Hello & Goodbye (slightly off topic)

© Nev 2004 A Dream Holiday

Hellooooo! I was very surprised this morning to see that it has been almost 2 weeks since I last posted. Time really flies when you're levelling 2 alts & finally experiencing the Cataclysm heroic dungeons! I got my hunter to 85, an alt that was born during last summers' huge guild drama as an escape has finally made it to level cap. I already have 4 level 85's but although I'm an ok player ability wise & a good player attitude wise, I've never really managed to get good dps numbers out of them.

My hunter has changed all that & having the gold reserves that I do, I was able to buy the Lava Bolt Crossbow, Witch-Hunter's Harvester & the JP boots for her the day she dinged. I also - like any good goldmaker - had the mats in stock for the Corded Viper Belt & some Justice Points saved up so I could get my first JP piece. Add the Thrall questline cloak & the initial Firelands vendor piece & I was off to my first heroic Cataclysm dungeon the same afternoon!

Now that may be quite normal for many of you but I've actually only completed 2 heroics on any of my girls up til now & two of my four 85's aren't even geared enough to try so for me, personally, this was a major step forward. So far, since Thursday, I've now done 6 or 7 heroics on my hunter & her dps numbers have given me the confidence to try HC's on my healer too. I'm still a little way off being able to do the Zandalari dungeons but that's my next target.

I know many goldmakers manage to raid/do Heroics etc whilst making gold but for me, it's one or the other for now. That's just the way my brain works. At the moment, it's full of stat priorities, rep grinds/rewards & reading everything I can find to help my performance. I 'm still doing some gem selling to fund my daily costs but as far as gold making goes, that's about it.

Having said that, I'm not quitting this blog. I fully intend to come back to some proper gold making soon but rather than just disappear for a month or more, I wanted to let my readers know.

So for now, my plan is to resume serious gold making & blogging about it in early September. I'll still be posting on my regular Wednesday slot over at Goldgrub's & I can't break the habit of reading all the new posts each day from the other gold blogs on my blogroll. If you have any gold making questions or just want to chat, I am still checking my email & twitter regularly as well as the comments here so I'm not far away.

Anyway, I've waffled on long enough, so I want to thank all my commenters & readers who've kept me going this long & I wish you all happy goldmaking for the rest of the summer. Take care & I'll catch y'all soon

Love
Nev
xxx

Obsidium Ore & Prospecting - sort of an experiment!

A slight change of direction for this post today - I'm still plodding along with my lil' auction house alt but I've spent most of my WoW time this week levelling Jewelcrafting on my level 75 DK & putting a few points on her Inscription too. Just out of curiosity, I kept a log of results from prospecting Obsidium Ore so following on from Smudger's 24hr Elementium Ore Project, here are my results so far.

I haven't been able to max her JC to 525, she's sitting at 501 for now whilst I get some of the daily tokens. I've been stockpiling most of the gems from this prospecting for 3 reasons - a) prices are ridiculously low at the moment for almost all cuts, b) I'm in no rush to get the capital invested back just yet & c) I can cut anything other than the standard trainer learned cuts!

I've bought 1120 ores (56 stacks) at various prices over the last week or so, with a total outlay of 3940g (3.52g per ore average). Results so far :-

Carnelian - 48 (aver price 22g) - 14%
Zephyrite - 50 (aver price 20g) - 15%
Jasper - 73 (aver price 12g) - 22%
Alicite - 45 (average price 13g) - 13% 
Nightstone - 60 (aver price 55g) - 18%
Hessonite - 60 (aver price 33g) - 18%

Inferno Ruby - 4
Ocean Sapphire - 4
Dream Emerald - 1
Amberjewel - 0
Demonseye - 2
Ember Topaz - 3

What I find interesting is that the two most expensive uncommon gems have the highest proc rate in my sample. I'm going to keep my results going and see if it evens out over time. I hope not because this is the good news :)

The other snippet that may be of interest to number crunchers is that I usually prospect just 100 or 200 at a time. These have produced 31/30/62/31/61/62/30/29 total uncommon gems per session - very consistent numbers I think.

I've sent 9 of each to my alchemist to transmute to Shadowspirit Diamonds, made some Carnelian Spikes for skill points & to sell and made a bunch of the Alicite pendants & Jasper rings to be disenchanted & turned into much more profitable scrolls.

As I said above, I'm holding on to most of these gems but even at these silly low gem prices, the uncommon gems alone are worth approx 8800g, a possible profit of 4860g before taking the rare gems into consideration. If I take care when timing my auctions, I've seen Nightstones at 80g & Hessonite at 45g, even Zephyrite jumps to 30g on occasion so the possibility exists to increase that raw profit quite considerably. Now these are the sort of numbers I like!

I haven't prospected much Elementium yet but I'm keeping a tally for that & also for any herb milling I do. The herb prices are still very high though so I'm being much more cautious there - I think one expensive habit is quite enough for the time being, thank you very much!