your enchanter. Voila, stacks of Large Brilliant Shards without moving a muscle.

Another option is  to actually camp him.  Now, this can be boring if you don't have much else to do but, say you've got bag fulls of cloth to turn into Netherweave Bags, or some other time consuming task. Consider doing it here for that extra added benefit.  I personally have one account camping him while the other account is flipping auctions or crafting!  It's an amazing passive way to farm shards without having to move a pixel!

Thanks to Flux at Power Word: Gold for mentioning this mob and getting me interested enough to check this out.

Below is a video that may be of interest. There shouldn't be any "new" information beyond what's in this article, but it will give you a nice visual of how to get to him, his spawn point, what he looks like, etc.

Faid on Twitter

This is possibly a horrible experiment meant to DIAF. (Haha, it's Faid backwards. c wut i did thar?)   But I've decided to give the Twitter thing a shot.  Now, assuming this link works and isn't about to lead to something horrendous that you cannot unsee, here's the link to me on Twitter if you feel like following me.

Twitter: What is this I don't even

First off, Faidian Slip 14!  (At the time of this posting Youtube is still processing the video, if it does not show or the video quality is poor, check back in ~5 minutes.)






Edited to add: For more information on farming Large Brilliant Shards Kammler also put up a great and informative post here.


Secondly: Twitter. Perhaps I'm just, at heart, an old person, but I don't get Twitter. The status updates of Facebook with fewer characters allowed.  The communication of an Instant Messaging service or IRC with fewer characters allowed.  I just don't get it. I don't know how to use it, it's weird to me.

That said, I'm willing to learn if there are enough people who would be interested in my having Twitter and being able to be reached on there, as well as, whatever the lingo is . . . "reading my tweets?"  This sounds dirty. I like it.

I just know there are several people I would like to be able to follow, such as prncesspwn, that don't have a blog but use Twitter instead, and so I'm playing with the idea of using Twitter.  Tell me, would you be interested in following Faid on twitter?

Are you a gold guru? (Discussion Question)

Semantics: Alright, I find the term "gold guru" very cheesy, I use gold maker because I find it more appropriate.  A guru, in my mind, carries a connotation of one who knows everything, has perfected an art, and spends their time teaching others.  I think anyone in this community will admit that they don't know everything, there's always more to learn.  Gold maker both is a plain explanation of what we do, as well as implies we're still working towards a goal, which I think most are.  So, yeah, gold maker is the term you'll usually see here on Nerf Faids.  But that's neither here nor there.

Though I didn't audibly participate I did attend the most recent JMTC Q&A Session on Friday.  I'll let y'all listen to it for yourself if you haven't already, but basically there was some drama between two regulars, Catharsis (who I can't seem to find a blog/contact for to link) and XanderEragon.  I won't take sides, but I will say that was the most interesting Q&A session I've listened to.  Finally broke up all that "lolshuffle moar" talk that I fully particpate in myself.

The comments on JMTC lit up with people "taking sides" and there was one part of one comment by an Anonymous commenter that interested me:

"Xander is clearly not a gold guru (what is it 50k liquid he has? ridiculous)"

Now, there was more to this comment but it's not relevant to what I want to talk about here. This post is not a commentary on anyone's actions during the meeting, I was just a very amused bystander.  What I want to know is:

What makes one a "gold guru?"

Am I a gold guru? Are you? What makes someone a gold guru?  Is it a person with an arbitrary amount of liquid gold? Is it someone who may not have a lot of liquid gold but has ten banks of pyrite ore?  Is it anyone who writes about gold-making on a blog even if they only have 6k?

I have a guild member who, at least at one point, has/had a lot of gold.  I'm not sure how much "a lot" is, I just know he was at the 214k cap before I even started in the 'biz.  He once told me that he doesn't try to make gold, he just plays as normal and it just sort of piles up.

My question is this:

If someone has very little liquid gold but has the know-how to make 30k in a day, are they a gold guru?

What if there's someone out there who has amassed 1 million gold through doing 25 dailies every day since Isle of Quel'Danas came out? They don't know how to use the auction house and can't tell you anything about a market or trends.  Try as they might they probably can't push more than 400g a day. But they have 1 million gold, don't forget! Are they a gold guru?

I've always felt that it's more about how you go about making your gold and what you know about gold-making that makes you a "gold guru," not how much you've managed to scrimp and save.

What do you feel makes one a gold-guru?  At what point will a new gold maker cross the threshold and become a guru?  Where's the Guru College?  If someone only has, say, 50k liquid why is their opinion any less valuable than someone with 1.8 million? 

Image credit: Printing Money

In closing, this isn't a Faidian Slip, that will be later!  But I did put up a random video worth a minor amount of mention:

WTB 1 Trusted Friend

No, this is not a post about a lonely or betrayed Faid. This is my entry for the JMTC April Carnival.   This topic just barely went up and I jumped right on it, I love when I have something interesting to say on the topics!

How would you make gold if you had low capital?

Though it's been a long time since I was truly a player with low capital I got a taste of it when I started characters on the opposite faction.  It's because of this opposite faction action (Haha, rhymes) that I stumbled upon the vendor recipe/pet market.  It's a very easy way to make gold with minimal, predictable investment and not a huge chunk of playtime.

You will need:

• A character on each faction.
• Either a second account -or- a trusted accomplice.
• A bit of time and willingness to travel.
• <100g.

The Plan

The plan is simple.  We will assume you only want to make large amounts of gold on one faction, for this example it will be Alliance, since that was my original goal. You can do both of these simultaneously to make gold on both factions, but for the purpose of this post let's keep it simple and go one-sided.

The goal here is to use a Horde character to buy lucrative Horde-only vendor recipes and pets, such as Black Kingsnakes. Then using the Neutral AH to flip the items you will move these to the Alliance and sell them on your Alliance AH.   Some may stop short and sell them only on the Neutral AH, but I find profits are fewer and they don't sell particularly often. The benefit of stopping at the neutral AH is that you do not need another account or friend.

Remember you cannot buy auctions posted by a character on your own account, this is why you need either a second account or a friend.

The Logistics

If a picture is worth a thousand words how many words is three videos worth?  Here are previous Faidian Slips featuring the recipes I recommend buying/selling for each faction, as well as a guide to flipping on the Neutral AH.  The first two are Faidian Slips, so feel free to mute them and listen to music while you watch 'em.

Horde Recipes/Pets

Alliance Recipes/Pets

Flipping via the Neutral AH

Why go the extra mile? Why not put them on the neutral AH and wait for other players to buy them?

For people unable to find a partner in crime or use a second account it's entirely reasonable to stop before flipping them; there's nothing wrong and eventually they will sell and make a profit.

The reason I do not do this is because there's one concept I think reflects the way I make most of my gold making decisions: The bulk of the WoW players on any given server are stupid, lazy, or both.

I'm banking on the fact that players will not bother to go to the neutral AH (lazy) and will instead just go to their local AH and look for anything they can use then pay  'decent' price for these recipes.  Often times people aren't even aware they come from vendors (stupid) and will pay thinking this is a rare or hard to get recipe.

On my server I can sell a pet or recipe on the Neutral AH for 7g. This is still a profit over the vendor cost and so you will make gold this way.  But by moving them to the opposite faction's AH I have my threshold set at 85g per recipe or pet and they sell like mad.  Over the course of about three months I made 33,000g selling only recipes and pets on Horde side, my non-primary faction. 

Those runs seemed to take you a long time.

If you make this recipe run every day you will likely spend large amounts of time doing this.  I recommend buying in "bulk." As I mentioned in the third video, I usually keep 14 of everything in stock. With the speed these items move on my high population server I usually only have to restock twice a month, and so for, say, 3-4 hours a month this is a great payout as long as you're willing to do the legwork.

Start off with just a few of  each recipe, particularly if you're very low in capital. There's a possibility someone else is already doing this on your server. Test the waters before making a huge investment but if your server is like most be ready to dive right in when you see the ludicrous amount of gold this may make you.

This is definitely my favorite way to jumpstart gold making with a low amount of gold to invest.  Not everyone can afford to dump thousands of gold into shuffling but pretty much anyone can afford a few vendor recipes for a couple silver each. Give it a shot, I think you may be pleased!

Moving your gold to another server just got easier.

Assuming this includes guild bank gold and not just items/bought tabs, this will probably be the most reliable way to move gold cross-server in the future. Throw away all those 5k fortune cards and choppers!

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2267590574?page=1#1

We want to give everyone an early heads-up regarding our plan to implement a guild relocation service for World of Warcraft. The idea is for a guild leader to be able to transfer a guild to another realm. The guild structure remains intact, including the guild leader, guild bank, ranks, and guild name (depending on availability).

Guild members who decide to relocate with their guild may initiate their own paid character transfer. Upon a successful transfer they will automatically be part of the guild when they first log into the new realm. Their guild rank and guild reputation will be intact.  

Guild leaders who do not want a change of scenery may also choose to pick a new guild name using another new service. These services are in development and we will be providing additional details at a future point in time. 

As with all of the features and services we offer, we intend to incorporate the guild relocation service in a way that will not disrupt the game play experience. Please note that this feature will require extensive internal testing, so you may see bits and pieces of the service appear on the public test realms. We'll announce further details at http://www.WorldofWarcraft.com . 

Taking a Brief Break

I think having hit 500k now may be a good time for a break from serious attempts at making gold.  I certainly don't intend to cease all gold-making projects, but basically it's come to my attention I may enjoy my playtime a bit more if I don't focus so much on gold-making.

I once bowed out of the glyph market because it was taking more time than I felt it was worth.  Well, I'm sort of feeling that way again, but for gold making as a whole.  I love being able to log into 10-20k in my mailbox each morning, but I tend to lose sight of the fact that that's usually because rather than play my toons and enjoy the game I was sitting in SW babysitting my auctions for most of the evening before.

My surge in gold-making with a lack of effort required is now explained.  My main competition in both of my main markets whispered me today explaining they'd had their internet knocked out for a week by a storm. (They attend a raid I run, thus the whisper. I doubt it's common for most people's competition to whisper them with updates. :P)  I've decided this is a good time to take a step back and decide just how much of my playtime I want to invest in making gold.

I'm still going to work to make gold, and I'm still going to blog just as regularly about my ventures, but for a week or two I think I'm going to bite the bullet and log off my AH toon except for posting and cancelling, no more of this AH camping, no more 2 hour prospecting marathons.  I will make gold, I know it. It may take longer but, in the end, if I enjoy myself more and get to experience the game the gold's actually for I think I'll still come out the winner.

Faidian Slip 13

Faidian Slips are back on track

My Guild Bank is a Rainbow

Vayaz said . . .
It seems to me that all those guild banks full of stuff (got 6 or 7) are eating a lot of my liquid money. Or perhaps that's normal and I simply have to spend more time selling things.

How many guild bank tabs full of stock do you have, if I may ask?

Vayaz (click here for Vayaz's blog) left this comment on my most recent post and I realized it's not something I've ever really talked about.  Some gold makers have banks and banks of stock while others work with what they have on hand. I've found a happy medium that works for me, and here's how it all works out.

The "Stockpile"

Honestly I don't really stockpile all that much. I think it stems from my fear of risk.  "Ooooh, all this X is really cheap. But what if tomorrow it's even cheaper? What if they nerf something and the market tanks? What if what if what if?"

I don't like taking risks and, generally speaking, stockpiling is a form of risk in my mind.  The only time I ever truly stockpiled something was because it was completely risk free. Elementium I would consider stockpiling in a similar fashion. Because it's currently under the vendor value I consider it risk free investment. I've been investing in it as though stockpiling, but with the amount of time I've had to prospect lately I don't tend to keep it around long enough for it to be considered a stockpile.

I keep a small amount of most low level enchanting mats on hand, enough Embersilk to do Dreamcloth on both of my tailors.  I have a small amount of herbs and ore that I clear out everytime I go on a milling/prospecting spree which happens every few days; usually less than 200 of each Volatile on hand, and that covers most of my "other" items.  Glyphs I don't often stockpile, they move quickly but I am able to find enough time every day to replenish what I sell and not having each glyph posted constantly gives them time to rebound if undercutting has brought the price down.

The closest thing I come to a real stockpile is gems.  I have about 100 uncut blue-quality Cata gems on hand at any given time and 300 of each green-quality as a bit of a "rainy day" fund if I ever need to cut and vendor for some fast cash, cut and DE for quick DE mats if the market goes wonky, etc. etc.

You should stockpile!

I see great value in smart stockpiling. Though my server has not experienced it yet many servers have seen a banwave of mining bots and the ore prices have jumped back up to "normal."  When this inevitably happens on my server I'll have my small stockpile of gems but I'm sure I'll be thinking to myself "Why didn't I snatch up all that 40g ore when I had the chance?!"

The main reason is that I don't like the idea of huge investments. I'd rather take small bites. Maybe that means the stockpiler will get 3/4 of the pie, but I can enjoy and savor my little slice of the pie just the same.

I know the markets I work in very well and I am usually pretty good at knowing how the markets will fluctuate with days of the week, times of day, patches, etc.  Because of this I'm experienced enough to know I always have enough stock on hand to meet my demand but never get caught without inventory to sell.  While I see tremendous value in stockpiling, it's not for me at this point in time.

Below are screenshots of my guild bank tabs with a description of what's in them and "why."

Tab One is my random enchanting mats and my embersilk and other associated taioring supplies.  All of my Cata enchanting mats are on my enchanter so this is where I store the "I don't usually need it but I want to keep it handy" stuff.

Second tab was meant to be ore but since I've been prospecting all of it so often it's become an overflow tab for cut gems.  

This is the "random herbs that have yet to be milled" tab, as well as my elements.  And, with all this prospecting, as you can see, more need for overflow room.

As you can see this tab is full of every epic mount you've ever wanted. I mean, um, gems. Many cut gems.  I pre-cut 7 of my lesser demand gems and 14 of my higher demand gems.  I do this even though it kills my space because generally in peak gem sale times I'm on Faid in a raid and can't be on my JC cutting gems to restock so I want plenty on hand to cover rush times.

More "mounts."

I'm addicted to "mounts."



I have other guild banks with things like cross-faction recipes and then a guild bank with my leftover saronite and eternals but I feel the stock is not great enough or unique enough to really warrant screenshots of it. Just picture way too much Saronite and Eternal Shadow.

Thanks for the question Vayaz, I was glad to talk about my stockpiling, or lackthereof.  If anyone ever has any questions please feel free to leave comments or contact me via the contact info on the right.

500k!

Woo! Half way there.  Emma, my main competitor in the gem market, hasn't been online since Tuesday and I've been feeling the profit!  I considered doing an interview for the Warcraft Econ's Hall of Fame but I think I want to hold off on that till I hit the big 1 mil. =D

I decided to celebrate by buying a Vial of the Sands for my mount collecting boyfriend so I'm already back down sub 500k, but I know I'll have it back in a flash.

 Gold really is exponential; the more I get the faster I seem to make it.  I've learned so much and had so much fun making this first half million, let's hope all the learning and fun continues!

Faidian Slip News: I've given up on the internet here.  Something about our net and Youtube don't agree. But I have not given up on providing Faidian Slips. They will now be posted on Mondays so that I can just bring them to my University on a flash drive and upload them there. So sorry for the hit or miss slips lately, but the fix is in.

Back to Basics

As I near 500k I think back on how this all started and how much I've learned.  The things I sell, the way I sell, the way I used my professions have all evolved to meet both a changing market, a changing expansion, and a changing attitude towards gold making.

Some things were very important to me in the early days but I have strayed from them as my capital grew, but the practice still are not terrible ones, and I even find myself returning to a few.  Here are a three of the earliest "tips and tricks" that I came up with or used to help me gain my initial golden foothold and, for the most part, I still stand by these goals on a regular basis.

1. Every Character. Every Day. In the Black.

It's easy to feel like you're spinning your tires in the sand, especially when your bank account doesn't seem to budge when people are talking about nearing 500k!  As you play your characters and repair, buy upgrades, enchant gear, etc. you spend gold and it's possible you're not realizing how much you're spending on them each day.

Each day you log onto a character take note of how much gold they have. You can do this "manually" or by using an addon like Auditor.  Be sure that every day, when you log off a character for the final time, that that character is "in the black" and has earned more gold than they spent.  this is a really easy way to stop "gold leaks" that you may not notice.

This doesn't work so well when you move up and start making large investments on things like crafting materials that pay off more in the long run and may not show an initial gain, but doing this sort of thing helped me significantly when building my seed money.  You can also set a "quota" per day. Rather than having each character be in the black, instead say that each character has to be 100g up.  You can quest, farm, whatever you prefer to reach your quota set, and you'll see the gold begin to add-up!

2. Don't be afraid of farming.

Auction House Junkies talked about this in their most recent episode (5), in fact.  Many bloggers will either specifically say farming isn't worth it or at the very least say that farming isn't a huge part of their routine.  This may be true for them, but for fledgling gold makers it's a great way to make starter cash.

When I first began I did not buy any materials.  If you have a good amount to invest in ore or herbs or something of the sort then invest away, but often the new gold-maker doesn't have the luxury of being able to tie up thousands of gold in a single investment for long-term gain.

This is largely similar to the previous point. Back in Wrath if I needed to make flasks for raid I would get on my herbalist and herb Icethorn until I had 20 Frost Lotuses. Lotusi?  Loti?  No idea.  Did I need all that Icethorn?  Not at all.  But by the time I had my 20 Frost Flowery Things I also had several hundred gold worth of Icethorn to craft with or sell.  Just by going the extra mile to farm my own materials I was able to also make gold.

This isn't the greatest tip for those with limited playtime, but if you have the time (They should have a command similar to /played that tracks how much time you sit in SW doing nothing . . .) it's a great way to get what you need and make gold rather than spending it!

3. Set short-term goals. And stick by them!

Most people who get into the gold-making mindset have a goal. Usually it's to buy a specific item, such as a Vial of the Sands, or to hit the game-defined goldcap.  Therefor most usually start with what they consider an "end point" at which point they will consider themselves to have "finished" accomplishing their original plan.

1,000,000g.  That's a big number. When your goal is to climb a mountain in a day it can be very intimidating. Your breaks for a snack or a breather can cut into your time because, afterall, it's a whole mountain in a day!  Instead, think of your goal as climbing 1/24 of the mountain an hour and it can suddenly seem much easier to wrap your head around and manage.

When my goal is to make 1 million gold it's hard to see how a 500g day differs from a 1,000g day in the long-run. I'm still a long way from the top of the mountain, regardless.  Instead I would set short-term goals, usually weekly or by an abstract date, such as "before x patch."  When your goal is much more immediate it's much easier to discipline yourself.  If I want to make 10,000g this week making 1,000g in a day instead of 500 suddenly becomes much more substantial and something much more important to hit.

Setting reachable short-term goals will also give you a sense of accomplishment when you're able to hit them and even surpass them.  It really helped keep me enthusiastic about my goals.

=========

Image credits: Accounting Ledger, goal

Captain's Log

Day 4

It's been four days since I began my journey.  Still no sign of the fabled staff nor the long-forgotten sword.  My pick is worn to a nub; I've begun clawing at the dirt with my fingernails. I need a manicure.

As I press on into the night I am calmed by the sounds of the fifth episode of Auction House Junkies.  I partake of Flix of the Net to pass the time.  I feel that, should this continue, I may soon lose my mind.

It's getting dark. I don't know how much longer I will last, if my effort will all be in vain.  But I know I must keep going. I must keep fighting. I shall not give up.

======================

So I've decided Spring Break has given me a good amount of time to sit down and seriously grind out some Archaeology. Well, honestly I'd already done quite a bit.  I've finished all of Northrend and Outland and have every Archaeology achievement. I'm still missing the Troll sword, the Dwarf staff, and a few Tol'vir rares though, and so that's what I'm spending this evening and a few more shooting for.

A while back, after I first put up my contact information on the top of the right column I got several e-mails from folks with questions and comments. Loved it!  I have a few posts and videos I'm working on right now but would love to answer any questions y'all have to throw my way.  If you have a question you'd like to see answered here at Nerf Faids or if you have anything you want me to talk about please just shoot me an e-mail, I love to get them! They'll break my archaeology monotony. =D

Faidtastic (at) gmail (dot) com

Are we all having fun yet?

A lot of people have been posting recently about a possible lull in players on their servers. Here's a few of the posts:

• Is WoW ready for a corpse run? - Capped by Cata
• The Current State of WoW - Cold's Gold Factory
• Has there been a "Rift" in your sales too? - Alto's Gold"ish" Advice

I'm not going to get too much into it because, perhaps I've just had my head down and my nose to the grind stone but I haven't really noticed it.  What I will say is that Rift will kill WoW. Just like Warhammer killed WoW. Just like Aion killed WoW. Just like Age of Conan killed WoW. Just like Eve Online killed WoW. Just like . . .  (Edit: Apparently EVE is older than WoW? Haha, that's hilarious, it only really became a big thing around here a year ago. I guess we're more backwater than I thought!)

It will be foolish to say that WoW will never die.  Just as D2 did before it WoW will probably eventually lose most of its player base when something truly better comes along.  But I do not think that time is now.  So often people have said "x game that is similar to WoW with better graphics will kill WoW" and every time there's a max exodus of players.  Every time most seem to return.

Tell me, do you have a character on every server? Do you have an 85 on more than two servers?  Probably not.  Why? Because we "grow roots."  We have in-game roots in the form of gold, characters, achievements, professions, etc.  We also have intangible roots, like the social interaction of our guilds and perhaps even reputations on our servers.

WoW doesn't hold its players on pretty graphics, it holds us because we have ties here. We have friends here and people like to go venture out and meet new people, try new things. But most people will usually return to their comfort zone.  If there is a slump in sales and in WoW players in general I don't anticipate it lasting long.

Faidian Slip will come tomorrow; my internet and Youtube just are not getting along on the days I want them to!

Death of a Dragon

Hope you don't mind, but I'm just still so stoked from our Nefarian kill last night and wanted to share the video of it. =D

In a gold-making vein of information, you'll remember I previously talked about doing glyphs the old fashioned way.  Well, that's true, but I also suffered from "not wanting to learn addons-itis." Though I'll still make glyphs "by hand" when time permits, now that I know how to use TradeSkill Master for it as well I know glyphs don't have to be a huge endeavor to restock

If you too want to learn TSM for glyph posting please, do what I did, and watch Fluxdada's amazing tutorial videos.  Unforunately my TSM_Shopping is broken in that there's no vendor button for stocking, but it's still saving me tons of time when it needs to! There were some great written guides out there but, hey, when given a choice between doing homework and watching a movie . . . =D

My Moment of Shame

When I saw the topic for Cold's Gold Factory's blogging carnival this month my heart sunk.  There are many stories I have about my building myself up to the point I can make gold rather easily that I'm at now. Some of the stories are funny, some are sad.

But one is shameful.  I've not wanted to talk about it because I feel that saying it may draw ire upon me or even get me into trouble, but I feel it's time to come clean.

The Humblest of Beginnings

I started on Daggerspine on Horde with a blood elf warlock in early BC.  By the time late BC had rolled around I had switched my main to a blood elf mage named Faid.  I really wanted epic flying, so badly. I didn't have any farming professions, though, so the usual "gateway" to making gold was lost on me.  I have since-learned that my professions, tailoring/enchanting, are very lucrative, but at the time I was ignorant to markets and demand and such.

However was I to make the gold that everyone else seemed to be able to make?  I tried installing Auctioneer and bought some Fel Iron that was supposedly being listed at 10% of it's usual price. I quickly found out that, due to my only having scanned the AH once, my average prices were way off base and the 750g I'd saved up diligently was lost.

I tried doing dailies; Quel'Danas was in full swing and there was always money to be made there. But with my abysmal skill at PvP and my then-horrid computer it was nothing but a 4 hour gankfest just to try to complete these few dailies.

It was hopeless, I had no idea what to do or how I would ever afford my coveted epic flying.  And here's where the shame begins.

I bought gold.

That's right, I said it.  I went to a website and I paid about 25 bucks for 5,000g.  (This was back in, I believe, 2006ish.)  At the time, at least that my ignorant self saw, there was no real risk in it.  Truth be told, I didn't even know it was against the rules.  I'd seen videos like this one and thought it was just an uncommon, though perfectly reasonable practice. Someday maybe I'll write a post about how the transaction "went down" because it was actually rather amusing.  But that's a story for another day.

The Terrible Hacking Incident

Never occurred.  I bought my epic flying and went on playing the game as though nothing had happened. I was never hacked, never had any information stolen, etc. etc.  I didn't advertise that I bought gold (I still didn't see anything morally wrong with it, I just felt kind of pathetic having been driven to the point I paid real money for it) and nothing more ever came of it.  However, as a starving student, I could not be shelling out real cash for gold anytime I needed it. There had to be a better way.

LOL YOU CANT FARM WITH ENCHANTING LOL

At the time all of my friends were out on their herbalists farming Life off the trees in Skettis or grinding elementals on the Elemental Plateau.  Farming through grinding mobs was out of the question for me because the ganking was non-stop and I just couldn't get anything done. 

I asked a friend who also had enchanting what he did. He told me he DE'd items and sold the enchanting materials.  What a great idea!  I manually searched the AH for a while before determining the highest selling enchanting material: Greater Eternal Essences. I popped up the thottbot (lol) and figured out where to get items to DE.  I was on my way to Stratholme.

Hamstrings and Diseases and Death, Oh My!

Now I'd never run Stratholme before. I was level 70 and actually asked my friend for a "run through."  I'd have loved to see the look on his face.  But after a bit I learned the instance relatively well. But I couldn't solo farm it, I was a really crappy mage and I just couldn't deal with the damage and the horrid diseases.  So I would get a priest friend of mine to just follow me around and cast Abolish Disease.  It was really inconvenient and I hated having to rely on someone else to get these items.  (Fun Fact: I'm still farming Stratholme to this day.)

A Little of This, A Little of That

I continued to do Stratholme when my priest friend was available and I also farmed Air off the elementals in southern SMV, a place mostly barren and so I didn't have to deal with ganking very often.  I eventually leveled my warlock up and learned to play it a bit so I could herb the Skettis trees myself.  I never made much gold, I would farm and sell the items and feel like I was raking in the cash, but I probably never had more than 2000g on hand at any time.

The Breaking Point

There were other small ventures here and there but my BC career never amounted to much more.  In time I quit playing and didn't restart again until a year had gone by and I rerolled on Argent Dawn about a month after Wrath was released.  I rerolled to play with a friend who funded me for the most part; I was never rich but I could buy whatever I needed.  Time came and went throughout the expansion.  I'd do dailies and sell some farmed materials, same old same old but with 100% less ganking.  Finally, though, about three months before Cataclysm it happened.

I saw a post on LiveJournal about someone who had recently hit the gold cap using Inscription. I had a character with Inscription. I like gold. Why don't I do that?

But I didn't know the tools of the trade.  This person, in their post, mentioned this strange and fascinating thing: QA3.  I asked them what it was and they said to check out Stokpile's guide.  Then I saw his other posts. Then his blogroll.

HOLY CRAP THERE'S A LOT OF PEOPLE OUT THERE WHO LIKE MAKING GOLD

The defining moment for me didn't happen in game.  It was the moment I found amazing blogs and thought "Hey, I could do that!" What really lit the fire for me was finding the community and all the amazing resources within and wanting to dive right in and learn and contribute however I could.  All of you are my defining moment. =]

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Faid Note: Since I talked about my "shady past" I think it's best if I also put in my opinions on it all.  I did not get burned when buying gold. But it was a much different time with, I perceive, much less risk.  I would never ever again buy gold and, as you can see, I'm not exactly proud I ever did.  It's dangerous to your account and your finances, against the rules, and just plain silly when you can learn how to make gold. Give a Faid gold, she gets epic flying. Teach a Faid to make gold and her alt's first epic flyer will be a Vial of the Sands. I'm actually sort of happy that through rerolling I've even distanced myself from anything that could have been built on the "seed money" the bought gold gave me.  I'm that averse to buying gold. Just don't do it. =]

*defends a shattered world*

Not a gold post, sorry. I don't post many non-gold posts, so permit me this one!

Legacy of the Illuminati is now 12/12!  After some serious nights of work put into Nefarian he's now down and we have pretty titles. I was so ashamed, though. I'm such a terrible auctioneer. I didn't have 3k on me to buy my mount! D=  Luckily someone spotted me some till I could get over to my bank toon!  (I do think it's kind of silly I had to pay for it in the first place.  I feel like those who participated in all the kills should get it for free. But, c'est la vie, there's probably not even technology available for all that crap.)

There's a video coming up once Youtube quits choking me to death, probably tomorrow afternoon. =]

UJ Market Notifications: Your Best Friend

Isn't that just the most beautiful thing you've ever seen? This enchant has sold on my server in the past for upwards of 30k.  I'm not yet sure if I'll flip it or learn it, since it's also the highest +Stats enchant that can be put on BoA chestpieces.  Regardless, it's an amazing deal.

With an incredibly active AH (3 AM on a Wednesday? Over 900 pages of auctions!) however did I snag such a great deal before someone else grabbed it up? The answer to that is the greatest thing since sliced bread, if sliced bread sent you e-mail notifications to tell you it had recently been sliced.

The Undermine Journal has a feature which allows you to set parameters for notifications.  Basically anything that can be posted on the AH can have a notification set up for it. You can have one just to let you know if one's even available, if one's available under a certain price, or even if there's none available so you know when you can jack up prices.

I get these notifications sent to my e-mail which I'm constantly able to view throughout the day. I believe they're now also doing twitter and Facebook stuff though, so you can probably even have it, either directly or roundabout, sent to your phone!  (Don't quote me on that though, you kids and your newfangled facetwitterbookspace confuse the heck out of me.)

The best bit is that if, like me, you're too lazy to make your own notifications you can now import other people's lists. Granted, this may cause you more headache than help; on my server most of the "rare" items are posted in vast quantities so I often get mostly useless notifications, but I deal with them for the time saving and for these great 45g deals.

A great guide to setting up notifications as well as a list of notifications you can just copy and paste (the same list I'm using!) is available over at The Consortium, check it out!

Faidian Slip #12

Week in Review

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A call to bloggers: I sort-of-but-not-really participated in JMTC's TeamSpeak meeting this past week and was very entertained talking to folks with similar gold-making interests. There were a few people with blogs that I know aren't on my blogroll there but I'm afraid I've had a heck of a time remembering or finding them. If you meet that criteria, or even if you weren't in the meeting but have a gold blog you'd like included in my blog roll, please let me know! I'm always on the look out for more to read!

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Sorry for the lack of Faidian Slip or timely post this Sunday, it's been a very long week for me both IRL and in-game and it's definitely caught up to me.  Weekends just aren't long enough! I'll get a post up tomorrow (Monday) but until then, let's talk about how this week went.

Liquidate's Week in Review

This was my first full week with my auctioning being handled from my second account and it went better than I'd ever expected.  Argent Dawn is one of the oldest servers and is high population. There are a lot of gold-savvy players and so often if things aren't selling it's not that there's not a market but that there's a more aggressive player undercutting your auctions.  Some markets are okay with a "post it and leave it" style of play but most need some real attention paid to them. 

Having Liquidate has allowed  me to keep an eye on the AH through most of my WoW activities and I'm pleased to report that in her first week of existence Liquidate's "Gold earned from auctions" statistic lists over 130k.  Of course, that was largely reinvested and I profited about 60k this weekend.  This is great, though, considering I'd been hitting about 15k over an entire week in the past.

What's she been up to?

Gems

   Gems were already a pretty big part of my selling setup but now I've been able to babysit the market more which has resulted in increased profits.  This has brought about some added frustration, though, because now that I don't just post it and leave I've been able to view more players in the market and how they post/play. 

   I'm not discouraged from the market as a whole, but I've noticed huge windows of time when the market is owned by an aggressive undercutter (Emma from my previous post) that it's more beneficial for me to just bow out until the person logs off.  On other servers it may be possible to bully someone out of a market or to undercut to loss-level profits to scare someone off but on my server there are just too many fingers in the JC pie and we're all getting our gems essentially free thanks to the cheap ore; I think it'd be too dangerous a venture.

Glyphs

   That's right, I took the plunge.  With the botter gone the market is now open to more players and I've been able to make a great profit off of Inscription once more. I buy herbs at 40-60g a stack and craft any glyph selling over 90g, leading to great profits.

   Interestingly enough I've found that Emma, on a different toon, is also heavily invested in the glyph market. However I've found that Emma posts auctions on different characters categorized by professions and so when they're on their JC toon I can undercut their glyphs and when they're on their glyph posting toon I know I'm safe to post gems without sacrificing deposits. 

Cards

   You may remember I delved a bit into cards at the very end of the fair last month and made a surprising profit on my investment.  I decided to put the Inferno Inks I was getting when doing glyphs to good use and make some cards. I've made about 10 cards today which have sold, combined, for about 15k, which was a great deal for the money put into them.

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There you have it, Liquidate's first week in existence.  As stated, I'll try for a Faidian Slip and/or great post tomorrow, for now I must go pass out.

AH PvP Record: 1 - 1

I'm pretty bad at PvP.  Apparently I'm "meh" at AH PvP!

Cutting off the Nose to Spite the Face

One of my most recent ventures was to move all my buying and selling to my second account. I even recreated Liquidate, my old glyph posting toon!  This would allow me to do whatever I'd like on my mains/alts (dailies, raiding, archaeology, etc.) without having to give up my presence on the AH to buy/undercut/etc.  This resulted in a huge surge of sales for several days and I was sitting pretty.

I started to notice, though, that another player seemed to have the same set up. There was a level 20 shaman we will call Emma in SW who would constantly, quickly undercut me by posting one gem 1c below mine.  She did this for probably about 80% of my cuts and I decided I really liked this market so I was going to try to push her out.  I was quite sure this wasn't a bot  (coincidentally I later found out with about 80% certainty that this is the alt of a guild member/friend)  and decided to just strong arm them out. I would drive prices so low neither of us would profit and hope that they ran out of steam before I did.

Things went well for a while. I constantly undercut them while they constantly undercut me.  I was making about 10k a day off the JCing regardless of this little gem war going on and was okay with it.

Until I sat down and took my own advice and began tracking my incoming and outgoing. While I was making a profit of about 10k a day I was spending almost 2k a day on posting fees for all these gems.  I kept on for a little while before finally throwing in the towel.

I never really had the desire to get into bidding wars or to try to muscle anyone out of a market before. I know I don't have the attention span to dedicate to such a venture and so usually I just go to one of my other pet markets until they clear out. So, "Emma" has won this one. But I feel like admitting I was losing and backing  out sooner rather than later gives me a bit of credit.  I still can make good gold here by posting during the day when this player isn't online, as well as posting the lucrative cuts they don't have. (Seriously, they don't have any Inferno Ruby cuts. o.o)  So I'm not feeling like I'm running with my tail between my legs as much as I might otherwise. =D

Faid: Back with a Vengeance

So how did I redeem myself in the world of AH PvP? By pointing the banhammer at my great rival, of course!  Well, great rival? Not really, we barely even competed in the same markets; I would do gear and consumables with small ventures into enchanting scrolls, he would do glyphs with the occasional enchant scrolls. But when one of us would post up those 5 scrolls the heavens would break and rain blood upon the masses as our epic battle unfolded.

But, yeah, remember this guy?

I think the reporting finally paid off. I think he's been banned!  Only time will tell if he comes back, but for now, he's gone. At long last, the glyph market is free.

Free for the taking? I'm not sure if I want to delve back into glyphs; it wasn't my favorite market to begin with. But with the market so competitive I imagine it's nearly barren now that he's gone, I may be able to swoop in and make some pretty hefty cash.

See this, what do?

So we left raid tonight and as I was about to go put my raid snacks back in the kitchen I hear a call from my intrepid hunter companion "Big Battle Bear 50k!"

So now I have a conundrum.  I've never really sold TCG mounts, or any big ticket item of this sort. (I know enough to know 50k's a good deal though!) I've watched a Mottled Drake rot on our AH for several weeks at 118k and so I don't think there's a million people out there snapping up TCG items.

On the other hand I'm pretty big into collecting mounts. I'm  not one of those ZOMGMUSTHAVETHEMALL people but I do have . . . 125 mounts, so clearly I like collecting them a fair bit. The thing is, though the mount is attractive, I'm not a huge fan of bears and it would probably just become another button on my mount selection screen to scroll past.

So it comes down to:

Exclusive mount I probably won't really use?

 vs. 

Extra gold, though probably no more than I could make in a week?

Edited to add: Well that was fast! My decision was made!  I thought it over for a bit before reminding myself "Gold is easy to make and common to come by. I may never see another of these mounts.  /right click"

But tell me, have any of you guys bought/sold TCG items? I'm dealing with someone to buy some for my toons (I've always desperately wanted a fishing chair but this guy doesn't have one to sell me. Q_Q) and have never really done the TCG thing.  Have you guys had good luck selling the loot?

Breaking the Gold Gain Plateau

It's common for people to hit "slumps" in their journey to the goldcap, or whatever their destination may be.  You keep on with your same old strategy but somehow your liquid gold just doesn't seem to grow, even though you may see money pouring in every day.  Taking one look at the OMG I can't make gold! forum over at JMTC lends evidence that the gold plateau is very real for some gold-makers.

My mother has always been one of those women who are tiny as can be but constantly think they need to lose weight. All through my childhood she was reading weight-loss books, doing VHS types in which middle-aged women wore pink hotpants and tried to look hip and happenin.

I've heard more than my fair share about weight loss tactics and one thing that I always found interesting was the concept of a weight loss plateau.  Basically the idea is that your body starts losing weight at a decent pace because of your new set up, be it added exercise, a new diet, or both.  You continue to lose weight until you "plateau" at which point the weight loss slows or can even stop altogether, even though you continue to do the exact things that were giving you great results in the past.  Sound like a certain gold problem some of us tend to run into?

The theory about plateauing in weight loss is that your body has become accustomed to the new regimen and has reached a stasis point.  Many people hear this and think that means they have to eat even less or work out even more. Usually they receive poor results and eat too few calories or work themselves into exhaustion trying to break the plateau.  But there is a solution.

The Gold Gain Plateau

People often come into the gold making business using a single tactic they've heard about.  Let's call this a diet.  Their diet may consist of selling vendor pets, netherweave bags, and shuffling obsidium. Not a bad diet, and one that's likely to see some steady results. 

Soon, though, all the alts have bought their bags and pets and the obsidium shuffling markets become saturated.  Though they're likely still breaking even and maybe even making a bit of gold their diet has lead them to a point of plateau when they just aren't seeing the income they once were.

Three Ways to Break the Gold-Gain Plateau

Just as the gold-gain plateau mimics the weight loss plateau, the ways to  overcome it are very similar as well.

1. Diversity - Often someone who has plateaued with weight-loss has been eating the same diet for weeks or months and a tactic of breaking the plateau is to mix up the diet; eating different sorts of food and in different amounts.  

Likewise, if your "diet" of items you sell isn't doing it for you, try branching out into different markets.  Experiment with selling limited supply recipes or farming Fel Iron if engineering pets and Obsidium just aren't doing it for you.  Worst case scenario your absence in the markets you used to frequent may raise the prices when you return to them.

2. Spend More - The most counter-intuitve tip people find for breaking a weight loss plateau is to eat more, but many people say it works.  Sometimes dieters will cut their calories too low for their body and the body will enter starvation mode, storing all the excess energy it gets from intake instead of burning it and weight loss won't happen.

This can definitely happen with gold-making.  As we start seeing our profits per day diminish it's a common knee-jerk reaction to stop spending as much, thinking surely you must be hemorrhaging gold somewhere.  Don't. A key to making gold is to have your gold working for you.  Zoxy did a post about this concept a while ago.  If you're not investing your gold into profitable markets it's just sitting there. Remember: Just because it's called a guild bank doesn't mean it earns you interest. (But wouldn't that be amazing?)

3. Track Your Calories . . . err, spending! - When people are dieting they usually shy away from snacks as often as possible, but it's common for a diet to be impeded by a little snack here or there.  A common tactic for breaking a plateau is to track how many calories you're taking in every day.

The same is true with gold-making.  It's easy to have gold slip by you without even noticing: Repairs here, BoE for an alt there, flasks for the next raid, reforging an offset of gear.  Gold can slip through the cracks very easily and your plateauing may be because you're not realizing just how much gold you spend on a day-to-day basis.  Keep track of how much gold you spend and you may see just why your bank account isn't growing. (Faid recommends Auditor.)

Thanks, that fixed it!

Hopefully those who have plateaued can find some help here. Remember the concepts though; just as it's common to plateau more than once in weight loss, it may also happen to you in your gold-making ventures.  As markets fluctuate with each content patch or hotfix and demand surges and subsides it's not uncommon to have an ebb and flow of gold.  Keep all of this in mind in your future gold making adventures.