Episode 15 Journal of Marcus Ty Podcast - Noodle Carts!

Fishing Boats in Zante

In a show full of giggles (from me) & corny jokes (from Marcus) we tried to cover the secondary professions this week. We talked about our week in WoW and some of the problems we've been having - Marcus finally found his Albatross but is still chasing his Noodle Cart and I can't use a glider to save my life! 

News from the Front is all about Connected Realms and Marcus got all techie, a bit of Blizzcon and the London Meet-up. Next we dived into cooking, fishing and archaeology - the whys and hows of making gold with secondary professions is one of the lesser talked about methods and we completely skipped First Aid. 

Marcus sidelined me a bit with his Alchemy section and then went all Alcheologist on me too! But I got my own back when I remembered the Pilgrims Festival right at the last minute and made him late for his lunch date with his wife! Oops!

We had great fun recording & I hope you enjoy listening too. If you have anything you'd like us to talk about or you want to add something, feel free to contact either of us, email & twitter details are below. We'd love to hear from you and of course, if you like us enough, we'd love some iTunes reviews or Stitcher thumbs ups too!

As always - you can find us on iTunes or Stitcher Radio or you can listen via the website if you prefer.

Show Notes

• Noodles, Noodles!
• Our week in WoW - troubles with transport!
• News from the front - Connected Realms, Blizzcon & the London Meet-up
• The Endless Grind of the Timeless Isle
• Why level the secondary professions?
• Making Gold From Cooking and Fishing
• Archeology love it or hate it
• Markets of the week.

Resources mentioned in the podcast:

• Contact Marcus Ty on Twitter @MarcusTy
• Contact Nev on Twitter @NevAHaddict
• Marcus's Blog WoW Gold Journal
• Nev’s Milestone Interviews
• Nev’s Iron Paw Shuffle
• London Meet-up
• Email Marcus at JournalofMarcusTy.com

****************

Check out some of my Squidoo lenses!

Horde Gift Guide | Alliance Gift Guide

Image © Nev Jones, All Rights Reserved

Cooking For Raiders in 5.4 - Part 2

A little while ago, I wrote a post about Feeding The Raiders in patch 5.4 but immediately received comments on the post & on Twitter that I'd missed the new Cooking recipes being added in patch 5.4! I meant to do an update post almost straight away but it got lost in the torrent of ideas that hit me at that time so I'm only just now getting around to it.

Ok, so in patch 5.4 there are 2 new sets of recipes - 1 set is 300+ individual buff foods and the other set is from a new Noodle Cart with +250, +275 and +300 stat buffs for either 10 man or 25 man options so that's 6 different Noodle Carts! I'll break them both down separately below.

New Individual +300 Stat Buff Foods

There's good and bad news about these new recipes - the good news is that they should be cheaper to produce than the existing +300 buff foods like Black Pepper Ribs & Shrimp for example but you're going to have to farm for some of the ingredients regularly because they have a limited life span of 2 hours! You're also going to have to kill rare mobs in Vale of Eternal Blossom for the other ingredients although those will probably turn up on the Auction House at some silly high price.

• Fluffy Silkfeather Omelet - 300 Strength, requires Aged Mogu'shan Cheese & 5x Fresh Silkfeather Hawk Eggs
• Stuffed Lushrooms - 450 Stamina, requires Aged Mogu'shan Cheese & 5x Fresh Lushrooms
• Seasoned Pomfruit Slices - 300 Agility, requires Ancient Pandaren Spices & 5x Fresh Pomfruit
• Spiced Blossom Soup - 300 Intellect, requires Ancient Pandaren Spices & 5x Delicate Blossom Petals
• Farmer's Delight - 300 Spirit, requires Aged Balsamic Vinegar & 1x Fresh Strawberries & 2x Fresh Shao-Tien Rice
• Mango Ice - 300 Mastery, requires Aged Balsamic Vinegar & 5x Fresh Mangos

The Aged Mogu'shan Cheese, Aged Balsamic Vinegar & Ancient Pandaren Spices are the items that drop from the rares in Vale of Eternal Blossom. With all the new activity there, you could see a lot of these hit the Auction House but I'd take a guess that they will be quite expensive initially. The Fresh ingredients may look familiar - most, if not all of them were quest items from the Golden Lotus dailies so Blizzard are recycling their in-game use! The Fresh ones are the items with a 2 hour life span so if you do decide to farm them, don't hang around too long!

New Noodle Carts (+250, +275 & +300 Buff Foods)

These are a bit more complicated & expensive to make and the details on the patch notes aren't very clear yet. Hopefully someone reading may have tried them on the PTR & will leave a comment below! (pretty please?)

You get the recipe for the various Noodle Carts from 3 different quest chains, one chain for each level of buff (250, 275 or 300) and it appears that it's the 25 food version that is the reward. I haven't found a source for the 10 food version yet though. There's conflicting data as to which of the 6 versions are tied to the 3 quest chains - on Wowhead, (thanks to @Sivation for the heads up here!) it appears the 10 food version is the one tied to the quests whereas  in their write up of the new cooking recipes, they have linked the 25 food versions to the quests!

Anyway, whichever is tied to the quests, the materials required to make the supplies for the carts are the same - 5 x each 250+/+275/+300 buff foods for the 10 food version & 10 x each of the same foods for the 25 food versions. Once you have your Noodle Cart, you will be able to set it out in the same way as you set out feasts & players can purchase their Noodles from you. It isn't totally clear yet whether you get the cash or whether, like Jeeves, the gold goes to the game. One comment I read says it goes directly to the game so I can't see any major benefits to spend the time & effort to make one of these carts!

Having said that though, it would work for a raid team to all chip in supplies to make one of these carts but as an individual, I won't be bothering with them unless details change my mind for me!

Effect on Current Cooking Markets

So what effect will this have on current cooking supplies & buff food markets? I'm really not sure to be honest - we may see a bump in demand for the materials for the current buff foods as people make them to then make their Noodle Carts so meat, fish & vegetables could be good sellers but there's also been a slow down on my server of sales of the existing 300+ buff foods so the prices have dropped to below 10 gold each. I've been picking those up at 3-5gold and have a few stacks of each type ready just in case but I haven't invested deeply in this market.

As for the Aged ingredients which drop from Rares in the Vale, I'm not clear on how much of this new patch is going to take place there so I can't advise correctly but if there is a lot of questing there then the sheer number of players doing the new content will almost guarantee a market for the Aged ingredients. Whether you go and farm Rares yourself to sell the ingredients or to make the new individual buff foods will be up to you but I'm pretty sure I won't be going there any time soon! I'm too far behind on gear & stuff to really join in with current content, I really must try to catch up soon! I will be keeping an eye on the market though - if it looks promising, I may have to actually play my Paladin a bit!

****************

Check out some of my Squidoo lenses!

Horde Gift Guide | Alliance Gift Guide

Image © Ronan Crowley under Creative Commons licence

Ironpaw Tokens - Yet More Thoughts!

Do you ever have a subject that ties you up in knots & you just can't seem to get your head around it? Then, when you finally think you've understood it, someone says something & you're back to going round in circles again? Yup - the Ironpaw Token shuffle is my achilles heel right now! Ok, so last time I wrote about Ironpaw Tokens, I thought I'd finally got my head around it but after chitchatting with Cold, I realised I had still missed something!

I wrote that I was 'fixing' my Ironpaw Token cost at around 30g so I knew my base cost was a maximum of 24g per single +300 buff food. With my own tunnel vision firmly in place, I was merrily buying all meat/fish under 1.50g each and converting 90% of them to Ironpaw Tokens then using those tokens to buy a bag of 5 of the specific meat/fish that I needed. It seems that Mushan Ribs & Raw Tiger Meat are the most easily available at low prices & as I didn't want to hold loads of stacks of those, I was converting the Mushan Ribs to Tokens too!

Cold pointed out that by using my Ironpaw Tokens to later buy  Mushan Ribsx5 from the bag, I was effectively paying 120g a stack! Ouch! Needless to say, that woke me up a bit!

So I've changed my tactics yet again. I am still buying every meat/fish for under 1.50g  and if I get lucky, vegetables for under 30s each to convert to Ironpaw Tokens BUT if I'm short on my specific required meat, fish or vegetables for crafting then I check the Auction House for any of those under 6g each (or 1.20g for vegetables). This maintains my 30g maximum Token cost even though I'm sometimes using the raw mats rather than tokens.

This way, I'm almost never short of materials to cook with - either by converting Tokens or by buying the correct items to cook the buff foods with. I'm still buying loads of Mushan Ribs under the 1.50g cut-off point but I'm saving more stacks as they are rather than converting them. By expanding my cut-off point to 6g per specific type of fish though, I'm not having to use up my precious Tokens to Buy Giant Mantis Shrimp or Emperor Salmon (for the Black Pepper Ribs or Mogu Fish Stew).

Hopefully I've got it sorted in my head now! I have to say I love this market, I'm almost the only seller of Black Pepper Ribs & Shrimp & I've got the price up to 78g per item. I can barely keep the Auction House stocked even at that price. The Mogu Fish Stew is running second but it's a fair way behind, selling at around 55g per item. I have a bit of competition for the other +300 buff foods but they are listing them at 25g each. Needless to say, I'm buying those up - it's only just above my base cost & it saves me using my own tokens for the Rice Flour & saves me lots of time too!

As an added bonus from all this converting - my level 85 Rogue is almost level 86 now too - the hand-in for the 'Replenishing The Pantry' quest gives 25k XP per turn in so if this market stays profitable for me, I may never have to quest on my Rogue! Woop Woop!

****************

Check out some of my Squidoo lenses!

Horde Gift Guide | Alliance Gift Guide

Image © Arnold/Inuyaki  under Creative Commons licence

Ironpaw Tokens & Cooking Materials Shuffle - Revisited

Ironpaw Cooking Materials Shuffle

After some comments, email feedback & a conversation with a fellow gold blogger, I've added some more stuff to the Ironpaw Tokens spreadsheet I uploaded a few days ago. It seems that as long as it took me to get my head around what I was trying to do, I still didn't quite manage to communicate it very well in my Ironpaw Tokens & Cooking Materials Shuffling post!

So version 2 has a whole bunch of extra columns which should show you at a glance which cooking material will make you some profit if you convert it to another via the Ironpaw Tokens trade-in. I've uploaded this as a second file called Ironpaw Conversion and Profits which you can download & edit freely. Please though - make sure you download before you edit - it just makes it easier for others if the original file is left untouched.

Ironpaw Token Profit Shuffle Spreadsheet

I took the original spreadsheet and extended the columns - one for each cooking material. Now all you have to do is type in the prices (in the yellow boxes) for your Auction House & it should calculate where any profitable conversions are. To use it, just choose the cooking material you have from column A & read across that row to find which other cooking material to convert it into for profit (or savings if you're leveling your cooking of course).

You don't need to worry whether you are converting vegetables to meat/fish or vice versa - I have adjusted the profit calculations accordingly within the sheet.

Also, you may want to sort each section (vegetable rows, fish rows, meat rows etc) by Column B once you've entered your AH prices - make sure you sort the whole section though otherwise the formulas will mess up big time! lol Sorting is optional but it does make it easier to read if your cheapest price is at the top of each section.

So an example might help I guess. If I have plenty of Wildfowl Breast & want to use those to convert to vegetables - I can see by reading along row 29 (wildfowl breast, column A) that converting to Juicycrunch Carrots, Green Cabbages or White Turnips will give me a loss, converting to Witchberries will give me profit of 1g63s per item but converting to Jade squash will give me a very nice profit of 6g 67s per item!

Please remember though - cooking materials are very volatile right now & prices are likely to vary widely over a few days - don't sink loads of gold in today then find out your 'profitable' material from the list above is the cheapest on the Auction House tomorrow. Spread your risk too - don't invest loads in just one cooking material - if you are going to convert a lot, convert to a range of different profitable items so that you are covered as prices change.

So there you go! Thank you to all the commenters, emailers & others who gave suggestions on the earlier version. I hope this one is closer to what you were hoping for from the earlier version.

Good luck & have fun

****************

Check out some of my Squidoo lenses! Gift Guide - Horde Edition | Gift Guide - Alliance Edition

Image © AW Sheffield under Creative Commons licence

Ironpaw Tokens & Cooking Materials Shuffling

Ironpaw Token Shuffle - Veggies, Meat & Fish

Over the last few weeks, I've been talking about making gold with cooking materials & fishing quite a bit here. That's because right now, it's about the only thing I'm really doing in game alongside dailies & some leveling! About 2 weeks ago, I did a post about how to make easy gold with Pandaren Cooking & in the comments it was pointed out to me that I missed an obvious trick! I edited the post at the time but it also got me thinking a little clearer about this whole Ironpaw Token Shuffle.

I went back to The Undermine Journal, to the Cooking section under the Gathered category & just stared at it a while. I realised that for me, at least, it didn't go far enough so I built another little spreadsheet for that extra step. This screenshot (from The Undermine Journal) shows how much it would cost to make a container of meats/fish or vegetables from each material available on the Auction House. In effect, it's the cost of an Ironpaw Token, dependant on which raw material you use. I've included the 100 Year Soy Sauce & Black pepper section because those are still selling well on my server & from this screenshot, you can easily see that there is profit to be made just by converting the cheapest raw materials to Ironpaw Tokens.

The Undermine Journal, Cooking page, Ironpaw Token Calcs

But what if you don't want to sell 100 Year Soy Sauce or Black Pepper? What if you need cheap materials to level your cooking Ways? Out comes the calculator to work out whether those 20 cheap Redbelly Mandarin are actually cheaper than 5 Raw Crocolisk Belly via an Ironpaw Token or should you just buy the Raw Crocolisk Bellies? (Just in case you don't know, 20 x  a meat or fish or 100 x a vegetable can be converted to an Ironpaw Token which in turn can be exchanged for 5 x a meat/fish bundle or 25 x a vegetable bundle)

That's where my spreadsheet comes in. I wanted to put some clever gizmos in there to make it even easier but my spreadsheet skills are extremely rusty & I just couldn't get my head around it! So I took the basic Undermine Journal data (columns C & D) to start with - this is just the same data as the screenshot earlier. Then I took the Container Cost & divided it by either 5 or 25 (meat/fish or vegetables) for columns E & F.

Calculate Ironpaw Token Shuffle Costs

So what does this actually do for me that I can't do quickly in game? For me, it quickly identifies which raw materials to buy to shuffle to the other materials I require. Currently I need Giant Mantis Shrimp but at 34g80s each, I don't want to buy them directly. My spreadsheet shows me that even if I use 100 Pink Turnips to convert to an Ironpaw Token & then buy 5 Giant Mantis Shrimp, I will save 42 gold! (purple dots).

It's going to be fairly rare for 100 vegetables of any sort to be a cost effective way of buying just 5 meat or fish - Giant Mantis Shrimp are just exceptionally expensive on my server today but using a single 20 stack of meat or fish can easily be cost effective to buy either 5 meat/fish bundle or a 25 vegetable bundle.

You can see that the Raw Turtle Meat & the Reef Octopus (red dots) are both really cheap today & in column F, it shows them at a converted price of 1g66s & 1g59s respectively - that means using either of these to buy a vegetable bundle (25's) will be the cheapest way to buy any of the vegetables except Pink Turnips & Mogu Pumpkins. The Reef Octopus is so cheap today that it's also the cheapest way to buy Wildfowl Breast, Raw Crocolisk Meat & Raw Crab Meat as well as all the fish below Jewel Danio in the fish section!

I've added this spreadsheet onto Google Docs & fingers crossed, in an editable, downloadable form. Just click Ironpaw Token Conversion spreadsheet and you should go straight to it. Feel free to edit it to suit yourself but please, only edit a downloaded copy. I tried to put a macro in for easy sorting but it didn't work (or I couldn't make it work!) so don't worry if you get a 'contains a macro' warning - I couldn't find it to get rid of it!

I hope this helps make the Ironpaw Token Shuffle a little easier & quicker for you. If you have any problems downloading or editing it, let me know either in comments, by email (top right under profile) or on Twitter @NevAHAddict & I'll do my best to help.

Edited: I had to change to Google Docs link above to return the file to it's original format. Please, please, download a copy before you edit anything. Thank you :)

Edited yet again! Following some feedback, I've extended this spreadsheet & uploaded a version 2 to google docs - I've also added some more analysis in a second post Ironpaw Tokens & Cooking Materials Shuffling - Revisited so to make sure you've got the most up to date version, pop over to the Revisited post & click the google docs link there :)


Image © USDAGov under Creative Commons licence

Fishing for Gold - Laid Back Mode

Gone Fishing  - Laid Back Style

I've spent most of the last week doing my Order of the Cloud Serpent dailies & Onyx Egg hunting - I really wanted those Cloud Serpents so my gold making activities have once again taken a back seat. One of the quests over there though, requires Golden Carp & another requires Sugar Minnows - both from Fishing. As I hadn't leveled my Fishing to 600 yet, I decided to bite the bullet & get it over with! As I wasn't too worried about gold & fishing in Pools for the 'right' fish, I just plonked myself down at the edge of the circular stream right there in the Arboretum & proceeded to spend an hour or so, just fishing & listening to some music.

Fishing Area at The Arboretum, Jade Forest

Imagine my delight when I started fishing up Jade Lungfish & Redbelly Mandarins as well as the Golden Carp I needed! Both fish are required for the Way of the Grill cooking recipes & Jade Lungfish are also required for the Way of the Pot too so their prices have remained fairly good on the Auction House. Now I was only here for an hour or so but in that time I managed to pick up 48 Jade Lungfish, 54 Redbelly Mandarin & 168 Golden Carp. I sold most of them within 24 hours on the Auction House although I kept most of the Golden Carp for the Cloud Serpent daily & for converting to an Ironpaw Token for cooking materials later.

Golden Carp - Easy Fishing Gold 

Jade Lungfish - Easy Fishing Gold 

Redbelly Mandarin - Easy Fishing Gold

Overall, I made just over 700 gold in that hour - not a huge amount but still a nice little chunk for something I would have to have done anyway. Best of all though, it got all of my professions to 600 so I gained the 'Serious Skills to Pay the Bills' achievement too - always a good side effect of making gold!

Now don't get me wrong - I'm not suggesting this as a great way to make lots of gold - there are much better ways of course but if you find yourself over at the Arboretum doing your dailies & a friend or guildie wants to chat - you'll probably end up just standing around whilst you have your conversation. That's when I do most of my fishing to be honest! Or perhaps you like to PvP and have 5 minutes between battlegrounds where you normally just hang around - plonk yourself down & do a little fishing. Now that you don't have to equip a fishing rod, there's no risk of forgetting to swap back your weapons when the BG queue pops!

There are no hostile mobs to worry about here either & there's a mailbox over near the dailies quest hub so if you get carried away & fill your bags, you can easily send all your slinkies off to your bank alt.

Do you have a favourite fishing spot? Whether for a bit of quiet time or for gold fishing, I find it quite relaxing sometimes & the gold is always a nice bonus especially now that Mists of Pandaria has brought Cooking & Fishing into the limelight.


Image © Helen Shorey (me) available as a print in my Society6 shop

Easy Gold With Pandaren Cooking - On A Level 85 Alt

Easy Gold With Pandaren Cooking

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been working on leveling my cooking skill to max on my main level 90 Paladin. To do this, I've started 3 other farms on level 85 alts to grow the vegetables needed for all the various Ways now available. I've also kept all of the meats & fish that I gathered whilst questing & that has helped me keep the cost down. I've only done 3 Ways so far but I'm not in a rush so that's ok by me.

But yesterday, I finally hit Exalted with the Tillers & started growing the first of my Motes of Harmony crop on my main so that will reduce the speed at which I can produce enough veggies for leveling and will also then delay me getting my farm produce to the Auction House. So I started wondering what other ways I could use Cooking or Farming to make some gold besides selling veggies or buff foods.

I've seen talk of the Ironpaw Tokens but not taken much notice until this morning when I hit up The Undermine Journal. There I saw this summary of the Ironpaw Token Trades & wandered off to investigate.

Now maybe I'm just a bit slow here but I didn't realise I could turn meats, fish & vegetables into Bundles of Groceries to hand in for an Ironpaw Token & then use that Ironpaw token to buy the materials needed for whatever I want to cook. Well, no, that's not quite true - I did know but the prices on the Auction House for the mats meant that I discounted this tactic & didn't look at it again. It seemed kind of silly to me to hand in 20 meat/fish for an Ironpaw Token & then use that token to buy just 5 meat/fish of the kind I wanted & don't even think about using vegetables for this either! (Hand in 100 veggies for 25 of a different kind, no thanks!)

But I missed the most lucrative items! Just look at the average prices on my server for the Black Pepper & 100 Year Soy Sauce - both are only available from the vendor & paid for with Ironpaw Tokens.

Looking at the Summary screenshot above - almost all the meats I wrote about in last weeks' 'Where to Farm' series would make really good profits if turned into a Bundle of Groceries & handed in for Ironpaw tokens to buy Soy Sauce or Black Pepper but that would take up valuable time which many of us don't have - especially with all the dailies to be done. No, the better option here is to check your own Auction House for cheap meats & fish & bundle those up. It will take a small investment initially but turning 85 gold into about 400 gold is not to be ignored!

I thought I needed to be level 90 to gain access to the quest to open up the Bundle of Groceries function but I tested it on one of my level 85 farmers this morning & all you need to do is the first quest for each of the 6 Ways. Once you have all 6 Ways started in your cookbook, you should have 10 or so Ironpaw Tokens too which is a nice bonus to get your gold flowing. I also thought you needed to be level 90 to get the Ironpaw Tokens from the daily quests in the first place ( well, you do need to be 90 for the dailies but I thought that was the only source!)

If you don't have your cooking to 525 yet, don't worry about that either! You can now level your cooking almost all the way with Pandaren vendor bought items. The only materials I needed & didn't have were the Golden Carp - I think I bought 2 stacks in the end but you can fish those up for yourself if you want to. The trainer in Halfhill is also the vendor for the materials & there is a handy-dandy fire/oven next to her so you don't even have to move from your spot!

Going forward, you will only need one character able to hand in Bundles of Groceries to get your Ironpaw Tokens but as I mentioned above, if you do open all 6 Ways, you should have about 10 Ironpaw Tokens on each character & all without spending gold to make Bundles. Of course, this works best if you already have your cooking leveled fairly high but with the Pilgrim's Bounty festival coming up 18th November in game, you will be able to level your cooking to 350 very easily & then head straight for the Cooking trainer in Halfhill to finish off.

So now I have 2 alts with high level cooking - my Paladin is going for the full collection of recipes & achievements but my little farming rogue has earned me 10 Ironpaw tokens for easy money up front & will continue to Bundle Groceries as I find them on the Auction House using my new spreadsheet to work out best conversion rates. I could level cooking on 4 other alts but I think I'll just wait for the Pilgrims to get to town & take the easy route there too :P

Edited to add: David very kindly left a great comment earlier that I thought I should add it to the post. I have no idea why I didn't even think of this but it's so obvious once pointed out! Oops!

From David : You are also missing another way to get crops to continue cooking. You can buy 20 meats off the AH and bundle them together to trade them for 25 (not 5) of a given crop. Looking at your TUJ screenshot, you can turn 90g (20xTurtle meat) into 625g (25xRed Blossom Leek). You can use them for your own cooking or sell the crop to buy a different kind. I'm 600 in all the ways and still making a profit with that technique.

Oh & by the way - what is it with cats & bags? I went looking for a pic of grocery bags & got cats in bags instead!


image © Mike Disharoon on Flickr under Creative Commons licence

Farming Meats in Mists of Pandaria - All You Needed To Know!

Farming Various Meats in Mists of Pandaria

As I leveled some of my cooking skills in Mists of Pandaria, I found that apart from fish & vegetables, I needed various meats too. So I set off to investigate and found some of the best places to go & farm those meats for yourself. You could buy them off the Auction House of course but with prices still quite high, I decided to farm instead especially as my only level 90 is also my Skinner and I can always use more leather!

Over the past week or so, I have covered where to farm these meats & provided little maps to show you exactly where the areas are.

• Raw Tiger Steak
• Raw Crab Meat
• Raw Crocolisk Belly
• Raw Turtle Meat
• Mushan Ribs
• Wildfowl Breast

I received a couple of comments on those posts with helpful extra information & I've since found some other useful bits to add so I thought I'd put them all here for you in one easy reference post.

Wildfowl Breast - Tailswish pointed out that the Glade Singers have a 'sleep' spell which some farmers might find irritating - I know I did, especially as I pulled about 3 at once! Felt like Sleeping Beauty there for most of the fight! lol

Raw Crocolisk Belly - Tailswish let me know that the Crocs in Vale of Eternal Blossom aren't always the daily so it may be best to stick to the area in Krasarang Wilds for these. I farmed some last night on my very slow paladin - 35 in 35 minutes (plus all the leather of course) not too bad but would have been better on a quicker alt. I didn't have to wait for any respawn at all, especially once I realised there were some crocs in the mid part of the island too!

Mogram was kind enough to tell me about the rare spawn Blackhoof in Valley of the Four Winds - he drops an amazing Battle Horn which allows you to pull enemies from 40 yards away - great for mass AoE farming (if you can handle the mobs of course!).

I focused my posts on farming to level the various new Ways within the cooking profession but these are not the only uses for some of these meats.

• Raw Tiger Steak - used for the Pandaren Banquet (10 per) & the Great Pandaren Banquet (20 per) which are the 10-man & 25-man raid feasts. However there is a small benefit to individuals to use their own specialised food rather than a Banquet in a raid situation so it may be that your raid team will ask you to bring your own food buff.(thank you to ScottieGazelle for the banquet info).
• Raw Tiger Steak - also used for Chun Tian Spring Rolls which is the level 90 buff food for tanks (+450stamina)
• Raw Crab Meat - used in Steamed Crab Surprise, the level 90 buff food for healers (+300 spirit)
• Raw Crocolisk Belly - used in the Mogu Fish Stew, the level 90 buff food for intellect users (+300 intellect)
• Raw Turtle Meat - the basis for the Sea Mist Rice Noodles, the level 90 buff food for agility users (+300 agility)
• Mushan Ribs - used for Black Pepper Ribs & Shrimp (damn that sounds good!), this is the level 90 buff food for strength users (+300 strength)
• Wildfowl Breast - used in Wildfowl Ginseng Soup which is a level 87 buff food for hit (+275 hit).

I do hope you found this series of farming posts useful - sometimes knowing where to farm is all you need to get some gold flowing. As the newness of Mists of Pandaria wears off, many players who are currently farming to level their professions will move on to raiding, challenge modes, pet battles & all the other new stuff Blizzard has provided for us. If you have the patience & time to do some farming yourself, I expect these meats will hold fairly good prices at the Auction House - perhaps a little farming in between battlegrounds would be good for PvP'ers gold making too.

****************

Check out some of my Squidoo lenses! Gift Guide - Horde Edition | Gift Guide - Alliance Edition

Image © Sam 17 on Flickr under Creative Commons licence

Mists of Pandaria - Where to Farm Wildfowl Breast

Where to Farm Wildfowl Breast

Wildfowl Breast drops from most of the large birdlife in Pandaria - not only Cranes but Bonesplitters, Corpsepickers & Plainshawks too. Wildfowl Breasts are the most widely used meat in the various cooking specialisations too - 13 for Way of the Wok, 50 for Way of the Steamer & 25 for Way of the Oven so that's at least 88 you will need if you want to complete all the Ways for the final achievement.

Initially the drop rate of Wildfowl Breasts was really high but has since been lowered so it's difficult to tell for now what the average drop rate is. Most comments seem to indicate around a 40-50% drop rate which is still not too bad as there are loads of mobs at lower levels to farm.

Wildfowl Breast farm areas - Valley of Four Winds

There doesn't seem to be a 'best place' to farm these so I've picked a couple of areas I found whilst leveling. As you are questing through Valley of the Four Winds, you will probably find yourself killing Glade Hunters, Glade Singers & Glade Sprinters in the Gilded Fen, just south of the Pools of Purity. These mobs have 147k health and move around a fair bit so you could easily pick up 2 or 3 at a time or just chain pull if that's your preferred farming method. They are only level 86 mobs & my undergeared DK is killing these quite happily so a well geared 90 would probably cut through them in no time!

Also in Valley of the Four Winds are the Whitefisher Cranes with just 139k health. These are in the far west of the zone, just below that annoying Headland that I couldn't explore at level 86 or just south east of Paoquan Hollow in the Singing Marshes.

Wildfowl Breast farm area - Kun-Lai Summit

In Kun-Lai Summit at level 87ish, you will end up questing in Shado-Li area up against the wall to Townlong Steppes. Once you've finished rolling barrels onto your enemies, you'll find the Kun-Lai Corpsepickers hard at work on the piles of dead bodies. With 215k health, these are a little harder to kill than the Cranes in Valley of Four Winds but they are in a smaller area & respawn fairly quickly. Not the most pleasant area to spend time in, the drop rate seems to be around the 50% so if you want to get your own back on these carrion birds, this is your spot!

Another lower level area is in Krasarang Wilds, all along the river area between Thunder Cleft & The Incursion area. There are also tigers in the forest so if you do manage to clear all the birds, you can kill tigers whilst you wait for respawns. I didn't farm here heavily as I was in full quest mode but the Carp Hunters have only 147k health so should die easily to a level 90.

Wildfowl Breast farm area - Krasarang Wilds

I'm questing again on my DK, working my way through Valley of the Four Winds. I've done the Gilded Fen quests & also the quests to get grain at the brewery (where those annoying little imps are!). The Hawks that have stolen the grain bags also give Wildfowl Breasts & I already have 28 in my bags without having to farm at all. Sweet! It helps to have some music going & a good mouse saves your wrists from fatigue too

***************

Mists of Pandaria Cooking Meats Series
Got all your Wildfowl Breasts but need to know where to farm the other Mists of Pandaria cooking meats? Check out my other posts in this series.

• Where to Farm Raw Crab Meat
• Where to Farm Raw Crocolisk Belly
• Where to Farm Raw Turtle Meat
• Where to Farm Raw Tiger Meat
• Where to Farm Mushan Ribs

****************

Check out some of my Squidoo lenses! Gift Guide - Horde Edition | Gift Guide - Alliance Edition

Image © Lightmatter on Flickr under Creative Commons licence

Mists of Pandaria - Where to Farm Mushan Ribs

Where to Farm Mushan Ribs

Strangely enough, I couldn't find any decent photos of a Mushan for my post header but I imagine their ribs would be familiar to Fred & Wilma! So where to farm Mushan Ribs in Pandaria? As usual, you have a choice of places, some better than others depending on your character level.

Starting off with the level 86/87 farmers, I'd suggest Valley of the Four Winds, at the Grassy Cline, not too far from Pang's Stead at the start of the zone or in the far south west, near the Nesingwary Camp (that guy gets everywhere, doesn't he?). At the Grassy Cline you will find Adolescent Mushan with 276k health as well as adults with 322k health. Both have a drop rate for Ribs of around 40%.

Mushan Ribs farm areas, Valley of the Four Winds

However, I found them a bit tough & slow to fight, especially as it's close to the Turtle farming spot I mentioned yesterday & there's almost always someone farming in that area. A better spot for these I think, is the Nesingwary Camp area. The Dustback Mushan there have only 129k health (unless you stumble into the Dustback Warders with 322k health!) and still have around 40% drop rate. As a small bonus, there are also turtles & tigers in the area so you can combine all 3 meats in your farming session. The one annoying thing I found was the stealthed foxes! There I was, happily questing away & Bam! damned fox appears & throws everything off! lol

At level 89/90, there are plentiful options including the Longshadow Mushan & Longshadow Bulls in Townlong Steppes. Both have just 271k health & a better drop rate of around 50%. It's a fairly big area though so you may have to run around a bit.

Mushan Ribs farm area - Townlong Steppes

Another option at level 89/90 is to head to the SE corner of Dread Wastes again, this time just south of the Lake of Stars. Here you will find a plentiful supply of Bluehide Mushan with around a 60% droprate (per Wowhead). However, they also have 394k health so killing them will take a bit longer than the Townlong Steppes area but if you are level 89, just think of the XP gains!  The other plus point for this area is the proximity of the Crocolisks in the lake & the Chillwater Turtles to the north & east. Combination farming is great if you are farming for leather & want to sell the meats on the Auction House.

Mushan Ribs farm area - Dread Wastes

My personal preference here is the Townlong Steppes area - middling health level & middling drop rate. With my new found lust for killing on my Blood DK, I'm not skinning these though - a serious boo-boo for a goldmaker! I took my skinner over there & logged in & out to try to skin as much as possible - that slowed me down but at least I got plenty of leather too. Long term, I have to rethink who is going to be my Skinner. My DK has Jewelcrafting & Inscription - both profitable professions but more importantly, both have lots of items learned via research & dailies so I just cannot bring myself to drop either of those professions. My other option is to work out what the heck I'm doing wrong on my Paladin but for now, I'm just poodling along, enjoying the scenery in true Pandaren style!

***************

Mists of Pandaria Cooking Meats Series
Got all your Mushan Ribs but need to know where to farm the other Mists of Pandaria cooking meats? Check out my other posts in this series.

• Where to Farm Raw Crab Meat
• Where to Farm Raw Crocolisk Belly
• Where to Farm Raw Turtle Meat
• Where to Farm Raw Tiger Meat
• Where to Farm Wildfowl Breasts

****************

Check out this great Zygor Guides site if you want easy leveling help.

Mists of Pandaria - Where To Farm Raw Turtle Meat

Where to Farm Raw Turtle Meat in WoW

Next up in my Where To Farm series is Raw Turtle Meat. This is used by the Way of the Pot (13) & the Way of the Oven (50) so if you are leveling all the cooking Ways, you will need 63 of these at least. As with all the previous mobs, these Turtles can also be skinned so if you can, take your Skinner!

For level 89's leveling through the Dread Wastes, head towards the Lake of Stars in the far SE corner. Just north of the Lake, you will find Chillwater Turtles - 394k health but with a 60% drop rate & of course, lots of lovely leather for skinning. If you do have to wait for respawns, you can always pop into the lake itself & grab yourself some Raw Crocolisk Belly {link} too.

Raw Turtle Meat farm areas - Dread Wastes

If you need Raw Crab Meat, you could combine Turtle & Crab farming over in the Briny Muck area - neutral mobs with the same health & drop rate as the Chillwater Turtles. I'm always a big fan of multi-tasking if you can.

For lower level alts around 86/87, there is the well known area between Grassy Cline & Pools of Purity in Valley of the Four Winds. The spawn rate is crazy good here & the Wyrmhorn Turtles have only 110k health. It's a well known leather farming spot though so you may have to find your little corner & hope for a good respawn rate. The Gold Queen has some good tips on this spot - funny thing is, I just got my Paladin here the day she released her post! Talk about good timing! Also close by are the herds of Mushan but that's for tomorrow's post.

Argggh! Just found out Blizzard have reduced the numbers of turtles here. I popped over & had a little try out - there are definitely fewer turtles there to start with but they still have a healthy spawn rate & I still managed to get about 30 Raw Turtle Meat in 25 minutes. As far as I can tell, they are in smaller groups or dotted around the lake so it's just harder to pull a huge number of turtles all at once.

Raw Turtle Meat farm area - Valley of the Four Winds

Looking at my server on The Undermine Journal, it's fairly obvious that the initial rush to farm here has slowed down. There is still a fair amount of Raw Turtle Meat available on the Auction House but today for example, the price has shot up to almost 10g each as there are only 50 or so available. Just 3 days ago, there were only 70 or so available but the price was just under 2g each! I guess someone decided that price was too low maybe? (hehehe!)

For sheer speed of killing, I'd say go to the Valley spot to farm this meat, especially if you are a skinner. If you're not, then maybe find a friend who is & really go to town on these poor defenceless turtles - win/win for both of you - you get the meat & your friend gets the leather. You'll have to decide between you what to do with Motes of Harmony though.

***************

Mists of Pandaria Cooking Meats Series
Got all your Raw Turtle Meat but need to know where to farm the other Mists of Pandaria cooking meats? Check out my other posts in this series.

• Where to Farm Raw Crab Meat
• Where to Farm Raw Crocolisk Belly
• Where to Farm Raw Tiger Meat
• Where to Farm Mushan Ribs
• Where to Farm Wildfowl Breasts

****************

Check out this great Zygor Leveling Guide Review

Image © AprilandRandy on Flickr under Creative Commons licence

Mists of Pandaria - Where to Farm Raw Crocolisk Belly

Where to Farm Raw Crocolisk Belly

So Day 3 and we're onto farming for Raw Crocolisk Belly - used in cooking for the Banquet of the Wok, you'll need 50 of these just to level your Way of the Wok cooking skill. I found 3 areas where you can farm these up & all come with built in leather too so take your skinner if you can! Just pop some good tunes on your player & go to town for a while!

For level 87 alts, head for the Cradle of Chi-Ji in Krasarang Wilds & just a bit further east you will find the Mortbreath Skulkers & Snappers. These crocs have 215k health and a Raw Crocolisk Belly drop rate of around 45% according to Wowhead. Along with the meat, if you are skinning, you are most likely to get Sha-Touched Leather but you could also pick up Prismatic Scale & of course the wonderfully gross Plump Intestines.

Raw Crocolisk Belly farm area - Krasarang Wilds

At level 89, you will probably be working your way through the Dread Wastes so head down to the far South-east corner to the Lake of Stars. Here you will find the Coldbite Crocolisks with 394k health but a much better drop rate of around 60%. If you are level 89, the XP gains will also be very useful on your journey to level 90.

Raw Crocolisk Belly farm area - Dread wastes

As with so many farming spots, being an area where a Daily quest happens brings both advantages & disadvantages. As a skinner, I will always prefer a Daily area to farm as there is almost always spare carcases to be tidied away too. It can make farming for meat a bit slower though so you have to decide for yourself if the extra leather is worth the extra time taken to gather the meat.

If you like to farm like this, then at level 90 there is a daily quest at Whitepetal Lake - a smallish circular lake in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms. The crocs here are Stillwater Crocolisks with 394k health & a 60% drop rate for meat, just like the Coldbite Crocolisks mentioned above.

Both the Coldwater & the Stillwater Crocolisks have a slightly higher drop rate for Motes of Harmony too although with my farming luck, the difference is not really noticeable. These higher level mobs almost always drop Exotic Leather rather than Sha-Touched Leather which is great news for skinners.

***************

Mists of Pandaria Cooking Meats Series
Got all your Raw Crocolisk Belly but need to know where to farm the other Mists of Pandaria cooking meats? Check out my other posts in this series.

• Where to Farm Raw Crab Meat
• Where to Farm Raw Tiger Meat
• Where to Farm Raw Turtle Meat
• Where to Farm Mushan Ribs
• Where to Farm Wildfowl Breasts

****************

Check out my latest project! 

Gifts for Gamers and Geeks

Image © Radek Vitoul on Flickr under Creative Commons licence

Mists of Pandaria - Where to Farm Raw Crab Meat

Where to Farm Raw Crab Meat

Following on from yesterdays post about where to farm Raw Tiger Meat, today we have some nice places to farm Raw Crab Meat, also for the Way of The Grill. You will need 50 Raw Crab Meat to make Banquet of the Grill x5 so it's a bit more of a grind to get these.

I only found two good areas for skinning & killing crabs for their meat but by far the best one is in an area of the Dread Wastes called the Briny Muck. These are level 90 Rockshell Snapclaws or Muck Sifters with 295k health. I prefer the Muck Sifters as they are neutral & you can take your time to heal up if you need to without pulling aggro!


Raw Crab Meat farm areas - Dread Wastes

There are occasional patrol mobs but they are fairly easy to kill or avoid - whichever is your preference. I spent just 30 minutes here a few nights ago & got 45 Raw Crab Meats as well as all the leather. Now I'm pretty slow at farming (especially on my Paladin) to be honest, I've never quite got the hang of pulling lots of mobs but after a little persuasion, I've just added a Blood spec on my Death Knight & so far I'm loving the AoE farming potential. It's a shame she's not my skinner or I would be in total heaven!

For lower level farming, pretty much the whole coastal area of Krasarang Wilds has Viseclaw Fishers & Viseclaw Scuttlers - at 184k health & only level 86, these have a lower drop rate of Raw Crab Meat (about 35%) but add in skinning & XP gains and it's a perfect spot for your lower level alts to grind.

Raw Crab Meat farm area - Krasarang Wilds

Raw Crab Meat is currently the 2nd most expensive meat at the Auction House on my server, selling for about 8 gold each. At 45 in 30 minutes, it's not going to be my best gold-making farming grind unless I can improve my killing speed but for leveling my cooking & researching a blog post, it will do me for now.

***************

Mists of Pandaria Cooking Meats Series
Got all your Raw Crab Meat but need to know where to farm the other Mists of Pandaria cooking meats? Check out my other posts in this series.

• Where to Farm Raw Tiger Meat
• Where to Farm Raw Crocolisk Belly
• Where to Farm Raw Turtle Meat
• Where to Farm Mushan Ribs
• Where to Farm Wildfowl Breasts

****************

Check out my latest project!

Gifts for Gamers and Geeks

Image © Crazy Creatures on Flickr under Creative Commons licence

Mists of Pandaria - Where To Farm Raw Tiger Steak

WoW - Where to Farm Raw Tiger Steak - awww really?

If you are leveling your Cooking skill in Mists of Pandaria, you will need various fish, vegetables & meats, depending on which of the new 'Ways' you choose. The easiest method for vegetables is either to grow them yourself on your Farm or if the price is sensible, to buy them from the Auction House. There is an option to buy small quantities from Nam Ironpaw in Halfhill Market using your Ironpaw tokens but for now, those tokens are much more useful to buy the 100 Year Soy Sauce for the banquets you need to make to finish leveling any of the Way specialisations.

The fish required for cooking are also easily found - just level your fishing from appropriate Pools anywhere in Pandaria or, again, the Auction House if the price is acceptable to you.

Farming for the meats however, is not something that most people like to do. The supply on the Auction House isn't too bad right now, with so many people leveling toons, some meats are available naturally as drops from questing kills.

So where can you find Raw Tiger Steak & how much do you need? Well, The Way of the Grill is the only Way that needs them & then only 25 to get to the next recipe. Where is also a nice answer - lots of places! Any tiger in the zones of Pandaria have a chance to drop them although the higher the level, the higher the drop rate seems to be.

One thing I would suggest if you can - take your Skinner! Farming skinnable mobs for meat & not skinning is kind of silly really - you are leaving all that lovely saleable leather just lying around & if you don't skin it, you can bet your last dollar, someone else will! If you haven't leveled your Skinner to 90 yet, don't worry - there are plenty of tigers that are farmable by a reasonably geared level 85 & you will get lots of lovely XP too.


Raw Tiger Meat farming Areas - Jade Forest

For level 85 Horde players, there is an easy source almost as soon as you arrive to start questing - the Sha-Infested Tigers just outside Honeydew Village. They only have 135k health with a drop rate around 35%. As a quest mob, you may face some competition but the spawn rate isn't too bad & of course, you can skin any corpses that other people leave behind!

Also in Jade Forest for level 85's - there is a large area just south of Serpent's Heart filled with Golden Tigers - 158k health & a 35% drop rate so a little harder than the starter zone ones but available to both factions as are the Wild Stalkers & Wild Prowlers just NE of Pearlfin Village. This is also a questing area but the spawn rate is good enough to support multiple questers & farmers. For skinners, there are also Stoneskin Basilisks here too.

Raw Tiger Meat farming - Kun-Lai Summit

The level 87/88 Zouchin Tigers with 271k health are plentiful & have a better drop rate of around 50%. These can be found in the far North of Kun-Lai Summit area. With lower health than level 90 tigers, these may be the best farming option for speed - the slightly lower drop rate is counter-acted by the easier killing. It's also far enough off the main farming areas that you will probably have them all to yourself!

If you have made it to level 90 then the various dailies are now available to you - including the Order of the Cloud Serpent ones in the Windward isles to the NE of the Jade Forest. One of the dailies is to get Tiger Flanks from the Windward Tigers and as a side effect of course, you get Raw Tiger Steak too. This area is rather like the crocs in Tol Barad - a skinner's heaven - with all the toons doing their daily, there are lots of skinnable corpses just laying around for you.

Given the Asian theme across Pandaria, it's not surprising just how many areas have tigers (even though they are endangered in the real world). I found that I had almost enough Raw Tiger Steaks by the time I got to level 90 so I didn't have to go & farm these. But if you are not so lucky or you would like to farm leather & a profitable meat at the same time, then these areas should help you do that easily.

Have you found a little corner to farm Tigers? Would you share it or do you want to keep it to yourself!

***************

Mists of Pandaria Cooking Meats Series
Got all your Raw Tiger Meat but need to know where to farm the other Mists of Pandaria cooking meats? Check out my other posts in this series.

• Where to Farm Raw Crab Meat
• Where to Farm Raw Crocolisk Belly
• Where to Farm Raw Turtle Meat
• Where to Farm Mushan Ribs
• Where to Farm Wildfowl Breast

****************

Check out this great Zygor Guides review

Tiger Cub © Image by DigitalArt2 on Flickr under Creative Commons licence
Pork Chops © image by StuartWebster on Flickr under Creative Commons licence

Cooking for Gold, Patch 4.1 Style

With the introduction of several new food & drink related achievements in patch 4.1, I have seen a rise in the prices of almost all the cataclysm buff foods & drinks craftable by my maxed cook. Most notably, chocolate cookies have been flying off the shelves especially when I add a little bark linking the cookie to the new 'You'll feeel Right as Rain' achievement.

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you'll know that my DK sat in SW at lvl 75 for ages. I had no need to level her to 85 for either JC or Inscription recipes but I did do the fishing & cooking dailies on her for the guild rep. However, her cooking skill is maybe 150 so she couldn't really make use of the Chef's Awards until patch 4.1 hit! Yay for Bario Matalli & his bag of Imported Supplies which costs just 1 Chef's Award token & contains 2 stacks of Cocoa Beans (although I have had bags with 51 cocoa beans so there's obviously a proc type thing in there too).

Off I went to buy my cocoa beans, 20 bags later I had 46 stacks of the darned things! Sent them all to my cook , ran to the cooking supplies guy in SW Old Town & started a massive cookie baking marathon. Luckily I have the Chef's Hat (from the Dalaran cooking dailies - I was 80 for a long time before Cata hit!) which vastly increases cooking speed so it wasn't too long.

I posted 200 of them on the AH in stacks of 20 at 75g a stack although the achievement only really needs 91 - I just wanted to keep to nice round numbers but actually, I realised afterwards, I was making people buy 9 extras! Then I barked in trade 'get your 'You'll Feel Right As Rain' achieve, Chocolate Cookies in AH now!' and sat back to wait a few minutes before barking again. I didn't have to wait that long, I'd say within 2 minutes they had all gone so I listed some more (but at 80g this time) & repeated. Same thing happened. In less than 20 minutes, I'd made & sold 400 cookies for over 1500g & I still had enough left for hubby & I to get the achieve too!

 

Fast forward a couple of days & I realised that I'd lost my top spot in the guild for achievements so I had a quick look to see which achieves I could knock out quickly. Apart from the three /love critters, the next quickest would be the Cataclysmically Delicious & Drown Your Sorrows ones so off I went to the AH to see if any of the foods were available cheaply (especially the ones I can't cook yet or didn't have mats for).

The prices were ridiculous! Some of the vendor bought items were listed for 30-50g each although some were still under 5g each. I smelt an opportunity so as of today, I have had a cook up of all the cataclysm foods I can & have them listed at reasonable (around 10g per) prices for singles. When I logged off last night, they were selling fairly well but with the login servers down this morning, I've been unable to find out just how well :)

So if you have a high level cooking skill & spare chef's awards, what's stopping you? I think this will be one of those markets I jump in & out of 'ninja style'. I'll be keeping an eye on the cookies in particular but where I've been selling the odd ones & twos of cooking mats, I'll cook them up now & sell the food instead. The bonus to that is the Guild achievement Set the Oven to 'Cataclysmic' which, in a small guild like ours, is a long way off for now.