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2.21.2011

Maximize JC Daily Gem Profit with TradeSkillMaster

Popular girl.
Today I am going to be detailing how I set up TradeSkillMaster in order to maximize the profit gained from selling gems required for the jewelcrafting daily quests.

If you are a Jewelcrafter you already know that the Jewelcrafting daily quests provide us with the chance to make huge sums of gold multiple times a week.

If you haven't been taking advantage of this opportunity then today's your day to learn so let's dig in!

The Reasoning
The jewelcrafting daily quest can be one of 5 quests. 3 of these quests require the JC to cut and turn in 3 of a specific green-quality Cata gem.

On any given day of the week (reset when the daily quests reset at 3am server time) JCs may be required to cut and turn in 3 Jasper, Nightstone or Zephyrite. On these particular days the value of those gems goes up considerably.On the days that the daily does not require gems the value for those gems can drop considerably.

The following TSM set up aims to avoid that drop while also preparing you for the next day (even if you aren't online with the daily resets).


The Preparation
You will want to be prospecting lots of Obsidum Ore each week in order to have a large stockpile of green-quality gems. The following is my shorthand on what to do with each gem color after prospecting.

  • Carnelian (Red) - Have a transmute spec'd alchemist transmute them to Inferno Rubies.
  • Hessonite (Orange) - Auction raw or have a transmute spec'd alchemist transmute them to Ember Topaz (depending on market value).
  • Alicite (Yellow) - Auction raw if current AH price over 9.43g otherwise cut and vendor.
  • Jasper (Green) -  Stockpile for JC daily
  • Nightstone (Purple) - Stockpile for JC daily
  • Zephyrite (Blue) -  Stockpile for JC daily
Now that you have your supply of raw gems let's get on to setting up TSM to make the most of those last three.

The Setup
Creating and naming the group.
We are going to be building a specific TSM group and setting it up to list our JC daily gems 20 at a time for at least 25g for 24 hours. The rationale behind setting it up this way is to never sell the JC daily gems too cheaply. (It also helps maintain somewhat of a base value for the gems in people's AH scanning addon's databases.)

First off we need a new TSM group. (You can download TradeSkillMaster here.) I called mine "JC Daily Gems". (I love how TSM doesn't remember capital letters...grr)

Once we have our group set up we are going to set its Group Overrides. This will allow us to set the parameters we want for the gems we add to this group. 


Setting group overrides.
The Group Overrides are quite extensive and a bit intimidating at first. With a little practice they become second nature.

We will set how many to sell, how long to list them for, the lowest price we will accept and what to do if they market goes below our set price.

To 'unlock' a setting for editing, first we right-click it. It will then 'light up' letting us know we can edit it.

Set the Group Overrides for your new group with the following settings:

  • General Settings
    • Ignore stacks under - 1 (default)
    • Ignore stacks over - 1000 (default)
    • Maximum price gap - 1000% (defualt)
  • Post Settings (Quantity / Duration)
    • Post time - 24 hours (This is to help cover the gap right as the dailies reset in case you aren't in game.)
    • Post cap - 20 (You will want a large amount of gems going up on off days to prepare for daily the daily switch over.)
    • Per auction - 1
  • General price settings (Undercut / Bid)
    • Undercut by - 1c (Default and what I always use. Helps keep prices high.)
    • Bid percent - 100% (99.99% of buyers use buy out. No sense to lose money here.)
  • Minimum Price Settings (Threshold)
    • Price threshold - 25g (This is the lowest price we will sell our gems for)
    • Set threshold as a - Fixed Gold Amount (default)
  • Maximum Price Setting 
    • Maximum Price Setting - 35g (This is what we will post for if everyone is over priced)
    • Set fallback as a - Fixed Gold Amount (default)
    • Maximum price - 500% (default)
  • Advanced Price Settings (Market Reset)
    • Reset Method - Post at Fallback (This will keep our gems at the fallback of 25g during the days when there is no gem cut required for the JC daily. It also help reduce the amount of reposting we do on those days as we won't be trying to undercut those selling the gems for low prices on off days)

Now that we have our settings we need to add gems to the group. To do this we must have at least one of each gem that we want to add in our bags.

Adding items to the group.
On the Add/Remove Items tab select the Jasper, Nightstone and Zephyrite and click "Add".

(Note each item can only be in one TSM group at a time. If you have them in your bag and don't see them in the left column remove them from the group they are currently in.)

Now that we have the TSM group set up we can go about our day to day AH routine safe in the knowledge that we aren't going to be giving away our stockpile of JC daily gems. (Unless they happen to be selling for over 25g on an off day. If so that is fine. More profit for us.)

Off Days
 If it is an off day (no gems required for the JC daily) you will end up with 3 sets of 20 gems. They will be set at at least 25g. If the market is below 25g there is a good chance most of them won't sell. This is fine. We don't want them selling for below 25g.

We want them sitting there up on the AH (with as little fuss as possible) until the JC daily resets. While we sleep the daily will reset and if it's a game day others cheap gems will get bought out and our 25g gems will start to get purchased.

By the time we are able to log on there is a good chance we will have sales already waiting in our mailbox. These will be gems sold for the current JC daily (since we had all three types on the AH at reset). Now we go check what the daily is so we can start the next phase of our attack.

Game Days
On game day (gems required for the JC daily) it is time to kick it into hight gear. Here are a few suggestions for things you can do to make game day a success.

  • Reset the market
    • Buy out all the current day's gems that are under 40g (if a reasonable number).
    • Re-list the gems at 39g or so.
  • Babysit the AH
    • Sit like a fiend jealously guarding your position as lowest seller.
    • Add those who undercut you to your friends list so you can keep an eye on them. (Know your enemy!)
    • Have your Auctioneer "Appraiser" window open. Hit "Refresh" every few minutes.
    • Sell one to a stack but sell 3 stacks (total 3) at a time. 
    • Watch you chat window. Restock as you sell.
    • If undercut, undercut them with three gems. Refresh and see what they do. If they don't undercut list 3 more.
    • Cancel your older auctions ahead of needing them. The Auctionator "Buy" tab works best for canceling multiples easily. Click your item then mash "Cancel Auctions".
    • Even just doing this for an hour or so will boost your profits greatly.
  • List a ton of gems
    • If you don't want to babysit the AH then list your entire stock of gems (in singles) on the AH.
    • Come back every few hours and either buy and re-list those who undercut you or cancel and re-list your own.
    • If you are taking a break from babysiting the AH, list all of your gems before you log out.
Recap
This JC daily TSM group setup aims to accomplish the following:
  • Keep 20 of each of the three possible daily gems on AH for 24 hours (to catch purchasers after the reset).
  • Maintain the price of 25g each for these gems on off days
  • Cut down on maintenance (posting, reposting, undercutting, etc.) of these three gems on off days
  • Keep reserves of these gems high in preparation for game days
The spoils of war.
Never be afraid to tweak or experiment with TSM group settings. The power available in this one addon is tremendous. If you catch your self thinking something like "Man it would be nice if I could keep my JC daily gems from selling for so little on non-JC daily days." there is a good chance you can do that with TSM.

In my JC daily gem routine I use four different addons together.
  • TradeSkillMaster
    • Maintain gems on off days
  • Auctioneer
    • use Appraiser to get minute-to-minute status of undercuts
    • posting gems
    • automatically setting undercut values (1c)
    • posting 3 stacks of 1 at a time (if I need 6 or 9 press button again)
  • Auctionator
    • Using "Buy" tab with daily gem in quotes (ex. "Zephyrite") to gather current state of gem prices
    • Canceling older auctions by selecting my items and pressing "Cancel Auction" button.
  • Postal
    • Automatically gathering canceled auctions/successful auction from mailbox
Always be looking for ways to use your addons to augment your gold making routine. Sometimes automation is the way to solve a particular problem. Other times doing things by hand works best. (Most often it is a combination of the two.)

How do you make the most out of the JC daily gem demand? How have you used TSM to solve a tricky problem? What is your "killer combo" of addons?
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11 comments :

  1. Thanks for going into that much detail. I have 2 questions though. How much time can you spend checking the AH each day and how many active competitors do you have on your server.

    While I like doing the Obsidium shuffle and have fairly successful done so for 2-3 weeks now, I found that my home servers market has too many AH campers who'll undercut me by 1c at any given time of day. Because of that I can either sell my Jasper, Nightstone and Zephyrite dirty cheap (15g per) or am better off turning it into jewelery to be DE'd.

    Do you have any other ideas how to profit from the JC dailys as a trader with a daytime job?

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  2. Are the deposit costs not eating into your profits on the days that it is not the JC daily? I feel you are spending a lot of gold maintaining a "market price" on days where you are not selling any gems.

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  3. @Aeg Not at all. If the market is below my threshold of 25g I may never touch those gems the whole day. They just sit there minding their own business thus reducing any deposit costs (which are 1.5g per 24h).

    Also I'm not keeping them at 25g to maintain market price as much as keeping them there so I have them when the JC Daily day comes. (The market price is just a side effect.) I'm also not reseting the market on off days.

    That being said, I will often start having them sell at 25g even on a non-JC daily day if the overall gem supply runs low and I happen to be the next cheapest. (This seems to happen most with Nightstone.)

    Green quality gems are used for Fire Prisms as well as Meta and Rare gem transmutes. Sometimes JC are just missing 1 or 2 gems and I make a sale.

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  4. @Apprentice Trader I have an answer to your questions coming a little later today. :)

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  5. All the TSM info and posting tactics are great. :)

    I'm surprised about how you deal with all your gems, though. Granted, your server may be much different, but I've noticed much larger profits dealing with them like this:

    Carnelian: Cut Carnelian Spikes, DE, Make enchant scrolls.

    Hessonite/Alicite/Jasper: Cut jewelry, AH blues for 200g each, DE greens and make enchant scrolls.

    Nightstone: Now that I have about 500 of these stockpiled I'm cutting them into jewelry just like above though I can usually get closer to 400g for the blue jewelry.

    Zephyrite: Sell on JC daily as you suggested. :)

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  6. @Faid I generally base my green gem choices on what OreCrusher recommends. Generally Carnelians are recommended to both xmute and de. I'll keep an eye on which is worth more.

    All other gems are generally recommended auction raw.

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  7. This is an incredibly awesome post. I really have nothing to add other than to tell you that. :)

    @Faid: This is obviously going to be very server dependent. I know some people cant move raw uncommons to save their life and people on other servers where raws are far and away more profitable. You would think this would be an area where you would see more homogeneity across servers but it really isnt.

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  8. I realize this guide is a few months old but what did you mean by vendoring the alicites if the AH had them for less than 9g when the vendor price is 75s for a cut one?

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  9. @webzu Back when this article was written the vendor price for the gems was 9g. It has since been nerfed down the the price you indicated. That piece of advice is out of date.

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  10. @fluxdada
    Ah, that makes sense, very well written guide :)

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  11. No one seems to have posted exported TSM Jewelcrafting groups yet, would be awesome if you did...

    ReplyDelete

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