Greedy Goblin

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

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).

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree with you that blizzard should be posting all patch notes.

I do actually read all the notes when they are posted but i thought it mentioned ALL changes that were taking place.

More fool me for assuming things i suppose.

Pangoria Fallstar said...

How about the fact that enchanting material costs are going down for Northend enchants?

I didn't read that in official patch notes. Is that more of what you meant about listening for changes not listed?

Gevlon said...

The enchanting mats changes are also not in the lists. What we know is from people who are in the PTR.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=32802.0

Anonymous said...

Sorry about your loss, GG. Your tale convinced me to stick with my current risk-averse slow-but-steady approach -- stay away from high-end gear and stick with DE'ing greens for essences (specifically greater nether and greater planar).

A belated thanks for your Knothide Leather Scraps tip a while back. The Heavy Knothide Leather market collapsed soon after I invested in scraps, but demand for armor kits (heavy and especially regular) has stayed strong.

- Rucker

Anonymous said...

Thoughts on pricing: How much Ink of the Sea are people sitting on? Since people ARE packrats, depending on your server, there might be a dearth of people with bags chock full of Ink of the Sea. They may not be organized 20 stack AH sales, but perhaps odd lots (stacks of 8, 3, 13, etc.) that could affect pricing.

My gut instinct says that initially the price of Ink of the Sea will skyrocket because supply responds directly to demand, even as price responds inversely to it.

In other words, because decks are such big moneymakers NOW, people will come out of the woodwork to dump their Ink of the Sea at what promises to be crazy prices in order to satisfy the demand for 6000g decks.

However, the eventual flood of ink and decks will drive down the price of the decks, as they will start popping up in the AH in greater numbers than they ever have.

But the first few people to buy 6k decks are going to really feel dumb as they see more and more pop up.

That would make timing key in this transaction. You snooze, you will lose.

If and when the price of decks drop, and the force behind making cards declines, it will drive Ink of the Sea back down in value. (Remember, card buyers generate demand indirectly...only Inscriptionists can drive Ink sales directly).

In other words...The first 48 hours are probably going to be the most critical in terms of selling your Ink of the Sea. If you miss that window, you might want to wait until the initial flood of decks has long subsided, and more and more people take up the raiding mantle...increasing the demand for the (thankfully) soulbound decks.

Also a throwaway to the PTR notes: The Inscription requirements to the offhand items have gone away.

While that should generate a shrug of the shoulders and a big fat "who cares?"...Faces of Doom and Iron Bound Tome, two Epic OH items, will be available for the general populace to use.

Mats for each:
5 Snowfall Ink, 10 Resilient Parchment, 1 Frozen Orb, 2 Ink of the Sea...

Allhakazam has these going for 750g (price should skyrocket as the available pool of people who can use these increases...i.e., non-inscriptionists)...back out the frozen orb (625g), the parchment (620g), this leaves us with material costs of 52 Ink of the Sea...50 for the Snowfall Ink + 2 additional Ink of the Sea.

52 into 620g, means an equiibrium price of nearly 12g per Ink of the Sea? That would make a stack of 20 IotS worth 240g?

Am I wrong in thinking these could be your big moneymakers...if acted upon swiftly enough?

Inscriptionists NEED to make these OHs to get up in skill, and will no doubt be more than happy to make them for, probably, low to no cost.

As everyone undercuts each other for decks in the red sea, cornering the OH epic market, this move into the blue sea could have a value unto itself.

Or is my greedy little heart getting ahead of me?

Victor Hollo said...

Ryan, I enjoyed reading your comment as I've also speculated into this. Do you also believe Eternal Life will be a limiting factor in the impending "deck rush" since 3 are needed in each crafting?

I feel they will rise in price considerably and have regularly been buying them when under 20g. I have a bit more stocking up to do on IOTS (only have 10 stacks or so.)

Anonymous said...

So, many receips use less greater cosmic essences.

On the other side, the money making cobalt->smith->disenchant is probably dead, they mention in the patch notes that the material costs of cobalt receips have been increased.

They did not mention the juwelcrafter ring.

Do you have any idea what will happen to the enchanting material market with the patch?

Anonymous said...

Ecr2,

I've been thinking about the Eternal Life factor myself.

Before Microsoft released the original Xbox, people were buying Microsoft stock trying to capitalize on the profits.

The smart money was investing in Nvidia, who made the video card that fit inside the Xbox.

Investing in another aspect of the supply chain is probably a good deal. Since it's not specifically mentioned in the patch notes, it's the kind of thing people can miss.

BTW, the new PTR notes have been released...it's official; Jessica Sellers in Dalaran will be exchanging IotS for Snowfall Ink.

Actually, there are a lot of changes under professions that bear scrutiny.

Titanium xmute...cooldown reduced.
Ethereal Oil? What's that?
Elixir of Water Walking? As if...
Increased mats of cobalt items...like what?
Worg Tartare? Previously, the only food that granted Hit rating, came from fishing. Time to stock up on Worg flank...
New Tanking enchants? Cha-ching!
JC's converting Frozen Orbs & green gems into Blue gems?!
Epic Leg armor...require Frozen orbs!
Reduced cloth to make Imbued Frostweave. (Mixed emotions, having a tailor)
Moving the Ebonweave "altar" to the Dragonblight. (Huzzah!)

That's a lot of changes...all I know is I'm stocking up on Frozen Orbs and Eternal Lifes.

I'll let the GG-oblin sort the rest.

Pzychotix said...

Ink vendor changes are now in the patch notes, or at least on the ones on mmo-champion.

Gevlon said...

Tomorrows post will be the crafting/moneymaking patch notes

Doyle said...

@Ryan & ecr2

I definitely expect eternal life to spike in price after the patch. I've made many Darkmoon cards and have found that when I farm my own herbs and kill the crystal life dropping mobs at the same time I end up with a few extra external life after processing the herbs into cards. Meanwhile most other farmers I see do not kill the flower mobs that drop crystal life so I suspect there is a nearly a perfect balance in herb and eternal production for card making.

When card makers suddenly have access to 60% more Snowfall Ink I'm betting there is going to be a shortage of Eternal Life.

Another item that I haven't seen mentioned anywhere is scrolls. On my server scrolls sell fairly consistently but at a pretty low prices. When I was making cards I generally dumped all my extra IotS into making scrolls to recoup some of the cost. If many others were doing the same scroll supply could drop dramatically.