Proposed Vendor Changes from Blizzcon

I do not like it, Sam I am,
I do not like this new Vendor Plan...

The Proposed Change:
In a quote at IGN:

Another will be made to items available from vendors, helping add to the overall game. Blizzard doesn't really enjoy the current system in place, where players can buy a batch of items and wait for the respawn to occur at a predetermined time and buy some more. What they're aiming to do is tweak things to where blue and purple recipes show up with a given vendor to add a surprise when the given item pops up. This is system is shooting to be totally random, so players cant really hang around the vendor or show up at a given time to buy a recipe, making it that much more difficult to camp and be the first to buy the item, but it's sounding like that there's a lot of potential for players to turn these rare items into a monopoly on the auction house, so we'll have to wait and see how Blizzard pulls this initiative off.

From WoW Insider's Professions and Items Live Blog:

Vendors: camping vendors for limited quantity items isn't fun. We're not going to really do that anymore.
Vendors are going to have this new awesome list of loot: blue loot, purple loot -- it will show up rarely but it is shared across all of them. So when you go to a vendor, there could just be some awesome item on there, just waiting to be bought.
It will be random enough so that you won't be able to guess. (applause)

The Vendor Game:
So why don't I like this change? For reasons such as these Commercial Breaks:

(* That joke still cracks me up.)

You see, I enjoyed conquering this part of the game through a different kind of skill: research. I would find special NPCs through something like Thottbot like this:

Select a Zone then click to find the "Vendors:"

Then one by one, check out each vendor to see if he/she had a "limited supply" of a good recipe and then, if it was a vendor I could get to safely (Frost Oil was always a pain), buy it for self or for resale:



There was already a certain degree of randomness to it because of the respawn time. (i.e. Once something with a limited supply ran out, you had to wait for it to respawn which could be hours or days, I never knew. The comments on Thottbot are filled with players who felt cheated when they got to the vendor and found he's out of stock.)

This Player's Experience:
I had a good time with this mini-game. Yes, I sold either the recipe or its progeny for a reasonable profit - that was the fun. I never really ran into players' camping a vendor, but then I wasn't really after much of the really hard to get stuff. So perhaps my experience wasn't representative. But I will still mourn a bit for this fond little part of the game if/when it goes.

Note to self - Next MMO - find a game where I can participate more in the economy.

Related Posts:

• The Mod that tells you what vendor sells a recipe just by hovering over it in the Auction House


• What happened to Bernard the Mixer, Vendor extraordinaire?


• My biggest sale ever - the Elixir of Brute Force obtained from hours of collecting sprouts in Un'goro.


• The Recipes I used to jump start my gold reserves

Elixir of Brute Force

I did it! (twice)

You may remember I mentioned the Bloodpetal Sprouts and the Dadanga is hungry! quest.

Well mostly, what you get from Dadanga is quail, bananas and dew. But, very rarely, less than 2% of the time, you can loot the recipe for the Elixir of Brute Force. It provides +18 to Strength and Stamina for one hour and you can't buy it anywhere. Rare, awesome and worth a fortune.



Well I looted one recently and was thrilled. I sent it to my alchemist for safe keeping until she can learn it. But - then I looted another one strangely quickly after looting the first. So I'm going to try selling the second one. I know my price is ambitious (150 gold with 250 buyout). But I don't want to price it too cheaply. I can always go down in price later. We'll see how it goes.

Bind on Pickup Recipes

A while back (this was pre-blog) I was playing with my tailor (a rogue who was a tailor and a leatherworker) and made a Robe of Power. Well the joke was on me. It's a "Bind on Pickup" (BoP) Recipe. Which means that only the maker can wear it. Well, I know that nooooow. It turned into a very expensive skill point.

So I spent some time on thottbot and culled out all the Bind on Pickup Recipes I could find:

Tailoring
Robe of Power - Tailoring 190 (Requires Level 33)
Robe of the Void - Tailoring: 300 - Class: Warlock (Level 57)
Truefaith Vestments - Tailoring: 300 - Class Priest (Level 57)
Robe of the Archmage - Tailoring: 300 - Class: Mage (Level 57)

Updated 2/11/2008 - Lootables updated Tailor BoP Item List and Tailor BoP Recipes (via WoW Insider)

Blacksmithing
Dark Iron Plate - Blacksmithing: 285 - Plate (Level 54)

Updated 2/11/2008 - Lootables updated Blacksmith BoP Item List and Blacksmith BoP Recipes

Enchanting
Smoking Heart of the Mountain - Enchanting: 265 - Trinket (Level 50)

Updated 2/11/2008 - Lootables updated Enchanting BoP Item List and Echanting BoP Recipes

Updated 2/11/2008: Plus Lootables has information on BoP Recipes or Items for:

• Alchemy
• Engineering
• Jewelcrafting (Items and Recipes)
• Leatherworking (Items and Recipes)

Profitable Recipes <=225

After playing around with Fizzwidget's Reagent Cost and discovering the Shadow Hood, I wanted to see if there were more recipes than just that one that would yield me a nice profit (particularly with my tradeskill levels are capped at 225 since my profession alts aren't much more than level 20).

Top Four Tailor Recipes

RECIPE Cost of Materials/Potential Sales Price/Net Profit
Component	Shadow Hood 6./21/15	Hands of Darkness 3/7/4	Icy Cloak 2./5./3	Red Mageweave Pants: 1/4/3 Vest: 1/3/2
Bolt of Cloth	4 Silk	3 Silk	3 Mageweave	3 Mageweave
Thread	1 Silken	2 Fine	2 Silken	1 Silken
Potion	1 Shadow Oil	2 Shadow Protection Potion	1 Frost Oil
Item		2 Heavy Leather	2 Thick Spider's Silk	2 Red Dye

Top Four Leatherworker Recipes

RECIPE Cost of Materials/Potential Sales Price/Net Profit
Component	Red Whelp Gloves 1/6/7	Thick Murloc Armor 2/8./6.	Barbaric Bracers 3/7/4	Shadowskin Gloves 4./9./4.
Leather	4 Medium	10 Heavy	8 Heavy	6 Thick
Thread	1 Fine	3 Fine	2 Silken	1 Heavy Silken
Hide		1 Heavy	1 Raptor	2 Heavy 8 Shadowcat
Item	6 Red Whelp Scales	12 Thick Murloc Scales	4 Small Lust. Pearls 4 Large Fangs	4 Shadowgem 2 Black Pearls

I have a blacksmith too; she's over 225 or so but she didn't have anything with profit of more than 3 gold (which were the Jade Serpentblade and the Moonsteel Broadsword).

It was a lot of work to go through these recipes but it was tons of fun. I love "navigating" the economic part of the game; figuring it out; selling stuff; making a profit. Plus I love logging in and seeing that I have mail.

Especially when it has money in it. :)

Mod: Fizzwidget Reagent Cost

I tried out a new mod the other day. This one is a little different. It's not something I'll use every day. Instead it's more of an analytical tool. It's called:

Fizzwidget's Reagent Cost
It analyzes:

• Auctioneer data
• Your learned recipe skills

Note - Auctioneer is a separate add-on that stores price data when you perform an "Auctioneer Scan" of the auction house. (Unfortunately it takes 15-20 minutes to do a scan.)

Then tells you which of your recipes will produce a profit and how much (based on the cost of the component parts and the possible sales cost of the final product). You just have to make sure you open the Auction House once and open your tradeskill window (to load the data) before you type "/RC report."

The results were quite interesting. I looked for the biggest profits. Since it weeded out the lowest profit makers I was pleased to see several recipes would make me a gold or two if I sold it on the auction house. I hadn't expected much because most of my characters' trade skills are 225 and below.

BUT THEN...

Boy was I surprised by something. There was an item that would yield an estimated 15 gold profit! With each sale. The results weren't easy to read but I scrolled up and carefully read through to see it was the "Shadow Hood" in my tailoring tree. Now I've done the buy low/sell high thing before. But never with something with such promise. I frankly doubted it would work. Luckily I have an alt who is an herbalist and an alchemist. I had the parts for some shadow oil (a 4-5 gold component if bought) and whipped some up. Then I put my first Shadow Hood auction up for sale.

The results? See for yourself:



Links:

• Shadow Hood on thottbot
• Recipe for Shadow Hood
• Download the Mod from ui.worldofwar.net

Update 10/4/06: I made 2 other Shadow Hoods at the same time I made the one above that sold immediately. But I STILL haven't sold the the other two! I keep putting them up, one at a time at the same prices but no takers... :(

Tuxedo Recipes Sold

In yesterday's post you may have seen the Commercial Break for an Alliance NPC that sells the recipes for 3 tuxedo parts (Pants, Shirt, Jacket). Well I've visited this store and periodically make a handful of gold by buying and then reselling these recipes.


In fact, when I start a Human, Dwarf or Gnome alt on a new server this is one of the ways I try to go from having just a handful of silver to a few gold. It's easy to get to the store, it usually has the recipe I need and with just a little in savings I can make the initial investment.