Christmas Week (2 Jan 2012) - Free Falling Market, JB Sees Daylight

Christmas Week (2 Jan 2012) - Free Falling Market, JB Sees Daylight

I was going to let Happy lead off, but Wild started nodding off by the second paragraph. So, Happy's diatribe has been repositioned - at the end. There is also Part 1 of the 2011 Year in Review already posted separately and in email boxes, and it's a rather long piece as well. Hey, you guys don't really want to work today, do you?

So, there is news from JB first. Be forewarned, Happy's week has not gone well, and JB only made things worse by suddenly deciding to become more active. JB had a large stockpile of herbs that Wild has steadily depleted doing all those Heroics and raids, as well as eating up large quantities of buff food that require fish to make. That didn't bother Happy. JB is quite capable of farming for those things herself, and he told her so in no uncertain terms. Said the same to Wild, who would benefit from that farming. Well, that got Happy in trouble.

Wild agreed that JB should do the farming. While she was at it, she might as well do a little leveling, said Wild, seeing as how she'll get some xp just from picking those flowers. JB thought that was a good idea, and asked if maybe she could get a little money for expenses. Happy went through the roof, but JB got her gold.

JB is level 84, and has been a level 84 for a very long time. She's far from reaching 85, too, at only 19% there. She has unlocked all of the zones she would normally level in, but for the most part have gained her xp through herb gathering, and has not done much questing or dungeon work. Over the past 2-3 days, though, JB has spent an hour here, an hour there, etc, fishing and flower gathering, mostly in Deepholm and Uldum. And when a quest presented itself, JB did those, too.

JB is now 65% of the way to level 85, and will continue to make a slow march to that goal. Her gear level is i315, not that that means anything at lvl 84. Oh, and JB quietly slipped into Wild's guild in order to speed up the leveling process. :-)

As for Wild, he has had a quiet weekend. But that changed on Monday night. Wild thought he might be able to crash Mf's Mon raid, but I was rather late getting on, and the raid ended up in the Firelands, anyway, so Wild didn't really miss out on anything. There was a guild asking for a healer for 25 man Dragon Soul, which sounded cool, so Wild volunteered. Wild got to talking with the raid leader while the guild was checking Wild's gear, and he seemed like a pretty good guy. They were happy with Wild's gear, and were ready to add Wild to their raid, when a terrible thought occurred to Wild. Wild had a Morchok kill in ten man DS this week. Before the 4.3 patch, the 10 and 25 man raids were on separate resets ... but not anymore. Even though it was only one boss, and in 10 man, not 25, Wild was locked out. Dangit! Wild apologized, but they didn't seem too put out about it. In fact, they let Wild know that they raid 25 man DS every Mon/Tues and would be happy to invite Wild along if Wild was interested and if they had a spot open. Wild is checking out their guild website and adding the raid leader to his friends list. Wild is very interested indeed.

The icing on the cake, though, was that after the 25 man DS fell through Wild went looking for a Baradin Hold run. Since it resets on Tuesday, there were several folks in trade chat trying to form up BH raids. One filled before Wild could do anything. The second needed only a healer to get going, and the third was asking for DPS and non-priest healers. Wild's first thought was to grab that last healer spot with the second group, but I wondered if there would already be a druid in it. Then I noticed the guild, which doesn't have a good reputation. Wild asked into the third group, and got an immediate invite. We killed the boss, no muss no fuss, and the loot was distributed. Wild was the only druid in the raid. The i403 (i403!) pvp leather healing boots dropped, which went automatically to Wild. Wild decided on the spot he needed to start pvping again, if only to show off his shoes. :P  Then came the miracle. The second drop was the i397 Tier 13 leather healing gloves, which also went to Wild. These are for the moonkin Tier set, but Wild didn't care about that. It was an upgrade from i378 to i397 and moved Wild's gear score up to i385. What a great start to the New Year!

Now it's Happy's turn. Everyone turn on your glum faces. During the past week plus of the holidays, the only person unhappy with the festive season was Happy. What started as a dip in the prices of a few items, which Happy gleefully snapped up, slowly grew into a steady rain of price drops in more and more of Happy's staple products. Happy kept buying, knowing there had to be a bottom to this somewhere. The trickle is now an avalanche, and there seems to be no bottom to it at all.

Happy's first blunder was that he picked the exact right time to get into the market of Brilliant Inferno Rubies and it's enchanting mat, inferno ruby. Raiders were getting a lot of gear from the LFR and needed gems for the sockets. Wild, too, was getting all this new gear and it all needed those rubies for the gear sockets. Happy was having to buy them at prices sometimes as high as 375 gold apiece and he was getting tired of paying it. When prices dropped to around 290 gold, Happy bought several. Happy also convinced Philly to get the jewel crafting recipe, which she did, and Happy then bought the mats for around 270 gold. That was good business. Today, prices for both the gem and the mats dropped below 200 gold. Not so good; in fact, Happy is out a lot of gold if the price doesn't come back up, which isn't looking good. Having gotten burned, Happy is wary of buying too many of those 200g rubies, not sure if he'll ever make a profit on them.

Happy's second blunder was in the volatiles market. There are five mats normally in high demand - air, life, water, fire, and earth. They are used in large quantities and turnover was always high. Happy sold them by the hundreds every day. No more. Depending on the type, volatiles roughly sell between 7g and 25g on average, air being the most expensive (25g), and earth the cheapest (7g). That would be the average price paid for them on the AH. Taking into account that prices do fluctuate quite a bit, Happy usually sells at a higher price range, taking advantage of the fluctuations. The only fluctuations going on now are free falling prices. Happy went all in, too, buying them up at the ever lower prices, waiting for the bottom and the resurgence. It hasn't happened. Happy has over 1,000 volatile earth he dare not sell at the current price, which has dropped below 1g each. Volatile water, which Happy once sold for over 20g each, hit 2g each on the New Year. Nothing is selling and the prices continue to fall.

The one area that has sustained Happy through this terrible ordeal was maelstrom crystals, heavenly shards, and celestial essences. Wild can take a maelstrom crystal and make two heavenly shards out of it. The buyers and sellers of those two mats didn't seem to understand the connection, because Wild could buy the crystals for, say, 160g, make two shards, and then Happy would sell the shards at the going price of, say, 90g per shard. Which is a 20g profit. Happy had a similar racket going with the essences. Celestial essence used to sell at around 50-60 gold each, but in this one case the prices skyrocketed to as high as 150g each. However, there were large swings up and down, and Happy made a lot of gold by grabbing essences when they dipped to 100g, breaking them into 3 smaller essences, and then selling the smaller ones for 50g each when the price swung up, netting 50g profit each time. Well, the good news is that these shards and essences haven't lost much of their value. However, it has stabilized to the point that there is no price disparity anymore and Happy can no longer profit from it.

Happy's profits are off by about 150% per day right now. There is a nest egg that Wild can feed on for awhile, but I wouldn't hang around Happy these days. Happy is not happy at all.

PS - As I write this, the price of celestial essences has dropped from over 100g each to 65g each. Someone should keep Happy away from windows in tall buildings. He just might jump.