Warcraft Gold Tips

by Fox Van Allen

If you’re a magic-using, cloth-wearing class, I’d recommend you at least take a look at tailoring. By leveling it, you get access to Lightweave Embroidery, one of the best level 85 buffs in the game for casters.

Of course, you can level tailoring on any character, and a lot of the craftables you make can be sold at a profit. But if that character can’t use the buffs from the profession, you’re missing one the key benefits to max leveling a profession.

Should I level tailoring?

Generally speaking, it’s hard to argue that one profession is hands down better than another. They all have their own unique advantages and drawbacks. And a profession that’s not especially lucrative or useful in one patch or expansion may wind up being the best in the next.

The tailoring profession is best leveled by someone who is actively leveling a character. The profession requires a lot of cloth. This cloth can be quite expensive to obtain at level 85, but leveling characters will routinely find cloth out in the wild.

The tailoring profession is best leveled alongside an enchanter. The two professions have terrific synergy. Tailoring requires you to craft a lot of gear that people aren’t going to be interested in buying off the Auction House. Disenchanting this surplus green gear turns them into enchanting materials, which is far more liquid a commodity.

Getting started

Obviously, the best way to level tailoring is to craft the items with the lowest cost to make that sell for the highest profit margin (or lowest amount of net loss). What items sell the best tend to vary from server to server. Still, some things hold more constant than others.

If this is the first time you’ve ever leveled a profession (don’t laugh — we were all there once!), you should know that the tailoring profession, like most non-gathering professions, is pretty poorly balanced in terms of leveling. In the early levels, you’re likely to find moreLinen Cloth and Silk Cloth than you can use while leveling. By the time you hit level 80 and are ready to leave Northrend behind, you’ll be frustrated that your tailor still needs tons more Frostweave Cloth.

Balance your leveling

It’s most efficient to pace your effort to level tailoring with your effort to level your character. This makes sense on a number of levels. You may as well be crafting things your character can use, and if your character levels faster than you level your profession, the gear you’re making will always be outdated. And, of course, by leveling in tandem, you’re actively getting the cloth you need from level-appropriate mobs. It just makes the whole process feel smoother.

• Tailoring 0-75 Level 1-15 humanoid mobs (Linen)
• Tailoring 75-150 Level 16-25 humanoid mobs (Wool)
• Tailoring 150-225 Level 30-40 humanoid mobs (Silk); level 38-50 humanoid mobs (Mageweave)
• Tailoring 225-300 Level 50-60 humanoid mobs (Runecloth)
• Tailoring 300-375 Level 58-68 The Burning Crusade content (Netherweave)
• Tailoring 375-450 Level 68-80 Wrath of the Lich King content (Frostweave)
• Tailoring 450-525 Level 80-85 Cataclysm content (Embersilk)

Priority 1: Craft Bolts of Cloth

While tailoring, you’re going to need bolts of cloth. Lots and lots of bolts. They’re the simplest and most useful thing a tailor makes.

As a tailor, there’s no reason not to craft bolts of cloth. They take up less bag space. They’re generally worth more than the component pieces of cloth you used to make them.

• Bolt of Linen Cloth Make these from skill level 1 through 50. Resist the urge to craft anything else until this pattern goes gray. You should have far more Linen than you need from drops alone, but in a pinch, Linen is almost always cheap on the Auction House.
• Bolt of Wool Cloth As soon as you hit skill level 75, drop everything and start making these. Keep making these until the pattern goes gray at 105.
• Bolt of Silk Cloth Start making these when you get to skill level 125. Keep making these through to level 145.
• Bolt of Mageweave Cloth You can make these as soon as you hit 175. Craft these through to 185.
• Bolt of Runecloth Start making these at 250; make nothing else until you hit skill level 260.
• Bolt of Netherweave You gain the ability to craft these bolts at 300. Making these should continue to provide skill points through to 325.
• Bolt of Imbued Netherweave Start making at 325. Make until it stops awarding skill at 340.
• Bolt of Frostweave Start crafting Frostweave at 350. Don’t stop until the act grays out at 375.
• Bolt of Imbued Frostweave Make this from skill 400 to 405.
• Bolt of Embersilk You can start crafting bolts of Embersilk at 425. It should continue to award skill points through to 450.
• Dreamcloth When you hit level 525, you’re likely going to want to craft gear with Dreamcloth, so it pays to start making it as soon as possible (500). Whether or not you want to wait out the week-long cooldowns or pay the premium price for certain types of volatile elementals is up to you.

Don’t take these bolts to the Auction House — hold on to them. You’ll need them to finish the leveling process. And if you make more bolts than you need, don’t worry. You can always sell the bolts on the Auction House later.

Priority 2: High-capacity bags

The one item that has consistently sold well throughout World of Warcraft history are bags. Everyone needs them. But not all bags sell. The only bags that sell to any reliable extent are those that contain a minimum of 16 slots. Profession-specific bags sell well too, so long as they’re 32-slot bags or higher. These bags frequently sell at a profit, so obviously you’re going to want to concentrate your leveling effort here where you can.

• Netherweave Bag This pattern is available at 315, though you’ll still be making Netherweave Bolts until 325. Keep making it until it stops awarding skill points at 330.
• Imbued Netherweave Bag Make these from 340 through to 350. You can get the Netherweb Spider Silk by leveling through Terrokar.
• Frostweave Bag Make these starting at skill level 410. You should generally switch over to making Embersilk Bolts at 425, but these bags award skill points to 440. So if you have excess Frostweave, keep going.
• Embersilk Bag If these are profitable to make (at 15 bolts each, these can be quite pricey), then you can grind these from 480 to 495.
• Hyjal Expedition Bag Early in the Cataclysmexpansion, these bags were made at huge losses just to finish the tailoring leveling process. Now that fewer people are leveling tailoring, these can usually be made at cost or at a profit. Just be aware that the market for specialty bags such as these can be easy to flood.

Priority 3: Bind-on-equip gear

Crafting bolts and bags put you well on your way to hitting 525, but you’ll still need to fill in the blanks along the way. For this, you’ll probably need to make green- or blue-quality bind-on-equip gear.

This is where there’s no right answer for the leveling guide. You’re going to want to try to craft whatever sells for the most profit (or usually, the smallest loss), but this can vary from server to server. You might need to do a small amount of research on the Auction House first. Thankfully, this is easy enough. I like to do the bulk of my crafting in the Auction House itself, so I can search to make sure the market isn’t already flooded with what I’m about to make.

Players who have already reached level 85 will have access to heirloom gear to send to any future characters they decide to level. Right now, heirlooms are available for your head, shoulders, cloak, and chest. Tailoring gear for these slots tends to sell especially poorly, since very few people are in the market to buy them. Focus your crafting efforts on the other slots: wrists, gloves, belts, pants, and boots.

There are some other things to consider, as well. Often, blue-quality gear will take the most effort and materials to make. But this means that few players actually bother to craft the gear. A surprising amount of blue-quality gear will sell for a profit, especially if it’s for one of those five non-heirloom slots.

Further, gear for twinks — characters who purposefully refuse to level past a certain point for PvP reasons — is always a popular seller. This gear is pretty easy to spot, even for beginners. Blue-quality stuff is more popular with twinks than green-quality stuff, because twinks only want the absolute best gear. Further, gear that has a minimum level requirement that ends in nine is popular with twinks, since they typically halt their growth at levels that end in nine. For a specific example, look at the Spidersilk Boots. They take more materials to make than their green-quality counterparts, but the extra effort is well worth it. They oftensell for around 250 gold, depending on your server.

Finally, a warning to the crafting novice: Before making something, check to make sure that item you’re about to craft is bind on equip, not bind on pickup. If it’s tagged as the latter, it will be bound your character and you won’t be able to sell it. Don’t waste time bind-on-pickup gear like the Robe of Power unless you plan on using it yourself.

Priority 4: The rest

One of the best ways to make money in WoW is to do what everybody else is not doing. That makes writing guides like this difficult. If everyone has the same information, then very few people who have that information will be able to make money off it.

That said, those who have the greatest success while leveling a profession will be those who have a little bit of creativity to find underserved markets specific to their server. On many servers, roleplay gear — that is, gear worn for looks and not functionality — tends to sell slowly but often at a profit. Shirts can be surprisingly profitable, but do your research first. And don’t list too many at once.

If you’re not a enchanter, don’t be afraid to make contacts with people in your guild who are. If they’re willing to lend a helping hand, you can always send them your excess crafted gear and have them disenchant it for you. Enchanting materials almost always sell better than the gear the materials came from.

And as a final note: Don’t be afraid to craft gear for yourself! While a lot of people level professions for the purposes of making money, that’s really only half of what the process is good for. Cloth-wearing tailors have access to some of the best gear possible for their class, if only they go through the trouble of making it. If you can get a skill point out of creating a better piece of gear for yourself, there’s really no reason not to.

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by Basil Berntsen

Every single content patch, Blizzard turns the tables on gold makers and, for a brief period of time, allows any player to make tens of thousands of gold by selling valor point-bought BoE gear. We’ve all seen the ads in trade of people looking to buy them or sell them, but most people focus on their own gear first and only think about selling them once they’ve gotten a few upgrades. Is this unwise?

What if I told you that you could get several thousand gold and still have as much valor gear at the end of the month as your guildie who didn’t sell a single BoE? It’s all about timing. The valor point weekly cap is 1,000, and in the beginning of the week that valor BoEs are available for purchase, the prices are extremely high. They stay high for a few weeks but quickly plummet as people start to use more points to buy gear for selling. They bottom out eventually when people stop having upgrades available for valor.

Easy gold for everyone

So how do you have the same gear as your guildie but have a few thousand folding gold? It’s simple: You delay your boots and bracers until last. The first boots and bracers you buy are sold to someone with more money than patience, and then you save some of that money to buy “back” a pair of boots and bracers for a fraction of what you made once you had everything else you needed. In the meantime, you were two upgrades behind everyone who bought pieces for themselves … but that’s also two more slots you could conceivably get a raiding upgrade for.

Every single level 85 character, even if they don’t raid, can cap their valor points each week. If you do raid, selling them will result in a slower progression of your average ilevel. If you take advantage of this early rather than later in the month, you can get some easy gold. And easy gold can buy you other, potentially more desirable BoE gear. Heck, with the price of enchanting mats and cut gems these days, you might get the best bang for your buck simply using the money for best-in-slot raiding enchants and gems.

AH or trade channel?

So you’ve decided to sell a BoE or two. How do you even go about this? The obvious way would be to advertise in trade channel with your price and the gear that you can access. This is popular because it’s risk-free and everyone else does it. Because of its popularity, though, you will find prices are lower here than on the Auction House. The advantages of trade are still pretty convincing, though:

• Risk-free You have points until you get the gold. If you don’t find a buyer, you can still buy an upgrade for yourself.
• Efficient It doesn’t matter if your buyer is a tank, a healer, or buying for an alt. All specs’ gear costs the same: 1,650 points for boots, 1,250 points for bracers.
• Cheap You don’t have to spend money to advertise in trade, and you don’t have to pay a 5% trade chat tax.

That said, when I want to get as much money as I can from a BoE, I never sell it in trade. I use the Auction House. Sure, it costs 5% of the sale plus deposit fees if you have to relist, but for one reason or another, people are willing to pay more on the AH. Your auction is there for as many hours as you paid for, and even if some insomniac raider is shopping for BoEs at the ungodly hour of 7 a.m., they’ll see your listing.

That said, there’s risk and inefficiency with this way of doing things. You have to choose the item you’ll be selling before you know the buyers for it, and if you’re unlucky with your choice, you risk having no gold, no points, and no equippable gear.

Mitigate the risk

There are a few things you can do to reduce the negatives of selling your cash cow on the AH:

• Bark your price in trade for a DPS queue or two before committing to the Auction House. If you get any offers that overwhelm you, take the money and run.
• Analyze the AH prices for all the different pieces of gear you could sell. This is particularly well done at the Undermine Journal. There is a lot more demand for plate, leather, mail, and cloth DPS gear than, for example, tank gear. But there are a lot of tanks, and if the market for the DPS gear you’re looking into is completely saturated, it may not be for a less common type of gear.
• Once you’ve listed the piece on the AH, bark a link to it in trade whenever you remember, and tell people that you’ll give them 5% off the posted price if they give you a chance to cancel it and trade them manually.

Auctioneers, watch out

One of the most satisfying things you can do while making money is actually buying low and selling high. It’s risky business normally but potentially very profitable in the beginning of a patch where large amounts of money are being spent. In this case, the best way to make money flipping valor-bought BoEs is to watch trade for good deals and sell them when trade is less busy or on the Auction House.

It’s risky business because the value of every BoE will eventually plummet. Riding the brink between trade and the AH always runs you the risk of having the risk of your entire stock being devalued from under your feet — especially because the increased prices paid on the AH are usually really only paid when you list the item for long enough, which goes directly against the requirement of a fast turnaround.

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by Fox Van Allen

Some things in life never change. Heart will always be the best band of all time. And gem prices will always spike after a new content patch, often by 100% or more.

The best way to profit off of (relatively) short-lived price increases is to stockpile ahead of time. While it’s clearly too late for that, there are still plenty of opportunities to profit off the rare gem market before demand dies down. It’s not too late.

Regardless of whether or not you’re a jewelcrafter, you’ve probably noticed that the market is going crazy. The red gems everyone wants are scarce enough to result in doubled (or even tripled) prices. And because people aren’t gemming red because of the cost, more folks are buying orange, purple, and to some extent even blue, green, and yellow gems. Why? Socket bonuses are pretty attractive, and if you’re expecting to have a piece of gear for only a week or two, why spend 300 gold, especially when you can get a decent boost out of a gem that costs a tenth of that?

A market snapshot

When looking at the gem market post-4.3, it’s easy to focus on Inferno Rubies and their little brother, the Carnelian, because red gems are by far the most expensive. But if you’reprospecting for gems yourself (as opposed to buying the raw gems on the AH and then cutting them), only one-sixth of the gems you’ll find will be red. Indeed, determining the profitability of jewelcrafting requires you to consider the average of all six gem colors.

Rare gems World average as of Dec. 11 (courtesy AHSpy)

• Inferno Ruby 260g
• Ember Topaz 47g
• Demonseye 35g
• Amberjewel 17g
• Dream Emerald 12g
• Ocean Sapphire 12g

Common gems World average as of Dec. 11 (courtesy AHSpy)

• Carnelian 73g
• Nightstone 20g
• Hessonite 12.5g
• Jasper 12.5g
• Alicite 7g
• Zephyrite 4.3g

For those too lazy to do the math, that works out to an average price of about 64g for a blue-quality gem and about 21.5g for a green-quality one.

The gravy train

To be fair, the increase in the prices of rare gems — especially Inferno Rubies — shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone. Any new patch that includes 5-man instances or a new raid is bound to drive demand through the roof, especially in the opening weeks. Level 85 players are getting a lot of gear upgrades, many of which need gemming. And thanks to the Raid Finder feature, some of these level 85 players are going through a series of upgrades in the same gear slot.

We see these kind of jumps in gem prices any time there’s a new tier of content available. And similarly, we know these jumps are usually short lived. Prices are going to be high and stay high for several weeks. But as the patch wears on, fewer people will be getting upgrades, and gem prices will return to normal levels.

The moral of the story: Don’t make any long-term decisions based on this short-lived spike in demand. Jewelcrafting isn’t any more profitable now over the long term.

Profits again gated behind work

If you’re looking for an easy score as a jewelcrafter, you may want to forget it. Lazy JCs can make money, sure, but the real money is had through prospecting. It’s similar to inscription that way.

For that reason, jewelcrafting tends to be a profitable endeavor at most times of year. It’s hard (and boring) for one person to satiate an entire server’s demand for gems, even if jewelcrafting is all he does. That makes it an easy market to get into for newcomers.

Jewelcrafting 101

Most of the Cataclysm-era jewels you see on the Auction House were born through the process of prospecting — that is, taking Cataclysm-era ore and destroying them to find raw gems. There are three different types of Cataclysm ore, and they all prospect into gems at different ratios:

• Obsidium Ore ~24% chance for each common gem; ~1.25% chance for each rare
• Elementium Ore ~18% chance for each common gem; ~5% chance for each rare
• Pyrite Ore ~18% chance for each common gem; ~7.5% chance for each rare; 100% chance for one to three Volatile Earth

Note that the above shows the chance of getting a specific common gem. Each prospect has a 100% guarantee to create at least one gem, and occasionally, a prospect will yield more than one. The math isn’t simple, but a decent rule of thumb allows us to add together the odds and estimate.

• Obsidium Ore 5.76 commons and 0.3 rares per prospected stack
• Elementium Ore 4.32 commons and 1.2 rares per prospected stack
• Pyrite Ore 4.32 commons, 1.8 rares, and 2 Volatile Earth per prospect

If you’re looking for rares, you’re best off grabbing Elementium or Pyrite Ore. If you’re more interested in common gems, Obsidium Ore is your best bet. Using the server average prices we discussed earlier and the average prices for stacks of ore (88g for Obsidium and Elementium, 150g for Pyrite), we find:

• Obsidium 130.3g prospected – 88g raw = 42.3g profit
• Elementium 169.7g prospected – 88g raw = 81.7g profit
• Pyrite 211.3g prospected – 150g raw = 61.3g profit

Should I prospect?

If you’re spending your time prospecting low-priced Elementium, then you’re probably going to see a 100% return on your investment. That’s pretty darn similar to the return of milling.

But don’t just jump into the deep end without understanding the risk. While the most popular gems — Inferno Rubies, Carnelians, and Ember Topaz — will sell all day long, less-popular gems like Dream Emeralds and Alicite may fester on the AH, even at competitive prices.

It’s also important to consider each step of the profitability of each step of the jewelcrafting process individually. If ore prices spike, it may become unprofitable to prospect, even if the secondary step of cutting gems is a moneymaker.

Finally, if you do decide to take the leap and try to cash in on high gem prices, take a look at some addons to minimize the time you spend on the most tedious steps. For prospecting, I really like the Panda addon. Just make sure to turn on your auto-looting option if you’re spending any length of time prospecting. It’s in the Interface menu: Interface > Controls > Auto Loot.

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by Fox Van Allen

When patch 4.3 first launched, the market price for Chaos Orbs on my server was about 400 gold. It didn’t take long for the price to fall though, the average market priceis about 56 gold. Frankly, that’s much lower than I’d have expected them to get so soon.

Don’t get me wrong, though. I’m not complaining. Quite the opposite: I’m excited. That’s because low-priced Chaos Orbs are a tremendous opportunity out there for crafters of just about all stripes.

The current supply

Do you have a large supply of Chaos Orbs sitting in your bags? You’re not alone.

As things currently stand, most Auction Houses seem to have a surplus of Chaos Orbs. This shouldn’t be too surprising. We’ve known for quite some time that Chaos Orbs would be going BoE in patch 4.3. A lot of people who didn’t have immediate profitable uses for the orbs (such as tailors) saved them up. And now that they can sell the things, they’re trying to do just that.

Presumably, this glut in supply will be relatively short lived. There are plenty of recipes out there that require Chaos Orbs. Players aren’t constructing a lot of i397 BoE gear yet, but when they do, they’ll need Chaos Orbs. A lot of i365 gear from the Firelands dailies require Chaos Orbs. Tailors can even turn these orbs into Powerful Ghostly Spellthread, an enchant that will be in high demand as players score new gear in the new 5-mans, the Raid Finder, and in the regular 10- and 25-man Dragon Soul raid. The market is good at finding uses for cheap materials, and this case should prove no different.

Moving forward, Chaos Orbs should become more and more limited in supply. They drop in 5-man instances, but as players progress through Dragon Soul, they’ll have less of a need to run content they outgear. Why run heroics if you’re already valor capped and don’t need the gear? Chaos Orbs are found in the Raid Finder as well, but in lower quantity; 25 people are all rolling for one orb. And while the Raid Finder is popular now, its popularity will likely fade when hardcore raiders no longer need the valor or lower-ilevel tier offered.

If you were stockpiling orbs for patch 4.3, you fell into the trap of thinking just like everyone else. When too many people get the same idea for making money, few people actually wind up making money off the idea. Keep that fact in mind when you see everyone rushing to sell off their stockpiles ASAP.

Current and future demand

The release of a new patch created a small uptick in demand for Chaos Orbs. As I said, they’re needed for the new i397 gear. They’re also still required for crafting i359, i365, and i378 gear from previous raid tiers. Sure, the demand for i365 is less now than it was this summer, but it’s still a non-zero factor.

But will that demand hold up moving forward? I say yes.

Don’t be fooled by the slow decent into worthlessness that Frozen Orbs experienced inWrath. Chaos Orbs are different, because Cataclysm is different. You can’t run regular instances without achieving a certain item level — 226 for Throne of Tides and Blackrock; 272 for Stonecore and Vortex Pinnacle; and 305 for Grim Batol, HoO, and Lost City. Even now, you need a minimum ilevel of 372 to participate in the Raid Finder.

To meet these ilevel hurdles, a player could run countless regulars, countless heroics, and then slowly progress through the tiers. Or, a dude could just head to the Auction House, drop a few thousand gold, and instantly gain access. Which sounds more appealing to you?

Lower-ilevel epics will always have a market in Cataclysm. And they’re far from the only useful thing you can craft with Chaos Orbs.

Profiting off Chaos Orbs

Right now, Chaos Orbs are cheap — near 60 gold each, on average. That has created some terrific opportunities, so long as your server’s economy will allow them.

For tailors, cheap Chaos Orbs means cheap Dreamcloth. The cost to make Dreamcloth with orbs is about equivalent to — and in some cases, less than — the cost to make Dreamcloth with volatiles. This gives tailors the ability to craft epics with abandon.

According to AHSpy.com, the cost to craft one Dreamcloth using Chaos Orbs is approximately 375 gold. This bargain-priced cloth can easily be turned around and crafted into Illusionary Bags, the i359 Belt of the Depths, and the i359 Breeches of Mended Nightmares, all of which seem to be offering modest profits right now: 700 gold on the Illusionary Bag (3,700-3,000), 900 gold on the Belt of the Depths (2,400-1,500), and 1,150 gold on the breeches (3,400-2,250).

Even bigger money can be made by blacksmiths who went through the trouble of grabbing the i365 Firelands patterns by grinding dailies. The profit margins on i365 gear are tremendous: The Masterwork Elementium Deathblade sells for 8,850 gold on average, with a material cost of only about half that.

Obviously, this gear doesn’t fly off the shelf — you’d be hard pressed to sell more than a one or two epics a day on my server, and it’s a high-population realm. But still, over the course of the rest of the expansion, these markets are likely to prove highly profitable for those willing to stick with them.

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by Basil Berntsen

I got an email from someone recently about a new competitor.

I have recently returned to the blacksmithing armor and belt buckles market. When I researched my old stomping ground, I found that materials cost has increased, profits are almost non-existent, and competition was rampant! I didn’t let that get me down, however. I watched the market, checked the reference data, got a good handle on the situation, then when the time was right, made my move! Competition dropped like flies, profits rose, and life was grand. Then one day, I got a new big-wig competitor.

He is one of those types who has his hand in all soups, and had set his sights on my little pot. For the past few weeks we’ve been having a war for the dominant spot in my market. It’s come down to almost nightly bouts of 1c markdowns for hours on end- some nights it goes so low that we’ve even bought stock from each other (me getting the upper hand by a few copper, though). One night, to test his wherewithal, I posted stock very low. He undercut, and I bought it all. He proceeded to buy my low priced bait within seconds. Since then, from war to war, I’ve become accustomed to the prices he likes to set, his posting habits, and his general posting times, but even with all this data at my disposal, he still manages to keep the steam in his engine.

We’ve only had one conversation in all this time as rivals, which consisted of him asking if I would like to sell my stock to him at a low profit margin, and me asking him to sell me his stock instead. Not a single word since. My profits are slowly slipping away as he and I post undercut each other relentlessly. I’m still making a bit of profit, but where does this go? Are the 1c markdown wars worth the effort?

One of the things a lot of auctioneers don’t fully appreciate is that the profitability of any market can be squashed by any one person posting near cost. Most attempts at reducing overall profitability in a market only last a short time because crafting for low profits is boring. There’s a sweet spot in the middle of the trade-off between volume and profit margin where you will have the largest possible total profit. If someone deviates too far toward the volume side of this zone, the total profit of the market is reduced.

This can be an effective way to compete if it results in a larger share of the market going the way of the new competitor; however, it loses its advantage if another competitor is stubborn and forces the first person to split this new low-margin, high-volume business with them.

It sounds like this is what’s going on here. You and your competitor have pushed each others’ prices down to a place where it’s barely profitable, and you’re both sticking it out hoping the other chickens out first so the winner can increase prices to that sweet spot where the goods sell fairly quickly at a fair markup. As I can see it, you’ve made two mistakes.

“Owning” a market

Your first mistake is pigeonholing yourself into a single market that you own. You don’t own markets; you rent them with a bunch of competitor as roommates. If you only work on a single market, you will always be at risk as the profit levels raise and lower and competitors come and go. You are playing the game of Who can sell the most belt buckles? when you should playing What’s the most gold per hour I can make?

If you have competitors willing to sell close to profit margin, let them have their way while you focus your attention on more profitable places. Of course, this is just a ploy for them to raise their prices, but all you can do by preventing them from doing that is waste your time by forcing them to waste theirs. Move on to another market with more casual competition, and make sure that as soon as the competitor tries to raise prices to a profitable place, you’re waiting there for him. TradeSkillMaster is good for this, as you won’t even have to look at prices or make manual decisions. If the stock is in your bag and it’s profitable enough to bother selling, it’ll get listed.

Trying to own a market leads you to waste valuable time cancelling and relisting frequently, as well as having to craft a ton more goods when prices get really attractive to buyers. Unless you have absolutely no remaining profitable ways to spend your time, it’s not worth babysitting auctions. Also, if he’s made it clear that he’ll undercut you immediately at the current price level, don’t waste time undercutting 1c at a time. Undercut 5g a time, or undercut straight down to the lowest you’re willing to park your stock and see whether he cuts bait. Nickel-and-diming your way down to that level will take you valuable time that you could be spending on another market.

Taking it personally

The next mistake you made was looking at the names on the Auction House. It doesn’t matter who posts a batch of auctions; all that matters is the quantity, prices, and stack sizes. React to these, not the name of the alt associated with them. As I said, any one person can ruin a market by mass producing and heavily undercutting. As soon as it gets personal, this may seem like a decent option — why bother making more gold per hour when you can win by beating someone else?

I’ve said before: The Auction House is not a zero-sum PvP game like chess. It’s more like a imaginary casino game where the players have better odds than the house. There doesn’t have to be a winner and a loser. Anyone can force someone else to lose profitability by flooding their market, but unless they can follow you around from market to market, they’ll never really have an effect on you. Also, they can only delay you making a profit by investing their own time in crafting and listing. It costs them a lot more time than it costs you money.

The best way to get someone to go all kamikaze all over your favorite market is to send them a mail or tell. People rarely see past the fact that you’re a competitor, so no matter what you actually say, all they’re hearing is “Come at me, bro.” If you want to talk to a competitor about how he prices, remember that just about the only thing that works is reverse psychology, and that’s only if he’s dumb enough not to ignore tells. If you legitimately want to talk to someone who plays the same optional minigame you do, don’t bother trying to do it in game. Go to The Consortium like the rest of us.

Effective competition

All that said, you did pretty well, all considered. You used a very effective tactic by posting low quantity seed/bait auctions and buying up foolish undercuts. It’s a good way to slap some sense into someone who is so single-minded in their pursuit of market share that they forget why they’re selling goods on the AH to begin with.

You might also want to consider looking into materials arbitrage. It’s borderline impossible to affect the price of base raw materials like ore and volatiles, but you can profit off volatility by buying when you know it’s a good deal and keeping a small portion of your mats available for a slight premium. You can better gauge your real materials value this way — and the better you are at picking up cheap raw materials, the better your competitors have to be to get the same cost as you.

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