Plan B for the 3.1 Economy

Posted by Warcraftecon | April 24, 2009 .

ilevel 200 BOE Epics

While we had never actually wrote much about stockpiling before 3.1, people still did it assuming that it was going to be profitable. Plenty of people wrote or commented on how there were going to stockpile tons of materials in preparation for the new patch, however few writers, like Greedy Goblin, simply came out and said they didn’t know what was going to happen. We are still in the first few weeks of 3.1 so it is still hard to figure out if any of the stockpiled items will go up in price down the line. I believe once these few weeks have passed, we may start seeing normalized prices. Some of us probably still have that small glimmer of hope that our materials related to the new [Runed Orb] recipes will jump in price drastically when they become more accessible by players. I admit to stockpiling a lot of materials myself, however I did have a plan B just in case things didn’t work out. Also I have never been involved much in selling raw materials anyways or buying low priced materials for resale. So why was I stockpiling these raw materials then? Well, just in case these materials did go up in price so much that having a big inventory of it becomes good for personal use and great for profit. Another reason was that I had other uses for these materials through crafting professions. So if something didn’t do so well in 3.1, I could start crafting items with the raw materials for an item with a decent profit margin. However, saving up so many materials may hurt us in the long run due to the falling prices of items. If I had stockpiled some [Eternal Fire] bought at 15g each pre patch and now they have fallen to 10g each, this turns out to be a loss. Even if I used them in a crafting recipes, the profit margin is still going to be lower than if I had just bought them right now for 10g a piece. I guess I just got caught up in all the stockpiling frenzy like everyone else. In hindsight, I should have went back to my old ways of making gold. This involved very little speculation and instead, focused on items that are profitable to produce and sell, also know as your “bread and butter” items. WoWenomics.com had an interesting post about this topic, well written and better than I could explain it. In short, start selling if you can make a decent profit instead of waiting for that perfect day to come.

Below, I have compiled a list of some of the raw materials that I had stockpiled (at least 15 stacks of each) that I had a plan B for. I didn’t really stockpile much else, just about a guild bank tab worth of food, tab of gems/enchanting materials, and that’s it. These items were not bought out on the auction house to stockpile, just crafted and holding on to them till 3.1. Profit on these items ended staying about the same, however they may possibly increase slightly over the next few months.

[Arctic Fur], [Icy Dragonscale], [Nerubian Chitin], [Jormungar Scale], [Heavy Borean Leather]

Almost everyone mentioned they had invested in these items. The reasons seemed obvious, a low supply of this rare leather like [Arctic Fur] combined with an increased demand in 3.1 due to new recipes as well as leg armor kits. We had purchased a lot of [Arctic Fur], but only at less than 50g each. Currently prices are still around 50g but are started to fall towards the 40g mark. Like we said before, the new recipes are hardly in circulation yet so the demand for leather has not changed much. One of the last minute changes on these recipes we noticed was as the addition of [Nerubian Chitin] and [Jormungar Scale] some of the recipes, that’s why we bought them.

Plan B: Using Leatherworking, we can convert this leather into leg armor kits. In most cases, the kits will always cost more than the raw materials making this profitable. Actually we would be selling leg armor kits anyways even if we didn’t decide to stockpile. It just so happens that the materials overlap, making speculation on leather less risky. As for [Icy Dragonscale] and [Jormungar Scale] these were considered low risk due to the fact that we bought them for 1g each with the vendor price being at 1g as well. If they don’t do well in 3.1, they can be vendored for all our money back.

[Eternal Earth], [Eternal Fire], [Eternal Water], [Eternal Air], [Eternal Life]

When I saw eternals at less than 5g, just like at the beginning of Wrath, it was hard not to purchase them. They just seemed like such a good deal in a market that can fluctuate up and down. Most people probably skipped over these items for stockpiling, while some just bought them due to very low prices. Depending on you server, the JC/DE method may still be profitable, so buying up cheap [Eternal Earth] is a good idea. The eternal markets look like they have crashed, with almost all at under 15g and even some down to 3g in my economy. The new recipes do require a few of these, up to 12 on some, but time will tell if they will actually cause prices of eternals to increase. Some of the my speculations were based on what happened in Burning Crusade, when towards the end of that expansion, eternals jumped up to 30-40g each. It does not look that way at the moment, they are at ridiculously low prices.

Plan B: Some of the pre 3.1 recipes still require these eternals. There was speculation that ilevel 200 items were going to be completely useless in this patch. While demand has certainly dropped on crafted BOE epics, they are still selling. This could be for various reason like people returning to the game and trying to progress through Ulduar. So they buy some of these dirt cheap epics to fill in slots that previously had blue or even green items in them. Players may have leveled alts and decided to re-roll just in time for the new raid, needing a fast way to gear up. Some players may be more casual and still progressing through Naxx/OS/EoE, with a new patch comes more reasons to play the game again. Whatever the case, the percent of profit seemed to stayed the same in my case. First months of Wrath, my Leatherworking BOE epics cost around 500g to craft and selling for 1000g on average. This is a 100% profit. Fast forward to now, they cost 150g to craft and sell for 300g. Still the same 100% profit, just less actual gold is being made. This is still not too bad, 150g profit per item sold is decent. They just don’t sell as fast as most items on the market.

Obviously I didn’t have a plan B for everything that I stockpiled. In the end though, when everything sells, it’s still considered profit.

Did any of our readers have a plan B also or was everything just sold at a loss?