ZA, 2.3 QQ, etc.

Man, it's been a hell of a week.

The meeting at work went great... thinks for asking.

Since I had to work late on Tuesday, in my downtime, I grabbed the laptop that is pre-loaded with WoW, updated it with the patch, got on-line made my [Quiver of a Thousand Feathers] put 100 feathers up on the AH (at 40 gold a stack), did the cooking quest and stationed myself at the Light's Hope Chapel and logged.

Got home Tuesday at 8:30PM, plopped myself in front of the computer and set the patch to install, turned and asked my wife and children how their day was. Turned back to the computer when the patch was done, got a few new add-ons, put my headset on, logged in and was ready for Zul A'man.

We had a really good time there too. We downed Nalorakk in two shots (he dropped the [Robes of Heavenly Purpose]) and then we moved on to Akil'zon, and we tried about four times to down him, got him to 24% on one of the attempts. We were happy with our performance. The other guild group didn't make it passed the waves of Amani'shi Warbringer so we were pretty proud of ourselves.

Before bed I farmed the [Pattern: Bag of Many Hides] and checked my auctions (jerks had undercut my feathers). Eventually I lowered the price to 25 gold per stack and they sold no problem, I also sold a ton of Heavy Knothide Leather (they would sell as soon as I listed them) and one of those nice leatherworking bags for 445 gold (that won't happen again, the price has already dropped to 250!) So I made about 1,000 gold in two days, through some nice planning on my part.

Of course, I got some serious and deserved Spouse Aggro in the morning for coming home and ignoring the family.

New Topic: Okay... so the hunter forums are all in an uproar because we lost the following abilities: Double Trapping and Feign Death Drinking. I never double trapped, although things do sometimes walk into my traps unintentionally so I think this change is not a real well thought out one, since our CC is not very target specific, plus it seriously nerfs the Survival tree. The FD Drink thing, I also never used. I would put a Superior Mana Oil on my weapon and use Elixir of Draenic Wisdom, Aspect of the Viper, plus some fel mana pots to make sure I had enough Mana for the long fights. I never liked how the FD drinking took you and your pet out of the fight, so no loss there, but the crying that is going on on the forums, after all our great buffs in 2.3, is personally embarrassing to me.

Finally, I will be away for the next week doing the Family Thanksgiving thing, so I will miss our next two ZA runs... Alas. I will try and post in that time, but if I don't get a chance to, I'll be back in a week.

How magnanimous am I?

2.3 is almost upon us and I have amassed over 300 light feathers, 100 Heavy Knothide Leathers, a primal nether and 2 primal airs. As soon as 2.3 goes live I will be making myself a [Quiver of a Thousand Feathers] (I'll be able to put a roll over link to that after 2.3 is live). The question is, what will I do with my remaining 200 feathers?

I have offered to friends and guildies, that if they run me through a heroic to get the Primal Nether, I will make them a quiver. (Ammo pouches are out of luck, as I never attained revered with Honor Hold.) I even mentioned that I would trade feather and leather for Primal Shadow and Primal Fire, since I need them for my [Ebon Netherscale Girdle]. I also said I would farm Nether Dragonscales in trade for those primals. But what do I do if Light Feathers start selling for 20 gold per stack? Nether Dragonscales for 100? Am I a nice guy or do I make a quick profit?

Here's what I'm thinking -- early Tuesday morning before the patch I will put up 5 stacks of Light Feathers for sale at the crazy price of 40 gold. If they sell at that price great, if not, I'll have them available for friends.

I guess there is a price at which friendship just can't overcome, especially when those friends have gold of their own. After all its fake money in a pretend game and I'm usually the good guy. Plus if they didn't know to start stocking up on Light Feathers shouldn't I punish them for being a n00b?

Of course when you put it that way, I'll feel really guilty, being a n00b myself... but I'll just throw all my gold onto the bed and roll around in it and then I'll feel better!

Econ 403: Advanced Auctioneering

So I promised more substance, less fluff and this post will be about as substantive as I can get.

How to make gold through the Auction House.

So, we have already had two posts about the auction house, the gist of these posts contained the following information:

1. Use the add-on Auctioneer for Pricing
2. Use Allakhazam for supplemental pricing, when Auctioneer does not have any info.
3. Scan Auctioneer often to make sure it is useful
4. Watch out for inflation & deflation

So for our advance class in Auction House Economy we will be focusing on the following:

1. Day of the week fluctuations
2. Posting your item to maximize profit

So day of the week fluctuation: I touched on this briefly in a post, but I want to give more detail, because some items go up in price and some go down. If you need to buy Leather, cloth and some of the herbs (maybe ore too, but I rarely buy it) you should wait until Saturday or Sunday to buy it. Why? Because there will be more people on the servers on the weekend and they will be skinning, picking, killing and mining, hence the availability of these items will be abundant and as more people post them on the AH, the price will decline.

Other crafting items? You're not so lucky. As motes become more and more farmed the drop rates reduce and Primals are under higher demand because of more people on the server needing them, so the price on those go up.

Other items can go either way. Look for crafted items to be cheaper as people level their skills and try and sell the stuff they make. Also, with more people posting items on the AH and more eyeballs to see and bid on them, the prices should come down a little on uncommon and rare items. The really nice stuff? Through the roof. Those special recipes, forget it. However, by Tuesday things should have calmed down on the servers and you can post your Knothide Leather and Netherweave Cloth and you should get 1-3 more gold per stack primals may have come down 1-3 gold, so if you're not in a rush to buy stuff make sure you pick the right time.

Which leads me to my second point: Posting your item to maximize profit.

Now, armed with the advice I outlined above, you could buy 10 primal airs on Wednesday at 25 gold each and sell them on Saturday for 30 for a quick fifty gold. You can also buy 20 stacks of Knothide Leather on Sunday for 6 gold and sell them for 8 gold on Wednesday. But that is not what I am talking about. I am talking about leather you skin or that rare drop you got off of a crocolisk, that just happened to stray into your path when you were landing to pick a flower or skin a dead animals. (Doesn't it always happen that way?)

But whatever it is, a stack of leather or a nice drop, when you take it to the AH, you will hit a nice button called "Update" on the "Post Auction" page and it will quickly scan the price of all the same items in the AH, and then it will put your item up for sale at 5% off the highest price if it can. Please note that there is a threshold at which it feels your item is selling for too low, at which it will note that it cannot match the competition. When it tells you that take a look at what else is for sale, sometimes you have a stack of 20 that you are selling and there is just one item at a very low price. You should ignore or buy that item and set your own price. What that price is depends on what you are selling. Sometimes, for the good of the economy you just have to ignore what auctioneer tells you. For Netherweave Cloth, I usually ignore auctioneer and sell it for just above the lowest stack of 20. (Usually 3.5 to 4 gold). But always remember, if too many items are selling too low for your liking don't sell the item at that time, you can always wait.

This whole post really boils down to one thing: timing and getting a feel for when is the right time.

As for the age old question 24 hours or 8 hour posts... I always do 24 hours, because if the item sells you get that deposit back, so it seems to give yourself the best chance of selling put it up there for as many people to see as possible.

Oh, and that level 70 two handed Axe of the Whale? Don't even bother, just vendor it for the 9 gold.

One more thought about the Auction House

Whilst I am busy in my own private hell know as farming for Motes of Fire for my Ebon Netherscale Breastplate (yay I hit 375 Leatherworking Friday night) and I won't buy them at the crazy weekend prices on the AH, I realized I left a thought off about the Auction House.

Prices vary on the weekends. Popular items go down in price (Leather, cloth, etc.), rarer items are a little bit higher (as there are more eyes to see the items you can mark your blues up a little bit).

I decided to write this after I went on a 1 for 21 skid of motes of fire -- take a little break, have my bank alt scan the AH and clear my head.

Good Idea, Bad Idea: The Auction House

There are many n00b stories surrounding the AH and how it takes some people a while to find it. A couple have been posted here in the comments, some I have heard and then there is my own story which does not differ much from most of the n00bs. Below is the conversation I had with my RL Friend introducing me to the AH.

RL Friend: Grats on hitting level 20. Hey what skills are you leveling?
Me: Well I was herb & skinning, but I dropped the herb for leatherworking.
RLF: That will be useful for your hunter.
Me: Yeah I thought so too, except I have all these recipes that I will never use for myself.
RLF: Well, you can make them and sell them on the Auction House.
Me: Auction House? What's that?

And then I am told all about the auction house and I learn to stop vendoring my light leather. w00t.

Nowadays, I feel that I am no longer an Auction House n00b. I believe I have graduated and I'm pretty good at playing the market and there are some essential tools that are needed to maximize profit and minimize your expenses when you need to buy materials or items.

Those tools are: Auctioneer, a wonderful add-on and allakhazam.com.

Now Auctioneer only works if you spend sometime scanning the AH. Basically, you have to have your character sit there and the program looks at every auction and looks at the price ( about 15 to 20 minutes). If you are just installing Auctioneer, you probably need to do this three times in the first week you install and once a week thereafter. The more you do this the more reliable your data is going to be. It is important to get as much info as possible for those weird things you pick up in your travels as well as keeping tabs on popular items.

Another important time to scan auctioneer is after a major upgrade. After 2.1 was implemented the prices of knothide leather and netherweave cloth plummeted, I was hoping it was a momentary blip because I made a lot of money off of these materials, but alas it was not. Keep in mind that there can be other unforseen changes to the economy after upgrades, so to make sure you get a handle on these quickly, scan often.

Auctioneer is also very useful in making sure you don't get taken for a ride. If you want to buy some felweed so someone can make pots for you and there are only a few on the AH and the price is way higher than Auctioneer says it should be, then you should probably wait on buying that item until there are more on the AH.

Now the best way to use Allakhazam is when you find a rare or weird item that you may only have one or no scans of the item.

Several weeks ago, while doing Netherwing Dallies, Formula: Enchant Chest - Major Resilience dropped. I did not have any info in my auctioneer on the item, but it was a green enchant, I probably would have put it up on the AH for 20g or something. However, since I had no info, I went to Allakhazam and it told me that this measly green sells for 475 gold on average and I gave it to my RL friend (yes, the very same one who hipped me to the AH) in hopes that he would get his epic flight form sooner, who sold it for 350g.

So, those are some good ideas.

Of mixed use is prospecting the AH (buying low and selling high). I will do it sometimes, but only with items, that if they don't sell I can actually use (with some exceptions -- like Primal Mana on the AH for 2g each.) I did it recently with Don Santos' Famous Hunting Rifle. I found it on the AH for 1,000 gold and tried to sell it for 2,000. I wound up selling it for about 1,400 -- still a tidy little profit, but it took several weeks. (Auctioneer has an add-on called Bottom Scanner, that will recommend you buy things that are very low in price -- if you decide you want to go that route.)

Here is a bad idea: Cornering the Market -- or attempting to. In this circumstance, you buy up everything on the AH of one kind of herb, leather or cloth and then resell it at an inflated price. This is a bad idea because you can never truly corner the market in this game. I have cloth and leather stored in my bank toon that I wait for just such a moment and then throw a bunch of it up on the AH at prices significantly lower than the other seller has set and yet still higher than the normal market price and I and others who do that same thing make a tidy profit off of other people's risk.

Of absolute stupidity is what someone on my realm tried to do a last week and that is make gold off of something you obviously have no clue about. This person bought all the epic recipes on the AH (selling for around 300 to 800 gold). Then they proceeded to mark them all up to 1,500 gold, what they did not discern in many of these recipes is that the item was Bind on Pickup (BOP) which meant that only the crafter could ever use it. No crafter is going to buy a recipe for 1,500 gold, then get the mats that will either take weeks to farm or hundreds more gold to buy, just for a single piece of gear. I would like to think that this person did not even realize that they were BOP items and thought that if the crafter was going to make money off of the recipe they would be willing to pay top coin for it. Sadly they were mistaken and wound up slowly dropping the price all week. It also didn't help that no one else putting these recipes up on the AH followed this person's lead -- they kept the old prices.

One final note: Inflation. As time goes on, Auctioneer will not keep up with inflation. You will start to notice that most popular items are being listed at 5 to 10% higher than your Auctioneer has them for. Since gold, copper and silver are created out of thin air, and once your epic flying mount is bought, you have no mortgage to save for, inflation is always going to be a problem -- just keep farming and doing quests to keep up with the Joneses. (This may also happen in reverse with high ticket items, which get farmed more as more people get better geared and do higher instances and get better drops.)

In the end, it's all fake money anyway, so if you lose money on the AH, its not as bad as having your entire IRA in Enron -- just like the rest of the game, it is something to have fun with.