GoldMaking – Girl Goblin

Weekly Wrap Up [Mar6-Mar14]

I know, I’m behind in my weekly posts – but I’ve been having a difficult time with an MS relapse, so my I decided it was probably best if I just minimized the amount of extra ‘stuff’ I had to do – sadly one of the first things to go in that case is content creation. During that time I decided to also stop re-listing most of my items for sale, the exception being – pets. I kept listing my pets.

I’m currently selling around 1200 pets spread across 20 servers. It takes me less than 1h a day to re-post those, and I leave them up for 24h with no cancel scanning or anything like that.

It has been interesting to watch the trends – when it was pet battle week I had a significant number of sales vs. non pet battle weeks, and the types of pets I was selling also changed.

My most sold pet of all time is Rotten Little Helper, and it’s used in quite a few pet battle scenarios so it makes sense. This is the first year where I’ve branched into a multi-realm selling scenario, and I have to admit, I see why it’s so popular with larger goblins. You rely less on expecting huge sales from one place, and are still able to make some fairly significant gains with smaller sales spread across multiple servers. I personally don’t want to invest more than 1h a day listing items for sale and handling the basics – but I absolutely see how others could be drawn to this and why it’s appealing.

I’m also still making significant amounts of gold with craft orders which are not tracked by TSM. On the profession side of things I have JC/LW/INSC/ALCH/ENG/BS “completed” (ie: at 100 skill, but not yet completed their knowledge trees) and I tend to check all of the public craft orders a few times a day if I’m in game, and then have a steady number of people sending me personal orders on top of that. I’m using journalator to track these (which is amazing, I love this addon).

Overall? Things are going very well! I’m excited to see what 10.0.7 brings, and hopefully I’m able to continue on creating content now that my hands don’t feel like molten lumps of lava. As always, happy gaming – no matter where you find yourself!

Weekly Wrap up [Feb6-Feb13]

This week was a pretty good week, with 1.6 million gold in profit. The numbers are skewed a bit because I was shuffling some gold around, but overall, sales were up, with a number of larger sales. My process? I spend 1h a day working on active gold making, in this case it’s logging to 20+ different servers to put items back up for sale. Most of those items are pets, but on a handful of servers it also includes transmog and mounts. I don’t bother doing cancel scans or getting into AH pvp with anyone – I have tried in the past, and it’s just bad for my mental health.

I leave everything up for a 24h period, and rinse and repeat. If I can’t re-post, I’ll leave the items until the next day. In most cases it tends to work pretty well. If I need a break, I’ll post for 48h. Being on multiple servers means I can get smaller sales here and there and it simply adds up over time. Once I reach 100k on any realm, I tend to shuffle the gold back to my main servers. This can be through the AH, or through buying tokens, or maybe moving a character to shuffle goods around. It really depends on what I need at the time.

I did have a few other sales in there, the steelbound harness is crafted by a blacksmith, the ‘ol smoky recipe is engineering. Most of the sales continue to be pets since that’s the largest market that I’m in these days.

I’ve said this before but I think it should be repeated – the amount of effort you put into gold making is going to be directly related to the amount of gold you can potentially earn. I am content with my earnings considering I only spend 1h a day working on it. It leaves me with a lot of time to do other things, and some days especially during an MS relapse (like right now) doing even the mundane like looking at the computer screen, becomes a difficult task. I know if I wanted to push my gold making I’d have to devote more time to it. Then as you learn to optimize your method, you’ll shave time off. The amount of time devoted (in my specific case) tends to ebb and flow. When I add a new server, or restock my craft items, the time spent increases. Once those things are done, I optimize my time spent, and it reduces again.

I would absolutely love to spend more time learning markets and making mistakes and honing in on the parts of gold making that I really enjoy – but alas, I do only have so many hours in a day, and so for now it is what it is.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

[Unpopular Opinion] Gold making is better on a low pop realm

I fully admit that this title is a pretty open interpretation of the events. I have played on low population servers almost exclusively for years now and I’ve come to love and hate them. Almost all of my gold making prior to Dragonflight was done on these servers, and I was able to made gold cap without too much issue. Things sell – slowly. They sell for (usually) higher than the higher population servers because there are less people selling there. It also means there’s less buyers.

I am comfortable with that low rate of sale because I diversify my markets. Before the regionwide auction house I knew there were limited raiders, so alchemy was probably not going to be the profession for me. Now with regionwide everyone is fighting about undercuts but there’s profit to be made for a player like me, where as in the past, there was not.

At the start of Dragonflight I went looking for greener pastures. I had never attempted M+ before, and I wanted a chance to raid. I wanted to experience more than just gold making. I have multiple sclerosis so finding people who understand my physical limitations can be a daunting task. My guild on the low population servers is quite small, which is not bad but it did make things like raids more difficult to obtain. There’s also no one advertising boosts or sales on my low pop server. Anyway, I moved to a high pop server and things were really awesome as far as seeing folks around in the world and interactions with others.

The server was less awesome when it came to gold making – except for craft orders. Craft orders were my saving grace. I picked up a cheap copy of the lariat neck, the hourglass, and titanic rings, and I was set. My JC reached 100 without buying a single component. The thing is I didn’t know what the market was like on a high population realm. I would have to learn the market over again from scratch.

After a month on the server, I missed the comfort of my low population gold making. I got into a few undercut wars with people and that is a fight that I absolutely could NOT win, both physically and mentally. I didn’t know what people on this new server wanted. I was frustrated.

Plus, I missed my friends. They’re in a different time zone from me but I missed occasionally seeing a friendly face around. I don’t make friends easily, and while I thought moving to a more populated server was the answer – it turns out, I was wrong.

It also turns out that there are some really amazing and awesome communities out there who do cross realm M+ and raiding and everything else you can think of. People who are known for being patient, and for teaching others. I joined WoW Made Easy, and I joined Dungeon Dojo. Both communities are on discord, and while I haven’t actually participated in any events yet, there are options out there if you’re on a smaller server like I am, or you don’t really have a place with ‘your people’ to raid with.

I believe gold can be made on absolutely any server if you put in the time to learn the markets. Low population, high population, all of it comes down to a personal preference. If you have the time and the willpower to play the auction house pvp game and battle it out, a higher population will grant you faster sales and an instant gratification that a low population can never hope to achieve – but if you’re like me, maybe those servers are just not the place you want to be. There’s no ‘wrong’ server to make gold on. You just have to find what works for you.

Weekly Wrap Up [Jan23-Jan30]

I know, I am behind with the post! It has been a particularly busy week between real life and game stuff, but here’s my weekly wrap up!

I finally broke 1 million in sales again which was a very nice feeling. Keep in mind that TSM is not displaying my craft order gold, which is where most of my income is coming these days. As far as selling on the auction house goes, I’ve been sticking to pets.

For some reason the TSM ledger is duplicating my sales when I select a specific group (in this case, pets) so you’ll have to reduce everything in that screenshot by 1/2. I’ve reported the issue but I haven’t heard back yet. Pet sales have been steady – nothing through the roof, but enough to have a very steady income.

I am planning a post this week explaining what I’ve been doing as far as crafting goes, I only have 100 in two professions (three if you count cooking) and crafting in Dragonflight is of course MUCH different than any other expansion we’ve seen so far. Some people love it and embrace the complexity, others are not a fan. I’m somewhere between the two thoughts.

I have been selling some transmog since 10.0.5 went live, but not a huge amount, which makes sense because I didn’t exactly stock up. I picked up a few items (blood elf bandit masks), but they’re on my low pop server – oh, and speaking of that. I actually moved BACK to my low pop server. I’ll write more about that this week too.

As always, happy gaming – no matter where you find yourself!

Weekly Wrap Up [Jan16-Jan23]

My gold making has been looking pretty sparse lately, with nothing but pets filling the sales queue, but it has given me a lot of time to work on my characters and enjoy the game for a while, which I’m glad of.

This week I saw 659k profit, 719k in sales, and spent 60k (mostly on leveling up some professions and crafting a few spark items for alts). I know there’s a LOT of gold making potential coming up tomorrow (Tuesday) with the 10.0.5 patch, and I’m INCREDIBLY excited – but I’ve also prepared zilch. Zero. Nada.

Some sure hits? The legendary base items (mail and plate) from Shadowlands – this will grant you mythic transmog. More hits? Grey/white items will be items you can (finally) transmog, and people are going to be on the hunt for them. I meant to run through a bunch of dungeons and pick some up, but life got away from me (again). I hope everyone else out there is preparing better than I have!

Taking a look at sales – pets. Pets continue to dominate my sales. Since that’s what I’ve been spending most of my focus towards, it’s no real surprise. Crafting orders are also still dominating the charts.

I imagine the amount of gold I make from public orders will change once we’re limited from 20 to 4 – I’m not a fan of this change, I don’t think it will do what Blizzard expects it to do. I wish professions were made more evenly, I don’t see a reason to ask someone else to craft things for me in a lot of professions. I think that’s why there’s a lack of public orders. JC/Insc/Eng have all treated me very well. The others, not so much. I haven’t had an MS relapse in a little while, so I’m always on the lookout for that, if it happens I’ll most likely be going back to fishing (I’m not even sure how much profit fishing is giving these days, I’ve had such a good run with no relapses I haven’t had to do any fishing for a few weeks!)

I’m trying to get my paladin caught up with all the things out there, and then I can focus a bit more on making gold. In the meantime, at least there will always be pet sales.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Weekly Wrap Up [Jan9-Jan16]

Another Monday means another weekly wrap up! There’s things to keep in mind with these, and the main one is that TSM isn’t tracking crafting orders, and these days a fair portion of gold I make comes from that. This week I earned just over 400k through public and private craft orders. I focus on jewelcrafting (neck/rings), leather working, engineering, and inscription. I have the other professions too but I haven’t been spending much time with them. I’m using the addon ‘accountant’ to track my crafting orders.

I tried to buckle down this week, focusing on my ‘main’ (I use the term loosely) and getting raids & world quests done. My renown levels are not that great, Tuskarr was the easy one since I could just throw gold at it. Everything else is taking some work. On the plus side I’m really enjoying Dragonflight a large amount, on the downside there are not nearly enough hours in a day.

Sales this week were pretty steady. You can see that I’ve moved into selling pets – with moderate success. The numbers are not huge, but they’ll add up and hopefully I’ll learn / get better. I’ve been trying to buy low, sell high, and build up stock. The Dragonflight “Rhinestone” sunglasses also did well this week (but not as well as last week) with another four pairs sold. I know I didn’t keep on top of it as much as I could have.

The prospector’s boots was a flip, I think I bought them for a handful of gold months ago. The haunted steel warboots are blacksmith crafted, and the two blue recipes are from fishing leftovers. I didn’t take any big risks, and I’m OK with that. I know a lot of people are frustrated with their lack of ability to make gold in Dragonflight but I actually think I’ve been doing better than I did in Shadowlands (remember I never touched legendaries in SL). I’m excited for 10.0.5 and I can’t wait to see what new exciting transmog it brings.

As always, happy gaming – no matter where you find yourself!

[Unpopular Opinion] So you Can’t Make Gold in Dragonflight

For the past few weeks I have been listening to people in the WoW econ discord, and on reddit, and on twitter, talking about how it is impossible to make gold with professions in World of Warcraft at the moment because absolutely everything sells for a loss. My unpopular opinion is that this is simply not true. What is true, is that it takes a lot more work and thought to make gold from professions then it did in the past. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it makes gold making much more engaging for those who manage to put in the time and effort. Keep in mind that ‘time’ is going to be relevant to how much you want to do, and what sort of server you’re on.

There is one exception to this rule, and I will say that lower population servers do have a much more difficult time simply because there are less people looking for things to be crafted, and more people crafting. My perspective for this post is coming from a medium/high population server.

The first issue – crafting for a loss. Well, if you’re used to simply opening your crafting book, taking a look at your list, crafting that, and then putting it on the auction house – yes, most items sell at a loss. Dragonflight completely changed how we craft, and those basic items we all start with are in low demand and VERY high supply. If this is how you expect to make gold, you will be selling at a loss.

Where Dragonflight actually shines is for those who have put in the work to make connections on their server, or those who manage to camp the work table. I do this for roughly 15 minutes each day on my jewelcrafter, and she has made over 400k in gold from public commissions. I do own the BiS lariat recipe, I also bought the two rings, the titanic & hour-glass. I did not spec down gems. I am spec’d into both rings, necks, and multicraft / inspiration.

So for JC alone, there’s necks, rings, gems, and then there are also some toys you can craft for people if you’re lucky enough to find the recipes. So far I have not managed to get a single one (frustrating). Then there’s the cosmetic items we can make, like the rhinestone sunglasses. Dragonflight has a recipe for those that comes from fishing. I usually sell at least one pair every single day, for 20k. Yes, it takes time or money (or both) to get started, but it’s a goal (I fished mine up). Then there’s the JC that’s selling from previous expansions. That’s right, don’t forge that Dragonflight is not the only expansion out there! For whatever reason, 233 and 262 gear is still selling VERY well on my servers. More so if you include speed sets. Then there’s transmog, battle pets, mounts! DIVERSIFY.

The second issue – You don’t HAVE to be hardcore about any of this. As you can see by the screenshot above, my renown levels are pretty sparse – minus Tuskarr, and that one I did by turning in fish. I also have around 130 JC knowledge points from just casually completing my weekly goals. Yes, I realize this is just one example of a profession, and sadly not all professions are made equal, I will admit to that. My JC is paired with Leatherworking, and I do not make nearly the same amount of gold. I also don’t spend nearly the same amount of time on it, I don’t own LW patterns from expansions gone by, and I don’t check out the LW table very often (most people want that artisan’s sign (toy), go get that and you should be getting lots of orders).

It is NOT too late to start. Be diligent about collecting your knowledge points, and wait for your way in if you’re absolutely certain you can’t make a profit. Check the work order table often! Talk to people in trade chat, let them know what you can craft. Use the crafting sim addon, and use a little research into where you want to spend those points. Stick with it.

Saying there’s absolutely no gold to be made with professions in Dragonflight is just wrong. It does take work. It does take knowing your server, and it does take using a different method that simply “level 1-100, bam, put items on the AH!” but it’s also completely worth it and rewarding. If you’re used to the pre-regional-auction house times, you may also need to simply adjust what your idea of “good gold per hour” is. I’m seeing brand new gold makers upset that they didn’t make a million a day – that is simply an unrealistic expectation. Set yourself with some realistic goals, and you’ll be a lot happier.

As always, happy gaming – no matter where you find yourself!

Weekly Wrap Up [Jan02-Jan09]

** note: This does NOT include craft order money, which was over 300k for the week **

I’m not sure if TSM is tracking the gold made from craft orders (I don’t think it is, I’m using accountant right now to track them), but that’s where most of my focus has been this week – aside from playing the game. I now have 10 characters at level 70, and I took 4 of them through timewalking and raids, and also completed the weekly. I put a few older items up on the AH, but most of my time was spent focusing on a new endevour & creating new characters, which you can see the results of in the item category of my sales.

The “rhinestone” sunglasses from Dragonflight are selling exceptionally well. This recipe has only dropped for me once so far in all of the fishing I’ve done. I’ve done a LOT of fishing. The components required are pretty cheap, and I’m getting a pretty nice profit for each sale. I only put one up at a time, and I just replace it when it sells. On average it’s one pair a day and I’m happy with that.

I also sold a bunch of replica gear that I had sniped for 1s a while back. I’ve been trying to sell this on my low population server for months now, so I’m glad to see it go. There’s a few recipes in there (leftovers from fishing), and some fish, and me clearing out my Shadowlands JC inventory. There’s a few people who like to do cancel scan wars on the AH, and I didn’t feel like participating in that, so I set all of my SL stuff to 115% crafting cost, and just want it out the door. Even on my best of days, cancel scanning is just not something that I enjoy doing.

The WoW token on NA has been VERY low, so I picked up a few and stocked up my bnet balance. I also decided to boost a rogue on my 2nd account to 60, and I moved a DK to my main account and a new server. Overall, I’m pleased with my progress given that very little of my time was actually dedicated to making gold. It felt nice to catch up on some knowledge points (professions) and to clear out some quests. I’m having an absolute blast with Dragonflight, and making gold on top of that is just a really nice perk.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

It’s Important to Check Before you Post

It is VERY important to check and triple check before you place an item for sale. Whether you’re using a posting string with TSM, using Auctionator, or even just putting your items up for sale using the base UI.

When you use the base UI, a few things happen depending on the item / if there are any for sale. If others are up for sale you’ll price match the last one. The auction house works on a LIFO method “last in first out” so there’s no need to undercut that auction.

The thing is, there are some ‘less desirables’ out there who want to make sure you lose gold. Unpopular opinion here, but I do not condone what these goblins do. They put up ‘bait’ in the auction house. Then the next person who isn’t paying attention comes along and matches their prices – and they attempt to buy out those people. Then they can resell the item for a profit. Personally, these are the sort of goblins that give other goblins a bad name. I don’t think that gold making needs to be done by tricking others or fooling them out of gold. That opinion isn’t shared by everyone, which is fine. It’s simply not a method I use or believe in.

Now, it IS common for people to just naturally make a mistake when putting an item up for sale if they have no idea what the value is – especially if there are zero already for sale. If the item has no others for sale, for example, the default UI will commonly use a very low price from Blizzard. In some other cases people have used their TSM strings to post very expensive items for vendor value (when there are no regional prices, for example, because the item is too new).

You don’t HAVE to post at the default number given – always make sure you check so that you’re not being baited into posting for under the value. In the case of the fluid above, they actually vendor for 62 silver – not a huge amount, but when you bait all day long and occasionally catch thousands of these things being posted, it can apparently pay off.

[Challenge] Expanding to Other Servers with new Characters

In World of Warcraft, I’ve constantly played on low population servers. First it was because I was playing with my husband, then with friends, and then simply because it was comfortable and I was used to it.

The thing is, over the years low population servers have no longer been fun for me to play on (in most cases, there are exceptions). This year I decided it would be a good idea to experiment with higher population servers and see how that goes.

A wise goblin once told me “60 slots – if you aren’t using them you are losing them” so I decided to use my 2nd account and create a character on a whole bunch of servers. I didn’t want to transfer funds to each of these servers, but I wanted to give them some pocket change to play with. This account is also a completely separate battle net from my main account. There are no unlocked allied characters on the horde side.

Right now Blizzard has a promotion going on where you can play Dragonflight with some restrictions if you do not already own Dragonflight. This battlenet does not own the expansion. Normally, one of those restrictions is you can’t make a Dracthyr without first having a level 55 on the server. Thankfully, that rule doesn’t pertain to the promotion.

I created a Dracthyr, and did their first quest. It rewarded 25g. I summoned my mailbox, mailed that to the actual character I wanted to keep, and then deleted. Then I took that 25g to the AH, and in a few seconds (thank you region wide auction house) I flipped it from 25g to 150g. That’s a much nicer number to work with. Recipes and pets only require 1s as a posting fee, and pets can be transferred across servers without any effort.

I haven’t made 60 characters yet, but it’s a start. This is a little more dedicated that I usually am in my gold making, but I do like to challenge myself, so let’s see where this goes. Since it’s my second account it doesn’t really affect my game play at all, and who knows, maybe in time I can work towards being one of the ‘big’ goblins, too.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.