Gold…on a stick….

Almost lost among the sneak peeks into the Mists of Pandaria expansion was the comment that Monks would use staves to tank with. Aspiring Monk tanks (and the goblins who prey on them) may therefore want to stock up on assorted BoE agility staves beforehand…both of them.

Yes, there are *2* Bind on Equip agility staves. (We’ll follow up later with the optimum route towards collecting the BoP staves.)

First we have Berto’s Staff , a low-percentage random drop from Blackrock Caverns. Usable at 78, it may be the premier tanking weapon for Monks finishing up their last few levels in Northrend before they heading into the Cataclysm zones. Even then, upgrades will be few and far between.

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Next up is Staff of Old Woes, a Cataclysm world drop for level 85′s. As impressive as this weapon may be for a fresh 85, we do have to keep an eye out for a level 86 MoP quest green that will make this look like a kid’s toy.

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Inscription Inks: Buy or Trade?

The question has come up many times whether it’s better to mill Cataclysm herbs and trade down for glyphs inks, or to keep buying Classic/Outland/Northrend herbs to get the needed inks. Calculating the true cost of Cataclysm herbs is complicated by their Burning Embers, used to make Inferno Ink, so the true price of our inks may take a bit more work to determine.

A quick comparison of the likely suspects:

Classic Herbs: 1g50s each, 30g per stack, or 6g per ink

Cinderbloom: 2g50s each, 50g per stack, or 10g per ink

Whiptail: 4g each, 80g per stack, or 13g per ink

With Cinderbloom, we’re paying an extra 4g for each ink, or 20g extra for each group of 5 bottles. However, each stack of Cinderbloom also produces a half-bottle of Inferno Ink. Looking at it from another direction, we could claim that we’re still paying just 6g for each Blackfallow Ink, and the extra 20g is paying for the half-bottle of Inferno Ink (40g for a full bottle from 2 stacks of herbs).

With Whiptail, the higher price means we’re paying 7g extra for each ink over the cost of the classic herbs, but gaining a full bottle of Inferno Ink in the process. If we apply the same 6g price to each Blackfallow Ink, this leaves 42g left over for the Inferno Ink.

Now, once we’ve built up our stockpile of 40g Inferno Inks, we have to find something to do with them (besides simply selling them).

If we use the Inferno Ink for making Darkmoon Cards, then each card will cost us 400g to make (10 bottle of Inferno Ink), along with another 450g in Volatile Lifes (at 15g each). Since we’re paying 850g for each card, each completed deck will cost us 6800g to make (although conveniently ignoring the dozens of unmatched cards hidden in the bank).  If decks and trinkets are selling for more than that, then the extra price we paid for using Cataclysm herbs for our glyphs is covered.

Darkmoon Card Prices

(quick and dirty spreadsheet attached for playing with your own numbers)

Clipping the Undermine

(click for full view)

The above chart (click for a larger view) follows the price of Hypnotic Dust on my server over the past few weeks, and by coincidence shows a series of market resets and crashes that pushed prices from extreme highs to extreme lows and back again every few days. (Those wanting a sneak preview at what we were trying to accomplish with all this can check out this thread on the JMTC forums.)

What is most interesting here is not necessarily the ups and down in the price of Hypnotic Dust, but the fact that we have the chart at all. The first reset occurred only days after The Undermine Journal returned to operation, and their extraordinary charting allowed us to track the market shifts in great detail. (If you haven’t explored the capabilities of the Undermine site yet, go play with it now. I’ll wait.)

Well, almost in great detail. As the Undermine routinely discards extreme prices in preparing its charts (as it must), there were several occasions when the entire market became nothing but extreme prices and was discarded in toto. When this happens, the spikes in the Undermine charts are clipped off at the highest price that the Undermine will accept, resulting in a flat line on the chart until prices drop back down to an acceptable level.

(No, I’m not going to try and explain how standard deviation filtering works. Given that my last statistics class was a couple decades ago, I’d just get it wrong anyway. You can check their forum for details.)

The first clipping on the left shows where the price was reset to 21g, and then was raised to 24g for a short time. The Undermine Journal seems to have rejected those prices and insists that we held steady at 17g43s. Everything above this point is simply clipped off. (Their scatter plot was even more conservative and held us to 13g48s.)

Clipping seems to occur at the low end as well; at the end of the first market slide, the Undermine shows we never dipped below 3g43s, yet I was routinely posting below 3g and competitors were posting all the way down at 1g87s. None of these listings appear on the chart, which shows the price staying exactly the same for days.

How can you use this behavior to your advantage? Learn to read the charts the charts for anomalies. The old maxim “there are no straight lines in nature” holds true here; a flat line on an Undermine chart is a sign that something is afoot. It could mean that prices have jumped to abnormally high or low values, and you’ll want to take an unfiltered look at the Auction House to see for yourself (either by logging in or using the remote client). A clipped-off high price could be an opportunity to sell off some of your stockpile at above-market prices, while a flat line at the bottom of the chart could be hiding a unique buying opportunity as prices have fallen into uncharted territory.

Literally.

Bacon!

Due to some marathon RAF sessions long ago, all of my characters are level 65 or higher. While this still leaves them largely useless in the level-85 world of the Cataclysm, it does at least mean that I have a very mobile pack of flying bank alts.

This brings us to our good buddy, Chef Marogg. Every day, Marogg will send my brave band of air pirates on a mission somewhere in the city to gather food for the troops. Most of these quests take only a minute or two to complete, although I’ve been known to skip Crawfish Creole. These quests reward Chef’s Awards, two of which can be used to buy a Crate of Tasty Meat. One quest, Everything is Better with Bacon, rewards two Awards. With ten characters out chasing pigs and pears, my collection of crates can add up fast.

The picture above is the haul from getting Everything is Better with Bacon two days in a row, after buying 20 Crates of Tasty Meat from the lovely and heavily armed Chef Shazdar. (There’s a few extra fish mixed in there from somewhere.) The crates were heavily buffed in patch 4.06, changing from one sample of a couple meats to two larger stacks of meats and greatly increasing their sales value.

17 Basilisk Livers (3g73s)

14 Crocolisk Tails (3g45s)

19 Dragon Flanks (3g44s)

17 Giant Turtle Tongues (15g84s)

14 Snake Eyes (6g35s)

47 Chunks of Boar Meat (26s)

28 Delicate Wings (13g78s)

24 Monstrous Claws (70s)

32 Toughened Flesh (1g94s)

12 Blood Shrimp (3g03s)

10 Boar Ribs (2g44s)

The grand total: 1072g95s, uncooked. Each daily also rewards 9g40s and a nice chunk of experience points (far more than any normal quest). It’s not glorious adventuring, but people gotta eat.