Elixir Mastery
Making money with crafting professions has long been thought to be the domain of the lucky few that managed to get hold of rare patterns or recipes. This series of articles will show in detail how you can profit from crafting professions with just normal, trainer or easily acquired recipes. You do not even need to have the crafting professions yourself. A friend or a guildie can serve just as well.
This article will teach you how Alchemy (specifically, Elixir Mastery) can make you rich just by following a few easy steps. Flasks are going to be the item of choice. Of all the Flasks available, 3 of them will usually see the most action:
• Flask of the Frost Wyrm – 1 Frost Lotus, 5 Lichbloom, 5 Icethorn
• Endless Rage Flask – 1 Frost Lotus, 7 Lichbloom, 3 Goldclover
• Stoneblood Flask – 1 Frost Lotus, 7 Lichbloom, 3 Crystallized Life
Before you embark on this money making enterprise, you need to prepare:
1. First do your research. Watch the Frost Lotus, Lichbloom, Icethorn and Goldclover markets during the week, paying special attention to the weekend rush. During the weekend a large number of very casual players come online and – pressed by need and time – dump large stocks of crafting materials on the market at lower prices. They end up undercutting each other and thus drive the prices down, much lower than their normal weekday average.
2. Watch the flask market. You need to know what flasks sell, which are undersupplied, which do not move. In general, Flasks of the Frost Wyrm and Endless Rage Flasks sell best, followed at a distance by Stoneblood Flasks. There is also a small market for Flasks of Distilled Wisdom, but usually it is not worth investing much effort in acquiring the old world mats needed to craft them. Oddly enough the Flask of Pure Mojo sells the worst out of all the Flasks, so do not bother with those unless you find the situation different on your particular server.
3. Find a friendly Elixir Master. Having Alchemy helps a lot of course and cuts this step out of the process, but in general Elixir Mastery is the most common Alchemy Mastery around and you are bound to have a few Masters in your guild.
4. Create an alt and post him near an Auction House. Sell and buy mostly through the alt, that way you can buy and sell to your own guild as well as other players. The second advantage to having a dedicated Auction House character is that you do not need to fill up your main’s mail and bank with the tons of materials and finished products that make up the bulk of your business, nor do you need to travel with your main to capital cities in order to inspect the status of your auctions.
Once all these points have been covered, you are ready to start making gold. The process is extremely simple and all it requires is 20-30 minutes per day. As per your research on herb and flask prices, use the weekend to buy the cheapest Frost Lotuses, Lichbloom, Icethorn and Goldclover stacks off the Auction House. Remember to check the Auction House several times on Sunday and Saturday as most of the time you can snap up half priced herbs before the competition.
Buy the Frost Lotus first! It is the lynchpin of Flask creation, so the number of cheap Frost Lotuses you acquire dictate the number of other herbs you need to buy. Some weeks you might see hundreds on the Auction House, while others you can barely scrape half a stack.
When the weekend is over and your stock is complete, get a hold of your Elixir Master and have him do his thing by turning herbs into flasks. Send the flasks to your alt and post them on the Auction House. The best days to post your flasks are the few weekdays after the raid reset – Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Friday is already a weekend day as far as Auction House activity is concerned.
Caution! Do not post more than a few flasks at a time, preferably in different stacks – 1,2,5,10 – priced slightly lower than the competition (slightly means 1 silver less, not 5 gold). Spamming the market with all your stock at one time will not allow you to properly deal with undercutters.
How It’s Done
Now that the boring theory part is over, there is no better way to show you exactly how this works except by telling you exactly how I did it.
Start funds: 1500 gold – this is not a small sum, but it is one that will suffice for the purpose of showing how much profit you can make with a relatively safe investment.
Weekend purchases:
40 Frost Lotus – 800g - 20g average (30g average during the week)
Lichbloom – 12 stacks – 396g – 33g average (42-45g average during the week)
Icethorn – 5 stacks – 150g – 30g average (38-40g during the week)
Goldclover – 2.25 stacks (45 goldclover) – 22.5g – 10g average (15-20g during the week)
Crystallized Life – 1 Eternal, 5 Crystallized Life – 12g – 8g average (10-11g during the week)
Enchanted Vial – 40 – 32g
Total gold spent – 1412.5g – 87.5g left
I talked a guildie(Elixir Master) into mixing them into: 40 Flasks of the Frost Wyrm – 20 Frost Lotus, 5 stacks of Lichbloom, 5 stacks of Icethorn – 20 Enchanted Vial – due to procs ended up with 48 Flasks of the Frost Wyrm
30 Endless Rage Flasks – 15 Frost Lotus, 5.25 (105) stacks of Lichbloom, 2.25 (45) stacks of Goldclover, 15 Enchanted Vials – due to procs I ended up with 34 Endless Rage Flasks
10 Stoneblood Flasks – 5 Frost Lotus, 1.75 (35) stacks of Lichbloom, 15 Crystallized Life, 5 Enchanted Vials – due to procs ended up with 14 Stoneblood Flasks
Basic weekday prices on my server – 31g per Flask of the Frost Wyrm
28g per Endless Rage Flask
33g per Stoneblood Flask (though the price is higher, there are far fewer tanks purchasing this flask than DPS or healers)
Auctioning all the Flasks on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday completely dried up my stock. I had to let a few go at below than average prices, but even then the profit speaks for itself:
48 Flasks of the Frost Wyrm – 28g average – 1344g
34 Endless Rage Flasks – 25g average – 850g
14 Stoneblood Flasks – 30g average – 420g
Total gold obtained – 2614g
Expenses – 1412.5g
PROFIT – 1201.5G
That’s right, in a single week, just by watching the Auction House 10 minutes a day, I almost doubled my initial investment. Could I have made more? Sure, I could’ve priced my Flasks higher but for this test I really wanted to sell them all rather than be left with a few for the weekend. Also I got somewhat lucky with procs, but even without them I would’ve made 850-900g profit.
This is just one of the ways to easily make money using crafting professions, usually other people’s crafting professions. You do not need rare recipies, you do not need rare materials. All it takes is courage, a little up front cash and a bit of time to monitor your Auction House niche.
Other Auction House forays (for Tailoring, Blacksmithing, Jewelcrafting, Inscription, Enchanting and even other Alchemy Masteries) will follow in other articles.
Conclusion
If you want to learn even more strategies for making a lot of money I recommend you checkout my Gold Guide at
www.wowtycoon.com. It contains 200 pages of pure gold making strategies.
This is the server you got me onto btw... Maybe once the Druid is max level I'll transfer it to your realm to support my Warrior. But only time will tell.
So that will hardly ever happen where I have to make pots for someone else. But selling my Crafts and living of the procs on my mats sounds like a fair deal to me 