One common tactic in working the auction house is to drive your competition out. If they leave, you have it all to your self. The rewards can be huge if you do that and eventually become the major player. Sometime you have to drive off a major player and it could be more work than you think. People try to move into my glyphs all the time. It is a big market and no way can I control it all. Sometimes the market will crash and I wonder if someone is trying to drive me out or not.

So would it take to drive a player like me out of glyphs?

This can be harder than you think. Not all people play the glyph market like I do. When I moved in to the market someone was top dog and I don’t see them any more. I see people that could have the potential to take the market, but I am already established. They would have made a lot of gold with out me here.

I have a stack of every glyph. That is a ton of inventory. If for some reason my competition won and I decided to leave the market, I am not going to let that inventory sit. All that would have to be sold. If I am exiting the market, the threshold is no longer an issue and the market could easily fall. My competition would have to wait that out.

I run the lowest threshold. well, almost. I see leveling glyphs way below cost and flooded all the time. In general my threshold is lower then everyone else’s. It is still above what I think they pay for mats. Lats thing I want to do is post for less than it takes for them to make the glyphs. They would just crash the market and buy up my glyphs. It is still a profit for me but it adds time to myself and gives them a break.

I have the largest market coverage. I use 3 alts to post with and while I still need about 10-12 research glyphs, most people posting have not been doing it as long. Not many people track every glyph. If you were looking to drive me out, you need to cover all the glyphs I sell. Also be careful that I don’t cover all the glyphs they sell.

I drive the prices down constantly. If you think driving the prices down is going to tick me off, think again. I run a 20-60 silver undercut. That pushes glyphs down fairly fast. The harder my competition works to undercut me, the faster the prices fall. The result is usually some part time players leave the market opening up the research glyphs to just me. Fewer people means more sales for me.

The thing with the lowest threshold is that my mats are cheaper. Sometime I have a farmer that sells to me direct. When I tell them I will take all you have, they are happy to give it to me. I can often get all 3 of the high yield herbs for the same price. I love buying lichbloom for the farmer price of adder’s tongue. It is not very often that I resell it, but its extra profit when I do. I also check the AH several times a day for herb markets to crash or other farmers unloading under market price. I am probably a major factor keeping our herb prices stable.

I have a large stock of reserve herbs and ink. I have a 5 tab bank to hold my reserves when needed. It isn’t full all the time but it is not uncommon for me to fill it with herbs when I catch 2-3 farmer dumps within a few days. I try hard to mill/ink it as quick as I can, but a few 120 stack purchases can take a while to melt. I also have a 2nd guild bank that holds reserve ink of the sea. On any given day I have 3000-6000 ink of the sea in the bank. This helps when herb prices are high or glyph demand spikes.

I have gold in reserve and fingers in other markets. If I ran out of all my inventory of glyphs and herbs and ink, and if my farmers disappeared, and if the herbs on the ah were way over priced, I would still have the gold to go toe to toe with anyone in the market. I have a 3 months head start on any new player to the market. Look at the advantage that gives me.

I am not saying that I cannot be beaten or that it is impossible. The odds are just in my favor. I have the time and the patience to go along with it. I read all the same sites and have access to all the same mods. I have access to all the same tricks. Its possible they learned everything from me. I am just saying that I will not be an easy target so they need to be prepared.

Welcome to the Thunderdome.

Graylo posted a comment looking for a mod to help decide the cheapest way to get the inks off the AH at the current market price. I take a different look at this. I feel that if you are buying herbs of the AH on the spot to make your glyphs you are over paying for them. It would be best to get a farmer to send them to you or just buy the herbs when they are low.

I am a firm believer in having a large stock of ink of the sea. Keep 7 days worth of ink in stock when you can. It is a buffer between you and high prices. It also gives you the supply you need when demand spikes.

I only buy the northrend herbs and use the ink trader for the other ink. Snowfall ink can be an issue for many scribes. You need to decide on the bulk value of it. Just because I see it on the AH for 18G does not mean that I can sell 6 stacks of it for 18G. The market value is around 15G so I supply it to my buyer for 13G each. I know at that price he will buy every stack I send him. Even when the ah dips down to 12G (from me driving it down), he will still pick it up. I send him 3 stacks a day so he does not even have to look at the AH.

Because I can sell my snowfall ink, I prefer the high yield herbs like lichbloom/icethorn/adder’s tongue (but at the right price, I will buy the others too). When I had a farmer I made it clear to him that all I wanted was the adders at a set price. I would take the other two herbs only if it was for the same price. As long as I took his entire inventory, he was happy to give it all to me for that price. I do the same on the AH. Lichbloom will usually sell for 50-100% more then the other two. But when it matches the others, I will buy it just as fast.

Instead of deciding how much my ink will cost me on the fly at current AH prices, I set how cheap I will get it a long time ago. I look at my inventory to decide if I am paying too much or not enough for it. Sometimes I will buy out the entire auction house because of a undercutting war or farmer flooding it. It can be intimidating to buy that much at once, but after you do it several times you get use to it.

I can easily go a week without buying herbs off the AH. I only do this when prices are too high and in that case, I do let my stock run low. That is exactly why I have it. I don’t build that stockpile of ink so that I don’t have to buy it but once a week. I am constantly buying it and it gives me the ability to only buy it when it is cheap.

I do use 30 stacks of ink a day on average (100 stacks of herbs). I have to have a huge stockpile. Even if you are small time, you can use that 7 day metric as how much you should have in stock. You would be able to use a much lower threshold then I do (unless someone like me buys it as much as I do). I would like to say I pay less than market price, but I’m one of the major players that holds market price for herbs where it is.

I talked about the different phases of selling glyphs. I don’t know how true they hold, but that’s how I progressed from one to another. I would get settled in how I was doing things then something small clicked and I took it to a new level.

One important detail in my process is how I decide what glyphs to craft. The system is so very simple. I start with a stack of every glyph I can possibly make. Then I go sell a many of them as I can. It is a great system when you are moving in bulk. The details of what gets sold are managed for you just by managing your stack size.

The mod I am working on fits into that system. I saw when I opened it up to some beta users that several people jumped onto this system of doing things. They all mentioned how much ink it would take and how much they needed. If you read my early posts you know that one thing that is important to my process is the back stock of ink that I keep. So when they start to mention how much more ink they need a few warning bells went of.

I make a lot of gold by catching the market when my competition is unprepared. I can tell when they run out of ink. I can tell when the herbs are too high for them to buy. They leave the market to me. Prices go up and more and more stuff list at fall back prices. I keep over a weeks supply of ink ready to go.

The last thing you want to do is invest you stock of ink into glyphs that will not sell when you need it to turn a profit on other glyphs. This system has an investment cost. I make glyphs that I do not expect to sell. The cost of gold is worth the time it will save but I never cut into important stock I needed.

If you are ready to make that jump then go for it. Do not let me stop you. It a great method if your operation is in place to support it.