20 Days of Gold Making - Day Six.

Nev from Auction House Addict has created a community project for the gold makers among us 20 Days of Gold Making You can find a list of all of the participants in this blog post at AH addict.

The question for today is;

"Which market has made you the most gold over the years?"

Cataclysm Gem, guild bank.

Jewelcrafting has always been a huge part of my gold making. During Cataclysm I put a lot of time and effort into the gem market. I was lucky enough to be on a medium population server with very little competition.

I started off selling gems during Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Every time I had excess honour I would purchase gems from the vendor in Dalaran and cut them into popular cuts.  I eventually started picking up uncut gems from the auction house to cut and resell for profit.

During Cataclysm I was heavily invested into the Obsidium Shuffle. This involved buying Obsidium or Elementium ore - prospecting the ore which yielded blue quality gems as well as green quality gems. The blue gems were cut into popular cuts and the green gems were used to craft jewelery to be disenchanted and made into scrolls.

With the release of Mists of Pandaria the gem market changed. In previous expansions learning recipes to cut gems were obtained via daily quests which rewarded tokens, allowing you to purchase the cuts you wanted. MoP introduced a new system which gave jewelcrafters a daily cooldown for each colour of blue quality MoP gem.

Using three uncut blue quality gems (Primordial Ruby for example) rewards you with an item called Facets of Research. Within this item will be two pre cut Primordial Rubies and you will learn a new randomly selected pattern for Primordial Ruby. You also have the option to learn blue quality cuts by using three Spirit of Harmonys' this method doesn't have a cool down.

This meant that for a good few months at the beginning of the expansion uncut gems were often more expensive than cut gems. As people needed them both for research as well as the new Jewelcrafting Panther mounts. The demand for uncut gems seems to have settled down a lot in the past month or two so the prices have dropped and with content being released at a higher rate than previous expansions the gem market is still thriving.

Mists also changed the way that Perfect cut gems worked. Previously, cutting green gems in Cataclysm had the chance to give you a Perfect cut. These gems had an additional five stats compared to an ordinary green cut gems and five less than a blue quality cut. Green gems in general have always been considered garbage but could provide a cheaper alternative if you knew you would receive an upgrade very soon.

Cutting green quality Mists of Pandaria gems still gives you the chance to proc a perfect gem however they're now blue quality and have the same amount of stats as a typical blue quality MoP gem.

You can often buy uncut green quality gems for very little in order to mass craft them into popular cuts hoping for perfect cuts.

WoWPopular is a great resource for finding out which cuts to start with if you're new to Jewelcrafting. They list the most popular gems and enchants for every class and spec.

The Undermine Journal also provides a fantastic breakdown for gems for your server. Under Crafted > Jewelcrafting. Make sure to read the text underneath "The Gems Array" to fully understand what the charts are showing you.

The Undermine Journal (EU)
The Undermine Journal (US)

I love the Gem market, partially because it's always been good to me and because it's the profession of my main.  It's just her thing.

20 Days of Gold Making - Day Three

Nev from Auction House Addict has created a community project for the gold makers among us 20 Days of Gold Making You can find a list of all of the participants in this blog post at AH addict.

The question for today is;

What were the first techniques/tricks/tips you used when starting out?

Jeez, it's been such a long time it's hard to really remember. As I mentioned in Day One of this Gold making blogging challenge I started making gold though necessity, needing thousands of herbs to mill down and turn into inks to make Darkmoon Cards for reputation. Along with the Inks needed to make cards they also required Eternal Life. The prices on these Eternals fluctuated wildly depending on how many people on the server were doing the same reputation grind and whether the weekly quest in Wintersgrasp required you to kill the nature mobs or one of the other elements.

Frozen Orbs. In an attempt to save money where I could I started to buy Frozen Orbs off of the Auction House for a maximum of 15g and trade them into Frozo in Dalaran for Eternal Life which at the time were closer to 25-30g each. Once I'd completed my FoS I continued to trade in Orbs but for Eternal Fire.which typically sold for 38-45g each.
 
Netherweave Bags. One of the first things I did when I started making gold in World of Warcraft was to sit down and really think about what people would buy. What I bought. One of the things on that list was bags. I've always been a bit of an alt-aholic and one of the first things I always do is mail a new alt some bags. I wasn't about to risk losing gold on crafting Frostweave bags as I didn't have much but Netherweave Cloth was low enough for me to give a shot. Buying Netherweave Cloth for 3g a stack. One bag requires one stack of cloth, I'd sell the bags anywhere between 12g and 30g.

Tailoring Cloths. Ebonweave, Moonshroud and Spellweave were fantastic sellers for me during Wrath of the Lich King. They were required to make BoE epics. While I was never interested in trying to sell the epics myself I was more than happy to provide the cloth at a huge markup. Using Frozen Orbs to trade into more expensive Eternals continued to pay off with this one!

Halaani Claymore. Within Halaa there's a vendor called Aldraan who sells the Halaani Claymore as well as a thrown weapon (which is no longer sold as they were removed from the game). These items used to be fantastic for disenchanting when your faction held Halaa. There was a point during Wrath of the Lich King where Feral Druids and Rogues used the Mongoose enchant from The Burning Crusade as it was best in slot for a short while until it was nerfed. This vendor gave me an incredibly cheap and lazy way to acquire Arcane Dust and Greater Cosmic Essences.

Exchanging Borean leather for Arctic Fur. In Darlaran you can exchange 10 Heavy Borean Leather for One Arctic Fur from Braeg Stoutbeard. This was fantastic for me. I'd grab up any cheap leather I could get my grubby hands on.

Vendor Recipes. Often vendors have items of interest. I myself am pretty lazy when it comes to visiting a vendor for a recipe while leveling a profession and I'm not the only one. Faid make an awesome video showing the route she uses to pick up vendor recopies for flipping. Make sure to visit Faid's Blog ClockworkRiot she writes a fantastic World of Warcraft gold blog as well as the new Litecast in which she answers gold making related questions.



Some of these methods of gold making are slightly time sensitive especially the tailoring cloths however bags are still profitable on most servers, Frostweave and Embersilk bags continue to be great sellers for me. Flipping vendor recopies and pets never gets old.

20 Days of gold Making - Day Two

Nev from Auction House Addict has created a community project for the gold makers among us 20 Days of Gold Making You can find a list of all of the participants in this blog post at AH addict.

The question for today is;

"If you set yourself a goal, what was your goal & at what point did you set it?"

I mentioned in my last post in this gold making series after I'd completed my FoS I continued to make gold. I didn't purposefully set any goals for myself in Wrath of the Lich King but shortly after my new found success with the auction house I discovered gold blogs. Since I'd been a follower of the Livejournal community WoW_Ladies I knew that World of Warcraft blogs existed but I wasn't aware of just how many there were. Or that there were any dedicated to making gold in game. I understood that you could purchase gold or guides to help you make gold but I wasn't aware of all of the free information out there available from people with an interest in that side of the game, who wanted to teach and help other people to make their own gold.

Mage Tier Four.

 Just My Two Copper, Hit the Cap and Stockpile were among the first few gold blogs I'd found. I was able to pick up a lot more information and progressed further into my own gold making. I hit the original gold cap of 214k right before the start of Cataclysm but I don't remember actively seeking it. 

In late June of 2011, during Cataclysm the 4.2 patch landed which not only introduced The Firelands but made Tier eleven available from vendors with Justice Points. I made around 200k from gems, enchants and various item enhancements I had stockpiled before the patch. By that point I was nearing 500k and decided to make a push towards the new gold cap of One million.

Getting back into gold making.

Most people seem to be experiencing a bit of a lull in WoW at the moment, I on the other hand feel completely different. Since I quit raiding a few months ago I have so much extra time on my hands. While I'm really enjoying not raiding I do now have a massive list of things I need or want to finish off before Mists of Pandaria!

One of those things is getting back into gold making. When I originally hit the gold cap I had been playing on the same server for many years and had amassed multiple level 85's all with maxed professions. When I later transferred off of that server I quickly began to feel lost when it came to gold making. I had no alts on my new server to back me up, I couldn't shuffle ore effectively. I had no awareness of the markets and to top it off I had to leave the majority of my gold back on Quel'Thalas as guild transfers weren't available yet.

I saw no use in continuing to make gold on Quel'Thalas as I had no need for the gold over there with no intention of playing any of those characters ever again, so I kind of just.. stopped altogether.

Quick! Steal it all while no one is looking!

Since I don't make gold just for the sake of making gold I actually enjoy it I started to add a few things into my routine to get myself back on track. Buying and selling transmogrification items, selling Cataclysm level 77-80 green armour. Sniping awesome deals from the Undermine Journal's great deals list.

Cataclysm 77-80 greens. 

Fast forward a few months and things are looking up certainly going into MoP more prepared that I was. I have several level 85's on my new server all with maxed professions and I've even started stockpiling for MoP. I'm currently sat (around) 480300g liquid. 


I still have Blacksmithing to finish off but my baby Paladin is only level 55. I have two Jewelcrafters, six alchemists, enchanting, mining and skinning. Two tailors, one leather worker. The only thing I'm missing is engineering but I have no desire to pick that up on any of my characters. 

A lot has changed since I stopped making gold being that I'm now on a crazy high population server (with several well known gold makers might I add!) but here's hopping it's as easy to fall back into as it was originality!

Wish me luck.