Why you check the Auction House EVERY night
I have a little routine I go through every night before I actually start playing. Before logging into Amanna, I log on to my auction house alt, who is parked at the mailbox outside the bank at Stormwind.
The first thing I do is check my mail for the results of the auctions I posted the previous night. Hopefully, that means I’m clicking on a lot of gold. I’ll also have mail from my main Amanna, since the last thing I do every night after playing is mail my auctioneer all the things I want sold. Next, I run to the Auction House and put up auctions for the new items Amanna sent and any other items that didn’t sell last night. Finally, I run back to the mailbox and log out, waiting for tomorrow night.
What I also do why I’m at the Auction House every night though is search on a list of stuff I’m looking for. This list is usually small, but is high value items I’m hoping to find or find at a better price.
For a long time, Stylin’ Purple Hat and the Strength of the Clefthoof set pieces were on that list. I had bought the Heavy Clefthoof Boots a while back, but was very unlucky finding the other pieces. Last weekend I found the Heavy Clefthoof Vest, but paid dearly for it. While I’m in the process of levelling two gathering professions back up, my cash reserves have been dwindling and what I paid for that vest and the gems to socket it, left me with not a whole lot of money to play with.
So I was very pleased last night to find two bargains in my nightly search. A Stylin Purple Hat with a buyout of 30G. W00t! I had only seen the hat three times before, with the cheapest buyout at 100G. 30G seemed like a true bargain and I immediately purchased the hat. My next search as on “heavy clefthoof”. There was a pair of leggings for 70G. Given that the vest and boots have consistently sold on my server for 100-150G, I snapped these up also. I still need the gems for socketing, but I’m hoping to pay a lot less for gems now that I’ve tracked down one of our guilds jewelcrafters.
So, it pays to have a list of items to check for every night. If you’re in Outland and don’t feel like flying back to Azeroth all the time, just roll up a human and run to Stormwind. I sent her some money to stake her, then she was on her own as she starting selling things. The only downside is the hour turn-around for mail back to your main.
Let me hear from you guys. Do you have a auction alt? If not, what’s your auction strategy? If you’re checking the auction house every night, what are you looking for? What’s the best deal you’ve ever found?
Adventures in Azeroth 
I’m somewhat of a packrat, so I actually have an AH alt, a herb alt, a leather alt, a craftables alt, and a consumables alt. It leaves tons of room for soulbound things in my main’s bank and the mail is so cheap that sending things back and forth doesn’t amount to much. I use Bagnon (http://wow-en.curse-gaming.com/downloads/details/2090/bagnon/), which includes a bank and bag feature allowing you to look at all your alts banks and bags, providing you’ve logged into them since you’ve installed the addon.
Also, there are several auction mods that would help you out. Curse Gaming (http://wow-en.curse-gaming.com/downloads/search/1/sort-by/-date/name/?cat=1&q_labels=1&q=auction) has quite a list, many allowing you to compare recent prices, see averages, see prices per unit, and looking for gems. I hope this helps. Of course, I’m an addon and macro whore myself, but maybe you just like playing with the default interface.
Eh, damn Akismet filters and links 😛
LOL – it didn’t spam you, but it did flag you for moderation.
I do use Auctioneer, but no other auction mods. I’ll check out the category.
Yeah, I figured it definitely modded me for the links, so I took them out and posted again. Sorry for the double 🙂
You have been alot of help for me and now its time for me to give my opinion. I’m here to talk to you about your clefthoof armor. I here you talking about the str set bonus. The set bonus is only for leatherworkers with 350skill so you being a minner and skinner you wont get a set bonus of 20str. Only other thing is the socket bonus of 4 dodge on chest, 4 dodge on pants and 3 dodge on boots. In my opinion 11 to dodge isn’t worth all the sta you loose in using the correct socket colors. I would put 12sta gems on all of your clefthoof set. I do alot of tankingin heroics and even with 19500ish ac you get hit for alot and need the sta.
http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/#character-sheet.xml?r=Demon+Soul&n=W%C3%A1rden
Thanks Tom – yes I became aware of the set bonus only for leatherworkers and updated the original post to indicate that. Thanks for the tip.
As to gems – I’m following Emmerald’s suggestions for socket bonuses. For blue slots, which I have a lot of, I’m using the Solid Star of Elune which is +12 stamina, so we are on the same page. Tanking isn’t about dealing damage, it’s about being able to withstand it, so plusses to stamina are very important.
I do hope to delve deeper into the math at some point though, because I know there is a point where damage avoidance takes over as your priority and agility can help there.
Too bad you’re not on Icecrown >.
Tom, I have heard rumors they may be ditching some of the defense/stam on the Clefthoof set in favor of adding more armor. This would actually be the best option for the set right now. Currently, the high amount of stam and defense you gain by using this set doesn’t totally make up for the high amount of armor you would gain by substituting greens like Supple Leather Boots and Ash Tempered Legguards. However, that is a whole different discussion on what stat is more important for tanking, and depends largely on what type of damage you are taking and how frequent the damage is.
Currently, there are very few instances/bosses with strictly magical damage. Therefore, the dodge, defense, and armor remains important. I would much rather lose 24 stam and gain 11 dodge and 12 defense. I feel dodge is even more important to druids than defense, simply because we only get roughly 1/3 of the dmg mitigation from defense (as we can’t parry or block). Sure, you are getting hit for quite a bit even with 19k armor, but if only every 2 out of three hits land, your healer won’t have to heal through that hit. Granted, in raids and such when you have multiple healers healing you, a huge amount of stam might be needed as a buffer to keep you from dying to a crushing blow. However, in 5 mans, your healer has a limited amount of mana. Also, there is only one healer. If you are taking damage at a rate faster than he can heal consistently, you will die even if you have over 25k hp.
I meant to add in there that I use Star of Elunes for blue sockets and Enduring Talasites(6 stam, 4 def) for the yellow sockets.
Eilanna – those are the gems I use also.
In the process of applying my last talent point last night, I found the talent that gives you a dodge bonus (can’t remember the name right now). Anyway, with two talent points you can get 4% dodge for cat AND Bear. Sounds like a pretty good bargain. I hadn’t selected this talent before, but now I’m 70 and will be hitting the end game instances, I think I need a re-spec if for nothing else than to pick up that 4%.
Also sounds like a good post…
I have always picked up that talent whenever I go feral, whether for pvp, farming, or raiding. You can chase down others/mobs in pvp/pve and also will get hit less whether in cat(if you pull aggro) or bear.
There’s one other thing I thought about adding here, especially with the recent influx of visitors to your site concerning the bank alts.
Usually only gold sends through the mail instantly. It takes about 30 min to 2 hours for actual items to come through. However, there is a trick. At first I hesitated to send something to my alt if I might need it back immediately. However, if instead of opening the mail and putting it in your alt’s bag/bank, just leave the mail in your mailbox and don’t open it right away. It will stay for upwards of 20 days. Then, when you need it immediately, if you open it and click “return”, it immediately shows up in your main’s mailbox. Of course, the downside to this comes from not being able to use addons to see the items in your alts bag/bank while logged onto your main.
I have several banking chars of various lvl 1-40. In my experiance I have noticed that the best way of making money using the AH is to be patient. Buy in weekends (loads of offers) and selling wednessday to friday (loads of demand). I never used any mods for this but 6 months of feasting of the AH is the best price indicators you have.
Experience laddy thats how ya do it 🙂
ok for starters I only get to play aroud twice a week but i have had at one stage above 90g, with my main at lvl 29 how i did this was grinding in the barrens, being lvl 29 i wanted to get all the battle grounds pieces so getting xp is not on my list of priorities so the barrens was a great place to get gold (without getting any xp), with fishing, skinning and cooking what i did was hung around the wailing caverns fishing for deviate fish which i would then cook into savory deviate delights (you need the recipe which is also available in the barrens but at a 0.6% drop you need to kill heaps or it costs on average 70g at ah) which on my sever sold for 1g a piece and then i skinned the deviates in WC for pefect deviate scale which sold for 3g a piece, there are also various patterns that always sell for a bit, and plenty of greens to disenchant and sell the various dust’s and essences which again sell in the ah i hope this helps a few bg’s characters like it did mine