Category: Enchanting

05Nov

Make Gold in World of Warcraft with the Sha Crystal Conversion for Enchanters

Posted in Enchanting, Making Gold | Leave a comment

My good buddy Rexor has been telling me about this fantastic way to flip cheap, Mists of Pandaria-level Enchanting materials for nice profits in World of Warcraft. I understood his fascination with this scheme: taking advantage of players that don’t understand how Enchanting materials — or the profession, in general — work in the new expansion. If you’re making gold, the two best markets to be in are selling items that are confusing to players, or selling items in high demand to lazy and/or desperate raiders. The Sha Crystal conversion covers both of these markets.

With MoP, we are introduced to a new tier of Enchanting mats just as we were in the previous expansions. The Sha Crystal is the epic-level Enchanting mat, currently used in five Enchanting recipes. The enchants produced when using Sha Crystals are only necessary when players reach end-game, or when they pick up an item that they probably won’t upgrade for some time. While most players are busy leveling alts, battling pets, or tilling their farm, you can spend a few moments with me and figure out whether or not you want to make some gold with Enchanting.

The Conversion

Before we can confirm whether or not the Sha Crystal conversion market is worthwhile to you, we need to understand the conversion itself. Basically, it takes the following quantities of materials to “craft” one Sha Crystal:

Spirit Dust Mysterious Essence Small Ethereal Shard Ethereal Shard Sha Crystal
Spirit Dust 1 5 25 125
Mysterious Essence 1 5 25
Small Ethereal Shard 1 3 15
Ethereal Shard 1 5
Sha Crystal 1
Reading the table from left to right, you can see how many of the material on the left it takes to craft the item in the column heading. For example, it takes 125 Spirit Dust to “craft” a Sha Crystal, converting (or “upgrading”) all of your dust along the way.

The Formula

Now for the fun part. How do you know which material you should use to create your Sha Crystals? It’s easy! Simply multiply the base material by the number needed in the column to the far right (listed under “Sha Crystal”). If that number is below the market price for the crystal itself, buy it up. If it’s not, or it doesn’t present a significant profit to offset your time, then don’t do anything or sell some of your crystals.

The Spreadsheet

Nobody wants to spend their time calculating Enchanting material cost when they could be out in the world doing pet battles. If you review my post on using IQY data to retrieve market price information, you can create a spreadsheet using the conversion information and formula that will interact with current market prices. Here’s a sample of my data using the Horde auction house on Earthen Ring (US):

SPIRIT DUST MYSTERIOUS ESSENCE SMALL ETHEREAL SHARD ETHEREAL SHARD SHA CRYSTAL
378.49 367.86 259.88 334.09 447.19

As you can see, the average market price for one Sha Crystal is 447 gold. In this example, you will gain the most profit from buying 15 Small Ethereal Shards, converting them to five Ethereal Shards, and converting those to a Sha Crystal. With this information, you now have the power to drive down the price of Sha Crystals all by yourself.

15Oct

Shuffling Ore in Mists of Pandaria – Sale Results and Conclusion

Posted in Enchanting, Jewelcrafting, Making Gold | Leave a comment

My initial foray into the ore shuffle in Mists of Pandaria has been completed with some success. I wouldn’t say that this is overwhelming enough to make this my primary source of income, but I have concluded that it is profitable.

I did end up growing somewhat impatient with my sales, but this is partially due to my inability to remain patient and the large amount of supply that is currently screwing with the market. My philosophy with the auction house is to endure all others, so I will keep posting new auctions, re-listing, and buying out cheap materials daily.

In terms of the ore shuffle itself, here was my TLDR bottom line:

Materials Cost: 2,770
Confirmed Sales: 2,844
Total Sales: 3,950
Profit 1,180

My “Total Sales” is the sum of confirmed sales and my current AH listings where I’ve severely undercut both the average and market price.

At this point in the game, my plan is to use the ore shuffle to level my Jewelcrafting for free. I can achieve this by selling off most of the Sparkling Shards and rare, uncut gems. I can then take the uncommon, uncut gems and use them to level and discover recipes.

I will also use some of the materials to craft jewelry for my Enchanter to disenchant and use to level up Enchanting. Enchanting is going very slow for me in MoP, but utilizing the ore shuffle should increase this significantly.

The disappointing part of the experiment was the fact that the potential profit was not even close to being realized. This is the problem that I continue to have with the get-rich-quick schemes. Actual sales data in World of Warcraft does not exist to the public. Market data is made up solely on potential, thus increasing the amount of risk for players. Remember in my first post, I had calculated a profit of 5,771 gold?  I only made 20% of that.

So what to do with this information now? Well, I can continue to load in current data into the spreadsheet or modify the calculations to assume a 60%-80% drop in expected profit. My plan, however, is to simply watch the price of Ghost Iron Ore and monitor the supply and demand of uncut rare gems. The value of any rare, uncut gem should equal the price of a stack as you typically receive one rare when prospecting an entire stack.

If the average price of all uncut, rare gems is above the average price of a stack of Ghost Iron Ore, sell all the gems at their market price and buy the ore. If the price dips below, then cut the gem for leveling or for alts, or wait until there’s an opportunity to sell.