Preparing for Panda-monium, part 1: A Scribe's Stockpile

Welcome to the first installment of: (insert explosion) Preparing for Panda-monium!! 

If there's one thing I've learned so far, as an overarching life theme, it's that being prepared is the key to success. Making gold is no different. I'm not really getting too specific with my stockpile posts; I just want to get some discussion started. With that being said, I'm kicking off this new series with one of my favorite professions ever, inscription.

How's the saying go, "The ink is mightier than the glyph??"

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but it looks like right now on live there are roughly 342 unique Glyphs available to players. Come mists, that total is moving up to roughly 415. Not only are they adding a ton of new low-level Glyphs, they are also removing Prime Glyphs and reworking or removing a ton of them. There will be [most likely be] a lot of change coming to inscription, probably more than any profession's levels 1-525. Since so much is changing, and no one wants to end up with stacks of Faded Glyphs, your best bet is to stop stockpiling actual Glyphs and migrate over to the materials used to make them.

On to my real point... 

If you don't get anything else from reading this post, make sure to pay attention to this part: 
It might seem like a good idea to just stock up on Blackfallow Ink... 

"Hey, I can always just use it to buy whatever other low level inks I want right?" 

WRONG. DO NOT MAKE THIS MISTAKE. Just like in the late days of WotLK, there will come a day soon when good-ol' Stanly McCormik will decide that he just isn't getting his money's worth from trading Blackfallow Ink and will move on to other, more expensive inks. Unless you just loooooove making those Glyphs of Colossus Smash, do not hold on to Blackfallow Inks for creating glyphs. 

"No thanks, Blackfallow Ink is basically cancer." 

Save yourself the epic disappointment and embarrassment and just convert that stuff into other useful inks, as soon as possible. Since Packs of Endless Pockets are relatively cheap, just make some ink alts and stash away your ink there. I'n closing, this is what one of my ink alts looks like:

I like to store my ink in gallon jugs.

Hope this helps!

Mists Gold-Making Speculation: Pet Cages

So... I'm sure most people already know about the new Pet battle Mini-game set to come with Mists. There's another thing pet related, however, that has me even more excited than the thought of following in the footsteps of the great Ash Ketchum. Since I've been into Pokémon since elementary school, this is a pretty big deal.

As I'm sure you can guess from the title, yes, it's Pet Cages. What are they? Well for starters, profitable. The idea is simple enough, you right-click a pet, select "Put in Cage," and just like that the pet leaves your pet journal and enters your inventory as an item. There's nothing you have to buy from a vendor or anything; the pet becomes the Pet Cage. The best part? There's no restriction on which pets you can cage up and which you can't.

I never liked my baby blizzard bear anyways...

So, aside from leveling pets for profit, there are other ways to take advantage of this. If you aren't a collector, you could just sell off all the pets you worked hard to get. If you are a collector, expect to finally have another way to get your hands on that pet you've been eyeing. If you are like me, then you will want to get the most out of this.

So the question for a collector who's also interested in profits is: Which pets can be acquired more than once but are hard enough to get that people will pay a premium? The easy answer are going to be pets you currently have that are bind on account and not consumed on use, like the baby blizzard bear. I'm sure in the future there will be some sort of inhibitor on pets like this, since you can soon cage them up and sell them. So, the sooner you pass them around and learn them on all of your characters, the better. There's also collector's edition pets, which is an easy one since you just have to make a level one to pump out another.

If that's not enough for you, there's also those pets that you acquire by doing some sort of rep grind or whatever, then purchase from a vendor. Come Mists either you will be able to keep pulling them from the auction house and posting them on the auction house or it will be patched somehow. If you like to prepare for the worst then you might want to buy a bunch of them before the expansion and stash them somewhere. It seems unlikely, but if Blizzard does end up hot fixing rep vendors, that little space sacrifice could win you big. A few examples are: Nurtured Penguin Egg, Tiny Sporebat, Nether Ray Fry, Hyjal Bear Cub , and Crimson Lasher.

So what does this all mean? Maybe next time you run Magisters' Terrace for your Swift White Hawkstrider , you should hold on to those extra Phoenix Hatchling . They might come in handy someday.

Mists Gold-Making Speculation: The Fifth Element

There's a new crafting material coming in Mists, and it's even more useful than a multipass... believe it or not.

"Revered by craftsmen throughout Pandaria, this spirit is used in countless recipes."

Well, I wouldn't say countless, but it's still pretty darn useful. The item in question is the new Spirit of Harmony. The role this item has in crafting is like a cross between a Chaos Orb, a Volatile, and a Primal Might, so it's kind of a big deal. The total count for items crafted with this item is 145, and it's not just used in random junk... it's used for transmuting gems, the crafted PvP set (Contender's), leg enchants, and just about every level 90 crafted epic. The interesting thing about this item is that it drops off just random mobs at any level and that it's really, really rare. 

Wait a sec, that's not a Porcupine Steak...

If it hits live, this item has the potential to  become a pretty narrow bottle neck for crafting in the early day's following mists, especially with the transmutation of gems. I thought to myself that there had to be more to this. 
I did a quick search on Wowhead and it revealed that the Spirit of Harmony has a dark secret...


The following are data-mined, but unavailable in the beta: 
Spirit of Winter
Spirit of Autumn
Spirit of Spring
Spirit of Summer
Spirit of the Season (Which acts as any of the above)


Their uses, so far, are unknown, but it seems that maybe these items have a part in the smaller crafting jobs. I'm crossing my fingers for the transmutation of gems. Since crafting is very new to the Mists beta, I feel it's very likely that it's just not yet implemented. 


So what's the point? Well the only certainty of just about any Beta is that there will be uncertainty. Some items make the cut and others don't (Anyone else remember poor old Eternal Might?) 

Who I am

Hey! I'm Preheat. I currently reside on Elune-US, Alliance side. I'm kind of new to the server. My guild and I transferred mid way through 4.3 from the smelly pit known as Staghelm-US. My focus is raiding and I've had great luck recruiting and making friends. My guild cleared 8/8H way back when it was only the 10% nerf, and I have high hopes to do even better in the next raiding tier.

Gold making is a relatively new hobby for me. Way back at the start of Cataclysm, when I transferred from Korgath-US Horde to Staghelm, I had one goal: Nothing too fancy, just to make a million gold. Although I have far exceeded that goal, I still continue on making that money. I've set in on some of the old JMTC gold talks, even spoken on one. I also am featured on the Warcraft Econ's Hall of Fame. I don't think I'll ever quit trying to make gold. It's just too much fun to stop!


I'm no writer, so forgive me if I make noobish mistakes here—my goal is to simply theorize Gold concepts and Speculation on the future.

If you want to reach out to me and exchange info, have a conversation, ask questions, or whatever, feel free to shoot me an email or hit me up in-game (my real-id is the same as my email).