Knowing The Ins And Out Of Supply And Demand

This is another tip from the archives, but it also shows that some principles never EVER change no matter how much the game changes.  If you really want to be a gold guru, you’re going to have to learn how to look at the market and get out in front of it.  So these oldies are still goodies, as a matter of fact they just keep getting better.

Now I have long since put so many of these types of things on auto pilot that I actually have a little bit of a hard time remembering all of them to re-post them as tips.  Once you identify a market segment that works, just work the crud out of it forever.  It’s really not that hard – and we can teach you exactly how to do things just like this for hundreds of items in a way you’ll never have to think about again either.

The Sheep Are Getting Away

(Originally published April 27th 2007)

One of the biggest secret money-makers in WoW is wool. It’s weird that everyone seems to know that wool always costs about as much or more than silk, everyone needs it to level up first aid, but no one seems to know why. Well you’re about to find out, and how to cash in as a low level toon or even farm a bit from time to time on your main.

Wool is expensive because it’s one of the harder cloths to get in the whole game. It’s actually surprising it doesn’t sell for more than Frostweave, since it actually drops a lot less often. To explain why, let’s look at the levels cloth drops from mobs.

Analyzing the chart shows us why wool is so hard to get. Although all cloths drop for about 20 levels, take a look at the 30% drop rates. When we look at the levels of mobs that drop the individual cloth at a 30% chance, we can see that you only have at least a 30% chance to get wool for a mere 5 levels. Another interesting fact is that for Frostweave every single one of the mobs that drop it do so at a 30% or higher rate. This means it’s much easier to collect Frostweave than it is to get wool.

Wool is even more difficult to farm for Horde characters than Alliance since the best drop rates are in the Deadmines and the Stockades. Since you would have a really hard time getting into the stockades instance in the middle of Stormwind, this leaves Horde toons with only one really good farming run and that in contested territory.

You may get your hands on a ton of silk, and it sells well, but it is just as profitable to run for wool. The best spot is definitely the Deadmines. But you can also grind through the Foulweald Furbolgs in Ashenvale forest. The Furbolgs are easy to get to for both Horde and Alliance and drop enough wool to get about 5 stacks an hour if you can kill them fast enough.

Also watch the wool prices on the AH. If someone is selling too low, be sure to scoop it up and re-list it for sale at high market value.

Fast Forward to WotLK

Since this original post we’ve refined our techniques to the point where I always have tons of mats of all kinds to sell without tracking a single thing or killing a single Furbie.  The Auction House Mastery Guide will show you how to use the Snatch module in AADV to build massive lists of: auto-pilot, market-controlling, sheer AH Dominance.

We know that Frostweave may still have a higher price than wool – but in reality it shouldn’t.  On several servers I peg wool at the Frostweave price and make people pay for it.  Yes, I know that there is actually more demand for Frostweave since more people use it, but you can’t skip wool altogether.  So you’re either going to pay my price (which I set by the time required to farm the stuff) or go farm it yourself.  And welcome to my world.

Now, you can choose to be not quite so . . .pirate-like . . .in your pricing strategies, but a good solid control of the wool market should be a standard part of every wow auctioneer that has any degree of skill or desire to Dominate.  Our students will tell you it’s so easy that once you do it for a month you’ll be rolling in dough and not thinking about it a lick.