Back To Banking Basics

We’ve posted a lot of information about this topic before in various posts, but we received and email a few days back from a reader trying to put it all together. So let’s take a look at some of the intricacies of using DK toons as bankers and which professions you might want to consider giving them – here is the question:

I have a L80 with Jewelcrafting and Enchanting, and am raising a DK for
profession sake only.

I had considered Alchemy (for transmutes) and Inscription, knowing that I
will have to work hard to make money with Inscription vs established scribes
already working the AH on my server.

While reading blogs and listening to podcasts, it sounds like Inscription
requires much more knowledge of add-ons and market conditions, and this
would be the biggest profitability challenge of any profession. I like
challenges, and would enjoy learning a new market, but thought I would get
your advice before jumping into it. Should I be considering a different
profession than Inscription, this late in the game?

Tyberiuss

Two good moves here by Tyberiuss: first, a DK profession alt is a great idea, and second, Alchemy is certainly at the top of the list. Let’s walk through the other choices you can make here, Tyberiuss, and give you a good synopsis of everything we’ve talked about on the site in one clean spot.

First, I would park your DK in your favorite major city and leave him there to do your auctions as well. When you use a bank alt for professions he really should do all your banking, as the name would suggest. In order to make full use of Alchemy, which would have been our choice as well (my DK banker does the same on several servers) the only thing to keep in mind is that you’ll need to train him up to level 68 to get the full benefit.

You have two choices with specialization in Alchemy, and although I prefer elixir mastery for the procs on flasks, on some servers there may be something to be said for transmute mastery if gems are hard to come by. That’s where you’re going to have to have a finger on the pulse of the economy. If your gem transmutes sell like hotcackes it’s not a terrible option, but it’s generally more profitable to go with elixir mastery. remember, you don’t have to do the dungeons to get Elixir mastery done, you can train for one of the other masteries (which only require things you can do yourself) and then switch to Elixir mastery later.

Next, I normally give my bankers enchanting for convenience sake, but it seems you already have one of those. The cool thing about hitting level 68 for alchemy is that you will already be past the level requirement for training all of the Grand master level professions, meaning you have three good options.

Tailoring, Jewelcrafting and the gathering professions almost require level 80 in order to do the dailies or gain the rep for the profitable patterns. So your first guess is a good one, that Inscription is not a bad idea, but let me throw in another one just for kicks – Leatherworking. Enchanting is also in this category, but you already have one of those.

Inscription, Leatherworking and Enchanting all have one advantage for the bank alt at level 65+. In each of these professions the best patterns can either be bought or learned from purchasable items. In the case of Inscription (and Alchemy, although the learned stuff kinda blows) you can learn all of the most profitable rare recipes from books of glyph mastery or the Inscription research spell. In other words, you can get all the good stuff and never do a single thing in Northrend.

The same thing holds true for Enchanting, where all the high end patterns can be purchased for Dream Shards, but don’t forget Leatherworking. Letherworking is a lot like Enchanting in that the epic leg armors can be had for Arctic Furs, so it also makes a good option. Depending on the mat cost of raising those two professions, and the profit potential on the leg armors you might choose LW instead. Besides that, it’s just simpler to make a profit on two items than it is trying to guess right on 50.

I’m not a big fan of Inscription for making gold, but it’s probably just the servers I’m on and the fact that I haven’t spent any time at all on it for more than a year. So your first instinct is probably the best one, which says that competing in the Inscription Glyph marketplace may be more hassle than it is worth. It’s not a bad idea to have an inscriptionist lying around somewhere so that you can make your own glyphs, but as far as dominating the Ah with one, it’s pretty hit or miss.

In the end, I did exactly that with my DK, however, since I didn’t want to blow Inscription on one of my raiding toons, and he ended up with Alch/Inscr – but only because I already have two raiding toons with Leatherworking. But as you all know, Law is just a weird alt-aholic with at least two of every profession (except Inscription, only one of those) maxed out to 450.

What it boils down to is that a DK alt for professions and banking is not only a great idea, it’s what we always do. And, for those off professions Alchemy is certainly at the top of the list. Past that, our favorite choices, in order, are: Enchanting, Leatherworking and Inscription. Any one of these professions can be effectively used to make a good profit or support your other toons at just level 68. But Tyberiuss is right about one thing, you’ll need to have some idea of just how saturated the market is for those leg armors or glyphs before you make your choice final.

8 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Interesting Items In The Next Patch

We recently put up a page for the Patch WoW links at Blizz. But we also want to give you some more insights incase you don’t go into patch notes like some folks (and you know who you are). So here are the more interesting tidbits coming from the current PTR notes.

Titansteel bars will no longer have a cooldown, expect prices to drop a bit since supply will be able to more adequetly match demand. The same thing applies to Moonshroud, Spellweave and Ebonweave – no more cooldowns on those.

Random dungeons have been such a hit that the concept is moving into the Battlegrounds. Using this system will give you extra honor equivalent to 30 kills the first time through each day and an extra 15 for further BG’s the same day. Since honor per kill is being doubled, that’s going to mean a lot more honor in random BG’s than queueing for specific battles. Marks of honor for specific battles are also being removed, we can only assume that those items which required marks will now be purchased with honor instead.

the deserter debuff for bailing on a random dungeon has been increased to 30 minutes. leaving a random party for any reason will trigger this debuff, which overwrites the usual 15 minute debuff. This will prevent some of the goonery for instances like Occulus, where people leave the second they see where they are. Honestly, just make the run mon.

For holiday bosses, you can now queue for the encounter without having to do the prequel quests each year. As long as you’ve done the boss before at least once you can just queue up random and go spank them.

But the big one is that those worthless Frozen orbs will now actually be useful for more than just vendoring. A new NPC is being added in Dalaran that will convert your Frozen orbs to other items. Here is the list of what he sells in exchange for frozen orbs (consider this to be currently accurate but Blizz has been knows to change their mind at the last minute).  You can see the (current) list of items Frozo is selling at the link below.

Items you can get from Frozo the Renowned

Frost Lotus for a Runed Orb – that’s going to help some.  It’s also going to raise the value of the orbs a bit and lower values for certain eternals.  Since only one orb drops per heroic, there shouldn’t be a huge change in Ah prices for the items above, but beware the first week or two while everyone blows through all their extra orbs they might have sitting around.

I’m kicking myself now for finally vendoring about 60 of them, but you might be able to snag a few cheap stack off the AH before this change goes live.  There are also some class changes you’ll want to take a look at.  Once again DK’s are getting the most fiddling while most other classes remain fairly static.

It’s not what we would call a Dominating patch, but Frozo and the random battlegrounds will be a nice couple of changes.

18 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

How To Power Level Jewelcrafting

Now that we are well on our way here at DYS to getting you the best builds for all the classes, it’s high time we jumped up and became your go-to source for professions as well.  We’ll start it off with our Jewelcrafting Guide.  We’ll do the best we can to get all of the professions up in short order, including the secondary professions such as first aid and herbalism.

Dominate Your Server Jewelcrafting Guide

Just use the link above to go directly to the complete jewelcrafting powerleveling guide.  The rest of this article will discuss the ins and outs of leveling jewelcrafting as an overview.  We just might be able to save you a lot of time, gold and headaches if you’ll flow through this bit first.

Leveling JC is something Law will probably never do again, which means at least not for a few more weeks.  It still irks me to no end that about the only way to level the dang thing without spending what amounts to a small fortune is to farm your way through it – YUCK BOMB!  That’s right, the only way you can reasonably spend less than a huge pile of gold on mats for this is if you have a miner and a whole lot of hours to kill.

I prefer to use other people’s hours, that’s what the AH is for.  So I suppose if you are also patient you can just meander along through the leveling Jewelcrafting process as you find good deals for what you need, but I’m not that patient.  Rich and impatient means that I leveled JC from 1-450 in about 6 hours.  Not all in one sitting, of course.  It took a few days when there just wasn’t a single truesilver bar left on the entire AH and I had to wait for someone else to go get them for me.

But in the end I’m pretty happy with having chosen jewelcrafting for my shaman.  I had already done Blacksmithing and dropped Inscription for JC – for the buffs.  Sure, the shoulder enchant is awesome, but the JC only gems are even better – plus two extra sockets to shove more stats into from BS.  For  a lot of classes it’s really hard to beat the BC/JC combo for min/max.  It would be almost as good on my Mage as Enchanting/Tailoring, though not by much.

Anyway the first reason you should consider JC is the same reason we always recommend you choose a profession – because it helps your toon do whatever it is you like most.  PvP guys like engineering, but it’s pretty much novelty stuff in Raids (yes I know that repair bots can be handy but honstly there is a repair guy or three inside ICC).  While you will find tanks with mining skill for the buff, there are other professions with better buffs.  In other words, Gathering professions just don’t help your toon all that much for the most part, at least, not enough to do them on a main.

Lawbringer Has one toon for all of the professions (even though I skip gathering for the most part), which means that I make everything I need on all my toons.  One man show.  Flasks, threads, gems, chants, I never buy crafted anything – buy the mats cheap and make it my dang self.  And in that way Jewelcrafting has been the awesome of the bunch.

It’s hard to imagine living without jewelcrafting and enchanting, with alchemy coming in a close 3rd place.  One toon has fishing and cooking maxxed and there is a tailor and leatherworker in the mix to deal with the leg enchants.  But being able to cut your own gems is awesome.  You don’t have to ask if “anyone has the +12 to nub / +10 geek gem, you just keep up your dailies and go get it.

Now, JC is NOT my favorite thing to use for making gold, although you will see in this thread that there are people who swear by it.  It feels more risky to me since there is such a high cost of entry to the market as a seller and the ongoing costs (in the form of auction house deposits) can absolutely kill your margin.  But I do have a few pet gems that I keep up on the AH at all times – on our server the PvP Meta gems are a good, consistent sellers.

When you use our guide you might not want to go buy all of the mats at once.  It’s hard to keep track of everything, so do it by each guide segment.  Buy all of the mats for apprentice, get them in your bags, then stand at the trainer while you use up the mats.  Then it’s off the the mailbox to clear your inventory and back to the AH for mats for the next level.

We’ve tried to make the guide in such a way that it will be the cheapest route on most servers from 1-450, but you might find a different sweet spot in your leveling where you can get something like 80 shadow gems for next to nothing.  So shop with your eye on the guide page and look for those opportunities.  Even though we think the guide is about as good as it can get, it can’t take all things into consideration for all servers all the time.

In the end we think you’ll enjoy jewelcrafting as much as we do (even though Law resisted it completely for two years).  Is Jewelcrafting the best profession in WoW?  Maybe it is for some people, and it certainly might be the best one for you.  But one thing is for sure, getting your jewelcrafting leveling done with speed and precision (and at the lowest possible cost) is completely Dominating.

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When And What You Post Can Make A Big Difference

This one hearkens back to an old saying – since some of us are older than others (and I’m not sure they even use this phrase much any more) an intro is in order.

“That guy could sell [snow cones/refrigerators/ice cream/(anything cold)] to an Eskimo”

Yeah maybe – but wouldn’t he sell a LOT more snow cones to people in Phoenix, Arizona?  I mean there are some people that are just born with a certain amount of arrogance, and it is quite natural for that to directly translate to e-peen.  In other words, why go out of your way to sell the worst possible items at the worst possible time in the worst possible way just to prove you can sell something.  There is another old saying that I like quite a bit better:

“Work smarter, not harder.”

That, in a nutshell, is our entire gold-making system.  You can go farm, you can track hundreds of items, you can depend on your main toons’ crafting professions, you can spam trade chat, you can sell ice in Northrend . . .

As for me, I prefer smarter.  Now, being smarter doesn’t mean you’re some sort of genius.  All it means is that you track what works and what doesn’t work quite as well.  Then you have to filter that information to find out what really works best based on some sort of quantifiable number.  We can all be very subjective about things, being smart is when you set your preferences aside and just make a cold, hard decision based on cold, hard facts.

And that’s what we did.  For two years we tracked everything about everything we did that had anything to do with gold in any way.  What we came up with is a way of making gold that is based on a very simple root – time.

For a few years, I was a personal trainer.  I did the same thing with working out.  I hate working out – HATE IT.  So when I found a system that cut the time requirement down to the bare minimum and got even better results – I could do that.  And it was so simple I could teach other people how to do it as well.  The cool thing is that it works every time, for every person, regardless of age or any other factor.

And the idea rubbed off into everything else I do.  So when I started in WoW, it wasn’t long before I realized I needed more gold – a lot more.  So I applied the time factor to everything I did to make gold – and I did it all.

• My first 1000 gold farming copper, tin and bronze in Darkshore (pretty nub stuff)
• Grinding mobs for cloth
• Farming SMGY
• Farming rares for twinks
• Crafting blues
• blah
• blah
• blah

That was pre-BC.  Around the time the Burning Crusade came out, I was full tilt into the AH.  And what I found was that I could make more gold at the AH in less time than any other method.  And not just a little more gold – a LOT more.  I could scan the AH for under-priced stuff other people had farmed (copper, cloth, twinkitems) and then just re-list it for a profit and never leave IF.

And that is why I never farm – ever.  There is always someone else out there willing to waste hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of their time and sell those farmed mats to me for under market price – it’s the silliest thing I ever heard of.  Then, for about 2 minutes worth of work, I can turn right around and sell those mats for market price and make 15%-50% profit.

If I was just doing it with copper and tin it wouldn’t amount to much really.  But when you do it for EVERYTHING – it turns into a lot of gold really fast.  But I have digressed egregiously from our original premise – well, sort of.

When you begin operating an AH-only methodology, you get a really good feel for how the market moves.  And you don’t have to be anal retentive to sense things.  Today we’ll look at just one timing tip that can make a big difference in how fast you make gold on one type of crafted item – and time is everything.

A few days back we posted the article: Best Gold-Making Professions On Bank Alts, which was a follow-on from the article: Alchemy – WoW Quest Tricks.  Both of those articles bring us to the real point.  If you’re going to use a bank alt for crafting professions (which you should) there are some professions that fit bank alts better than others.  Alchemy is a great fit for a bank alt.

If you’re going to use alchemy on a bank alt, you need to be an elixir master for the procs of extra elixirs and especially flasks.  Since you’re getting the mastery for flasks, you will want to be selling those flasks for maximum profit – and now we come to the point.

As you scan the AH for things to sell throughout the week, the temptation is to just post them as you get them.  For certain categories, that works well – such as mats.  Mats are like a little black dress or blue jeans, always in style in every season and decade or day of the week.  We only resell items (armor, weapons etc.) on weekends when the most people are on (especially the nubs who don’t get to play all that often).  And there is a best time for other things as well.

For flasks, it’s Tuesday.  I know I know, big surprise, but it’s an easy thing to overlook.  After server reset, everyone is rushing back into ICC or doing the weekly for their frost badges, or even VoA for the week and the demand for flasks goes from a trickle to a roar.  And since there is a huge demand spike on Tues, there is a corresponding price spike potential.

If the raid leader requires you to flask and there are only 10 flasks on the AH (all yours btw) then you will pay whatever the price is or you don’t raid.  Pretty simple when you think about it.  Buy up all your flask making mats during the week and on the weekends (especially from the farming goobers who are killing time on Sat afternoon).  Then on Monday brew up a few dozen of each.  Tuesday morning you can throw all your flasks up on the AH (even buying out the other guys selling too cheap), corner the market, and quite easily double whatever you spent on mats.

So:

• Get you a DK
• level to 68
• get elixir mastery
• buy up flask mats during the week
• make flasks on Monday
• buy out cheap flasks Tues
• sell all flasks Tues
• make another 1,000g a week
• Dominate

It’s when you start stacking things like this that you really start to get rich in WoW.  Find a sweet spot for alchemy, Inscription, JC, DE, resale, mats and whatever else you can get your grubby little enterprising hands on and pretty soon you will never want (or need) to pick another weed, kill another mob or swing another pick as long as you play WoW.  And, you’ll have a LOT more gold to boot, which is quite simply – Dominating.

12 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Two Trade Skills That Fit Great On Bank Alts

Alright kids, let’s review.  We don’t farm here at DYS – well almost never.  From time to time the perfect conflagration of once per year occurrences happens that makes us do it, as we have mentioned in this post: Investing And Farming For Gold.

Next, we recommend banking be done in certain ways.  First, a bank alt is by far the best use for a DK we’ve ever seen, and we’re going to tell you which two professions suit bank alts best.  But a DK banker is perfect because you only have to get to level 65 from a level 55 start to train all the way to Grand Master in any profession.  But over the last six months we’ve figured out two professions that just stand far and above the others when it comes to making gold quick and easy.

The first one will come as absolutely zero surprise to anyone who reads DYS.  Enchanting – the gran-daddy of them all when it comes to gold making.  I recently had to change my tune a bit when it comes to Jewelcrafting, but I still don’t make as much from Jewelcrafting as I do from enchanting – not by a wide margin.  Just in case you missed it, here is another post if you want to read about the true power of enchanting for making gold: Best Profession For Those New To Gold Making.

Currently, you’ll want to focus on DE items between level 200 and 300 skill.  With everyone doing 5 million heroics per day, the market for Northrend mats is pretty depressed already – flooding it with another 50 stacks of infinite dust will just generate even more downward pressure on the price by inflating supply that much more.

A few months ago we suggested using a DK as your bank alt and giving them Enchanting, it’s a little more complex than that if you want it to be, as in this post: More Banking Toons Make It Easier To Make Gold At The AH.  But after working with that system for a few months, another profession has jumped out of the woodwork as absolutely perfect for the single DK bank alt.

You will need one DK, a desire for more gold and enough patience to gain 13 levels.  You’ll need  to hit level 68, but with a DK that’s pretty easy to do in just a few hours if you concentrate.  Then it’s off to the profession trainers for Enchanting and . . . Alchemy.

Alchemy is perfect for a bank alt because it requires zero rep to get all the recipes, so you can stand all by yourself in the major city of your choice and end up with every recipe in the game through discovery.  And you’ll make all the accidental discoveries in record time.

In our last post – Alchemy, Wow Quest Tricks, we talked about how to get the Elixir Master profession bonus for Alchemy without doing the Elixir Master quest, which is a pain in the tookus.  At level 68 your DK can do exactly the same thing and end up with Elixir Mastery and that’s where the real dough starts rolling in.

On an average day I will have my DK bank alt brew up around 200-300 elixirs and flasks.  Now that’s just the number I have mats for.  Since the proc rate for Elixir Mastery is a little higher than 10%, I generally end up with an extra 10-15 flasks for every hundred I make, sometimes more.  With flasks on our server going for about 60g, that’s 600+ gold for zero extra work.

All I do is put all of the herbs and other mats for the best alchemy potions (Lil’Sparky is a must here) in my Snatch filter for AADV and grab everything under 100% market price a couple of times a day.  Then I just afk brew, post the products and profit – generally while raiding or watching SportsCenter.

Alchemy is ridiculously easy to make gold with, and unlike Tailoring, Jewelcrafting, Leatherworking and other professions that can be lucrative, they also all require that you be level 80 and gain exalted rep with certain factions or acquire recipe drops in raids to get the patterns that will make you serious gold.  (yes, I have seen the stupid youtube video of the guy DE’ing the JC rings a bazillion times, but with northrend DE mats prices being what they are LilSparky’s tells me I would lose a lot more than I gained doing that right now.)

So My main DK banker does Inscription and Alchemy.  Inscription is another good fit for bankers, but if you only have 2 to work with.  On a single bank alt, alchemy and enchanting is the only way to go.  Between those two professions you should be able to knock down an easy 2,000 to 5,000 extra gold each week and not spend more than a few minutes each day fiddling with it.  It’s easy, fast and very Dominating.

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How To Get Elixir Mastery Without Doing Black Morass

Not all professions are created equal.  While I don’t use alchemy on any of my raiding toons I like to have one around to make gold with.  The only problem with that is that in order to really make a killing you certainly need to make it to level 68 and go get the Elixir Mastery specialization so that when you’re brewing up a few hundred flasks you have a chance to get even more to sell on the AH.

So off an on I’ve been leveling my trusty DK banker (who does alchemy and inscription BTW (and perhaps the only decent use I know for a DK (just a little DK dig there))) to level 68 for just this reason.  If your alchemy is at level 325 and you are also level 68 you can get one of three quests from several NPC’s scattered around Outlands.  Even if you do it the hard way the Elixir mastery specilization is worth it, but there is a much more Dominating way to get it done.

Here are the three quests:

• Master of Elixirs
• Master of Potions
• Master of Transmutation

Well, I never liked Black Morass anyway.  Then, when you consider the fact that you are going to have to do the silly walk-around quest and Old Hillsbrad first, bah, I’ve got gold to make with my time.  But I really REALLY want the extra flask procs – so what do I do?

I go get the last quest – Master of Transmutation and then pick up the recipe for Transmute: Primal Might.  By this time there are enough people just fiddling around in Outlands but not really doing anything there that making a Primal Might really shouldn’t be all that expensive.  In other words it’s pretty reasonable to find all the primals on the AH for cheap since no one uses them much any more, even if they are rare-ish.

Now, even though I want Master of Elixirs, I can use any of the Mastery quests to get there.  The only one that doesn’t require me to do a dungeon run (and have a flying mount for TK, not wasting that gold on a DK bank alt)  is the Master of Transmutation quest.  So I head out to Zarevhi in Netherstorm with 4 each primal earth, air, fire, water and mana – and the recipe from one of the vendors above.

If you go prepared you’ll be a Transmutation master in about 30 minutes or less if you don’t get lost easily and have the flight points.  Next just talk to Zarevhi again and tell him you don’t really want to be a transmutation master after all and pay him 150 gold (cheaper than a flying mount) to unlearn what you just did.  Don’t worry, it all works out well in the end.

All that’s left is to fly back to Shattrath and talk to Lorokeem (the bird doods kinda freak me out, but there’s not much I can do about it in this case).  Tell him you want to be an Elixir master and POOF!  You’re a brand new Elixir master ready to get all those free flasks out of your usual business for free.

Free gold is interesting to me, and so are shortcuts.  This way I don’t have to get a lock summon or buy a flying mount up to TK and then to the second boss.  I don’t have to do all the pre-reqs for BM and then actually do BM four or five times.  As a matter of fact there is an off chance the Primal mights could be already sitting on the AH from someone else making them for some goofy reason.

This works for any profession specialization, but specializations don’t mean quite as much now as they did in vanilla wow waaaaay back in the day.  Who knows, maybe Blizz brings that flavor back.  But in the meantime, on your bank alt alchemist (which I highly recommend btw) getting elixir mastery doesn’t have to be a huge pain in the tookus.  All you have to do is use this little trick and you’ll be maximizing your auction house domination of the flask market in no time.

6 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

With Great Power comes Great Responsibility.

Despite what you may believe, it’s not easy leading a guild, ask any leader who’s guild has been around for more then one or two patches. We’ll be covering various aspect of Guild Leadership over the coming months. Dominating is more than just about DPS and gear.

In the last few months there have been quite a few things going on in-game for Dominate. With new leadership, sometimes you also get new ideas. One of the biggest challenges that any guild faces on a regular basis is dealing with the guild bank, funding it and allowing access to resources.

For starters you should know that it costs nearly 10,000 gold (9350 to be precise) to get all 6 possible bank tabs so before you gripe about your rights as a member, rememeber that someone paid for the bloody thing. Every guild has it’s own system for keeping it filled and it’s own ideas about how to use it and who should have access. Of course for most guild the problem isn’t distribution of wealth, really, the real challenge is Acquisition of said wealth to distribute.

Just as in-game we strive to give you tips and tricks to make your gaming experience more enjoyable, so too in this series we’ll share with you some things that we’ve picked up along the way.

There is no single way to fund the guild bank just as there is no single way to spend the resources in it. Cataclysm will make this significantly easier with the option to tithe members whenever they loot anything. Until then, here’s a nifty and fun little way to go about it.

Submitted Anonymously

GuildLotto

The basic premise of this strategy is exactly the same as most state lotteries. everyone who wants to, buys a “ticket”. At a set date, there is a “draw” and the winner takes home a large purse (say half the pot) and the other half goes to the guild bank . You can take this concept and tweak it all you want, I’ll just detail how we at Dominate are going about it.

There will be a lottery (4 actually) that anyone can buy into. Out of all the money accumulated from “ticket” purchases, half will go to the winner and half will go to the guild bank for mats, flasks and reagents to help fund the raiding (or whatever special project you have in mind)

Dominate will host 4 lotteries:
The Lowbie lottery:

- Only open to those who don’t have a toon past 70
- Only 1 entry per person/human being (not character, not account)
- 5 gold entry
- 2 winners (50% and 25% of the pot respectively)
- 1 draw/week (Fridays?)

Leveling Loto:

- Only one entry /human player
- Open to anyone in the guild
- 25 gold buy in
- 1 draw/week (Fridays?)

Raider Loto:

- Only one entry /human
- Open to anyone in guild
- 100 gold buy in
- 1 draw/week (Fridays?)

There will also be an EPIC Lottery:

- Only 1 entry /human
- Only open to those who raid, are present or contributing in some way to Guild Raids.
- 1000 gold buy in
- 1 draw/MONTH (On the first of the month?)

Game Rules:

In order for this to work it has to be administered in fairness, impartiality and with complete transparency or you may as well just disband your guild right now.

If you ever lose the Respect and the Trust of your guildies, you are Finished as a guild Leader.

If you decide to play the Lottery you will be assigned a number (sequentialy) that will be yours as long the lottery is in place. There is no easy way to do this quickly and fairly in-game so we have to accommodate the rules of participation to the in-game mechanics available to us. In that respect, once a guild member choses to participate to the Lottery they will be attributed a number (sequential seems easiest for our purposes) and that number will not change (for admin purposes)

• All ticket purchases should be sent to a single character, created specificaly for this purpose: “<Guild>Lotto” character preferably from your main toon, stating which characters you are contributing for (Name your Alts) .
• Draws will be made from a /roll 1-xx (Where is the number of contributors) from that toon: <Guild>Loto.

• The Guild Bank will be aloted the first number to every lotery (roll 1 = Guild bank wins) but will re-roll for the lowbie Loto. Should the guild bank win a roll , the entire sum gets rolled over to next week’s Jack Pot

• If someone doesn’t want to play that week or doesn’t pay in time for the roll, and their fixed number comes up all the money is rolled over into the pot for next week’s “bouble jackpot “

• All roll will be made in the presence of at least 3 witnesses, Idealy in a raid group so everyone who’s interested can see the actual roll.

The purpose of this lottery is to supply the guild bank with sufficient funds to help out the Raiders with Flasks, Reagents, Enchants, pay for repair bills and whatever else the guild need. After all it’s a lot easier to raid when your gear is enchanted and socketed and you have flasks and repairs are paid for.

Just as there are rules for the lottery so too should there be basic rules for the administration.  Here are some guidelines:

1. Full disclosure and complete transparency (Not optional)
2. Clear, pre-established rules/guidelines as to where the money will go and who will have access to it.
3. A spreadsheet with everyone’s positions (numbers) will be made available to everyone in the guild as well as the totals for each jackpot. Web site, FTP, in-game mail, e-mail … whatever it takes.
4. Communicate with your members. Informed guild mates are trusting guild mates.

Everyone has his/her own idea of how it should be done, we’re just trying to share some ideas. Feel free to add your ideas on how you fund your guild bank, I’d love to hear about other success stories out there.

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Optimize Your Profession Selection For Maximum Low Level Earnings

Whether you’re starting your first toon or your 20th, you have one of two goals in mind. One is to get to 80 as fast as possible, and in that light we tend to tell folks to not even mess with professions until 80. But if you are making a toon to end up being a gathering profession alt in the first place, then you certainly want to maximize your time and effort. It is entirely possible to keep skinning, mining and herbalism completely maxed out as you quest.

Not all zones are created equal when it comes to the gathering professions. In case you didn’t notice, Teldrassil is a giant tree, so there isn’t a single copper node on the whole thing. Your new Night Elf warrior is going to be completely out of luck until you hit Darkshore if you choose to do the Nefl starting area. There are way around this, however. You don’t HAVE to use the Orc starting area just because you’re an Orc. In other words, once you decide which profession you want to level, go level in an area that lets you gain levels and skill-ups in both.

With that introduction, here is a list of all the starting areas and what gathering professions they support better than other professions or zones. It’s not unreasonable to hit level 20 or so with a couple hundred extra gold just for picking a few flowers or swinging your pick along the way.

Alliance

• Dun Murogh – Dwarf/Gnome:  This is probably the best gathering profession zone in the entire game.  No matter what you choose, there are plenty of mines, herbs and almost everything is skinable.  It just doesn’t get any better than this.
• Teldrassil – Night Elf:  Teldrassil is good for both Herbalism and Skinning, but there isn’t a single mining node.
• Azuremyst/Bloodmyst Isles - Dranei:  The Dranei starting areas are bigger and more spread out than Dun Murogh.  Although there is a bit of everything, it’s the worst of the areas for gathering overall.
• Elwynn Forest – Human:  You won’t do much skinning in Elwynn, and it’s better for mining than herbalism.

Horde

• Durotar – Orc/Troll:  Durotar isn’t terrific for any of the professions, you’ll have to wait until you get to the Barrens to start cleaning up on Mines and Herbs.  It is, however, far better for mining. Both areas are OK for skinning as well, but the place is so huge that you can spend a great deal of time running from node to node.
• Silverpine – Undead:  This is by far the best place for Horde toons for both Mining and Herbalism.  There isn’t a better Herbalism location anywhere else, actually, as it beats Dun Murogh and is very close to UC.  Not terrific in the skinning category.
• Eversong Woods – Blood Elf:  Decent all-around for gathering professions, but nothing like Silverpine.
• Mulgore – Tauren:  Not bad for herbalism, and just ok for mining and skinning.

The best overall choices for each faction run toward Silverpine for Horde and Dun Murogh for Alliance.  The proximity to both IF and Undercity make these two zones perfect for getting training without having to run very far, and the zones are packed full of almost every type of node or skinable mob.

If you like to run instances at level – SFK is also a really good option for Horde, although there really isn’t a great choice for Alliance.  Well, maybe Balckfathom deeps, but as a general rule we skip instances unless we’re just leveling for the heck of it.  Getting to 80 faster is our typical advice, but breaking up the monotony of a speed leveling grind with an instance here and there for gear isn’t all that bad.

This information will probably be the biggest help to those of you who are firing up a new toon on a new server.  Getting that first toon grabbing some sellable stuff right off the bat to begin your banking life can be important.  DK’s are the best for this sort of thing of course, but if a DK is not going to be your main (and please tell us it’s not) then you’ll be leveling up something else anyway.  Might as well earn some decent gold along the way by using gathering professions while you level, and then switching to your end game professions at 80.

But at the very least, you now know the best zones for each gathering profession, and in a small way it can help you be more efficient and earn more money on your next new toon.  It might not win you any awards, but it’s at least a little Dominating.

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Spreadsheet Helps You Track Your Expenses And Income

Yes, I said Jewelcrafting.  I know there is this misconception out there that I hate Jewelcrafting, but that’s not really the case at all.  Although I don’t think it should be the cornerstone of your gold making business, it can still be a decent part of it.  The real reason that I haven’t reported much on JC is that I haven’t had one, but recent changes in patch 3.2 have forced my hand into the business.

Jewelcrafting has become far more like what it was in BC than it has been to date in WotLK.  If you have all the recipes you can make some real dough.  The trouble, of course is knowing exactly where the profits are.  And although Lil’Sparkys can help, we all know that it doesn’t update quite as often as it should and has a tendency to be quirky.  In other words, it is more of a guideline than a hard and fast analysis tool.

And that doesn’t really work for the seriously anal retentive.  There are people who want to know things precisely.  I don’t happen to be one of those people.  I’m getting back into JC to shield myself from spending too much on jewels for all my new gear sets.  BUt I do realize that if I’m feeling pain when it comesto prices, that must mean that the market has evolved to the point where there are some profits to be made.  Anytime it hurts, I want to put the hurt on someone else besides me.  Yes, I’m a robber baron, so sue me.

with all that being said, I don’t always make up everything I teach.  You don’t need to go around inventing the wheel all the time if it already exists.  And while this might not be the most sophisticated tool you’ve ever seen, it certainly might help you take advantage of the current market situation and get the insight you need to truly Dominate with Jewelcrafting.

An alert reader, one that is keen on the JC market, ran accros a spreadsheet at Warcraftecon that helps you track everything you need when it comes to Jewelcrafting.  Thanks to Jurandr for sending us the email, and after a cursory review I can say that it definately will help you track all of your prospecting and profits should you choose to engage in such activities.  I know on the alliance server for the DYS guild I have scooped up all the cheap mats I can find for alchemy and transmutes because the profits are nice.  You can only do it once a day, but an extra 1,000 gold a week for two minutes worth of work sounds like my cup of tea.

So check the spreadsheet out at this link: http://www.warcraftecon.net/?p=1777 and see if you can make it work for you.  It just might have you, and the rest of us, Dominating with Jewelcrafting again.

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Making Gold For Newbies Doesn’t Have To Be Guesswork

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  Um, whatever.  This is a dog eat dog world, and if you’re doing something well it’s only a matter of time before you’re not alone any more.  For more than two years we’ve been teaching people how to Dominate – especially at the auction house.  But from time to time we have to step back (even though the pros gripe at us) and start back at the beginning.

A few days back we brought back an article from back in the day talking about using enchanting for making gold.  Amazingly we get the same old crud from people who think it’s more complicated than that, but disenchanting will always be one of the cornerstones of any good wow gold making business.  But it certainly isn’t the whole story.  Everyone should be using far more than enchanting to make gold and today we’re going to talk about sniffing out the pros in your market and following their lead.  It’s a way to break into the business without getting your feet all that wet.

In the real world marketing sector, there is a lot of follow-the-leader.  Innovation is expensive and very hit or miss.  But a formula that works well tends to work pretty well for lots of things.  We’re working on a technique for the very advanced gold maker, but it takes a ton of gold to do it on a lot of things and it can be risky (or at least it seems to be dangerous – the worst that can actually happen is a break even).  And one of the ways we figured out what the Chinese gold farmers are REALLY doing these days came from price capping.

Price capping is also a pretty advanced technique, and you don’t have to know how to do it to make some gold using it.  It works best if you’re the one in charge, but you can also ride the wave of someone else price capping if you know how to spot it and what to do when you see it.  Below is one example of a price cap.

You see at the top a few stacks of Mageweave at 924% above market price.  This can only be one of two things: somebody made a mistake, or someone is price capping.  Of course, even the price cap might just be ignorance, but let’s give this dude the benefit of the doubt.  Now, in this case the price cap is not going to work.  You can’t move a market of four pages of stacks with four stacks.  The only thing that’s going to happen from this move is maybe a 1% or 2% bump in the overall price of this item.

Here is another example of a price cap done right.  You might recognize the name.  But I also recognize the names above me.  It doesn’t take too long to figure out who is price capping.  When you scan for mats to resell, you’ll start to see the same five to ten names all the time.  As a general rule; those guys are your real competition at the AH, and everyone else is buying them new shoes.  Of course, all pros aren’t going to the hall of fame, and we’ll see why in a second.

This is the way that price capping is supposed to happen.  The difference here, although you can’t see it, is that the majority of the Northern Stew on the AH has been capped which will seriously affect the price.  You can also see another example of someone price capping who doesn’t really know what they are doing.  After being on this particular server for a while I know that Poliea and Tracea are alt bankers for one person – whose main banking toon happens to be Katharinea, not too hard to figure out who that is after a while.  But whoever it is isn’t much competition because she ends up buying all of my price cap markdowns and never price caps hard enough to actually move the market.

But more to the point, when you see something like what is happening above, it means someone is trying to move the market up.  When you see that, it’s a good time to buy out whatever low priced items there are left on the AH that the price-capper has left behind and then resell immediately as prices rise.  In other words, you can buy a little Northern Stew at 1 gold and resell it at 2 gold.  They are pretty sure to sell since almost everything else on the market is 14 gold, if you see what I mean.  Or you can cash in on their price capping push by cooking up some Northern Stew a few stacks at a time and the price-capper will probably buy you out in an effort to corner the market.

The point is that you can tag along behind the big boys and make a pretty good living riding their wake.  The water is smoother and you won’t have to risk very much.  Making a profit from a moving market without having to move the market is pretty shrewd, and just a little Dominating.

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