Meet Ohnekase: The Basics, Part 3. Knowledge is Power.

"An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest."
- Benjamin Franklin


Meet Ohnekase.

We have met him before, on two occasions.  He is our level 6 Hunter, who is less poor, but still not overly wealth (but I would say that a gold before level 10 is doing well).


Last week, we talked about the basics of finding the items that might sell, and using the Auction House to sell them.  The Auction House will be the number one way we make our money.  The reason is that, while there is money to had from other sources, the Auction House is player driven.  Vendors will always give you the same amount for your item, regardless of how much of it is around.  They don't really care whether you are selling it or not.  But Players do care.  They need what you are selling.


However, this week, we are going to talk about a skill that will help you no matter what character you have and no matter what you are trying to do with your character.  Today, we are going to be talking about Knowledge.  If you are trying to make money, knowledge can help you decide who and where to try it.  If you are trying to level quickly, there are a lot of tips and tricks out there that WoW doesn't tell you.   That is kind of the reason I am doing these articles.  


Ultimately, whatever I do with this podcast, my goal is to show you how to make gold.  It is also the reason I picked a fresh character on a new server.  The idea of a new character is that it is someone who has nothing to their name.  I want to effectively have this character live the American (or Azerothian, in this case) Dream.  It is possible, and it isn't terribly difficult to make money.


So, now that I am off of  the soapbox, lets get into what exactly I would like to talk about.  Today, I would like to tell you about 2 websites that have a treasure trove of information:  WoWHead and The Undermine Journal.  Then, I would like to touch on the subjects of Addons and one addon in particular which I think can help you as you are trying to make gold:  Auctionator.


Using knowledge


Ok, so let's start with an example of I used the knowledge I had to try and sell something on Ohnekase.


So, to be honest, I tried to sell the Chunk of Boar Meat again and it didn't sell (trust me, items not selling is very common).  That is ok, cause I still got that Linen Cloth I had and sold quite it for a good chunk.  But, when I am out question, how would I have known that Linen would have been worth selling on the AH and not the another item to sell to a vendor (and there are items that are probably more worth it to sell to a vendor)?

Don't Ask Me?  Its the person writing the column
who is talking right now?

So, when I found the Linen Cloth, I can go to www.wowhead.com .  There, I looked up Linen Cloth and looked at what it is used for?  It is used for Tailoring and First Aid, so I can try and keep and look at the Auction House later.

If I wanted to see if it is useful on the Auction House, The Undermine Journal can show me the prices and the average price of the item, as well as what is on the Auction House.  And I didn't even have to go look it up myself.

So, lets take a look at each piece specifically.

Using WoWhead.

Well, seeing as how Ohnekase is in Stormwind (you can do similar things in Orgrimmar too), let's take a stroll around and see if there is anything that players could use that we can get here.

First off, why don't we head west, out of the trade district and across the bridge.

Huh, Cordellls Enchanting.  I suppose they are as good as any other

We will try this store first and see what they have.  This is the enchanting trainer and supplier.  Let's see what they have.

Ok, so... what does all this do?

Ok, so now we have a list of items that are sold by the merchant, and a few of them are even only sold in small quantities.  Why don't we check out a few of these items on WoWhead first and lets see what they do.

So, first things first, let's go to www.wowhead.com

www.wowhead.com

Ok, so right now, I have 2 things.  One, I can see some information below on new information about the next upcoming patch (which also is good information, but you can look into that later).  Above, though, it has a text field that I can put anything in there I want and it can tell me about it.  So lets put in "Strange Dust" into the text box and....

Well, it knows what we want, so lets click into it:

It gives us all of the information on the Strange Dust.  It will tell us who sells in (in case it works well for us), what it disenchant's from (which is a product of "Enchanting), What it is a "Reagent" for (what is it used in making) and any other comments that the readers of the site have to offer.  In addition, a newer feature is that it also has a "Buyout Price" listed for it in the top-right corner.  The average buyout price there is the Average of what it estimates it will go for on the Auction House.

One other nice feature is that nearly everything here is clickable.  Want to find the First guy on the list that sells it, click on his name and it can take you to his page, with information on him.  It is also not restricted to silly little things like items and people.  Need quest help, you can type in the quest and it will have some information on it.

This site is amazing.  I could go on and on and on about this site and its uses.  However, let's get back to items.  This item we know is used for something, and if we believe this "Buyout Price" thing it has, the 7 silver, 60 copper price they want us to pay for these, seems less than the 50 silver that we might be able to get it.  So lets buy that, and while we are at it, lets look at this other item "Lesser Magic Essence"

So, looking at this site, it looks like Lesser Magic Essence is also used in Enchanting.  Also, it looks like the 80 silver price they are telling us is better than the 7 Silver we can buy it for.  So let's buy that too.

I just spent 30 Silver, but any one of these items sells for close to the wowhead site is telling us, we can make a profit.

The Undermine Journal

So, Wowhead has that field that tells us a relative buyout price on the Auction House, but that only gives us a ballpark figure.  We don't know exactly what it is selling for on our server's Auction House.  But theunderminejournal.com does (within about an hour).

Theunderminejournal.com

This site contains auction information on every single US Realm Site (And some EU Realms).  This particular site can give you a treasure trove of economic information on any item you want to know about.  Is it helpful for questing?  Probably not.  Is it helpful for selling items?  Absolutely.

So, lets use the items have and get some information about them on our server specifically.

So, first, lets select our server.

For Ohnekase, it is Deathwing Alliance Side

Ok, so this is what we should be looking at.  Below are some articles from various gold-making blog sites.  Again, these are great tools and I would highly recommend them.  However, one thing that isn't always great about them is a lot of them are written as though you are 85, which we are trying not to be.

However, what we are interested in is the top part.  Above it has 2 neat things.  First is that it has an Item/Seller search.  This is nice if you want to find out specific information about an item.  I can also help us later out if we run into some competition from someone and we want to take a look at what they are selling as well.  Very handy indeed.

The second feature it has, is in its automatic lists.  It will tell you about specific profession items, companion pets, and various other helpful things.  Clicking on on of these sub-tabs will give us some information about specific items with all the basic information on each (price, average cost, etc.)

However, while the automatic lists are cool, lets take a look at just a basic item search, so we can get an idea of how to use it.

So, to get information about our Strange Dust we have, lets go ahead and type "Strange dust" into the Item search text box.

Ok, so I posted all three of these screen to show you the massive amount of information on something as simple as this item.  Just this one item we have basic stats, we have a graph showing its price rises and falls, we have information on when it is posted, we have a graph of the comparisons between this and other servers, and we even have what is posted at the moment, and by whom.  And remember, that is just one item, we can do this with any item.


Sorry, I just can't gush enough about this site, cause it really is very handy.  It gets even better if you register a name on here (using a gmail or twitter or whatnot), cause you can sign up (I believe you will have to pay for it soon) for notification on when an item is below a certain price, or when someone posts, or you can set it up to *mostly* tell you when you what has actually sold (which is a nice feature).


So, lets use the information to see if our Strange Dust is worth selling and what it sells for.

It looks like it is lowest selling for 48 silver and 50 copper.,  the next one up 48 silver 75 copper.  So lets try posting something up for that

So, that is up too, notice that my Chunk of Boar Meat is still up.  :(. 


Addons and Auctionator


Ok, so we have information that we can get information from another site.  But while we are leveling and into our grove, we dont want to go check these other sites.  They might be great just before we are going to put it up on the Auction House, but really...

Addons are amazing tools to help with this (and just about anything else you would like them to do, just short of playing the game for you).  So, I would like to get an addon to help me know about what items will go for so I can find out information about an item without having to leave the game.


Auctionator can do just that.  Plus it can help make our Auction House a little more managable to use (in my opinion).


To install an Addon, here is how you do it.


1) Go to an addon site (I personally use www.curse.com)
2) On Curse, click WoW Addons
3) Type in the name of the Addon are looking for.
4) Make sure it supports the version you are looking at, and make sure it doesn't have weird installation instructions (Auctionator should not)
5) If not, go ahead and Download it (Click the Download button, than the "Manual Installation"
6) Unzip the folder and make sure you put it into the World of Warcraft Folder (specifically, in World of Warcraft/Interface/Addons folder)
7) When you log in, it should automatically be enabled.  You can double check this with the "Addons" button in the character selection screen.


So, theoritically, you have the addon installed, so lets go ahead an enable Auctionator on my system.


Done, now lets look at the auction screen and see what is different.

Ok, so the first thing I like about Auctionator is that it doesn't actually change the Base Auction House Interface.  So (for me if it rare, but...) if you want to actually look at something in the base Auction House, you can.


What it does do, is adds 3 more tabs that can give you extra information.  Lets check the Buy, Sell, and More... Tab.


Buy Tab

OK, so what does the buy tab do?  Simply put, it has a better organization for items if you are looking at buying them.  Rather than showing you just a list of the individual items and such, it stacks them up, so it can give you more information.


For an example, lets say we wanted to buy some Linen Cloth and search them both ways.

Basic UI Time

Auctionator Buy Tab 1

Auctionator Buy Tab 2

Ok, so the Basic search tab gives me both "Bolts of Linen Cloth" and "Linen Cloth" on it, and it has just one individual item.  The "Buy" Tab of Auctionator does this differently.  First, it gives us a choice of what item we are looking for (screen 1).  Then, when we click into Linen Cloth (Screen 2) it will show us the Linen.  But, rather than individual listings, it shows us them in a stacked manner.  I can now see everything that is on the Auction house, and I can see how much they are going for per item.  So if I am buying in some form of bulk, I can buy it as cheap as I need to.

Sell Tab

So, what I like about the sell tab of Auctionator, more than the Default UI is that the Sell tab will give us information about what is already up, and it will help undercut auctions automatically (if you want it to).

So, lets go ahead and post the "Lesser Cosmic Essence" that we bought.

TIP:  To put it up to post, you can either click the item, then click the Auctionator window, or you can ALT+Click on the item.

So, this will give us what is already up on the Auction House.  In this case, there isn't much, so its information may not be good.  However, notice that what is selected, it automatically undercuts by a small amount.  If I wanted to just be quick and just post it, it has already undercut the lowest bid (or any other bid I select) and I can just post it.  I can also change the stack size and the number of stacks, like the default UI, and I can change the duration.  This would be why I likes these a lot.

Full Scan and information from it...

So, if you look at the top right, there are two buttons:  "Full Scan" and "Options".  Options should be fairly obvious what it does, but honestly, I haven't needed to mess with the options much., which is kinda nice.

The "Full Scan"  Button will scan the auction house and store it for you, so you can get the information automatically on your items.

Lets check it out on a before and after.

First, I am going to go grab an item.  Maria Lumere has some Herbs that is used in Herbalism (Check Wowhead to find out where she is and what else she has ;).  So, we bought a Mageroyal.

Here is what the Full Scan adds to the tooltip.

Before

The Scan

After the Scan

So, now I have an easy update to my tooltip which can make searching through stuff easier.

If you would like more information about Auctionator (cause there is quite a bit more information, i just gave you the basics), search around in google, or you can check out http://www.powerwordgold.net/2011/08/auction-basics-auctionator-and.html

Gold Blogs

So, you can call this self-serving if you want, but I thought I should at least mention blogs as a great way to get knowledge.  The reason is simple:  Gold Blogs are an example of people who are sharing the knowledge that they have gained.  Personally, I know that I have used gold blogs a lot to gain some of the knowledge of gold making.

The few I have attached to my site are well written and interesting gold blogging sites.  They may not have only low level tips, but the tips are still nice.  In addition, I know that there is some discussion on other gold making addons.  They are definintely worth checking out.

You are learning, young grasshopper

So, all of these tools are just that:  tools.  They cannot immediately make 1 million gold.  But they can make it a lot easier.  Play around with these sites and mods.  Learn what they can do.  I have been playing this game fairly consistently since the game came out, and I reference these sites and read the gold blogs quite often.  They have helped too.

So, now I feel like a few of the basics have been covered, which is good.  So, next week, we will start looking into using professions to make us some money while we are actually playing the game.  Specifically, next, we will start with the Skinning profession and see what it can do for us.

Thank you for reading and...

See ya next time....


PS:  So, I did sell my Lesser Magic Essence.  Which means that I am now rocking 4 gold.