justinscopper-blog

[justinscopper-blog]

The Three Big Lies of Auctioneering

Gather round everyone, Markco is going to share some wisdom with you which he has collected over the past few years. I’m going to try to make this lesson in economics as entertaining and useful as possible. Instead of just spouting big words and catch phrases at you I’m actually going to explain what they mean and how they relate to your game play. After all is said and done you should not only understand opportunity cost but also the ins and outs of what your time is worth in game. I’ll preface this by saying I’m no expert in professing economic terms and defining them as I've never taken a class in economics in my life. I am however an expert in developing methods that work and are practical. So if what I say doesn’t seem to perfectly match the status quo note that it’s done on purpose because that’s what works for me and will work for you. Being different is not a bad thing on the auction house.

“I farmed it so it’s free. I proc’d it so it’s free.”

If you farm something it’s not free because it took time to farm the item and that time is worth something. Let’s say you farm twenty eternal fires in an hour on your hunter. You can now say that your one hour was worth the gold you’ll get from selling twenty eternal fires (ignoring time spent auctioneering and mailing the items as it is rather small). If you say that you can post those eternals for 10 gold each when the market is 30 gold because you farmed them for “free” then you are ignoring opportunity cost. You are selling yourself short big time and reducing the value of that hour you spent farming. Instead of being worth 600 gold you have reduced the value of your hour of work down to 200 gold. Nothing is FREE in this game unless it costs you zero time to acquire it (a gift would be considered free and that’s about it). Procs from alchemy or other professions are not freebies. They are a mathematically predictable number of additional items you will get when transmuting or prospecting or anything else. They make the method you are performing more valuable which is not to say they are adding freebies to your normal rewards.

What people do with their “free” stuff is the real problem. More often than not they post items for ridiculously low prices in order to get gold right away. You probably take advantage of their mistake with a well defined snatch list.

Opportunity cost is how much gold you could be making with your time. If you can spend an hour farming eternal fires but you do it farming eternal waters then you have reduced your opportunity cost by the value of the fires minus the value of the waters. This is of course assuming that fires are the best thing to farm with your time based on competition and pricing. If you choose to drastically drop prices then you also lower your hour’s worth to far below your opportunity cost.

Bigjimm from P3P did a great job on the last Call to Auction podcast describing oppurtunity cost in a more technical manner. I'm just an orc, small words work better for me.

“This item makes the most profit for those mats, only sell this item.”

There are people who take this idea to the extreme and limit their professions only to a single market or whichever item is worth the most gold for their time. This is 9 times out of 10 a horrible mistake. Let’s take felsteel sets for example. One commenter argued that selling felsteel rods was much more profitable than the felsteel sets and sold more often so therefore they weren’t going to craft any of the armor in favor of the rods. First off, can you sell as many rods as you can make in a single day? Let’s say he can craft three rods per day based on how much fel steel he can acquire then he probably could just sell the rods and that would be maximizing the opportunity cost of his time. But if he were farming and gathering far more mats and creating a dozen rods per day he probably would end up with quite a bit left over and that’s ignoring additional competition from other auctioneers. Once you reach the point where you have too many items in one market to sell per day you need to diversify your efforts and that’s where less profitable items are worth selling. If he diversifies into felsteel sets and still maintains his feliron rod market he will be getting the maximum amount of return on his investment each day. There are other feliron markets but that’s just a quick and dirty example.

“I AFK-Craft and AFK-Post so it took me no time to make my gold.”

Time for the next fallacy of auctioneering. AFK work or automation does not mean you somehow didn’t spend time crafting or posting or collecting gold or whatever you have automated through addons. If you don’t include this time in your gold making analysis you are lying. If you for example make 4k gold a week crafting glyphs through “automation” and “afk time” you still spent that time and must include it in your gold per hour calculations. This lie also includes those players who don’t have addons and hit “craft all” in their professions tabs. The idea that if you go off and clean your house or walk the dog or do any additional activity while your character performs actions in game is not spending time is ridiculous! If I have to go do something outside of the game because my toon is spending a half hour posting auctions then I am not spending time doing other things in game. This gets back to opportunity cost and what your in game time is worth. AFK work is still time used in the game that could have been used doing something else. If the thing you’re doing right now (including afk work) is maximizing your efforts to make gold then it was worth your while but it still has to be measured up against what you could have been doing in the same time. NOTE: The changes to addons in 4.0.1 have greatly reduced the opportunities to AFK-anything. Please keep this in mind as the post today was written almost a month ago. For addon help and a list of currently working addons read this post.

The counter to what I’m saying is to put a price on your real life time which you spend in game. Sadly this is just not an argument anyone can win because it’s too subjective and based on a person to person basis. For those who work they have even more factors to worry about when deciding what their time is worth. Trying to fit this discussion to every person out there reading this is just not worth the herculean effort and will probably not do much to improve your gold making skills so I'm going to drop it all together.

Learning from these Lies

Farming is an acceptable way to make gold on the auction house, and so are diversification and using addons. However, knowing this is not enough; you need to also decide what to do with your time in order to maximize your gold earned. Understanding the best methods and identifying what your time is worth (that’s basically what opportunity cost is) will make you a much better player. Be sure to also note that things change over time and one day it might be worth your effort to farm instead of playing the auction house or vice versa. I hope this information has armed you with the knowledge necessary to take advantage of players who succumb to these lies. Buy out cheap items from rushed farmers, ignore trolling whispers from people telling you that you're doing it wrong with regards to undercutting or time spent on the ah, diversify your portfolio and last but not least: include afk crafting/posting/mailing time in your calculations when determining the best ways for you to make gold. Have you seen these lies in action? Do you believe them to instead be truths? Speak your opinion in the comments section.

[justinscopper-blog]

How to Use the Snatch Tool

You can’t ungold cap someone. You can make their profits smaller and take away market appeal, but you will be hard pressed to battle someone on the auction house and cause them to lose gold. There are ways to compete with opponents but you won’t be blowing them out of the water the way you can in the real world. This is largely due to the lack of quality disparity among goods. Since you can’t make a better product, all you can do is change the price, quantity, and time of posting. There is a strategy however which allows you to compete with your auction house brethren and push markets  into more profitable ranges. What you do is run a normal auction house scan with auctioneer (use the little blue double arrow for a fast scan) and then go into searches (right click the yellow magnifying glass) and select snatch. Within the snatch tool you can set values which you’d like to buy items for (remember they are based on individual item prices) and then click search to see if any items were found within your purchase range from the previous auctioneer scan. Keep in mind that you must have something to search in order for scan to work. You cannot run snatch without performing a scan first and every snatch search until the next scan will rely on this old information. Example: Step 1: Run a fast scan.

Step 2: Set saronite ore to 85 silver (17 gold a stack) and hit snatch.

Step 3: If saronite appears for bid or buyout at 85 silver or less than it will appear on the snatch screen.

Step 4: Select purchase for each and confirm your decisions.

Step 5: Go to the mail and collect your items (if you bought anything out)

Step 6: Prospect your saronite or make some bars for transmutes or w/e you want to use it for! It’s that easy! One more tip, once you add an item to snatch it stays there every time you log on and you will need to change the values if market prices change.

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22 Steps to Using Auctioneer Correctly

There’s a lot of information to sort through when bidding, buying, or posting items on the auction house. In fact it’s too much for any one person to realistically accomplish on his/her own. How can you possibly keep track of literally thousands of item prices as well as predict their values at any given time? Well thankfully there’s a little piece of freeware called auctioneer. Go to google.com and search for auctioneer, then download the safest working version (not beta). Install the addon and place it in your World of warcraft/Interface/AddOns folder. Now make sure to exit wow if you have it running so that it will read the new addon into its addon options at start up. Enter your information and select the character who will use auctioneer. At the bottom of the screen is the addons button, click it and make sure that Auctioneer is set up for at least this toon. Enter the world and head to your nearest auction house. I recommend thunder bluff because you can remain mounted from mail box to auction house and they are insanely close. Also the guild bank is in the open if your character has one for easy storage.

1. Open the auction house tab. 2. Type /aadv getall. 3. When the scan completes, mouse over the hidden set of icons just under your mini-map. 4. Select the second option from the right which looks like a magnifying glass. It’s the Appraiser tab. 5. Select Vendor from search options 6. Put 50 silver as your minimum profit. 7. Using the purchase option, spam it until every item disappears from the list. These items will always net you money, regardless of whether you vendor or resell them. 8. Accept purchase for each and when you are done confirm them. 9. Select the Resale from searches options 10. Put 50 silver as your minimum profit. 11. Sort by quality of items so that white items show up first and select purchase for each item that looks like a good deal. Compare the bid/buyout price with what you think the item will sell for. Be mindful of ridiculously priced items which can trick auctioneer. You can look below the list of items to compare your currently selected item with all others currently on the auction house. 12. If you wish you can do the other quality items as well. 13. Select done. 14. Go to your mail box. 15. DO NOT PASS GO. DO NOT COLLECT 200 GOLD. Just kidding :)- 15. Empty the mail box into your bags. 16. Go to the auction house. Open the auction house tab. 17. Select Appraiser at the far bottom right of your normal auction house tab. 18. For each item, use the first horizontal bar to select the size of each stack to sell. If the item is not that susceptible to flooding you can leave the total number to sell at ALL. If the item is susceptible to flooding, such as rare twink items, then reduce the number you wish to sell at any one time. 19. Select the enable batch post check box. 20. Select the enable market pricing check box. 21. When you have finished every item, shift+control+alt click on the Batch Post button. 22. When all the auctions are finished posting you can close all tabs and you’re done!

Next time you log in simply empty your mailbox and then head over to the auction house to repeat the process. As you do this you will most likely gather far more items than you sell, so making money may take a few days but the gold will come in exponentially as your total number of auctions increases. You should aim to make half your money back the first day. By the second day you should have most if not all of it back and by the third day you should be easily making money. As you build up and get to the point where you are posting a thousand or more auctions a day you will be handling as much as five thousand gold per day on the auction house.

It doesn’t get easier and now you have the step by step guide to become rich in wow. Combine auctioneer with my farming strategies and you've found the best way to make gold in wow.

Let me know in the comments section if any part of this guide is confusing or requires more explanation!

[justinscopper-blog]

How to Use Bean Counter in Auctioneer

I've been emailed quite a bit recently with questions about auctioneer's handy little tool: Bean Counter. Today's post is meant to be an answer to the what, why and how questions asked about Bean Counter. What is Bean Counter? Every time you sell items or more importantly fail to sell items in world of warcraft, Bean Counter is there to track the transactions. It is a part of Auctioneer and the last tab on your auction house user interface if you have the addon installed. Why Use Bean Counter? You can view the information Bean Counter gathers in order to decide how many items you would like to post. In most cases when I start selling in a new market I am clueless as to how many will sell on any particular day. I'm also unaware of my competition and how they will react to various pricing methods. Bean Counter allows me to look at the dates I have posted items and see how many sold as well as how many came back. If every Monday I post 10 items and 8 come back, I know that I should really only be posting two at that price or I should be posting the same amount at a lower value. If I post 10 items and all sell then I had better increase either my price with the same number of items or increase the number of items I'm selling. I'm sure now you're starting to realize why this addon is so powerful! How to Use Bean Counter Bean Counter works a lot like the appraiser tab in that you need to drag an item into the item slot on the left side of the UI in order for Bean Counter to look up the relevant data on the item in question. You can also shift click an item in trade chat just like the snatch list. This is why you sometimes see auctioneer talking in /say with nothing more than an item listed. They are doing that as a way to shift click on the text and then populate the Bean Counter or Snatch list tab since they don't have any of the items in their inventory at the moment. Sorting is just like any other part of auctioneer, just left click on a column to sort and click again to change between ascending or descending. There are some more advanced features for Bean Counter like changing the date display method (you could for example show the day of the week instead of a number) and you can play around with these if you'd like. %c is the default if you screw up and would like to go back to the way it was. You'll find all the configuration settings for Bean Counter by clicking on the red "Configuration" button at the top of the UI. Bug in Bean Counter I found that I was unable to scroll to the right of the UI in beancounter so I came up with a work around to be able to view all the fields, in particular the date field which by default starts off way to the right of the list of fields. Simply alt right click and drag to resize the column widths so that other columns start to squeeze in from the right side of the UI. Next you can shift right click to drag columns close to the left and then either resize them manually with alt right click and drag or press control + right click to set the column to it's default size.

[justinscopper-blog]

Do you Own Your Tree?

If you read the blurb at the end of my articles you can see that I spend much of my time on the Shandris server. This has been the home for myself and the alt army since I started this game. There have been other servers I've dipped my foot into, but Shandris has been home for my gaming. There are a mix of characters that have come and gone on the server. I wouldn't say that Shandris is anything spectacular. We have a little above average raiding group. A average to above average economy (which I'm trying to make extraordinary of course) and a pretty good group of players. With any server you get players who probably should be doing other things than griping in trade. But there are a few that have made themselves known just simply by one thing. They pseudo own a piece of property in Orgrimmar. While watching trade chat he will announce his wares depending on which alt and profession he's selling that day, and it all revolves around a tree that almost everyone knows is his tree in Orgrimmar. I"ve even seen arguments of others saying 'that's not your tree, that tree belongs to everyone. Seems like a very valid argument til 10 players verbally lay a beat down on them saying 'he has had that tree for years'. It's a fascinating deluge of support for something that technically isn't a part of the Warcraft game. This is the epitome of having a reputation that everyone knows. The question is have you set up your reputation in your home city that players know? Do you have a spot that players know to come to you. In the beginnings of wow I would see players (as well as myself) run to whoever had 5g for my crafting wares. This was long before I looked to dominate the Auction House.  Running like a panting dog to get another 5-10g into my coffers. As I progressed I saw a change in my attitude because I could wait for them to come to me. Controlling my own crafting and selling destiny instead of being dependent on the whims of others. Before the biggest letdown was that a player would change their mind the minute I arrived to finish the transaction. Do I own a tree in Orgrimmar? No,  not really. There are players who know the spots that I pop up from my hearthstone so if I am arriving in town they know to wait there. But I'm more partial to bushes than trees. Still, it would be nice to own a nice oak in Silvermoon.

[justinscopper-blog]

Old World vs New World Profits

Mommar here The past couple of days I've been busy with other projects so had to cut down my time playing World of Warcraft. Finishing my daily chores and a little exploration to get my lock up the unlocking of the gates quest eaten up a lot of my time. I did spend a little bit of time doing some quick flips of items,  including my biggest pet peeve when it comes to markets. Ghost Iron Bars should never,  ever be sold cheaper than the ore itself. So I took a little of time to flip the market for what I was most comfortable pricewise. In the past month I've gotten a little bit lazy when it comes to farming, taking that little bit of profit off the top to spend on materials instead of farming them myself. The measurement of the value of my time makes it much more cost effective than spending a couple of hours grabbing product for all of my daily timer crafts. That doesn't mean that I don't do any farming in other areas. Old crafting materials are starting to make a comeback and keeping an eye on enchanting materials. Where the basic ore still tends to sell lower than I like, a nice burst of demand for dust and celestials from both Wrath and Cataclysm areas bring in a nice profit. The key to this is not abandoning old world techniques, including the Elementium shuffle to generate profit. Mists of Pandaria made it much more difficult to generate gold with the combination of an Enchanter/Jewelcrafter. It required more juggling and decision making than just what was given during Wrath. The same applies now,  except that crafted items for the most part are not going to sell well on the Auction House in the 80-85 range. These areas are leveled through very quickly and players take their new toons into higher areas. I've preached the idea of knowing your market and also knowing your conversion of materials. What is that price point that will allow you to generate a quick profit,  against letting items sit there to deteriorate in demand. That mental toolbox being put to the test. Test yourself this weekend and see just where you think old world profits can be squeezed from.

[justinscopper-blog]

My Favorite Addon

Mommar here.

Over the amount of time during my Warcraft 'career' I've added and deleted a cubic ethereal ton of add-ons. Some performed one specific duty such as keeping track of how many attempts I ran Sekketh Halls to obtain my Raven mount. Others performed much more complex tasks such as Trade Skill Master. Each become very important in the overall setup of performing tasks towards gold making.

But one add-on is the most powerful add-on I have. Without it I would be crippled in my exploring of gold making tasks.  It's taken years and year for me to develop and is so important that I would guard it with my Warcraft life.

It's my Notebook that sits next to my computer (yeah, I know. Cheesy).

There are all sorts of note taking tools that can be used as add-ons. And with more and more powerful computers, it's just as easy to swap between windows to bring up Springpad or notepad or lily pad or whatever you choose to keep notes. When I first started playing WOW, my computer just barely crawled over the minimum requirements for the game. My video settings were at the lowest they could be and I was tanking with a 6fps. You can imagine how my monitor whined at the end of any boss battle that covered the entire screen with flashing lights. Ultimately I upgraded my computer to a much better setup but I still remained conservative in how I did my note taking.

I used to note everything that I did or bought in Warcraft. Looked for trends and researched offline and even noted players that I grouped with that didn't fit my view of how to play. Keeping records for my guild was an extension of this record keeping. Now that I do not run as much with my guild I do not keep as detailed records as I did from the start.

But what I do still have is copious notes on financial trends and expectations in the market. It's how my brain organizes information. Your brain may do something different and that it becomes easier to use much more computer based ways to keep your notes.The important part of this is that you are looking for trends and keeping track of your decision making. Some trends repeat itself every season. Others are one time deals that are here and gone.  

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it” George Santayana

This ideal doesn't just apply in real life but also in your Warcraft life. Your mistakes should not be repeated while your successes should build you to the next step. The notetaking will allow you to know which is which.  

So buy yourself a notebook and a good pen and keep your own personal gold making journal. You might be surprised just how much you can learn when you put pen to paper.  

[justinscopper-blog]

Fail Proof Gold Guide for Making Glyphs

Here is a guide to help people out make gold with the scribe profession by making glyphs. Before using this guide I strongly recommend you acquire all the glyph recipes by doing all your minor and Northrend glyph research and also buying all the recipes from Book of Glyph mastery item ( witch you acquire from pretty much anything in Northrend, they tend to be pricy) You will need the Trade Skill Master add on in order to make your glyph selling skills profitable.

Is your server glyph market profitable?

First you need to check if it his profitable to sell glyphs on your server. Keep in mind that it takes 3 blackfallow inks to make one glyph, and that you can get in average from 3 to 5 blackfallow ink from one stack of Cata herb. For example, on my server, stacks of Whiptail and Cinderbloom go for an average of 30g. Buying mats at that price, I can make about 1.5 glyph for 30g or less depending on the market. Then if I look up the minimum buyout price average for all the glyphs from my server, it seems to vary from 10g all the way up to 190g per glyph. And only about 1/5 or less of those glyph are worth below 31g, that means that 4/5 or more of my glyph recipes will be profitable up to 160g profit per glyph. Make a similar comparison on your server before diving head first into selling glyphs.

Trade Skill Master

TSM is an add on that comes in separate module you need to download apart, it his meant so that you use only the module you need and limit ram usage. We are going to need the shopping, auctioning, and auction DB module.

TSM shopping

Go to the AH, from the TSM module click Shopping: Milling/Disenchanting/Prospecting/Transforming, select Mill, and select blackfallow ink. The add on will list all the herbs, pigments and blackfallow ink up on AH, and present them in order from cheapest going up to the most expansive, and give you the option to buy. I personally would buy any of those that will give my ink for 6g or less (TSM will tell you how much your ink his worth when you buy said item) and stop after that. I stockpile a lot of inks for the future, so when prices are too high I don’t invest on mats, and I invest a lot when prices go way down. Feel free to buy the other herbs you need. I find Inks of the sea and Ethereal Inks I use a lot. I normally sell my inferno inks in stacks of 20 for extra profit, as of patch 4.2 ( those trinkets are useless now...) After you’re done, it’s the most annoying part of glyph making ... mill the million stack of herbs you just bought. Here’s a tip for milling faster: get the Expeller Button add on. It will give you a macro than when clicked, will auto mill and select a stack of herb in your bags, any kind of herbs. Set this macro to your mouse wheel up and down, and all you gotta do his roll your wheel up and down until everything his grinded.

TSM Auctioning

Open the TSM main menu, and click the auctioning tab. The first option tab his personal tastes set it up however you like. Go in Category / Groups in the left hand side menu, and then select the create category / group tab. In the second text box under category, create ‘glyphs’ category. Now choose the Auction Defaults tab. Here is the important stuff you need to enter, the rest I don’t mention don’t matter so much and his up to you. Post Settings (Quantity / Duration) Post time: 48 hours, Post Cap: 4, Per Auction: 1. General Price Settings (Undercut / Bid) Undercut by: 30s, Bid percentage: 95%. Minimum price settings (Threshold): I put in 30g, this should be equal to the average price you pay your stack of herb on your server. If you’re about to post herb below that price, TSM will not post them. Set threshold as: fixed gold amount. Maximum Price Settings (Fallback): Fallback Price: 190g (see what’s the minimum buyout price for the most expansive glyphs on your server and set price accordingly) set fallback as: Fixed gold amount, Maximum price 130%. Advanced price Settings (market reset) reset method: Don’t post items (why? Because we don’t want to let the glyph minimum buyouts go below 30g or we don’t make profit. My advice is to not post those glyph that are too low in price and just let the market go for about a week. Prices normally get back up. You don’t want to contribute in undercutting a glyph too much)

TSM crafting

We are now going to create one individual auctioning group for every glyph. But first let’s set up the options for this module. Open TSM main menu, click crafting options tab on the right. General Settings tab: Sort crafts by: profit, descending. Unknown profit queuing: Set crafted item cost to Auctioning fallback. Price / Inventory settings:  Get mat prices from: Auction DB market value (you could also choose auctioneer market value if you already have done scans with it) Get crafts prices from : Auction DB minimum buyout (again; or auctioneer). Make sure that mat prices his set to market values and craft prices his set to minimum buyout. Profit deduction: 4%. Queue settings: Minimum profit Method: gold, Min restock quantity: 1, Max restock quantity: 3, Min profit in gold: 30g. Now click the crafting inscription tab on the left hand side, and go down in the options tab in here, and set groups inscription crafts by: Inks.  Now click Ink of the sea on the left list, enable all crafts, and create auctioning group. Category to put groups into: glyphs, How to add crafts to auctioning: All in individual groups, create. Repeat the process for all the other inks except blackfallow (which has nothing in it anyway) I suggest not to include the off hands and other misc inscription stuff.

Restock Queue

We’re finally all set up to make some gold. Go to AH, click Auction DB in TSM side menu, and run Get All scan. Run Auctioneer scan instead if you set your mat price to follow auctioneer in TSM crafting. Open your inscription profession window, and open trade skill master crafting at the top. From here hit Clear queue, then restock queue, then if it appears hit clear TSM filters. You will see your queue on the right side. Every glyph that will net you 30g profit over your mats price will be queued for 3 times each. Click the top entry and you will auto craft 3 of that glyph, hit create next again and again until you’re done with your queue. Make sure you have the appropriate mats from TSM shopping, and stay near the scribe vendor to buy your parchments and trade in your blackfallow inks for the appropriate required inks (normally it’s a lot of Ink of the sea and ethereal, and a bit of jadefire lion and midnight and very few shimmering.)

Posting

Now that we got our glyph inventory restocked with only the most profitable glyphs, it’s time to post. Go to the AH, click the top button in TSM side menu, Auctioning Post. Everything you created an Auctioning group for will be posted if it’s price his above your set threshold (30g in my case). To make it easier to mass post, have TSM create a mouse wheel posting macro in TSM auctioning main option window.

Post Rotation

The toughest part in posting glyphs his to stay ahead of your competition. Someday I post all my 600-700 glyphs, and minutes later I find that more than half of them are already undercut. You need to figure your competition posting pattern and try and always post after them. To refresh you’re AH posts and undercut everyone that has undercut you, click Auctioning cancel (not Auctioning Cancel All) from the AH TSM side menu and TSM will scan all your posts and ask if you want to cancel your posts that have been undercut. You need to click once for every glyph you cancel, again the TSM mouse wheel macro comes in handy here. Gather all your cancelled glyphs back from your mailbox and turn them back to the AH using the posting technique explained in the last paragraph. Repeat this rotation as often as you like when you want to undercut your competition. When your inventory runs low, repeat the restock queue process, don’t forget to run a get all scan to have accurate market prices. I find posting at around 5h or 6hPM is a good time, you get normally a good hour of being on top of the market at peak times. I suggest you refresh your posts more aggressively 2 or 3 times or even more a day during the weekend. Trust me; weekends sell tons of glyph if you manage to stay on top of your competition.

[justinscopper-blog]

Cataclysm Volatile Farming Guide

Cataclysm is here, and so are the new "eternals". People have been asking, what are the best spots to farm Volatiles? If you don't have a gathering profession such as mining or herbalism, you're going to need ways to obtain volatiles without dropping huge amounts of gold at the auction house, I have found some of the best cataclysm volatile farming spots.

Volatile Fire

Volatile Fire Farming Spot

I have found this to be the best spot to farm Volatile Fire, there are pools of fire that can be fished here, as well as level 80-81 elite elementals that also drop volatile fire. You could also go visit Twilight Highlands, around the bastion twilight, there are mobs that drop volatile fire, and there are also a couple pools of fire that can be fished.

Volatile Earth

Volatile Earth Farming Spot

Here you will be farming Volatile Earth, you will be killing elementals named Scalding Rock Elementals. They have a decent drop rate of Volatile Earth and another plus is that they're not spread too far apart. The respawn rate is fairly quick as well. These mobs are needed for a quest, so you might have a little competition while farming volatiles here. You can also farm volatile earth at The Black Breach located in Twilight Highlands.

Volatile Water

Volatile Water Farming Spot

You will be killing Muddied Water Elementals here. They have a good chance to drop volatile waters, if you're a gatherer, there are also a couple elementium nodes to snag while you're farming them. The mobs are tightly packed in one small area and spawn fairly quickly. These mobs are needed for a quest, so you might have a little competition while farming volatiles here.

Volatile Air

This is by far one of the hardest volatile in game to obtain, and it's price tag shows it. The best spot I have found is in uldum, killing Scion of Al'Kir. They seem to have the best drop rate for Volatile Air, they're fairly spread out, but I found very easy to kill at 85. These mobs are needed for a quest, so you might have a little competition while farming volatiles here.

Volatile Life

Sadly, these are only obtained from herbalism. You could use potions of treasure finding to obtain some, but it will be a pain if you need large amounts of these and you do not have herbalism.

Alchemy Living Elements Transmute

This is an excellent way to obtain volatiles. It does requires 15 volatile life, but you can turn that into any other volatile. Volatile life normally goes for 10-15g each on my server, while volatile air goes for 45-55g each. It's an easy and surefire way to obtain 14-16 of any volatile without going out and farming for a while. If you don't have an alchemist, try tipping someone 50g for them to use their transmute.

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Cataclysm Tailoring Gold Guide

Tailoring has always been an excellent way to make gold with, from crafting bags, to crafting spellthreads, or even pvp gear, it's always been an excellent profitable profession. Within this guide I will teach you how to make gold, utilizing old & new methods & items to make heaps of gold.

Cataclysm Spellthreads

Cataclysm Spellthreads are hot right now, especially the epic ones. Why? It's because people are beginning to raid seriously, thus creating a huge demands for these spellthreads. I often see them go for 900-1,100g per, it's great profit for anyone, if you manage to craft the Epic BOE legs you can usually squeeze in a spellthread in there for about 800g extra ( I've done this about 3 times total ).

Wrath Of the Lich King Spellthreads

I have been crafting and selling so many of these it's insane. With the material cost under 5g, I can literally sell these at any price, but I found that 60-75g is the "sweetspot". People don't want to spend 1,000g on stuff that going to get replaced so they think, well hey, this is 75g and isn't that bad compared to that so I'll just buy this until I get my tier 11 pants. The spellthreads you will be crafting are Azure Spellthread and Shining Spellthread.

Dreamcloth Epics

This market can vary at times. Crafting the dreamcloth epics ( there are four total ) can be profitable if you're able to obtain cheap materials. Currently this market can is usually is flooded by other tailors, so profit can vary but I've found that selling the epics via trade chat is an excellent way to avoid the auction house. Read more on crafting Dreamcloth epics here.

Pvp Armor Sets

Pvp sets have been a great way to make gold since Cataclysms release. The profit on some items can be low sometimes due to constant flooding of the market by other Tailors. I find that the patterns that are vendor bought sell much better than trainer taught patterns. You will be crafting the Emberfire & Fireweave Sets. In total there are six different items that you will need to acquire from the vendor in Twilight Highlands, they are as follow for the corresponding sets: Emberfire/Fireweave Cowl , Emberfire/Fireweave Robe, Emberfire/Fireweave Pants.

Crafting and DE'ing

This is another excellent option to make gold with. On my server cloth prices have plummeted, they're down to as low as 35g/stack, so picking up the cloth to craft and DE is an excellent way to make gold. I found that the lower level cataclysm greens are the best to craft because they don't require that many materials. Deathsilk Cowl on takes 3 bolts to craft, and even better the Deathsilk belt takes 2 bolts, either can yield 1-4 dust and 1-4 lesser celestial essence. I would only advice to craft and DE if you manage to get embersilk cloth for cheap.

Crafting Bags

This is one of the best methods to make gold with tailoring. You can craft a multiple number of bags and they will almost always be profitable. The best bag in my opinion is the netherweave bag, it's low cost and sells extremely good, you can read about selling these bags here and here. I would also craft the recently buffed Illusionary bag, it just received 2 extra slots so the die-hard gold makers are going to want these regardless of their price ( Portable Holes cost 3,000g ) so they will be hot to sell. Embersilk bags are also a great to make gold and unload any extra dust you have laying around from doing the obsidium shuffle.

That's all folks! Think I missed something? Drop a comment below and let me know.

[justinscopper-blog]

Netherweave Bags In Cataclysm

Let’s fast forward 4 Days Until Cataclysm … Cataclysm hits. People go roll worgen and goblin, people level new alts, what is the first thing they will need? Bags. What is the cheapest bag to craft, yet sells well and has a nice markup? Netherweave bags. Now you might be thinking, well… those are 16 slotters why in the world would people buy those? Wouldn’t they want 20 slot bags? The thing with 20 slot bags, is that their material cost makes them way more expensive and harder to sell to new and upcoming characters. Currently I can craft a netherweave bag for roughly 3-4g, including the thread, a 20 slot bag costs me about 30-40g to craft, and they sell for a little above that. I'd rather craft something for cheap and yield the same amount of profit, if not more, than something that is expensive and harder to sell. Netherweave bags also sell is larger quantities than Frostweave bags, in my opinion, as their price is low and it is more affordable to the low levels. If you're going to seriously sell bags in Cataclysm, you're going to need to know on how to build and maintain a wall. This is going to be extremely important in securing yourself profits, while keeping the competition out of the market.

How to Wall The Market

Sherretz, From the JMTC Forums wrote a nice explanation on how to “wall” up a market “ Basically, you throw up a large volume of bags at a set price. The idea is that your presence outlasts and outweighs the people posting in smaller volumes, even if they undercut you. This is generally done close to mats price to force out other sellers and give you a larger portion of the market. It can also serve to drive up the price of mats on the AH, further cementing your position since you can make profit where others can't. This will take some strategy in the bag market, however. You'll need to buy out most of the AH cloth to drive its price up, while also choosing the proper price point. For example, on my server, if I did this, I would probably put the bags up at around a 5-6g BO. I'd buy up all the Netherweave priced at or below about 7-8g, with the idea that cementing my place in the market will outweigh the loss I accept by buying higher priced Netherweave. “ Basically what you would do, is make a wall of bags, and start buying all the Netherweave cloth a little above the price that you have the bags posted at, or up until a certain price point, mine will be 10g. While you are making a loss, the amount of bags that you’d be selling for a profit would offset the loss. The trick to this method is to keep your competition from getting the cloth, therefore shorting the market and raising the prices for the cloth. You're going to be undercut, but simply buy the cheap bags out, selling one at 200% profit will make up for two or three bags. On top of this, you're also shorting your competitors supply, the less they have, the more they'll want to make, and if you've done everything correctly, there should be any cheap Netherweave Cloth posted at the Auction House, so he'll be out of the market before you know it. Making a wall takes a substantial amount of gold. I personally would not recommend it to anyone who does not have a ton of gold, as you're most likely going to be burned out of the market by people who do have the gold to properly control a market. Of course you could just not wall, and constantly undercut your competition. This is a safe method, but it will make the price for the bags lower due to the constant undercutting. Be careful, as you could drive the price down low enough for your competition to snag them up, and you don’t want that happening, as they’ll simply buy you out and repost for profits. You’ve only got a couple short days before Cataclysm, how will you approach the bag market?

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Netherweave Bags still Gold

"Hey Marcko, A while back another reader wrote to you about how great netherweave bags were, and I've been using the tip ever since.

Lately in the AH slump, fellow gold-makers have been complaining about sluggish sales and unstable prices. The netherweave bag market is still stronger than ever; no matter how much cloth I snatch up, I can sell those bags as quickly as I can craft them. You suggested selling 4 at a time, but I list 12+ at a time, posting two and three times a day as they sell. Sometimes my twelve hour auctions expire, but not often. :) Thank you for your great site! Enlynn" The real beautiful thing about netherweave bags, and it's something which just occurs naturally when you buy out all netherweave cloth below a set price, is that you limit your competition's materials. If you buy out all the netherweave cloth below 8 gold then your oppenents on the auction house are forced to make bags worth at least 8.5 gold each to make a profit. Since there is only one item needed to make the bags (that isn't from the vendor of course) you will naturally inflate the price of netherweave bags simply by buying out netherweave cloth. So many bags sell per day that you will be hard pressed to find enough cloth to keep up with demand. By far one of my favorite markets and I use a second account to craft the bags so I don't lose any time (20 seconds per bag can be tough!). Even without the second account I would still afk craft these bags since the money always comes back within a day or two after crafting.

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Cataclysm Dreamcloth Cooldown & Crafting

Are you using your Dreamcloth cooldown? Wait what's Dreamcloth? You don't know about it? What! Dreamcloth is the new cataclysm special cloth that can be made by using one of every volatile, it's somewhat costly to make depending on the volatile, but it is very profitable if you use the dreamcloth to craft epic tailoring gear Do you know that, right now, you can spend about 2,000g on making all 5 pieces of Dreamcloth for the week and craft an epic ilvl 359 tailoring piece that can sell for 10,000g+? No? How does this work? There are five different ways to make Dreamcloth. Each piece requires 30 of one volatile and can only be crafted once per week, there are 5 different Dreamcloth cooldowns, one for every volatile. Patterns cost 1 piece of Dreamcloth to buy, and 4 to craft. If you were to buy every single volatile off the Auction House you could still make a nice profit ( ~500% ROI ) but you could also go out and farm your volatiles. Some are easier to farm than others, but you could also use the Alchemy transmutes to make those volatiles that are hard to get and costs a bit at the auction house *cough* Volatile Air Where is the cloth vendor located? The cloth turn in vendor is located in Twilight Highlands, you need to be at least 84 to get here, otherwise you will be phased out and cannot see the vendors, or anyone at all for that matter.

Why should I do this? As of right now epics are HUGE. People are trying to get the item level requirement for heroics and they need any and all gear. If you do craft one, you're going to make huge profits on them, trust me there are people out there that are willing to pay 10k+ for the current best in slot gear.

[justinscopper-blog]

Favorite Places to Visit Before WOD

Warlords of Draenor will change out our view Outlands and life beyond the portal. Some of my favorite areas that were introduced during the Burning Crusade will be changed come the next expansion.   It is possible that the 'old' areas will be available through the Caverns of Time in Tanaris, but there will be a mental change when visiting this area. The biggest change will be in Negrand. Negrand took my breath away the first time I entered the area. From the road leading to the first city, to seeing the giants that really wanted to stomp me into oblivion. Going down southeast and seeing all of the animals that needed to be skinned. Spending what seemed like forever farming leather for our Druid tank gear.   But the one questline that everyone should complete is the Visit with the Grandmother questline. Running all over Outlands to finish quests, run instances and then be introduced to a self defeated Garrosh. Taking Garrosh to see his grandmother and be told the story of Thrall. If you look at the entire quest now you see that this was the grand tale of both redemption and a fall from grace. Now with the speed that players can level through Burning Crusade content,  areas such as Shadowmoon Valley, staring at the biggest raid at the time which was The Black Temple. To beingable to fly over fire pits and strongholds held both by the Alliance and the Horde. I can go on and on just how much will change in the game when the Warlords hits the shelves. Perhaps it is nostalgia, or how much enjoyment I received from the different story lines that occurred during Burning Crusade, but consider running around Burning Crusade content and see just what brought us to the point that the Iron Horde comes to light.

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That Thing You Do... Revisited

Everyone in their lives has that one person who just doesn't understand why we play online video games. They come back with something they heard about how games are addicting. How it can lead to mental health problems. How even one guy died because he played so long at one point.

I've told my story before when it came to starting playing World of Warcraft. It was a rehab project for when I was trying to strengthen my body. I would go to my rehab classes, but end up in so much discomfort it was difficult to find something to do that took my mind off of what was going on.

A friend of mine suggested I give World of Warcraft a try. She spoke highly of her guild and her enjoyment of the game. So I loaded up a copy on my computer and jumped head first.

Now, almost 7 years later and I'm still enjoying not just the time I spend playing WOW, but also everything that has developed over the years. Through World of Warcraft I started writing in journals and on different projects. Even to the point of taking a position here on JMTC as the chief writer and bottle washer.

So keep in mind exactly why you play this game and what you get out of it. Does it sharpen your ability to see bargains in real life? Does it help with your interaction with others? Does it spark the creative bug in your life?

What you get out of World of Warcraft is completely up to you. So enjoy the game and enjoy what it brings out of you.

[justinscopper-blog]

Cataclysm Engineering Gold Guide

Many people say, engineering is just a "fun" profession, it doesn't really make me gold. Well, they're wrong, engineering has made me thousands upon thousands of gold, as a matter of fact, it was one of my most profitable professions during Wrath of the Lich King, and now with cataclysm, the gold making options have become even better.

Within this post I will included ways t make gold with engineering, and trust me there are countless ways to make gold with this wonderful profession, hang in there, you're in for a long read!

Selling Pets

Selling pets is one of the best ways to make gold with engineering. As of recently blizzard has added two more engineering pets, once for each specialization, they are the De-Weaponized Mechanical Companion mechanical companion and the Personal World Destroyer. I have made a killing selling the Personal World Destroyer, I craft them at ~5-600g and they can sell upwards to 2-3k each.

If you can manage to snag yourself a lifelike mechanical toad schematic for cheap ( 1-2k or less ) learn it! I can sell these toads for 150g each, and they sell like hot cakes. I sell at least four or five pets a day, by simply selling this amount selling the pets has paid for the schematic and then some.

The Mechanical Yeti is also an excellent way to make gold with engineering, especially since the schematic is a little harder to obtain now, you need a reputation of revered ( correct me if I'm wrong ) to even start the quest, allowing you to control the market and set your own price for this pet.

Selling any of the other pets ( Pet Bombling, Lil' Smoky ) also make you some excellent gold, the materials are cheap and the pets can selling anywhere from 50-150g each, they do sell a little slower, but profit is profit!

Selling the New "Fish Feast"

Engineers now can make the new "fish feast" of cataclysm, it is called the Goblin Barbecue. Selling these at 75-100g per is great profit, especially if you're on a realm that raids constantly, they'll want the best buffs that they can acquire, and this is by far one of the easiest to get.

The Goblin Barbecue requires 2 Elementium Bars, 2 Toughened Flesh, and 2 Lavascale Fillets to craft. You can farm most of these mats to help reduce the costs and help increase the final ROI ( I recommend you farm the fish for the fillets )

Kaye Toogie - The Wormhole Ordeal

If you don't know about this now, go read up on it over at The Gnomish Coin. The way it works is, everytime you use your wormhole you have a chance to get the option "Underground", which takes you into a sewer where there is a vendor that sells rare engineering schematics. There are three total schematics, but one of them is what makes it all worth it, it is Schematic: Arcanite Dragonling. As of the shattering, this schematic is NO longer dropped by mobs and this is the only place to obtain it, I personally have sold two of them, each at 4,500g each. I use my wormhole whenever it's up, and I've gotten underground now three times, it's an easy way to make 3-5k within seconds.

Farming Primal Air in Outlands

I've found that farming Primal Air in Nagrand by using the Zapthrottle Mote Extractor is an excellent way to make gold! The place to farm them is in Nagrand, there are roughly 10-12 "clouds" that can be farmed.

What is this Zapthrottle Mote Extractor? Where do I get it?

The Mote extractor is a engineering device that "extracts" motes from Mini clouds that are all over Outlands and Northrend. To obtain the schematic, you have to go pick up a quest in Zangarmarsh. The quest can be started at Mack Diver, for the horde, and K. Lee Smallfry. The quest is fairly easy to do, it can be done in under 5 or even 10 minutes.

I have the schematic where do I go??

You are going to be flying around Nagrand, There are 10-12 clouds around that can be farmed continuously, especially since not many people know about the mote extractor. Click this map to view where the motes "spawn"

So why does primal air STILL sell? This stuff is from BC!

The main reason this stuff still sells is because people are doing the transmutation master quest, to either keep it and then drop it and changing it to elixir or potion spec, but either way, they need 5 of almost every primal that is available in Burning Crusade. Another great reason this stuff still sells is because of the twink enchant, 15 agility to gloves. I must admit, not many people have this enchant but the few that do have it, are most definitely buying primal airs, rather than going out and farming them.

Selling Fused Wiring

Check out this awesome post by yours truly over at The Gnomish Coin. Selling fused wiring is an awesome way to add a little extra to your daily income. Fused Wiring only costs silver to make, but sells for 1-5 per, and you get 5 of them per craft, if you haven't been selling them, I suggest you go do so.

Selling Engineering Mounts

This is another way to gold about making gold with engineering, it does require that you do have a more gold, but the return on all of the mounts is rather nice especially the choppers.I'm not simply talking about the chopper, but crafting and selling the two engineering flying mounts is another excellent way to make gold, I bought my 280% chopper for 2.5k just because I didn't want to get all of the materials, time is money after all.

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Lessons Learned For WOW while Playing Farmville

To paraphrase a saying, man shall not live by Warcraft alone.   During my off time when I'm watching TV or relaxing I will pop open my tablet and play a game called Farmville 2: Country Crossing. It's a pretty simple game of resource management. You have a certain amount of slots for items you gather and can manufacture into food or supplies to sell. The more money that you obtain, the more XP you obtain and the more items/lots you can purchase to expand your farm. Very simple premise, but can be very challenging from time to time. The most important aspect that I have learned from this game is keeping all of the plates spinning at once.  When one of my ovens finished after a two hour cook time making sure I have all the materials to put another recipe to cook. This keeps my preparation skills active since everything has different grown times. My strawberry patch takes 50 minutes to grow and I need a certain amount of these to make the treats to feed the miners so that I can obtain the quartz for manufacturing bottles etc. (whoo) So how can a small game on the tablet or phone affect the play style in World of Warcraft? Because many of your professions have the same concept in what you have to gather. Each item has a possibility to be sold in its raw state, or combined to produce another item for sales. That item you gather while fishing can be converted by your alchemist to sell as a potion. Even a baseline exists that most items can be sold to the vendor for a little bit of pocket change. Your cognitive skills determine just how quickly you can convert an item into a higher selling item. There is not an expectation that you will know exactly how to convert each item into a sale item. With there being 1000's of items in World of Warcraft, that is a lot of plates spinning in the air. Soon players will be entering the portal into the land of Draenor. New items appearing into bags to buy and sell. But even now,  with the end of Mists of Pandaria just over the corner, items can be manufactured into sales items. Just keeping those pots a cooking and filling orders can keep you busy by itself. A little bit of repeated knowledge can open up a brand new world of sales. Warlords of Draenor has shown itself to be a very expensive place to live. Bringing all of your sales guns can let you be prepared to conquer a new sales world.