Monthly Archive for August, 2008

Your 12 step program to more gold – Part 2

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Yashima
on August 30, 2008
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Lakshmi's AuctionsSo in Part 1 of this guide I wrote up how you can prepare to make lots of gold from your fellow players.

So if you followed my advice by now you probably have set up a banking alt, started saving your gold, got yourself some helpful addons and a few big bags full of loot.

Now what to do with that loot?

Here comes the second set of tips how to become rich in the World of Warcraft.

7. Don’t stockpile. Sell everything. When logging of for the night, switch to your bank alt, empty their mailbox, run over to the AH and just put up everything for sale. Don’t worry too much about getting good prices for your stuff or wasting money on AH fees. Selling lots of cheap stuff is better than not selling a lot of expensive stuff. Every copper counts!

8. Consider your professions. Professions are part of my personal gold making scheme. I have two characters at max level. The second one I leveled mostly because I wanted a character with maxed out Tailoring and Skinning. My main has Alchemy and Herbalism and I am leveling a third character with Jewelcrafting and Mining. The easiest professions to make money of are the three gathering professions. If you want to level another alt just choose Skining and either Herbalism or Mining as professions. From the crafting professions there are those that are more useful than others:

Alchemy: the specializations are nice because they help make the most out of materials. Use your timers if you have the time to log on. Transmutations are money makers for a minimum amount of invested time. Primal Earth -> Primal Water is my favorite. Alchemy is cheap to level I think.

Tailoring: make your own bags. Again: if you have the time to use up your timers … they all generate money. Plus there are some things that can be sold. Even when it is not Xmas the Xmas outfits sell quite nicely sometimes. I think it is nice to have a tailor to be able to use up all that cloth you find to make items for your Disenchanter (up next).

Enchanter: well most Enchanters really are Disenchanters, right? Of course you could just ask a friend to do it for you. But it is much more comfortable to have your own. But … it is a bit expensive to level this as you need to have quite a high level to be able to disenchant most things you find. But the Enchanting mats are definitely worth it on the AH. It is a good idea to use your Bank alt as Enchanter if you plan to level your Bank alt (my bank alts are level 38 and level 36). Right now on our realm you could get rich from Greater Eternal Essences and Greater Nether Essences. Illusion Dust is also very nice. (Enchantrix which is included with Auctioneer usually is very helpful to see which items will yield which enchant mats)

Jewelcrafting: Definitely not cheap to level. But Lakshmi has now reached 350+ and can sell cut gems on the AH and that makes great money. I have not yet bought a single one of the recipes for the rare stones, they are too expensive with every recipe going for at least 300 gold. It would take way too many gems to make a profit from a single recipe. There are enough “free” recipes for uncommon gems that still sell. Prospecting is also very nice. Even “simple” gems go for great profits on the auction house because most are needed for a variety of recipes and often those are recipes people will craft for their alts. I don’t think the timer for the Brilliant Glas recipe is very useful unless you get skillpoints from it and still have a huge cash of uncommon gems from the times when these sold for next to nothing.

Leatherworker: Has some nice items for your alts. For the rest it is much the same as Tailoring except that you need a Skinner for the Mats.

Smith: I have to say I never leveled a smith so I can’t really say anything about that. I much prefer to use my ores for Jewelcrafting.

I am very curious about Inscription and the new mechanism to sell enchants on the AH. I believe both will be huge in making gold. As with gems, buff food, flasks etc.  I believe that Inscriptions and Enchants are items which cannot really be obtained from anywhere but your fellow players.

My price for best return on investment for crafting professions goes to Jewelcrafting right now. Enchanting and Alchemy should be close. Nothing beats gathering professions however because everyone tends to stockpile mats for their crafting profession “just in case” which is not helping in making you gold. Just sell it!

9. Cook and fish. If you are into fishing you probably already know it’s a gold maker. Fishing has a very good time:gold ratio. On the lower levels you are better off using up only the cooking materials that you need to level and selling the rest, preferably in big batches that people who are too lazy to farm are looking for. I never thought people would buy all the Mystery Meat and stuff I found. Absolute bestseller are the items you need for the level 225 cooking quest. Any kind of pool fishing will yield an ok amount of gold. The best fishing is in the three zones around Shattrath. Zangarmarshes are usually the quietest. You can just wander around the lakes and fish out all the junk plus some fish. I like my Golden Scale Vendor Fish. When I feel like it I do the cooking and fishing dailies with my druid. Both are easy to do and yield a nice return on my time.

10. Auctioning for the Experts. At first you just sell everything for whatever price feels right. If you keep it up for a while you will learn what sells and what doesn’t. If you have a few minutes to spare on your auction runs let Auctioneer scan the AH. It stores a lot of price statistics which will help you in the long run. But don’t trust those statistics blindly! Thinking is still required. There are people who game Auctioneer users. Once you have a feeling for the market and prices you may consider doing some AH Flipping. Flipping is when you buy something cheap and sell it again for a good profit. Flipping carries a big risk. Use it sparingly and only when you are pretty sure that the price you are paying really is cheap. I think my best flip recently was buying to Shadow Pearls for 80 silver (silver!) and making them into two Necklaces of the Deep which sold for 100 gold each.

There are some weapons across all levels that will always sell sooner or later for a nice price. Sometimes you can find them cheap and resell them.

Much less risky is to buy cheap green items and disenchant them or buy cheap ores to prospect them. Buying uncut gems and cutting them also yields nice profits. But anytime you buy something to re-sell there is risk involved! Don’t be disappointed if it doesn’t work out every time. Just keep going.

Most of the time I just sell stuff I have found.

Additional Pricing resources:

  • http://www.wowhead.com
  • http://www.wowecon.com

11. Set yourself small goals. It is much easier to save up to reach 1000 gold instead of 5000.

12. Plan ahead on your own purchases. If you know that you will want certain items, plan ahead. Wait for a good deal or until you get the materials during your normal play. Having to buy stuff “now” on the AH costs a fortune usually. You will want to reserve that kind of behavior for emergencies. Finally: in this game time time equals gold. Always remember that farming most often is a boring activity that takes lots of time and somebody else may have done it for you and offer the goods you need for a price that you can easily pay when you think how long it would take to get the gold as opposed to the items.

So basically my gold making scheme  is adding a gold making aspect to a variety of in-game activities I have fun with instead of stupidly doing dailies or farming some type of ore or leather until I drop dead of boredom. It still takes (out-of-game) time (until all your wares are bought) and some spending discipline to get lots of gold, but it is not impossible even for somebody with little time on their hands to get enough money for any type of mount.

A fast mount is a good investment by the way as it allows for much faster gathering or daily questing at max level.

I hope there was something in this guide for everyone and I’d be glad to hear of your strategies for making even more gold.

Your 12 step program to more gold – Part 1

Published
by
Yashima
on August 30, 2008
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Last night I crossed the 7000 gold treshold the first time and I am well on my way to reach the 10k. Since Softthistle asked how I do it, here I deliver. This post is about how I am going about getting rich in the World of Warcraft.

I’ve always managed to steadily increase my hoard when I had that goal and I had it most of the time. Sometimes the gold was a means to an end. Mostly I wanted to buy various mounts. I still remember saving up for my very first Tiger for my very first Druid. The biggest challenge thus far has been the epic flier. As most of you will have discovered, it is not a trivial goal to reach. But who doesn’t want an epic flier? It is also very nice to just have a nicely bolstered budget for those impromptu shopping sprees at the AH: Recipes, Badges of Tenacity or weapons for your alt.  Just buy what you want, don’t let yourself be limited by the amount of gold you can beg from your guildies!

For me though the trade game is not only the means to a goal. I do have fun seeing the hoard increase just for the sake of having more gold available to spend on … well don’t spend too much. That’s the first rule.

1. Save your gold. Don’t spend gold on random stuff. Every time you buy something at the AH it must either be an important goal of yours to get the item or the item has to bring in more money than it cost very soon. If you want to become rich, the first step is to not go on shopping sprees. Tip: If you can’t manage to save your gold, setup an alt as savings account and be sure to mail him everything above a certain amount and be also sure to mail it to “Bänk” not “Bank” if you called your alt “Bänk”. (SendSelf or Postal may help here)

2. Be patient. Whatever you do, it takes some time. Try to enjoy this money-making as part of the game. Otherwise just stick with step 1. If auctions and professions are not for you, do your dailies and quest a lot to get money. Hope for valuable drops and stick to step 1, the rest of this is all about how to make money using your fellow players and playing the markets of WoW.

If however you want to get into the trade game to make gold here’s another 10 steps to get you started.

3.  Get yourself the following addons:

  • Auctioneer: it keeps track of all auctions you participated in, it stores prices and automates auctioning. It helps find out what the market is now and what it was in the past. You do not want to do without this one!
  • Bag addon: a bag addon that does categories and big one-bag inventories. I use ArkInventory. Use whatever you like, just don’t go with the default bags. Having organized bags is a big help when deciding what to sell.
  • teksJunkSeller: or any other addon that automatically sells your grey junk for you.
  • ColaLight: or any other addon that shows how much an item will be worth at the NPC Trader, so you don’t accidentally drop something big when your bags are full.

4. You need a trusted Banker: Set up your bank alt if you have not done during step 1. Unless you are playing a character that is questing near one of the big cities you really want one of these.

5. Get bags to haul your loot. Prepare your character and your alts: give them big bags. But don’t invest in bags that are too big or too expensive. Go with what you can easily obtain without spending a lot of time or gold. 14-16 slots is good. 18 slot and above is overkill. Bonus points on this step if you can craft the bags yourself or get a guildie to craft them for you. At first you don’t really need bank slots. If you go with a banker character your mailbox and bags should suffice.

6. Play the game. Oops. What? Yes: play the game! Even on an alt. You need stuff to sell on the AH and how do you get that? By playing. Getting gold has become a lot easier with Burning Crusade and I am sure it will be even easier with Wrath.  There are so many more markets, another profession and more levels.  If you haven’t noticed: more levels are good for the traders among us. And the best markets are where few people play the content. Which is not the max level content. One easy example: people pay a lot of gold for some Truesilver Ore, Gold Ore or even Silver Ore. Those are the rare metals of the early game. They pay a lot more for that than for the level 60+ Fel Iron which is abundant because so many people are in Outland. Tip: Sell the smelted bars of the rare metalls not the ores. Rare metalls cannot be prospected. For other metalls always check to see if the ore or the bar brings more gold.

Most people repeat the content at max-level over and over. Very few people play the lower level content so drops from this are rare. There is green stuff “of the falcon” going for tons of gold in all level ranges on the AH. So I say: play the game and loot, loot, loot. Take everything and put it in your big bags, then mail it to your banker and go play some more. As you get to know prices it is great to see that nearly every drop can be sold for a small or sometimes bigger profit. That’s part of the fun to see that just by leveling an alt you can easily get a lot of stuff to sell to people on the AH.

So much for the first part. Prepare yourself for the second part – coming up soon!

Why I am back

Published
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Yashima
on August 27, 2008
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Some time in May or April my motivation to play WoW was gone all of a sudden. I never really quit the game. I payed for my account all this time. I just played less and less and then came the month where I just didn’t log on and all and did not even read the guild forums for a while. I know a lot of the reasons for not playing mostly real life caught up with me and there was a lot to do and the nice summer weather and …

You won’t guess what really brought me back.

I played another game. A German single player roleplaying game named Drakensang. It’s a nice game and it motivated me to play computer games again. I found quickly that WoW still is my game of choice if I choose to spend time in our chaotic computer room at all.

Why still WoW? I am just so used to the interface. I still know my keys blindly and I had so much fun putting together my addons … I just can’t let go of that.

Reading List (OT)

Published
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Yashima
on August 26, 2008
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I found this nice list of “books to read” on Ayliis blog. I marked those I have read. Currently I have no plans to read so many of these books but there are some I am interested in reading once I manage to get through the pile of fantasy books on my night table. Admittedly there are some books on the list I have never heard of until now. In keeping with Aylii I’ll also underline those books I really enjoyed

The list is after the jump.

Continue reading ‘Reading List (OT)’

Phasing

Published
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Yashima
on August 26, 2008
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I just saw this article on phasing. In short phasing is a technology where a player’s questing history influences what he sees in the world.

From the article

The potential for this technology is huge. We only saw glimpses of it in Blade’s Edge Mountains, where players and NPCs would disappear from or appear within view depending on your state. Blizzard takes it several steps further and applies the state to apply to structures, as well — whether, say, a house is intact or in disrepair

From the comments section:

Yea, that’s pretty cool. Just imagine, if they had used this technique from the start: that bridge in Lakeshire would be finished, Mankrik’s wife would be buried…

This sounds absolutely amazing. We have for the longest time been talking how the world was to static and never changed with whatever quests our characters completed. This technology would allow for you to change at least “your” world by doing quests. It would be nice to see it applied to old content as well.

Of course the downside is that if you are grouping for a quest and not everybody is on the same steps people may indeed see different things in the world. But if you want quests to tell stories and want everyone to be able to experience the story-telling it is next to impossible to avoid this.

WoW more and more feels like an evolving game. Are these expansions really expansions or rather sequels? The gaming experience has changed so much over the last few years. Right now it feels like WoW3 will be exactly that: the third installment of games in a series. The only weird thing is that each sequel obsoletes the previous games and that is what people cry about when lamenting how everything was better in the “good old times”.

I think the game has improved tremendously over the years. Many many changes have been made that have made the game more fun.

Nostalgia is fine, too, because nobody can bring back the experience of the classic wow game we played 3 years ago and it was fun back then.

I just think looking forward to exciting new stuff is better than playing and complaining about the game you play. So I look forward to all the small changes that are going to come. I especially hope this one is going to make a big impact on the game world.

Character Pages

Published
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Yashima
on August 26, 2008
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As seen on another blog I have now made a page for each of my “named” characters. My hordes of alts will have to remain unnamed until I decide to make them one of my official and guilded characters.

Here are the three pages:

I’ll try to make these pages a bit more interesting when I have time or play more.

Goals before WotLK

Published
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Yashima
on August 22, 2008
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I want to make that 10k Gold achievement. That’s the only goal I have. Everything else is only there to help me achieve that one gold: leveling the shaman to level mining to have one more gathering profession available at max level.

My plan is to just play bit and sell a lot on the AH. Just as always. Currently I am sitting on 6.4k. I think it’s doable even with my play-time. All I need is to reach Outland with the Shaman and then start gathering and selling … I’ll just have to resist the temptation to buy me some jewelcrafting recipes – everything cool is still much too expensive.

On quitting WoW

Published
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Yashima
on August 21, 2008
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No not me. I am actually “back”. Though I try to keep my playtime low. I am leveling my shaman and try to keep her with some rest-xp when they are gone I can’t play – that’s my rule now. She made level 50 last night and I am also successfully leveling her professions.

One of our guild’s longtime members has quit the game. At first he posted he would take a break from gaming until WotlK. I thought it was a good idea. He had been playing a lot for the past three years and sometimes a break is necessary to get a new perspective on the importance and of the game and it’s effect on your life. It worked for him.

Two weeks after his first post he wrote that he was quitting completely. He had found out how much his life had been put on hold during playing the game. He missed out on things and didn’t see his friends. Some of those seem to have talked some serious sense into him. I am sad I never realized before how much he was playing and I feel bad for not ever trying to tell him: “hey you’re playing too much, you think that’s good?” I am glad somebody else did.

I see how much some people play and I realize that some people’s behaviour isn’t healthy. I also think that I cannot take responsibility for every guild member. Yet I am not sure if there are cases where I should try to intervene. Make sure people know what they are doing.

All this makes me incredibly sad because the biggest rule in our guild is “RL > WoW”. We always said so to each and every new member who joined and kept repeating it when situations came up that seemed to give the game a higher priority. This rule is in place to remind people that it is only a game, that we all have to question our gaming behaviour all the time. For me it suffices. For him it just was not enough.

For me playing the game all this time was worth the time I spent (well sure it could have been a bit less sometimes, I logged my 150 days played in 3.5 years – sum of all characters). I do not have the feeling I missed out on important things in my life. I believe I would have spent the time with another hobby (right now I am reading most of the time). I learned things through the game. I met people. I had fun and I made good memories – and some bad ones. With another hobby I would have learned different things met different people. But I did not miss out on anything because of the game except for a few movies or so ;)

Please always think before logging in if what you are going to do is worth your time. Don’t play when you’ll later regret it and feel like it was a waste of your time.

Achievements

Published
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Yashima
on August 13, 2008
.Tags: 2 Comments

After I have started playing a bit more often again – I did log in three or four times in the last 7 days and Lakshmi has now reached level 47 – I also started reading more WoW blogs again and my first objective was to get me some information on WotLK.

I have heard from a Druid/Hunter player that he has trouble deciding which character to level first because both sound very nice in the coming expansion. So far I could not verify much about that. I had a look at skills and talents of the druid … sounds nice.

What impresses me the most currently are the achievements. Though most are pretty obvious and a bit boring or uncreative it still is a nice enough addition that triggers my hunter-gatherer instincts. Best of all is that it looks like achievements might bring Tenobaal back to the game. It would be nice to play together again.