Miners Trick with Felsteel

Here's a quick little trick I have found decent success with as a miner. Get some Fel Iron from Helfire Peninsula - it's all over. Make Fel Iron Bars. Now, hit the AH and look for Eternium Bars. It takes 2 Eternium and 3 Fel Iron bars (4 Eternium ore and 6 Fel Iron ore) to make a Felsteel Bar. I usually find 2 Eternium bars for 3-4 gold. So, I pay the 3-4 gold for it, smelt a bar of Felsteel, and turn around and sell that for 12-15 gold! It's a quick trick, very easy to do, and as long as you aren't overpaying for the Eternium, it's always a profit.

New Chest Farming for Rogues

So, Blizz fixed the old Mechanar chest farming exploit, which flooded the market with world blues, and generally contributed to a large drop in price for many items. Well, someone has already figured out a new one for Manatombs, if you have a decently geared 70 rogue.

So, here's the thread on the WoW forums discussing it, and here is the link to a handy instructional video!

Have fun not-quite-cheating, you sneaky people. :p

Dirty, Dirty Trick

I was debating with myself if I should even post this Auction House trick. It takes advantage of the competition, which is fine. It has a decent success rate, also fine. However, it is very, very dishonest, and generally pretty bad form. I've only done this once, and I felt really bad about it, so I don't do it anymore. Unfortunately, it IS somewhat amusing on an immature, sneaky level, and it's an example of out-of-the-box thinking. So, here we go.

I made a post about an Auction House tactic where you find an undervalued item on the AH, and then post it in /trade for a normal sell value, or higher. The hope is that someone will offer to buy it without checking the Auction House to find the actual price. When you see people selling a plethora of blue items at one time and wonder where they got them, they either bought them and are now trying to sell them, or they're using this trick. Most of the time, people are smart enough to not fall for this. BUT: a lot of people still try to make this work, and that is what we're going to take advantage of.

Make 2 characters and jog their weak butts to an Auction House. Take a decent blue item, and list it on the Auction House for, oh, 25 or 30 gold higher than it should go for. Stay with me, I'm not crazy. Now, log on to your other toon. Get in /trade, and say something like "want to buy ****", whatever the item is, for even HIGHER than what it was listed for. Now, if you're lucky, someone will try to pull a fast one with the first trick I listed: they'll hit the AH, see it for sale for less than what you're buying it for, buy it, and try to resell it to you for your price. (It must be the ONLY listing of the item, or the person will just buy the one that is listed for the real price instead of yours!). Here's the dishonest part: once they buy that item (the one you posted on the other character), just log off, say you don't need it now, whatever. Now you've sold that item for way over its value.

Here's an example. Get Ced's Carver on one toon. It sells for, oh, 50 gold on my server. So, I could list it for 80 gold or so. Then I'd get on another character and say in /trade "WTB Ced's Carver, 100g". The victim checks the AH, sees it for 80, buys it, and tries to sell it to me, at which point I disappear. Voila, Ced's Carver sold for 30 gold over value. Of course, this wouldn't work with Ced's Carver, because EVERYONE is trying to sell one (mostly because of Rogue treasure chest farming). Try to do this with a more rare blue that people don't see frequently.

I do NOT recommend using this beyond maybe once to see that it does work. I do encourage this sort of unconventional thinking, though! Be creative and you can stumble upon some trick no one has thought of, and ruthlessly exploit it!

Quick Linen at the Defias Windmill

Here's one for the lower level folk out there amid my scant readership.

Westfall is the best place in the game to farm linen. Linen, you say? Who cares about linen? Well, a lot of people care about it, particularly people leveling up tailoring and first aid skills. Linen goes for about a gold a stack, which is good money at lower levels.

The Defias Windmill is on the Northwestern shore of Westfall. It isn't noted on the map, but I have supplied a handy reference here. That isolated block of white dots is the windmill. Now, here's the kicker - the mobs here respawn more or less instantly (Defias Trappers and Defias Looters. They go down fast, they come back up faster. If Blizzard hasn't fixed this yet (and I don't think they have), they probably never will, so it's a good tip to know. You can farm tons of linen here, and small change in copper because they are humans, and they carry money. And of course the random green drop.

So, there you have it. For the low level trying to get some cash, or the any-level trying to SAVE some by not buying their way through the lower levels of Tailoring and First Aid. Happy farming!

Psychological Tricks on the Auction House

There's no better human trait to exploit than GREED. It's the basis of sales in our society. If something is on sale, you're more likely to buy it, whether or not you need it. After all, it's on SALE! Buy it when it's cheap, because otherwise you'll pay more. You can effectively create a "sale atmosphere" on the Auction House, too! It's kind of underhanded, but it can give you a nice edge.

Find a pair of items on the Auction House, like a blue piece of equipment. You need to have 2 of them, and no others on the Auction House, so take some time to hunt around. Now, send one of the blues to an alt, and list it for a high price, maybe twice the normal price. Then get on your main, and list their's for closer to the real value.

What you're doing is taking advantage of people's eye for good deals, even other Auctioneers. When someone sees how much less your main's listing is than your alt's listing, they are more likely to buy it, because it will seem like such a great deal! Sure, some people will see through it, but we all know there are a lot of unintelligent people in the game, don't we? =D

Price Manipulation For Easy Profits

Update: This method simply will not work. There are too many rich players out there, using the Auction House just like you. If they see your low prices, they'll snap it all up and relist it for 5 times your price. Even if you flood the market, it will all be gone. Unfortunately, the economies are too full of legitly and non-legitly rich players to pull something like this off. =(

So, this occurred to me as I drove to work today. I've been trying various things on the Auction House lately, and I plan to try this over the next week or so.

The way people make money in the Auction House is to buy low, and sell at actual value or even higher. But what if the low bids aren't low enough to turn a nice profit? If the market isn't gigantic (like Linen Cloth, or other low-level crafting items), you can tilt the market just enough to really make a killing.

Find your market of choice. The items must be frequently bought on the Auction House, but not so huge that you can't control it a little. Mid and high-level crafting materials usually make good candidates. Again, I'm using Mithril Bars. I buy all of the bars available at auction. I then relist a small portion of them for significantly less than they are actually worth. Seems crazy, I know, but bear with me. Now, when someone decides to post more Mithril Bars, they are forced to undercut you to sell them. Buy those, too. Buy all of them you need to in order to keep your auctions in the majority, and force the overly low prices. When you've built up a good amount, let your auctions expire/sell out, and post no more.

What we're doing here is deliberately driving down prices. If all went well, you've now got a decent stock of whatever item you chose, and you acquired them rather far below market value. Now, simply allow the prices to rebound to regular levels. It could take a day or two. To speed it up, buy out all of the auctions again, and relist them for the prices they went for before you drove them down. Now you can re-sell the items you bought at rock-bottom for their actual worth. You can even undercut for more than you normally would, because your profits will still be huge! If you try this, let me know how it works out in the comments. I'll keep my results posted.

Some things to watch out for that are occurring to me now that I'm checking out the Auction House:

• It must be an active market! If no one is posting items in competition, people are just going to buy your low listings, and prices will go back to normal.
• There is a risk that the market is smart enough that competitors will simply wait for your items to be sold, rather than lose their own profits to underbid you. For this reason, a gradual slide down in price might be necessary.
  

My Ore Experiment

Okay, so here's my latest experiment in the Auction House. I'm taking Mithril Bars, and buying every one I see. Usually, there's only 8 or 9 listings, so it's not a huge investment. Then, I break them up into smaller amounts (1-6 bars) and re-list them, but raise the price of each individual bar. For example, I bought 20 bars for 17 gold, which puts each bar at a little less than 1 gold. I re-listed them in smaller amounts, with the prices per bar at 1.5 gold. This way, the total amount is less, but I'm actually making profit. Also, I can now cater to people who only need 1 bar, or 2, or whatever, who might not buy if I listed in stacks of 20.


Really, it's just a way of tricking the consumer. Like how everything is $xx.99. The fact that it's 1 penny less than a whole new number doesn't matter, because it LOOKS cheaper, as long as the front numbers are small. So, this is kind of a dirty trick I'm trying, to see if I can short-sight the buyers and make easy profit.
I'll keep you updated on how this works out!

Recycle Raw Materials

It's amazing to me how many gold earning guides don't cover some of the less obtuse, more subtle ways to earn gold in World of Warcraft. Here's one of my favorites!

If you've got a crafting skill, you need to go to the Auction House and check out the prices on some things: Raw materials. The goal is to find unworked materials, buy them, turn them into something else, and sell that for more than you spent for the materials. This works, everyone, it just takes some careful planning or market information.

For example, a leatherworker might check out the price for Knothide Leather. If the price of buying 100 knothide leather is 60 gold, and the price for a stack of 20 Heavy Knothide Leather is 100 gold, you can buy the raw materials, rework it, and sell it at a profit. This gives you more skill ups, and free profit. You can do this for as long as you can find the raw materials in the auction house. It's especially useful for crafting skills, because stuff like this example don't have cool downs.

Open up your craft window and find an item you think people need. Search it in the Auction House and get an idea of average price. Then search out the components, and see what they cost. Even if the average prices come out to be the same, if the market is undervalue on the components (if people keep undercutting each other) or over value on the final product, you can still make a profit before the prices even out. You just have to make a point to look for deals like this.

So go to your Auction House and sniff around a bit! There are plenty of people waiting to be taken advantage of!

Technorati: Wow Gold Guide , World of Warcraft Professions , Auction House Tricks and Tips

Buy Small Stacks, Sell Big Stacks

I was at the Auction House today, looking at Primal Earths. They were available in stacks of 1, 2, and 20. The stacks of 20 were going for about 100 gold. On a hunch, I did some quick math, and discovered that I could make my OWN stack of 20 by buying all the smaller stacks, but it cost me 30 gold LESS to do it that way. I then turned around and undercut the other stacks of 20, and earned a 25 gold profit.

This is a good example of how the average World of Warcraft player makes mistakes, especially ones who haven't read and gold earning guides. ALWAYS be on the lookout for easy scores like this! It works with primals, enchanting items, cloth -- anything that can be stacked!

Of course, this can work in the opposite way even more effectively. Rather than rely on a stupid player paying more for a stack when they could save by buying separately, you can take advantage of the deal seakers! Just keep an eye out for big stacks of items - in order to make them sell, players tend to sell stacks of items for LESS money per item than the ones for sale individually. For example, a stack of 20 Adamantite Ore might be up for 20 gold (1 gold per ore), while individual listings will be up for 1.5 gold per. Just reverse engineer this by buying these discounted stacks, and breaking them into individual stacks to sell at a higher price!

Use Patches to Judge Demand

When a new patch is going to come out, you can find the patch notes detailing the changes beforehand. This is a good chance to make some easy money. Look for items that are going to be changed (weakened or beefed up), or have their drop percentage decreased.

Let's say that the drop rate of Staff X is going to be decreased in the next patch. Go to the Auction House, and see if Staff X is up for sale. If it is, buy it! I don't care how high the price is. When they become rarer after the patch, that price will go up. This is especially true for Epic (purple) items. If Staff Y is Epic, and going for 500g, you can buy it, and probably sell it after the patch for 3 times that. This goes for any kind of item. Read those notes carefully!

On the other hand, if an item is going to be made more common through INCREASED drop rate, make sure you try to sell as many as you can before the patch comes out! Remember that blue weapon in your bank that you're holding on to until the price goes up? Uh-oh, it's being made more common in the next patch. Sell that thing now, even if you have to drop your price. Once more are on the market, the price will go down anyway, and probably by even more.

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Honesty is Not Your Best Policy!

Here's a sneaky trick that sometimes works wonders.
The biggest risk in buying something from the Auction House is being unable to sell it again, right? So, don't buy it, I say!

Get on the Auction House and find an item being sold under value that you'd like to be able to resell. But don't buy it. Get into the /trade channel and advertise the item at the price you would sell it at. If someone makes an offer for it to you, THEN buy it from the Auction House and turn around and immediately resell it! 100% money guarantee!

This trick is hit and miss. Any smart player will check the Auction House for a better deal before paying someone directly. But if you've played WoW long enough, you know that way too many players are just not that smart!

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Profit from Server Downtime

It's everyone's least favorite time - usually Tuesday mornings (EST, at least), Blizzard takes down the servers to implement patches, fixes, and do all the other arcane stuff they do. What does this mean for the average player? It means they have to go find something else to do for 2 or 3 hours. But that isn't what it means to YOU!

No, for you, the savvy Auction House shark, the server going down is opportunity knocking. You see, even though no one can play when the server is down, time is still passing for the Auction House, and a lot of auctions will finish during that downtime. Obviously, no one can bid while the server is down, which means the last person who bid BEFORE the servers went down is essentially GUARANTEED to get all the shorts they bid on, and some of the mediums. You want that person to be you! A lot of people put low numbers on their bids, hoping to provoke a bidding war to raise the price, but a server shutdown will cut it short by 2-3 hours, which means you can stand to make a great profit!

Also, after the server comes back up, many vendors limited stock items will be refreshed. So, if you've got one that you have your eyes on (Check my posts on Reselling Recipes), check them as soon as you can!

So, find out when YOUR server goes down regularly, and take advantage of it! Also be on the lookout for those occasional unexpected periods of downtime -- you can take advantage of that, too!

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