Goblin Mindset: Making sense of fast market changes

Are you confused by all the rapid changes in the markets right now? Maybe even afraid to dive into anything as you are afraid the market will crater?

You don’t have to be.

A simple framework for analyzing markets

Understanding WoW markets is actually not too hard. There are two sides to every market in the game, the supply side consisting of players selling the item and the demand side of the players that are buyers.

Understand how and why those two sides work and you can start making predictions.

The Supply Side

The supply side is primarily driven by players that are focused on the gold making side of the game. Mass crafters will provide a large amount of the volume. How materials are obtained will vary a lot between markets and will have large impacts.

How are materials obtained?
Does the market require a lot of effort?
Can it be mass produced?

These are some questions you can ask. Identifying bottle necks or items that are so abundant that they will quickly lose value are the most important features.

The Demand Side

Why do players buy this item?

That’s pretty much it. Figure out why players buy it. Then you will figure out when they buy it. They’ll be buying when they need it. The largest value will be when the ratio of players that need the item to the players that supply it is the highest.

When this is will vary a lot between items.

Let’s make some predictions:

So let’s analyze som items and make some predictions.

Inscription: Contracts will collapse completely

Inscription is currently completely dominated by players crafting the darkmoon trinkets. These only require viridescent pigments. This means that anyone who crafts trinkets will quickly end up with a MASSIVE stockpile of ultramarine and crimson pigment that are essentially “free”.

Needless to say the market will be flooded by anything that requires these pigments.

I hope they hotfix tranquil mind tomes so the new quiet mind tomes are actually necessary. This would at least help us get rid of some of the pigments that are generated.

Alchemy: Herb prices will SKYROCKET when Uldir opens

This is what happened to Foxflower in Legion:

Graph showing the price of Foxflower

And I fully expect it to happen again. The main reason players buy consumables is for raiding. Progression raiding will typically go through a lot of consumables.

Flasks for the entire raid and 1-2 potions per pull will be expected for serious raiders.

Currently herbs are only really used by scribes to craft darkmoon decks as no one cares about potions and flasks yet.

This will change in a big way

A 20 man raid using a full set of consumables will use a total of roughly 8000 herbs per raid night (3 flasks and 30 potions per player).

Currently my realm has 900 Sea Stalks.

That’s enough for potions for 3 players for a regular 3 hour raid night (assumes 30 potions over 20’ish pulls).

Needless to say we will need a lot of herbs. I expect supply to rise as more players get rank 3 herbs and start farming, but it will not be enough.

The price will increase by a lot when the AH is literally cleaned out.

At this point I think a significant amount of players will have to raid without potions.

You can take advantage of this right now. Players are crafting tons of Battle Potions to level alchemy and selling them way below crafting cost. I am personally buying a lot of them. I mean, it’s cheaper than the material cost.

Other markets

I focused on the herb market here as it is the one I am following the closest.

Some other trends I have seen is that platinum ore is relatively cheap. Monelite is needed to level professions and Storm Silver is very useful for the blacksmithing gear. This makes Platinum the ideal ore to prospect at the moment.

The Darkmoon trinket market will likely remain profitable, even if the raw gold profits of this first week will not be sustained. It requires a lot of effort to get expulsom for the cards and process all the herbs. If that isn’t worth it then no one would ever bother crafting them.

Enchanting and cooking are two other markets that will be booming in a week or two, getting your recipes unlocked now is a great idea! Don’t be afraid to buy up materials either. Especially Midnight salmon for feasts. Crystals will likely trend down in price as more players hit level 120 and start generating them though.

Long Term

For the long term just realize that everything that is useful will retain value. Darkmoon trinkets, flasks, potions, gems, enchants etc. will always be in demand as they always provide performance boosts.

As long as you are providing value to other players, you will be doing well.

If you want to level up your gold making consider supporting my Patreon, because you will get early access to all my posts! 

22 thoughts on “Goblin Mindset: Making sense of fast market changes

  1. Do you think the same goes for gems? Prices will sky rocket? Cut rare gems are significantly cheaper than their raw counter parts (assuming bc people are mass leveling it to get to Kraken’s eye). I’ve actually stopped cutting gems and sell my raw sometimes when they’re going for a pretty good price. The rate that ore sells for verses the % of useable rare and epic gems on my server is starting to not be worth cutting (verses just buying the gems).

    Wondering if I should buy out the cheap cut rares, hold onto them, and sell them in a few weeks.

    I’ve been stocking up on battle potions too since I’ve been focusing on darkmoon cards. I figure I can either flip them or use them myself cause they are dirt cheap compared to the mats.

    1. Not to the same degree. Demand will increase, but not as drastically as potions.

      Gems are quite cheap to prosuce as platinum ore isn’t really used by anything else besides prospecting. I think rare gems will probably always be fairly cheap and that Kraken’s eyes will be the major factor.

      I think Legion gems went up about 50% at raid launch. It depends on how ore supply and prices change over the next week. I don’t think you will lose gold if you invest though, but I haven’t done it personally.

      I’m just buying cheap platinum to prospect.

      1. Hmm. Platinum Ore on my server right now is going for 78/each. Amberblaze (uncut) is 874g, and Deadly Amberblaze is 140g. Likewise Tidal Amethyst is 945g and Masterful Tidal Amethyst is 94g. This continues throughout. Do you think rare gems will stay around that price? With mythic content only having been out a week I know people weren’t gemming heroic gear.

        1. That’s crazy, I would buy rare cuts for sure then.

          My realm has 40 gold platinum and cuts going for 500-1k. Not sure about the uncuts

          1. Haha yeah. And krakens raw is about 3.5k. Been buying them out every time they drop under 3k. Cut selling for 4-5k right now.

            The JC market kinda plummeted. I’m taking advantage of it trying to come out on top in a few weeks.

            Rank 2 battle pots are about 700-800g crafted. And they’re selling for about 125-200g depending on the pot. Buying some of those out thanks to your suggestion too.

            I may have to buy some flasks too. Anchor weed has been anywhere drom 200-400g, and flasks are anywhere from 2-3k right now.

            I wanted to get my brontosaurus but may have to delay it. To be able to have cash flow

  2. So is it worth holding on to herbs one gathers now and sell them the day the raids come out? Or when will be the ideal time to sell the herbs?

    1. I would hold onto them. Ideal time will be sometime in the first week after raids open. Impossible to tell exactly when

  3. I’m already predicting a HUGE bottleneck in my production. I’m getting Anchor Weed at a really low rate and I’m going to need tons of them to keep my production rolling. Anchor weed is currently at about 210g each while potions are around 1200-1300, as you can see they are not profitable (high population server).

    Should I just buy Anchor Weed or buy and resell potions and sell all my herbs when raids kick in? (I already have a couple of rank 3 potions).

  4. I saw no profits in Legion with Alchemy and Enchanting. Flasks and potions (except prolonged, but bloods were limited) only made a profit if you got rank 3 early. Through all of Legion they were less than material costs. As for enchanting, if it wasn’t below mat cost, the enchants just didn’t sell. I only made gold through enchanting by obliterating the enchants. I kept alchemy(vial of the sands) and enchanting(cause I thought the scrapper would make enchanting better) cause I hoped things would be better in BFA. But now all I see is both those professions under mat costs, and its freaking me out. Because I can only pay my sub with gold, and I only have enough gold for one more month. I have no clue what to do.

    1. I made with gold with both of those i. Late Legion. Both sold for 20-30% above mats at rank 3. I did use an overcutting approach to alchemy though, posting flasks in a variety of stack sizes above the lowest price.

      1. Nice to know you made gold at the end of Legion. But sadly that doesn’t help me now, or the fact that I only have enough gold to pay my sub one more time then I’ll have to quit. And don’t tell me to go double gather. If that was the only way to make gold everyone would be doing it. And what’s the point of even playing then if my entire playtime is spent farming?

        1. I personally dont farm anything. Double gathering works, but it’s very boring.

          Alchemy is likely to get really hot soon, so look into buying battle potions if they’re below crafting.

          Materials should also stabilize soon so you can dive into material flipping.

  5. What would you say are the best two professions for making money without BfA?

    I’m considering trying to start WoW with just a sub and basically doing your 0-1mil challenge and hopefully buying the expansion with bnet credit one day.

    1. For old world markets I think jewelcrafting for the panthers and either engineering for the mounts and transmog or blacsmithing for weapon transmogs are your best bets.

  6. Hey Lazy, how you doing today?

    Do you think Darkmoon Trinkets will be good after Uldir and Mythic+? I’m not sure but I do believe those craft will get “buffed” after a patch in the future, right?

    I think in Legion the Darkmoon decks got a raise in demand after they got a ilvl upgrade (or something like that) but I’m not sure since I couldn’t play much on Legion

    1. They won’t be buffed until the next raid tier. I think they will still be useful for at least the first half of the Uldir patch cycle.

      We don’t know if they will be buffed after that, but it has typically been the case.

  7. Hi, been following your blog for a while and love your content. I am a cutting edge raider and am a cloth user, so am needing to have tailoring as one of my profs to get the high ilvl BOPs, but struggling to decide what my other prof will be. It will be more than likely quite a while before I get an alt up.

Have a question or a thought? Leave it here:

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.