Weekly Recap - Raw Gems Are Still Being Good To Me

This last week was a good solid week for me gold-wise. Even with a slight detour to put some time into Rift I was still able to make some good gold in WoW.

As a little atta-boy for myself I reached over 60k this week. This is the most gold I've ever had at one time and it feels good.

In this weeks recap I'm going to be talking about what worked, what didn't, what was new and what to look forward to.

What worked.
Prospecting Obsidium - Prospecting Obsidium Ore is still my major cash cow. With little to no risk with the 9g vendor on green-quality gems, good sales volume during Jewcrafting dailies and strong demand for transmutes of rare and meta gems prospecting cheap Obsidium is a no-brainer.

Prospecting Adamantite - While looking over TUJ's gems page for my server I noticed that Adamantite Ore was listed as having a prospecting value of over 5g while the ore was around 2.5g. Double my money? Yes please!

While I was a bit unsure the gems would sell, I ended up selling out of almost all the gems I prospected from the Adamantite Ore as well as selling all the Adamantite Powder.

Be sure to keep an eye on the TUJ gem page for your server And pay special attention to the prospecting values versus the ore values.

What didn't work.
New Bracer Enchants - The saga of the bracer enchant curse continues. I've still got two Enchant Bracer - Major Strength scrolls that I've  been trying to sell for weeks now. No one wants these things. Even when I've dropped them below mat cost they just aren't selling.

I think the enchant is too expensive at the moment for the benefit it provides (+50 Strength). Perhaps if 4.1 brings cheaper Maelstrom Crystals the price will drop enough that people will buy them, At the moment unless your customers are bleeding edge raiders (in which case they most likely have a guild enchanter do this for them) I think these are a bust for now.

What's new.
Large Prismatic Shards - My wife and I have been spending time together getting Outland Dungeonmaster achievement. In doing so I sort of stumbled upon a market I hadn't really ever been in before: TBC enchanting mats.

Since we've been running TBC heroics (and sharding all the loot) I've been ending up with lots of Void Crystals. I saw the Void Crystals weren't really worth much but the Large Prismatic Shards were. I shattered all the Void Crystals via Void Shatter and put the Large Prismatic Shards up for sale. They all sold.

Interesting side note about Void Shatter. Formula: Void Shatter is purchased from Eldara Dawnrunner on the Isle of Quel'Danas and requires Honored with the Shattered Sun Offensive. This means there is at least some barrier to entry to be able to do the shatter. This means enchanters who were around at the end of TBC (or have ground up the SSO rep) will have a leg up on making money this way.

While I'll have to do a bit more research into the gold per hour on farming TBC heroics for enhancing mats; all else failing at least it is a nice break from he same old, same old. (Plus I loved TBC so those heroics make me all sentimental.)

What's coming up.
Patch 4.1 - With patch 4.1 on the PTR now there are three main areas of interest to us auctioneers.

Maelstrom Crystals - With the addition of Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman in 4.1 (as heroic 5-man dungeons that will drop epic loot which can be sharded into Maelstrom Crystals) the market for Maelstrom Crystals has a strong chance to crash (or at the least experience a large drop).

Some are warning to get out of the Maelstrom Crystal market now before the patch hits and prices tank. Others are saying them up as people panic and start dumping their crystals before the patch.

I don't usually stockpile anything other then gold. I tend to like to get my crafting mats in a "just-in-time" manner. Prices for current-expansion mats almost always go down in price over time.

346 iLevel Requirements - With heroic ZG and ZA both requiring a 346 item level to use the random dungeon finder we can speculate that the marks for any crafted items that are 346 and above may go up as people scramble to beef up their anemic item levels in order to have a chance at the epics in ZG and ZA. Most crafted epics as well as some crafted blues fall into this category.

Also worth noting is that the built-in item check doesn't take into account if the item is equipped, bound, proper spec or even wearable by that class. This means that you may consider picking up any cheap 346+ gear you find on the AH now and squirrel it away to sell when 4.1 drops.

New Pet Achievements - The new pet achievements are for 100 and 125 pets. At this time there is no rewards for these achievements which makes me thing they won't be as likely to be chased. (If, however,  they add new pets as rewards it's game on.) While stocking up on pets may seem like a no-brainer keep this in mind.

These achievements are only really going to be chased by people who already have the 75 pets achievement and so have most likley exhausted all the easy-to-obtain pets. I would't fill your bank tabs with cockroaches or cats just yet.

Rare and expensive pets, I would say, are a better bet for the types of things a pet collector going for these new achievements would be looking for. Argent tournament pets, rare spawn raptors and things like the new enchanting (especially cross-faction) pets I think would be a better bet. The pet market might get a shot in the arm.

What worked for you?
So that was my week. It's an exciting time in gold making. How was your last week? Let us know in the comments.