Old world cloth shuffling

As mentioned a couple of times before, I am still working with toons of level 60 and below only. I also decided to not bother talking about my "old server" anymore, because most of it would only be my side of the popular strategies many other blogs cover way better. And since I wouldn't want to read about the same things over and over again either, I'll not waste your time. In addition, it's a vicious place with half a dozen 24/7 AH campers/botters, which I can't compete with time-wise.

Today I want to give you a short overview over a nice niché I am currently using to make money. As covered before, a good chunk of my money comes from selling Enchanting materials. The problem is, just snatching low-priced greens from the AH won't yield that many materials, even on the weekends. And even if the supply is nice, I'll have to scan several times with changing iLvl ranges to avoid the "bad materials" (more on that in a minute).

When I started leveling Enchanting and Tailoring on my toons, I stumbled upon this little guide on WoW-Professions.com. Being surprised that I actually made a plus from selling the leftover Strange Dust, I thought to myself, "I wonder if this kind of shuffling of cloth to dusts and essences works up to Runecloth?" I had read recommendations about turning Netherweave into Arcane Dust via Netherweave Pants, but the in-between was missing. Long story short, here are the results of my homework.

Brown Linen Pants
81% chance: 1-2 Strange Dust
19% chance: 1-2 Lesser Magic Essence

Double-Stitched Woolen Shoulders
74% chance: 2-6 Strange Dust
16% chance: 1-2 Lesser Astral Essence
10% chance: 1 Small Glimmering Shard

Silk Headband
75% chance: 1-5 Soul Dust
20% chance: 1-2 Lesser Mystic Essence
5% chance: 1 Small Glowing Shard

White Bandit Mask (recipe is a random world BOE, so add it to your snatch list)
75% chance: 2-5 Vision Dust
20% chance: 1-2 Lesser Nether Essence
5% chance: 1 Small Radiant Shard

Runecloth Headband
74% chance: 1-2 Illusion Dust
23% chance: 1-2 Greater Eternal Essence
3% chance: 1 Large Brilliant Shard

The clear star in that line-up definitely is the Runecloth Headband, because it yields the three most rare and thus very high demand materials. A lot of the BoA enchants require at least one of those. But don't ignore the other four. Leveling Enchanting from 0 to 300 requires 125 Strange Dust, 122 Soul Dust, 155 Vision Dust, 230 Dream Dust, 10 Illusion Dust and dozens of different essences (source: WoW-Prof.com). Why not be the one to supply those and make some gold in the process?

You may have noticed that I left out an item yielding Dream Dust. That's because on my server the market for that is moving between decent and horrible. By the number of Dense Stones being bought and sold (The Undermine Journal hooo) and checking a few names, I can tell that at least two people are doing the price ticket thing, exchange them for greater Darkmoon prices and DE all the greens. If your server's Dream Dust market looks healthy, try Black Mageweave Headband or Runecloth Belt, depending on the prices of each cloth.

Another point are the Small Shards. You can try and scrolls with the respective weapon enchants which are using Glowing and Glimmering, but sadly this isn't Classic or TBC anymore, where people went crazy when their level 20 sword was glowing red. I mostly AH them for whatever low price they're on there or just trash them. Has anyone had different experiences with Lesser Beastslayer and such in recent history?
The Small Radiant Shard you should definitely keep and use yourself for Fiery Weapon and Boots - Minor Speed.

Dream Dust, as mentioned, and Soul Dust are dirty cheap on my server in quantities larger than I feel comfortable in stockpiling, so I just re-post cheap Silk Cloth back into the market and use the others to fuel my material supply line. You should check the prices of cloth and Enchanting materials on your server, you may be pleasantly surprised to find a "market ready for the taking".

As a last point of order, here's how I went through my check list for entering markets.

1.) What's necessary?
295 Tailoring and 200 Enchanting. Steps are acquiring the cloth, turning it into bolts, crafting the items, mailing them (happens at the same time thanks to TSM), disenchanting them, mailing of the mats, post them.

2.) What's the profit margin?
On the one hand, cloth gets dumped on the AH relatively cheap all the time. Most of the resulting Enchanting materials on the other hand are rare or listed in way too small quantities. The sky is the limit. I've sold Greater Eternal Essences for 50g per and a stack of Vision Dust for 40g.

3.) Who am I selling to?
Leveling enchanters and people looking for BoA enchants. The numbers of people doing either each week should be low (1-5 day) and stable in the long run.

4.) What about the competition?
Dream Dust and Soul Dust are a mess, but the rest is very healthy. Surprisingly even Strange Dust. Level 85 players probably won't bother with this, since it'll look like "nickles and dimes" to them. Cloth is also mostly needed by Tailors only, so no other profession should come in my way.

5.) Can I afford to do it?
Buying the cloth daily or bi-daily and crafting only once or twice a week should suffice. From a money perspective, we're talking a low four digit investment per week, which by now shouldn't cause me sleepless nights anymore.

Verdict: Jump in!