Inscription redux

Since I've been getting more comments here and there about inscription, I decided that it was high time I revisited the subject. Before I go on, make sure you read my previous posts relating to the subject. They can be found here and here. For sale price, undercutting, and related things read my post on undercutting. I also highly recommend reading Gevlon's post on his glyph industry, especially since that's how I got started into this monster of a market. Honestly, if you haven't read those posts and have questions about inscription, go read them first as most of your questions are likely answered there.

First I'll go a bit more into detail about my buying and selling prices for herbs and glyphs. I'll buy low end herbs for up to 15g a stack, this includes: tiger lilly, goldclover, deadnettle, talandra's rose, and fire leaf. The high end herbs I buy for 20g a stack which includes: adder's tongue, lichbloom, and icethorn. At those prices and assuming you always get the worst outcome from milling means that from a 15g stack of low herbs you will get a single ink of the sea for 3g per mill. For higher herbs you'll get 1.5 inks for 5g, or a price of 3.3g for a single ink per mill.

After that you need to consider the parchment price which is an average of 30s each. Now that all glyphs essentially have the same material cost you can easily put a single price as your threshold. This price should ensure that you can go as low as possible but never lose money. My threshold is 3.5g which turns into 3.33g after the AH cut from a sale meaning 13s profit. Sure that's not much of anything at all, but we're looking at the bottom end sale for the worst possible milling. More often than not from a low herb mill you'll get 1 sea ink and half of a snowfall. From high herbs you'll get 1.5 sea inks or 1 and 1 snowfall from the mill.

When you take into account snowfalls selling for 8g on average, you'll find that each icy pigment is worth about 4g. And that 4g will compensate you for all of the 5 herbs you just milled, assuming the ink is used/sold. Now the small sale of 3.33g turns into 3.33g profit. Seems a bit more worthwhile doesn't it?

When getting started you'll be required to buy a few dozen books of glyph mastery which should be rather cheap by now. Also be sure to pick up the recipes from the parchment seller in Dalaran. After that get yourself a few hundred inks of the sea from the AH or milling and go to town making glyphs. It's probably wisest to start with making 3 of each popular glyph and a few of the other ones that are useful in the standard specs in the game. You'll be seeing immediate returns on your investment and should make your money back rather quickly depending on how many goblins are competing at the time.

Ok that covers herb buying/milling. Now for crafting and selling. With so many glyphs to craft and sell, you should just pick a section of them, either by class or ink type and make a ton of those to sell. Once you build up a good stock you can, and should, make a few of every glyph you know. Every glyph sells with a relatively different frequency. By that I mean that some of them I'll sell out of every day, others might take me a week just to sell 2 of them. My normal stack size of glyphs that I always fill up to is 5 of each. However with the ones that sell very often I make sure to have 10 at all times since they tend to sell more than 5 a day. Since I only craft my glyphs every other day it's important that I have enough to last with my ignoring the stack size for two days.

Here's my list of glyphs that I make sure to have a larger than usual stock:

Deathknight:
-Death and decay
-Obliterate
-Deathstrike
-Dancing rune weapon
-Horn of winter
-Dark death
-Disease
-Pestilence
-Blood tap
-Raise dead
-The ghoul


Paladin:
-Seal of vengeance
-Lay on hands
-Blessing of kings
-Sense undead
-Bacon of light
-Divine plea
-Blessing of might


Mage:
-Molten armor
-Eternal water
-Frost ward
-Fire ward


Rogue:
-Mutilate
-Sinister strike
-Hunger for blood
-Vanish
-Safe fall


Warrior:
-Battle
-Charge
-Bloodrage
-Resonating power


As you can see many dk's need many glyphs since everybody and their mother has one. On top of that, most have no clue wtf they're doing or supposed to glyph so instead they'll waste a lot of gold buying whatever looks right. The rest of the classes either don't seem to ever buy glyphs or aren't the types to change specs too often. But for minor glyphs, those are the most important. Every class seems to have 1 legitimately useful minor glyph and the rest are just filler.

Most notably are paladins and warriors. These two classes have several minors that are good for every spec and, in the case of warriors, are very useful for all specs. So they have tendency to change them around from time to time depending on their current needs. In any case if you only craft glyphs every so often like I do, those are the ones I recommend you make a few extra of.

After all of this, we lastly come to snowfalls. These you can move as plain inks for 8g/ea or rune scrolls for 50g/stack of 5. But I highly recommend you make a bunch of offhands if you have some frozen orbs hanging around. Seriously, I get up to 180g each. This is what makes every single 3g sale a profit. One thing you can try is find somebody that's buying up a ton of eternal lifes as they're likely making cards and off load them a ton for cheap. Or of course you can try making cards yourself but I never suggest outright gambling with your gold since too much can be lost. Not much else to say about them other than move them as much as you can, as fast as you can, in any way you can.

EDIT: Also one last tip, make sure that you're exalted with whoever you are buying parchment from. The small bit of silver you'll save adds up to a fist full of gold each time you sit down to craft a thousand glyphs. And since you'll be doing this everyday or every other day... I'm sure you can see how fast it'll all add up.

Thanks for stopping by!