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.

For The Children

Children's Week is upon us, which means that it's time for The School of Hard Knocks to rear it's ugly head again.

Hey... it's For The Children.

As usual when it's something PvP related, I recommend that you turn to Cynwise.  If you're going to be in the BGs trying for your achievement, take a look at his guide for the event.  If you're a regular BG participant, you might want to consider his Modest Proposal.

Me?  I'm thinking that I'll drop in on a BG or two, just to lend a hand.  Not on Aeth, though, tempting as that might be.  Perhaps I'll get some starter PvP gear on Laenshield or Aretae or even Aeven and see what PvP as a different class feels like.

Scratch That... Apparently, I've Been REALLY Good!

Just got an invite to the Diablo III beta as well.

Looks like I'll be playing lots of games in the future!

...

Yes, yes, I know.  It's not like I wasn't going to do that anyways; but now I have a justification for it.

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...

With The Fury of a Thousand Suns

Ah, Noblegarden!  The seasons are turning.  Spring is in the air, and it is a time to put aside the struggles of the world for a time, and celebrate not victory, but life itself.

Ah, Noblegarden!  One of the few in-game holidays without a PvP component.

At least... that's what they'd like you to think.

The truth of the matter - the sick, twisted truth - is that while there is no direct PvP activity during Noblegarden, the entirety of this oh-so-innocent looking holiday is designed to fill you with the seething, white-hot fury of a thousand suns, directed at your fellow WoW player.

Consider, please.  What is the primary activity of Noblegarden, eh?

Running around and collecting Brightly Colored Eggs.

So pastoral, yes?  So... so peaceful.

Until you show up in Dolanaar and realize that there are about a thousand other people doing the exact same thing.

Have you ever had a character who was a miner?

Have you ever, on that character, spotted a node, swooped in on it, and stood on the node while you fought off the inevitable slavering horror who lurked nearby?

Have you ever done so, only to hear, as you finished off your foe, a sound that simultaneously chilled your blood and filled you with a blinding, burning hatred?

"Tink... tink... tink..."

Yes... the sound that lets you know that, when you turn around, you'll be greeted by the sight of some inconsiderate jerk of indeterminate parentage stealing your freaking node.

Recall the times this has happened to you.  Take this thought.  Roll it around in your head for a bit.  Allow it to seep into your psyche, until you remember the feeling of incandescent rage that bubbled through your entire being, bringing all your thoughts to a roiling boil of distilled hatred that suddenly crystalized into a single, focused desire.

Nay, not a desire, but a need.

A need to kill.

Got it?

Now imagine that feeling washing over you every thirty seconds.

That, my friend, is what it's like collecting eggs for Noblegarden.

Two days, and I'm about halfway towards the 500 chocolates I need for Aeth's Swift Springstrider.  Two more days, and I suspect that I will be filled with a loathing of my fellow WoW player so blindingly intense that Deathwing himself would be taken aback.

If I could, I would cheerfully murder each and every person in Dolanaar.

Cheerfully.  Whistling a jaunty little killing tune the whole while.

Fortunately for them, my murderous rage is blunted by the sad, sad fact that one cannot simply gank members of one's own faction.

Believe me, I've tried.

That druid in flight form, camping two prime egg spawns?  If looks could kill, man, you'd be dead.  And not just dead - I'd camp your dismembered corpse, and sit and munch on Barbecued Buzzard Wings while I waited for the chance to kill you again.

Fortunately for you, Blizzard - in their wisdom - keeps me from this immensely logical course of action.  Which leaves me with a surfeit of vitriol, a desire to find another player and ruin their entire week, that I need to unload somewhere.

Now, where could I find that kind of catharsis?

If only there were some location - some battleground - where I could let slip the dogs of war and vent my pent-up feelings, even if it were upon some poor proxy for my despite!

Heh.

So, yeah.  Noblegarden?

Totally a PvP holiday.

Totally.

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.

Laenshield the Alchemist

Since Aeth is now an enchanter, I dropped that profession on Laenshield and picked up alchemy.  The total time to level was about the same - a couple of hours a day over 2-3 days for collecting mats, picking up recipes, etc. - but the overall cost was vastly different.  It cost Laenshield less than 3k, total, to level alchemy, and even that's probably on the high side, since I'm still making money off of selling the potions, elixirs, and other items he produced while leveling.

Granted, I spent a couple of hours on Aretae gathering herbs for Laenshield before I started leveling alchemy.  That wasn't really to avoid spending gold on the AH, though.  Truth be told, there were almost no low-level (pre-BC) herbs on the AH at all.  Given that, farming up what I needed was the only real option I had.

Dances With Guildies

I did a couple of HoTs on Aeth last night, then had a guild member ask if there was anyone interested in running normal Cata dungeons.

It.  Was.  Glorious.

Srsly.  I had about the best time I've had in the game for a long while.

The first dungeon was the Vortex Pinacle, which is always neat to run.  With three other guildies, we had enough room to hit LFD looking for a tank, and got one really quickly... and got one who was not only competent, but had a sense of humor.

That became significant rather quickly.

After the first pull, the tank took a look at our healer - a Worgen druid - and said words to the effect of "Holy cow, heals - your gear!"

And yeah, the healer was in a mix of quest greens, crafted and quest blues, and the occasional epic.  Nothing unusual, really, but... something of a mismatched set.

"I've had really lousy luck with drops", she mentioned.

At which point I commented that her gear "was lovingly crafted from the finest bubble gum and sticks we could find."

Aaaaaaaaaaaand we were off!

Pretty much from that point on, we were joking back and forth about everything.  Standing in the green is good? What about fire?  "Fire heals you.  You just have to stand in it long enough."  Riffing on fragments of movies and songs.  "Sheep this one..." After Aeth did a turtle polymorph, "That's not a sheep!  That's not even the same species!" "It's a... uh... SEA SHEEP!"

I think I shocked someone by knowing who Barbara Manatee was. (That came up in Throne of the Tides, of course).  "Don't stand in the bubbly green stuff!" "I thought green stuff was good!" "No, the bubble are like in the bathtub.  Toxic farts."

Yeah, not exactly the lofty heights of humor.

But it was relaxed, we were having a good time, and even when people 'asploded from various things, we managed to soldier on and beat the living loot out of the bosses.  The tank (who was an amazingly excellent and a wonderful person to boot) stuck with us through two dungeons, rolled with the strange comments and weird humor, and was generally was just the right person at the right time for our pack of only moderately lucid lightning-throwing, arcane blasting, stabbity heroes.

Good times... good times!

Aetherna the Enchanter

Enchantress?  Enchantrix?

Whatever - she's dropped Mining, leveled enchanting to 525 over the course of a couple of days, and is now sporting a couple of nice +40 int ring buffs instead of a boring old +120 stam buff.

All for the cost of... (drumroll, please!)

... 17,000g.  Give or take a few coins.

But hey, who's counting?

Note that this was the cost to go from 0 to 525 - my original estimate of what it would take to level enchanting to 525 in Cataclysm assumed that you were starting out at 450 skill already, and was based on market prices from over a year ago.  On my server, the price of hypnotic dust has fallen to about 10% of what it was a year ago, and celestial essences are running at about 75% of what they once were.  That reduces the total cost to go from 450 to 525 from 14,950g to around 5700g.

Yowza.

Now, granted - I was in a hurry, I had the cash, so I was willing to pay more than the lowest possible market price for a lot of mats.  What's the difference between 42g for a BC-era essence and 45g for the same essence?  Well, 3 gold, times 50, times how many times I made that decision... it adds up.  Plus, I spent quite a bit of gold at the end of the process to buy up some heavenly shards to trade for the top-end Cata enchantments.  So let's say that I was paying at least a 15% surcharge for my mats, and knock the total price down to 14,450g.

Still, that means leveling from 0 to 450 cost about 8,750g.

Ouch.

Yeah, it stung a bit.  On the plus side, I've made about 3k selling some of the enchants I used to level on the AH, so that helps knock the total price down a bit.  In real terms - what I actually paid - that means that I'm only out about 14k.  If I had been more careful about buying and stockpiling mats, I probably could have knocked the total cost down to 11k and some change.

But... hey, +80 int on my rings now.

That's only 175g per point of intelligence.

Definitely worth it, right?

Now to start running some dungeons to make use of my new found disenchanting skills... I figure I'll only need to run something like 100 random HoTs to make up the cash I blew on this little diversion.

Sigh...

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Last night, as I waited for the queue to pop for a run through a random HoT, I gave some thought to some changes.

Right now, I've got a couple of stable alts with a nice selection of professions:

• Aetherna - level 85, Jewlcrafting and Mining
• Laenshield - level 85, Tailoring and Enchanting
• Aretae - level 85, Inscription and Herbalism
• Aeven - level 80, Mining and Skinning

Overall, a nice spread of capabilities.  I've got all three gathering professions (Mining, Herbalism, Skinning) represented, plus the major gear enhancement professions (Inscription, Tailoring, Jewlcrafting and Enchanting).  There's a couple of gaps, though...

Aeth is my main.  She's the one that gets all the love, all the randoms, all the effort at advancement.  I honestly don't think this is going to change any time soon.  There's just something about playing a mage that really appeals to me.  On top of that, she's my achievement hound... if I'm doing something in the world, it's almost certainly on Aeth.

In particular, it's annoyed me the number of times I've gotten a bit of random loot in the LFD that's soulbound.  On Aeth, that means I can sell it to a vendor for about 10% of it's real value (should it happen to be disenchanted).  Sometimes there's an enchanter along for a run, so she can get a shard or a crystal instead of a purple that sells for 15g, but that's not certain by a long shot.

So, I'm thinking of dropping Mining on Aeth and picking up Enchanting.  Being able to add some ring enchants would definitely be nice.  Where will she get ores to prospect for gems, though?  Aeven, of course.  So that's one change.

If Aeth has Enchanting, then there's not much point in keeping that profession on Laenshield.  It would be nice to have an alchemist around, though.  I leveled Alchemy on Talesin (my Horde shaman) to max level, and having access to a transmutation alchemist would be nice.  Where will he get the herbs to turn into potions, though?  Aretae, of course!  So that's change number two.

Now, Aeven's skinning skill was a nice little money maker as she was leveling.  I suspect that it will continue to be so for a while.  Still, it would be nice to have something else available.  Blacksmithing?  Leatherworking?  Engineering?  Frankly, each of those has a minor appeal.  However... Aretae's my only leather wearer, and I'm not really interested in gearing him up for PvE (though PvP might be interesting).  Engineering is really tied specifically to the character who has the skill, so unless I'm planning on Aeven being more active than she is now, that leaves blacksmithing as an eventuall profession for her.  Change number three.

So my tentative plans:

• Aeth drops Mining, picks up Enchanting, and levels it to max.
• Laenshield drops Enchanting, picks up Alchemy, and levels it to max.
• Aeven (eventually, possibly) drops skinning, picks up Blacksmithing, and levels it to max.

It'll probably be a bit expensive, but I've got plenty and to spare at this point, so why not?

"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.