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WoW Economy Weekly Wrap-Up: Token Journey, Group Farm Efficiency, plus Flipping Quantity vs Quality

posted 2019/08/03 at 12:59 PM by Gumdrops

check out the previous articles right here on wowhead.comGumdrops/r/woweconomy subredditDiscord serverTradeSkillMasterMethodToken Journeyincredibly detailed post was shared on the subreddit this weekQyuneMy name is Qyune, and some of you may know me from my 12-Class All-The-Things Challenge, where we are trying to collect everything in the game. However, for the month of July, August, and going forward, we will also be including new gold-earning based challenges.

I am writing this as summary of my first 1-month long gold farming challenge and how I made enough gold to buy 9 – 10 WoW Tokens of the course of that time. The goal for this challenge was very simple: I wanted to see if it was feasible for someone to pay for Classic by playing as little time as possible in Retail (using Retail gold to pay for a WoW Token) from the perspective of a person who doesn’t really know much of the gold farming tactics.

About the Challenge

Below is a list of the guidelines I used for such our WoW Token Challenge:

Player has a 110+ character
Player is not familiar with common gold-farming tactics
Player’s character on a low population realm
Farm time is limited to an average of 2 hours per day

The thought process is to simulate a person coming back to play Classic and would like to (or can only) pay with WoW Tokens.Lazy GoldmakerSenzasAdventuresThe first thing we did, was run LFR and Normal MoP raids. This immediately gave us some liquid gold and a few pets to throw on the Auction House for the rest of the month. If I was a player who flipped goods, then this would potentially allow for an entry-level foothold into the economy. And these runs only take about 1-2 hours per week depending on hearthstone location, character level / power / spec, and whether or not a player has flying. Once, we had some gold on us and some pets on the Auction House, then it was all about figuring out what sells on this server! I think if there is a golden paragraph or two of information, then these next few will be it! The idea is that we need to understand what people on this server are interested in buying (or at the very least, not interested in buying). So, the first thing I did was head over to Wintergrasp and farm up some Titanium, Saronite, and all the herbs nearby. I did this for about an hour, then I went and farmed in the Burning Crusade zones for more herbs and ore. And, of course, once done, list those on the Auction House.

So, at this point in the challenge, we have MoP pets, Wrath materials, and BC materials on the Auction House. The next day, when I check my mail, I was met with BC materials having sold. So, at that point, I know exactly what I need to do – go farm replacement BC materials, because I found something that sold! Since, no Wrath materials sold, there was no reason to go back to Wrath content. The next place to go would be Cata zones for more ore and herbs. So, now I have 4 large categories of materials on the Auction House.There's a ton more information in the original post

Tips & Tricks

Diversity cannot be understated. Break things up in every way. Don’t allow yourself to get burned out doing any one thing. Burning out while farming ore and herbs in BfA? Then try farming in BC or Wrath. Tired of gathering altogether? Then run LFR’s. Tired of those two? Then grind mobs for cloth and etc.
Find a way to enjoy the game, then make gold from that. For me, I prefer to make 5 gold in 5 hours doing something I enjoy, rather than make 10 gold in 2 hours doing something I hate. This is meant to be fun, so don’t punish yourself!
Diversity again! Sell in different size stacks. Learn how many of something is needed to make something, and sell in that stack size (especially dailies). And as always, neat stacks of 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 and 200 are nice selling points.
Time of day. I have noticed a massive difference in the amount of materials I farm in the mornings vs afternoons. Furthermore, even in afternoons, there is a significant difference between Tuesday afternoons vs Saturday afternoons.
Know your server. Each server is different. I covered this earlier. Find the gap in your server, and fill it.
Start with profession materials. If you are starting out like me, I would advise against trying to transmog farm (this is all aside from if you actually enjoy doing this, of course). Typically, transmogs (and sometimes pets) are a slower sell even though they can go for quite a bit. I still have pets I picked up from the first day of the challenge. They sell, it can just take time – this overlaps a bit with knowing your server. For beginners, I would advise sticking with gathering professions and progress from there.

Check out Qyune on TwitchWill you fit the category of WoW player that only plays 'modern' WoW to pay for your Token and access Classic? Where would you go first to make gold without using the Auction House to flip items?Group Farming OptimisationsReckles aka WTBGoldrecent videoLAC Champion StudenAlbatroz joined the discussionThis has been an interesting topic ever since group farming became a thing. I personally always tell my boys to loot at 2:00 - 2:15 , really depends on the farm, since mobs do despawn differently. but the biggest factor for me when I've done testing, has been looting time, changes the game completely, do you have druids only? do they have an addon that allows you to skip loot windows? what is the mobs density, if it's good, and the druids have speed sets, it's important to keep in mind that rotating marked spots and looting WHILE killing might be the most optimal way, as druids who kill mobs with speedsets move faster then the flight form, and will keep up the kill/despawn. Get a speed set guys, NOW!https://discordapp.com/invite/8SQMCFchttps://discord.gg/studenalbatrozDo you participate in group farms? What's the most gold you've made from a session of group farming? Which is your favourite farm?Quantity vs Qualitydiscussed in a reddit post this week by /u/HellenKellersMonocleThis is my first post in the woweconomy so bare with me. To give a little background I currently have 2.5 million in gold and if I had to estimate I'd say at least another 1.5 - 2 million in inventory. The selling aspect has really slowed down (I play only the highest pop realms) so while I'm trying to do what "always worked previously" it's starting to slow down and I'm thinking about trying a new way of selling, but it leads me to questions.

Generally when I buy something to flip I try to get the max profits but now I'm getting to the point that I'm not sure of that "sweet spot" when selling and I'm building up tons of stock. Of course ideally to maximize your profit you want to sell for as much as someone is willing to pay, but it seems that this range has become huge and stale. My new thought process is to sell items faster for lower profit, but to go for quantity over quality. Should I just assume if I double my flip I'm good? triple?/u/Ryika discusses this furtherI'd say that's more personal preference than an actual science, and very much depends on your habits, mainly how much time you're spending on sniping. If you snipe for long periods of time, and plan on continuing that, you'll probably want to aim for a lower profit margin, simply because otherwise you'll just build up more and more stock that you'll not be able to sell quickly enough. On the other hand, if you don't snipe a lot, and thus don't build inventory as fast, you might want to aim for higher profit margins. The same is true if you plan to reduce the amount of sniping you do in the future.

What you definitely don't want to do is to have an inventory full of things that lose value over time (or don't gain value slower than the level of inflation does), but I guess that's self-explanatory. In either case, finding the sweet spot between the extremes that works for you is difficult, especially if you're dealing with a lot of different types of items on markets that all behave differently, but I think the main take-away is that is mostly depends on your habits.

When it comes to trade mat flipping, I would say it's all about quantity, with a small profit margin. The drop-offs in available items below a certain sniping threshold and willing buyers above a certain selling price are generally way too significant compared to the quantities that you can ship if you concentrate on moderate profits.what has been said on available play time is true: if you don't have much time to play focus on higher margin deals (BoEs mostly) + the time you're willing to devote in active daily goldmaking will impact the margin % you'll reach for and thus the size of your inventory, and reposting times; depending on how you value your time you might want to always lower the size of your inventory while always making it more valuable continuously; personally I never buy something that I doesn't price at least 3x higher.Do you focus on high volume or high quality flips? How many auctions do you have listed in total? How much time do you spend per day managing your auctions?Further Reading/r/woweconomy subredditDiscord serverstreaming live on Twitch@GumdropsEU

Comments

Comment by DeadMAXWhat a gather from this is that farming for noobs is either gathering, running old raids (in LFR since thats the fastest) or murdering mobs.

...I'm never getting a lot of cash again. :(Comment by QyuneHey guys and girls,

I just wanted to stop by and offer to help any way I can regarding the Token Journey. I will look over the comments from time to time here as well as the original Reddit post. Either way, if you have questions, I will respond.

Good luck!Comment by baldie80I’ve never been much into flipping items as a) I don’t have mulch interest in automating a bunch of stuff through TSM and b) I don’t have the availability to post flips at optimal times.
The idea of exploring LFR’s and old content materials is actually quite appealing, though I know from experience that farming is not something I can maintain for more than 30-45 minutes at a time.
As for Classic and paying for it via BfA, the idea has been in my mind for a while but I have been unsure of the viability. Especially since I am not into flipping, this might be tight. Two hours a day is a lot of play time in my life, but if someone can manage it then more power to them.Comment by SirDougWhat are some add-ons you recommend for someone just starting out and looking to sustain a subscription on WoW tokens? This has been pretty insightful on the how, but I'm sure there are tools to make it 100% efficient .Comment by QyuneThe idea of exploring LFR’s and old content materials is actually quite appealing, though I know from experience that farming is not something I can maintain for more than 30-45 minutes at a time.
As for Classic and paying for it via BfA, the idea has been in my mind for a while but I have been unsure of the viability. Especially since I am not into flipping, this might be tight. Two hours a day is a lot of play time in my life, but if someone can manage it then more power to them.Comment by QyuneWhat are some add-ons you recommend for someone just starting out and looking to sustain a subscription on WoW tokens? This has been pretty insightful on the how, but I'm sure there are tools to make it 100% efficient .

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