Alchemy: Door Charge

EDIT: gold cap number 4 has been reached! Screen shot be here. Time to buy myself a hilt and see what all that is about.

Another post on entering the real alchemy market.

For the most part, this post is going to be me "thinking out loud" (then again that is what blogging is for). Mostly as a way to kind of help organize my thoughts on the matter. The first thing you need to look into for a new market is the material cost of everything you intend to craft to start off with. For me it's the 3 basic types of flasks. This is a rather easy one to figure out for me since I have a very strong grasp on the average price of herbs due to my working with glyphs. Here's what I'm expecting to pay for flask materials.


Flask of stoneblood, 41g material cost
7x lichbloom - 14g (2g each)
3x crystallized life - 6g (2g each)
1x frost lotus - 20g
1x enchanted vial - 1g


Flask of endless rage, 37.5g material cost
7x lichbloom - 14g (2g each)
3x goldclover 2.5g (80s each)
1x frost lotus - 20g
1x enchanted vial - 1g


Flask of the frostwyrm, 35g material cost
5x lichbloom - 10g (2g each)
5x icethorn - 4g (80s each)
1x frost lotus - 20g
1x enchanted vial - 1g

On top of all of this is the entry fee of a new profession (and mastery spec) of about 2600 gold. Quite a bit especially when you consider the time it takes. With all this information you get the door charge just to start your trade on the AH.


Since each craft makes two flasks, that means that my threshold will be around 25g or there about to make a decent profit on each flask. Also of note is that I've noticed that all flasks have an average sale price of anywhere from 35g to 45g. That is the lowest and the highest I've seen them when buying flasks, but I'll be paying much closer attention in the coming days.

After the profession leveling and material costs being figured out, I need to decide just how much inventory I'll be creating at the start. A good number I think would be enough mats for two stacks of each type, not including procs. That makes my total "market buy in" price in the area of 1100g for basic flasks. Add that with the profession cost brings the grand start up total to almost 4,000 gold.

Granted that's about the same price of crafting two ToC epics, but it's still a high price for something that's completely unknown and something of which I'm entirely inexperienced with. Since I'll be leveling the profession right away and stocking up in the process, I'll be taking about a week or three so making zero profit with alchemy and then need to make up that 4k that I just spent (all of which will be zero profit).

With this knowledge you need to decide if it's worth the potential profits you can make per day/week. My personal goal will be to make up that 4k in the same amount of time I took spending the gold to start up. I think that sounds reasonable enough.


Next string of numbers and gibberish to look at is the potential profits you can make on each craft.

Flask of the frostwyrm:
crafted at 17g per flask
minimum sale price of 22g each
5g profit

Flask of endless rage:
crafted at 18g per flask
minimum sale price of 23g each
5g profit

Flask of stoneblood:
crafted at 20g per flask
minimum sale price of 25g each
5g profit

Considering that your average raid lasts for 3-4 hours you can expect your typical buyer to buy 4 at a time. Normally that would say to me that selling flasks in stacks of 4 would be best, but I would be surprised if most thought to buy the exact amount they'll need. So that gives us a 20g profit per person per sale at the least, not a bad number considering how many raiders are out there that flask up even when not provided by their guild. One last thing to make note of here is the actual consumption of these flasks and who, specifically which class, is using them the most. How often do you see a dps class without a flask on? Nearly all the time, ICC or not. How often is a healer without a flask? Usually, but it's fairly common for them to flask up.

What about a tank? I have never once seen a tank without a flask that didn't legitimately outgear the raid (think ICC gear in a normal toc 10). And with tanking flasks being the most expensive, they just may have the best rate of sales. However more classes use SP than there are tanks, but a lot of them CBA to buy them (if they can even afford it). This is all just pure speculation at this point so feel free to correct me if I'm way off base here. Tough to say at this point, but with the many other alternatives to an SP flask, I'd venture to guess tha frostwyrms sell the least of the three with stonebloods at the top. Naturally I'll be watching the influx and supply of flasks on the AH for the week, especially on Teusday, Friday, and Saturday.

Since flasks are sold solely to raiders for the most part (know your market even if it's obvious) the best time to post them on AH is bout 30 minutes before raids tend to start which is around 8ish on my server. This makes things rather interesting as my normal post time is several hours before then and several hours after. Flasks it seems, is the only market that has it's prime time BEFORE raids opposed to afterwords like enchanting or gems. Since I'm definitely not going to change my day around when to post flasks this will surely effect my profits greatly so it'll be interesting. Regardless I'm sure I can make some form of profit from the market, but it's a question of how much it's worth and how long it'll be worth doing it for.

So for the time being, I'll just use the round numbers of 4k gold lost and about 2 weeks of time to make it back. Quite a daunting task, but with the constant demand for flasks and the potential of severe campers/UF it's quite exciting!


Small research note:
Last night during the wee hours of the evening, flasks were all at 39g a piece, which is about 35g profit on a sale. This could easily be due to the fact that the cheap ones had already been bought out due to the time and only the pricey ones were left up on the AH. Come the following morning there was a page or two of flasks by a few people, one being a power herb farmer, for below material cost. Looks like I'm going to get to have some fun.


Thanks for stopping by!