Epic Gem Transmutes and Day 1 of Patch 4.3

Epic Gem Transmutes
4.3 has been out for a full day now and there's still no news regarding epic gem transmutes. When the patch first came out and transmutes weren't on any vendors most of us assumed they must be raid drops but after a full day with no reports of any dropping on any server it doesn't look like that's it either.

That probably means epic gem transmutes are either:

- not intended to be available yet (IMO most likely), or
- something is broken preventing them from dropping / showing up on a vendor.

At this point I'm going to assume that epic gem transmutes while they may be in the data files are not yet obtainable in game and will not be anytime soon. Maybe in some later patch a few months down the road, maybe not until the next expansion or maybe never.

Patch 4.3 - Expectations, Random Thoughts and Ramblings

Patch 4.3 is almost upon us now. Possibly as soon as tomorrow but probably still another 1-2 weeks away yet. Tomorrow according to a just released blizzard status update.

The following is an assortment of facts we can be reasonably certain of as well as my own speculations, conclusions and expectations that I've been taking into account while preparing for patch 4.3.

Potion materials requirements are being greatly reduced. Most cataclysm potions will take just a single herb and a vial to make. Expect potion prices to drop significantly and once players get used to new low prices they should start selling in greater numbers too.

Epic gem transmutes. We don't know what the materials costs will be and we don't know how the cooldowns will work either. We don't even know for sure if they'll be in the patch though it seems very likely. Blizzard hasn't said a thing about transmutes but from what they have said about the availability of epic gems don't except an instant gold mine. Transmutes will likely be limited by both high materials costs and long and/or shared cooldowns.

Addons and User Interface - Data Brokers every good goblin should have

Data broker plugins are addon threads for displays using LibDataBroker. A data broker display like Fubar, Titan Panel, or my personal favorite Chocolatebar is required to use data broker plugins.

Many plugins display additional information when you mouse over them and/or have drop-down menus allowing you to clean up your user interface yet still have quick and easy access to everything. By adding plugins you can set up a broker display mod to show virtually anything you want exactly where you want it.

Chocolatebar




Creates a bar at the top or bottom of your display where other addons called broker plugins can display things like your fps, latency, gold earned, and much, much more.


Ara Broker Money

I really like Ara Broker Money for keeping track of how much gold I have across all characters. It also shows you how much gold you've made (or lost) for the current session, today, yesterday, the last 7 days and the last 30 days.









Ara Broker Tradeskills

Another handy addon from Ara. This one shows you all your tradeskills on all characters. It shows cooldowns, including which ones are up and how long it will be until the others will be up again. You can also open and view the tradeskills for any character on the account.








Broker Micromenu

I like this one because it allows me to completely remove the blizzard default bars. I can use a custom bar mod (Macaroon!) for abilities and macros while Broker Micromenu takes care of things like opening a ticket or viewing the character. It also displays FPS and Latency, putting many seldom used but useful things into a small space where they're unobtrusive yet still readily accessible for when you do need them..






If you're looking to find more broker plugins there's a nice big list of broker plugins over at WoW Ace complete with pictures for most of them. Mouse over the thumbnail pictures there to see larger pictures.

Addon Control Panel isn't a display broker or plugin but it comes in real handy for turning various mods on/off and reloading the UI without leaving the game... Like you'll be doing when trying out a bunch of new data broker plugins.

Brief history of a scammer

That crook Markco is at it again with yet another scam. Faid over at Nerf Faids has done a nice detailed video expose of his latest scam, the so called WoW Crusher Addon.

WoW Crusher claims to make you the best at everything (yes everything) on your server.

It slices, it dices, it even cuts tin cans! It cures colds, flu, whatever ails you, even cancer! It cleans, calcium, rust, lime, grease, all the worst most difficult to clean up messes in just seconds and you don't even have to wipe it off, everything just disappears like magic!

You get the picture, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't true. Snake oil sales at it's worst. This isn't the first time Markco's been caught in shady business. He's been doing it for years. Here's a brief history of some of his more obvious scams and shady dealings over the years.


Nerf Faids Nov 2011 - WoW Crusher "addon"

The Gold Mint Sept 2011 - Tycoon "addon"

Cold's Gold Factory May 2011 - Coaching fiasco

Tobold's MMORPG Blog Nov 2009 - Trying to get other bloggers to run his scams too

Greedy Goblin Nov 2009

Read the comments too, it's hilarious how he tries to weasel his way out of things with more lies and constantly tries to change the subject.

He claims to have sold the JMTC website and the name Markco for 50 thousand dollars but many fellow bloggers don't believe that. More likely it's just another lie in an attempt to disassociate himself from all the crooked business going on there.

Tips and Tricks - TSM Custom Reset Method

Posting walls of items works well to squeeze and discourage campers. The idea is you post multiple items at prices the campers really don't like. Lower than they like selling at, yet higher than and too many of than they'll buy you out at.

The camper then has 3 choices:

1. Undercut you anyhow
2. Buy you out and attempt to reset prices
3. Stop posting until the price goes up again

In my experience most campers will continue to undercut for a while anyhow. That's fine, let the campers work their butts off for peanuts for a while. All you have to do is post enough items often enough to keep the price low and discourage buyout attempts until they stop camping.

Campers figure if they can stop all your sales for a while you'll lose gold on deposits and give up. That only works on the little guys and the casuals. All it's going to do with an experienced goblin who's in it for the long haul is get his attention focused on making things difficult for the camper(s) in question. The goblin won't be losing gold either. He'll be making less gold, but that bothers campers a lot more than it bothers goblins.

The biggest problem with walls is getting your walls up at high enough prices to discourage buyouts while at the same time being low enough to keep the pressure on the campers. If you post too high they'll gleefully undercut you forever and you won't sell much. If you post too low then you might wind up being the one working your butt off for peanuts and that's no good. Worst of all if you post too low the campers might buy you out and reset prices much higher.

Ideally to prevent buyouts you want at least 3 walls at low, medium and high prices. Or better yet think of it as low, medium and high profit margins. The low priced wall puts the pressure on, the high priced wall caps the market and the medium priced wall discourages buying out the pressure wall and re-posting just under the cap wall.

Let's say you're battling an obsessive gem camper who mostly focuses on Inferno Rubies and Ember Topaz (hi phlox).

The three important Inferno Ruby cuts sell fast enough the simplest and most effective thing to do is just post and forget 5 or 10 of each at a time. Keep an eye on the camper and post several times a day for 24 hours with threshold near cost (the price you can normally buy raw gems in enough bulk to not run out at), fallback 150-200% cost and 10-20% undercut. Enough will sell you really don't need to do anything more complicated. If a camper tries to stop your sales completely he's going to have to camp hardcore posting at or near cost. He won't do that for long, especially not if you occasionally buy him out when he goes under your threshold and re-post his gems for more.

Ember Topaz on the other hand are a little trickier, particularly if the camper posts them cut under the usual bulk buy price for raw gems. There are so many different cuts, most of which sell fairly well, it'd take an awful lot of stock to do the same as with Inferno Rubies. Fewer walls (3 or 4 at most) with steeper undercuts works better here. The problem with this is there's a bigger gap between walls making buying out the low priced wall more tempting.

Reset Method tells TSM what do when prices are below your threshold. The options are to post at fallback, threshold, to not post and to post at a custom value. If you set reset method to threshold someone might buy you out anyhow if they see an opportunity for a big price jump. If you set it to fallback they'll just 1c undercut you forever. What's needed here is a wall priced a little higher than the threshold wall. Over the bulk buy price on raw gems but not by too much.

This is where TSM Custom Reset Method comes in handy. The high and low priced walls are easy to maintain with Threshold, Fallback and Undercut settings. Custom Reset Method only comes into play when the price is below your threshold. Simply set Custom Reset Method to somewhere between your threshold and fallback (closer to threshold usually works best) and it'll post at that price when prices are below your threshold.

Unfortunately Custom Reset Method can't be set any higher than 100g so while it works just fine for gems and glyphs it isn't suitable for everything. It's really too bad it can't be set higher because it'd be great for chants, belt buckles, leg armors, spellthreads or anything else that sells in volume and is heavily camped.

In fact I'd love to see custom reset method expanded to allow it to change everything about the reset post from price to duration, stack size and number of auctions posted.

Tradeskillmaster Mailing - Quick Setup Tutorial

TSM_Mailing handles mass mailing items to other characters. In a nutshell what it does is you load up your bags with things you want to mail off, open the mailbox, press a button and it automatically mails everything off for you. It will fill up all 12 mail slots whenever possible.

It's particularly good for sending bulk mail to alts. It does not handle sending CoDs, just regular mail so it's not very good for selling in bulk.


Configuration

Configuration is pretty easy, nothing like configuring the auctioning or crafting modules.

Type /tsm and click the "Mailing options" icon on the right side of the window. The mailing options tab has 3 options at the top:

 1. Auto recheck mail
 2. Don't display money received
 3. Send items individually

Leave them all off (not checked).

Below those options is a "Player name" text entry field. Add the name of a player you want it to send mail to and hit enter. Make sure you spell the name correctly. If you spell the name wrong it will send the mail to the wrong person!

The player name will appear in the list to the left. Now click on the player name in the list. Two lists will appear "Items / groups to add" and "Items / groups to remove". The left list contains everything in your bags and all your TSM_Auctioning Groups. Select everything you want mailed to the character in this list and hit the "Add>>" button to move it into the list.

Sending Mail

That's all there is to configuration. Once you have it configured simply fill up your bags with stuff you want to mail, open the mailbox and hit the "Tradeskillmaster_Mailing: Auto-mail" button you'll now see on top of the mailbox window.

One caveat, mailing gets laggy with large configs. The larger your mailing config gets the worse the lag gets. The lag can be so bad it's really not even usable. How big your config can be before that happens probably depends mostly on your cpu. I tried setting it up with settings for all Cataclysm gems (uncommon, rare, raw and cut) once. The lag that caused was so bad I had trouble just closing the mailbox to make it stop! With that in mind I recommend only using TSM_Mailing to mail a limited number of big bulk items like ore and herbs.