Here's an awesome tip for single-players who are interested in cashing in and leveling quickly.

* Diablo 3 is a one-time cost and there are no monthly fees.
* There is a party limit of 4, and the game is designed for the more difficult encounters to be handled by 4 people.
* Each player has their own drop modifiers for personal drops and magic finds. There will be group drops and personal drops for each player in the group.
* When playing in co-op, you kill faster and there's much better loot available.

The tip? MULTI-BOXING!

And you only need to buy a maximum of 4 copies!

With your own party of 4 and in your own game instances, you can level faster and get better loot than most of the competition. All of your characters can stack on top of each other too and they don't all require varying locations in combat. :)

Blizzard has no problem with this, it's not against the rules and is widely used in World of Warcraft and other MMORPGs.

With a powerful enough PC, you should be able to get away with this on a single PC. Each Diablo window, though, might require lower graphics settings. It will take a while for the Diablo 3 retail price to drop too, so this is something you need to decide whether to do right in the beginning or not.

There's still 4-5 months to go, so take this time to research and prepare. :)

Some links to get you started; What is Multiboxing, Dual-boxing.com Forums, MMOWNED Forums

If you guys know of any other good starter sites, let me know. I'll write more about this in the future too as this is probably what I'll be doing.

If you followed my cross-faction gold-making strategy, chances are that you still have a guild bank full of recipes like I do.

Well, stop posting [Recipe: Fillet of Frenzy] and [Recipe: Tasty Lion Steak] immediately!

Some of your recipes might have become Bind on Pickup, but HOLD ONTO THOSE AS WELL if you have them stored in your (personal) guild bank! The two recipes I just mentioned are no longer available - meaning that prices for these two cooking recipes will sky-rocket once people figure this out.

For the new soulbound recipes [Recipe: Westfall Stew] and [Recipe: Cooked Crab Claw], hopefully you still have those in your Guild Bank. If you do, they're not soulbound and can still be sold! First, just wait to see if they become rare or not. If they're introduced again after Cataclysm, just vendor them. If not, you can sell the recipes (after a long wait period) in Trade Chat. What you do is move a single recipe to a Guild Bank tab, and invite players to the guild who want to buy the recipe from you. You give them access to the single Guild Bank tab only (or only allow 1 withdraw for their rank), and then kick them after. =]

For Frenzy and Tasty Lion - as of right now, no one has been able to find any vendors that offer these recipes. The Tasty Lion/Menace quest has been removed from Southshore, and Laird (the NPC who sold Fillet of Frenzy) was killed during the Shattering.

No word on whether these will be available after Catacylsm, so I would recommend you hold onto these for dear life!

Right now, they don't seem to be available but they might be back in Cataclysm.

If you like taking risks, you should start hunting down these recipes and buying them out on the Auction House before others realize how valuable they've become (spend up to 500G per recipe for example). The other option is to advertise that the recipes have been removed, and try to sell them for 5,000 gold each or more - in case it does make a return in Cataclysm.

Otherwise, if you don't want to take any risks - just wait to see if they're available again from NPCs after Cataclysm, or watch as they become extremely more rare and valuable. (The longer you wait, the more valuable they will become.)

Remember the [Ruby Shades]? They were widely available for 5 copper, Blizzard removed them, and now they sell on the Auction House for over 100,000 gold.

(Note: I'll update if I find any other missing recipes - I heard that there are 6 recipes missing from Tanaris, but I haven't investigated yet.)

* Update:

The other missing Tanaris recipes are sold by Gikkix (first 4) and Jabbey who are both MIA.

Recipe: Grilled Squid
Recipe: Nightfin Soup
Recipe: Poached Sunscale Salmon
Recipe: Spotted Yellowtail
Recipe: Undermine Clam Chowder

According to Blizzard, however, the recipes will be making a return sometime after the Cataclysm release but they weren't sure on an exact date.

If you have these recipes, you should buy them out on the AH and start selling for very high prices (tell everyone that they were taken out of the game.. you know, a half truth.) =]

No word on Tasty Lion and Fillet of Frenzy however.

* Update (12/03/10):

I've received confirmation from a GM that [Recipe: Fillet of Frenzy] and [Recipe: Tasty Lion Steak] will NOT be making a return. The NPCs were killed during the Shattering and therefore the recipes died with them. So, hold onto these recipes - they can only go UP in value. In 6-12 months, they'll be worth 60-75k at least. Maybe they'll even reach the heights of those Ruby Shades one day (eg 150,000-250,000 in a couple years)..

[Recipe: Keldorei Spider Kabob] has also been removed - another extremely valuable recipe if you still have it sitting in your bank space.

If you're a long term gold strategist such as myself, you'll start stocking up on "Hallowed Wands" now for next years Hallow's End event.

On the opening day, transformations sell for over 25G a piece so you can quickly make a lot of gold on the first day before anyone else collects Wands from the Innkeeper Trick-or-Treat bags.

The next day, prices will drop to 15G, then 10G, then 5G, etc. So you'll want to advertise Achievement transformations as much as possible on the first day of Hallow's End next year.

The cooldown on "Trick-or-Treat" is 1 hour whether you're logged in or not - so just rotate through all of your realm characters and try to collect as many Treat Bags/Wands as possible and just store them in your bank. All of the other Hallow's End items pretty much expire and disappear.

With Christmas coming up, you'll also want to fill up a couple (personal) Guild Bank Tabs with the Gingerbread Cookie and Egg Nog recipes. Wait a few months after Christmas, and you can re-sell those recipes for 25G a piece or more (and there's almost no competition in Jun/Jul/Aug).

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.

So I spent the last couple days selling Glyphs and re-selling [Vanishing Powder].

Trade Chat was filled with players asking, "where do i buy vanishing powder????" so I simply purchased stacks from the Scribe Vendor, directed Trade Chat users to the AH, and re-sold to them for 30G per stack. =]

I probably made about 3k gold just reselling cheap [Vanishing Powder] to people who didn't read the patch notes. From my Glyph selling, I gold capped one of my characters and the other is 50% capped. I had a lot of competition too unfortunately, but all-in-all it was a good day. Mat and ink prices sky-rocketed, so it was a good thing that I had made all of the glyphs (40 of each) during the weeks before. (Since ink requirements for Glyphs went from 1 ink to 3.)

All of the new 4.0.1 Glyphs can be learned from the trainer, 1 x Northrend Research (Living Bomb), and 1 x Book of Glyph Mastery (Colossus Smash). Don't waste any more than that, you won't learn anything new.

So here's an interesting gold tip:

[Glyph of Vanish] is currently bugged and no one is able to craft it. It will be hot-fixed eventually, so most players won't know when it will be available. But if you check the Trainer after each server restart, you'll be able to get and sell the Glyph before anyone else. For atleast the first few hours, you'll be able to sell it for 100-200G each.

Other broken Glyphs (not available YET) include [Glyph of Mage Armor], [Glyph of Armors], and [Glyph of the Long Word].

Mage Armor still might be available from your old crafted glyphs, but there's no way to make new ones - so they're very pricey at the moment and you should buy out all competition.

Don't advertise sales of these Glyphs in Trade Chat either, otherwise other Scribes will clue in.

This is actually more of an addendum to "Part 2".

In Part 2, I had discussed how there are many items, pets, and recipes that are Faction Exclusive (can only be obtained by one faction), and how they can sell very well on the other side. I forgot to list one interesting item that you can transfer through the Neutral AH from the Horde side to Alliance that's highly valuable.

To Horde players, it's trash. But to the Alliance, it's pure gold. =]

I'm referring to the [Sleeveless T-Shirt]

What most players don't know is that the [Sleeveless T-Shirt] only drops from Alliance bodies in Alterac Valley, so it's impossible for Alliance players to obtain this item unless it's through the Neutral Auction House.

They're cool looking outfits and their description is priceless. You can actually sell them for 50-100G on the Alliance auction house. Or just throw them up onto the Neutral AH for a reduced price. =]


Right now, the gold markets seem to be favoring Glyphs and Recipes/Pets (cross-faction trading works very well), but disenchants aren't selling for very much anymore. But then again, it's server dependent.

Here are some other interesting items that can be sold Cross-Faction.

1. The [Black Tabby] pet can only be obtained by the Horde, killing the Dalaran Spellscribe in the Alliance-friendly village Ambermill. The silver elite spawns quite a bit at 3 different locations (Humanoid Tracking is recommended so that you can login/logout and just quickly scan the area for the Spellscribe) throughout the day, but the Pet drop rate is around 20%. It'll easily sell for 700-1000G on the Alliance AH.

What's nice about the other NPCs in Ambermill is that they drop other rate items that can only be obtained by Horde. Such as "Channeler's Staff", "Dalaran Wizard's Robe", and "Jewel-Encrusted Sash". Alliance don't really know how rare they are (and that the Robe is required to look like a Dalaran Wizard) so your best bet is to advertise in Alliance trade chat. I sell the Robes for 75G each, and the Sash/Staff for 20-30G a piece. Their drop rates are very high, which is nice.

2. [Ripped Ogre Loincloth]

This item can only be obtained by Horde when looting the Gordunni Dirt Mounds (Gordunni Cobalt quest in Feralas). They look awesome, very rare on Alliance side, and I sell for 75G each.

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Old World items are also selling very well right now, but they won't be as soon as Cataclysm hits. On my server for example, here's how much they sell for:

Adamantite - 60G/stack
Fel Iron Bars - 70G/stack
Goldthorn - 80G/stack
Purple Lotus - 80G/stack
Gromsblood - 80G/stack
Rugged Leather - 50G/stack
Wool Cloth - 30G/stack

Botters are still foolishly collecting WOTLK ores (ie, Saronite) and have no idea how well Fel Iron and other Old World items are selling. I report bots all of the time in WOTLK zones, but never see any in Outlands surprisingly.

Anyhow, in preparation I had stockpiled all of these items during the WOTLK launch (and prior to) when everyone was running new DKs. I filled up several Guild Bank Tabs with these items, and just waited for 4-6 months to sell them. I had paid about 5-10G per stack for most of these items and resold them at significantly higher prices.

With Cataclysm approaching, though, I would recommend that you sell all Old World items that you have right now and then buy them out again when everyone is leveling their fresh toons (only to resell them again 4 months down the road.) If you have the guild/bank space that is. =]

Speaking of Old World items, don't worry too much about farming the [Swift Zulian Tiger] either if you just want the cool looking mount. Everyone is saying "The Swift Zulian Tiger is gone forever! Farm them now while you still can!". However, according to my trusted sources it will actually be back in Cataclysm but much easier to obtain (the "Insane" title will also be available in Cataclysm but easier to get as well) with the Zul'Gurub zone rebuild and new quests. (The mount will still be a drop, reward, or an exalted reputation purchase - it's not exactly clear yet.) The achievement won't be the same though, only those who got the "original" will have that special mount and achievement, but there will be a new mount with the same look and texture.