Happy Happy Birthday!

It was my birthday a few days ago, so I've been a little busy. I'm home this weekend to see my family, so probably won't be posting a real post until Sunday night. Sorry for the delay! See you all Sunday.

PPP: Flask of Chromatic Wonder

Time for another PPP installment, that is a "Particularly Profitable Pattern"!

New patch (2.3), hurray! New content! I haven't done a post about pattern reselling in awhile, so here we go. The Flask of Chromatic Wonder! Probably one of the coolest sounding recipes ever. Quite useful, too. It is sold by Apprentice Darius, the Karazan vendor in Deadwind Pass. It also requires Honored with the Violet Eye to buy it. But, it doesn't bind, and a lot of people have no idea where it comes from yet! So, reselling it should work fine, especially to Alchemists who aren't running Karazan, and have no way of getting it.

Same routine as ever, folks. Buy some (seems like they are unlimited supply?), resell them to other players. This should work well, until everyone finally figures out where they come from. But even when they do, only people who run Kara will be able to buy it! So, expect these to sell decently for some time yet, but the best time would be right now.

AoE Farming in Silithus

A lot of people look at grinding for gold in Wacraft with faulty logic. Everyone is so gaga over Outlands that they never leave, or consider there might be places just as good in Azeroth! Well, they are partially correct. For sheer value of items, level of mobs, etc, Outlands is king. However, there are some great places in Azeroth where a level 70 can grind extremely quickly and efficiently, which makes up for the lower value of the mobs.

Case in point, Twilight Avengers and Twilight Geolords in Silithus. This is a great place, especially for Mages who can AoE grind effectively. Check the links above for the locations of these mobs -- the good thing about them is they are very densely populated, very weak (for a level 70 mage), and are HUMANOID. So, they drop silver, frequently drop cloth, and the traditional greens or maybe world BoE blue. Round them up, knock them down. Runecloth, which is what they drop, still sells very well on my server, and probably yours. (Used mainly for bandages and pre BC recipes). You can grind here safely, and with little fear from being ganked by another level 70 player, so enjoy the change of scenery!

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!

Auctioneer Advanced

As if Auctioneer 4 wasn't good enough, the brilliant folks of Norganna have released a NEW addon: Auctioneer Advanced. Don't be deceived by the name - it isn't an update for Auctioneer, it's a completely separate addon. As the Auctioneer Advanced info page points out, there is one thing you need to understand about this new addon:

• Your Auctioneer data will NOT be converted. Auctioneer Advanced uses a different database, and does not share data with Auctioneer. However, you can run it alongside Auctioneer with no trouble until you build up Auctioneer Advanced's database.

So, when you load it and find you have no price data... sorry. No way around it! Enjoy the chance to build up a new set of data from the most current prices.

Speaking of price data. Scanning the Auction House is not the only way to gather data for Auctioneer Advanced. Every time you search an item, whatever the Auction House returns to you is added to your data. This is nice, especially if you want to keep current on certain things, but don't want to take 10 minutes to scan. Also, there will no longer be the moment of lag at the end of a scan, before the sound plays. Hurray!

Also, the entire setup can now be done through a GUI: no more confusing slash commands! More on this later, in depth.

Appraiser! A new feature in Auctioneer Advanced that carriers an Auctioneer feature to its logical conclusion. Remember the button you checked in Auctioneer to remember your pricing? Well, Auctioneer Advanced does that automatically, for EVERY item you post. So the next time you list it, you can see what you sold it for last time, search the Auction House (and record new data for that item), and adjust your sell price accordingly.

Let's break it down into sections: first thing, the main auctioneer window. Before, you had to do a scan, then search through it according to PCT less, bid %, etc. Now, some of this info is built into the main Auctioneer window!

A lot of this is familiar territory.

• On the far left of the results, we have the number of items in the stack.
  

• Next the item name, followed by the minimum level you need to use it (if any).
  

• To the right of that, we have "iLvl", a new feature. This is the "item level", which from what I understand is the estimated level requirement an item would have if those stats were found on a green.

• Next is "left", which is how much time is left on the Auction, followed by the name of who is selling it.

• Next is obviously the price. Bid price on top, buyout (if there is one), listed beneath it.

• Lastly, we have the "PCT" column, which means "percent". Basically, it is how much the item is listed for compared to how much it is sellable for, according to your data. As I only have a couple scans worth, Auctioneer Advanced is seeing these items for the first time, hence the "100%". They are being listed at exactly the same price as my data reflects, and my data contains only that price. The more data you have, the more reliable this value becomes.

• Note, there is no 'scan' button! You can scan by typing "/auc scan", or press the little "play" button on the top frame.
  

Now, let's look at our new "Appraiser" tab, which is where you will do all your selling. This where things start to get different, and rather cool.

• On the far left is your item selection window. It shows a list of all your sellable items! Simply click on it in this window, and the info for it will pop up on the right-hand window. Now you don't need to search through your bags, looking for the correct icon! You can search by name; very handy.

• Under where it displays the name of the item are some sliders. The first is the stack slider. Here is where you can choose how many items per stack you want to sell.
  

• The slider beneath is for how many stacks you want to sell at the size you chose above. Look at the image I have: the first slider says "stack size: 5", meaning I want to sell in stacks of 5. Below, the slider says "number: 2 stacks = 10". Meaning, I will list 2 stacks of 5, for a total of 10. When I click to post the auction, it post 2 stacks of 5 automatically! Neat, huh? You can also set it to automatically list as many full stacks as you have items for, but moving the slider one click from the far right. All the way to the right will list every full stack you can, and whatever is left after that as a smaller stack.

• On the bottom right, we have the bid price per item and buy price per item fields. This is just where you put in your bid price and buyout price. Auctioneer Advance will do this for you once you have data for it, just like Auctioneer. "Per item" simply means if you're selling a stack, how much each one in the stack goes for.

• Now, on the bottom left we have the "pricing model to use" dropdown menu. Here's where it can get confusing. I haven't figured out the details of them all, but here's what they mean as I understand it, in order from top of the menu to the bottom:
• Market Value: This is the one we are used to. Lists the price Auctioneer Advanced thinks it can be sold for, based on previous auctions it has seen.
• Stats: Vendor Markup: If Auctioneer Advanced hasn't seen an item before, it will list it at 3x what a vendor would buy it for (as vendors are rip-off artists).
• Fixed Price allows you to specify what exactly you want to sell for.
• The other options are a bit more cryptic. As Auctioneer Advanced is new, there is not full documentation. I'll finish the list when I'm comfortable that I can explain them accurately. In general, use "stddev" or Market when selling.

• The very bottom window shows other listings of the item you have just put up (according to your last scan, that is.)

I think that's enough for one post, don't you? That should get you comfortable with how to use it. Next post will cover the configure menu in depth, which I didn't touch here, for those of you who must tweak and tweak and tweak until everything is perfect!

Delay!

Sorry for the delay here, folks. Classes have been busy, and it seems I'm always doing homework. I have an easy day on Thursday, and will be investigating Auctioneer Advance, so I ought to be posting about it Thursday night! Thanks for the patience.

AoE Grinding in Shadowmoon Valley

Whoa, sorry for the long time between posts! The days just got away from me!

Here's a very nice spot for a level 70 mage to AoE grind and make some serious gold! Head to Shadowmoon Valley and go to the Ruins of Karabor. You're looking for Demon Hunter Supplicants, and they won't be hard to find because there are 15 or 20 of them, all close together, all level 70. Don't be alarmed! Blizzard, thankfully, has them training with each other, so they aren't all at full health. Being the sneaky, opportunistic type that we are, we will take advantage of this!

These mobs are mainly melee fighters, so if you're good at kiting with AoE, you'll have dished out some serious damage before they even get to you. I know they are all level 70, but if you know how to AoE properly, you should be alright. One thing to remember is that they respawn very quickly. Yeah, that's pretty great in terms of little downtime, but be careful they don't spawn on you while you loot the huge pile of bodies. Try to pull them a little bit away from where you found them, just to be safe.

Bits of silver from each mob, decent amounts of greens, and lots of Scryer rep items are to be had! Unless another mage is AoE grinding, there's really no reason for anyone to be here other than for doing quests, so competition should be minimal. Get to it!