VekTor, Ysera US

There are a variety of strategies for allocating which alts go onto which accounts when using two accounts.

The one really hard-and-fast rule is that your Neutral Auction House characters from each of the two factions need to be on different accounts.  They're not allowed to buy each other's auctions if they are on the same account.

One other recommendation that I'd like to make is to have the main auction house characters (the ones that do your AH scanning) on the same account.

The reason for this recommendation is that it makes it easier for Auctioneer to do the Arbitrage search, which can be quite useful in identifying cross-faction opportunities that you might otherwise be overlooking (once you learn to ignore the spurious entries from people posting ridiculous nuisance bid listings).

With both characters on the same side, I also find it faster to log out of one and right into the other one, without having to sign in again or run a second copy of WoW just to do both scans.  When on the same account, Auctioneer seamlessly integrates the data between the two factions into one database.

I may come back and edit this later with the full list of how I'm planning on distributing my alts across my two accounts... I think I've accounted for all 20 slots at this point.

As many of you know, I earlier provided a detailed analysis of how to defend against cross-faction "sniping", where someone else can snatch the items out from under you while you cross-faction trade them if you are not careful.  (I also provided techniques for offense if you're bloody-minded enough, but we'll set that aside for the moment.)

Here's the thread: http://massivewowgold.com/memberforum/index.php/topic,1104.0.html.  The most relevant sections are the first post, and then Reply #5 where I refine the alternate approaches.

The recommendation that I had at the end (and which I've used diligently since then, and haven't lost a thing to snipers since) was to create two extra characters, and to station one at Tanaris, and the other one at Winterspring.  This allows you to check prior to a cross-factioning session to ensure that there isn't someone camped out there, waiting to snipe a listing when you try to cross-faction it.  This is "Technique 2" in Reply #5.

Given the lack of high level characters, it's a little more effort to do this, but in my opinion the time investment is worth it.  Losing a critical cross-faction trade which represents a large portion of your progress to date in a speed run is a devastating blow to take, and I'd hate to see anyone suffer that in this run.  Better safe than sorry!

With low-level characters, the fastest way to do this is with "death runs" in the same manner as I outlined above for the free Dalaran Connection:  die, run to your ultimate destination while still dead (run speed is substantially increased while dead), find the spirit healer near your final destination, log out there, log back in and then resurrect.

Just leave those toons there, and log into them for scouting purposes before each cross-factioning attempt.

I just read all of these posts: Whoa this is sometimes insanely cool and sometimes so advanced I just squirm.
I am not giving up but it seems I willl have no chance to win...being one week into MGB and not a very experienced player.
I WILL PLAY TO WIN AND HOPE JON WILL HAVE mercy on us newbs.

best to you VekTor

The point is less about winning than it is about learning how to get rolling on a new server.  This may be an ideal incubator for you with just having started out... there's less to "unlearn", and there's bound to be mountains of advice provided over the next thirty days.

I can't think of a better time to start into the MGB process than with a speed run environment.  Just be sure to check in on everyone's threads from time to time, and they can point out ways to get going faster.

Welcome to the club, and I suspect you're going to surprise yourself beyond your wildest expectations with how well you will have done by the end of the month!

The third big ticket item that is strongly recommended is to get the White Kitten from Lil' Timmy.  Most people have difficulty with camping for him, as it can be fairly time consuming.  My recommendation is to use the add-on NPCScan, which can detect Timmy when he spawns and automatically alert you without you having to spam a macro.

The only real downside I've found is that for repeated use, you have to clear out the cache after each time he is detected.  It's an extra effort, but definitely worth it in my opinion.  I've picked up many White kittens now without even planning to, since I can receive the alert that he's spawned while I'm at the Alliance AH, and I then immediately run towards the spawn point to catch him.  Most of the time, he'll still have the kitten by the time I catch up to him.

So using this add-on, you may be able to add a big ticket item to your early mix of stuff without having to specifically camp for him.  Just be sure you have 60 silver or more on hand before running to go catch him!

The downside you mention here is actually why I don't use NPCScan,  I have a tendency to forget to clear the cache and have missed out on a few rares.   I have had great luck with Silver Dragon and the best thing is you don't have to remember to clear the cache   My post http://massivewowgold.com/memberforum/index.php/topic,1079.0.html explains how to set it up.  You don't have to go looking for Lil'Timmy just hang out at the AH in Stormwind doing your buying and selling, when Lil' Timmy walks by the AH area on his canal walk your alerted right away.  Run out and grab your white kitten.

Enjoy.

Awesome posts VekTor!

Mahdi

VekTor;


I as a newbie in making money and an expert in spending it greatly appreciate you thoughts.
Perhaps Jon can make a general section for "Advice from the experts" so the newbies can have a central reading location.

Geoff

After the calendar rolled over to July 2nd on Ysera, I set about the first step in my sketched-out plan for how to get going:  Create 20 toons.  My goal was to have these characters closely mimic the naming and appearance for my main server, to act as a kind of mnemonic reminder for me of their roles.  Just getting the characters built, mind you, not actually logging them in.

Next on the plan was getting the AH mains over to the major cities, get the first scans in and do some quick focused browsing to get baseline values for the spreadsheet.  Alliance first because it's a little shorter of a run.  I'm halfway down the tunnel into Stormwind when I see my first guild advertisement!  I scurry over there to get the signup and the 10g, and let him know I have another on the way.  He cautions me that he only has a couple of slots left, so I scramble to get the other account logged on and running over to SW.  Good thing it's close from the starting human area to SW!

I make it just in time, so I have 20g on the Alliance side to start.  Sweet!  I get my first scan in, check the Vendor search, and lo and behold, my first silly poster trick:  40s in free profit on Thick Spider's silk.  It's not a lot, but I'm not going to turn it down.  There are small spider legs up, but at over 3g each, that's a no go.

I work my way down the focused browsing list, and get initial values filled in on Alli side.  Over to Horde.  Running the AH main over to Silvermoon City (a belf character) and do my first scan and start gathering data.  I'm about halfway through when I see a guild advertisement.  He's in Org, I'm in SMC.  I beg him to hang on while I get there.  Through the translocator to Undercity, and zeppelin across.  Come on, stupid zeppelin, get here faster!  I make it and get 10g for my trouble.  I tell him that I have a second one that can sign up, but he says that he already has tells from enough folks to finish the creation.  I have cash on both sides early, this is going better than I expected.

Back to focused browsing.  Do another scan and vendor check, nothing silly listed.  Check for small spider legs.  Wow, 14 small spider legs for 56c.  Can't beat 4c per leg!  Snatch those bad boys up.  Now I can get the Kaldorei recipes without having to grind.

Ah, wait.  I can't cross-faction them until I get my cross-faction toons in place, and that includes a death run for the alliance side toon.  Argh!  I can't have everything done at the same time, and that's messing with my plan.  Well, I suppose no battle plan survives contact with the enemy, and I've made good progress, so I should look on the bright side.  I'm going to have to budget my time, though... I have a lot of things I want in place ASAP, but not a lot of time in which to do them.  Triage time.  Stop and regroup.  If there are going to be lost opportunities from not getting something done, what would cause the most regret?

I'd hate to miss out on a big ticket opportunity, since that can fast-forward things tremendously.  So try to get those in place.  I can't cross-faction the legs yet, because I need that setup in place.  Let's do the moongraze recipe pair first, and then they can grind for legs.  I run the team through, bringing them over at L4 to Azure Watch and getting the quest.  I avert death a couple of times using Gift of the Naaru, get the meat and get the recipes mailed over to my AH main.

No one interested in the trade channel offer.  I want cash fast, so I'm listing it at just under 200g and crossing my fingers.  I can quickly jump the team over using my RAF summons.  Oh man, I forgot that I could have used that to rapidly summon my secondary guild signup characters straight to the primaries, instead of running them!  Live and learn.

I can't get the moongraze recipe over to the Horde side without the Neutral AH set up.  Gotta get that done.

The team of grinders bops around Goldshire for a bit until they farm 7 legs (8 actually), and then email them to my "relay" nelf character.  I log on the recycler (the character that I run-and-delete with for Kaldorei recipes), run it over, hand off the legs and 1s, get the recipe, hand it back and mail it to the AH main.  No one biting in trade channel, these go for only about 140g on the Alli side on my main server, so I'm going to gamble and list this for just under 100g.  Fast cash is good cash.

One last scan and then it's off to bed.  No sillies found.

---

In the morning, JACKPOT!  My Kaldorei recipe sold, netting me an extra 93g+ for the mix!  Even if nothing else happens, this is enough to get a good shotgun blast of limited supply recipes up for both sides.  To get it across, again, I need that cross-faction setup.  Gotta bite the bullet and do the death run, I'm tired of this limitation getting in the way.  It'll exhaust my time window for the morning, but it's clearly necessary.  OK, the main neutral AH characters are all (barely) set up to allow me to get things across to the Horde side when needed... but there's someone camping at Booty Bay, which reminds me I still need to get the spotters over to Winterspring and Tanaris, with their OWN death runs.  Grrr.  Gotta go to work.

Last scans before I go, and another silly pops up:  82s free profit for Icemist Pants of the Physician on the Alli side.  I'm not as concerned now that I have 100g+, but throw it on the pile.

Just curious but can't you log onto the web based ah and sell on neutral ah?

I just started playing with this thing so am unsure.

Geoff

Just curious but can't you log onto the web based ah and sell on neutral ah?

I just started playing with this thing so am unsure.

Geoff

I could if I had chosen to pay for it, but my goal isn't so much to sell it on the Neutral AH itself, but instead to get it over to the Horde side to try to sell it there.  Much more visibility.  The remote AH feature would be extremely risky to use for cross-factioning, I'd never want to take that gamble.

The downside you mention here is actually why I don't use NPCScan,  I have a tendency to forget to clear the cache and have missed out on a few rares.   I have had great luck with Silver Dragon and the best thing is you don't have to remember to clear the cache   My post http://massivewowgold.com/memberforum/index.php/topic,1079.0.html explains how to set it up.  You don't have to go looking for Lil'Timmy just hang out at the AH in Stormwind doing your buying and selling, when Lil' Timmy walks by the AH area on his canal walk your alerted right away.  Run out and grab your white kitten.

I tried getting this set up when I first saw the post.  It simply never worked for me, ever.  I went back and checked that I had matched things up several times, no luck.  It was finally at the point when I was running to go to the docks, and Lil' Timmy was RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME without it going off that I threw up my hands and went looking for an alternate method.  I targeted him, followed him around, the darn thing would simply never alert on him.  I dunno if it was a conflict with something else I run, or what, but I needed something that worked at least somewhat reliably.

As long as there is no entry in the cache, I've never had NPCScan fail to trigger on a rare.

I put together a batch file that I use to launch WoW, which clears the cache and then triggers launcher.exe

That lets me keep the cache pretty regularly cleared without any extra effort, and I get a reminder message if it isn't cleared when I log in to any character.

I put together a batch file that I use to launch WoW, which clears the cache and then triggers launcher.exe

Awesome idea with using the batch file.   To bad this was not part of the coding for the add-on as part of it's initialization though.   Hmmm...wonder how hard that would to be to add into NPCScan.  Might have to play around with it

Mahdi

Don't have time for a full breakdown of everything at the moment (it's been a rollercoaster ride), but the short of it is that I think I'm doing quite well.

At the end of Day 2, Total gold acquired is 175g + 250 on a trade chat sale of 5 Arctic Fur, and 804g on the Horde side, for 1229g total.

Cash on hand was 722g, I'm itching to get into the proper pipelines but I just don't have the solid data to back them up yet.  I suspect my total gold acquired would have been about double that if I'd had a way to farm wool cloth, as the lack of production on the Alliance side of cheap wool has slowed down how fast I would have been turning things over.

Two of the moongraze recipes sold on the Horde side, and one of the Kaldorei on the Alliance.  Off to bed with me, I'll try to fill in more details when things slow down and I get some time

OK, middle of day 3, total gold acquired stats are 1529g horde side and 878g alli for a total of 2407g.

I'm going to try to go back and reconstruct how I got from there to here (from my last update), just been so busy getting everything set that I haven't had the time.  I have basically all of my cash sunk back into inventory up on the AH, and I'm waiting for another 70g to grab a nice opportunity on the horde side, so I have a bit of breathing room while I wait for those to sell.

The pipeline discovery tracking spreadsheet has once again proven its value to me.  I've used it to find a variety of very nice cross-faction opportunities, and that's probably going to be my major source of income until I have some hardcore data on volumes and extremes in pricing, around the day 5-7 timeframe.

Getting the first 100g or so on the Alliance side made a big difference once I had cross-faction trading set up, as this allowed me to get wool cloth going from the Alliance side over to the Horde.  Coming back the other way, Arctic Fur has a nice price difference with Horde low (40-50g) and Alliance high (70-80g).  It's been tough selling the Arctic Fur at those prices, though... I had to sell the first 5 of them in the trade channel because of the undercutting wars going on, and the listing prices are rather harsh on Arctic Fur.  Since my major moneymaker has been wool, I've needed a way to get the cash back to the Alli side, so I've found two other items that sell well H -> A and make a modest profit along the way:  Cardinal Ruby and Scarlet Ruby.

I've managed to get my first Frozen Orb to Runed Orb conversions going, since Frozen is going for 27 and Runed is selling at 200g each (and Auctioneer is logging actual sales at that price).  So that has the rest of my Alliance side cash locked down into three of those, going for a psychological price point at 188g 88s, hoping to move them more quickly than usual.

Once I get the cash freed up from that, I'm planning on getting going with Pristine Black Diamonds, and they are 155g on the Alli side and 283g on the Horde side.

I want to get going on Skyflare Diamonds, but the only available source on the horde side is a single stack of 15(!) of them.  I'm 70g short from being able to buy it, so I'm in a holding pattern on those for a bit.

Let's dig back through Beancounter and see if there's anything else interesting.  Sold a stack of 20 small eggs and a stack of 5, at 2g 28s per egg.  Been successful with a variety of recipes (I did a run-through of SW, Ironforge and Silvermoon, and basically bought every limited supply, threw them at the wall and got to see what stuck... it's mostly the fish recipes.  All of the Adamantite plans sold as a group.    Sold a Strong Fishing Pole for 6g 80s... there's a vendor along the way to Azure Myst that had it available while I was getting the Moongraze recipe, and it's obscure enough that it might be worth checking regularly for more.

The leader so far in the silly poster olympics is the Horde side...  someone posted a set of leggings that had a vendor value of 3g 35s... for 5s.

I've taken Jonathan's advice from the most recent news, and I've not only stocked up on the fireworks and sparklers on my main server, I've laid in a supply on the speed run server too.  My theory is that if even one of them sells at a premium of about 5-10g, it will have paid for the supplies of all of them.

The vendors have now despawned on my speed run server, so I'm glad I acted when I did.