This is a big opportunity for business savvy people, you can offer inscription powerleveling packs! (for an hefty profit off course)
The basics
How are you supposed to overcome the scarcity of low lvl herbs? Well you should know if you're a scribe but since not everyone has that profession I'll explain; there's an ink trader in Dalaran named Jessica Sellers she has pretty much every ink needed by players for crafting glyphs and you can buy them by trading Ink of the sea to her.
She's the resource that you as a maxed scribe (well you need 350 skill to mill northrend herbs) have access to while the people wanting to powerlevel do not, and we'll exploit her services in this guide by milling cheap Northrend herbs such as Icethorn, Adder's Tongue and Lich Bloom, then crafting Ink of the Sea and finally buying low level inks!
Material Breakdown
Wanting to know all the materials needed to powerlevel inscription by using jessica sellers, I tried looking for a guide, but everythingI've found was tailored for people who manually milled their herbs.. So I said "screw it
you'll write your own list!" and went straight to wowhead where they show the skill ranges (red/yellow/green) for each craft.
After some work that's my powerleving guide:
1-375 materials needed
35 ivory ink
57 moonglow ink
25 midnight ink
60 lion's ink
65 jadefire ink
65 celestial ink
50 shimmering ink
55 ethereal ink
20 ink of the sea
367 inks
124 light parchment 0,186g
155 common parchment 1,9375g
130 heavy parchment 16,25g
85 resilient parchment 42,5g
375-386 materials needed
28 ink of the sea
1 snowfall ink
30 resilient parchment 15g
- 1-35 Scroll of int/Spi/Stam 35 ivory ink 35 light parchment
- 35-60 scroll of recall 25 moonglow ink 25 light parchment
- 60-79 armor vellum 31 moonglow ink 62 light parchment
- 79-80 minor inscription research 1 moonglow ink 2 light parchment
- 80-105 any red glyph requiring midnight ink, train new glyphs every 5 skillups 25 midnight ink 25 common parchment
- 105-150 any red glyph requiring lion's ink, train new glyphs every 5 skillups 60 lion's ink 60 common parchment
- 150-200 any red glyph requiring jadefire ink, train new glyphs every 5 skillups 65 jadefire ink 65 common parchment
- 200-205 glyph of detterrence or glyph of rip 5 celestial ink 5 common parchment
- 205-250 any red glyph requiring celestial ink, train new glyphs every 5 skillups 60 celestial ink 60 heavy parchment
- 250-290 any red glyph requiring shimmering ink, train new glyphs every 5 skillups 40 shimmering ink 40 heavy parchment
- 290-300 scroll of stamina VI 10 shimmering ink 20 heavy parchment
- 300-310 any red glyph requiring ethereal ink, train new glyphs every 5 skillups 10 ethereal ink 10 heavy parchment
- 310-355 any red glyph requiring ethereal ink, train new glyphs every 5 skillups 45 ethereal ink 45 resilient parchment
- 355-360 armor vellum III 5 ink of the sea 10 resilient parchment
- 360-375 scroll of stats, train new scrolls every 5 skillups 15 ink of the sea 30 resilient parchment
- 375-385 any red glyph requiring ink of the sea 25 ink of the sea 25 resilient parchment
- 385-386 northrend inscription research 3 ink of the sea 1 snowfall ink 5 resilient parchment
My main goal is to make my customer always skillup on red recipes to have a predictable material consumption, but there are 3 ranges where raising 5 skill points on yellow recipes is unavoidable.
In those cases I've considered a very unlucky 75% chance of failing (instead of the effective 25% you have when skilling on yellow recipes) and added 4 inks and parchments for each skillup.
You may assure your customer that you'll send other inks in case he's really really unlucky.
I've decided to stop my powerleveling pack right when Northrend Inscription research begins because at that point your customer will be able to mill and do researches by himself.
But I guess you can include enough materials to make it to 400 for the shoulder enchants without big issues.
The Math Behind
How much does it cost a single ink? Well since milling is an rng based skill I can't tell you exactly how many stacks of herbs you should mill, but I can give you a statisticallly accurate number;
quoting from greedy goblin
I'll consider only high level herbs since they usually yeld more snowfall inks that can be sold for a good profit.
Each stack of herbs will give on average 6 ink while costing on average on my server 15g per stack (this is an high price, sometimes you find botters posting for half of that.. yum big profits), so each Ink of the Sea will cost 2,5g
For this powerleveling pack you'll need to mill slightly more than 65 stacks of herbs assuming on average 6 inks from each stack (395/6=65,83).
That's a lot of herbs! How much will it cost to you?
Rounding at 66 stacks each costing 15g you'll spend 990 gold.
You could pretty much double that amount asking 2k gold just for the inks and people would still buy your bundle since it's basically cheaper than low lvl herbs, faster and simpler, but 1k gold for 1 hour of milling is not good enough!
We've left behind snowfall inks!
If you milled 66 stacks of high lvl herbs you'll get on average 132 inks (66stacks x 4 millings x 0,5 snowfall ink on each milling) that on average sell for 12g on my realm; that's 1584g right there just for a "side product".
FINAL PROFIT CALCULATION
In the end you milled for an roughly 40 mins, crafted inks for 20 mins and spent 990g what you'll get for all this boredom?
2000g for the powerleveling bundle+1584g from the snowfalls-990g=2595gold of net profit
That looks like good stuff to me if you consider that you don't need any gear or skill whatsoever and you can try to completely rip off people asking a bigger premium for your service!
Approaching the customer
- Publish my powerleveling guide on your website (blog platforms works for this), it'll serve as a good reference for your customers so they don't waste materials. Do not link this thread expecially in world of warcraft.. linking mmowned in game is never a smart move
- You'll get your customers from trade chat mainly during the weekends when casuals log in and people care about stuff like profession that they can't fix during the week; don't spam your advertising macro, just every now and then while you're doing your usual milling routine.
- Use the mailbox to trade the inks, it's just more convenient for you and for him (he won't fill his bags right at the start), make consistent shipments (only one type of ink and the respective parchments for each shipment)
- Agree for a payment method, try always to ask for instant cash right assuring that you're going to be banned if you scam him since you won't risk of dealing with a smartass that keeps your inks under hostage for 3 days without paying the cod.
- If you agree on cod spread the amount your customer has to pay evenly across shipments to avoid scams
- Ask your customer if he wants vellums too (no big deal, I's less than 70g for the entire bundle), it's a good opportunity for asking another premium
- This kind of deal takes time so don't start advertising if you can't spend some time helping your customer since he's probably going to screw up at some point
Why helping other people raising their inscription skill won't hurt you
- Most people are clueless, they just want inscription for the raiding bonus or just because they're completionists, they're literally cash cows waiting to be milked
- You can end up helping your biggest competitor, but it's quite unlikely since inscription has an high entry barrier (months of daily research and several books) so they won't compete seriously in at least 3-4 months
- If you help a fearsome and ruthless competitor which will mercilessy undercut you by 1copper several times a day it'ss totally unrelevant since he'll find a way to your market no matter what you do.. so better ripping him off now and eventually deal with him at due time with price wars
- It's late into the expansion, the current recipes are going to be outdated (or severely less useful) in few months, people will reroll professions and roll new toons, what you do is irrelevant in the bigger scheme of things, just take what you can now!
Tips and tricks
Milling is boring as shit, use this button mashing macro while you're watching tv
/cast Milling
/use Lichbloom
/use Adder's Tongue
/use Icethorn
Hope you'll find this guide useful and please report any error I could have made.
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