A Business Transaction

So, as you might know, I’ve spent a fair bit of time leveling my professions. Specifically:

• Jana is a zen master jewelcrafter, now with every single superior Pandaren gem design. She is also a zen master tailor.
• Saxsy is a zen master transmutation alchemist and a zen master herbalist.
• Traxy is a zen master blacksmith and a zen master miner.
• Yonten, despite being only level 80, is a zen master enchanter. Because of her level she cannot get the high level enchants but she can do everything else.

Jana, Saxsy and Traxy all also have 16 plot farms in Halfhill, and Jana is a Master of the Ways in cooking.

As I’ve suggested before, this has allowed me a great deal of flexibility in procuring raw materials and other items. Traxy can farm for ore and pass it to Jana for prospecting for gems or Saxsy for transmuting into Living Steel. Every other day Jana and Saxsy get enough motes of harmony from their farms to transmute an extra Imperial Silk or Living Steel. Traxy produces enough motes of harmony that in a week she can pass 33 Golden Lotuses to Saxsy for use in producing flasks, which is more than enough for Jana’s raiding needs. All of my characters can send their cloth to Jana for tailoring. Finally, the residue from Jana’s prospecting can be turned into rings and amulets and then sent to Yonten to convert into enchanting mats, resulting in one Sha Crystal a day.  It’s all quite useful.

It’s also useful to other people. Saxsy builds up a supply of Living Steel, but because Jana only needs it for mounts and Traxy only needs it for blacksmithing patterns she can’t buy yet because she doesn’t have the rep, I have a lot left over.  Jana has prospected so much ore that she has at least 200 of each rare Pandaren gem and a couple bank tabs full of uncommon Pandaren gems.  Yonten has disenchanted so many items that she has filled another bank tab and a half with enchanting materials, and has enough ethereal shards for three weeks worth of sha crystal transmutes.

From that comes a business. I’ve spoken often about Jana selling cut gems on the auction house, but really I could sell much more. I could AH Living Steel and flasks and Golden Lotus and enchanting mats very easily, but I’ve decided to stay out of those markets.

You may have noticed one glaring exception in the above paragraph: Jana’s tailoring. In previous expansions I could have done something with Jana’s tailoring skills and sold bags. Blizzard, in its infinite wisdom, decided not to include an uncommon level pattern for bags, instead providing only the rare level bag pattern, available at exalted reputation with the August Celestials, providing a 28 slot bag for the grand total of 12 Imperial Silk.

Here comes a rant.

This has led to a very frustrating problem in that if someone comes to me and wants me to craft some bags, or if I just want to craft some bags for myself, I can’t. All of the bags I can make require materials I don’t keep around anymore and don’t run into in normal questing/adventuring/dungeoning/raiding.  In order to make bags I have to go back into Cataclysm areas, farm embersilk, and hope enough greens drop so I can get Yonten to disenchant them for the dust I need to use to make those bags, which in Blizzard’s infinite wisdom required four stacks of cloth and 8 DE’d cataclysm level greens to make.

Even supposing I could make 28 slot bags, I can’t make them for other people.  There’s no way for people to provide the mats to me, and they take 8 days worth of transmutes (including 16-plot daily Songbell yields on the farm) to make.

The upshot here is that unlike Enchanting, Blacksmithing, Alchemy, Jewelcrafting, Inscription, Leatherworking and even Engineering, there’s not a damned saleable thing I can do with Tailoring. There is not a single realistic level 90 desire that would make someone go up to a tailor and say “Can you make me this? Here are the mats.”

Could we please get 24 slot bags? I’d even settle for 22 slot bags made from a reasonable amount of Pandaren cloth.

I have a friend. She runs a very large guild (approximately 600 members), many of whom she wants to ensure are well equipped for raiding and arenas. From what I understand, her guild does not have a reliable jewelcrafter (there’s a caveat to this), nor does it have a reliable transmutation alchemist.

There’s certainly a jewelcrafter, possibly several in her guild. But they may not be readily available and almost certainly do not have the stock of rare gems that Jana has.  More on this later.

So we made a deal. Jana would provide gem cutting services for her, and Saxsy would provide Living Steel for her. She would provide ore and bars to me.  Here’s the system:

• Each stack of ghost iron ore she gives me earns her one credit.
• Each trillium bar she gives me earns her one credit.
• Every 20 kyparite she gives me earns her one credit.
• Each rare level gem I cut for her costs her one credit.
• Each Living Steel I give her costs her six credits.
• Each meta gem I cut for her costs her six credits.

Everything is subject to availability. Generally that only applies to Living Steel.

How did I come up with these figures?  Well, let’s start with the prospecting side.  Each stack of ghost iron ore, on average, will result in one rare gem (in addition to about six uncommon gems and a fraction of a serpent’s eye). This would theoretically balance out in terms of rare gems.  20 kyparite offers the same amount of rare gems as a stack of ghost iron ore, so that’s another possibility. (I’ve advised her to sell the kyparite on the AH and use the proceeds to buy ghost iron ore, which should be more profitable).

Now for the other bits.  A stack of ghost iron ore will turn into 10 ghost iron bars, which can be transmuted by Saxsy into 1 trillium bar, without considering the possibility of her transmutation procs. Thus, it makes sense for a trillium bar to be worth the same as one stack of ghost iron ore.  Living Steel takes six trillium bars on the once-a-day transmute, so it makes sense for Living Steel to cost six credits. Meta gems take six rare gems to transmute, so they should cost six credits as well.

At this point I would like to note that I did not suggest this arrangement out of charity. There are some people out there who believe that if people provide crafters with mats, they should be happy to live with whatever tips the person graces them with. I am not such a person, and I wouldn’t enter into this sort of thing if I weren’t going to benefit by it.  How do I benefit?  Let’s start with the ore side of things.

A stack of ore gets me one rare gem, which balances out the credit earned, but it also gives me about six uncommon gems and some fraction of a serpent’s eyes. The uncommon gems, in the right colors, can be converted into jewelry that nets about 16g per stack. Thus, all other things being equal, I’m earning 16g per stack of ore she gives me.

Now let’s move to the Living Steel side of the equation. For every six trillium bars she gives me, I would give her one Living Steel, which is the guaranteed rate of transmutation. But I benefit in two other ways. First, my transmutes can proc, giving me extra Living Steel. Second, I can combine three of those trillium bars with my harmonies to make Living Steel off a cooldown, generally every other day. The upshot is that for every six trillium bars she gives me, I get more than one Living Steel. I make money off the transmute procs.

There’s a risk to the prospecting side of this, which is that the gems I get out of the prospecting won’t correspond to the gems she is demanding. I would be in trouble, for instance, if she gave me hundreds of stacks of ore and expected only vermilion onyxes in return. So far this doesn’t happen, and she understands that if this sort of thing does happen we will have to change the terms of the agreement. So far, though, I deal in larger quantities of ore on my own such that imbalances on her side are a small factor.  I prospect far more ore on my own than the ore she provides me.

For her part, I think she’s making out quite well with the deal.  Instead of buying Living Steel at 400g per (or whatever it costs), she can buy six stacks of ghost iron ore (a total of about 180g) and receive a Living Steel in return.  Instead of buying a gem for 50g, 80g, or even 200g (as popular gems can cost), she spends less than 30g on a stack of ore and gets the gem she wants. (She is not precluded, of course, from buying the gem for 5g off the auction house if someone is stupid enough to be selling them for that amount).  There is definitely a mutual benefit here.

I hope this works out. I do like being helpful while earning a decent profit for my skills.