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So, just leveled alchemy up - And realized that right now I primarly want to make money, long term I want the flask procs, but there is plenty of people in the guild who can do that for me.
So, for regular cash selling, is a transmute or elixir master better? or even potion?
I think I will eventually get all of them, but will take me a while since I'm a bit of a slacker :P
I know the answer can vary a bit depending on realm economics etc, but curious to see the general opinion.
I recently switched from flask procs to transmution master.
I've only got 2 alchemists. I've had a couple of 2 procs on gems, on each since changing.
(I'm going to level alchemy on other characters).
On my server I can buy the mats (eternal air and sky sapphire) for majestic zircon for 30 gold.
Each uncut gem goes for about 150. I'm levelling a Jewel crafter so that I can cut these gems myself, but guildies will cut them for me for free (If only I wasn't so impatient). The cut gem then go for 200+, most of the time.
So each additional proc is at least 150 gold.
I was doing cardinal rubies but the price of the mats shot up, so take a look at which epic gems sell the best on your server.
Flasks were doing well for me a while back, I was just buying mats and letting the procs make the profit, but frost lotus prices have gone through the roof to the point where it wasn't worth the effort anymore.
IMO the easiest cash if you are really going to watch the AH is elixir spec. I've made far more gold with this spec than I have with any other but it required a lot of work. The least work / easiest cash is definitely transmute spec. Selling the gem you xmute each day + potential procs can be very profitable even if you buy gems / eternals.
Thanks so far guys, and yeah I plan to watch the AH .... I would probably have tried transmute first though, but seems like I need to do elxirs for the last 5 points in alchemy and rather not do those as non-elixir master :P
Go with whatever is currently hot on your realm as the cost to switch is minor. However like Svper said the best mone maker for me has been elixers but it's very dependant on raiders and the day/time. Xmutes are the easier money maker as you just make em and put em up whenever you want and eventually they get bought.
I usually put my flask and elixers up at 5:45 and 6:45 Tues,Weds and all day Sunday.
I use transmute on 3 alchemists. I post after 9pm, rarely get undercut by then. Place mine 5g lower then the next highest. Sold usually w/in an hour. I can buy the mats for it fairly cheap, less than 40g (give or take depending on which mats vs what gem is value highest or not avaialble) but usually one of my other gathers/crafters have the mats available. 3 alchemists, at least 1 procs and extra or 2 easily 3-400g profit for 5 minutes work. Some nights I log in just to tansmute.
Transmute spec if you have multiple alchemists and want to just quickly sell a transmute cooldown or convert gems easily. If you have a JC, even better so you can sell your own gems. This is not a ton of money, but it is very, very little time investment.
If you want to watch the AH and really play "Alchemist for Profit", then I personally recommend going Elixir Mastery and setting up shop selling flasks for raiders.
Depending on your local server economy, this can be quite profitable. You don't necessarily need to camp the AH continuously either (although if you do, you can take advantage of the economy to the fullest).
I have started playing the AH game recently on my server and decided to focus on supplying flasks. Here's a few tidbits that I will pass along.
AddOns are essential, or you will quickly get overwhelmed. I keep it minimalist and use only the following: Auctioneer & QuickAuction. I use QuickAuction only for its ability to cancel auctions and its auto-mailbox-emptying functionality.
Utilize Auctioneer for a few days or so to understand your server's economy. Make sure you understand what the important raw material costs are likely to be (e.g. esp Frost Lotus, Lichbloom, Icethorn).
Focus on supplying high-volume movers. I make only Flask of Endless Rage, Frost Wyrm, and the occasional Stoneblood.
Know your costs and have a feel for what you need to be profitable (include AH fees and procs in there as well, search the web for a spreadsheet if you can't quickly make one yourself). If you aren't careful, you can start crafting/selling for a loss, depending on how tight your server economy is.
Flask business is about volume most of the time. Therefore you will need a supply of herbs (esp. Frost Lotus) that will outstrip what you can probably buy on the AH. If you see people selling goods, reach out to them and try to set up COD arrangements. This gives you a good supply and more importantly, keeps your flask-making competition from getting them. Any large seller of flasks that you compete with will probably have 2-10 people that they are buying herbs from totally separate from the AH.
Understand the raid times and selling times of the raiders and herb farmers on your server. This is helpful to maximize profits.
If you're going to "camp the AH", do it only in periods of peak buying. Don't be afraid to jack up your prices and re-list if you get into a situation where you are the sole supplier at a time (right before raids) where people need flasks.
I thought I would help out any budding flask sellers by somewhat explaining what I do on a night when I might be "camping the AH" versus a day when I want to just quickly throw up some auctions and not be bothered.
The Quick Approach:
1.) Log in, clear out mailbox of old/expired/won/successful auctions.
2.) Go to AH, scan auction house with Auctioneer.
3.) Look for raw materials (even if I have a good supply) and buy anything that is under valued significantly. Replenish stocks of herbs I need.
4.) Look at current Rage, Frost Wyrm, Stoneblood flasks on the market and evaluate what to craft. This is a combination of how many are posted as well as the price of everything that is posted.
5.) Craft needed supply. Pray to the proc gods. (You do this less as a Pro because you make hundreds and thousands of Flasks and you know you'll get a guaranteed %age from Mastery over time).
6.) Post auctions at a price that I'm comfortable with (NOT ALWAYS UNDERCUTTING EVERYONE) and log off.
Last step is key, and is why it's important to understand the market. You don't need to undercut people for your goods to move, usually. If I log in before raid nights, I can post flasks significantly higher than the lowest offerings and they will still sell that evening. If they don't, then you can re-adjust and try again the next session. Undercutting to "move them fast" is a really problem for newbie alchemists.
This whole "quick" process might take 5-10min, and you can do it once a day or once every 48 hours.
The more involved process:
It's the same basic flow as above, except you are now repeating the process over and over, paying attention to other peoples' offerings and how things are selling, and making decisions to keep other people out of the market and maximize your profit. Here's a summary of what I did last night on my server:
Logged on, did my "quick" process, and then found that there were very few Rage (+AP) flasks on the market. I bought some under-market-value raw herbs and crafted more Rage potions and a few Frost Wyrms, but decided NOT to make Stonebloods due to there being a lot on the market and my profit on them not being as good.
Rage potions on the market were all at 43g, which is a little high (normal sales price is 38-40 when there's competition), so I put 10 of them on at 45g. I price my Frost Wyrms just a bit below my competitor, because there's 100 or so flasks on the market and they're all tightly grouped.
I was chatting away and started to see a steady stream of...
"Your auction of Frost Wyrm Flask has been sold."
They come 2 at a time, because most raiders are buying enough for that raid that night. I see a lot of Frost Wyrm activity and decide to make a few more and keep selling at that price. While crafting, I get a huge spam of Endless Rage flasks sold, and check the AH quickly to discover there's none left for sale. None.
I put up 5 stacks at 58g per flask. This is a full 20g/flask more than normal market prices. I don't actually expect them to sell, but I instead expect to see a bunch of other people posting flasks up for sale.
But they don't. For a good 45minutes, raiders are buying up my Rage flasks at inflated prices because I have a short term lock on the market.
So I flip my normal herb buying methodology on its head and now start to work on buying as many Frost Lotuses as possible. I'm low on Frost Lotus, so I need them anyway, and my high Rage flask sales price will support buying "more expensive" raw materials.
The main thing I want to do is keep non-professional-Alchemists from just making their own Rage potions unless they have Frost Lotus on hand. So I bite the bullet and buy up a lot of "overpriced" Frost Lotuses on the AH. They normally sell for 50g or so, but I'm buying them as high as 60g each because I can still make profit with them AND I am now controlling the supporting market of Frost Lotus for anyone else standing there thinking, "Man, I'll just buy the mats and have my Buddy make them for me in the raid."
Meanwhile, Flasks are still selling. I am still the only Rage seller, and although a few people have undercut me on Frost Wyrms, they are only posting 2-3 at a time, so I just let theirs be sold and then I see more AH spam when mine are cheapest again. I've updated my spreadsheet with tonight's inflated Frost Lotus costs and have just shown that I'm OK with what I've bought. While I'm tinkering around in my spreadsheet, I get a tell from one of the Frost Lotus sellers and he asks if I would be interested in more. I tell him that I am OK for now, unless he wants to really sell me a lot for 900g/stack. I am totally upfront with him and tell him that the Flask market is my business, and I am looking for Herb suppliers that will COD me stuff. He laughs and says, "LOL, I only have 8, want those?" I buy his 8 for 45g each, and tell him he can COD me any quantity at 45g and I will buy them. I also tell him that if the market goes up, I will give him a fair price instead of him needing to bother with AH fees and hassle.
"What about other herbs?", he asks. I tell him I only buy three other herbs and give him about 75-80% of market value / stack for my COD price. He says he has 15 stacks of Icethorn right now, so I buy them pretty cheap. I'm loaded with Icethorn, but the market is fairly consistent and this is a good deal for me.
Back to check the AH, and someone has finally ended my monopoly of Rage potions. A person has posted 10 stacks at 4g under my price.
I do nothing. I let them sit. I know they'll move.
I keep checking, and sure enough, they're gone in 10-15min, more Rage cha-ching sounds coming.
On the Frost Wyrm front, some guy has posted 25 Flasks at 28g each. My sales stop, obviously. But that price is so low that I think that he has no idea what he's doing, and I decided to buy out the remaining stock at that price. What's left is now:
5 @ 38 (not me)
3 @ 39 (not me)
2 @ 41 (me)
2 @ 42 (not me)
oodles at 45 (all from earlier in the day, by my guess)
So I go through a mailbox empty/rescan cycle, and I post 30 Frost Wyrm flasks at 44.5. I did not undercut everyone, content to let the stuff clear out at 38-39. People buy that stuff, then my 2 @42, then the yellow spam continues as they buy up 20 or so at 44. I smile, thinking that I just flipped 20 stacks for 10g profit each without any headaches.
I continue to gobble up Frost Lotus for another 30-45 min, until the price is too high. I refresh that page continually, and stumble upon someone who lists 3 stacks of 5 for 40g... I nab them immediately. Rest of the ones for sale are now severely overpriced and listed at 69.99. Lichbloom is also totally depleted of market-value stock, so I decide to become an herb seller and put up 15 stacks at 115% of market value (I bought at 80-85%). They all sell that night. I DON'T try to flip the Frost Lotus because I want them off the market.
I get a couple COD emails with Frost Lotus and Lichbloom in them, and I refresh my stocks with cheaper herbs. One 20-stack of Lotus had a cost of 950g, so I paid it, then sent the guy a mail back with 50g in it and a note: "Market's gone up a bit, here's a fairer price at 50g/each instead of 48. By the way, you accidently shorted yourself 10g with 950/stack instead of 960-- I can't sleep well by overcharging. Keep sending them at 48 each and if the market stays up we can reset a new price next week."
I want this guy happy. I want him supplying me directly and not the AH. He sends a big thank you note the next morning.
About 2 hours into the night, and volume is dropping off a bit as the raids are now underway. I contemplate logging, but the short term single supply of Rage is taunting me. I pull all my remaining auctions off and list them at 63g each, which is astronomically high for our server. I also list a few stacks of 2-3 at 120 or 180g (60each), and they sell to some people who decided for a "better value".
All good things come to an end, and eventually 2-3 sellers of Rage flasks show up to the market with listings down in the 45-48 range. This is still great money. But they're not huge players, and there's not any Frost Lotus available, so once they're done, they're done. I reprice at about 46g to be competitive with them, seeing if they keep throwing 2-3 flasks at a time up. I see one of them asking for Frost Lotus in trade chat, so I know he's probably out.
I decide I'm done for now, and I look at raw prices one last time on the non-Lotus herbs. They're sky high, 120-140% of normal market price. So I load up 5-6 stacks of my own herbs onto the AH and undercut them by posting at 110%.
I close up shop, having made 3,300-3,500g or so in about 3 hours. It was a nice gift to have been the only significant Rage supplier for a few hours of prime selling, and I took advantage of it.
In the morning before work, I find I sold quite a few more over the evening, and some of my Herbs also sold. I recheck raw materials and see the AH is now fully restocked with herbs at 75-80% of market value. I re-buy herbs low, and find a 20-stack of Frost Lotus in the AH for 50% market value!! I hoover that up and send the seller a note telling him I'll save him AH fees if he wants to send me more. Prices on my server are lower in the morning since all the late night people post their daily herb catch really low "so they'll sell".
A couple of my Herb contacts sent me stuff via COD which I'm happy to see. I've got a head start for tomorrow night's raid supply... I craft and list a bunch of Flasks for the daytime, when sales will be slow. I price them a little lower so that I can move a few during the day, knowing that there will be some competition.
Very cool detail of your night on the AH. My only worry with what you did was if someone had been late on the AH and dumped a load of Frost Lotus on the market you could have lost out on that night's sales? Correct?
Also, I have read in some guides that it is possible to setup direct farmers who sell mats for a lot less than the AH in bulk. It seems like you do this also from you COD description?
I have tried doing flasks on my server a couple of times and it just sucked, the flasks were selling at a lot less than the mats it took to make them and even with Elixir spec the profit margin was really small (I am on US Uther). Was I just unlucky or is it on a server with larger raiding guilds they have their own guys making and farming their pots?
Just some thoughts I had :)
I have two alchemist and imho transmute spec sux.
transmute spec has essentially the same % change to proc as the flask spec.
one transmute every 20 hours .vs. unlimited flasks.
these transmutes need relatively expensive mats, unless you are farming those yourself.
so cash wise, I would argue that against the transmute spec unless you already have the other specs covered and just want to do a few transmutes on the side.
so far. I have had ZERO transmute procs but then I've done less than 10 of them.
While probalby relying too much on RNG I loooove my transmuter... Got a 3x and 4x procc two days in a row. Granted there's a lot of 1x proccs... but those awesome moments make up for it. Money ahoy!
Quick question, how do I drop Elixir Mastery so that I can learn Transmute Mastery? Which guy to I go to so that I can drop Elixir Mastery?
Thanks