Step Right Up – There’s Gold To Be Made!
The Darkmoon Faire is an event that goes unnoticed by many players throughout the game but is of the utmost importance to others for one simple reason. When the faire arrives, you are able to turn in Darkmoon decks for epic trinkets.
Traditionally all Darkmoon cards have been world drops which made them a very random and unpredictable thing to gather but in WotLK things have drastically changed. All of the Darkmoon cards for the expansions four new decks can only be created by Inscribers with the spell “Darkmoon card of the North” which is learned at 400 Inscription skill from trainers.
Creating these cards requires the following materials:
- 1 Resilient Parchment (bought from vendors)
- 6 Snowfall Ink (Created from two Icy Pigments)
- 3 Eternal Life
- 3 Ink of the Sea (Crated from two Azure Pigments)
Azure Pigment is created from milling any Northrend herbs and Icy Pigment has a 25% chance of appearing per mill of low level Northrend herbs and a 50% chance per mill of Lichbloom, Adders Tongue or Icethorn.
So, why is this information important? The first thing to consider is how much the Darkmoon cards themselves are actually worth. Most of the cards created are not highly sought after and will only sell for a few hundred gold. But Nobles cards are worth a small fortune; selling for between one and two thousand gold each. This high value is due to the fact that they make what is essentially the best trinket in the game for many classes, the Darkmoon Card: Greatness
On average it should take 24 mills of high level herbs, or 6 stacks of herbs in order to create the inks needed for one card. If you luck out and create a Nobles card you have just made yourself a small fortune from around 300 gold worth of materials. Since the card you create is random you only have a 25% chance per craft of creating a Nobles card so it can be risky; you may get lucky or you may only break even.
What is more important, however; is that all inscribers who are currently creating Darkmoon cards are amassing a huge amount of Azure Pigments beyond what they require; come patch 3.0.8 you will be able to trade 10 Ink of the Sea for a single Snowfall Ink.
The net effect will be that Inscribers will be able to suddenly create a mass of Darkmoon cards without the restriction of a limited amount of Snowfall Ink; instead, Eternal Life will be the resource in demand!
And this is where the opportunity to make a lot of money arrives. Your first option is to stockpile Azure Pigments and Ink of the Sea while there is an abundance of it around, and then create your own Darkmoon cards after the patch for lower than the current cost. Alternatively, the demand for Eternal Life should skyrocket after the patch, allowing you to make a tidy profit there as well.
It may take a while for the prices of the affected items to change however; as, like all things related to the Darkmoon faire, demand tends to only increase close to and during the fair actually starting – so you will need to be patient with your investment.