Rinda's scribe journey
When WotLK came out, I decided to change one of my rogue's profession from tailoring to inscription. I didn't know much about the profession but I had every other profession covered and it sounded interesting so I leveled it to max soon after patch 3.0 came out. Fast forward a few weeks and the actual WotLK game was released. Stacks of herbs skyrockets to 100g and since I was cash poor I decided to stop glyphing altogether and abandoned the profession. I mean everyone already had their glyph and they never expire so in my mind the profession was basically tapped out.
Six months go by and I'm listening to a podcast called "How I Wow" and the guest is Markco of Just My 2 Copper. He is describing how to make money in the game and he says the best way is inscription. As someone who rarely had more than a few thousand gold I was very interested but I have a hard time believing his claims of massive profit. I researched his claims and soon realize that the way he made the 30k gold in a day was due to a special circumstance when Blizzard allowed dual specs. That meant that on the day of the patch, a large population of people needed 6 glyphs immediately. I knew the circumstances from that patch would never be repeated and I'd missed another opportunity but as I studied I realized that you could still make plenty of money in the profession. The main reason was the higher barrier to entry and once I realized this I immediately leveled my rogue's inscription to max and started listing glyphs.
Scribes can make many things but glyphs are the basis of the profession. Currently there are 345 glyphs in the game and you can learn 138 by training (40%), 64 by minor research (19%), 83 by major research (24%), 3 by bought vendor recipe (1%), and 57 by reading a BoE Glyph Book (16%). Many people getting into the glyph game buy everything possible from the trainers and learn everything they can from the glyph books meaning they now have the ability to make 198 different glyphs or 57% of all the recipes in the game. This is a bit misleading. First, of the top 80 glyphs sold, only 29 of them (or 36%) are learned this way. That is just the start....
Scribe Barriers to Entry
On the other hand I laugh every time I see someone post on the forums about how there isn't any money in inscription. I like that line of thinking as it is lessens competition. My scribe has made over 300,000g (1700g/day) in the last 6 months and I only list 80 x 4 glyphs per day. On an average day I post 3 time and sell anywhere from 80-120 glyphs at a profit of 10-20g. Of course all this is dependent on competition. The key was understanding that the profession was still profitable and then getting the right tools (mods/macros/) to maximize profits. Because once you have all the glyphs, know your competition and have streamlined your production process, making a glyph is like printing money.
If you haven't read my mini-strategy on how the 7 stages of inscription you should take a look. Not only should it help you understand the frustration of inscription but I included a mini guide at the bottom that is essentially how I overcame the barriers listed above.
When WotLK came out, I decided to change one of my rogue's profession from tailoring to inscription. I didn't know much about the profession but I had every other profession covered and it sounded interesting so I leveled it to max soon after patch 3.0 came out. Fast forward a few weeks and the actual WotLK game was released. Stacks of herbs skyrockets to 100g and since I was cash poor I decided to stop glyphing altogether and abandoned the profession. I mean everyone already had their glyph and they never expire so in my mind the profession was basically tapped out.
Six months go by and I'm listening to a podcast called "How I Wow" and the guest is Markco of Just My 2 Copper. He is describing how to make money in the game and he says the best way is inscription. As someone who rarely had more than a few thousand gold I was very interested but I have a hard time believing his claims of massive profit. I researched his claims and soon realize that the way he made the 30k gold in a day was due to a special circumstance when Blizzard allowed dual specs. That meant that on the day of the patch, a large population of people needed 6 glyphs immediately. I knew the circumstances from that patch would never be repeated and I'd missed another opportunity but as I studied I realized that you could still make plenty of money in the profession. The main reason was the higher barrier to entry and once I realized this I immediately leveled my rogue's inscription to max and started listing glyphs.
Scribes can make many things but glyphs are the basis of the profession. Currently there are 345 glyphs in the game and you can learn 138 by training (40%), 64 by minor research (19%), 83 by major research (24%), 3 by bought vendor recipe (1%), and 57 by reading a BoE Glyph Book (16%). Many people getting into the glyph game buy everything possible from the trainers and learn everything they can from the glyph books meaning they now have the ability to make 198 different glyphs or 57% of all the recipes in the game. This is a bit misleading. First, of the top 80 glyphs sold, only 29 of them (or 36%) are learned this way. That is just the start....
Scribe Barriers to Entry
- Low price of trained glyphs - As mentioned earlier there are 29 trainable/book mastery glyphs that sell in good quantity. The problem is the low barrier to entry on these items means the price of these glyphs are perpetually below cost as there are always people leveling the profession. This gives the impression that there isn't any money to be made in inscription.
- Bag Space - A player that has trained and used book mastery is faced with the prospect of making 200 glyphs. Each glyph takes up one slot in your bag up to a stack of 20. As a player with maximum normal bags has about 100 slots that means you have to fit glyphs on your character in addition to all your armor/weapons/food/flasks and anything else you happen to be carrying. I have found that is is almost impossible to make glyphs on an active character for this reason and if you want to list all glyphs you need to use Inscription bags and 3 different characters.
- Listing issues - You've made an alt to list your glyphs but you need to list 200 glyphs x the number you want to list. Profit on glyphs at the beginning are only 1-2g each and demand is sporadic so the key is in being able to post 4-500 glyphs at a time. Without help of a mod this is almost impossible.
- Knowing what to produce - An alternative to producing all 200 glyphs is to pick a lesser number of glyphs and make only the most popular glyphs. The problem is how do you know what people are going to buy as most people only player 1-2 characters and don't know what glyphs each class considers mandatory.
- Time Investment - Milling a stack of herbs takes about 10 seconds. Creating 6 Inks from that stack takes another 20 seconds. Creating 6 glyphs from that ink takes about 20 seconds. So in 50 seconds you have 6 glyphs. Obviously this is best case scenario but lets use this 8 seconds per glyph as the standard. A good scribe will sell about 100 glyphs per day. If you make 100 glyphs it will take you almost 14 minutes (8 x 100 = 800 seconds). Keep in mind that this doesn't include the time to figure out which glyphs to create, buying inks from the ink trader, buying parchment, the time to list glyphs, getting all the unsold glyphs from the bank, and all the associated running to do all these things. Assuming you take 3-4 minutes for each of these activities you are looking at another 20 minutes to list your 100 glyphs everyday. When you consider that you can do 2-3 dailies in the same time frame it is hard to justify inscription.
- Time / Cost to learn the reseached glyphs - Leveling inscription isn't cheap but it is just the beginning. Once you get to a skill of 75 you have the ability to do Minor Inscription Research. Every day at a cost of 1 Moonglow Ink and 2 Light Parchment you can learn 1 of the 64 minor glyphs in the game. Once you hit a skill of 385 you have the ability to do Northrend Inscription Research which cost 1 Snowfall Ink, 3 Ink of the Sea and 5 Resilient Parchment to make 1 of the 83 researched major glyphs in the game. It will take any scribe a minimum of 3 months to learn all the glyphs at an approximate cost of 2200g. This can be daunting considering that inscription isn't very profitable when you first start.
- Constant competition in the Auction House - As I have mentioned earlier, inscription isn't very popular but the 5-10 people that focus on it will undercut within an hour of posting. For a player that isn't expecting it, the constant posting/reposting is maddening.
- Low percentage of sales - I usually sell anywhere from 10-20% of what I post but I only post the best sellers and a new scribe doesn't have that option. Using the 100 glyph example from before, I'd imagine a new scribe would sell about 5-10 each time they post and have total revenue of about 40-50g vs their startup costs and time/cost to make the glyphs.
On the other hand I laugh every time I see someone post on the forums about how there isn't any money in inscription. I like that line of thinking as it is lessens competition. My scribe has made over 300,000g (1700g/day) in the last 6 months and I only list 80 x 4 glyphs per day. On an average day I post 3 time and sell anywhere from 80-120 glyphs at a profit of 10-20g. Of course all this is dependent on competition. The key was understanding that the profession was still profitable and then getting the right tools (mods/macros/) to maximize profits. Because once you have all the glyphs, know your competition and have streamlined your production process, making a glyph is like printing money.
If you haven't read my mini-strategy on how the 7 stages of inscription you should take a look. Not only should it help you understand the frustration of inscription but I included a mini guide at the bottom that is essentially how I overcame the barriers listed above.
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