How To Take Your Gold With You When You Transfer Servers

This month is the first month that Selltacular over at Copper to Gold blog is hosting the monthly Gold Blogging Carnival, having taken over from Cold at Cold's Gold Factory. As he says in his post, the topic of server transfers has been very common on Twitter & various forums over the last few months & Blizzard must have been listening as this week, they have had a 50% off character services sale.

If you were to transfer servers and could take only one toon, which one would you take and why? What goods would you use to transport all of your gold over the 50k transfer cap?

My choice of toons to move is fairly obvious - I could either take my main - a Leatherworking/Skinning Paladin and basically never look back at my current server or I could take a high level toon but one that is unimportant to my goldmaking. For me at least, those would be my options - yes, I could take any one of my 6 level 85-90's but as my professions are all over the place, moving any of the 5 besides my Hunter would leave a gap in my goldmaking on what I still consider to be my main realm.

My level 85 Hunter is my 2nd alchemist & 2nd Tailor - alchemy is maxed but tailoring I haven't even started on the daily Imperial Silk cooldown & learning the newer PvP items so if I was moving in order to continue my gold making, I'd have my work cut out for me! However, for me, a move is more of a search for the social side of WoW - I really miss evenings on Skype with my guildies, tackling new dungeons, raiding or even just mucking about in PvP.

Now I know it's kind of academic at this point but to take as much of my gold with me as possible I would firstly empty her bank & bags of any low level or non-valuable items. Next I would make sure she had large bags and fill them with valuable items as well as any heirlooms I wanted to take with me. I might even go and buy more heirlooms from the guild vendor if there were some I didn't already have. I wouldn't pay silly money for the largest bags though - at least not until I had filled my existing large bags. Spending 3-4k gold on an extra 4 spaces per bag seems kind of silly to me unless I knew I could make it worthwhile on the new server!

Amani Dragonhawk

Deciding what kind of valuable items to take with you requires research. Once you've decided on your destination realm, you need to use The Undermine Journal & look up all kinds of expensive items - think mounts (especially TCG mounts like Spectral Tiger or Amani Dragonhawk), high level, high price battle pets (although you can always swap those over later of course!) and epic armor. Don't forget mounts/pets you can craft too - think Vial of the Sands, Jewelcrafting mounts & pets as well as Engineering ones like the choppers.There's an option to compare prices between 2 servers at the top of the screen & I find it very useful sometimes.

The other thing to think about though is the higher value items that you can craft - think Living Steel, Living Steel Belts, top end enchants, valuable gems, spellthreads & maybe even the +300 buff foods!. These all stack so each single bag space can hold quite a high value stack. It might be worth checking out the glyph market on your new server too - I know many servers seem to have a dead glyph market & if your own server is dead on glyphs but your new one is busy, you can pick up a bucketload of cheap glyphs BUT be choosy! You don't want to take a load of rubbish with you!

And that's the key point here really - you want to fill your bank spaces & bag spaces with the highest value items/stacks that you can - it may be that a stack of say, Living Steel has more value than any of the mounts or pets you find on your current server& if you aren't taking an alchemist with you, but can still use Living Steel then having a few stacks for selling or crafting with may prove more valuable in the short term.

Going back to pets though - if you do have to leave a pile of gold behind, don't forget that you can still move some over time by buying pets on your old server, learning & then caging them on your new server. Once you are settled into your new home & have begun to understand your new Auction House, you may find opportunities you missed. Make a note of those when you find them - you may love your new server so much that you decide to transfer another toon over later & then you can cash in on those earlier missed options.

This all sounds like a lot of preparation & to be honest, yes it is. Moving server is quite a big change for many players & not one I would take lightly after all this time on my home server. I've decided not to move any alts this time though - as usual I've left it too late to really get organised & I'm not sure of where I want to go. I have some cash on Arathor so I may go & play a little gold making over there - mainly just flipping though & it turns out I have a friend who plays there too. As for my twitter friends on Ghostlands, I feel the need to learn to tank on a DK from the start so I'll possibly turn up on your doorstep sometime soon :)

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Time for a Change?

I may have to streamline my packing!

I mentioned in an earlier post that I was considering moving an alt from my current server in search of a higher population one. There's two main reasons for this with a few lesser reasons too.  I've also mentioned before that my guild is on life-support, just waiting for someone to pull the plug but I really don't want to do that so I figured moving 1 high level alt with 2 professions would let me dive straight in on a new server & would also let me experience an Auction House on a higher population realm.

One of the lesser reasons is that I really don't feel like leveling a new alt - my time is more limited now & besides, I still have alts on my main server to finish leveling! I'm looking for something in game to re-ignite my passion for this game & leveling a brand new alt is definitely not it!

So I was very pleased to see that this month's Gold Blogging Carnival was all about transfering servers - it's the first month that Selltacular is hosting the Carnival in it's new home as Cold has handed it over due to work, other projects & the fact that after all these years (3-ish for the blog, I believe) he's finally run out of steam!

I've been humming & ha'ing over which alt to move, which server to choose & whether or not to take heirlooms with her - all in preparation for my Carnival entry post this month when I saw yesterday that Blizzard have announced a 50% 'sale' on character services for this week only - arrgghhh! I'm not ready yet & I wanted to read all the Carnival entries too!

I'm not sure yet if I want to find a social & active guild or just a larger Auction House to play in - I can do both by moving a high level alt at least & I'm fairly sure now that it's my level 85 Hunter who will be moving - she's my 2nd Alchemist & my 2nd tailor so I won't miss her on my main realm so much. She's also the only alt with any reasonable pvp gear so that gives me that option too.

So now I just need to decide which realm to try out over the next day or two - Arathor-EU is one option as I have an alt with some cash there already and the Alliance faction is twice as large as my current server but if I want a friendly guild, I think I'll have to investigate Ghostlands-EU - a few of my Twitter peeps are there ( /wave hi guys!) & judging from my twitter feed earlier today, one of my friends is already trying it out & I have a feeling I'd be welcome too :P

I'm going to do some more thinking though - I need to work out how much stuff I want to take with me or shall I just go with the 50k gold, shall I take all my heirlooms or just the ones I know I won't need again on main server & I also need to check out the Auction Houses to see what sells best over there.

Once I have it all sorted, I'll pretty much have my Carnival post written too - I just wish the sale was on for a bit longer as I'm sure the Carnival posts will highlight something I've missed!

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Boo! Guess Who's Still Alive?

Yup, I'm still alive but getting my butt kicked in real life a bit. I had no idea it had been over a month since I posted here & probably has been that long since I logged into WoW too. Like many on my Twitter feed, I downloaded Neverwinter to 'have a look' and I've got hooked.

I haven't ended my WoW subscription though & I'm putting out a call for ideas. Having fallen so far behind with gearing & following storyline through all these fast patch releases, I feel kind of useless in game. My confidence isn't the greatest in the first place & being undergeared & underperforming doesn't really help that.

I also want to keep going here - gold making stories, hints, tips etc as I find them but even that has become stale for me. So I thought maybe I need to have a change of scenery, a plan of attack & try to follow it through but I don't quite know what!

My server is listed as medium population but I think the Alliance is low population & my auction house activities are kind of slow. I was thinking about 2 options - start a new character on a new high population server & see how things go or to transfer a level 85 or higher with professions & some gold & go from there.

I'm not looking for a leveling project though & I have done the new character/new server thing before so I pretty much discounted that idea as soon as I had it but I'm also a bit broke right now so could probably only transfer 1 character with gold & professions.

I'd love other ideas to consider though - are there any that you can think of that would provide good gold making information too or maybe you'd like to challenge me to try out a theory you have?

Once I get home (yes, I'm traveling again!), I hope to fire up my WoW enthusiasm again & get back to more regular posting. Have a great weekend y'all

Nev


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What's Been Selling This Week?

It's been a couple of weeks since I last posted my weekly sales pics and 2 very slow weeks they were too! This new job is really cutting into my energy to actually play the game right now, to the point where I don't even relist my auctions some evenings.  But I made a bit of an effort over the weekend & did a whole bunch of crafting so hopefully this current week will be a bit better.

As you can see, the Black Pepper Ribs & Shrimp continues to sell well even though I've picked up some competition on the other 4 types of +300 buff foods. I've managed to maintain the price at about 80g each & I have 2 or 3 regular customers.

week ending 22nd April

The Mysterious Fortune Cards were an after thought when I was crafting on the weekend - I saw someone barking in trade so I listed a whole bunch quickly & just watched him sell my cards for me! The best thing is, my cards were 15g-ish whereas his were at 12g but he'd listed them only in stacks of 20. I listed mine in singles & 5's and sold out in about 20 minutes!

I've stopped selling my Living Steel this week too - the prices have dropped below what I'm prepared to sell it for but not quite low enough to take a gamble on flipping it. I know the new weapons will be arriving soon but I've never had much luck with that kind of stuff so my risk-averseness (is that even a word? lol) has kicked in. I'm playing it safe with Living Steel Belt Buckles instead although again, the prices have dropped a little bit.

The crafted PvP gear is still selling fairly well & the Leather/Mail stuff is holding its price nicely. The Cloth armour isn't doing so well but as I've stocked up on Windwool Cloth all at less than 30g a stack, it's still making some nice profits.

The previous week (when I completely missed a post!) was perhaps my worst week in 6 months. I let my auctions lapse on the Wednesday evening & didn't log in again until late on Saturday. Add in toothache again this week & I'm not sure next weeks report is going to be much better unless the stuff I crafted over the weekend moves!

week ending 15th April

In other news, I did get an unexpected invitation one evening last week - Marcus Ty asked me to join him on episode 3 of his podcast, the Journal of Marcus Ty. It was great fun - we chatted for maybe 40 minutes before we even started recording & then another 30 minutes or so afterwards too! If you are new to goldmaking, I definitely recommend having a listen to Marcus - he tends to focus on teaching the basics & explaining stuff that I certainly take for granted. It seems common knowledge isn't actually that common these days!

Also, for those who are interested, the screen shots above come from a simple little addon called MySales which you can find on Curse.com. I know TSM Accounting has something similar but this one is just so neat & simple, it suits a screenshot better I think.

Image - Floating Market, Bangkok © Nev 2005

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Help Richard Harlow See Again - pt 2

A couple of weeks ago, I published a post about Richard Harlow aka @demonicric - a WoW player who is legally blind but still manages to play his warlock using various addons & a lot of determination. I made the mistake of including a bit of a rant in that post which didn't start the drama but sure as hell didn't help either! I have a feeling all the drama has turned some people away from this fundraising so I wanted to do a second post to highlight Richard's plight & ask everyone to find it in their hearts & pockets to make a donation now, regardless of the personalities involved in the drama that has been raging on Twitter.

Just this week, Richard made a guest appearance on Eviscerated Gaming Podcast Ep 45 - the guys over there are 100% behind Richard's attempt to raise funds for special medication which has the possibility to restore some or all of his vision so they devoted the whole show to his interview. No segments, no crazy news stories & no Electronic Education music either, just 36 minutes of talking to Richard about how all this happened, how he manages to play & more importantly, why this money needs to be raised.

There's a whole host of other podcasts highlighting Richards fundraising too - he made a short bumper explaining it all but I'm very behind in my podcast listening so I can't list them all, I'm sorry.

I first heard Richard talking about playing blind on Hearthcast a couple of years ago - I'm pretty sure it was one of the very first podcasts I ever listened too & I was fascinated by his courage & endurance then. Listening to EGP last night, I was reminded just how strong the human need to win is - he could have just accepted it & hidden himself away from most of the world but no, he is out there - fighting for others in similar or worse positions than himself & I'm sure he will win this battle or there is no justice in this world.

If you would like to donate - the fundraiser page is here

Help Richard Harlow See Again

There is a deadline for this too - just 19 days left but after a fundraising event last night which raised over $4000, he is so close to his target, I have great hope that if we all chip in, he will make it.

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What's Been Selling This Week?

As expected, my sales have slowed down this week as I've started a new job. I was hoping I could sneak onto the Remote AH now & then but in an open plan office with a boss sitting behind me, I haven't even tried! I was only cancelling/relisting once during the day anyway but I messed up my auction timings too so one evening I got home to find they had all expired!

Given that, I'm still quite happy with my sales this week - not quite the 'ramping up' I was hoping for but hey ho, life happens!

I've added screen shots of the top 2 pages of My Sales this week - I thought it might be interesting to see some of the stuff that didn't make page 1. Living Steel Belt Buckles are selling pretty well - in fact, faster than I can make the Living Steel so that market will dry up a bit for me soon. I was tempted to buy some Living Steel when it was around 400g mark but I decided against it for now - the belt buckle market isn't as high volume as I would like to be able to turn the Living Steels around quickly.

I've definitely picked up some competition in the 300+ buff food markets - I'm still dominating the Black Pepper Ribs & Shrimp but all the others have dropped off, I've tried buying up the cheap stuff but there's too much for now so I'll hang on to what I've got, pick up the super cheap stuff & just focus on the Black Pepper Ribs & Shrimp.

In making my Mysterious Fortune cards, I've ended up with loads of Starlight Ink. Yes, I know I could make Darkmoon Cards but I've never had much success with those & I don't have many Scrolls of Wisdom so I decided to sell some of the Inks - just to see what sort of market was there. Bear in mind that I'm only buying the very cheapest herbs at a max price of 30g a stack, so selling Starlight Ink for 70g each or more is nice, especially as my Mysterious Fortune Cards are selling themselves too.

By far my biggest gold making market right now is the crafted PvP gear - both my Tailor & Leatherworker are still doing their daily cooldowns for the new patterns & I'm adding 2 of each new item every day. I'm still managing to pick up Windwool Cloth & Exotic Leather for around 30g a stack & I have over 200 stacks of each right now so that will keep me supplied for a while longer!

The Flasks market this week has sucked! Very few evening opportunities at anything over 50g which is way too close to my crafting price so I've been hanging on to most of them for now. I did make a few leg armors this week, just to test the market. Once my Leatherworker has finished her daily work orders on her farm, then I'll definitely be back to planting Songbell Seeds for the Motes of Harmony.

Enchanting has been going well this week too although I have slipped a bit on crafting scrolls - I thought I could buy the enchanting vellum from the vendor on the Travellers Tundra Mammoth so I took my priest back out into the wilds to do some questing but then it was way too much hassle to get the vellums so I let it go for now! I keep forgetting to use my banker in Ironforge to send some in the mail too. D'oh!

So there we go - Nev's fairly casual approach to selling stuffs this week.

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Old Markets Gone Bad!

This month's topic for Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival is one that many of us can have a chat about. If you've been making gold in-game for a while, there are bound to be markets that have died on you or that you've given up on. I know I have a few but I've narrowed it down to just one market.

Name one of your historically profitable markets that is now defunct and what can we learn from that old market?

I think you can probably guess from my header image which market I chose for my topic this month - yup - vendor bought cooking recipes! I stumbled into this market within a month or two of starting to play WoW. The Pilgrims festival was in full swing as I started leveling my 2nd alt & accidently found the cooking recipe vendor in Stormwind when I wanted to add Cooking to her profession list. I had a little bit of gold then from selling turkeys I'd picked up whilst questing so off I went to the cooking trainer to get started. Except I didn't find the cooking trainer - I found the recipe vendor so I bought the recipes anyway, having no idea that I didn't really need them to level my cooking.

It was one of those serendipitous moments when I accidently bought 2 of the same recipe so I just threw it on the Auction House - I followed the existing prices & just undercut by a few copper. I think it earned me about 6g back then and it took me a few days to realise it as I was busy questing & leveling & didn't check my mail! Needless to say, I quickly ran back to the AH to check some of the other cooking recipe prices & a fledgling Goblin was born! I think I made maybe 500g from just those cooking recipes in that first foray into the AH.

Fast forward to the next Pilgrims festival a year later & I had a few more alts on the go & a level 80 too. I'd been dabbling in the AH but not in any serious way. I was in a busy guild, chatting, dungeons, raiding a bit all took up my game time so although I was never short of gold, I wasn't racking it up like some goldmakers. That inspiration/necessity came later & is a different story! So for this 2nd festival, I remembered the cooking recipes & looked up on Wowhead to see what other recipes might be out there. 

The Stormwind vendor was always the easiest to get to - my bank alt lived in Stormwind but my 2nd or 3rd alt was working through Outland - I'd regularly pop over to the Allerian Stronghold in Terokkar Forest & pick up 2 or 3 of each recipe & post them back to my bank alt. This year, I raised the prices & some of them were selling for 30-50g. I loved this market - the Stormwind set cost about 1g & sold for 15-30g each - all the time!

I can't remember all the other recipe vendors but I do know I made good gold from this market right up to the launch of Mists of Pandaria. The new Cooking trainer & leveling method for cooking means that most players now level their cooking just standing in Halfhill. I bought a set of recipes from the Stormwind guy just last week - I was curious to see if there was any market left for them. A few have sold but only for 2-5g now - still a very good profit & still a reasonable market to try for some starter cash but for me, it's just not time efficient enough now.

So what can we learn? Well I think the most obvious lesson is that some players are just plain lazy or downright stupid! Think of all the cheap vendor bought stuff that sells for much better prices on the Auction House - gold bloggers have been writing about them for ages but there are still players out there who have no idea you can buy say, crystal vials from a vendor! But don't forget, I'm not even talking about limited supply items - those I kind of understand buying off the Auction House, there's a time element to getting them & for some players, time is more precious than gold. Nope, I'm talking about unlimited supply items just like cooking recipes!

There is still a small market here - some players like to have all the recipes & some prefer to level a profession as they level their alt so they do it using the older recipes & materials they pick up along the way. It's not a market I'm bothering with now although if you are just getting started, it may be worth a try. A 1g investment could net you 50-100g profit even if you have to relist them a few times.

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What's Been Selling This Week?

Wow! Monday really does roll round fast these days doesn't it? It's time for this week's round up of what's been selling on my server although it's much the same as last week for now.

The week started off really well in the 300+ buff food markets but I've gained some competition over the weekend. I'm pretty sure they aren't making as much profit as I am though as I am checking the raw materials supply 5-6 times a day & buying up everything below my buy price. I'm up to 107 Ironpaw Tokens on my Rogue alt who is about 5 token swaps away from level 86 now. Almost all of the level has been via Ironpaw Token swaps and a little bit of pet battling so you can see just how much raw material swapping I've been doing!

I've finally started shifting some of the Living Steel Belt Buckles & a fair few Flasks this week. I still haven't converted one of my Alchemists to Potion Master - both are transmute masters so I really have to watch my Flask & herb prices to make real profits there. I did manage to grab 70-ish Golden Lotus at 28g each though so that has helped a great deal.

I also managed to get a whole bunch of Silkweed this week - with the ink price calculated at 5g per ink but glyphs still not doing well for me, I converted all the ink to Blackfallow Ink and made a shedload of Mysterious Fortune Cards. I have a little competition now & then but I'm holding my price to about 16g per card & I'm not barking in trade either.

Before Patch 5.2 went live, I was using my Tillers farm for Songbell Seeds & Motes of Harmony but now I'm doing some work orders to save time on reputations. I made 2 epic pieces and as you can see above, I finally sold the Gloves. That was a nice little boost to my profits this week.

But by far the biggest boost has been the new PvP Crafted Dreadful Gladiator items from Tailoring & Leatherworking. I'm picking up Windwool Cloth for a maximum of 30g a stack which equals 4 Bolts of Windwool Cloth which means that the most expensive Tailored PvP item to craft costs just 45g. As you can see above - I'm selling for way above that price!

The leatherworking items are showing huge profits too & holding their prices better than the Tailoring ones. I snagged 150+ stacks of Exotic Leather for 25-30g & also picked up 40 Magnificent Hides for 40g each. Even if I make my own Magnificent Hide using the non-cooldown method, my maximum material cost is around 75g so Nev is a happy girl when that stuff sells for 700g-ish!

I mentioned last week that I was going to dip into the enchant market - well as you can see above, only 2 different enchants made my top sellers list but I am happy to report that out of the 30 scrolls I made, they did all sell & at a nice profit too. I made a load more this morning and focused more tightly on the highest priced ones. It will be interesting to see where they land in my selling report next week.

The Ghost Iron Ore price on my server is slowing climbing too - over 55g a stack usually and as I haven't really explored the gems market yet, I'm wary of spending too much there for now. My Warrior Blacksmith is just fresh dinged 90 so she's not ready for Isle of Thunder yet to get the Plate PvP patterns & the prices on the Contenders Plate has been dropping too. She also doesn't have many Spirits of Harmony to buy the older Contenders patterns so I'm kinda stuck there for now. It's on my to-do list though - if I can bear to play her much!

Tomorrow I start my new job so I'll be a bit more restricted in my AH activities for a while - at least until I get to know what the score is as far as internet use is concerned. I'm pretty sure it will be a lunchtime only thing so I'll just have to make sure I'm super organised for my evenings.

Hope y'all have a profitable week, have fun xxx

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Ironpaw Tokens - Yet More Thoughts!

Do you ever have a subject that ties you up in knots & you just can't seem to get your head around it? Then, when you finally think you've understood it, someone says something & you're back to going round in circles again? Yup - the Ironpaw Token shuffle is my achilles heel right now! Ok, so last time I wrote about Ironpaw Tokens, I thought I'd finally got my head around it but after chitchatting with Cold, I realised I had still missed something!

I wrote that I was 'fixing' my Ironpaw Token cost at around 30g so I knew my base cost was a maximum of 24g per single +300 buff food. With my own tunnel vision firmly in place, I was merrily buying all meat/fish under 1.50g each and converting 90% of them to Ironpaw Tokens then using those tokens to buy a bag of 5 of the specific meat/fish that I needed. It seems that Mushan Ribs & Raw Tiger Meat are the most easily available at low prices & as I didn't want to hold loads of stacks of those, I was converting the Mushan Ribs to Tokens too!

Cold pointed out that by using my Ironpaw Tokens to later buy  Mushan Ribsx5 from the bag, I was effectively paying 120g a stack! Ouch! Needless to say, that woke me up a bit!

So I've changed my tactics yet again. I am still buying every meat/fish for under 1.50g  and if I get lucky, vegetables for under 30s each to convert to Ironpaw Tokens BUT if I'm short on my specific required meat, fish or vegetables for crafting then I check the Auction House for any of those under 6g each (or 1.20g for vegetables). This maintains my 30g maximum Token cost even though I'm sometimes using the raw mats rather than tokens.

This way, I'm almost never short of materials to cook with - either by converting Tokens or by buying the correct items to cook the buff foods with. I'm still buying loads of Mushan Ribs under the 1.50g cut-off point but I'm saving more stacks as they are rather than converting them. By expanding my cut-off point to 6g per specific type of fish though, I'm not having to use up my precious Tokens to Buy Giant Mantis Shrimp or Emperor Salmon (for the Black Pepper Ribs or Mogu Fish Stew).

Hopefully I've got it sorted in my head now! I have to say I love this market, I'm almost the only seller of Black Pepper Ribs & Shrimp & I've got the price up to 78g per item. I can barely keep the Auction House stocked even at that price. The Mogu Fish Stew is running second but it's a fair way behind, selling at around 55g per item. I have a bit of competition for the other +300 buff foods but they are listing them at 25g each. Needless to say, I'm buying those up - it's only just above my base cost & it saves me using my own tokens for the Rice Flour & saves me lots of time too!

As an added bonus from all this converting - my level 85 Rogue is almost level 86 now too - the hand-in for the 'Replenishing The Pantry' quest gives 25k XP per turn in so if this market stays profitable for me, I may never have to quest on my Rogue! Woop Woop!

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Nev's First Ever Public Rant!

It's not often I have a little rant about something but this morning on Twitter I saw a tweet go out to help one of our own fellow WoW players regain his sight by raising funds for his treatment. His disease is so rare that the authorities in his area won't pay for the treatment. I'm talking about @DemonicRic aka @Richard_Harlow, a young man I first heard on Hearthcast - talking about how he manages to play World of Warcraft although he is legally blind.

So why did that make me rant? Well, with all the excitement of Blizzcon being announced recently, several fairly well known players with livestreams, podcasts, forums, networks etc are raising money to go to Blizzcon & it's all over my Twitter feed. I am NOT pointing a finger at any one person - there are several going on - I also have nothing against them personally - I applaud their efforts & wish them well - I just wish they'd take a break from raising their own cash & perhaps point their followers to Richards cause. Maybe this post will make them aware of the situation if they don't follow Richard on Twitter.

Having tried to raise money for Breast Cancer Care last year when I was hit with breast cancer myself, I was hoping that my little bit of 'fame' in the gold making world would help me raise just $1500 for such a good cause. I ended up raising just $440 even after some great support from fellow bloggers & being able to talk about it on a couple of podcasts too. At the time I was raising money, there was a fundraising effort going on to raise cash for a CD of original hunter music - that raised $1000's. I know the Hunter community doesn't know me but it still kind of frustrated me.

Now we have a similar situation - a guy who is always positive, actively working to benefit disabled gamers of all types needs some help. I know he's trying to raise a huge sum of money but that shouldn't stop us all dipping in our pockets - even $5 (the cost of a raffle ticket) makes a difference, especially if enough of us donate.

DONATE HERE NOW!

By my rough calculations, those raffles going on have raised over $4000 already - just how much does it take to get to Blizzcon from inside the USA? That would be enough for me to get there from the UK!

I know there have been arguments & disagreements about advertising on blogs, paid for guides etc but at least that is upfront & is obviously there to make money. I have advertising too - it makes me almost nothing to be truthful, but then I don't push it & I don't have my own guide to sell. I'm not perfect but other than my charity fundraising last year, I have never asked for donations & I never will even though I honestly could do with some help myself right now!

I'll probably surprise a few people with this rant - I'm not known for ranting after all but this really galls me. If you can afford $5 for a raffle ticket for a chance of winning an electronic/virtual pet or mount, can't you dip your hand in your pocket for $5 for Richard's medical bill? You could help save his sight.

What's Been Selling This Week?

Now that I am ramping up my gold making activities again, I thought it might be interesting to restart my What's Been Selling posts. I'm not expecting any major surprises to show up in my top sales but then it wouldn't be a surprise if it was expected would it? So it's probably just going to be a recap but you may find some inspiration for new markets to look at or just find comfort in how bad my sales figures compared to your own! I'm not the most efficient gold maker so my numbers are never going to be as impressive as some bloggers out there.

If you've been reading here for a while, it will come as no surprise that my best selling item this last week has been Black Pepper Ribs & Shrimp - the +300 strength buff food. With the release of the new raid in patch 5.2 just a few weeks ago & the opening of The Isle of Thunder still in full progress on most servers, I should have known really but it still caught me unprepared for the sheer quantity of sales on my quiet little server!

Unsurprisingly then, Mogu Fish Stew (the +300 intellect buff food) is also in my top sales this week as are Flasks. Sadly my alchemists are both transmute masters so my flask profits are based purely on buying materials as cheaply as possible. I did score 60 Golden Lotus for just 25g each a week or two ago which has helped keep my costs down. There's a fair bit of competition in the Flasks market & the price can drop to just 35g per flask so I don't list any on those days.

Living Steel & Living Steel Belt Buckle are mainstays of my gold making - I always make my daily Living Steel on both Alchemists and built up a bit of stock whilst my Blacksmith was still leveling. Now that she can make the Belt Buckles, I'm selling much less plain Living Steel and focusing more on Belt Buckles as the sale price is usually higher. This market is pretty volatile though - just yesterday, Living Steel was down to 375g & tomorrow it could be back up to 550g.

I've also been doing my daily Leatherworking Magnificent Hide cooldown to get the new PvP patterns & I make 2 of each new piece straightaway. I check to see which have sold overnight & make new pieces to keep my stock at 2 for each PvP item. I do the same thing on my Tailor with her Imperial Silk cooldown too and as you can see above, the prices are holding up fairly well.

I'm also still selling Mammoth Mining Bags although I have a competitor now who seems to think they should be priced at 150g-ish when I've been selling them for months at 375g. I did buy her out a couple of times but she just keeps on listing so now I've decided to buy all the Borean Leather & starve her of materials! It's working but slowly - I've got the price back up to around the 250g mark this week. She may have done me a small favor though - at 375g, I was only selling 1 or 2 a week but at 250g, I've sold 4 this week & 8 last week. Maybe I was being a little bit greedy but it is a good reminder that taking a little bit less profit per item may result in increased sales thereby increasing overall profits.

Just yesterday I crafted a whole bunch of enchant scrolls so next week, we'll see how they did! I also made up a bunch of Rich Purple Silk Shirts after snagging a bunch of Silk Cloth for just 4g a stack. I price these at 79g each but again, I may drop the price a little to see if I end up selling more.

Plans for this week include going back to some old favorite markets & seeing if they are still viable, keeping up with buff food production & keeping a close eye on the enchanting scrolls market. Have a prosperous week my friends xxx

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Time To Get Back To Some Serious Gold Making

I've had a quiet couple of weeks in game - real life got a bit too busy for me to do much other than just maintain my auction house activities. But it's quietened down a bit now so it's time to get down to some more serious gold making efforts! I'm planning on being a very busy bee over the next few weeks so hold on to your hats people! lol

Whilst I may not always agree with how Zerohour phrases his posts, I do agree with much of what he says. I guess I'm a gentler soul & I've always worked on the basis that sugar is better than vinegar! After his first post or two, I wanted to hate him but how can you hate a guy who talks so much sense! Some of his stuff hit a nerve with me & I've been doing a little analysis of my gold making style. I realised that I am very risk averse so taking a gamble on flipping high cost items has never been my thing but in my safe little world, I've also not been buying much more than what I really need to craft stuff for the next day or two.

His post about stockpiling (or Just in Time crafting) made me realise that I have all this gold just sitting there & not really working for me - in keeping my 'costs' down, I actually wasn't investing in future profits either. It can be easy to get tunnel vision and just keep doing what works for you & that's what I think I've been doing.

So over the last week or two, I have been buying up raw materials like crazy. The cheap stuff has been there all along, I just didn't want to buy too much. Not anymore though! I am now the proud owner of almost 200 stacks of Exotic Leather, 150 stacks of Ghost Iron Ore & 60 stacks of Bolts of Windwool Cloth not to mention about 40 Ironpaw Tokens & 20 stacks each of Mushan Ribs, Raw Tiger Steak & Raw Crab Meat!

Now as stockpiling goes, I know that still isn't that much stuff but I'm working on it! With the leather at 17-25g, I can make Magnificent Hides for a cost of 63g by using the non-cooldown way (50 leather = 1 hide) & with Magnificent Hides selling during the week for 100g or more, I can still make a nice chunk of change without even crafting anything else! I am doing the daily Magnificent Hide cooldown too though - got to get those PvP patterns discovered after all!

The Ghost Iron Ore is fuelling my 2 transmute spec Alchemists for their daily Living Steel cooldown & I'm also prospecting stacks on my Jewelcrafter - making rings/necks to disenchant & keeping my daily discovery of new cuts going too.

The Windwool Cloth is fuelling my daily Imperial Silk craft & as I discover more PvP patterns, I'm making sure I craft those too. Unfortunately, whilst the leather/mail PvP gear is maintaining its price, the cloth PvP gear is dropping rapidly - some pieces are as low as 90g!

I'd forgotten how much of a buzz it can be to open my mailbox to 10k+ gold overnight. I've been poodling along since early last year really and it shows in my gold balance. I'm almost back to my 1 million gold balance & if the Amani Dragonhawk I bought to flip sells soon (negotiations are in progress!) then I'll be a happy camper once more.

I'm going to start doing my weekly 'What's Been Selling' posts again. I had a lot of positive comments on those & I think they can be helpful to kickstart your own ideas. I've got a lot to relearn over the next few weeks & a fair bit of exploring & testing some new markets so hopefully my posting frequency should return to normal service shortly!


Bumble Bee © Arty Allsorts & available as a notecard in my Etsy shop!

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Yet Another Cooking & Ironpaw Tokens Post!

It's been a while since I created my Ironpaw Token spreadsheet & made it available to my readers but I have to admit, I've been slacking! Not only have I not been doing much with the cooking materials, I haven't really been very focused on gold making at all. But a week or two ago, I read Zerohour's post about his approach to Ironpaw Tokens & it struck a chord with me so I thought I'd have a go at something similar on my server.

To do so though, I needed to really understand what his spreadsheet was showing us. I got there eventually - it seems that getting my head around the variables is taking me longer each time I tackle this Ironpaw Token stuff! Must be getting old or something :P

Anyway, I discovered that my server has some nice inexperienced Auctioneers who post the various meats & fish for silly low prices so I initially set my top value per stack at 25 gold. I've since been buying everything  (well, meat & fish) under that price & converting much of it to Ironpaw Tokens via the Bundle of Groceries & Restocking the Refrigerator quest in Halfhill.

I've also been concentrating on the 300+ buff foods (mainly Black Pepper Ribs & Shrimp & the Mogu Fish Stew) as the various Banquets are selling for only 10-20g each on my server. Each of the 300+ buff foods has 4 ingredients - by fixing my Ironpaw Token price at 25g per token, each recipe costs just 100g to cook and as each 'craft' makes 5 items, that's a base cost of 20g per 300+ buff food.

The Black Pepper Ribs & Shrimp I have been listing at 58-65g & they are selling out quickly. The Mogu Fish Stew is slightly lower priced at 35-45g but I'm creeping the price up on those & they are still selling well.

What I'm finding is that the Raw Tiger Meat & the Raw Turtle Meat tend to be the items listed cheaply most often along with Krasarang Paddlefish.  I'm keeping a few stacks of the meats in reserve so that's actually 1 less Ironpaw Token I need to cook the Sea Mist Rice Noodles & the Chun Tian Spring Rolls.

I haven't gone into full 'dominate the market' mode just yet - I'm still testing the markets. I also don't have a huge stock of Ironpaw Tokens but with 2 alts doing the Tillers dailies as well as buying all the cheap stuff, my inventory is bound to increase over the next week or two. I've also increased my 'base' price per stack of meat/fish to 30g as there just wasn't enough supply under that price. It means that each single food has a maximum price of 24g each & with my sell price at 60g-ish, that's still plenty of profit for my liking!

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What To Do With My Sunsong Ranch?

I can't believe it's been a month already but yup, it's that time again! This month's topic over at Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival is very timely given that Patch 5.2 has just landed & changed quite a few bits on the Tillers Farm.

What Are You Currently Doing With Your Sunsong Ranch / Ranches?

Are you growing crops to level cooking skills? Growing raw materials? Doing the Ironpaw Shuffle? Abandoned the farm all together?

If you've been reading a while, you may remember I did quite a few posts about the Farm & the Ironpaw Shuffle too. I even created a spreadsheet to share with you but what have I been doing since then? Well, to be perfectly honest, not as much as I could have!

I only have 1 farm with all 16 plots available and that is on my Leatherworking Paladin. She's been growing mainly Songbell Seeds to get a regular supply of Motes of Harmony whilst I've been leveling my Warrior & DK. I've been making some of the Epic gloves which use 6 Spirits of Harmony and as they can take a little while to sell, in between times, I've been making a selection of the 3 leg armours. They've all been selling but not very quickly & not in large numbers. The gold has been quite nice though - anywhere from 5-8k for the epics & usually around the 700-800g for the leg armors.

When I originally wrote about farming & it was all new & shiny, I started farms on 3 of my level 85's - just the basic farm but they were all planting vegetables that I needed for leveling my Cooking. Once I'd maxed all the Ways, I kind of forgot about those mini-farms. I'm not planning on leveling those alts for a while yet so I guess their farms will just sit there for now.

Just in the last week or so though, I have been doing the Tillers dailies on my Warrior & my DK - both now have 8 plot farms & should hit 12 plots each this weekend (unless I get sidetracked yet again!). My plan for these 2 farms is to provide Spirits of Harmony for the Blacksmith and a few Spirits for the JC to make the 2 pets then I'll swap the DK's farm to either Enigma Seeds (depending on Golden Lotus & flasks prices) or one of the other 'special' seeds depending on my raw materials requirements. I'll consider using the new Work Orders too although I'm not too worried about most of the reputations for these two alts.

I do love the new seed bags though! Planting 4 plots all at once is just so much easier and along with the Plough (that I eventually got around to buying!) it does make farming just a little less irritating. I still hate those damn birds though.

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High Society Top Hat & Rhinestone Sunglasses - Two Rare Items To Watch For

Way back near the beginning of Cataclysm, I first learned about the new High Society Top Hat which was supposed to be a new recipe for Tailors to make. I didn't have a max level Tailor at the time but the bit that caught my interest was the materials. It was going to use Polished Brass Rivets - an item only found by pick-pocketing or occasional random drops. As a very newbie gold maker back then, I set off to grind some mobs & do some serious picking of pockets with my Rogue. Sadly the recipe never made it into game & with the arrival of Mists of Pandaria, those lovely Polished Brass Rivets turned grey in my bank.

So why am I telling you this sad tale today? Well, I was randomly mooching through the Auction House earlier this week & the Rhinestone Sunglasses caught my eye. Listed at 40,000g, I had no idea what they were or where they came from so off I went to Wowhead. It turns out that they are now a very rare drop from the Blingtron 4000 and for the few players who have been lucky enough to find some in the Blingtron 4000 Gift package, they are selling for very high prices. They aren't transmoggable but they don't bind on equip either so you can safely use them & still transfer them to a different alt later.

The Rhinestone Sunglasses are also listed as crafted by Jewelcrafters so I thought to myself - where do I get the recipe? Back to Wowhead & reading the comments for the Sunglasses recipe, there was mention of the High Society Top Hat. It turns out that both these recipes have made it into game but with such a low World Drop rate that very few have been found. The recipe for the Top Hat has been changed to just 4 Dreamcloth & some vendor materials but on top of it being a super low drop chance, it only drops for Tailors! The Rhinestone Sunglasses recipe will only drop for Jewelcrafters and is also a super low drop rate.

Out of curiosity, I popped over to The Undermine Journal (EU) just to see how many of either of these items are available. Imagine my delight when I saw the Top Hat listed on my server at 200g! I have never logged into game so fast in my life! Luckily, the cheap Top Hat was still available so of course, I snatched it up straightaway!

There was another listed at 40,000g so I relisted my bargain too. I really don't care if I don't sell it though - my Gnome looks so cute in her Top Hat! Sadly the Top Hat is bind on equip but not transmoggable so anyone with the Recipe could make quite a killing on this one. I would put it in the same kind of category as the Rich Purple Silk Shirt although much more expensive of course.

So, that's 2 very rare drop recipes to add to your snatch list. With the Sunglasses dropping off Blingtron gifts, they may not hold their value quite so well but as The Undermine Journal is showing only 58 Rhinestone Sunglasses available across the whole of the EU servers & only 33 High Society Top Hats, I'd take a bet on their prices staying pretty high for the foreseeable future!

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