I finally got around to getting an alchemist to level 110 recently. With the upcoming release of Antorus in about two weeks this is the perfect time to break into the main profession for consumables. I have written about some of the old world uses of alchemy before, and it is a great profession for those reasons alone.
Alchemy is a profession with very high demand. The main crafts are flasks and potions, both of which are consumed on use. The main drawbacks are that competition is high and profit margins can be thin, and the fact that you need rank 3 recipes to be even remotely profitable.
In this post we will be covering flasks and potions, the two main markets in Legion alchemy.
Shoutouts
The approach I have used in the alchemy market is based on the ideas of Gumdrops. He has been using odd stack sizes and overcutting for a while. In addition I took most of the TSM implementation more or less directly from these two reddit post by /u/BilisOnyxia and /u/FaceyGaming.
Preliminary results
I have only been posting flasks for 4 days. My sales so far are quite decent as you can see from the TSM summary below. My daily sales average about 6k gold. Since then I have also gotten the rank 3 potion recipes I want and I am in the middle of posting potions to the Auction House as well.
Rank 3 recipes and the proc rate
For all of the Legion potions and flasks the rank 3 recipe gives a chance to proc more than one flask or potion when you craft. The long term average of the proc rate is about 1.48. This means the rank 3 recipe is a massive upgrade in profitability compared to the rank 2 recipe. You get the rank 3 recipe as a random proc when crafting the rank 2 version. I was able to get all rank 3 recipes within about 70 crafts for the flasks. If you can’t afford the initial investment, then I suggest staying out of alchemy all together.
Setting up TSM correctly
TSM does not support recipes that yield more than one item based on random procs. So to correctly account for the extra procs from rank 3 recipes we need to do some changes. The main idea is to change the default crafting value in the crafting operations to 1.4 times the value of the item. This will slightly undervalue the procs, but it takes some time to reach the average proc rate. For a more detailed view on how this works you should read BilisOnyxia’s post. It explains it really well.
Potion of prolonged power
Potion of Prolonged Power is a special case. The only material is blood of Sargeras. Since these can’t be traded on the auction house it is quite hard to find the value in TSM. Luckily /u/fantastandi on reddit has us covered. He has created a custom price source that calculates the maximum value of a Blood of Sargeras at the vendor. To set it up head to the crafting tab in TSM and go to materials. Search for blood and click blood of Sargeras. Then copy the string from the reddit post into the field and it will automatically calculate the value! The proc rate for rank 3 for these is just 5%, so I have disregarded it completely in the TSM setup.
Profit strategies
There are several strategies you should pursue to maximize your profit in alchemy. The consumables are really cheap to post on the auction house, so competitions is generally very high. To ensure that you can sell your stock at decent profit margins I have some tips.
Sourcing herbs cheaply
One simple way to increase your profits is to buy your herbs cheaper. The main approach to finding crafting materials cheaply is to look for regular suppliers. Hardcore farmers are often willing to sell their stock directly through the CoD mechanic at lower prices than market value. I suggest making a trade chat macro that you can send regularly looking to buy herbs at preset prices.
You will have to set the price levels yourself based on your realm. For help in setting up a trade chat macro, head over to my post on the topic.
Overcutting
This is the approach Gumdrops uses, and the approach I have adopted in my current TSM settings. The idea is simple. You post your auctions in a bunch of different and irregular stack sizes. For flasks this means stacks of 2, 3, 4 etc. You then post them at a price higher than the cheapest auction. A lot of players are lazy and will be willing to overpay by 50-100 gold per flask to get the exact amount they want in one click.
Getting Blood of Sargers
Potion of Prolonged Power generally sells really fast. Having easy access to Blood of Sargeras on your alchemist is amazing! Alchemy should preferably be combined with a profession that can generate Bloods for this reason. Enchanting is great if you are doing the shuffle, or if you are farmer it can be combined with one of the gathering professions.
What to craft
There is a huge difference in sale rate between the various alchemy crafts. The flasks are a no-brainer. All of them are best in slot for at least one spec. Obviously the tank flask sells slower than the others as there are fewer tanks, but I’d keep them all in stock.
Potions
I have separated the potions into the novelty potions and raid consumables. The novelty potions I would test out at a small scale. Depending on your realm it could be good, or a dead market. For the raid consumables Potion of the Old War is by far the fastest seller. The others are less important as many specs will just stick to the Potion of Prolonged Power. Keeping Potion of Prolonged Power in stock is great, and they will likely increase in value when Antorus releases.
TSM Settings
You can find my TSM settings in my pastebin as usual. One extremely important note is that all of my settings assume that you have rank 3 recipes. If you do not have rank 3 recipes you will LOSE money until you get them if you use this setup!
The general rundown can be found below:
- Flasks: Stacks of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. Minimum price based on crafting and 1.4 as the proc multiplier to guarantee profits. Crafting operation sets the craft value to 1.4. Minimum profit and restock quantity are both set to default.
- Potions: Stacks of 5, 10, 15 and 20. Minimum price based on crafting and 1.4 as the proc multiplier to guarantee profits. Crafting operation sets the craft value to 1.4. Minimum profit and restock quantity are both set to default.
- Potion of Prolonged Power: Stacks of 10, 20, 50 and 100. Minimum price based on crafting cost. Remember to set the value of Blood of Sargeras. No crafting operation.
Experimenting with stack sizes
You will have to experiment with both stack sizes and the post cap in this market. I have set the post caps quite low for flasks so I can keep items around and re-post regularly when I am online. These settings are usually not generalizable between realms. I suggest testing my set-up first and then tinkering with it as you see which stack sizes sell well, and which do not sell.
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Just saw a guy use your posting operation to post like 300 flasks at minimum price at stacks of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. Don’t think he understood Gumdrop’s strat…
Lol, probably not the best approach!
I am trying to come up with a setting to ‘overcut’
Looking at the min price settings on one of the reddit threads you linked it says
” crafting / 1.4 / 0.95 ”
Shouldn’t this translate into ‘ crafting cost divided by 1.4 divided by 0.95 ‘. Doesn’t seem right as the result would be less than the crafting cost and therefore potentially sold at a loss.
With the rank 3 recipe you will on average get 1.5 flasks per craft, so the actual crafting cost per flask is crafting/1.5.
I use 1.4 to be a bit more conservative and then the 0.95 is based on the AH cut from succesful auctions. This ensures that the minimum profit is 7%, which might be a bit low, but you will generally make up for it in volume.
Gotcha! How about the over-cutting? I’ve only ever had operations that undercut the cheapest, or simply not post at all.
I think I could make an operation to post at my normal price, if the current auctions are below my minimum. However, how would I get TSM to post above the minimum price, even if the current auctions aren’t below my minimum. Is there a variable to pull the current min and multiply by 1.1 ?
There are several approaches to that. You could just set your minimum price to some percentage of normal price. Alternatively you can set your minimum price to what you want your “normal” price to be. Then it would overcut at that level.
You can also use DBminbuyout if you want to access the current minimum price, but it is not 100% up to date as the TSM data is updated about every hour.