Looking for farmers

Finding farmers can be a simple or difficult process depending on the server you are on. One of the easiest ways is to go to the auction house and search for the item you’re trying to buy.

If you see a large listing of the item all by the same seller then there is a good chance they are a farmer.

For example if you look at the screenshot you’ll see a large listing of herbs all by the same person. This is far more herbs than any normal person would sell at one time. While this does not mean the person has to be a farmer it is still worth checking just in case.

There are many ways you can go about checking if someone is a farmer. The first of which is to add the person to your friends list, and the next time they come online whisper them and ask. However you might not find the person online, in which case you can mail them a simple letter.

Finally you can spot farmers in trade chat. Look for people that are using very few words in their messages, such as just saying “WTS [item] [price]“. This does not necessarily mean they are a farmer, but is unusual for farmers to use much more than this in their messages.

Communicating with Farmers

So once you have found a farmer you need to communicate with them. As I mentioned before, you can mail them a simple message.

Try to keep this mail short, if the farmer does not speak English then you will confuse them by writing a long and complicated message. Here is an easy example of you to copy and paste and use yourself.

Hi there,

I want to buy [item] for [price] each.

Please send me all.

Thanks

It might look stupid and badly worded, yet it is important to use easy to read and translate words.

If they are online however then it is worth communicating with them directly, as you’ll get a much better response face-to-face than you will with a mail message.

First of all always say hi in the simplest way possible, such as just “Hello”. Then in a new line simply state what you are after, such as “I wtb [item] 10g each”. Again this may look stupid and be a poor way of working sentences, however it works and that’s what’s important.

In some cases it is apparent that the person you’re speaking to is not able to speak English very well at all. As such it can be a good idea to find out where they are from, as this will allow you to try and speak their language if possible. By doing so it will allow you to more easily communicate with them and get better deals.

As a large majority of the hard-core farmers are Chinese I have created a dedicated post to talking with Chinese farmers. This post is before this one, and you can find it here – Chinese Phrases to Talk to Your Farmers.

It is never a good idea to just assume the person is Chinese however. By starting a conversation with “Ni hao ma” you might offend the other person if they are not Chinese!

As such, start with “Hello” and go from there!

Was this post useful to you? How do you find farmers and communicate with them? Let me know in the comments!

You can use other online sources of translation in different languages but be aware that some of them are very inaccurate.

Before starting to use these, first ask “Ni hui jiang zhong wen ma?” which is “Do you speak written Chinese?” If they don’t then these sentences are useless to you!

I owe a great deal of thanks to Zekta from Phase 3 : Profit! for this list – as he had a friend spell check the entire thing for me and add a few corrections for me.

So thank you Zekta!

For more information on getting farmers and talking to them check out my post Finding Farmers and Communicating With Them

Snatch is a great way to get the items that you need at cheap and consistent prices. A good use of snatch is too use its prices to feed into my crafting spreadsheet.

It is a good idea to snatch every time you login, or even multiple times while you are playing. This allows you to grab all of the great deals on the auction house, without having to search through a whole load of items manually.

As I mentioned at the end of the video there will be future videos on using other searches in auctioneer. The next of which is the general search to find out more about your competitors. You can expect this video on Thursday.

So, no new blogs that I know of this week – however a great new website has been put up which is worth checking out.

It is wowoah or WoW Online Auction House.

It is in a fairly early alpha at the moment, so it has a few kinks and it only has data for US realms. This makes it rather useless for me currently, what with being a Brit, although it could be really useful for some of you.

Searching for Netherweave Bags on wowoah (random server)

At first I thought the site was just a wowecon clone, which should the average value of goods for any server and faction.
This is NOT the case.

Essentially it allows you to do a search on the auction house of any server or faction (again, currently US only) and get ‘live’ data as if you were searching in game.

This means you no longer even need WoW to search the auction house!

It even lets you do things like see every item a seller has for sale, via the SellerData. Very handy for spying on competition even when you can’t be at home, as well as allowing you to easily do so without having to install Auctioneer.

It is in alpha however so there are a few bugs. A couple of times it wouldn’t show any data from Live Searches and I had to search a couple of times.

Another great thing is that you can see time left and current bid on any auction. This means you could bid on an item, then still check and see the time remaining and if you have been outbid all from outside of WoW.

Then there is also the Data buttons, which tell you the sale prices, and sale volume, for the past 7, 14, 30, 60 or 90 days – displayed in easy to understand graphs. It also tells you the total amount seen in that time frame.

I'm giddy for graphs, so this is heaven for me!

I am really really impressed with this site, and while it might not ever be a big hit like Wowhead or Thottobot because it’s target audience is limited to just people like us, it could easily become a major WoW website once it is up and running.

So, go check out WoW Online Auction House! Remember it is still in alpha – and that any website thrives on feedback from its readers, so make sure you send them your feedback!

That is all for this week. Again if you know of a something that deserves to be highlighted then let me know.