Well, i've got 2 things i'm thinking about covering next.
My first idea is about looking about rare alchemy recipes - looking at how the market goes for them, especially with the limits that the discovery system places on supply.
My second idea is basically to review what i've done so far - go back and do a weekly review of prices and trends and see where my predictions have panned out, and where i have egg on my face.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Gems in the 2.4 Marketplace
The profession that was probably most directly affected by the 2.4 patch was Jewelcrafting. The introduction of the Shattered Sun Offensive gave jewelcrafters access to a number of new recipes - for figurines, epic versions of 'regular' gems and a few new meta gems. Combined with the large number of people replacing and upgrading gear, it looked like a large opportunity was being opened for jewelcrafters to make some money.
Some people had predicted that the influx of the new epic gem recipes would decrease the value of the existing blue gem recipes and the gems themselves. As of today this does not seem to have happened. Blue gem prices appear to have remained at fairly high levels, except for the green (talasite) gems. I am not sure why those gems are particularly cheap (~10g per gem as opposed to between 40 and 80g for any other color). I assume talasites are easier to come by than other blue gems.
There might be a number of reasons for blue gems to retain their value. Epic gems have begun to show up on the auctionhouse, but not in large numbers, and still at very high prices (hundreds of gold per gem). It would seem unlikely that most people would buy these gems, especially where they thought they might be upgrading their gear again reasonably soon.
Probably the most interesting part of the gem market at the moment is the meta-gem market. Immediately upon the release of the patch the meta-gem market soared by about fifty percent. This price hike affected all meta-gems, not just those released in the new patch, so i assume it was a result of rising cost of the ingredients as well as soaring level of demand for the finished product.
At the moment it looks like the most profitable aspect of the meta-gem market is probably supplying the base ingredients. Plain Earthstorm Diamonds and Skyfire Diamonds are selling for almost as much as the finished meta-gems are going for, whereas the ingredients for the base meta-gems are a good deal cheaper than the gems themselves. This seems, at least for the moment, to be a market wide open for exploitation by alchemists, particularly those specialising in transmuting.
Some people had predicted that the influx of the new epic gem recipes would decrease the value of the existing blue gem recipes and the gems themselves. As of today this does not seem to have happened. Blue gem prices appear to have remained at fairly high levels, except for the green (talasite) gems. I am not sure why those gems are particularly cheap (~10g per gem as opposed to between 40 and 80g for any other color). I assume talasites are easier to come by than other blue gems.
There might be a number of reasons for blue gems to retain their value. Epic gems have begun to show up on the auctionhouse, but not in large numbers, and still at very high prices (hundreds of gold per gem). It would seem unlikely that most people would buy these gems, especially where they thought they might be upgrading their gear again reasonably soon.
Probably the most interesting part of the gem market at the moment is the meta-gem market. Immediately upon the release of the patch the meta-gem market soared by about fifty percent. This price hike affected all meta-gems, not just those released in the new patch, so i assume it was a result of rising cost of the ingredients as well as soaring level of demand for the finished product.
At the moment it looks like the most profitable aspect of the meta-gem market is probably supplying the base ingredients. Plain Earthstorm Diamonds and Skyfire Diamonds are selling for almost as much as the finished meta-gems are going for, whereas the ingredients for the base meta-gems are a good deal cheaper than the gems themselves. This seems, at least for the moment, to be a market wide open for exploitation by alchemists, particularly those specialising in transmuting.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Ding... again
Well i had definitely intended for the next post to be about gem prices in the auctionhouse, but i had a successful day with my rogue alt, so i thought i would report.
Ran Shadow Labyrinths, got the Blackout Truncheon from Grandmaster Vorpil. It has a nice haste proc which will be very useful if i decide to go combat spec again. Then got to Murmur, who kindly dropped the Whispering Blade of Slaying.
After this group, i went to Shattrath to hand in the two quests i had completed in Shadow Labyrinths, and dinged 70 off the first one. So, now i have 4 level 70 characters. I also had just enough spare cash to buy the flying mount riding skill as well as a mount.
All in all a good day, but i still need 2 more Essence of Infinity to complete my Elixir Mastery quest.
Ran Shadow Labyrinths, got the Blackout Truncheon from Grandmaster Vorpil. It has a nice haste proc which will be very useful if i decide to go combat spec again. Then got to Murmur, who kindly dropped the Whispering Blade of Slaying.
After this group, i went to Shattrath to hand in the two quests i had completed in Shadow Labyrinths, and dinged 70 off the first one. So, now i have 4 level 70 characters. I also had just enough spare cash to buy the flying mount riding skill as well as a mount.
All in all a good day, but i still need 2 more Essence of Infinity to complete my Elixir Mastery quest.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Next Up: Gems
Just thought i'd pop in and say that and i haven't forgotten gems from my list of item supplements, but that i think they're more than enough for a post all of their own. Given it's getting towards half past midnight right now and i don't feel like logging back in to WoW, that will have to wait until tomorrow.
You might notice that i've been tweaking some of the settings to make this a little less a bog-standard blog. Subscribing should be easier if anyone feels a crying need to do so, and there's also a search function. In addition i found a very handy little script which converts item links into their in-game graphic when you hover over them. Very handy, and thanks to the wonderful WoWHead database.
You might notice that i've been tweaking some of the settings to make this a little less a bog-standard blog. Subscribing should be easier if anyone feels a crying need to do so, and there's also a search function. In addition i found a very handy little script which converts item links into their in-game graphic when you hover over them. Very handy, and thanks to the wonderful WoWHead database.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Supplementary Items
First of all i guess i should start by defining what the hell i'm talking about. By 'supplementary items' i mean anything which is added on to items - so, enchants, armor kits, oils, etc.
I would expect there to be a natural temporary surge in the price of permanent supplementary items whenever a patch is released containing a large amount of new content and new items. A large number of players getting new items (in this case from 2 seperate new instances, 1 for the hardcore raiders and 1 for the more casual player) means that you're going to see a natural spike in demand for ingredients as people go about replacing or upgrading their previous item supplements.
The patch also introduced a new enchant - Enchant Cloak: Steelweave - but I don't think it's a particularly desireable enchant compared to the alternative options. I could be wrong about this - if i am, let me know.
Anyways. Most people who are replacing supplements will be trying to do their same task with the same talent spec, and therefore most people are going to want to essentially buy the same supplement again.
Head enchants are all reputation based, and therefore there is going to be hardly any impact in the auctionhouse. The only possible way i could see is if someone wanted to buy their way to Revered status with the Cenarion Expedition, but most people who are replacing a head enchant will already have the appropriate reputation status (small addendum: not me, i'm a horrible nub). The Blackrock auctionhouse seems to bare this out, as the market for Coilfang Armaments does not seem particularly volatile at this moment.
Shoulder enchants are a different story - they are also reputation based, but in addition to that they are obtained by trading in items which can be purchased from the auctionhouse - Arcane Tomes for the Scryer enchants, Fel Armaments for Aldor. You would expect these to be a lot more volatile to market forces - not for their reputation, but because 8 are required for a full-strength shoulder enchant. The market in both those products seems reasonably volatile - each of the two had more than 80 available for purchase, with a broad price range. The average price was approximately 50% more than the cheapest price (for both products), which suggests to me that you have a large amount of demand to go with what seems like a large supply. I would expect that within a month or so this demand will lessen a good deal, so i think both these products will probably lessen in volatility down to a steady rate of their current minimum price or thereabouts.
Leg armor kits seem to have come into their own with this recent patch - demand has predictably sky-rocketed. Cobra scales - whose main use is for armor kits - have seen a price hike, but not all ingredients have done so. Primal earth and clefthoof leather have not seen huge cost jumps. Primal mana, air and life have gone up, but not by the disproportionate level seen with the scales. In fact, now that primal nethers are available on the auctionhouse it is possible to in some cases buy all the ingredients needed to make a leg armor kit off the auctionhouse, construct the kit, and then sell it for a profit. This is a reasonably rare occurence in WoW, and it might not last depending on how kit prices go when demand begins to taper off.
The last thing i'll cover is the cost of enchantments. The market in enchanting reagents seems to have well and truly hit saturation point, especially on items like Arcane Dust. I'm not sure what effect the introduction of the ability to split Void Crystals into multiple Shards has had, but it'll be interesting to see how that market settles down.
What will be interesting is the extent to which casters change over from MP/5 based enchants to Intellect in order to take advantage of the recent changes to mana regen. Will raiders now take up +6 All Stats instead of +6MP/5 on chest armor and +12 Intellect instead of +6MP/5 on bracers? It will be interesting to see.
I would expect there to be a natural temporary surge in the price of permanent supplementary items whenever a patch is released containing a large amount of new content and new items. A large number of players getting new items (in this case from 2 seperate new instances, 1 for the hardcore raiders and 1 for the more casual player) means that you're going to see a natural spike in demand for ingredients as people go about replacing or upgrading their previous item supplements.
The patch also introduced a new enchant - Enchant Cloak: Steelweave - but I don't think it's a particularly desireable enchant compared to the alternative options. I could be wrong about this - if i am, let me know.
Anyways. Most people who are replacing supplements will be trying to do their same task with the same talent spec, and therefore most people are going to want to essentially buy the same supplement again.
Head enchants are all reputation based, and therefore there is going to be hardly any impact in the auctionhouse. The only possible way i could see is if someone wanted to buy their way to Revered status with the Cenarion Expedition, but most people who are replacing a head enchant will already have the appropriate reputation status (small addendum: not me, i'm a horrible nub). The Blackrock auctionhouse seems to bare this out, as the market for Coilfang Armaments does not seem particularly volatile at this moment.
Shoulder enchants are a different story - they are also reputation based, but in addition to that they are obtained by trading in items which can be purchased from the auctionhouse - Arcane Tomes for the Scryer enchants, Fel Armaments for Aldor. You would expect these to be a lot more volatile to market forces - not for their reputation, but because 8 are required for a full-strength shoulder enchant. The market in both those products seems reasonably volatile - each of the two had more than 80 available for purchase, with a broad price range. The average price was approximately 50% more than the cheapest price (for both products), which suggests to me that you have a large amount of demand to go with what seems like a large supply. I would expect that within a month or so this demand will lessen a good deal, so i think both these products will probably lessen in volatility down to a steady rate of their current minimum price or thereabouts.
Leg armor kits seem to have come into their own with this recent patch - demand has predictably sky-rocketed. Cobra scales - whose main use is for armor kits - have seen a price hike, but not all ingredients have done so. Primal earth and clefthoof leather have not seen huge cost jumps. Primal mana, air and life have gone up, but not by the disproportionate level seen with the scales. In fact, now that primal nethers are available on the auctionhouse it is possible to in some cases buy all the ingredients needed to make a leg armor kit off the auctionhouse, construct the kit, and then sell it for a profit. This is a reasonably rare occurence in WoW, and it might not last depending on how kit prices go when demand begins to taper off.
The last thing i'll cover is the cost of enchantments. The market in enchanting reagents seems to have well and truly hit saturation point, especially on items like Arcane Dust. I'm not sure what effect the introduction of the ability to split Void Crystals into multiple Shards has had, but it'll be interesting to see how that market settles down.
What will be interesting is the extent to which casters change over from MP/5 based enchants to Intellect in order to take advantage of the recent changes to mana regen. Will raiders now take up +6 All Stats instead of +6MP/5 on chest armor and +12 Intellect instead of +6MP/5 on bracers? It will be interesting to see.
Mana Regen Changes
One of the changes introduced in the recent patch was a tweaking of the mana regen formula for casters. It changed the formula so that the intellect stat improved the effectiveness of spirit in regenerating mana. I believe the reason that this was done was to make intellect a more desireable stat for healing classes, who had generally been stacking spirit and avoiding intellect.
This buff to the intellect stat appears to have had a fairly significant effect on raid consumables. Up until Patch 2.4, an Elixir of Major Mageblood was the preferred guardian elixir for healing casters. It gives 16 mana every 5 seconds regardless of any other contributing factors. Elixirs of Draenic Wisdom were generally considered the poor man's Guardian Elixir - only giving 30 Intellect and 30 Spirit.
The changes to the mana regen formula appear to have reversed this, at least for serious raiders. The general consensus appears to be that the Draenic Wisdom elixirs give the better regen results for a geared raider. Given that the Draenic Wisdom elixirs are taught by trainers and the Major Mageblood elixirs are taught by an expensive world drop recipe (300-400 gold is usual on Blackrock), along with the fact that the Mageblood ingredients are rarer, this is rife for interesting results.
So, how are these two different products selling at the moment?
Mageblood elixirs are going for slightly above 3 gold, while the average price of the Draenic Wisdom appears to be somewhere in the vicinity of 2 g 60s. Unfortunately i don't have historical data on these products, but i would be surprised if they were usually this close in cost in the past.
The ingredients for these 2 elixirs are also quite interesting at the moment. The mageblood elixirs are made from Ancient Lichen and Netherbloom. Both of these ingredients are reasonably uncommon, especially the Lichen which is only harvested in instances or rarely 'skinned'. The Draenic Wisdom elixirs are made from Felweed and Terocones. Both of those herbs are reasonably common, especially the ever-present felweed.
Strangely, ancient lichen are now selling for about 75s, compared to the terocones which are going for about 1g 40s. Given that both of these ingredients are used in a number of other recipes, and that ancient lichen is by far the rarer of them, I am surprised that the lichen are as cheap as they are. Given that lichen are used as ingredients in a number of DPS-enhancing elixirs and flasks, i expect their price to go up once more raiding guilds start getting serious about the Sunwell raid instance and the huge levels of DPS required.
This buff to the intellect stat appears to have had a fairly significant effect on raid consumables. Up until Patch 2.4, an Elixir of Major Mageblood was the preferred guardian elixir for healing casters. It gives 16 mana every 5 seconds regardless of any other contributing factors. Elixirs of Draenic Wisdom were generally considered the poor man's Guardian Elixir - only giving 30 Intellect and 30 Spirit.
The changes to the mana regen formula appear to have reversed this, at least for serious raiders. The general consensus appears to be that the Draenic Wisdom elixirs give the better regen results for a geared raider. Given that the Draenic Wisdom elixirs are taught by trainers and the Major Mageblood elixirs are taught by an expensive world drop recipe (300-400 gold is usual on Blackrock), along with the fact that the Mageblood ingredients are rarer, this is rife for interesting results.
So, how are these two different products selling at the moment?
Mageblood elixirs are going for slightly above 3 gold, while the average price of the Draenic Wisdom appears to be somewhere in the vicinity of 2 g 60s. Unfortunately i don't have historical data on these products, but i would be surprised if they were usually this close in cost in the past.
The ingredients for these 2 elixirs are also quite interesting at the moment. The mageblood elixirs are made from Ancient Lichen and Netherbloom. Both of these ingredients are reasonably uncommon, especially the Lichen which is only harvested in instances or rarely 'skinned'. The Draenic Wisdom elixirs are made from Felweed and Terocones. Both of those herbs are reasonably common, especially the ever-present felweed.
Strangely, ancient lichen are now selling for about 75s, compared to the terocones which are going for about 1g 40s. Given that both of these ingredients are used in a number of other recipes, and that ancient lichen is by far the rarer of them, I am surprised that the lichen are as cheap as they are. Given that lichen are used as ingredients in a number of DPS-enhancing elixirs and flasks, i expect their price to go up once more raiding guilds start getting serious about the Sunwell raid instance and the huge levels of DPS required.
Patch Consequences
Some people i know in WoW look forward to every patch dreading a nerf for their class - or worse yet, a buff for another class. I'm pretty non-fussed about that kind of stuff. I don't get too caught up by anything except radical changes to classes. What I always like to look for are the changes that are going to affect tradeable items - and to try and guess what those changes will mean in terms of price. If i was any good at this, my characters would probably be swimming in gold.
In the next couple of posts we'll ignore the fact that i'm obviously a bargain basement seer at best and look at some of the changes which the recent 2.4 patch made.
In the next couple of posts we'll ignore the fact that i'm obviously a bargain basement seer at best and look at some of the changes which the recent 2.4 patch made.
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