"Say," you may wonder...

... "What's that crazy 'Azeroth on 20 Silver a Day' guy up to these days?"

Glad you asked!

I've been running random dungeons on Aeth.  Random HoT's and random regular Cata dungeons, mostly.

Seven last night, in fact.  One after another.  Boom, boom, booooooooom.

Why?

You see, the first seven random heroic end time dungeons give you valor points - 150 each for completion, plus something like 77 justice points per boss.  You knew that already, though, right?

Gotta get those VP for gear, after all!  It's about a 10 minute queue for DPS on my server, so I spend some time in Uldum flying around and mining while I wait for the next queue to pop.

Now, the random regular Cata dungeons don't give VP.  Instead, the first seven give you 140 JP each for completion, plus something like 33 JP per boss.

If you add it up, that can be around 250 - 350 JP per random regular Cata dungeon.  Plus, the queue is generally really short - on the order of a minute or two.  From what I've seen, you end up with a lot of well-geared players in a mix of PvE/PvP gear, so I don't think I've had any of the random Cata dungeons take appreciably longer than 20 minutes or so.

So, basically, I've been stockpiling JP.

And spending JP.

The week before last, I was depleting my stash of VP when I realized that I was approaching the cap on JP.  So I wandered over the the JP vendors to see what I might convert my JP into.  In the past, I've converted them into BoP boots and bracers for a bit of a profit, but for whatever reason, I checked out the JP goods vendor this time.

Looked over his goods, said "Meh," went to go buy some boots... and hesitated.

Huh.  You can turn 375 JP into 250 honor points?  Why is that catching my attention?

Well, I guess I can eventually use it to buy some better PvP gear, but... hmmm.

Wait.

Aren't the PvP mounts purchasable for honor points now?

A quick check, the PvP mount vendor located, and HOLY COW THEY'RE ONLY 2000 HONOR APIECE?

Let's see - I already have one of the PvP mounts, so that's four more mounts!

How many do I have now, anyways?  Let's see...  huh, 95.

Ninety.  Five.

Plus four.

Makes... ninety nine?

And... wait, I'm about 10 tickets short of getting another Darkmoon Fair mount.

Ninety.  Five.

Plus four.

Plus one.

Makes... a Mountain o' Mounts!

Yeeeeeee-frickin'-ha.

So, yeah.  I've been farming JP.  Blowing it all on PvP mounts.

And, really, having a fun time doing it.

Another 7 dungeons or so and maybe I can start stockpiling JP to covert to honor and buy some decent PvP gear...

Is It Just Me?

Does anyone else amuse themselves by grabbing the "Love Is In The Air" daily quest, running over to  Stormwind's Old Town, and tossing bonbons and perfume at the thugs loitering around outside of "The Five Deadly Venoms"?

Makes me chuckle every time.

Making Gold

Hand over fist, man, hand over fist.

Well - maybe not quite that much, but on the order of 8k gold over the past few days, with very little work involved.

I'm selling gems on the AH.

No, not cut gems - though, as a JC, I could do that.  The profit margins are probably better, but really, that takes a whole lot more time and effort - identifying which cuts are selling, which are more profitable, and so on - than I'm willing to put into things.  For me, making cash is a way to fund other aspects of the game, not an end in and of itself; and spending 20 minutes a day to pull in 3k seems like a pretty good rate of return for me.

No, I'm selling raw gems on the AH.

You see, I noticed that - on my server, at least - Carnelian is going for between 100g and 130g apiece.  Probably because three of them go into the Inferno Ruby transmute, and those are going for about 330g each, minimum.

Obsidium Ore and Elementium Ore each go for about 6g each, which means there's generally a decent supply in the sub-6g range.

So, I'll buy about 20 stacks of ore - cost of 2400g.  Then I'll just crank through and prospect it - that's 80 prospects total.  That will (conservatively) net me about 16 each of the green gems, and 4 each of the blue gems.  More green gems and less blue gems if I'm prospecting Obsidium, more less green gems and more blue gems if I'm prospecting Elementium, obviously.

16 x Carnelian @100g = 1600g

16 x Nightstone @ 10g = 160g

16 x Hessonite @ 10g = 160g

16 x Jasper @ 7g = 112g

16 x Zephyrite @ 6g = 96g

16 x Alicite @ 2g = 32g

4 x Amberjewel @ 8g = 32g

4 x Demonseye @ 21g = 84g

4 x Dream Emerald @ 30g = 120g

4 x Ember Topaz @ 32g = 128g

4 x Inferno Rubies @ 300g = 1200g

4 x Ocean Saphire @ 15g = 60g

Income - 3784g.  Outlay - 2400g.  Profit - 1384g.

Again, this is a conservative calculation.  I've actually been getting closer to 2000g profit on prospecting 20 stacks of ore, so either I've been lucky with my drop rates, or I'm missing something in my figuring.

In any case, it's made me about 8k gold over the last four days.  I put the blue gems up on the AH as single units, unless their price drops below 5g for some reason... then, I just stuff them back in the bank.   Green gems get listed as stacks of 3 gems or singles, with the exception of Zephyrite and Alicite, which get sold in bulk (stacks of 20) or just get vendored if the price drops below 2g.

I'm going to continue this for a few days, and see how it works out.  I suspect it will continue to be a decent money maker for some time to come.

It's That Time

Just cranking through the Love is In The Air dailies, Aeth finally managed to pick up enough tokens to get her Swift Lovebird.  Along the way, she even managed to pick up a Vile Fumigator's Mask, which will definitely be going into void storage for future transmog potential.

Oh, and in case you missed it, Blizzard posted an updated talent calculator for MoP.

Let's see... anything... in... ter... es... 

Holy cow.

Some magey bits to consider:

Temporal Shield - level 30 Arcane Mage talent.  "Envelops you in a temporal field for 4 sec.  Damage taken while shielded will be undone over 6 sec."

Invocation - level 90 Arcane Mage talent.  "Your evocation spell no longer has a cooldown, but you no longer have any base mana regeneration.  Completing an Evocate causes you to 20% increased spell damage for 30 sec."

Incanter's Shield - level 90 Frost Mage talent.  "Absorb's damage, converting the damage into mana, up to a maximum of 30% of your maximum mana.  Lasts 8 sec.  When your Incanter's Shield is destroyed, you gain 30% increased spell power for 30 sec."

Just...  wow.  Invocation with Mana Adept?  Burn to 40% mana, cast Evocate.  6 seconds later, burn again.  Couple with Arcane Power to get an additional 20% damage for 15 seconds.  That's 15 seconds - 10 GCDs - of 40% bonus damage, another 10 GCDs of 20% bonus damage, and if you haven't managed to burn through 60% of your mana by then you're really not trying.  Evocate, lather, rinse, repeat, with the Arcane Power tossed in on every third rotation.

Incanter's shield?  "Hey, hold on.  I need to run and stand in the fire for a few seconds."  Given the amount of Bad Stuff (TM) that generally gets thrown around, this is a potentially always-up 30% spellpower increase coupled with a 30% mana return.

Oh, yeah.  MoP looks like it's going to be fun.

50/50

Two major milestone recently.

First... I've managed to crack the 50k gold mark.  Well, actually, I hit that goal a while back, but it was total gold across multiple servers.  I've since reached 50k gold on one server, which is more of a milestone.

I've got to emphasize that while I've occasionally engaged in some minor gold-making activities - crafting and selling a batch of Mysterious Fortune Cards, or some glyphs, or starting PvP cloth gear,  etc. - most of my "gold making" has simply been accomplished as a by-product of playing the game.  Waiting for a queue to pop?  I'll mine a bit in Uldum... and in a couple of weeks, that ore will hit the AH, or become a stack of Inferno Rubies.  Accumulated a couple of stacks of cloth from soloing Northrend dungeons?  Ship it off to my tailor and make some Frostweave Bags.

Playing more or less casually, without any focus on gold making, has still allowed me to accumulate over 50k in savings.  That's after shelling out tons of cash for pets, mounts, glyphs, rep items, DMF quest items, BoE gear, potions, flasks and... you get the idea.

In other words, there's a reason why I'm telling you "no" when you whisper me begging for gold.

Second milestone?  Reached exalted with the DMF, which got Aeth the achievement for 50 Exalted Reputations.  It was kind of cool in that I got to exalted by turning in A Treatise on Strategy, which meant that I was able to get three achievements simultaneously: 50 Exalted Reputations, Darkmoon Dungeoneer and Darkmoon Despoiler.

The next week or so will be spent on holiday activities - primarily farming Love Tokens for a Swift Lovebird, though if I have enough tokens left over, I may buy a couple of Truesilver Shafted Arrows to put up on the AH at some point.

Two to the Sixth

Yesterday, I had the chance to download and try out the new 64-bit client for WoW.

For a piece of "unsupported" software, it's rather nice.

Loading screens, particularly the initial loading screen, seems to complete much more quickly for me.  Frame rates are generally better, to the point where I was able to do crank up my graphics settings to "Ultra" for the the Benedictus fight in Hour of Twilight.

Overall, very nice.  I think I'll be using the 64-bit client for a while longer, maybe see how the frame rate performs in some more chaotic and crowded situations.

One note: the Mac link for "How to tell if you have a 64-bit operating system" are not quite correct.  The link takes you to the Mac support page that tells you how to answer the question, "How do I tell if I'm using the 64-bit kernel?"  Which isn't what you really want to know.  You can run 64-bit applications on a 64-bit processor even if you're currently running the 32-bit kernel.

Instead, what you really want are the instructions that describe "How to tell if your Intel-based Mac has a 32-bit or 64-bit processor."  My MacBook Pro is running the 32-bit kernel, but because it has a 64-bit processor, I had no problem running the WoW 64-bit client.  I may follow the instructions on the 64-bit kernel page and reboot to use the 64-bit kernel, just to see if there's any additional improvements there; but the WoW 64-bit client runs just fine on my Intel Core 2 Duo system.