Profession, Gold Making - Alchemy? Help please

[dancook]

Hello!

I want to make lots of gold:) and dailies aren't my forte.

I have just compiled a spreadsheet of current professions, green highlights a free options available, red highlights easily discarded professions.

Assuming I know nothing about making money with professions, can I get some advice on what I have?

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Apn6hK_-i2X-dDlsUjFmTFc2cWRKN1IzSl9ZeW1rUnc

I've read that alchemy can make a lot of money, and so I could look to levelling lots of alchemists...

What do people think?

Cheers

[Ualaa]

Alchemy can make you a bunch, but its an investment to get there.
You essentially look for the daily transmute that converts less valuable stuff into more valuable stuff.

In WotLK that was basically non-epic gems into epic gems or the helm meta gems.
And you'd make a bit more, if you had a jewelcrafter who could then cut them.

In Cataclysm it was a combination of Truegold transmutes or Volatile Life > Volatile Air (by doing Transmute Elements, in Uldum).
With my army of alchemists, an hour a day worked out to 100K a week...
You can make more per week, with a variety of options... but the passive income is attractive.

One enchanter, at max level, will be useful for gold making in the expansion.
Via arbitrage, as a max level enchanter will be able to convert lower mats into higher mats and vice versa.
So if 1x Greater is worth more (or less) than 3x Lesser (but not specifically this one change, you'll have all the conversions...), you can make gold that way.
Plus an enchanter is good in instances for dusts/etc, if you do PvE stuff.

I did dailies personally, on three teams, to finance buying herbs.
I had herbalists in four zones, because of either AH shortages Stranglekelp/Etc or exorbitant pricing for Sungrass/Etc...
Gradually I dropped teams from the dailies, as the transmutes were making money.
And eventually used those profits entirely to finish the other alchemists.

[roddo]

how many alchemists does it take to make 100k a week? i'm making about 1500-1600g a week just by doing the volatile life to air transmute, selling them in batches of 100 at a time, which it seems no one else on my servers doing. Always sell fast, even if theres individuals selling as low as 14g per, i post for 16-1700 and always find a buyer. takes me less than 2 minutes a day, and that long only because i'm also doing the daily in uldum since its right there. Are there any other trades where its useful to have more than one of a crafting profession? Sorry for the hijack, was just wondering the same as the OP.

[JohnGabriel]

Selling volatile air has not been very profitable for me lately. So few people on our server that the AH is near dead. I have several thousand on the AH now, just not selling.

I'm just going to ride it out until MoP is released.

[dancook]

Thanks Ualaa, I think i might get cracking on that then...

I'll max out current alchemists first then consider maxxing more:)

[Ualaa]

I did the Alchemy, with an army of 37 alchemists, but that was towards the start of Cataclysm.
My 100K a week, was for the first two months of the expansion, or 800K in total.
Of that I spent 200K on Vial of the Sands x5, and another 200K on assorted crap for the teams.
I brought 100K with my Pally/DK team to Mag and have the rest still on Cenarius.



The basic procedure was to buy on the AH.
Or advertise in trade, buying bulk Volatile Life, please mail CoD (@ xxx per stack) to my AH toon.

The AH toon would then distribute stacks of 75, to each toon leader who was also on the same account as the AH toon.
Meaning the mail transfer was instant.

That recipient toon was in Stormwind at the mailbox closest to the inn.

The rest of the team was at the summoning stone for the dungeon in Uldum.
The one on the floating platform.
They would summon the toon.

That toon would distribute Life to everyone.
I would mouse broadcast the transmute.
Collect the Air, and any random bonus Volatiles from being a transmute master.

That toon would then hearth back to Stormwind and mail everything to the AH toon.

Log the next team on and repeat.




I'd imagine you'd make a lot more at the start of a given expansion.
And gradually make less as the expansion progressed.

But if they came out with something like epic gems (say in 5.1, 5.2 or 5.3), when before you were transmuting something different.
That would revitalize the market for a while.

[Lyonheart]

Remember, in the expansion, it seems that some of the transmute components are no drop. Meaning you will have to farm them yourself ( for each alch ) making having an "army" a lot less practical.

[beeq]

As a sidenode, you might be able to make insane amount of gold without any professions since you're multiboxer.
With strong CC (5 to 10 sheeps) I farmed trash in BoT and Firelands. Two hours a day, and sold the epic BoEs and patterns on AH.

I made around 5 million of gold in a month or two with just that.

Also I'm wondering when MoP goes live, should I run/fly/swim to lvl 90 place on my farming mages and fill the AH with the new stuff, but dunno if it's worth the trouble. Could be though.

[dancook]

Have the firelands prices not come down significantly? due to new heroics and raid finder

[beeq]

Have the firelands prices not come down significantly? due to new heroics and raid finder

Yeah but I farmed long long time ago, when trinkets and polearms went up to 80k each

[crowdx]

As a side note, on my realm (Uther Alliance) volatile air prices have crashed from 23g dow to as little as 12g. Competition seems fierce, I think there maybe a couple of other boxers selling on this realm which is also driving the price down. Volatile life has been as low as 3.75g but with competition and undercutting volatile air does not always sell unless you get into a undercutting war :(

[roddo]

stormrage volatile air is 16-17g, and i grabbed a few hundred at 4 gold per life, so making around 13g per air. My problem is i only have 1 alchemist atm.

[JohnGabriel]

stormrage volatile air is 16-17g, and i grabbed a few hundred at 4 gold per life, so making around 13g per air. My problem is i only have 1 alchemist atm.

I am getting 8-9g for volatile air and buying volatile life for 3-4g. They sell, just slowly, currently have over 1000 air in my bags.

The horde prices are much higher, but they dont sell at all. I have started thinking about moving them to my alliance bank.

[Ualaa]

If you really want to make gold, the absolute top method is going to be server & faction arbitrage.

Basically check out the Undermine Journal.
You're looking for something that sells for both a higher price and a higher volume on one server/faction and sells for a lower price but still high volume on another server/faction.

Once you find that...
Transfer a toon with gold to the buying server and/or faction.
Buy a bunch of them, as much as you can afford.

Transfer to the selling server and/or faction.
And unload them over several days.

You could go with more than one mule character.

This is essentially Blizzard legal, purchasing gold with real money.
Similar to buying the mounts/pets and then selling in game.

[roddo]

curious as to how much the mounts and pets sell for in game.

[kate]

My experience with gold making was that having an army of transmuters was an OK way to get a little cash (not much for the effort) or to have a way to mass produce stuff that required the products of transmutation, but I didn't really find it as beneficial as just playing off of having at least one of every profession maxxed out and taking advantages of opportunities as they come up.

In Cata, for example, I made a stupidly large amount of money and all it required was having:

- 1 max level enchanter
- 1 max level jewelcrafter
- 1 max level alchemist

I would buy ore off the AH and prospect it for gems. I would then cut and sell gems that, when cut, sold for more than whatever else I could make from them, and that would sell FAST (this was pretty much all the red or red-hybrid gems). Then I would make all the rest of the gems that could be made into jewelry to be sold or disenchanted, and then I would either make enchants or sell the enchanting mats if that was more profitable.

At first it was a bit slow - I couldn't afford much ore, but as ore became cheaper and I had more money I was able to continually grow my bankroll and continually buy and make more stuff. At first I was buying maybe 10-20 stacks of ore a day, but by the time I really got rolling I had an arrangement with multiple farmers to buy any amount of ore they would send me and between that and the AH I was going through hundreds of stacks of ore every day, to the point where just prospecting, crafting and disenchanting took multiple hours some times.

On a slow day I'd make maybe 5-10k in profit, and on a fast day (like the first week or so after 4.3 hit) I was making over 100k a day in profit for a few hours effort. I know some other people who were really ruthless about squeezing every copper out of the process were making more than that, but I just wasn't willing to obsess over checking the AH and relisting constantly.

Because everything I was selling was basically a commodity item, things would sell fast even when there was a minor undercut. Since enchanting mats don't have any listing fees it didn't matter if I got massively undercut - as long as the price was above the point where I needed it to be to make a profit I would just post more whenever enough people had lower prices than me. On gems I would price at the middle of the market and because they go so fast even if people undercut me I would still sell quickly.

You can do this kind of thing as a multi or single boxer - you really don't need to have an assembly line of multiple characters getting the same professions, except maybe jewlcrafting or any profession where you have to do dailies to get tokens for recipes and you want to be able to get all the cuts fast, but that really only matters for the initial gold rush and towards the end it isn't that big a deal.

If you don't want to do that, just wait for the AoE looting and clearing dungeons. You'll make ridiculous amounts of gold just off drops and vendor trash without even having to bother playing on the AH.

[Lyonheart]

If you don't want to do that, just wait for the AoE looting and clearing dungeons. You'll make ridiculous amounts of gold just off drops and vendor trash without even having to bother playing on the AH.


This is my preferred way to make cash. I think focusing on making gold causes burn out to happen faster. I just play, run instances.. do some dailies, and farm the mats i need while I'm dungeon clearing or questing. The only time i ever spend time farming is mining and herbing on my druid. But i only do it a few times a month for several hours.

I started to make an army of alchs.. but think ill put them on hold. I do have one of everything maxed though. ( and will again in MoP ) I sooo look forward to ae looting 8) us MBs have an advantage there for sure 8)

[Ualaa]

Boxing is still going to be faster than non-boxing.

Take prospecting your ore.
If you have 200 stacks of our, a full 5-box group will prospect that in the time that a solo boxer would prospect 40 stacks.

You can do the whole spectrum of skills.
A couple of Scribes to make glyphs and/or decks.
A leatherworker, blacksmith, enchanter, etc...

Really, you'd only need one at maximum level...
Although multiples is faster acquisition of recipes, if its like Jewelcrafting in WotLK...
Or quicker prospecting...

You only need to stack something, if you want multiple transmutes or whatever.

[kate]

Just to try it, I will see if I can level my Druid entirely from 85-90 just through farming sessions since its actually kind of soothing with a combo of gatherer and farmhud. Not an efficient use of time but eh, why not mess with it :)

[JohnGabriel]

If you really want to make gold, the absolute top method is going to be server & faction arbitrage.

Basically check out the Undermine Journal.
You're looking for something that sells for both a higher price and a higher volume on one server/faction and sells for a lower price but still high volume on another server/faction.

Once you find that...
Transfer a toon with gold to the buying server and/or faction.
Buy a bunch of them, as much as you can afford.

Transfer to the selling server and/or faction.
And unload them over several days.

You could go with more than one mule character.

This is essentially Blizzard legal, purchasing gold with real money.
Similar to buying the mounts/pets and then selling in game.


I thought about that but there are gold limits, think its 50,000 for a level 85. Once I made the gold and wanted to get it back to my main bank, wouldn't be able to bring it all.

The only way I could think of would be if the selling server was the one my main was on. You could transfer a toon to the buying server, but again only with 50,000 gold so unless there is also alot of stuff to sell on the buying server, it seems limited to 50,000 gold for $50 in blizzard fees. $1 per 1000 gold.

[Kojii]

or best way still u can now bring alot more gold over if u transfer a guild to another server costing 35 dollars!