Hello! Welcome to the 278th edition of the WoW Economy Weekly Wrap-up!
This week as the race to world first kicks off, we look at potential markets with Armor Patches and discuss ways of optimizing gathering in Zaralek Cavern. We also have some exciting news with legendaries and discuss if Public Work Orders are working as intended.
My name is Samadan and I’ll be your guide through the World of Gold Making!
Gathering In Zaralek Cavern
The new zone in 10.1 is alive with players racing through the new content and amongst them are a plethora of gatherers on the hunt for the new Glowspores
However, many players have had issues with despawning nodes ..
I’ve done dual gathering as a profession setup since early cataclysm and I have never hated gathering more than I do in the dragonflght caverns. Unfortunately, the gold to be made is currently with the glowspores (which are broken and require dismounting to propagate both buffs). However, my issue isn’t with the bug where the spores don’t propagate, my issue is that every third node I land at despawns.
In every other expansion a despawned node is just something to move on from. However, this expansion requires us to fly using vigor which when gathering can run out quickly. Landing on a node and being out of vigor with no increased recharge from gathering feels really bad. What feels even worse is landing on a node using your elemental overload and having it despawn before the overload goes off, meaning you don’t get the glowspores or their buff and you don’t get any vigor recharge.
If WoW continues with the dragon riding feature in future expansions, how can they improve the system to allow for gatherers to not feel punished for being on active servers? (Keep in mind materials are not server specific on the AH, meaning someone on a low pop server vs full or high pop server is likely making more GPH simply due to less competition and fewer despawning nodes which increases their glowspore propagation rates)
TLDR: I’m malding every time a node despawns and I land on it, previous expansion gathering was superior.
The issue here being that nodes are despawning due to heavy farming, but the mechanics of the new systems of using overload (which takes time to cast) and pairing up the two buffs within 2 minutes by finding the appropriate nodes.
It sure is frustrating how many nodes are despawning, especially considering the new system is kinda aimed at many people farming together.
So a system that is supposed to get better with more people engaging in it, is basically getting worse with more people engaging in it.
And this zone is kinda extreme. When comparing this to Zereth Mortis where it was possible to get progenitor essentia from farming worth 18k even multiple weeks in when I started, you barely had despawning nodes.
Now you have tons of despawning nodes during ‘dead’ hours and during rush hour it is a mix of depsawning nodes and sometimes not finding any new herbs or ores for 5 minutes at a time.
There are workarounds as u/Rallyks has the genius idea of just staying in one spot ..
I’m a lazy gatherer, I’ve just been sitting at the middle tower and waiting for nodes to spawn. Respawn is very short and you’re usually one of the first ones to the node.
One plus side to having sooooo many other ppl gathering in the same location is the that it’s likely one of them has an opposing spore buff making it easy to propagate when everyone swarms the same node. Better than scouring the map for appropriate buffs, imo. (Speaking as a lazy gatherer)
u/DinosawrDruid has also come up with a very helpful weak aura to pair up people with opposing buffs.
https://wago.io/GmQdzFYad
When a herbalist with Zaralek Glowbur and a miner with Zaralek Glowdust meetup they create a Propagated Spore clump. This clump contains roughly 20+ Zaralek Glowspores. If youre a dual gatherer, you can proc this off yourself which is pretty nifty — but you’d have to find 2 Glowspore nodes within 2 minutes. Sometimes this isn’t possible, and this Weakaura can help you identify other miners you can ‘propagate’ with.
Unfortunately it requires you to have friendly nameplates enabled to anchor the notification icon to. I’m not sure of another way to anchor the icon onto another player so let me know if there’s a way! It will also play a sound and show and icon when you’ve successfully propagated and looted a spore clump.
Edit: fyi the hotfix last night bugged the propagation buff, you must dismount to proc it 🙁
This adds much more to the community aspect of gathering as it was generally assumed (myself included) that the buffs were personal and didn’t interact with other players.
It’s been interesting to see the price/quantity of Glowspores over time ..
Price chart courtesy of undermine.exchange
and subsequently the price of Dracothyst ..
Price chart courtesy of undermine.exchange
Crafted Legendary for Evokers
Exciting news ahead for professions! Particularly Blacksmithing, Jewelcrafting and Engineering when it comes to the new Legendary for Evokers – Warning Spoilers.
Manthieus has the lowdown on the possibilities ahead …
Work Orders Without Reagents
Was it the right decision to offer Public Work Orders without reagents? A question asked often especially as when you look on the face of it, many BoE items that can be put on the AH are part of this system which can effectively be sold on for a profit.
Mine isn’t one of the big servers but still, 90% of the workorders I see now are people giving 100g tips without a single reagent, sometimes even Artisan mettle for profession gear. There should be a minimum tip that takes into account how much the materials would cost on the AH or some other way of stopping the ‘free’ work orders.
It definitely is a mistake. A lot of scammers out there posting 1g orders with no mats, and selecting items they can resell on the auction house for hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of gold. And filling those orders costs you hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of gold in mats.
And yes, we can sort the orders or use addons to filter out the no/some mats people, but that doesn’t solve the issue. It’s really disheartening to open up the public orders interface and see nothing but scam orders for days at a time. And it’s always the same accounts doing it.
Of course, we have an addon to filter out these Work Orders – NoMatsNoMake which does alleviate potential losses. Sometimes, it’s worth taking the loss for a skillup, so the system is not entirely one sided.
A core part of the impression that the system isn’t working is that we’re not seeing the orders that get fulfilled almost immediately. Some servers, especially low pop are lucky to see any orders for any profession. The whole system is also going to be skewed in favour of less tips, because the price is set by the player not the crafter.
I have no problem with it. I can sort down the None mats supplied orders. I can also sort for high commission for those crafts where the orderer provided gold to cover the mats not provided.
Being able to create orders without mats has been great for my alts (eg: ordering treatises from another alt) and some customers to take the hassle out of AH searching for obscure mats and ranks.
After dealing with hundreds of player crafting lariats they often know very little about cost of mats and need so much assistance. There may be a few players trying to game the crafters, but my take is most of those orders are from players with no clue.
“Don’t assume malice where it is probably just ignorance.”
What do you think? Have you been able to make a profit with Work Orders?
Shadowflame-Tempered Armor Patch
The Lazy Goldmaker has an interesting theory that this will be a hot ticket item for potential gold makers – the Shadowflame-Tempered Armor Patch
I think this item will be massive. Every DPS player in the game will want at least one of these ASAP. You can’t target farm or increase the drop rate of the recipe, and there will likely be very few available the first reset. Obviously we don’t know how the recipe will be priced, but if you are the first one in your region you will be printing gold. I can easily see players paying 100 000 gold for this, at volume. Shadowlands proved there are TONS of players willing to pay that amount of gold for marginal power upgrades.
You can see already the pattern and patches have started to hit the market …
Prices are on EU as of yesterday (13th May)
Being a region wide commodity though, I expect the price to drop rapidly, but this is certainly seeing some interest as many players will need it.
The Lazy Goldmaker has a little video going through his thoughts a little more …