Inscription: Unholy Death Knight Glyphs and the Economy
I’m starting a new series of World of Warcraft articles covering glyphs and the WoW economy. I’m having a difficult time finding a consolidated resource for popular glyphs and making gold with Inscription, so I decided I would create my own here. I will break down the popular major and minor glyphs by spec and class, and how much you can profit from crafting these glyphs.
First up is the Unholy Death Knight.
Major Glyphs
Glyph of Plague Strike
Suggested Herbs – Dreaming Glory, Felweed, Mana Thistle
Profit: 8.73 gold
Glyph of Blood Strike
Suggested Herbs – Dreaming Glory, Felweed, Mana Thistle
Loss: -3.92 gold
Glyph of Bone Shield
Suggested Herbs – Golden Sansam, Dreamfoil, Mountain Silversage
Loss: -3.93 gold
Minor Glyphs
Glyph of Raise Dead
Suggested Herbs – Dreaming Glory, Felweed, Mana Thistle
Profit: 17.38 gold
Glyph of Horn of Winter
Suggested Herbs – Dreaming Glory, Felweed, Mana Thistle
Profit: 13.48 gold
Glyph of Pestilence
Suggested Herbs – Dreaming Glory, Felweed, Mana Thistle
Profit: 9.73 gold
Summary
A great way to buy and sell using Inscription is to look for deals on the suggested herbs, craft Glyph of Raise Dead and Glyph of Horn of Winter, and sell for a nice profit. However, these are both minor glyphs, so it will take an Inscriptionist some time to discover these recipes. Glyph of Pestilence is almost a required glyph for any Death Knight in PVE, but the profit margin is smaller. Craft some of these glyphs and wait to sell them when the supply dries up. They are too popular to not sell. In general, it’s difficult to turn a profit on major glyphs, but you can return eight-to-nine gold for a Glyph of Plague Strike.
Price Sources: Wowhead, wowecon.com. Prices based on auction house sales between January 12, 2009 and March 13, 2009.
This is an interesting thread BC, and it also shows the tremendous difference between high and low pop servers in general. Back on Ursin, home of the Jr. Whopper, the economy is in a recession, primarily due to the very small population having everything they need already and no influx of new players to buy stuff. I’ve totally clobbered the infinite dust market almost single handedly, and went from making approximately 1K a day to 1.5K a week. It’s no longer worth buying the mats on the AH to turn into enchanting goods as the margin is so slim, so short of finding deals I just use whatever I farm up myself.
Meanwhile, on other higher population servers, folks can continue to pump dusts, essences, inscriptions, cut gems, etc., into the market at a reasonable expectation of profit. New players and prolific twinked alts all serve to bolster the economy and even drive inflation.
The downside to the lower-pop-server conundrum is that it only really keeps one from buying the gold sinks Blizzard put in-game – primarily the crazy expensive mounts. When I started aggressively cornering the dust market I figured I would be able to buy every mount available within a month. Now I realize that was too lofty a goal. Although my gold-making scheme is theoretically solid (it’s the same one a lot of folks are using after all), it is not nearly as successful with a smaller player base.
I bring this all up because I’m seeing the exact same thing with inscription. I was making a fortune with my DK who is also a scribe, but that has recently dried up as folks tend to stick with their favorite inscriptions and seldom swap out. The release of 3.1 will change that with dual spec, but only on the very short term on Ursin because the population will quickly buy up their extra glyphs (and gems and enchants) and things will likely stagnate once again.
I should take one of my many toons on a high-pop server and repeat the experiment there, but I don’t think I could stand to power-level JC again so soon… Damn, that was painful.
P.S. plz shar ur spredasheet lol!
By “experiment,” are you referring to the buy cheap JC mats, craft, disenchant, and sell enchanting materials? That’s a great scheme, but I’m currently burning through the mats to level enchanting, myself.
I’m watching the updates to glyphs in 3.1 closely and preparing to craft as soon as it hits. However, I think many of the new glyphs will be available as recipe drops in WoTLK dungeons (just as the old JC recipes dropped in BC dungeons).
This may hurt me in the short-term, since my Inscriptionist doesn’t run dungeons, but the price of herbs should escalate when 3.1 drops, and I’ve got flowers coming out of every orifice!
Not knowing when they’ll drop the 3.1 bomb on us, I think I’ll start stockpiling AHable materials myself. Normally I like to keep my sacks clean (Ooh!) but It’s probably time to craft up a bunch of enchants, glyphs and gems for the big day.
Time to get the assembly line into production!