The Tomb of Sargeras Raid instance is opening on the 20th of June (21st on EU). A new raid means changes to demand and this is something we should try to take advantage of.
The Nighthold tier has been going for a long time and raid consumables and item enhancements are moving slowly. This represents a nice opportunity as the demand for these items is very likely to increase as soon as the Tomb of Sargeras opens.
What happened when Nighthold went live?
I have gone through the region prices for EU when Nighthold went live. The Nighthold release schedule was announced on the 3rd of January. The normal and Heroic versions opened on the 18th in EU. The main items we will be looking at for changes are enchants, flasks and potions and gems. Let’s start with enchants.
Enchants
Below is the Regional summary chart (from www.theunderminejournal.com) for Enchant Neck – Mark of the Hidden Satyr, the BiS neck enchant for DPS. On the 3rd of January the region price was 4 980 gold. On the 18th when normal and HC opened it was 6042 and by the time Mythic rolled around it was at 6300 gold.
Flasks and potions
Next let’s take a look at flasks. Below is the same summary chart for Flask of the Seventh Demon, the BiS flask for agility based DPS classes. As we can see the price rose steadily from the moment NH was announced all the way up to raid finder releases. The new price held remarkably well for quite a long time. We should expect to see the same effect when ToS releases.
For Potions I took a look at Potion of Prolonged Power, the most versatile one. This had by far the largest increase over the period, with the price almost doubling from 2 weeks out. This is definetly one of the better items to stock up on as we wait for the raid to release.
Gems
Finally we take a look at gems. The chart below shows the regional price for Masterful Shadowrubies. We can see that there is some very clear cyclical and predictable effects here. The price spikes every Wednesday as more gear is released. Buying during the weekends to sell on Wednesdays is definetly great outside of new raids. We can also see that NH release bumped up the minimum prices and the peaks and the price was much higher at the end of the period than the beginning. Stocking up on gems is also looking like a very good idea as we wait for ToS to open.
Cooking
Honestly I didn’t even check cooking prices. Food has been such a great seller throughout the expansion that it’s a no-brainer. Stock up on what you can and put it in a guild bank until ToS opens up. There’s little capital involved and very little risk.
Conclusion
From looking at the prices from when NH released it looks like stocking up on enchants, flasks and gems are all good ideas. Potion of Prolonged Power gets the MVP for the highest percentage increase. I would buy up as much material and finished items as you can stomach now to be well stocked for the inevitable flood gates. I would not buy too much stuff above market value though, but buying up to 100%dbmarket is likely a good limit. Outside of that I wouldn’t buy unless I knew the market really well or you are a risk seeker.