Cataclysm Essentials [2/3]: Stockpiling

Yesterday we talked about stockpiling quests to get you ready for Cataclysm. Today I want to talk very briefly about 4 key things that I'll personally be stockpiling, that I think everyone should be doing, regardless of their other strategies.

Undervalued Glyphs

Inscription is a nightmare. Let's just get that out of the way. There are 300+ crafts, probably 5-15 competitors on each server, and unless you have a dedicated farmer/supplier and someone to craft your inks for you - it's flat out time consuming. It's by far my biggest investment timewise, but it's also my biggest gold gain. The big problem for Cata is that if you aren't a scribe right now, it's honestly getting to be too late to make it useful for launch, due to Minor and Northrend research.

But wait! There's no need to despair. Whether you're a goblin scribe, a fresh starter like myself, or even someone who doesn't even have the profession, you can make money if you're quick and smart about it. It's very simple: start buying glyphs.

Glyphs take time. Lots of time. Time to skill up. Time to learn each one. Time to mill. Time to ink. Time to craft. Even [Glyph of Voidwalker], heralded as one of the most useless glyphs in the game, requires the time investment to sit down and level a scribe.

What doesn't take much time, or much effort other than some common sense and a willing to take a small risk, is buying out glyphs on the auction house. For the past month I've been buying out glyphs. I've scooped up probably 50 glyphs of Sap for a gold or less each. That's a 50g investment for a glyph that will be harder to craft, in higher demand, and with less supply come Cata. If I sell 2 I'm probably breaking even. If I sell them all? Look out!

It's pretty simple. Get AuctionLite, search for all glyphs, and buy any cheap glyphs while you still can. Start with the classes you know best - the ones you play, then branch out before others catch on. This is my single biggest investment for Cata and I'm expecting to be nothing but pleased with the results.

Netherweave Bags

This one takes a little less time to explain. Come cata, levelling alts, levelling mains, profession zergers, gatherers - they'll all need one thing - bag space. It doesn't matter if you're just returning to the game on an 80 or playing through your 10th toon as a goblin or worgen - you'll want bags. By far the biggest sellers will be Netherweave Bags.

If you're a tailor, snatch up any low valued cloth and start bolting them. If you're not a tailor, or even if you are - you might even want to snag any bags you feel are at or below current market value.

Whatever the value of bags on your server is - 5g, 10g, 15g, whatever. It's likely they'll all increase in relative value. Might only be 25%, might be 200%, but be sure that they'll go up come release.

And since time is money, and so many of us have such few time - you might want to consider the value in "pre-crafting" some of these bags.

The Golden Pan has a great blog post on this very subject - go check it out if you're looking for more advice and thoughts on this.

Other markets you might be interested in pursuing: Frostweave bags, Profession bags (mining, herbalism, skinning).

Justice Points

Another big time saver. Right now your time is slightly less valuable. You still have the same X hours a week, but it's likely your crafting, leveling, raiding, and other wow experiences have peaked and leveled off. There's ALWAYS time to be spent making gold, and you should continue to invest in that - but now is as good as ever to devote time to capping your JPs at 4,000 to be ready for the new level 85 gear.

Once cataclysm hits you'll be adjusting to the new options: daily quests, professions, leveling, server firsts, achievements, exploration, you name it. Right now your biggest sacrifice to grinding dungeons is a slight loss in income. However, if you balance it right, you can sneak 2-3 dungeons in between posting sessions and still come out with some nice gold in your bags after you clear another round of heroics.

I personally started "investing" in this tonight, and came out with 600 JPs in a little over 2 hours. Not an alarmingly fast rate by any means, but that still comes out to about 13 hours total to cap myself - not awful. I'd rather spend that 13 hours now, than give it up the first month of cata. Even if I'm using those 13 hours later to run dungeons, it means more gear faster.

Lessons

I know what you're thinking - how can I stockpile lessons, and which mob do I farm to earn them? Seriously though - the shattering patch is its own "mini" cataclysm with regards to the economy. Many of the things that happened today and will happen over the next days are a good indicator of what is to come.

New dwarves and taurens rolling new classes are but a sneak peak of what is to come with goblins and worgen. If glyphs and bags are peaking on your server now, then they're probably going to explode come cataclysm.

You might have been banking on some strategies for this patch that worked, and you probably had a couple that didn't work out so well. With such little time to react and prepare your final Cataclysm strategies - it's important to take in all the lessons learned from this patch and see how they apply to the expansion. Maybe you didn't think of an emerging market - maybe you overvalued a certain item.

It's far too late to convert your inks of the sea, buy those forgotten vendor recipes, or farm that rare spawn that doesn't exist anymore - but it's not too late to evaluate what you did right, and what you did wrong. Take in these lessons - information can be even more valuable than gold if you take advantage of it!


That wraps it up for today - I'll be finishing my thoughts on Cataclysm preparation in my next post, where I'll talk about all the other assorted things I'm doing to get ready for launch day.