Easy Gold Farming with Obsidium Ore

by Alice Drescher · 0 comments

One of the big business makers here lately has been Obsidium Ore—and if you’ve been missing out, it’s not too late to get into the game. Depending on your server, it’s pretty easy to buy at around 60-65g per stack for about 6000g total investment into around 15000g just by prospection alone.

There’s an insane amount of gold to be made with Obsidium Ore, but a lot of merchants too lazy to do anything other than flip it raw—leaving a potential gold mine for those players fortunate enough to know how to use this to their advantage.

Know Your Market!

There’s a lot of ways to sell newly acquired Obsidium Ore, and each of these methods have a target audience, or market, that will be buying. Would you prefer raw selling the common gems—is it even worth it? Do you think using them to do rare transmutations and peddling those rares at the Auction House would be better? What about taking those gems and creating necklaces and rings—which will, once they are disenchanted, capitulate a nice return investment?

All of these are very valid options, and you will find that sometimes the market is more “receptive” to one way of selling than another. Never forget the power of supply and demand—do your research and you will double the profits of other merchants.

Selling for Profit

After you’ve looked into the market a little, it’s time to make a decision on how you plan to use your prospected ore. Although I’m sure I won’t hit everything here, I’m going to give you a few suggestions on how I spend my ore for better profits.

• Use Jaspers to create Jaspar Rings for DEing and then flip the rare rings for a nice little profit
• Turn all of your Carnelians into Carnelian Spikes and then DE for essences – nice profit here, and they sell fast enough that you can post several auctions at a time.
• Sell Nightstones and Zephyrite raw—the best time for this is definitely during the JC quest
• Turn Alicites into Jewelry, DE, and peddle the resulting materials in the AH
• Sell Hessonites either raw or use them in jewelry and then DE—the former option usually being the most profitable

Disenchanting is tricky, and accidentally flooding the market can be disastrous.

I love disenchanting—it’s a great way to make gold as many players don’t fully understand how to use this great skill. However, disenchanted materials are often slow movers, and you have to factor this in when buying up your source items.

Don’t put all of your gold on DEing items because if you flood the auction house with these auctions, you will be stuck with unsold merchandise and undercuts that will drive the market price down.

Although I didn’t list it, raw selling is always an option. I usually have enough leftover gems to keep at least 5 or 6 listed in the auction house—and they never go unsold. The players that buy these are normally leveling up their Jewelcrafting profession. Another great way to profit from raws is by saving up Zephyrite and Nightstones for players wanting to do the JC daily.

Just with these techniques, I can turn over about 23k daily if I’m not lazy about it. It takes a little investment in both time and materials, but it’s a great way to make some extra gold when it runs tight. After all, easy gold is the best gold!

Booster 1-85 Leveling Guide and Class Guide Review

by Alice Drescher · 1 comment

BoosterHordeProductBox

As a leveling guide, Booster delivers beautifully. From the streamlined questing path to the thoughtful ingame GUI, it improved both my leveling speed and ingame experience.

I don’t have a lot of time to waste leveling new characters. Being both a full-time college student and a part time worker, the idea of starting a new character was almost laughable.

After just over a week ingame with Booster, I found myself with a brand new level 85 Warlock. The most fun part about the leveling experience is that I could actually keep up with my XP/hour as I was playing. It may not change your leveling life, but it is a great motivational tool.

Booster also helped me gain a lot of confidence as a player. I’ve never felt that I was a particularly “exceptional” player in any area of the game except for gold farming. When it came to actual leveling or PVP, I found that I had a much harder time leveling than farming. Sure, I already had a few level 80s, but those had all taken a considerable amount of time. I just couldn’t “pop out” a level 85 toon like some of my guildmates seemed to be able to.

Although I have been playing WoW for a very long time, I have never really been a player that has been noticeable outside of the blogosphere. Within my guilds, I have mostly been known as “that girl who sits in front of the Auction House and chats.”

The truth is that making it to level 85 and being wealthy is something any player can do.

What makes you, as a player, unique from everyone else playing this vast MMORPG?

In other words, what makes someone a good player? A player that others look up to?

It’s not the gold in your bag, or the equipment on your toon. It’s YOU. Although there’s more than a few leveling guides out there, Booster is the first guide focused on teaching HOW to play your class and race efficiently.

It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been playing the game or what you think you know. The class training videos included with the Booster Leveling Guide will change the way you play the game forever.

While the effects on my leveling speed were minor at first, I saw a huge improvement in my PVP matches right away.

You’ll Never Quest Alone Again

Sometimes there can be a kink in the system–a ripple in time, a shift in awareness–and even the best leveling guides can leave you confused in the middle of a quest.

One of the coolest parts of the Booster ingame addon is that you can easily browse advice from other questing players like yourself.

This can save a lot of time! With the introduction of Cataclysm, some of the older quests became a little more complicated than I remembered. Thanks to this nifty feature, I was able to consistently blast my way through difficult and frustrating quests without having to ask for help or wander around lost.

Most people don’t realize how much your spec really affects your leveling speed. Sure, everyone knows that Resto Druids aren’t exactly the quickest levelers–but what about Feral vs. Balanced Druids? Stealth Rogues?

Are you absolutely sure that your toon has the best talent spec possible?

If you’re not, you might not be living up to your potential in terms of leveling speed.

Fortunately, Booster’s built-in talent distributer is prepared to make sure all of your toons get the best specs possible for the fastest leveling possible. Alongside advice for weapons and armor tailored to both class and race, it’s no longer necessary to spend hours agonizing over the design of your perfect killing machine.

Lifetime Updates Really Are Lifetime

A lot of players were disappointed with the coming of Cataclysm. Although they had purchased leveling guides that advertised “Free Lifetime Updates”, they really only meant “Free Lifetime Updates!…. for this expansion only.”

One great way that Booster shows its dedication to giving players a great experience is by offering free updates for expansion packs and updates alike. With a 60 day money-back guarantee, it’s clear that the first concern that the Booster team has is their customer’s satisfaction.

In the end, I think that ANY player can benefit from using this guide. Whether you are new to the game or an experienced veteran who just wants to pick up a few new tricks, I can honestly say that you will find something invaluable in this guide. There’s no other experience out there quite like Booster, and I feel that I have improved my playing style considerably as a direct result of this guide.

Bags Surge with Cataclysm Demand

by Alice Drescher · 0 comments

I don’t know about everyone else, but I’m actually having a hard time keeping up with the sheer amount of bags flying out of my bank alt with Cataclysm. For whatever illogical reason, I have a warm spot for tailoring and so one of my mains cranks out Netherweave Bags regularly enough that I rarely buy them unless I spot an epic deal.

Thanks to Cataclysm, I’ve been buying up all the bags I could at around 3.7~4g/stack and reselling at anywhere from 9.5~10g/stack. They’ve been going so quickly that I haven’t been able to get the cloth from my bank to my tailor quickly enough to keep up with the demand.

This is, of course, dependent on the time of day you do your selling–I tend to be online during the lunch period and after 5pm, which I find to be my best selling time.

There is a huge amount of new players coming into the market right now alongside older players returning to the game after extended breaks–and A LOT of these players are wanting to buy bags for farming and leveling.

I went from having enough cloth for some 1000 bags to having ABSOLUTELY NO CLOTH LEFT. That’s pretty crazy, I thought I was well stocked for Cataclysm but it seems like I underestimated the demand.

I’m not the only one. I can’t judge your server’s market, but I would recommend you scanning the Auction House for bags and cloth. On my server, the proverbial well has run completely dry.

No bags, no cloth. The few bags I’ve seen go by, I’ve been furiously competing for with other merchants.

Why is supplies so scarce right now? The ironic thing is that most of the players who stocked up on bags and cloth are the ones losing out right now. Many merchants (to some degree myself as well) sold out all of their supplies with the opening rush of Cataclysm. Then, after running out of their farmed supplies, they turned to the Auction House and bought up all of the excess supplies so that they could keep up with the initial rush of player activity. And they did it again. And again.

And now? All the excess cloth and bags are gone! Players are more concerned with exploring the new content than making gold at the Auction House. This leaves a lot of frustrated merchants with no supplies, and if you’re one of the lucky few who have held out and kept yourself stocked–you have a nice profit waiting for you!

This is why it’s so very important to never let yourself run out of stock on your bank alts even if you really feel like the demand has hit its peak–just like the real world market, sometimes you can be caught by surprise.

If you have a tailor and some cloth put back, now’s the time to laugh in anyone’s face who has ever told you that tailoring is a poor man’s profession.

WoW Tanking Tips : Party Talk

by Alice Drescher · 0 comments

It never ceases to amaze me how many high level players just don’t understand how to play their class when it comes to tanking. While running some of the new Cataclysm instances, I’ve seen both some really amazing tanking and some incredibly fail tanking.

The truth is that one of the most important parts of tanking (and any time of playing with a team) is communication.

CLICK HERE FOR THE ULTIMATE WOW TANKING GUIDE

Communication? I’m a Tank! This isn’t in my job description. Grawr.

The truth is that, despite popular opinion on the matter, there is more than one way to play a tank. If you’re running random instances, there’s a high likelihood that you will have a different tank each time you go in.

With two major styles of tank pulling and personal variations on each style, this can lead to some serious confusion for DPS players.

The problem is that DPS players tend to expect one style or the other from past experience, and can be thrown off by suddenly having a tank that pulls in a different way from partners in the past. So why should you care if a DPS doesn’t approve of your tanking style?

Speed! Your DPS teammates are your killing force, and having them confused and runnning about can really double the time it takes for you to move between targets.

It’s not THAT big of a deal

It actually is! Here’s a real world example to put it a little more into context:

    DPS player starts instance expecting to follow the tank’s lead–they focus their efforts on whichever mob that the tank is targeting. Problem? The tank is furiously switching targets to keep an even threat level against a group of mobs. DPS players run around in circles and the tank wants to [/wrist] himself
    DPSs starts an instance expecting a tank to stay on a limited range of mobs. The tank hits a target with threat, moves on, and the DPS remains determined to get their full DPS rotation. In the face of this impressive determination often comes death–the tank has moved on, and the threat is no longer effective against a [/raging] DPS.

These are only a few of the situations that can happen during the chaos of instances. The easiest way to eliminate this confusion? As a tank, you should always let your teammates know how you plan to handle pulls, and what you expect out of your teammates during the instance!

If you don’t, the DPS players of your team will have to draw their own conclusions during the heat of battle–and it’s impressive how spectacularly they can fail at times.

This Guide Should Be Directed at DPSs, Why Tanks?

As a tank, it is your resonsibility to charge into mobs and pull them to you. These mobs are chosen by either you or your raid leader, but ultimately the decision is yours.

In short, once you have charged through the black gates and into a horde of angry mobs, it is YOUR decision how to make us of your threat among those mobs.

This threat generation is the lifeline of your team. Each and every player in your team is depending on your ability to keep the mobs pulled so that DPSs and healers can do their thing.

You are, in a sense, the leader of the group. Every other player looks to you to see what they need to do next.

Your raid leader may be the evil overlord, but you are the general–tanks lead from the frontlines, and knowing that, you need to be able to communicate to your teammates how you intend to lead them.

The Two Basic Methods of Group Threat

In reality, there’s almost as many methods for tanking as there are tanks in the game, but we can narrow down this large list of personalized styles by defining them in two major philosophical categories.

Prioritized Tanking

A prioritized tank is a player who DPSs tend to love. They focus their attention largely on a single mob, which allows DPSs to shine to their fullest double rainbow capacity. With this method, the tanks choose a primary kill target to use Direct Threat against while using AoE threat abilities to prevent aggros from attacking group healers.

Even Split

This is a harder player style for a tank and involves spreading the threat from both Direct Threat and AoE Threat evenly among an entire mob group. This tactic can be fun as it allows DPS to use AoE abilities without worrying about staying on a particular target.

So what is the Most Effective Way to Tank?

The truth is that both styles work great as long as the entire team is along for the ride. A good tank will use both styles, or a mixture of the two, depending on the particular situation at hand.

There are plenty of times when it may be smarter for a tank to use a prioritized style against a particularly vicious mob and then switch back to even split tanking afterwards. But, if your teammates have no idea what you are doing, they may be temporarily confused and just continue on AoEing resulting in aggro-pulling chaos.

In the end, it doesn’t matter how you do it–macro your explanation if you’re lazy–but let your teammates know what you’re doing. It can be as simple as “Hey gaiz, I’m gonna evenly spread my threat so you can AoE, but be careful if you pull from me. If you can’t kill it yourself, run back and I’ll taunt it.”

It’s Not All Serious Business

I don’t wanna come off as one of those people who are so serious about their runs that they describe the exact angles they want all of their players positioned in. This is a game, and while it’s a very fun game, you’ll always get the occasional team that is just destined to descend into chaos in the middle of an instance.

The more often you play with a certain team, the better your teamwork will become. With a few runs under your belt, your teammates will know your style better than you do, and you won’t have to announce your intentions at the beginning of each battle.

If you’re a little newer to tanking, I promise that tanking isn’t as boring as I’ve made it sound. As time goes on, you will take on your own style and you won’t even think about it.

Communicating with your teammates is what allows your teammates to trust you and head into battle worry-free.

With the cooperation and understanding of your party members (and at least one healer with balls of steel), you will find that your runs go much smoother for everyone.

20k Leveling Guide Review

by Alice Drescher · 1 comment

20Kleveling

Written by a well-respected and passionate WoW gamer, the 20k Leveling Guide is an incredibly unique and satisfying experience for old and new players alike. The guide is updated constantly to reflect changes in the economy and patches–something that is, sadly, extremely rare to find.

Before i get into the meat of the guide, I’d like to let you know what really makes 20k Leveling different from everything else.

Unlike most authors, Markco is PROUD of his ability to generate gold and give back to the community.

It’s not a marketing charade like many other authors (I’m beginning to question if some of them have even played the game. Ever.), Markco is a dedicated player who pours all of his passion into figuring out the most innovative and effective strategies to help players stop struggling with making gold.

Okay, okay, so the author is a pretty legit player, but what about the guide?

20K Leveling is pretty much an all-in-one gold course that covers everything from farming locations to analyzing economic trends for the Auction House. Although a lot of the strategies covered are pretty advanced, the guide is designed to be applicable at any level of experience.

My favorite part of the guide is the fact that it is updated religiously. Because Markco spends a lot of time actually playing the game, the guide is constantly being added to.

You will never find another Auction House guide that teaches you how to control a market.

The 20k Leveling Guide can teach you how to go from basic gold making strategies to a gold making beast. I learned how to pick market niches that I could easily manipulate for better profits.

If you have a friend (or a second account), you’ll also really appreciate the Cross Faction Arbitrage part of the guide. A lot of players already know about trading faction pets for profit, but this guide blows any conception you may have of cross faction trading out of the water.

The grand finale and your final step in the 20k Leveling Guide journey is the Hard Mode guide, which I have used the most. This is basically an elaborate guide to making your first million that is idiot-proof. You can’t mess it up because, at this point, you’ve learned all the underlying strategies you need to rock the Auction House like no one else can.

This part of the guide has some amazing tips on professions that I haven’t even seen anywhere else. You will learn a perfected daily routine alongside all of the supplies you will need in order to make a huge profit. If you think you have your profession routine perfected, think again! I thought I was managing my professions pretty well, but I never would’ve guessed that I could make this much gold on professions alone. This is great for the occasional lazy streak when you don’t feel like dealing with the Auction House every day.

Although the guide does contain a wonderful farming section dedicated to showing you the most profitable mining and herb routes (among other things), I doubt many players will want to use it after all the other wonderful material that is taught. This includes all of the new Cataclysm farming locations!

Markco’s 20k Leveling Guide brings a different sort of experience that can only be described as “fun”, and I think that is a great thing.

Making gold should never be a chore!

If you find yourself stressing out about your strategies, you just aren’t doing it right. Thanks to Markco’s guide, I’ve gained some invaluable insight into how to farm gold efficiently without feeling like I’m in a Chinese sweatshop. Whether you’re a complete newbie or an old pro looking for some new tricks, I recommend trying this guide wholeheartedly.

Make Some Extra Gold in Cataclysm with WOTLK Items

by Alice Drescher · 0 comments

One of the most profitable Auction House ventures that I have had so far in Cataclysm has been the selling and buying of WOTLK items. A lot of players are farming Cataclysm right now without even realizing the goldmine they may have sitting on their bank alts.

More specifically, I’ve been selling off meta-gems and glyphs, “standard” old-world items. These are items that, at times, could take a ridiculous amount of time to sell in WOTLK but are selling very well now.

I’m talking about glyphs going for 200g and dps meta gems (Chaotic Skyflares) rolling a 97 gold pricetag!

Most of these buyers are last minute players who either forgot to stock up–don’t miss out by not taking advantage of this.

I’ve also slaughtered the Auction House with Obsidium ore, which has been going for a shocking rate of 900g/stack (due to the low spawn rate as well as an annoying glitch in Hyjal). I also made 400g/stack selling some excess Elementium ore that had piled up on my bank alt.

I feel sorry for anyone who didn’t mine their greedy little hearts out before Cataclysm, because the crazyhighomgwtfbbq prices have come and gone. Don’t worry if you didn’t bank exactly what you wanted, though, because there’s still a lot of opportunities to profit from Cataclysm in the upcoming weeks.

Another great opportunity that has come with Cataclysm is the ability to sell leveling scribes excess snowfall ink. Right now, many scribes are using the darkmoon faire cards for easy level-ups and so there has been a considerable spike in snowfall ink prices.

I don’t know how all of you are choosing to spend your early Cataclysm days, but so far I’ve only hit the big level 83 even though I’m in the process of finishing my review for Dugi’s Leveling Guide.

I play on a very high population server and questing just is rediculous during the launch buzz, so I’ve been focusing almost entirely on making gold. 50k gold in just a few days!

Cataclysmic Economics 101:

  • Don’t try to undercut every Auction House sale– you will be bought out by a more knowledgeable resaler who will double your profit.
  • Don’t forget to factor in both the demand and the supply of any item– what good is buying a rare item if no one wants to buy it back from you?
  • Try to aim for the middle of the going prices for any item. If you’re at the top, everyone thinks you’re a douche. If you’re at the bottom, you’re probably feeding your competing merchants.

For all of the players who have been mercilessly farming the ore in Uldam, Blizzard has smitten us with their mighty hand once again. With the ore nerfed, I expect that prices will rise a little as that was easily the best mining route.

Don’t forget that many players will be entering the new Cataclysm world this weekend for their first time. This is due to a lot of factors, including but not limited to school, jobs, and those jerkoff retail stores that got either too few copies in or no copies at all.

Also, Blizzard has finally patched the Celestial Essences and Hypnotic Dusts issue. Because armor now gives dusts with only a small amount of essences, expect for essences to blizzard just fixed the Celestial Essences/Hypnotic dusts problem. Armor now gives dust and only small amounts of essences, so expect dust to become a lot cheaper in the future. For us merchants, that means sell your dusts now while they’re still valuable!

Welcome to the New Warcraft Guide Guru (A Message from Your Sponsor)

by Alice Drescher · 0 comments

The past few days I have made many changes to this blog–most of them good, some of them fairly violent and probably funny to watch for visitors. I’ve updated the theme, the focus, and many of my older posts. Unfortunately, there are also a lot of things I haven’t gotten around to “fixing” yet. I’ll be working throughout the next week (while I’m enjoying the unhealthy amounts of hours I’m spending in Cataclysm right now) to get everything sorted out. Hopefully I won’t accidentally break anything again!

I hope everyone is enjoying Cataclysm as much as I am, and I hope to be able to update this message soon to say that we’re up and running smoothly again. Or that I’ve myself over my unintelligible coding skills.

Update : I broke it a little anyways. Working on getting all the site’s images back up :]

Unfortunately, I’m more interested in playing Cataclysm than dealing with my programming failure.

Update on Last Update: It’s less broke now. It’s pretty much good. Probably. I don’t need to be allowed near CSS–ever.

Let’s Level! Archaeology 1 – 525 Profession Guide

by Alice Drescher · 0 comments

With players now digging into the meat of Cataclysm, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about the new Archaeology profession. Fortunately, Archaeology is a pretty straight-forward profession to level, and it’s also on the cheaper side of leveling professions.

WoW Archaeology Trainer

Digsites

Once you accept the archeology profession, digsites will start appearing on your map (not the mini-map). These digsites are a pretty unique addition because they are completely player-specific, which means your digsites will not be the same as your guildmate’s digsites (or farmer digsites). This is great because there is a lot less competition and frustration with a system like this.

There are four digsites per continent–the Eastern Kingdoms, Kalimdor, the Outland, and Northrend. The digsites are level-locked, so you can only see digsites in zones appropriate to your level or lower.

Because all sites are race-specific, you will also find fragments of a single particular race at each site. A lot of the fragments are pretty predictable such as the Eastern Kingdom Dwarf Ruins, but some may surprise you.


Fragments

Each digsite can be searched up to three times before disappearing and leaving you with a new digsite to explore. This means that if you have a digsite in a particularly annoying location, you can pretty much ignore it since clearing another digsite three times will always give you a new site.

Searching for a new digsite can be done using your “Survey” skill, whcih will spawn and point you towards your next fragment. Green means that you are very close (within 40 feet), yellow means you are almost there, and red means that you aren’t even in the ballpark yet.

Once you discover the racial fragment, you will be able to start researching it.

Artifacts

A player can only work on a single research project per race, but you can eventually solve the artifact once you acquire enough fragments. Once a player solves the artifact, they will be gifted with some pretty nice items. At lower levels, you will receive some pretty unexciting common items, but higher levels can yield more worthwhile rewards.

If your artifact is rare, you will be rewarded with a much better items. This can include some very nice account-bound armor and weapons if you’re lucky!

Let’s Level! Archaeology 1-525 Guide

Level 1-100

The first step is, of course, to find your Archaeology trainer for your faction. They will be located in either Orgimmar or Stormwind.

With two fancy new abilities, Archaeology and Survey, it’s time to get down to the boring stuff. For 1-100, you will be using only these two abilities. To find a digsite, look for the little shovel icons on your map.

WoW Archaeology Digsites

After arriving at the chosen digsite, you will use the Survey ability to try and find your artifact. A little steampunk themed telescope will swivel around and point in whatever direction the artifact is in, and the light will change color depending on how far away it is. If it’s red, you might as well pack up and get back on your mount.

After you discover the artifact, your Archaeology will level. Each digsite may be surveyed up to 3 times, and you will continue repeating this exact process for the next 100 levels. During this time, don’t complete any artifacts until you are at level 100! This is the secret to leveling Archaeology quickly. After level 100, you can no longer survey to level your profession. Take advantage of easy levels!

Levels 100 – 525

The scurrying around is finally done, and it’s time to solve your artifacts. The process is a lot less interesting that it sounds, unfortunately. In order to solve an artifact, you simply choose your Archaeology ability and select “Solve.” Each solved artifact will give you a solid 5 levels alongside a reward for all of your trouble.

Stop! Don’t Drop That Profession!

by Alice Drescher · 0 comments

One of the most common questions that I’ve been asked by guildmates and other players is what profession that I think they should choose. I’ve been given lists of races, classes, current professions, levels, and pretty much anything else to help narrow down the possibilities. While this can have a lot of different answers (and not really a “correct” answer, either), another popular question that I get is when to give up a profession.

The easiest answer that I have is simply this : No matter what level your toon is, don’t drop a profession that none of your other toons have learned.

Don't Drop That WoW Profession

Many players may argue that some professions are easy to relevel. I hear frequently of players dropping and picking back up farming professions (I’d say these professions take around five hours of effort to level). This isn’t always bad. If you already have the farming profession on another toon, I would definitely recommend dropping it in favor of a crafting profession. You will get a higher margin of profit for your time.

The simple fact is that more professions means a greater span of options for your World of Warcraft experience. Just like any good stock portfolio, diversification leaves your characters with a healthy wallet (think of your profession diversification as a nice little 401k for your future business adventures).

Dropping a crafting profession is almost always a frustrating experience. Because of the cooldowns it takes to level the profession, it is worth the effort to have several toons with crafting professions on a single account. Leatherworking, Enchanting, and Engineering are the exceptions to this rule and could, if you really needed to, be dropped and picked up later.

Any successful auctioneer knows that diversification is one of the most powerful tools that a player can posses. Without diversity, an auctioneer can easily be left without a choice when the economy takes a sudden dive and opportunity strikes.

Instead of dropping and picking back up professions, an auctioneer would better serve themselves by getting those rusty storage alts up to a respectable level.

Basically, if you have to ask whether you should drop a profession or not–don’t do it. Professions take a lot of time to level, and you’re probably going to be regretting it soon afterwards.

Take a little thinking time, make a plan, and remember that leveling a new toon can open up a whole new realm of possibilities without taking away your financial security!

Auction House Reselling with Auctioneer

by Alice Drescher · 0 comments

With Cataclysm finally arriving, there are more than a few players scrambling to make enough gold to get the best out of the new content. I don’t know about you, but I’ve found myself a little strapped for gold after the bustle of the new expansion.

The first golden rule to using Auctioneer is to SCAN, SCAN, SCAN–

If you have to ask why, you’ve clearly never been on the wrong end of a very slow moving and very expensive stock. Nothing is worse than thinking you have a great deal only to be sacked with some other merchant’s unsellable deadweight.

If you want to flip quickly and without worrying too much about watching every piece of gold coming in and out, I’d recommend using this strategy when you have about 1000g already in the bank.

Once you build up a library of prices (scan the Auction House regularly for about a week), you can start using the “resale” option.

There’s three major rules to using a “resale” search to buy items:
-Start with Cheap Items
-If you don’t know you can make a profit, don’t buy it!
-Be wary of market pulls and pushes (Market Manipulators)

It’s best not to squander away all of our savings at once before knowing exactly how well and often what we are buying sells. Until you are more experienced, I recommend trading things like recipes and inexpensive mats that are always in demand. Never bet all of your money on a single resale!

When in Doubt, Pass!

If you aren’t positively certain of an item’s average price or selling rate is, either do some research or just pass on the offer. Even if it seems like a good deal now, it won’t seem like a good deal when it’s glaring at you from your guild storage.

If you start out with low funds, it’s especially important to have items you can flip quickly. More experienced merchants have the funds to “sit” on items for a long time in order to sell them for higher prices, but this isn’t wise for starting merchants.

No One Likes Being Manipulated

There’s a lot of ways that a play can be deceived by a market price. Auctioneer factors in a lot of different variables, so a few auctions with obscene prices (I’m thinking 99999g for some meat) will drive the price average high enough for Auctioneer to tell you to buy an item that isn’t as cheap as you may think.

Many players price these auctions regularly to mess around with Auctioneer’s scan data to disrupt other merchant’s businesses. Always be careful and research deals that seem unrealistically profitable!

Where and When Do I Find Hot Resale Deals?

Always sort the Auction House by the time remaining in an auction. Many of these items will be without bids, but the ones that have bids can often be sniped at the last moment. Keep in mind that other players like to do the same thing, so you’ll have to expect to lose a few auctions in order to get a nice deal in the end.

I’ve started playing the Auction House with as little as 10g before by flipping extremely low value mats. Remember that if you have a small budget, any profit margin is better than what you had before. The more gold you have to spend, the more gold you can earn per day.

The time that I tend to have the most luck on finding low priced items is around 11pm-2am Friday – Sunday. These are the times that players are heading off to bed and are putting all their battle spoils up, so be sure to check out the Auction House before you decide to do the same!

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