The Worth of a Kingdom.

I started a 20g 10-deep glyph wall. I had a few intentions for it with respect to the market and competition, but after posting my wall I realized just how much time I had put into my glyph empire. Each milling, each crafting, each posting and mailbox clear--I was spending more time on the AH than I was playing the game. I hadn't quested on my alts in weeks, only sat in LFD while milling herbs. I was even milling while reading (my husband has started me on the Wheel of Time series).

It was time to sell.

With over 3k glyphs still on the AH, this was the contents of my kingdom:



It doesn't look like so much when it's across multiple toon and bank tabs. This was a little intimidating to see.

I spent a few more hours calculating the value of everything and sold it at a discount to my GM for 120k.

It felt a little weird logging in today. My mouse hovered over my glyph poster on my main account for a moment before I logged onto my other bank toon. I realized I didn't even need the second copy of WoW that I'd started yet. This is going to take some getting used to.

Panic Attacks: Making the Most of Others'.

Everyone is stocking supplies for Cataclysm. New levelers mean new professions which require old materials. New gear will be needed, new bags, new glyphs; many goblins have guild banks full of the stuff. Current buyers are slowing down and prices are beginning to decline BUT markets have not stopped completely. Remember when I said Don't Panic! ?

Now is a good time to watch your Resale list for goodies. Things I've been finding this week:

*ilvl 200 crafted epics - Folks are still leveling their professions as well as their alts; if you can find them for the price of an Abyss Crystal, all the better.
*Patterns and Schematics - Dark Iron Bomb, Ornate Khorium Rifle, Swift Boots, Green Lumberjack Shirt -- These aren't rare, per se, but a collector somewhere will be interested and I've only paid a few silver for each of them.
*Frozen Orbs - 6 for a Crusader Orb, 4 for a Runed Orb, and 1 each for Eternals -- check to see if converting them could bring some profit.
*Flasks and Feasts - These will be useful for leveling and will be cheap as folks try to get rid of their remaining stock. Every little buff helps!
*Crafting Materials - Cloth, leather, cobalt ore, eternals; time to start stocking up!

May all your competitors panic!

Turkey Time: Pack-Farming

Sorry for the lack of posts. Organizing in reality makes me want to jump into the game for some non-cleaning time! Oh, wait... my gbanks need to be organized, too. /sigh

Today I would like to share my method for farming packs of mobs as a Turkey. This has worked especially well while farming for those soon-to-be-extinct Razzashi Hatchling pets but will work any time the mobs you are farming are in tightly-packed groups.

Recommended Glyphs:
Glyph of Thorns
Glyph of Starfall
Glyph of Focus
NOT Glyph of Typhoon (the knockback is useful for interrupting casters)

Process
1) Position yourself outside of aggro range.
2) Cast Rejuvenation and begin running into the center of the group you intend to kill.
3) Shift into Moonkin form while running.
4) Cast Barkskin and Thorns just as you reach melee range.
5) As soon as you get into the center, cast Starfall and back away during the GCD. This allows you to force all mobs in front of you so you're able to dodge.
6) Cast Hurricane and center it on the group.
7) Be prepared with Typhoon, using it to interrupt casters (assuming you do NOT have it glyphed).
8) Moonfire anything that is still alive.
9) Loot.

With a little practice you can make steps 1-6 seamlessly utilize every GCD. Since Barkskin and Starfall are on a one-minute cooldown, you can either wait for them to come up or, if the beefiness-to-squishiness ratio is high enough, simply continue but ignore Starfall and Thorns for the next pull.

Alternating the two allows me to clear every pack with raptors in ZG in less than 10 minutes (including travel time and looting).

Find of the Day
Yellow Lumberjack Shirt (2) - 6g each

Of Cloth and (Cartel) Kingdoms.

There has been an official declaration that portions of the Insane in the Membrane achievement will not be obtainable come Cata. There is no word yet on whether those who have completed those portions ahead of time will be able to complete the remaining portions or not but this muddy water is not stopping the truly Insane last-minute achievement seekers.

One of the requirements of Insanity is to be Honored with the Bloodsail and Exalted with all of the Steamwheedle Cartel, each the sworn enemy of the other. Contrary to popular belief, the two reputations do not have to be held concurrently in order to obtain credit, significantly decreasing the amount of grind this portion of the achievement has historically been.

Since most of the Insane-seekers are also working toward the Exalted achievement, it is far better to gain the Bloodsail rep first and lose it in favor of the Exalted reputations with Steamwheedle Cartel. This requires slaying Booty Bay guards and NPCs until Honored with the Bloodsail is reached and then turning in repeatable quests with each of the goblin cities to repair rep to Neutral before heading back to the pirate or DM grind.

Those who are Bloodsail Admirals but not Insane-seekers may also be interested in repairing their reputation now: Beta's Booty Bay has level 85 elite guards who crushing-blowed my poor turkey for 17k worth of damage a swing.

Each city has a different quest and each quest requires 40 cloth and 4 of some type of trade good (runecloth and coal for Everlook, for example). Each turn-in provides 500 rep for that city and 250 spillover rep for the other three up to Netural. Getting your first city to neutral will have your other three halfway there, so half as much cloth is needed for the next city, etc. In the end you'll need

~ City 1: 84 turn-ins (3360 cloth)
~ City 2: 42 turn-ins (1680 cloth)
~ City 3: 21 turn-ins (840 cloth)
~ City 4: 11 turn-ins (440 cloth)

for a total of 6320 cloth. Everlook requires Runecloth, Gadgetzan requires Mageweave, Booty Bay requires Silk, Ratchet requires Linen. In the end, this is a lot of cloth required to get back to neutral with all four cities.

Of course, a true goblin would sell you the cloth required to get back into their favor, right? Prices on my server have already increased drastically for these cloth types due to normal buyouts of the lower-priced stuff and there is very little left on the AH at all. Now is the time to consider offloading your cloth.

You can start by sending me some while I try to repair my own reputation.

YMMV.

First off, today is Just My Two Coppers' Blogger Carnival! Be sure to check out some of the other great WoW blogs and help us grow as a community. Hopefully you'll learn from our mistakes before they become your own!

I've been hanging out in JMTC's IRC channel lately. They have a webchat interface so folks can pop in and out as they please and since pre-Glyphmas there has been an increase in new faces appearing. Some are great new additions to the chat, some ask to be spoon-fed information that is already on the forums (pssssst... go read the forums!) and others ask for confirmation that a gold-making method will work.

My response to this last part is always: YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary)

There are some safe bets, like Saronite Ore for less than 62s50c per piece (smelted into Saronite Bars, a stack vendors for 25g). If Eternal Earth is less than 5g per piece and green-quality gems (Chalcedony, Sun Crystal, Bloodstone, and Huge Citrine) are less than 2g per piece, you can always craft necklaces and rings that vendor for a small amount of profit.

Everything else is really server-dependent. Sure, we can tell you that something worked great in our own experience but it may not necessarily work for you. Just like the United States and France have their own economies, so do Moon Guard and Bloodhoof. The only way to know how well something will work is to know your economy and, since many goblins are secretive about which server they play on, your chances of finding information tailored to your needs is not so great. You'll have to figure things out on your own but remember that with great rewards comes great risk.

If you want to start understanding your server's economy, look at what your server base is like. PvP servers love PvP gear and RP servers love shirts; servers with a lot of progression will need more flasks and servers with a lot of altoholics will need more bags. Be sure to do your daily (at least!) auction house scans if you're using Auctioneer. Watch how quickly different types of goods sell and be wary of those that languish for a long while. These are just guidelines, of course, but hopefully it will be a start.

Here's hoping you get great mileage to the (gold) gallon!

Single-Wide or Double-Wide (Posting).

We've all seen it: someone undercuts us by 1 copper with not just a single post but with two, three, sometimes five-glyph-wide posts. Is there a method to their madness? Maybe. There are certainly advantages and disavantages to posting multiple glyphs while undercutting wars abound.

Single-Wide
Most goblins post a single glyph when undercutting. Someone else undercuts us, so we post another to undercut them, creating layers of posts.

Pros
~Fewer glyphs are tied up on the AH at any given time.
~Can undercut more often without having to maintain high stocks of glyphs or cancel as often.
~There is the potential that if enough sell the lower boundary price will rise.

Cons
~If yours sells and you don't post a fresh one fast enough, your competitor gets a sale at a higher price.


Double-wide (or Triple-, Quadruple-, etc.)
Some folks will post two or more glyphs at a time when undercutting. This is not the same as walling (posting multiple glyphs at a particular price point so that you can either annoy your competition or not have to babysit the auction house).

Pros
~If one of your glyphs sell, there is another of yours waiting to be sold.
~It can be used to intimidate your competition by showing off how much more supply you have.

Cons
~More of your glyphs are tied up while on the AH.
~You increase the amount of time you're waiting at the mailbox when your glyphs have expired.
~Unless sales are pouring in, the lower boundary price has a smaller opportunity for rising.

What is good when?

For constant undercutting, I personally stick to single-wide posting. Undercutting remains fierce enough on my server that being able to undercut more often and possibly lose a sale in between is better than spending so much time canceling and waiting for the mailbox to refresh. Before I go to bed, however, I will always post a double-wide undercut. If I'm undercut after I log out for the evening, there is nothing I can do anyhow, but I have an extra layer in case I do manage to get some sales overnight.

If you have more control over your server's market or your competition is less vicious in undercutting, constant double-wide undercuts may work for you. If you're stuck fighting against a bot... I'm so sorry.

Don't Panic!

I was prepared. With 25+ of every glyph, thousands of ink and herbs in reserve, and a last-minute buyout of pretty much everything glyph-related from the AH, I posted my wall of glyphs right before the servers dropped and dreamed of gold caps.

Two days after 4.0.1 hit I'd only made 20k in sales and was still in the red. The day-one reports of 50k, 150k, 300k profits by some of my fellow peers was like adding salt to the wound. What had I done wrong?

I kept going through the motions, buying out herbs below 40g a stack and glyphs below 10g. I lowered my threshold, lowered my fallback, started undercutting every 30 minutes, even bought out everything below 20g to try and reset the market--nothing seemed to help. My dreams shattered, I was ready to throw everything I had into a 10g wall in order to punish the other scribes on the server.

Suddenly, a glimmer of hope appeared in my mailbox: six different glyphs sold at my fallback. I rushed to Iressa and Fanin, begging them to show me how my wares were faring. A handful of other glyphs were all selling, many of them at my fallback value. My competition was running dry and, five days after the patch released, I started to gain control of the market.

When I'd thought that my competition had won, it ends up my server is just a little slow. Many of those who pulled in 50k or more on the first day found their sales dropped sharply after whereas mine have been only steadily declining. Who would have thought a more laid-back server would have more laid-back purchasing patterns?

Two and a half weeks later, I'm at 200,000g in sales and 160,000g in profit.

The moral of the story? Don't Panic. What happened on one server will not necessarily happen on yours. Oh, and don't buy out *everything* below 20g or you'll end up with six stacks of Glyph of Voidwalker. No one wants that shit.

Next time I'll be sure to bring my towel.