Warlords' Economic Forecast for Mists' Craft Mats/Goods

[Deleted]

• Cooking Mats - There is little market currently for pre-Mists cooking mats since one can power level their cooking with vendor mats now. Mists' cooking does requite a good amount of mats though and this will generate some markets.
•   Meat - very little market for these since drops are high as one levels through pandaria. Expect to see .5-1 gold a piece for most.
  
•   Fish - All but one cooking path requires these and one must go out of their way to get them, so there will be limited supply and high demand. Expect 3-7g a piece for fish.
  
•   Vegetables - All cooking paths require a significant amount of vegetables to complete, but require people to slow down and actually work farms to garner large enough amounts of them which no one will want to do. Expect vegetables to retain a solid market with 1-3g a piece.
  
  

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• Herbs - Expect a low demand for herbs in general as neither Inscription nor Alchemy requires many to level. Green Tea Leaves will likely be plentiful on the market for 1-2g prices and be sufficient for most of the needs to power level these professions. Limited amounts will be needed of any other herb type for alchemy and seeing as these are all region specific and people won't encounter much of them while leveling, you can expect 2-4g a piece for these herbs. So, limited demand, but limited supply of anything but Green Tea.
  
  • Golden Lotus - Will have zero value in Warlords.
    
    

• Ore

• Ghost Iron - Will retain the most value of any craft mats when exiting Mists. Blacksmiths can use high amounts of this to power level their profession through early levels and through Mists levels itself maintaining a high demand for the ore. Engineers making Skylgolems from their daily cd power source and corresponding 2 pets will ensure an even greater demand for this ore perpetually. Jewelcrafters will also be looking for this to prospect to level their profession. Expect to see Saronite Ore-like prices, so 2-6g a piece for this. While demand is high, supply will diminish as people don't want to go out of their way to farm.
• Kyparite - Will have little to no demand going forward. The biggest market for this will come from Jewelcrafters using it as an alternative to Ghost Iron for prospecting. Limited use by Engineers to make one of the expensive rocket mounts. Blacksmiths who are collectors will need this to buy recipe from the Klaxxi. While demand will be low, supply will be even lower as this is found in limited areas in 2 zones people will spend little time in while leveling through Pandaria. Expect 2-5g a piece, but slower movement in sales.
• Trillium - Will retain its value only because of the Skygolem and 2 pets engineers make, Trillium being used solely to make Living Steel for these things. Expect to see Titanium prices for this ore, about 8-15g a piece.

• Gems 

• Common - You can expect a small market for these gems as Jewelcrafters need about 60 of them to power level. I'd anticipated 3-5g a piece for them.
• Uncommon - There will almost no market for these gems. Jewelcrafters need 9 of them to level and there'll be plenty of excess produced by any limited prospecting going on. You can expect to sell these for the same amount as the common gems.

• Leather - Expect a very poor leather market as only 300 leather is needed to level Leatherworking and the player can user either exotic or prismatic scale freely, so they'll flex with whatever is cheapest on the market. Pandaria offers a good amount of beasts for skinning purposes, so players will get most of the leather they need through leveling. Expect 1-3g a piece for leather.</li><li>Enchanting Mats - Essentially even more worthless then they are now, which is saying a lot. High supply and very low demand throughout the whole expansion. Any Enchanter can acquire all the mats needed to level their profession as they level will excess to spare.</li><li>Windwool Cloth - Supply is high and only a moderate demand needed for leveling. The secret to this will be savvy tailors who go out of their way to continue to pump out 28-slot bags next expansion. Those bag-makers will create about half the demand for the cloth. I expect prices ranging from 1.5-4g a piece for cloth.
  
  

The only craft goods to continue being of use going into Warlords will be the Tailor's 28-slot bag, and the Engineer's Skygolem and accompanying pets. 
Ghost Iron is poised to be the most lucrative craft material with a high demand in 3 professions and for making 3 of the 4 items above.
If you have a lot of BoAs and intend to level any alts, look into equipping those items with high level enchants, the mats are very cheap. The weapon enchants are still a bit pricy, but that'll only come down in price.


A few last notes about what to expect in Warlords' economy:

There'll be fewer gems in gear next expansion, I figure like 3-4 total as opposed to like 12 now. This'll dampen the economy for Jewelcrafters most likely. However, there may also be a drop in gem drops from ore and so the price of gems will rise to like 300g a piece, but you won't be buying nearly as many or meta-gems, so overall it should be cheaper. But you can expect transmuting gems to become more important for Alchemists.

Alchemists will take a hit to their economic powerhouse with the loss of meta-gems. They will continue to make gold in early expansion with flasks though. And their transmutations of common gems and whatever special metal they'll make will retain supremacy.

Inscribers will have a very active place in the market early expansion with making Darkmoon Decks. These are always resource intensive, so lots of gold to be made there through herbs. Each card will sell for about 2-3k and decks for about 25k consistently for the first 4-6 months of the expansion. I will be investing in these heavily most likely as these trinkets are very powerful in early expansion for raiders and we now have a raid team to outfit properly.

Overall, the more you're willing to forego crafting in the early expansion and focus on selling craft materials, there's a lot of gold to be had since prices will be at premiums.

[mordatha]

The rough thing about Inscription is the cards are made from the new mats from the expansion. You're saying there are no new mats for any trade skills, and they are using the same ones we have now?

Thanks

[Deleted]

There'll be new mats for all the new levels of professions of course. The last few notes are simple observations about what to expect in the new economy, what professions historically do well and what they make their gold by. Since the new recipes or information has not been released, this is conjectured based upon what little has been announced in the case of JC, but what has shown to be the case in prior expansions. This is sort of a heads up to prepare yourself for where to focus your efforts on what to gather/craft if you want to play the market.

The rest of the post is dealing specifically with what of the current craft mats will have any value going forward. So it's looking at what crafted things will still have value and looking at what mats go into them.

One addendum, when I say there'll be fewer gems, I mean fewer gem slots on gear. So expect a full set of gear to have 3-4, maybe up to 6 gem slots total, as opposed to the 12 slots you have now. Since that would utterly destroy the gem economy due to over-supply, I'm expecting Blizz to tighten up the drop rates for gems a bit.

[drazzl]

Just as a brief update, you can disregard like everything in the original post. It will be possible to power level all professions doing current content crafting/gathering. So pretty much all prior content mats will be superfluous except in the rare cases it's cheaper to procure those mats. Trillium will have some viability still only for the mats for skygolems.