Spirits of Harmony - Determining Value

The most common question I've been asked on my server is what the value of a Spirit of Harmony is. Some people want to know how much to offer, the others want to know how much to sell theirs for. It's a question many people are starting to ask now that eyes have turned on professions and gearing up.

The short answer that I give them:  "I don't know."  But let's get into the long answer too.

Right now Spirit of Harmony is a Bind on Pickup crafting item.  When looking at the value of a Spirit of Harmony you have to think about the way the seller values the Spirit.  This is affected by a few different factors:

1. What professions does the seller have to use it with?
   Faid is a Blacksmith/Engineer while, for example, my friend Altrien is a Miner/Engineer.  This means that he can only spend his SoH on Engineering while I have a choice to instead spend them on Blacksmithing.
   
   
   Blacksmithing has many recipes to buy with Spirits of Harmony while Engineering doesn't require any for the purchase of recipes. This means that Altrien can immediately start funneling his Spirits of Harmony into crafted items to sell while, despite having Engineering as well, my next twenty six Spirits are earmarked for buying Blacksmithing patterns.  Because of this you'll have much better luck asking someone like Altrien to make that scope instead of someone like me.
   
   
   Beyond buying patterns it also comes down to usefulness. Not all Spirit of Harmony uses are created equal. Let's look at the Long Range Trillium Sniper which, due to its scope requirement, essentially costs two Spirits of Harmony.  If I do not spend these two Spirits then this gun does not come into existence, I cannot make and sell this gun without these Spirits.
   
   
   Compare that to an Alchemist/Herbalist with Spirits of Harmony. They have only one use at this point, using three Spirits to create an extra Living Steel that's not on the daily cooldown.  In the Engineering example it's a question of "Do you want a gun or not?" while in the Alchemist situation it's "Do you want that today or do you want it tomorrow?" Because Alchemists and Tailors don't actually make anything new with their Spirits, only create something they can already make, sans cooldown, professions like Alchemy and Tailoring will likely see less value in their Spirits of Harmony.
   
   
2. How hard is it for the seller to farm Spirits?
   A level 86 Disc/Holy priest will find it much more difficult to farm Spirits of Harmony than a level 90 Fury Warrior. Anecdotal evidence seems to suggest a better drop rate of Spirits from higher level mobs (because of this I'm working on a new SoH farming video for level 90 players, stay tuned!) and the faster a player can kill mobs the more Spirits they get.
   
   
   That priest may look at ever Spirit as a sacred crafting ingredient as they might see only one a week while the Warrior can farm several in a single play session and so the priest will probably value their Spirits much more.
   
   
3. What is the going rate of Golden Lotus on your server?
   I've seen a lot of players on my server falling for this one. (Also, it's a gold tip I suppose!) For one Spirit of Harmony you can buy three Golden Lotus by visiting Danky for Horde or Krystel for Alliance.
   
   
   This means that the floor price for Spirits of Harmony should be three times the value of a Golden Lotus. I've seen people in Trade offering 300g per Spirit of Harmony. They bring you to the vendor, tell you to buy the Lotus and then they pay you 300g for the 3 Lotus which, on my server, they then put on the AH for 300g a piece, tripling their gold off of your Spirit.  
   
   

At the end of the day some people will be selling theirs for dirt cheap (because there's always that guy who thinks he farmed it so it's free) and there are people who won't be convinced to part with their Spirits at any price but until Blizzard shows mercy and makes these Spirits non-soulbound these are some important things to consider when trying to place a value on Spirits of Harmony.

Goodbye, Helenia.

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Important Note: I will be live-streaming my run for Server First Engineering tonight starting at 12:45 AM Mountain time (long live Mountain time, the time zone no one uses!) and I invite you to hang out at twitch.tv/faidtastic to see just how much it ends up costing me!

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A reader, Groo, sent me an email a while back that I was far too slow to respond to. However, we still have a few hours for the non-EU folks. (Sorry, EU friends!)

With the destruction of Theramore a lot of NPCs have disappeared including Helenia Olden.  I was not able to find any information about a relocation of her or her wares. (Please share in the comments if you've spotted anything that's gone missing!)

While no recipe in the game is 100% specific to Helenia she is the only Alliance vendor available for a few items.  Luckily it's not too late. If you have any character that hasn't yet done the Theramore event you can head out there and it won't be cratered quite yet. Since mages can port you straight there you can even roll a new alt just to snag her items if you already did the event on every character.

Be sure to pay her a last minute visit and buy her limited quantity recipes Design: Truesilver Crab and Design: Black Pearl Panther.  Once she disappears players will need to look to the Horde for these recipes.

You can also get her cooking recipes and Pattern: Murloc Scale Bracers but as these items will still be available on other Alliance vendors they're lower on the priority list.

Recipe Vendor MIA - Some recipes no longer obtainable!

Hagu, a listener of the Litecast, sent in a question asking if the Desoalce caravan had been removed since they couldn't find it. I went out to Desolace to check for myself and sure enough the caravan seems to be MIA.

I've gone up and down this road three times with my eyes, a targeting macro, and NPCS Scan and Cork Gizelton's caravan is not in sight. Either it was moved or was removed.

Until this NPC and his buddies are found again then currently impacted are:

• Super-Seller 680 which is the only source for
• Recipe: Big Bear Steak
• Recipe: Lean Wolf Steak
• Vendor-Tron 1000, the only source of 
• Recipe: Lean Venison

Wowhead comments seem to confirm that these vendors are not currently available in the game.  This means that if you have any of these recipes stockpiled (have you tried a vendor recipe collection?) you can now command a much higher price for them.

The Six Thousand Gold Vendor Pet

This has been posted about on the Consortium forums but I thought I'd bring it to the blog since it's been so freaking lucrative and, well, I can't pass up an opportunity talk about reselling vendor items!

Years ago Mountain Dew and Blizzard had a promotion for Game Fuel. If you registered you'd get a little Warbot in-game pet and if you bought Game Fuel you could get fuel for your Warbot and make it fight with other players' bots.

Thanks to the patch new players or those who just missed the pet during the promotion can now purchase one from one of the toy vendors:

• Blax Bottlerocket - Orgrimmar
• Craggle Wobbletop - Stormwind
• Clockwork Assistant - Dalaran
• Jepetto Joybuzz - Dalaran

The Warbot Ignition Key will run you 350g after all applicable discounts. You can also buy the fuel for under a gold for a stack of five which is great for those of us who got the pet but never could stomach that terrible soda!  

Here's the fun bit: The pet isn't BoP.  You can sell it on the Auction House. Now, it is Unique, so you can only have one in your bags at a time but with multiple runs between the toy vendor and your preferred destination you can have several on the AH and can also store them in the mail or guild bank!

So just how much are these pets worth? I've sold a few for six thousand gold so far! You may even be able to run yours higher though the competition will be setting in once this gets out. Get some high sales fast!

Ultimate Recipe Collections get more Ultimate!

Today I'm releasing the first update for the Ultimate Vendor Recipe Collections.  I'm really happy with how the update's turned out and I think you all will be too.

What are the Ultimate Vendor Recipe Collections?

They're two guides, one for Horde folks and one for Alliance. They will lay out for you every vendor recipe in the game that is available to your faction. They highlight faction-specific recipes (great arbitrage candidates!) and everything is arranged geographically so it is easy to move from vendor to vendor, something I've yet to see with any other guide or resource out there.

But wait, there's more!

What's new in the updated versions?

Thanks to suggestions from purchasers of the first versions I've added in a few more useful features. 

• I've rearranged the list; instead of a strict North-to-South I've outlined an actual route for you to follow which should cut down on massive amounts of zigzagging.
• I've included maps with the routes I use outlined on them to help you get an idea of where to go next.
• I've included TomTom waypoints for every single vendor as well as a guide for how to use TomTom with these collections.
• I've included information on whether or not any recipe is Limited Quantity.

Sidenote: In my update announcement I stated that there would be TSM Auctioning lists. When I went to add them I found out it's not possible to make Auctioning groups just with Item IDs. Sapu has stated he's working on it and I will add them in as soon as I am able.

Holy crap, where do I get my hands on these awesome works of art and support Faid in the process?

Click here to purchase an Alliance collection. ($3)

Click here to purchase a Horde collection. ($3)

Click here to purchase an Alliance+Horde combo collection. ($5.75)

I already purchased a previous version. Where's my free update?

If you've purchased a previous version simply send me an e-mail from the same address you'd used to purchase your collection and I will send out an updated version shortly.

I really want to get into vendor recipes but can't/won't spend the money on a guide.

I get that. For what it's worth it's only three bucks and it helps me out a lot, but I totally feel ya on this one.  If you're just interested in getting a bare-bones sort of set up you can try the RecipeProfit plugin for GatherMate2. It's free and highlights many profitable recipes.

But Faid, if it's free why would I buy a guide? Well, you get what you pay for. RecipeProfit is decent for getting started but the dozens and dozens of incorrect, misplaced, or altogether missing vendors that I ran into were startling. It'll be alright for picking up a recipe here or there but if you want a more complete experience (and if you want to sell the recipes your competitors using RecipeProfit know nothing about!) I urge you to check your couch cushions for a few bucks in change.

If you have any questions check out the Store FAQ. If you still have questions feel free to ask!

Recipe Collections Update Coming

A while back I created the Ultimate Recipe Collections to assist people who were interested in selling vendor recipes. I don't often to go out of my way to mention or bark it unless it's incredibly relevant to the conversation so I imagine some folks don't know it exists.

Basically, quite a while back I felt there was no good resource for vendor recipes. Sure, there's wowhead searches with the appropriate filters but every time I wanted to get recipes I would end up missing a few and wasting tons of time since it wasn't properly sorted.

So I made a massive list of every vendor recipe sorted by geographic location, highlighting important faction-specific recipes and adding notes where necessary. Once it became cleaned and polished I felt I had something that was really valuable. As money was (and is) tight and I was also interested in learning to sell things online I put them up for purchase at two bucks per faction.

The response has been very positive, significantly moreso than I ever imagined. I knew that the list was a valuable tool but I admit I didn't know how it would be received by people who aren't as hooked on vendor items as I am; I am very happy to have received many words of praise from purchasers.

So thank you for everyone who bought a recipe collection, I know two bucks doesn't seem like much but you guys really helped me out a lot.

So what's this about updates?  Well, along with all the good reviews I also received a lot of recommendations for future updates, recommendations I've taken to heart.  I'm working on updating the collections with some of these requested features and a new version of each faction's collection should be out before the month ends.

Planned Additions:

• There will be TomTom waypoint macros for every vendor on the list.
• There will be maps outlining the route I follow when stocking up on these items.
• There will be information on Limited Quantity numbers, as well as information about the spawn times/details where available.
• There will be importable TSM Auctioning groups to sell the items in the collections.

Anyone who purchased a collection already will be entitled to upgrade to the newer version for free once it's been released.  Because of the increased amount of time invested and value in the collections, as well as money continuing to be far too tight around here, I will likely be raising the price to three dollars per faction when the updates are released. (Hint: That means you can get it for 2 dollars before they're released and get the free upgrade once the new version's out, saving a buck per faction!)

I guess that's about it. If you have any questions please feel free to ask!

Want to purchase a collection before the price rises with the new update? Check out the store!

Want to hear what others thought about the collections? Check out the reviews from Farli at The Overcut and Focushot at Hunter Mastery.

Orgrimmar Roundup - Low Level Gold Tip

Don't worry, Horde players, I didn't forget about you. A follow-up to my previous run around Stormwind, this video focuses on items which can be purchased in Orgrimmar to resell for a profit. This probably won't be "worth it" to most max-level players but it's my favorite way to make gold on a new server or faction.

If you are interested in making gold selling vendor items be sure to check out the Ultimate Recipe Collections available from the ClockworkRiot store!

Stormwind Roundup - Low Level Gold Tip

During one of my gold-making livestreams Cryan requested that I make some guides and/or videos about the items I buy in town to make gold on low level characters.  In Orgrimmar and in Stormwind there are some great items you can pick up for resale and this video hits some of my favorite Stormwind pieces. Next time we'll do Orgrimmar so you Horde folks don't feel left out!

If you are interested in making gold selling vendor items be sure to check out the Ultimate Recipe Collections available from the ClockworkRiot store!

New Video: Unlimited Maelstrom Crystals

Hi folks! Today's video tip isn't particularly new; folks have been talking about it at the Consortium for quite a while and I bet there are at least a few blog posts out there mentioning it.

So I'm pretty surprised that, without fail, any time I go out to Hyjal to snag some cheap enchanting mats someone's always out of the loop.  They're amazed when I explain this tip to them and I'm amazed they didn't know about it beforehand! So this tip is my attempt at making sure everyone knows about this awesome source of Maelstroms and Heavenly Shards.

New Video: Damn, I love vendor recipes.

I know I'm always talking about vendor recipes.  I just love selling them. Items you never have to farm for that you can consistently sell for 100x what you paid for them? Sign me up!

Early on in my cross-faction vendor recipes and pets adventures I found myself in Gadgetzan an awful lot to move the items across to the other faction.  I figured there were so many vendors around I'd give them a look.  Since then Gadgetzan recipes have been my hottest selling stuff; I would dare to estimate I've made over 50k just selling Philosopher's Stone recipes.

Here's everything I buy in Gadgetzan, I hope you enjoy the video! (Don't forget to subscribe to the new YouTube channel to stay up to date on all of my video tips.)