Finally Back - With a New Rig!

It sure has been a while but I'm back at last.

Unfortunately my long absence was unavoidable as first I got smashed by uni deadlines for a few weeks and then my poor long-suffering old computer gave its last shuddering cough and died.

Pretty much my exact expression when it happened.

I finally got around to buying a new rig so I'm back! And what a magnificent specimen it is too since a mate and I custom built it ourselves. I won't go on and on about it but suffice to say I've gone from playing wow on the lowest graphics settings at 5fps to playing with maxed settings at 60fps!

 My beautiful new baby

So anyway, expect some more posts about gold making etc soon as I kick things back into gear and turn the old gold machine back on.

Seal

Day 2/3: It starts to get interesting

Due to a particularly busy weekend (the beer wasn't going to drink itself) I was only able to play for around an hour over the two days. But even with that minimal playtime things are starting to take shape nicely.

With such limited opportunity my main objective was to try out one of the strategies offered by another blogger in JMTC's most recent blogging carnival: How do you make gold with low Capital? Given my time constraints I opted for one that once set up would only take a minute to execute when necessary.

What I chose:

Given this criterion I went with a nice little strategy by Flux over at the excellent Power Word: Gold blog which involved selling vendor cooking recipes found in Stormwind to the horde via the neutral Auction House. I won't detail exactly how the strategy works as Flux says it perfectly so if you're interested check it out here: Making Gold Selling Alliance Cooking Recipes to the Horde.

So with my tactics outlined perfectly I ran my auction alt to the recipe vendor and bought the recipes in question and then sent them to another new alt who had drawn the short straw for the trek from the human starting zone to Booty Bay. Needless to say this trip was very painful as a lvl 1 toon with no mount, but 27 minutes (!!!) and 2 deaths later I was sitting safely on the dock in BB next to the neutral auctioneer. Having safely arrived I listed each of the recipes for 20g apiece, logged off and promptly forgot all about them.

A good 24 hours later when I logged back in to check mail and presumably re-list the unsuccessful auctions (I'm cynical at the best of times) I was greeted with the very welcome site on the left. Over half of the recipes had sold and I couldn't have been happier.

All in all the sales netted me about 120g profit thereby quadrupling my total gold in an instant. The best part about this strategy is the fact that once the initial outlay of time getting to Booty Bay has been spent, this is an activity that will take 2 minutes max to rinse and repeat as necessary as the auctions either sell or expire. Having it confirmed so quickly that the recipes will definitely sell is a nice weight off of my mind also.

Oh and I almost forgot the best part: All of the recipes together cost less than 1g to buy!

So far this is a perfect example of exactly what I am looking for in this challenge: cheap, effective, and quick gold making techniques that can be used by a player completely new to wow. Good on you Flux!

So with the first few days of my challenge behind me this is how my finances look so far:

So far I couldn't be happier with how I am progressing. With minimal playtime and no boosts of any kind (help from others, heirlooms etc) I already have over 150g and a quick and easy moneymaker locked away for continuing profits. I can only hope that each new trick I try is as good as this one.

The empire continues to grow!

Day 1: A New Beginning

Well after a very little bit of research I decided my new home for this challenge would be the Aman'thul server - Alliance side. Why those? Aman'thul because it seems to have a decent population and alliance because the Stormwind auction houses look the most 'commercy' (yep, that was the basis of my faction choice). I like the idea of building an empire from a big stone bank instead of from a wooden shack, it'll go way better with my tuxedo, monocle and top hat.

So with my server choice made I stepped out into the world as a fresh human rogue (humans start right next to SW so this was a no brainer, plus the extra rep will save me money if i decide to buy mounts in the future).

Unfortunately due to RL commitments I could only spend about 40 minutes playing today so I didn't get quite as much done as I'd hoped. Having said that I did manage to train skinning and mining and grab a few nodes/pelts which I then threw onto the AH. This part was fairly dicey as I'd completely forgotten about posting costs but luckily I only had a few things to sell so I posted them all with a whopping 61c to spare.



 As of writing this post I have made 3 sales bringing my grand total up to around 13.5g! It's a tiny sum in the scheme of things but given I started with nothing, over 10g in just over half an hour makes me very happy.

The first brick has been placed and now the empire will grow around it!

Noob Challenge!

I have been inspired by this month's blogging carnival over at JMTC: How do you make gold with low Capital? to put my own startup skills to the test and see if I can build a tidy fortune from scratch.

The Challenge:
Start fresh on a new server with no heirlooms, no gold, no friends to boost me... nothing!
The only help I will use will be addons as anyone can get them whenever (sure genuine first time players might not know about them, but really with all the information and detailed guides out there it's not hard to work them out).

I will be updating my progress here whenever I play.

I would like to stay on an oceanic server to minimise lag so if anyone has a suggestion for my new home (Nagrand is my current home), or even a faction/race/class suggestion post it in the comments and I'll be happy to oblige.

Key to Success #2: Opportunity Cost

Hey long time no see! I've taken a break from wow for the time being to focus on university but that doesn't mean I can't still provide some useful gold making tips while I'm away from the game (they'll just be a little bit more general).

So anyway on with the post:

Opportunity Cost?

The Skinny

Nothing is free. Every action you make in-game or out has an inherent cost attached whether it be time or money or whatever. Opportunity cost is basically what your resources could be doing instead of their current use. Using the pic on the right, the opportunity cost of going into door A is missing out on whatever's behind door B. In wow terms, a common misconception is that anything you farm personally is 'free' but this couldn't be further from the truth. If you farm 2 stacks of ore in 20 minutes sure you may have made 80g but that 80g has cost you 20 minutes that could be spent elsewhere. If you had instead used that 20 minutes to buy herbs, mill them and sell the inks for 200g profit then the opportunity cost of farming is the difference between the two: 200g - 80g = 120g.

It may seem like a fairly simplistic concept but it really is that simple. What it boils down to is ensuring that you spend your time on the most profitable activities possible. What those activities are depends on your tradeskills, market knowledge and server but with a little research and trial it is fairly easy to work out.

Where else it's important

Not only is opportunity cost important in terms of your precious time, it is also critical to consider when stockpiling as well. Whenever you buy a large amount of an item to put away for a future where it will be worth more you should consider other potential uses for the gold you spent. When you invest in the future that gold is tied up indefinitely until you sell the stockpile and cant be put to any more productive uses.

For example: if you buy 10,000g worth of ore today and sell it for 30,000g in three months you've made a 20k profit, not bad. However if you instead used that original 10k to buy items cheap on the weekends and then resell them for more midweek your 10k could be constantly growing and working for you as you can then reinvest larger and larger sums.

This is particularly important for those who don't have a massive bankroll as investing a high proportion of your total gold in stockpiling can be extremely counterproductive. As the old saying goes "it takes money to make money" and a 1,000g profit tomorrow that you can reinvest and continue to grow is worth so much more than a 20,000g profit in 3 months that is useless in the meantime.

My parting thoughts

The most important part of this theory is the fact that there is no universal solution; the most effective money making scheme for one player usually wont be the best for another. Working out what you are best at and cutting down on the less productive activities is the key to maximising your profit.

My snap decision - the results so far.

Well, 3 days on from my Snap Decision post and hings haven't turned out quite as I had hoped or planned for in the original post. However that's the nature of speculation, sometimes it pays off big other times it doesn't. As the picture below shows, the whiptail market is still flooded with super cheap stacks and it is now mid week.

This would be a problem if my only plan for profiting from my speculation was to flip all of my stacks back onto the auction house. However, as anyone who's had success making gold in wow will tell you "there's more than one way to skin a murloc". So instead of re-listing the mountains of whiptail I had for a significant loss I set to using it in a more financially beneficial way. Not only did I listen to the suggestion from Faid of Nerf Faids of "Darkmoon cards gooooooooooooo!" but I also listed burning embers, inferno ink and blackfallow ink in various stack sizes, made a few mysterious fortune cards, and also a ton of glyphs.

As of writing this post I have made back all but about 4k of my original 15k investment. Not only that but I still have about 400 blackfallow ink left to make more glyphs with as well as about 75 more stacks of whiptail waiting to be milled and heaps of glyphs listed to sell.

What's the moral of the story?

Know your markets. If you are thinking of spending big gold (or any gold) on speculative items do your due diligence first. If it seems like a good deal that's great but make sure that you also have an exit strategy for if your plan falls through that doesn't involve wearing a big loss. If the item only has one use and that doesn't pan out you're screwed, however if the item has several uses the risk diminishes exponentially.

Trying something new

 As usual I made my rounds of the gold blogosphere this morning and found THIS post over at Alto's Gold"ish" Advice which basically details a guest post Alto wrote for JMTC about farming mobs while under the effects of [Potion of Treasure Finding]. Now I usually wouldn't touch farming with a 10 foot pole but Alto has found a great spot to farm using this potion so I thought I'd check it out myself to see if this would be viable for me as another layer of diversification. My results are below:

cash looted: 96g
vendoring [greys]: 71g
13 [green] items disenchanted into:
15 [Hypnotic Dust]: approx 75g*
8 [Lesser Celestial Essence]: approx 120g*
34 [Embersilk Cloth]: approx 100g*
18 [Volatile Fire]: approx 243g*
total: 705g
*these figures are based on monday morning ah prices so may be a bit skewed after weekend trading*

11 [Tiny Treasure Chest] containing:
25g cash
1 [green] item de'ed into:
2 [Hypnotic Dust] : 10g
52 [Embersilk Cloth]: 156g
15 [Pyrite Ore]: 150g
4 [Volatile Fire]: 54g
4 [Volatile Life]: 46g
10 [Volatile Air]: 200g
5 [Volatile Earth]: 67g

Grand Total minus 170g for potion: 1093g

So similar to Alto's results 1100g an hour isn't an amazing return, however I did gain 5 bars of experience in the process which took my paladin to lvl 84. Also I imagine that mid week the ah prices on most of these items would be higher as well.

I'm not sure I'd bother with this again as my time is better spent elsewhere (opportunity cost and whatnot) but it is certainly viable as a way to make decent low-risk gold to bump up your bankroll, especially if you are just starting to try and make some serious gold.

If you want to give it a crack, check out this post at Alto's excellent blog.