Meet Ohnekase: Making the Grade, Part 2. The Shuffle.

Meet Ohnekase.

Earthen Ring, US

We have met before.  Last week, he began his journey, done a little bit of questing, and put some auctions  up.  He has been applying the tricks of his parent's trade over the past week (a little each day).  I decided not to do specifics.  Instead, lets see what he has sold, and then I will give you a tip that he has been using all week.

Sales of the last week.

So, after day 1, I ended up selling quite a few things.  My Clam Meat, Copper Bars, Leather, and gems all sold.  But I didn't stop there.  Lets take a look at the items I sold.

In short, Ohnekase has been very busy.  Lets disect this first.  So we sold:

Leather:  The leather sold pretty well.  For what I earned, it was pretty good.  I definitely could keep going on them too.

Cooking mats:  These are usually pretty big sellers.  Boar Meant, Wolf Meat, Small Eggs, and Clam are cooking foods you use from 1 to 75 cooking.  So, this is definitely something to always keep a look on.  Cooking mats sell, that is all there is to it.

Dust and Essence:  We have talked about it before and every single one of those sold for a profit.  I just watched the market and posted them up every time there was profit to be made.  Looks like it did well.

Pets:  I kept up one of each pet up there and look how it went.  I spent 50 silver each for them and definintely made money back there and then some.  I am keeping the pet selling on hand.

Gems:  Gems are usually tricky, but they will still sell.  I have seen them go up and down, but I was still able to unload them as I needed to.

Copper:  I saved this one for last, and for good reason.  This was definitely my primary focus for the last week.  Using copper is the reason that I feel I have been getting so much money.  Now, note that it says that I have made 185 gold from it, but that isn't where I am.  This is the quick tip I want to give for the day.  And for that, we are going to talk about the shuffle.

Shuffling?  Is that like with decks of Cards?


If you ask a gold seller what has been the best tactic for making money in Cataclysm, I would bet that a large portion of them would tell you that it has been the Cataclysm Ore Shuffle.  Lets take a look at a picture of what that exactly entails (I borrowed this from the Consortium Forums, which is a great site for making money).

Ok, so what the heck does this mean?

Basically, we can start with one commodity (which we can get at reasonable or amazing costs), then begin to transform it into other items, all of which end up giving us a lot and lot of profit.  For example, if we follow the top right, Obsidium ore gets prospected into green gems and blue gems, which either become cut blue gems ($$$) or jewelry which we can Disenchant and use those mats....and so on.  Either way, you pretty much can't really lose money from it.

Even better than just full shuffle, you can take pieces of this and make money from it.  For a while, there was a lazy way to do the shuffle, where you just take the ore, prospect, and vendor (at the time, they sold for like 5g).  You didn't need the rest.  It was useful.

I know what you are thinking.  Great, but what the heck does that have to do with copper.

Well, that is what I did this last week.  I sold a lot of copper.  I mean a lot of copper.  But I didn't farm one bit of it after our first post.  Why you ask?

Take a look at this.

So, Copper Bars are 60 silver, Copper Ore is 43 silver.  Which gives us, per unit, a difference of 17 silver.  What this means, in theory, is that I can take 1 copper ore, buy it, turn in into a Copper Bar (1 Ore creates 1 Bar in this case), and put it back up for 60 silver.  Even if I have to put it up a second time and sell it for 55, I can still make profit on it.  Even better, that is for 1 Ore/Bar.  What about 20 ores/bars?  10 silver profit * 20 we 200 silver, or 2 gold.  I can profit 2 gold putting 5 minutes of work into it.  In addition, smelting ore raises my Mining as well, so I get a side bonus there (up to 60 points, you can smelt copper).

So, is it worth it to get 17 silver for no work?  You bet.  And this is just the low level.  You can find price discrepencies across all of your professions.  Are you a skinner leather worker?  I know NerfFaids blog had a point that you can take one type of leather, turn it into another and make a profit (if you choose the right kind of leather, even at 5 of the old leather to 1 new leather, it is possible).

So, my quick tip for the day is look at what you have.  If you use Lil Sparky's Workshop, half of the work is done for it.  It will tell you what the mats cost is for something and how much your auctionhouse database saw it selling for.

Conclusion...


Ok, so this wasn't the most novel post for Ohnekase, but to make the grade, I am pullling out what I can.  I want to crush the 3000 gold limit if I can.  But, it is still a great tip.  Always look at your Auction Houses to see what you can do.  I have seen a number of money making schemes that pay off big.  Heck, before 4.3, there was a way to make a ton of gold off of the Darkmoon Faire using only Dense Stone (which is usually pretty cheap).

Next Week, I think I am going to do some more leveling and see what else we can find.  Hopefully, I will have another tip for you.

So, until then....

See ya next time.