WoW Economy Weekly Wrap-Up: BFA Season 3, Challenge Updates plus Mobile AH App

Wowhead Posted 2019/07/13 at 1:01 PM by Gumdrops

check out the previous articles right here on wowhead.comGumdrops/r/woweconomy subredditDiscord serverTradeSkillMasterMethodBFA Season 3Hikons goes over some of the ways he'll be making gold in the coming weeks and months in his latest videoBudding AlganBrinestone AlganKraken's EyeAre you going to be raiding the raid or raiding the Auction House? What have you got prepared for the release of Mythic difficulty? How many guilds are raiding on your server?Gold Challenge UpdatesLazy Goldmaker recaps on his recent blog

What did I do?
The first week I spent all my gold on materials to flip, then I started working on emissaries, rep and leveling professions. I spent a decent chunk on professions and did a small bit of enchanting shuffling. Week 2 was more of the same, but added the first sinister combatant pieces. In week 3 I started crafting enchants as well. Week 4 I got the tool of the trade for enchanting, did some 2×4 farming and went really hard on the enchanting shuffle.

Overall I barely made the challenge in time, but I did manage to go from 10.7k, with no professions to level 150 in both tailoring and enchanting, 204k gold and 110k in AH value. My total gold acquired over the 30 days was 511k, with 460k of that coming from auctions.

Time spent
I spent 44 hours over the 30 days, which translates to just under 1.5 hours per day on average. This is /played time and will by it’s nature include some idle time. I also spent a lot of time on emissary caches, doing old raids and some other things that are not optimized for getting a token. When I repeat the challenge I will try to just do goldmaking stuff to really get a good estimate of how much you can get if you only focus on the most efficient methods.

Gold on hand

The liquid gold graph is very funny and has a very hockey stick like shape. Obviously I kept reinvesting my gold constantly to always get more stuff up on the AH. Eventually my sales sky-rocketed and I cut back on the spending and we made it!

In a follow up blog, Lazy Goldmaker outlined some key lessons to take away from the 30 day challenge.

Take away Lessons

Get raw gold/farm early
The number one thing that held me back early was honestly doing too much longer term focused stuff like levelling professions and doing emissaries. I should have spent my time farming early on in the challenge and then speed leveled crafting later. It may even be better to just farm, then flip materials and then do that until your first token before you start investing in crafting professions. My capital limited me for the majority of the challenge.
Crafting is profitable, but requires a lot of capital
Crafting was overall quite successful for me even if I got burned on a lot of items with the release date announcement in the last week. I should have waited with crafting until I could level my profession to the right level in one fell swoop however, and I did spend too much gold on enchanting recipes I knew would never make it back. In general I locked too much capital in crafting professions early on when I should probably have just been flipping material. On the other side the enchanting tool of the trade and the enchanting shuffle wast the number one method that worked for me by a large margin, so it is possible that I made the right call.
Material flipping is great, but start low
The first gold you have is so precious that you absolutely have to prioritize it really well. Do material flipping, but look for deals below 60% dbmarket first. You can sell these for 80%dbmarket which means you get your gold back WAY faster, and you’re still getting a great profit margin. Eventually you can afford to invest at 80 and flip to 100%, but you do need to have at least 40k gold available for that to make sense.
2×4 farming is great to get capital
2×4 farming is great as it does not require any setup, generates loads of materials that will sell quickly and has no barriers to entry. It can also be combined with crafting professions as it does not require you to have any gathering professions. If I did the challenge again i would do more 2×4 early on to generate a surplus and then possibly go into crafting later on.

in an announcement shared on reddit

Hey guys, just letting you know that I just pushed new versions of my spreadsheet with all the new 8.2 recipes. If you use the google sheet you have to make your own copy under File -> make a copy. You will also have to re-authorize the import script for the data import.

You can always find the correct links on my blog at: https://thelazygoldmaker.com/battle-for-azeroth-spreadsheet

What did you learn from a gold-making challenge you started? What would you differently if you tried again? Will you try a challenge now with these lessons?Mobile Auction House/u/sircool69 recently returned to WoW and started a discussion on what a potential new AH app would look like

So I've been a WoW gold-maker for a good while now and I was sad to see the mobile auction house go and be replaced by glorified world quest trackers. Now that i see that blizzard are taking a much more “mobile oriented” approach to games cough diablo cough I think its high time that we get a dedicated WoW AH on our phones.

Now the old mobile auction house was great with allowing us to auto under cut items and select the amount of stacks to sell as well as collecting gold while away from wow but I feel that if they where to make a new AH app they should make some improvements.

First change I would make is the ability to see a graph of the price of the item you are selling when you press on it. I know there are sites that do this like TUJ and I would not want them to go out of business so maybe blizz could partner with them. Secondly I would like to be able to set up a notification system for buy/sell orders. So the way I envision this working is you select an item on the auction house and tell the app “Send a me a notification if this item drops in value by 10%” or “notify me if this item gains 15% value” and allow the user to customize the percentage per item. Lastly i would like to be able to set up groups for mass posting/buying like TSM.

/u/GoldGobblinGoblin discusses the argument that it would allow too many people to compete

Opening the AH to more people makes a more healthy/true market. The whole scripting exploit is an issue and I agree that isn't fair, but everyone complaining about more competition I think is ridiculous and just lazy. If there's an opportunity to make money, more people and competition will always be drawn to it, then the opportunity passes and you move on. That is the true gold making game in my opinion. It's not just exploiting a market system without buy orders and monopolizing items at key times. Idk, Yea it'd be nice if we were all the only goblins on our server, but that's just not realistic and even on high pop you can still make tons of gold with the volume.

Maybe I'm biased because I used the mobile AH to make millions in legion and miss the ability to occasionally post auctions on breaks at work.

Auction Notifier for World of WarcraftDo you miss the AH mobile app for WoW? What would you have a new app do if one was introduced? How do you operate as a gold-maker outside of the game today?Further Reading/r/woweconomy subredditDiscord serverstreaming live on Twitch@GumdropsEU

Comment by gumby760No mobile auction house!Comment by KaiteirThis post got me excited that maybe the mobile AH was coming back when i read the title...

fooled again....../cryComment by AislarThis post got me excited that maybe the mobile AH was coming back when i read the title...

fooled again....../cryComment by jblosunit wasn't possible at the time to manage your entire AH operations through the appComment by hobbidaggyI miss that Auction House....Comment by SaithieIt was so easy and convenient for me to use mobile AH that with it's absence I barely visit in-game AH to sell. The mobile interface was smooth and easy to use when the in-game one takes a lot of space, does not have many features so you have to install addons to use it at all.Comment by aviectusGkinda clickbaity as i clicked the link believing there were news about the Mobile AH ;-( ./angryComment by Fixi100% clickbait - i wasn't really interested in the rest of the article and was bummed that the AH stuff was just a rehash of what it already is: deadComment by baldie80I would honestly rather the AH app not make a return. As much as I like to make a profit on the AH and all that, when I'm away from the game I'd rather honestly be away from the game! I rarely even use the mission App as it is for that very reason. I enjoy my time in WoW, but I don't want it to be something that takes over every waking moment.

I also feel that the true Goblins in WoW are already so many miles ahead of the average player that giving them a tool like this isn't a good idea. I am admittedly a middle-Goblin, making most of my profits in the margin between "traditional" players and gold-making players. I don't use TSM, but I do understand markets and how to find niches. I generally don't farm, but balance my limited play time between pursuing gold and enjoying the content. I've been funding my subscription this way almost since Tokens were introduced, and I think a new Auction App would put the squeeze on folks like myself. Ultimately, the economy can only bear the load of so many Goblins, and an AH App will give the dedicated gold maker even more power to make profits. Profits that have to come from somewhere!