Greedy Goblin

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Leather transformation

Tzigone has maxed LW, but did not make much money with that. Most LW-s believe that their profession is not profitable. They try to craft Earthen, Frosthide and Icescale leg armors, Mammoth mining bag, sell them for 5% profit due to high competition and whine "LW won't make gold".

Making money always demand thinking out of the box, finding things people want but don't have. The first batch of work for Tzigone was leather transformation:
  • Borean leather to heavy borean leather, 80% profit
  • Knothide leather scraps to knothide leather, 40% profit
  • Knothide leather to heavy knothide leather, 60% profit
  • Ruined leather scraps to light leather, 1000%!!! profit
I also told her to craft lower armor kits. They are usually ignored by crafters. Post them 1 by 1 as usually the buyer needs just 1:
There is one more item she bought: Salt shaker. Most LW does not even know what it is. It's an LW only item, used to refine deeprock salt, needed for cured rugged hide. You can use the hide for 46 recipes, several useful to level LW between 280 and 300. So leveling LWs will buy your cured rugged hide unless they are smart enough to buy the salt shaker itself (or they don't know it no longer has CD).

Tzigone also has an Ulduar BiS pattern (for trees). Of course it's way to expensive to craft one just for sale (what if it doesn't), but it worth spamming the trade chat "crafting [Ulduar stuff], bring mats and 200G fee".

My last advice was crafting two more forgotten items: the quiver and the pouch. While hunters no longer need them, many use them for RP reasons, to make sure they don't run out of ammo or simply because they don't read patch notes.


Not about money but about LW: possibly the LW is the best tradeskill for progression raiders because of fur linings. Normally a fur lining gives 67 SP, 114AP or 90 stamina to bracers. However for progression hard modes with heavy elemental damage (Firefighter, Smell of the Saronite, Steelbraker's kiter) you can get 60! resistance instead. The flask trades 50 resist for 125 SP, the fur lining trades 60 for 67).

13 comments:

Noak3 said...

The leather transformation idea was very smart, nice thinking on that.

ZachPruckowski said...

How do lvl 78 and lvl 80 blues/purples sell? Any rogue, druid, hunter, or shaman who hits 80 is going to want a handful of things from a leatherworker to gear up for Heroics or Naxx. It seems like it might be worth looking into.

I know that when my shaman hit 80 and I was gearing up 2 specs, there were a number of nice leatherwork things I wanted, since they were easier to get than the equivalent Heroics/rep pieces.

But you're absolutely brilliant to notice the leather -> heavy leather conversion. People screw up on that often enough when posting enchanting mats or eternals, where the average person can join/split them, and in the leather instance, you're the only one who can join them!

Catalin said...

Congratulations Tzigone for becoming Gevlon's apprentice.

I'm sure you will do quite well on your gold making ventures with the help of the goblin.

Catalin said...

@Tzigone:

Just checked your armory profile. Say hi to Moonbars from Cuore. Some in Elysium may still remember that name, even though the roster has mostly changed with fresh blood.

Tiny world, isn't it? Funny how things connect around....

Pangoria Fallstar said...

On my server I always keep an eye out for the leather market. Sometimes it's better to leave it as regular and sell that, and sometimes it's better to just hold off for a couple of days then post the heavy leather.

For some reason, you get more profit selling the borean scraps (that anyone can right click into borean leather) than selling even the heavy leather.

5 scraps makes one leather, 5 leather makes 1 heavy borean leather.

If the price of 25 scraps is higher than the price of 1 heavy borean than you make more selling the scraps.

Weird thing is that is sells, because people see 50s, not thinking that its really 12g50s to get enough scraps for 1 heavy borean leather.

SmokyBG said...

ZacharyPruckowski, most blues/purples are a hard sell now and will be even a harder sell when 3.2 hits; material cost is still pretty high, and most people prefer to run an instance a couple of times than drop 500g ore more on a crafted item.

Fawr said...

@smokybg
On my server the mats for the leather 78 PvP blues cost about 50-70g per item, and I've often found most of them selling for 100+g. There are a couple of items (bracers) which people leveling periodically flood the AH with, but otherwise...

Of course this market doesn't do well with much competition (once upon a time I sold them for 250g each but competition forced me to go back to glyphs).

Tzigone said...

@Ydraisa
Indeed it is a tiny world :) I remember Cuore the hunter even I wasn't in Elysium at that time. Although roster has changed a lot in the past year I'm sure there will be people remembering ;) And I know Moonbars reads the blog from time to time so he might say hi back himself.

@ZacharyPruckowski
Naxx10 and Naxx25 are like kids' play, so most people prefer gearing up there with pugs etc lately and don't bother to spend money on crafted blues/epics. But as Gevlon has proved me again there are a lot of stupid people out there, so my final decision would be 'it depends on your luck'

[nb]Caffeine said...

I thought you were going to comment on the REAL way to make money using leatherworking. It is not a solo effort, however, requires enchanting too: http://www.warcraftecon.net/?p=1583

Just doing this has made me a mountain of gold, so I don't feel bad sharing it now.

Wooly said...

These are some nice tips. I also didn't know about the saltshaker cooldown removal. I stoped using that cooldown ages ago, because the profit was still not really worth the effort of it back then. Let me add a little tip: make green leather armor, it's used to craft a blue chest by blacksmiths, you can make some cash with it.

I recently started leveling inscription on my bank alt btw. And though she's just 35 (I take her out for a run when I'm bored every so often), I'm already making money with it. It's almost a joke how easy it is to make money with inscription. I think I like it :)

BTW, about the resistances with fur linings: they're good idd, but besides Hodir/Sapphirion I can't really think of any encounter where resist could be that useful. And even those two encounters don't really need it either, except for the tank on Hodir maybe, but even he would probably prefer 90 stamina over 60 resist. Or am I missing something?

Anonymous said...

I suggest that your protege also look into crafting the two entry-level pvp sets. The mats are relatively cheap, and I don't know what his competition is like, but I sell almost 6 full sets for 148-210g per piece a week.

Rob Dejournett said...

I may be wrong but I think the salt shaker CD is still in effect. I used it a month ago, so unless its been patched quite recently then its still in effect. I will definately check tonight and report back; this is very useful for making yeti pet which requires engineering.

Nice tip about DS though.

The thing about all of this is that it takes *time*. I'd be very interested to see what is actually the most gold/hour, which is the only thing I care about. Same thing with inscription, it takes time to mill and make hundreds of inscriptions.

If leather conversion doesn't make more than 200g per hour I wouldn't bother with it, because you can get that much just doing dailies.

mikwolf said...

Depending on the server's player base, you can make extra G selling lower level gear at a good price.

There's gear with hit, expertise and crit rating that sell quite well. Shamans/druids/rogues/hunters all use leather and people are always leveling new toons.

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=18238
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=8174
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=7348


Early level mats tend to be dirt cheap so I think it's at least worth checking out your server's market.

You won't make a ton of money, but the time investment to grab the mats off the ah, craft and post them can't be more than 10-15 minutes.