More than likely Tailors saw the grass so green in other professions such as Inscriptions or Jewlcrafting and switched.   Chances are the lack of complaints were due to the fact that players had another profession to generate income and didn’t care.  Maybe Blizzard just overlooked the fact that Tailoring is turning into Engineering (less the cool toys?)

Sure there were some positives, just like every other profession at the start of an expansion, a free leg enchant is nice.   But each profession balances and scales over time.   As a Profession-a-holic,   I really feel like this may have been the profession most untended to in WoTLK.   I say this because if you’re going to remove the cool down to Transmute Titanium,    why not reduce the cool down on specialty cloth to 1 day. 

A reduction in the CD will not cause a price drop in the specialty cloth in the Auction House, the cost of materials is the primary driver.    If you change the cool down and reduce the amount of specialty cloth you need for the starter epic items, you’ll be able to increase the demand for that cloth.  As a result you may actually raise the price for specialty cloth but in contrast you’ll see the price for the items crafted with that cloth decrease.

For example, I have a mage that I’m casually leveling to 80 on the side.   When I get to 80 I’m still not inclined to fork up 1000 gold to pick up the 3 piece Spellweave crafted items,  I mean there’s not even a set bonus.   If the price for that set was between 500 to 600 gold I’d say sure why not, but I’m not dumping 1K gold for a 3 i200 level items with some many places in WoTLK to grab gear even if I’m still wearing blues, I can chain Trials of the Chamipons, hit the 5 mans and pick up i245 level gear.  I won’t wear that gear long enough to justify a 1000 gold investment, it’s not must have gear to access content like it was in TBC.

What do you think?

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The original release of WoW to many is called vanilla WoW, where the level cap was 60 and we all ran around Azeroth farming materials.   Some of those vanilla materials offer a far greater return for your farming time, if you don’t mind kicking it old school, you can make yourself a tidy profit pretty quickly.

The reason these materials still find is a demand can be categorized as (a) yes, people are still just starting to play the game  (b) creating new alts or (c) changing professions.  The latter is pretty common, right now I’m torn on dropping tailoring on my main (separate story on that later) and perhaps grabbing inscriptions.  After the break, we’ll talk about some materials that provide some pretty surprising returns for you farming time or might be good spec buys during the week for that AH Day Trader.

I’m going to quote some amounts that are related to my server,  mileage can vary so check your local realm but crafting professions seem to suffer from a price choke point in the 250 – 300 range and key items below that.   Think back to the last profession you leveled from zero after TBC, didn’t you go AH and cringe when you saw the price of something you could farm but just didn’t feel like going all the way over there so you paid what you thought was an outrageous price?  Well what made you cringe is also your opportunity, take a look at just a short list below.

Thorium Bar / Thorium Ore – Requirements in Blacksmithing, Jewlcrafting & Engineering, a few loops around Winterspring, Silithus or the Plaguelands during the week can tuck up to 1000 gold each weekend.  During the weekend these peek in price at 90G per stack on my server.

Mithril Bar / Mithril Bar – If you’re traveling around for some Thorium, you’re bound to grab some Mithril,  consistently seeing highs of 50G to 60G a stack depending on availability.

Mageweave Cloth – You’d expect Runecloth to be the bottleneck item but the fact is most people will run through a Strat or Scholo and quickly grab all the stacks they need to level a profession.  Step it down a notch to Mageweave as seems to have a higher demand since fewer people bother to farm the 40-50 level instances like BRD, Uldaman, Zul Farrack or Sunken Temple.

Illusion Dust – The demand for illusion dust has been constant, a constant home run if you don’t mind farming some old content.   Try hitting up Dire Maul or a Combination Strat Live/Undead, you are sure to walk out with a pretty descent pile materials and Illusion Dust seems to pull down 50G to 60G a stack regularly for me.

Greater Eternal Essence – If you don’t end up with Illusion dust from farming efforts listed above,  the alternative are Eternal Essences.  Greaters go for 10G to 15G and the demand is pretty much constant.

Huge Emeralds – According to one of my favorite leveling guiles and I’m sure a favorite of many is wow-professions.com and you’ll note there is a requirement for a whopping 24 of these according to this site to get your JC to 300.   There is always someone who decided the grass is greener and I’ve seen these going for as much as 40G to 50G each.

Golden Rods - I’m continued to be amazed that I can craft a half dozen of these each Friday and watch them disappear for a solid 50G each.   So yes there’s even something a Blacksmith can do to turn a tidy profit in the Auction House in our Vanilla WoW hot list.

Briarthorn –  This is very much a low level mat used in Inscription and Alchemy,  It continues to amaze me at seeing these priced out at 60G per stack but it proves the point that scattered around Vanilla WoW,  we’ve got some great ROI for time spent farming.

CONCLUSION: The point is it never hurts to go back and check markets on materials in your profession.   Vanilla farming is a change of pace,  a good fallback if you no longer making the returns you want for your current gold making venture and it’s also something to do besides just standing around and adding to the Dalalag problem.

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Enchanting markets are always sensitive to ebbs and flows from doing the content.   Increasing content or reasons to revisit content create inventories of items that can be disenchanted.   Tailors with a passive ability to obtain more cloth drops will also see bags start to fill up as well.  We’ll tear it down to the nuts and bolts after the break.

Patch Note Changes: (Downward Market Pressure)

• Additional 5-man content.
• Cross Realm LFG – allows players run more 5 man / 5 man heroics.  Greatly improving functionality of the existing service.
• Additional emblem awards for running 5-mans
• Auto-disenchant features will allow for more items turned into enchanting materials.

Positive Effects (Upward Market Pressure)

• Icewing Citadel with a dozen bosses,  enchanting materials will most certainly be in demand.

After accounting for the pro’s and con’s here it’s obvious there will be more negative forces at work on the enchanting and frostweave.  

I don’t think anyone is too terribly upset about frostweave prices lowering,  it’s already dirt cheap and a little lower is not going to make anyone’s bottom line cringe.  I would say it may be worthwhile to move any Frostweave you may just have sitting around now though.  Tailors also may want to keep an eye on the price.  About a week after the patch,  Frostweave should start dropping in price and probably see an opportunity to craft items to disenchant for a tidy return. 

As far as enchanting mats are concerned,   I think we’re going to see more materials available pushing down some prices so if you’ve been thinking about moving inventory doing so sooner rather than later might be a good idea.   My main is an enchanter and I keep a good bit of inventory on hand for the Alt’s, I’ll probably push some inventory into AH right at the start of Patch 3.3 but I think the negative forces here will certainly weigh down the value of Enchanting materials as the 5 mans get hit like it’s nobody’s business in search of badges to round out some gear for Icecrown 10/25.

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