Greedy Goblin

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

How to save hundreds of gold with gems?

Gems have high vendor cost. A crafted blue quality gem has 3.75g to sell. This means high deposit cost on the AH. You can't sell gems like enchant stuff or glyphs. If your gems return, you lose serious amount of gold. Such losses scare most of the jewelcrafters away from the AH, leaving only some dedicated and properly funded ones who can survive the "gems returning in masses" phase until the competition gives up. From there, he can sell with high profit. It's not surprising to see cut gems 50-100G above uncut ones.

How can you bypass this problem? By mass crafting. You use only a few kind of gems. For example for PvE I use pure int, int/spi and int/crit gems, for PvP pure resi, int/resi, stam/resi. With every item upgrade I can socket a few gems.

So: buy up uncut gems and find a crafter. The easiest is using the "professions" tab of your guild interface, but can seek JC on /trade. Get 10 from each gems you use. Put it to the bank. Every time you use one, you just saved 50-100G.

Soon the gems will be stacking items, allowing you to keep them in your bags, so you can even gem in the raid when the item drops. Save gold and be faster!

Obviously you can do it for any items that you use regularly. Have a personal stash of consumables to avoid being the victim of wannabe AH monopolists.

10 comments:

Wrathebe said...

I'd advice you from doing resi/stam gems, they are the ones that sells the least, atleast from my PoV.

No serious pvp'er gems stam.

Jabarj said...

Or, as a goblin, you can be the JC profiting off the AH.
Since my main is a mage thge first Cuts I got at the beginning of the expansion were the ones my mage needed, at the first week of expansion I recall selling "Piercing dream emeralds" (which today aren't worth anything) for 400 each.
@Wrathebe: Stam Resi are usually cheap ones to sell, usually the Red, Orange and Purple cuts sell higher due to having the classes primary stat in it (INT/STR/AGI).

tri said...

May want to add a "*" as of next patch all of cata gems are getting there price nerfed making them easier to restock from lowered AH deposits.

This tip may have a short shelf life.

link to info
http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/2328-Tier-12-Video-Preview-Mage-and-Death-Knight-Reagents-Price-Changes-MMO-Report

Leeho said...

That's why i like playing on a high populated realm. You can buy everything you need from AH for reasonable price. Usually it's 10-30g for "craft". On the other hand, on high populated realm you can make like 1k in a day with almost any crafting profession, or performing some kind of a goblin trick. Selling pets, disenchanting greens, cutting gems, selling scrolls, pretty much everything gives you profit. Things are bought fast and competition is high - those two factors are making everything profitable with low single-item "craft" price. Nothing usefull is terrible underpriced because those who are just levelling skills can't affect the market. Nothing sells for high profit from single item because of competition. Both outcomes are good for sellers and for buyers.

Anonymous said...

If the cost of the items decreases over time then you are losing money not saving money by stockpiling.

Coralina said...

I think it is dangerous to stockpile these items. I have a lot of gems in my bank. I prospected a lot when levelling my JC at the start of Cataclysm then left the gems in my bank so that I would have enough to complete my JC daily and gem my gear for months to come.

Pure folly.

I should have sold the lot of them at the time.

When I need a gem for my gear now I am better off selling the raw gem from my bank and buying a cheaper cut version from the AH. That is how it is on my realm.

The money will be made in the first month following the introduction of epic gems - assuming like me you were smart and saved lots of tokens to buy all the main recipes rather than cashing them in now.

Anonymous said...

Good advice, but keep using your brains. You can use alts for this, but it can be costly to level up profession, especially jewelcrafting. It is easy to acquire uncut gems now by simply mining + prospecting, or getting elementium ore from JP vendor. Not many people are mining anymore, even on high populated realms (where my main is located). There, it might even be cheaper to buy elementium ore from AH and do some dailies instead.

One danger is buying too many mats (e.g. cut jewels). Then next patch, they're worthless. As of patch 4.1 in Cataclysm we still don't have epic gems. The rare gems are going to be replaced by epic gems somewhere in patch 4.x.

The amount of fish feasts I had to toss in patch 4.0.3 was unbearable (all gathered in WG whilst waiting in raids). Same for flasks (brewed by my main, an alchemist). The reason? I like to have my characters a stack of something, and replenish the stack after e.g. raid. What did I use all this for? Leveling characters in begin of Cata. Useful? Might have saved a wipe here or there, or caused some speed-up but generally not necessary hence a waste of time and money. One could still use 'em for when you're learning a fight, or some lol-run (say: ICC).

Instead, prepare yourself for the worst. What you need depends on if you have farm night or progression, and depends on if the price of the mats or end product is likely to decrease. Since the demand for +90 int + 90 sta food will remain it is no problem to gather various stacks of these. With flasks, this is different. You won't need more than 4 flasks (2 if you're an alchemist) if the raid lasts 4 hrs max. So for one raid night you get 5 or 6; not 20. For a week of raiding a stack is still suffice however don't get too many because in the case of herbs, the price is deflating slowly, so getting too many flasks right now just to get several full stacks is unwise.

AFAIK the price of uncut gems is not deflating although on my main's realm the price of +20 mastery, +30 sta, +60 sta, and yellow uncut (e.g. for +40 mastery) are cheap (between 8-25g each). YMMV. Int gems will remain useful because every caster will use them in red and often in other sockets as well. They are a safe bet. Same for agility and strength. In fact, I think on my main's realm the price of an uncut red is near the price of a cut red gem. I suppose that is due to high demand. I used to think this was due to achievement, but the achievement does not register the rare gems.

Moral of the story: Don't overdo stocking utility mats. Obviously, don't `underdo' it either. The worst thing which can happen is an ungemmed item, or having to admit you're out of flasks.

Anonymous said...

Stockpiling has it's risks but it's not necessary.

Knowing that high AH deposits encourage high margins, in a mature gem market one can expect that cut gems will sell for significantly more than raw ones. The opportunity to save is in getting raw gems cut by a guildie or a crafter.

If you think the market is going up, stockpile. If you think it's going down, buy only when you get new gear.

word verification: miners

Anonymous said...

Who kidnapped the goblin and replaces him with a dunce?

Gevlon, JC is the second best money maker there is. Only inscription beats it. I pull in 3k gold a day (profit, after expenses)from JC and I spend about 15 min a day doing it.

and this will only get better when the vendor costs go down.

Gevlon said...

@Last anonymous: who stole your ability to read? No one questioned that JC is profitable. I suggested to customers EXACTLY to cut you out of their supply chain and get their gems cheaper.

@epic gem people: blue quality gems won't lose their value just because epics arrive. They will be expensive for marginally better stats. People will still not use them for their temporary stuff like the gear they buy from the new honor and justice points.