Gambling on Northrend Cards and Decks

Posted by Warcraftecon | December 29, 2008 .

With the release of Wotlk, 4 new decks or trinkets were introduced. However the cards for them do not drop in instances or the world like in Burning Crusade. Instead they are crafted using the new Inscription profession. The skill used is called Darkmoon Card of the North. This will create a random card out of 32 possible ones. There is no cool down on this so you can do as many as you want. The process includes Milling Northrend herbs to proc [Icy Pigment]. You then need 12 [Icy Pigment] to produce the 6 [Snowfall Ink] needed. Since milling at best has a 50% chance to produce one [Icy Pigment] per 5 herbs milled, that’s an average of 6 stacks of herbs that have to be milled. Be aware that some herbs have a lower chance to proc the pigment, around 25% instead of 50%. The good news is that prices of herbs are starting to fall and each card takes about 300g to make on average in my case.

Materials Required

Darkmoon Card of the North

1 [Resilient Parchment] 50 silver
3 [Eternal Life] 60 – 150g
3 [Ink of the Sea] 1 – 4g
- Also created with 2 [Azure Pigment], a byproduct from milling Northrend herbs.
6 [Snowfall Ink] 250 – 400g
- Created by 12 [Icy Pigment] which comes from an average 6 stacks of;

Total: 350 – 500g

Icy Pigment Proc Rates

Icy Pigment Rates

Trinkets

Like before, an Ace through Eight of the same type creates a deck which then can be turned in to an Epic trinket during the Darkmoon Faire.

Prisms Deck – [Darkmoon Card: Illusion]
Chaos Deck – [Darmoon Card: Berserker!]
Undeath Deck – [Darkmoon Card: Death]
Nobles Deck – Pick from one of 4 different trinkets

As you can see the first two are more PVP oriented and are less desirable than some of the other ones available. Then you have [Darkmoon Card: Death], which is just an average trinket for PVE. In patch 3.08, this trinket will have its’ haste converted into critical strike rating. Still not considered that great of a trinket considering anything in raids will replace it easily or even some blues from heroic instances, such as [Meteroite Whetstone] for melee classes. Now we have the Nobles deck, the only one that is worth anything. For some classes, the it is the best in slot trinket you can get as of patch 3.03, but there is not guarantee that you will be able to make all the cards yourself. This results in having to buy each card costing easily over 1000g each making this trinket worth over 10,000g. So assuming you are spending about 300g on the mats to proc Northrend cards, your looking about 2400g per 8 cards. Even if you happen to make one of each Nobles cards, you just spent 2400g on a trinket for yourself if you decide to keep it. Is this what you would spend on a trinket if it was on the auction house? Well maybe if it happened to be a Nobles deck. However this is not how it plays out, chances are you are going to make some terrible cards that won’t even sell for over 100g. You see, you only have an 8 out of 32 chance or 25% to get a Nobles. If the ratio was 50/50 on getting a really good or really bad card, then making cards for profit wouldn’t be such a bad idea since at worst, you can break even over time. I would consider this a risky business if you are tyring to make money. There is a lot of luck involved as well, it is very hard for one person to be able to craft all the cards required for a single deck.

The Experiment

So I really should have stopped making cards after the first few non-profitable ones. However I decided to make a total of 10 to show you what to expect when your doing this. I did lose a bit of money, but wanted to see how the Northrend card business played out. Luckily I had a large enough gold reserve to attempt this just for fun and to help our readers decide if they want to enter into this new card game. Prices of the materials have come down a lot since I started, but so have the cards since more and more people are making them. Making the 10 cards below cost just over 3000g after selling off excess [Ink of the Sea] for about 350g total, there is another solution next patch for this ink, but more on that later. Profit so far is about 2000g with 2 cards left to sell, but most likely won’t break even. Update: Total return now is 2690g after selling all my cards. So I did not break even, even if I included possible profits of the two saved Chaos cards, still lost money on this.

[Eight of Undeath] - Sold 150g
[Ace of Prisms] – Sold 730g
[Five of Undeath] – Sold 50g
[Two of Nobles] – Sold 940g
[Ace of Chaos] – Saved
[Six of Undeath] – Sold 130g
[Five of Chaos] – Saved
[Five of Undeath] – Sold 50g
[Eight of Prisms] – Sold 70g
[Ace of Undeath] – Sold 570g

Total: 2690g

Invested: 3000g

While listing some of the cards up, I noticed some had very low prices, around 50-100g per card. Specifically the Chaos Deck, which produces [Darmoon Card: Berserker!]. Not the greatest trinket, but maybe someone will buy it with Darkmoon Faire coming up soon. So I took a chance and spent about 700g to buy the other 6 Chaos cards I needed on top of the two I had. This make is a total of 1300g for the deck, since I had already spent 600g on creating the Ace and Five cards. Profit on it already doesn’t look good, two decks were listed right after I put one up for 3000g. I am just hoping to get rid of this thing for at least 1300g so I can break even.

What’s Next

In patch 3.08, there is a new change that will reduce the cost for creating cards. You will be able to trade the easily obtainable [Ink of the Sea] for [Snowfall Ink] and other various inks. There is a vendor in Dalaran that sells the different inks in exchange for [Ink of the Sea]. I must have sold at least 10 stacks of these, which means I could have made 3 more cards. This would bring my total investment to under 2300g down from 3000g. Even with the new changes, I may not continue to do this. I am not an Herbalist or Scribe for that matter and have little motivation to acquire a Nobles deck due to its high price. Again, this new vendor sells (Patch 3.08):

10 [Ink of the Sea] for 1 [Snowfall Ink]
1 [Ink of the Sea] for 1 Ivory, Moonglow, Midnight, Lion’s, Jadefire, Celestial, Shimmering or Ethereal Ink.
Screenshot (3.08 PTR)

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4 Comments so far

Big Bear Butt January 4, 2009 12:33 PM

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It’s a great post, no question. I’m playing the inscription game myself, and finding it to be frustrating… but it takes me time.

One quick question for you, how do you know that there will be a new vendor in patch 3.0.8?

I’m assuming you found her on the PTR, but I’ve seen no mention made on any other site as to this person being added.

Could you please let us know, if you could, what the person’s name is and where in Dalaran she can be found on the PTR?

Thank you very kindly!
taco January 4, 2009 2:33 PM

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Actually this is quite profitable if you are willing to take the risk and have lots of gold. I have so far sold 4 nobles decks (kept 1 for personal use). It may be server dependent but I sold them for 10k,15k,15k and 14k respectively. I purchased some of the cards as it was more profitable to buy the last few rather than making more useless cards.

I’m surprised you were able to sell a prism card for such a high price. On my sever nobles cards go for 1-2kg each, everything else is 100g, the prism deck is 1.5k and you can’t sell the chaos or the undeath decks.
Warcraftecon January 4, 2009 3:34 PM

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Hey it’s BBB! Yes the Ink vendor is on the PTR but not mentioned in the patch notes. One of our readers, Kestre, alerted us to the change. The vendor is named “Jessica Sellers” and is located in the Dalaran inscription store. The source was from ( http://www.elsprofessions.com/news/ink-trader.html ).
Big Bear Butt January 5, 2009 8:55 AM

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Thank you very much for such a great answer on a question on an old post, this has huge ramifications for me. I really appreciate it!