Inscription: Herb Comparison

Here's my guide to the relative herb prices you should be looking at when milling cataclysm herbs.

Unfortunately, on Dath'Remar at least, the party is over as far as cheap cataclysm herbs goes. The base price of the lower quality herbs seems to have settled around 3g50 up from 2 - 2g50 quite soon after the expansion hit.

Here's a guide to the table.

• Blackfallow Ink - The average yield of Blackfallow Ink from each mill.
• Inferno Ink - The average yield of Inferno Ink from each mill. I'm now valuing Inferno Ink at 10 times the price of Backfallow, since there is such a huge demand for the rare ink, many people are using the Dalaran vendor to convert them.
• Weight - Using Cinderbloom as the base herb, the weight indicates how much 'product' you get in comparison to this baseline.
• Price Eq. - An example of the equivalent price for each herb based on the baseline of Cinderbloom at 3g50s. If Cinderbloom is at 3g50s, and I see Twilight Jasmine at under 5g98s, I'll buy the Twilight Jasmine and know I'm getting more 'product' for my coin.
• Sample - The number of mills that I've used to derive my numbers. Naturally the more expensive herbs have a much lower figure, but it looks like the average product scales with the herbs item level pretty much as you'd expect.

	Blackfallow Ink	Inferno Ink	Weight	Price Eq.	Sample
[Cinderbloom]	1.21	0.12	1.00	3.50	165
[Heartblossom]	1.23	0.13	1.06	3.72	310
[Stormvine]	1.25	0.13	1.05	3.68	256
[Azshara's Veil]	1.29	0.17	1.25	4.39	35
[Whiptail]	1.43	0.26	1.70	5.96	34
[Twilight Jasmine]	1.51	0.26	1.71	5.98	72

Prospecting in Cataclysm

 
Here are my numbers for prospecting so far in Cataclysm. So far, aside from helping to level both Alchemy and Jewelcrafting it is looking quite profitable.

Here are my results for [Obsidium Ore] and [Elementium Ore].

The biggest difference is the number of rare gems gained from Elementium, but both sets of prospecting have a similar total yield of gems. Early on in the expansion, uncommon gems have been used for leveling and transmuting and are actually more expensive in a lot of cases than rare gems. So when Obsidium ore is cheap, it's a great way to help level Alchemy and transmute some meta gems. Cut rare gems are quite profitable if you pick the right pattern, and have as little competition as possible while still picking a highly desired cut that sells well.

The "Cost per Gem" figure is reasonably crude, since the value of gems varies a lot from gem to gem, and is changing fairly quickly. At the time of writing it represented a large markup in selling raw gems, but as the price of gems and ore comes down, transmuting and cutting the gems will help the raw gems retain their profitability.

Obsidiun Ore	550
Number of Prospects	110
Cost Obsidiau Ore	11.4
Cost per Prospect	57
Total Cost	6270

Uncommon Gem		Rare Gem
[Alicite]	34	[Amberjewel]	4
[Jasper]	28	[Dream Emerald]	1
[Zephyrite]	32	[Ocean Sapphire]	0
[Nightstone]	24	[Demonseye]	1
[Carnelian]	23	[Inferno Ruby]	0
[Hessonite]	26	[Ember Topaz]	3
Total	138		37

Yield Common	1.52
Yield Rare	0.08
Cost per Gem	37.54

Elementium Ore	1080
Number of Prospects	216
Cost Elementium Ore	11
Cost per Prospect	55
Total Cost	11880

Uncommon Gem		Rare Gem
[Alicite]	34	[Amberjewel]	6
[Jasper]	44	[Dream Emerald]	13
[Zephyrite]	39	[Ocean Sapphire]	8
[Nightstone]	34	[Demonseye]	9
[Carnelian]	43	[Inferno Ruby]	12
[Hessonite]	47	[Ember Topaz]	14
Total	241		62

Yield Common	1.12
Yield Rare	0.29
Cost per Gem	39.21

Cataclysm Milling

I've been doing a lot of milling since the prices of herbs, while not 'cheap' have stabilsed pretty quickly. I'm surprised by just how much people are prepared to pay for Inferno Ink (up to 500% above cost)... but it's great for the bank balance.

Some assumptions for the numbers below.

• Inferno Ink is worth 8 times as much as Blackfallow Ink. The exchange rate is 10:1 but I'm being a little conservative, since in WotLK the ratio was at times 1:1, but Inferno Ink is looking to be a lot more useful in Cataclysm than Snowfall Ink was in WotLK.
• Prices for herbs are changing dramatically, so expect that to change from day to day and from server to server.

Cinderbloom
Sample: 127 mills
Yield of Blackfallow Ink: 1.2
Yield of Inferno Ink: 0.12
Cost of Herb: 2g
Cost of Blackfallow Ink: 4.59
Cost of Inferno Ink: 36.75

Heartblossom
Sample: 266 mills
Yield of Blackfallow Ink: 1.23
Yield of Inferno Ink: 0.13
Cost of Herb: 2g
Cost of Blackfallow Ink: 4.35
Cost of Inferno Ink: 34.77

Twilight Jasmine
Sample: 36 mills
Yield of Blackfallow Ink: 1.53
Yield of Inferno Ink: 0.26
Cost of Herb: 2.7g
Cost of Blackfallow Ink: 3.71
Cost of Inferno Ink: 29.68

So Twilight Jasmine is currently my herb of choice for milling, since you can pay up to 50% extra over Cinderbloom and Heartblossom to get the same result. I'm not sure if it will pan out (since the sample was only 36 mills) but Twilight Jasmine producing twice as much Inferno Ink is pretty awesome.

I'm really enjoying that I can make a profit from all the products of milling herbs, and it means I can really keep cranking out glyphs for sale at a base price of around 12-15g. Unfortunately Blizzard set the exchange rate of Blackfallow Ink to Ethereal Ink at 10:1, so I have to keep hunting for Outland herbs in order to make many of the (now) most profitable glyphs.

The changes to inscription are fantastic, and I'm looking forward to getting into the darkmoon cards as soon as possible. Today, Twitchie has a trip planned to Stormwind to deliver his Forged Documents.

One last tip: make sure you get your friendly Inscriptionist (or Scribe for you heathens) to craft you a Adventurer's Journal to get a 10% buff to your quest XP. Based on the prices above, you should be able to find them for around 15 - 30g on the AH if there's any kind of scribbling competition on your server.

As prices come down further I'll have a look at milling the other Cataclysm herbs.

Last Minute Wrath: 150k gold

After I posted that I had reached 100k gold on the server, the coin just kept flowing. The nice thing about automating many of the steps in coin generation, it doesn't take a lot of effort to keep things ticking along. Sure if you have a burning desire to have a ton of gold you can expand to new markets, and find new niches... but if you are comfy with where you're at, you can focus on your highest profit for time markets and participate in the others when you grab those bulk bargains from the AH.

A month or so ago I had 160k at my peak, and then between getting involved and another "Last Minute Wrath" project and transferring 10k horde side.... I was down to 125k.

Fortunately after the doom and gloom about the post Glyphmas slump prediction for Inscription when patch 4.0.1 hit... I found precisely the opposite. Increased materials for glyphs meant a larger mark up for each glyph, and even after the massive demand subsided... demand has been steady and the market humming along nicely.

I was completely caught out by patch 4.0.3a, and had not traded nearly enough Ink of the Sea for alternate inks before the ink trader was 'upgraded'. However, there most be a whole bunch of people leveling alts prior to Cataclysm hitting, since I've found the lower to mid level Herb markets far more accessible in the last couple of weeks. I'm still constantly short of Eternal Ink, but I make hay when the sun is shining.

The picture above has my most recent takings from selling glyphs in a single session, which at 3.8k is a new record for me. With the last taking coming in at 1.8k, hitting 5.6k worth of glyphs sold in 12 hours was a nice present just before Cataclysm.