Playing the Auction House

It’s sick how closely related WoW can be to so many things in real life.

For this example we will be talking about the Auction House.

This is not some high tech strategy guide, these are just some gathered thoughts that I have used to success when playing the auction house.

My biggest “aha” moment when it comes to playing the AH is when I realized that the money comes from when you buy.

This will make sense to you people in real estate, or the stock market – but for everyone else this may seem like a retarded statement.

So let me explain.

The WoW Market is constantly fluctuating. Daily, Hourly, Weekly.

Prices will go up and down as people undercut, as people stop farming, and even as people stop playing.

The prices in the auction house are a little more controlled then the real world economy so it’s a lot more safe to just jump in.

Here’s the deal.

When you are looking for buys in the auction house, you will want to make your money on the purchase.

This means your profit doesn’t come directly from your sales, your money comes from picking up the good deal.

An example to this would be my overloaded stock of Small Glimmering Shard’s right now.

I actually have 624 of them. Here’s a picture:

Why? – Because I picked them all up for 20 silver each. Following the market I know that they can sell all the way up to 1.5 gold a piece (on THIS specific server). That means on each purchased I made about 1.3g.. However it doesn’t show right now. Right now it just shows that I’m down 125 gold.

So this brings me to the next point.

Playing the Auction House takes patience.

The market takes swings, it goes up and down. Just because you can’t sell something immediately right now for a profit doesn’t mean you took a loss.

Save it for later. No one is forcing you to sell something for a loss. I will go out on a limb and claim that you will ALWAYS be able to sell something for a price of your choice. I have never been “stuck” with an item that I couldn’t sell off.. (besides a few items that got changed during patches, or phased out…etc etc)

So to be a good AH player it takes a lot of PATIENCE!

Make your money when you buy, wait for the market to give you a good chance to sell.. and take your profits.

Once you begin to understand this your swings in the market will be so much more controlled.

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Tags: AH, Auction House, Gold, Guide's, Market, WoW Gold

Using your chat box for gold!

I don’t know one player who doesn’t use the chat box in World of Warcraft, but are people using it correctly is the question.

I don’t know about you buy over the weekend I made a killing from players selling items in bulk, or just negotiating with them so that I can get a great price for the item.

You see, if you’re staying current with your Auction House scans, you have an advantage that most players don’t. Most players are too lazy to actually scan the AH on a frequent basis. This is awesome for us players who are trying to make gold because we get some steps ahead of them.

You will often see people spamming things in the trade channel, like:

20x Stacks of [RuneCloth] for sale. Now if you don’t know how much runecloth sells for (per stack) I would recommend taking a quick little stroll to the auction house just to update yourself. After you have a price set in your head.. get ready to negotiate!

Send that player a message and first ask him for what he’s asking for. A lot of times you will end right here, either he is asking for too much, or he is asking for a great price and you just take the offer right there.

Some times on the other hand, you will want to negotiate with him to get a better price. What I usually do is if I don’t like the price I will leave him with a message along the lines of:

“Well, if you don’t sell it – I will send ya “x” gold for it. Just get back to me if you want it.”

Most of the time people will be spamming in the trade channel for hours just to try and get rid of their items that they are selling at wholesale price. When you are friendly with the player at the same time of offering them a rediculously low price – they will easily take you up on your offer.

It works for me nearly every time! It usually doesn’t work with items that are hot (epics, or some big blues) because these players are fixed on the price they want – they usually go no lower.

But for materials like cloth, ore, herbs, or even bulk things like potions in stacks, many players will budge a little bit to avoid having to post on the auction house!

I have asked around to see why players do this, and their answers have usually been because they don’t know how to use the auction house correctly! I thought this was absolutely crazy. The auction house is so easy to manipulate and make gold from.. but it proves a good point.

Most players don’t have the ability to make gold like we can, so lets take advantage of it while we can (before some new add-on comes out and makes our style of gold-collecting wash down the drain!

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Ore continues to be a great gold making income!

I had a bunch of ore stashed up inside of my bags (Because I haven’t played in a while).

I sent them to poor to get them all on the auction house. This consisted of, Silver Ore, Tin Ore, Copper Ore, that I collected.. then a few pieces of Gold Ore that I had from chests.

This proved to be a huge source of income. Silver ore sold for 4g for a stack of 5, Gold ore was 1g a piece, tin and copper were 2-3g a stack!

When I finally ding 40, and I get my mount, I’m going to make a huge load of money from farming Copper, Tin and Silver. I will show you how!

Tin and copper is just at the beginning. There’s so much ore that will be farmed here in the near future.

Tin is a very “hard” ore to obtain.. people struggle when speed-leveling up their mining because of how long it takes to collect all the Tin Ore. But of course I found a way around this! I will post up a video very soon here of me collecting tin and copper at level 40 (as soon as I hit level 40). The two places where I farm this ore will amaze you because of how simply easy it is to find, but not too many people know about (Unless you have read my guide: Derek’s Gold Mastery Guide)

My gold income will explode here very shortly as the new levels of ore becomes an option (Iron, Mithril and True silver)!

Check back for that video!

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Breaking down the stacks

Everyone talks about how great an add-on Auctioneer is.

I’m not going to argue that it’s a very powerful add-on but people rely on Auctioneer way to much!

Auctioneer should be used as a tool, not as your whole gold farming method. I honestly only use it for HALF of what I do while playing the auction house.

A common mistake you usually see players commit is that they list their items in stacks at a low price. I don’t know if it’s an honest mistake, or if the players are giving you the item at a “bulk” price but players commonly list items in stacks at a low price.

There’s always auctions like this on the AH for us to pick off. In fact most of my gold comes from simply buying stacks and re-listing them individually. The only thing you need to do is the math to make sure you are getting a deal per item. Don’t worry! You can use a calculator if you need to!

With that being said I usually search for Gem’s, Enchanting Materials, Potions, Reputation items, Motes and Primals.

These are usually listed individually but usually you will find some people listing it in stacks.

Whip out that calculator and get to work!

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Character Levels play a huge factor!

Your characters level plays a huge factor in the amount of gold you are able to farm.

When you are level 70 you have a wide range of gold options open to you.

You have the choice of grinding any level mob you want, and the ability to farm any item.

You can max out your professions and you can also run all the high level quest lines.

It’s very important not to focus all of your time on gold farming but leveling also! The higher level you are, the more coin that drops, and the more valuable items that drop.

I see many times on forums players always question their gold amount. We ask the most important question “What level are you” and they are only level 23 or 24.

Leveling is just as much important as grinding for gold is. It’s very important that you continue pushing your characters to high levels.

Here’s what I do!

If you have been following my posts then you understand that there is a massive amount of gold waiting to be taken from the auction house. (This is where most low levels waste their time)

Save up every item you plan to sell for the auction house and list it on Friday afternoon. The only time you should look in the auction house to purchase is Sunday Nights or monday mornings. (After everyone is done undercutting).

Every other time you log on during the week you should focus on leveling! This gives you more gold as time goes on.

I absolutely hate leveling. I hate grinding, I hate instances, and questing USED to be a struggle for me. As you can see (in [tag]Gold Project X[/tag]) I’m using great guides to level my character up.

For alliance you can check out: Brian’s Alliance Leveling Guide

For Horde check out: Joana’s Horde Leveling Guide

They may it very fun to level up because its 95% questing, and you can level your character in blocks at a time. You wont have to spend countless hours grinding the same mobs over and over. Any class can use these guides.

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Making gold with herbalism at level 70.

This is just something that fell in my laps this morning, so I thought you all should know about this.

I found an item that is selling huge on some servers, and none selling for ANYTHING on other servers.

The reason it’s not selling yet is because it’s not in huge demand. Not too many people know the power of the item.

This is for the [tag]herbalism[/tag] specialists!

The item I am talking about would be:

ManaThistle

Mana Thistle is going to be the new dreamfoil. Used in many of the protection potions, and used in the flasks.

Every raiding guild will want to take advantage of these potions/flasks so Mana Thistle will be in high demand.

Why isn’t it selling huge right now?

Before the burning crusade, there were COUNTLESS guilds on each server that were raiding.

The expansion means new players are leveling, slower leveling. New guilds are preparing for raiding still. These flasks wont come into play for a little while still.

I believe that [tag]Manathistle[/tag] will go up to 60-75g a stack, as it’s average price throughout many servers.

I know on the server Al’Akir it’s going for 50g a stack right now.

Some new servers it’s not even going for 10g a stack!

This means even if you aren’t an herbalist, use the gold you got, continue to buyout EVERY stack, just stash them away on a mule character or in your bank. In a months or maybe even as early as a few weeks your server will put this item into demand and you wont be able to keep it in stock.

For herbalism specialists go farm it!

The only bad part about ManaThistle is that you have to be level 70 with your flying mount to farm it efficiently.

How much is it selling for on your server?

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Professions, Professions, Professions!

Professions seem to be the new “cool thing to do”.

I can understand why because it makes SO much gold.

Every profession now that Burning Crusade has been released, is just making HUGE amounts of gold.

With the new expansion there is 3 elements to Gold Farming now..

1. Questing
2. Professions
3. Auction House
4. Grinding (“New school” Grinding)

Everything is being changed with new recipes.

Even grinding has changed. You no longer grind mobs just to get big drops, or even grind them for gold per hour. That’s what we are beginning to consider “Oldschool” Grinding.

The new age of grinding is different, you farm for reputation items, or you grind mobs that you are questing on, or getting a specific item. The fact that you are picking up coins, and other vendor trash is now just an “added” bonus.

Before the expansion – that vendor trash was the bread and butter of your grinding.

[tag]Professions[/tag] are in!

I haven’t seen an unprofitable profession yet in this game. Some cost a lot of money, some make more then others, but there’s just so many ways to make money now from EACH one.

The best professions to make money off of right now are your gathering professions. They always will be the huge money makers but for right now they are KILLERS.

The reason they are making such a huge killing right now is because people are speed-leveling their professions.

Everyone wants to be the first person to 375, and they want to be the first person with all the new hot recipes.

On top of that, you have guilds that are trying to conquer new content so they NEED [tag]high level[/tag] professions to gear their players.

Mining, Skinning, Herbalism, will make you a killing. Every single one of your herbs, ore, or leather will make you money for now because people are still trying to level up. I would quickly pick up one of these professions, if not TWO!

If you want to see a great guide on how using professions to your advantage for gold farming – take a peak at this great Gold Guide

Post up a comment if you have been using any professions to your Gold Success!

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