Archive for auction house

Patch 4.3 Professions Prep!

Posted in Alts, Main with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 7, 2011 by Epic Diapers

Make crazy gold or gear your alts when 4.3 drops!

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Well, after almost a year of doing Epic Diapers, I’ve decided to take the plunge and purchase the domain, epicdiapers.com. Has a nice ring to it, eh?

Patch 4.3 is now live on the PTR, so I wanted to cover some additions to the world of professions to get you better prepared and meet the item level requirements for the new 5 man heroics and the new looking for raid feature.

First of all, chaos orbs will be tradeable in 4.3, meaning you may want to either a) craft a bunch of item level 365 epics NOW with all of your orbs before the price in those craftables drops too far, b) horde those chaos orbs for selling on the AH or c) craft some of the new ilevel 397 gear you or your guildies will be able to make.

Right now, blacksmiths, leatherworkers, and tailors will get all new patters for bracers, boots and legplates, all of them requiring the new essence of destruction, which will replace this tier’s Living Ember. Blacksmiths and leatherworkers will also need chaos orbs, while tailors will need dreamcloth. All three will also get new ilevel 377 PVP patterns.

Enchanters will also be able to shatter their maelstrom crystals to heavenly shards, Scribes can create new ilevel 377 PVP relics, and jewelcrafters will be able to make new ilevel 377 PVP amulets and rings and even some sexy new rhinestone sunglasses!

Oh man, I gotta get me some of these to wear at Blizzcon!! Hit me up on twitter if you’re going!

Wowhead has a great professions prep page for patch 4.3!

And remember, it’s hard to balance the pew pew with the poo poo.

Sihx

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Best PVE Gear for Toons that Don’t Raid

Posted in Alts, Main, Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 12, 2011 by Epic Diapers

You can still have chocolate cake if you don't raid!

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So, you’re level 85 and can’t raid, or you want to gear up an alt. you may not get the best gear in the game, but you can do pretty well without ever killing a boss in the Firelands, Here’s a quick guide on the best PVE gear you can get without raiding.

First, grab your 365 cloak from the Elemental Bonds quests, open to all level 85s. Next, head for the Molten Front. Upon completing all of the quests, most classes can get 365 gear for their neck, hands, wrist, waist, feet, rings, trinkets and relics, and blacksmithing patterns for weapons.

For level 378 gear, do your daily random heroics, as valor points can get you your neck, wrist, ring, relics, and your tier 12 chest, hands and legs. Don’t forget your weekly Occu’thar kill in Baradin hold for a chance at a 378 PVE piece or PVP 384 piece to drop.

Try and join a PUG to kill Firelands trash, and you can not only grind up rep with the Avegners of Hyjal to get a 378 cloak and belt, but you may also get lucky with a neck, wrist, waist, ring, or weapon drop.

If you’re rich, hit up the auction house for BoE 378s. Ask guildies if they have any 378 hand or boot patterns they’d be willing to craft for you…but make sure you pay them well.

In a nutshell, you can get item level 365 or 378 PVE gear for every slot except for your head and shoulders. If you have less than 359 gear here, just spend honor points for 371 PVP gear, which will be better in most cases.

You can find a more detailed spreadsheet of your options here.

And remember, it’s hard to balance the pew pew with the poo poo.

-Sihx

@epicdiapers

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Epic Diapers, Segment #3 on “The Instance”

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 27, 2011 by Epic Diapers

If you want to listen to segment 3 of “Epic Diapers,” please download episode 231 of “The Instance” at www.theinstance.net or look for “The Instance” on iTunes.

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In this short segment, I continued from last week how you can make lots of gold with your limited time. There are a few addons that I use to make several hundred to several thousand gold a day:

Auctionator: This is a great addon that helps you price your auctions with a 5% undercut and in stacks of your choice. It saves time.

Altoholic: This addon helps me find that item or look up a profession skill across all of my many alts.

ArkInventory: This addon will organize your bags, including your bank bags, into virtual containers that you can set up rules for. I set up my bags to sort soulbound items by item level, BoE items by item level, and all my materials into sections by profession.

www.theunderminejournal.com: This website is fantastic! You can look up the price history for the last two weeks for any item on your server’s auction house. What’s nice about this is that you can also set up email alerts for items that cross a certain threshold. For example, if you want to purchase volatile life under 10 gold, it can email you when it drops below that amount. Or, perhaps you have been stocking up on a certain item that you want to flip for a specific price. Once it rises above that threshold, again you are emailed! It gives you the opportunity to capitalize.

Mobile Auction House: The Underminejournal ties into the mobile auction house. Granted, it’s $3 per month, but for me, it’s worth it. In conjunction with email alerts from the Underminejournal, I can quickly log onto the mobile auction house on my iPhone and post or buy such items. Great money making opportunity enhancer!

Feel free to share your tips on how you make most of your limited time in the World of Warcraft by sending me email at epicdiapers at gmail.com or tweet me up @epicdiapers.

Stay epic, my friends!

Sihx

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Making Gold With Minimal Time

Posted in Alts, Main with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 26, 2011 by Epic Diapers

From ehow.com

Gosh darn it’s hard to get back to posting on this blog! It’s been tough with the family commitments over the holidays, and ramping back into school with the kindergartner. However, I have been able to maximize my minimal playing time with the obsidium/elementium shuffle and Transmute: living elements. These process is widely available on the internethers, but results will vary based on your server, time you log on, and when you purchase and sell on the auction house.

 

Seriously, I have been making boatloads of gold with these two quick processes. Now, not gold-capped type of gold; I only have about 15-20 minutes a day to do this, so there are MANY markets that I am not taking advantage of.  First of all, these are the tools I have at my disposal: auctioneer, auctionator, and the mobile AH (yes, it’s $2.99/mo). That’s it. Obviously you don’t NEED these tools, but they help me automate a little bit more of the process and to take advantage of opportunistic times to buy and sell.

 

Step 1: Buy elementium or obsidium ore…lots of it! Servers will vary, but I can reliably buy dozens of stacks at 80G or less. Sometimes it actually dips down to less than 60G/stack like it did last weekend…boy did I lap it up. See, you’ll never have to worry about losing money on it if stacks are around 60G or less because of the vendored value of cut uncommon gems. Each stack will prospect to an average of 6 uncommon gems. These uncommons, if cut, can be vendored at 9G x 6 = 54 G. So, this is the theoretical market price floor of the ore. God forbid, if you EVER see it cheaper than 54G/stack, you have some idiots on your server.

Step 2: Prospect, prospect, prospect!!!

Step 3: Do your market research to determine how best to craft and sell your wares. If can maximize your profit if you have access to an enchanter. I have an alt enchanter that I mail mats to DE. Anyway, this is how I process my gems to maximize profit:

Uncommons:

  • carnelians – I craft into Carnelian Spikes and DE with an alt. I’ve been getting an average of 2 Greater Celestial Essences per weapon, plus some lessers and Hypnotic Dust. The GCEs sell for 40-50G on my server, thus each weapon’s DE value is 80-100G, not including the additional mats I mentioned. This is also a value I use to watch for purchasing Carnelians. Since it takes 3 of these to craft the spikes, I’ll purchase the carnelians outright if they are <20G each, since the production cost will be <60G; it’s just sweet icing on top!
  • jaspers – I used to make Jasper rings and DE them, but dusts are down to 7G and less on my server, so now I’ve been holding onto my jaspers, and selling them in stacks of 3 when the JC daily comes up. I can usually sell them for about 20G each, as opposed to the DE value of around 12G.
  • hessonites – sell in stacks of 3 when the daily comes up. The JC ring requires 2 of these, so DE isn’t as profitable on my server as just selling the raws
  • alicites – the raws are down to 10G each, so I do craft the necklace that requires 2 gems, DE the greens, and try and sell the blues for which I usually get 50-100G
  • zephyrites – sell in stacks of 3 when the daily comes up.
  • nightstones – probably the highest valued raw uncommon on my server. I sell these in stacks of 3 when the JC daily comes up, and I routinely sell them at 50G per gem!
  • Fire Prism: This is NOT profitable, but I did create 3 of these just to level my JC to 525. It takes 3 of each of 6 uncommons, and usually only produces 2-3 rare gems.
  • Shadowspirit Diamonds: Although it is most profitable for me to do the above, I do have an alchemist, so I occasionally transmute my uncommon gems into 2 Shadowspirit Diamonds to either sell raw (can be over 200G each!) or to cut into one of 2 current meta gem patterns I have. My alchemist is transmute-specced, but I have yet to see a proc of more than 2 diamonds. The Ember and Chaotic sell for around the same 200G, although not as regularly as the raw diamond itself.
  • Enchants: One enchant is selling very well: Enchant Chest – Mighty Stats. It requires 2 lesser celestial essences and typically sells for 70-100G. However, this enchant cannot be flooded onto the market, so I can’t make a ton of them. I make several at a time and reap the profits.

Rare gems – I typically just horde these and cut 3 of each color for the patterns I have already. I get about 100G per Bold Inferno that I cut, but all other patterns bring in around 30G per..not very lucrative, but money nonetheless.

This process above can take me 15-20 minutes per day. If I had more time, I would just be making more money!

As I mentioned, I do have an alchemist. I have parked her level 80 booty at the Ramkahen Inn in Uldum, and now that there is a mailbox there, it makes it so easy to do this. I simply purchase Volatile Life with this toon on my iPhone mobile AH (when I’m at work, or just out), and when I’m home, I simply log on, retrieve the Volatile Life, transmute it to Volatile Air (being present in Uldum forces this specific product), and log off. I later sell the air from the mobile AH. All in all, I purchase 15 lifes for an average of 150G, and sell 15 airs for an average of 450G, which is a 300G per day profit for about 2 minutes of “work.” It’s definitely my best gold/min strat, but because of the CD, is limited to once a day. However, I’ve been doing this for about a month now, and it adds up. That’s 30 days x 300G = 9000G without even trying.

Crap, I just wasted some gold-making time…back at it!

 

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Where’s all that Cataclysm farming gold durnit?!!!

Posted in Main, Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 8, 2010 by Epic Diapers

First of all, it’s been over 2 months since I’ve posted…I won’t get into the details in this blog, but work and family have been over-bearing, hey this blog is about balancing family life with gaming (but not necessarily blogging?!)

So, it’s been about 44 hours since Cataclysm launched here in the US, and I was ready and waiting. No, I didn’t flip anything like many bloggers I’ve been keeping up with, nor did I stockpile vast quantities of leveling mats and goods (Netherweave bags anyone?). However, I did take some advice from Kaliope’s Crafting Tome to get mining to 525 ASAP and hopefully turning a HUGE profit. Even the “experts” all agreed that farming the first week or two of the expansion would reap huge stockpiles of gold for those who chose to do so. How wrong they all were?! (at least in the first 36 hours). There are many bloggers out there commiserating and a bit depressed about the weak returns. At least I didn’t invest capital into flipping or large quantities of crafting goods, because I would be sitting on a ton and losing my shirt!

Back to mining: I took Kaliope’s advice and camped in Northrend after getting the mining glove enchant, purchasing Master Riding for 310 speed and then respecced frost to grab “On a Pale Horse,” which gives my toon an additional 20% mounted speed, much like a paladin’s Crusader Aura. That would effectively put me at 372% flying speed! After a frustrating 25 minutes of trying to login on launch night (to be expected, of course), I finally appeared in Dalaran. My trusty tauren DK was parked in front of the mining trainer, where I quickly picked up Grand Illustrious Mining, grabbed the same for blacksmithing, then headed to Krauss’ Landing to get Old World Flying for later. I then flew routes around Icecrown, Wintergrasp, and Shalozar Basin until I got to 470 mining skill (took about 15 minutes total). It was beautiful because there was no competition for ore in Northrend at that point. I then deathgated to Ebon Hold, mounted up, and flew south to Twilight Highlands to farm Elementium Ore, which requires 475 skill (remember my +5 mining glove enchant?). This served the great purpose of efficiency and lack of competition. I didn’t see another toon for the first hour in TH! I eventually saw several, but I had my pickings. I began to have visions of a realm first, but I ended up missing it by a paltry 15 minutes (thanks login server boss!). That’s ok, I was there to MAKE GOLD DARNIT! After reaching the mining cap, I just farmed Elementium, Rich Elementium, and Pyrite Nodes. In approximately 4 hours of farming, I netted 979 elementium ore, 79 pyrite ore, 6 rare gems, about 20 green gems, and about 200 volatiles (fire, water, earth).

Now is when I tell you how my visions of extreme riches came crashing down.

About an hour into farming, I had about 250 elementium ore. At that point I noticed someone spamming trade that they would pay 300 g per stack of elementium ore. I scoffed at it; literally laughed out loud at my screen at that preposterous offer! Oh how I wish I c0uld turn back time to jump on that offer. See, after I farmed up nearly 50 stacks of the stuff, I hit the AH to post, but not flood, the market with my mats for many riches, or so I thought. Elementium at that point was going for 90g/ore, translating into 1,800g/stack!! Even Basil B. himself thought ore could be going for 1-3k/stack in the first few days. So, I posted and went to bed for about an hour.

After dropping my kid off at school and an hour commute to work, I check my mobile armory AH and discovered that the price of elementium was quickly plummeting! I quickly canceled and reposted and did so throughout the day. The only saving grace is that I did end up selling 4 stacks at 600 g/stack, about twice that trade channel offer. After that, I cried. Everything plummeted below for what that initial offer was, and all within 18 hours of launch!!!! I sold another 10 stacks at 180g/stack, but since haven’t sold a lick. The undercutters are too fast. As of this post, we are 44 hours after launch, and the current lowest price on my AH is 2.9 g/ore or g/stack. The price is almost at it’s floor!! How do I know this? Well, others have been smart to forecast this, as jewelcrafting comes into effect:

From Wow Insider, “Cut green gems vendor for 9g. Prospecting and vendoring alone will set a minimum vendor value on a stack of ore, depending on the prospecting average yield. For example: If a stack of ore on average gives us six green gems, these gems can be cut and vendored for 9g each, which means you will only ever find ore for less than 54g if a jewelcrafter hasn’t logged in since it was posted.”

Looking at the Undermine Journal confirms a flooding of the market. Here are two graphs 40 hours into the expansion:

The top graph shows market price. You can see the rapid decline to it’s 6pm, day 2 value of 3.58 g. The bottom graph is the number of elementium ore available…over 5,200!!

Apparently everyone had the same idea!

Despite the lower-than-expected gold making, I have still made over 5.7k gold by selling Cataclysm ore, gems, and volatiles…all in about 4 hours of farming for over 1k gold per hour. PLUS, I still am sitting on 800 elementium ore left over. I know, I know, you’re probably screaming at me to just dump that too…it’s pure gold, right? Well, that’s true, but if the floor indeed holds at 54 g/stack, and it’s at 58 g/stack right now, I may just keep the ore to level my blacksmithing instead of making a small margin to reinvest into purchasing these same mats for leveling 3 weeks from now.

I will still keep a close eye on the market as I start leveling my main to 85…it’s always possible that there was an initial flood that will temper off into a moderate rise in market price, significantly above the gem vendor floor of 54g/stack.

Of course, I’ve been wrong before!

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Don’t drink too much

Posted in Alts, Main with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 22, 2010 by Epic Diapers

This hasn’t been too hard for me lately as I’ve succumbed to the P9oX fad; only it’s not a fad, I love it. 40 days in and I’ve lost 10 pounds, put on decent bulk, and feel fantastic! Of course, doing any vigorous activities for 60-90 minutes, 6 days a week will yield some results, no?

Actually, what I’m talking about is Brewfest baby! It started a couple of days ago, and I’ve been running all 5 of my 80s through it since it dropped. Not only are the queues for DPS under 3-4 minutes, but it’s 2 frost badges, a trinket here or there that my low geared 80s need anyway, and a chance for Coren Direbrew to drop some rare loot like a mount or the Tankard O’Terror, which my rogue happened upon in his loot barrel. Now, my Auctioneer data reported that the weapon is around 2-2.5k in value. I quickly mailed said mug to my bank alt, salivating at the 2k drop, only to look at the board and see about a dozen tankards already up. The lowest price was 109 gold. WTF?! Ok, so maybe getting this weapon isn’t going to be a money maker, but it’s an ilevel 226 weapon, good for rogues and enhancement shamans. I guess it’ll end up with one of them as I level in Cataclysm :( . Besides the drops, each alt gets 20 gold as well. Include that with occasional vendoring of trinkets, and I pull in 100+ gold plus 10 frost badges in about 15-20 minutes. Not bad, not great, but not bad for gold/hr.

That’s about all the time I have on my toons now. In fact, “Call to Auction,” a great podcast about making gold in WoW, answered my email on air in their last episode. I asked how I might take advantage of my maxed professions with the 10 minutes per day I have to spend in the AH. They actually recommended that I drop scanning the AH daily, as I should know what sells. Also, focus on my profession cooldowns, sell what sells for a moderate price, and that’s about it. I was surprised about the AH scans, but the economy of WoW has been a bit upside down lately. Usually, my red cut epic gems would sell between 140 and 160 gold. I’m lucky to sell them for 110 these days. Even raid nights bolds, brights and runed cardinal rubies are going for under 100g. Ouch. With this trend line pointing down, and 4.0.1 dropping any week now, I suppose I need to have a fire sale to get any value out of my 2 dozen gems or so. Better than nothing, anyway.

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Make money in minutes

Posted in Alts, Main with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 18, 2010 by Epic Diapers

I’ve been playing WoW since October 2006, so I’m approaching 4 years played now. In that time I have gotten 4 toons to 80, 2 are in their 70s, and a 61. I suppose I’m a bit of an altoholic, and it’s hard to focus on one goal on any given day. That said, I’ve tried to become more re-focused lately…what do I want to do in game?

I thought, as Cataclysm approaches, I want to stockpile gold. I have no aspirations to get “gold-capped,” but 100k would be nice entering the new expansion. How to do that? I cruise gold making sites such as Just My Two Copper and others for ideas, but at times, their strategies are clearly being employed by other readers, or I have incredibly bad luck. I figured I would start by getting some professions maxed. In the past several months I have leveled tailoring, jewelcrafting, and most recently, alchemy to 450. That is in addition to several max level skinners, an herbalist, miner and blacksmith. I have yet to max out inscription, leatherworking, and engineering.

Now that I have some decent money-making professions, it’s time to talk about how I use them to make money in my very short windows of playtime. I raid twice a week for 3 hours each night. That alone is a lot to ask of my wife, but I do raid after the kids have gone to bed. The other 5 days of the week I try and hop on just for 20 minutes a day (I never make it on all 5 days, btw) and do the things that will make me the most money per minute.

Transmute – quickest 100+g you can make: I focus on the money making cooldowns first. Primarily, I do my daily alchemy transmute (blue to epic gem) because that’s an easy 100-130 gold per day for 2 minutes of work. That beats dailies any time. If I have the mats on hand, I also transmute meta gems. I then ship those gems to my JC and cut them to whatever I think will be most profitable. Any additional time goes to my JC daily to earn my daily token. These tokens will eventually buy patterns that in turn, will eventually enable me to diversify what I can cut. I usually also make an icy prism with that daily cooldown as well.

The Saronite Shuffle: If I’m really fortunate and have a few more minutes to spare (wife is doing something for 10 minutes), I can hop on my bank alt and run a quick Auctioneer scan and also purchase as much saronite ore as I can, usually if it’s under 20 gold a stack. I then mail most of the ore to my JC to prospect for green and blue gems used to cut, craft rings (Sun Rock ring), vendor, or send to my alchemist for the aforementioned transmutes. I also send some saronite to my blacksmith for smelting into bars, then back to my alchemist for transmutation into titanium bars. However, my server’s economy doesn’t really make this profitable in mats alone, only if I use the titanium in special patterns that may or may not sell, so it’s a bit more risky and unknown.

It’s in the Bag: I will also buy cheap netherweave cloth and send them to my tailor to make netherweave bags. Lately, frostweave bags are not profitable, so I focus on the BC bags.

Make Money Actually Playing the Game: It’s important to not get too focused on the economy and forget to play the game. It varies, but some weeks I can squeeze in a Wintergrasp battle on all 4 80s. My server is dominated by Horde, and we win 9/10 times, which is nice for the honor and stonekeeper shards. Not only is WG fun for me, but I will typically get around 20,000 honor for each toon for just 25 minutes of PvP. Plus, the stone keeper shards add up and 150 of them can be turned in for another 10,000 honor. I then use the honor to purchase epic gems to be cut by my JC. If I can turn in around 10-11 gems a week, that’s more than 1,500 gold for playing 4-6 Wintergrasp sessions per week, or about 2-3 hours of playtime. That converts to 500 gold or more per hour, which rivals many other money-making endeavors in the game.

As my professions have been used a bit more lately, my random dungeon participation has abated quite a bit. As of a couple months ago, I was routinely running 2-4 toons through my random daily to get my frost badges, plus an occasional weekly, if I could find the time. I was using the frost badges to buy primordial saronite and then sell it on the AH. I was maxing out around 1,500 gold, but it’s been steadily decreasing in value for months now. On my server, it’s now around 800-900 gold. As far as money per hour, it’s not very good, but alas, you are looting gold, DE mats, BOE chances, frozen orbs, cloth and other supplies, and of course, emblems of triumph, which can be used to upgrade your toon, buy gems, or converted to emblems of valor for bracers or other BoEs that can sell.

Anything else is Auctioneer-based in terms of my resale and vendor searches. I have a lot more to learn about this and other addons that can really make your money-making endeavors more efficient, but that’s for another post.

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