Commenting rules

I've been getting more and more comments, just like I've been getting more and more subscribers and visitors to this site. Of course it's good. However it has a negative effect that has to be dealt with: nobody wants to read lot of comments, so important ideas remain unread or even worse, untold because the wannabe commenter knows that nobody will read his #48 comment. So I have to set up some comment deletion rules to prevent comments outgrow manageable sizes.

The comments that I will delete mercilessly:

1. These are the comments that lack the signs of human intelligence: "First", "Posting in a legendary thread", "lol", "I lolled hard on this", "The cheapest WoW gold and Powerleveling services, don't hesitate m8, try out now!"
2. Emotion comments that show nothing but the emotional reaction of the commenter, therefore being irrelevant to everyone else: "I really like your blog", "This sux and you eat dick big time". Some troll posts may survive this rule if they have a certain amusement value.
3. Comments with werry bed gramar or 2 much l33t.
4. Error corrections that point out broken links or grammar mistakes in the post. I do fix the post, but delete the comment afterward. Such comments are very welcomed but after the fix they are no longer valid, so deleted.
   
5. Denial comments that show nothing but the fact that the commenter disagrees. While you are free to disagree, do it alone! Comment only if you have arguments to support your opinion.
   
6. Off-topic comments: Anything that has no connection to the original post, like "Could you tell me how can I make money from BS?" or "I'm making 1000G from BS" below a post about making money from LW.
7. Stories of your own moneymaking success are only welcomed below "My Business" tagged posts.
8. Philosophical, moral points are only welcomed below "Philosophy" tagged posts.
9. Link-comments like "I wrote a blog about his, follow this link because I have alot to say" will be handled individually. If the linked post is offtopic, primitive or obviously stupid, the comment goes down. Otherwise stays.
   
10. Long comments that has a point but this point could be made in three lines instead of three pages. We all know that long speeches can be boring and we never liked the long speeches that the politicians use to make. Just like we dislike the long and meaningless speeches on a company meeting and those people who just talk and talk and talk when we meet them. So please just don't write too long comments. Especially avoid repetitions since we all know that long speeches can be boring and we never liked the long speeches that the politicians use to make. Just like we dislike the long and meaningless speeches on a company meeting and those people who just talk and talk and talk when we meet them. So please just don't write too long comments. So if you want to write "shut up" please use 2 words, unlike I did now. :-)

The posts will turn un-commentable after 3 days. So you can comment this post today, tomorrow and the next day, but not after that. The existing comments remains visible. This is because I don't have time to cleanse all posts and the longer the post is out, the more bots can find it.

Lost 149G

And so happy about it :-)

Why am I so happy for dumping a Darkmoon Card for lousy 3K?

Partially, because decreasing your losses always make you happy. I've invested about 6000G into the cursed Darkmoon cards. I sold a few Nobles cards for nice money and sold the surplus of the other cards for 2-3-400G but also had to buy some to complete my sets (People buy decks, only a few buys cards, though those are obviously cheaper). Out of the 3 decks I sold one, so I have a chance that I will end up with little loss or even with little profit from the card business.

But the real reason of being happy is being able to sell this damn thing before 3.0.8. Ryan said in a comment that "It seems the only thing people pay any attention to are impending nerfs to their class." Quite true, however this change was not in the patch notes. The change I'm talking about is a new vendor on the PTR who sells Snowfall ink for 10 Ink of the sea and simple inks for one.

Now this is real information asymmetry, not the one caused by dumbness. There is no comprehensive list of PTR changes, not everything gets into the patch notes, you either have to play PTR yourself or read the "proper" blogs to know about them. Actually I'm not happy about this thing, all PTR changes should be listed on the official site.

Also note that PTR does not mean sure implementation to live realms and it's even less sure that the implementation happens on the next patch. No blue post promised this new vendor, they can remove her any time.

However I have the tendency believing in this vendor for my own reasons: the price of the Ink of the sea fell deep below the price of other inks. Since high level inscription still use low level inks, the inscribes buy the low level herbs making them unreachable for low level players and making herbalism an unfarirly profitable profession on low levels. Notice that no high level item need the skins of lvl 15 beasts, yet high level warriors can use Glyph of heroic strike, crafted from herbs in lvl 15 areas. Since no flying mount can be used in low level areas, farming mageroyal is harder than farming lichbloom which is ridiculous. This problem will have some solution and such vendor can be the solution.

What this vendor will mean on the Darkmoon card market? High level Northrend herbs (Adder's tongue, Icethorn, Lichbloom) are around 2G apiece so you can mill one for 10G. The gain is around 0.7 Icy Pigment and 3 azure pigment. With the new vendor it means you get 0.7/2+3/2/10 = 0.5 Snowfall Ink for one milling. So the Snowfall ink production price will be around 20G.

With this price, Darkmoon card of the North will cost around 180G to cast. If the increased production drive the price of Eternal life up, maybe 200. So you get the strongest trinket in the game for 1600G. Yes please!

However there is a catch. You can get one card randomly. The problem is not getting too many aces and no sevens, you can trade an ace for a seven. However there are 4 kinds of lvl 80 Darkmoon cards. The Greatness card is the best in game. The Illusion is good, the Berserker and Death are just OK. So they are mostly useless by-products of crafting Greatness card. Since people will pay 5-6000G for a Greatness card, crafters will craft it, and the the other decks will spawn in the process.

This will cause an oversupply of the by-product cards driving their prices down. My guess is that they will sell below 800G after the first month. That's why I'm happy to sell one for 3000G.

Moral of the story: if you want to get rich (opposed to not "poor" but "OK"), you have to read patch notes and the "proper" blogs.

There is a hidden twist in the calculation above. If you spend 1000G buying 500 Adder's Tongue, milling them will grant you 150 Ink of the Sea and 35 Snowfall ink. The distribution of the price between them is arbitrary. You can even claim that Ink of the Sea cost 6.7G and Snowfall ink is free. Or you can claim that Snowfall ink costs 29G and Ink of the Sea is free. Their prices depend on their demand and supply. Since most people have glyphs already, the Snowfall is needed more, turning Sea into a useless by-product. That's why I can buy them for 1G!

The new vendor will create an unlimited demand for Sea at a 1:10 ratio. Inserting this into our calculation we get 2G for the Sea and 20G for the Snowfall. Notice that this is just a lower limit for Sea, since the vendor don't do the opposite trade. So if people would stop wanting Darkmoon cards but demanded more glyphs (when dual specs arrive this will be the case), the price of Sea can climb up to the mentioned 6.7G. So the final verdict: buy while below 3G, like there were no tomorrow (I already have 50 stacks).

The industry

What you see on the picture is the inventory of Triara, my bankalt with the job of distributing glyphs.

This business is my main workhorse with 1000-1500G/day income for 200-400G/day investment, mostly risk free, 30-60 min/2 days work.

There are two questions to answer. At first, why glyphs and not BS stuff or cloth items? The answer is simple: tailors, BS, LW and so on have only a few items to mass produce for sale. The other items are either useless, or mass produced by others for skillups, or having CD so cannot be mass produced. On the other hand inscription has lot of glyphs and all and every one of them are useful for someone. Don't forget that while monsters drop cloth armor, all glyphs come from inscribes.

The other reason for it is low absolute profit. An epic LW item's materials cost 1000-1500G, so even if the crafter wants just 10-20% profit, we are talking about 100-300G. This big profit has two negative effects, at first all other crafters want it, undercutting you, secondly it's big enough for the buyer to try to avoid it by buying mats and searching for a crafter for 10-20G tip. On the other hand glyphs cost 2-3G materials, so even 1000%!!! profit means only 20-30G. Most people won't spam trade channel to save this money or bother crafting and listing. On the top of that, glyphs have complicated materials since the inks need herbs but you don't know how much ink you get from herbs so to "have mats" one would have to bring double herbs just to be sure.

The second question is how on earth can I manage this inventory? Pretty simply with proper addons. The cycle is the following:

• All the unsold glyphs return from the AH to Triara's backpack. Since I list them together, they return together. If I listed some extra, I cancel those auctions, so all my glyphs are in the backpack.
• I have an addon called Possessions. It builds a database of what item is owned by my alts. I have another addon called WhoHas, it uses the mentioned database and displays it on the item tooltips.
• I log to my main and open crafting window. The LilSparky's workshop addon shows the price of the items. If this price is below 10G, I ignore the item. If the price is OK, I select the item and mouseover its icon.
  
• WhoHas write ownership on the tooltip. If it says "Triara has 3" or more, I ignore the item.
• If Triara has 1-2, I craft enough to have 5.
• If Triara has 0, it means all sold out, I craft 7.
• After I checked every glyphs, I send the crafted glyphs to Triara. The result can be seen on the picture.
  
• Triara list them on the AH one-by-one, for 48 hours, using Auctioneer market price, 40% undercut (deflating market, have to undercut deep). Today I listed 923 glyph auctions. I don't have to post every item one-by-one, since they are selected for Batch Posting.
  
• The second day the original listing's time expires, I collect the sold auctions from the mailbox, and the cycle starts again.

You surely don't need it.

The previous post was about unneccesary upgrades. We have seen that we have to pay more and more for less and less upgrades.

Yet there is a field of the game where even the illusion of upgrade is missing, yet people waste huge amount of money or time (=money) on them: mounts.

You most probably know what I'm going to say in short: conspicuous waste!

And if the idea is about buying a new mount next to your existing one, you are right, it's just stupid "look how rich I am" show.

However we all need mounts to travel. Let's see how can we save even more money on mounts!


At lvl 30 you can learn Apprentice riding skill, needed for the basic mount providing +60% speed. It costs 35G, but you most probably will be honored by your home faction so you can buy it for 31.5G. The mount itself is sold for 10G (9G on honored). However if you are paladin or warlock, you can learn a spell summoning your spell mount for 1G and get apprentice riding for free.


At lvl 60 you can learn Journeyman riding skill for 600G. You most probably will be revered by your home faction, decreasing the price for 510G. The mount itself will cost 100G (85 on revered). This mount will travel with 100% speed. (25% speed increase from normal mount)

However if you are warlock or paladin, you shall wait until lvl 61 and learn your mount spell for cheap. You still have to pay for the riding skill. Theoretically you could complete a long questline for the mount and the skill, saving money, however the time invested is much more than the money saved.

Here comes a valid problem: if your faction mount is so ugly that you can't bear watching it, (even I accept that gnomes want a replacement), you need a replacement. For a new faction mount you would have to farm exalted reputation, does not worth the time. My tip: run AV on lvl 60 for 50 medals and buy a Frostwolf/Battle charger. You save not just yourself from the ugly mount but also 85G. If you are already 80, you can still collect 50 AV badge. If you find this mount ugly too, the next tip is the lvl 80 daily quest reward in Brunhildar village (for me this is really-really ugly).

There is absolutely no logical reason for buying Mammoths, or Bears, or Choppers or anything that cost money. Period. Of course you are free to waste your money and time, but don't even try to claim that it was not pure waste. They can carry passengers you may say. Are they paying passengers? - I reply.


On lvl 70 you can buy Expert riding skill in your faction town of Shadowmoon Valley. It costs 800G, no discount. You can buy normal flying mount there for additional 100G. This mount travels with +60% speed in land and air.

The No1 tip here is that if you no yet bought it, than don't do it until lvl 77! Flying is impossible in Northrend until you reach lvl 77. You will have more money on 77, due to quest rewards (and hopefully following the advices here).

If you are druid, you can learn Flight Form on lvl 68. You get the expert skill for free next to this spell. This is an instant cast spell, while calling your mount take 3 seconds. So any mount is inferior to this spell therefor any druid with a flying mount is dumb.

The flying mounts sold in Shadowmoon are the same as used as taxi in Azeroth. In no way can they be ugly. So don't try to tell me there was a logical reason why you farmed endlessly for an exalted rep dragon. However there is one exeption. With outland abandoned, the materials for Flying machine became so cheap that this mount can be cheaper than 100G, so engineers may use this instead (ugly as hell for me BTW).


On lvl 77 you can and shall learn Cold Weather Flying. It will cost you 1000G, no discount. You will need it to fly in Northrend, you cannot access several areas without it.


You can learn Artisan riding skill in Shadowmoon Valley. It costs 5000G, no discount. You can buy basic fast mount there for 200G, no discount, they can travel with 280% in air, 100% on ground.

My opinion about it is simple: does not worth it, unless your income is based on herbalism or mining. There are taxi points in every land, you can take insane amount of taxi flies for the price of the fast mount. Of course you can spend your money here (I did), and it does add to your comfort. However you shall be aware that it's a comfort item and not a necessity.


Summary: if you are broke, but ride a dragon, most probably the wiser creature is the one below.

Do you really need it?

The most basic rule of getting rich: "Spend less every month than you earn". It's true in all existing worlds. In Azeroth, on the top of all, easy. You don't have bills to pay. You don't have to buy food or shelter. You can stay in an inn forever for free and need food only for buffs. You don't have any unavoidable expenses in Azeroth!

Everyone has income, no matter how little. If you have auctioneer and aware of opportunity cost, you have more than little. If you have accounting, you'll have lot more.

So there is income. There are no expenses. Why don't everyone have full purses?
Mostly because they spend like crazy. Before every spending, you should ask the question: "do I really need it?"

Check out these items: Titanium Spellshock ring with Perfect reckless huge citrine and a Signet of Kirin Tor:
+1 Stamina
+1 Intellect
-6 critical strike rating
21 haste rating
-3 spell power
Use: Teleports the caster to Dalaran. (1 Hour Cooldown)
This is the advantage of the Signet over the Spellshock. On my server the mats+gem+tip for the Spellshock are around 2000G. The Signet on revered reputation (this can be reached without farming, just by questing up and doing the cooking daily) is 6500G. Does +21 haste rating and a free hearthstone worth 4500G?

OK, you may say the Signet is a pointless luxury item, so let's make a much more real comparison:
Runed Scarlet Ruby: 19 spell power, 200G
Perfect Runed Bloodstone: 16 spell power, 40G
Runed Bloodstone: 14 spell power, 10G
Do you really need that +3 spell power for 160G? Does that spell power will make or break Naxxramas? Come on! Ensidia cleared not Naxxramas, but HC Malygos in lousy lvl 70 stuff. Their gear was much weaker than any casual's now. If you cannot clear Naxx, not +3 spell power but either learning to play or finding proper groupmembers is in order.

Wrath Elixir vs Fel Strength Elixir. The difference is -10 stamina and -5G.
Elixir of Spirit vs Elixir of Draenic Wisdom. The latter have -20 spirit, +30 intellect and -7G.
Firecracker Salmon vs Smoked Salmon. The latter have -11 spell power and -9G.

The items are tools to reach a goal. They only need improvement if the goal cannot be reached without them. Of course I'm not telling to walk around in unenchanted, ungemmed greens. But if the stat increase is marginal, you don't need it.

If you have a crafting profession, you can spend thousands to reach slvl 450. Why??? Does it give you anything? The tradeskill specialty (like ring enchant, bracer embroidery and such), can be reached on slvl 410-420. Why do you push it higher? If you really need a crafted epic, you can find another crafter for a 50G tip instead of for a 1000G levelup!

Graving for "better" items can come up with ridicoluous results. I've met an unforgettable mage back in ZA, who had epic gems in all slots but went out of mana at 30% of the boss and used wand. After the fight I asked him why had not use mana potion? "Because I can't afford it". Or the other one, I kicked from an instance group couple days ago after seeing no enchants and meta gem in his epics and also several greens. He arrived on a Red Drake!

Three kind of people want "perfect" items:

• Absolute competitive HC raiders and PvP-ers. I can imagine that you do need that extra 3 spell power to down Satharion with 3 dragons. If you are in such guild, go for it! But if you are not even applying to such guild, you don't need it, even if you raid 6 times a week. Doing lot of easy content does not make you HC, just addict.
• People with obsessive compulsive personality disorder find internal happiness in reaching "better" items, even if they can't gain anything from it. If you don't feel good if your item is just blue, even if the stats are not bad and you can raid the content you want, you should consider seeking expert help. I mean it. If you have a guild leader who demands not better performance, but better items, /gquit today. An obsessive-compulsive boss can make your day terrible.
• People who like to look good (as opposed to be good). I'm absolutely positive that watching that boss video increases your damage done on him more than farming for a better gem. /ignore those stupid kids who linger around in Dalaran on their useless Mammoth and epic gems. The only thing they can kill is the poor squirrel at the well (and they usually do). If they would be not just a well-dressed piece of rock, they would be in a raid and not standing in the middle of Dalaran.
  

Business report

I'm doing OK I guess, 60K on the top of a completely geared restodruid and a half-geared mage.

My main workhorse is selling glyphs. I'm selling like 50-60 pieces every day for 15-25G each, materials cost 5G.

The secondary workhorse is the good old Crystallized fire. I started to play the same with infinite dust, I buy a stack of 20 for 5.5G each and sell them by ones for 6.9-7.5G.

I also keep the market filled with Etereal belt buckles, imbued frostweave cloths, spellthread and such. I sell 2 moonshrouds every 4 days and titansteel bar every day.

Luckily the remnants of my flower business are sold out, way under their buying price, but finally my alt's bank is clear. I rolled in 3500G in the process, definitely did not worth the time.

I have money outside in the bronze bar fund (seems that I manage to liquidate it in a week) and the card fund (damn cards).

The deflating market is not a good place for long term investments. I won't have too many (though I'm planning one). I mainly feast on the idiots and sell stuff crafted from immediately bought materials. I try to keep my storage at the minimum, since the items in the bank lose worth as we speak. The only exceptions are dream shards, which will get something in the next patch.