Just wanted to make this quick post because I noticed a lot of readers were interested in how to sell Glyphs. You don't even need Auctioneer to do this either, although it does help in tracking quantities and it's Quick Buyout feature.
It's definitely the most lucrative gold making method right now (selling Glyphs) and will pick up again when Cataclysm is released. Although Glyphs are now permanently learned, there will ALWAYS be a need for them and will always sell well.
Based on statistics I gathered from over two most recent (pre-4.0.1) months of selling Glyphs (50,000+ transactions), all Glyph sales were based on UNIQUE users. Meaning that Glyphs were purchased for permanent reasons, and there were a negligible quantity of players that actually bought REPLACEMENT glyphs. And this was YEARS after Glyphs were first introduced. Bottom line: they will always sell, and this new change to Glyphs won't effect sales that much.
Here are the basic tools you need:
Auction Profit Master - Used to be called Quick Auctions 3, this is your bread and butter.
Postal - for quickly collecting Mail Items.
Additional Tools (optional):
Auctioneer - From just a Glyph selling perspective, this is extremely useful for it's EasyBuyout feature (it's DISABLED by default FYI!) Make sure you download the latest Beta btw to ensure it's always up-to-date.
Altoholic - for tracking mats and item quantities that you have on all of your characters.
Panda - For Mass Milling of your herbs.
Note: As of 4.0.1 automatic posting and cancelling does not work anymore, so you have to click on a button for each transaction. It's just a minor annoyance, and probably upset most of the Glyph sellers that were AFK posting/selling. Didn't bother me at all though, and I was hoping that Blizzard would actually do something more significant.
Getting Started
First thing you need to do is learn how to use Auction Profit Master. Here's an old video on YouTube for using Quick Auctions 3 and it best explains. There are very little changes between QA3 and the new APM version.
(FYI: Quick Auctions 3 was abandoned by the developer, and he gave the source code to a new developer to continue the work on, hence the tool was renamed to "Auction Profit Master".)
All of the other tools are just automated and require no setup (except for Auctioneer - TURN ON EASY BUYOUT and set limits!). Other than that, APM is the only tool that requires configuration to start selling Glyphs.
Follow the instructions in the video to get started. Type "/apm config" instead of "/qa config" to configure the Addon.
After watching that video at least 3 times, here are some key items (and strategies) you should be aware of:
1. Item Group -> Add Items. Remember, you can only Add Items if they are currently in your inventory. So make sure you find out which Glyphs are selling the best, craft them, and THEN add them to your Glyphs Item Group. (Keep reading to find out which Glyphs sell the highest.)
2. Override Undercut: This is how much you undercut other sellers by. You can make this 1 copper to really piss them off, but I usually undercut by 50 silver or 1-2G. If there are very few sellers and little competition, undercut them by 1s.
However if you have a lot of time and gold on your hands and there is a lot of competition, drive down the prices significantly (10G each undercut for example). It will hurt both of you (you'll be selling Glyphs to break even), but will come out on top if you have a steady supply of mats and inks. Basically, you want to drain them of all of their resources so that they can't create any new glyphs.
3. Override Threshold: This is the MINIMUM amount you want to sell Glyphs for. This should be _slightly_ above the cost of crafting the Glyph. This amount is HEAVILY influenced by herb prices too so pay attention.
- Milling stacks of Adder's Tongue, Icethorn, Lichbloom gives 6 total [Ink of the Sea].
- Milling stacks of Deadnettle, Tiger Lily, Goldclover, Talandra's Rose, Fire Leaf, Fire Seed gives 4 total [Ink of the Sea]. (It's actually closer to 5 on average, but I'm using 4 for safety).
Glyphs require 3 of each Ink + Resilient Parchment (40s if Exalted).
If the average price of a stack of Adder's Tongue sells for 40G for example, you MUST sell your Glyphs at a minimum cost of 21G or higher.
If the average price of a stack of Adder's Tongue is 30G however, you can sell your Glyphs for 15.5G (to break even) or higher.
Use a calculator when deciding minimum thresholds for your Glyphs. APM won't post Glyphs if their too cheap, it will only post the ones that make profit for you.
You'll want to sell all of your Glyphs for 30G or higher, and keep buying out all herbs/mats off the AH using EasyBuyout. If you have any competition that falls below the crafting price, BUY THEM and put them back up for auction (classic Buy Low/Sell High strategy.)
4. Fallbacks -> Override fallback: This is the price you want to sell Glyphs for if there are none on the AH or the only competition is very expensive. I usually put in 120G or 150G per Glyph. This is all server dependent though, but don't get too greedy or they won't sell.
5. New Auction Tab Features
If you open up the AH, and click on the "Auctions" tab you'll see a bunch of new entries at the top. Familiarize yourself with these.
Status: It will let you know if anyone is undercutting you, but Cancel already does it anyways so this is pretty useless.
Cancel: Will scan all of your posted Glyphs and cancel the ones that were undercut so that you can repost them.
Post: Posts all of your Glyphs and will automatically undercut each of your competitors.
Summary: Very important. This will show you the prices for all Glyphs, and is very useful when first setting up APM. Click Glyphs, then Get Data. You can click on each of the Glyphs to Queue them for crafting later. Left-click to increase the quantity, right-click to reduce.
Log: This LOG button can be toggled on-and-off while scanning is taking place. It's a history log of all transactions.
6. Your New Inscription Menu
Finally, if you open up your Inscription crafting menu you'll see a new button in the top-right corner called APM. Click on the button and it will open up the Crafting Queue mentioned above.
Here you'll see all of the Glyphs that you queued for crafting and each quantity selected. Scroll down below and you'll see all of the materials required to craft the glyphs. Collect the mats, and start clicking on each entry and they will be automatically crafted for you.
Once all of your Glyphs are ready, and they have all been added to your Item Group, just click POST and all Glyphs will be automatically posted and undercut for you. The only new feature is that you need to confirm each post, so get ready for a lot of clicking. =]
One you're all good and setup, it's just a matter of constantly clicking CANCEL, retrieve your mail items, and POST again. Once every hour, every 30 minutes or every 10 minutes depending on competition.
Glyph selling is a VERY time consuming process and you'll have little time for anything else. You'll always be watching to see if players are undercutting you for example. However, it has a high rate of return.
Here's a summary of some of the more interesting 4.0.1 patch changes.
I'll keep updating the list as I learn more.
- All characters can toggle on & off all Minimap options. For example, you can see Mining, Fish, and Herb nodes all at once now. (Just turn each option on.)
- Hunters can also now track Beasts, Humanoids, Hidden, Elementals, Demons, etc all at once. It's pretty awesome.
- Characters can now collect XP from mining Herbs and Ores. It's a great way to level new characters especially now that you can see both node types.
- Discarded PVP gear can be sold or disenchanted.
- Several other items that previously couldn't be disenchanted can now be.
- Tailoring Specializations have been removed permanently.
- Leatherworking Specializations have been removed, however it's currently bugged and you can re-learn the specializations from the quest givers.
- Transmutation cooldowns reduced (significantly) to 4 hours.
- You can pickup Master Riding (310% mount speed) for 5000G. Don't bother trying to fly in Old World yet, that will only happen after Cataclysm.
- New scaling spells & skills have made leveling much faster and most low lever characters quite overpowered. Health and mana regeneration is significantly increased as well.
- Older (Level 70) Heroic dungeons have been tweaked, making mobs hitting a lot harder. I used to solo Kara quite easily, but it's become a lot more difficult now.
- NPC that have quests available (or are part of active quest chains) now show text above their heads identifying them. It makes it much easier to find "points of interest". This was actually a very subtle, but extremely useful update and I liked it a lot.
- I like the new Thorns spell. Instead of a buff, it's an instant cast defense spell that tears apart melee characters. Works great on Rogues. =]
- Lockpicking now scales with your level. All 80 Rogues automatically have 400 LP skill. Since all skills have been removed, weapon training is no longer required and everyone always has full weapon training. Goodbye "Knuckle Sandwich" Achievement.
- Many Hunter Pets now have unique abilities that can benefit the entire raid. Right now, you can swap in-and-out 4 different pets depending on your needs. The 5th pet will be available when Cataclysm is released. Low level pets also now auto-level to 3 levels below you instead of 5.
- Level 20's can now move at 100% mount speed. All mounts now scale with their riding skill.
- Most PVP Daily Quests now no longer provide Honor Points but rather gold. I think only the Venture Coin quests down by the shoreline provide Honor Points now - but it's very little and not worth the trouble.
- No more vellums, it's all just one new all-purpose Enchanting Vellum for armor/weapons at all levels. Makes things much easier.
- Power PC, Windows 98, and Windows 2000 users will no longer be able to play WoW.
- Flight paths are shortened, and don't make as many stops any more.
- There are a couple minor pre-Cataclyms events going on (other than the earthquakes). There are new conversations taking place in Thrall's chambers for example, and Emissaries should be arriving in cities soon for the new elemental invasion quests.
- Honor Points and Justice Points can be converted into each other, however it hasn't been implemented yet. I think it's pretty cool that you can PVP for points, and then exchange them for Raid PVE gear. Here's the original post from back in April.
We do plan to have a way to convert Honor points (PvP) into Justice points (PvE), and vice versa, at a loss. The conversions will be possible, but it won't be a 1:1 rate, and you'll have fewer points after the conversion process. We won't allow the higher tiers to be exchanged for each other, however.- Auction Posts and Cancelling now have a secondary confirmation request. It's a big annoyance, and there were plenty of other options available if their reason was to prevent automated auction posting. The thing is - it's automated.. they just need to add an extra step to their automation. So, all this does is hurt legitimate users (who now need to spend a lot more time in the AH) and I'm pretty sure they weren't complaining about accidental auction posts being such a huge problem or that they requested these new features. "Hey Blizzard! Can you make it first ask 'Are you really sure?' than ask again 'Are you really really sure?'. That sounds like a great feature that everyone will love!"
- There are also rumors of Shaman Tanking being possible in the future (Plate armor upgrades too.) I think it would be pretty cool for a new tanking class. All of the tanking classes are MELEE, but what about a SPELL CASTING TANK? That would just be cool.
In an earlier post, I had mentioned "crazy Gold Making exploits" were also being heavily utilized (other than Remote AH bots) since the 4.0.1 patch but didn't provide any examples.
Well, here they are. These exploits have been working since the 4.0.1 initial patch, but they probably won't be working after today (there will be a lot of hot fixes I'm assuming).
#1 Argent Tournament Pets & Infinite Champion Seals
The Champion's Purse from the Argent Tournament can also be looted for infinite Champion Seals in the same manner as the Unlimited Justice Points exploit. It is currently being exploited heavily to purchase and sell Argent Pets for 700-2000G a piece (post cross-faction to make more gold). You just open the bag, grab the Seals only, leave the gold alone, reset the bag contents (several methods as mentioned previously), and loot the Champion Seals again.
#2 Karazhan Exalted Rings & Infinite Void Crystals
Those special Quest rings you can get outside of the Kara instance can now be disenchanted into Void Crystals. Just D/E the ring, talk to her again and tell her you "lost your ring" and she'll give you a new one. You can also create a macro to talk to the NPC, D/E the ring, talk to her again.
Previously those special Kara rings could not be disenchanted or sold. But, I think it was a mistake since Blizzard made a change so that PVP gear could be sold or disenchanted now (I'm assuming it's an intended change.) I'm not sure if the earlier rings (ie, Friendly, Honored, etc) can be disenchanted as well however.
#3 PvP Gear - New Intended Changes?
It appears that all unused PVP gear can now (finally) be disenchanted or sold. So if you just want to make gold, or you're discarding older PVP gear, you no longer have to destroy the items and can now make some profit from them. From what I can tell by disenchanting results, you'll be making roughly 1G for every 1 Honor Point you spend. But, it's all server dependent (ie, D/E mat prices).
* Moved from my previous post "A whole lot of cheating going on.."
Blizzard's gaze is currently upon those Battle.net (SC2) hack developers, but much like Sauron's gaze - it shifts frequently. I'm expecting the same swift and decisive actions on these recent WoW cheaters in the same manner. These exploits and cheats completely DESTROY the gold markets, fairness, and ruin the enjoyment and participation of a competitive online experience (just like what Blizzard claimed in their lawsuit.)
"When users of the Hacks download, install, and use the Hacks, they copy StarCraft II copyrighted content into their computer's RAM in excess of the scope of their limited license, as set forth in the EULA and ToU, and create derivative works of StarCraft II."So if Blizzard actually believes this statement to be true, they'll definitely action this exploitive behavior within a week minimum. If they don't stand by their beliefs, however, they'll probably just hotfix the issue, leave the players alone, and then ban them much later when it suits their purpose.
"The harm to Blizzard from Defendants' conduct is immediate, massive and irreparable."
"By distributing the Hacks to the public, Defendants cause serious harm to the value of StarCraft II. Among other things, Defendants irreparably harm the ability of Blizzard's legitimate customers (i.e. those who purchase and use unmodified games) to enjoy and participate in the competitive online experience. That, in turn, causes users to grow dissatisfied with the game, lose interest in the game, and communicate that dissatisfaction, thereby resulting in lost sales of the game or 'add-on' packs and expansions thereto."
After all, these exploits are truly game breaking and completely destroying the economy (while also ruining a legitimate player's experience.) So, I'm really interested to see how quickly they'll action this, especially after preaching about SC2 cheaters and the serious harm they have caused to the value of their games and their legitimate customers.
How long will it take to action? SC2 cheaters were banned on Oct 1 and then Blizzard launched their lawsuit by Oct 16. Will Blizzard fix this customer-impacting issue and practice what they preach, or will they instead use this as a strategy to improve revenue? It will be a good example of whether they stand by their "stated beliefs" or not.
The Global Cooldown (GDC) Hack also comes to mind. This has been exploited for not just days, weeks, or months but rather YEARS. Even in the most recent Ladder Arena Tournaments it has been estimated that almost 3/4 of all players have cheated using the GCD hack and obtained their Gladiator titles unfairly. Blizzard banned very few people and there are probably tens-of-thousands (if not hundreds-of-thousands) of players who have used the GDC hack without any fear or action by Blizzard.
It's scary to think of all of the cheaters out there. From all of the various official announcements, Blizzard has banned millions of players for online cheating. MILLIONS! I wouldn't be surprised if 50% of all online players have knowingly cheated or have exploited bugs.
On a side note,
Their new lawsuit actually worries me a bit. I don't care that Blizzard is going after cheaters and the developers of these applications (like BnetD), but I am concerned about the repercussions. If successful, it will set a legal precedent that single-player or multi-player cheats or addons/mods (even when acceptable) would be completely illegal. Virus scanners, operating systems, performance apps, tools for impaired users, etc all fit within Blizzard's classification, and it would make it very easy for them to be able to sue any software developer or users of these tools (harsh charges, prison time, etc). Blizzard probably wouldn't do that of course (bad for PR), but the case would be available for other (less savory lawyers) to reference and many people could suffer badly as a result.
The thing is, Blizzard claims that these hacks cause irreparable harm. But that's not actually true: the harm CAN be repaired by hotfixes, patches, player bans, and resetting Ladders & Seasons - all of which they already do quite frequently. All of the players cheating to get Honor Gear for example will lose it all next season.
Blizzard also knew about the map hack tool the minute it was released (they even stated that they were following it's initial development), and there have always been tons of Starcraft 1 maphacks available. Warden uses hash values to determine whether a user is running a Maphack or not, so SC2 could have easily prevented users from even launching SC2 if a hack was running. It was easily detected by Warden, and they could have done something about it right away - but instead they waited months to ban the users, allowed them to cheat, and it seemed like they wanted "damage" to occur so that they could sue the developers on purpose. They've done insta-bans before, why did they wait so long for "damages" to occur? Was it on purpose for a planned lawsuit?
Blizzard was already going to sue SC2 hackers, but then they suddenly decided to drop the charges. If I, for example, was interested only in profits from court settlements, I would wait until significant damages were incurred so that I could sue for a larger amount of money. That's what the patent trolls do too.. they wait until businesses become successful before they sue. Patent Trolls are not interested in protecting their Intellectual Property, but rather the revenue they can generate from settlements. Based on what I've seen, it seems that these lawsuits are just another alternative revenue stream for Blizzard, and there's little emphasis on actually protecting the legit players (although public statements make it look like users are their top priority). If there were concerns for the legit players, users would be prevented from even launching SC2 (or other Blizzard games) if they have a maphack running. Hash files are very unique signatures too, so Warden would not be triggered by a false positive.
With all of the balancing issues, client issues, crashes, melting video cards, account thefts, and bugs (all of which were complained about for months during PTR/beta, but were STILL released live) wouldn't Blizzard themselves actually be causing even more irreparable harm to their players?
Anyhow - I've been tracking a lot of players on my own server who have been cheating like crazy. Still no ban as of today, even though many of them have probably accumulated 15,000 to 30,000 JPs in one day without running any raids. Yeah, definitely suspicious having all brand new high-level raid gear without having run any raids.
With the new 4.0.1 patch came a whole ton of bugs, exploits and opportunities. =]
We're talking infinite Justice Points exploits, unlimited Honor Points, crazy Gold Making exploits, and Remote Auction House exploitation.
Most of them are easily detectable by Blizzard and these exploits have worked for the past 5 days - but players haven't been banned yet. I'm interested to see how long it will take Blizzard to crack down on these cheaters and exploiters. As mentioned in a previous post, if Blizzard is having concerns regarding Cataclysm (or worried about financial figures) they'll have a ban wave in Q4 (ending Dec 31). Otherwise, they'll save up the ban wave until Q1 next year (Jan/Feb/Mar) so that they can pad their revenue numbers even higher.
Here are some of the many cheats & exploits going on:
1. Infinite Justice Points Exploit
Containers that used to drop Emblems of Frost now drop Justice Points, however they are bugged and you can loot them over and over. 1000-1500 Justice Points in under 10 minutes is easily possible.
Here are the specific items, and you needed to have the ones from before the 4.0.1 patch. I'm not sure if NEW drops work as well.
For the [Sack of Frosty Treasures] for example: just open the bag, pull out JPs, enter Blasted Lands portal, pull out again, keep going back and forth. Each time you go through the portal it resets the JP contents. Don't loot all though, just the JPs.
[Brewfest Kegs] work too and provide 24 Justice Points each time. You can also logout and log back in again, and the items reset. It doesn't work with all zoning methods, however you can use the Undercity/Silvermoon Translocator to also reset the bag contents. There are other ways too.
2. Infinite Justice Points Exploit #2
You can kill the end boss of Hellfire Ramparts over-and-over for Justice Points. He's not supposed to drop them by the way. =] Clear the Heroic Instance to the last boss, kill his guards and he'll dismount, kill Vazruden only (not the Drake), jump off the bridge and exit the portal. Go back in, kill him again. Each kill gives 250 rep and 5 Justice Points.
Apparently, a couple other 70 Heroics are bugged as well. Anzu (Raven Lord Mount) doesn't need to be summoned anymore, so anyone can farm the mount without a Druid present. I hear that it's working on some realms, but not others - so I don't know if it's intentional or not.
3. Remote Auction House
A bunch of new web-based Remote AH bot applications have hit the market (the developers are profiting from it, just like the SC2 hack developers), and I'm seeing them in use on my own server. It makes Glyph selling fairly difficult.
One individual in particular that exploits heavily (he's logged in 24/7 making transactions - cancelling auctions and undercutting automatically) is actually the GM of one of the biggest PVE guilds on my server. He's fully geared in 277 and the guild is well progressed. For the past week though, he hasn't been raiding but rather running a bot to exploit Glyph sales. Players using Quick Auctions 3 (Auction Profit Master) is easily noticeable, but his activities are obviously automated. I chatted with a member of his guild, and apparently they're aware of his "exploits" and how he shares his account with others for heavy raiding which is why the account is logged in so much.
In regards to the other exploits, I'll post some more once I get confirmation from other players. Some methods involve gold making related to the 4.0.1 Undocumented Changes (ie, how everyone can get Wrath gear for honor now which can be sold back.) They removing Tailoring Specializations FYI, and apparently some other Profession Specializations might be impacted currently (Blizzard might be removing them later) such as LW Elemental, Blacksmithing, Alchemy Transmutation nerfs, etc.
*UPDATE:
I'm moving the lengthy SC2 hacks post (that was originally in this post) to a new entry to keep this post short.
I've also confirmed that other loot bags are bugged as well, some of them have been hot-fixed however.
Here are more bags that also provide infinite amounts of Justice Points and can be reset:
[Cache of the Ley-Guardian]
[Large Sack of Ulduar Spoils]
[Sack of Ulduar Spoils]
[Stachel of Spoils]
[Large Satchel of Spoils]