How I get my ink prices

 Before we get to it I want to say Congratulations to my guild for being amazing and being server 3rd with 11 of 12 normal kills on raid content as of this week with only Nefarian left.

For those of you who say TL;DR I calculate my ink prices as 1 Inferno Ink = 10 Blackfallow Inks. You get 5 Bi and ½ of an Ii from a stack of Heartblossom, Stormvine, Cinderbloom, or Azshara's Veil. Likewise you get 6 Bi and 1 Ii from a stack of Whiptail or Twilight Jasmine.

For those of you who want a more in depth account and want a free spreadsheet out of the deal, read on.

First of all we need to set some boundaries. I will only be talking about the highest end common and uncommon types of inks. In Cataclysm that is Blackfallow Ink (henceforth known as Bi) and Inferno Ink (Ii) respectively. A stack of 5 individual herbs can be milled once into pigments. Two pigments are combined to make one ink. There is a chance for pigments that make Bi and Ii to drop each time you mill an herb introduced in the cataclysm expansion.

So how do you get prices for your inks? As I see it there are three ways to do this.

1. Sell all your Ii at a price that covers the cost of the stack of herbs you milled for it. This could be in the form of the inks themselves or as crafted items like the Darkmoon Fair cards. This leaves your Bi cost at 0 meaning everything you make from them is profit.
2. Sell all your Bi at a price that covers the cost of the stack of herbs you milled for it. This is the flip side of the coin that is option 1. This leaves all your Ii as a free item. Most people who use this method do so so that they can have a lower threshold price on their Darkmoon Fair card prices.
3. Calculate and sell both your Ii and Bi as a combined price so that you can know what the lowest common denominator is on every item you craft and sell.

I am a firm believer in method #3. In #'s 1 and 2 you have to hope you can sell all the crafted items from that one ink at above the herbs cost or your other ink isn't free anymore. The problem you run into regularly is that if you can't sell those inks (or items crafted from the inks) above those prices, your math gets really complicated and you end up losing money.

My premise for using #3 is that 1 Bi can be exchanged for 1 of every other common ink. Also 10 Bi can be exchanged for 1 uncommon ink (Ii and Si). This comes with the caveat that you can't exchange the other inks back to Bi so once the exchange is made you have to sell the item you make with the ink.

Now lets talk about herbs.

In every expansion there are multiple herbs of variying levels that fit into two categories when dealing with inscription. I call them low end herbs and high end herbs.

1. Low end herbs: Have a 250% chance to drop common pigment and a 25% chance to drop an uncommon pigment. These herbs are Heartblossom, Stormvine, Cinderbloom, and Azshara's Veil
2. High end herbs: Have a 300% chance to drop common pigment and a 50% chance to drop an uncommon pigment. These herbs are Whiptail and Twilight Jasmine.

What this means is for every 5 low end herbs on average you should get 2 ½ common pigment and ¼ of an uncommon pigment. For high end herbs you should get on average 3 common pigment and ½ of an uncommon pigment. The game obviously doesn't give out less than 1 whole pigment so sometimes you will get more and sometimes you will get less with each individual mill, but over the long run it works out to these numbers.

Since most people don't buy herbs in stacks of 5, but in stacks of 20. And since most people turn all those pigments into inks, the numbers for inks from a stack of 20 herbs is as follows.

1. Low end herbs: 5 Bi and ½ of 1 Ii
2. High end herbs: 6 Bi and 1 Ii

This shows that high end herbs yield more inks than low end herbs. High end herbs typically cost more than low end herbs because they are used in more recipes from other professions also.

Now that we know the drop rates and the different ways to calculate your ink prices I have a question for you.

Assuming you can use all your ink to make Mysterious Fortune Cards (Bi), and D.M.F. Cards (Ii) which should you buy: Cinderbloom at 100g per stack of 20 or Whiptail at 120g per stack of 20?

The answer is: It depends on how you calculate your inks.

If you use method #1 you want to buy the Whiptail.

If you use method #2 you can buy either since they are worth the exact same in ink prices.

If you use method #3 you want to buy the Cinderbloom.

I have built an Open Office spreadsheet to give me exact numbers on all (most) things inscription introduced in the Cataclysm expansion. Open Office is a free program that does all the things microsoft word/excel/powerpoint does but you don't have to pay for it. If you have exel I believe you can port my spreadsheet into it and have it work fine.

Get your free copy of Open Office Here

Download my spreadsheet HERE its free.

A note on prices in this spreadsheet. Prices are listed as GG.SSCC what that means is that gold is listed before the decimal point, then silver and copper is listed behind the decimal point in that order. A price of 12.3456 means 12 gold, 34 silver, and 56 copper

Now, we will only be using method #3 where we combine prices of inks. I do this because I plan on selling my whole stock of inks over the long run through various means of production. If I can figure out the price of the lowest common denominator -Bi- then I can figure out what each higher level of ink costs.

Therefore one Ii costs the same as 10 Bi

Looking at my spreadsheet you have 2 tabs at the bottom: Milling values and Crafted items.

Lets look at the Milling Values page first.

Across the top you see the cataclysm herbs.

In the blue boxes you put in the prices you pay for those herbs AS SINGLE HERBS. The spreadsheet takes those prices and calculates them into stack prices elsewhere so if you put them in as stack prices in the blue boxes you will get the wrong ink prices later.

The next section down is where the ink and herb prices are calculated.

First you see the name of each herb along with the average of low end herbs and average of high end herbs.

Next box over to the right you see the stack prices of each

Next box over you see how much each mill cost you at those herb prices

Next box over (yellow highlight) is the #3 method of calculating ink prices where 10 Bi = 1 Ii

Next box over is the #2 method of calculating ink prices where you only consider Bi prices to get your investment back.

Next box over is the #1 method of calculating ink prices where you only consider Ii prices to get your investment back.

(Collums E and F are only there for refrence for the people who use methods #1 and #2.)

The last two boxes in this section shows the average yield from a single mill of 5 herbs

The section right under the ink prices tell you what the combined average price of all your inks are in the column above and what the lowest price of a crafted glyph (at 3 inks plus a parchment) or a Mysterious Fortune Card (1 ink plus parchment) is. This is only an accurate price if you are putting in your prices for herbs in the top blue boxes.

The next section down has the final prices for a single ink in the red boxes and for pigments in the white boxes. Again this is only accurate if you are putting the prices you paid in the blue boxes at the top. This uses method #3 for the ink price calculation.

The final box on this page is for other materials that are used in items added in Cataclysm. The white boxes are for vendor bought items with no faction discount. If you get a faction discount or can buy the item for cheaper then change these prices to what you pay. Otherwise leave them as is.

On to the Crafted Items tab.

Top left is the Fortune card flip breakdown.

The first section you see is the amount of fortune cards reported to be found by other people. If you flip cards or have people willing to report which cards they get when they flip, then add to the numbers in the blue boxes. The grey section at the bottom right of the box shows how much you get back per card, just from flipping cards. The orange box next to it is the materials cost for the cards found on the previous tab. If the grey price is ever higher than the orange price then you can make a profit by just flipping cards, however you will almost alway make more profit by selling the cards at market value than flipping them yourself.

Staying on the left side of the page, underneath the fortune card breakdown is the relics you can make.

You will see the name of the item, the cost to make it, the sale price in blue that you input, the profit, and the percentage of profit.

Underneath that is Runescroll of Fortitude II.

This one is a little different, because everytime you craft this you get 5 scrolls. The blue box is the price of a SINGLE scroll. The profits and profit percentage is calculated to compensate

The box on the top right shows the cost, profit, and profit percentage of D.M.F. Cards and decks. There is also a refrence of how much each card is to make incase you want to sell individual cards instead of decks and trinkets. Always sell your cards above this price.

Under that is the Origami items.

These are made with 3 parchment each and just about any scribe can make them, but I'm sure most won't. If you bark in trade what they are you will probably get many sales.

Finally at the bottom right is the Held in Offhand items.

Same system: name, cost, price, and profit. These items will bring a steady income for you as long as you can know the cost and sell for a profit. Barking in trade will help your sales here too.

So there you have it. Change the prices in blue boxes to reflect your purchases and sales and look to the boxes in red for your ink threshold.

If you use this spreadsheet you should have a pretty good idea of what your break even price on any Cataclysm item is. From there you just add 5% for the auction house cut and whatever profit margin you want to get your final posting price.