Grimmtooth's Troops

For the past year or more I’ve provided a steady and significant income to ten toons doing nothing more than selling Glyphs and Glyph-related Accessories.  I have done this without spending an excessive amount of time at it, and I have done so without being a cosmic jerk to everyone else on the market. The gains are modest by comparison to the "goblins" among us but they are gains despite the presence of such creatures.

There is no complex formula to memorize or fiddly process to follow.  It’s all a matter of good old common sense and old-timey business practices.

Without trying to force my precise methods on anyone, let me put down what the general principles are. You can follow through in whatever fashion you want.

First Principle: I am a shopkeeper

When a buyer approaches the auction house, it is often with trepidation that the item they wish to find won’t be there. My job is to ensure that when someone comes to buy a glyph, one of mine is there to be bought. I may have been undercut, but with 430ish glyph types out there, the odds are pretty good that I’ll have something they want at the price they’re willing to pay.

This is all about opportunity. A customer provides an opportunity to fulfill a need. Your job as a shopkeeper is to ensure that you can fulfill that need.

Practically every specialty shop I have been in sticks to a specific type of product and/or service, but within that narrow confine, covers all the bases.  Big*Mart may carry camping tents, but only Camping Equipment World carries tents in fifteen different sizes, from fifty makers, all the time.  My job is to be the Camping Equipment World of glyphs.

This means inventory

A shopkeeper doesn’t generally have five items in the front window and make everything else to spec. They maintain an inventory of items to sell¹.

This means a couple of things to me and you.  First it means that you need to know what the possibilities are – what kind of glyphs exist in the first place? And secondly – and more importantly – it means you need to keep track of what you have on hand at any given time.

The main reason for the latter is that you don’t want to tie up assets in stuff that won’t sell – but you also want to make sure that stuff that DOES sell is always available to your customer.

I’m afraid some effort is required at this point.

How you go about this is up to you.  I have a spreadsheet on Google Docs that I use to track average sale price, inventory levels, item status (available, stocked, warehoused), and so forth. There are many other tools available for this, but this was the weapon I chose.  There may even be in-game tools for this.  Or you might choose an old fashioned bound ledger².  Up to the individual.

At any rate, when an item sells, you decrease inventory. As you create replacements, they get noted, too. All you need to do now is figure out what the right levels are.

This is a difficult subject. Different servers have different demands, and things tend to move in cycles.  I’ve seen glyphs that didn’t sell for months suddenly fly off the shelves, then cool off just as quickly.

My own personal practice is to keep two of every glyph in stock at all times. For items that sell faster, three may be more appropriate, but you have GOT to know the market before you run the risk of overstocking, and since I check things once a day there is very little down time even if I sell out on an item.

Getting stocked up

Developing an inventory in the first place will more than likely be a drain on the coffers, if you buy your materials.  Most dealers will need to take time to develop inventory slowly.  But choosing the wrong items will likely result in bankruptcy.  So, choosing your initial stock is important.

There are many tools out there to help out with this – such as The Undermine Journal – but be aware of what they represent. Most, if not all, of these tools use the WoW Armory Auction House feed to access AH information periodically. That feed, however, does not offer real sales data, last I looked. It offers data on what was posted, and what was no longer posted, but it does not indicate if an item disappeared because it was bought, because it expired, or because it was cancelled. Without that information, the best these tools can offer is a guess, which some of them do attempt.

A fair approximation can be gained from the average post price of an item over two weeks’ period. Such an item with a lot of activity and a fairly flat price curve is probably a reliable seller.  An item with a steep sawtooth sales curve (starts out high, drops off rapidly) is probably moving nowhere and all the activity is due to constant undercutting. Items that sell quickly rarely see a lot of undercutting.

You can use tools like this to glean, say, the top 20 items and then work your way down. This way you get some income to fund your subsequent stocking operation.

Yes, there is risk here in that a price is inflated due to artificial manipulation, but since you’re going to make at least one of everything anyway, just view that as an advance copy and move on.

The Supply Chain

Where you get your glyphs is largely up to you.  In my case, I actually make the glyphs, but I purchase my raw materials.  But, if you have the time, gathering your own mats and milling them is a lot more profitable, by many orders of magnitude.

However, a lively glyph market will support a vendor that buys supplies off the auction house. You just have to know what to buy and when.  On my server, for example, Whiptail is generally as cheap as Cinderbloom and Stormvine, with a significantly higher yield per stack.

A really lively market will pretty much require you to at least supplement your supply chain with bought materials. On my server, I generally go through twelve to twenty-four stacks of Whiptail per day, usually in excess of twenty. Unless you give up a significant amount of your time to gathering, there’s no way you can keep up with that sort of demand on your own.

If you choose to buy your glyphs straight up for resale, then your margins are going to be even thinner, and you will need to account for supply costs in a lot more detail. That will also require a LOT more of your time.

Keep the good stuff up front

With over 430 types of glyph to sell, just moving and posting them can eat a significant chunk of time. This is why I have a three-tier inventory.  Tier 1 is the stuff that sells. Tier 2 is the stuff that usually sells but isn’t right now. And Tier 3 is for the stuff that rarely, if ever, sells.

Tier 1 I always keep in stock, two items at a time.

Tier 2 generally gets rotated out of stock for a week, then gets brought back in. The price levels have probably reset³ so it’ll probably move back into Tier 1.

Tier 3 items go into a virtual warehouse, where they sit for a few weeks before being popped into circulation again. I almost always break these out during special events, such as holidays or content patches when a lot of people show up needing a lot of things that normally don’t move.

Now, what you call "selling" is up for debate. Currently, I determine that any glyph that doesn’t sell for at least 25g needs to go to Tier 2 for a week, and if it doesn’t sell for ten weeks in a row, it goes into a warehouse.

Due to undercutting, the "average" price an item brings in is highly questionable, since it varies depending on which part of the sawtooth you’re on. Therefore it is better to establish a minimum, below which you aren’t going to waste time on it.

Don’t sweat the goblins

I read, every week, posts by people that appear almost fixated on undercutting.  Gotta be the lowest price for an item or it’s the end of the world, or something to that effect.

There’s always a "goblin" – real or wannabee, doesn’t matter – out there undercutting something. Can’t get away from it.  You can either engage in a long, wasteful, elaborate "war" with this individual (or – horrors! – a bot), or you can ignore him or her and work to alleviate the impact of such activities.

With 430ish glyphs on the market, you buy assurance through quantity. You will get undercut somewhere, but you won’t get undercut EVERYWHERE at ALL THE TIMES.

The proof is in the pudding. On a well-populated server with an active AH ecosystem, products sell every day, easily. Maybe I miss a few opportunities by not obsessing over The Other Guy, but then, he’s not my customer. My customer pays the bills, not that goblin dude.

Tools for the times

I will be first to say it: without tools, this process would be impossible. I’d be doing nothing but getting glyphs made and posting them, every day. Call that a game if you want, but I call it a job. A boring, soul-destroying job.

So, having the right tools for the job is important!

I am going to take off my hipster glasses and gladly join the throng of people that recommend Trade Skill Master (TSM). I use two of its modules primarily to get things done, and a third for non-related activities⁴.  The Posting tool moves items from your bag to the AH quickly; the destroy tool takes a lot of pain out of milling herbs.

Advanced Trade Skill Window or Skillet can be used to set up queues for making glyphs (the former has a better feature set but the latter seems more reliable).  This, also, is a massive time saver.

Gathering tools like Gathermate 2 and Routes help organize your foraging expeditions.

Postal will help you process mail en masse, moving glyphs to your bags and cash to your bank. There’s also a TSM module for the mailbox, but I haven’t used it.

Google Docs will provide you with free tools to organize your data and find holes to fill and bumps to sand off.

Do be cautious of the more automated tools, though. Understand your market and train the tool to work properly within it.  For example, I posted all my auctions by hand for weeks before letting TSM take over the job, by which time I was aware of the peculiarities of my market and either didn’t care, or developed a process to deal with it.

The most important tool is between your ears

And that brings me to the point that, regardless of what process you develop, what tools you use, or how you deal with adverse situations, the most important things you bring to the table are your heart and mind. If you engage in practices that are a little seedy, expect others to follow suit. If you play the game honestly and fairly, however – you’ll get by just fine.

Above all, keep your eyes open.  For opportunities, trends, potential issues.  Gather what data you need to make it possible.  Don’t rely on tools to drive the whole thing. Keep your hand on the wheel at all times.

Room for improvement

The whole "working as a storefront" process is not without failings. Some are inherent, some can be improved.

I’m bothered by having to put items in warehouse, for example. That makes it impossible to make all things available at all times.  Unfortunately, the AH doesn’t facilitate the customer doing the equivalent of walking up to the counter and inquiring about a rare glyph that isn’t out front.  And NOT warehousing things just eats up too much time and bag space.

The other thing that doesn’t get captured well is sales frequency per item, in my current process.  I don’t record when I sold an item; I don’t even have a database, and that’s what you’d need.  I wanted to do this earlier in the process but eventually arrived at the conclusion that if I have everything up at all times, who cares about when it sells the best?  I’ll be there anyway.  But that does run the risk that the item is currently warehoused.

My current process is also very dependent on me personally catching all the details for sales, etc. Sometimes I forget to record a sale and my inventory gets skewed badly because of it. I live in fear of NOT documenting a sale twice in a row, meaning I’d have no items for sale, and no reason to make more when I looked at my inventory. My next step in that regard is to make a tool that will record each for me into a text file or something, but that’s for another time.

Glyph-Related Accessories

A while back I read on WoW Insider the advice of their goblin advisor regarding the selling of Darkmoon card decks. and the like. At the time it was very good advice, as many of the Darkmoon cards were BiS for several classes. But a week or so later, a new content patch dropped, and they were immediately trumped by the next tier’s trinkets, for the most part.

The upshot is this: Darkmoon cards – and the entry-level relics we can make – really aren’t as profitable as they used to be, not with so many good endgame items available through LFD and LFR.  So, don’t build your business around them. It won’t work out all that well.

While there is still a very minute market for the very patient, don’t expect to see them flying off the shelves.

In fact, after close analysis, you may find that selling Embers or Ink will be more profitable than selling the cards they create.

And that’s pretty much all I’m going to say on this part of the market.

Does this work for other markets?

In a few weeks we’re going to move into the Enchanting market once again. Jas was doing that for a while, and it was tedious and dreary.  Now that I’ve got a new system, though, She’ll be trying her hand at that and see how it works out.

The BIG question mark in all this is Mists of Panderia. With an overhaul to both abilities and talents, how will glyphs be handled? You can bet that I’m watching that like a hawk!

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1. The Internet does change those rules a bit, but let’s pretend it doesn’t exist on Azeroth and see where that takes us. [↩]
2. This does have a certain romantic appeal, I confess. Especially if I get to use a fountain pen. [↩]
3. I mentioned earlier how posting prices have a sawtooth pattern to them as they get undercut from a high price to a low price. This happens to Tier 1 items as well as Tier 2.  Eventually the price bottoms out, at which point everyone withdraws. The next posting will be again at a high price, and we start all over again. [↩]
4. Basically, the AH buying tool is handy for finding bargains to resell, but I use it minimally because the glyph market is just too busy! [↩]

GOOD NEWS, EVERONE!

The creator of the much beloved (by us, anyway) GUPPet addon has updated it to be current with 4.3 and even corrected a but or two. My past ramblings are therefore rendered moot. I haven’t tested to see if the sea mount bug is still there, yet, but my workaround still probably works.

At any rate, no need to hack, just download!  And if you’re super-cautious, like I am, back it up to a USB thumb drive first.¹.

/cheer

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1. If you don’t know how to do that, STOP HACKING NAOW! [↩]

Excitements and Alarums

If you are a user of Google Analytics, and you blog anonymously, your real identity may be at risk of discovery.

The problem is that certain aspects of Analytics are public, including a unique ID that goes with a specific Analytics account – NOT the blog itself, but the whole account, which may be linked to multiple blogs.

Thanks to reverse lookup services, Analytics can be used to eventually correlate all blogs on a single account to each other.

If one of these happens to be a non-anonymized  blog, well, you’re found out.

What to Do About It

Don’t panic! The solution is simple, though somewhat less convenient than having everything under one roof.

Simply go out and create a new Analytics account for your anonymous blogs.  I personally would recommend one account per blog, for enhanced security, but at least decouple your real-identity ones from the rest.

True, this is a bit more bookkeeping for you, but if security is important, it’s worth it.

My Log Does Not Judge

I know there are those that don’t see the need for this level of security because they don’t feel they need it for themselves.  I can understand that; I don’t have the need for myself. 

However, there are many legitimate reasons, which I will not try to trivialize in any way.  Someone hiding from an abusive ex, not making it easy for sleazy collections firms, hiding from Mexican drug cartels … lots of real reasons out there. I’m not going to judge them.

If you feel happy using your real name on the internet, that’s fine. Just don’t be a hater. Respect others’ desire for privacy and either be helpful or stay out of the way.

One thing that WoWHead could do¹, but does not, is report on herb milling yields. So the best you can usually do is comb through comments and hope they’re accurate.

The problem is that without accurate yield information, the enterprising Scribe cannot accurately forcast what her needs will be from day to day, and that makes for a sloppy business model. Whether you are buying off the auction house and need to know how many stacks of X to buy, or harvesting in the wild and just want to know when you can safely stop, it’s kind of a big deal.

Not only that, but different herbs yield different results. Logically, they seem to group thusly:

1. Lower tier – Cinderbloom, Stormvine
2. Middle tier – Heartblossom
3. Top tier – Twilight Jasmine, Whiptail, Azshara’s Veil

The assumption is that the higher the tier, the more valuable it is for alchemists, therefore the better the pigment yields.  But there was no solid evidence either way.

To get that evidence, then, I set out on a several-week study. Many high-end herbs were sacraficed in the cause of science – or at least, solid statistical data.

Here is the fruit of my labor.

You can see the raw data in this spreadsheet.

Herb	Pigment	Ember
Azshara's Veil	10.0	1.1
Cinderbloom	10.0	1.0
Heartblossom	10.2	1.1
Stormvine	10.0	1.1
Twilight Jasmine	12.1	2.1
Whiptail	12.1	2.1

When you look at this you immediately see that there are, in reality, only two tiers. Moreover, they don’t fall out the way we first expected. Azshara’s Veil, a high-end herb for Alchemists, is actually lower-tier in yield.  And the two tiers are incredibly consistent within themselves.  Basically:

	Pigment	Embers
Tier 1	10.1	1.1
Tier 2	12.1	2.1

Methods

Simply put, I gathered herbs as needed and ground them up, counting the yields per stack and recording each one. For each herb I acquired 100 samples. For Cinderbloom, I acquired 200 to check for consistency (the first 100 is not there, don’t look for it).

And we conclude

So, what lessons have we learned?

Lesson 1: Tier 2 might be worth a premium

At a 12-10 advantage, Tier 2 can deliver Ashen Pigment at a 20% improved rate.  If the premium for a Tier 2 herb is less than 20% over a Tier 1, you’re better off buying the Tier 2.

Better, Tier 2 offers a 2:1 advantage for Burning Ember. If you’re making decks, the gains will likely far outweigh the cost of the premium.

Lesson 2: In Tier 1, it doesn’t pay to be fussy

No matter what you buy, all Tier 1 herbs will deliver approximately 10 Pigments and one Ember. So, shop smart and don’t get too worried about “brand name” on these.

Lesson 3: If you’re not interested in Embers, Tier 1 is probably the best buy

As 4.3 hits the downloaders, the products derived from Burning Embers (T11 products) are becoming less interesting and not much in demand. A glyph proprietor will find them to be less attractive than Pigments.

True, that 20% boost to Pigment yields is a boon, but if the cost of Tier 2 outstrips Tier 1 by 20% or more, and all you care about is pigment, go cheap. It’s just math.

On the other hand, if 4.3 brings out some new gear to make with the embers (do they ever?), then Tier 2 will be very valuable to you should you choose to exploit that market.

Lesson 4: If you can get Tier 2 for about the same as Tier 1, jump on it

Despite its higher price, there is no denying the superior quality of the Tier 2 herbs. When opportunity knocks, don’t hesitate to reap the benefits of a fickle market.

On my server, Whiptail routinely falls below any Tier 2 herbs. On the other hand, Heartblossom rarely falls below Tier 2 herbs in price.  Knowing what I know, I will always buy in the case of the former, and never buy Heartblossom unless it is a real bargain.

Lesson 5: Within the two tiers, things are incredibly consistent

You will hear anecdotal evidence, nearly religious-fervor sales pitches, and just plain assumptions that have never been born out. But this you can take to the bank. These are statistics, taken from live samples.  100 samples of each, which I believe to be statistically meaningful² and which have yielded remarkably consistent numbers.

Lesson 6: Unless you’re an alchemist, Azshara’s Veil isn’t worth it.

The scrawny herb population, awkward movement mechanics, and hordes of ninjas and cheaty druids make Vashj’ir a wretched experience, doubly so for farming herbs. Alchemists have no choice, they have to go by brand and no substitutions.

Stop throwing things, Flora!

Lesson 7: When farming, don’t let herb type be the deciding factor

Unless you’re hot for those Tier 2 yields, you’re better off choosing based on comfort, enjoyment, population, and presence of asshats. On my server, if I need a LOT of herbs, I’ll hit Deepholme, which as about twice as many nodes as any other zone at level 85. For my daily needs, I usually go to Uldum and get some tasty Tier 2s in there as well.  I almost never go to Twilight Highlands because the cheaty druids pick it as clean as possible.

Conclusions

Whether you are farming or buying, knowing the yields for real gives you an advantage when it comes time to do the deed.

While it is true that price per stack will vary from realm to realm, the yield will be consistent across all realms. The former is based on player needs. The latter is simple game mechanics.

This late in the expansion, knowledge is power. You need every advantage you can get in a competitive market.

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1. They have an addon that automatically harvests data for them. If they tracked this, they could provide some great statistics. [↩]
2. In that, if you plug in a big number into any one cell in that spreadsheet, the other 99 keep it pretty well in check. Freaky yields do happen, but it all averages out. [↩]

Grimm’s been hogging the spotlight with his fancy-pants Effers, but the rest of the crew is hanging tough with our original guild. Jasra’s darkness casts a pall, and we usually aren’t considered for raiding since it’s assumed we won’t wan to.

Last night the GM was really desperate and invited me along, and, well, we managed our guild-first kill of a Cataclysm boss.

Indirectly, Grimm helped out since I was able to peer into his notebook and assure the GM that, yes, we were on the right track (strat-wise) and just keep practicing execution. After three tries, we got him down and broke out the garlic and butter sauce.

OCV is a much more casual guild than Grimm’s guild, but there are many top-notch players within. Once everyone knew what was needed, that big burny prawn went down like a ton of bricks. Us casual types may not get the headlines, but we get the job done eventually.

Since I’m not really used to a raid rotation, some of us take longer than others to get the job done.

STOP RIGHT THERE! As of early December 2011, the author has begun updating the addon again.  The new version (2.020-ish) works properly.  See here for more details.

If you have been using the addon GupPet, you’ve no doubt noticed that (a) it has problems with swimming mounts in Vash’jir, and (b) it has problems with any of the new mounts from 4.0.6 onward. This is a shame since GupPet is otherwise one of the most sophisticated and well-featured random mount addons you are likely to encounter. Fortunately, all is not lost. I have some tips on how to fix both issues.

Easy one first – the swimming mount issue

In the most recent version, 2.018, the following appears in the release note.

Fixed the bug where a flying mount was selected while swimming if you only had a mount that can be used as ground and fly

This got me thinking: what if that broke something else? So, I downgraded to 2.017.  That fixed the problem!

New mounts!

This is a little harder to sort out, but isn’t that difficult if you’re familiar with using text editors to edit configuration files.

GupPet puts all of its mount data in a single file called Gup_MountData.lua. The trick is to find a mount similar to the one you want to add, copy it, paste it where needed, and then edit the new data to add your mount.

Here’s how.

1. Find your Addons. On an XP box, it’s C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Interface\Addons, in Win7 and Vista it’s C:\Users\Public\Games\World of Warcraft\Addons. Inside that folder you will find a folder called GupPet .
2. Find the file to edit, and open it with a text editor. The file is called Gup_MountData.lua. You can use NotePad, but I recommend one of the free replacements such as NotePad++ (which will be used for this example).
3. Find a mount similar to the one you want to copy.  In this case, I want to add my new Subdued Seahorse mount, so I’m going to copy the seahorse mount that everyone gets in Vash’jir, as you can see.
4. Copy that mount’s info, and paste it where it needs to go. In this case, it goes right at the end of the aquatic mounts section.
5. Edit the name of the mount. This is not required – the mod will work either way – but if you don’t edit the text on the far right (a programming comment), you may forget what’s what in your updated file. DO NOT REMOVE THE DOUBLE-MINUS AT THE START OF THE DESCRIPTION. The addon will break if you do.
6. Find the mount on WoWHead. You need the ItemID of the mount. There are many ways to get that information, but this is the surest.
7. Find the ItemID. The ItemID is the unique identifier of the mount (not it’s reigns or similar "item" that teaches you the mount). The ItemID will be the number at the end of the URL for that mount’s WoWHead page. Note the ID and write it down.
8. In the LUA file, change the ItemID of the copied line to that of the mount itself.
9. Save the file and you’re done! If you are logged in to the game, you will need to exit the game and re-start it¹.

 

And that is it!  You should now have the Subdued Seahorse as a usable mount in GupPet if you should ever catch Poseidus out on a stroll.

Here’s an example of adding a couple of flying mounts. In this case, the Flameward Hippogryph and the Winged Guardian.

Finally, at the top of the file is a guide to the flag logic that you can use when adding mounts of various types.

When upgrading, don’t forget to copy this file off as a safeguard against being overwritten by one with incomplete information. You will need to manually inspect the upgrade file to ensure that all your mount data is preserved in the new one.  Now, I suspect that any upgrade that comes down the pike will be up to date with the latest mount data. But I also find it unlikely that we will see an upgrade since this one is close to eight months out of date (nine, if you don’t count the broken 2.018). Otherwise I’d not be writing this guide.

Hey, if you know of a maintained addon that has all the bells and whistles that this one has, please do drop a line in the comments.  And, if not, then at least we can extend the life of this lovely piece of software a bit more. Who knows, we might keep it running into 5.0!

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1. There are other ways, yes, but this is the most reliable way to get the right results. Hush. Do eet. [↩]

I once read something by a fellow that espoused what he called a "Christian" driving method¹. Basically, he said, why drive like an inconsiderate lout when it gained you at best a couple of minutes? Why not do the decent thing and, for example, let people merge ahead of you or pull out of a parking lot?  He felt that by making his corner of the world a little better place for somebody, he was doing a good thing. I wish I could remember who it was. You may have heard of a similar philosophy called "paying it forward". Same basic idea, except without the expectation that the recipient do the same. Rather a hope that they would without being asked to.

We’ve always used a similar approach to gathering here at Casa de Grimmtooth, in that no single node, herb or ore or fish, is really worth fighting over². If I see someone headed for the same node, I generally veer off. If there’s a person fighting mobs  near one, I’ll wait to see if that person is fighting for the node before taking it.  Sometimes things load slow and I don’t realize I ganked somebody’s node, but generally I avoid it.  There’s always another node further on³.

So there I was. It had been a long day of constant movement, gathering those flowers and hoping some cheater Stormcrow wouldn’t come in and gank my goods while I’m dismounting. I’m circling Deepholme gathering stuff to grind up, and I see a node. Near, but not on top of, the node is somebody fighting one of the elementals.  Seeing that, I hovered, and after the fight was over, the toon headed for the node. Well, that was that. Checking the map, I headed off to the next node.

Normally it ends there, but then I got a whisper.

 

It doesn’t happen often. But people do notice, from time to time.

Happy hunting.

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1. Don’t get hung up on what he called it. It is what it is. Please be considerate and focus on the actual point. Love, me. [↩]
2. Nodes in battlegrounds are a different matter, of course! [↩]
3. Mind you, I don’t always live up to the ideal. Sometimes it’s blatant and I just can’t help myself. Stupid stormcrows. [↩]