One of Strev’s daily routines is scanning through page after page of listings hoping to snag a good deal on items to resale for a tidy profit. I’ve found that I tend to make a lot more overall from these ventures when I target a large number of “little things” instead of dipping a toe into the waters of speculating on blue and purple gear—it’s too easy to take a bath as the prices plummet. Although this basic strategy isn’t without some risk (Anybody need a few dozen stacks of Cobalt Ore?), I’ve been fairly successful wealth generation overall.
Where does the money go? Since Cataclysm released, I’ve dropped about 9k on various flight speed increases, 23k on leveling trade skills, 2k on a few items to stockpile for resale in a few months and about 6k on various enchantments, enhancements, gems, and frippery… and still have about 21k banked at the moment. For the “big players”, this is a trivial amount I know, but it’s very comfortable for me.
By and large, people with disposable coin tend to drop it on one of four things: vanity pets, vanity steeds, leveling professions and item upgrades. Frankly, I don’t really care too much about pets and mounts. Some of them are ‘nifty’, but not so much that I can justify blowing thousands of gold on one. The professions I want to have I have and at maximum level—maybe. I’ve considered playing around with tailoring or jewelcrafting but neither appeal enough to make a time and coin investment…yet.
That leaves gear. Evening time restrictions have left me unable to dungeon run with the guild as of late and I simply refuse to pug in Cataclysm. This means gear has to come from AH Bind-on-Equips or reputation rewards. As I was browsing the AH, I found a nice set of pants. Stupidly nice pants. 11850 gold nice. Breeches of Mended Nightmares (+512 stamina, +321 intellect, crit and haste and a red gem slot for good measure). Maxdps.com confirmed there’s only a couple of better options for the slot.
For a disturbingly long period of time I stared at the pants and contemplated my options. Should I burn over half of my nest egg on pants? What else is the money good for? I clicked the ‘buy option’. The auctioneer asked for confirmation. I chickened out.
In the end I decided to give it a week and see if the price drops. If it doesn’t, a week or two from now I may deem the money is trivial enough that I can just buy without feeling immediate buyer’s remorse. For now, though… let’s see how I can make that extra capital work for me.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Miner Diversions
Anyth is my hunter that mostly lives amongst mothballs. I take her out of storage generally once a week to run with “Team Lowbie”, although now that they’re pushing through the mid-70s, it seems a somewhat ill-fitting term. She’s mediocre at best, suffering from a horrid lack of decent gear and a recent talent change has left her on the “Power Underwhelming” side of the DPS charts, but at least she isn’t stealing aggro from the tank anymore. Time to make her earn her keep. Although I’ve been very, very successful with making gold with Strev, I’d been pondering a way to diversify my holdings, as it were, and make a little extra scratch with Anyth when I don’t feel like tooling around with Strev.
I’d considered getting her herbalism, but I scratched that plan when I remembered both Myrial and Michaelle have that skill and the last thing they needed was another teammate fighting over nodes. How about mining? As I recollected, mining was a decent enough income producer, so I plunked down a few copper and flew around Elwynn Forest looking for ore.
After ten minutes and six nodes I realized it was going to take a long time to get anywhere productive, so I looked up mining on wow-professions.com and discovered to my joy, I could buy my way into the upper tiers by smelting ores from the AH into bars. With a new-found mission and a thousand gold ‘loan’ from Strev, Anyth shopped her heart out and smelted her way…to about 350. At that point all of her smelting recipes were gray and she’d actually have to mine to increase her mining skill. Heh.
Fortunately, this meant she was “Northrend” ready for ore. I installed the “Gatherer” addon and flew over to Sholazar Basin and went to town. If you’ve never played with this addon, it is godly. It marks on your map places where nodes spawn that you or your guildmates discover. It also can display a transparent overlay on your screen nearby potential nodes and maintains a ‘trail’ of where you’ve just traveled. By the time you’ve made a few circuits of a zone, you have a fairly good map and path to take to hit as many nodes as possible.
I quickly learned than flying at slow speed was going to be a serious pain, so I hit up the Bank of Strev for another 4.5k for Artisan flight. This was a solid investment and I have no buyer’s remorse for once.
Anyth flew around ‘mapping’ out the Basin’s nodes. Each one yielded in addition to ‘stuff’ a little over 3k xp. It was actually possible (if not practical) to level through mining. After a time, I had a pack full of cobalt and saronite and was ready to graduate to Obsidium, one of three new ores from Cataclysm. After making my way to Uldum, I discovered vast and plentiful areas of Elementium, which were far above my skill level to acquire, and instead flew across the length of the continent to Mount Hyjal to find a depressing number of fellow miners scooping up the few nodes I could find. It’ll take a few days to cross that Elementium barrier (particularly since Anyth isn’t an everyday character), but hints of Uldum’s treasures haunt my dreams.
(Note: In 24 hours Anyth’s mining revenues paid back the initial 1k loan. It’ll be a while on the flight money.)
I’d considered getting her herbalism, but I scratched that plan when I remembered both Myrial and Michaelle have that skill and the last thing they needed was another teammate fighting over nodes. How about mining? As I recollected, mining was a decent enough income producer, so I plunked down a few copper and flew around Elwynn Forest looking for ore.
After ten minutes and six nodes I realized it was going to take a long time to get anywhere productive, so I looked up mining on wow-professions.com and discovered to my joy, I could buy my way into the upper tiers by smelting ores from the AH into bars. With a new-found mission and a thousand gold ‘loan’ from Strev, Anyth shopped her heart out and smelted her way…to about 350. At that point all of her smelting recipes were gray and she’d actually have to mine to increase her mining skill. Heh.
Fortunately, this meant she was “Northrend” ready for ore. I installed the “Gatherer” addon and flew over to Sholazar Basin and went to town. If you’ve never played with this addon, it is godly. It marks on your map places where nodes spawn that you or your guildmates discover. It also can display a transparent overlay on your screen nearby potential nodes and maintains a ‘trail’ of where you’ve just traveled. By the time you’ve made a few circuits of a zone, you have a fairly good map and path to take to hit as many nodes as possible.
I quickly learned than flying at slow speed was going to be a serious pain, so I hit up the Bank of Strev for another 4.5k for Artisan flight. This was a solid investment and I have no buyer’s remorse for once.
Anyth flew around ‘mapping’ out the Basin’s nodes. Each one yielded in addition to ‘stuff’ a little over 3k xp. It was actually possible (if not practical) to level through mining. After a time, I had a pack full of cobalt and saronite and was ready to graduate to Obsidium, one of three new ores from Cataclysm. After making my way to Uldum, I discovered vast and plentiful areas of Elementium, which were far above my skill level to acquire, and instead flew across the length of the continent to Mount Hyjal to find a depressing number of fellow miners scooping up the few nodes I could find. It’ll take a few days to cross that Elementium barrier (particularly since Anyth isn’t an everyday character), but hints of Uldum’s treasures haunt my dreams.
(Note: In 24 hours Anyth’s mining revenues paid back the initial 1k loan. It’ll be a while on the flight money.)
Monday, December 27, 2010
Blackrock Caverns Strategy
Ok, I’ve put this off long enough. Today we delve inside Blackrock Caverns (BRC), which is so pleasantly oldschool I thought it was a revamped classic dungeon I’d missed somehow. The dungeon itself is a new wing of Blackrock Mountain and is conveniently located near the northern entrance. For those of you who just wiped, Googled, and found this: from the spirit go up, across the chain, hop down just before you get to the end, run a little east, take the north passage by the summon stone and it’s the first passage to the east. Inside is a network of caves and tunnels mixing with dwarven architecture, lending the whole a very ‘dungeon dive’ atmosphere.
The population is mostly orcs, ogres, twilight hammer, with elementals thrown in for flavor. Mages: nearly everything here has at least one sheepable target in a trash pull and there are plenty of corners to duck around if you need to save that invis cooldown.
Very close to the entrance you’ll find the first boss—a huge ass ogre named Rom’ogg Bonecrusher, who has been responsible for more wipes for me in this dungeon than any other (so far). He’s a tank and spank that summons a constant stream of adds that must be gunned down and he has two “gotchas”. The first is a ‘quake’ attack that does massive damage to people who don’t get out of the fire fast enough. The second is the one that wipes groups: he pulls the entire group next to him with “chains of woe” as he begins casting a point-blank-area-of-effect “I kill you” spell. You must target the chains, kill them, and get the hell out of dodge before the spell completes. This can be very difficult with a large number of adds still up and I highly recommend having people make targeting macros (/target chain) beforehand.
The next boss is Corla, some evil twilight sorceress chick, who would probably die for her master a thousand times. Fortunately, once is enough for me. This one requires a little team coordination. In front of her are three servants being smacked with beams of EVIL energy. The three beams must be blocked (usually by your DPS group) while the tank tanks. Players standing in the beam get a fast and constantly ticking counter. If it reaches 100, you get mind-controlled and the party wipes. If you don’t stand in the beam, the servants evolve into OMGITSKILLINGME nightmares from beyond and the party wipes. Also, Corla will cast a number of spells that should be countered at every opportunity. The proper way to handle the beams is to block them until your debuff stack reaches “80”, step out of the beam until the debuff expires, then hustle back into the beam to repeat the cycle. With her spells countered and nothing evolving this becomes an easy encounter.
Karsh Steelbender is a fairly interesting fight with a golemy-elementally-type thing. It takes place on a large bullseye with a pillar of flame in the middle, a “safe” ring, a grated ring that can spout giant gouts of flame, and the rest of the room. After clearing all of the trash in the room, the tank will run in to engage the construct. Karsh starts out practically immune to damage but as he’s dragged through the pillar in the middle he gains a stackable large buff to damage and debuff to defense. In a way, this fight isn’t so much a DPS race as it is a balancing act for the tank.
The next boss is entirely optional: it’s a huge ass corehound named “Beauty” and has three miniboss pups that join the fight. Do not under any circumstances kill ‘Runty’ as it will send Beauty into an enrage frenzy. Otherwise, treat this like a dragon fight: tank should turn things away from the party and everyone should stay out of the fire. Kill the adds first.
Finally, there’s Lord Obsidius. This fight is vaguely reminiscent of the Blood Council in ICC. The boss has two ‘shadows’ that can’t be killed or CC’d (except slowing effects), but can certainly dish out damage. They must be kited away from the tank by two DPSers while working on the boss. Periodically the boss will ‘trade places’ with one of the shadows and that shadow’s kiter needs to pick up the tank’s previous target.
All in all, it’s a great dungeon to cut teeth on. The non-heroic version targets levels 78-82 or so and drops level 308 (I think) blue gear—a nice way to start upgrading from LK purples.
The population is mostly orcs, ogres, twilight hammer, with elementals thrown in for flavor. Mages: nearly everything here has at least one sheepable target in a trash pull and there are plenty of corners to duck around if you need to save that invis cooldown.
Very close to the entrance you’ll find the first boss—a huge ass ogre named Rom’ogg Bonecrusher, who has been responsible for more wipes for me in this dungeon than any other (so far). He’s a tank and spank that summons a constant stream of adds that must be gunned down and he has two “gotchas”. The first is a ‘quake’ attack that does massive damage to people who don’t get out of the fire fast enough. The second is the one that wipes groups: he pulls the entire group next to him with “chains of woe” as he begins casting a point-blank-area-of-effect “I kill you” spell. You must target the chains, kill them, and get the hell out of dodge before the spell completes. This can be very difficult with a large number of adds still up and I highly recommend having people make targeting macros (/target chain) beforehand.
The next boss is Corla, some evil twilight sorceress chick, who would probably die for her master a thousand times. Fortunately, once is enough for me. This one requires a little team coordination. In front of her are three servants being smacked with beams of EVIL energy. The three beams must be blocked (usually by your DPS group) while the tank tanks. Players standing in the beam get a fast and constantly ticking counter. If it reaches 100, you get mind-controlled and the party wipes. If you don’t stand in the beam, the servants evolve into OMGITSKILLINGME nightmares from beyond and the party wipes. Also, Corla will cast a number of spells that should be countered at every opportunity. The proper way to handle the beams is to block them until your debuff stack reaches “80”, step out of the beam until the debuff expires, then hustle back into the beam to repeat the cycle. With her spells countered and nothing evolving this becomes an easy encounter.
Karsh Steelbender is a fairly interesting fight with a golemy-elementally-type thing. It takes place on a large bullseye with a pillar of flame in the middle, a “safe” ring, a grated ring that can spout giant gouts of flame, and the rest of the room. After clearing all of the trash in the room, the tank will run in to engage the construct. Karsh starts out practically immune to damage but as he’s dragged through the pillar in the middle he gains a stackable large buff to damage and debuff to defense. In a way, this fight isn’t so much a DPS race as it is a balancing act for the tank.
The next boss is entirely optional: it’s a huge ass corehound named “Beauty” and has three miniboss pups that join the fight. Do not under any circumstances kill ‘Runty’ as it will send Beauty into an enrage frenzy. Otherwise, treat this like a dragon fight: tank should turn things away from the party and everyone should stay out of the fire. Kill the adds first.
Finally, there’s Lord Obsidius. This fight is vaguely reminiscent of the Blood Council in ICC. The boss has two ‘shadows’ that can’t be killed or CC’d (except slowing effects), but can certainly dish out damage. They must be kited away from the tank by two DPSers while working on the boss. Periodically the boss will ‘trade places’ with one of the shadows and that shadow’s kiter needs to pick up the tank’s previous target.
All in all, it’s a great dungeon to cut teeth on. The non-heroic version targets levels 78-82 or so and drops level 308 (I think) blue gear—a nice way to start upgrading from LK purples.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Worgen in a Winter Wonderland
As snow fell outside on Christmas for the first time in Atlanta since the 1800s, I sat around idly sipping something warm and wondering what to do. I’d completed my dailies and there was time to kill, so I bit the silver bullet and rolled up a worgen. In moments, Onsunshine stood in the streets of Gilnaes, ready to lend a paw in the battle to save the city.
Over the course of a few hours I slogged through the starter zone. For me the zone was very much “Aliens Vs. Predator”…. 15 minutes of awesome surrounded by two and a half hours of suck.
I’ll give full credit where it’s due: some of the quests were downright engaging and entertaining. “Grandma’s House” was decorated amusingly with portraits of presumably grandchildren on the mantle. Gazing upon the aftermath of Deathwing’s assault brought a long and thoughtful look. The atmosphere was sound and the story of a quasi-Victorian city under siege and the plight, fight, and flight of the survivors moved briskly. So why did I hate it?
Ian noted that I disliked the area because it was gloomy and depressing. Although I dismissed the comment out of hand at the time, it likely factored in to a small degree. Although it was appropriate for the setting, I don’t play games to feel depressed. Just sayin’. My biggest gripe has to be the sheer volume of killtenrats quests. Although I’m generally ok with them, I realized that, for the most part, most of my playtime had been devoured just doing one right after the other. Generally, everything that wasn’t a killtenrats was completed in ninety seconds or less (“grab a book from the shed next to me”, “talk to the person standing over there”, and so forth.) so a vastly disproportionate period of time was spent doing the ‘non-fun’ grind. To top things off, the quest line is so linear it may as well be on a railroad track. Not only should you kill the ten rats, you MUST to do anything else on the island and since you’re walled off from the ‘real’ world in a starter instance, you don’t have the option of doing anything else.
When I finally left the isle, Onsunshine was level 13 and I’m enjoying the druid mechanics immensely.
Over the course of a few hours I slogged through the starter zone. For me the zone was very much “Aliens Vs. Predator”…. 15 minutes of awesome surrounded by two and a half hours of suck.
I’ll give full credit where it’s due: some of the quests were downright engaging and entertaining. “Grandma’s House” was decorated amusingly with portraits of presumably grandchildren on the mantle. Gazing upon the aftermath of Deathwing’s assault brought a long and thoughtful look. The atmosphere was sound and the story of a quasi-Victorian city under siege and the plight, fight, and flight of the survivors moved briskly. So why did I hate it?
Ian noted that I disliked the area because it was gloomy and depressing. Although I dismissed the comment out of hand at the time, it likely factored in to a small degree. Although it was appropriate for the setting, I don’t play games to feel depressed. Just sayin’. My biggest gripe has to be the sheer volume of killtenrats quests. Although I’m generally ok with them, I realized that, for the most part, most of my playtime had been devoured just doing one right after the other. Generally, everything that wasn’t a killtenrats was completed in ninety seconds or less (“grab a book from the shed next to me”, “talk to the person standing over there”, and so forth.) so a vastly disproportionate period of time was spent doing the ‘non-fun’ grind. To top things off, the quest line is so linear it may as well be on a railroad track. Not only should you kill the ten rats, you MUST to do anything else on the island and since you’re walled off from the ‘real’ world in a starter instance, you don’t have the option of doing anything else.
When I finally left the isle, Onsunshine was level 13 and I’m enjoying the druid mechanics immensely.
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