Warcraft Elite Guides

Posts Tagged ‘Warcraft Advanced Gold Guide’

I just want to get this out of the way. It’s not a major part of the guide, but  here is “video 2”, and it deals with cross faction trading.

You need two accounts, or a friend you can trust to do this.

Bare in mind that 2 accounts will cost you twice as much per month, and a friend will probably want half the profit from doing this – so this method is not for everyone.

Tomorrow we are back to the single player gold guide, but for now, here’s the vid.

Mageweave Cloth ALLIANCE

26

24

28

31

33

35

35

21

Mageweave Cloth HORDE

44

45

51

53

67

66

44

29

Above is the data for the item “Mageweave Cloth” taken from European server “Anachronos” over a period of 16 days in August 2009. The prices are in silver pieces per individual piece of cloth.

This data in the Material master will give you some clues as to whether this item is a potential profit maker.

Firstly, the average price in Alliance auction house is 29.13 silver pieces per cloth
The average price in horde auction house is 50 silver pieces per cloth

So instantly we know that to buy from alliance and sell from horde gives us a very good average profit (the price difference is 72%)

Buying from Alliance and selling to Horde is a no-brainer.

The standard deviation is 5.22 on Alliance and 12.44 for Horde.

This tells us that buying from alliance to sell at a later date to the same market is not a particularly good choice. A standard deviation in single figures is a pretty good indicator of a low margin potential.

Horde however is a different matter. 12.44 tells you that buying low and selling high in the Horde auction house  is a great idea for  someone playing a single market strategy.

However, there is an issue. Closer examination of the data shows that we have a “rogue” figure.
7 of the 8 data points for horde are between 44 and 67 silver pieces per cloth. One point is however 29, silver pieces per cloth.

This low figure is capable of skewing the figures quite a bit. However, if you replaced that figure with the average of 50 would give you a standard deviation of just below 10, and an average even higher at 52.63

These are still great figures for either a single market or a cross market selling strategy.

Okay, to normalize the figures and obtain a price index take the following steps.

•   Work out which is the “Buy From” market  – in this case Alliance.
•   Take the worst buy price from this market (i.e the highest price) – In this case 35 silver pieces.
•   Give this 35 silver pieces the Index rating of 1.00 (one point zero zero).
•   Rate every other price as a ratio of this price

Another option is to take the average price and give that an index rating of 1.0. You would use this if you were comparing prices across servers, or comparing PvP servers with PvE for example.

ALLIANCE MAGEWEAVE PRICES		26	24	28	31	33	35	35	21
ALLIANCE MAGEWEAVE INDEX		0.74	0.69	0.8	0.89	0.94	1	1	0.6

Once indexed, here are the Alliance prices. Below are the Horde prices. Remember they are indexed as an average price over time across BOTH factions auction house readings.

HORDE MAGEWEAVE PRICES		44	46	51	53	67	66	44	29
HORDE MAGEWEAVE INDEX		1.26	1.31	1.46	1.51	1.91	1.89	1.26	1.43

The top row of each factions data set shows the actual prices, the bottom row the “price index” As you can see 35 silver pieces is rated as 1, every other price is a ratio of this price. In this way you can compare item against item, even server against server without worry.

Below is a video we have added showing the Material Master spreadsheet. This will be a download on this site once the serialization of the Advanced Gold Guide is complete.

The standard deviation bell curve.

You can work it all out for yourself..or the “Material Master” spreadsheet that comes as a free gift with this guide can do it all for you.

Above, the average price is 10..in terms of mean and model average.

The item HAS sold for 2 – and could sell for 18.

No guessing when you should buy and when you should sell then.

So what to have in your portfolio. Here’s how to decide which items
To trade in.

Ok, here’s the bit you were dreading. The maths. We have gone out of our way to make this as simple as possible.

Good items to trade in a single market have a large range "standard deviation" of price.   
Standard deviation is a measure of how much an measured item deviates from it’s median (average) price over time.

So here is Lesser Healing Potion. We measure it’s price 5 times over 5 days. The prices were (in silver pieces)

        80s
        77s
        82s
        79s
        83s

This gives an average price over the 5 measurements of 80.2 silver and a standard deviation of 2.39 (roughly 23.9 percent)
    Is this any good ?

Well, copper ore gives these values over the same period

        45s
        140s
        84s
        47s
        85s
This has exactly the same average of 80.2 silver. However the standard deviation is 38.6  or 386% variation from the mean

Standard deviation is a vital statistic for checking the price volatility of an item. In simple terms :

The greater the deviation, the greater the profit potential of that item.

It means that an item price varies wildly. These are the items you need to watch.

Included with the Advanced Gold Guide is a spreadsheet we call “The Material Master”

With this we have been tracking the price volatility across many servers and over a long period of time.

To ensure that we are dealing with a consistent set of set across all the servers, we use a method known as “normalizing”

As we mentioned before, the prices vary wildly across servers, to simply add all the prices together would be to overvalue some servers and to undervalue the data from others.

If you use the “Material Master” you can see that it does not have prices in it at all, it has the variations of price from an index.

Here’s how price indexing works.

•   First use an add-on or manually  check the selling price of items at a particular time period
•   Next note the selling price of each item at that time period.
•   Repeat this process over at least 8 times. Deliberately choosing different times of the day, days of the  week etc. NB. This is not a true random, as we are actively making decisions when to collect the data. Choosing  holidays, weekends, Patch days etc to measure the effect.
•   Index the results. This means
•   Nominating the faction with the lowest average price as the ”Buy”  faction
    Using the HIGHEST PRICE FROM THE “BUY” faction AS THE INDEX, AND GIVING IT THE VALUE    1.00               (one   point zero zero) then measuring all other prices as a ratio of your index price.
•   Putting all the prices in a row against the item in date order.
• Taking an average of the price for Alliance, and comparing that with the average price for Horde

Use this method of indexing whether or not you are considering cross faction trading. There is no point struggling for profit in the wrong market place.

What Items should you concentrate on when starting out?

    We STRONGLY recommend you concentrate on a subset of items that you are familiar with. The Materials Guide lists over 150 items. It covers just about every material required to craft in the game.

    We recommend you specialist. Make a list of a minimum of 12 items – a maximum of around 25 and make these items your "Portfolio". These are the items you will specialist in.
Over time you will instinctively know what is a good price – and what is a bad price on these. But for now – using the material master to help you, updating the data on more than 25 items can be quite time consuming, and will    not give you a good enough return on your time spent.

    Which items should you specialist in ?

    Cloth – all cloth. Cloth of some type is used by everyone at every level, it levels First Aid, it is a "hand in" for reputation quests (in huge quantities in some cases), it makes bandages, it is the staple resource for tailoring.

It’s your choice, but we recommend taking the items on the list above appropriate to your level and adding them to your portfolio (if you are just starting in the game – and have character below level 20 stick to Linen and Wool – move up as you feel comfortable)

Copper Bar
Tin Bar

Peacebloom
Mageroyal

hese are the low level herbalism items. Used by Alchemists and Inscribers. Again very variable rates at AH. There are other low level herbs – but these two tend to sell the best.

Light Leather
Medium Leather

The low level skinning items. There are "Ruined Leather Scraps" however these rely on the buyer having the skill to convert them. By all means have these as well, but the market for your sales may well be lower

      Finally – Whatever you gather…

        Now you did choose at LEAST one gathering profession didn’t you?

We recommend 2 gathering professions – but one is a bare minimum. If your first character or "main" does not gather at all (except cloth as we discussed above) you have lost a very major value stream. Keeping up with the materials you need to advance 2 crafting professions will take an age and add considerably to your levelling time.

        It’s not the end of the world – but you will make so much more money during your normal playing time (levelling, PvP or Instance runs) if you gather while you play.

With your gathering profession/s you should have 10 – 12 starter items in your portfolio.

If you are new to the game, stick to the lower level cloth, leather, herbs and ores. We suggest  sticking with the cloth appropriate to your level all the way through the game.

Note. Every 5 or 10 levels that you progress..or every time you double the gold in your capital, consider moving your portfolio on. Dropping some low level items and replacing with some higher level ones from    the material master

Of course, by dropping we mean "Selling for the best price to clear your stock space"..but you know what we mean.

Now if you become familiar with other items during the course of a game, and you see an absolute bargain outside your normal field of expertise. By all means snap it up. Do your research first (check it’s not about to get nerfed by a patch.

Google the "Level 69 Riding Crop" scandal if you want to see an example of a patch nerf that cost unprepared players a fortune. Blizzard implemented a patch which affected an item that wasn’t usable before level 69 …. would become unusable again at Level 70.

This caught a lot of people out – and the item became pretty valueless – but not before a lot of crafters who had seen the pre-patch notes had unloaded there stock in a largely unsuspecting auction house.

        So if you are confident, and happy (and can afford it) feel free to go outside your portfolio for an obvious bargain – but check first!

There is no other way to put this. "If you don’t understand how the economy on your server works, you will not make money on it – the more you understand the more money you will make"
    So here is a tick list of what you need to know, easy stuff first.

• What can I farm myself at my level ? 
• Important note. Selling materials for other people’s professions is probably THE most solid way of making money., and anyone can farm for cloth for tailoring. We are not fans of going out farming for farmings sake, but if you have a couple of gathering professions, you will always have items to gather during your normal every day leveling and questing 
• Where is the best place to farm appropriate to my skills and level ? 
• How much working capital do I have to start ? 
•   Ok, not all your gold should be thought of as "working capital", but if you have a decent amount of gold  – enough say to buy 4 or 5 new level appropriate "stacks" from the AH – or more – then MOST of it should be working capital.
          Think in terms of putting aside enough for 5 BIG repairs of equipment  – replenish ammo a couple of times and gold to buy enough potions/bandages to last a day or two of normal leveling/PvP or instances.

             The rest of your money is your investment. You could start with as little as 10g. Though the more you have, the quicker you will make it. 

• What sort of time investment am I prepared to make? If you only log on a couple of times a week then you will be looking to trade on single market longer term investments. If you are playing WoW every day, then you will probably make more gold hitting lots of smaller margin short term investments.

Do I have the manpower?

Did you follow the guide and get a character to your own and a neutral Auction House? 
Do you have a second account or a guild friend to “go into business” with?

Yes – great – All options are open to you.

No – No problem,

It rules out cross market trading for now, but until you are confident – and     have a buddy with a character in the opposing faction you can trust, then it’s best to leave it for     now.

    Do I have any relevant professions other than harvesting?

    The most relevant profession for gold making without grinding is Enchanting, (or more specifically disenchanting), Alchemy is next because the key items you make are consumable – and therefore need replenishment often.

    Blacksmithing might be next. Warriors are VERY gear dependent, and to level quickly have to change gear more often than other classes – and Blacksmith’s make some of the best warrior gear.

    However – at Level 75 or better the best for all classes is often from instances. Leatherwork, Tailoring, Jewelcraft and Inscription (in roughly that order) Though jewelcraft really comes into it’s own at high levels.

While it is very possible to make money without farming (once you have a decent starting capital) we have included farming because it will just happen naturally. If you are a skinner, miner of herbalist then it stands to reason you should just take the items presented to you during the normal course of play. This being the case, you need to know where the places are that are right for your level to farm.

However, we re-iterate. Once you have a starting capital (or STAKE) then if you wish, you can stop farming all together. We don’t advise it, but it is a real option.

So preparation is the key. Understanding your own server dynamics. Buying low and selling high. Supplementing this with a bit of farming of your own perhaps.

Here’s the issue.

Most people have no idea of an items true worth,

The auctioneer add on, though great for getting an overview of what people want for an item, has no actual sales data for anyone but you.

Most auction house add-ons list all the VENDOR prices, and keeps a note of what YOUR OWN ITEMS sell for.

It does not tell you what all the other items sold for. Just what was asked for them. It doesn’t tell you if someone else s auction was a success or not.

To simplify, a Herbalist could put one "Mageroyal" on for 300G..it almost definitely wouldn’t sell, but they can ask whatever they want.

This happens. In fact, massive over pricing at auction is one of the tips other guides give out. The thinking being that someone might accidentally buy it.

Which does bring us to an important point:

BIDS AT AUCTION ARE IMMEDIATE IRREVOCABLE SO BE CAREFUL

At the Gold Cartel we have worked hard trying to develop methods and tools to understand our server financial dynamics.

Now might be a good time to get you into Auctioneer. The eponymous auction house add on.

Here is a quick look at the auctioneer set up. There are a few changes to the normal auction house window.

Along the top is the right “start”arrow

This begins a scan of every item in the AH, checking quantities and prices.

you’ll be using this button twice a day. Preferably when you are having tea or need to visit the loo because it scans. EVERYTHING. And can easily take 15 to 20 minutes. So twice a day could easily take you 40 minutes to do this for both Alliance and Horde AH’s

A detailed guide on how to use add-ons is in the appendix.

DO NOT BE TEMPTED TO BUY A GUIDE TELLING YOU HOW TO USE AUCTIONEER. THERE IS A FAR BETTER GUIDE AVAILABLE FREE – FROM THE MAKERS OF THE AUCTIONEER ADD ON ITSELF.

Find the free Auctioneer guide at the official Warcraft Auctioneer Site.

Ok, that’s the end of the preamble. Next putting your basic skills to work.

Buy low – Sell High

Well that’s pretty obvious isn’t it?
However traditionally, in Warcraft you have been told to achieve this in one market.
It has been a matter of buying low, then waiting..and waiting  for that one market to change.
This works (to an extent) – the problem is EVERYONE WHO PLAYS THE MARKET DOES THIS.

Every other guide  we have read tells you to do this.
In fact later in this guide we will tell you how to do this PROPERLY. Including Inventory costs, storage costs and valuing your players downtime

But items can be changed by characters. Smelting, Milling, Prospecting and Disenchanting – the sub skills or Mining, Inscription, Jewel crafting and Enchanting have the ability to change one ingredient into another.

Regardless of what other guides tell you, turning ore into bars in not necessarily the most profitable route.

What is the mindset of the average player. Well we’ll tell you. It can be summed up.

“I’ll level and grind this week, and at the weekend I’ll group up and do some instances – and put whatever I’ve farmed on the AH because it’ll sell quicker on Friday and Saturday”

That’s it, that’s what the vast majority do. Later we’ll show you how to take advantage of that. After a while you will be able to guess to within a hour or so when is the best time to buy up all the cheap stuff, and when to wait to post your own.

Importantly we show you how other players habits and  the fear of item not selling – can make you a small fortune on a regular basis.

Making 500 gold an hour – well that’s definitely possible. We’ve made far more. But if you are smart you are not farming for gold. You make a wise investment – learn how to store it cheaply and efficiently (we’ll show you how to get a load of cheap storage) then offload at sky high prices into a hungry market.

Ok, now we are going to go through some steps to get you into a position to make money. Explain the choices you need to make along the way – and explain how these choices will fundamentally alter the way you can effectively make money

First, if you haven’t already, chosen your server go to www.wowrealmstatus.net or similar

Yup these guys know their stuff. Every realm listed, and if you press on the link to a server you are interested in they will break down the quantity of each faction, and show the “load” levels as a percentage of server capacity.

Remember the following :

High load servers = most fluid market

Large imbalance between factions = market opportunities for you if you ever dabble in cross market trading

• PvP = Low level items more likely to sell, particularly the items with a
  level requirement of 29, 39, 49, 59 and 69. (PvP Toon’s may buy these)
• PvE = Easier farming,

But on the down side a “mature” and full server status could mean your low level greens may not sell.
(see the sub chapter on professions to see how you can still make loads of money from these items however)

TIP: Don’t pick a PvP server if you don’t want to play in a PvP environment. Likewise don’t pick a PvE if you want to wander around “laying down some serious carnage” on the opposition faction during the normal course of play. Having fun is the most important part. Pick a style you will enjoy.

You will have a preference I’m sure. It’s great to feel affinity with your character. Many people seem to start with humans, then see the exciting possibilities of playing a Horde character later.
Stormwind or Ironforge might get a little dull. Silvermoon or Orgrimmar seem like a very nice alternative…and they are.

To make real gold, you are best having characters in both camps. There is no need to cross market trade, just make money in both markets – you’d be daft not to ! There will be times when the opportunity arises to transfer items or gold between factions, but taking advantage of two ripe markets separately will do for now.

Ah, I see, someone told you you could make 1000′s of gold with a level 10 did they ?
Well, a level 10 auction house runner can be pretty useful (more on that later)

You’ve read about someone trading up the copper they made from selling their level one clothes and armour (all 16 copper pieces) and turning into 1000g inside 24 playing hours?

The caveat here is “playing hours”. It is just about possible. If you log on 4 times a day for ten minutes trading for about a month.

You have to be very lucky – a mistake early on and you’ve failed.

You need to know the market very well. – a few Auctioneer readings is not enough.

• Markets have variations that are wheels within wheels.
• Evening is busier than morning, Weekends are busier than weekdays
• Summer holidays are very poor trading times, Autumn (fall) Holidays are excellent
• Winter is busier than summer
• Just after an expansion is busier than the eight or so months before it lands.
• Patch day is busy in the evening.

Add all these up and the result is a market that, to the untrained eye pops and weaves all over the place.

Not just a litle bit different, but hugely so.

As mentioned earlier, levelling helps. It’s a simple fact that higher level character has access to better skills, profession levels and can survive in the harder areas where higher value materials and reagents can be harvested.

But if you want to pay Blizzard good money to have your first character sitting outside the auction house for months on end, then go ahead. Be my guest.

If you have an ALT doing this, then that’s a different matter altogether. You’ll soon find a modest amount of levelling with another character will out-earn your “broker” alt by a factor of “many” to one.

When you have plenty of gold. then speculating becomes a worthwhile activity, and yes, using a low level character to process your sales and speculate is a great idea.

Doing it with your first is not recommended.

One thing you “could” do, is get an alt to a neutral auction house for later. It’s always handy to do this. But we’ll come on to that later. For now, it’s an interesting little trip for a level one. And yes, a level one from either faction can do it.

I can tell some of you doubt this, so here’s the videos to finish this post.

First the easy one – Horde Level 1 to Booty Bay…

Now for a much more convoluted route.

Alliance Level 1 to Booty Bay