Current Gold Total: 2,000g
Working on: Away from home

Auctioneer is a great addon, and some would call it near essential for anyone seriously trying to compete on the AH now. While you can get by using no addons at all, it certainly does make things a lot easier if you do!

One of the brilliant features of Auctioneer over other AH addons is it has “Searchers” which are predesigned to find specific items for certain uses. This sounds broad, but that’s because there are a whole host of available searches. The one we will be focusing on today is the Disenchant Search, although I will be using DE instead of disenchant throughout this post.

What is the Disenchant Search?

The disenchant search checks through your latest scan data* to find items that can be DE’d for profit.

Now that is still rather broad – what is scan data? How much of a profit? What if I don’t have the ability to DE high level items or don’t want to deal with low level enchanting mats? How do I actually do it!?

Scan Data?
Auctioneer, as well as other addons, have the ability to ‘scan’ all of the items on the AH and add them to a database. This allows them to do lots of complex things with them, but most importantly it allows them to keep average prices of all items seen for sale on there.

There is an additional bonus post before this one which details exactly how to scan the auction house using Auctioneer, so if you don’t understand this part, worry not – check out Scanning the Auction House!

It is important to remember however that scan data is not necessarily what is in the auction house. For example if you haven’t scanned for a day, the data Auctioneer searches through will be a day old! As such, anytime you are going to do any kind of search on Auctioneer it is advisable to scan first.

How much profit?

Auctioneer gives you the ability to set price limits on the search. For example the default is to only show items which will give you 50% profit, provided they sell for full price once you have DE’d them.

This can be adjusted fully, so you can either set this lower if you don’t mind spending time for less of a profit, which is great if you have spare time on your hands, or if there is little on the AH that will make such a massive profit.

I don’t have max Enchanting skill / I don’t want to deal with low level enchanting mats!

You can customise Auctioneer so that it will only show you items from a certain level of enchanting skill needed to disenchant them.

This might sound more confusing than it really is. Say for example you are fairly new to enchanting and only have 100 skill. Simply change the defaults to only show items that require a maximum of 100 skill to disenchant, and then that is all it will search for.

If you don’t want to deal with lower level items, then simply adjust the minimum to a higher number so that they don’t show up. If you set your minimum to 325 skill then you will see only items that disenchant in to Northrend enchanting materials (needs to be tested in game, fairly certain however!).

How do I actually do it!?

It’s a fairly simple process in reality, especially once you have adjusted all your settings for the first time. I will post a quick video on how to do this, however for now the process is a simple seven step system

1. Scan the auction house
2. Switch to the Search Tab
3. Click ‘Disenchant’
4. Click ‘Search’ and then wait
5. Buy the items using the Purchase Button
6. Go collect the items from your mail box and disenchant them
7. Sell them!

So essentially Auctioneer allows you to search for great deals on BoE items which you can buy, disenchant and then resell the enchanting mats at a profit. It is all very customizable to make sure you are getting the ROI you are after, and is fairly simple to use once it is setup.

Now we know how to Use Auctioneer to Search for BoE’s to DE and yesterday we learnt about Disenchanting Crafted Items for Profit. What comes next?

Now we learn how to disenchant hundreds of items with even less effort! Look forward to that post tomorrow.

P.S. As mentioned there is a bonus post, before this one, that explains about scanning the AH – it is a really basic primer for people who have never used Auctioneer before, so check it out if you don’t know what scanning is!

Bonus Post – Please note that today’s real post will be after this one. Sorry they are being posted rather late in the evening – didn’t get home until recently from the hospital.

This is just a quick and simple guide on using Auctioneer to scan the auction house, explaining…

• What the term ‘Scan the Auction House’ even means
• Why you would want to scan
• How often you should do it
• How you actually go about doing it

If you already feel like you know all of this, or don’t need quite so much in depth information feel free to skip to the end of this post and just watch the video.
For the rest of us, let’s get started.

Scan the Auction House, what’s that?

A whole bunch of addons are able to pull all the data from the auction house and store them in a database.

This database contains information on every single item seen in the AH, including how many have been seen, who’s selling them, how much they sell for* and a whole host of other things depending on the addon – we’ll be using Auctioneer which you can download from their official site here, from Curse Gaming here or from WoWInterface here. If you don’t know which to pick, just use the official link!

By ‘scanning’ the auction house Auctioneer gets all the information on the items currently in the Auction House at that moment in time. The last part is important – it can only collect data from items in the AH when you actually scan it. As such you should scan regularly, preferably at least once every single day, so that your data is up to date.

*Auctioneer is probably the most detailed in it’s information, all together allowing you to see a tone of different information on the data, from the average price over the past 3 days to the standard deviation in price, complete histograms on items and so on. This is in some part Auctioneers curse – it is TOO good. It floods the average user with so much information that they probably don’t fully understand, let alone care about.

Why would I want to spend time Scanning the Auction House?

Nothing is worse than buying a whole bunch of items that looked like a bargin, and then finding out your data was innacurrate and you just paid 800% the normal price!

As such you should try to have scan data that you have been collecting for at least a week, if not longer, before you start really buying or selling on the auction house. The longer your data collection is, the more accurate it will be.

If you use the GetAll scan (described below and in the video) it is also pretty quick, taking only a couple of minutes on most computers.
A great way to remember to scan is to do it as soon as you login, before you start doing anything else.

How often should I scan? Does the data get tainted if I scan too often?

Aucitoneer is able to detect duplicate auctions from different scans – as such there is no possible way to scan too often and mess up your data. You can scan as often as you like without worrying!

However, Blizzard has put in place a limitation on what addons can do, and so Auctioneer can only do a GetAll scan once every 15 minutes. Truth be told you are probably wasting your time if you are scanning every 15 minutes, but it can be helpful if you are doing a scan before doing a Search (like we did in today’s real post on Using Auctioneer to Buy BoE’s to DE)

If you really do need to scan more often than that, you can do the standard scan. This however can take a very long time, depending on how many items are in the auction house at the time. Even on a fairly medium population server it can take 10, 20 or even 30 minutes or more. Worse it stops you from doing anything on that character other than chatting really. As such, I wouldn’t recommend doing a standard search unless your internet connection or computer can’t handle doing a GetAll scan (detailed bellow)

So how do I actually go about scanning?

Okay, so now we know what scanning is, why we should do it and how often – now how do we actually go about doing it?

With Auctioneer it is surprisingly simple to scan the auction house. This is a lot easier to see in game than to describe, so refer to the video below! It has a rather basic recap of the above too, so you can just refer to the video from now on, unless you need the in depth information listed in this post.

There you go, it’s as simple as that!

Current Gold Total: 2,000g
Working on: Away from home

As mentioned in the previous post, this is all about crafting items to disenchant (DE) for profit.

Tella from Hit The Cap! posted a great post on this, and this is not meant to steal his/her thunder, it is just something I want to fully expand upon due to it being my primary method of making money on my yet to be transfered warrior in the past. So definitely check out Hit the Cap! too.

This is not a new idea, or even a ‘secret’. It is a well known and used money making method used by countless people, and you can guarantee there are others on even the lowest population server doing the same thing.

That does not make it useless!

One of the greatest things about enchanting mats is that they are always in very high demand, so much so that even with others doing the same thing you can nearly always turn a profit from this method.

So how does it work? (Beginner primer)

Essentially disenchanting is used to turn a green, blue or epic item in to trade goods which are used to make enchants as well as a few other things. This is done by the wide public via BoE items that drop while they quest, or items that nobody needs during an instance run.

However, a lot of crafting professions have the ability to make items that can be DE’d, which if the materials cost is low enough and the enchanting mats cost high enough allows you to make money just by crafting an item and installing DE’ing it then reselling the goods.

Alchemy, Enchanting, Engineering and Inscription do not have the ability to do this – either at all, or never at a profit.

To fully break it down, the steps are;

1. Get mats, either ones you have stockpiled or purchased from the AH or trade
2. Craft disenchantable items via these mats
3. Disenchant these items
4. Sell the enchanting mats you get from them

You do however need to know what you are crafting, so that you buy the right resources.
You also need to know the cost per craft, and the profit you stand to make from the enchanting materials you will sell.

Very Soon(tm) I am making a spreadsheet to cut out the need to manually work out the cost per craft and profit you stand to make.

Okay so I understand how the system works…but what should I make?

As mentioned before, a few of the crafting professions each have items you can craft to DE for profit, although not all of these will be profitable at any given time depending on the state of your server.

As such the below list of possible crafts does not mean you should make these items no matter what. Take a look at your servers prices, in some case you might be better off waiting for cheaper mats prices or higher enchant mat prices, or just selling the mats you have for a better profit.

Due to a greater amount of people doing heroics, the price of Dream Shards and Abyss Crystals fell on every server – as such the best items to craft are normally those that DE in to infinite dust and cosmic essences.

Blacksmithing : Horned Cobalt Helm (Ensure you also check prospect prices, often more profitable to do that and craft the Jewelcrafting items below)
Jewelcrafting : Crystal Chalcedony Amulet, Crystal Citrine Necklace, Sun Rock Ring and Bloodstone Band
Leatherworking : Arctic Boots
Tailoring : Duskweave Belt

Just ensure that your crafting cost is less than the value of the possible enchanting materials you will get. To do this check the Created By tab for the mats and work out your total cost, including AH cut, and then compare this to the average DE under the Disenchant tab.

This very simple calculation will let you work out if an item is profitable

a * 1.05 – b = c

a = Mats cost
b = Sell value of enchanting mats
c = Profit
The 1.05 is adding the 5% AH cut.

To recap the above

You can craft items using Blacksmithing, Jewelcrafting, Leatherworking and Tailoring – which can then be disenchant and the enchanting mats sold at a profit. Always ensure your mats cost and AH fee is lower than the sale value of the enchanting mats you will get from doing this however.

If anyone knows of better items to use, for any profession please leave a comment here, and I hope this post has been useful.

Current Gold Total: <300g
Working on: Paladin leveling (61) and Tailoring

Currently at my girlfriends house, so unavailable to play for the next few days, so posts will be more about thoughts and plans rather than progress.

On to the post…
As my goal is to have tailoring/enchanting on my Warrior when she transfers it seemed worthwhile to do it on her now while waiting.

There is the added bonus that due to her 450 enchanting skill everything can be nuked for more profit.

Do not forget to train Northern Cloth Scavenging at high enough skill level. You can purchase it off the Dalaran trainer for 5g. Obviously this is only worth the money if you plan on using the character for more than just professions – but if you are then you 100% need this!

Originally my intention was to just buy the cloth off the AH when I had transfered her over, seeing the cloth prices soon changed my mind however!

Instead only Linen Cloth and Wool Cloth were brought.

Silk: Scarlet Monastery – I found Cath was the best by far, but Armory is good too. Ignore Graveyard, and only do Library if you do the other two faster than the reset limit and need more cloth when farming.

Mageweave: Tanaris – Pirates, at Lost Rigger Cove. Fast respawns and lots of them, the drop rate could be better though so if anyone knows of somewhere better…

Runecloth: Stratholme – Baron runs, great way to net a whole load of runecloth, DE items and a chance at the Baron Mount.

Netherweave: Nagrand, Ogres – Multiple camps here with great drop rates. Personal preference is Burning Blade Ruins, if you use the camp at the bottom of the hill, up the hill and then in the cave and repeat you literally can’t run out of mobs.

They also drop powder which can be used for Halaa mounts and give Kurenai rep for Talbuks, so if you are a mount collector and don’t have them this is some really worthwhile farming.

Frostweave: Storm Peaks, Valkyrion – You can farm cloth in so many places in Northrend, however this is my personal preference due to a good amount of mobs, decent respawn times and they can drop Relics of Ulduar for even more profit.

So, am I missing any amazing farming locations?