Summertime schedule

Ah, summer.

It means two things. First, the schools are out and the Wold of Azeroth is constantly full of students on leave. Material prizes fluctuate more than over the rest of the year, you can score great deals both buying and selling and generally the population is more on the jerk side.

Secondly, the summer vacation of the blogger. As a working dad and all, the summer weather poses serious hazard to the game time, even though there are a few projects I've taken to keep myself occupied over the furious outdoors living.

I - the one who resents PvP in all forms and functions - have started new toons on a PvP server. And I've locked already a rogue to lv 19. My baby warlock is about to be locked at 14, just to accommodate a more casual bracket. So the big, big project will be to level up that DK who will provide materials and money to these two. I'm now contemplating over the professions for the DK to a) generate nice nest money, b) to help the twinks gearing and enchanting and c) create a nice income to accommodate more toons in different brackets.

The second project is to level up an enhancement shaman along with my son, who's warlock is going to join the Three Stooges on their scheme of world domination. As soon as that addition to our team is geared up, the Three Stooges and Son will take on heroics and Wrath raids (stay tuned for more spectacular failures!).

Of course there is always my pet, Gnomore. I've played him once or twice now, without an update, but rest assured, when I need to slow down my pace in killing things and ... bigger things, I will return to him.

As a recap, summertime causes some delays in the posting schedule. Despite of this, the toons are going strong and my banker is now sitting on 280k (again!!!) with over 250 stacks of Cataclysm herbs in his mailbox, waiting to be milled.

Wishing you a warm and relaxing summer.

C out
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Warm fuzzy feeling...

I got my first ever 'hatemail' in WoW this morning as I was checking my dwindling jewel sales. I posted some gems at around 250g price range, while the competition there was at 550g, and I got a 'concerned' whisper from the owner of that bid, that I'm always undercutting so much and ruin his clever operation.

Let me make this straight right here and now. I have only once undercut forcefully, when this particular 'merchant' had outrageous prices for Reckless Ember Topaz. You could purchase the raw Ember Topazes below 35g at that moment, and the prices were over 200g. So I sold mine at the same price range as ever, bit higher, being 65g. Sold all five in minutes, posted five more and so on.

Now I just posted 6 of the gems in question and I was about to cease the AH game altogether. However, this kind of clever merchant conduct incited something at the back of my head, which I try to get rid of...

I may return and ruin that one market. Given the proper push, there may be a shove coming.

We'll see.
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AH gamble

I have been asked how I got to the 250k in this time, so I thought it would be nice to write a short wrap up on how I did it. Mind you, short is being very subjective as most of the readers know.

The short, condensed version is this:

Obsidium Shuffle with alchemy and jewelcrafting, glyphs, some enchants and a couple of check ups daily.

Longer version will be split in sections mentioned in the short one.

One note before starting anything: everything starts with a full scan of AH with Auctioneer.

Obsidium Shuffle
Those who do not know, the term (ore) shuffle was used already in Wrath of the Lich King describing the way one could buy Saronite from AH, prospect it and sell the uncommon gems for profit. It worked well, especially when combined with the transmutations to rare gems and then cut rare gems. At times it was possible to make enough profit from one cut rare gem to purchase several stacks of Saronite for prospecting, making this an endless money grinder.

Shuffle is a grind, don't forget that: there is no 'Prospect All' button, as there isn't any 'Mill All' button. In this sense the gathering professions have the long end of the shaft, as all the rest of the professions have a Do It! button at their disposal.

Anyhow, the gritty little bits on how I did it. I set a certain price under which I purchased the Obsidium from the AH. My latest threshold was (is if need be) at 3g a piece, making the stack price maximum of 60g. When I started this, the stack prices were much higher and I had the threshold at 4g a piece (80g a stack).

Now when you prospect Obsidium, you get 4-6 uncommon gems and 1-2 rares. It's pretty safe to calculate this being 5 uncommons and 1 rare (there are more accurate calculations out there based on vast volumes of prospected ore). Now if you cut the uncommons and sell them to a vendor, you get 9g a piece... Yes, the raw floor base of the stack of ore is 45g (5 times 9g, forgetting the rare).

However, you can sell most of the uncommons for much higher price than that, especially during the days when the Jewelcrafting daily requires three cut uncommons: the price for a gem can easily go as high as 30-40g a piece. Then again, Carnelite and Nightstone are usually at around 30g in the AH, so just by getting them sold raw you have most probably made some profit.

Great help in calculating what you should do is an addon called OreCrusher, even though it sometimes calculates the values a bit differently than I could by hand. OreCrusher gives you a general idea on how much you can make profit out of the amount of stacks at the price you have paid for them (you give these values to the addon, all else it takes from the Auctioneer data), and how you can get the maximum profit out of the stuff: be it selling the gems raw, cut and vendored, transmuted into rares or crafted and disenchanted.

So, now we have prospected the ore and have a handful of gems: time to see what else we can do.

Jewelcrafting
If you can prospect, then you are a jewelcrafter, right?

First things first: the most important thing of a jewelcrafter is to keep his stock of them most important rares and Shadowspirit gems up. The first thing I always did after the prospects was to create the jewelcrafter Fiery Gem, which 'opens up' to a random set of rares. The three gems of each uncommon usually pays itself back just for the cut rare prices.

You see, there are very few uncommon gem cuts which actually sell at all: people tend to go for the best cuts available, causing the situation in which almost all rare cuts which sell are red (Inferno Ruby) or orange (Ember Topaz). The uncommon cuts just sit in the AH until I sell them to a vendor.

OreCrusher tells you if you can make profit from cutting and vendoring the uncommon ones. The most prominent candidates for this treatment are Alicite and Zephyrite, latter of which cannot be used for any jewelry at all. For Zephyrite the route is either cut/vendor or AH during the days it's required for the jc daily.

What really pays for a jewelcrafter are the rare and meta cuts, and one should always have a good stock of the most important (best selling coloured) gems available. For me the best ones were Inferno Rubies, which sell constantly at profitable prices.

Enchanting
OreCrusher tells you also which gems you could craft into jewelry and have disenchanted, the enchanting materials to be sold for profit. This requires you to have access to an enchanter capable of disenchanting Alicite Pendant, Jasper Ring, Hessonite Band and Carnelian Spikes. OreCrusher is pretty accurate on this, but you should always check if it's better for you to have the Alicite turned into Hypnotic Dust or cut/vendored. If you have an enchanter, the disenchanting way ought to be better.

You should remember one thing with the jewelry: once in a while you get the rare version of the Jasper Ring, Alicite Pendant and Hessonite Band, which should be sold as such. Their price is around 100g for the ring and pendant and as high as 300g for the band, but that's very much server dependant.

How I do it? I have automated the crafting so that I automatically send the crafted stuff either to my enchanter or my auctioneer, and so I can craft some hundreds of them easily while doing something else. For this end I use Trade Skill Master addon's Auto-Mail feature. Now the question is, how is this possible, as there are several of the different enchants the rings, pendants and bands can have.

The answer is easy: TSM handles the uncommon and rare ring/pendant/band by it's item number instead of the name, and when you set it to sell one of the rares to one and one of the uncommons to another toon, it just knows to send them all the same way! Talk about 'Craft All' button here.

Carnelian Spikes is a special case, as it competes with the next part for the Carnelians: first of all, you need to be at an anvil to craft the Spikes and so you cannot automate the crafting the way the rest of the craftables, which you can make at the mailbox. Second, the profit is quite seldom better than from cutting the rares done via transmutations, which is next.

Alchemy
The best way to keep your jewelcrafter in good supply of rares is to check the OreCrusher Transmutations subpage: it tells you which transmutes are profitable as such, and it doesn't take into account the further cuts. And the best part is the fact that the rare gem transmutes are not on cooldown, so you can craft as many of them as you have the gems and accompanying herb to produce.

The first transmute I always do is the Shadowspirit gem transmutes, and I do them right after the Fiery Gem. This leaves me less raw uncommons to process, but gives me also a good set of meta gems to sell raw and sell as cut.

Best transmutes seem to be the Inferno Rubies, Demonseyes and Ember Topazes, all of which sell well both as raw and as certain cut ones.

Now that was the shuffle. It's not for the faint hearted and most certainly it requires work and dedication to make it work.

Inscription and glyphs
My scribe is only at level 67, and he was below 60 when I started. Glyphs were profitable already then, as there are several glyphs which sell decently from the very beginning of the Inscription profession. The main aspect of making money with glyphs is consistency and persistence. The more you can cancel and repost the glyphs at peak times, the more you sell, sadly.

I automated as much as possible of this, as I knew I couldn't commit a lot of time to the whole business. So I set up TSM in a way that I posted the glyphs for 48 hours, with decent undercuts and in two different sets at all times, posted every other day. So I had one set reposted every day.

The hardest part of the inscription is to come up with the herbs and inks, and for that my scribe is both herbalist and scribe. I can mill the herbs myself, and so I have at least one level of more control over the actual ink prices.

Glyphs are not as good in money making with little time to devote to playing, and the best profit comes from concentrating on the best selling glyphs, leaving the less popular ones out. Then again, working with the whole set gives you wider range to tap into.

However, by far the best business I have had with inscription have been both tomes and cards. I have currently a couple of all tomes in AH, and they sell one or two a day, still! I have also crafted all special inks into all sorts of cards. At this level my scribe can't access to the highest tier of Faire cards, so I'm out of the real business, but the lower tier ones - except the Northrend ones - sell still decently due to the reputation achievements.

Enchanting
While I've been disenchanting the jewelry from the Shuffle, I haven't given the proper love to my enchanting at all. There are few 'new' best sellers here (Avalanche and Mending at the forefront) which could easily multiply the profits of the Shuffle, I've been lazy and sold the enchanting materials as raw. Of course I've done some enchants to level up the skill and Enchanting has been generating some stable income, too. It could be much better if done properly.

All in all, that is all I have done. I have three characters (JC/Alchemy, Enchant/Tailoring, Herb/Inscription) which have been running the show. Twice a day I've checked the mail and reposted, once a day I've taken the time to do some shuffling and crafting, all in all it's taken 2-3 hours a day to run the business, including a random or a couple of dailies or something fun in between the crafting and toil.

If you are really interested in AH gamble, I would suggest you go to the Consortium Forum, where you can find the most accurate information about the prospecting results, spreadsheets on maximizing your profits and great information about making money in AH in general. When you do so, please mention Copra as your referrer, just for the sake of it.

Gold making in AH is like anything in WoW: it just takes time, preparation and long hours of working towards your goal. If I can make 250k in a couple of months, ANYONE CAN!

Go for it!
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I'm done with it (yawp)

In addition to that, my first character made it to the lackluster 85, being my shadowpriest Pupunen. After a couple of Halls of Origination PUGs (and failed Tol'Vir and some other) it dawned to me that either spriest is very much overpowered or I play my ilevel319 mix-match spec pretty well or the PUGs are just littered with people who really do not how to play (says a lot about the people PUGging). Why?, you may ask. Because I was all the time in the first or the second place, and the ones passing me obviously had quite a lot higher ilevel. I checked the ilevel occasionally and the best/worst case was that one warlock who pulled about half of my dps with ilevel of 345 or something: considerably better than my gear, gemmed and enchanted (tell tale signs of shining and twinking gear...), while mine was not even gem slots and without enchants (as I haven't bothered yet).

So two goals reached almost simultaneously.

Gnomore got just one level and moved on to Stonetalon. Knowing how crappy that place is in travel wise, I think he'll turn to the Eastern Kingdoms for a while, say, next 5 levels. If not more but to gain some other archeological finds than Night Elf stuff.

While I'm at it, I may as well analyze the current motivation. With the burden of having promised the 250k cap, I have next to no motivation to play WoW. I remember this same feeling from springs of earlier years, too, and I put it into the amount of sun/daylight. The more daylight there is, the less I want to sit inside and play. It seems that the same thing is happening all around the blogosphere, creating the summertime blues.

However... Rift is still there, something I haven't tabbed for a while. Still need that one Iron Tombs run to get the quests done and then it's up to the Stonefields and new 'quest' areas for rifts and monsters. Kind of waiting for that to be able to play for my pleasure rather than just to show it can be done.

What my gaming will consist from now on in WoW is Gnomore (naturally) and the Three Stooges. Nothing more I want to put my time into, even though there are multiple time sinks to waste it all to: reputation sinks, cooking and fishing dailies, overall dailies and collecting stuff. Sorry, Blizzard, did that in Wrath of the Lich King, why do it again?

I'm done with it. How about you?

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Nothing to report (yawp)

That must have been one of the worst (gaming) weekends in a long time. In addition to that, I had the lousiest nights for a long time due to the crickets we are giving to our pet tarantula. Those darn creatures were chirping the nights away, all the way from Thursday and most probably till unforseen future. Depends on how our Mexican Fireleg Tarantula is going to treat them: as food or as companions.

First things first. Due to some crappy decisions on the AH front, the balances tipped. Add to that the fact that I ended up purchasing two of the new meta recipes as well as expand the storage space on my mule by purchasing additional guild bank slot. One to go still, and I'm not using the newest one to the fullest yet. However, despite all the losses and very few gains, the final balance this morning was 161.735, which is only 1.7k less than last week. At the same time I have stockpiled quite a pile of Obsidium Ore for the shuffle at very low prices. So in addition to making some 16k profit to cover the recipes and bank tab, I have also increased my assets pretty considerably.

Still the shuffle is the majority of the income, glyphs bringing the basic daily income still. As it happens, the alchemy is becoming a viable income again, as the materials for the flasks and potions are becoming more reasonably priced. Transmuting is still there, though, as it has always been, as it is a part of the effective Ore Shuffle (prospect, cut/vendor, DE and transmute being the main aspects).

Due to the sporadicality of my free time over the weekend, I didn't get any real big sessions to run. A couple of better ones were spend in Rift, where my mage Copraf is making steady progress by closing rifts, killing invasions and trying to do some quests in the meanwhile. I also took Copraf 'out there' to explore areas I definitely shouldn't have been in, and got - to my surprise - a shard first achievement for an artifact I found. Exploration pays in the game, though not for long. It was fun, though, to be travelling in an area which is meant for characters at least 20 or more levels higher, where every step had to be thought out pretty much down to a spot to be able to proceed. Definitely going to do the same on the northern territories soon.

Which leads to the major problem: I didn't have my weekly Gnomore session. There are only two viable options: to try to see if I can do it today or to skip it for the week. I'm pretty much inclined to the latter, but we'll see how I feel later.

That's all folks for the weekend recap. Rift is a great game, WoW is still eating my time and I think I've found the guild I've been searching for - in Rift, not in WoW.

It's strange how life sometimes treats you and your gaming, eh?
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Newbie gripes

As I'm playing with the Auction House in WoW, I get awfully lot of WoW beggars asking for "spare gold". Like any respectable goblin would have any to spare, it's all MINE!!!

The most recent one stated exactly those words when he opened his whisper, begging for gold. That warrior was at level 19 and I told him that by that time he should have about thousand golds if he had played the game cleverly. His response was "No". 

I proceeded - very politely - to tell him that Gnomore had over 700g at level 17 without killing a single creature and without doing any of the quests requiring killing, only from gathering professions and selling the materials. I even gave him the Armory link to see for himself. 

And he disappeared.

I should have taken his name up, because I could have helped him to learn even more of the game, even mentor him onwards to become a better player than I am. Though with the beggar mentality that would have required quite a lot from my part.

Anyhow, as today is the beginning of Rift headstart, I thought I'd put up a memory list to all, each and everyone ever starting a new MMO. Not how to play, but how to maximize the money on the run. There are only few simple things to remember, things which are a second nature to all nomadic gamers out there.

1. First of all, loot everything. The crap is worth every copper, silver or coinage the game has.
2. Get bags to your all bag slots. You can never have enough or too much bag space.
3. Get the gathering professions, unless you are sure which crafting professions you are going to take.
4. Loot everything, gather everything. 
5. Replace your bags with bigger ones whenever you can.
6. Run a dedicated auctioning character aka AH mule to the nearest auction house and set it up for trade.
7. Loot everything, gather everything and post everything except the worthless loot to the AH mule.
8. Level up and enjoy life.

I think that covers the basics. The first time around I would suggest - however - to forget the mule and just loot, gather and sell as long as your bag space can hold the gathered materials and good unbound gear looted. You'll get to the nearest city soon enough to empty your bags to the bank or AH.

Happy adventures!

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Cheated by the mechanics: Gnomore

Gnomore pictorial 19-22.

Long and winding story short, Gnomore made it from Duskwood to Ratchet in one run and lost the status of clean slate due to game mechanics. Yes, Gnomore is not clean and 'kill less' anymore.

I won't go through the rest of the adventures except for these two pictures, which show I struck my two 'main' objectives:

The rest of the story goes to telling how Gnomore the Pacifist became Gnomore the Shameless Killer Bastard.

Pretty soon after gaining the mount(s), Gnomore headed towards Loch Modan. Along the way there is a camp at Helm's Lake, in which there is a quest Entombed in Ice: You have to rescue six Dwarf Mountaineers from Ice Blocks into which they have been entombed by the shameless Tidal Elementals (or something).

Naturally it's on Gnomore's genetics to go and SAVE people from fate more horrible than dead. Without a second thought Gnomore started banging the Ice Tombs into pieces.

This should have been a warning sign.

Without thinking it any further, Gnomore just bashed the Tombs into smithereens, saving the suffocating Mountaineers on the way.

"Frozen Mountaineer gasps for air and shivers from the cold."

On the third one - after getting several records on the highest damage done, I checked the kill board.

Alas, it was too late: third Mountaineer rescued and three kills done! I was speechless, powerless and dumbfounded. After the initial shock I got infuriated. Crappy game with faulty mechanics, posing that the Ice Tombs are CREATURES which you KILL. Stupid Blizzard!!!

So the quest killed my kill board, making it six "uncategorized" creature kills (as seen in the Armory page), and made me seriously doubt if it's worth to continue this project. 

Lies, damned lies and statistics.

Despite of my doubts I decided to play the full session and I found out that even though the game itself spoiled the actual fun by luring me into "killing" in the game terms, it did very little to my joy of playing the character. Even more so, as I got the mount and got into travelling more, I got back into the joy of discovering new sights and if you add Archeology to that equation, you can see the amount of potential fun for this character.

In the end, Gnomore was left into Ratchet, with a bit over 1k gold in his pocket and some archeological finds in his stash.

I leave you with this stern looking professional and final thought.

Should I really continue with Gnomore or start a new one?

Clean slate no more (yawp)

Like I have tweeted every now and then: I QUIT! That summarizes the weekend, totally. That pointing to WoW, Rift - which had it's 7th beta and I was playing that, too - not being in question.

Ok, that out, we can proceed according the plan. I have accumulated 163.447g, which means I have gained a bit over 11k over the week. Which is in fact a fault assumption, as I went and purchased a certain new meta recipe for 17.5k in hopes of making some money out of the cut. This was the first reason I want to quit: it failed miserably, and instead of making almost 30k plus I netted only 11k.

The prices of Obsidium and Elementium Ore have risen noticeably over the last week, their supply has diminished from the original and this results in the common and rare raw gems being less and less available. This should count as rising prices, but no. The only one worth anything is the gem required for the daily, the price of Hypnotic Dust and Greater Celestial Dust have gone very low so the disenchanting route is not as profitable as it used to be: in normal situation it should be the other way around. In lack of supply the prices should go up!

Anyhow, I have split my time in between my main server and the server my son is playing. He took up on a Deathknight and has this uncanny habit of spending all the money accumulated on the character in few poorly placed purchases. Granted, he's only 10 with next to no understanding on the English language, but still he's topping the DPS in the dungeons he goes to with LFD tool.

So I took on generating him enough money to get him the flying mount and both skills: the artisan riding needed for flying in Outlands and the Old World flying. The server is very much different from the one I'm in, but the result was that as this toon was levelling his gathering skills from naught, he finally got about 700g in two days to pay for his flying. That was the great end for the weekend.

What amazed me over the weekend is the fact that there are recipes in the game which are not available in the game anymore. Like the already rare pattern of Deviate Scale Belt or the cooking recipe Soothing Turtle Bisque which you could get only through a quest. You just cannot get them from the game anywhere, except from AH in the lucky shot when someone happens to post them in. Usually the prices should be outrageous, like 100k or more, but that depends on the server.

The amazing part is this: you can still get those recipes from AH for as low as 60g, 10g or even as low as 15s if you're lucky. That's because there is nothing in the tooltip telling that the recipe is not available in the game anymore!

And that's not all that is missing from the tooltips. The major I QUIT thing happened when I was happily adventuring with Gnomore. This one quest in Dun Morogh requires you to free dwarves from icy tombs they have been stuck in by some elementals. So I started the quest, banging the tombs to smithereens and found out that the bloody icy tombs count as creatures! So I lost the reason to level Gnomore any further for his "creatures killed" count states six (6) killed, unspecified, creatures.

There was nothing warning about this, nothing pointing out that this would count as a kill and I really feel that this bloody game mechanics have failed me and my project. I'm not starting over, so I'm on the verge of quitting the project and I'm strongly contemplating quitting WoW except for the three stooges evenings.

What's the point, if the game screws you in the eye at every turn, one way or another?

Should I keep on going with Gnomore in spite of this set back?
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Hits and misses for Valentines (yawp)

What a bewildering and confusing weekend.

First of all, a market report: my alliance toons on my main server are sitting on 151.671g, which is more or less spot on +30k to the one I had last week. All this from some enchants, glyphs and Obsidium shuffle. What is interesting is the development of Obsidium Ore stack prices: I've been purchasing them at average price of 72g per stack over the week (even for 57g at one point), but now the stack price is over 100g. This makes the shuffle a bit more challenging, but not a shabby income in any case. To add some insult to this injury, I haven't been utilizing the shuffle to the fullest: I still have almost all rare gems in my AH, so if the bad comes worse, I can still sell them either raw, cut or even transmute them to Shadowspirit Diamonds and sell them on nice profit this way.

As 4.0.6 introduced the new meta recipes, the gem market has gone wild and the raw uncommon gems have sold at very interesting prices. Most probably due to the alchemists transmuting everything to Shadowspirit Diamonds, which - naturally - have lost a good chunk of their price due to increased supply.

The other hit I had was when I travelled to Dalaran with my alchemist/jeweller to obtain my first (and with that price the only) Ring of Kirin Tor (Ouch! 7k gone in the wind!). As I was just about to leave and in fact had started my hearthstone, I noticed that the Kaluak Fishing Derby just started. While I have never taken part of any of the Fishing Events in the game, I decided to pop in and see what comes. So I swooped down from Dalaran, headed to the river and started fishing from the schools of fish. I was on my third school, after I had cast about twelve times, when I got the price fish. As the winned hadn't been announced, I flew up and...

I won the Derby! On my first ever try I came, saw and won!

Beginners luck, I just didn't even realize the meaning of the achievement. I just picked the nice account bound levelling ring and was just hearthing out when the first congratulations came from a druid who just missed returning the fish by few seconds. As I got back to Stormwind, I got two whispers: one asking what was my fishing skill (it was 318+20 from the fishing rod) and where I had gotten the fish. The other one was a lengthy discussion with a druid who had been hunting for the achievement for a long time and still couldn't understand how I had won. When I finally got him realize that it wasn't the skill (he had all the best fishing gear, capped fishing and even all fishing enchants on plus the lure!), he thanked me twice and off we went. It was at this point that it really dawned on me: friggen A, I had won the Fishing Derby!

The PUG runs of the weekend were all from the lousy side. With my druid at level 64 the few instances I ran were all in Coilfang and the tanks were from all over the scale. One DK who really didn't know what he was doing, running around in Frost Presence and claiming to be a tank. Another - again DK - who was otherwise performing great, but running ahead of the group and not paying attention whether the healer was around or not - he learned the lesson after the second time HE died and the rest of the group stayed alive. And a tankadin, who worked like a thought: thoughtful, checked - silently - that everything was ok and pulled the mobs in orderly fashion. The rest were something not worth mentioning, strong silent groups with no social interaction.

The social stuff got the final draw of the week from a lv72 DK who whispered to my DK who was just purchasing the auction house dry of Obsidium Ore. He started very directly, asking what was my DPS and rotation for my Unholy spec. After I answered, he continued that where I had gotten the rotation from. After I answered... no further contact. No thanks, no okies, no nothing.

No manners.

Which leads to Gnomore. I had a blast, even though he didn't break the magical level 20 yet. Explored the Redridge Valley area and found out that the game definitely is bugging me with all the rares when I cannot kill them.

Anyhow, today being the Valentines Day, I present you the Valentines Greetings ala Blizzard.

For those not too shy, the next one without the censoring speech bubble...

And finally, the last one from the behind, to make the point even clearer.

Happy Valentines to you all admiring Blizzards way of appreciating good taste and common decency!
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Lost my appetite (yawp)

Oh, well, another weekend with Rift Beta, in which I spent only a short moment. Instead, I plunged into the AH game in WoW and had - almost as short - moment with Gnomore.

Positives first: I broke 100k gold in Sunday, 121 312g this morning to be exact. This makes it about 50k in less than three weeks, not to mention all the materials I've been stockpiling and have waiting for processing on my three main crafters. Mind you, I'm not doing this as my main attraction (though it seems that way): I have enough time to pull a thing in here and another there, but not enough to plunge into a LFD PUG or quest meaningfully in the new areas.

Gnomore hit level 17 and I had some strange things to happen... All in all, I noticed that I have very hard time in logging into Gnomore because the playing is pretty intense. The general mindset I have on this toon is very, very different from the gung-ho mentality I have with other toons. In addition to that, anyone claiming that it's hard to get any money as a starting character can look at themselves: Gnomore at level 17 has 444g only through gathering professions and selling the materials in AH. Normal character has quest rewards and assorted loot to sell, too, so they should have even more at level 20. Definitely enough at higher levels despite the increasing skill costs. So hush and go loot something, like I tend to say to beggars.

Which brings us to the not so positive things. Rift is one fine game, but as it happens, the players are drifters from other - not so great - games. They bring their limitations, expectations and views along with them, most notably the spam in the chatrooms about how Rift is this and that other game is so much better and so on.

I learned a few things about myself and my playstyle in one encounter in Rift. It effectively took my appetite for future betas, and I really honestly began to doubt if I really want to be part of the Rift community. Then again, the community consists of players, and if I'm out, the community will be less me.

I was exploring with my level 17 Pyro/Archon/Ele in the second Defiant area, Stone-something. It's an area for levels 18 upwards (I think, the mobs are that range), so I was really exploring an area where no sensible player would go at that stage. My experience with Gnomore however has lead me into this, to challenge the odds and see how far I can trek.

Anyhow, I came to the settlement in there and as it happens there was a cave nearby, behind a cathedral of sorts. I sneaked past a couple of groups of mobs and got into the cave. There was a party of two in, killing mobs and by a custom I launched my - due to level difference - feeble fireballs into the mobs. Yup, the mobs were level 24, seven levels above my toon, so I barely made an odd point or two damage here and there. My mistake was that I wasn't paying attention to the chat at that point, as there was something said that was probably aimed at me.

You see, one of the pair said that "you should stop leeching" and "ok, kill the next ones yourself" and I didn't understand a)who was saying that, b)to whom it was said to and c)what it was related to. Turned out that it was meant to me and that I was leeching the pair doing the 'hard work'.

Now color me pink and call me Daisy, but I understand leeching to be something involving gaining something from others hard work. Like Larísa of the Pink Pigtail Inn, when she leeched the Headless Horseman pumpkin event: she did it because the game froze and she just got the reward from other players work. It's the same as playing WoW Battlegrounds and AFKing to get the points for it, doing nothing.

Leeching is to me to gain something from others, doing nothing yourself. In this case, I was doing (even though it was in vain) and I wasn't gaining anything as the mobs were normal world mobs and there was no group event around.

When I pointed out and challenged this view of the vocal person in the pair I was told the following:
* It is rude to leech - of course, I wouldn't approve it
* I was leeching because I wasn't contributing - I was contributing to the best of my ability
* That point or two was hardly contributing, I shouldn't be here - Oh...
* At that level I shouldn't have even been there - ...
* Because I didn't ask, I was rude, impolite and leeching.

Anyone knowing me ingame knows I'm very polite, treat even the jerks with utmost respect and correctness and very seldom use any derogatory terms, especially with strangers like this.

In the end, I took the pounding of one mob in the cave, gave the vocal one the satisfaction of seeing me fail like that (really) and trekked even further into the zone after resurrecting myself and healing.

But I felt very bad about the whole incident. Had I misunderstood something? Was I really acting improperly and rudely? Am I to be confined to the 'safe and proper' areas for questing?

So I logged out after taking a soul portal to Meridien and didn't even look back to Rift after that.

Goes to show how one rotten experience can spoil the whole fun for you. I wonder how a newcomer to any MMO will react or feel when s/he encounters the "L2P NOOB" wall of scream in the first group event s/he takes part in...

Was I really playing it wrong?

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No three to report

Yes, due to a real life commitment, Three Stooges didn't ride. At least not together. I'm not sure what Förgelös and Bishopgeorge may have gotten into their mind on doing, the best I can hope for is for them to do some questing and get some gear.

On the other side, I'm nearing 100k gold through my AH experiment. That's only 30k more from my starting point, but it has accumulated through effort, not through luck, and within a short period of time (2 weeks to be honest). From this I can offer a few insights on the AH market to the newcomer.

* Start small. Do not try to grasp the whole glyph market on the first try if you're new in the game, short on money or short on time. Best way to go is to sell materials: cloth, ores, stones and herbs.
* Trust the market. Do not put cheap materials for sale in stacks of one: instead, put full stacks and at a bit higher price.
* Know the market. Too often I find a piece of rare recipe, schematic or plan in the market for a fraction of it's real price. I purchase a rare recipe for 6g and sell it for 300g. The same goes with all the stuff in AH: know the competing and/or real price of the items you are about to sell. Saves you the headache when you notice that you could have gotten 10 or 100 times the money you put it in for.
* Plan and develop a system. Saves time for the actual play.

Unless of course, you plan to play the AH rather than the questing, grouping or raiding.

It's a choice. Your choice.

.Current balance (alliance side): 90 635g, invested another 2540g in Elementium and Obsidium ores for prospecting.

Wasted time and effort (yawp)

I have made a mistake. I have dipped my feet into the Grand Game.

I'm talking about the AH game, of course. It's available to all, each and everyone, it's just as equally mean and demanding to all and the success is totally depending on yourself and your understanding of the market. Information.

Last week I said that I found my initial dip kind of too easy. Considering I don't have a single capped crafting toon I still managed to reap about 10k profit over the week, mainly from the severely overpriced prime and major glyphs which still sold like Coca-Cola. Nice play, considering my inscription toon is capped at 375 and not coming up from there anytime soon.

Of course I had to plunge myself into the depths after that. I purchased the cards to build the Hurricane Deck (Darkmoon cards of the Winds persuasion, that is). The deck cost me - done this way from the cheapest cards in the market - some 17k, while they were sold at 24k. Nice, if that had only materialized: the price of the deck plummeted over the weekend down to 18k and AH has now quite a few of them on sale.

On the bright side, I'm almost back where I started, money wise, meaning that I have managed to do about 20k in a bit over a week. Last I checked I had done 40k sales, meaning that my profit-% is around 50%.

Not bad. We'll see where this takes us when I get my system running.

On the play side, my main toons have been frozen in time. Laiskajaakko is taken out of the naphtalene only for the Brothers, my spriest is working on tailoring and enchanting occasionally and DK is just sitting there, doing some jewelcrafting once in a while. The main toon I'm playing currently is my banker, a restoration druid who runs a random every now and then if time permits. (My typical AH run takes about a hour with checking mail, restocking, reposting and specified scanning).

Now to heal in the Outlands dungeons has become the 'favourite' pass time for this toon: maybe it's the effect of Gnomore, but I just cannot take on doing the killing quests with this one, either. The fighting part of most of the quests just puts me off and as a resto druid the options are pretty limited. I'm lazy, I don't want to change gear or spec to accommodate the questing, so I just hit the LFD button and wait for the group.

Glad to say, as a healer it is almost immediate, even in the levelling dungeons. It seems that even though the healer/hybrid classes are predominant in the groups, none of them are willing to make the switch either. Levelling as dps in questing is so much more convenient and faster than as a healer, so I fully understand them.

However, being a pure healer brings interesting discussions in groups. It's always the healer's fault when something bad happens, and it doesn't matter how you explain the thing. In this one PUG there was a pretty vocal warlock, who insisted on pulling mobs in chain: the tank pally was doing his best to contain the aggro and had something wrong in his set up. In short, it caused a wipe (Hellfire Citadel, the bigger area after the tunnel): he pulled the whole area, some 20 or so mobs and ran first out of line of sight, then out of my range. As the only heal I can cast while running is Rejuvenation, a weak HoT, it wasn't enough to contain the damage.

This warlock started on nagging on the healer (didn't even take time to write a name there), how druids are so OP at this level (62) in these dungeons and how the healer did a sucky job. In my polite manner I explained how I can't do a thing if I'm not in the range or if I'm forced to move, and told him to check the facts, STFU and concentrate on his dps.

What a change in tone. He didn't even mention healing after that, pointed out that the tank had wrong sigil (or whatever the paladins have) on and generally thanked the healer at the end. It seems no-one had said anything against him, ever, and the first time someone paid any attention was now as he was shown where he was standing.

Anyhow, levelling up through the LFD is very interesting. You really cannot regard the rest of the group as being even a lousy AI, and you really have to adapt to how the tank - dps co-operation plays. I don't remember ever having to take other players into account as much as tank or dps as I have to do as a healer, so while playing a healer while levelling is demanding, it's also the most interesting part for me.

Pretty nice counter activity to the static AH grind, really.

Gnomore got a few hours, too, mounting up to lv16. LFD opened up, but the main interest is in the mount at lv20. The Darkshore has changed all for the best, but as the final steps of the main quests require killing, they are left unfinished: also the easter egg for two achivements requires some slaughter, so the latter one remains un-earned. Which really pisses me off.

This for now. I'll keep my stocks up and may even tell about my AH stories.

C out
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Patch always breaks something

Addon breakdowns aside, why is it that a patch always breaks the fundamental game somehow? Is it because of that list of thousands of bugs in the code which still wait to be repaired? Or is it just fault in the testing procedures?

WoW is acclaimed for being the most polished MMO out there, a game which is said to be the benchmark of polish. Right, WotLK worked nicely for the last few months of the expansion. BC did the same and Vanilla, too. If you do not count the disparity of the class balance which just got a new blow by the latest, most fundamental changes to the talents and skills.

So the first question is, why is there such a long list of unrepaired bugs in the game?

Because... I don't know. New content needs A-team to work on. Daily maintenance and content patching requires the B-team to work at their best, with the glint in their eye to be included into the A-team. The C-team... There is no C-team to patch and fix the bugs which have bugged the players for so long time, some even from the launch.

And now we have some real bugs to bug the players. Mouse-over lockout. Instance entrance lockout. Instance bugs like the Anub'Arak bug in the 5-mans.

The first two however bug me the most. I login and queue for an instance for the meager 10 minutes, only to get my computer freeze to the instance load window. Total. Lock. Out. Kind of freeze. Login and find myself from where ever my hearthstone is set, with 5 minute cooldown on LFD. Wait for another 10 minutes, hoping it will go through this time.

Happened to me once yesterday, a couple of times over the weekend.

How about the Headless Horseman? Game freezes the moment I mouse-over the event activation pumpkinhead. Finally get logged in and... I have the stuff in my bag. Whoo-hoo. Only if I was the tank this would have been a disaster. So what is Blizzards word of advice in here? "Make the dps to activate the event, don't mouse over the pumpkin if you are a tank."

Great.

Now I have been playing with the tradeskill window replacements because Skillet isn't working anymore. Even though LilSparky, who's responsible for the addon currently, has stated that it will be updated in the future. However, knowing he's working on his own tradeskill window replacement (GnomeWorks), it may well be the end of Skillet as we know it. And still no other comes close to Skillet in functionality, light weight and simplified outlook.

What can I say. These both issues have one thing in common. Keep It Stupid Simple is the best way of doing it. Or at least do it so that it all seems incredibly simple to the end user.

C out
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PS. Lil'Sparky's Workshop, the tradeskill window enhancement, is updated, but I can't make it work. I have only zero prices to all products in there, so if anyone could give me a hint what to do to make it work again it would be appreciated. I like my things simple, effective, easy and working, you see.
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AH game and all

For the last week or so I haven't been able to play as much as I would have wanted to. Real life takes priority and so it should always be. I've had enough time to check and run my AH mule, a chore from which I've taken much pleasure: it's a completely different battleground over there.

What I've noticed lately -amazingly- is the fact that Titanium and Titansteel have dropped in price considerably. No wonder really, as they are the 'old news': Primordial Saronite is the new Titansteel, so the MUDflation takes its toll. The same has happened to the crafted gear which used to be around 2k just a month ago. They are around the material prices currently, making the crafters very sad trolls everywhere. A little point I wrote about in the Nomadic Gamer last week, or at least a tangent to that post in a way. Everyone wants to be the hero so no one cares about the ones wanting to be the master crafter. Because everyone IS the master crafter already.

The flipside of this top heavy game is the fact that the lower and especially mid level crafting materials are constantly rising in price. There is a known threshold at the crafting materials around the last levels in Old Azeroth and around the last levels of Outlands. Clearly the reason to this is the fact that people are skipping those last areas so totally that the gathering of materials from those areas is forgotten.

The implications in levelling new crafting skill through AH becomes pretty pricey around the middle of the craft's levels. And that's the area the AH game is the most interesting to me.

I don't fancy the overcompeted glyph market, nor the Netherweave bag market. Sure, they are the fire and forget markets with possibility to create fast and fabulous wealth (and I'm not that fast and fabulous... nor bored). It's the snatching the few underpriced mats from the market and flipping them to more proper prices that makes me tick in a way. Sure, I craft some from time to time, but just to fill the holes I see in the AH listings, mainly for enchantments and bags, but that's just some extra.

Now, if someone would explain to me why people are still buying the vanity pets from AH, the pets which are sold in Dalaran? The vendor sells them for 40g a piece, but you can sell one in AH for anything from 70g to 120g.

What is your way of putting some extra cash into your character's pocket?

Impossible situation?

I've taken my priest, Pupunen, out of the storage again. Respecced her to Discipline, only to discover how much more efficient Disc is in damage dealing compared to Holy. Truly, Discipline suits better to the soloing up and occasional grouping, with it's lacks in healing side and all.

The server I'm playing in is a peculiar one. Especially the Alliance side: all the epic gear prices plummet within few days way, way below Allakhazam values. And at the same time, I'm selling pre-BC scrolls with huge profit, practically without competition. Epic which Allakhazam gives the price of 2500g is left unsold at 700g: this cannot be a sign of a healthy AH or end game farming. Phaelia's Vestments: last price I saw was around 2000g, when it's being reported being sold for 5000-6000g on other servers.

Is this server over farmed at the moment?

The requirements in the LFM announcements in the trade channel tell the same: LFM for Naxx10, must have achievements for bosses. Must have epics to prove. Every announcement requires achievements to make certain you have done it and accomplished the deed. I bet Greedy Goblin would love this situation. No more M&S's ruining the day, right?

Then again, I'm way too casual to pay any heed on this. I want to experience the game, and I want to experience the content. If it requires me to gain achievement before I can experience it (dilemma?!), then I think I won't experience the content as it is. If the only way to enter the raiding scene is to buy myself the gear to fulfill the requirements to be able to enter the raid from which the gear drops, then there has to be something very awry about the whole end game concept.

The more I think of this, the more I'm trying to stay away from the WotLK. The more I postpone the purchase of it.

Well, with Pupunen I have found new joy in the lower level grind and questing, and I most probably will be pretty happy with that.

Oh, by the way. My middle son, age 11, plays on another server. He has a draenai shaman, and he's just entered the Ashenvale. On the way there he created a minigame for himself: Azeroth racing. You see, there are these trees and roots which arc so that you can run underneath them. Obvious lap arcs you can see in racing games... We had loads of giggles about this as he ran through Darkshore to Ashenvale, skidding all over the road to find the lap gate...

What's your minigame Blizzard doesn't reward you about?

Newfound interest

Holy macaroni!

After I found out how to make scrolls with my enchanter (Pupunen), my ventures in the AH have gotten a new twist. The market potential is enormous, as no-one is really providing the lower level scrolls! The majority of the scrolls in AH are aimed for the end game people, the raid enchants being at the top of the list. But very, very few twink enchants or 'generic' levelling enchants are available.

I've made decent profit already from disenchanting and scroll making, almost paid back my flying and three mounts I got for Laiskajaakko last week.

Which reminds me of the next patch, in which the travelling is even more dumbed down. I have finally gotten the flying skill and mount, and now they nerf the flying in Outlands completely: fly right away when you come in! What is this!?

Thank you Blizzard for making MY personal achievement feel like stolen treat. Next I suppose they will nerf the Heroics so that you can enter them right away when you enter Outlands and complete the normal version. And make them soloable for the proper level toons.

Nerf the whole game, then.

Till that, I'm going to reap the benefits from my newly found interest in AH: disenchanting for scroll enchanting...

Newbie moments

Ok. I consider myself a newbie in the sense that I don't read Tankspot, Elitist Jerks and such to improve my performance: instead I want to learn myself... In a way, I don't believe that there is electricity in the fence, I have to pee on it myself.

But still sometimes I find myself smacking myself on the forehead for my own stupidity.

I have told, boldly, that I'm mostly checking AH currently. Mainly I'm hoping for the good deals to come up, and I haven't paid too much heed on the crafting side. Still, I have enchanter/tailor with both skills at around 280, sitting idle. My newbie moment considering this: I hadn't realized that the scrolls are made by enchanting.

My AH ballgame just got a new turn. Hello disenchanting and scroll manufacturing!

Before anyone comments that the lowbie scrolls are not worth it, I just checked the market: the only scrolls beside the ones coming from vendors and loot in AH are only for raiding people. The whole level area from 1 to 79 is being largely neglected in my server! So, I'm buying the vellums from Bishopgeorge (who is a scribe) and selling the enchants at the price I can make profit. Simple, eh?

The only problem is the vast amount of readers who will copy this... Crap. :P

Lost week

Yeah, that's not a typo: last week was truly a lost week for me: first a three day work trip which ended up being four days, then the holidays during which the weather was so great I just couldn't sit by the computer.

I did, however, have a nice email conversation with Tipa who directed me to a very intriguing side path from this regular WoW-whining of mine. I'm trekking that path whenever I can, rest assured I'll come up with something about that!

The few minutes I got to be in the game (make that two hours during the whole weekend...) resulted the following notions:
- The price of glyphs is rising again, and for many the price is stabilizing to correspond the cost of materials. Gone are the days of outrageous prices, both high and low.
- I made some decent wins with Nexus Vortexes, which I purchased some weeks ago. I purchased quite a lot of them and due to the fact that the AH deposits are enormous on these emblem vendored goods, I was pretty reluctant to sell them cheap. Now I made some 3-4 times the purchase price with them, and I'm certainly looking for more as soon as there are some for sale.
- 76-80 blues are appearing in very low prices, even though they sell for very nice profits. I'm not objecting, just wondering why people are throwing away all that gold: if there is demand, utilize it, right?
- Made Laiskajaakko Exalted in Darnassus and Exodar: Gnomeregan still waiting and then the main factions in the Old World have been conquered. Which makes me wonder, though: why do the toons who have passed lv60 and gone through the Dark Portal have to grind for their faction's reputation? They surely are world class heroes and should be considered equal to King Varian and other miscreants by that time. Really, which of the Old World heroes do you see fighting the monsters and demons of the Nether? Huh?
- And while going through the Drenai starting areas with my heavily over levelled protection warrior, I noticed that I really enjoy the storylines and stories which are obscured into the quests. I really want to make sure the Blood Elves' portal to Outlands (Sun Portal) isn't opened into Bloodmyst, and that's only because the story is scripted so well into the quests in there!

That's all for now. There have been a couple of very good discussions in the earlier posts, which I urge you all to read -and possibly even comment!- if you have spare time.

Dual-Spec glyph honeymoon over?

I was checking my Actioneering Alt, Copramo, yesterday and noticed that the glyph market is cooling down. Fast. At the same glyph you could have the high price of 25g and the lowest selling price at 78s.

I wonder if the 'new' reset of the talents causes any kind of hike in there?

Most probably not. Hope to sell the cheapo glyphs out and go along with the business as usual: vendor, convert, disenchant and resale. That's my Auctioneer Search rotation.

It works, but takes about 45 minutes to complete with a scan. All away from my questing.

What a bliss!

Trade channel comments

Another fine day in the AH world in two separate servers. In Thunderhorn the money keeps slowly rolling in: 'only' 120g profit yesterday, mostly from commodities. No vendorable deals as usual, which tells that the people on the server know the value of items. Trade channel was full of purples, mostly crafted and few which there are thirteen in a dozen. No surprises there. Half of the income went to resale purchases, though, so the AH keeps rolling money in. And it's the slowest time of the week...

I love it.

On the other server, however, situation is quite different: the prices live like there was no tomorrow! The epics seem to be at a way higher value range, so my measly 200-300g cannot even scratch the market. Then again, I made similar profits from the earlier day, with much lower priced trade items than I have in Thunderhorn. I could say that the lowlie trade goods are in good demand on this server, still. Also the conversion trade works, whereas the price levels on Thunderhorn don't provide such opportunities.

Which actually was a subject of discussion in the trade channel on this server: someone started ranting how the prices of Crystallized Fire had dropped dramatically overnight and how the prices of Eternal Fire seemed to be incredibly low. As you might know, you can split one Eternal to 10 Crystallized ones, this being known as conversion if you make profit from doing this split. And as far as I know, the Eternals are pretty useless in professions, whereas Crystallized ones are used in several recipes.

However, this certain person couldn't take the fact that the demand and supply are the main things that generate the price ranges in AH. Instead he proposed that there should be set limits to the prices of goods in AH, so that the high end prices wouldn't become outrageous and the low level prices would stay 'reasonable'. Now I know that Gevlon could say something great and intelligent on this subject, but as I'm not as economics savvy all I can say is that this thinking is faulty and stupid.

My only comment was that if the prices of certain goods were too low for comfort and demand, make the market accept a new price range. I did that on Linen Cloth, Tigerseye and Wool Cloth the other day, and rose the price to double it was when I started. With minimal money, as the price ranges were very, very low.

The main argument was that the epics prices are too high and in some cases quite outrageous: prices of 10k in Allakhazam were unthinkable. Then again, the Nobles Deck, which is the source of 'incredibly op trinket' (according to one player), was selling like Coca Cola on this server at price range of 6000-8000g... Which tells something about the state of crafting in this server. And no-one thought that this price was too high...

Strange how illogical people sometimes are.

However, I made several mental notes out of this:

1) as the market is still emerging, even the low level trade goods are good money

2) because the raiding is not so fully working on this server, there might be some nice catches coming later on: eyes open on epics and rares

3) the crafting is way behind the level composition of the server, so everything needed for meaningfull crafted items is in dire need

4) You can dominate the AH easily on this server with well placed purchases and pricing.

Ah, I love the smell of napalm... erm... I love the AH in the morning, when the people have mispriced their precious loot.

Oh, yes, and I made 5g 78c from vendoring stuff directly from AH. This server is easy.