Monday (6 Sep) - More Market Meanderings

Monday (6 Sep) - More Market Meanderings

For the first time in four weeks, I believe, Blizzard is running maintenance on a Tuesday morning in the usual 5am to 11am window.

For the first time in almost as many weeks, the team of Lao, Ando, and EZ got together on a Monday night. Rather than hit the pvp battlegrounds, we opted for some dungeon fun. EZ had the most to gain from that, as she is at level 41 whereas Lao and Ando are both level 48. Random dungeons that fit both level 41 and 48 players are few, and so we were not surprised that the random choice was Maraudon, a five man dungeon in Desolace rated for level 45-48s. Maraudon is a massive place that is divided into three areas identified by a set of crystals - purple, orange, and pristine. Two of those areas are rated for as low as level 39 players, which is how EZ was able to get into the dungeon with Ando and Lao.

Normally we could wait upwards of 20 minutes for a random dungeon, but in our case we had two aces up our sleeve. Ando signed up as a bear tank and Lao signed up as the healer. With both a tank and a healer, getting two DPS in addition to EZ was fast, and we instantly got a queue.

We roared through Maraudon with no troubles. EZ discovered, though, that she was constantly running out of mana for the spell casting that added extra "oomph!" to her dual wielding weapon attacks, as well as her mana based totems that added buffs to the whole group. As an enhancement (ie, melee) shaman, EZ has a lot of agility based gear to improve weapon attacks, but also needs considerable mana to deal the most damage possible. EZ also got to practice melee positioning, as I wanted to get used to moving behind mobs the tank has targeted. Doing that, though, was one of the main reasons EZ was running out of mana. EZ's primary means of regenerating mana is from her mana shield. Every time a mob hit that shield, EZ gained mana back. But Ando was a good tank, and he didn't give the mobs any chance to hit EZ. EZ loved the protection, but she couldn't regen her mana. There was only one boss in this section of Maraudon, but that boss did drop a very nice mail armor piece. Unfortunately, EZ lost the roll to the hunter in the group.

Lao had to leave after the first run, but Ando and EZ did one more. Ando switched to healing, but we would need a tank and more DPS. We got lucky, and the wait was a short one. We got the same section of Maraudon again (luck of the dice) and pounded through it a second time. Ando then had to leave, and we called it an evening.

EZ started at level 41, 0% of the way to level 42. When she finished, EZ was 66% of the way to level 42. EZ had several completed quests from earlier questing, wanting to save them for when she had some rested xp. Now was the time to turn them in, and with those quest completions EZ reached level 42.

A nice evening for EZ and the team.

A week ago Happy was seething because another one of his big sellers went into the tank. This time is was flasks of frost wyrm, which Happy sells for around 19g each on average. They cost roughly 16g to make (less when Happy can get a bargain on the materials). The flasks are in high demand on weekends because they are used by virtually every raiding toon that uses mana. On a single night a raider will use several of these flasks. Prices go up and down constantly, with Happy sometimes getting as much as 23g per flask when quantities get tight. When prices drop to 16g or less, Happy stops selling and waits for the price to go back up. It always does. Except that this time the prices kept dropping, down as far as 13g, and then refused to budge upward for days. The cost of the mats didn't get cheaper, so many players were selling their flasks at a loss.

This past weekend things were even more strange, but in a (hopefully) positive way. In part due to the low prices the prior week, I believe that flask sellers ran low on stock, and so this weekend there were fewer flasks for sale. Happy still had his stock because he'd refused to sell at those low prices. Happy made a killing selling those flasks at much higher prices - a LOT of flasks. On the alliance side the price dumping didn't happen last week - it happened this weekend. The low pricing was so juicy Lost could not resist risking some serious gold to buy up many of the bargains. Lost bought a number of flasks for 11g each, and bought frost lotus (an herb used in making the flasks) at 11g each as well (frost lotus usually sells for 20g each). Lost had been selling whatever frost lotus she picked up to Happy, but the 15% trading fee charged by the neutral auction house is a pain, and Lost decided that this time Happy was on his own. Lost intended to repost the frost lotus on the alliance side AH and keep the profits. Lost had already made a risky purchase on three full stacks of large brilliant shards, her biggest purchase to date at the time. After a worrisomely slow start, the shards are selling briskly at a very nice profit. So Lost risked another large purchase, this time on dream shards. Dream shards are a riskier bet as their price can fluctuate quite a bit and it can be hard to make a profit on them.

Her current cash cow, small radiant shards, now has more competition. Happy has been selling Lost the small radiants for 2g each, which was still a profit for him, and Lost was selling them on the alliance AH for 7g each. Quite a deal! There weren't many sellers of the small radiants, so Lost had the market mostly to herself. Others have noticed, though, and Lost has had to lower her prices several times. She's still getting close to 6g each for them, and since she only paid 2g each, she's well positioned to chase away her competitors. Update - Happy has been buying up the low priced small radiants to sell to Lost, and as could be expected, all that buying has been noticed and the price of small radiants on the horde AH has jumped to over 3g each. Happy is trying to back off the buying a bit to let the prices fall again.

It'll be a few days before Lost will know whether she made the right choices. Two things that Lost is learning from Happy and from her own experiences with the AH: (1) When you see a great bargain - buy it! Don't dither, don't worry it won't sell. Grab it before someone else does. (2) When selling stock be patient! Yes, selling those 11g flasks for 14g (the going price at the moment) is a nice profit. But those flasks have an average price closer to 18g each. Wait for the prices to go back up and rake in even more profit! (3) Ok, so there's three things, but this is a corollary to (2). When there is a lot of competing sellers for an item, and you get a good bargain, repost quickly for a decent profit but low enough for it to sell right away. When there are many sellers underbidding is a constant issue, so in that case selling fast and taking a little less profit is the best approach.