Fox Kit

So Twitchie has been getting all the blogging attention of late, and <Fidelity> is already starting to wind down after clearing heroic Dragon Soul.

I've had a lot going on in game, but writing about it in two other places does tend to keep me away from this one. Today, I had a discussion with Jondy about the Fox Kit becoming purchasable with Tol Barad Commendations. Her response was, "there are some things that should be left to RNG, some things that should be earned, not bought".

200 commendations? That's a LOT. I saved up enough for both trinkets, [Reins of the Drake of the West Wind], [Reins of the Spectral Steed] (my most favourite ground mount ever) and I'm working on another pet, [Rustberg Gull]. 665 commendations all up. I couldn't possilbly grind out another 200.

So I set to work, killing foxes, and cursing RNG all the way around the island. Until Jondy suggested I should be a little more Zen about it. She asked if I could kill 10 foxes in a row without some kind of expletive exploding from my person. So I became at one with the foxes... ALL THE FOXES. I instinctively worked my way around the island, each spawn point known to me. Targetting macro at the ready, I charged and vanquished the foxes around and around.

All of a sudden my bags were full, so I whipped out my favourite utility items. First up, my Tundra Mammoth to sell some vendor junk, and then calling on my Argent Squire complete with Pony to mail off my fangs and claws. I figured I would get a good idea of how many foxes I had to kill to end up with the kit.

I started up again and was joined by Whippy who used every part of the fox as we sprinted around the island.

Eventually, the Fox Kit was all mine, and I vendored my fangs and claws for 180g. Estimated foxes (for this one session, over the course of doing dailies I'd have killed many, many more) comes out to around 230.

Glory of the Cataclysm Hero

I picked up my long overdue [Reins of the Volcanic Stone Drake] by completing Glory of the Cataclysm Hero this week, as the silver lining on a cancelled raid. Finding guests when we are a couple down for heroic mode content is proving to be very difficult this close to patch 4.3. The following raid night I even had trouble finding a single ranged DPS that was up to the task, so with a third of our week already down we had a romp through four normal bosses, leaving a heroic Beth'tilac this week for a full strength guild group.


If I may digress further, the silver lining on the romp through normal mode bosses was Kalus was able to complete his [Branch of Nordrassil]! You can barely see the shadow tree of life, but he's there, kicking some ass. [Remind me to update with a gallery link to the action shots here]

Meta achievements can be a little painful, as it is difficult enough to schedule 9 hours of raiding per week for 10 or so people... when it comes to a ton of achievements across a bnuch of heroic dungeons, it tends to get a little messy. Fortunately, after a few guildies smashed through a bunch of achievements together quite a while ago, we were able to put together a group to help Jondy and I finish off our missing ones.

500k Gold Milestone and Interview

I finally submitted my interview for the Warcraft Econ Hall of Fame, so head on over and check it out! In the mean time, I've been flipping cubs and managed to move another 100k across to horde while maintaning my 500k balance on Alliance.

I've also given my glyph operation a major overhaul, since the guild bank interface has gone from clumsy to unruly... a great feature for guild masters would be to allow turning off logging of transactions from guild bank tabs. It's not like the armory can provide an out of game interface for that anymore, and the amount of data kept for display in game isn't worth the hassle.

The picture above is from when I first introduced Twitchie the Gnome Warlock, but because he was a glypher, I couldn't show you his face.

Guardian Cubs on Dath'Remar

The [Guardian Cub] is here, and the prices are already plummetting on Dath'Remar.

The cub started off at a modest 25k and fell to 15k almost immediately. The next morning it had hit 11k with a total of 13 cubs available. On day 3, it had hit 7.5k and has slid down to just over 7k.

At this point, I'll be waiting until it is under 5k to pick mine up... How long do you think that will take? Do you think it will even get there?

Update: The Undermine Journal is now updated with data over the last day or so, with the price dipping just under 6k.

October Glyph Sales

Stats:

• Total Glyph Sales: 53,937
• Total Glyphs Sold: 1410
• Average Price: 38g25s

So a very similar haul to last month as I go in to maintenance mode. I'm coming up to 25,000 glyphs since the start of Cataclysm, and have been putting my interview together for the Warcraft Econ Hall of Fame since I recently hit the 500k milestone. Yes, I snuck that in there... 500k, woo! More on that when the interview is up.

Jondayla wins the Booty Bay fishing contest!

Just a few minutes ago, Jondayla won the Boot Bay fishing competition for the achievement Master Angler of Azeroth, leaving only catching that elusive fish for Accomplished Angler and the Salty title.

Since Jondy started down the path of fishing milestones, she has taken the Azerothian fishing community by storm.

I remember my days of trying to fish up [Old Ironjaw], with no luck at all. Jondy on the other hand scooted on down to Orgrimmar just to be diplomatic, and after getting the achievement... decided to cast half a dozen times since she hadn't been ganked yet... and BAM! Wasn't even looking at the screen when [Old Crafty] landed in her bags and the achievement emblazoned her screen! We're not sure... but we estimate about 7 casts... TOTAL.

Jondy has also been running around all over Azeroth completing the newly introduced cooking and fishing dailies in Ironforge and Darnassus. After conclusion of this story, you'll understand why I'm puzzled at her bemoaning RNG for her missing out on the last of her cooking dailies. Jondy announced that her fishing daily in Ironforge was to put Young Ironjaw up on display. We both thought that was kinda cute after my efforts to fish up the old bastard. You guessed it, BAM! [Old Ironjaw] fished up in the same cast as [Young Ironjaw]!

So all but Salty, Jondy has been relaxing of late fishing for a [Dark Herring],

September Glyph Sales

Starting with the stats:

• Total Glyph Sales: 59,204
• Total Glyphs Sold: 1518
• Average Price: 39g

The average price continues to climb, potentially in no small part to a conversation I had with a fellow glypher. As I have mentioned before, a lot of my low priced glyphs are bought by competitors in the glyph market. I make a profit, they attempt to reset the market price, and I make even more coin undercutting the inflated new listing.

Recently I was online when my competitor started to buy up glyphs, so I initiated a chat thanking him for the sales. He immediately recognised me, and asked why I post my glyphs at such low prices. We had a quick chat, and in a lull in the conversation I was naturally AFK milling and missed the conversation resuming. It turns out that my competitor is a fellow blogger, and writes about gold making and glyphs specifically, so was particularly interested in my methodology. He also asked me to refrain from posting in his newly reset market for at least a couple of hours.

I was delighted. I thought, "this stranger is just a friend I haven't met yet". A kindred spirit in the gold making community. So I wrote him a mail explaining, yes, I'd leave reposting until later in the afternoon. I also mentioned that I had a blog myself (that since most of my raiding is now covered in the guild blog) that deals with gold making, and I'd love to swap sites and chat about glyph strategies.

I didn't hear back from my fellow glypher, but it did give me some things to think about. He is willing to buy out cheapish glyphs, just to reset the market for a couple of hours at most. When I say cheapish, based on my costs he sometimes buys glyphs at 5x the cost price. His maximum price is over 300g, so I started to think about how many he would have to sell to make a profit on his initial investment. At less than 10%, I figured that buying out cheap glyphs might just be a reasonably time efficient way of collecting a stockpile of glyphs. No milling, no turning pigments into inks... just browsing for underpriced glyphs for purchase and resale. Certainly the margins are lower, and frustrating if the market doesn't stay reset for long, but finding cheap herbs and milling isn't for everyone.

It's a shame that I didn't get to catch up with my fellow glypher, as I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have guessed my main motivation for approach to glyph selling. I'm very comfortable with the amount of gold I generate in game, and I've accumulated more gold than I could reasonably game. Aside from making enough coin so I can by my 6th 85 alt another pair (or two (yey for dual spec)) of Valor bracers at 5k, my income is far greater than my expenses. Yes, originally I was into glyphs to make a whole bunch of coin, but since Cataclysm...

... I'M ALL ABOUT VOLUME.

Devotees will recall that my goal from the start of Cataclysm was to make 25,000 glyphs inside a year. I was so keen on doing this all by myself, that I expelled all the other inscribers from Twitchie's guild so I could more easily track my progress. Of course, I was devestated when Blizzard dropped the guild achievement down to 2,500 glyphs... but a quick tweak to my processes meant I could easily track my progress myself.

So my pricing really has very little to do with maximising my profits, and all todo with moving large volumes of glyphs. I realised quite early on in glyphing, if you just hit every single profitable glyph, regardless of how fierce the competition the coin just comes flowing in.

The volume is also my motivation for never cancelling glyphs in order to repost. If I want to have the cheapest glyph of each time right now... I just make them all and post new glyphs. The side effect of this approach is that I make glyphs in reasonably large batches, which makes tracking my progress towards the achievement more efficient.

One thing did change after my conversation with my fellow glypher. I raised my ceiling price for posting glyphs from 96g to 296g. If someone can by glyphs at 500% profit to me, and then reliably sell enough at 10 times that price to make it worth their while... why not see how much of that psychotically priced glyph market I can capture? Well in the last month I had 77 glyphs (or 5% of my volume) sell at between 96g and 296g, which I'm going to call bonus monies.

Now into October, I'm back to a 48 hour post cycle since I'm not as active with my daily gold making routine. I've also had the supply of everything aside from whiptail and cinderbloom pretty much dry up, so potions and flasks have taken a dive as well. Fortunately, I've been able to find a reasonable amount of volatile life, and I have plenty of Darkmoon Cards for this months faire... and I'm secretly hoping they distinguish between the reputation earned with the current faire with the new and approved 4.3 faire... that was a lot of epic decks to get two toons over the line to exalted. Finally, the savage leather has all but dried up, so my killing on epic leg patches has too for the time being.