News making the waves across the WoW blogs are discussing a new area where Whiptail nodes seem to constantly respawn and the markets are being flooded with this herb.

If you log onto your server and search for Whiptail you will no doubt see a 15-30% decrease in the price.

Here’s the particular farming spot everyone has been going on about, in Uldum where you can stand in one spot and see 6 different nodes spawning rapidly:

I don’t think blizzard meant for the whiptail buff to be this dramatic, as it has already had large impacts on the WoW economy, some of which I’d like to discuss.

Whiptail Supply Goes Up, All Herb Prices Go Down

Not only does the price of whiptail drop significantly but the price of all other herbs will see a similar drop. Yes there are certain flasks and items that only require whiptail as a regeant but for all items where whiptail is a reageant the total cost to craft that item goes down which also lowers the value of the item and all the other regeants for that item.

Big Impact on Inscription Market

This is a delicate market where herbs dictate the costs of all glyphs and darkmoon cards. Since Whiptail is one of the higher end herbs that yield more inferno ink than the lower end ones it is gauranteed that the price of inferno ink will drop, making it cheaper for darkmoon cards to be made, driving down the prices of all darkmoon card decks.

With prices at 7g per Whiptail I am basically able to my glyphs FOR FREE if I am able to get 150g per inferno ink. Before I assumed my costs were about 35g per glyph so do I lower my threshold now? do I assume my costs will be lower, say 10g per glyph?

Hotfix Patch 4.0.6a Launched

While typing up this post I just noticed that my server was being reset and subsequently MMO-Champion has announced that a new hotfix 4.0.6a is being deployed on servers this morning, if I was a betting man I’d say the whiptail spawning rate is going to be fixed and the markets will normalize.

But will they normalize? since we are still in the expansion where prices continue to decline (albeit at a much slower percentage than in the first few weeks on the expansion) I don’t really foresee prices going back to the 12g per whiptail happening, since the supply of herbs are still somewhat higher than the current demand.

Did you get a chance to farm up lots of whiptail? did you buy out a lot of stock while prices were low? I guess we’ll see if the spawn rate really does get nerfed or if we’ll all have to adjust to this new market with lower herb prices.

I’ve been really grinding out glyphs the last couple days and I’ve noticed a peculiar pattern.

Given that the cost of cataclysm herbs are still inflated it is cheaper in most cases to buy the lower level herbs and craft them manually than to convert blackfallow inks into them.

However one thing I have noticed is that Ethereal Inks seem to be the most common ink in the glyphs that are selling and the herbs required to craft them are in very low supply and highly priced.

Very often I’ll run into situations where I need 150 inks of the sea, 110 ethereal inks and under 50 of the rest of the inks. When I go to purchase the herbs to create ethereal inks I always come across this kind of scenario:

At first glance this may not seem so bad, we are looking for a price of under 3g for each herb (which totals 36g cost to make a glyph, 4g would be 48g) this is displaying the lowest priced herb but when you narrow down to each specific herb list the supply is always very low:

2 auctions at 2g, another 7 at 3g 88s then the price jumps to 5g for 18 more…. on average I am needing around 150 ethereal inks a day which comes out to 600 herbs!

To solve this problem I’ve been using Cata herbs to convert to ethereal inks, it is unfortunate though as I’m able to find all the other lower end herbs for under 2g each usually which makes glyphs cost 24g opposed to the 50g that using cata herbs cost.

The reason I’m posting about this that I think it’s an opportunity as I’m sure most other scribes are running into this same problem, here are some ways you could potentially profit from this:

1) Convert cataclysm herbs into Ethereal Inks and sell on AH:

I am usually against supplying your own competitors with the materials needed to compete against you, however if you can make ethereal inks for about 25g per (when you consider the profit you get from the inferno inks you make with the left overs from milling cata herbs) then you can set a price of say 35g and make a nice profit there.

2) Use your herbalist and farm these following herbs:
dreaming glory
felweed
terocone
ragveil
ancient lichen
mana thistle
netherbloom
nightmare vine

since the average price is above 5g each, which is around the price of Cata herbs, you’ll have less competition and should be able to sell most of your stock.

Many of the changes we’ve seen with cataclysm has already begun to take effect on the wow economy, inks of the sea no longer converting, drop rates for rare recipes higher, and prices mostly plummeting across the board.

One thing that always holds true though at the start of each expansion is the huge demand for the new gathered materials available at game launch. I wrote about this before when WOTLK came out.

Super Inflation of Gathered Materials

Back in the first week of Wrath the price of the new herbs/ore as well as lower level gathered materials shot through the roof:

(screenshots taken from first week of WoTLK)

and as for the Outland herbs/ore that were the top material before WOTLK, there was the opposite effect.. demand lowered and prices dropped:

We’ve already seen most of the price decline occur as players are quickly getting rid of stock, but still expect further price drops.

As for the new herbs and ores introduced in WOTLK, here was the effect:

These screenshots were taken 3 weeks after the release of WOTLK but it tells you a lot.

The price of Tiger Lily’s were around 70-80g/stack in the first couple days of launch, the price dropped almost 300% after 2 weeks! This goes to show that if you can mine/herb fast at the start of the expansion you’ll get top gold right away. As for Cobalt Ore the effect was even higher with prices tanking 400% of the original first weeks value.

The biggest dilemma you’ll have to face is whether you’ll want to use these materials on your profession toons if you’re trying to hit a server first profession to 525. This is my plan but we’ll see what happens on launch day

Have many of you prepared a miner/herbalist or skinning alt specifically for Cataclysm? Gathering incessantly or do a mixture of both gathering and leveling?

It has just been announced on the official wow forums that the drop rate for Frost Lotus has been increased by 50%.

This now means that the drop rate has increased from 5% to 7.5%.

Impact on the Market

Frost Lotus Price

The average price on most servers for frost lotus is typically around 45-65g per. With a 50% increase in drop rate you can expect the price to drop roughly 40%.

A few things to consider with frost lotus is most players farm it to get [x] number of frost lotus to make flasks to supply their raid then they are DONE, they will not continually farm.

This means that the time spent getting frost lotus is reduced by 50% and not so much the supply going up by 50%.

If this was an item that dropped more often from mobs/bosses that would be different since the boss is usually killed the same amount of times before and after a drop increase and the supply increase would match the drop increase, but not in this case.

Price of other Northrend Herbs

You’d think that an increased drop rate in frost lotus price would mean that more players will be going out to farm this, thus MORE Adder’s Tongue, Icethorn, Lichbloom and other Northrend herbs on the auction house = price decrease.

I think that there will be an opposite effect, most herbalists are alchemists and know that their profits lie in frost lotus, 2 of my herb farmers explicitly tell me “Hey, I’ll sell you all my adders/icethorn as I only farm for frost lotus anyways” meaning that they will get frost lotus faster thus LESS extra adder’s/Icethorn that they will post on the auction house.

Prediction: Prices of Icethorn, Adder’s, Lichbloom and other NR herbs will increase. Also more flasks will be made (due to higher sales of flasks at lower price point) which will result in more demand for goldclover and icethorn which are used in flask making.

Sell All Your Frost Lotus Now!

One thing that is for sure is the price of frost lotus will plummet come next Tuesdays maintenance when this goes live. Sell all your frost lotus as soon as possible!

Prices of Flasks will drop

With the decrease in price of the most expensive reagent of flasks you will see a significant price drop. This will not only lower the price and production cost but also I think the demand of flasks will rise a bit for casual raiders at this lower price point.

I say a bit because regular/hardcore raiders will always use flasks, with this lower price point you’ll see more casuals picking it up.

Overall this will decrease the “worth” of gold in the game, seeing as how a major expenditure for the mass population (raiders) is now going down in price and gold will now have less use. Bind on Equip items however will always inflate to “the highest people are willing to pay” so the value of gold still has meaning with rare and high demand items.

Gathering professions are used by many players while leveling or even when just starting out with gold making at level 80 because it doesn’t require any investment, the profits are very immediate and low level materials that you gather are worth a lot.

Gathering professions and buying and selling on the auction house as WoW School shows in their guide is the best way to make gold for anyone under 5k and without a crafting profession. I don’t think any player would dispute that.

It would be ideal if you could combine the two best gathering professions: Herbalism and Mining together but many players do not choose both of these professions on one character as you can only track one profession at a time.

There is a solution, with the use of this gathering macro I found it will automatically switch between Find Minerals and Find Herbs for you every 1.8 seconds and best thing of all it is legal to use in WoW and not against Blizzards ToS agreement. (nothing I post on this site is against the ToS btw)

Gathering Addons

1. Gathermate and Gathermate data – These addons populate your world map and mini map with all the mining and herb nodes. Gathermate data comes preloaded with all the locations already available and is updated very frequently on the curse website.
2. Routes – An amazing addon that figures out the best gathering route by using the gathermate data and creating the shortest path between the nodes. The is an optimization feature to cluster nodes so that you are only travelling the shortest distance between nodes (as it takes into account your range for tracking).
   You can also select which herbs/ore to include or exclude based on what is still giving you skill ups or have insufficient skill to gather from.
3. SexyMaps – I found the routes addon didn’t work with the default blizzard mini map and I found Sexymaps was fully compatible with it, you may need to go into the addon config menu to take off some of the frills and flashy graphics.

Gathering Macro

Here’s what makes it possible to track herbalism and mining at the same time, with this gathering macro you can copy it from a notepad document and paste it into the chat box in WoW. Once executed it will switch between find herbs and find ore until you either quit the game or type /reload ui.

/run local f=AuG or CreateFrame(“Frame”,”AuG”) f.m,f.t=1,0 f:SetScript(“OnUpdate”,function(s,e) f.t=f.t+e if f.t>2.5 and not InCombatLockdown() then f.t=0 f.m=3-f.m SetTracking(f.m) end end) f:Show()

I’m using both herbalism and mining on my newly created Death Knight for my project to hit 10,000g as fast as possible and so far I’ve made 600g from low level herbs in 3 hours of gathering to afford my flying mount to use in Outlands. 200g/hr is pretty good for something a level 20 could do (First level you get a mount). Although you could get around 1,000g/hr as a level 1 follow WoW Schools AH guide.

I also tried the  addon Spotter that also automatically switches between herbalism and mining but I found it would stop after I gathered some materials and I’d have to click the icon again to restart the macro, the macro posted about has worked great.

(Written by Nicholas) (Write for us!)

Herbalism, like mining, has changed in terms of value as a profession. In my opinion as money making professions they do not have the same potential for income generation they once did. For example in the Burning Crusade I could farm Nightmare Vine from Shadowmoon valley and generate around 40-60g a stack. In WotLK this is no longer the case, there is simply too high a supply level and not enough demand now.

I believe that gathering professions on their own are no longer as good a source of income, you have to combine them with crafting professions to maximize the return on your investment of time.

So what does a herbalist do to maximize his/her return with their chosen profession? Unlike mining most of the herbs I have observed on the AH sell at around the same level, around 20g per stack. This includes Lichbloom and Icethorn, which are the current high level herbs for flasks etc. In fact these herbs often sell at less than this and as such don’t always represent the best source of income by simply gathering them to put on the AH.

With this in mind we need to look at the other professions.

Inscription

This provides a couple of outlets for herbs. The Darkmoon cards of the North are of reasonable value, especially the Nobles cards. The others are of lesser value but still provide useful trinkets for less well geared 80′s. The problem I foresee is the constantly updating gear with new patches coming out. These will become dated over time, though they still provide a recurring source of income from newer players and alts.

The inks made from the Northrend herbs can also sell well. Snowfall ink is around 20g per ink on my server, so when the prices of herbs do reach low levels I tend to buy at around 12-15g/stack and have a friend make the inks for me. I have then sold the inks for a profit on the AH as well as having some of the Darkmoon cards made as well. This can provide more of an income than simply selling the herbs when the prices are too low.

One major selling point for Inscription is the vellums, especially Armor/Weapon Vellum III. These are of considerable use for enchanters and are a good way to provide income regularly. I have an enchanter and often I have problems getting these vellums so the demand is there for them. The materials for each are quite inexpensive in comparison to the profits. One vellum III of either type sells for around 10-13g+ each, which is considerably more than the herbs required to make each.

Alchemy

Alchemy provides the best use of herbs in my opinion. The reason for this is simple, it produces a consumable. In other words people have to keep buying more potions/flasks/elixirs when they run out.

The general rule concerning raids is that if you are doing a new raid dungeon you must be using a flask or 2 elixirs. This means that when a new patch comes out you will get good business repeatedly, not just a one off sale as with a glyph or piece of armour. If herb prices are low enough then you can easily buy them, make potions/elixirs and sell them for a profit, hence avoiding trying to sell your herbs lower than is reasonable. If you feel that even the consumables are priced too low, hold on to them till later. You don’t need to sell them immediately, let some of the lower priced stock sell then put them on a day or so later.

During the Burning Crusade I always farmed my herbs during the week and put a load of elixirs on at the weekend and found this to be quite successful. The key point here is to be adaptable, maybe the prices are too low at the weekend, but through the week nights there are raids running and there is less competition. So you would put them on then for a greater profit margin.

Another point that makes alchemy more useful than just selling herbs alone, is the specialization you can have. You can be a master at Potions, Elixirs/flasks or Transmutes. This processes some of the time when you are using alchemy to produce your speciality, thus again increasing your earn for the same materials.

General points

Herbalism on its own can be used for profit but I feel it is better in combination with Alchemy or Inscription for the above reasons. Frost Lotus is possibly the only exception to herb gathering being less profitable on its own, but is a rare drop.

You get Frost Lotus as a rare drop from other Northrend herbs, however you also get it as an individual herb in Wintergrasp and Ulduar. It is one of the few herbs that has sustained a reasonable price. Prices average from 35-45g each and so it is worth selling as there is always a demand for it from Alchemists if you have a few spare.

One overall point to remember is to observe the market as often as possible. Herb prices do fluctuate as with other trade goods, they may be low one day and higher the next. The more you get to know these fluctuations the better you will be at making gold.

Update – Jan 26, 2010 Note: This post is out of date and I’ll be updating it shortly. In the meantime I have written numerous articles for patch 3.3 on Making Gold With Jewelcrafting and Making Gold With Inscription (Which I’ve made 68,000g with so far) which are the 2 best gold making professions currently. Go check them out.

This is purely from the perspective of which professions make the most gold/profit. It does not take into account which professions are best for your class, that article will come in the future.

I really recommend that as you level up you focus on gathering professions, this will give your character income to buy new equipment/enchants and save up for your epic mount. Gathering professions can also be done in unison with leveling whereas crafting will really slow down your journey to level 70.

You have a lot of options in World of Warcraft, you can choose 2 professions out of the following:

- Blacksmithing

- Enchanting

- Engineering

- Leatherworking

- Jewelcrafting

- Tailoring

- Mining

- Herbalism

- Skinning

Along with these 2 professions you can also have all of the secondary professions:

- Cooking

- First Aid

- Fishing

A very common question asked given all of these choices “Which profession makes the most gold?” here’s the simple answer:

“Pick two gathering professions; Mining, Herbalism or Skinning. Sell the raw materials on the auction house and you will make more than any crafting profession.”

Why are these the most profitable professions? It has to do with the economy in World of Warcraft where raw materials sell for more than the finished products that are created from them.

That sounds strange though, why would someone buy raw materials if they couldn’t profit from the end product? The answer my friends is that the majority of crafters buying those materials are trying to power level their professions and will pay absurd prices on materials just so that they can get to skill 375 and make their epic crafting items.

But you still want to craft?

However, crafting is a whole different side of the game that can be fun, I’m not saying a profit cannot be had and if you are the type of person who would rather sell potions, enchant items, and craft gems than fly around looking for flowers to pick then read further.

Here is my top 7 list of professions that earn the most gold:

7. Blacksmithing

- All of the great things created by this class are bind on pick up. Definitely a profession you should only chose if your class can benefit from the higher end weapons that this profession provides, ex. Deep Thunder.

6. Leatherworking

- Also a profession that only provides valuable bop items, no profit to be had from anything crafted here.

5. Engineering

- As is the case with most of these crafting professions the cost of the raw materials are just more valuable than the actual end products that are created. Engineering is expensive to level. From a make money standpoint it is much better to sell any ore mined on the auction house than to craft for a profit.

Ways to make gold: Things people buy from engineers

• • • Scopes: Sniper and Deadly Scope
  • • Deadly Blunderbuss is needed for a quest
  • • Pets: novelty and for fun, this is a game right?
  • • Mithril casing
  • • Fused wiring
  • • Bullets
      

4. Tailoring

- Fantastic profession for casters who are looking for higher end gear before SSC and Black Temple, horrible from a make money stand point. If you specialize in spellcloth or mooncloth make sure to use up your timers as soon as it’s up to make a little bit of a profit back. Bags have so much competition that it’ll usually cost more to buy the materials.

3. Enchanting

- Although very useful for its ring enchants, disenchanting unwanted drops in raids and being the guild enchanter (who gets all the sweet recipes), this money sink is not a get rich quick profession given the rarity of the recipes that people are actually looking for. You’ll end up spending a ton in recipes and get pennies in return via tips.

Ways to make gold: Disenchanting and selling mats on auction house, tips for enchanting other peoples gear.

Class Advantage: Rogues/Druids can go through lower level instances and disenchant the green drops.

2. Jewelcrafting

- If you combine jewelcrafting with mining you’ll have yourself a hell of a good money maker, use the rare gems you find on rich adamantite to create socketed gems, prospect adamantite ore when the prices on the auction house are low and sell the adamantite when the prices are high. Buy up the adamantite and prospect those and sell any rare gems that come from it. Get tips for crafting special gems for others. There are many ways to make money in jewelcrafting and people are constantly switching out gems and getting new equipment that there will always be a demand for jewelcrafters.

1. Alchemy

- Buying herbs off the auction house or gathering them yourself you can make potions to sell which will be your main source of income as all the raiders will need those elixirs and potions to take on the harder content. Has the potential to become the best gold earner if you find the right niche of potions to sell which aren’t overproduced on your server. Try to make friends with some herb gatherers who you can buy all your herbs off for a discounted price, both parties save the auction house cut. Offer to make their potions free of charge if they provide the mats.

Ways to make gold: Selling potions/elixirs, transmutes (primal mights), tips from making potions to people who supply mats.

I will be making guides for each crafting profession individually which will explain how to get the most profit and power level the cheapest.

Want to know the fastest way to earn gold with herbalism if you have an epic mount? Head over to Shadowmoon Valley, turn on your herbalism mineral node finder and follow this route:

Nightmare Vine is one of the most expensive herbs you can sell on the Auction House and given that there is a large abundance of it clumped up in groups in Shadowmoon Valley it makes it well worth your time.

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