It’s time to look ahead to Mists of Pandaria goldmaking and today we will take a first look at Alchemy as well as give some tips about how you can set up your alchemist(s).
Recipes are different
Recipe unlocks are very interesting in MoP. You learn two recipes from the trainer and every other recipe ie learned as discoveries from crafting other recipes. This means you can’t target the best recipes, you just have to keep crafting and hope you get the relevant recipes in a reasonable time frame. This also means that anyone that’s rich can just dump gold into getting them all, but prices may be too high on materials early on for that to be attainable.
The same procedure as cataclysm
Overall the recipe list is very similar to Cataclysm. There’s potions and flasks for each stat type as well as healing and mana potions. There are also some elixirs which likely won’t matter as flasks are just better for the persistence through death (outside of very extreme min maxing). There are also a new set of transmutes, allowing you to transmute uncommon gems into rare ones as well as for the new transmute only material Living Steel. There’s one interesting new recipe which is the Potion of Luck. This gives you plundered treasure sometimes when killing mobs, which amongst other things is a source of the BoP spirits of harmony, making it VERY worthwhile.
Specializations reign supreme
Profession specializations are still in for alchemy and the 20% bonus in recipe yield for potions, elixirs and transmutes will be decisive. Everything is sold stackless now, so having the cheapest possible average crafting cost is absolutely necessary.
Potions
For potions the main ones you want to focus on are the strength, int and agi potions which will all sell consistently. The Potion of luck will also be quite a hot commodity, but it does depend on players finding reasonable farms where they can kill mobs quickly enough.
Elixir specialization
For elixir specialization the flasks are where you will want to go. Cauldrons are gone in MoP, so everyone will be back to the AH to purchase their flasks. This means demand should be substantially higher than it has been in Cataclysm. Preparing an elixir master can be quite valuable.
Transmute specialization
Transmutes will have three main recipes with potential. The Living Steel daily transmute will obviously be good, and if you have a source of Spirits of Harmony you can also use the eventual Riddle of Steel variant. The non CD-based transmutes the red gem is likely the key one. This was quite profitable in early cataclysm and I expect it to be good again. The transmute that turns Ghost iron bars into Trillium is also an interesting candidate and can be part of a full supply chain for Living steel or other crafts that use Trillium.
Pick your poison
If you’ve had success with any specialization in Cata I would keep it. Outside of that I think getting an elixir master ready is a lot more viable in MoP. For the casuals transmute is the best bet for the very low risk daily transmute and generally higher margins on gems than on consumables. Transmutes also usually peak earlier so it can help you generate gold early compared to consumables which usually slowly scale up in volume.