Glyphing 101

9-20-2011
Originally, this was gonna be called "Scribbling fer fun an profits," done entirely in the style of Ratshag, just for the hell of it.

7-14-2011
Inscriptionist....scripter.....inscriber.....scriber...scrivener....shriner....bugger it, I calls meself a scribbler. The scribblin' perfession be a diffrent beast altogethers, far from the more genteel craftifications of blacksmithies, tailorerers, an them buggers what smush leather together and calls it armor.

And then I discovered he had done it already, in his own inimitable style. So, scratch that, I'll just do in my own way.













That's 6 full 32 slot inscription bags, with an additional 12 slots on the 7th. 6x32=192+12=204 different Northrend inscription research/Books of Glyph Mastery, Techniques, and minor inscription research glyphs.

Now, you've done all your research, learned the techniques, and read the books.....but what you haven't done is actually make gold with your profession. You've tried, but never seem to make a lot of sales. It's confusing, because you always give the customers a great discount, compared to those other scribes who only undercut each other by 1 freakin' copper, just to get their glyphs at the top of the list.

Sit back, while I illuminate the situation.
Ur doeing it wrong!
The thing about glyphs and enchanting scrolls is that they have NO sales price to vendors. Therefore, their posting cost to the Auction House is only 1 silver. 12 hours, 24 hours, 48 hours.....only 1 silver. This allows you to post, then cancel and re-post any time you get undercut by a competitor, at a very minimal cost to you. Compare that to Blacksmithing, where the vendor price of the armor and weapons you make are so high that the deposit cost at the AH, even for 12 hours, is still over 1-2 gold apiece. Contrast that to 4 gold TOTAL for posting 400 glyphs, and you'll start to realize that the margins are higher, and the overhead costs are a lot more lenient than the other crafting professions (not including enchanting).






Like the Industrial Revolutions effects on industry, so too is the effects of addons and macros on crafting and making gold in WoW. Even having a macro that does "/Cast milling /use Stormvine /use Whiptail..../use etc" can save you a lot of time, just by not having to click on each stack that you want to mill, as long as they're in stacks of at least 5. If the macro follows its script, and encounters a stack of less than 5 herbs, it won't allow you to mill, even though there are full stacks of a herb further down the macro list.

But, I digress. The macros will only save you time, the addon(s) will make you money. The two main ones I use are TSM and Auctionator. Edit - I also remember I use Millhelp and Millhelp_Glyphs, which I guess is included in Millhelp. If you look at the first image, you can see it displaying the inks/pigments needed to make the glyph, which is very useful.

TSM (TradeSkillMaster) is probably under-utilized by me, as I only use it for posting and cancelling auctions, not the crafting queues that Mysscia has told me about. But.....for posting and cancelling, it's unrivaled. Set up your groups of items, with posting time, undercut amount, minimum price you'll sell at, and maximum posting amount (for when nobody else is in that market, heh!).

Auctionator is the addon I use for storing my search lists. It searches for what you have specified, then displays them in descending order of price per 1 unit, whether it's a single or full stack. The great part of this is the ability to quickly buy out auctions, without the annoying confirmation that you'd have with the standard Blizzard UI. The drawback is that it doesn't show the bid amount, only the buyout. Also, it doesn't show the time left, which could save you gold if you saw the item only had a short time left. Cancelling and re-posting with Auctionator....I wouldn't. The anonymity of Auctionator doesn't let you know who you're going against in that particular market, which can be verrrry important.

Dealing with Competition
There are a few types of competitors.
1) Power-levelers.
These people are leveling inscription to get to the max level, primarily with trainer taught recipes. If you decide to sell trainer taught glyphs, these are the guys that will mess you up. If you post glyphs in an open market at 250 gold each, these guys will come along and post at 10 gold each, even though the mats cost more than that.
2)"Happy, freinly peoples" - as Gevlon would say.
These people want to supply glyphs at a cost only slightly high than the material cost. They'll sell research/book taught glyphs at a much lower price than you would prefer, and mess up glyphs markets for a long time, as the next guy will post lower than them.
3) The One-percenter.
When I first started posting (manually, took me forever to post a hundred glyphs), I hated the people that would undercut me by 1 copper. "It's not fair, they'd post higher if they could." - is how I felt.
But in actuality, these are the scribes you want to be in competition with. With a 1 copper undercut, it would take 1000 undercuts to drop the market price by 1 gold. With the first 2 types, their drastic undercuts affect the market for a long time, until either a scribe buys all the glyphs to reset the market, or people stop posting, leaving the market empty for the next scribe to post at their preferred price point.

One last thing about 1-percenters. They are the ONLY safe bet to buy out when you want to reset the market. Since they're almost chained to using their set discount with using an addon, they will rarely if never undercut by the huge amounts the other classes of scribes do. And that's why I like TSM, since it shows me the other people in the market. If I have to buy out 3 glyphs at 50 gold each from a percenter, to reset the market up to 300 gold, so be it. But I'll be damned at buying 6 glyphs at 35 gold each from powerleveler who did 1 northrend research on his way up to max level, he'll just post again at the same ridiculous price point. Buyout percenters when it's feasible, undercut the noobs, and you'll gain power over a ton of markets.

Shoot, this is turning into a wall of text, but....
Stalking the Competition
Add everyone you see posting in your glyph markets to your friends list. If they do huge undercuts, add a note to that person like "idiot glypher." One-percenters would be "glypher." If you notice them come on when you're posting, do another posting scan to see if you need to undercut them when they're done. Scribes that are serious competition could also be added to your alts friends list, just so you'd know if you might want to jump back and re-post. This is another reason to favor TSM over Auctionator, since the auctions shown in Auctionator are anonymous.

Supplies and Demand
I'm trying to keep around 6-10 of each of the 204 glyphs, so I don't run out, and cause a hole in my bags. This allows me to quickly post when I get on, then run a cancel scan to clean up the remnants of my last post. It's a lot better to get your stuff to the front of the market, rather than cancelling when you first get on, waiting for the 8-10 minutes for your 400+ glyphs (I usually only post 2 of each glyph) to dribble in at 50 items per one minute mail scan, then posting for the first time that day.


Yup, it's a lot of info, but it can pay off.

The Most Valuable Item in the Game

4/29/2010

What is the most desirable mat for recipes in the game now? Primordial Saronite? Abyss Crystals? Titansteel Bars? Frozen Orbs? Not likely. Prices for high level mats are falling fast, with Primordial Saronite, once up to 1.8k gold each, now down to about 800 gold on the servers I play on.

And, exactly how much profit margin can you make with high level recipes? My enchanter Banesidhe can barely get work, even after dropping my crafting price from 30 to 20 to 15 gold for any of the Wrath enchants (of course I don’t have Blade Ward or Blood Draining, since he’s only level 69). Even when I enchant scrolls with those recipes, I find that the Auction House already has Berserker/Massacre/Super Stats in there already, at….and get this…..less than mat cost. So, enchanters get mats together, pay for or make their own Armor/Weapon Vellum III’s, then put them in the AH at less of a cost than the mats would sell for. Ludicrous!

What is it about the fact that it’s a game that prevents people from considering making a decent profit? I always measure things against how much gold my level 80 Bloodshrike can make doing the Argent Tournament Dailies, which is 13g 23 silver per, plus 4 of the quests have the option to make an additional 10 gold and a chance at another Champion Seal. When someone wants me to craft something for them, and they want to party up and then spend time gathering the mats, and 5 minutes later are ready for me to start crafting, then I get a 5-10 gold tip…..It’s not worth it to me.

My Blacksmith Bullkathos had someone whisper him to come to Orgrimmar to make a Razorplate chestpiece for them. I said sure, but I wanted to discuss the crafting fee first. This guy, just because he had mats, thought that that entitled him to have me make it for him free. I’ve bought all the Ulduar and TOC recipes that I have off the AH, and I’d like to make a profit on them.

I’ve probably used this analogy before, but I think it’s a good one. When people get accustomed to you crafting for free or for tips, that’s like them showing up at a carpenter’s house with bunch of lumber, and asking the carpenter to build you a house. When the carpenter is done, he maybe gets a $20 tip. Having mats means nothing! You can have all the mats in the world, but unless someone on your server has the recipe you want, you aren’t getting the item you need.

Getting the recipes, which for the most valuable ones means going out and either grinding specific mobs or building up reputation with a faction, that’s what makes you stand out among the crowd of other crafters who “LFW [Profession] Your mats free, tips appreciated.” I refuse to lower my standards on pricing. I spent hella gold/time either searching for bargains on the Quest items tab in the Auction House, or by doing dailies or killing monsters to gain rep with factions for the recipes that I possess. And for someone to compare that to a Max level enchanter who doesn’t have any other recipes than what the trainer taught him, and want to tip me the same? Hell no.

/end rant

So, getting to the original point of the post. Large Brilliant Shards are the most valuable items in the game to me right now, offering 500-5000% return on the cost of buying them from the AH. They have a multitude of uses in enchants, for heirloom items as well as enchants for equipment slots that don’t have heirloom pieces. Crusader, 15 Agility to 1hand, 25 Agility to 2h, Spellpower, Healing Power, and various other enchants to gloves and chest pieces.

So stock up, enchant scrolls, use the Auction House, and save yourself the grief of dealing with customers!

To make inordinate amounts of gold or not to make inordinate amounts of gold, that is the question;

2/13/09

Bloodshrike1 hit 61 last night, still in Azeroth. I’m trying to get thru the quests in my log, even though a lot of them are grey, just because I’m stubborn. I think I’ve gotten all the Zul’Farakk quests for Tanaris assembled, as well as the Sunken Temple quests (since there’s a Hunter quest that’s in ST). Now I have to see if I’ll be able to solo them at 61, with my AOE gorilla keeping all the aggro on him.

I’ve definitely slacked off on my gold frenzy, letting a couple of days lapse between logins of my AH toons. It just takes too much time out of my day to try and keep up, leaving very little time for actual questing. I can log in at 5 pm, and still be posting stuff at 7 or 8 pm. There’s just a lot of work involved in posting. With Scribes, you open up all your mail, accept the 100+ gold from the glyphs that sold (my usual average), make additional glyphs to get you back up to 3-4 of each minor glyph that they know makes a profit, and then go to the AH. Click on each glyph to see what other people are selling them for, then undercut them. Then, select Trade Goods and type Ink or Pigm, to see if I can pick up any that are low priced. Since I’m in Trade goods anyway, I usually select Jewelcrafting/Parts/Devices/Explosives to see if there’s any bargains. If the Scribe is the only one who’s going to log in on that server that day, I’ll usually check recipes for BS/Engineering/Tailoring/Enchanting to see if AckisRecipeList sees anything that my toons can learn.

But, I am making about 5k gold per month with Demon Soul AND Daggerspine, since they both have Enchanters/Blacksmiths that are 300, and can provide Arcanite Rods and high level enchants for the AH. And on my Horde accounts, they usually have the Ally cooking recipes to sell on the AH, providing 10-15 gold each. Multiply that by 5-12 per day, every day, and it comes up to a lot of gold. Demon Soul now has over 56k (even after buying my level 60 land mount and training for Bloodshrike), Daggerspine has about 49k, and Darrowmere is probably around 21k.

An Addict's checklist

7/23/08

I’m getting burned out on the whole making money on the AH thing. With 3 of my own servers to check, each with 1-2 people that sell stuff on the AH, and have a whole laundry list of things to check for cheap prices on, it gets really time consuming. For example, I have Bullkathos & Kukoshakaku on Demonsoul as my main sellers. Kukoshakaku is my LW, who will check for cheap prices on Shadowcat hide, spider’s silk, Large Fang, Heavy Hide, and Heavy Leather. He also puts up 1 Arcanite rod at 75-90 gold, and a Sniper scope at 25-30 gold, to provide a high price for Bullkathos to price multiples of the same item and undercut Kuko’s prices. Bullkathos will check gobl (anything goblin), gnom (anything gnomish), mech (for the mechbuilder’s overalls and mechanical toad recipe), and dragonl (to see if the Arcanite dragonling recipe is being posted, or if the actual trinket is posted). He also scans parts, items, and explosives under the trade goods section, to see if there’s anything posted at a cheap price. Then I type elemental (for fire/air/water/earth), essence of (fire/air/water/earth/undeath), Core of Earth, Heart of Fire, Living essence (for my next engineer who hits lvl 35, so they can powerlevel using the mechanical toad recipe). I also look up simple gems, since that’s all I’m using at the current time, paying particular attention to the Star Ruby and Arcane Crystal prices, since I make most of my gold from Sniper Scopes and Arcanite Rods/Bars.

Same thing with Clockwrkmage and Tsuris on Daggerspine, and Clockwrkmage on Darrowmere is my only seller. I open all my mail from the previous day, repost stuff that didn’t sell, and make stuff if I have the mats assembled. Then, I go to the opposite factions AH, using Kevin’s account, and do pretty much the same thing. I can get home at 5, and maybe finish up with checking the AH by 8 pm. It’s no kind of life, especially since I don’t really need gold much anymore. I’ve got packed guild banks to draw upon (3 tabs on Demon Soul and Daggerspine, 2 on Darrowmere), I’ve bought most of the 1-300 level recipes for ALL my toons, and yet it’s still hard to stop checking for bargains. I originally started this because I wanted to have enough to buy mounts at level 40 for all my toons on Demon Soul. Well, now that they’ve lowered the price to 35 gold for training, and about 8 g for the mount, I’ve got about 15x25=375 mounts (G15,000).

It HAS worked out for me getting recipes that weren’t posted on my own factions AH, like the Steel Weapon Chain BS recipe. I’ve gotten that for both Daggerspine and Darrowmere from the opposing factions AH, because it’s never offered on my own. I still want the Thorium Shield Spike recipe for those 2 servers though, because it’s so cheap to make, and makes it very easy and cheap to level from 285 to 300 Blacksmithing. Not to mention it’s almost as damaging as the Felsteel spike, and way….way…way cheaper to make.

Onto giving updates on my toons. I’ve gotten 2 level 44’s on Demon Soul, and 2 lvl 42’s on Daggerspine. I also went down the list and got all of my toons to at least lvl 11 on Darrowmere, having them each run to TB when they hit level 10, so they could get all the weapon masters and waypoints along the way, do the quest for the Kodo hide bag recipe, and then fly to Ratchett to powerlevel engineering to 150.

I have it down to a science now. Do about 40 rough stones to get to about 30+ engineering, then do about 80 copper bars to make 80 copper bolts (needed to make target dummies). Make enough copper tubes (usually about 5 or so) to level up enough to make copper modulators, and make them until you get to 75 engineering. At that point you have a choice. You can either make 20 Coarse stones into 20 Coarse Blasting powder, or continue making copper modulators. Either way, continue until you can make Target dummies, then start cranking them out. I usually end up with about 20 target dummies at level 105 engineering. I usually make some bronze tubes or EZ-throw dynamite (for my priest) or small seaforium charges at this point, in order to level up to 125.

At 125 you can make Heavy Blasting powder, and then turn around and use it in making Heavy Dynamite. That pretty much takes you up to 150, where I’m able to equip my Green-Eye Goggles (the ones that give +8 stamina and spirit), which provides a big boost to any level 10 character, no matter the class.

I can haz gold?

6/02/08
Panzergishi just finished up Duskwood last night, dinging 33 when he turned in the Embalmer quest, after killing the Embalmer’s wife. I have to say I like the lore in Duskwood, but I hate the running back and forth. At least you can fly over to Westfall for an easy journey to the west side of Duskwood, but it’s still annoying.

Holy smokes…..I just got over 10,100 gold on Demon Soul last night, and I only have 5 lvl 40+ characters on there. I have about 7,700 gold on Daggerspine, and buying Void Crystals and Large Prismatic shards on the Ally auction house with my 300 gold worth of Elixir of Giant Growth sales, bringing them thru the neutral AH, and selling them on the Horde AH, got me to 2000 gold on my new Horde account on Darrowmere. My Toons there range from 2-12, but I like to make gold first, level later, so I’ll always be able to afford anything I need/want. Since he’ll be getting to 35 soon, and unlocking the 225-300 level of Blacksmithing and Engineering, I’m going to need to level Gwiddonyon to level 35 soon, so she can transmute the 60 arcane crystals and Thorium ore she has saved up in her bank, making 60 Arcanite Bars. That’ll powerlevel her to 300 Alchemy I’m sure, and give Panzer plenty of Arcanite to make Arcanite Rods with. I also need to level Clockwrkmage to 35, so she can get her Enchanting up to 300. I’ll be needing a lot more high level enchants on my level 40+ toons, and I don’t feel like tipping to get them done.

Panzer is almost out of well-rested, so it’s probably time to send him over to Southshore, since he only has 171 fishing, and I need 225 to get the fishing quest at level 35. I also need to make sure to talk to the fishing and cooking trainers in Ironforge at that time, to get the travel quests to Nat Pagle and the cooking quest guy in Tanaris. They’re not needed to get the quests, but it’s an easy 1000 xp each.

Account summary

5/12/08
Back from training in Phoenix, so it’s back to posting. Since my buddy let me use his account to buy the faction specific recipes, I’ve made a ton of money from the Alliance cooking quest recipes. I’ve gotten up to 7k gold on Demon Soul, 6k on Daggerspine, and 1.3k on Darrowmere (my newest account). I post the 12 recipes for 4-5 gold each on Darrowmere, and log back in a few hours later to find them all sold out. I’ve also made all of my accounts into their own guilds. Demon Soul has Wraith Flight, Daggerspine has Warshrike, and Darrowmere has Psychrometrics (it’s a term used in heating and air conditioning).

I’ve also narrowed down the amount of items I sell. I only do big ticket items now, like Arcanite rods for 65g, Sniper Scopes for 16g, and since I just made my pally into a Goblin Engineer, she can make Goblin Jumper Cables XL for 70-80g.

It’s hard to find cheap mats for the blue items in Leatherworking now. Large Fangs are going for 1g each, Small lustrous pearls for 50 silver to 1g, Spider’s Silk for 1g, Heavy Leather for 3-4g a stack…It’s not economical to make Toughened Leather Gloves, Barbaric Bracers, or Shadowskin Gloves very often.

Sneaky sneaky, Sir

4/11/08
Wahoo!!! It’s nice to be able to post enchanting mats again. Banesidhe posted a bunch of Vision Dust, Small Radiant Shards, and Lesser Nether Essence on the AH on Wednesday night, and came back on Thursday to find a cool 150 G in his inbox. The previous sellers must have underbid themselves into the ground, and stopped posting, leaving me an almost free market. There was virtually nobody posting nether essence or small radiant shards, and I’m used to seeing a lot of other sellers in the market.

I decided to take Thrillkiller over to Gnomeregan, since I wanted to get the [Schematic: Discombobulator Ray]. Very easy for a level 42 rogue to get in there. I’m going to have to charge in with Clockworknyt though, and learn the schematic at around 150, so I can get some skill points for it, once I respecc from Gnomish to Goblin. I figure I should be able to do it by about level 36 at least, since they’re only level level 27-30 elite. It’s a huge instance, and I’m glad I was able to stealth, because it wouldn’t be fun to fight through. The irradiated troggs spill tainted blood on their fellows when they die, turning them from normal mobs into elites, making it harder to kill them. You have to target the normal mobs first, then take down the elites. Well, Thrill didn’t have to do any of that. I snuck around, pickpocketed some of the mobs, then went and killed the Mechgineer boss in the final chamber. You’re supposed to have someone run around and hit the switches to disable the bomb pipes, but it’s not needed when you’re high enough. I cheapshotted him, used the lowered defense attack, hit my Gnomish Harm Prevention Belt, and immediately used my Death Ray. I tossed in a Fel Iron Bomb, and with a few smacks with my maces later, he was dead.

On Darrowmere, the price for the gems is a little skewed. On my other servers, Talasite and Star of Elune usually sell for about 50 gold each, making the decision to buy them for 12 gold an easy one. But on Darrowmere, they sell for only about 8-10 gold, meaning that I lost money on buying them. Luckily I was able to sell the Living Ruby for about 35 gold, giving Gimmershred a bit more buying capital to go back and camp the Faire some more.

Brikkabrikkabrikka breakdown of how to run the AH

4/4/08
You know, I really don’t have a choice BUT to be flipping recipes on the Auction house in order to make gold. I’m going to need such a large amount of copper and bronze to level engineering on my new toons on Darrowmere that I wouldn’t have any to spare for the AH. Luckily, I don’t have to really farm for stuff to make money on, I just spend about 30 seconds every few hours to check vendors. Wartraveler sold a Blue Dragonscale recipe for 30 gold, and has sold off a few Deepdive helmet recipes as well. He’s up to at least 40 gold, even after sending 20 gold to Clockwrkmage, since he’s my main buyer. I sent him all the Blacksmithing recipes that Clock had saved up, so he can take over buying them, and it would free up a lot of room on Clock.

It’s really funny how much people will pay, when they don’t take the time to research how easy it is to get these recipes. “Ooooh, the Deepdive Helmet recipe is in Azshara, that’s too high level for me to go to, so I’ll buy it on the AH for 6 gold.” It’s freakin easy to get there! Go to the east of Orgrimmar, and follow the coastline into Azshara. It takes a while, but you can just watch TV while you’re waiting for your toon to get close to the lighthouse. Once you’re by the lighthouse, you’ll probably get killed by a monster, but so what? Run back from the spirit healer, and corpse jump if needed to get you close to the rocks in front of the lighthouse. You can get up them, it just takes practice. If needed, just die on those rocks, and rez inside the lighthouse. Boom, you’re there, ready to stock up!

The girl goblin sells Engineering supplies and the Deepdive helmet, and it refreshes quite rapidly, at least every 30 minutes or so. I’d recommend stocking up on about 12 deepdive recipes, and buy all the coarse blasting powder too. You’ll have several full 20 stacks that you paid (48 copper x20) about 10 silver for, that you can easily sell on the AH for 2.5-3 gold. The Deepdive helmets will definitely sell for 5-6 gold, and they only cost 36 silver. Just have an alt post one at a higher price to simulate competition.

The Blue Dragonscale Breastplate recipe is 2gold each, but you can easily sell them for 20-30 gold, even on a low pop server. Have an alt post one at a higher price to simulate competition, if needed.
The Chimeric recipe that Blimo sells…..it’s only 1.2 gold, but it doesn’t sell very well. I wouldn’t bother picking it up unless it’s for your own use.

Attack of the 50-foot Gnome

4/2/08
I didn’t get much done last night, just checked my auctions and leveled Aosdanasaoi in engineering, up to level 262. I ran out of Elemental Earth for making Truesilver transformers, so I had Clockwrkmage bid on about 4 10 stacks of them. After I make about 10 Truesilver transformers, I’ll make a bunch of Lifelike Mechanical Toads, and power level up to 280-290 that way.
Clockwrkmage on Darrowmere was successful in selling a Green Dragoncale Armor recipe for 19 gold, bringing her to about 150 gold. Not bad for a level 4 toon! :)

I really need to run out of crafting materials for my toons. It brings me money, but I need to go out and level, so I can get to level 35, and unlock the next portion of the profession. I have yet to get a Leatherworker above the 225 level, and I’d like to see what items they can make that will benefit my higher level toons.

I sent Aosdanasaoi a Gnomish World Enlarger, and it really is very funny. I used it while I was powerleveling engineering in Tanaris, and I shrank to Barbie Doll size. She’s a Night Elf, which are pretty tall, but she shrank to being tinier than a gnome. I’m going to challenge the next one I see to a duel, and see what happens when I use the Gnomish shrink ray on them. Hopefully it’ll backfire, and cause them to grow to enormous size. Then I can run from them screaming “Help! Help! Gnomezilla is going to stomp on me!!”

After Aos powerlevels engineering, I’m going to have her do the Shimmering flats goblin quests, then do the Fishing quest for Nat Pagle. Ryo needs to do the Shimmering flats quests too, because I want him to have the quest “Dream Dust in the Swamp” where you have to kill the green whelplings in Swamp of Sorrows. I think they drop Green Whelp scales, and it would definitely make killing those things worthwhile, since they have a lousy drop rate on the Dream Dust. Then he can camp the Draenai vendor for the Green Dragonscale breastplate recipe, and kill the stealthed panthers for Shadowcat hide, which Tsuris can use to make Shadowskin gloves from.

Engineering got hit by the nerf stick

3/28/08

That Green Dragonscale Breastplate recipe is hard to time. On Darrowmere, Wartraveler got it yesterday at 6 pm, and again at 9 pm. Either someone else (Alliance probably) is buying it, or the recipe only sticks around for 10 minutes at a time or something. However, I do have 3 to sell now, so I’ll be able to rebuild Clockwrkmage’s fortunes. I dropped 40 large by buying 4 Fel Iron Toolboxes at 10g each on the AH, since they were reasonably priced, and a further 25g by buying a Bag of Many Skins (24 slot LW) for Gavelofpain, since he’ll be my LW. I’ve been making a good profit by buying Elixir of Giant Growth on the AH for 1g, and selling it on the Neutral AH for 8-10g.

That darned patch……they changed the ability to summon 2 attack pet trinkets at the same time. I’m hoping that’s the only change, because it would suck to limit you to one trinket at a time. You should at least be able to use one attack pet, and still be able to use the Goblin Death Ray or any other engineering trinket that you like.
I wonder if it’s because of me? I designed that macro that would cast both the chicken and the dragonling at the same time, and equip the Death Ray. As long as you used it before you got into combat, you’d have both pets out, and the Death Ray was only 30 seconds away from activation. Fight the enemy for a little bit, then bubble up with the Gnomish Harm Prevention Belt, and blast them out of their steel plated boots. Perhaps it was decided that engineering gave too much of an advantage over other players? I believe it does, and that’s why most of my toons are engineers. You have the choice to have all farming professions, which will get you lots of gold, or taking up crafting professions, which will sometimes get you decent amounts of gold, or taking up Engineering, which will rarely get gold, but gives you a lot more damage potential to monsters and enemies.

…..Rarely get gold…..well, unless you’re me. I’ve regulated the Demon Soul economy to the point where people expect to pay about 15 gold for a Sniper scope, whereas Daggerspine and Darrowmere both have people who consistently post Sniper scopes at 8 gold.

I’ve also dinged 2000 gold on my level 41 Tauren Warrior Bullkathos, on Demon Soul. After the patch, I figured the price of Arcanite rods would drop drastically, but I was still able to sell 2 of them for about 60 gold each. I’ve given up on trying to sell Steel Weapon Chains in the AH, since it costs too much, and people rarely buy them. But, it’s a good recipe to have, since I can use it for Bullkathos as well as Thrillkiller, to shorten the duration they’ll be disarmed. Even if it’s on the off-hand weapon on Thrillkiller, the effect still works. And since the off-hand weapon rarely hits, you might as well put something useful to the character on it.

Bubble + Death Ray = Win!

3/7/08
Not much done last night. Panzergishi had picked up the Darkrune Helm schematic for 10 gold yesterday, and immediately flipped it into a 70-80 gold buyout on the AH. It sold! The Darkrune recipes are rewards for turning in items in Tanaris, so I know I’ll get the recipe again. I’m just amused that people don’t look up recipes on Thottbot, to see where they can get them. Kishigishi finally made it over to the spider cave in Dustwallow, after touring the northern part of that zone. I didn’t know that there was another Direhorn Tauren compound north of the spider cave, and Allies have a couple of quests that take you there. Kishi turned level 38 while questing, so I was able to equip her with a level 38 sword that Clock had enchanted with +3 damage. 5 more dps is good, because she had been running around with a level 33 sword for a long time. Looks like my first toon to reach 40 on Daggerspine won’t even pay very much for her mount, since Paladins get the Summon Warhorse spell unlocked at 40. It used to be a long quest, but now you just buy it.

I also found out that if you’re bubbled with Divine Protection, you are immune to damage from the Death Ray. I had figured as much, but I tested it on the rare Darkspinner Widow in the spider cave, and it worked like a charm. Right after that, I tried to use the Gnomish Shrink Ray, but it malfunctioned for the 1st time, and shrunk me instead. No worries though, the Death Ray had taken most of her life, so a few midget slashes and she fell over. The widow has babies inside, though, that swarm out when she’s killed. I Consecrated the ground, and most of them died quickly.

I imagine that this would work the same way for a Warlock, by Sacrificing your Void Walker to become immune to damage for 10 seconds or so, but I haven’t tested what spells you can use while protected.

Shut up before I crush you with my wallet!

3/5/08
I played Bloodshrike again last night! This is some kind of a record for him, being taken out more than once in a month. I saw I had the Dawnrunner’s cargo, and the Spy’s report from the grave by the Hermit on Witch Hill, so I flew back to Dustwallow to turn them in. Since I was there, I decided to do the travel quest to Tabetha’s farm, and kill Deadmire. A level 40 horde warrior just killed Deadmire, so I wasted some time by zapping crocolisks and killing spiders/windserpents for the guy in Tabetha’s cabin. After Deadmire respawned, I took him down, then did the travel quest to Beazil’s Wreck. Those 2 quests are easy, and kinda fun. That leads to a travel quest to Rustsprocket, the new neutral town in Dustwallow, so I went there to turn it in, and get the flight point.

I also came up with a new macro last night. I know you can’t switch out trinkets while you’re in combat, but you can do it right before combat, if you’re quick enough.
#showtooltip
/cast Mechanical Dragonling (just add in Mithril or Arcanite, if that’s what you have equipped)
/stopcasting
/cast Gnomish Battle Chicken
/stopcasting
/equip Gnomish Death Ray
I don’t know if I need to have /stopcasting, but the macro does work. You call out 2 attack pets, and have the Death Ray starting its 30 second equip cooldown before you even get into battle. If you want to, you can even have it equip 2 new trinkets if you can set it up for the specific slots, but this is a pretty easy macro. I like having the chicken on my second trinket slot, since it only has a 20 minute cooldown, so any new trinket you right click to equip will go into your first trinket slot, and not interfere with the chicken.
(Edit 11/14/08) - The macro won't work anymore, since a later patch changed it so you could only have ONE mechanical trinket attack pet out at a time. I imagine that applies to the Goblin Bomb Dispenser as well.

Funnily enough, my blacksmiths are now my toons with the biggest wallets. Usually blacksmiths can’t find customers for the items they sell, since you can usually find a lot better as green drops from monsters. But, making Arcanite rods/Shining Silver Breastplates/Green Iron Hauberks will give you a lot of cash, pretty quickly. I now have about 1300 gold on my level 41 Tauren Warrior blacksmith Bullkathos, and I just got about 1200 gold on my level 24 Dwarf Warrior Blacksmith Panzergishi. I usually check to see what available recipes there are for Panzer when I log on, then I check to see what the epic and Blue recipes are going for. Well, I found an epic recipe (Khorium Longsword I think) for 100-150 gold, and when I looked at Auctioneer, I saw it usually went for about 700-800 gold. So, I bought it, and put it back on the AH for 600-700 gold. I logged in last night to see Panzer’s gold go from about 589 gold to about 1200 gold. That’s the biggest sale I’ve ever had!!! I’m used to getting about 80 gold for each Arcanite Rod, but that was an incredible rush to see my gold double overnight. Granted, I had paid 150 gold for it, but I still made about 400 gold profit on it.

Monopoly - spelled I B M

2/12/08
Whew, I discovered a handy little trick last night! I took Ryoushigishi down to the Deadmines to knock out the quests outside the instance, and see how far a lvl 30 hunter can solo inside the instance. I didn’t get that accomplished, though. You know why? The Defias Miners outside the instance are lvl 15-17 normal mobs, and they drop a lot of good stuff! My first pass through, I ended up with 12 Coarse Stone, 15 Copper Ore, 6 Tin Ore, 1 Iron Ore, 3 Heavy Stone, 3 stacks of linen cloth, 2 stacks of Wool Cloth, and a few green items to send to my disenchanter. If I had a miner, I could have gotten even more Ore and Stones, but Ryo is a skinner. I’ll have to try this with Aosdanasaoi, and pickpocket groups of the mobs before I wipe them out with fast and furious dagger strikes. I did this once, hearthed back to drop off my loot, and flew back to Sentinel Hill to attempt it again, because my blacksmith Panzergishi can’t get enough Coarse Stone to keep up with the demand for Golden Rods, as well as the other twink armor he can make. The drop rate of Coarse Stone from Tin veins is very low, maybe about 1 in 6 tries. These miners were dropping them 5 at a time! I need to find an equivalent for Horde toons. Maybe the cave where you get the Miner’s Emerald and the pages of the Samophlange Manual for NPC’s in Ratchett would be a good place to do it.

As I was flying back to Sentinel Hill, a lvl 70 mage was posting that he was bored, and willing to run people thru Deadmines for free. I said heck yeah!, and tucked Ryo into the inn there for safekeeping, while I logged onto my lvl 17 NE hunter Doomslinger, a future twink. I had been run through as far as the ship before, but our runner, a lvl 40 Warlock, died and didn’t want to continue running. So, she’s been sitting in Stormwind, serving as a food material mule. I quickly switched around bags to make her battle ready, mailed whatever extras to another toon, and flew to Sentinel Hill. That mage, using lvl 1 Arcane explosion, was able to run VC in about 15 minutes, just hampered by the fact that we looted everything. We finished up with full bags, and the mage offered to run again. I said yes, and logged onto Preyonyou, my lvl 26 Priest. We got through everything, and I got some blue items, but since she was high level for the instance, nothing really was an upgrade. Even the staff that drops near the end was kind of a little below what I had equipped, especially since I had +3 Intellect on it. But, I was glad to get it done. That’s two more toons all the way through VC, bringing the group to 4. Kishigishi, Tsuris, Preyonyou, and Doomslinger. Doomslinger was my main concern, as I didn’t want to gain too much XP, and ding over to level 20. I only leveled to 18, so I have plenty of room to play with. I’ll turn in the Defias instance quests, maybe do the Wilder Thistlenettle undead miner quests outside the instance, and I should be ready to go to Darkshore for my Ghost saber. I will keep PigglyWiggly though, until I can get one of those armored boars from RFK or RFD in Southern Barrens. The Ghost Saber would match Doomslinger though, since she’s a tall, lean Night Elf with white hair, and the Ghost Saber is a lean cat that is translucently silver/gray.

Oooh, ooh! I stumbled across something that will get me to focus my efforts on leveling Ryoushigishi. I saw the Sniper Scope schematic on the AH for 60-80g, and after much consideration (about 2 seconds worth, lol), I bought it. I had Ryo buy it because duh, he’s my highest hunter, and will need scopes pretty regularly. Once I get him to level 35, I will be able to mess with another facet of Daggerspines economy, the scope industry! Sniper scopes are on there for 8.5 gold, everyday. On Demon Soul, I’m having Bullkathos post 1 for 20-30 gold for 48 hours, while Bloodshrike posts a few for 16-18 gold, and it’s turned out to be successful. I’ll do the same to Daggerspine once I get the chance to powerlevel Engineering. Mwaahahahaha!!!!!! (Be wary of anyone ending a sentence in multiple exclamation marks, I learned that from the Battlefield: Earth Decology by L.Ron Hubbard).

I’ve been buying Star Rubies for about 1 to 1.25 gold for a while now, so I have a bunch saved up and ready to be used.

Time to melt faces, while still looking cute

1/18/08
I decided to work on Gwiddonyn, since that gnome warlock has been sitting in Darnassus for WAY too long. It’s great for picking up the Deflection recipe and the Barbaric Bracer recipe from the Trade supply and LW vendors there, but the whole setup of that city is annoying. It takes too long to run to those vendors, run to the AH, and run back to the bank and mailbox where I log out. I think I’ll just camp the vendor, save up a bunch of recipes, and be setup for a while. So, I ran down Darkshore, picking up the remains from all the monsters washed up on the coast, killed Murkdeep, did the Master’s Glaive quest, and escorted the centaur out of the Master’s Glaive.

Finally, I was done with all the quests I was willing to do in Darkshore, and Gwiddonyn was now Honored with Darnassus, which leads to saving $ when I buy recipes from the vendors, plus a discount from the flightmasters. Once I got into Ashenvale, I explored around looking for the Ruins of Ordil’Aran where I was supposed to pick up Heartswood for a Warlock quest. Once I finally looked it up on Thottbot, it was right at the spot where you pick up the Soul gem for a quest from Maestra’s post, so I got that quest and the Bathran’s hair quest as well. I completed all three of those quests, and was running up the road towards the ally town in Ashenvale, when some ??? Horde Warrior who was escorting a lower level player killed me.

So, I resurrected in the graveyard, turned in my quests, and hearthed back to Auberdine, since I had about 6 of the remains quests clogging up my quest log. I think I’ll do the travel quests to Forest song, and maybe the cure quest chain and the Furlbog quest chain up to a certain point. After that, it’s time to go back to Stormwind, and get those darned VC quests completed. They’ll probably be grayed out by the time I get back to Stormwind, but unlike the 1st Horde dungeon, which is Ragefire Chasm, the Deadmines (VC) quests link into the next dungeon, which is the Stockades.

Panzergishi, my Ally warrior Blacksmith, also found another moneymaking recipe. Truesilver rods! I had always typed in “Silver rod” to check the prices on the AH, to see if they were worth making that day or not, which also brought up Truesilver rods. Truesilver hadn’t been selling for a very high price, so I didn’t bother making it. Imagine my surprise when I saw that the Truesilver rods were on the AH for 9-12 gold, and the recipe only calls for 1 Truesilver Bar and some Heavy Grinding stones. I have been buying Truesilver Bars for about 1g or less, so I had about 60 saved up in anticipation of powerleveling engineering once one of my toons reached 35. So, I made about 3, and put them up on the AH for 7-8 gold. That should be a good moneymaker as well.

Sometimes I feel bad about charging so much for what I put up on the Auction House, but hey, the other players could make alts as well. Nothing is preventing them from making up to 50 toons, scattered across as many servers as they’d like. Nothing that I’m doing is unique, I’m just using strategies I’ve developed over the past year. Buy low, sell high. Buy materials for cheap, sell the finished product for a profit. You just have to put a little thought into it, and you can make a lot of gold.

New Player Tips II

11/13/07
Here’s a list of what I keep in a bag on my AH alt for easy reference, so I can just shift+click the item, instead of trying to remember what to look up. Citrine, Jade, Aquamarine, Lesser Moonstone, Moss Agate, Star Ruby, Shadowgem (it’s used in Barbaric Bracers I believe XXXX), Iridescent Pearl, Small Lustrous Pearl, Black Pearl & Shadowcat Hide (used in Shadowcat gloves? XXXX), Elemental Fire, Essence of Fire, and Mithril Bars. I usually just type in pearl to scan for all the pearls available, and I click the Elemental and Essence items I have, then delete the “Fire” part. This allows me to scan for all the essences and elemental items on the market, and bid on the ones that have low starting bids. I’m not high enough to be able to kill the monsters that drop these items, or survive in the areas where I can mine some of these gems, but I know how to take advantage of optimistic people who put items in with a low starting bid. :)

I also try to remember to check for Mithril, because it’ll come up with mithril ores and bars, along with Mithril filigree (JC) and Mithril items from Blacksmithing. If you have a Miner that you’ve powerleveled to be able to smelt Mithril, you can take advantage of the price difference that sometimes happens between Ores and Bars.
If you have a Jewelcrafter, you’ll know that it takes 3 Mithril Bars to make a Mithril Filigree, and it’s annoying to make them if you’re not getting skill points from it. It’s often posted at a very cheap price, so if you start looking for it early, you won’t be wasting mats that you could sell or use on other professions.
If you have an enchanter, know that you can often find good items to disenchant on the AH by typing in Mithril and Mageweave. Items that have those keywords are a big part of Tailoring and Blacksmithing, so people will post a lot of them at once, with a low bid price.

When buying recipes for alts, be aware that some green recipes are actually vendor sold, not drops. Cat’s eye goggles (stealth detection) are frequent rewards from renewing your Gnomish engineering membership card, so I wouldn’t bother getting them off the AH either, unless it’s a really low bid of like 15 silver, or a buyout of 50 silver. I renewed 5x one day, and the next day received 2 of the Cat’s Eye goggle recipes as gifts for renewing. But, the 3rd gift turned out to be the recipe for Lil’ Smoky (robot non-attack pet), so I was pleased.

Like I said, don’t waste your gold on vendor/trainer sold recipes that you see on the Auction House. Send an alt there to camp, and every so often check back in to see if you can buy some recipes. Since you’re there, you might as well make it profitable, so buy as many recipes as you can afford. I’ll point to Azshara’s southern coast lighthouse for the Deepdive Helmet recipe (36 silver?) that you can easily sell for 3-4 gold. The other vendor in that building has the Blue Dragonscale Breastplate recipe on occasion (sell for 20-25 or even 30-40 gold), and Chimeric Gloves (sell for 7-9 gold) more frequently.

The Hinterlands also has a engineering supplier that sells the Mithril Mechanical Dragonling plans (40 silver???) that can sell for 5-10 gold, as well as a vendor outside that VERY occasionally sells the Ironfeather shoulders recipe for 1.6 gold. The Ironfeather Shoulder recipe can easily sell for 20-25 gold on the Auction house.
The Mechanical Dragonling recipe is sold by a vendor in STV, as well as the Deadly Scope recipe.

Mithril Scale bracers are a Blacksmithing recipe that is rarely sold on the Auction house, that are obtained in the Hinterlands Ally camp, and the Horde camp in Swamp of Sorrows. If you’re Ally, the Herbalism Gloves (+5 herbalism, SW Ashenvale) and the Red Whelp gloves (chance on hit for fiery damage, Wetlands) are cheap recipes that will sell well on the neutral auction house, because they both are sold by Ally vendors ONLY.

New Player Tips

Many alts = slow leveling, but the potential for lots of fun and gold.
How can you make gold with Enchanting? Compete with yourself, with Enchanting mats. There’s no post price for enchanting mats, so you are free to play with the market! If it doesn’t sell, no harm no foul NO CHARGE. I’d recommend having a mage be the enchanter (Blood Elf mage FTW!, passive levels in Enchanting), because if you ever get to the point where people actually pay reasonable prices for enchants, you want to warp right to them, so you don’t waste time traveling.
The thing is, people are as lazy in-game as they are in real life. If they can buy the items from the auction house instead of spending time disenchanting for the mats themselves, they’ll buy it. You can either post items at cut-your-own-throat prices to compete with the people who drive down the market, or you can inflate prices by using alts, thereby ensuring that your reasonably priced items sell out.

I made quite a killing on my Horde account by bidding/buying on full 20 stacks of Mageweave cloth for 1.2 gold, making White Bandit masks (1 bolt of mageweave + 1 bleach + 1 heavy silken thread = best disenchanting item out there, hands down) and disenchanting for either 2-5 Vision Dust/1-2 Lesser Nether Essence/1 Small Radiant Shard. I sell Vision Dust at 2.4-2.65 gold for a 5 stack, with my alts posting at 2.75-3 gold and higher.

Lesser nether essence could be combined into a greater nether essence, but they don’t seem to sell as well, and you usually have to give a bulk discount to make them sell. My main seller will post Lesser Nether Essence at 2-2.1 gold, with my alts around the 2.5 to 2.75 area. Small radiant shards should sell for around 4, maybe as high as 6 gold apiece. Post your alts higher for competitive pricing. :)

Selling mats on the AH with my first enchanter got me to 700 gold at lvl 35, after buying 4 bag slots in all of my characters banks, and powerleveling a 225 Blacksmith, 225 Jewelcrafter, 300 Alchemist, 225 Leatherworker, 300 Tailor/Enchanter, and 2 x 225 Engineers.

How do you get mats? You could stockpile them on a weekend, or just take up enchanting. On my first enchanter, I would bid on linen cloth, and make tons of Brown Linen robes, and disenchant them. Not worth it, as I soon realized. Bid on Uncommon (green) items in the AH. Select level 1-19 Uncommon Armor, and don’t bid/buyout for more than 10 silver per item. A Heavy Copper Ring (JC) will disenchant to 5 Strange Dust regularly, and you can usually buy it for 10 silver or less. There actually seems to be less competition at lower levels of mats, so this is a decent place to make money.

For example, I’ll send a 20 stack of Strange Dust and a 10 stack of Greater magic essence to an alt or 2. Alt 1 will post four 5 stacks of Strange Dust at 75-99 silver for 24 hours, and Alt 2 will post four 5 stacks at 70-85 silver for 24 hours. Do the same with the greater magic essence, posting them individually for 1-1.5 gold on Alt 1, and 99 silver to 1.25 gold on Alt 2. Break some down into lesser magic essence, posted individually for 45-55 silver and in a 2 stack for 75-85 silver. Breaking it down into lesser magic essence is sometimes a good thing, remember, people will pay more for just what they need, rather then pay a bulk price for a large stack. Either that, or they’re too lazy to check the price of the Greater essences, which can sometimes be lower than the lesser essences, even though you only have to right click it to break it down.
Ok, now you’ve primed the market. Make sure to have stocked up on the items you’re planning to sell, because they’re going to go thru the roof (a good way to do this is by buying out the low sellers, or look for deals like: 10 Greater Magic essence for 1 gold on the weekend. Now, on your main selling character, post the items at a reasonable price, with an 8 or 24 hour time limit. I sometimes post my main seller’s items at 8 hours, because it creates some urgency when customers see it won’t be around at that price for very long. Also, when I log back on the next day, my main seller’s posts have been bought or fallen off, and people have been slightly undercutting my overpriced alt’s postings, making it easy to undercut them. J
On the main seller, post X number of 5 stacks of Strange dust for 50-55 silver, and greater magic essences for 75-99 silver, with lesser magic essence going for 30-35 silver for one, and 60-65 silver for a 2 stack.
Sure, it’s annoying when stuff comes back unsold on your alts, and you have to re-break the stack apart, but just think about the fact that you’re NOT losing money on posting prices. It takes a few minutes to repost the mats, and whenever you log into your main, you’ll have money waiting for you. You’ll probably even have money waiting on your alts, since they’ll be posted for longer.

Edit 2/12/08: Post for 48 hours with all enchanting mats. The AH will take 5% no matter how short you post it for, so you might as well have it around as long as possible.

You’ll make money, people will be buying stuff at a reasonable price, and you regulate the economy by raising the average cost of enchanting mats. Left to themselves, other players will undercut each other to the ground, making it pointless to try to compete with them and still make money. Raising the prices might even make other players aware of how annoying it is to have people not want to tip you for enchants when they provide the mats. “You just have to click a button!” You have to spend a lot of gold to level up enchanting, and you have to waste most of your early level enchants because nobody wants to pay for them. It’s even hard to find someone to GIVE them free to.

It’s really irritating to sit in the trade channel and spam what enchants you have available, fly or warp to the customer, and get little or no tip. No thanks.
I’ve had a person ask me for a Fiery Weapon enchant when I already had the skill grayed out, provide 5 small radiant shards (it only needs 4) and an essence of fire, and even though I corrected him and told him to take 1 SMR back, thus saving him around 4-6 gold, he still didn’t tip me. I’m not going to rip someone off, but I’d like to be appreciated for the time and effort I put into a profession. So, after that, I decided to enchant for my 10 toons, a couple of friends, and make my money by selling the enchanting mats, and not the enchants.

I started the Ally account on Daggerspine a little while ago, leveled all my characters to about lvl 10-15, and decided to play with the AH for a while so I could afford to buy 14-16 slot bags and 24-slot engineering bags for all of them. I now have about 150 gold on my main seller (60 and 90 gold on my alt sellers), all my alts have 14-16 slot bags on them and in the bank, and I’ve bid on and collected most of the level 1-300 engineering/blacksmithing/enchanting (including Fiery,Icy,Unholy, Demonslaying)/leatherworking/tailoring recipes to give to the characters that have those professions.

It’s nice having an AH alt. Give them the biggest bags they can buy (get bags that don’t soulbind, so you can send the bags to your other characters if you decide to delete the alt), and start collecting recipes. You’ll never buy a duplicate, you can look for bargains on mats you know you’ll need, and there’s no pressure to go out and level them. In my opinion, Stormwind has the easiest access to ore, so after you’ve scanned the AH, go out and make a copper run. If you want, level the alt to about lvl 10, so you can kill the Defias outlaws if needed, but you can make a quick foray from the city, warp back, and have a full stack of copper to send to a character that needs it.

A Plethora of updates

1/8/08
Ryoushigishi hit level 30!! I can now get the specialization quest for gnomish engineering, and go to Booty Bay to talk to the trainer there. Only 5 character levels before I can increase my engineering max level to 300. I did this last level in the Wetlands, killing raptors and Red Whelplings for their hides, and hoping for Red Whelp scales to drop. I also did Dark Iron War in Bael Modan, which involves killing about 20-25 lvl 29 Dark Iron Dwarves. Pretty easy with a lvl 29 Hunter, and I discovered a friendly vendor Dark Iron Entrepreneur in the upper left building, where I found the last 3 Dark Iron Demolitionists hiding out.

After that, it was time to check auctions. Daggerspine must have a limited amount of Blacksmiths, because my Silver Rods and Golden Rods will sell for 2-3 gold and 4-6 gold, respectively. My Blacksmith warrior Panzergishi currently has about 250 gold, and he’s only level 24. Though, as usual, it’s hard as heckfire to sell any armor or weapons that are crafted, unless it’s the Shining Silver Breastplate or Green Iron Hauberk.

I did decide to drop Blacksmithing on Thrillkiller, over on my Horde server. He’s my highest miner, and I’d be kicking myself every time I passed metal veins that I could be picking up. Bullkathos will be fine being my only blacksmith, since they can respec for a measly 100g a pop. That’s nothing compared with the arduous and expensive process that leveling blacksmithing takes. I know I’m wasting all the 1-225 recipes I picked up, but like when I dumped Leatherworking and Skinning on Bullkathos, it was something that had to be done.

At least my Ally account was planned out properly, I only dumped level 125 leatherworking on Aosdanasaoi when I became convinced that Engineering for all characters was the way to go. It still is, in my opinion. The armor/weapons you can make for yourself can easily be duplicated by stuff you buy off the Auction House instead, but the sheer joy of blasting 4-6 enemies at once with about 350 damage for a total of 1400 to 2100 damage, then dumping most of that aggro with a nicely timed Target Dummy…..it’s fun squared.

I also got rid of my n00b hunter weapons on Bloodshrike. I had a sword and axe that had a total of about 10 stamina and 5 agility, with Fiery on both of them, so I replaced them with a 2-handed sword with 12 stamina and agility, and had Banesidhe put +3 intellect on it. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing, and I only have melee and spirit enchants to put on at this point, since I haven’t gotten any kind of faction recipes.

I’m at work, but they can’t make me work!

12/26/07
I got my Horde Rogue Thrillkiller from level 30 to 31 on Monday night, and cleared out all the Ashenvale quests that I’m going to do with him. I must say, dual-wielding Jade Serpentblade swords with Demonslaying on both of them made taking down the Infernals and other demons pretty easy. I might keep those swords in the bank for use in Desolace, even if I do upgrade my regular weapons in the meantime. I’m going to miss mining, but I’m going to keep Blacksmithing and take up Engineering at level 35. I was missing the ability to use my parachute cloak and bombs while I was questing. It was worth doing the Warsong supplies quest though, as I scored the leather Warsong boots which boosted my stats up significantly. I just need to sent Thrill some Vision dust so he can get a +5 stamina enchant on them.

On a side note, because of Christmas, there was a dearth of enchanting mats on Demon Soul. So, I put a high price on mats with Gwiddonyn, a fair price with Clockwrkmage, and went to bed with visions of Glowing Brightwood Staff and Gorehowl dancing in my head. :)

I checked Clock’s mail before I took off for Christmas dinner, and she went from 7 gold in the bank to 115 gold overnight! I had also started selling off Essences of Undeath, because I only need 1 for the Goblin Death Ray. Times that by 9 for my entire account, but I still have a ton I don’t need. At around the 300 level, I can use them for Blacksmithing recipes, but with how I’m NOT powerleveling Blacksmithing with either of my accounts, I should be able to farm my own by then. I might as well sell some of them off, considering that I’ve gotten about 60-80 of them on each of my accounts.

Almost time to change sides

11/30/07
Not much done yesterday, I just logged on to post to the AH and check for deals. I was able to pick up the Gnomish World Enlarger for about 2.5 gold, which is less than the cost of mats, and a Mind Control cap for about 1.8 gold, which I’ll send to my rogue. My rogue is currently in the Alterac mountains, camping the goblin vendor for the Mithril Mechanical Dragonling plans, and the vendor outside for the Ironfeather Shoulders recipe.
I’ve gotten about 4 of those, and I’ll be able to sell them for about 25 gold each. I also finished up my last quests for Hangfire in Darkshore, so he can go to Westfall and knock out the quests for the Deadmines. Once all my characters have gone thru the Deadmines, I’m going to start playing my Horde characters again, so that’ll be a fun change.

Stacking the Deck in the AH

11/28/07
I was sniffly most of the Thanksgiving holiday, and it carried over into the workweek. I took yesterday off from work because my throat was killing me, and because I just felt like it. I hardly ever take time off, and since I’m kinda thinking of going for another job, I might as well use up sick days.
So, I got Kishigishi to lvl 225 engineering in Stormwind, skipping some of the recipes available (since she’s going to be going goblin at level 35, equipped my handy dandy parachute cape, and set off for Westfall to do the Tome of Valor quest, which I figured I’d knock out since it was paladin only, and my only quest left in Westfall.
It’s funny, when I checked Thottbot for info on the Tome of Valor quest, they were saying that it wasn’t possible to get 2k armor at lvl 22, and the quest was really difficult without help. With all the scroll/potion/food buffs, I was about 1900+, and had 950 life. The three waves of Defias didn’t stand a chance, especially since I buffed the NPC with Stamina and Protection scrolls as well.
There, I’m finished with Westfall until I get a PUG for the Deadmines. I don’t like Pick Up Groups much, but we can usually muddle through, and I don’t especially care about drops. But for right now, off to Redridge!
She’s level 22, and I was able to defend myself against up to 2-3 level 22 orcs or murlocs that I was fighting at various times. I didn’t die, and I only had to bubble shield once, to get away when I was swarmed by 5 murlocs. I was using Big Iron Bombs and Explosive Sheep, and the sheep haven’t been living up to my idea of using them as long range homing missiles. You have to get as close as you would while tossing a bomb, but maybe if you run after you see the sheep start trotting towards the target you selected, it would help. I’m just trying to figure some way to get around the cooldown timer, or get some time elapsed by the time the monsters start fighting you. I need to send her to Thelgen Rock now, since she’s high enough to take on the spiders, and I want to get her to 155 mining skill, so she can powerlevel to Mithril smelting as well.
I have to say, I’m having fun playing Tsuris (Shaman). The ghost wolf form with 40% faster run speed makes traveling so much easier, and it’s totally free, with a easy quest chain to unlock it (if I remember correctly). I’ve heard the Paladin and Warlock mount quests are hard, and require some help to complete. I have no problem throwing money at a problem (like buying mats on the AH), yet for some reason I’m reluctant to ask friends for help, or buy a high level’s help to complete a quest. Anyways, traveling as a shaman is fun, and so is going Enhancement spec. I think I’d like to be a tank with my Warrior/Pally/Shaman/Druid, because I at least try to understand threat generation, and can use engineering items to get threat targetted on me.
I need to go Enhancement for my Horde Shaman Kukoshakaku, and also transfer off the 500+ gold he has on him, since he won’t need it for a first mount, lol. He’s been my “Decent Priced” person for Vision Dust and Lesser Nether Essence for a while now, while Bloodshrike and Banesidhe are the mean, terrible people that price higher than him. So, he’s got loads of money that he can’t do anything with. He’s level 20, with level 225 Leatherworking, and he’s bought up all the slots in his bank. All I can do now is level him, and get the mats to powerlevel him thru 1-225 Engineering. Waaah, life is so hard for me. /violin
Yeah right, I would be lucky to keep up with my well rested bonus. If I played each character enough to burn through their well rested XP of 1.5 levels, that would probably take me at least 2 hours each. Say I only played 1 character per night. With 20 characters (Well, 18, since I have a twink on each account), and the fact that it only takes 10 days to completely fill your well rested bonus again (1 bubble per 8 hours, 30 bubbles total), I’m never going to run out, ever ever ever!