Intermission: traffic appreciation post

Last night, after reading a couple of emails we've been tossing to and fro with Larísa from the closed Pink Pigtail Inn I got this devastating urge to install Planescape: Torment on my computer. While I was hunting for a way to actually do that (as the four disk installer wouldn't even start the install) I began to think. That alone is pretty amazing, but this time the thought bubbled from the fact that I know where this blog's traffic comes from pretty decently and quite a lot of it has been coming from the same blog for some while now.

So I decided to break my normal policy of not discussing the blog statistics at all. Only because the major contribution of the linked traffic still comes through the forementioned Pink Pigtail Inn.

Werit has been quite a good contributor, too, even though I haven't had a single WAR related post, ever. There is this steady flow of readers from that blog, as well as odd few from the following, excellent blogs.

Raging-Monkeys
Spinksville
Stylish Corpse
Tank Like A Girl
Chappo's Opinion
Highlatencylife
Kill Ten Rats

Those are not in any particular order, and there are some I have seen in the logs (Kiasa, weflyspitfires, oakstout and so on), but haven't been there for the last few weeks for a reason or another.

The biggest single burst of traffic came from Tobold's post about his 'not a blogroll' in which this blog is presented among the greats of the gaming blogosphere, a honor I will not easily forget. The same blogs are in my roll, too, which was kind of nice to notice. Please use the blogroll, use the links and make the network work!

In the time of globalization and internet, the whereabouts of the traffic are not important. Sure I could break the linked traffic into countries and the 147 subscribers my FeedBurner informs this blog having, but what would be the value of that information. More important are the connections which are keeping the traffic up, showing the networking and the routes people come in (and go out).

Knowing that no man blog is an island and seeing that be true is a revelation in itself. To see a waterfall to close into a dribble and disappear on that island feels uncomfortable, but not totally disheartening. It only means that you have to go out there and make the connections even stronger and open up the dams to form another stream to burst.

It may happen, or it may not. Without trying you'll never know.

Oh, and the Planescape: Torment problem? In case the installation doesn't start on Win7, 64bit especially, you have to restart the computer in Safe Mode, make the installation and return the computer to the normal mode. This is done by Start -> Accessories -> Command Prompt and write msconfig in there (press enter). Select tab Boot and check the Boot Options "Safe Boot" checkbox, apply, ok, restart as prompted and install PS:T. Return the computer to the original state by removing the tab in the Safe Boot checkbox. And after that, go through this list of added value. You won't regret it!

And one thing which most certainly interests me in the most used search words I've seen lately is do people not explore anymore? I mean, if the most of the incoming search engine traffic comes by "Where is Talon Stand" or "Talon Stand", then the player has to be extremely lazy and effective...

That's all for now, thank you readers for making this feel worth while!

.

On the way to Stonetalon Mountains

Gnomore pictorial 26-27

Last time, in the short update, Gnomore was left again in Darnassus, with his AH bulging with stuff and things to sell. Needless to say, half of that stuff got sold over the week and the current balances are not too flattering. Then again, for a character which has never killed a single target granting honor or experience (ha!), having over 2000g at level 26 is nice. It's much more than needed at this point of the game and it will easily carry for a long time. Plus he has nice goggles and a Haunt.

Then again, Gnomore is about to enter the mining and herbalism skill range, where the gathering skills can - and will - generate some real money. The next range after iron-mithril-truesilver is the herbalism range of Outlands.

To our story of the day: Gnomore let the archeological survey decide the way to proceed. This time the choice was Ashenvale, and the southern outpost to be exact. After running around that small spot for digging, Gnomore remembered that he had some gnomes to save from a wagon. Too bad you had to kill the driver of that wagon, so the only thing Gnomore could do was to bid goodbye to the guys and be sorry.

 The next spot was in the Zoram Strand, where the outpost people had some nice quests to run while digging.

The whole roundabout proved a serious reason for the lack of Night Elven Engineering in the game. They simply do not have the knack.

Like I could have told you they are locked and all...

Note, he needed ten statuettes to come to the conclusion that they all have a hidden compartment and that hidden compartment was locked...

The going about along the archeological sites took Gnomore to Forest Song again, to pick some rotten wood for some night elf and to seek out a goblet. Too simple for this resourceful little gnome, so he had to check what was behind door number two. I mean, before the portal at the end of the road.

Not only a huge army of dracolisk guardians, but two dragons guarding the portal. I still wonder where the portals would lead if they hadn't been made defunct...

Along the way, Gnomore ran into Gnarl, who had another nice quest to do: collect the assorted bits and pieces of his cousins and relatives, whom the orcs had sawed into lumber. Nice distraction from the actual aim of the day, which was fully realized after this quest was done.

What little did that little gnome know... because on the way there, he ran into the encampment of orcs and goblins, with their huge machines of destruction, and even bigger balls bomb for which Gnomore had to die for.

Can you imagine? The Night Elven commander at the outpost didn't even believe this little gnome. See for yourself!

Then it was time to move on, anyhow. Off to Stonetalon, to higher gains and glory.

Eww... I really shouldn't be here...

In the end, after serious doubts about the sense of being at challenging area, Gnomore found a place to rest.

All I can say at this point is that the rest came on purpose, because the next time Gnomore was out, he got even deeper into areas where he shouldn't have been.

But that's a story for another time!!!
.

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!
.

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?

.

Asaad day

There they were: the foolish three who had once failed to conquer the Vortex Pinnacle. Facing the portal, feeling confident and willing to die for... the sake of dying.

Fast forward, with subtitles:
"If you just sap that one and I pull the rest... Oh, it can't be sapped, and omgwtf LET ME AT IT!"
"Could you use Fade or something, so I can keep the aggro?"
"Um, well, it might be better for my mana if I stopped doing damage to them, right?"
"Ok, I'll go and strangle that one, silencing it? Ah, for crying out loud, you pulled it already..."

The groups of different sizes of winds and clouds came and went, and the majority of the time my screen was like this:

Happily smashing away, from one pull to another. Ok, save the one time an exploding cloud warrior pushed me over the edge of the Pinnacle, but otherwise the trash mobs were pretty uneventful, as if someone had tweaked them - again! - to some lower level of challenge. This time the Grand Vizier left another man standing, and it wasn't the tank...

Bloody priest! He should keep the tank up rather than the rogue, as it was the tank who bit the dust first again.

No reason to cry over the spilled milk, though.

Jump to the next, the mid-boss Altairus was a nice, fast and simple fight, right after the fellowship thought out to use the wind to their benefit. Old hunter adage was proven correct: always stand downwind...

Finally it was time to face Asaad. The trash mobs of the Tol'Vir after the Grand Vizier were a sort of nice change to the pace, as our rogue could sap and control the excessive healers. Otherwise it was - like I commented in Twitter - "sap one, tank on rest, kill the second, wham-bang-slam-smash."

Now Asaad. That is one bugger of a boss. The stars around pounding extra damage to us all, with no way of putting them out of their misery, having to run from one Containment Field to another while tossing things to the Lord of Wind and Fury himself, the fight was actually very interesting. Thrice we fell, until...

The perfect performance.

In the end, all we could conclude was...

After which we searched for new challenges. I wonder if this is good enough?

Oh, by Golly!

The first fights in the Lost City of Tol'Vir were intense, interesting and way better than all the fights so far in Cataclysm, with several aspects to take into account. It is indicative that we didn't get the first boss - General Hasam -  down on the first run we were there, yet everyone of us felt that we were doing our best, with little to improve in our playing.

So off to the questing it is. Mind you that we cleared Vortex Pinnacle with tank and healer being at lv84 and 'just' the rogue at 85, and the healer dinged to cap while in the Lost City of Tol'Vir. More or less, it's down to gearing up from now.

It seems that the game just turned interesting, if the quality of the instances grows this rate from now on...

.