Guest Post: Inscription & Glyph Market II

Posted by Warcraftecon | March 26, 2009 .

Author: Level 70 Mage

Let’s take a look at another perspective on the Glyph market, many of our readers found the previous guest post on glyphs to have non-typical results. Here is a more conservative and in-depth look into the market.

Making Money with Glyphs

Step 1: Make glyphs

Step 2: ???

Step 3: Profit

Tools you’ll need

Skillet or Advance Trade Skill Window (ATSW) – profession UI replacements

Auctioneer

Auctionator

LilSparky’s Workshop

Lots o’ bag slots open

Roughly 1 hr of time

Venture capital for herb purchases or an herb farmer of your own (~200g)

On a good day of auction postings, I can make 750g or so selling glyphs. This is done almost entirely with herb purchases at the AH, instead of farming. I guess I just don’t have the patience for farming so with some starting capital, I just purchase my own. Prices of herbs on the AH will obviously vary per server, so I will use the prices found on mine (US-Kargath).

I primarily use glyphs made with Ethereal Ink or Ink of the Sea. Ethereal Ink is made using pigments milled from any Outland herb. Usually Felweed or Dreaming Glory is the cheapest. Which Outland herb you use doesn’t matter. Ink of the Sea is obtained from pigments milled from any Northrend herb. Depending on the price, I usually go with Adder’s Tongue or Icethorn, but I’ll go into more detail about the different Northrend herb choices later.

Buying your herbs from the AH

I usually set my price point for Outland herb purchases from the AH at no more than 7g per stack of 20. I will usually purchase 5-6 stacks of these.

Outland herbs are a little different. I try to purchase stacks of Tiger Lily, Deadnettle, Goldclover and Talandra’s Rose at no more than 25g-30g per stack of 20. I buy stacks of Adder’s Tongue and Icethorn at no more than 40g-44g per stack of 20. Here’s where it gets festive. Since each 5 stack of herbs will mill 2-4 Azure Pigment, it would seem to me that you would go with the lowest price period and be done with it. It seems there’s still a higher chance of getting 3-4 Azure Pigment out of the Adder’s Tongue and Icethorn as the other 4 I mentioned. Adder’s Tongue and Icethorn also have a 50% chance to mill Icy Pigment, vs. the 25% chance of the other 4. This you can either keep for recipes like Darkmoon cards or sell at the AH for at least 30g apiece. All in all, Adder’s Tongue and Icethorn offer you better bang for your buck. Whichever herb you choose, I will usually purchase 7-8 stacks of these at a time.

Now, go back to your mailbox, set your interface on Autoloot, put Milling on a hotkey and have fun milling for awhile.

Wake me when you’re done.

AH Scan

Go back to the AH and perform a full scan. With the AH window open, type “/auc getall”. This will dump the entire AH at the same time and can amount to a MUCH faster full auction house scan. While it’s running, you want to sit back and not do anything until it’s done. I’ve seen it do a full scan in 1min 30sec, so it’s not usually that long.

Choosing glyphs

Find a quiet place to hole up and start making your glyphs. At this point, you need to have a price set in mind. Since you will get 4-8 inks from milling a 20 stack of herbs, you want to work from there. I presume I only get 4 inks though the actual number likely averages to 6.

Ethereal Ink

20 Stack of herbs = 6g

Ink created from milling that stack: 4 (6 on average)

Minimum price per glyph to make a profit: 1.5g* (1g on average)

Ink of the Sea

20 Stack of herbs = 44g

Ink created from milling that stack: 4 (6 on average)

Minimum price per glyph to make a profit: 11g* (7.3g on average)

*The parchment used to create the glyph is a negligible cost and is outweighed by the fact that you will have more than 4 ink per stack milled.

Note that the minimum price can vary largely dependent on what price you got per stack of herbs or whether you farm them yourself. I’m lazy, so I just buy from the AH.

Going through your profession listing

If using the Skillet addon mentioned above, it allows you to sort through your listing by ingredient. ATSW will allow you to search by recipe name. In this case I prefer Skillet since I only plan on making glyphs using 2 different inks and it’s much easier to weed out the other recipes this way. If you notice, there is a new column next to the recipe name with a price. That’s LilSparky’s Workshop. Use this column as a guideline for finding which glyphs fit your price range. Type “Ethereal Ink” in the search field to filter out all receipes that don’t use that ink. Click on the glyph you think you want to make, then mouse over the icon for it in the right pane and pay attention to what the “undercut” price is in the Auctioneer tooltip. If THAT number fits your profit margin, click the “Queue” button twice. Rinse and repeat for the rest of the Ethereal Ink glyphs then change your search term to “Ink of the Sea” and do the same with those. I only make 2 of each glyph at a time. More than that and you tend to flood the market (yes, I’ve had issues selling normally popular glyphs if I post 3 instead of 2). Once done you should have a rather lengthy list of glyphs to create. Skillet also allows you to resize the profession window. Hop over to the vendor that sells parchment and you should see a new button on the vendor frame to buy the reagents. Click that and enough parchment will automatically be purchased to cover each of your queued recipes.

Posting the glyphs for auction

I’ve found that the ability for Auctionator to undercut and scan when you post to be better than Auctioneer, so for this you will use the “Sell” tab in the AH frame. You will need to separate your glyphs into stacks of 1 instead of 2. Drag the glyph over to the auction frame. It will instantly give you a price that will undercut everything on the AH. Click the “Create Multiple” button and it will open a window that will allow you to create multiples of that item. In this case, both glyphs will post individually. From there, go through each of your glyphs and repeat this process.

You’re done! At this point I will normally have 110-130 auctions posted. Not all will sell the first time, but they can be reposted when they expire while still netting a healthy profit.

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9 Comments so far

Thomas Jespersen March 26, 2009 9:39 PM

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One problem with LilSparky’s Workshop is that it bases the profability on the auction-house prices of the glyphs on the ink *NOT* the herbs! That is a bit problematic because sometimes the ink prices are heavily inflated (especially considered that only scribes can use it) and sometimes the opposite is the case.

Just keep that in mind when you use it
Gevlon March 27, 2009 3:14 AM

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I would add Possessions and Whohas addons into the system to prevent crafting something that has nice AH price but already flooding my bags: http://greedygoblin.blogspot.com/2009/01/industry.html
Kandaril March 27, 2009 5:09 AM

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A quick additional pointer that can help with milling (or disenchanting for that matter is to use a macro as follows):

/cast Milling
/use deadnettle
/use tiger lily
/use Goldclover
/use icethorn

(etc.) As long as you make sure you only have full stacks (or at least multiples of 5) in your bags, then you can just keep hitting this button without having to open your bags. It’ll use whichever is available.
Zaloth March 27, 2009 6:44 AM

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imo, i would get combuctor and bagnon, activating only bagnon forever and bagnon tooltips so it shows who has what and you still have all combuctor’s features
Frizzl March 27, 2009 11:33 AM

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I find that auctioneer’s batch post system works great for this, it lets me tag all the glyphs, set prices, set stack size, and then post all 250 in one go. Saves the trouble of splitting stacks by hand or posting individually. It also sums up the total value of everything you’re posting so you can get a read on how much return you’re getting.

The only downside, as you mentioned, is that the appraiser’s undercut ability isn’t as good as the simple-post one, so you have to check your prices carefully on each glyph.
Tordenflesk March 27, 2009 3:35 PM

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Zaloth: Combuctor comes with bagnon forever and tooltips by default.
Jae March 29, 2009 5:48 AM

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I don’t understand why you limit yourself to 2 ink types. With the ink trader in Dalaran, all inks cost the same as an Ink of the Sea. Since Northrend herbs are relatively more plentiful due to the ease of access, they are often cheaper than midlevel herbs (mageroyal, wild steelbloom, etc). As long as you are hitting the same margins, there is profit to be made there as well.
patrick March 29, 2009 4:32 PM

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Since I use the Ink of the Sea for everything (trading at the ink vendor), I know exactly the cost of my inks. Because I do not sell inks, I have changed all the other inks to a fixed price of what I believe my Inks of the Sea are worth. This makes Lil Sparky work just fine when I change the module to appraiser.

Also, I make sure I use a fixed price on every glyph. I also do price matching. It will undercut when there is competition and when there isn’t, it sets my price back to where I think it will be. Other undercutters will tend to undercut my new higher price, effectively resetting the price. Enjoy.
Conradek March 30, 2009 8:35 AM

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Can someone point out which glyphs are good moneymakers? I usually do new glyphs I discover from research but I am never able to produce the ones people desperately want.
I check the AH and see which are the most expensive glyphs (some are for 60g!) and I make those…but Inscription is definitely a fluctuating profession.