Pots of Gold

Starting Afresh

2010-11-30T02:29:00.000-08:00

I'm not going to beat around the bush here. A lot has happened the last few months, mainly real-life things which in themselves were a Shattering / Cataclysm. However I'll be elucidating a lot more on this in my new gold blog, The Midas Touch.
Hopefully I'll be a more consistent poster now that I have much more time on my hands these days. The blog is in a very basic state right now and I'm busy writing a catalogue of posts to have a good base from which to move forward from.
See you on the other side.

Return of the Mag.

2010-09-28T03:58:00.000-07:00

About 6 weeks ago I hit the 500k mark. A little later than expected but I took a back seat and had to deal with a lot of RL issues. However over the coming few weeks I shall start to pontificate again on making copious amounts of gold and on what me experiences are as we approach and enter Cataclysm.

Word spread of my achievements on Emerald Dream and now I have more competition that I would have liked but I'm loving the challenge. It's not a last man standing scenario but it will be interesting to see how many of them are committed to surging forth once the expansion arrives. I'm ready for it but are they? Time will tell.

MyStory

2010-04-29T03:05:00.001-07:00

http://emeralddreamers.co.uk/2010/04/29/feature-interview-money-makes-the-world-of-warcraft-go-round/

A link to my route to making gold and about my experiences along the way.

Busy Being Busy

2010-04-15T11:06:00.000-07:00

Here's what I've been doing since my last post on here. I will however be reviving this blog in the very near future, hopefully in conjunction with my server's unofficial blog Emeralddreamers.

http://gombeen.wordpress.com/

A Fool and his Money....

2010-02-02T06:32:00.000-08:00

are easily parted. Yesterday evening a kind frivilous soul bought out all my Endless Rages (45g) and Stonebloods (40g) and decided to relist them all singularly at 70g apiece. A nice and handy 3k and even handier for me as I immediately relisted a similar number of flasks at my original price. I was tempted to up them again as that was all that were there at the time but why gild the lily when it's already beautiful to look at?
I've dabbled ina spot of flipping the last few days, mainly on Thorium ore and crusader orbs. I accrued about 12 Orbs at 160g roughly and sold them for 200, handy money again. The thorium is a long game. There's never any rush to sell the stuff so I'm not posting it until I'm 100% sure I can get 60g a stack, 100% profit or nothing in that game. It's one of the few items I profess to being a little greedy about.
The glyph machine is starting back up again, although I could really do without spending the time milling. The major hassle I can't stand though with crafting glyphs is the havoc is plays with my fps. It wanders all over the place during production and I'm not sure yet how best to resolve this. It's even bad in Undercity.
Lastly for today, I want to mention new patch day. PvP gear time and the gems, scrolls and armors that accompany that. I rustled up a shedload of Empowered and Durable Ametrines as well as the equivalents Topaz's. A few Mystics as well. Will be interesting to see who that pans out as it's the first major Arena Patch I have dealt with since starting.
Oh and http://azerothchat.com/ - a few new posts for yer reading pleasure are now available.

Shatter that Crystal!

2010-01-28T07:10:00.000-08:00

Abyss crystal prices are plummeting. Recent scans of the AH are showing me that more and more of the bleedin' things are going for 25g and under which once upon a time would have been excellent news if ye were in the scroll market. Yet as I mentioned before that market is dropping like Belle du Jour's frilly knickers: fast and often. Mind you unlike Belle, there ain't much money anymore in scrolls. Sadly as infinite dust is also at stupid prices on my server, shattering the abyss is not exactly profitable either.
However it's still decent money that can be achieved by shattering void crystals into Large Prismatics. Remember in an old post I managed to accrue oodles of voids at 6g apiece. Well currently I'm selling prismatics at 6g apiece. 100% profit. I will admit however that it is a slow process but one that is still a consistent bringer of the dough and I have mde my initial outlay back with plenty remaining for shattering. At one point I was selling the shards for 11g! Nice but bear in mind I also had to sell some at 4g. Still a profit mind.

On a side note again, uncut gems are slowly returning to pre3.3 prices. No complaints there especially as cut gems are not as quick to follow suit. It's only a matter of time but striking whilst the iron's still hot is advisable.

Oh, and the goblins are pissed off and need your help at http://azerothchat.com/

Busy as a bee

2010-01-26T08:04:00.000-08:00

A short update on what's been happening.
Outside of the game I'm still scribbling and penning away on http://azerothchat.com/ . It's takign up more time than previously expected but so far I'm enjoying the challenege of coming up with a new story almost every day. Mind you, the latest story, which was intended for yesterday overran a little and became a beast of an entry. It's turning into a saga that particular tale so I'm going to keep running with it. Hopefully I can keep the others as standalone affairs.
Ingame has been rather quiet. Raiding wise we managed to smack down 3 bosses in ICC10 which for aguild of our size is fairly decent. We only raid Thursdays and Sundays but progress is looking up.
I've started accumulating herbs again and beginning the milling process in advance of Cataclysm. I've let me previously substantial stocks of glyphs run down dramatically. TO be honest I wasn't arsed to keep relisting and makign new ones so am doing bugger all business glyph wise. But I'll continue buying out all cheap stacks I can. (They're only going to get more expensive once x-pac arrives so I might as well grab 'em now)
At this moment in time I have about 4000 azurepiggies to craft into inks but that's not a major issue. When I find the time (who knows when!!) then I'll start reglyphing, with the intention of making 15-20 of all cheaper/less productive glyphs and upwards of 50 profitable/top sellers. That's the aim.

I have a couple of alts lurking around the 65-70 lvl so I may look to gettign them up to 75 to max profs in advance of Cata. I could really use two alchemists maxed. One for Flasks (already in operation) and one for mutations. Better to have this done now rather than experience the pain of levelling them after Cata.
And for badness, I've dropped the prices of Scrolls on some of my items to below the price of mats, just to piss a few people off. When I see them posting BErserking Enchants for less than the price of the abyss crystals then that gets my back up. Well for the hell of it I halved the prices again on all Abyss Crystal scrolls. I have 300 Abyss Crystals in my bags, not a huge amount, but one which will allow me to be machiavellian for a week or so.

Bits 'n' Bobs

2010-01-22T07:50:00.000-08:00

As you can see I've been a little busy this week working on the stories on my other blog. Naturally this has resulted in less time spent in game keeping the cashflow healthy. I'm still making about 2-3k a day but have been spending more than what's coming in. It's mainly going on buying mats for craftable epics for my Shaman and trying to maximise the guild's efforts into IC by bringing flasks etc. To be honest I madea conscious decision a while back to help our efforts as much as I can by using my in game wealth. There's not much point otherwise in hoarding so much gold. Can't take it with me when I eventually stop playing.
Flasks have stabilised at 45g which I suppose isnt too bad. Family commitments have naturally meant I cannot spend the time to play the market as aggressively as I would have like although I am shifting as many items as before only making more money.
One tip I do have though is about checking out the lower end mats required in those epic 264 craftables. I purchased Icy Dragonscales the other night for less than a gold apiece. I took what I needed and put the rest back on the AH at just over 8g each. I sold about 75% of these before someone dumped some extra stock on there at half the price. I'm going to keep my eye on this market over the next wee while. I'm sure the same might apply to the Blacksmithing and Tailoring options as well.

Citizens of Azeroth

2010-01-21T04:34:00.000-08:00

Many years ago I used to write fairly prolifically. Mainly poetry, comedy sketches and the odd short story thrown in for good measure. I used to love penning random bits of silliness and to be honest I've let myself go stale. I know I can write although my editing skills are as rough as a badger's arse.However being recently made redundant has both given me time to reassess what I would like to do with my life and then to do something about it. So I have an idea and I'm running with it. And that idea is..
http://azerothchat.wordpress.com/
My hope is that this blog reignites my love for writing and telling stories. All good things hopefully have to start somewhere and this is my beginning.
The aim of this blog in particular is to try to add some backstory to the inconsequential characters of wow, those who have no history. It's all meant to be in good humour and to try something a little different, for me anyways.
The aim is to keep the stories in line with the ethos of WoW and the history within although there's always room for some personal interpretation. Some will be standalone pieces and others are intended to be serials. I hope you all like it and as always, your thoughts are welcome. If you even fancy commenting on the stories feel free to do so. All is ask is that you add a little flair to the comments, maybe even adding what you might have heard from these characters.

A new Venture

2010-01-19T06:06:00.000-08:00

This is just a small heads up on a new idea I've working on which isn't gold related. I've had an idea for a while to write stories based around in game characters whilst at the same time learnign to blog more efficiently and carefully. It might go further than that but at the moment I just want to keep writing and working on the site.
Hopefully by the end of the week I'll be ready to share the blog address with you all.

Flasks - an update.

2010-01-13T04:33:00.000-08:00

Well I promised I would delve vociferously into the flask market and I have to admit i've taken a slightly more restrained approach instead.
In total I have about 500 Frost Wyrms, 200 Endless Rages and 150 Stonebloods just now, with about another 250 Frost lotus sitting in the bank. The other night I bought out all remaining Lotus from the AH, well those at 70g and under and also cleared out the Lichblooms, Icethorns and Goldclovers as well. Thankfully I already had 50 Eternal life in stock.
I whacked a shedload of flasks ontoAH for 24 hours at 50g to see if they sold, roughly 50 of the DPS ones and 20 of the Stones. The Stones all sold but the DPS were sporadic at best, They were fairly easily undercut although promisingly not by huge amounts and not in huge numbers. Admittedly this was the weekend and beign a family man I hadn't the time to log in keep track of affairs, however I'm goingto try the same this afternoon in advance of the new raid week starting around teatime. I should get luckier I would imagine.

Am still going to post at 50g as I want to continue seeing over a 2 week period just how volatile the market is. Like Hulan commented on my previous flask post/thought, flask prices do not accurately reflect costs of the mats. Thus am hoping with a sustained clearing of the AH of mats I might be able to manipulate further. It's still early days mind and ultimately I'm not goingto be too disappointed if I am not too successful. Although I damn well sure won't make a loss.

2010-01-12T10:20:00.001-08:00

Ticking along , free of stress.

2010-01-08T04:45:00.000-08:00

I have been remiss. Goldcap was smashed about 2 days after my last bout of waffling. Then the spending spree began. A cloak for 8k and a big fat mammoth for tramping and trading around Northrend on. I'm a little disappointed that when ye repair using the troll dude on the back of said wooly elephant the costs do not go to you personally. Now I'm not too worried abotu my own repair costs etc but it would be nice when others who use him, the shillings come to you. I mean we did pay 16k for the fecker.
One of the joys about having hit goldcap is that it's remarkably easy how the gold continues to roll in, even having scaled back my efforts considerably. The mammoth and cloak costs have already been made back threefold and thats with barely bothering to spend as much time as I had been doing.
Gems are still the main earner although the price of uncut ones went ballistic for a while, Thankfully, Cut gems followed suit and the complaints about prices are more common place these days. Still, if you can't craft the said item you need then be prepared to pay the going rate.
Apologies for a random higglety pigglety post but to be honest there is a lot going on these days in the MagzGuild and naturally these take priority.

To round off - I'll give you some info on one thing I have been doing recently in game and that's attempting to manipulate the Flask Market. I mean, come on, 25g for a flask!!!! Try 50g minimum by the time I have finished. It's a slow process but I do now have 400 Frost lotus in my bank to help me continue and there's more on the way. The demand is huge right now with ICC being the flavour of the month and I'm tryign to limit supply. I'll let ye know how I get on soon. I hope :p

Another for the Horde!

2009-11-28T15:58:00.000-08:00

A stupid post title for a marvellous occasion. Magz junior has arrived a little earlier than anticipated and I'm now the proud father of a little boy called Robert. Already we've started calling him Robbie which isn't terribly Irish but he's a little duck and he's mine.
I would probably be right in assuming that there are a few of you out there who have sprogged some wains of yer own, so you can now empathise with my current feeling of elation and satisfaction. We waited 7 years now since our first to have this little fella and that wait was well worth it.
Mother and child are in excellent health and if I were to be honest I'm slightly ratarsed whilst scribbling this. It wouldn't be Irish if I weren't.

And as a sidenote - whilst I was at the hospital the last few days, my auctions have tippedme over the 200k mark. Darkmoon faire, I truly love ye.

And to sum the occasion up

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5HZ4tzQmL8

Rattling the Cage

2009-11-23T14:34:00.000-08:00

There's an old expression, probably used the world over, which constantly comes to mind when I read certain blogs which have Warcraft gold making themes. The expression "empty vessels make the most noise" can be appropriated to a small number of individual blogs who believe that by spouting seemingly intelligent and statistically heavy opinions in their blogs they are in fact contributing to educated and informative discussion of all matters worldly.
Well you know just because someone constantly batters along on the same point again and again doesnt actually make them right, more the opposite. Blah blah Welfare state, blah Scroungers and so on ad finitum. It's all rather depressing really but what's more depressing is that these "empty vessels" are held in high regard and are supposed paragons of infinite wisdom on all matters, both WoW and non-WoW related. Personally If I were one of these individuals who were self sufficient for 3 years, I would travel the world, demanding to be fellated by my fawning minions, such would be my power over their feeble sycophancy. Then again I could on these travels discover more about how the world actually is and maybe fill that "vessel" with some knowledge so that the noise in future is somewhat less.

And maybe then we could could all have some peace.

Tankard O' Terror

2009-11-19T15:53:00.000-08:00

I was casually skimming through a few of the recent articles posted via WoW Economic Review and noticed a comment made by someone on the Phase3Profit blog.
He had stated that he thought the Tankard was a bad investment. Well I have to disagree, although there were a few times at the moment of purchase and shortly after that I did question the wisdom of procurement.
The person ins question bought 28 Tankards. Now I wonder what he paid for them? I myself bought 8 at an average of 800g apiece and right now wished I could have (should have) bought much more. The original dream was to sell them for 1500g + down the line but instead I've shifted them already at an average of 1100g which is no bad thing. They're sold, no money has been lost apart from a couple of hundred on AH listing fees.
I can't complain about this at all but am now wondering what would happen if I delayed a little longer. Mind you , better sold at a profit than not at all eh?

Delayed

2009-11-18T07:59:00.000-08:00

Hmmm - was intending on whacking a raft of posts on here relating to some interesting points I noticed about gems and crystals. However they'll have to wait as the good lady wife has been brought to hospital for monitoring - the unborn be lying arseways right now so precautions have to be taken.
SO again for now some more silence.

Tainted Love - the slow decline of the epic gem.

2009-11-10T09:11:00.000-08:00

I'm going to keep this brief for now but I hope to pontificate more in the near future about this.
Epic Gems are slowly but surely starting to lost the sweet 60-100g profit margin ( on bought uncut gems anyways ). Today I saw Runed Cardinals selling for 140g on my server - and to makes matters worse there were 6 sellers at this. Some I recognised other not. Now I can only assume the normal sellers did't pay much attention to the notices when using QA about who and how much etc but it's slightly disconcerting. What with the inevitable spike in demand with 3.3 soon upon us I would be hoping they don't drop much further. Even so, I bought out the ones at 140g (roughly 7 gems) and only posted 1 at 190g. The plan is to store them for the next patch unless these prices from today were a blip, an anomaly. At least they wre cheaper than what I've paid for the uncut rubies previously so should save some time.
The main thing is I can afford to take a small risk like that but would hope not to be diving in there too often again.

Gripe of the day: Transmutation procs suck the donkey's dong.... 1 in 10 days and for only one extra Amber. At the end of the second week, if it hasnt picked up my specialisation is returning to elixir.

Meet and Greet

2009-11-09T16:11:00.000-08:00

I decided this evening to check out a competitor - just to see what he had made gold wise. It was interesting to find out that he was goldcapped solely from Gems. The TinyTip wealth addon told me his wealth so I struck up a conversation and needless to say, being a "sociable" person, the chat was amicable.
We discussed the rapidly declining profits in the gems market and nattered about what we can expect in 3.3 and beyond.
I'm glad I did this as between the two of us we're the largest Gem merchants on the AH and both concluded that there were too persons slapping underpriced gems on the market. I like to think I learned something from tonight in mainly focussing on one market as opposed to the "throwing shit at a wall" approach but, tbh I think I will continue as I am for now. Its much more fun if a little more work. I did like his gentle and subtle warning though......"I have plenty of stock" :-)
However the upshot is is that I dont really need to worry about him right now and vice versa.

A Bargain? Here's hoping.

2009-11-07T06:18:00.000-08:00

Trade chat this morning was an interesting habitat. I spent about 30 mins in the company of a chinese farmer /gold mule who was selling some stuff. Namely Abyss and Void Crystals.
He had been trying to sell the Abyss on the AH the evening before at 40g a pop - about 6-8g lower than average price. HE had them in stacks of 20 and I thought - hmmm - lets wait a see if he reposts lower.
Lo and Behold on trade chat this mornign he is tryingto sell them. I whispered for the price and he said 56g each, so a small chuckle later I informed him of his efforts the previous day.The price dropped to 40g each. I offered 25 to buy the lot. He had 12 stacks. After the usual haggling he finally settled for 390-g a stack equating to 32.5g a crystal. Now in my eyes thats a bargain.
Reason? Patch 3.3 and scrolls which require Abyss Crystals. New weapons from ICC and Season8 = Berserker and Mighty Spllpower enchants. There may even be room for the change in the Black Magic enchant = gold rush. Hopefully. It a risk but one I reckon could be worthwhile.

The Void Crystals are a different story. They were going for 12g+ on AH which in reality is a ridiculous price from an enchanters POV. However having bought 36 stacks!!!!!! at 120g a stack I am taking the long term approach to this and shattering the feckers in advance of Cataclysm and for general use in between,
Reason? Large PRismatic shards sell for 12g on my server. It's a no brainer.
So whilst continuing to bring in the sales on glyphs and gems I've just spent over 18k (I bought other stuff from him too) on the future. Speculate to generate I reckon.
This has meant though that I've dropped from 137k last night to just under 120k this lunchtime but there's no fun in not trying to think big sometimes.

UPDATE: Bark at the Moon

2009-11-06T17:07:00.000-08:00

Nipped earlier over the the Alliance Ah to visit my much neglected lvl5 Dwarf Warrior, basically to check were there any Rituals on their AH. Lo and Behold there were nowt and then the idea came: Neutral AH!
Off I went and crafted 12 of the buggers and slapped them in the Blackwater AH.
Returned to Stormwind and did a little trade chat tickling. unfortunately I encountered the usual "pfft rip off remarks, but it seems I was justified.
I logged to my toon in tanaris after about 2 hours and 7 of the twelve had sold, bringing in roughly 120g profit per book.

One eejit had told me that his "mate" said I was really overpriced as I was chatting in Alliance trade. I advised him to let his mate know that he should desist in offering such pearls of wisdom in the future. You can only know a fool is a fool when they say or do something.

Bark at the Moon

2009-11-06T12:49:00.000-08:00

It's amazing the amount of "pfft" remarks when I gently remind people I have Rituals of the New Moon on sale in the AH.
"160g for wha?" is the usual remark.
"Not worth it mate- too expensive"
"Goldseller!"
"Reported" is a rather common one.

It's rather comforting reading these comments having sold nearly 2 dozen of the feckers in the last 3 weeks at yes you got it, 160g apiece. Has to have been the simplest sweetest Moolah moment since feck knows when, and all for 5 mins farming in the Grizzlies.

Release your inner Lupine tendencies...

Whoa - Slow down there Magz!

2009-11-05T08:08:00.000-08:00

Somethings happening and I'm not 100% sure how to explain it. I've goen from 5-10k a week to pulling in 20K the last two weeks and there's no sign of a patch as yet.

In saying that I've really intensified efforts in both the glyph and gem markets and it's paying off. I'm aggressively purchasing epic uncut gems from the Ah and even if the cut gem sells for 20g more its still profit. More often than not it is selling for 50-70g more.

I've done some research on Major Inscriptions and I'm almost there with the full whack. Am now considering stockpiling Glyph books for Cat if I can get them cheaply enough.

More's to the point I really must start updating this more regularly as there is lots I need and want to share with people on this malarkey called the Gold Cap. IT takes some time folks but it isnt impossible to do.

Being a Bastard

2009-10-22T16:52:00.000-07:00

So today was the first day of slapping all glyphs on the AH at a low tasty reduced price. I became rather tired of waiting so took the plunge and went all out assaulting the AH. I popped 7 of all glyphs I could make on the AH and waited to see what happened, save in the knowledge that I still have 3000 inks in my bank waiting for manufacture.
ON top of that I have persistently bought out all herbs on AH for 22g a stack and under - which must be pishign the alchemists off no end and quite possibly a few scribes as well. It's a testing of the waters thign and somethign which can easily be done when there's 95k sitting, looking at the walls. It's an investment I'm prepared to make and in all honesty there's enough coming in from my gems, flasks and infinite dust to keep the wolves from the door. My intermittent suppliers are happy as I'm paying them slightly more than usual so all is well there.

What does all this mean....?

My first 1k day with Glyphs. Can't be bad to that.

Out of the frying pan.......

2009-10-20T05:18:00.000-07:00

Did something I never thought I would do last night and cleared the Ah of herbs. About 5k in total which is fine from a liquidity Point of view (can easily cover that) but more from a " what the feck have I just done" viewpoint.
The plan is to adopt a "shock and Awe" policy on the AH sometime soon although I'm not sure when. our server has a small number of players in glyphs but it's very hard to gauge as yet what their stocks are going to be like. Personally am thining of leaving it for another week and continue accruing flowers. I have about 2k inks and 400 Snowfall in the bank at the moment. That should keep me going in the short term whenever I decide to make my move but , like I said, I'm just not sure what the competition is really like if I push them into a corner. It's a small horde market but money is not in short supply.Meh....too many confusing issues -better to gather more info methinks.

There's plenty of other things keeping me occupied just now but I'll pontificate and expand more on those later.

Starting out

2009-10-20T02:16:00.000-07:00

Where to begin eh?

I've been doing a lot of reading recently about making gold in the gaming crack that is World of Warcraft. It's a veritable minefield of what to do, what not to do, who to do it to and how to do it.

A lot of it all makes sense, though for someone who has only really started on his quest for hitting the GOLD CAP, a lot more of it is pretty confusing. In short I'm a gold making virgin.

Well virgin is probably the wrong word as my goldmaking cherry has been popped but it's all new and wodnerful and the thrill still has not worn off.

So I've decided to climb aboard to Wow Gold BLogging gravy train and chuck my oar in with some pearls of gibberish and some musing from a middle aged WoW addict.

Even a Leprechaun was a wee bairn once.

I'll scrabble together an introduction later on today when I get me head around this blogging malarkey.