Money Making in MOP, Update #2

Currently at just shy of 110K gold.  Bags continue to sell briskly, and I've cleared out a good portion of the BC and Wrath era crafting materials I collected in the weeks prior to the expansion.  Laenshield has learned the Living Steel transmutation as well, which provides another source of profit (about 1K per day).

Between the transmutation, bags, and selling MoP ore/herbs on the AH, I'm making about 3500 gold per day just as side effect of questing on Aeven.  At this rate, I think I'll be beating 150k gold by the end of October.

Money Making in MOP, Update #1

So.  As of October 8th, I have about 82k total from selling gathered items, herbs/ore, and bags.  That's a 17k increase over 11 days, or about 1500 gold per day.  At this rate, I'm looking at having about 120k in the bank by the end of October - well short of my 200k goal.

Hmm.

Part of the problem is that we've got a major release coming at work, and some things going on at church that have been taking up a lot of time, leaving relatively little for WoW.  So I've really not been playing much, compared to the WotLK and Cataclysm releases.

In game, the reason I've been leveling Aeven so slowly is that the stories are interesting, exploring Pandaria is fun, and I don't feel the need to rush through content to get to max level ASAP. All of that's a good thing.   Last night's few hours of play saw me get distracted and start poking around and exploring rather than questing, and I had a blast.

Still, it cuts into my money-making.  As I progress, though, I'm sure that I'll encounter new and exciting opportunities for parting people from their cash on the AH.

To that end, I've cleared out most of my stockpile of Outland ores, with Fel Iron selling fairly reliably for 100g/stack.  I need to start doing the same with my Outland herbs and enchanting materials.

Keep in mind that my "stockpiles" in this case are a few dozen stacks - I don't have a guild bank for my sole personal use, and I'm not looking to corner the market or anything.  My goal was, and is, just to take advantage of the fact that players will be leveling new characters in the expansion, and provide them some of the materials they'll need to level their professions.

MoP ore and herb prices have been surprisingly stable on Kirin Tor.  Ghost iron ore - the only ore I've been mining to date - has held pretty steady, at about 100-120 g/stack.  Green tea leaves started at about 40g per stack, but as people have leveled out of the starting zones, it's starting to push upwards to 60g per stack or so.

I've also started investing in leveling alchemy (Laenshield), inscription (Aretae), and jewlcrafting (Aetherna) on my alts.  No enchanting yet - I'll do that as part of leveling Aeth, since she's my enchanter now, and I can take advantage of the gear upgrades available through leveling to provide the materials I need for that.

Panda Thoughts

Pandaria is gorgeous - even my wife thinks so.  The style reminds me quite a bit of Northrend, in a good way... the land seems to be much more real, and less cartoony, than some of the old world zones.

Well.... to be honest, the Jade Forest is beautiful.  I'm pushing level 87 on Aeven, and I still haven't gotten out of the first starting zone!  I'm actually looking forward to the other zones, even the ones I visited briefly in the beta.  I can't wait to meet the Grummles, the Klaxxi, the Tillers, and figure out what beasts Hemet Nesingwary wants me to slaughter this time.

I credit Aeven's rapid advance, in part, on the incredible abundance of herb and ore nodes in the zone.  At level 86, she's still getting 15k XP per node.  Last night, just questing for a couple of hours - not even farming - she managed to hit about 50 nodes in an hour.  That's about 750K XP over and above what she got from questing, and roughly the equivalent of completing an additional six quests on top of the ones she'd already done.  Whoa.

The XP gains from the nodes helps make up for the leveling pace that Aeven's at, though.  Leveling on a protection paladin is much, much slower than I'm used to... but man, she is un-freaking-killable.  I've gotten into the habit of trying to collect at least 3-4 mobs at a time, just because fighting a single mob is so slow that it feels painful.  At one point last night, I managed to collect and burn down a group of about 8 mobs at once.  Shield of the Righteous and Word of Glory keep her up, and in the few instances where things start to look a little hairy, there's always Lay On Hands.

So far, I'm having a lot of fun.  The laid back nature and practicality of the Pandaren is absolutely  delightful.  When I completed A Humble Offering and Pei-Zhisays commented on the mushroom offering I collected, "Also, they make a pretty fine stir-fry"... that made me chuckle.  Those Pandaren certainly keep their feet on the ground, as the Dwarves would say!

Money Making in MoP

I'm starting out with a total of about 65k gold across my various characters (Kirin Tor, Alliance).

I've got three plans I'm pursuing:

Gathering.  I've already made about 3k gold just off of the herbs and ores I've gathered with Aeven in the first half of the Jade Forest.  The price per unit isn't sky high, but it's high enough that I expect farming ore and herbs for a while to be a decent money maker.  I've also got a good stockpile of Outland and Northrend ores and herbs that I'll be selling to folks leveling their Pandaren characters.

Materials.  Stuff that comes from killing mobs - primarily, cooking materials, enchanting mats and windwool cloth.  For now, if it's a cooking reagent, cloth, or something else usable by a profession, it's going on the auction house for the best price I can get.

Bags.  I've got enough materials for about 400 netherweave bags and 40 embersilk bags socked away on Laenshield.  While this won't make nearly as much money as gathering or selling materials, I expect it will generate a few thousand gold.

Once the prices for ores, herbs and other materials starts to trail off, I'll start stockpiling materials to level my own professions.  I'm not a raider, except very casually, so having the absolute best gear really isn't an immediate priority for me.  I'm hoping to get to 200k gold by the end of October - enough to fuel whatever initial pursuits might be interesting in MoP.

MoP: First Impressions

Scenarios are interesting.  Hopefully a little more challenging than the Theramore scenario was, though.

Pet battles are amazing.  I thought, "Oh, I'll just learn the skill on Aeven before I hit Pandaria and start gathering," and half an hour later, I had a couple of new pets and a fistful of new achievements.  I can definitely see moar pet battles in my future.

The intro to Pandaria is a bit linear, but I understand that was to help introduce the idea of the Sha and the reasons for the Horde/Alliance interest in Pandaria.  I'm OK with that, especially since it looks like from the second half of the Jade Forest on through the rest of the expansion there's a lot more freedom to accept or ignore quests.  I'll be plowing through with Aeven until I can hit max gathering skills, but I plan on slowing down and seeing everything with Aetherna.

The Sha look like interesting foes.  I'll need to be careful when I play through on Aeth and my other characters, though.  Ive got Aeven specced as protection, which means she can gather up and wear down a large number of enemies at once.  Some of the intro quests will be a bit trickier on a more squishy class.

Pandaria is obviously a land abundant in natural resources.  I've not really even left the starting area (Pado'shan village?) yet, and I've already hit 550 mining/herbalism on Aeven, with 3+ stacks of ghost iron ore and 2+ stacks of green tea leaves.  Note to self: next time, learn the new level of profession training before starting to gather.

The scenery is awesome.

A Maze Of Twisty Passages

The Pandas are coming... and with the 5.0.4 patch today, Cynwise has decided that the best thing you can do is to start over from scratch.

Well, not entirely - not until you have the chance to level yourself some Panda.  But for your existing characters?  There have been enough changes that is makes sense to clear off those menu bars and rebuild 'em.

From my time in the beta, I'd have to say this is a pretty sound bit of advice.  Things have changed drastically; instead of adapting, it's probably best to start over and build a new UI that you're comfortable with.

The Ultimate Gold Sink

Coming soon with Mists of Pandaria:  The Black Market auction house.

Looking for that rare mount?  Rare pet?  An old tier piece for transmog that you just can't seem to get that one boss to drop?

Keep your eyes on the Black Market.

Yoi!

From the UI, it looks like there's no "buy it now" option.  So when those Ashes of Al'ar show up, you don't just have to see it listed - you apparently have to be prepared for the ensuing bidding war.

Double yoi!

I don't see how they can do this, really, unless they implement a proxy bid system.  To do otherwise would be to invite the unbridled rage of millions of bidders...

The Snark Is Strong In This One

In Pandaria, when you get to the Valley of the Four Winds, one of the quests you can pick up is "Li Li's Day Off".  Li Li is a snarky little Pandaren, the niece of Chen Stormstout, and when Chen runs off to investigate an abandoned brewery, she asks you to help her see the sights in the valley.  As part of the quest, you get Li Li's Wishing Stone, which lets you summon her whenever you get to a sight she wants to see.  You will be tempted to hit a point, summon her, then dismiss her so you can be about your business.

Don't do it.

If she's accompanying you as you perform your other quests, she makes some amusing and truly, deeply snarky comments about the situations and things you encounter.

I liked Li Li when I first encountered her on entering the Valley; as time goes by, I'm just growing more and more fond of her.

Apparently, I've Been Good

Blizzard has decided that I CAN HAZ PANDAS.

This isn't my first time beta-testing a game (take a gander at Frayed Knights, which I suspect you'll enjoy if you have anything more than a rudimentary sense of humor).  I may be weird, but as a software developer, I actually take the whole "beta tester" thing kind of seriously.

Yeah, I'll get to see da Pandas.  I'm also looking forward to filing some reports on truly heinous bugs.

Don't laugh.  I just told you - I'm weird.

In fact, as kind of a good omen of the bounty of bugs to come, I managed to file one even before I had the Mists beta installed.  The Mac installer crashed in a weird and unusual way, so boom - off goes the problem report to Blizzard.

An auspicious beginning, I think :-)

Moar Panda news to follow...

The Most Exciting Bit Of MoP News Yet...

Glyph of Crittermorph.

Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Tremble in fear before my chelonian army, fools!

Dual Gathering

I recently read an article at The Consortium that advocated having a dual-gathering (mining/herbalist) character, especially at the start of an expansion.  Since I was already shuffling professions around on my characters, I figured that I'd shift Aeven from being a miner/skinner to a miner/herbalist.  How long could it take, really?  Besides - I'd actually be making some money in the process, which is different from leveling a crafting profession.  So, why not?

Four hours later, she's now at 475 skill in herbalism, and already able to start picking nodes in Cataclysm content.  Running through Hyjal was fun - it seems like she was running into a node (Cinderbloom, Stormvine or Obsidium) once a minute or so, and her bags started to fill up pretty quickly.

If Aeven is going to become my main gathering character, I'm not sure what I'll do with Aretae.  Having him as an herbalist seems redundant, but I'm not sure it's really worth it to train him as a leather worker or a smith.

In any case, I'm pretty sure that for MoP, I'll end up rolling and leveling a female Pandaren monk.  Take a look at that link, there.  She's so FLUFFY!  Ahem.  That's another two primary profession slots to look at - perhaps I'll level skinning/leatherworking on Aelin, and blacksmithing on Aretae?  Hmm.  Decisions, decisions.

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.