WoW Economy Weekly Wrap-Up: Battle for Azeroth Data Mining, Expansion Prep, RAF Changes, Blogs & Giveaway!

Live Posted 2018/01/27 at 10:57 AM by Gumdrops

check out the previous articles right here on cuckhead.comGumdrops/r/woweconomy subredditDiscord serverTradeSkillMastercheck out the full Wowhead.com BfA datamining hub for the full coverage

NEW Allows a Blacksmith to make basic weapons and armor up to a maximum potential skill of 100. Requires stone and metal found with the mining skill.

NEW Allows a Blacksmith to make basic weapons and armor up to a maximum potential skill of 75. Requires stone and metal found with the mining skill.

NEW Allows a Blacksmith to make basic weapons and armor up to a maximum potential skill of 300. Requires stone and metal found with the mining skill.

NEW Allows a Blacksmith to make basic weapons and armor up to a maximum potential skill of 100. Requires stone and metal found with the mining skill.


BFA Skill Up Ranks	Live Skill Up Ranks

The new materials for most professions have been datamined albeit some unnamed. - zone herbs, enchanting materials and ore.Hardened Tempest HideReckles with WTBGoldAlchemySilas' Sphere of TransmutationPotion of ReplenishmentBlacksmithingKhaz'gorian Smithing HammerMonelite OrePlatinum OreStorm Silver OreEnchantingVeiled CrystalGloom DustGlove enchants are coming back tooEnchant Gloves - Kul Tiran CraftingEngineeringElectroshock Mount MotivatorPotion of Soul PurityInscriptionContractsTome of the Quiet MindRiverbudStar MossAkunda's BiteWinter's KissSiren's PollenSea StalkJewelcraftingNatant RubelliteKraken's EyeGolden BerylRubelliteKubilineSolstoneViridiumKyaniteLeatherworkingShimmerscale Diving SuitShimmerscale Diving HelmetTailoringPet - Hot Air Balloon (DNT)Embroidered Deep Sea BagBregVidsWhat excites you about the upcoming expansion professions? Is there anything that you would like to see added in addition to what has already been datamined? Will you be kitting out your characters with 32 slot bags as soon as they're available?new/u/olioli86 asks when is the best time to level up a profession in an expansion on the /r/woweconomy subreddit

I'm intrigued what people think about this. Early in an expansion you have massive prices on materials, so leveling a profession to max costs a lot. When successful though, the top level crafts can sell for big money. Do you plough money in early and try to be first on your server, or do you wait a couple of months till people have hit level cap, mats are cheaper and there is a bit more competition?

/u/StuffMcStuffington echoes my thoughts

I personally thing it depends on the kind of capital you end up having at the beginning of an expansion. If you have enough you can skill up quicker and make a profit quicker since you can buy the mats. Possibly getting in early when shuffling is very profitable. If you don't have enough capital honestly mid to late expansion aren't bad times as during the middle things are selling still pretty well and mats are cheaper. Later on you may have people buying things up to finish collections but you also have usually the cheapest mats which lets you get to the max skill level and be prepared for next expansion where you may have enough capital to start out early and make some early money.

as /u/taolan explains

If you are not at max now, wait until the end of Legion when it is cheapest. Then, you can use that to start easier. It's recommend only picking a craft/farm pair per char so as you level you can get the mats cheaper. So, Herb/Alch or JC/Mining. This way you can support your own profession cheaper as you level to 120. Whatever you need when you hit 120 you can finish on AH if you want. Also, the start doesn't need to be the 1st week, prices will remain pretty high probably until patch 8.1. Also, if you really want to make EASY gold, level up a herb/miner first and just sell those mats. If you like farming especially, this is a no-brainer as prices are going to be crazy high for mats at the start for the few people who just want to power level their professions. Sure, there is more gold to be made crafting, but more investment and effort.

/u/Eriennyl asks about preparation between expansions

I'm not a veteran goblin from like vanilla days that sort, only started end WoD and now end Legion. I'm really interested to know what kept the motivation between the end of expansion until the next expansion.

What I mean is, while the expansion is active .. I'll usually try to anticipate markets like raids, new pets, transmog, mats in general that's gonna rise in demand, etc stuff like that. But coming to an end of the expansion .. I'm not really sure what to anticipate or rather, do I just lie low and make passive income from order halls? I'm a semi-altholic with 8 alts .. But what else is there to do?

So my question is, aside from doing some long term crafts like MoP stuff - sky golem, panthers, transmutes. What kept you going? Do you take a break after banking in on tokens/balance or is there something to look forward to?

/u/Ex_iledd shares their outlook regarding identifying markets and items to take forward beyond Legion

I try and think about what things from the current expansion that are sort of easy to come by now won't be in the future. An obvious example is the Steelbound Harness mount from Blacksmithing. Costs 50 Blood of Sargeras and a bunch of other mats to make. I imagine people aren't going to be out farming Blood of Sargeras in the next expansion. Most people aren't going to have lots of it on a single character let alone one that is a blacksmith AND has the recipe from Nighthold. So that mount is going to inevitably going to rise in value.

Another one is the battle pet Hungering Claw from the Kosumoth the Hungering daily. Lasts two weeks I think, decently long set up to even get the world quest. No guarantee it'll even spawn the next week. Could be the mount, could be gold, could be the pet, etc. It's really cheap now, that too will go up in price.

I personally sell alot of mog so I'm going to be stocking up on felslate and other trading goods. Legion 850 stuff uses alot of materials compared to previous expansions.

Those are two examples off the top of my head, I'm sure there's more.

What are you doing to prepare for the launch of BfA as a gold-maker? Are you investing in anything that will sell long in to the future of the next expansion? Which professions are you focusing on and why?

Blizzard

Recruit-A-Friend Changes in Full

The XP boost has been reduced from 200% bonus to 50% bonus*, effective today, January 22, 2018.
If you’re already actively participating in the program, fear not! If you either sent or received an invite before the change went into effect today, once the invite is accepted you and your friend will still receive triple XP* (200% XP bonus) until the link between your accounts expires (90 days from the date the new recruit’s account was first created). Please note: RAF invites expire after seven days.
Heirloom gear XP bonuses will no longer stack with the RAF boost (i.e., the maximum XP boost you will see from today onwards is 50%). If you were already on the program, Heirloom gear will still stack.
All other rewards are unchanged and yours to enjoy:

Summon your friend once every 30 minutes.
10% bonus reputation from kills that grant reputation.*
Level granting: for every two levels your friend gains while the accounts are linked, they can grant one level to one of your characters.
Recruiter rewards, including game time and epic mounts.

*For a full list of the rewards and the in-game criteria for receiving them, visit our RAF In-Game Bonuses page.

/u/francismcd explains

I decided to set up a new army of alts with Recruit a Friend on the last day of December. Was breezing through leveling in dungeons until patch 7.3.5 hit but had many alts at 90 before the nerf.

The last few days, I've been leveling characters on a different server and got the first set of them to 90 and a few more to 46 (so they can boost to 90). But it was noticeably slower than before, took almost 24 hours /played to get from 15-90 using a combination of leveling zones and dungeons, instead of 2 hours 15- 2 hours 30 for 46, it takes more than 5. This is with heirlooms too.

I'm relieved this new nerf doesn't hit me at all. You would think, however, that Blizzard would boost RAF to level 100 at this point. But they still want to sell those boosts I suppose.

Blizzard

Thanks for the feedback and thoughts so far.

The Refer-A-Friend system is intended as an option for players who want to invite a friend to play WoW with them and experience the game together. When it was first introduced, we gave it a hefty bonus to experience gain as a way for both players to reach endgame content as quickly as possible.

Nowadays, purchasing the latest WoW expansion includes a free character boost, so the need to rush your friend to max level is no longer there; you can jump into the latest content with your friend right away. This meant that the only players who were using the Refer-A-Friend system in its intended way – leveling alongside their friend – were those who had decided that they wanted to experience that content together. We realized that, for those players, the 300% XP bonus was a disservice; we were cutting that shared experience short by making them finish it far too quickly.

Now, we certainly recognize that the majority of people using the Refer-A-Friend system before these changes were doing so in order to level alts quickly. If anything, we take that as a strong indication that the system needed to change: the best method to level a character in WoW shouldn’t be “buy a new copy of the game, put it on a separate account, send it a Refer-A-Friend invite, level a new character, and then transfer that character to your primary account when you’re finished.” That’s messy, at best.

That said, we’re certainly taking the feedback about the rate of leveling alts into account as we move forward with the game’s development. We’ve been happy with the changes so far, but if leveling is too slow, we’d rather address that in the game itself than have Refer-A-Friend be some kind of bizarre workaround to an outstanding issue.

giving an XP bonus based on the number of max-level characters you haveincreasing the XP bonus for heirloomsDo you already have an active RAF account? Were you planning to RAF a new or another account before the changes were announced? If you set up a RAF after the changes, what do you think about the leveling rates?very active on Twitter sharing gold-making tips and advicelaunched her own gold-making blog

Since I began posting about my goldmaking on Twitter, the question I’ve been asked the most is about how I make my gold. So I thought, for my 1st ever blog post, I would give a brief overview of what I craft, what I flip and anything else I do to make gold.

Disclaimer: The following crafts/methods are what work for me on my realm and may not be profitable for all players on all realms. Check prices on your realm and use your own judgement before investing.

Crafting

Blacksmithing - Relics: You wouldn’t think that i805 relics would sell, but they do and the profit margin can be real nice. I try to keep 2 on the AH most of the time.
Leatherworking - Toys: Legion added 4 toys crafted with Leatherworking. I’ve been selling the Leather Pet Bed but I have not yet got the other 3 recipes (which I just realized 😛 ) so I need to work on that.
Tailoring - Hexweave Bags: Still the most in-demand bags in the game. I get my Sumptuous Fur from trading Garrison Resources and craft when I can for a tidy bit of profit.
Disenchanting Bracers AKA “The Legion Shuffle”: for creating Leylight Shard (and the occasional Chaos Crystal) plus, disenchanting Legion gear also produces the occasional Blood of Sargeras. For this reason I have had Enchanting paired with Blacksmithing, Leatherworking and Tailoring for most of Legion.
Alchemy - Vial of the Sands: A recent addition to my recipe list, this is probably the best-selling crafted mount in the game. The grind to farm this recipe can be brutal due to the double layer of RNG but it is definitely worth it. I like to keep 3-5 on hand when possible.
Jewelcrafting - Obliterating Gems: Since the value of gems began to drop I started obliterating the Red and Green uncut gems. These both average about 64 ash and have been, in my experience, the most reliable and profitable means of crafting Obliterum.
Engineering: Mounts: The Mechano-Hog (Mekgineer's Chopper for the Alliance) and Depleted-Kyparium Rocket Rocket are the main two I keep in stock (up to 5 of each at a time). The Sky Golem is also profitable and sells well but the 30 day daily-craft limitation and the large amount of Living Steel required makes it a much lower priority for me as the Jewelcrafting Panthers are a more profitable use of Living Steel in my experience.
Inscription: Tome of the Tranquil Mind: I sell about 1000 of these every week. On many realms, the profit margin may be very small but I my realm I have been able to maintain a profit of around 30g or more per Tome. Mill Felwort to get the Sallow Pigment to craft these.

Flipping

Raid BoE’s: I only started flipping these with the release of Antorus so any BoE’s items i930 or higher. These have been a really big boost to my sales avg but they are a very expensive investment so not a realistic option if you don’t already have a lot of gold.
Battle Pets: I buy pets under 50% DBRegionMarketAvg and sell for at least 70% DBRegionMarketAvg (they often sell for around 100% or higher) and I do sometimes flip them on multiple realms.
Other High-Value Items: I also keep an eye out for good deals on many other items including Battered Hilt, Sealed Tome of the Lost Legion, Medallion of the Legion, Mounts acquired from Holiday Events and more. My best ever flip was a Wooly White Rhino that I bought for 850k gold and sold for over 1.7mil.

Check out the full blog post for even more tips for each profession and other methods that Jessi uses to make gold./u/TurrPhennirPhan describes coming back to the game and not having any idea on how to get started, finishing with this summary

I've read a lot of the top posts here, and it mostly just makes my head swim. I get the idea of most of it, I just don't know where to start. I'm under the distinct impression I'd probably be doing myself a favor if I made a DH and also used my free 100 boost in order to get some more professions on the table, but I'm clueless to which professions I should be looking into at this point in the expansion (or what class to 100 boost, for that matter!). Honestly, I'm not even sure what advice I'm hoping to get beyond a soft, cooing voice telling me "everything is going to be OK".

Lazy Goldmaker breaks down making that decision

Since your issue seems to be some sort of analysis paralysis and fear of starting, let's look at what you have. It seems you have engineering, blacksmithing and mining available. All of those are professions that have some decent old world recipes that are profitable. Generally speaking when starting out, it is best to focus on high volume markets. You want stuff that sells quickly so you can re-invest and start seeing positive results instantly (you want to create a positive feedback loop in your brain).

Lazy Goldmaker continues

You need to overcome your fear of spending your gold. The easiest way is of to start at a very small scale. Don't spend a lot of gold at once. Just do very small scale stuff, make sure it works and then repeat. This will help you build the necessary confidence and hopefully make some easily recoverable mistakes you can learn from.

Always remember that you can likely just repeat what you did to get to where you are today if something fails. I have sessions where I have spent upwards of 2 million gold across my realms within an hour, without breaking a sweat or even blinking.

Moving to the blog post inspired by this discussion

Let’s look at an example where someone has 100k gold. Professions are leatherworking and Inscription. Here’s how I would go about it:
Craft 5 each of dreadleather bracers and gloves and gravenscale bracers and gloves. This should cost somewhere around 20k, depending on your realm and recipe rank.
Then I would craft 500 Tome of the Tranquil Mind. At the EU median price for Felwort (100 gold) that is a cost of about 25 000 gold.
Next I would spend about 15k crafting Vantus runes for the current raid tier, using whichever milling method that would get me the pigments for the lowest cost.
That would leave me with roughly 40 000 gold and I would spend this on any legion materials I could find below 80 % dbmarket with TradeSkillMaster

Check out the full post for more insight on getting started with gold-making and overcoming the "analysis paralysis".

Note: this giveaway has ended. The winner is Eentje!

Twilight & Luminous Starseeker bundle

To enter: leave a comment below (minimum 1-2 sentences) responding to any of the Discussion Points from this week's post.

Prize: 1 x Twilight & Luminous Starseeker pet and mount bundle.

Entry period: Now until Friday February 2nd at 11:59 PM Pacific.

here/r/woweconomy subredditDiscord serverstreaming live on Twitch@GumdropsEU

12 316

Comment by iosefwardMaxing blacksmithing at the start of an expansion has always been worth it for me. Definitely my plan again this time.Comment by pjuffzor>Tailoring - Hexweave Bags: Still the most in-demand bags in the game. I get my Sumptuous Fur from trading Garrison Resources and craft when I can for a tidy bit of profit.

Too bad that this won't be worth to do in BFA.Comment by CyrisaIm really glad theyre changing professions to make it a little bit easier to level. However, I'm annoyed that you still cant really make any money off of them.Comment by Sp33deyThe change of the RAF-system is okay in my opinion. The system was too strong for new players and mostly used by veterans. I enjoy levelling more now and am hyped to level up the new allied races. I don't need boosting and refer-a-friend for that, because I want to play the game.Comment by szombatibalu7What excites you about the upcoming expansion professions? Is there anything that you would like to see added in addition to what has already been datamined?Enchanted ChickenComment by SquirePipIm really glad theyre changing professions to make it a little bit easier to level. However, I'm annoyed that you still cant really make any money off of them.Comment by BeanieMakes me wonder how big the bags will get before they are too big? Seriously though how much stuff do you need to carry about with you? and who really needs all that stuff in the bank?

Ok yes, it's me I admit I'm a hoarder of useless stuff and my bank is full of old sentimental junk and things that might come in useful :)Comment by voidoxThe profession changes look interesting for sure. Though I've yet to really start prep for next xpac in terms of professions. Though I am stocking up on legion mats like blood of sarg and such~

As for the RAF changes, sure I can understand the logic behind the change but for sure alters/vets need SOMETHING to level up faster. It's not fair to make things so slow for everyone, not everyone is a "new player" and some of us just want some alts to level.Comment by SquirePipLooking forward to Potion of Soul Purity, just hoping it doesn't require Goblin Engineering and is open to all EngineersComment by Camio3495Im really glad theyre changing professions to make it a little bit easier to level. However, I'm annoyed that you still cant really make any money off of them.P.S.Comment by RodroRLZI really dislike the RAF changes, idk what to think about the professions skills squishComment by natyarafdnRaF changes does not surprise me at all. Blizzard is a company of course they want to make more money from game time and boosts. Their statement has some logic but I don't think that's the real concern.Comment by Bloodvalor21I'm ok with the RAF changes mainly cause I never used the system anyway. My concern was with the leveling process becoming much slower for veteran players like me who has seen the content numerous times. Blizz did acknowledge that and expressd a desire to fix it ingame. That's good enough for me. Huge fan of significantly increasing XP gain from heirlooms btw.Comment by pilgrimzIt's not the change to RAF itself that bothers me but how disingenuous and condescending their response is, and how much what they DON'T say speaks of the real motive behind this. First there's this whole "we're doing it because this is what you really want" shtick with leveling too quickly with friends - how about giving me the option to switch the triple XP on or off? Some friends want to level quickly and some don't, how does it make sense to state that forcing one thing is bad while forcing the other instead? Then there's their referencing the free boost - when was the last time anyone used RAF to help their friend level ONE single character to max? Even when I was RAFed years ago we leveled 3 alts, so I'd have a variety of roles and playstyles to try current content with and so I could decide which one I want to main. Of course the elephant in the room here is that, with the nerfs, if you want to do exactly that, you're buying the other max level characters at $60 a pop. The fact they do their best NOT to mention that this is now the only new alternative, coupled with my points above, does not fill me with great confidence regarding their reasoning. I know people are quick to jump on the GREEDY! accusation, but nothing they've said or not said makes me think of any other explanation.Comment by HannahlianneRegarding, Steelbound Harness, I haven't gotten the recipe and the good chance it'll go up in price in the near future means i should buy one now. :O Or get the recipe but I never see NIghthold pugs at this time :CComment by ArrayaPretty interesting to see the new 32 slot bag. Makes me wonder if they'll keep increasing their size or if there will be a point where they say "stop".Comment by WeeMadAggieI can't believe I'm still raking in gold on Pandaria veggies but here we are. If it wasn't so dull I'd be farming veggies on all my alts at this point.Comment by CysgodiWhat are you doing to prepare for the launch of BfA as a gold-maker? Are you investing in anything that will sell long in to the future of the next expansion? Which professions are you focusing on and why?Comment by CoffinboffinI'm not a goblin at all, but when I saw that there were no larger bags in Legion, I started levelling tailor alts. I've now 10 tailors in total, churning out 100 Hexweave Bags in total every 5 weeks, for absolutely no outlay whatsoever, thanks to Garrison Resources. I can't believe how well the price has held up, actually increasing now ppl are re-experiencing the old levelling zones. Those bags, added to gold from order hall missions and emissaries and stuff has resulted in a 4 million profit in the last 12 months. Good job, as I was 1 million down by that point, buying everything I needed to make raid consumables, just for myself, lol. Anyway, just my way of saying that you don't need to be a gold-maker to make gold, just keep your eyes peeled for what is and isn't gonna be in the next expac and pick something you know ppl will still want. Granted, we're never gonna get lucky enough again to have Garrison Resources giving us free mats, but there's ways and means out there for anyone to accrue a tidy nest-egg :)Comment by k3nshiro2for me always work gathering and alchemy i love at the beging to farm mining and herbalism and sell them at ah then before release of normal hc raid spam ah with flasks food etc.

12 316