Friday 7 December 2012

What To Do With Golden Lotuses?

What To Do With Golden Lotuses
Now that Blizzard have upped the spawn rate for Golden Lotuses (Loti?), as extras from normal herb picks & from the Enigma Seeds on your Tillers farm, I wondered whether I could make some good gold from them. Yes, I know, I'm late to the party but I've been focused on completing my cooking Ways & leveling & dailies! I'm also trying to work out which is the best crop to plant to make the most gold from my Farm. I've been planting the Songbell seeds to get Motes of Harmony but as my Leatherworker is creeping so slowly through her dailies, I have more than enough Spirits of Harmony for now.

As far as I can see, there are several options for using Golden Lotus to make gold - the 5 different flasks or transmuting uncommen gems into rare gems (6 colours) as well as the Mists of Pandaria Potion of Luck - all made/used by Alchemists. I could also just sell the Golden Lotus on the Auction House & save myself a fair bit of time & effort by not crafting anything but looking at this graph from The Undermine Journal, an average price of 100g-ish per Golden Lotus is not exactly the most profitable way.

Golden Lotus Prices (from TUJ)
My alchemists are both transmute masters so making flasks is probably not the best option either - the additional procs of a mastery are where the real profits lie as they bring the per item crafting cost down. I could change one alchemist to an Elixir Master at a cost of 8 Flasks, especially as the Living Steel transmute is not exactly profitable right now but I'm hesitant to do that straight away. I think I'll test the market first.

Alchemy Flask Prices (from TUJ)
The transmute uncommon gems to rare gems is also a bit of a non-starter - prices for gems are pretty bad on my server - to the point where my Jewelcrafter is still sitting around not doing much. Again, I've been focused elsewhere so I haven't been watching the JC markets as closely as I used to. Besides cut rare gems though, there are the ilevel 450 rings & necks to make as well as the JC crafted Panther mounts. Looking on the Undermine Journal for my server, it looks like there are some good profits in those for now but I'd need to do the prospect vs. transmute costings before I throw all my Golden Lotuses at those!

JC Rings & Necks (from TUJ)
So what to do? Well for now, I think I'm going to try the Flasks market - just dip a toe in to see how things go - for the cost of 16 Enigma seeds each day, I'm picking up 3-7 Golden Lotus as well as a variety of the other Pandaren herbs so my crafting costs are minimal (yes, I'm ignoring opportunity cost etc!).

Like so many, I'm also limited by time so I think this will be least time consuming whilst I have a better look at prospecting. My other 4-plot farms are still producing vegetables but I may just leave those lie for now - spend that time doing dailies or prospecting instead. I'm beginning to feel as if I'm a long way behind - with the release of patch 5.1 there's a whole load of new stuff to get into but I haven't even seen all of the initial Mists of Pandaria stuff yet and that's without spending much time at the Auction House! My gold flow is just ok but so many of my traditional markets seem to have almost disappeared that I really need to knuckle down & get that gold really flowing again.

What do you do with your Golden Lotuses? Are you feeling time-pressures, falling behind etc too? Let me know in comments - I'd love to hear from you.


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5 comments:

  1. I definitely hear where you're coming from on this one. I came back from my Cataclysm hiatus early in November, and have been feeling the pressures ever since.
    It seems that if I don't spend my entire daily playtime devoted to taking care of all of the new dailies (more in the start of an expansion than I can ever remember), I feel like I'll never catch up.
    On top of that, I've barely touched 5-mans and LFR, and have just started to bring my professions online to 600.
    I'm hoping I'm not alone in the feeling of being overwhelmed at the moment.
    As far as the few Lotuses that I've gathered, they've mainly been used to aid in leveling Alchemy. However, I can see myself using them mostly in transmutes in the future.
    If my server's raiding population sees some growth in the future, it might be worthwhile to bring up another alt as a Flask Alchemist (I always try to keep an eye on /2 and raiding progression sites, situational awareness is key!)- though I do not see Potion of Luck being a moneymaker anytime soon, unless it is revised heavily. It is vastly under-powered compared to Potion of Treasure Finding from Cata.
    Right now, my main source of income is flowing in from the bag and leather markets- I guess plenty of people are still rolling plenty of monks still :)
    Sorry for the long response, lol- Hope things are going well!

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    Replies
    1. Actually Ian, it's nice to get a long response! As for catching up - I guess it depends on what you want to do in game - I can't see myself raiding at all so any gearing up I do is just to make life a little easier when doing other stuff like dailies or questing.

      As for Potion of Luck - I agree it's probably not going to be the moneymaker that the Cata version was but if you use it yourself whilst questing or farming, it does add some extras to your haul. I haven't tested it yet - maybe I should do that this week for a post!

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  2. Hi Nev,

    I used my JC to make gold heavily in Cata, however in MoP everything changed. The fact is JC can cut perfect gems with exact same stats like the rare ones killed the market instantly. Only thing I do on JC is prospecting, selling RAW RARE gems since people still learning new cuts for "just in case". Other thing I do on JC is lvl 450 blues. Obviously the market shrinks, price drops etc. but still make some gold here and there. I used the left over "low quality" gems to create the ring, necklace for shuffle. Sell blues, DE rest. In MoP we got the chance to upgrade enchanting mats so besides selling scrolls I create Sha crystal every day. Other thing as JC is viable is collecting the Primal Diamond recipes and sell them on AH, that's where the Transmute alchemist kicks in.

    As Alchemist: I have two of them. One for transmute primal diamond as needed and the other one is Flask master. That's where golden lotus used in mass amount. Gathering, or buying the other herb for flasks not a big deal. Usually as I run around or do daily I pick them myself but not always. Golden lotus on MY server goes from 80g-1xxg. Since flasks selling 100+ it does make money. Every time you get the proc for creating multiple flasks you made ~100g instantly. Does it works? Yes and no. Yes it works since you will sell all the flasks around or more than 100g that's for sure. BUT. NO - there is only 5 flasks to sell and if people killing each other over the glyph market where you see hundreds of glyphs you can imagine what happens when it narrowed down to 5. You have to camp the AH to make something out of that. Unless you enjoy to do LFG / LFG / PVP you not going to go outside and run around... even if blizzard want you to do that.

    Conlusion?: Golden lotus best use: FLASKS with flask master. I do not see any use to waste them to convert gems at all.

    Besides my explanation you check it yourself on your server: go to TUJ (the undermine journal) and take a look at the Crafted items -> JC. You can see how much perfect cut <> rare cut goes. You will see the sad true: most of the time 1/5th or even less. When I get a slotted gear drop and need gems I always look up for the perfect cut vs rare cut price. 4g vs 40g most of the time. If there is none available at the right price my JC has 90% of the cuts already and I always keep a stack of each rare for "just in case"....


    Sorry for the long post, I just tried to explain my experience, and the reasons why most likely I see what I see....

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  3. Nice article Nev, well thought out and written as always. :)

    I am not really touching Golden Lotus at the moment. My two main sources of income right now are:

    1. Contender Cloth gear. All of my Spirits of Harmony have been spent on the Contender Cloth gear recipes (both the healing and the DPS sets). Windwool Cloth sits around 1g on my Server so I am making each Contender piece for 25g and I sell them for 299g each. Sales are good on this at the moment.

    2. Buying >= ilvl 409 under-priced weapons from the AH and re-posting these. This market is great at the moment and nothing beats picking up an ilvl 442 staff for 1K and re-posting this for 3K! ;)

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  4. I have been using my GL just to convert some rare gems so I can get my JC's cuts maxxed, honestly though after I get all the cuts I don't see myself doing the shuffle with either my enchanter or alch - I am not finding any profits. This seems to be a reoccurring theme in all my markets save 83/84 items lately. Competition is through the roof and the profits are not there...25g profit on all my crafted BS stuff...I will however be keeping my alch xmute for 5.2 - Hopefully the price of living steel will come up with all the new items. Feeling behind the times!

    -Larryfine

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