Season 4 - A Unique Opportunity
Posted on June 16th, 2008 by Lithanial under Gold Building, Gold Farming
It has recently been announced by Blizzard that season 4 of arenas will begin on the 24th and 25th of this month on the US and European servers respectively and this presents a unique opportunity to all players to make a good sum of gold.
When season 4 goes live not only does the brutal gladiators’ set become available for the top arena players; but also season 2 equipment becomes purchasable for honor. Currently each servers’ PvP players are working diligently at stashing away masses of arena points and honor for season 4.
What this inevitably leads to is an astronomical one-off influx of new equipment into each and every server much larger than normal kit replacement. All this new kit will be needing gems and enchants, those prepared to provide the materials needed for these gear buffs stand to make a good deal of gold indeed as demand will far outstrip supply leading to inflated prices.
In an effort to aid you in exploiting this massive demand for enchants, let us explore exactly what will be in demand on a profession by profession basis.
Tailoring
Spellthread of all types will be in demand for leg enchants by all casters, and in order to create those threads large amounts of primals are needed.
The common ingredient to all spellthread is a primal nether, unfortunately these cannot really be farmed and are not worth spending badges on to resell the primal; if you have any spare nethers stashed away however, then this is the best opportunity to sell them you will likely ever have.
The next ingredient needed is either primal life or primal mana in very large quantities, both will see massive price escalation and so are ideally suited to being farmed for profit.
Leatherworking
Leatherworking creates leg enchants used by melee classes. These also use a large quantity of primals which can be farmed by anyone.
Once again primal nethers are required, creating an even larger demand for them. However this time it is primal earth and air that is required; unfortunately primal earth is almost always in surplus due to a high amount of miners in game so these are generally not worth farming. This is not the case with primal air - it always sells well.
Secondly, if you are a skinner, all leg armors require a large amount of knothide leather so it may be worth farming some to sell.
Jewelcrafting
Gems of all colours will be in high demand, however PvP kit comes with a mix of yellow and red sockets leading to a much higher demand for yellow and red gems over blue.
Since you have little control as to what gems specifically you get, just hold back any gems you have for sale once season 4 is released and you should see a price rise for all types.
Alchemy
Alchemists create the base meta gems before a jewelcrafter can cut them, and creating meta gems requires primals. Earth, water, fire and air will all be in demand.
Note that primal air is also required by tailors so having two professions requiring primal air only serves to further increase the demand for primals and motes of air - and as such raise its price even further.
Enchanting
All base enchanting materials will see a price hike as the demand for them will be overwhelming; when out farming other materials keep any greens you find for disenchanting either by yourself, if possible, or a friend.
Besides the basic materials though, enchanting requires an astronomical number of primals. Primal fire, water, life and mana are in demand for caster based enchants while a small amount of primal air is in demand for agility enchants.
Misc
On top of all these profesion based requirements, new shoulder enchants will be in demand which will lead to a rise in the price of arcane tomes and fel armaments; arcane tomes are more common due to the sunwell runs now available so if you plan to farm either then I suggest you farm fel armaments.
Once you have farmed a good amount it will be time to dominate the auction house on the 24th/25th for some good old fashioned profiteering.
Addition by Lawbringer:
After doing a test on this theory (and being flamed for it in the comments by Richard) I decided to post the results of my own experience with this information directly in the post for all to see. The following screen shot show the bags of my banking toon on Fenris, Horde side, toon name “Moneybaggins.” I sent every penny I had past 5,000 gold to my mule toon on Fenris to hold for the duration of this experiment.
With my 5,000 gold I spent the 22nd, and 23rd purchasing every available items for DE that would yield high level mats as well as purchasing every available Void Crystal, Large Prismatic Shard and Arcane Dust. Fenris Horde has a fairly small AH, just over 160 pages on average (information from AADV).
On the morning of the 24th I re-posted every single enchanting mat I had gleaned from my purchases and DE efforts for approximately 150% more than market value based on data from AADV and Bottom Scanner. Needless to say, since I had the only available mats in any sort of volume I was the only choice. I would also spend some of my earning each day buying out people who tried to undercut my price by a significant percentage as well as any auctions of large stacks to make sure I kept nearly complete control of the market.
What was really amazing is that I was able to corner the market on a server as mature as Fenris with as little as 5,000 gold.
The following screen shot shows the results of this exercise as of the morning of July 5th, 2008. You can see that I was able to far more than double my 5,000 gold and I still have a mailbox full of mats I sold at the ah I haven’t even opened yet. If you doubt the existence of any of this, you are welcome to meet me on Fenris and I will be happy to show you first hand.
I certainly hope that many of you were able to profit as handsomely as I did from this tip and I look forward to more of these tips from Lithanial as well as the pointers Gavin and I try to give you when the fruit is ripe for the picking on the AH - we don’t just make this stuff up folks, we know how to make things work!
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Do you suggest buying up a ton of specific items and upping the price the day of the new season? Also, will there be a great need for Large Prismatic Shards? I have read that some players have made profits close to 8000g taking advantage of this season change. Do you think this is possible?
Thanks,
Arch
It could well be possible if you had enough gold to buy up the auction house; though time is a little short for that as other people will be anticipating this rush and are either buying materials now while they are cheaper for personal use or for resale later as well.
Large prismatic shards will be in great demand yes, along with void crystals, essences and arcane dust since these are all general enchanting materials.
as an example both mongoose and executioner enchants; very popular with arena rogues, require 6 void crystals and 10 large prismatic shards along with essences and large quantities of arcane dust. Then keep in mind that a rogue has two weapons to enchant and is one of the most heavily played class types and you have a recipe for insane amounts of demand.
I think I will begin investing all my gold this week on shards, essences, and dusts. Do you think there will be a need for cobra scales? I think they are ued for epic/blue armor kits. Also would you all recommend posting material the day of the release or previous to. I was just thinking it might be smart to hold out about (the day of) so that you can see how everyone sets the market. I just dont want to excessively over price my mats.
Thank again for your help.
Arch
Also, for any of you with experience using this season change as profit what historically has the greatest profit return on investment and what sort of markups can we expect.
there will be a need for the cobra scales along with thick clefthoof leather, however farming for these specifically will be less profitable than farming for primals will be. If you can find some cheap on the AH however then by all means grab them.
Holding off a day will work if that is your aim, but for maximum profit you should sell relativly early. If you sell late people will go out and farm theyre own materials due to there being that much of a shortage.
The demand will remain high for a few weeks however as after the initial influx of items from people spending honour, you will get players throughout the week holding off buying arena items untill they get the personal rating required for, as an example, a new weapon.
keep an eye on what is short and you can continue making a good profit for a decent period of time untill the market adjusts.
This is what I’m gonna do until S4 arrives:
Log-in with mi bank char, bid/buyout all the cheap/reasonable Netherweave Cloth in the AH (3g stack), logout (2 minutes).
Log-in with mi main char (lvl68 lock) go farm Primal Life at Dead Mire or/and Primal Water at the Eels north of Shatrath (2 hours for example xD).
Log-in with mi bank char and re-bid/buyout Netherweave cloth.
Then the day before S4 I will take all that hundreds of Netherweave cloths and make Netherweave Bracers/Belts and Disenchant them… unload at the AH at 150/200% his normal price.
I did this same thing on my anterior account but with a Blacksmithing warrior (doing Fel Iron Belts and buying ALL the Fel Iron Bar that goes for 1g or less for about a month) and farming Dead Mire with my Herbalist Shadow Priest (loot motes of life and then “skin” the mob and loot motes of life again is priceless)… and I earned 2.500g thanks to S3 patch ^^.
I’m sure I’m gonna have enough money to buy my epic flying mount when I reach lvl 70 ;D and this is whit my main char :D:D
Don’t miss this opportunity!! ^^
Also, most of the primal farming spots have been nerfed- bad. So the demand will be sky rocketing and the supply super short. After S4 comes out all the primal farming spots will be way over-crowded and most people will just give up and buy what they need x]
Time to get farming!
Keiba Says:
June 18th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
“Also, most of the primal farming spots have been nerfed- bad”
I was farming in the Dead Mire (Zangarmarsh) last Monday:
Time: 130 minutes, Motes of Life: 93
(plus 46 gold in greys, 12 greens, 1 blue, 90 bog lord tendrils and 87 unidentified plant parts)
I was farming at the Lake NE of Shatrath yesterday:
Time: 90 minutes, Motes of Water: 67
(plus 46 gold in greys -yes, the same amount ¿?-, and 5 greens).
Doesn’t seem to be soo nerfed ;D
Well i have 80 Primal Nethers stocked up, 20 primal fires 18, primal mana and 14 primal air.
Lots of Cash here i come
I did a little test run with this information on Fenris, horde side. Beginning with 5,000 gold. I bought up every item for Disenchant that would yield high level mats, as well as purchasing every single Large Prismatic, Void Crystal and Arcane dust, until I had spent every single penny of the 5,000 original gold.
In the 7 days since S4 went live I have made back my 5,000 gold plus another 5,100. It is perhaps the best speculative week I have had in quite some time.
Next time Lithanial gives you a gold tip, you might want to take it!
Thats crap the prices did not go up that much. On our realm which is shadow moon apparently people had been buying up for some time or collecting motes,primals, large prismatic shards etc. Unfortunately there was a little money to be made but not the doubling of the money like you said. I am not sure if your buds or what. seriously was not good advice. The market adjusted accordingly. Some items did go up about 10 to 20 percent but quickly balanced out again due to the large volume of people who had items saved up and dumped them on the AH in hopes of getting a big return. This did not materialize…
Richard,
Calling someone out based on what you did not observe is crap. Fortunately I was able to more than double my money. It might have been a unique situation on Fenris, but f that is the case I suggest you transfer your toon to another server or get used to the fact that you just may be stuck for as long as you are on Shadowmoon.
To call me a liar with no real research of this situation across a number of realms is bad form. I do not report poor information, nor do I exaggerate. To prove the point I will post today a screenshot of the gold on my banking toon for Fenris and you can argue with that.
The fact is that on many realms this not only materialized, it gave a number of people the chance to make serious money. My only regret is that I did not do this for all of my banking toons with all of my resources on every sever I have access to. Since it was a test of the situation I only used a portion of my available resources (gold) on Fenris, Horde side to do this test with.
To ensure I had an accurate barometer for this test I sent every dime of gold past 5,000 to my mule toon to hold so that I would not get an inflated sum. I also posted no other auctions other than the mats and items for this particular test so that I would have an accurate picture of what really happened without getting an inflated picture from the sale of other items I normally deal with each week.
Perhaps, as you mentioned, the reason you were not able to profit from this tip is that you were slow to the punch and got beaten to the lower priced goods. Skeptical people often miss big opportunities because they wait too long while the confident and smart capitalists do their speculative purchases.
Don’t be mad when something doesn’t turn out well for you. That doesn’t mean that your experience is the norm, it was just your experience. I firmly believe that those people who follow our gold-making tips consistently find that they receive not only good advice, but excellent results.
I’m sorry this one didn’t pan out for you, but torching my post was not called for. The information is accurate and actual, and I took care to make sure that the data was not tainted by anything outside of the theory for this specific subject.