WWGD – What Would Gevlon Do?

7/31/09

I’ve been reading Gevlon’s blog for a bit now, and I’m wondering what Gevlon would have to comment on about getting recipes for professions other than Inscription. Would it be worthwhile to a goblin to pay gold for recipes, instead of farming them themselves? Also, would it be worth getting all recipes for that profession, no matter if they were moneymakers?

From a goblinish standpoint, the trick is to get rare, midlevel recipes that few other people on the server have, or make trainer taught items that require quite a few different mats. For example, the Helm of Fire will cost me about 15-20 gold in mats, but can be sold for 60-65 gold easily. It’s a great helm for its level, and even though it’s leather, I’m using it on a few of my paladins and warriors around that level, just because of the high agility (crit) and awesome fire burst damage every five minutes (great for a PvP server). Add to that all the rogues, hunters, druids, and enhancement shamans, and you have a wide market base. You just have to market it effectively, and don’t flood the auction house. Post one at a time.

Farm World Dragons, if you can. The recipes they drop are very rare, like the Lifelike Mechanical Toad and the Radiant Belt.

I also am a sucker for recipes. All of them. If it’s a dropped recipe, it’s a decent price, and I don’t have it…….sold. That means less time that I would have to spend bored out of my mind, mindlessly killing the same mobs over and over again, cursing Blizzard for making recipes have such a low drop rate. Case in point: Pattern: Stormshroud Armor. When I finally got Tsuris to level 35, and powerleveled LW to 300, I noticed this high crit/dodge armor set, perfect for feral druids or rogues. The pants recipe is vendor bought, and the gloves and shoulders are usually readily available on the AH, but the armor…….the armor……
I ground the Arkkoran Oracles in Azshara for 3+ hours on Daggerspine to get the recipe, and then decided to do the same on Demon Soul. Another 4 hours of grinding, an almost infinite amount of zesty clam meat from the clams they drop, and Kukoshakaku had his own recipe. And on Darrowmere, it dropped for me on the AH, for a mere 10 gold. Aaaarrrrggggh!!!

Since I've gotten to Outlands, and have started to replace my 50's blues and epics with Outland greens, I've come to this conclusion: Don't kill yourself. Unless the recipe is for stuff below level 59 that a twink could wear, don't spend a lot of time or gold trying to get the recipes (this applies to Blacksmithing/Tailoring/Leatherworking recipes). If it drops, or if it's cheap on the AH, get the recipe. But after having the Arcanite Champion recipe learned for for months, and finally getting my warrior Bullkathos high enough to use it, and spending 150+ gold on mats even after I had Bloodshrike make the Arcanite Bars..... then replacing it with Fel Iron Hatchets at level 61 with Fel Iron Greatsword right around the corner.....Priceless. Granted, I'll still use it when I'm just doing some grinding for quests, but as soon as I hit 63, that's going in the bank.

Finish – I’m not trolling for comments from Gevlon, or flaming him, or anything like that. I just came up with the headline, and had to write something to match it.

Holla!!!! Holler? Hola…. Halaa!

7/7/09

Well, I only ended up with Bonescourge and Pallormortis getting the Spirit of Summer pet on Demon Soul, and I think Clockwrkmage got it on Daggerspine. But, I didn’t care too much about the pet, I appreciated the 2 bubbles of EZ XP per character, per day.

So, once the Fire Festival ended on Sunday morning (4 am server time), I decided it was time to start leveling some professions. Annihilus on Darrowmere needed to level her JC skillz to 225, Thrillkiller on Demon Soul needed to get to 375 engineering, and Doomslinger my former hunter twink was in need of 225 Inscription and Engineering.

Annihilus didn’t take too long to level, and I loved making the mithril settings, as I was able to go from 150-190 JC with just one recipe.

Thrillkiller, on the other hand….. It takes me a while to level each stage of engineering. The guides that are on the interwebs are designed for people who want to level up their professions as fast and cheaply as possible. They usually don’t have dropped recipes included in them, and really, nobody will ever be rich or even break even using just trainer bought recipes. Looking back on it though….I didn’t really make anything special to sell, it just took me a while to get all the mats together. I know I made a bunch of Elemental Blasting Powder, then Fel Iron Bombs until 330+. Then I switched to Adamantite Frames, and 5 Adamantite Scopes, and got to 350 with a Cogspinner Goggles of the Bandit (31 Agility, 46 Stamina, 62 AP). After that, it was smooth sailing to 375, making Volatile Blasting Triggers, with 1 point coming from the Gnomish Poultryizer.

I didn’t make the Nigh-Invulnerability Belt yet, as Khorium Bars/Ore couldn’t be found on my Auction house, and I hate asking in trade for items, since buyers know they have you over a barrel at that point. When they have metal in the AH, they paid a deposit for that, so they want to sell it. When in trade, they’ll jack up the price or simply refuse to talk to you because your initial offer didn’t match some price they had in their head, and they punish you for not being able to read their minds. I’m somewhat used to haggling, or at least offering low, being countered high, and usually settling in the middle. With some WoW players, you only have one shot to give them a price, and if you offer low, they laugh at you and /ignore you. Idiots…..

So, because of the need for Khorium Power Cores, Bloodshrike went on a field trip! I had intended to wait to adventure in Outlands until the new patch, when I’d be able to get my flying training at 60, training and mount prices would be reduced, and I could finally get mounts for all my level 20+’s on Darrowmere. But, needs must, I suppose.

So, Bloodshrike set off from Falcon Watch, ran thru Zangarmarsh (getting the FP on the way), thru Blades Edge Mountains (getting the FP from Mok’Nathal Village), and on to Area 52 in Netherstorm. I was freaking on the way, especially in Blade’s Edge, since I was running thru a cave with a bunch of higher level spiders, and I was expecting to be automatically dismounted or knocked off by a spider at any second. I’m used to ghost-running, or even corpse-hopping exploring, but being able to explore high level areas without getting killed repeatedly is still a new one to me. Of course, having 7.5k health at level 63 does help a lot. :)

I left Bloodhrike at Area 52 for a day, checking in occasionally to what I could buy from Qiff. I got 1 Khorium Power Core for 4.8 gold, a few Fel Iron Bolts for 60 silver each, a few Adamantite Frames, and some smoke flares just because.

After a while, I realized I was only a half bubble away from leveling to 64, so I decided to go out and explore, and maybe pick up some Alchemy recipes for Bloodshrike. I also realized that I could get the Gnomish Toshley’s Station transporter recipe, since I had 450 engineering, and you only need 350 to learn it. After I picked it up from Smiles O’Byron, I headed west to the other Horde town, Thunderlord Stronghold. Got the flightpoint there, and flew back to Zangarmarsh. I picked up the alchemy recipes Recipe: Elixir of Major Frost Power and Recipe: Sneaking Potion from Seer Janidi, then decided to go get the fp for Nagrand. After looking at ProfessionsBook, it showed that a vendor in Halaa sold a couple of alchemy recipes as well, so I headed over.

Along the way, I got waylaid by a quest. The quest giver for the Cenarion expedition had a simple exploring quest, which got compounded by me running into Fahssn on the way over. So, I got sucked into grinding the Bog Lords and picking up spore sacs, but it was actually pretty fun! With the burst damage from Hand-Mounted Pyro Rocket and Gnomish Lightning Generator, using each one every 30 seconds really, really speeds up grinding those bog lords. I got to almost friendly with the Sporeggar, then decided it was time to call it a night, and just made a run to Garadar in Nagrand. That’s some really beautiful scenery to run through! The funny part is, even though I’m 64, and the monsters are higher than me, I have way more health than them, and me and my gorilla didn’t have a problem dealing with a few pesky 67’s that attacked.

Midsummer Madness

6/29/09

I freakin’ love the Fire Festival! Not just because I’ll be getting some of my toons the Spirit of Summer pet, but because of the daily quests that all my toons can do. I’m running 30 toons on 3 servers, and I’m trying to level all of them. With the ability to log into each of them for 5 minutes, and get 2 bubbles of experience a day, it’s going to make leveling them a whole lot easier.

Preyonyou, my Draenai priestess, has been stuck at level 26 for……probably 6 months or more. I specced to Discipline on one of these Talent rollbacks, but she still doesn’t seem to do a lot of damage. But, she dinged 27 last night after I had her do the dailies in Darnassus! I can’t wait to get to 30, and after 2+ years of playing, finally get to (Levitate)! --- Edit, I looked at the training, and it's actually 34.

Bonescourge, my Demon Soul Undead Warlock, went from 44-47 over the weekend, just by exploring, honoring flames, and desecrating Ally flames. Well, he maybe have done a quest or two, but I’m not making it a habit, I swear! :P
I snuck over to the Draenai starting area, and desecrated both flames there. Bloodmyst Isle has WAY too many little areas to discover, and it’s annoying, because they aren’t listed on the map, and the fog of war on the map isn’t always helpful in finding what you haven’t discovered yet. Vindicator’s Rest, anyone?

I think this will also prompt me to take Bloodshrike and Pallormortis to Outlands, since there’s more fires to honor and desecrate out there, as well as some vendor-sold recipes and pets that I’ve been looking for.

Mouse Vs. Keyboard – 2 peripherals enter, 1 peripheral leaves.

6/25/09

I’ve been trying to get Francois and Steve to try using their mice for turning and movement, instead of just using it to click attacks. Why? I believe it’s far superior to have your right hand control your movement, and you’re already used to using your left hand for typing, why not use it to hit attack spells?

This isn’t something I developed while playing WoW, I’ve used this strategy for Half-life, Counter-Strike (when it was still a mod), Diablo 1, Diablo 2……and basically any computer game I’ve ever had the option of changing the command keys on.

Francois’ first toon is a druid, and having played druids, I concede that you could probably do fine with WASD for movement, and just clicking through your attacks. You might miss an attack, but you really don’t need all that many keys for your attacks.

In contrast is…….every other character class out there. Hunters, Mages, Warlocks, Shamans, Paladins, Warriors, Rogues, Death Knights, and …..Priests. Ok, ok, I haven’t played a Priest past 30, and my highest Druid is 35, but they haven’t racked up enough skills at this point to really NEED the whole keyboard like the other toons do.

It seems like a lot of people fall into 1 of 2 categories.
1) Mouse for looking around, keyboard for movement with the arrow keys, and either clicking attacks or using the number keys.
2) Mouse for looking around, WASD for movement, clicking or using Z,X,C, Alt, Ctrl, and maybe the number keys as well.

I don’t fit into any of that. I use my mouse purely for movement AND looking around (very handy to do 360 spins of the environment on a PvP server), with only the right click button to start auto-attack, and either press both keys to run, or a button on the side of the mouse.

The keyboard is where everything else is. My first toon Bloodshrike is a hunter, and I quickly found my action bars filling up with all the new skills he was learning. And to me, they all seemed pretty useful, so I wanted instant access to most of them, without having to look at them in my action bar, and then click them when needed. I don’t understand how people with chance on hit/dodge/block/parry abilities like Rogues and Warriors can manage to click Riposte, Overpower/Revenge with the narrow window of time that’s offered. I don’t have to look at the action bars during a fight, all my attention is focused on my opponent or mob.

I use A-G for my main attacks, with usually some cast sequence or Alt or Ctrl modified macros thrown in. Space Bar is jump, Z-B are my less used spells, with V and B being my “Oh Shit” or melee hot buttons. Q + W up top are usually my potion keys, or in the case of my Warriors, W is always Charge. I don’t PvP much, even though I’m on PvP servers, but I just figured out that I could have E be Strafe left, and R be Strafe right.
1-6 are the last set of keys that I press.

Since most of my toons are engineers, 1 and 2 are usually bombs or target dummies. 3-5 is up for grabs, or for Warriors, who have 3 different Stance bars, I’ll have 4 set for Shoot, since all Stances can use it. 6 is usually Blink for mages, or the Gnomish Harm Prevention Belt or Nigh-Invulnerability belt for those toons that can wear it. 7 is ALWAYS my mount button. Since I use an ergonomic keyboard, it’s still pretty comfortable for my index finger to hit it. Everything else on my action bars (usually I have 2 stacked above my XP bar, using CTMod) is clickable.

So, in total, I have 20+ keys/spells that are very easy to reach and use, with more being available with Ctrl and Alt modifier macros.
Anal-retentive? Sure. Handy? Very much so. Hmmm, maybe I’ll do a series of posts for what I’m using for each character class, using my highest level of each of those classes.

Weapon Skills

6/24/09

Hey, just a quick little thought for those interested in achievements. One easy way of leveling weapons skills is to always switch up your weapons while leveling. .

Every 4 levels or so, peruse the auction house for a weapon that you have the lowest skill in, and start using that one. Buy a rare one if you can, so the weapon skill AP modifier won't be as apparent.

Maximizing low level quests for fun and profit.....well, maybe not fun, but definitely profit

6/24/09


Production Line Assembly of Alliance-Only Quest Reward Recipes.

My previous post about ez gold – which we will expand upon.
Post- Spider Kabobs

From Step Two, you’re logged into your throwaway Night Elf, level one. This time, run around and do some quests until you get to at least level 3. Then, go get your 625 XP by getting the Kaldorei recipe in Dolanaar, and continue on to Darnassus. Fly over to Darkshore, and set your hearthstone in Auberdine.

Take the boat at the very end of the pier to get to Azuremyst Isle, You should be pretty close to level 4 by now, with the XP bonus from discovering different areas. If you’re not, kill Moongraze Stags to the south and east of Azure Watch to get the 6 needed Moongraze Stag Tenderloins needed for “The Great Moongraze Hunt.”

Send your recipes to your bank alt, or your Booty Bay transfer character, and stop for a second.

Do you want to spend a few more hours and get three more Ally recipes? They don’t sell as well as the cooking recipes, but they will sell to completionists. I wouldn’t try it until you’ve built up either a stockpile of Copper Ore/Bars (the rough stone can usually be bought anytime for 20 silver a stack), or the necessary items by scanning the AH religiously by typing “copper” and clicking on Weapons, and then Armor.

So, you decided to go for the recipes, you masochist you. Hit your hearthstone to zoom back to Auberdine in Darkshore, then run down the dock and take the boat on the left, going to Stormwind. Run FIRST to the Windrider Master to get the flight point, then go to Dwarven District to take the Tram to Ironforge. Coming south from Tinker Town, go directly to the Windrider to pick up the flight point.

Pick up Blacksmithing and mining, then go pick up 100-160 rough stones from the AH, or have an alt send you them, along with the copper weapons and armor, or the copper and mats to make them. However, you don’t learn the recipe for the Heavy Copper Maul till 65, and the Runed Copper Belt isn’t learned until 70, so its up to you how you want to play it.

Ally Blacksmithing Quests: Get to level 60 Blacksmithing, using only rough stones. Do about 35 rough sharpening stones first, then switch to rough grinding stones. Once you hit 60, both of the BS quests will be ready to pick up at Tormus Deepforge, right at the Great Anvil in Ironforge. The quests are detailed at the end of the post.

If you like, you can drop blacksmithing, and pick up skinning, because you’ve already accepted the quests. Now, it’s time to run to Loch Modan. Make sure you have the 6 copper belts and 6 axes in your inventory, because you’ll turn in the quest before you come to a mailbox. With the mauls and runed belts, keep them in the mail system, so you can get them out of the mail once you get to Redridge.

Follow the path, and feel free to zig-zag a bit if you see a copper node or a rabbit you want to skin. You might as well make some gold while doing this.
Go thru the Southern Entrance to Loch Modan, and turn in the Supplying the Front quest in the Valley of Kings (the round building ahead of you as you come down the path). Now continue North up the path until you get to Thelsamar, then take the gryphon and fly back to Stormwind (you DID remember to get the flightpoints for both Ironforge and SW, right?)

Once you land in SW, just jump into the water below. Follow the path to the east towards Redridge Mountains, and I’d advise walking a little to the right of the path (south) so you can spot the copper nodes that are on the edges of the hills. Try to kill enough mobs along the way so you’re about 1100 XP under dinging level 8, as you’ll need that level for the leatherworking quest.

Once you get to Redridge Mountains, hang a hard left. There’s a little path up thru the mountains that can actually let you get to Lakeshire unharmed, if the mobs are far enough away. If not, just rez at the spirit healer, and swim across the lake to the mailbox at the inn. Get your mauls and belts from the mailbox, turn them in at the eastern edge of town, and you’ve gotten the Ironforge Breastplate recipe! You should be level 8 by now, so hit your hearthstone to zone back to Auberdine.

Take the grypon back to Darnassus, drop mining, and pick up leatherworking. Once you hit level 70 LW, Lotherias will have a “!” over her head, and you’ll have the items already in your inventory. Turn in the quest, send the excess mats and the recipes to your alt to sell off or give to a friend, and never, ever, EVER do that again. It takes way to long, for too little gain.

Definitely take advantage of the Kaldorei recipe being easy to farm, and if you have the time, or if you have a mage friend, have them come to Dolanaar and have them port you to Exodar after you’ve gotten to level 4 (do it with a few of these throwaway toons at a time, so it’s worth their time and yours.

In conclusion, here’s the mat cost and expected sell price of these recipes.

Recipe: Kaldorei Spider Kabob -- 1-20 silver if you buy the mats off the AH, sell on the neutral or Horde AH for 250-350 gold
Recipe: Roasted Moongraze Tenderloin – 0 mat cost. Seriously, there’s a 100% drop on the meat, so you might as well farm it. Sells for 250-350 on NAH or Horde AH.
Recipe: Tasty Lion Steak – 50 silver to 20 gold on the Ally AH. As long as it’s not too expensive, buy it every time you see it on there. Horde will snap it up. 250-350g

The most I’ve ever gotten for the BS or LW recipes on Horde side was about 200 gold, but usually they sell for around 100-150.
_______________________________________________________________________

For the quest Supplying_the_Front, you’ll need 6 Copper Axes and 6 Copper Chain Belts. For the Axes, that means 36 Copper Bars, 12 Linen Cloth, and 6 Weak Flux. For the Belts, that’s 36 Copper Bars.
Total: 72 Copper Bars, 12 Linen Cloth, 6 Weak Flux.
Reward: Plans:_Heavy_Copper_Longsword

For the quest Gearing_Redridge, you’ll need 4 Runed Copper Belts (40 Copper Bars), and 4 Heavy Copper Maul (48 Copper Bar, 8 Weak Flux, 8 Light Leather)
Total: 88 Copper Bars, 8 Weak Flux, 8 Light Leather.
Reward: Plans: Ironforge_Breastplate

Leatherworking Quest: try using this guide http://www.blizzardguides.com/wow_leatherworking_guide.html or whatever gets you to 70.
For the quest Moonglow_Vest, you’ll need to get to level 8, and level Leatherworking to 70, plus turn in 1 Embossed Leather Gloves (2 Coarse Thread, 3 Light Leather) , 5 Embossed Leather Boots (25 Coarse Thread, 40 Light Leather), and 5 Embossed Leather Cloaks (10 Coarse Thread, 25 Light Leather). Follow the above guide to 59 (probably about 100 Light Leather worth), then make the required quest items from there.
Total: 168+ Light Leather, 37 Coarse Thread.
Reward: Moonglow_Vest

The Diplomat

6/16/09

Continuing with my plan to escape the AH, and get out to leveling, Bloodshrike (Demon Soul) dinged exalted with Orgrimmar and Undercity, and maybe Thunder Bluff as well. I can't remember, but I know I got to 1000 achievement points, and the Armory is only showing 960 right now. With Tsuris on Daggerspine, I purchased all the low level SW and Darnassus mounts when I hit Exalted with those cities, but I'm going to hold off on that for right now, until the patch hits. Why?
With the new patch, mounts and training will be SO much cheaper.

Apprentice Riding (Skill 75)

60% land mount speed
Requires level 20
Cost: 4 gold
Mount cost: 1 gold
Mail will be sent to players at level 20 guiding them to the riding trainer
Journeyman Riding (Skill 150)

100% land mount speed
Requires level 40
Cost: 50 gold
Mount cost: 10 gold
Mail will be sent to players at level 40 guiding them back to the riding trainer

Expert Riding (Skill 225)

150% flying mount speed; 60% land mount speed
Requires level 60
Cost: 600 gold (faction discounts now apply)
Mount Cost: 50 gold
Can now be learned in Honor Hold (Alliance) or Thrallmar (Horde)

Artisan Riding (Skill 300)

280% flying mount speed; 100% land mount speed
Requires level 70
Cost: 5,000 gold (faction discounts now apply)
Mount Cost: 100 gold

You might as well show them off, too. Here's a handy little macro I just spotted on Wowmacros.com, that selects an appropriate mount for your location.

/run if IsMounted()then return end local t if GetRealZoneText()=="Dalaran"and GetSubZoneText()~="Krasus' Landing"or GetZoneText()=="Wintergrasp"or not IsFlyableArea()then t={1,12,16}else t={6,7,15}end CallCompanion("MOUNT",t[random(#t)])
/dismount

Here's another one of their macros I've been using for a while, to randomly select a pet companion.
/run CallCompanion("CRITTER", random(GetNumCompanions("CRITTER")))

I've also started Bullkathos on farming rep with the Timbermaw, as they have recipes for Blacksmithing that he wants. It doesn't hurt that he's actually in the level range for grinding on them, since I've been doing gray and green quests recently, trying to get Exalted with Undercity with him too. I think I'll try for Exalted with the Timbermaw, so I can add to my trinket collection, and have a pocket healer Furlbog. I'm going for Revered anyway, as the belt recipe is available to a Honored, and the boots at Revered.
Of course, there's no recipes for Engineering. As usual.

How are you doing?

6/8/09

I finally, finally got around to leveling Bloodshrike on Demon Soul from 445-450 engineering. I was dreading it, because my chief method of skilling up was making Heartseeker Scopes, as I had this crazy idea of, y'know, actually making SOME gold while leveling a profession. But, when I was buying Twilight Opals at 20 gold each, and the recipe takes 2, plus 10 Saronite bars, and other people were posting them at 34 gold buyout......I said screw it, and started making more Gnomish Army Knives.

Granted, I'm a big fan of the Army knife. Almost all of my toons have one, except for my first mage, who's a Tailor/Enchanter. But Engineering forces you to almost oversaturate the market with just one person skilling up engineering up to 450. You learn the recipe for the Knives at 435, and even though I tried skilling up with the Heartseeker recipe to 445, I still ended up with at least 15 knives for one of my bank toons to sell off.

When I finally hit 450, and went back into the engineering shop in Dalaran to learn the 2 gun recipes, the engineering supplies vendor had the nerve to ask "How are you doing?" I'm freakin' pissed, that's how I'm doing!

If it required me to make a consumable to level engineering, I wouldn't care. A 20-stack Big Box O' Titanium-cored Titan bombs would be awesome, dealing 2500-3000 each bomb. Make the mats 1 Titansteel bar and 5 Saronite bars, it wouldn't bother me in the slightest.

Instead, the highest level regular bomb you get is:
Saronite Bomb
Requires Engineering (350)
1150 to 1500 Fire damage to targets in a 5 yard radius. This explosive is powerful enough to cause moderate siege damage

It's sad when Target Dummies exceed bombs in damage.....
Explosive Decoy
Requires Engineering (350)
Use: Summons a decoy that explodes when attacked, shredding enemies for 1440 to 2160 Physical damage. Lasts for 3 min or until it explodes. (2 Min Cooldown)

And, yes, there is one more bomb, available for Goblin Engineers to make AND use. But, my only Goblin engineers are Paladins, as you might have picked up.

Global Thermal Sapper Charge
Requires Engineering (400)
Requires Goblin Engineer
Use: Explodes when triggered, dealing 2188 to 2812 Fire damage to all enemies nearby and 2188 to 2812 damage to you. Also causes major siege damage. (5 Min Cooldown)

I haven't tested it yet, but this will probably be negated by the Nigh-invulnerability Belt, so Pally's wouldn't have to expend a bubble or a Blessing of Protection to soak up the damage.

I'll test it when I have my DK pick up engineering and go Goblin, since Pallor is 61, and Clockworknyt is only level 44.

Or perhaps they could make depleted-uranium Titansteel Bullets or Arrows..... but as of right now, it's not worth leveling to 450 for any of my other engineers. Level to 440 for the BOP helm, then stop. The 2 guns and the motorcycle can be bought off any other engineer, since they're BOE.

Where’s MAH money?

6/1/09

I’ve been reading http://wowalone.blogspot.com/ about a guy’s adventures in solo WoW, during downtime at work. He was talking about being proud of having 32 k gold again, after spending 21 k on the Kirin Tor ring and a motorcycle mount. I’m a recovering AH house addict, but I felt like helping him out with a few quick tips on making gold, especially since he had an Ally toon. So, I typed aboyandhisdeathrays into gooogle to go cut and copy some of my tips, and this was the first entry on the list http://www.cubestat.com/www.aboyandhisdeathrays.blogspot.com.
Website Worth: $273,750,000.00 Daily Pageviews: 125,000,000 Daily Ads Revenue: $375,000.00

So, where’s my money?!? I should have installed a pageview counter a while ago, but there’s been only 1 comment on the site, so I figured there wasn’t any interest in it. I tried BigBearButt’s site, and BigRedKitty’s, and both had less Daily Ads revenue coming in. Granted, both of those are their personal websites, so they don’t do advertising. But I tried www.4haelz.blogspot.com, who is someone that BigBearButt links to, and also had low pageviews.
Website Worth: $2,842.62 Daily Pageviews: 1,298 Daily Ads Revenue: $3.89

I’m guessing those are real people though, who leave comments and have interaction with the author, which I’d much prefer. I also saw that further down the list one of my posts was cached on an Asian site, but it was a post about Fury Warriors, not gold making. Strange.

Don’t call it a comeback, I didn't go anywhere.... :)

5/29/09

I’ve been concentrating on leveling toons lately. On Demon Soul, Bloodshrike is now 62, Bullkathos is 52, Thrillkiller just got to 50 last night, and I buckled down and ground out levels with Kukoshakaku, so he went from 28-35. I had to, he has about 400 clefthoof leather that I’ve been keeping in the mail system forever, and I want to just keep it in the bank once I learn all the recipes in there. Plus, since I got Tsuris on Daggerspine to level his LW to 300, I found some nice, actually useful leather items that I wanted to make for my rogues/hunters/shamans/druids when they got to those levels.

Helm of Fire is an awesome leather helm, and the mail Dragonscale chest is pretty sweet for hunters and shamans. The Stormshroud pants aren’t that great though, only giving slightly more crit than the level 37 pants Thrill had, and a lot less Agi and Stamina. I’ll see if it’s worth making the whole set for Thrill. They’re basically a dodge/crit set, and designed for rogues or feral druids, since one of the set bonuses is for regaining energy.

Speaking of Thrillkiller, he went on a rampage this last weekend. I was tired of having old quests clutter up my quest log, and I realized that since I had been so anal about completing every quest I came across, Thrill was already half-way or better on most of his reputation levels with the capitol cities. I figured I might as well get more rep by knocking out the dungeon achievements and quests. So, during the Memorial Day weekend, I had Thrill solo Wailing Caverns, Blackfathom Deeps, Razorfen Kraul, and Razorfen Downs. Downs was the hardest, since Ammenar the Coldbringer had his summons swarm me, and I had already used up a Fel Iron bomb on him, and had just used my Harm Prevention Belt on Glutton. I think I was still 48 when I took down Glutton, but he hits pretty hard.

This Dungeon clearing kick got started by Thrillkiller being in Booty Bay, and deciding to do Gnomer. I had already snuck down in there before to get the Discombobulator ray schematic from the Punchograph-D machine, but I didn’t kill Thermaplugg. Since the last patch changed how the engineering Lil Smoky and Pet Bombling recipes drop in that you can now get both of them from Gnomer, and you can’t get them from renewing your membership, I figured it would be a good time to pop in there, get both recipes and kill Thermaplugg, and be on my way. No such luck. Thermaplugg is supposed to have a 100% drop on the Pet Bombling recipe, which may be, since I only killed him once and he did drop it. But Warcraftpets.com lists the drop rate of the Lil Smoky recipe from the Arcane Nullifier, Crowd Pummeler, and Peacekeeper mechs at 20%. Thottbot lists it at around 2%, which is how it was for me. I probably did 6 runs on that blasted instance, killing 1 Crowd Pummeler, 4 Peacekeepers, and 10-15 Arcane Nullifiers each run. I think it was the last Arcane Nullifier in the area on the 6th run that finally dropped it, and it was a good thing, because I was ready to just forget about it. Luckily, Bullkathos already has the Lil Smoky recipe, so when he goes into the instance, he’ll just use seaforium charges to blow the back door, come in thru the Engineering Labs, get the Discombobulator recipe in the Engineering Labs, then go kill Thermaplugg and get the Pet Bombling recipe.

I also worked on Bloodshrike (Darrowmere), my Blood Elf hunter. She knocked out Ragefire Chasm (very good Thunderbluff rep on those quests), and Wailing Caverns (decent TB rep). I was surprised that the Leaders of the Fang quest gave no rep at all, even though you usually get rep when you have a quest to kill a boss in an instance. But, the Glowing Gem quest that drops from Mutanus does give a good bit of TB rep.
I’m mentioning TB rep because I want Bloodshrike to have a Kodo, and not the Hawkstrider that Blood Elves get. Granted, the Hawkstriders are a lot better looking than the elephants that Draenai get, so I guess I should be grateful.

While Bloodshrike was finishing up quests, I took her to Ashenvale to do the Test of Lore section of the whole quest chain that starts in 1K needles. It ends up with quests to go into Scarlet Monastery, so I want to do it with SOMEONE who can actually benefit from the quest rewards that drop. While I was there, I noticed I hadn’t killed Shadumbra, so on my way back from dropping off the book in Stonetalon, I swung by the Laughing Sisters and took Shadumbra’s head. Since I was there, I figured I’d go up to Feralas and pick up the neutral flight point there, for when I could come back to it at 45 or so. So, I ride up there, and I noticed a Human Rogue that was a skull to me. He had about 2500 hp, and I had 1900 at level 39, so he was probably 10 levels above me. I’ve gotten used to higher level players not attacking me, and I figured he’d do likewise. I figured wrong. I’m heading toward the flightpoint, when all of a sudden I got sapped. I stand there, swaying dazedly, while he calmly proceeds use my back as a pincushion. I got a bit annoyed at that, so I charged back from the graveyard, found him starting to use his hearthstone, so I rezzed and immediately started attacking. He hadn’t killed Arikara, so I was able to summon him instantly, then I popped my Mithril Mechanical Dragonling trinket and my Gnomish Harm Prevention belt. The Mithril dragonling (unlike the others) has a limit on how much it can scale up with your engineering. It can only get up to level 50, whereas the Mechanical Dragonling and the Arcanite Dragonling scale up based on how high your engineering level is. So, my level 62 Bloodshrike has an Arcanite Dragonling guardian that’s probably level 75 or 80.
But I digress. Between Arikara, my dragonling, and me riddling him with holes, the rogue got kilt. He tried to do the smoke bomb escape, but since I always start out with a Hunter’s Mark/petatttack macro, I was still able to see him, and of course my dragonling could too. I bet that sucked for him, thinking he was big and bad by taking down someone gray to him, then that player coming back and just annihilating him in retaliation. In hindsight, I should have stuck around and killed him a few more times, just to drive home the fact that it’s not cool to pick on lower levels.

After that, I decided to take Bloodshrike to Badlands, since that’s a 40-45 area, and it would be a good place for her to work on her skinning. Plus, I’ve had the items for all the turn-in quests in that zone for far too long, and I need to start clearing out her bank.
I’m so relieved to finally be able to level Kukoshakaku in Leatherworking. Not only that, but due to my pack rat mentality, I’m able to make multiples of items that will actually sell well on the AH, instead of having to sell them for less than the cost of the mats. I was looking ahead at what the mats are for the Stormshroud set that I’ll make for Thrillkiller, and I noticed it took a bunch of Ironweb Spider Silk and Essence of Air……..hmmmm, Clockwrknyt just so happens to have a hundred or so Essence of Air in her bank, and probably about 50 Ironweb Spider Silk. I just went from 275 to 285 last night, and was able to learn about 10 new recipes. I did notice that the Stormshroud chest recipe wasn’t among them, and apparently it drops off a specific mob type in Azshara. Looks like Pallor needs to make another trip up there.

Poof! Whaddaya need?

4/15/09

It's the day after patch 3.1, and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth (qq'ing for those of the younger generation) by twinks as their beloved leg armors and other twinkish stuff were removed by the evilness of Blizzard. :p

For me, it don't really matta. Doomslinger hasn't fired a shot in anger in a looooong time. It's probably time for her to go kill something, and get the last bit of XP needed to tip her over to 20.

But what I really, really don't like about the patch is that Arikara's summoning puff of smoke and sound effect no longer exist. It was very cool having one of the rarest pets that an Ally hunter can get, and now there's now difference between her and a Rogue Vale Screecher from Feralas.

Ehh....just another thing in my list of general apathy about the game currently. I've severely curtailed my selling on the AH, and haven't even been looking for mats much anymore either. I'm not logging in every hour to gallop around Stormwind looking for Lil Timmy, but I do log in every few hours to try to kill the Dalaran Spellscribe.

I want to play all my characters, which leads to me playing none of my characters, because I'm always thinking "Oh, Ryo needs to do this" or "I forgot to get this item for Kuko off the AH." I haven't even finished leveling Bloodshrike to 450 in engineering, and he's already level 61. I usually powerlevel my toons to the max they can get whenever they hit the appropriate milestone. I know it's a game, but....I hate wasting my mats on making stuff, and then having to sell it for pennies on the dollar. Or, making stuff for other people, and paying them for every skillup.

On the other hand, I have had a lot of fun leveling my DK. Since he's a dual gatherer, and I haven't really played in the Outlands yet (except for going there to talk to the mining trainer), Pallor had a blast in Un'goro, Sithilus, Burning Steppes, and all the zones earlier than that which helped me to level up my skinning and mining skills. Since I'm only limited by my skill level in skinning, I'm free to move to the next zone as soon as mob skill level x 5 = or <>160, that only takes 5 kills. But...... Pallor will have to drop skinning. I gotta drop one profession so I can take up engineering when I hit Outlands, and now, he's my highest miner. With the level 300 mining skills of being able to break apart Primal Earth and Fire, that lets me consolidate the hundred's of Mote of Fire and Earth I've saved up for when you need to make Elemental Blasting Powder from level 300-310. It takes a lot, and I hate being unprepared, and having to get ripped on the AH because of it.

Besides, I think Thrillkiller would benefit from dropping mining to take up skinning. Critical strike chance benefits rogue's and hunters (who are my usual skinners) way more than it would help out a Death Knight at 60.

Demonsoul has 67k gold, Daggerspine has 59k, Darrowmere has 31k, Lightbringer has about 8k, and I've made about 6.5k gold for Steve on Bladefist. I'm not bragging, it's just a thing so I can track how much I made over the last few months or so, and how much more I'm making than when I started out.

The Kindness of Strangers

2/21/09

As we’ve already established, I’m an altoholic. I’m also a bit of a recluse. Most of the time I prefer doing my own thing, and don’t like having to deal with people on a regular basis. When I first started WoW, I joined the first guild that invited me. I left after a little while, because the conversation scrolling by on guild chat was about as interesting as trade chat, and I didn’t want to double my punishment (yeah, I know you can turn trade chat off, I just keep it up because very occasionally there’s some topic that’s interesting, or a good deal comes up on it).

Nowadays, I play WoW like I used to play Diablo II online; I kind of view people as my gatherers. I don’t have the patience or time to grind for dropped recipes on 3 different servers, but if it happens to drop for someone, and they happen to put it on the AH, and I don’t have the recipe, I’ll probably grab it, no matter the price. It’s not that I’m shy around people, and I don’t talk about WoW ALL the time - though Steve or Francois might beg to differ.

Anyway, I had started toons on both Draka (PvE)(Horde side) and Gurubashi (PvP)(Ally side) to help out Kevin and Francois, respectively. They both ended up transferring those toons from those servers, and I was left with a few more toons on my account, bringing me closer to the 50 toon limit set by Blizzard. I decided to get rid of the temptation of playing those toons, and went ahead with it this evening. I logged into Gurubashi, and discovered that I still had a bunch of engineering stuff that hadn’t been moved to Horde side before Francois’ toon got transferred. I didn’t want to waste the recipes/mats/gold that I had collected, so I decided to host a giveaway. I posted on trade “Looking for dedicated low level engineer. I don’t want advice, pst link to engineering for a reward.”

People are naturally suspicious of strange posts, so I didn’t get many replies at first. So, I decided to make my message a bit less cryptic. “I’m deleting this toon, and I want to give my stuff to a low level engineer that shows worthiness. You won’t be disappointed.” The criteria I was looking for was someone who took the time and effort to actually acquire dropped recipes, either by buying them on the AH, or by grinding for them by themselves. The Johnny-come-latelies to engineering that powerlevel it at 80 are usually the ones that sneer at the low level trinkets and bombs, and refuse to admit how useful they could be. I didn’t want to reward them, so I was looking for someone a bit like me, who powereleveled engineering to 225 at level 20ish, and would appreciate the gift I was giving them.

Well, a couple of high levels posted me, wanting to know what I was up to. One level 72 said he had 360 engineering (I think, fuzzy on the numbers). That didn’t sound like my type of player, so I kept looking. Another level 80 had a whopping 99 out of 150 engineering. No, sorry. The level 72 was persistent, though. He asked, “What about a level 19 with 165 engineering?” I said he could log him in, and I’d check him out. He posted his engineering list, and while he was definitely a twink, he didn’t just do it for the goggles. He had the Goblin Jumper Cable recipe, and the Minor Recombobulator and Gnomish Universal Remote trinkets equipped. I thought he deserved a reward.

So, Endeavour of Gurubashi, I salute you. You showed perserverance in talking to me, and dedication in engineering by getting all the recipes you could for your twink. You deserved the 462 gold, the Schematic: Arcanite Dragonling, the Schematic: Sniper Scope, and the rest of the stuff in my bank that I gave you. Oh yeah, I also gave him 3x Recipe: Tasty Lion Steak, and explained how much it could sell for on the neutral AH.

One toon deleted. On to Draka. Pretty much the same story, a disbelieving audience, a couple of high level engineers were the only ones to post. One, a level 70 Tauren Hunter named GSMoomoo, posted his Goblin recipe book. 315 out of 375, not bad, and he had learned the Goblin Jumper Cables XL, the Mechanical Yeti recipe from Winterspring, and the Snake Burst Firework recipe from Feralas. He deserved it, in my opinion.
On Draka, I had most of my stuff transferred to Kevin, so all I had to give him were 45 Truesilver Bars, 57 Thorium Ore, 4 x Pattern: Bright Yellow Shirt, 4 x Recipe: Elixir of Giant Growth, 4 x Recipe: Discolored Healing Potion, 5 x Formula: Enchant Chest - Lesser Mana, and also 152 gold. I asked if I could give him some advice, and he said yes, so I told him what to sell in the Horde AH, and what to sell in Booty Bay AH. He said he wished that we could play together, which would have been cool, but the whole reason for the giveaway was so I could delete some toons. I gave him my blog address in case he ever wanted some advice, I /saluted him, logged, and deleted the toon.

That was pretty fun, actually! I’m thinking of perhaps doing this weekly on Demon Soul/Daggerspine/Darrowmere, seeking out a deserving engineer to give a a Lifelike Mechanical Toad or 50 gold, or give them the choice to post it on the AH while I price higher, so they could double their money. Hehehe, I’ll hook them on the AH before they know what hit them.

I might even do it on the opposite faction of those servers, seeking out a worthy Alchemist to give a Recipe: Elixir of Giant Growth to, since I usually have a backlog of those recipes on Ally side. They just don’t sell as quickly as the Savory Deviate Delight recipe.

Gold? I got a guy for that.

2/20/09

Well, I’m helping out another friend at work with gold. My dispatcher Steve is a fellow player, but like most normal people, doesn’t worry overly much about making gold. He just hit 64 with his main Mage, and noticed he was starting to have a tough time taking down mobs. I told him to start buying armor and weapons on the AH, and he said he couldn’t. He only had 40 gold at level 64……….

That’s a bit of a shock to me. My level 20 characters are regularly raking in at least 100 gold a day, after only 5 minutes of reposting items. I couldn’t let that situation continue, so I offered to help him out. I started 2 Orcs, ran one to Booty Bay and the other one to Orgrimmar (well, I flew from Ratchett, after making some coin), and logged out. His level 3 warlock ghost ran down to Booty Bay from Elwynn, and then his main bought 12 Fillet of Frenzy and 12 Clam Chowders (since he was by Auberdine), then he did about 5 flips of the Recipe: Kaldorei Spider Kabob. He sent them to the warlock in BB, my Orc bought the recipes, and sent them to the Orc in Orgrimmar. I posted 2 each of the Frenzy and Chowder recipes for 16-18 gold each, and the Kaldorei recipe for 90-99 gold.

I checked back an hour later, and they were all sold out. I put up more of the Frenzy and Chowder, and another Kaldorei for 99-110 gold. It sold almost immediately, as I was checking for enchanting bags on the AH (Steve has 240 enchanting at level 64, which is pretty decent, but his entire bank was full of enchanting mats, with only one bag slot bought, and no bag in it.)

After another recipe sold, I had enough for a 32-slot Mysterious Bag (enchanting bag). I checked back later, and I had enough to buy a Recipe: Savory Deviate Delight at 150 gold. We did the swap at Booty Bay, and after selling the Savory recipe on Ally side for 399 gold, he now has about 430 gold, plus ALL of his mats in one bag, and a lot of empty space in his bank.

On a side note, I took yesterday off sick since there wasn’t any service calls, and as I was finishing up transfers from Ally to Horde side on Demon Soul, a level 80 hunter asks Thrillkiller, my level 44 Rogue, if I wanted a free run of Zul’Farrak. I was like “sure, let me clear my bags and get the quests, and I’m ready.” Well, it took a bit of time to get it organized, since we were waiting for other people, but once it started, it was pretty fun. We knocked out most of the ZF quests you can get in Gadgetzan (along with Gahz’rilla from Shimmering Flats), and only when I logged into Bloodshrike later did I discover that there’s a couple more quests that Thrillkiller hadn’t picked up. Oh well, I don’t really mind. I just want to do dungeons once, or maybe do them solo at 80 for the achievements.

After we had run ZF a few times, the level 80 said we were going to go to Blackrock Depths. Wow, that’s a huge instance. The biggest one I’ve seen so far has been Wailing Caverns, but BRD is WAYYY bigger. Pretty cool, even though I died multiple times because I was trying to help the hunter’s gorilladin on DPS, and ended up grabbing aggro. I’m sorry, I just can’t put myself on follow, and sit on my ass doing nothing, like the hunter/mage/druid that the level 80 hunter was rushing. The hunter was getting knocked down to 10% of his health on a lot of these encounters, and so I’d run in with a Fel Iron Bomb and an Advanced Target Dummy to distract some of the mobs, and hurt them a lot. Since the druid was with us, it wasn’t annoying to get killed, since I wouldn’t have to run back from the Spirit Healer outside. He got killed, but luckily my Goblin Jumper Cables XL worked, and we were able to continue on. In the ZF runs, a couple of the other guys got killed, and I tried the jumper cables, but there was no reaction. I think it was because they had already released their spirit to the Spirit Healer. When the druid died, I immediately said “Don’t release!” and when I selected him and hit the cables, the channeled Defibrillate showed up on my screen, and it rezzed him. Gogo engineering!!

After an hour or so of running around BRD, we had had enough, so they ported back to UC, and I teleported back to Gadgetzan. Level 47 3/4ths, after only 4 hours. Pretty cool, though now I’m out of well-rested XP.

"Yum, those Spider Kabobs are tasty! What's your secret?"

2/20/09
This is/will be posted on Markco’s site, when he has a slot open for it, but I figured I might as well post it here as well.

Here’s another quick thing to keep in mind for making gold if you’re Ally side on a PvP server, or if you’re whatever on a PvE server. Quest:Recipe_of_the_Kaldorei
is a low level quest available to Ally only characters. How low level? Well, actually, level 1 ONE one (1). So, if you happen to scan your auction house, and find 5 full stacks of 10 Small Spider Legs for 10 silver a stack, you’d have all you needed to make a TON of gold.

Step 1: Make a bunch of Night elf toons. I usually name them Kaldorone, Kaldortwo….

Step 2: Log on to your toon with the spider legs and at least some money. Send 7 small spider legs AND 95 copper to each of these throwaway toons.

Step 3: Zone in to the starting area, and immediately run to Dolanaar. Pick up your copper and legs from the mailbox, make a hard left towards the lake, and talk to Zarrin to learn the cooking skill for 95 copper. Ding! The quest appears immediately over Zarrin’s head, and you accept it and immediately turn it in. Sell off the extra Kaldorei Spider Kabob and your starting food, and you end up with 1 silver, 19 copper. Run back to the mailbox, send it to whoever, along with the 89 copper (leaving you broke), and delete the toon. Rinse and repeat for as many times as you can stand. While the entire process only takes about 2-3 minutes, it is extremely boring, especially if you have mods (CT mods always cover my screen when logging in a new toon. I guess I could turn them off, duh!)

Step 4: Collect your recipes, and go to the neutral Auction House in Booty Bay/Tanaris/Winterspring. I prefer Winterspring, since it’s not that popular, because if you’re high enough for it, you’re high enough for Outlands. Posting with an alt on a PvP server at Booty Bay is extremely frustrating, since you can get ganked a lot, or even accidentally ganked by a high level going for the Bloodsail achievement, and his AoE spells kill you.
Now, if you only have access to one account on a PvP server, here’s where it stops. I’d say experiment with posting at 60-100 gold, and keep increasing until sales drop off. You can even have another alt Post at 200-300 gold, to get people wondering why these recipes are so expensive. They look it up, they see it’s Ally only, they buy it. Cha-ching!
By the way, Horde toons can do the same thing by buying the Recipe: Elixir of Giant Growth and Recipe: Savory Deviate Delight recipes from the Horde AH, and reposting at a large profit on the Neutral AH.

Extra Credit Step 5: If you have access to a second account, or another person you know plays WOW and isn’t on your server, ask them to help you get it to Horde (If you’re on a PvE server, you could get a guildy to make a Horde toon to help you out.). You post the Kaldorei recipe for 1 copper bid/1 copper buyout, and they immediately buy it out. They or you post it on the Horde Auction house for 80-100-130 gold, and wait for the money to roll in. Now, if you use Auctioneer to make money on the margin, this long of a process won’t appeal to you. But, considering that you could get 8 of these recipes in under 20 minutes if you had the 8x7=56 Small Spider Legs and 8 silver, that translates to over 800 gold on Horde side. You (or your friend) can use that to buy mats for your professions, or buy the Recipe: Savory Deviate Delight at wholesale, or just buy Abyss Crystals to bring back over to Ally side and sell off.

Hope you liked it,
Bloodshrike

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.

Patch 3.08 Death Knigget Explosion

1/20/09

Patch 3.08 should be hitting the servers this morning, so it’ll be time to make a new Death Knight this afternoon. I’ve been wanting to play with Francois and his wife on Lightbringer, but really, really, haven’t wanted to level up any toons. This will allow me to have a 55 toon on that server, and since they haven’t gotten their DK’s past 60, we can all level together.

I think I’ll go with a Night Elf female. I like gnomes because of their passive +15 engineering racial ability, but at 55, a DK has the opportunity to have up to 375 engineering automatically, if you powerleveled them. Besides, this is a care-bear server (PvE), so I won’t need engineering to help prevent being ganked. I figure I’ll go Mining and Skinning up until 60+, then drop skinning for engineering once I get to Outlands. Same plan as Pallormortis on Demon Soul, just less pressure, since I only have to worry about mobs killing me. So for that reason, I’ll go with Night Elf, since Shadowmeld will have uses throughout the game, whereas the +15 engineering won’t.

In other news, Tsuris is now level 38 ½!!! I spent a bunch of time leveling him over the weekend, and now he’s going to be my highest level Leatherworker. Along the way of leveling, I dinged Exalted with Stormwind, since I had done so much questing there, plus a lot of quests give rep with them anyway. I had originally started both Tsuris and Preyonyou with the idea of grinding rep with Darnassus, to get the Nightsaber mounts, but this happened along the way. I did most of my questing in Dustwallow, and didn’t bother going back to Exodar for my level 30 Totem of Air quest until level 37, since I wanted to get Exalted with SW and get my horsies. Yup, Horsies, plural. I bought all four of the Stormwind mounts, and later on, I bought all three Darnassus cats. I also made a macro to randomly select what mount I’ll use, so it’ll keep it interesting.

/castrandom Pinto, Black Warhorse, Spotted Nightsaber….
You get the idea. Not sure if I named the mounts correctly, since I’m doing this off the top of my head while at work.

I also looked up upcoming profession quests for Tsuris. Of course, I know about the engineering spec quest, but the leatherworking ones will be new to me. Apparently, there’s two. Wild Leather, available around level 30, and your actual specialization quest, available at 40. Wild leather is like the blacksmithing quests, where you have to make a bunch of items and turn them in to receive additional recipes. A good amount of Thick Leather is needed, and TONS of Turtle Scales (considering I only have 7 in my bank). It looks like Ryoushigishi will have to brush the dust off his gun, and get to killing turtles in Tanaris. He’s level 37 I believe, and the turtles are around 40, so that should be good XP as well as turtle meat and turtle scales for Tsuris.

Also for Tsuris, I’m going to be doing the opposite of what I do with paladins. Since I want the Pet Bombling minipet on a least ONE toon on each server, I’ve decided to have my Shamans go Goblin first, get the Goblin Dragon Gun and minipet (not the Goblin Mortar, since he won’t be able to reload it), and respec to Gnomish. Yeah, it’s kinda a pain, and expensive, but……what else do I need to do with my gold? I’ve gotten a bunch of epics off the AH, I’ve gotten most if not all all recipes I’ll need in the foreseeable future, and….I got the gold and the time.

Surprisingly, my Ally account on Daggerspine has the most toons over level 35 now. Only Doomslinger (19 twink) and Preyonyou (26 Priest) are under that level. On Demon Soul, Burizadokyan (27 Priest), Morticide (26 druid), and Kukoshakaku (28 Shaman) still need to be leveled.

Recap on Gold: Demon Soul is about 50.3 K, Daggerspine is about 42K, and my baby account on Darrowmere is just over 16K. I attribute most of the gold to level 300 enchanting recipe scrolls on Demon Soul and Daggerspine, as well as my ruthless manipulation of the Glyph market on all servers. People have a natural tendency to try to sell items at any price, and usually end up driving the market down. For the people who rely on the AH for materials, rather than grinding for them, that’s a good thing. For the sellers, it’s a bad thing. So, for example, if I see some of the glyphs that I normally sell for at least 20+ gold being sold at 5-8 gold, I’ll price my regular 4 glyphs (since I only make 4 at one time, since it’s not wise to flood the market) at a high price, like 30-35 gold. By the next day, the lower priced glyphs have been sold off, and people are undercutting my high priced glyphs, leaving me free to undercut them, still at a nice profit.

I'm counting my rocks.....

Chris Rock -
No one cares when you get outta school-
"I just got outta school! Got my masters!"
"So what- dont come around here with all that readin and shit- see I can count too 1,2,4,9 So- what! You be countin these rcks byotch!"
"but I got my masters!"
"So what you my master now???"

1/16/09

Whew, Mastery of professions is expensive! I finally got around to leveling Bloodshrike on Demon Soul in his professions, since he’s 55. Alchemy probably took 200 gold to powerlevel, and it would have been higher, but I had a ton of herbs saved up from Morticide camping the Darkmoon Faire for herbs and motes. I haven’t picked Potion or Transmute as a specialty yet, and I haven’t researched where/when to do that. You probably have to be level 60 or something, but I’m an impatient little sod, and want to powerlevel professions as soon as I can.

Bloodshrike’s Engineering is probably around 330 right now. I’m torn between making Arcanite Dragonlings, since I had Bloodshrike learn it, and it turned yellow at around 320 engineering, or making Health Potion Injectors, since he made a ton of Super Health Potions while leveling up Alchemy. Or, I could make Crashin’ Thrashin’ Robots, since I learned that at 325, and those should sell for a good price. Aaaaugh, too many choices!
Arcanite Dragonlings are super expensive to make. 1 Mithril Mechanical Dragonling, 8 Delicate Arcanite transformers, 6 Thorium Widgets, 10 Enchanted Thorium Bars, 6 Enchanted Leather….. I could probably sell one for 500-600 gold, and come out about even on mats. Since I’m making 9 of them for my toons, it’s cost efficient for me to make them first, and worry about selling them later. If I do sell enough of them, it won’t be a problem to come back and make more of them for myself.

Tsuris is now level 34 1/2, waiting for me to come back and finally get him to level 35, and be able to finally powerlevel my first toon past 225 leatherworking. I think I’ll probably go Dragonscale LW, since he’s Enhancement spec, and I like doing DPS rather than healing.

Of Tabby Cats and Faires

1/9/09
What have my toons been up to lately? Morticide on Demon Soul had been camping the Dalaran Spellscribe in Silverpine Forest, hoping for the Black Tabby Cat to drop. The cat is usually sold for at least 200-800 gold on Ally side, since Allies can’t kill the Spellscribe, and he’s the one mob that usually drops it. It only dropped once before the Darkmoon Faire started, and since my druids are usually the ones that have herbalism/engineering, they usually don’t have a lot of stuff in their bags, since all herbs go directly to the alchemist or scribe on that server.

So he’s camping the Faire, getting all the herbs and motes he can. I’m also getting the Wood frog and Tree frog non-attack pets from Flik, though it’s annoying to have to chase him down. I’ll try to start collecting Dark Iron Ale mugs from the AH, since that’s the only way for someone to get Jub Jub, the other non-attack pet available there. They were about 25 gold each on the AH though, so I’ll wait until the faire goes away, and the price will probably drop.

But with Abyss Crystals, Francois can buy them, sell them to me, and I can just sell them directly, no need to craft anything with them. At 130-200 gold a pop, that’s easy money!

Gimmershred is doing the same thing on Darrowmere, but I have Misericorde still camped in Silverpine, killing the Spellscribe. I’ve probably had about 5 of the cats drop for me so far, though I’m waiting for Francois’s toons to actually have a sale of one on Alliance side. 300-400 gold isn’t that much, rite rite? :p

I’m glad of another thing with the Wrath expansion. Abyss crystals!! For a while, Void Crystals were my main way of moving gold from Horde to Ally side, or vice versa. But after a while, the price dropped from about 40 gold each to about 2-4 gold each. Not worth Francois stocking up on, and not worth me taking the time to sell. Luckily, on Demon Soul and Daggerspine, I’ve gotten both my mages up to 300 enchanting, so they can do Crusader, Lifesteal, Fiery, Icey, Unholy, and Major Health (100) to chest. Those sell very nicely on the AH after I’ve put them on vellums, and it’s easy for Francois to get the mats for them and have me buy them on the Neutral AH for 1 copper a stack of Greater Eternal Essence, Illusion Dust, Large and Small Radiant/Brilliant shards, and other things. Francois’ toons try to get a bargain on them, but it doesn’t really matter that much, since the gold they’ve made on the opposide side of the server cost me a few silver or gold, and it all gets sold for 100 or 1000 times its original price.

Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!

12/29/08

Since the Feast of Winter Veil began, it’s given me the kick in the butt needed to level up some of my toons, so I could do the “You’re a mean one, Mr. Greench” and “Save Metzen the Reindeer” quests before the event ends. On Daggerspine, I leveled up a bunch of my toons by doing the Greench quest in Alterac mountains, along with all the other quests from Southshore. Ryo went from 37 to 39, Gwidd got to 39 as well, Aos got to 43, Kishi got to 44, and Panzer finally dinged 40 (woot, plate mail time!).

Hangfire is level 35 though, so it’ll be interesting to see if he can take down the Greench. But, with a Mechanical Dragonling and Shrink Ray to help, along with a Big One bomb and a Target Dummy, not to mention the Lifebloom buff from Herbalism, I think he’ll be able to get it done.

I’m doing the same thing on Demon Soul too, having my toons get all the quests from Tarren Mill before heading up to Alterac. For most of the toons that can do the quests, they’re level 40+ already, so it’s not that hard for them, but the Metzen quest might be a bit tough, since he’s surrounded by level 40 something pirates, and they keep on adding to the fight, since they run and get help. Granted, this was my experience with my level 55 hunter, and I wasn’t really worried about pulling in singles, I just wanted to nuke everything as fast as possible.

Oooh, oooooh! Tsuris finally hit level 30 last night. For some reason, my Shaman/leatherworkers, Druid/herbalists, and Priests don’t get a lot of play from me. I’ve never gotten a leatherworker above 225, because all 3 of them are still in their 20’s. Well, until last night. I decided to clear out some of Tsuris’s quests, one thing led to another, I laid a trail of slaughter all the way through Duskwood….y’know, the usual. I was doing the Wolves on our Heels/8-legged Menaces/Lean wolf flank quests in the northwest part of Duskwood, and I got bored waiting for the meat to drop, so I was starting to see how many wolves I could collect before AOE’ing them with Solid Dynamite, then cutting them down with my shiny axe buffed with Windfury. Granted, those were only level 20ish wolves, and I’m level 30, but enough low level enemies can still hurt.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I took engineering to its low level limits. At level 29, I picked up the quest to kill 12 Darkrunner Worgen. There’s a group of them directly west of Darkshire, near the mountain in the middle of Duskwood. I had been picking off a few Darkrunners here and there, but when I saw the village, I decided to do a full-on attack, and wipe it all out. I buffed up with a scroll of stamina, cooking for +8 stamina and spirit, got my electrical orbs spinning, and used my Mechanical Dragonling as I was running to attack. I quickly swapped it out for the Cloaking Device, since I hadn’t entered combat yet, and wanted the option to bug out if it looked like I was going to lose. I jumped into the village, tossed down a Stoneskin totem, started swinging at the nearest Worgen, and quickly let off a Big One bomb (400-500 damage). Following that, I threw down a Target dummy, to hopefully distract them for a second or two. At level 10, they’d keep hitting the Target dummy until it blew up, but at level 25+, you put out too much aggro, and the monsters see you as more of a threat than some paper figurine waving back and forth. It was a bit iffy for a second, but I got through through the fight with some judicious use of my Flame Shock spell and Magma? totem for additional damage, not too mention my dragonling chewing on them from the side. After the fight is done, I’m at 10% health, but still alive, and he runs off and starts attacking another Worgen! I used a Mageweave bandage, and went to help the dragonling, since I knew he’d be despawning soon anyway. But hey, at least he bought me some time to bandage…..which I would have had anyway, if he wasn’t such a bloodthirsty little beast…..ehh, whaddya gonna do.

The Definitive Guide to making Gold in WOW

12/23/08

I'm not sure how much I've covered in my previous posts, so I figured I would do a recap of easy ways to make Gold in World of Warcraft.

1 - Beg for it. Swallow your pride, ignore people giving you advice on how to make money by taking up gathering/crafting professions, and spam the trade channel tirelessly with comments like "I'm level 6, and need 10 gold 4 new armorz" "Can anyone give me money for my epic ride? I pay back next week, swear!"
It will work, eventually. Someone will get tired of your whining and give you a few gold to shut you up.
(The above is sarcasm, just felt like listing it)

2 - Take up a gathering profession. Herbalism, Skinning, and Mining will all give you a good gold return for the few seconds it takes to gather a metal/herb node or skin a beast.

3 - Take up a crafting profession. Leatherworking, Tailoring, Blacksmithing, Enchanting, Jewelcrafting, Inscription, and even Engineering can produce items to make you money. Inscription is the newest one, and as such, if you log in every 20+ hours to do your Minor Inscription Research, you can make a lot of money off the minor glyphs pretty early on. The other professions usually don't start making money until later levels.

4 - If you've downloaded Auctioneer, you can use Bottomscanner or whatever it's called to gather prices of all the items in the AH. Keep doing this regularly, and your computer will build up a database of prices for the items. This will allow you to see when someone posts an item below the average price, which you can buy and resell for a profit. (Not my favorite way to make gold, but to each his own)

5 - Whenever you pass by a tradeskill supplies vendor, peruse their stock to see if they have recipes for sale. For example, Rikqiz in Booty Bay sells the Shadowskin Gloves recipe for 35 silver, but you can easily sell it for 5-8 gold in the Auction House. Some recipes sell very well, others bomb. You kinda have to develop a sense for them.

6 - Become a Neutral Auction House (NAH) supplier. There are certain recipes that are Horde or Alliance ONLY, buyable only by someone of that faction. But, if you buy them, and bring them to the NAH, you can post them for much, much more than they're worth. The Pattern: Red Whelp Gloves is sold in the Wetlands by Wenna Silkbeard for 14 silver and 40 copper. If you left an Alliance alt there, and logged in every few hours, you could build up a bunch of the recipes for only a few gold. But, you can sell each of those recipes for at least 6-10 gold on the NAH, since Horde players can't normally get them. Check here for a full list. http://www.wowwiki.com/Faction_exclusive_recipes
The Recipe: Tasty Lion Steak can be bought on Alliance auction houses for 1-2 gold, since it's quest reward, and not everyone decided to take up cooking. You could probably get at least 20-30 gold for it on the NAH.
Formula: Enchant Chest - Lesser Mana is sold for 4 silver in the Drag in Orgrimmar, and I'm guessing you could get 8-10 gold for it.
There's also recipes that you only have to go a little ways into a profession to get, like Plans: Heavy Copper Longsword & Plans: Ironforge Breastplate, a level 5 alliance player can powerlevel his blacksmithing to about 50, make the necessary items, complete the quests, and be able to sell the Ironforge plans for at least 100g.
I'm conjecturing on some of these items, because I stopped posting on the neutral auction house a long time ago. I discovered a better way, shown below

7 - Become a smuggler. Know someone who plays Warcraft, and isn't on your server already? Congrats, they just became your new best friend. You can work out an arrangement, where they create a toon on the opposite faction, you buy a worthless item from them for a few gold, and they go buy the recipes/pets you want. They bring them back to the NAH, post them for 1 copper bid/buyout, and congrats, you have a recipe/pet that you didn't have to spend a ton of gold on. If they're really accomodating, they can get multiples, and you can bring them back to your AH to make a killing.
The 12 cooking recipes (except the Curiously Tasty Omelet) sold by Kendor Kabonka in Old Town in Stormwind, on the second story landing above the cooking trainer can be bought for about 1 gold for the set. Get them over to Horde side, and you can sell them for 6-8-10-15-20-30 gold EACH, depending on what people will pay for them. Go high, and work your way down.
The Savory Deviate Delight and the lesser known Elixir of Giant Growth recipes are Barrens only drops, which means Horde toons are usually the only characters to get them, as Allies don't spend too much time grinding those mobs. You can probably get the Giant Growth recipe for 2-10 gold, and the Savory recipe for 20-50 gold. Get them to Ally side (with your friend helping you), and the Giant Growth can sell for up to 100g, and the Savory will sell for 250-300g.

If you do a little of each of the above steps (except #1), you'll soon have enough to provide you with enough gold to do whatever you want. If you don't suffer from altoholism like me, your main will have more gold than they know what to do with.