Greedy Goblin

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

The black blood of the gold god

I never thought I'll get a business tip from Larísa. It's called "saronite slaving". Saronite is the "black blood of Yogg-Saron", the old god with pretty high survival rate. Most guilds let him live, because ... to let him make more saronite!

Primordial saronite is the new frozen orb. It's material for several BoE ilvl264 leggings and boots, currency for their crafting recipes and also needed for the quest for shadowmourne. It's BoE and sells around 2000G. You can loot primordial saronite in ICC raids and also buy it for 23 emblems of frost.

Saronite slaving means that (all of) your alt(s) do the random heroic for 2 emblems to buy primordial saronite. As I mentioned, it's BoE and sells around 2000G. If you run 11.5 heroics, and each of them are just 25 mins long, then you spend 4.8 hours getting one primordial saronite. 417 gold/hour. It's not bad by itself. You also get 26.5 G reward for doing random dungeons, that's another 64G/hour. The bosses also drop emblems of triumph, 4-5/instance. You can use them to buy either crusader orbs (for 15), valor bracers (for 60), or epic gems (for 20). One of these actions give more than 10G/emblem, so another 45G/instance, 108G/hour. You also will end up some greens and 1 blue on average, sharded if enchanter present, another 20G/instance, 48/hour. We can add 20G/instance for trash and money drop.

All together 690G/hour. Of course you can make more with AH, but we are talking about farming here, and it's the king of farming, no doubt. (definition of farming: repetitive activity that surly generates income, unlike trading) On the top of this nice gold/hour, you also get reputations for your alt and have chance to get some ilvl200 epics to the slot where your alt is missing it.

The con: LFD itself. The whole thing is based on the 25mins/run assumption and it needs a competent tank, healer, and at least one DPS above the tank. And knowing the beings who roam LFD, it's not a small request.

Of course the primordial saronite prices are slowly dropping, so this trick won't last forever. I asked around and several members of my blue gear guild spends their frost emblems the same way.


And don't level new alts just for that. If you insert the leveling time into the equation, you'll find that you can get higher G/hour killing random monsters for vendortrash. Seriously. Don't be this guy!

25 comments:

Kreeegor said...

25 min heroic? I can't remember when I last did heroic longer then 15 minutes. Btw - inscription is the best way to farm for saronites - got mine shadow's edge in less then two weeks

Koch (Aszune) said...

The rate of aquisition for the Emblems of Frost is even slightly higher in weeks with Naxxramas weekly raids. The standard PUGs seem to be quite capable of killing Noth/Anub'rekhan as well for an additional 5 emblems of frost (or 19/week).

Joe Nothin' said...

That is horrid.

I mean, there are much better things to do with emblems of frost then money. After all, money is a tool for playing, not the other way around.

If i could BUY emblems for that amount, i would. I dont see why you'd spend emblems to get money.

Gevlon said...

@Joe: have you read the post? It's not about your main spending badges for gold. It's about the alts.

Anonymous said...

@ Joe Nothin'

As someone who does the "saronite slaving" told me "yes I gear my alts, they're geared in emblem of triumph items but I see no reason to gear them in emblem of frost items" and it's pretty reasonable if you raid on only 1 char then what for would your alts need level 251-264 items? E-peening with your gearscore?

Unknown said...

@Daniel

25min/run is actually pretty good average.

You got to take in to account that places like CoT, HoS, Oculus really can't be done much faster, no matter what gear you have.

Also don't forget that not all people have just tank or healer alts with shorter queues.

If your alt is not a well geared tank, the chances are that you will run into either undergeared or unskilled tank that just can't rofl-pull 3-4 packs at a time for you to aoe-fest them down.

Yes, you get some groups that can do Gundrak with Eck in 12 minutes, but then again you get some groups that do HoL at a bit slower 35 minute pace.

Bottom line: If you don't think that 25min average per run is not accurate for your own set of alts, then insert your own number.

Oxymustard said...

I have 7 JC alts doing dalies. Dragon's Eye going for 150-250 ish depending on the day and 7.4g from the daily itself. That's 1100-1750 for 30-40 mins work.

Anonymous said...

@jana

If you have more alts doing this you can do this like me. When you get HOR just leave and relog to another alt.

Strat takes a bit longer than 25 min yes. Oculus is 15 min max (speed achievement is standart for any pug I'm in).

On the other hand you have dungeons like:
Gun'drak: 7-12 min
Azjol: 7-10 min
Old Kingdom: 8-13 min (if you go just for 2 boses)
And many others that you finish before 15 min even with 1 carried DPS (less than 1k).

Nerdrager said...

It's just not worth the time involved with leveling alts and primordial saronite at current prices is just a bad investment if you need to buy it.

Prices will drop significantly in 2-3 weeks when the raiding community will have bought their tier 10 and 1-2 off set pieces and the larger availlability of frost badges (voa boss and more bosses in icc) will kill prices too.

You can call me a slacker but I'll buy saronite at 40-50% discount from current prices, nothing more.

Anonymous said...

Good job. Now take into account the oportunity cost for those 7 JC alts.

At a very generous leveling cost of 3k gold/profession, adding a 3 day time spent leveling(worth an average of 500 gold/hour) each of them to 70+, you get....

(3000+72*500)*7=273k gold wasted in opportunity cost.

Also, I severely doubt that you get 250 gold/dragon's eye, so let's use the more reasonable price of 150.

Per day, you earn 150*7=1050 gold

This means that in order to break even with your investment, you have to do your JC dailies EVERY SINGLE DAY for 270 days.

In order to double your investment, you need to do them for 540 days straight.

So, assuming you did all these dailies since WOTLK came, you earned a profit of about 1.4 times your investment.

Great!

Admittedly, the 1.5k gold/hour rate is good but only if you play 2 hours/day, and such, the hardlimit imposed by the daily/day is less important.

Dread said...

My girl and I are each leveling a tank and healer, respectively, to have on the side anyway. I don't plan to dump a huge amount of gold into making the priest amazing, but I will do the dailies and weeklies to get PS for my main to sell. He already has all the craftables as it is so it would be purely farmed profit, and the epic gems from badges won't hurt either.

Anonymous said...

@ anon

Did you consider that he might have actually enjoyed playing those alts up to the required level for JC dailies and as such the opportunity cost of leveling the alts is mitigated by fun.

Gold NoScripts said...

On my three alts I tend to get 19 badges per week. Weekly raid, and daily randoms. Just shy of that the 23 needed for the primodial saronite. My main uses all his frost badges for gear, with one piece left to buy, but after that it's full on saronites.

In addition to the weekly raid/daily random my guild normally runs an ALT icc 10, in wich we down the first four bosses like cake an dthat ends up being another 8 badges a week for one alt.

By the time icc is on farm my main should have all his frost gear, which means I'll be getting 48 badges a week just from icc 25/10, and another 19 from random/weekly, or 67 badges. Almost three saronites per week on one character. I bet the prices will have dropped by then to around 1k however.

Anonymous said...

I think it will be more than 2 or 3 weeks before Primordial saronite will drop in price. A cost of legs and chest for T10 are 95 emblems of frost each. that is rather a lot!

However what will keep the price high is the quest for the Shadowmourne weapon which requires 25 per person.

I think the price will stay high for 2-3 months not 2 to 3 weeks

Brian said...

I really like this kind of tip, because it's something people can do to get started on the path to making serious gold. As Gevlon pointed out, you can make more gold/hour on the AH, but that will be more difficult if you don't have much gold to start out with.

Anonymous said...

I play on an Oceanic server called Saurfang. The top guild here is called Ajantis, they are a very well organised guild with many skilled players. I am not 100% sure this happened but there are rumors they defeated Yogg-Saron in 25 man with only blue items equipped.

Inquisitor said...

Okay, how about the weekly raid?

The question is how long it takes you. I reckon it's usually about 30 minutes, end to end, if I'm organising a group to one of the easier bosses. You need one tank, one healer, and whatever DPS you can scrape out of people's alts - we've 5-manned a few of them, because we figured it was quicker than faffing with PuGs.

If you can get in on somebody else's PuG raid, of course, it needs about the same time, but you can /afk for half of it.

It's well over 1k g/hour, between the quest, the 6 EoT and the 5 EoF, and the drops are even slightly better.

Martijn said...

Would you have spend the time leveling up some new fun characters on farming to make more gold? I don't really believe that. Lots of people including me already had a dozen alts at 60+ at burning crusade and the start of Wrath of The Lich King. Also by abusing the RaF system level 70 will take 3 days on 2 characters. I mean by abusing the Grant Level system, after your 2nd level 60 you get a 3rd in 5 minutes just by granting levels.

Tonus said...

That thread is funny. No matter how many times you see people whine that the game needs to be easier, it's still a surprise to see someone do it. Having gotten geared up in epics and near the top of progression after just two months, that guy basically complains that he has not been gifted with multiple level 80 alts by Blizzard.

I guess that is how entitlement syndrome works. The more you give to people, the more they demand.

Honors Code said...

In my guild we have people with multiple level 80 alts. The guy with the tank alt tanks for the guy with the DPS main, then they swith and the tank main gets on for the dps alt. We have all competent people, all our ques are near instant and the runs go well.

The downside being none of us have our Perky Pug yet.

I'm actually not selling the PS, but using them to craft stuff for my main.

Winsome said...

A couple of notes:

1. Primordial Saronite sells very quickly in /trade and shouldn't be AH'd due to the high sell point and the cut.

2. Don't forget the weekly raid, which is sometimes just as fast as the daily dungeon, depending on the target, and gives 10 emblems (5 frost) and gold.

3. While I wouldn't level an alt to do this, it can be good incentive to finish leveling an alt who is just short of the finish line, or dust off a previously abandoned 80.

It's a little late in the game to do price fixing, but I was able to sell a fair bit of Saronite at 4K/each. I think that is done though.

Be aware that we are almost at the point where hardcore badge farmers will be in full T10 - you may start to see a drop off in /random dungeon quality, which will extend the time.

Eaten by a Grue said...

I am beginning to get suspicious of any such slaving activity with Cataclysm nearing. All that stuff will be obsolete soon.

I understand still playing your main and improving that character, because I assume that activity is fun, but slaving for PS sounds like no fun.

Anonymous said...

"I am beginning to get suspicious of any such slaving activity with Cataclysm nearing. All that stuff will be obsolete soon.

I understand still playing your main and improving that character, because I assume that activity is fun, but slaving for PS sounds like no fun.
"

1. If Cata works like wotlk you'll see people raid the Cata t11 content in t10 after speed-levelling to 85, same as people raided naxx in t6. Unless you wear "wrong gear" as Blizzard warned (leather on warrior etc.) even after all the stat changes the gear should be good, very good.

It might even help you to get "server firsts" at 85.

2. It's not about levelling new alt, just many people have farm alts, DKs, "old mains" who can be used for such. Running a daily heroic or killing weekly patchwerk or flame leviathan is a simple task and unless you hate instances / grouping (then why would you play so much pve oriented mmo) it shouldn't be bad, it's even less boring than mining or fishing for money.

If you hate PUGs: you do NOT have to group with random people to get 2 frosties, you can use premade group of 5 for "random heroic".

AlexS said...

@ Anonymous 02 February, 2010 11:41

"At a very generous leveling cost of 3k gold/profession, adding a 3 day time spent leveling(worth an average of 500 gold/hour) each of them to 70+, you get....

(3000+72*500)*7=273k gold wasted in opportunity cost. "

How the hell can it take you 72 hours to get to level 65 (max level needed to max a profession)

Don't forget, you also make money while leveling.

Unknown said...

You also will end up some greens and 1 blue on average, sharded if enchanter present,

You mentioned something in passing here, Gevlon, that's really been irritating me ever since the "free disenchant option became available.

One of my professions is Enchanting, and I've spent significant amounts of time, effort, and money to level my professional skill to the point that I can provide the high level enchants and disenchant any green, blue, or purple in the game.

There are no green/blue/purple drops in any Heroic instance or above that DON'T take a 375 Enchanting skill to d/e.

By adding the "free disenchant" button, Blizz has essentially forced me into an almost unnoticeable form of slavery by FORCING me to provide my disenchanting services FREE OF CHARGE to any M&S that happens to be in group with me.

If you're going to operate that way, I expect a free roll on all skinning, herbing, mining, and engineering nodes that come up during the course of an instance, but do we get that. Nope.

IMO, Blizz should put a pay-for-disenchant system, where he has to give the party enchanter the item's vendor price if he wants it auto-d/e'd.

Also, Blizz should give the option to enchanters to offer to purchase any BoP items from the roll winner for the same vendor price, if the winner accepts the offer.

Will I get a system like that? Doubtful. Because Blizz probably doesn't even realize what they did.