Leveling Alchaemy Question

[crowdx]

Hi all,
a simple question, for those of you that have leveled alchemy on multiple toons, did you farm mats or just bite the bullet and buy the mats? I have been looking at AH prices and some of the lower level herb prices are insance and so I farmed some of them, just thinking that it probably is a time waster farming though.
Anyone else wanna share how they did it?
Thanks

[Drommon]

I didn't do alchemy but I did do engineering by buying all the mats. Yes, I payed for the very expensive old world bars rather than farm them. Once you get to 80 make a ton of gold doing dailies with the goal in mind that you are going to be buying mats. I am not sure of the difference in time but if you think farming is a waste of time then do dailies/heroics or find some other means to get the mats.

[Starbuck_Jones]

Find a guide and follow it. Buy the mats of the AH unless you have nothing else to do but wander around and farm. Some guides will use very expensive items to get like 5-10 points. There are usually something else you can make that might be green or something and still give you a good 20 more points of skill for 10% of the cost.

[Shodokan]

I hired 5 people to farm for me for about 7k per person. Took them about a week to get all the materials i needed.

[deez]

I made Auctionator shopping lists for leveling mats. Whenever I check the AH, I look to see if there are any deals and buy out everything that falls in my price range.

[crowdx]

Well gold is not an issue, so I suppose I should just buy the mats.
I do agree with Starbuckjones on some of the guides, they list "guaranteed" skillups whereas some mats will get another 10 - 15 levels and sometimes allow the skipping on the really expensive items.
Shodokan: was that 7 k per person to get mats for all of your 32 alchemists?

[Shodokan]

Well gold is not an issue, so I suppose I should just buy the mats.
I do agree with Starbuckjones on some of the guides, they list "guaranteed" skillups whereas some mats will get another 10 - 15 levels and sometimes allow the skipping on the really expensive items.
Shodokan: was that 7 k per person to get mats for all of your 32 alchemists?

correct. some got less than 7k and some got more because of how much they actually got.

[crowdx]

Shodokan, are you still selling the gems to a supplier or using the AH?
On my server, Cardinal Ruby uncut is selling for about 120g each with mats costing anywhere between 40 - 60g, so not sure at this point how much time I should put into leveling this atm.
I am only thinking about possibly 3 - 4 additional toons, I have 2 already.

[ashlor]

I have been toiling over this question for a bit and I think that it would be best to level to 80 do dailies and farm the AH if you choose to go that route and are in need of a guide http://www.thenoobschool.com/worldofwarcraft/ has the best guides I have found for leveling profs the ones I have used use the cheapest mats.

[Ualaa]

I usually bite the bullet and buy mats, as needed.
Unless of course you can buy ore and prospect it for the mats, for less then the mats themselves.

Quite often, the unrefined mats cost more then the refined mats, which is rather retarded if you think about it.

Basically, if you can get "x" gold per day.
And use it to buy the mats, in say 4 days.
Then ask if you can farm all of the mats, within 4 days and playing similar amounts of time.
If you can farm faster, and don't mind farming, then go that route.
But if farming is too boring, or if it will take a lot longer, then the purchase route is the way to go.



On my server, cut gems are going for 90-130g on average.
But I regularly sell a few cuts at 189g, when no one else has any on the AH.
I have Quick Auctions set, to not even list a gem auction for less then 120g... in which case it goes back to my maximum price of 189g.

I basically transmute whatever types of gems I have the least of.
And then (one at a time) whatever gem is selling for the most.
Or if none are appreciably better then the others, then keeping one of each cut on the AH at all times.
QA is easy to undercut (by 1cp) others, and I cancel/re-list periodically throughout my session... just log back to my JC toon, and once done back to whoever I was playing on that account.

With 29 alchemists, I've averaging 4.5k a day, purely from alchemy/jewelcrafting.
Not doing any instances at the moment, or farming.
Kind of a wow break, except for leveling teams here or there.