“Auctioneer” is one of the main addons I use within World of Warcraft as a tool in my “how to be wealthy” toolkit.

Each day, I scan the current Auction House listings with Auctioneer, and then I use it to determine what of my auctionable materials I put up for sale, how many get posted, and what prices I list them at.

By using Auctioneer, I’ve found a lot of “good deals” for my own purchases, and have been introduced to a number of easy-to-buy or easy-to-make items that have a low investment cost but high profit return.

But, by using Auctioneer’s price-suggestion features, I’ve also noticed some not-so-reliable results being suggested to me, and have had to pay close attention to the true worth and value of materials I am looking to add to my sellers list.

Auctioneer Downside #1 - Starting With Nothing

The biggest detriment is that the Auctioneer addon package comes to you with an empty database - that is, until you have allowed the addon to scan Auction House listings at least once, the addon has no stored prices for anything and cannot offer listing-price advice.

Therefore, until you’ve completed a dozen or more scans with enough time between them (different days at different times of day) to make them useful, the Auctioneer’s suggested prices are likely to be way off from your realm’s “average”, and it won’t have ANY information for things listed infrequently.

In short, the more scans you do over time (1-3x a day maximum), the more complete the addon’s information will be for you, the player, to use. Keep scanning regularly!

Auctioneer Detriment #2 - Price Storage Rules

A second detriment to consider with Auctioneer is that its suggestions are based only upon LISTING prices, NOT actual Auction prices. Auctioneer can only see what value things are listed for currently and record that, it cannot tell how much that item actually sold for, or if it sold at all.

What does this mean for you, the user? Two main things:

First off, it means the information Auctioneer provides as it makes recommendations for your own listing prices may be WAY off of the profitability mark, especially with a small number of scans to base its information upon.

Secondly, it means that Auctioneer data can be “skewed” by purposeful and excessive over-pricing of items posted by its users.

The result of both of these may likely be your vast over- or under-pricing of auctions until enough information has been collected to be accurate and for you to get a better “feel” for the acceptable price for this particular market.

How To Compensate / Find Your Profit “Sweet Spot”

Without scanning the Auction House for 2 weeks twice a day in order to start to build a respectable database of information, what’s a player to do in order to recognize and avoid these under- or over-price skews?

Stay tuned for Part Two!

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At level 70, doing instances on a regular basis and now getting into Raids, I thought maybe I should go back to Azeroth and into Azshara to finish the level 60 Mage quest that I never, ever did.

I didn’t do it mainly because I didn’t realize what the reward was - and that reward is the ability to Polymorph something into a Pig instead of the standard Sheep form.

So, I headed over to WoWWiki and looked up information on the quest chain, and headed to Orgrimmar to make the run to Azshara. Since this toon came about during the Burning Crusade era of World of Warcraft, he hadn’t ever ventured to Azshara as there was no real reason to - advancing through the 50s to get to Outland was easily done in other zones.

The King of the Class Quests

Archmage Xylem is the guy you’re sent to see for your last Azeroth class quest, pretty much no matter what class you are, Horde-side. If I remember correctly, I went to him for my Warrior, Hunter and Rogue quests, and I’m sure my Priest will need to visit him shortly as well. He’s located at the Bear’s Head in Azshara, at 29,40, and you need to take a teleport up to visit him.

Stage One - Prismatic Shell and Warlord Krellian

The first stage of the class quest that results in the Polymorph: Pig spell for Mages is to retrieve a Prismatic Shell from Warlord Krellian who dwells in Azshara. At level 70, this is a super-easy quest to complete, but at a lower level it may be more difficult simply because of the number of wandering mobs that will impede direct progress to the Warlord whose temple is found at 39,53.

Stage Two - Polymorph Clone Destruction

Once you return the Prismatic Shell to Archmage Xylem, you get the next stage to the quest which requires you to destroy 50 Polymorph Clones before returning to the Archmage.

The clones are created when you polymorph the appropriate quest mobs and then wait a few moments. The polymorphed serpent will then “break apart” into a bunch of little Polymorph Clones (sheep-shaped) which run around like crazy for a short period of time and then die off on their own.

Your job, dear Mage, is to kill the little suckers before they run off and die on their own.

I found that I had to be semi-close to the serpent to be able to sheep it and step forward and get in proper range for an Arcane Explosion, and if I wasn’t close enough or fast enough, some of the little sheeps got out of range and died before I could get another Explosion in. You’ve gotta be quick!

The Final Result: Polymorph: Pig

For your efforts, you get a new polymorph to look at whenever you’re doing your regular job of Crowd Control - Pig! You can set up a macro to “randomly” select Pig or Sheep for your polymorph, too, if you like those extra surprises.

Finding Other Polymorphs

One of these days I’m going to see if I can convince a few friends to do some Zul’Gurub runs with specific attention to the guy who drops the Polymorph: Turtle tome, and maybe even some of the animal bosses who drop the special mounts.

Are there any other polymorph spells attainable that I didn’t mention?

Tags: azshara, cc, crowd control, mage cc, mage class quest, mage polymorph guide, mage quest guide, mage tips andt ricks, pig polymorph, pig sheep, polymorph: pig, polymorph: turtle, warcraft mage tips, world of warcraft