Hall of Fame – 1 Million Gold Cap Club: Asyncritus of Bronzebeard-EU

The Warcraft Econ Hall of Fame interviews the few elite players that have hit the World of Warcraft gold cap of 999,999 gold 99 silver 99 copper as well as ones who have obtain 500k and 250k. We have with us, Asyncritus of Bronzebeard-EU, who will be sharing their story with us today.

Please tell us a little about yourself and your gaming experience.

My main character is called Asyncritus, I am an alliance shadow priest raiding in a 25man guild called Serenity on Bronzebeard EU. Most of my gold has been made through my level one gnome who is too small to be anything other than anonymous! He is however very nicely dressed as befits a gnome who has earnt 1,000,000 gold. In real life I am an older gamer who was brought up with D&D games like Baldurs Gate etc. I also work full-time as a doctor and manage some time with the wife and kids. I started WoW back in vanilla times and did manage to raid a bit in MC, AQ and ZG etc for about 6 months prior to TBC arriving. I raided a lot more in TBC eventually chasing server firsts for Illidan etc. I have continued to raid throughout WotLK and into Cataclysm although at a more relaxed pace. We are currently 1/7 in 25man Firelands.

Do you raid or PvP most? Both? How do you enjoy the game?

My main enjoyment from the game is big raids, I love the challenge of getting 25 people from all over Europe and South Africa working as a team to defeat encounters. My in-game hobby is making gold.

Why did you choose to collect this amount of gold?

Probably about a year ago I was browsing some WoW sites and stumbled across Stokpiles blog. The style of writing and the obvious enjoyment and skill he brought to gold making and wow-economics really caught my interest. Once I had learnt about the ‘Gold Cap’ it became a challenge I had to try and reach. I made my first gold cap (back then 214k) after about 6 months of slowly learning about the AH, add-on management and professions.

How did you go about getting to this gold amount? Any creative or original ideas?

How did I go about it?  Thats a good question because looking back it seems quite hard to recall what I did and when. I think I started off with 2 level 80 characters, my hunter with skinning/LW and my main with at the time herb/tailoring. Now any good goblin will tell you that they are not ideal combinations. The first thing I did once I had assessed my starting point – about 60k across 5 alts – was to drop herbing and level enchanting. My priest immediately got a better raiding perk with ring enchants, and I was better placed to start making gold. My first business strategy was buying up cheap greens/blues and DEing to sell mats. This became boring rather quickly! Turning the mats into scrolls was the next step and worked well except I was frustrated to find I was often quickly undercut and my scrolls where not selling. I was doing everything manually with the standard AH and professions UI at this time. I installed Auctioneer which helped.

During WotLK I also leveled 3 other characters to 80 and maxed out their professions. I put herb/mining on my druid – instant flight form is just fantastic for picking nodes. I didnt really spend much time farming but doing quests and dailies etc you can pick up a lot of stuff. My warlock has transmute spec alchemy and tailoring – was good for the extra cloth cooldowns and I wanted to be able to make my own pots for raiding. I also leveled a DK, initially just for fun to see the new class but also with Jewelcrafting and then Blacksmithing.
At some point during the autumn of 2010, I cant recall exactly, I discovered AuctionProfitMaster. This revolutionised my AH business. I was able to cancel and re-list much faster and with much higher volume. Once I had this set up I started to expand my markets, slowly at first but then increasing the volume once I had tested them out. By the start of 2011 and I was dealing in enchanting scrolls, mostly WotLK but a few niche TBC ones. Tailoring epics and bags, leg armors, mining bags, LW epics and BS epics. Side lines included transmuted cut epic gems – I didnt have many patterns, and belt buckles.

Much like everyone else I was pretty bored with WotLK, we had killed everything except Arthas on 25man Heroic by the time the expansion ended so a hobby of making gold helped keep me interested in logging on each day.

With Cataclysm approaching I scaled down my AH routine and prepared for leveling. In the first few days I sold everything I picked up, or used it to level my professions. I was a bit slow maxing my professions out so I missed the first wave of sales of raid entry gear and item enhancements. I picked up materials in my own time and at prices I felt comfortable with rather than rushing so I didnt dip into my gold pile too much. Once market prices stabilised I quickly maxed out my professions and started to use them. A nice increase in profits came in 4.1 when profession recipes where available from trainers rather than just the Twighlight Highlands vendors. This allowed me to fully utilise my blacksmith which had only leveled to 81 from the daily JC quest.

I am afraid there is nothing very creative or original in any of this. It is mostly a steady progression of building a business with commonsense coupled with reading a few blogs and implementing the ideas from them into my servers markets.

What is your master list?

*Cataclysm enchanting scrolls – with the exception of a few frequently used by profession leveling guides that are almost always available below mats cost on the AH.
*TBC scrolls, mainly Agility on hands, cloak and the top end weapon enchants.
*Enchanting pet.

*Gems – Mainly red, purple and orange cut rare gems. PvP gems are a good market especially since 4.2.
*Jewelery – Procced blue Jewelry from the shuffle and the new PvP jewelry.

*Tailoring – profession bags, PvP sets and a few spellthreads. I have mostly been stockpiling dreamcloth the last few months.

*Leather/mail – all PvP sets where items are above mats cost. Leg armors, mining bags and a few armor patches.

*Blacksmithing – Enchanting rods from TBC onwards, Buckles, DPS plate PvP sets.

You will notice there are a few ‘popular’ gold making items I dont sell. I have never bothered flying around places picking up pets and recipes and I dont have inscription on any character for Darkmoon Cards, Glyphs or Fortune Cards.

What items are in your Snatch list?

I buy raw ingredients mostly but to save time will now buy some enchanting mats rather than spend ages making my own.
so – Volatiles (except earth – I get most of that from prospecting pyrite),
Savage Leather (and a small ammount of Borean Leather),
Obsidian/Elementium/Pyrite ore, small ammounts of TBC ore for enchanting rods.
Embercloth.

How did you learn to do it? Anyone or resource you would like to thank?

Over the last year I have found and read many great gold blogs but the ones I bookmarked and returned to are Stokpile and Gevlon (The Greedy Goblin). The others are often intersting and offer little bits of advice but these are the two sources I have most enjoyed.

What addons, if any, do you use to help you make gold and why are they needed?

Auctioneer – to keep a track of market prices and to enable quick buying of large volumes of materials. I can often spend 5-10k on materials in a morning before going to work.
APM – now updated to TradeSkillMaster but I still use the old one. This allows quick posting and cancelling of my auctions with my predetermined price thresholds.
Panda – a simple crafting interface addon which I mainly use for DE/Enchanting and prospecting.

Are you still going for more gold? If so, do you have a new goal? Are you close?

Hitting a million will do for now. I will no doubt keep the basics of my routine going but I will probably devote a bit more time to playing my alts and maybe collect a few more achievements on my priest. I suspect the total will tick up slowly unless some serious competition occurs. I have a fairly streamlined operation which doesn’t require a lot of daily maintainance.

Do many people know you have this amount of gold?

My guild know my ‘hobby’ is making gold but only a few knew I was at this level. I am sure they all will now.

Did you spend your gold on fun things? What have you bought? What things would you like to buy?

I get a cold sweat when I think how much I have spent on some vanity items! I bought a music box near the end of WotLK for 30k, 2 Haunted Momentos (because my banker needs one too), a few pets, some Troll Dice, a motorcycle and the vendor/repair mammoth. I also spent quite a bit buying BoE raiding epics, I found it easier and faster to make gold than to grind DKP for raid drops. I am fairly free about setting Seafood Feasts for guild raids aslong as I can find the ingredients on the AH.
For future gold sinks, how about buying a monument in the middle of Stormwind? That would be pretty fun. Maybe the Goblins could engineer a tank for me to PvP in? The thought of all those bubbled paladins being crushed under my tracks, I would happily spend a few 100k for that!

If you were the professor of a gold making 101 college class, what would be some things you would talk about?

The most basic lesson is simple math: Work out the material cost needed to craft an item you think will sell. Add a 5% AH fee and a small profit margin. Look and see if it is selling on the AH at this price or above. If it is – make some, be prepared to cancel and relist a few times. Add up your new gold. Once you have mastered this you can start to scale up your crafting operation and start to diversify but this is the basic premise of all profession based gold making.

How about an advanced gold making class?

Advanced gold making is about volume and diversification. Expand your markets, try out new things using the 101 advice above, if it works, keep doing it and expand some more. You will need some add-ons to make this work but they dont have to be overly complicated to do the job. When you hit a slow patch, go read some blogs and pick up a few new ideas, they might lead you into new markets. Be aware of upcoming patches and READ THE PATCH NOTES! Then think about what the patch notes will mean for your business and plan accordingly.

Do you have good farming strategies or spots?

“Farming is not for free.” I am not sure if it was Stokpile or Gevlon’s blog where I first read this but I certainly agree with it. Hence I am unable to recommend anything farming related that I would ever do. If you really want to farm something, go fish ingredients for Seafood Feasts.

What was the best deal you ever came across?

Nothing really sticks out as being a super-awesome deal. I think one of my most profitable investments was to buy all new the +50 bracer enchants recipes during the slack months before Firelands when they where cheap. Now with the new VP BoE bracers available, I can barely keep enough stock listed.

Do you remember any of your worst deals?

Probably not a deal as such, but I have spent quite a bit of materials using my transmute spec to craft Truegold and now have have about 60 stockpiled. So far there is no sign of increased demand or increasing prices. If the worst happens, I’ll use them to have some stuff crafted for my alts.

What are your future plans with WoW?

I plan to continue playing and raiding, devote a bit more time to my officer role in Serenity, I’ll keep the AH business ticking over but probably spend a bit more time raiding and gearing alts on off nights. I might even PvP, especially if I can buy a tank!

What are you predictions for the future WoW economy?

Inflation will happen. The real value of your gold will drop as there is an increasing ammount of gold in players pockets, and in the economy, from the mountains of new dailies introduced in Firelands. At the start of Cataclysm a 359 BoE epic was selling for 20-30k. Firelands epics are selling for 60-90k. Thats inflation. Your profits need to increase to keep pace with this.

Please tell us a little bit about how you handle your real life finances. What are the differences and similarities with how you do things in WoW?

I am fairly fortunate to have a steady well paid job. Much like my AH business I have a cautious approach to real money such that bills are paid on time and ‘get rich quick’ schemes are avoided. Putting in the time and effort to learn how to do things from basic principles pays in the long run.

Thank you for taking the time to do this interview for Warcraft Econ. Do you have any last words?

Go buy my stuff!