Shuffling: Motes & Primals

19/07/2021 / Gra1980 / 1 Comment

Shuffling Motes & Primals:

Shuffling Motes & Primal’s isn’t something new but a reminder of a market that you can operate in to earn you passive gold on the side of your primary Auction House operations. The benefit here is discovering the value of your Primals on your realm (using TheUndermineJournal) and purchasing cheap Motes, that when combined into Primals, will net you a profit.

Although this guide is for Retail World of Warcraft, you can also use this method within Classic TBC.

What Are Motes and Primals?

Motes and Primals are an elemental crafting material introduced to World of Warcraft in The Burning Crusade (TBC) expansion. These materials were essential for many professions because of the expensive Transmog and materials you could craft.

There are seven different Motes, when you combine 10 of any one Mote, you’ll create a Primal. Every Mote has been added below, with it’s Primal.

Thanks to the emergence of Relics in Shadowlands, many of these Transmog crafts are now suitable for players leveling characters. The Relic made crafted Transmog an ideal piece of gear, as you could upgrade your piece of armor as you level.

Combining Motes into Primals

It takes 10 Motes to combine into 1 Primal. By dividing the price of a Primal by 10, we know by purchasing a Mote cheaper than this number, we’ll make a profit! There is no value in buying Motes equal to or greater than this number, as we’ll lose gold in the long run after depositing fees.

Examples:

Here is the Regional Median Price (RMP) via TheUndermineJournal for the E.U. Region. I will use two examples here to show a profitable and non-profitable shuffle.

Profitable: Mote of Shadow and Primal Shadow.

Material	E.U Median
Mote of Shadow	12g 79s

Material	E.U Median
Primal Shadow	178g 00s

Non-Profitable: Mote of Air and Primal Air.

Material	E.U Median
Mote of Air	158g 00s

Material	E.U Median
Primal Air	1166g 00s

The Results:

The results from the above information suggest that shuffling Mote of Air into a Primal Air isn’t profitable. By dividing the Primal Air into ten, we know 116g is the maximum price we should pay for our Mote of Air. The Mote costs 158g, which is too high – we’d stand to lose gold doing this shuffle!

Alternatively, if we divide a Primal Shadow into ten, it equates to 17g per Mote of Shadow. The price of a Mote of Shadow is 12g, so we’ll profit 5g, which equates to 50g per Primal. 50g doesn’t seem a lot of profit, but that quickly increases depending on the amount of Primals you’re selling. If you were to sell a stack (200) of Primal Shadow, you’d make a 10,000g profit based on the valuations above.

Reminder:

When using TheUndermineJournal yourself to calculate potential profit, you must always use data for your realm. Whenever I use TheUndermineJournal to post examples, I use Regional Market Prices (RMP), an average price across the region because this is an average price.

Using your realm’s data, you will get precise data for your realm, thus returning better results. TheUndermineJournal is an excellent resource for gold-makers, but only if used correctly!

Alternative to Selling Motes & Primals:

If Transmog and selling Motes and Primals doesn’t interest you, and you have an Alchemist, check to see if it’s a Transmute Master. If you don’t have an Alchemist yet, consider creating one and making it a Transmute Master, as Primals are an essential material for some crafts, and you will get a 20% chance to proc an extra craft.

Primal Might:

The best material to craft is Primal Might. This material is also essential for crafting Transmog. You will need one of each of these Primals to craft this.

The E.U. Region Median Price (RMP) for Primal Might is 4,142g. The profit margins are more significant if we can purchase our Motes cheaper than the Primals. But, ultimately, if we’re an Alchemist with Transmute Master, we have a 20% chance to craft an additional Primal Might – this will bump the profit margin up considerably!

Adjust your minimum price to compliment the 20% proc chance as the crafting cost will be slightly less. Non Alchemists will not be able to post as low as us, meaning they can’t compete.

Shopping Scan With TSM:

If you want an easy shopping string, open up the Auction House, click on the Browse tab and enter this string into the search bar;

Mote of Air/exact;Primal Air/exact;Mote of Water/exact;Primal Water/exact;Mote of Shadow/exact;Primal Shadow/exact;Mote of Mana/exact;Primal Mana/exact;Mote of Life/exact;Primal Life/exact;Mote of Earth/exact;Primal Earth/exact;Mote of Fire/exact;Primal Fire/exact

This string will scan the Auction House for any available Motes and Primals.

Cheap Motes Via a Vendor:

There are two vendors that sell a limited supply of Motes. Once these have been purchased, there is a small cooldown until they become available again. It’s rumoured to be a 30 minute cooldown.

The vendors to visit are, Dealer Najeeb, in Netherstorm at coordinates [44.36]. Alternatively, visit Dealer Tariq, within Terrokar Forest, coordinates [39.70].

I leave a bank toon at either of these vendors and using the toy Katy Stampwhistle. Alternatively, if you’re an Engineer use your mailbox (Moll-e) to transfer these motes to your Auction House toon, or crafter.

Credits:

A huge thank you to Wowhead for the use of their item I.D.s. This post would not have been achievable without their website! All traffic redirected from my blog to their site.

Feedback:

Any feedback is greatly received; please use the comment section below. If you need to contact me, use the contact me method. If you found this post helpful and believe it could be of use to someone else, please consider liking and sharing.

I hope you enjoyed this post, thanks for reading.

My Fantasy Premier League Mini League

15/07/202115/07/2021 / Gra1980 / 1 Comment

Fantasy Premier League Mini-League:

Hello guys, I thought I’d do something a little different today. I have created a mini-league within the Fantasy Premier League, which is available to anyone who wishes to join for free!

This mini-league is off-topic somewhat, but I fancied introducing something that I felt may be of interest to a lot of you.

What’s The Point?

You may think, what’s the point of all this. Well, by creating this mini-league, I felt it would bring a lot of you closer together, and we could have a little fun at the same time. This mini-league is entirely free to join; feel free to invite your friends and family too!

Fantasy Premier League Rules:

Squad Size:

To join the game select a fantasy football squad of 15 players, consisting of:

2 Goalkeepers
5 Defenders
5 Midfielders
3 Forwards

Budget:

The total value of your initial squad must not exceed £100 million.

Players Per Team:

You can select up to 3 players from a single Premier League team.

For more information, check out the Fantasy Premier League FAQ and Rules pages.

Choosing Your Team Name:

When registering a team or league within FPL, all managers must think carefully before entering a name. Names that are deemed inappropriate or offensive may result in a team and/or league being deleted (see Terms & Conditions)

My Mini-League Prizes:

I have 3 Amazon eGift Vouchers as prizes to anyone who finishes 1st, 2nd, and 3rd after gameweek 38 (End of the Season). If I place in any of these positions, I will exclude myself, and the payout will go to the next placed player.

You forfeit your prize if you don’t fulfill the instructions below regarding How to Enter my mini-league. Your prize will instead be given to the next placed qualifying player.

My decision is final, with no exceptions!

Payout Structure:

1st – £50 Amazon eGift Voucher
2nd – £30 Amazon eGift Voucher
3rd – £20 Amazon eGift Voucher

How To Enter?

To enter this free to enter Fantasy Premier League mini-league, add a comment below with the following details;

Your Full Name
Team Name (Please abide by FPL ToC)
Your Email Address

These details are essential to contact you if you win and email the Amazon eGift Voucher. I will not use your details for anything other than sending you your prize!

**Failure to add these details will result in you being exempt from any prizes and instead given to the next qualifying placed player**

Once you’ve added your comment with your details, please enter the mini-league with the code below.

Closing Date:

There is no closing date; however, joining the league later than gameweek 1 onwards will put you at a disadvantage compared to the rest of the players.

Example: If you enter your team in gameweek 3, you would have no points from the previous gameweeks.

Gameweek 1 Deadline:

The deadline for gameweek 1 is Friday 13th August at 18:30 (90 mins prior to the first game kicking off for the gameweek). Please make sure your team is completed by this time, to start earning points towards gameweek 1.

Moderated Comment Section:

If you’re a frequent visitor to my website, you’ll know that the comment section is moderated merely to prevent spam and unwanted content within my comment section.

Once you’ve commented, there will be a slight delay until it shows up; please be patient until I approve your comment.

Alternative Competitions in the Future:

I understand this mini-league may not be of interest to a lot of you, or you may not have any interest in football as a whole. However, I will look at other competitions in the future that will hopefully be of interest to you.

Thanks for reading and good luck to all participants!

Fortnightly Sales Report (17th June to 1st July)

14/07/2021 / Gra1980 / Leave a comment

Fortnightly Sales Report (2nd June – 16th June):

Welcome to my fortnightly Sales Report from the 17th June to 1st July. If this is the first report you’re reading, I hope you can find some value from it, maybe entice you into a new market for gold-making.

I didn’t write this report to boast; it’s more of an opportunity to prove that if I can do it, you can too! Check out what I’ve been selling and incorporate it into your posting routines.

To explain why I only do my reports over a fortnightly time frame, read this post.

TSM Ledger:

If you’re unaware of the TSM Ledger, it is a great tool available from the TSM website. The Ledger collects your purchase and sales data from the app and gives you the freedom to build reports.

If you’ve not used TSM Ledger yet, and you use the TSM app, give the Ledger a try; you can find out some fascinating information about your gold-making.

The Sales Report:

For the third fortnight running [Medallion of the Legion] was top of the sales report. This fortnight, I made 4.05m gold worth of purchases and earned 7.7m gold in sales, which resulted in a profit of 3.7m gold.

I managed to sell 188 [Medallion of the Legion] for a total of 889k. 5 [Reins of the Tamed Bloodfeaster] for 432k, 6,801 [Darkmoon Daggermaw] for 267k, and another recipe, [Plans: Masterwork Stormhammer], for 237k. A notable mention is the [Blade of Wizardry] that I sold for 177k.

Overall, it’s been another incredible fortnight’s worth of sales, not bad, considering I couldn’t post all my auctions as I went away on 28th June (as shown in the graph below).

Selected Sales:

Below is a selection of sales from the markets I operate within. If there’s a market that interests you, click on the links added to view my guides.

Battle Pets:

Island Expedition Transmog:

Legion BoEs:

Recipes:

Replica Transmog:

Mounts:

Transmog:

Crafted Uncanny & Gladiator Transmog:

Selection of Other Sales:

You can find guides regarding the items within the screenshot above below!

Feedback:

Thanks for reading.

Farming: Cobra Scales

10/07/2021 / Gra1980 / Leave a comment

Farming Cobra Scales:

Cobra Scales are an essential material needed to craft eight Transmog pieces. Depending on your realm, these can cost between 200g – 1200g each. To increase your profit margins, I suggest farming these materials yourself, unless you can get your Cobra Scales for 200g.

Transmog Crafts:

I’d recommend ignoring the two Leg Armors, as these are a niche craft and don’t sell too often.

Instead, it would be best to consider crafting these six Transmog pieces below; these crafts demand a lot of gold when sold on the Auction House. Check to see if you have the patterns; if not, check the Auction House for the recipes!

Mobs to Farm:

There are three mobs you can farm and skin to obtain Cobra Scales. They are;

Each mob has a 10% chance to yield a Cobra Scale when skinned. It’s best to farm the Twilight Serpents as they’re easy to farm within Nagrand.

Once you kill and loot a Twilight Serpent, it takes approximately 5-7 minutes to respawn. Thankfully, we have two close locations that will significantly reduce the time waiting for respawns. The locations are Location 1: Warmaul Hill (Twilight Ridge) and Location 2: Forge Camp: Fear (Twilight Ridge).

I’d suggest clearing Location 1: Warmaul Hill, then quickly moving to the Location 2: Forge Camp. Once cleared, return to Location 1, where the Twilight Serpents should have respawned. Rinse and repeat till you reach your goal.

Location One:

Warmaul Hill (Twilight Ridge) can be found at coordinates [20.35] within Nagrand. You will find approximately 11 Twilight Serpents here. Scattered around the location are Herb and Ore nodes; if you have Herbalism or Mining, consider farming these too! Also in close proximately are Wild Sparrowhawks; consider killing these if you wish.

Location 2:

The Forge Camp (Twilight Ridge) is located close by at coordinates [11.40] within Nagrand. When you approach the area, you will notice there is a lot of mobs here. There are approximately 13 Twilight Serpents here. If you wish, you can kill everything you see here. There are also Herb and Ore nodes you can farm too.

Valuing Your Cobra Scales:

If you’d prefer to sell the materials, here are some Regional Median Prices (RMP) from TheUndermineJounal (TUJ).

Material	E.U Median	U.S Median
Cobra Scales	1200g 00s	1200g 00s

Please consider posting a small amount to the Auction House at any one time. Posting high amounts of Cobra Scales will reduce its value considerably – ideally, we want our customers to believe these items are rare and will continue to hold their value!

Although the Cobra Scales are approximately 1200g each (RMP), I would urge caution and significantly reduce that price if you want to make a sale. Anything around the 200g to 400g mark should entice someone to purchase your Cobra Scales.

The prices suggested above by TUJ are simply a guide and are based on regional data. Be sure to enter your specific realm to obtain precise data for your realm.

The Results:

Here are my results from farming Location 1: Warmaul Hill and Location 2: Forge Camp for one hour. Please note, I only killed and looted Twilight Serpents. If you kill other mobs in the area, you will get considerably more loot than my results.

It’s essential to remember that RNG can and will record different results.

I have decided not to highlight the results at the top of this blog post to prevent any possibility of clickbait; I hope you appreciate this decision.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Credits:

A huge thank you to Wowhead for the use of their item IDs. This post would not have been achievable without their website! All traffic redirected from my blog to their site.

Feedback:

I hope you enjoyed this post, thanks for reading.

Farming: Dark Rune

06/07/202107/07/2021 / Gra1980 / Leave a comment

Farming: Dark Rune:

Dark Rune is an essential material needed to craft seven Transmog pieces. The benefit of farming Dark Rune’s yourself is you’ll have significant profit margins when you complete a Transmog sale. However, if you don’t plan on crafting Transmog, these can be excellent materials to sell on the Auction House for other goblins due to their low deposit fees and their vast valuation.

Transmog Crafts:

There are seven Transmog crafts of interest. There is also the Felcloth Bag, but I’ve never managed to sell one, so I’d recommend not bothering with it! Of the seven crafts, four are from Blacksmithing, and three from Tailoring.

Darkrune Breastplate (Blacksmithing)
Darkrune Gauntlets (Blacksmithing)
Darkrune Helm (Blacksmithing)
Persuader (Blacksmithing)
Runed Stygian Belt (Tailoring)
Runed Stygian Boots (Tailoring)
Runed Stygian Leggings (Tailoring)

Farming: Corin’s Crossing

I’ve been farming Dark Rune since the end of Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK), mainly for crafting Transmog. The best place to farm these materials is within the tiny village in Eastern Plaguelands, called Corin’s Crossing coordinates [55.62].

There are eight different kinds of mobs here,

All these mobs have a slight chance to drop Dark Rune’s and have a low chance to drop other items, including Essence of Undeath. Click the mobs above to view their loot tables.

Farming: An Alternative Option:

Staying within the Eastern Kingdoms, there’s a single cauldron, which you can find at the coordinates [62.76]. There are fewer mobs at the cauldron than Corin’s Crossing, but these mobs are easily grouped up and killed.

You can see 11 mobs patrolling around the cauldron. These are Dark Summoners and Vile Tutors. According to Wowhead’s data, they have an 11% and a 9% drop rate, respectively. Collect the mobs up and AOE them down. Once they’ve all died, it will take between 2 minutes, 45 seconds, and 3 minutes before they respawn.

During this time, return to Corin’s Crossing.

Valuing Your Dark Rune’s:

If you’d prefer to sell the materials, here are some Regional Median Prices (RMP) from TheUndermineJounal (TUJ). Please consider posting a small amount to the Auction House at any one time. Posting high amounts of Dark Rune’s will reduce its value considerably – ideally, we want our customers to believe these items are rare and will continue to hold their value!

Material	E.U Median	U.S Median
Dark Rune	1052g 00s	1200g 00s

The prices suggested above by TUJ are simply a guide and are based on regional data. Be sure to enter your specific realm to obtain precise data for your realm.

The Rares:

When traveling between the cauldron and Corin’s Crossing, keep your eyes peeled for the rares, Snort [57.79] (pictured below), Foreman Marcrid [53.68], and Foreman Jerris [55.68]. As these are close by, you may want to kill these for some decent loot.

The Results:

Here’s the result of farming the cauldron, Corin’s Crossing, and the rare, Snot for one hour. It’s important to remind you, that results will vary from player to player, thanks to RNG. I also decided to value my items based on Region Median Price (RMP), so this was an average value for a fairer assessment.

I have decided not to highlight the results at the top of this blog post to prevent any possibility of clickbait; I hope you appreciate this decision.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Credits:

A huge thank you to Wowhead, for use of their item IDs. This post would not have been achievable without their website! All traffic redirected from my blog to their site.

Feedback:

I hope you enjoyed this post, thanks for reading.

Blizzard Finally Restored My Character!

27/06/2021 / Gra1980 / Leave a comment

The Character Transfer:

Today, Blizzard finally restored my character SofaKingWat. Approximately six months ago, I purchased a character and account transfer. In the beginning, everything went smoothly; I managed to get over 1 million gold, a new Guild Bank (with two of my alts), and a massive inventory of items to sell.

Here’s the original post I made last year regarding the issue.

The Realm Connection:

Then came the problems. Blizzard performed a realm connection between one of the realms I transferred to, and my character became unavailable. After a few days, I realized that I couldn’t access my character and immediately contacted Blizzard. They informed me that there was an issue and that they’d need to pass my case to developers for investigation.

Hassling Support For Answers:

Every month, I’d open a new ticket to enquire whether they were any closer to resolving the issue. Sadly not. It got to the point where GMs informed me that potentially developers couldn’t restore the character, and I’d lose everything. There were no guarantees that I’d be refunded or compensated for any of the losses.

He’s Alive!

A month ago, after no more updates, I decided to deactivate the account associated with the character. I honestly gave up at this point. But, today, I was informed via email that Blizzard has restored my character and was once again accessible.

Not All Good News!

Sadly, I’ve lost the million gold, the Guild Bank, and the inventory I made on the new realm. Instead, Blizzard’s only option was to restore my character to its condition before the character transfer. They’ve reimbursed me for the paid character transfer; the items in my inventory (before the transfer) were restored, and the small amount of gold I could take.

Ideally, this isn’t the result I was hoping for, but it’s better than losing everything.

What To Do, If It Happens To You!

So I write this today hoping that if one of my readers is in the same predicament in the future, not to give up! Instead, collect information to help with your case. Then, when approached by Blizzard, give them all the information to help with their investigations.

The good thing about World of Warcraft and other high-performing games is the data that they save for backup purposes. So if there are any issues, mainly on Blizzard’s behalf, they can either revert any changes or as in my case, restore something to a restore point. A bit like System Restore in Windows 10.

Solo Queue For Island Expeditions in 9.1?

27/06/202127/06/2021 / Gra1980 / Leave a comment

Solo Queue For Island Expeditions?

Blizzard is finally releasing their new patch, Shadowlands 9.1 – Chains of Domination, next week! Therefore, I thought it would be beneficial to quickly check out the PTR and see whether they’ve successfully incorporated the long-awaited solo queue for Island Expeditions.

According to Jeremy Feasel, he was hopeful that a solo queue for Island Expeditions could be incorporated in 9.1 but didn’t hold much hope for Warfronts.

What Are Island Expeditions:

For those unaware, Blizzard introduced Island Expeditions in Battle for Azeroth (BFA). Players could approach the Expedition Map and sign up to queue for four different difficulties, Normal, Heroic, Mythic, and PvP.

You needed a team of three players to participate, and it had a simple objective, reach the azerite goal first, and you won! In addition, Blizzard introduced further incentives and tasks throughout the expansion of BFA and made it worthwhile for players to continue participating in Island Expeditions for Companion Pets, Mounts and Transmog.

Why The Need For A Solo Queue?

With the release of Shadowlands and the lure of new content, players that continued to queue for Island Expeditions found it difficult to get groups due to a lack of interest. Thankfully, early in Shadowlands, there was hope. Jeremy Feasel informed the World of Warcraft community that they were trying to incorporate a solo queue. The community had hoped that the improvement was ready for Shadowlands 9.1.

The 9.1 PTR:

I quickly copied over my main character onto the PTR and hurried over to the Port of Zandalar. I interacted with the Expedition Map. To my astonishment, there was no method to solo queue for an Island Expedition.

When I hovered over the four difficulties, the tooltips expressed the need for three players to participate in the Mythic and PvP queue. However, the tooltip for Normal and Heroic had no minimum player requirement. Furthermore, all four options needed me to select find crew, suggesting there’s no solo queue yet!

With 9.1 due to release on the 29th of June for NA (30th for EU), there’s no way they’re releasing the solo queue unless they plan to release something in the next few days. So that would suggest that there’s no testing expected before the release of 9.1.

If No Solo Queue In 9.1, When?

Suppose there’s no solo queue in 9.1. In that case, I can only assume that Blizzard maybe hit a snag while making alterations to Island Expeditions. However, if they plan to release this during Shadowlands, then perhaps it will come in 9.2. It’s worth remembering that Blizzard usually waits for two expansions before making previous content more accessible for soloing.

What Does This Mean For Gold-Making?

The inability to solo queue for Island Expeditions means that players will continue to struggle to queue. Therefore, the need for offloading Island Expedition Transmog (as warned in my previous post) may not be necessary now. Gold-makers were worried that with the ability to solo queue, the demand for Transmog would drop. At the same time, the supply would increase, meaning a loss in value. What will likely happen now is the opposite, more demand and a lack of supply, slowly increasing its value!

But stay vigilant; Blizzard has in the past made changes where necessary, without warning. So expect Island Expedition Transmog to hold its value for now, but adapt if there are any late changes.

Feedback:

I hope you enjoyed this post, thanks for reading.

Fortnightly Sales Report (2nd June to 16th June 21)

26/06/202113/07/2021 / Gra1980 / Leave a comment

Fortnightly Sales Report (2nd June – 16th June):

Welcome to my fortnightly Sales Report from 2nd June to 16th June. This report is a couple of days early; this is because we have arranged to go on a week-long family holiday from 28th June. So if you’re reading this post today, I hope you can find some value from it, maybe entice you into a new market for gold-making.

To explain why I only do my reports over a fortnightly time frame, read this post.

TSM Ledger:

If this is your first look at my sales reports, and you’re unaware of the TSM Ledger, it is a great tool available from the TSM website. The Ledger collects your purchase and sales data from the app and gives you the freedom to build reports.

If you’ve not used TSM Ledger yet, and you use the TSM app, give the Ledger a try; you can find out some fascinating information about your gold-making.

The Sales Report:

This fortnight, I made 3.3m gold worth of purchases and earned 6.5m gold in sales, which resulted in a profit of 3.2m gold. [Medallion of the Legion] is still selling extremely well. I managed to sell 90 for a total of 433k.

I also managed to sell the recipe [Recipe: Greater Arcane Protection Potion] for 237k. Unfortunately, thanks to the sudden changes to unobtainable recipes in Shadowlands 9.1, now becoming obtainable once more, these recipes will begin to start losing value. For more information regarding these changes, read this post.

Overall, it’s been an incredible fortnight worth of recipe sales, proving that there’s much interest in this market. If you’d like to get involved in this market, consider checking out my guides here.

Selected Sales:

Below is a selection of sales from the markets I operate within. If there’s a market that interests you, click on the links added to view my guides. Markets without a link will have guides available in the next few weeks.

Battle Pets:

Island Expedition Transmog:

Legion BoEs:

Recipes:

Replica Transmog: