New Way to Spy on your AH Competition

Spy on Your AH Competition - Ninja style!

I don't usually spy on my Auction House competitors but I do enjoy rummaging through the Armory, looking up random strangers' alts to see what transmog gear they have or to check out gear, reforges & enchants if they have impressed me in a dungeon or something. I was checking out one of my guildmates the other evening to make them some armour when I clicked on the Roster button.

Out of curiosity, I sorted the roster by Achievement points (I'm the Achieve Queen in my guild :P) to see who was catching me up & it suddenly dawned on me - with the new Account-wide achievement system, all my alts have approximately the same number of achievement points. There is some variation but not very much as you can see from the screenshot below.

So how can we use this to our advantage in the Auction House? Well, if you saw my Rogue posting on the Auction House then went & checked her out on the Armory, you wouldn't be too far off in guessing that Hunter, Death Knight & Warrior are also mine - same guild & same number of achievement points. The rank would also give you a clue normally but my Rogue has a special rank so that throws this example off a little!

Taking it a step further, I could also keep an eye on the GM Paladin & the Priest (perhaps even the lowbie Druid too) - just above & just below, especially as no-one else in guild is even close to these alts. By adding them to my friends list, I could see when the Rogue logs off & one of the others immediately logs in.

What this doesn't do is find the lowly level 1 bank alt characters that so many serious goldmakers use. Usually the bank alt is in a guild on it's own so this wouldn't work but if you were to check out the Guild roster of your competitors alt - you may find other alts in there that are higher than level 10 & therefore show up on the Armory. Again, add them to your friends list & watch for the log out/log in connection.

How does this help us? Well, one technique to deter competition in a market niche is to post the same items at different prices on different alts - it then looks like a busy, competitive market which may deter less experienced goldmakers from even entering it. Using this spying method, you would know when someone is doing just that & then you wouldn't be scared away from that market.

Do you keep an eye on your competitors? Have you found an easier way to check them out that you are willing to share?

Leveling 85 to 90 - How Much Gold Can You Earn?

I've often wondered just how much gold can be earned just by leveling. You know, quest rewards, loot & vendor trash, not to mention all the good stuff you can pick up along the way. So this time through, I actually managed to keep track of it and thought I would share it with you.

I took my Paladin through to 90 purely by questing, no dungeons, no Auction House activities & no battlegrounds. You can see from the screenshot below, over 7 days, she earned almost 6000 gold. What the screenshot doesn't show is how much good stuff she picked up! Ignore the outgoings - I nabbed flying & the yak mounts as soon as I dinged!

addon used here is Auditor

Just after she hit 90 & I'd got out of combat, I did a quick check of her inventory - 390 Exotic Leather, 39 Sha-touched leather, 1 Magnificent Hide, 68 Prismatic Scales & 7 Sprits of Harmony. I did lose track of all the cooking materials she picked up as I did do a bit of cooking leveling & I sent about 22 green armour/weapons to my enchanter. I haven't disenchanted everything yet - I'm keeping some bits back for my alts but the prices of gear on the Auction House are so low during this initial rush that I may even end up buying stuff to disenchant!

All that leather meant that I managed to level my profession to 600 without having to spend any gold at all & I still have leather left over too. It's difficult to quantify just how much all this stuff is worth though but at a rough guess, I'd say about 1000 gold for the leather, 550 gold for the Prismatic Scales & if I use the average Golden Lotus price to value my Spirits of Harmony, then around 4000 gold for those.

That makes around 10,500 gold over the process of leveling just 5 levels - not too shabby at all!

I'm just about to start leveling my next alt so I'll try to keep better records this time! I don't cook on most of my alts so it will be easier to keep track on those materials. I've not decided which alt is next though - my heart says go with DK or Hunter as they are both fairly well geared & shouldn't be too difficult. My brain says if I don't level my rogue or priest soon, it will take me 2 years to move them along & my inner goblin says 'get those damn professions leveled as cheaply as possible' which means probably my recently dinged 85 Warrior miner/blacksmith but she's another melee. oh well, I shall ponder it a while longer & let you know next time.

Happy Goldmaking peeps

Mists of Pandaria Level 90 - What To Do Next?

Level 90 - So What's Next?

After a week of almost nothing but questing, I finally made it to level 90 on my first character - my beloved Retribution Paladin. I contemplated being a ruthless goldmaker & leveling a different alt purely for goldmaking reasons but I just couldn't do it! My darling girl got left way behind during Cataclysm because I just could not get the hang of the Holy Power changes. Now I seem to have just magically managed it & I'm feeling much better about that, as you can imagine!

So where does she go from here? I've been reading my Twitter feed & numerous blog posts for the last few weeks but without actually being there or doing that stuff, it's difficult to make sense of it all. Some information has stuck but not enough to make an informed decision as to my next steps. Talk about information overload & too much choice!

If you're a regular reader, you'll know I don't raid (well, not since ICC anyway, long story) & I didn't do many dungeons during Cataclysm either. I really do want to do more in game than just making gold this expansion though so yes, I will be doing dailies for gear reputation grinds. However, I also need to look at the various factions for goldmaking stuffs and of course, there's lots of lovely new mounts to aim for as well.

For this post, I'm going to ignore the gearing up possibilities & just look at professions. There are too many gear options for me to cover & the chances are, you'll need class/spec specific advice anyway which I certainly can't do!

Leatherworking & Tailoring

The Golden Lotus faction has patterns at Honored level purchased with gold. With over 50 dailies available (depending on progress), it shouldn't take too long to get to just honored level. There are also shoulder & chest armor at Revered & 3 new Crane mounts at Exalted. Hopefully you unlocked the Vale of Eternal Blossoms whilst you were leveling so you just pick up the daily quests from their NPC's in your faction city there.

The Leatherworking patterns are the leg armors & epic armor (ilvl 476) for chest & gloves - all the usual combinations - Mail (agility & intellect types) & of course, Leather (intellect & agility types).

The Tailoring patterns are the spellthreads & epic armor (ilvl 476) for chest & gloves too - intellect or intellect & spirit combos.

Blacksmithing

The Klaxxi is the faction for all your Blacksmithing needs - as with the Golden Lotus above, these patterns are available at Honored reputation level. As well as the epic chest & gloves patterns (ilvl 476) there are also weapons patterns but these are rare quality ones with ilvl 463. There is also the usual enhancements of belt buckles, shield spikes & weapon chains available.

Gearwise, there are epic legs & waist items for all classes at Revered (also ilvl 476) & my favorite is the Amber Scorpion mount available at Exalted :) Rare quality weapons are also available at Exalted, ilvl 463 so if you can make the rare quality weapons from patterns available at Honored, you should find a market for these as people aren't going to be raising their reputations with all factions as once.

Jewelcrafting

The Order of the Cloud Serpent is the faction that teaches you to fly on the cloud serpent mounts (need Exalted though) but it also has the patterns for the Jewelcrafting Panther mounts - 2 mount patterns (Jade & Sunstone) at Honored, 2 mount patterns (Ruby & Sapphire) at Revered & lastly, the Onyx Panther at Exalted.

Enchanting

The Shado-Pan faction has the 3 weapon enchants for you at Revered & the August Celestials have the strength, agility & intellect bracer enchants, also at Revered. It seems a bit of a pain to have to level both factions to Revered to get at the recipes but for me, the bonus is the 2 Cloud Serpent mounts available from the August Celestials at Exalted & the 3 Riding Tigers available from the Shado-Pan also at Exalted.

Other Professions

Lucky you! You don't have to grind any specific factions to get any patterns. Alchemy & Inscription are 'discovery' based so as you create potions or do your daily research, you gain new patterns at the highest levels. Engineers get to learn everything from their trainers, as small compensation for how complicated some of the items are to craft I guess :P

Next Steps for my Paladin

My Paladin is a skinner/leatherworker & I have saved all my leather whilst leveling. So my first faction to start with will be The Golden Lotus, a faction that was recommended to be first for all classes/crafters anyway due to the fact that you need Revered with them to open the Shado-Pan & August Celestials dailies.

Lissana over at Restokin.com has a great guide post to all this faction related stuff too, especially if you are gearing up as well as leveling your professions.

I haven't mentioned the Tillers here because although having your own farm will be very useful & make a fair bit of gold, I just haven't got my head around it yet & there are loads of other Tiller guides out there already! I'm using Els' Angling guide to the Tillers & farm related stuff but there's also a wealth of detail in The Godmother's posts about her farming adventures, well worth a read if you're looking for the nitty gritty stuff.

I hope this helps - I know I panicked when I saw all those quest givers suddenly appear on my map last night! I ignored them & went to get my flying training so I could explore those last few places for the achievement & then I sat down & fished for a while!

Mists of Pandaria - The Plan & The Results (So Far)

Mists of Pandaria - The Plan & The Results

Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival this month has a nice retrospective flavour after all the frantic preparations before Mists of Pandaria was launched

Pick A Market Or A Strategy That You Planned To Focus On For The MoP Launch. What Were Your Results?

I was late to the Mists of Pandaria party as I was away from home on launch day so I've only been playing for a week now. I knew being a week behind was going to mess up any big plans & with moving house & packing for my trip, my pre-launch to-do list never really stood a chance! Having said that though, I did have fairly big expectations of the Glyph market on 2 different servers.

Original Plan

Like many Scribes, I stockpiled some decent stacks of all the various inks although nowhere near the quantities that some bloggers were talking about! I didn't precraft glyphs, that's never been how I work but when I saw how low the prices were dropping, I did grab some of the very cheapest ones from the Auction House.

On my main EU account, I kept to my normal method, using Trade Skill Master addon (TSM) to identify which glyphs were selling at the highest prices & I only crafted glyphs worth over 250 gold. My banker there also picked up a few hundred cheap glyphs, all at 20 gold each or less.

On my US account, things are slightly different. My main there had only just maxed her Inscription & is still learning the glyphs from the daily researches. I used the same method, crafting the highest priced glyphs but I had a fairly large stock of glyphs crafted when leveling. I also picked up cheap glyphs from the Auction House.

Also on my US account, I have a baby Alliance banker & like the Auction House Addict that I am, I somehow can't resist playing that Auction House too. She has no professions so she just picked up cheap glyphs when the prices were below 15 gold each.

How It Turned Out

So how did it all work out? Well, the Kobolds (Cold's nickname for the huge undercutters has stuck with me!) have been out in force on all 3 Auction Houses, driving prices down below 25 gold for probably half of all the glyphs available. I'm seeing good glyphs listed at anywhere from 200-500 gold & then someone comes along & lists 5 at 24 gold & not only that, they are cancelling & relisting as often as the main players. If I sell 3 or 4 higher priced glyphs on my main account in a day, that is now a good day.

On my US account, both factions have the same problem but my Horde gilrlie is suffering from not only competing with the Kobolds but also with Cold himself! When I picked my profession, I forgot to ask him which was his main one so I could avoid having to compete! It doesn't really matter though as I'm putting that account on hold whilst I focus on all the lovely new stuff in Pandaria on my mains.

Nice Surprises

One nice surprise in this brave new world of Pandarian auctioning has been the cooking materials - with 6 x 85's available & only leveling one of them, I have been able to get my farms started & producing a wide variety of the cooking ingredients which are selling for anything between 40 gold to 9 gold each!

Another pleasant surprise was the ease of leveling 2 Alchemists to max purely via Auction House herbs - not only was it fairly cheap but I seem to be on a lucky streak with my Living Steel transmutes - I've had a proc almost every day so far!

And lastly but not gold related, I'm surprised by how much I like the quest reward armour! My Paladin is my first love & although I was torn between her & my Hunter for first to 90, I just had to stick with my Pally. The changes to Holy Power seem to have improved the rotation for me at least ( I was struggling all through Cataclysm) & she just made level 87 late last night.

Going Forwards

Right now, I'm not sure quite where I'm heading as far as the Auction House is concerned. I'm still playing catch up, trying to make sense of the huge variety of options Blizzard have provided for us this time around. I'm going to get all my girls to 90 at some point but I'm not going to rush. I'm determined to actually do some dungeons this time around too & maybe even attempt to raid a bit.

I will still be making gold though, it's almost impossible not too whilst leveling, especially on 6 toons. I'll level my professions as quickly as I can, not only for the Guild achievement but also so that I can begin to get my head around them & perhaps find a little corner to call my own.

Good Luck out there, my fellow gold makers. It's a brave new world to conquer!

Leveling Zen Master Alchemy - My Way & The Right Way

Leveling Zen Master Alchemy

I currently have 2 Alchemists - both Transmute Masters. One is my rarely played Rogue & the other is my main candidate for leveling to 90 first but whilst I'm still faffing with banks, auctions & getting to grips with all things Pandaren, I thought I'd get these two started with their farms at least.

My Leveling Method

In my usual manner, I checked the Auction House for pandaren herb prices & was pleasantly surprised by how cheap the Green Tea Leaf was, so I grabbed 18 stacks for around 490g (just 25g a stack!). I knew they were the starter herb for Alchemy & of course my main money making profession of Inscription uses them too. In doing so, I may have got slightly sidetracked from my plan to get my farm started & I started leveling my alchemy.

I dived straight in & learnt the Zen Master level & the 2 trainer taught recipes - Master Healing Potion & Master Mana Potion. Almost 2 stacks of healing potions later, I'd picked up about 10 new 'discoveries' & off I went, back to the Auction House to price up the next leveling potion. Within about 1 hour, I was at skill level 590 and had picked up a nice bunch of new recipes, including Transmute: Living Steel - yay!!!

Back to the Auction House to price up the Trillium Bar - Eeeek! no way was I paying those prices so I took my little Rogue out to start her farm. With that done, I logged into my Hunter & did exactly the same thing again! I still had a load of Green Tea Leaf left from earlier so that reduced my costs this time round. As I neared 590 skill points, the discovery for Transmute:Trillium popped up - phew! That was lucky otherwise both my girls would have been stuck until Trillium prices dropped or my Miner actually got out of Stormwind!

Again I got lucky - someone had listed Ghost Iron Bar for just 262 gold a stack or 131 gold per Trillium transmute so of course, I snagged as much as possible, having 2 alchemists waiting for it now. Just 5 transmutes later, I'd maxed my skills for my Hunter & on the very last transmute, the discovery for Living Steel popped up.

Now I know there are some folk out there who are going to hate me but my very first Transmute:Living Steel proc'ced for me -  woop woop! 2 Living Steel to sell straight away. To make you hate me even more, I've now done 3 days of Living Steel transmutes & have had a proc every day - giving me 9 Living Steels out of 6 cooldowns!

Overall, I spent 3090 gold on herbs & ghost iron bars to level both alchemists to 600. Out of the potions, elixirs & transmutes I made, I have sold 3524 gold's worth so I am already back in profit & have 7 Living Steels still to sell as well as enough Healing potions to keep my alts alive whilst they level through The Jade Forest. What I don't have yet is all the recipes so once my herbalist starts to level, I will go back & make more potions to complete the discovery process on both alts.

How I Should Have Leveled!

As I sat down to write this post, I realised I hadn't noted down everything I had done, so off I went to Kaliope's Crafting blog to look for some of the details I'd missed. What a slap head moment that was! One of the very first points she made in her Alchemy summary was

'don't learn Zen Master Alchemy straight away, just the healing & mana potion recipes'

Basically, you need to make a whole bunch of the Master Healing Potions to start learning the discoveries. Once you have made about 5 potions without a discovery, you have probably learnt all the discoveries at that level and THEN you can learn Zen Master Alchemy & continue making Master Healing Potions until the recipe goes grey. In this way, you will maximise the number of discoveries you make with the cheapest & easiest potion, giving you a wider selection of recipes to make for the rest of your leveling process.

So that's my Oops! of the week so far. I'm off to read the rest of Kaliope's profession summaries - I do not want to find a similar oops on any of my other professions, that's for sure :)

Image credit © Horia Varlan under Creative Commons licence

Adventuring Supplies - No Pandaren Level 85 Green Armour Market This Time?

Adventuring Supplies - No Pandaren Level 85 Green Armour Market This Time?

I finally managed to get my EU account upgraded to the new expansion Mists of Pandaria but have spent the last 2 days just trying to get my head around all the possibilities. Have 6 possible candidates for leveling first and all the professions to level has resulted in 2 days of Auction House chaos & profession confusion for me but I think I'm getting there!

I did manage to level both my Alchemists to 600 very easily (post coming up on that soon) & I took both of them to Halfhill to get their farms started. Whilst travelling there, I bumped into Claretta, an Adventuring Supplies trader sitting at Pang's Stead in the Valley of Four Winds.

Now one of the big markets during Cataclysm has been the level 77-80 green (uncommon) quality armour & weapons markets. If you were asleep or AFK, these were Cataclysm items useable by level 77 characters & up, with the obvious benefit of much, much better stats than the level 77-80 Wrath gear.

There has been some talk on Twitter about whether this 77-80 market will survive & I have to say, judging by my sales over the last week or two, yes - I think this market will survive! As you can see from my screen shot below, I have been buying Cataclysm 77-80 level gear for less than 50 gold each & reselling them quite successfully at 199 gold each. This screenshot is from my US account only but I have had similar success on my EU account although by using the Remote Auction House, none of my sales statistics were recorded - boo!

So back to Claretta & her fellow Adventuring Supplies traders - she sells a full set of item level 372 green quality armour for very reasonable prices. My US Hunter only dinged 85 a few days before Mists of Pandaria was released & as I don't usually do many dungeons, my poor hunter was not looking forward to the initial struggle to quest in the new zones, being dressed almost totally in Cataclysm quest rewards green armour!

As you can see from the screenshot below, the stats on these items are really quite good - especially when compared to many of the Cataclysm items my girlie was wearing. I had already picked up 3 or 4 Pandaren quest reward items but I was still struggling a little so I decided it was worth 150 gold or so to replace the worst 3 items.

With these wandering traders so easily available & with the Auction House flooded with Mists of Pandaria green quality items for very low prices, I have to wonder if an equivalent to the 77-80 market will be able to thrive during this expansion. I know many Enchanters are currently snapping up many of the lowest priced greens on the Auction House to disenchant but when the leveling buzz dies down a bit & everything starts to even out, these travelling traders will provide an alternative to the Auction House for buyers.

I know I won't be buying gear for my fresh 85 from the auction house unless the prices are really cheap. I would guess that buying cheap Mists gear & relisting them for much higher prices will find a small market - after all, there will always be players unaware of the travelling traders or those who simply want their gear straightaway who will purchase the higher priced armour but I don't think it will be as big a market as the recent 77-80 greens one. Only time will tell though - I'm not usually prone to 'forecasting' such things so we'll just have to wait & see how it goes.

What do you think? In my confusion over all the stuff to do in Mists, have I missed a point here? Let me know in comments if you want to put me straight :)

Mists of Panderia - Where Shall I Start?

Mists of Panderia - Where Shall I Start?

So I finally got home after my travels & one of the first things I did (besides collapse into bed & sleep for 5 hours!) was upgrade my EU account to Mists of Panderia. I've been following various tweets over the last week about all the different things people are doing & I have to try to decide where the heck to start my Pandaren adventure!

I don't really want to rush any alts to 90 although I do want to get them all there in the next month or so and I also want to max my professions. From Twitter, I'm getting the impression that a farm is a must have for all my 85's but as yet, I have no idea how to get the the Farmer NPC guy!

I have had a little play with pet battles on my US account and also raised a baby Pandaren Monk to level 10 but gold making on that account is unimportant to me so I'm going to leave that out of my musings. I will probably poodle my US Hunter along very late at night when my US friends are around though.

So what do I have in my stable of alts & which order should I tackle stuff?

1. Paladin - Retribution, Leatherworker & Skinner. also my Achievement Queen but that's not so important now. Gear wise she's kind of middling. I never got to grips with the Holy Power system so she's just been gathering dust although she is my first love & I feel the irrational urge to level her first & fast too.
2. Death Knight - Frost, Jewelcrafting & Inscription - my main melee DPS girlie, she's also been my main gold maker with her professions. I know there are kobolds in the Glyph market now though so I'm not sure if I want to keep fighting that battle.
3. Priest - shadow/holy, Enchanting & Tailoring. I'm honestly not very good on my priest - I didn't start healing until the very end of Wrath & never had the confidence to face many Cataclysm dungeons with her. Her gear is ok but I think she will struggle a bit in Panderia.
4. Rogue - Combat, Herbing & Alchemy - geared to mid Cata PvP level, she will definitely struggle in Panderia. I love my lil gnome rogue but I'm really really bad at all the moving around & jumping type stuff so she's never really had a chance!
5. Hunter - Marksman, 2nd Alchemist & 2nd Tailor, this girlie is my favourite for a bit of PvP & some dungeons too. I seem to be able to pull some ok DPS numbers out of her although still not spectacular. If I do dungeons in Mists, I'm pretty sure she will be my 1st choice but her professions are only basic - no extra plans/recipes etc, just the basics to get at the additional cooldowns in Cataclysm.
6. Warrior - Arms, Mining & Blacksmithing - my newest level 85, she just dinged the week before Mists of Panderia arrived so her gear is still end leveling greens & a few blues. She will probably struggle in Panderia too but although it took me over a year to finally get her maxed, I did quite enjoy it in the end.

My initial thoughts were to take my gatherers out first - get those farmed items onto the Auction House & capitalise on the early rush but I'm already seeing prices dropping dramatically & stabilising at fairly reasonable prices too so that blows that idea out of the water.

Next thought was to take my Paladin out first - (instinctive really, she is my fav!) her Leatherworking would be ideal with all the new monks that suddenly sprung into existance! But then I remembered I dropped skinning last summer & am only half levelled on that now - do I spend an afternoon getting that to Pandaren level?

I'm hearing that professions are fairly easy to level now so I'm also wondering, shall I just throw some gold at it & get all my professions leveled via the Auction House & just play which alt I want to? My old friend Khalior is writing again - 2 great posts to get me thinking this week - a Grab Bag of Random Tips & More Random Tips for Panderia

But then there's the whole Spirit of Harmony being Bind on Pickup thing! Most of my girls will need them at some point. Faid literally just posted about SoH & determining their value whilst I'm writing this & that's given me a whole new lot of stuff to think about!

Phat over at Phat Lewt's Gold Blog has also been analysing this kind of stuff too - his post Top 5 professions to Level ASAP makes some really good points & based on his thoughts, I could happily level my hunter first (Alchemist/Tailor). Even though she doesn't have extra stuff from earlier expansions, I'm not sure that matters too much right now - my other Alchemist & Tailor will get leveled soon enough to fill any gaps there.

And lastly, just now, Jim from Power Word:Gold has just published a new post 'How To Eat An Elephant' - apart from making me smile at the title, he also makes some very good points that are perfectly timed for me as I write this post! It's good to know that as I sit here, frantically trying to work out how to catch up for missing the first week & worrying that I'm falling behind, there are others out there feeling exactly the same sense of being overwhelmed by all the possibilities Mists of Pandaria & Blizzard have brought to us. I don't think I'll be complaining about boredom anytime soon, that's for sure!

Image © Alex Bellink under Creative Commons License

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!