Profit By Supplying Secrets of the First Empire

Today's guest post was written by reader Sueshi. You can find them on twitter at @brocampaign.

World of Warcraft is a multi-faceted game and people’s motivations for playing are as diverse as the players themselves. Whether it’s raiding, pet battling, PvP, or gold-making it is challenging to master every aspect of this game.

When attempting to forge a new market or discover a new gold making “secret”, it is important to have an understanding of “why”? Why do players want it and why is it needed? Read on past the jump for a very interesting market I was able find.

Perspective

Many gold makers focus their energies on playing the AH with little emphasis on raiding or vice versa. It is important to have some perspective on making gold from the raiding community even if you have no interest in raiding whatsoever.

Mists of Pandaria offers an expansion-long legendary quest that will (hopefully) result in a killer Legendary weapon.  In the meantime, players have some hoops to jump through before ultimately accomplishing this feat.

Many of you are familiar with the sigils of power and wisdom collected from the first raiding tier. If you collected 10 of each, the Black Prince allows you to move on to “A Test of Valor”, a quest requiring 6000 valor to be earned along with a few other tasks before receiving an extra gem slot in your weapon.

The reason this post is relevant right now is that the 6000 valor requirement is being reduced to 3000 when patch 5.3 launches in the next week or two.

This means that immediately upon the release of 5.3 many players will essentially auto-complete this requirement and be allowed to move on.

The next step is the part we as gold makers are interested in and what I am here to talk about.

Secrets of the First Empire is the current portion of the legendary quest. Many players are on the quest now, but most will be working on it in 5.3.

This quest is just like the sigils quest, requiring you to collect 20 [Secrets of the Empire] to earn a Legendary meta gem.

Secrets of the Empire

So, WHY do non-raiding gold makers care? Unlike the sigils quest, which is free, this time the Black prince wants 40 trillium bars to incorporate into crafting the gem.

This gem is a major DPS boost with many players reporting a 6-7% overall DPS (or healing) gain. Even if it cost substantially more than it does, serious raiders and casuals alike would still have no problem opening their digital wallets.

This is where you come in.

Understanding a raider’s mentality when they complete this task will help give you the confidence to enter this market and invest your capital.

I have personally been in mumble when a guy from my team collected his last secret. I told him “gratz,” and that I would help him with the 40 trillium bars after we finished up.

This wasn't good enough or fast enough for him. He dropped from the middle of LFR and headed straight for the auction house to purchase the bars regardless of price.

After witnessing this, I began rubbing my hands together and chanting “excellent” much like Mr. Burns from The Simpsons would do. For the next few days I began barking in trade, obtaining the cheapest highest quantity of ghost iron ore I could get my hands on.

The Process

The name of the game here is threshold price.  Because trillium bars can be made from both smelting and transmuting, you need to set a price threshold and stick to it.

I have found that on my server any Ghost Iron Ore at or below 60g/stack can yield a nice profit. Obviously the cheaper the better and you are going to need a lot of it.

I have found that smelting Ghost Iron Ore into bars and using a transmute specced Alchemist is the most profitable way for me to obtain trillium bars.

Your mileage may vary but after transmuting 4000 Ghost Iron Bars I was able to get 480 trillium bars (with procs).

After fees this turned out to be a net profit of just over 10,000 gold on a single Tuesday night. I repeated the same process and had any additional 5k in sales the next night.

Transmute Trillium

My advice would be to leave some of your stock on the AH throughout the week, but don’t flood the market and depress prices too much.

Remember, your target market is raiders that need the last of their secrets and will pay anything to get their meta. This will usually occur on a Tuesday or Wednesday.

Lastly, I have found that posting in stacks of 20 gives people sticker shock. Its purely psychological, but post in stacks of 1,5,6 &10 to keep the stack prices low while also capitalizing on players needing 6 bars for their daily living steel cool down.

I certainly hope you enjoyed the insight into the mindset of a raider and hope that you will use the technique of gaining perspective when devising your own gold making strategies. I wish you all the best of luck in your gold making endeavors.

-Sueshi
@brocampaign


Thanks to Sueshi for sharing this niche yet potentially powerful market with us. As someone who doesn't raid there are many markets out there that I would never come across on my own.

The fact that Sueshi was able to turn something he noticed in game (the near irrational demand for a certain material to progress a questline) into profit is the epitome of critical thinking.

Use your mind. Be observant. Meet the needs of the players around you and you may discover a hidden market you didn't even know existed.

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