Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Timeless Treasure Trove

The timeless island has been a gold making machine for many people in the game already.  Those that are on the island killing things and collecting things even while there are still easily hundreds of thousands of people there doing the same are making money selling anything that is not nailed down.

The thing is if it is so profitable now you need to think how much more profitable it will be once the next expansion comes out.  Does anyone out there remember the argent tournament pets?  I know I do.  In wrath they sold okay and were a good source of gold and you could get a new pet every few days which was kind of nice.  When cataclysm came out and the argent tournament was now old content those pets went up in value and on most servers they were around 3K gold each and if you managed to get one across faction lines you could easily find yourself selling them for upwards of 10K on most server.  All this before pet battles where introduced to the game and made pet collecting an even more popular thing.

In basic terms, stuff from old content sells well.  In more advanced terms, stuff from old content that requires some sort of luck and grind sells even better.  If the argent pets were selling for 3K - 10K depending on which one you had and they were easy to get because there was no RNG involved what do you think the timeless pets will be like when they require luck, lots of time, and now benefit from many more people collecting them due to the addition of pet battles to the game.

But it is not just all about pets here, it is about a lot of stuff on the island that can be a nice way to make some gold come the next expansion.  Sure you can make some gold now, but you can make more gold later when there are not hundreds of thousands of people running around collecting these things to keep the auction house filled with them.

I've decided to make a little list of things to look out for on the island that might be worth holding on to, if you are no in need of the gold now, because next expansion they will, or could be, worth so much more.

Pets: (Note:  Pets that can not be caged are not listed)

Ashleaf Spriteling : This pet drops off the rare mob named Leafmender.

Azure Crane Chick : This pet can be picked up from egg nests around the island.

Dandelion Frolicker : This pet drops off angry sprites during the solo nice sprite triggered event.

Death Adder Hatchling : This pet drops off the rare mob named imperial python which is a rare spawn that only spawns after many death adders have been killed.

Gulp Froglet : This pet drops off the rare mob named bufo.

Ominous Flame : This pet drops off the standard elite mob named foreboding flame.

Jadefire Spirit : This pet drops off the rare mob named spirit of jadefire.

Jademist Dancer : This pet drops off the standard elite mob surprisingly named jademist dancer.

Ruby Droplet : This pet drops off the rare mob named garnia.

Skunky Alemental : This pet drops off the rare mob named zhu-gin the sour that appears during an event in old piju village.

Spineclaw Crab : This pet drops off the rare mob named monstrous spineclaw which is a rare spawn that only spawns after many ancient spineclaws have been killed.

Swarmling of Gu'chi : This pet drops off the rare mob named gu'chi.

All the above listed pets have a (usually) less than 5% chance to drop off the mentioned mob.  Most are less than 2% and if you are like me, whom it took 94 kills to get the garnia pet, it could even be less than 1%.  So luck is a huge factor and you can use that to your advantage.

If someone really wants these pets next expansion and are not exactly what we would call thrilled to be hanging out camping old spawns for hours and days and maybe even weeks on end hoping to get a rare drop they will spend a fair deal of gold for it on the auction house.  Even the ones like the spineclaw and python which you can get to spawn by killing spineclaws and pythons will not be attractive to grind because if there is anyone else on the island, being they can spawn anywhere, even if you get it to spawn there is no guarantee you will even get to kill the rare spawn when it does spawn.  So you are not only competing with a 1% drop rate, but other people and lots of work grinding.

Once this is older content that no one, or very few, is visiting the availability of these pets on the market will dry up.  Do not think because you always see from 3 to 12 on the market now that a year from now there will ever be a large supply of them around.  If anything, these will become rare as time goes on and fewer people are getting more to add to the market.

Should any of these pets become a pet that is extremely powerful against a new grand master pet fight daily come the next expansion and these pets are few and far between, the sky is the limit on how much gold pet battlers will be willing to pay for it.  These pets are without a doubt a future treasure trove.

But it is not all about pets, there are other items on the island that will be worth collecting and selling next expansion.  Some more than others, but all worth mentioning as part of our timeless treasure trove.

Transformation Items :

Savory Deviate Delight :  While you can this yourself and it has been a great seller for a long time, it is worth stopping to kill the rare mob named stinkbraid whenever you see him for some free delights.  I've been stockpiling them myself, they might be flooding the market now that the island is full and everyone is getting it with each kill but next expansion it will be like it used to be, few and far between for 400 gold per stack compared to the 40 gold per stack they are going for on my server now.

Spectral Grog : This is a transformation item, one time use, that turns someone into a ghost pirate.  They drop off normal mobs so they can be farmed.  The rattling mariners only appear during the rattleskew event but the spectral pirates are there to kill whenever you want, spawn timer permitting however.  Do not loot the treasure chest around the spectral pirates if you want to farm them however, for some odd reason they become friendly until the next weeks reset if you steal their treasure, if that makes any sense.

Inscription Techniques : (Note: Not listing BoP ones.)

Technique: Glyph of Condensation : Teaches a minor mage glyph.  Dropped by the rare mobs named zesqua only.

Technique: Glyph of Evaporation : Teaches a minor mage glyph.  Dropped by jademist dancers only.

Technique: Glyph of Headhunting : Teaches a minor rogue glyph.  Dropped by burning berserkers only.

Technique of Impaling Throws : Teaches a major warrior glyph.  Dropped by eternal kilnmasters only.

Technique: Glyph of Inspired Hymns : Teaches a minor priest glyph.  Dropped by windfeather nestkeepers only.

Technique: Glyph of Lean Pack : Teaches a major hunter glyph.  Dropped by crag stalkers or primal stalkers.

Technique: Glyph of Lingering Ancestors : Teaches a minor shaman glyph.  Dropped from the spectral pandas near old piju.

Technique: Glyph of Loud Horn : Teaches a major death knight glyph.  Dropped from ordon candlekeeper only.

Technique: Glyph of One with Nature : Teaches a minor druid glyph.  Dropped from ashleaf sprites or the rare mob named leafmender.

Technique: Glyph of Pillar of Light : Teaches a minor paladin glyph.  Dropped by foreboding flames or the rare mob named spirit of jadefire.

Technique: Glyph of Rain of Frogs : Teaches a minor shaman glyph.  Dropped by gulp frogs or the rare mob named bufo.

Technique: Glyph of Regenerative Magic : Teaches a major death knight glyph.  Dropped by damp shamblers or the rare mob named rock moss.

Technique: Glyph of Shifted Appearance : Teaches a minor priest glyph.  This can only be purchased for 4000 timeless coins from the rare spawn vendor named whizzig.  Stock up, I already have.

Technique: Glyph of Skeleton : Teaches a minor death knight glyph.  Dropped from the rare mob named rattleskew only.

Technique: Glyph of the Watchful Eye : Teaches a minor warrior glyph.  Dropped by ordon oathguards only.

Technique: Glyph of the Weaponmaster : Teaches a minor warrior glyph.  Dropped from the rare mob named jakur of ordon only.

There are also 24 BoP techniques that can be dropped on the island meaning you must be a scribe in order to loot them and learn them.  So there are effectively two ways you can work this part of the treasure trove.

You can hunt the patterns listed that are not bound and sell them.  They are currently anywhere between 20 gold and 500 gold on most servers but once we move to the next expansion and the area is not being as heavily farmed as it is now the supply will eventually dry up and never put the desire to know every pattern past people.  There will always be a market for them and at a higher, possibly much higher, rate than 20 gold to 500 gold.

If you are a scribe you can hunt the inscription only ones and learn them and make the glyphs.  Just like I said do not put it past people to want to know every pattern, do not put it past people to want to know every glyph.  Once the next expansion comes out people will either need to go back to hope for a lucky drop for these patterns to make it themselves or they will need to buy them off the market from someone that already knows them.  While the market might be on the upper end of flooded with these new glyphs now, come next expansion many scribes will forget about them.  Out of sight, out of mind.  If you remember to make them, they will sell, and they can sell very handsomely as not as many people will have them or want to go back to farm them just so they can make them.

With all that said, we never know if blizzard might just delete the glyphs as they have done before or if these glyphs will ever be capable of being learned through research.  But hoping they are not learned through research and not removed, this is a very solid market for a very select group of scribes that farmed all of the 24 BoP patterns as well as the ones that are not bound.

There is a lot of gold to be made from the timeless treasure trove and most of it comes next expansion when there are no longer hundreds of thousands of people on the island daily if you are willing to wait it out.  Will you hold on to them to increase your profit?  Will you stock up for later sales?  I'd say it is worth it.  Come WoD everything mentioned here will just go up in price.  A lot.

16 comments:

  1. re the Glyphs. there will definitely be a bumper market for them with all the new lvl 90 characters that are going to appear

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    1. Oh hell yeah, so selling the patterns or the glyphs will be a winner all around. Not as good as glyphmas a while back, but still something worth writing about for sure.

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  2. Considering all the time I've spent and killing I've done on TI (and still am), I've had a shockingly low glyph drop rate... my scribe has picked up, I think, 2 BoP ones and I've gotten a total of 1 BoE one on my main account and it's one of the ones that sells for 20s (not 20g, at least on that server).

    I've always taken advantages of those types of "temporary oversupply" situation when it seemed to make sense to... buy cheap ones off the AH, toss 'em in a bank somewhere, sell 'em later when they're less available. The DMF turn-in items were good to me earlier in the expansion (I'd buy for 20-50g at the end of the DMF and sell at the start of the next one for 5-10x that), holiday pets are always good for that (although that market has dried up a lot since pets went account-wide, by now most people have them), expansion-specific pets (first I can recall taking advantage of personally were the ones from the Oracles egg in Wrath), etc.

    Crafted mounts and pets are going to be interesting going forward... thinking specifically about the recent engineering ones (Sky Golem, etc). Are people still going to do the daily Eng cooldown in WoD? Where will the Living Steel come from, assuming that's on the same CD with whatever xmute shows up in WoD (as it is currently with Living Elements, that's still on the current shared CD)? Will Blizz take that off the CD or will the price on Living Steel jack up significantly (and supply dry up, most likely)? I'm considering stockpiling Sky Golems that others put up, I could easily see the price on those doubling or more in WoD *IF* Blizzard doesn't make them more easily craftable.

    I find those types of markets interesting to play in... I can also afford to be wrong, which helps. :)

    Those TI pets are another obvious candidate, yep. To this point I'm still generally selling them when I get them (the prices are high enough for farmable items, IMO) but at some point, especially if the prices drop, I can see becoming a buyer for those.

    The glyphs I'm not so sure about, on a server with an active glyph market where selling them is a positive experience rather than my typical "why the hell do I keep wasting my time with this shit?" experience, stockpiling might be worthwhile. Me, I'll probably just wait until later in the expansion, buy all the cheapish recipes that I don't have and buy out any glyphs I need, by then the prices should have stabilized at something reasonable. Buy once, have forever. Stupid profession model, that.

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    1. The drop rates on them is pretty dismal. I still need a lot of them including a lot of the tradable ones and you are talking to someone that has one character with over 400K coins and 4 others with over 100K coins, so it is not like I have not killed an entire universe of mobs.

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    2. Speaking of drop rates, I've seen a ridiculous uptick in Burden drops this week across all toons (one toon got 3 in 4 kills and I've picked up at least 9 this week so far)... anyone else seeing that or should I just enjoy the brief RNG burst? I figured there was a hotfix to up the drop rate but haven't seen anything mentioned yet.

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    3. I wish I had that luck. Went on my paladin (my only character under 515 sitting at 499) and figured I would get a few pieces for it so went burden hunting.

      Joined with 2 guild mates, both over 560 so they do not need burdens. Over the course of some grinding and rare killing one got 2 the other got 3 and my paladin that needed them gets none.

      So I do not see an increased drop rate, at least for the characters that actually can use them.

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  3. Well, based on the results of your guildies I'm thinking the drop rate has increased... I'd get an average of 1 a week across ALL toons with a decent amount of killing going on. I'm hoping it continues, too... does seem to be the point in the expansion where they can ramp something like that up a bit.

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    1. I just wish I could get them on the characters that actually need them instead of getting more on characters that have no use for them.

      Or when I do get one on a character that can use it I get a 1 stat item that really is not an upgrade from a 528 LFR item.

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  4. would you mind making the same type of post for the BOP? Thanks GE

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    1. You mean the inscription BoP ones that only drop for a scribe? Or the BoP pets?

      I think bonkers that you can get from the chests is the only BoP pet.

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    2. inscription bop. I dont know where this island is, but it looks like I need to find it especially after telling me about this 479 weapon. I will need to do it 3 times if that is so. are coins soulbound? prob.

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    3. I'll see if I can find a short list. There might be one on wowhead for their timeless island header.

      Coins come from everything you kill, lots of them. Also treasure chests all over. So getting enough is just a matter of spending the time.

      When facing shao, the guy that gives you the kill 20 elites quest, the person that sells the weapons is on the left of him.

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  5. ok, now to find this timeless island. thanks again,

    -roo

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    1. If you picked up the flight path you can just fly there with a taxi. Otherwise you can go to lower jade forest and just head out to the land mass you see in the distance. Do not worry about fatigue, you should reach it before you have any issues. I had to do that my first time back because I forgot to pick up the flight path.

      Be careful not to land in the horde camp. That can be painful. I've done that too. The alliance camp is near the bottom of the map, safer to aim there when flying.

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