WoW Elixir Mastery Gold Guide

WoW Gold Guide --> Professions Gold Guide ---> Elixir Mastery Gold Guide (you are here)

Elixir Mastery

Elixir Mastery Alchemists naturally want to make money by selling elixirs. You should know that Flasks fall under the category of Elixirs, and tend to be by far the most profitable item to sell. All the Flasks are big sellers:

·         Flask of the Winds: +300 Agility (Hunter/Rogue/Feral)

·         Flask of Titanic Strength: +300 Strength (DK/DPS War/Ret/Enh)

·         Flask of the Draconic Mind: +300 Intellect (DPS Casters, some healers)

·         Flask of Flowing Water: +300 Spirit (Some healers)

·         Flask of Steelskin: +300 Stamina (Most Tanks)

Elixirs should be quite profitable in Cataclysm. The material requirement is pretty intense - the rare "lotus" material has been removed from the game and instead been replaced with extra required herbs. Also, Flasks also now only last for 1 hour.

Why is this good? Due to the herb requirements, flasks will be expensive. The more expensive an item is, the more gold you can mark it up for.

In other words, if a flask cost 10g in materials, and you tried to sell it for 25g, it would not sell very easily (15 gold mark-up). However, if that same flask cost 50g in materials and you sold it for 67g (17g mark-up), no one would think twice about the price hike.

Selling flasks is easy - apply the same principles mentioned in the Jewelcrafting guide:

·         Check the AH throughout the week, particularly in the morning and weekends, for cheap herbs.

·         Scan the auction house for each of the 5 flask types. See which ones is the most profitable (market price - herb cost for making the flask).

·         Any time you see the going price for flasks that is 5 or more gold than the herb requirement, craft the flask and put it up on the Auction House just under the current market price.

Best Time to Sell Flasks

You generally can make more gold on your flasks before major raiding times on your server. This occurs typically after the 3 and 7 day raid instance resets. Naturally, the first two evenings after the 7 day resets are huge days to sell flasks. Oftentimes, you will be able to mark-up flasks for much more than 5 gold on these days.

Never assume the market is saturated with flasks, unless there is more than 50 of a given type on the auction house (and if you can still make money then if you get cheap herbs and then undercut on an evening).

Think about it this way: each flask only lasts for 1 hour, and most raiding groups raid for about 4 hours at a time. If there are 100 people on your server (which is a very low estimate on most servers) who do 10-man or 25-man raids on Wednesday evenings, if everyone flasks that is 400 Flasks that will need to be used.

Most players like to buy their flasks at the last second, because they do not enjoy spending gold on items that they can only use once and offer no real "self" benefit - just a benefit for the group.

However, not flasking is a great way to draw scorn from fellow raiders and can be a source of major internet embarrassment. In an effort to avoid wiping at 1% to bosses and then subsequently being called out for not flasking, players will go to great length to make sure they have flasks for raids, even if this means paying ridiculous mark-ups.

Check the AH each evening and keep it stocked with flasks and you will do just fine.

Stacks or Singles and How Many Flasks to Sell?

In nearly every situation, you should sell your flasks one per stack. Most players will only buy a few at a time, and there is no savings that results from selling a stack of 5 flasks.

In fact, most players would assume they would get some sort of discount for buying in bulk. As a result, putting up multiple stacks of 5 is not advantageous to maximizing your profits.

I recommend keeping up to 30 of the +Str, +Agi, and +Int flasks and up to 20 of the +Spirit Flasks and +Stamina on the auction house at any given time. This gives you about 100 flasks that you are managing at any given time.

I would recommend keeping about 70% of your flasks as singles, and consider putting up 1-2 stacks of 3, 4, and 5 (with a very modest discount - no more than 50 silver a piece) to satisfy every market. There are a few players who will grab the stack of 5 and not notice that it is not cheaper per-unit than stacks of 1.

Non-Flask Elixirs

You may find a nice niche in Elixirs, but I do not think items which only will pull in a few gold of profit per craft are worth your time when you can knock down 20g+ off each elixir (especially when you count free elixirs).

Micro-managing a bunch of small auctions is not fun and you should not consider it a valuable use of your time. If you really want to earn some more gold from the AH, check out our AH guide or use one of the other profession guides to earn more gold.

---> Next: WoW Potion Mastery Gold Guide 

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