Knitten's Kittens: 2014

Ju got me into a group for finishing up our Glory of the Thundering Raider achievement - needed the Overcharged Conduits part of Lei Shen on Knitours (Bouncing Bolts on Alter and Knitten)... and they already had tanks - so I got to be a failcat. A few people didn't really know the strat (including the tanks), at least not in the roles they were in... but after a few tries and some coaching (and yelling... run for the post, run for the post run run run; here's a tip for dealing with his bump in P2; here's how you deal with the blue swirlies... etc), we managed to get him down. Yay!

Also, after failtanking the first couple pulls of Garrosh (I've killed him how many times now? (tonight was the 4th) and died to stupid stuff in P1? bah), we killed Garrosh with our regular PU guild, and we both got our heirlooms :) Woot.

Levelling gems is not a fast goldmaking strategy. I don't claim to be the best at it. However, it doesn't take a lot of capital to get started, it doesn't take a max-level jewelcrafter, and it's *steady* once you've got some inventory. Since starting to use TSM, it's my highest overall income source (too bad I didn't start using TSM when most of my gold was coming from leatherworking, I'd like to see how they stack up against each other). I am not a power gold maker, I don't make gold *fast*, but I'm not badly off either (currently at about 650k on my main server, it'd be higher if I hadn't bought two fancy yaks (for me and my BF), some TCG pets, a couple mounts off BMAH... :P)

I first started on Elune-EU Alliance (medium FR realm), using an idea from Raenboe's short-lived blog . When I moved to Suramar (medium-low FR realm), I started it up, and found it worked just as well there. This is my main server. Suramar was recently connected to another server (less than 2 weeks ago) prices seem to be holding and sales seem to be up - I'll reevaluate that in a couple weeks. I let the Elune market go when I transferred my JC to Suramar. Around the time 5.4 dropped, I started on Dalaran Horde (also medium FR realm - higher pop than Elune, but ally > horde) with a level 40-something character I already had there (I gave her JC at that point), because I wanted a Depleted Kyprium Rocket, and my BF has an engineer on that realm that could make it but not enough gold. The 40-something character started out at about 1k gold and a couple battle ptes; both BF and I now have the rocket (supplemented slightly by those battle pet sales and flipping herbs), that character is now 54 (yay DMF and holidays) and I'm staying in that market for battlepet buying (prices there tend to be lower than on Suramar). About a week ago, I dusted off my bank alt on Elune, and have started resetting prices there - someone's selling TCG pets for relatively cheap, if only I can get the gold before they sell off! :P

I'm not very scientific about how I set my gem prices; I started out using Auctionator historical data, and set my starting prices at "higher than that" (Auctionator saves lowest price seen). I now have a pretty good feel for what Suramar's market will take; Dalaran is pretty similar (with a few gems that sell much higher or much lower) and I'm starting Elune at my Suramar prices. I sell in stacks of 5, as Raenboe suggested, and it seems to work well. Every couple of months, I go through my sales data, and bump gems up or down between pricing groups as needed. Every 3-4 months, I try to use Wowprospector to evaluate my low-threshold prices and ore buy prices and make sure that I'm still profitable, but a lot of my inventory also comes from buying out cheap auctions. I buy out auctions under about 50% of my usual sales price; this varies by gem (slow sellers or gems I've got too much stock on I will only buy the ridiculously underpriced, and some gems I'll buy as many as I can get because I know I'll be able to sell for more eventually).

One thing I have learned - you CANNOT use Wowuction or realm/region average prices to set your gem prices except as a backup measure to keep your TSM operations happy. The prices people will pay is a lot higher than the region averages; unless you have someone like me who's taken over the levelling gems market, the prices are set by random people selling stuff they've picked up, so the prices are low. On Suramar and Dalaran, my TSM auctioning operations are set to a percentage of my avgsell and the realm market value with a region market value thrown in as a backup just in case, but my prices are pretty much always higher (sometimes significantly higher) than the region prices. On Elune, where I've just started back up, I'm currently using Auctionator to place all my auctions mostly by hand; hopefully in a couple weeks I'll be able to use TSM to automate the process.

Every ore has some gems that sell well for higher prices, some gems that sell well at medium prices, and some gems that don't seem to sell well no matter how low you go (so I aim at medium prices since that doesn't seem to slow the sales down any). Those last gems I also occasionally vendor or send back to the JC for crafting and then to my enchanter for disenchanting when my stock gets too much for me to handle (probably not very gold-efficient, but at that point, I want the things *gone*). Standard disclaimer: you have to find the prices that work for you on your server.

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Specifics. I will put my Suramar average sales price (rounded) in after each gem, and only mention the gem in the lowest level ore it can be prospected out of. I look at this prospecting chart a lot; someday I need to be unlazy and figure out how to get Excel to do what Wowprospector does with less hassle. On Dalaran, for the most part, gems sell within 1 price bracket (up or down) of my Suramar prices with a couple of outliers that I'm too lazy to go look up. I have TSM groups set up in roughly 5-g brackets that use 120% avgsell as part of the operation forumla on the theory that over time, this will automatically creep my prices up without me having to do much about it.

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Copper: Tigerseye (2-4g (though my highest sale was apparently 10g)) doesn't sell as well as Malachite (3-5g). Shadowgem (17g) sells very well. I aggressively buy out Malachite and Shadowgem.

Tin: Lesser Moonstone (2-4g) doesn't sell as fast as you can prospect it (i.e., sells well, but if you're getting most of your inventory from prospecting, you'll have too much). Aquamarine (17g) sells for reasonable prices, but not fast. Moss Agate (35g) is not possible to have too much inventory (hmmm should raise that price). Jade (40g) and Citrine (24g) sell better than Aquamarine in general. It's really easy to get too much inventory of Aquamarine and Citrine (see note below).

Iron: Star Ruby (42g) is your friend, it's one of my best sellers (with Shadowgem). I don't buy much Iron though; I prefer Tin and Thorium (but Mithril tends to be a lot cheaper than Thorium, so I end up with too much Aquamarine and Citrine, and I swear the Blue Sapphire prospect rate is higher than what's in the chart).

Mithril: Azerothian Diamond (38g) sells very well, but not quite as well as Star Ruby. When you can sell Blue Sapphire (24g), it goes for a decent price, but it's hard to sell a lot of it (it's only used in 2 recipes, and I surmise they're not good levelling recipes); I always have too much stock and I've pretty much quit buying out low priced auctions. It doesn't seem to sell faster if I drop the price. Large Opal (30g) and Huge Emerald (34g) sell ok.

Thorium: Blood Garnet (17g), Flame Spessarite (13g), Deep Peridot (28g), Azure Moonstone (19g), Shadow Draenite (25g). Golden Draenite (78g, highest sale 95g) is used for magic carpets... price that baby high (and consider selling in stacks of 4, which is what the carpet recipe wants).

Fel Iron: I mostly vendor the rare quality gems. I try them out again occasionally to see, but they don't seem to sell very fast, or for enough more than their vendor price to make it worth it. This is true for all rare quality gems except (obviously) Pandaria ones and Monarch Topaz (Cobalt, Saronite, Titanium). If I'm feeling industrious, I cut the gems first for the slightly higher vendor price.

Adamantite: Adamantite Powder (63g) sells like hotcakes in stacks of 5. I should probably try an experiment where I sell in stacks of 4 (which is what Mercurial Adamantite needs).

Cobalt Ore: None of the gems is very special, they sell reasonably well. Bloodstone (13g), Huge Citrine (13g), Sun Crystal (18g), Dark Jade (9g), Chalcedony (14g), Shadow Crystal (7g). Monarch Topaz is used in the other flying carpet recipe, also in 4. I only just figured this out a couple weeks ago; I swear I sold some in the same price range as Golden Draenite, but I can't find the record in my TSM.

Titanium: Titanium Powder (45g) seems to sell reasonably well, but I don't buy enough titanium to be sure. Epic quality gems I treat like rares.

Obsidum Ore: For some reason Nightstone (28g) seems to always be in short supply. Carnelian (8g), Jasper (23g), Hessionite (14g), Zephyrite (12g), Alicite (15g)

Pyrite: Volatile Earth happens too. I don't sell a lot of it because I don't buy a lot of pyrite.

Misc: Black Diamond can be used to level JC, among other things; sells for around 10-12g.
The various pearls will mostly sell for 5-10g, some a bit higher.
Arcane Crystal (12g) I think probably sells for higher than I think it does, but I don't have it in stock very often. I'm not actually sure it's JC mat... but it's in with my JC groups so good enough for me.