I’m a saver in game and out. I much prefer my money to sit in the bank accumulating than spend it. I don’t feel safe unless I have at minimum a certain balance. After all you never know what might happen. Therefore, it’s not really much of a surprise when I realised the other day that I was applying those same beliefs in warcraft. How then can a committed saver buy the mount that they’ve wanted ever since they saw it? I’m talking of course about the motorbike.
I decided to conduct a little experiment. In the past I’ve used the auction house with great reluctance. I’ve levelled all but one profession to max (and that one will be max soon) to try and end any association with that money pit. However, it’s hard! Farming all the materials needed for whatever is needed takes boat loads of time. I’m quite an impatient person and my saver tendencies have clashed with my impatience a time or two. This has resulted in a couple of impulse buys which I’ve regretted almost as soon as it’s too late.
Anyway, I read WoW Insider compulsively, the only columns I skip are for classes I have no interest in. So, I’ve always read Gold Capped and pondered the possibilities but I never could quite be bothered to work out how to get started, there was always something else that was more pressing in game. However, I really want that motorbike and was contemplating cutting deep into my gold store for it. I don’t want to do that though. I like having a comfortable amount of gold so I decided to see if I could make enough to get that bike.
First thing I did was download Auctionator. On a previous occasion when I thought I might try and play the market I’d downloaded Auctioneer. Comparing the two is like comparing oil and water. Auctioneer was buggy, incomprehensible and quite frankly put me off completely; Auctionator is easy to use and understand and hasn’t crashed my system yet. I then looked back through previous Gold Capped columns to try and find a starting market. I read that Mysterious Fortune Card’s were a safe bet. I checked on The Undermine Journal and sure enough the price of them was twice the mats cost. I had my scribe make a few hundred and put them up there. They didn’t sell.
Here is the first lesson and one I should already have learnt as it’s also rule 3 “Don’t believe what you’re told. Double check”. I looked up the price of Fortune Cookies and found that there were triple the price of the cards. They also sell a lot better. I also read on Gold Capped that Ebonsteel Belt Buckle’s were good. Now, this seems to be true. I’m in a bit of an undercutting war right now but I’ve sold 10 in less than 24 hours for twice or more what the mats cost. So far so good.
It’s still not enough though, and despite my mixed results with the fortune cards, Inscription still seemed to come heavily recommended in this gold making game. I looked on my character profile on battle.net and found much to my excitement that I knew all but a dozen glyphs. Here’s the second lesson “Not everything is as it seems”. Inscription doesn’t show up right on battle.net much to my disappointment. I soon learnt that there were a hundred or more different glyphs that I don’t know and researching has a cooldown. You can research both minor and northrend at the same time but that’s it, two a day. While I know some glyphs already I don’t know any of the real money spinners so Inscription is off the table for the time being.
I then turned my attention to Jewelcrafting. After a small bit of trouble understanding The Undermine Journal’s way of displaying the information I got started. Here’s when I realised the biggest mistake I’d made and the most important lesson from this 24 hour experiment. I hadn’t kept records. How am I supposed to know how much I’ve made? I’ve bought materials and had sold auctions, got things listed, got things in my bags. Gold is flowing in and out with no regulation. I can estimate but that’s all I can do. So far I think I’ve spent around 7k on materials, until I’ve sold everything I can’t even begin to estimate what I might make despite already having sold things.
All told for a 24 hour experiment I’ve learnt a fair bit. I’m going to see if I can properly apply those lessons now. Therefore the 24 hour experiment has ended and the true gold making game begins. If or when I make enough for that dream motorbike I’ll make another post. I’m sure I’ll have learnt a lot more by then and made just as many mistakes.
Oh I _so_ recall being in your shoes about getting gold ^^ I spent countless hours playing the game of AH during wotlk, mostly after I’d gone through my daily runs for emblems in hc dungs since I didn’t raid at the time.
I use auctioneer though (I’ve tried auctionator too, but switched becasue I didn’t understand it, guess we’re all different 😉 Or to use a swedish expresion that I can’t think of an english version of “Smaken är som baken”. Which would translate to something like “The taste is like the bum” which sounds weird, but it implies that it’s divided so the meaning is that everyone has different taste) since I like that interface the most.
Anywho, I just wanted to point out that as far as I know you still can’t research all glyphs. I try for time to time, but I’ve researched all I can and I don’t have nearly everyone in game. There are still a lot (the ones that sell for the most ofc =P) that has to be learned via Book of Glyph Mastery so as of now, if you want to go that route you’ll need to farm a lot of wotlk dungeons/raids. The droprate is really low though, I think it’s averaging 0.4% or something, which is why it still sells for a couple of hundred on AH -.-
Your posts do make a good read btw, I know I told you after reading the Mists Monday, but it needs to be pointed out more I think ^^ I haven’t read any of the swtor posts since I don’t play the game, but I might read some anyway since I think you have a nice was of presenting your thoughts (even in the parts that might be a bit of a ramble ;p) and you provide quite some nice thoughts on how you think they will (and in some cases should) implement the new features. ….hello excruciatingly long sentence.. -.- oh well, I ramble a lot too as you might have noticed by now.. =P I guess what I wanted to say here though was that I hope you’re right in how they’ll handle account wide achievements (well, you did give a lot of suggestions, but I kinda liked most of ’em) and your thoughts on mists actually makes me more interested in the expansion than the advertisement I’ve seen so far XD
Kinda far fetched, but I do hope someone at blizzard reads your stuff 😉
So keep the posts coming! I for one find them interesting at least ^^ C ya in-game! 😉
Update: So I wasn’t using QuickAuctions3 to post, I was using Auctionator prior, I set it up and found it doesn’t work It scans and then queues the aintuocs. I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong and found it wasn’t actually me according to comments on wow.curse.com for the addon it’s been broken as of 4.0.01 because Blizz felt it was facilitating botters/gold sellers. >_> Auctionator isn’t as quick but it works. Someone suggested Trade Skill Master as an alternative.