The Ore Shuffle

    The Obsidium Shuffle, or the Elementium Shuffle known by most is the grand jewel of Cataclysm that made many goblins very rich. Now here is the funny thing, even though we are nearing the end of the expansion and almost everything is out there, and everyone is making gold off the gold tricks and tips there are still people that have never heard of the Shuffle. The reason for making this post is quite simple, i have been trying to help people make gold on my server for a while now, and since i started the blog i had a place where i can redirect with anything they might want to know, but i saw that i didn't have a topic that explains the Shuffle so here it is.

The Ore Shuffle ( taken from the Consortium site )

   As you can see from the image above it is very self explanatory, but i will go into a bit of explaining just in case. Just so you know in order to take the full extent of the profits the shuffle brings you need to have a Jewelcrafter, Blacksmith, Enchanter and Tailor (this one is optional).

    The entire shuffle starts with the purchase of Obsidium, Elementium & Pyrite ore. Once you have bought them you have a choice, that choice boils down on whether you want to prospect the ore for the gems or you want to manufacture Heavenly Shards. In order to find out which one would be more profitable you need to check out your prices for the Heavenly Shards and if they are high, or you are low for your enchanting market you might want to go that way, but at the same time you want to check the prices of Greater Celestial Essences and the Infinite Dust as that is what you can get if you choose to take the prospecting road.

   If you go with the prospect option you need to know how to get from having Alicite, Hessonite, Jasper and Nightstone into Heavenly Shards adn Greater Celestial Essences. By crafting the gems into rings and pendants and then disenchanting them you get to have the finished product. Now one of the things you should be aware is that if you decide to go this way you should know that you have a chance to get a rare (blue) ring or a Pendant. Now there is a bit of a trick here, and that trick is the item level of the items you end up getting and i will explain why.

    If you are using Jasper then you are taking the best deal because the jasper is the only one that requires only one gem to make a ring, opposed to the other ones which will require you to spend 2 gems to make a single item. But this is not the best part, the best part is that when you end up getting a rare (blue) item, it is going to be a level requirement of 79 which makes it ideal for twinks and leveling characters, and i have been selling them anywhere from 300g to 50g, and that for a 3g gem is a 10000% profit margin.

   If you are using Hessonite and Nightstone for your crafting you will need to spend 2 of them to get a single item. This on it's own puts it at 50% efficiency, and the other thing is that the rare (blue) items you get have a item requirement of 81 so the twinks are no longer your targeted market. But it's not all gloom and doom, and that is because if you disenchant these rings you get Heavenly Shards, as well as increased chance to get Greater Celestial Essences from disenchanting the green items.

   I really don't see a point in explaining that you need to cut the rare gems and post them on the Auction House as that is quite obvious. And at the end of the explanation i can only offer to give you a place where you can get the best spreadsheet that can automatically tell you which road is the best to take, and which will make you the most gold. The site i'm talking about is the Consortium forums which will give you the most awesome weapon you can wield if you take on to do the Shuffle.

   So, like always, keep an eye out for good opportunities out there.

Blacksmith's Main Interests

   Blacksmith probably has  one of the good ways of making gold where you can craft items that are in a constant demand due to the game's mechanics and player needs. Here i'll try and note out the best ways that you can use your blacksmith to make gold, oh and if you've missed the previous post about the enchanting rods check it out.

   Ok to get down to business i'll try and make it easy and fast to see what you should be focusing on.

Ebonsteel Belt Buckle
Pyrium Weapon Chain

   These two items are always in high demands because EVERYONE uses the belt buckle and as for the weapon chain, hell all the PvPers love it for some reason so they sell quite well and take into account that it costs only 1 Pyrium Bar and it usually sells for 50-150g then you have to love it, every single sale.

Eternal Belt Buckle

   Yes this is the WOTLK version of the Belt Buckle, and before you ask yourself why bother crafting those then check out the little bit of info that says you can't use it on item level above 300 but that only means that you can use it on lower level, and yes that means people that are leveling and most notably higher tier twinks.

   One of the things you should check is the competition and the prices they are posting, i usually corner the market and post them for 200G, and usually during the late night shuffle.

Bloodthirsty Pyrium PvP

   This set is where you make alot of gold and you don't even have to check recheck and triple recheck for undercuts because it's usually one or two guys holding the markets and rechecking the prices every 6-12 hours, so with minimal effort you could be carpet bombing the profits on those pieces.

   One of the main reasons why this set is so profitable is because it's aimed at all the people that are into PvP and are leveling an alt or just starting out in PvP and they buy that gear as a entry level gear to help them not die right away in BG's or Arena.  And the best part about this set is it's aimed at Warriors, Paladins and Death Knights so it's pretty much covering 3 classes which is a pretty big market.

   As for  pricing i use a very wide pricing net which means 200 - 1250g and solely because usually people do silly things like posting 5 of each at ridiculous low prices but still profit like 130g or something but for some reason i don't like profiting 30-40g on an item that i sold for 1250g the night before, so my advice don't go below 200g

Bloodthirsty Ornate Pyrium PvP

   Now this set is a bit more different from the previous one for one reason alone, it's meant for the holy paladins alone and in perspective it has a much more narrower crowd of buyers and in return the profits are lower.

   And as a finisher i'd have to add that blacksmith has one of the best uses for the Chaos Orbs, which means that if you have done the dailies for the Molten Front and have access to the patterns for the BoE weapons you can earn tens of thousands of gold by simply crafting those weapons ... you dont even have to but the mats just offer your services and say you charge 5-6k for the orbs and you will get some people asking you to do it for them.

Support Blacksmith

   Blacksmith is one of the primary professions in WoW and a fairly decent profession for making gold. The ideal thing about blacksmithing is that you end up crafting gear and weapons that characters will buy while leveling or twinking their alts or buying items for end game content, and no matter what if you play it right you can earn quite a bit by putting your paws on that market as well.

   As for this post i'll focus on the part of blacksmithing supporting other professions, namely enchanting. Now every novice, prominery or expert enchanter to do his profession needs bunch of enchanting materials which they can get one their own by disenchanting items but they will need the enchanting rods if they want to get into a higher skill enchanting and this is where they need a blacksmith (THIS IS YOU) to help them out (NICE WAY OF SAYING ROB THEM BLIND).

   Now most of the blacksmiths playing on the server will never look back and post enchanting rods on the AH simply because they don't see them as a big earner, and this is why you can profit on this so much. Usually it's one of two or NONE blacksmith doing the rod posting and if the last is the case then prepare yourself for huge earnings. But to make it shorter here's a list of rods as well as suggested prices that i've found out the be the middle ground for Greedy Profit VS Time Needed to Sell.

Silver Rod                             20-50g
Golden Rod                           20-50g
Truesilver Rod                      20-50g
Arcanite Rod                       100-250g
Fel Iron Rod                        100-250g
Adamantite Rod                  100-250g
Eternium Rod                      100-250g
Titanium Rod                      100-250g
Elementium Rod                 100-250g

   Those are some guide lines as for which items you should focus should you decide it's a market you want to cover, but before you decide if it's worth getting in it check your server's AH to see the competition and to make sure that there isn't someone that's constantly keeping the prices down, but even if the prices are low the moment you checked the AH don't forget to check if that is a one time thing that guy has posted them or is he posting them at a regular interval through out the week by checking him out at The Undermine Journal or the European  (EU)The Undermine Journal.