White Kitten - Quick Gold Making for PvP'ers

White Kitten, Quick Gold making for PvP'ers

As part of my continuing series of quick gold making tips for PvP'ers, I'm going to link you back to an old post of mine - Lil Timmy & the White Kitten. In that post, I notice I said the kitten sells for 150 gold each but of course, that was long before Pet Battles were on the horizon & that was also the sale price only on the Alliance side.

I've just checked The Undermine Journal for updated figures & it seems my server is a very special place! The Cat Carrier (White Kitten) is still selling at an average price of 150 gold whereas the EU average is almost 400 gold. Out of curiosity, I also checked the horde side as this kitten is found only from this NPC in Stormwind - my server average on horde side is about 800 gold & across the EU Horde, the average is around 1400 gold!

Now that Pet Battles & the Pet Journal are available in game, it's even easier to transfer this White Kitten between factions - just learn it then log to the character that is going to sell it, enter the Pet Journal & cage the little beastie - hey presto, one free faction transaction without Neutral Auction House costs or risks!

The downside to this cute little kitten though is that it's not one of the rare types of pets. It's too early to tell how the new Battle Pets prices will change but this will always be an attractive pet for pet collectors. I've leveled mine a bit just for fun & have listed it on the Auction House. It's the only Battle Pet listed with some levels on it but with the current Battle Pets category still bugged on the Remote Auction House app & with some of the auction house addons still not working properly, I've not seen even a sniff of interest yet.

This is a great tip for Alliance PvP'ers (and anyone else really but fits well here!) as you can park yourself near the Jewelcrafting Trainer in Stormwind & spam a target macro to find Timmy. In the 2-5 minutes between battlegrounds, you shouldn't get too bored & as his spawn timer is between 1-3 hours, it really is just an off chance that you'll find him but if you think about what you would normally do in those few minutes, then decide whether spamming a target macro is worthwhile.

Now before anyone goes off the deep end & says this is a waste of time or a useless tip - remember! I'm not suggesting you spend hours spamming that macro, I'm not suggesting this is the best way to make gold for everyone, I'm just pointing out one quick little thing that PvP'ers can do to improve their chances of making gold without using up valuable Battleground time :)


Image Credit © *Shanghai*Sparkles* on Flickr under Creative Commons Licence

Mists of Pandaria - Pet Battles - First Impressions & How To Make Gold

© Piez on Flickr, under creative Commons Licence

If you follow me on Twitter (@nevahaddict), you may have seen me bemoaning the fact that I wasn't going to be able to play Mists of Pandaria until next week when I get home from my travels. Well, as luck & a chance comment on Twitter would have it, it turned out that I could so like many others, I have almost lost the last two days in this wonderful new world Blizzard have created for us!

I thoroughly enjoyed the whole start area for a few hours but I'm out of practise with questing so I decided to head back to Orgrimmar & take a look at these pet battles. That was my biggest mistake! Multiple achievements, 70 captured pets & 100 pet battles later, I realised that it was almost time for my friend to get home from work so I just logged out. I didn't even put any of my MoP herbs on the Auction House.

General Gold Stuff
That brings me to this morning - I did eventually get all my auctions posted - manually as I don't want to mess up any of my friends add-on settings. My sales have been atrocious on this US server, about the only stuff selling is the few cheap herbs I manage to snatch up now & then or the level 77-80 green armour. We have the same glyph problem that so many others are bemoaning - even today, most of the Monk glyphs are under 100 gold with just 3 or 4 above the 300 gold mark.

Pet Battle Stuff
I currently have a lvl 15 twink on the Alliance side of my main US server & a little banker over there too. I decided to check out the Auction House for pets - just to see what was happening. I found a very busy pet section on their auction house - over 600 various pets listed as opposed to the 100 or so on the Horde auction house. Prices were much lower too so I snatched up a few bargains - 3 x White Kittens for 100 gold each & a Razormaw Hatchling for 35 gold. I've also been picking up Elementium Geode pets for 200 gold or less over the last few months so my little banker alt learnt 3 geodes, the 3 kittens & the hatchling.

I then logged back to my main & made up a team to get some pets leveled. I only took them to level 4-5 (without even leaving Orgrimmar!) but I then caged them up & listed them on the Horde Auction House at a higher price than the level 1 versions. This is still a work in progress type situation - there have been problems with the Battle Pets section not being searchable on the remote Auction House App & I haven't seen much in the way of price movements, undercutting or even any sales yet. I have a feeling most people are either leveling to 90 or playing in the new Pandaren starter zone or perhaps, like me, they got into a time warp & are still pet battling out in the wilds somewhere!

There is also a small problem where a vendor bought pet (Companion Pet) goes into the Miscellaneous/Pets section whereas one that has been learnt then caged gets listed in the Battle Pets section. If you just list a vendor bought item, you may want to check prices in both sections before listing it - variances between the two prices can be quite noticeable even tho at level 1, the caged version is identical to the uncaged one.

Making Gold From Battle Pets
So how will I try to make gold off this new pet battle system - well, for starters, I'm an altoholic - I have alts dotted over multiple servers & most are just the bankers, left behind after I deleted the leveling toon on that server. So with pets being account wide, I'm going to be searching for cheap pets across about 8 different servers. I'll learn them & perhaps level them a bit (we'll see how that market develops over the next few weeks, I'm sure) & then cage them & sell them on the most expensive of my servers. Eventually I think the most valuable battle pets will be the highest level ones of course but for now, it's a whole new market to test & explore.

I also quite enjoy farming stuff so I will undoubtedly be out there, farming or grinding away at getting some of the rarer pets from drops like the various whelplings, firefly or even the disgusting oozeling. I'm sure my tactics will change as this market develops but for now, I'm just going to poodle along & enjoy all the new stuff that Mists of Pandaria is offerings us.

Do you have a tactic you are willing to share? What do you think of the Pet Battles so far? Let us know in the comments or you can email me (email address in right sidebar). I look forward to hearing from you.

Edited to add: Whilst I was looking for a picture for this post, Cold has just published his post for today Companion Pets vs Battle Pets - Pricing Discrepancies & Warnings - I've only touched on some of the points so go have a read there too for greater analysis of this whole subject! Great Minds think alike huh?

Zygor Guides - Fully Updated & Improved for Mists of Pandaria

With the release of Mists of Pandaria looming ever closer, I thought I'd mention Zygor's Guides in its own post as I believe it is one of, if not the best WoW leveling guides out there. I began using Zygor's Leveling Guide way back when I first started playing. My husband had been playing for about 3 months before I caved in & gave it a try myself. He'd got badly lost on his first character & almost quit until he found this fantastic WoW leveling guide so when I did start playing, I used it too.

Now this was before Blizzard improved the quest log, quest tracking, map system & before they added the little tips you get in the starter zones. I remember clearly googling for hours, looking for a 'how to play WoW  guide' or 'leveling in WoW' article of some sort. Having never played an RPG or any other MMO before, I was totally lost but Zygor's Guide gave me the directions I needed in game to get my first character moving.

I use Zygor's Guide every time I start a new character - not because I really need it now for the Alliance characters but because I just find it so easy to use & I got lazy! I recently started a new account on the US servers & have been playing Horde seriously for the first time. It's like being a newbie again! I don't know where anything is - flight paths, profession/class trainers even inns but this wonderful WoW leveling guide takes me exactly where I need to be & has reduced some of the frustration for me.

Check out the new, updated Zygor Guide now!

Since I first started using Zygor's WoW leveling guide, they have added several brilliant features, including a Loremaster section - this helped me find all the quests I had missed when questing & I when I eventually knuckled down to it, I got my Loremaster achievement fairly easily.

So why am I only just talking about this now? Well, of course, Mists of Pandaria is launching just 4 days from now & the busy people over at Zygor's have been hard at work preparing the updated version of the Leveling & Loremaster Guide as well as introducing some fabulous new Guides too. I especially like the look of the Dungeons & Gear Guide as I often spend a lot of time, trying to find gear upgrades, even whilst leveling.

So far, they've announced that they will have guides ready for all of the following World of Warcraft topics, available on September 24th - the day BEFORE Mists of Pandaria releases:

* Leveling and Loremaster
* Dailies and Events
* Dungeons and Gear
* Professions and Achievements
* Pets and Mounts
* Titles and Reputations

On top of ALL that new content, they've managed to add a boat load of new features to their guide software.  It's all stuffed into a sleek and powerful package they're calling Zygor 4.0.  They're not finished revealing all of the new features, with more coming over the next couple of days, but what they've revealed so far is brilliant!  This is really something you have to see to believe, so head over there and check out the videos they've released so far.

Check out the new updated Zygor Guide now!

Blizzard has predicted that Mists of Pandaria will be one of, if not THE largest and most successful World of Warcraft expansions yet. I'm also seeing quite a buzz on Twitter & whilst some folks are still decidedly unimpressed with the whole Panda thing, I am super stoked to get my alts moving. Sadly I have to wait a full week until after launch as I'm currently away from home with no access to my EU account *insert sad panda face here* (pun totally intended by the way!). I also don't have access to my Zygor's WoW leveling guide here so my first steps into Mists of Pandaria are likely to be tentative to say the least!  Go check out the stuff Zygor Guides is doing so you can be prepared to dominate all of this new content right from day one.

New Series - Quick Gold Making Tips for PvP'ers

Several times over the last few months, I've got chatting to various PvP'ing guild mates of mine. Initially, I kept quiet in guild about my gold making but as guildies became friends, I opened up a bit so I often advise them in small ways on the AH and various other bits & pieces. The one thing my PvP friends all seem to have in common, besides an unending thirst for killing Horde is that they are all virtually broke most of the time.

They can make gold if they have to, especially if saving up for a new bit of gear but to do so, they stop their PvP activities & do some daily grinding or farming until they have enough gold. I've tried many times to explain some basic gold making but almost with out exception, their answer has been 'that sounds complicated' or 'that's gonna takes forever'.

So I was sitting here quietly today & it hit me - I should do a small series of 5-10 minute gold making tips - little bits that over time will add up but most importantly, can fit in those 5 minute gaps between battlegrounds! I've added a tab at the top of the page so over time, it will provide quick access to any tips I think fit in this category as well as the new posts I'm planning for you.

Today's quick tip then is to install Auctionator if you don't already have it. I'll show you how to set up a basic shopping list of some nice bits to snatch for reselling in my next post. You could use Auctioneer or TSM of course but I haven't used Auctioneer for a while now & TSM can get a bit complicated if you're not really into Auction House stuffs!

If you are a PvP'er & want to know anything in particular, just leave a comment or you can email me on auctionhouseaddict@gmail.com or tweet me on @nevahaddict if you prefer. Or of course, if you want to share your own 5 minute tip - I'd love to hear those as well.

Engineering Pets - Part 4 - Dragonling At last!

I was going to wait until Mists of Pandaria went live live before posting this but this new Engineering pet is super cute & deserves to see some daylight already!

For the first time, we are going to be able to have a Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling as a proper pet rather than as a 5 minute helper given by a trinket. I've kept all my dragonling trinkets I've picked up whilst questing as well as a fair few other fun trinkets, all happily taking up bank space for those odd occasions when we show off stuff in guild :P

Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling (Skill lvl 575)

I haven't been able to find out where this schematic comes from yet - I don't have beta access either but I will guess at it being trainer taught. We'll find out in a week or so & I'll update here as necessary! I expect this pet to be quite popular given that it's the first mechanical dragonling although how it will fare in pet battles, I have no idea.

As it is a crafted pet, I will take an educated guess & say that it won't be super-popular with the pet battlers as it is not one of the pets listed to be 'rare'. As a collector myself, I'd pay a lot for it early on but as a confirmed miserly scrooge-like gold maker, I will make myself wait until prices stabilise a little later into the expansion! lol

Materials

4 Ghost Iron Bars = 8 Ghost Iron ores
6 Trillium Bars = 12 Black Trillium Ores + 12 White Trillium Ores
2 Spirit of Harmony

Ghost Iron bar = 2 Ghost Iron Ore (mining/smelting skill 500)

Trillium Bar = 2 Black Trillium Ore + 2 White Trillium Ore (mining/smelting skill 600)

With this being information from beta (even at this late date) some items may still be liable to change but for now the info on these materials is as follows.

Ghost Iron Ore is the first tier of ores available in Mists of Pandaria & as such is plentiful in nodes & supply. Trillium Ore appears to be a rare spawn in some of the Ghost Iron Nodes, rather like Truesilver or Khorium at lower levels. The difference this time though is that Trillium has two variations - black & white. Comments on Wowhead suggest the colour of the rock underneath the node may give you a clue as to whether it is white or black trillium but I honestly think that doesn't really matter much - it will be valuable either way. In the time it takes to check the underlying rock colour, you could have mined the node, found out what colour it is & be on your way to the next node!

Spirit of Harmony

At the moment, these are Bind on Pickup as are the Motes of Harmony (10 Motes = 1 Spirit). Spirits & Motes can drop from any mob in Pandaria but there is still a lot of confusion & discussion over these items. With them being BoP, they will act as a limiting factor for almost all craft professions & having a dual gatherer will see that character piling these up & not really being able to use them. There is a vendor for both factions that will accept Spirit of Harmony in return for other trade goods such as herbs, leather, cooking tokens etc.

In reality it means that if you want to make these Dragonling pets for resale, you will have to go out & about & do some killing, either questing or dungeons, I'd guess. This will be a bit of a shock to the system for many serious goldmakers - I know I only actually kill stuff on maybe 3 of my lvl 85 characters, the others just do a bit of farming or low level dungeon boosting for guildies & spend the rest of their time in Stormwind!

If you have Engineering paired with another craft rather than a gathering profession, you may also be torn as to which craft should use your limited supply of Spirit of Harmony. Spirits can be used to by-pass the daily and/or weekly cooldowns on some profession items such as Inscription Research, transmutes & cloths. They are also used in high end Jewelcrafting trinkets & all level 90 non-cloth armour. It will be interesting to see how this limited supply will affect the different professions & how gold makers perceive their value - craft a pet, skip a cooldown or craft high level armour - I'm sure there will be much discussion over the coming weeks on this subject.

Shake That Salt Shaker - Engineers Get Groovy!

© TheGiantVermin, Salt Shakers on Flickr, under CC Licence

Just a short post today as I'm away from home & can't access my main account. I will resume my weekly sales updates once I return home again though.

One of the nifty gadgets that Engineers can make is the Salt Shaker. It requires an engineering skill of 250 & is usable only by Leatherworkers with a skill level of 250. This came to my attention whilst I was writing the Engineering pets posts recently. The Tranquil Mechanical Yeti requires Cured Rugged Hide in its' making & part of the process of curing is to refine deeprock salt.

Salt Shaker Materials

1 Mithril Casing = 3 Mithril Bars = 3 Mithril Ore
6 Thorium Bars = 6 Thorium Ore
3 Gold Power Core = 1 Gold bar = 1 Gold Ore

The salt shaker originally had a cooldown but that was removed & now the only limit to how much refined deeprock salt you can make is how much deeprock salt you can source. It's not the most widely used material but the drop rate is fairly low so I'd say your best source will be the Auction House over time.

Cured Rugged Hides are used in level 60 Epic & Rare armors including the Black & Blue Dragonscale sets. I'm not sure if these are good mogging items as I haven't kept up with mogging trends but you should be able to see from your own servers data on The Undermine Journal.

As I mentioned above, the main use I can see for cured rugged hide is in manufacturing the Mechanical Yeti. So with the salt shaker, I can therefore make money in several ways

• As a LW'er, I can hoard as much deeprock salt as possible & refine it for sale to other leatherworkers
• As a LW'er, I can snatch up rugged hides to cure & also sell to other leatherworkers or engineers
• An an Engineer, I can make Salt Shakers & sell to leatherworkers

The other good thing about the Salt Shaker is that many Engineers forget about them once they level past 250 but the salt shaker can give skill points all the way up to 290 (altho it goes green at 280, so probably hard work to get those last few points this way). If you make a few at 250 & find they sell on your server, then why not make a few extra, get the skill points & make gold while you're at it? lol

On my EU servers, the salt shaker sells for around 55 gold with materials in the 15 gold range. It's not the fastest seller but most leatherworkers will need one at some point & with the influx of leather wearing Pandas soon, I'd like to feel fairly confident that there will be a boom in leatherworking too.

Engineering Pets - Part 3 - Rabbits & Robots

© FurryScaly on Flickr, used under Creative Commons Licence

So this is part 3 of my look at Engineering craftable pets & the materials required. The Personal World Destroyer is a small robot & the De-weaponized Mechanical Companion is a mechanical rabbit to add to your collection of mechanical toad, yeti and squirrel! In my Part 1 post, I covered the lowest skill level crafted items, the squirrel, pet bombling & lil smoky. In Part 2, I covered the toad & yeti, both mid range skill level items but a bit more difficult to get hold of the schematics.

The Personal World Destroyer & the De-weaponized Mechanical Companion are both trainer taught schematics at skill level 475 but you can only learn one of them which will depend on whether you chose Goblin or Gnomish Engineering as your speciality.

De-Weaponized Mechanical Companion (Skill 475)

Trainer taught for Gnomish Engineers, this cute little mechanical rabbit sells fairly well. It remains to be seen how it will sell when Pet battles become available but I think it should still do well for collectors at least.

Materials

12 Obsidium Bars
4 handful of Obsidium Bolts
8 Electrified Ether
2 Jasper

Handful of Obsidium Bolts = 2 Obsidium bar - this makes 2-4 handfuls of bolts so quantity may vary

Electrified Ether = 2 Volatile Air - makes 2-3 ethers so again, materials may vary

Summary of Most Basic Raw Materials

32 Obsidium Ore (if you only get 2 handfuls of bolts, if you get 4 then 4 less ores required)
8 Volatile Air (if you only get 2 ethers per craft, may have some left over)
2 Jasper

Obviously mining your own obsidium isn't too hard & you may pick up some Volatile Airs while you do it but otherwise, I'd suggest the Auction House. Volatile Air on the other hand is probably the most expensive of all the volatiles so if you don't want to pay AH prices, you have several options. If you have an Alchemist you can do Transmute Living Elements - this takes 15 volatile lifes & transmutes them to a random 14-16 volatiles. To make sure you get Airs, you need to take your Alchemist to Uldum & do the transmute while you're there.

If you don't have an Alchemist, it used to be difficult to find one willing to do this transmute for you as it shared a cooldown with Transmute:Truegold which was usually the most profitable use of the cooldown. However, patch 5.0.4 last week has removed the cooldown on Truegold so don't let an alchemist in trade overcharge you for the Living Elements transmute!

You can also farm Volatile Airs - some reports suggest farming up to the first boss in Vortex Pinnacle, others suggest the wind elementals in Uldum. I haven't tried either option to be honest so do your research & give it a go if you don't want to pay AH prices :)

The Undermine Journal mean sell price for my server is around 500 gold, with materials around 125 gold whereas the EU mean price is 870 gold. Unfortunately my engineer isn't high enough to make these yet so I can't say from experience.

Personal World Destroyer (skill 475)

This is the Goblin engineers only, trainer taught pet which is a little clockwork robot. Similar materials to the Rabbit above, it does require use of the High Powered Bolt Gun (skill 465) in it's crafting but you can also use the Bolt Gun like a trinket. Comments on Wowhead suggest the Bolt Gun is really good at level 75 in battlegrounds & dungeons but it does require Handfuls of Obsidium Bolts to function.

Materials

10 Obsidium Bars
8 Handfuls of Obsidium Bolts
4 Electrified Ether

Handful of Obsidium Bolts = 2 Obsidium bar - this makes 2-4 handfuls of bolts so quantity may vary

Electrified Ether = 2 Volatile Air - makes 2-3 ethers so again, materials may vary

Summary of Most Basic Raw Materials

36 Obsidium Ore (mats may vary, depending on results of Handful of Bolts crafting proc)
4 Volatile Air (again, may vary, depending on Electrified Ether proc)


So what does the Undermine Journal say about this one? Well on my Alliance side, the average price is about 925 gold with the EU average being only 780 gold. I'd guess we have more Gnomish engineers than goblin specialty ones so that might be something for me to consider when leveling my Engineer. I don't really know enough to make that decision yet though - at least not from a gold-making point of view.

Weekly Sales Update - Post Patch 5.0.4 3rd Sept 2012

New mog for my lil Warlock Engineer

Well! What a week it's been! The week before patch, I finally caved in & decided to buy up some of the cheapest glyphs flooding the Auction House. I may have got a bit carried away as I decided to try the same strategy on both factions on my US account too. I'll say here & now, I think I owe a big apology to everyone not on a server like my EU one! I've spent the last couple of years making gold with glyphs easily & posting about it here. I'd never really tried glyphs seriously on any other servers but oh man! This US server I'm on is a bitch for glyphs! lol

So the first screen shot is the summary page of my US Alliance character - I don't have any characters over there higher than lvl 15 so I was very restricted on what I could do glyph-wise. Given the overall average price of glyphs, I set myself a ceiling of 10 gold & bought a fair few glyphs below that - mainly in a vain attempt to reset the market on those particular glyphs. As you can see, I've made some nice profits on individual glyphs but overall, glyph sales post patch were very disappointing & I still have a bag full of cheap glyphs to sell.

CLICK IMAGES FOR LARGER, READABLE VERSIONS


US Alliance server

This next screen shot is my US Horde character. Now here I have just maxed inscription on my Hunter & have done maybe 10 days of researches for the Northrend & lower daily cooldown so I have some non-trainer taught glyphs. I also had a bit more gold available to buy up some of the cheapest glyphs for stock.

I've used the Sales tab for this screenshot to show how few glyphs have sold since the patch went live. If I'd used the Items or Resale tabs, it would have given an incorrect picture as I've been selling glyphs here for a while & didn't clear my data pre-patch.

Just a quick glance down this list will show you just how low the overall prices are for glyphs but there is one major player in the glyph market here who doesn't appear to sleep! Even with the time zone working in my favour for really early morning listings, he still manages to undercut me within an hour or so!


US Horde server

And last but not least, here is the screenshot for my main EU server, Alliance side. You can see straight away that the volume of sales is higher but look at some of those prices! Quite a few over 400 gold & a lot in the 200-400 gold range. The volume is still well down on what I have been used to but honestly, I haven't been posting as regularly as I used to & I left the market completely for quite a long time so I'm not the big player I used to be.

Home server, EU Alliance

So it wasn't quite the second Glyphmas that many gold bloggers (including myself) were expecting/hoping for. On the plus side for me, I've never been one for stockpiling anything so I only have maybe 2000 inks in the bank, mainly because the cataclysm herbs never dropped below 50 gold a stack here. I'm not sure there is a huge downside generally though - all those who did stockpile inks at least got them at really good prices & won't have to mill/make ink for a long time yet!

As for the rest of the changes brought about by the patch - I am soooo confused! I have 7 level 85's now that I have hardly played since January so resetting their talents & glyphs is not so bad - I've already forgotten how to play them but resetting toolbars & new rotations is going to take me some time!

I'm off on my travels again this week so I'll miss the Mists of Pandaria release on my EU account too. I just won't have access unfortunately. Luckily my friend plays so I will at least have access to my US account but with only one PC in the house, we'll have to fight to use it for Launch Day!