Addon Review - Auctionator

This blog entry is dedicated to Making Gold and understanding the Auctionator Addon.

There are several key functions in Auctionator, and I will list them below:

Buy - In the Buy window, there are several key features:

• The Search Window. This works as the standard Blizzard search window but will sort listings by the cheapest per item in the lot, not the cheapest listing period. 
• Shopping Lists. Shopping lists can be created to manage large amounts of items that you want sorted into specific categories. You can create a Shopping List by clicking the "New Shopping List" button. After naming the List via a prompt, you can now search for items or add them manually. Once you have a list you are satisfied with, the door is opened for several more uses within the addon.
• Search for All Items. You can use this function and it will query the Auction House and give you the cheapest listing for any item that has any word in it's title which you have in your Shopping List.
• Manage Shopping Lists. This prompts the player to a menu where they can add or subtract items from their Shopping List.
• Remove Item. If an item is on your Shopping List and you no longer want it on there, simply click the item you do not want on your list and click the Remove Item button.

Sell - In the Sell window, there are several key features:

• Whenever listing an item, it will automatically search for the cheapest listing and undercut that listing.
• 1-click re-adjusting which price you're undercutting. Want to undercut that stack of 2g30s rather than the cheapest which is 1g95s? Go for it - just click on the listing that's 2g30s and hit list!
• 1-click cancelling. While it is also in the "More" tab, it's nice to have if you accidentally list something at an undesired price and want to take it back off the Auction House quickly.

More - In the More window, there are several more key features:

• Check For Undercuts. This feature will query the Auction House to run a scan of the current Auction House prices for any items you currently have listed and compare them with the prices your items are listed at. There are three different ways in which an auction can be flagged:
• Green Check - currently the cheapest listing on the Auction House
• Will not prompt any cancellations
• Green Check + Red X - some of your listings are the cheapest while others have been undercut
• Will prompt cancellations for all Auctions that have been undercut
• Red X - all auctions of this name have been undercut and are no longer the cheapest available on the market.
• Will prompt cancellations for all Auctions of this name.

Additionally, there is a feature called "Full Scan" which will scan the entire Auction House and database the prices of all currently listed Auctions. This data can be used in conjunction with other Addons to give you insight as to the current, average, and extreme prices of an item as well as any disenchant information - if applicable.

I hope this write-up has helped to add clarification; and, as always, good luck!

Druid Macro - Cooldowns (Bear and Cat)

This blog entry is dedicated to helping you better play a Feral Druid.

The Macro is as follows:

/cast [stance:3] Tiger's Fury; Survival Instincts
/cast [stance:3] Lifeblood; Frenzied Regeneration
/cast [stance:3] Berserk

Just throw those two lines into the Macro window and you're all set!

I hope this write-up has helped to add clarification; and, as always, good luck!

Druid Macro - Skull Bash (Interrupt)

This blog entry is dedicated to helping you better play a Feral Druid.

The Macro is as follows:

#showtooltip
/cast [stance:1] Skull Bash(Bear Form); [stance:3] Skull Bash(Cat Form)

Just throw those two lines into the Create Macro window (it may bleed over to a third line - that's just how it works) and you're all set!

I hope this write-up has helped to add clarification; and, as always, good luck!

Druid Macro - Feral Charge

This blog entry is dedicated to helping you better play a Feral Druid.

I highlighted a very useful Macro for any Feral Druid which allows the player to use Feral Charge in either Cat Form or Bear Form (Depending on what Form they are in) with the same click of a button.

The Macro is as follows:

#showtooltip

/cast [stance:1] Feral Charge(Bear Form); [stance:3] Feral Charge(Cat Form)

Go ahead and put those 2 lines into a Macro (The second line may flow into the third line - that's just how it works) and you're all set!

I hope this write-up has helped to add clarification; and, as always, good luck!

Making Gold With Enchanting - Power Torrent, Landslide, and More!

This blog entry is dedicated to Making Gold with Enchanting Scrolls.

In the past, I covered only the basics of what I was doing. While the 5 Enchants have different required materials, the principal is the same across all 5. Before I go about the techniques, I'll list the requires materials below:


Enchant Weapon - Power Torrent

Requires:

• 14 Hypnotic Dust
• 8 Heavenly Shards
• 4 Maelstrom Crystals

Enchant Weapon - Landslide

Requires:

• 6 Hypnotic Dust
• 5 Greater Celestial Essences
• 5 Heavenly Shards
• 5 Maelstrom Crystals

Enchant Weapon - Windwalk

Requires:

• 4 Greater Celestial Essences
• 6 Heavenly Shards
• 6 Maelstrom Crystals

Enchant Bracer - Major Strength

Requires:

• 4 Hypnotic Dust
• 8 Greater Celestial Essences
• 2 Maelstrom Crystals

Enchant Bracer - Major Intellect

Requires:

• 4 Hypnotic Dust
• 4 Greater Celestial Essences
• 2 Maelstrom Crystals
• 15 Volatile Water

Now, onto the methodology. For these Enchants, it is the same idea that is used in several of my other blog posts. As an Enchanter with the most updated version of Auctionator, all I have to do is click the "AH" button when having the Enchant in question selected.

From there, the addon query's the Auction House to give you the most updated prices for all required items for the Enchant and the price of the Enchant Scroll itself. From there, the math is fairly simple. An equation such as the one below can suffice:

(Price of Enchant Scroll in Question) - (# of Required Item 1(Price of Item 1) + # of Required Item 2(Price of Item 2) + # of Required Item 3(Price of Item 3) + # of Required Item 4(Price of Item 4))*0.95

And, as a hypothetical to show how it works, we will first give the following Values:

Scroll of Enchant Weapon: Landslide - 1500g
Maelstrom Crystal - 125g
Hypnotic Dust - 2g
Heavenly Shard - 65g
Greater Celestial Essence - 50g

And now plug them into the equation as follows:

(1500g) - (6(2g) + (5(50g) + 5(65g) + 5(125g) *0.95 = 273.6g

With those hypothetical prices (which really aren't that far from my Server's prices), each sold Scroll of Enchant Weapon: Landslide would give the player a net profit of 273g 60s. As stated in other posts, the multiplication of 0.95 at the end is representing the 5% cut the Auction House takes out of every transaction assuming you're going to sell the Scrolls on the Auction House.

After that, it's all a matter of actually doing it. Going out, getting the addons, checking the Auction House, buying materials, listing Scrolls, and getting Gold. In my opinion, this is one of the easiest methods of Gold-making out there due to the ease of acquiring the patterns and ease of selling the end-result. I can't speak for all servers, but I can speak for mine. If there's room for profit from this method on your server, take advantage of it! It might not last forever, but it's here today. Go out and make some easy Gold!

I hope this write-up has helped to add clarification; and, as always, good luck!

Making Gold With The Auction House - Volatile Air

This blog entry is dedicated to Making Gold with Volatile Air.

In the past, I've only began to hit the surface of the implications of the tactics used through this method. That being said, this concepts used also require the most server economy knowledge of all my blog entries thus far. Through this method, I purchased several Volatile Airs for around 15g each and re-listed them at around 19g each, netting a 4g profit per Volatile Air - but that is only doable with the knowledge I have of my servers economy.

In the case of Volatile Air, I have broken it down into several steps to make this process easy to imitate on any server - so long as it's possible.

1. (Optional Step) Download Auctioneer and get in the habit of scanning 2-3 times per day. This allows you to database information of all items on the Auction House including average price, median price, number of times seen, etc. While I do think that it helps speed up the time of this process and make it useable for more markets than just the Volatile Air one, it is doable without the addon as well.
2. Search for Volatile Air on the Auction House and keep note of the price at varying times of the day (Morning, Afternoon, Evening, and Night). You don't have to actually write them down (unless you'd like to). 
3. After several days of both scans and special attention to the Volatile Air market, it's time to start getting your feet wet. If you've seen an average price of around 16g, let that be your price floor. From that point on, purchase all Volatile Air you see on the Auction House below 16g and re-list for at/above 16g. This will give you quick feedback to see if the price you have set as your floor is too low or too high. 
4. Watch your Auctions on the Auction House. If you have the Gold to invest and people start to undercut your listings, buyout all stacks that undercut your Auctions and allow your stacks to be the cheapest available.
5. Take a look at the results and adjust. If you attempted to set the price at 16g to no avail (implying that people just continuously undercut you to a point where you could not keep up or simply no one was willing to purchase them for that price), it's time to experiment with lowering that price until you find a "sweet spot" that you can set your price floor at. On the flip side, if the Volatile Airs were selling very quickly and without much trouble at 16g, it's time to start trying to push your price floor to see how much you can profit from your server's economy. 
6. Depending on your analysis of Step 5, raise or lower your price floor on Volatile Air repeatedly until you can find the most efficient price floor for your servers economy.

The above steps are the exact steps I took to find the "sweet spot" of 17g per Volatile Air on Stormreaver Horde; and, in all reality, this method does take time. Once you've got one market down, however, it's time to move on to another one. That's not to say that you forget about Volatile Air once you've finally honed in on that price you were looking for, but that you now do that and start to expand your eyes to, say, Volatile Fire or Water. The exact same steps can be applied to most all in-demand Trade Goods; and, once you've gotten comfortable with manipulating the Auction House for one market, the transition to subsequent markets becomes a lot easier. It's also assumed that you've managed to amass a bit more Gold in the process, putting you in a prime position to take more risks to learn about potential markets faster - in turn, resulting in a higher profit in the long run.

It's said in real life that time is money. The same goes for Azeroth. Time is Gold, and the quicker you learn to master markets, the sooner you can use that knowledge to your advantage - furthering your market domination and increasing your Gold total exponentially.

I hope this write-up has helped to add clarification; and, as always, good luck!

Making Gold With Alchemy - Transmute: Living Elements

This blog entry is dedicated to Making Gold with [Transmute: Living Elements].

In short, you purchase and/or farm 15 Volatile Life, take the Portal to Uldum, and use your daily cooldown of Transmute: Living Elements to transmute those 15 Volatile Life into 14-16 Volatile Air.

Now, in the actual skill, it says "Transforms the essence of life into another element. The exact result is not known ahead of time."

In reality, it has been discovered that the Element you get as an output is dependent solely on what zone you are in when you do the Transmute. The Cataclysm zones which are associated with an element go as follows:

Deepholm - Volatile Earth
Hyjal - Volatile Fire
Uldum - Volatile Air
Vashj'ir - Volatile Water

Furthermore, if you are a Transmute-Specced Alchemist, you have a chance to proc additional Elements on top of the 14-16 Volatile [Earth/Fire/Air/Water - zone-dependant] you decide to Transmute. Contrary to the actual Transmute: Living Elements, these procs are actually random. The zone that you're in has no effect whatsoever on the Elements that are procced on top of those designated by your character's location at the time of the Transmute.

Transmute: Living Elements shares the midnight-reset cooldown of Transmute: Truegold. Many of you may opt to use Transmute: Truegold on a daily basis - which may or may not be more profitable (server-dependant) - but it's worth noting that you cannot use both of them in the same day. They both share the same cooldown which resets daily at midnight server-time.

I hope this write-up has helped to add clarification; and, as always, good luck!

Making Gold With Alchemy - Transmute: Inferno Ruby

This blog entry is dedicated to helping you Make Gold with [Transmute: Inferno Ruby].

It's quite a simple process, actually. The required materials for each transmute are:

• 3 Carnelians
• 3 Heartblossom

And that's it! Using Auctionator, you can easily search for these items on your server's Auction House and be instantly informed of the cheapest price per item.

Furthermore, the math is very simple to figure if this exchange is profitable. Just insert your values into the following equation and you are on your way to figuring if this transaction is profitable on your sever:

(Price of 1 uncut Inferno Ruby - (3(Price of 1 Carnelian) + 3(Price of 1 Heartblossom)))*0.95

For example, if Inferno Rubies were 130g, Carnelians were 30g, and Heartblossom were 2g, you would input the values and get the following results:

(130g - (3(30g) + 3(2g)))*0.95 = 32.3g

So long as the end number is positive, you will make a profit with the Transmute. Also, the reason for multiplying the entire equation by 0.95 is under the assumption that you're selling on the Auction House rather than via Trade Chat or a Trade Window and the Auction House takes a 5% cut from all sales on the Auction House. That being said, it's generally a good idea to tack off that 5% by multiplying your profit by 0.95.

But that is the equation. And if you're trying to calculate the profit gains if you plan to cut the gems yourself, simply change the value you input for the Inferno Ruby to that of which you're cutting (i.e. if Bold are selling for 150g and you cut a Bold Inferno Ruby rather than selling it uncut, you just replace the "130g" at the beginning of the equation with "150g" and re-calculate). 

From there, it's all up to you. If you've found a niche market of profit via this method on your server, use it! Not all servers have a stable gem market or even one that can support this method of Gold acquisition, but if you are one one that does, use it. So long as people are playing the game, there will be a demand for Gems - and you can be there to meet that demand.

I hope this write-up has helped to add clarification; and, as always, good luck!