Altos "How To" Guide- Manipulate the AH to get Epic Results

I have hit on this before, but not in complete detail. Well, here you go folks. This style of AH PvP is hated by some, as I am sure to get some blast on my comments for covering this....

This is in fact a two part post combined into one. Since Cata, I have seen this example happen on almost every "farmable" mat that is used in crafting, and have used this style of PvP with almost every one of them. Mysterious Fortune Cards is a biggie. Volatiles, Gems, Leather, and Ore/Herbs are heavy hitters too. Enough chit-chat, lets get this goin, right?

First off, check your AH. You can do it many ways, but the best is using the Auctionator Buy tab. Go to my "Recent" searches (like my jacked MFC twice in a row? lol) and in this example, I am using Volatile Life. Be prepared in some markets to do a hefty investment (in this case around 3300g). The reason I focus on Volatiles for this is they are a quick sale, everyone and their grandma are snatching these up all times of the day. So I am warning you to be weary of what markets you do this with, as I prefer the ones with the quick flip like I mentioned above. Next.

See the 7.99g posts?

There are 8 stacks of 1, 2 stacks of 200, then it goes to 10g with two stacks of 1. Total around 3300g investment. Buy em all up. Got me? You are looking for the "big break". 8g to 13g is a 5g profit per sale, correct? And how many did I just buy? 400ish? So really, I am looking at a near 2K profit on this "flip". But I bring it a bit farther. Why do you ask? Read on, young grasshopper....

Click on the SS above, and study it, then come back. "What are you doing Alto?", "You are already undercutting yourself!". Yeah, you are right. But no, not in all senses of the term. You see, Volatile Life is used by a few different profs. And really, you need multiples. Not just one. When crafters purchase these from the AH, they buy bulk. I would go into why, but it would take too long. Trust me. You have already and made a ton of gold from my advice, why stop now?

Now I know your next question. "Why are you only listing half of what you bought, and why in 50 stacks?" The 50 stack reason is due to my answer above. If someone needs 36 to craft XX item, they will buy 50 and have extra. Why? Because to buy 36 in the example above, they would have to click 12 times to buy the stacks of three below me. We all know we make more gold from the lazy people. One click versus twelve clicks? We win. =) The second part of your question is....wait. I answered the second part first. Thanks for correcting me. The "first" part of your question was why am I listing half right now....that is twofold. One, you create a false sense of "rarity" of the item. Two, well, in this case, I was planning on being on for a few to prospect and mill, so I would have easy access to the AH when they sell. And if I saw no movement in 20 min or so, I would double back, check to see undercut, and change my gameplan.

So, I post my 4 stacks of 50, tap the button for a fresh AH scan, go downstairs to put a load in the wash, go out back, smoke a stogie (thanks to a twitter post by CbC earlier, I broke out a Cohiba, went on the porch, and watched the snow melt for a few minutes). I come back to see that my four sold. So I repost the other four stacks of 50, do my Auctionator scan now, and go to finish my stogie. I come back, and this is what I see:

Ok. Add that up quick. 3737.5g is on it's way to my mailbox. 250 outta the 400 sold, and I have already made a 400 gold profit. Now I am writing this post around midnight, and havent logged back in yet to check, but I can guarantee they sold, for another 2200g in sales. So if you wanna see it as a 2600g profit for a few minutes work, then I am gonna have to agree with you. Not too shabby, huh?

Now this is not server dependent. You can run multiple markets with this idea, and even go further and "bully" with this style of AH PvP. So when your niche market is slowing, search around and do a test run. Remember, I know my markets, along with the ebb and flow. You might not want to risk this, as certain markets will seriously stress you out if you toss some gold at it and see no returns right away.
I can guarantee if you see the same screen above on your server, follow my steps, you will succeed. Well, unless you are on my server, you won't see this too often, unless I miss it.... =(

Now I need something from you. Tweet me, Follow me, Digg me, whatever all those little circles are up there. If you have one of those accounts, get my blog out there. I am not asking you to buy anything, just shout out to your WoW friends. It took me about about an hour and a half to write this post and make it all pretty for you to read, I imagine you can take 10 seconds to do this for me. See how easy that was?

And to all those that are filling up my inbox the last few days, know that the emails do not go unnoticed, and I enjoy reading what you have to say! Thanks again, and always feel free to contact me or ask questions in comments below.

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Alto vs. OreCrusher- "The Death Match"

Ore Crusher. It is a fairly new addon, so I figured to test it out a few days back (a blog hit on it, but I can't recall who or where I saw it- if it was you, holler in comments please so I can give you credit. *Edit- It was over at Trading With Zoxy- OreCrusher- Prospecting Addon). As I was writing this, midway through I took a break to read up on blogging, and Smudger did a post on his blog, The Warcraft Corner (and I hope you check it out if you haven't yet). He mentioned that he isn't a big fan of spreadsheets, and this addon basically does all the manual work of the ones that are out there. After using it myself, I was amazed at how quick it worked, and I love anything that can shave time off my daily "ritual". Can you blame me?

Now for all you folks that have been doing this shuffle for quite some time, you already have a good idea of the gold that can be made, and estimate your profit, correct? If you answered kinda, we are in the same boat....

Using this addon (or the spreadsheet that is floating out in the blogosphere, Stede at Venture LLT has a great one) takes 100% of the guesswork out of your profits, if you sell the uncuts, if you vendor, if you craft and D/E, if you transmute to Shadowspirit Diamonds, what-have-you.

Here is the addon. Not much to do, other than to enter in your cost, your # of stacks, then click "Do It". That's it. You are done. Total time, 2 seconds. Now there is a catch, you have to have your AH scan up to date. Either Auctioneer or Auctionator is fine, just do a scan and it will use the most recent information available. Ez peezie, right? 

Now for the main gunk of my post. I had to find out how accurate it is to real-time. Now we are all aware that to get an accurate number is extremely tough, especially when Blizz has the "drops" or "procs" of prospecting is all based off random numbers (or RNG), so I can understand where this can be off, but I wanted to see how far off it is. Now this is not meant to hate on the program (I can only imagine how tough it is to program something like that, and how much time was invested), I just want to know how accurate it is. So here goes:

For my comparison, I used the magic number, 100. Not that it can disappear, or pull a rabbit out of it's hat, but just because it works. And just in case, I did it twice. Two seperate sets of 100 stacks prospected. Now you are probably thinking that's quite a bit, it must have taken a long time. Well, I was surprised when I timed it.....

100 stacks. Almost 23 minutes. Now it seemed like an hour, but it wasn't. So, I got a screenie, got a count, and started fresh with a new 100 stacks for Test 2.

 Here are my results:

ROUND ONE

Dream Emerald: 4

Ocean Sapphire: 9

Inferno Ruby: 7

Demonseye: 3

Amber Jewel: 3

Ember Topaz: 7

Jasper: 91

Zephyrite: 103

Carnelian: 101

Nightstone: 97

Alicite: 106

Hessonite: 103

601 Greens

33 Blues

Now this is very close with what I have been estimating, 6 greens per stack, and 1 blue per three stacks. So nothing new here, and extremely close, give or take a few greens. So far, so good. 1st round, I call it a tie, what about you?

ROUND 2

Dream Emerald: 2

Ocean Sapphire: 7

Inferno Ruby: 5

Demonseye: 8

Amber Jewel: 3

Ember Topaz: 9

Jasper: 96

Zephyrite: 111

Carnelian: 80

Nightstone: 98

Alicite: 110

Hessonite: 104

599 Greens

34 Blues

Damn. Still extremely accurate. Now I am not necessarily looking at the exact amounts "here and there" for the greens or blues, but just going off the overall numbers. I am extremely surprised how close blizzard has this random number thing down. Fairly even across the board. Once again, I feel that round two is a tie as well.

Now I also did a comparison with the D/E'ing side of OreCrusher, and it was basically a tie as well, however I only compared Carnelian Spikes and Jasper Rings, so it wasn't a "complete" competition, so I cannot judge, however.....you guessed it, very close.

*Edit- Kammler, from Kammler's Korner updated some info in the comments below (to read his whole comment, check below):

"Also, the projected number of crafted items is not visible, and neither is the raw gem data except on the main page. For example, the data I just generated for 10 stacks of Obsidium suggests 9.6 Carnelian and 9.6 Jasper. The Transmute button says I should expect 6 Greater Celestials from the Carnelian Spikes (at a rate not disclosed per unit) for a total of 284g, and 2.8 Hypnotic Dusts (again, rate not shown) for 19.60g. Now I know the Carnelian Spikes take 3 gems each so I should produce 3 total. But it isn't shown in the data. It would be helpful to determine "what if" I sold the DE mats from two units at a high enough rate to get that return--then I could bank the extra 3 Carnelians for later.

Similarly, the Jasper Rings show a predicted 10.8 Hypnotic Dusts (total only, 75.6g) and 1.2 Greater Celestials (total only, 56.88g). I know it takes 1 Jasper per ring so that must be based on 9.6 rings. But the totals are not shown so I can't run any other models--its all based on the lowest price listed in the AH."

Now only one area that I seen was WAY off, the transmute Shadowspirit Diamonds....(I am sorry to say I did not get a screenie of the addon's estimate, but it was 74. I ended up with 64. Now that is a 2500g difference. Out of the 30 I did, only 4 procced as 3's, the rest were 2's. And yes, I am transmute spec, so I will be trying it again to see if proc's get more on my side...). With this round, we are about 15ish percent off. But I won't hate, because I think that I had bad luck there.

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Overall, this addon comes highly recommended if you are looking for an estimate of what prospecting will give you (at least for Obsidium- I cannot speak for the others). Now after adding and subtracting, I saw that there was just shy of 1200ish gold difference on the price it listed (for just uncut) between the two rounds, but 10ish percent is still close in my book, and it beats guessing.....this addon is definitely staying in my bag of tricks. If you prospect, I imagine this will be of assistance to you as well. Ok, now for some questions for you reading this...

Are you using this addon? What do you think? Are you as happy as I am with the results?

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