Before today's entry, I give you this amusing screen I got the other night while heading to the training dummy on my DK.
DON'T BE THAT GUY!
In case you just can't wait, yes alchemy is awesome. Last post on all the things I've learned and noticed about the alchemy market. How To Alchemy post is coming soon so stick around. A handful of sections within this post will be explained in depth with my how to post or have been briefly mentioned already.
First I've noticed that over the last two weeks every +Stat elixir has been flooded with a page or two at the cost of an imbued vial. I also have no idea who would be using these outside of gimmic fights. And since you need to know WHO you're selling to so you know HOW to sell them makes this pretty much a dead market. If I could tear out all the pages of elixirs from my book I'd do it in a heart beat. This section of alchemy is a good thing to keep a mental note of though even if it's not a market you'll want to work in.
While leveling a lot of people DO buy up these cheap ass elixirs. I mean it's only 2 gold for an hour long boost of uberness. Granted it's not necessary to level, but epic gems aren't necessary to clear Ice Crown either. The reason that I'm making it a point to draw attention to this is because when you're leveling a new profession, chances are high that you'll just vendor almost everything without a second thought. Stobbit!
Remember everything has a price. So if you're wanting to get into flasks don't vendor the 9001 elixirs that you end up with. Throw them up on auction for 1.5g each and relist a few times after they expire. You'll at least make back something, definitely a lot more than what the vendor gives.
The interesting thing that I've found about alchemy compared to other professions is that there's several very different ways that you can work this market. They're a lot like glyphs because of small profits in massive amounts, but the glyph style doesn't seem to fit here as you can't rely on a constant horde of herbs and inks. The best way to describe it is that there's several different amounts of effort that you need to sell flasks all based on your AH style and server and all other situations to judge by. I'll be going over all of that in the How To post.
The profits I've been getting from alchemy were what I imagined that they would be ONLY if prices managed to be raised by about 5 gold a flask. Boy was I under estimating this market. With good luck on procs, which I'm convinced is normal, and getting a few stacks of semi-cheap lotus... wow. As you saw in my business reports, I've made quite an astounding profit by just hitting 4 buttons. The only catch is that I completely ran out of materials almost instantly. Before the first week had ended I had sold every last scrap of lichbloom and frost lotus I owned. I'll say this many times for this profession... STOKPILE! For serious!
So I'm now completely convinced that having an elixir spec alchemist of your own, or a friend that doesn't mind waiting on a cast bar of 300 flasks, is HIGHLY beneficial to your AH game. While as a whole the profession is rather boring to work, I like that there's so much more of a business aspect to it than collecting money like a fiend. This whole experience was very satisfying for me and would totally do it all again.
I have not explored potions at all for a few reasons. One being that I don't have a potion master and I am definitely not power leveling alchemy again. The other being that I have never seen a north rend potion listed for more than 3g since a month after release. So as far as that market goes I'll just go ahead and say it's 100% not profitable. However if you can prove me wrong on that one please by all means do so. I doubt I'll get into potions any way but I would certainly love to know if it can be profitable.
Ok so here's the short and narrow of what I think about alchemy:
-Very profitable
-Flasks are awesome
-Requires actual AH business strategies
-Stokpiling is absolutely paramount
-Sales are fast and in large numbers
-Elixir Mastery or GTFO. The choice is yours
-Highly recommended market for any AH player to get into
-Having your own elixir alchemist is far from a necessity
-The secret to profitable flasks lays in the price of lichbloom, get it cheap and win.
Thanks for stopping by!
Only runed mana potions were worth the effort from my experience on a medium pop server. 7-9g per potion, but it's that cursed lichbloom again -.-
ReplyDeleteWhen you say 'cheap lichbloom' do you mean like 15g a stack? cause that's what i get from my farmer.
ReplyDeleteWhat is 'cheap' on your server:)
Thanks in advance.
I know it varies from server to server, but i have generally found the 3 raiding pots (armor, haste and crit i think) quite profitable,as most high end raiders use them.
ReplyDeleteI have also earned a LOT on doing some of the older transmutes: Arcanite and Primal Might in particular, with profitmargins of almost 100g on each, and with Transmute spec they proc a lot.
I have however experienced very bad profits on flasks, doubtlessly due to not being elixir spec.
I think as the person above mentioned, the 4 raiding potions are probably the only potions worth anything. Progression guilds go through 2 potions every single attempt or fight for every single raider. Don't have an alchemist so I have not paid attention to the market on it, but I know I went through 100+ potions this past week.
ReplyDeleteI know a lot of people with alchemists actually just went transmute for the gems. I think many of them were feeding their true market of JC though.
The cost the change specialisms is 150gold.
ReplyDeleteYou can craft a load of flasks/Elxirs change spec to potion and then get procs from the new batches you make. You just need to make enough to get more than 300g of value procs.
I cant really see this being viable going potion spec but easy enough to work out.
Holy comments bat man!
ReplyDelete@ Anon 2
The average price of lich on my server is 3.25g+ and there's usually no more than a page on the AH at any given time, even on the week ends. The primary farmer for it is also the primary flask seller.
@ Anon 3
I usually don't supply small and cheap like potions for the serious raiders as almost anybody that's smart enough to use them or progressed to need them rather has them provided by their guild. Different servers are different of course.
Primal might xmutes are indeed a great niche market if you can get the mats for a good price. On my server they're all in the 20g range with air being 35 and up. I never looked into the arcanite so I'll check that out.
@ Tarax
If I had a solid supply of mats for flasks and xmutes I'd have considered switching specs, but in the long run it's best to just have another alch if possible. Basically a small price now, that'll add up to far more later, or a big price now that you can forget about next week. But there's also the hassle of having to go to the spec trainer and forget/train every time.
I'll be working a bit from these comments into nmy How To post coming up soon, namely the changing specs part.
well it depends i am transmute mastery on my main and hes hes my herb/alchemist. for most of my moneys been trans epic red gems but i have sold a metric truck load of potion of haste and elixers of agility
ReplyDeletejust discovered your blog and i have to say alchemy is my favourite profession i make a insane amount of money imo, raking in up to 40k profits a week.
ReplyDeleteThe days i sell items is very important a good idea also is to find out when all the big guilds raid what days and times so u can make a not of these.
I can usually list up 200 flasks of each on the AH on wed at about 6pm server time and they all sell out without even undercutting due to the huge demands from guilds.
One more thing i do is make sure 10 flasks of each is at 60g each on a 48 hour listing so if flasks start to sell out ppl will start at undercutting at that amount instead of starting at like 25g so i can make more money undercutting. Also competition does seem to give up quickly if u can keep up the pressure making u able to sell flasks for double profits.
p.s sorry for commentating on a old post.