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Comment by 174122

Build 8970:

Created one Five of Prisms

Comment by 210199

I'm guessing this skill will be on a rather long cool down. Can any one confirm.

Comment by 59001

counterfeiters...

Comment by 252390

There is no cooldown and farming mats in the basin is pretty easy.

If you search 'uncategorized spells' for 'Darkmoon card' we are compiling a list of the new decks/what they do.

Comment by 214014

The Decks created are:

Chaos Deck: Reward is supposed to be a Darkmoon Card: Berserker. When struck in combat critical strike rating and resilience will be increased by 35. Stacks up to 3 times.

Undeath Deck: Increases Crit rating by 85 and each time you deal damage, you have a chance to do an additional 744 to 956 Shadow Damage.

Nobles Deck: Rewards Darkmoon Card: Greatness. It's important to note that the agility on the card is one of four possible rewards. Cards with Strength, Intellect, and Spirit also are available.

Prisms Deck: Rewards Darkmoon Card: Illusion

Comment by 224221

Undeath Deck: gives Darkmoon Card: Death

Comment by Acquila

Well, there is equal chance when doing lets say 10 cards to get 10 of the exact same as there is of getting 10 different. Thats why its random. 1 in 32 chance everytime you craft it.

Comment by Milker

The everreturning Math discussion about random.

The difference between the 2 above views, is that Acquilla is talking about observing 1 draw at the time and Asharak is talking about observing 10 draws.

Acquilla would think like this:
If you do 1 draw, its 1/32th chance to get a card.
If you do 1 draw, its 1/32th chance to get a card.
If you do 1 draw, its 1/32th chance to get a card.
If you do 1 draw, its 1/32th chance to get a card.
If you do 1 draw, its 1/32th chance to get a card.
If you do 1 draw, its 1/32th chance to get a card.
If you do 1 draw, its 1/32th chance to get a card.
If you do 1 draw, its 1/32th chance to get a card.
If you do 1 draw, its 1/32th chance to get a card.
If you do 1 draw, its 1/32th chance to get a card.
If you do 1 draw, its 1/32th chance to get a card.
So in his mind (bless him, he has no concept of future or past) it's always 1/32th chance to get a certain card.

Asharak would think like this:
If you do 1 draw, its 1/32th chance to get a card.
If you do another draw, its 1/32th chance to get that same card, so 1/32^2 chance to get this same card 2 times in a row if you pull 2 cards.
If you do another draw, its 1/32th chance to get that same card, so 1/32^3 chance to get this same card 3 times in a row if you pull 3 cards.
...
If you do another draw, its 1/32th chance to get that same card, so 1/32^10 chance to get this same card 10 times in a row if you pull 10 cards.

For those interested, if there would be a limited amount of cards in game (which not the case) this math would change.

Also, if Asharak would consider yesterday's card crafting as well, the math would change.

So: it's all a matter of scope.

Comment by lightmgl

Odds are always a very tricky topic. You have a 1/32 chance of drawing any given card, lets say an Ace of Nobles. In 2 draws you have a 1/1024 chance of drawing two of the same card, since the only possible combination out of the 1024 combinations is if you draw it the first time and the second time.

f you draw 3 cards and 2 are the same you have a 96/32768(1 in about 341.3) chance of getting a match since you can match them on 1 and 2 with 32 other cards for 3, 1 and 3 with 32 other cards for 2, and 2 and 3 with 32 other cards for 1. (I think I did that right, I'm kinda tired). Notice your odds are 96 times better off drawing 2 of the same than 3 of the same. It gets tremendously more difficult to get duplicates as you approach the sample size. You are also significantly more like to get duplicates in general as you do more draws.

If you draw that Ace of Nobles the first time (already drawn) then you have a 1/32 chance of getting it again on your next draw and a 1/32 chance of getting each other card on the next draw. Once you include history you are looking at the sequence in addition to the total cards you end up with. In that case you end up with a 1/1024 combination since you have the Ace of Nobles (1/32) your first time and any other card (1/32) your next time. Odds become very different when you are looking at the specific sequence drawn vs the odds of a certain number of draws yielding certain cards at the end.

Now if you were to draw two different cards including order lets say an Ace of Nobles then an Ace of Undeath the odds of that combination are 1/1024 since you are once again looking at sequence but if you are simply looking at the end results of having an Ace of Nobles and an Ace of Undeath then your odds rise to 1/512 since there are 2 possible outcomes out of 1024 (Nobles first then Undeath and Undeath first then Nobles).

As for random appearing random you cannot make a judgment like that. When you are looking at results with odds like 1/32 you need tens of thousands of crafts before the odds will become remotely accurate. In statistics we refer to this as sample size. The larger the sample size the more accurate the standard deviation is (Variance from the average odds).

Comment by zeklaine

Acquilla is not incorrect in his thinking. Each time you craft this item you have an equal chance of getting any card. That is to say that no card is more likely to be created than any other card, thus 1/32 chance.

However, the chance of getting 10 of the same card in 10 consecutive uses of this ability is not the same as getting 10 different cards, as you would have to create the same card 9 times in a row, a probability of (1/32)^9. This is because it doesn't matter what the first card is you create, you just have to make 9 more of the same card afterward. It is only (1/32)^10 if you are trying to predict the card you will get 10 copies of BEFORE you actually create any of them.

So in his mind (bless him, he has no concept of future or past) it's always 1/32th chance to get a certain card.

In the World of Warcraft there is no sense of future or past, and each random event in the game is independent of every other event, previous or subsequent.

The main point is just that each time you cast this spell you have an equal chance of getting each card.

Comment by kxy1983

I just made 4 of these, got Eight, two three and three, all of nobles, do you always make cards from one deck? or is it just luck that i made all nobles?

Comment by 109245

On a lowpop server I had to craft my Nobles Deck all by myself.

Now that I am finally finished (and the fairie has just ended -.- ) I am sitting on a pile of no less than 2660 Ink of the Sea. I guess Blizzard really wanted to encourage trade with this.

Comment by 255990

The real issue is that every combination of 10 cards drawn consecutively is 1/32^10...

such is the case with 10 of the same card in a row, or any 10 cards in a row. it is the same 1/1125899906842624 (1/32^10) chance. so the best mathematical explanation is the one that takes into consideration that anything that can happen in a probability like this is just as likely as every other outcome.

Comment by AzGuL

To craft one card you need:

1x Resilient Parchment (50 silver, prior to faction discount)
6x Snowfall Ink (12x Icy Pigment - Milled from Northrend Herbs)
3x Eternal Life (30x Crystallized Life)
3x Ink of the Sea (6x Azure Pigment - Milled from Northrend Herbs)

This will give you one random card.

I strongly recommend you to start crafting the cards prior to Darkmoon Faire coming by, as all the herb/Eternal Life prices rises by a lot.

Comment by Dyaus

As an Herbalist I was wondering, how many herbs must be milled to make a Darkmoon Card of the North? There are several variables. (I'm ignoring the Resilient Parchment x1 and Eternal Life x3.)

Short answer

There is luck involved. You might need more herbs or less. On average, you will need:

5-6 stacks if milling Lichbloom, Icethorn, or Adder's Tongue

OR

10-11 stacks if milling Goldclover, Tiger Lily, Deadnettle or Talandra's Rose

Long anwer

When milling a stack of 5 Northrend herbs, you will receive:

2-4 Azure Pigment
0-3 Icy Pigment

The Icy Pigment is the difficult part. (You'll end up with tons of extra Azure Pigment.) So let's focus on what it takes to get one Icy Pigment. When milling a stack of 5x Lichbloom, Icethorn, or Adder's Tongue, you have a 50% chance of getting 1-3 Icy Pigment. After milling many stacks of herbs, it's obvious you're much more likely to get 1 Icy Pigment than 2-3. Based on my results, I'm going to estimate you have a 90% chance of getting 1, and 10% chance of getting 2-3.

So that leaves you with:

50% chance to get 0
45% chance to get 1
5% chance to get 2-3

Based on that, you can "expect" to get 0.575 Icy Pigment every time you mill 5 herbs. (It should average out that way in the long run.) So getting one Icy Pigment requires an average of 8.7 herbs. Considering you need 12 Icy Pigment, that means ~104 herbs for one Darkmoon Card.

With all other Northrend herbs (Goldclover, Tiger Lily, Deadnettle, Talandra's Rose), your chances of getting Icy Pigment are halved, so you can expect to need twice as many.

Edit: Tweaked a few numbers based on my observations milling many herbs.

Comment by najani

Anyone else starting to doubt that its an even chance per card?

28 cards so far and 2 nobles :-/

I comfort myself by not keeping track of the amount of herbs I've purchased.

Comment by 278420

Patch 3.0.8 (the next patch) will allow you to trade 10 Ink of the Sea for 1 Snowfall Ink. So all those extra inks won't be wasted.

Comment by 301535

11 cards so far, 7 chaos, 4 undeath, 2 doubles all up.

Comment by 151016

Bottom line: probability sucks.

Comment by 245808

Are the eight card numbers (Ace, Two, Three, etc.) equal odds to create? In the past sets the Ace was usually a rare drop off a special mob, and thus was generally the most expensive card in a deck. Has anyone observed whether the Aces are still the rarest, or if all eight are equal for the Northrend decks?

Comment by 259235

If you are trying your luck with making the card instead of buying the card that you want, i suggest you be prepared to fork out alot of cash on my realm it cost me roughly ~1000g for 3 of these cards and i have made 6 so far and have got
1 x Noble
1 x Undeath
1 x Chaos
3 x Prism
and trying for the Nobles deck so its ultimately luck defendant
you could gain alot or lose alot from making these

Comment by whatisfgh

Starting from scratch, you can count your chance of getting at least one specific deck after making n cards by counting the ways you can fail to get at least one of your deck A, subtracting that from the total number of possibilities T, and then dividing by T again.

(T-A)/T

I will save you all the math I posted I my guild forums, but it boils down to after n cards you have

T-A = sum(k = 0 to 8) ( ((-1)^k)*(k, 8)*(32-k)^n)
= 32^n - 8*31^n + 28*30^n - 56*29^n + 70*28^n - 56*27^n + 28*26^n - 8*25^n + 24^n

with T = 32^n

inputting some values we have after n cards made your chance to get at least one deck is

8 0.000000036670826
16 0.000166052001440
25 0.004591812287009
50 0.145079746974393
100 0.706825352849575
125 0.857330847951889
150 0.933360608760159
175 0.969433667914750
200 0.986091635586966

so at about the 150-200 mark you can be pretty certain you won't not get your specific deck. (keeping in mind that you can probably sell the cards you make for a profit depending on your server)

This math drastically changes if you have even one card already though, so take what you will from this.

Comment by 306500

If your making these to sell you could end up getting rich or disapointed.

On my server (Silvermoon-Horde) if u sold the mats it takes to make a card u would get about 450g.
Well some of these cards, like a few of the undeath ones sell for only 40g....so you could use 450g worth of mats to make something that sells for 40g

OR u could get lucky and make like Ace of Nobles which sells for 2000g therefore making a huge profit...It all comes down to luck.

Comment by 310566

mmkay as Ace of Nobles sells for like 2500g on Vashj(EU) I just think this was worth to post :D

http://img530.imageshack.us/my.php?image=northrendcardat9.jpg

Comment by 175097

If you want any random full deck the first 8 tries, your chances are:
(1*.21875*.1875*.15625*.125*.09375*.0625*.03125)
0.0000001466833055019378662109375
Which means...
.00001466833055019378662109375%
( Which is close to 3/20,000,000
- or, rounded to 1 in 6,666,666)

If you want a certain deck the first 8 tries, your chances are:
(.25*.21875*.1875*.15625*.125*.09375*.0625*.03125)
0.00000003667082637548446655273425
Which means
.000003667082637548446655273425%
( Which is close to 37/1,000,000,000
- which is rounded to 1 in 27,027,027)

THEREFORE... not very likely.

Comment by cinderblock

Thanks Madry, while I appreciate the random/luck discussion above, a real world sampling was really helpful. Thought I would do the same here:

This screenshot shows the first batch of 10 or so, but in total what I got from doing 20 cards were:

Nobles - All but the Four and Six
Chaos - All but the Six and Seven
Undeath - Only the Six and Four
Prisms - Only the Three and Eight

(and four duplicates, 2 extra Nobles and 2 extra Chaos.)

I chose to stop there and buy the four cards I was missing from the two almost complete decks of Nobles and Chaos. Mats for the cards are indeed about 450 gold per card, totaling about 9000 gold for the 20 I made. Selling the extra Nobles brought that down to 7k. Worth it? Yes. Because its a game and not real money. If that is a concern for you - you can sell the deck for quite a bit, well over 9k. I enjoyed the fun of making 'em.

Suggestions for anyone doing this:
Hook up with other inscriptionists on the trade channel or see who is selling cards and message them. Half of them just churn out cards for money - others are actually trying to assemble a deck and the cards they have for sale are extras they are willing to trade with your extras.

I also found that a lot of the cards on the AH were sold by the same person and the Four and Six of Nobles I needed, they were happy to sell for a deal since I bought them both.

Also as of 3.0.8 - a vendor in the Dalaran Inscription Shop, Jessica Sellers sells Snowfall Ink for 10 ink of the Sea - REALLY made an impact on mat consumption for me.

Anyway - good luck.

Comment by 305694

I agree with most of the above post, but how possibly is the average cost of a card 450g? Herbs would be going for 100g per stack and Eternal lifes for 50g each to get to that kind of number. Are they that high on your server?

Here is my ballpark estimate of the average cost to run a card.
.
Stacks of herbs are about 40g (for Adder). A stack (4 millings) of Adder, Lichbloom or Icethorn will produce about one Snowfall ink and 5-6 Ink of the sea. So three stacks gives me the inks and I still have 6-9 ink of the sea left over. Eternal Life are about 15g on my server. Parchment is 2 gold.

Total cost 167 gold with 6-9 ink of the sea left over, which can be turned in for more Snowfall.

This is a very rough calculation. But even at double the herb prices, I can't get close to 450g. perhaps you were using the AH cost of crafted ink on your AH, in which case it probably makes more sense to sell the ink and buy the cards.

Comment by Avendelora

As a response to Mortrisha:

I believe that the average price of 450g is based on the 1/4 chance of creating a noble card, which assumes that cards from all the other decks won't sell. (unless you have a full deck)

Using your own math:
''Stacks of herbs are about 40g (for Adder). A stack (4 millings) of Adder, Lichbloom or Icethorn will produce about one Snowfall ink and 5-6 Ink of the sea. So three stacks gives me the inks and I still have 6-9 ink of the sea left over. Eternal Life are about 15g on my server. Parchment is 2 gold.''

However, with 1.5~ (1 ink from pigments, 0.5 from the ink of the sea that are converted) snowfall ink per stack it will take 4 stacks of herbs rather then 3 to get enough ink for 1 card, and then 1/4 of a stack to get enough Ink of the sea.
With 4.25 stacks of herbs required for one card and a price of 40g per stack, the herb cost will be 40 x 4.25 = 170g
Eternal life 3 x 15g = 45g
Parchment = 2g

Making the total cost of one card 217g.
Now with a chance of 1/4 of getting a noble card, the actual average cost of making a noble card will be 4x217= 868g.

Comment by 317829

To calculate the number of Stacks required per Darkmoon card:

We'll make a couple of assumptions, first that:
1. We are only milling Adder's Tongue, Icethorn, or Lichbloom
2. That my 270 millings provided accurate enough percentages to work off of

Based on my own milling numbers, the following is true (or very close to true):
One Milling yields 0.59 Icy Pigments and 2.95 Azure Pigments
or
x = 0.59y + 2.96z (Let x = 1 Mill, y = Icy, and z = Azure)

The materials required for one card (minus the Life and Parchment) are:
6x Snowfall Ink + 3x Ink of the Sea
or
12 Icy + 6 Azure
or (using the above algebra)
12y + 6z

Now we know that in algebra, to solve an equation you must reduce all unknown variables to one variable. Prior to 3.0.8, this wasn't a problem because you couldn't convert Ink of the Sea, and the equation was solely dependent on how many Icy pigments you could produce.

Now, however, we can convert Ink of the Sea to Snowfall Ink as follows:
1x Snowfall Ink = 10x Ink of the Sea
or
1 Icy = 10 Azure (reduced from 2 Icy = 20 Azure)
or
y = 10z

Now we have a way to reduce the variables in our previous equation. Let me summarize:
1x Card = 12y + 6z (12 Icy + 6 Azure)
and we know that
y = 10z (1 Icy = 10 Azure)

So we can now substitute y and assume the following:
1x Card = 12(10z) + 6z = 120z + 6z = 126z

This means that one Darkmoon Card of the North costs 126 Azure Pigments. We can now use this to determine how many Mills of an herb are required to produce a card.

Back to our very first equation:
x = 0.59y + 2.96z (Let x = 1 Mill, y = Icy, and z = Azure)
and also knowing that
y = 10z
we can deduce that
x = 0.59(10z) + 2.96z = 5.9z + 2.96z = 8.86z

So one milling will produce 8.86 Azure Pigments. We know we need 126 Azure Pigments to produce a card, so the following is true:
126 / 8.86 =
14.22 Millings per Card

or about
3.55 stacks of Adder's Tongue, Icethorn, or Lichbloom

Comment by earti

Being an engineer (which involves a lot of MATH) the odds are getting all 8 cards of a certain deck in 8 draws are as follows:

Say you want to get a nobles deck:

First, the odds of getting any one of the cards from the nobles is 8/32, where the 8 comes from the number of chances you will get a <x> of nobles and 32 is all the different cards that can be made.

Since making another card is INDEPENDENT to making another one, the odds of getting another nobles card without duplicating the one you made is 7/32 (or 8/32 - 1/32), where 7 is the 7 remaining cards that you need over the 32 possible cards.

Repeat this process and you end up with a formula like this:

Odds = 8!/(32^8)
= 1/27,269,633.63

conclusion: very very slim

Comment by 188301

well, you guys have some great numbers going on here, so i think i will make a post for the more simple-minded:
"everyone! listen up yall, grab your lucky horseshoes, your 4 leafed clovers and pay a gnome to dance around you while wearing a green overcoat then hope for nobles."

Comment by 328728

Good job on the maths there. Now there's one more highly intresting calculation left:

How many darkmoon-cards (north) would you on average have to create to get a full set of
a) anyone of the 4 sets?
b) a specific set?

...I'm guessing this follows some kinda Gaussian bell curve or something but don't know. I bet someone does though...

Get to work bright people!

Comment by remotettl

if u compare this to tbc trinkets u can get from darkmoon, prices are mad.
500-1800 for single card its madness.
9,5k gold for set is kinda way to much. for all that money u can definately hire some raid and get something from naxx. :)

+ as i see, there is no cooldown to make these.
so... basically you just get mats, make them and sell for prices you cant imagine even :) mats are like 200g-300g and card - starting from 600. its nice warmup :D golmakers paradise.

Comment by 264014

Well I don't think there's a need to insult him when what he is thinking is correct, it's how he said it that was incorrect.

There is obviously an equal chance to get any specific, particular card every time you draw. It's 1/32. The only flaw was he said there is an equal chance to get the same card 10 times as there is to get any other card 10 times.. There is a 31/32 chance to get the other cards versus the same card.. but it doesn't take a brilliant mind to figure out what he was trying to say.

Comment by 207050

ok as of 3.0.8 and the fact you can buy Snowfall Ink for 10 Ink of the Sea in Dalaran, it means the maths has changed

When milling a stack of 5 Northrend herbs, you will receive:
2-4 Azure Pigment
0-3 Icy Pigment

So that leaves you with:
50% chance to get 0 Snowfall Inks
45% chance to get 0.5 Snowfall Inks
5% chance to get 1-1.5 Snowfall Inks

but you also ALWAYS get 0.1 -0.2 snowfall ink from Ink of the Sea ... so... that means (assuming you have a tonne of Ink of the Sea and don't need any more)..

0.15 snowfall from Azure pigment + 0.225 (45%ers) + 0.0625 (5%ers) gives

0.4375 Snowfallinks PER milling Since 3.0.8

or to get all 6

13.7 millings.. or 68.57 herbs

Comment by Yuka2

Dont use this recepie alot. you'll get hooked.

Comment by bleakraven

What is the minimum character level to train this skill?

Comment by 348980

A) How many cards do you need to make to have a 50% chance to have completed the nobles deck (or any other specific deck)?

78.4 (which translates to 79)

B) How many cards do you nee to make to have a 50% chance of having completed one complete deck (not a specific one, but any of the four)?

49.9 (which translates to 50)

The math:

Given N cards the probability you have NOT received a specific card is (31/32)^N
The probability you HAVE received a specific card is (1-(31/32)^N)

The probability you've received 8 specific cards (given that 8 or more cards have been dealt)
is (1-(31/32)^N)^8. Thus:

Probability you've received a given deck in N cards, given that N>=8, is (1-(31/32)^N)^8.

If we set this equal to 0.5 (we want the 50/50 point) and solve for N, we get 78.4.

Now for the second question. We know the probability that we've received a given deck in N cards. Therefore, the probability we haven't received a given deck in N cards is given by:

(1-(1-(31/32)^N)^8)

The probability we haven't received any of the four decks in N cards is given by:

(1-(1-(31/32)^N)^8)^4

Setting this equal to 0.5 and solving for N gives us.... a mess that resolves to: 49.9.

Changing the questions to more closely resemble the original:

C) If a person starts with no cards and generates random cards until he has assembled a nobles deck, what is the average number of cards a player would have when they completed a nobles deck?

I also came up with an infinite series which summed up to approximately 86.11.

D) If a person starts with no cards and generates random cards until he has assembled a complete deck (any of the four decks) what is the average number of cards a player would have when they completed a deck?

Again, an infinite series which summed up to approximately 51.92.

Using a high quality pseudo random number generator I verified the above values (for all four questions) to within +/- 1.

The math:

C and D are just the infinite sum of:

1 + "probability you didn't get what you wanted with 1 card" +
"probability you didn't get what you wanted when you had 2 cards" +
"probability you didn't get what you wanted when you had 3 cards" + .....

Using the same probability equations given above.

Comment by 264711

Probabilities of past events=1 (mathematical certainty that the past did in fact happen)

Before I roll I have a 1/32 chance of rolling an ace of Nobles
After I roll that Ace of Nobles:
I have a 1/32 chance of rolling an ace of Nobles
assuming I roll that ace of nobles:
I have a 1/32 chance of rolling an ace of Nobles
if the devil finds it in his heart to condemn me to having three aces:
I have a 1/32 chance of rolling an ace of Nobles
Rinse/repeat:
I have a 1/32 chance of rolling an ace of Nobles
I go to get an advanced mathematics degree:
I have a 1/32 chance of rolling an ace of Nobles
My grandfather dies and leaves me his entire estate:
I have a 1/32 chance of rolling an ace of Nobles
My alt dings 80 and I win the lottery:
I have a 1/32 chance of rolling an ace of Nobles
Patch 4.0 comes out:
I have a 1/32 chance of rolling an ace of Nobles

Math!

Comment by 154169

Is there any internal cooldown on making this like the titansteel bars?

Comment by Siralos

Of course, there's a internal cooldown on getting Ace of Nobles xD

But it's still 1/32! xD

Comment by starwolf

For all math geniuses out here, you forgeting to set confidence interval in your calculations, therefore all those calculated numbers mean absolutely nothing. Depending on confidence level, number of cards created before getting any particular deck will vary from 8 to infinity. In other words, out of infinite number of people creating those cards there is 100% probablity that someone will get any particular deck full by making only 8 cards, and there is a 100% probability that someone will never create full deck. As someone posted, 8!/(32^8) indicates that out of 27,269,633 independent tries there is 100% confidence that someone will get full deck by only making 8 cards in row. But if you set confidence level to 0% that would mean every person that makes 8 cards will get full deck right away.

Comment by manolete

I think your math is wrong when you assume the cost in Azure Pigments.

Just a check to your results: 14.22 mills = 42 Azure + 8.38 Icy ... that means you need to mill for the 10 extra Azure Inks ;)

The most restrictive is Icy Pigment as you can't turn Icy into Azure.

You need 12 Icy Pigment to make a card.
You get 0.59 Icy Pigment per mill
You get 2.96 Azure Pigment per mill
As you can change 10 Azure into 1 Icy, the item above turns into:
You get 0.296 Icy Pigment per mill (Azure)
Total: you get 0.59+0.296 = 0.886 Icy Pigment per mill
Assuming you change all Azure for Icy you need 12/0.886 = 13.54 ~ 14

So to go with your math my best guess is 16 mills = 47.36 Azure + 9.44 Icy
You get 9 Icy Pigment, turn 30 Azure into 3 Icy, and have 17 extra Azure to make the 3 Ink of the sea, plus you get 11 extra an probably another pigment.

Resuming, you need 16 or 15 mills to get enough mats for a Card, meaning 4 stacks of Lichbloom/Icethorn/Adder's Tongue.

My way of doing it... I farm Talandra's Rose in Zul'drak, has same % of getting frost lotus (in my server's AH 1 Frost Lotus = 1 stack of herbs) but 25% only of getting Icy Pigment... but you get A LOT of herbs with no competition at all.

Comment by 280578

Please pardon my inability to decipher my answer from your math. I'm a language-brain, not a math-brain.

Question: If all of the Darkmoon Cards of the North have an equal random possibility of being made - then why do cards from the same deck (all nobles, all prisms, etc) not sell for the same price? Shouldn't they all have similar value?

I understand why cards from different decks have different values (because the resulting trinkets vary greatly) but not why say, an Ace of Prisms is different than an Eight of Prisms.

Thanks for your insights :-)

Comment by 364456

All this math assumes that the programmer made the algorithm give equal chances to each card. Does any one know for sure that this is the case?

If the programmer gave different weights to each card you will have some being made more then others. I don’t know if wowhead has any way to data mine how many cards have been made and what cards have been made to see if they are all being made in about the same quantity. if they can you should be able to show that through statistics.

Of course Blizzard may also have come out and stated that they all have the same chance to be made, But I haven’t seen any statement to that effect.

Comment by 387035

THIS ABILITY IS AWESOME!

Maybe i just lucky but ive got 12/18 nobles cards so far using this spell.

I farmed the mats for about the first 10 but now i just fly around in icecrown on my epic flyer (Which i wouldnt have if it wearnt for the fortune im making off this) and started farming the mats.

The first time i did it i got the 7 and 6 of nobles, next time i got the ace of chaos, since then ive got

five of nobles
four of nobles x2
three of nobles
4 of prisims x2
ace of prisms
three of chaos
another ace of chaos
seven of nobles
eight of nobles

The odds of getting a nobles card is 1/4 so maybe ive just been extremely lucky but this is an awesome ability, im planning on dinging 449-450 inscription with it tonight

Edit: Did 4 of them again tonight:

2x Three of Nobles
Seven of nobles
Eight of Nobles
Ace of Chaos

xD

Edit2: Oh jesus, i did it another 7 times and not 1 nobles card. i think its time to end my gambling addiction to these things, if you get a couple of nobles cards smile and WALK AWAY :(

Comment by Belse

There is a bunch of comments about the chance to get the cards you want or how big the chance is to get a specific deck but nobody have mentioned the money making possibilities.

With a lot of money you can make a lot of money of this. At least in theory. What you need is the auctioneer addon which shows both the average price of the cards and the average material price.

Check the average price of all cards you can get and add these prices together. Then you divide it by 32 and if the number you get is greater than the price of the mats you can make them with an almost safe profit.

Of course there is a chance that you are unlucky and will only get a bunch of prisms cards but if you make enough cards the odds are that you will make a profit. But most people who have made the amounts of money to sucessfully do this should have figured it out themselves but just saying it in case somebody missed it.

Comment by 29534

Here's some formulas to decide what you should be paying per herb:

First, figure up what nobles cards sell for on your server, average them all, then divide that by 4.
Then subtract your server's average price for 3x Eternal Life. This gives you the "Herb Cost" of a card.
(I choose to ignore the other cards and assume that they just paid for their eternals to make.)

1 Darkmoon Card = 6 Snowfall Ink and 3 Ink of the Sea
10 Ink of the Sea = 1 Snowfall Ink

Therefore, 1 Darkmoon Card = 63 Ink of the Sea

H = Number of mills of Herbs that produced an average of 1.5 Ink of the Sea and .25 Snowfall Ink (4 Ink of the Sea pigments)
-=( Adder's Tongue , Icethorn , Lichbloom )=-
h = Number of mills of herbs that produce an average of 1.75 Ink of the Sea and .175 Snowfall Inks (2.5 Ink of the Sea)
-=( Goldclover , Deadnettle , Tiger Lily , Talandra's Rose )=-

H = 63/4 = 15.75 Mills (78.75 Herbs)
h = 63/2.5 = 25.2 Mills (126 Herbs)

So, divide the Herb Cost of your card by the number above and you should end up with the "break-even" herb price that you can pay.

NOTE: Milling chances above are average inks made, not pigments. You actually have a 3/.5 and 2.5/.25 chance for the respective pigments.
ANOTHER NOTE: The reason this works is because you always end up with more Ink of the Sea than Snowfall Inks so you can trade them in for Snowfalls. I converted the Snowfall Inks to Ink of the Sea for simpler math. :)

(Hopefully I didn't screw up my math.)
-edit-
I did screw up my math. Fixed it now though. :) or did I?

Comment by 165407

Thankyou to all the math junkies who have tried to boil this down but id like to add something on a more metaphysical level. The bottom line is chance vs infinity = LUCK. I have made 20 cards in one session and received not one nobles and I have made 4 cards in one sitting and made 4 nobles. Ive also made 3 cards in one go and theyve all been the same. If you flip a coin and it comes up heads 1 million times in a row, then the chance of it coming up heads again is still 50/50. Simply refusing to believe that something cannot happen again is human arrogance, and thus we invented probability. Its a human concept and the universe does not recognise it. The same thing can happen repeatedly without ever reducing the chances of it happening again,chance does not consider the past. What im getting at is, when creating these cards it comes down to pure and simple 1/32. ;P

Comment by 438402

So tonight I bought enough herbs to make 4 Cards, and managed to make 4x Three of Chaos. Seriously what is the chances of doing that, I wish I had've gotten more so I could see if i made more of them.

Comment by 166196

Current lowest AH costs on Llane are for the simple mats:

3 3g15s/ea 9.45g total
3 12.5g/ea 37.5g total
6 20g/ea 120g total

(Note that it would cost 31g50s to buy a Snowfall Ink for 10 Ink of the Sea.)

Net cost per card: ~167g

Comment by rapscallion

It all comes down to 1 simple concept.

Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what your gonna get.

Comment by danilche

A question that interests me much more is a practical one: if I want a specific card, should I scribe or should I buy?

The probability relations being too tangled for easy analysis, I went the simple way: run a simulation. I assumed equiprobable result of any of the 32 cards -- which BTW is not a given*, seeing as how they sell for different prices at AH, and how some deck cards seem to come out much more rarely than others.

The bottom line? I ran the simulation a few times with a 100,000 tries (each try was seeing how many times inscribing a card it takes to complete a specific deck). It takes about 87 inscriptions of Darkmoon Card of the North to get a specific deck. Chances are that by that time you will get one or two other decks as well BTW.

So that's your basic answer. It takes, on average, 87 scribings to complete a specific deck. That's a metric boatload of Eternal Life and Snowfall Ink.

The cost of the materials for such a momentous undertaking would completely dwarf the typical AH price of the resulting card. The card which usually sells for the most gold, Death, I have bought for 1200 -- but we are looking at many thousands gold to permit 87 scribings. Even if we assume the minimal cost of 10 gold per Eternal Life and 20 gold per Snowfall Ink, and ignore the cost of Sea Ink and parchment altogether, we are looking at about 13,000 gold for the mats -- and these are below market prices.

Of course if you can hook up with a bunch of other scribes, things will go incredibly faster. After all, asymptotically, it will converge on taking only 8 scribings per full deck... but for an individual starting with nothing but mats, it will take, on average, 87 scribings to complete a specific deck.

However, even with a large group of scribes approaching 8 scribings per full deck, we are talking about the materials cost of about 1200 gold per card (with the above price assumption). Which is still totally uneconomical as a way of making money, even if you look at it as simply another way to cash in the herbs, because half of Darkmoon cards regularly sell well below 1000.

BTW, the variance of the number of steps is fairly large, about 30; so on average your actual number of scribings will be within 30 of 87. This is not a standard distribution.

* My first and only foray into scribing Darkmoon cards was to scribe 10 of them in a batch. Every single one came out between 2 and 5 inclusively. If the output of the cards is equiprobably distributed, the chance of this such an outcome is about 0.1% (0.5^10).

Comment by 15629

OK alot of this math gives you the number of mats to make a card. Fine. But as folks are saying you need to scribe 87 times to make a deck is false. It is based on the idea you have to make the card, but you don't.

If you want a specific deck, you need to make less than 32 cards. If you are unlucky and make qty 8 #5 of Nobles you are still fine as you sell your 7 duplicates and use the money to buy the cards you need. You sell all the cards of the deck you don't want and buy the cards you do, which reduces the number of cards you need to make.

Comment by Kartman82

I was nicely surprised to see that this requires only 1 Eternal Life instead of the 3 from before.
Snowfall ink is untouched though :|

Comment by Ssateneth

If you want to complete any SPECIFIC deck, such as nobles, starting from scratch (we're going to assume making 32 cards since on average you're going to be making duplicates after 32), then ON AVERAGE you will need slightly less than 2500 high level herbs (icethorn, adders tongue, lichbloom, closer to about 2490) and 96 eternal life. You will of course get on average the other 3 less desires decks but you may be able to subsidize the nobles cost by selling off the undesired decks

Links

Darkmoon Card of the North

Darkmoon Card of the North
3 sec cast

Tools:

Virtuoso Inking Set

Reagents:

Resilient Parchment, Snowfall Ink (6), Eternal Life

Darkmoon Card of the North (2)
Item Level 80
"A random Darkmoon card of the north. Collect a full set to receive a reward."

Reagents

	Resilient Parchment (1)
	Snowfall Ink (6)
	Snowfall Ink (3)
	Icy Pigment (6)
	Eternal Life (1)
	Create Eternal Life (1)
	Crystallized Life (1)
	Crystallized Life (1)
	Transmute: Eternal Fire to Life (1)
	Eternal Fire (1)
	Create Eternal Fire (1)
	Crystallized Fire (1)
	Crystallized Fire (1)
	Transmute: Eternal Water to Fire (1)
	Eternal Water (1)
	Create Eternal Water (1)
	Crystallized Water (1)
	Crystallized Water (1)
	Transmute: Eternal Air to Water (1)
	Eternal Air (1)
	Create Eternal Air (1)
	Crystallized Air (1)
	Crystallized Air (1)
	Transmute: Eternal Earth to Air (1)
	Eternal Earth (1)
	Create Eternal Earth (1)
	Crystallized Earth (1)
	Crystallized Earth (1)
	Transmute: Eternal Shadow to Earth (1)
	Eternal Shadow (1)
	Create Eternal Shadow (1)
	Crystallized Shadow (1)
	Crystallized Shadow (1)
	Transmute: Eternal Shadow to Life (1)
	Eternal Shadow (1)
	Create Eternal Shadow (1)
	Crystallized Shadow (1)
	Crystallized Shadow (1)
	Transmute: Eternal Earth to Shadow (1)
	Eternal Earth (1)
	Create Eternal Earth (1)
	Crystallized Earth (1)
	Crystallized Earth (1)
	Transmute: Eternal Air to Earth (1)
	Eternal Air (1)
	Create Eternal Air (1)
	Crystallized Air (1)
	Crystallized Air (1)
	Transmute: Eternal Water to Air (1)
	Eternal Water (1)
	Create Eternal Water (1)
	Crystallized Water (1)
	Crystallized Water (1)
	Transmute: Eternal Fire to Water (1)
	Eternal Fire (1)
	Create Eternal Fire (1)
	Crystallized Fire (1)
	Crystallized Fire (1)

Spell Details

Duration

n/a

School

Physical

Mechanic

n/a

Dispel type

n/a

GCD category

n/a

Cost

None

Range

0 yards (Self)

Cast time

3 seconds

Cooldown

n/a

GCD

0 seconds

Effect

Create Tradeskill Item

	Darkmoon Card of the North

Flags

Darkmoon Card of the North

Buff

Reagents

Spell Details

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