With the launch of Midnight rapidly approaching, many players will soon be returning to Azeroth. While there are too many new features to explain all at once, the single largest addition to the game is Player Housing. There are numerous online videos that do a superb job of explaining the ins and outs of this new feature. What I intend to do today is give a very cursory overview of crafting décor items via the Profession Crafting system by placing Guild Orders. At the end of the expansion, we typically have an overabundance of materials that simply get tossed into the bank, auctioned away, or simply vendored for gold. Since décor items have been added to every profession across every expansion, these old materials have value again.
This guide is to help you understand what décor items are available, what professions are used, and how to properly tip our guildmates in the process. Two addons are instrumental in this process, Homebound and Auctionator. You will want to have both of these installed on your system.
Homebound is a phenomenal addon that helps the player to understand what % of décor items are still available via all the sources in the game, via Achievements, Vendors, Drops, or Professions. It can be filtered to showcase everything or individual expansions. For this example, we are looking at The War Within Expansion: Professions. Click on the Profession tab at the bottom to begin.
Notice how every profession is listed with a + indicating a expanding menu. We are going to be using Alchemy for our example, so click on the + to expand the category.
Notice there are two items listed that are available for décor crafting. For this example we are focusing on the Boulder Springs Hot Tub.
If you hover your mouse over the item, you can get a preview image of the item itself. In the tooltip description of the item, Auctionator starts to be a part of this system. This item can be crafted and sold on the AH currently for 4,999 gold. This of course will fluctuate up and down and requires you to update Auctionator database for the most up-to-date rates. You will also see the amount of Housing XP you gain for acquiring this item into your Décor Catalog.
Now it’s time to place the crafting order. We did a search for Boulder Springs Hot Tub and selected the item to bring up the order window. There are several things to note here, first is the little check box for Track Recipe located in the upper left corner under the item name. Clicking on this adds a Profession section to your Quests pane that will list the individual items required to craft the item. Regional Lumber is required for every décor item crafted and cannot be sold on the AH. This should be 100% the Player’s responsibility to acquire the Lumber needed to craft the item for every profession except Cooking (more to come on that). The materials needed are a combination of Reagents from Drops (such as Delves), sold by Profession Vendors, and crafted items. Notice under Crystaline Powder the Reagents Value listed for 100gp 70sp. This is the amount you would need to spend at the AH to purchase all the items needed to craft this item, not including the 34 Dornic Lumber. The goal of this project is to keep all Gold within the Guild. The crafters have collected reagents over the course of the expansion and can use these to craft your item. You will add the Reagents Value on top of the Tip to craft. Now same goes for the player, at the end of the expansion, you also could have stockpiled numerous reagents needed to craft the item. If you include the Profaned Tinderbox, your Reagents Value decreases accordingly, lowering the amount you would include over the tip. Provide what mats you have, which includes the 34 pieces of Dornic Lumber, select Guild Order and add the Commission (remember to place a notice in crafting that a Guild order has been placed) . For almost every item crafted, save a few select items, the AH will be selling these items for thousands of gold pieces minimum. We should tip the crafter accordingly, and since this is going to be growing business for the crafter, at a minimum of 1,000 gp. They did have to spend gold leveling their skill and should be justly compensated for it. The alternative is to pay the current price on the AH.
Now to show you how to update Auctionator via the Auction House. When you click on the Auctioneer, you will notice at the bottom of the screen a tab “Auctionator”.
At the top of the screen there is a button “Full Scan”, click it and the addon will update Auctionator based on current prices. You will notice a percentage starting at 0% and the scan is complete when it hits 100%. You can notice in the chat window how many items were scanned. Now press the “Search” Button now listed on the right in the Profession Log. This will search the AH for the items required for the Boulder Springs Hot Tub.
At the top of the list is the Hot tub itself, only 2 are available for sale at 4,999 gp. The crafters might decide it is worth their time to farm the lumber and start placing these on the AH for the general public. Just a reminder, the fewer items listed have a better chance to sell, don’t get greedy and allow someone to undercut your pricing. Now we have various reagents listed for a few silvers to a low amount of gold. The largest cost is the Harmonious Horticulture which is listed for all 3 ranks. Crafting décor doesn’t require a specific rank, so if I had to purchase this item off the AH, Rank 2 at 86gp is the best option. Remember our Reagents cost of 100gp 70sp? It considered using the cheapest sources of materials required. This item is crafted by the Alchemist, so in fact they can most likely craft it at a greatly reduced cost. Hence, it is important to not buy unnecessary items off the AH. Include the Reagents Value above the Tip amount, 1,100 gp 70sp, to compensate for this.
Cooking cannot, at this time, have orders placed in the Crafting System, therefore the crafter must supply all the Lumber necessary to craft the item. It takes time to gather lumber. So, an agreed upon amount has to be determined to compensate the crafter. Again, we go to the Homebound Profession tab and this time select Cooking. There are 4 décor items available.
Notice the Auction House prices for each of these items.
Based on the shopping list search, you can see that the cooking décor items range from just simple ingredients to one that has 2 separate “foods” required to complete the recipe. But still, the individual materials cost is cheaper than the going AH rate for the Décor Items minus the cost of lumber harvest. Since Cooking Orders are not available in the Crafting System, you will need to make a special request in the crafting Discord Section for these items. You will need to compensate for their Lumber collecting. Notice how these 4 items range from 5 to 25 pieces of Dornic Lumber. Kaheti’s Predator Assortment is 5,999 gp on the AH. It requires 2 crafted items along with the 25 pieces of lumber. It might take someone 15-25 minutes depending on availability to gather the lumber. What is that time worth?
I hope this guide helps you better understand how to obtain the Profession Crafted Decor Items. If there are any questions, don’t hesitate to ask in the #Housing channel.
Trevain