What Makes a Good Gold Maker?

About a month ago, my fellow gold maker, Phat Lewts made an interesting, slightly ranty post about an addon called Total Gold Earned and I have to say, I fully agree with his point of view. Reading that post triggered an idea for my own post but knowing that Selltacular at Copper to Gold had recently taken over Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival, I realised my post idea might be a good one for the Carnival so I emailed Selltacular & held off writing this post.

What is your definition of a good gold maker? How do you measure gold making success?

First let me add my comments to Phat's original post - he talked about how easy it was to inflate your Total Gold Earned figure as it only adds up the total of items you sell in the Auction House. It takes no account of any tradechat transactions or any done via trades with friends or via mail so it also underestimates on that side.

The other area where this little addon falls down is that it can only look at your current stable of alts - my total gold earned looked abysmal to me until I remembered that I hit gold cap during early Cataclysm & have since deleted that banker alt (and she wasn't my first deleted banker either)! So this addon doesn't & can't take that into account and I won't be publicising my totals anytime soon, that's for sure!

So how would I measure success?

If you measure success by how much liquid gold someone has (available gold value in bags & banks), then you are almost missing the point! If I have 1 million gold just sitting in my bags for months on end, I'm not a good gold maker anymore - I've either stopped gold making & just enjoying being rich or I've been playing WoW for a long time and haven't spent anything! Even the worst gold maker can accumulate a tidy amount of gold as long as they aren't losing on every sale - all it takes is time & not spending on expensive items.

So does having a large amount of gold & a huge list of active auctions make you a good gold maker? Nope! I'd say you're on your way though - you do need to have your fingers in many pies & have lots of stuff to sell BUT it needs to be the right stuff!

Does having a high 'total gold earned' value in your game statistics make you a good gold maker? Nope! I think Phat already covered that one!

To be honest? I'm really not sure how I would measure success - there are so many factors involved & so many personalities in this gold making community that there are countless ways to try to define 'success' - personally I go by gut instinct - if I like the way a person writes/talks about gold making, if I know that some of their techniques/methods are ones I use myself then, to be honest, I really don't care how much gold they actually have or how much they are actually making! I'll try their techniques for myself or use them to form the basis for my own experimenting with markets.

What is my definition of a good gold maker?

Using your brain & being curious about new markets is a great asset to any gold maker - addons are great but if you just follow a guide & use it on automatic, you will make expensive mistakes! Using your brain is not just about working out crafting costs before setting your selling prices either. It's a way of thinking, of being keen to learn and being quick to take advantage of new stuff coming out, spotting trends and knowing how the markets work on your server.

A good gold maker is also patient - there's no point rushing to sell something and dropping your prices to sell 'bargains' when with a little patience, you could sell it for full price. Being first to capitalise on a new market or to resurrect an old one is not the same as rushing to sell stuff. We've all seen the amateur sellers in trade chat - dropping their prices quickly in a desperate attempt to sell it now!

In my mind, a good gold maker is also organised - lots of professions leveled and working together to maximise profits, having buy lists of raw materials, ready to grab anything & everything that falls in their pre-set price ranges and making best use of their in-game gold making time. Sitting at the Auction House, farming or crafting all day & making lots of gold that way doesn't make you a good gold maker, just an inefficient one with lots of time to waste!

Am I a good gold maker?

Honestly, I don't think so! I do use my brain & I am patient but I am really unorganised. I do have all professions except Engineering but I don't always make best use of them these days. I actually enjoy faffing around, crafting a bit here & a bit there, scanning the auction house manually and just absorbing prices & spotting trends but I wasn't always like this.

This is a bad habit I've got into since I started playing solo so much and since I hit that magical but anti-climactic 1 million gold. Yes, I've got lazy and you can tell by my lack of blog posts but I also know I can ramp it up whenever I feel like it. I hope I feel like it soon - my blog is nagging at me for some attention!

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How To Take Your Gold With You When You Transfer Servers

This month is the first month that Selltacular over at Copper to Gold blog is hosting the monthly Gold Blogging Carnival, having taken over from Cold at Cold's Gold Factory. As he says in his post, the topic of server transfers has been very common on Twitter & various forums over the last few months & Blizzard must have been listening as this week, they have had a 50% off character services sale.

If you were to transfer servers and could take only one toon, which one would you take and why? What goods would you use to transport all of your gold over the 50k transfer cap?

My choice of toons to move is fairly obvious - I could either take my main - a Leatherworking/Skinning Paladin and basically never look back at my current server or I could take a high level toon but one that is unimportant to my goldmaking. For me at least, those would be my options - yes, I could take any one of my 6 level 85-90's but as my professions are all over the place, moving any of the 5 besides my Hunter would leave a gap in my goldmaking on what I still consider to be my main realm.

My level 85 Hunter is my 2nd alchemist & 2nd Tailor - alchemy is maxed but tailoring I haven't even started on the daily Imperial Silk cooldown & learning the newer PvP items so if I was moving in order to continue my gold making, I'd have my work cut out for me! However, for me, a move is more of a search for the social side of WoW - I really miss evenings on Skype with my guildies, tackling new dungeons, raiding or even just mucking about in PvP.

Now I know it's kind of academic at this point but to take as much of my gold with me as possible I would firstly empty her bank & bags of any low level or non-valuable items. Next I would make sure she had large bags and fill them with valuable items as well as any heirlooms I wanted to take with me. I might even go and buy more heirlooms from the guild vendor if there were some I didn't already have. I wouldn't pay silly money for the largest bags though - at least not until I had filled my existing large bags. Spending 3-4k gold on an extra 4 spaces per bag seems kind of silly to me unless I knew I could make it worthwhile on the new server!

Amani Dragonhawk

Deciding what kind of valuable items to take with you requires research. Once you've decided on your destination realm, you need to use The Undermine Journal & look up all kinds of expensive items - think mounts (especially TCG mounts like Spectral Tiger or Amani Dragonhawk), high level, high price battle pets (although you can always swap those over later of course!) and epic armor. Don't forget mounts/pets you can craft too - think Vial of the Sands, Jewelcrafting mounts & pets as well as Engineering ones like the choppers.There's an option to compare prices between 2 servers at the top of the screen & I find it very useful sometimes.

The other thing to think about though is the higher value items that you can craft - think Living Steel, Living Steel Belts, top end enchants, valuable gems, spellthreads & maybe even the +300 buff foods!. These all stack so each single bag space can hold quite a high value stack. It might be worth checking out the glyph market on your new server too - I know many servers seem to have a dead glyph market & if your own server is dead on glyphs but your new one is busy, you can pick up a bucketload of cheap glyphs BUT be choosy! You don't want to take a load of rubbish with you!

And that's the key point here really - you want to fill your bank spaces & bag spaces with the highest value items/stacks that you can - it may be that a stack of say, Living Steel has more value than any of the mounts or pets you find on your current server& if you aren't taking an alchemist with you, but can still use Living Steel then having a few stacks for selling or crafting with may prove more valuable in the short term.

Going back to pets though - if you do have to leave a pile of gold behind, don't forget that you can still move some over time by buying pets on your old server, learning & then caging them on your new server. Once you are settled into your new home & have begun to understand your new Auction House, you may find opportunities you missed. Make a note of those when you find them - you may love your new server so much that you decide to transfer another toon over later & then you can cash in on those earlier missed options.

This all sounds like a lot of preparation & to be honest, yes it is. Moving server is quite a big change for many players & not one I would take lightly after all this time on my home server. I've decided not to move any alts this time though - as usual I've left it too late to really get organised & I'm not sure of where I want to go. I have some cash on Arathor so I may go & play a little gold making over there - mainly just flipping though & it turns out I have a friend who plays there too. As for my twitter friends on Ghostlands, I feel the need to learn to tank on a DK from the start so I'll possibly turn up on your doorstep sometime soon :)

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What To Do With My Sunsong Ranch?

I can't believe it's been a month already but yup, it's that time again! This month's topic over at Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival is very timely given that Patch 5.2 has just landed & changed quite a few bits on the Tillers Farm.

What Are You Currently Doing With Your Sunsong Ranch / Ranches?

Are you growing crops to level cooking skills? Growing raw materials? Doing the Ironpaw Shuffle? Abandoned the farm all together?

If you've been reading a while, you may remember I did quite a few posts about the Farm & the Ironpaw Shuffle too. I even created a spreadsheet to share with you but what have I been doing since then? Well, to be perfectly honest, not as much as I could have!

I only have 1 farm with all 16 plots available and that is on my Leatherworking Paladin. She's been growing mainly Songbell Seeds to get a regular supply of Motes of Harmony whilst I've been leveling my Warrior & DK. I've been making some of the Epic gloves which use 6 Spirits of Harmony and as they can take a little while to sell, in between times, I've been making a selection of the 3 leg armours. They've all been selling but not very quickly & not in large numbers. The gold has been quite nice though - anywhere from 5-8k for the epics & usually around the 700-800g for the leg armors.

When I originally wrote about farming & it was all new & shiny, I started farms on 3 of my level 85's - just the basic farm but they were all planting vegetables that I needed for leveling my Cooking. Once I'd maxed all the Ways, I kind of forgot about those mini-farms. I'm not planning on leveling those alts for a while yet so I guess their farms will just sit there for now.

Just in the last week or so though, I have been doing the Tillers dailies on my Warrior & my DK - both now have 8 plot farms & should hit 12 plots each this weekend (unless I get sidetracked yet again!). My plan for these 2 farms is to provide Spirits of Harmony for the Blacksmith and a few Spirits for the JC to make the 2 pets then I'll swap the DK's farm to either Enigma Seeds (depending on Golden Lotus & flasks prices) or one of the other 'special' seeds depending on my raw materials requirements. I'll consider using the new Work Orders too although I'm not too worried about most of the reputations for these two alts.

I do love the new seed bags though! Planting 4 plots all at once is just so much easier and along with the Plough (that I eventually got around to buying!) it does make farming just a little less irritating. I still hate those damn birds though.

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My Best & Worst Markets in MoP

For this months blogging carnival over at Cold's Gold Factory, Cold has asked us another interesting question. Unfortunately I think my answer is probably not going to be particularly informative as I have been focused mainly on leveling, dailies & yes, dungeons! But never mind, it's still valid & I'm pretty sure many of you have probably found the same markets as I have.

BEST and WORST Markets So Far In MoP

Tell us about your favorite, most profitable, or most consistent market in the MoP era of WoW Gold Making. Then, tell us about a market that you've abandoned, has crashed, or has just plain been a flop. What are your best and worse WoW auction house markets so far in Mists?

My Best Market in MoP

For me, with all the leveling & dailies, my best market that has almost taken care of itself is the vegetables from my farms & any cooking materials I've been picking up whilst out in the world. I haven't been paying close attention to the Auction House & I haven't been crafting much at all to sell so my banker is just selling off any green armor/weapon drops & other random stuff that drops of mobs. My MySales statistics are abysmal! With just 5000 gold in sales last week, I'm not sure I should even be writing a gold blog right now! But in my defence, I haven't been playing much either so from just logging in & relisting what I do have in the mail, that's not so bad, right?

Looking through the MySales statistics though, it's very obvious to me that vegetables, meats & fish are my best sellers. I only went half way down the list to get the numbers but I've made almost 12,000 gold since early October. I know that doesn't sound like much but most of my farm produce has gone to my Main alt to level my Cooking in all the Ways. I finally finished that last week & now I'm in full production on 4 baby farms (4 x 4plots) producing various vegetables each day.

The other nice surprise when I looked at MySales was just how much gold I made from some of the items I cooked to get skill points - almost 2000 gold just from the last few items like Chun Tian Spring Rolls, Sea Mist Rice Noodles & Banquet of the Steamer.

My Worst Market in MoP

Well, I have to say it - glyphs! I'm sure if I was paying attention, relisting 3-4 times a day etc like I used to, that this market could be better but with so many glyphs under 25g each, I've kind of lost interest in it. I can craft a glyph one day based on current market price of say 200g & then the next day, some nice person (thru gritted teeth) has relisted theirs for 15g or 20g. I have almost 1000 glyphs that I just can't seem to move & the numbers aren't going my way at all.

I'd be very surprised to find that I'm making any gold at all with glyphs right now especially when I compare it to pre-MoP days. Just pop back to my Nev's Glyph Strategy post from earlier in the summer & look at those prices!

I've always been a glypher in my gold-making - glyphs probably accounted for over 60% of my 1million although I can't be sure as I lost all my data before I could analyse it (arrrgghhh!).

Where Next?

So once I'm done with all my alts, leveling, dailies, rep grinds, dungeons etc, I'm going to have to find a different way to make my gold. I've been a bit spend happy recently - mounts especially towards the end of the summer - but I'm well below 500k now & I don't like it much!

I'm looking at the Flask market right now after moving my main farm over to Enigma Seeds for the Golden Lotus harvest but having looked at my Cooking results for the best market section above, I think perhaps I should keep an eye on the Banquet market too. It goes without saying that vegetables are still in my plans but over time, I'm sure that market will saturate too & I will have to move on to something else to make good gold.

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Different Markets, Different Tactics

Ferris Wheel by Andy Cardiff, under creative commons from Flickr

It's that time again, thinking of a post for Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival proves a challenge most months for me. This month is no different. I'm not the most organised gold maker or a particularly deep thinker about tactics or strategy so this was really tough! Thanks Cold! lol

Compare & Contrast 2 Different AH Markets and How Your Gold Making Strategy Varies In Each Market

Market 1 - Glyphs & Gems

I've written several times now about my glyph selling method & about the only organised part of it is the regularity of doing the same thing every time. I also do virtually the same routine for my gems. Both these markets have a lot of competition, regular undercutting occurs & can be rather time intensive to make the most of them. I'm not particularly greedy about owning a market or even dominating it - I just take what I can squeeze out of it so I don't really worry too much about what my competition is doing.

• empty mailbox of cash & expired glyphs
• cancel any remaining glyph auctions using TSM
• relist glyphs per TSM settings
• run TSM Inscription only scan
• rinse & repeat 2-3 times per day

Depending on sales from day to day, I then add the following crafting routine maybe once or twice a week

• cherry pick top priced glyphs to craft using TSM crafting
• run Buy materials module in TSM
• mill herbs, make inks
• craft cherry picked glyphs
• list new batch of glyphs

Market 2 - Almost Everything Else I Sell

One thing I've never quite got my head around is sales groups in TSM. I know how to set them up in principal but I can never decide what should go in which group! So as a result, almost everything except glyphs & gems get posted manually.

I have general prices for many things in my head & I find it fairly easy to remember approximately how much I bought something for. Trying to explain my thought processes is one of the most difficult things for me to do. I've had problems at work when trying to teach someone else my system there & the Auction House is very much like that too.

I almost always go in at the bottom of the market as long as the price is still within my happy zone unless some idiot has undercut by a large amount. You know the one - the idiot who thinks that 50 gold is too much so posts his for 20 gold? Yeah that one! Then I usually undercut the next sensible price & if that bottom price is within my buy range, I may buy it & flip it straight away.

The other thing I do is to vary my stack size - again depending what the item is, I may sell my stock as full 20 stack or I may post as 10's, 5' or singles. Items like hypnotic dust, infinite dust or mid range leather are fairly expensive now so I usually list those in mixed stacks. People who don't care about the price & just want a lot will buy the full stacks but people who just need a few will buy the singles or 5's where they may hesitate to buy the full expensive stack.

Summary

So there ya go - very organised, precise cherry picking for glyphs & gems, total gut/instinctive reactions for everything else - couldn't get much further apart in methodology but it works for me. I certainly wouldn't suggest it as good for everyone but I can't be the only disorganised gold maker out there, surely? lol

Maximising Your Gold Making Potential In Time for Mists of Pandaria

Not daydreaming, planning! © Nev 2007

I will admit I'm pretty bored in game right now but then I have a lot going on & am struggling to focus on any one thing! I have started dabbling on my EU server again, just little bits here & there to get myself back up to speed. But I haven't been keeping up with much of the Mists of Pandaria profession information that is coming out or the changes to glyphs or pet battles etc.

So I sat down & had a think about what I need to do now to maximise my gold making potential for when Mists of Pandaria is finally released. When I saw the topic for this month's Carnival over at Cold's Gold Factory, I thought my list might fit quite nicely so here it is!

"What Do You Recommend Players Do During The Current WoW Lull To Benefit Gold Making In The Future?"

• Have a good rummage through all my various banks and bags, clearing out stuff that has been sitting for those 'I might need it' moments that never happen! So far I've made about 4000 gold on just those bits & that's just from 3 alts. I still have 4 more to go.

• Read up on other blogs to see what others are recommending to stockpile, make a list of all of them & then decide which bits I agree with & start building my own little pile.

• Read up on Mists of Pandaria in general - try to get a feel for how changes will affect my stable of alts & their professions. I'll be looking at Inscription in particular - it's been my main gold making source in World of Warcraft since I started trying to make gold.

• After all that reading & list making, I'll have another look at which alts have which professions. My main server is still the one I landed on when I started playing, so my professions weren't thought out carefully. I know I need to drop the partially leveled Engineering on my Paladin. She is my Leatherworker so I want her to have skinning again although that does mean I'll probably have to move my Warlock banker on a few levels - she's also a partially leveled Engineer!

Stockpiling

This is my first expansion event since I started making gold in any serious way so stockpiling is a bit new to me. Yes, I could have stockpiled for some of the major patches during Cataclysm but I was having way too much fun elsewhere to worry about that too much! With the current lull however, I am thinking much more seriously about building some reserves. I don't have a list yet, I have a lot of reading & planning to do but I'll post it when I get there :)

Professions

I have all professions except Engineering & Skinning so I need to look at those in detail to see if anything jumps out at me as a possible opportunity. As I mentioned above, I'm going to re-level skinning on my Paladin main so I'm thinking I will keep all that leather & hides - there will be a lot of new monks (leather wearers) & new alts being created who might pick up Leatherworking.

If I level skinning effectively, I may be able to put together a 'profession leveling kit' & sell all of it for one large sum of gold or I could put the individual stacks on the Auction House for exhorbitant prices & take advantage of the need that some people have to power level as fast as possible, regardless of the cost!

If you are thinking of leveling a gatherer yourself before Mists of Pandaria, this may be a thought for you too. You can check wow-professions & make sure you have everything needed to level a related profession.

Leveling an Alt

There's a lot of talk about leveling alts now before the new expansion hits. It's one way of expanding your gold making machine but if you do level another alt, think! There are lots of things you pick up whilst leveling that may make you more gold later than if you sell it now. Those items that you had a hard time finding on the Auction House when you were leveling a profession or the ones you had to look up & go farm yourself.

Conclusion

If you made it all the way to the bottom here then gratz! My conclusion is that I have a lot of reading to catch up on & a lot of list making to do! This will actually be quite a change for me - I'm very much a laid back, get there eventually kinda gal when it comes to gold-making! Most importantly for me, it's something I can be doing in little bits & pieces as my energy allows but it will also be a challenge. I've been looking forward to Mists of Pandaria anyway but a new angle, a new plan of attack will bring back some of the fun that has kind of drained away in the lull.

So that's it so far :) have fun & happy gold-making xxx

What To Look Out For When Levelling a New Alt

It always surprises me how quickly Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival rolls around. This month the topic fits in very nicely with my two ongoing subjects - Project Shoofly (levelling like a newbie gold maker) & my farming series. So June's topic is:

What Are Some Things You Recommend Players Look Out For While Leveling A New Character In WoW?

This is actually quite a wide ranging subject & my answer depends very much on what type of player is leveling the new character. I won't go into the very basics for a really new player or even touch on stuff for a very experienced gold-making one. I'm aiming this post at the mid-range player - someone who has a few characters already, has a few professions underway (maybe maxed) & knows what kind of things they may come across whilst leveling.

Profession Bottlenecks

Talking of professions - there's your first hint of what to watch out for. Remember when you settled down to level 30 or 40 points on your professions one evening because you had everything you needed? Yup, me too & then there's that one recipe/pattern that you missed & you are one 'gidget' short but when you go to the Auction House, there are no 'gidgets' for sale or they are at really stupid high prices but you buy it anyway because it's just one bit & you're on a roll & want to keep those skill points rising?

Yup - those are some of the items to watch out for whilst leveling - most notable ones for me are :-

• Hides of all types for leatherwork or blacksmith, especially heavy hide & rugged hide
• Certain herbs are reknowned for being difficult - think goldthorn, briarthorn or netherbloom for example  
• Certain ores like gold ore, truesilver ore or of course, the ever expensive khorium ore
• Gems - golden draenite is always in demand but don't forget citrine, jade & large opals too
• For tailors, I think wool is often the cloth that I find hardest to accumulate until much higher levels when frostweave & embersilk just seem to take forever to gather
• Ghost Dye is used in several tailoring recipes & uses Ghost Mushrooms - I've never had problems selling either the dye or the mushrooms for decent gold although technically it's not a bottleneck for leveling your tailoring. 

Money Making Crafted Items

These tend to be rare or 'blue' quality items that crafters can make. The materials are often wide ranging & may require some farming or Auction House watching. I've covered a few of these types of items in the past :-

• My recent post on Farming Large Fangs for Barbaric Bracers
• Another recent post on Farming Spider's Silk for Spidersilk Boots & Toughened Leather Gloves
• An old post on Farming Essence of Air for the Enchant Weapon - Agility
• Engineering crafted pets - these require a multitude of odd bits - Globe of Water, Living Essence & Core of Earth spring to mind
• Felcloth is another item on my watch list - I use it to make the Mooncloth Robe - such a pretty dress & nice if your server has a good transmog market.

Regular High Value Drops & Finds

Some items that drop off mobs or you find whilst out questing just maintain their value in general. Every server is different though so do check your own Auction House for prices and volumes.

• Embersilk Cloth - used by tailors in huge amounts when leveling
• Frostweave Cloth - ditto!
• Cobalt Ore - used by blacksmiths in large quantities for leveling & a pain to farm, check the price of Cobalt Bars too before you list on Auction House
• Pearls - Small Lustrous, Iridescent & Golden pearls all have a regularly high price on my server
• Gromsblood - this surprised me recently & I'm still testing the market but worth a look

So there you go - some of the stuff I look for when leveling a new alt but to be honest, I only vendor grey items, almost everything else goes to my banker or one of my crafting alts for later use. I'm a self-medicated packrat in game which means I can powerlevel 50 points on a profession without spending a copper sometimes :)

My Surprise Cataclysm Niche Market - Chocolate Cookies

© Nev 2008 - Chocolate Cookies

If you've not come across this before, Cold posts a Carnival topic & lots of different people do posts & send him the links for one big article link post each month - Colds Gold Factory Carnival has all the details & previous months topics. This months' topic is a little difficult for me as I'm not really a niche market finder or player, I just poodle along doing bits & pieces here, there & everywhere!

What Was A Niche Market That You Were Surprised To Find Or That Did Better Than Expected In During Cataclysm?

So how did I decide what to write about? I went back & re-read every post I'd written since Cataclysm launched in December 2010 & the only 'niche' item that jumped out at me was...Chocolate Cookies of course! What else would the so-called Chocolate Cookie Queen talk about? Coincidentally, I have Cold to thank for that title I think. He called me that after one of my early appearances on Power Word:Gold Podcast Episode #9 :)

Now I wrote about this way back at the beginning of May 2011, just as patch 4.1 introduced several new food & drink achievements. My post 'Cooking For Gold, Patch 4.1 Style' explains most of my method & it was later linked to on WoWInsiders blog too. That was an exciting few days for me - my blog traffic went crazy as you can imagine but I also had my best ever Chocolate Cookie sales week!

As with many niches, it was soon full of competition so I left that market. Now that I'm back playing, I should revisit it & see if there's any life left there!

Now in terms of how much gold was made, I lost all my sales data in July 2011 so I only have the screenshots from my blog posts to go by but between 3rd May and 4th July 2011 I made almost 10,000 gold just by selling Chocolate Cookies. If you consider that the cost of materials was cooking tokens & simple flour from a vendor, that 10,000 gold was almost pure profit. I'm sure that figure would be higher if I had my full sales data. I only used to post the top part of my MySales data so there are some weeks where Chocolate Cookies wouldn't have shown up.

Yes there are niche markets out there that made more gold & I'm not suggesting that anyone would get rich from this one but as an easy sideline, perhaps for lowbie alts in town, doing cooking dailies for XP & a little cash makes for a nice little boost to anyones cash balance.

An Ideal Alt? Hmmm, Decisions, Decisions

This is my submission for Cold's Gold Blogging carnival this month, the subject of which is Ideal Alts. Now Cold did a fairly comprehensive series of posts on this subject & my first choice was in there so it's taken me a while but I think I've found one he didn't cover! The rep grinding rogue :-D

To be fair, this probably isn't the most effective alt for gold making but rather in speeding up & reducing the costs of reputation grinds (thereby saving money & you get back to the AH quicker!) lol.

Ok, so my thoughts processes are like this - human for the racial which gives +10% reputation gains & rogue for their ability to stealth & pick pocket. I know druids can stealth & I did consider them but it's the pick pocket ability that swung my decision (more on this later).

As for professions - well, seeing as most of the Burning Crusade factions have dungeon grinding as a way of gaining reputation, I think Enchanting is a must have especially if your rogue is high level & going to solo these dungeons regularly - disenchant everything & either sell the mats or use them for scrolls if more profitable.

For a second profession, there are definite arguments for going with skinning as leather & hide is always a good seller at almost all the various levels however, my second choice would be Tailoring. Why tailoring - because there is always a lot of cloth dropping in dungeons & you can use it to craft items for skill ups then disenchant those same items for enchanting mats.

The second bonus for tailoring is the Northern Cloth Scavenging ability which means that when you grind through the Northrend dungeons, you'll be picking up a shedload of frostweave. At the current time, frostweave cloth sells for about the same if not slightly more than Embersilk Cloth so good money to be made there too.

So why does the pick pocket ability of the rogue make this the perfect choice? Well one of the reputations for the Insane in the Membrane achievement is the Ravenholdt one - the only way to advance this rep to exalted is by handing in Heavy Junkboxes. Why pay a rogue to do this for you when you can do it yourself on your very own stealthy killing machine?

The beauty of the stealth ability is that if you don't have time to kill everything in the dungeon, you can stealth past all except the ones you want, in most cases, the bosses but sometimes it's not the boss that gives you the rep items. You can also stealth past everything to collect the Sanguine Hibiscus in The Underbog for Sporregar rep.

From a gold making point of view, you should pick pocket everything then kill it - the gold in the junk/lockboxes isn't huge but it all adds up by the time you finish all these reps. You can also get some nice items - at 85, every rogues' dream weapons drop only from pickpocketed chests (krol decapitator & spinerender) albeit at very low drop rate.

If you really want to make the most gold out of this alt & haven't yet levelled one - consider stopping your XP at 80 - you can get the faction tabards & use the dungeon finder to run Northrend dungeons (in cata greens of course!) for the rep & for all those lovely Wrath enchanting mats & cloth. For the truly serious achievement chaser, there are also various mounts available in these dungeons & for purchase from Quartermasters once you are exalted. Don't forget the Argent Tournament either - money, pets & mounts from the dailies as well as rep & titles.

Unfortunately my own rep chaser isn't my rogue, tailor or enchanter & my rogue isn't human, tailor or enchanter so I kinda messed up there! lol

What Will I Do When I Reach The Gold Cap?

This is my entry for the blogging carnival over at JMTC & it's really made me think. My first reaction was 'Spend it, of course!' but then I realised that nothing in game actually costs that much so what would I be buying?

Well, I would really like the 100 mount achievement so I guess I'll buy mounts to make up that total & also the pet achieves. I still haven't bought a chopper or the traveler's tundra mammoth so I guess I'd have to allow myself those luxuries but whether I splash out for all my level 85's or just for 1 or 2, I don't know yet. I suppose I should treat my ever suffering husband to something special & probably a few of my closest guildies too but I don't quite know what yet!

I have a feeling that 1 million won't be enough though. I'm fairly competitive in some ways & knowing that other bloggers are out there with more than me or getting there faster than me, kind of makes me want to go full steam ahead & try for the 2 or 5 million mark. Hopefully by then I should have my systems streamlined so I can actually sit back a little and watch the snowball gain momentum as it races down the hill but I also think that I'm not very good at sitting on the sidelines so I'll be tempted to fine tune & fiddle all the way.

Hitting the half way mark last week has already changed how I've been working this week but that's for my weekly update post. I definitely won't be glyphing all the way to 5 million though, that is for sure!

Specialise or Diversify - Better Late Than Never Too!

I've posted before about my Butterfly brain so this month's Blogging carnival at JMTC is really appropriate for me. I'm not sure there's a definitive answer but perhaps my own experiences can help you analyse your own playstyle/experience so you can maximise your gold/time system.

For me, diversify is my natural habit - I have most profs maxed now (except BS & Eng) & although I am currently spending most time on JC & Inscription, I'm also popping over to my LW'er when a blog post comes up that reminds me of something or to my bank alt mage to do a quick teleport around the capital cities for vendor items.

I've tried to streamline my routine to give myself more time levelling or learning other markets & to be honest, I'm not sure I like being organised like that! Am I missing opportunities? Undoubtedly. Am I having fun anyway? Most definitely! So I guess the question of whether to specialise or diversify is very much a personal choice, made simply by trial & error & limited only by the number of maxed profs/various alts you have & the amount of play time you are willing to spend on making gold.

The bulk of my gold comes from glyphs at the moment - using TSM (Trade Skill Master) has speeded up the whole process so I now cancel/repost several times a day which has made a huge difference to my income.

I also do a lot of ore prospecting for my JC/Enchanting alts - I sell uncut & cut gems, rare quality (blues) necklaces & rings from Alicite & hessonite, disenchant the 'greens' for dusts/essences & craft scrolls.

I dabble in Mysterious Fortune Cards, I watch the markets for Darkmoon Faire Cards (& buy when I see nice prices!), I occasionally craft Relics, I make PVP leather gear, leg armours & mammoth mining bags. I've just levelled tailoring so I've added netherweave bags to the mix.

So you can see, I have a lot of fingers in a lot of pies BUT I'm not an expert in any of these markets - I don't dominate any of these markets & I'm not trying to. That road leads to stress for me & that's not why I play this game. I'm more of a 'go with the flow' type person so a bit here & a bit there suits me.

Is this attitude/personality thing ringing a bell with you? Then don't worry about specialising, work with what you've got & make the best of it. If you happen to stumble into a good deal or a quiet, untapped corner of the market, then you'll have the skills to make the most of it. You're reading gold blogs if you've found this so you're ahead of many other players anyway.

Is this attitude/personality thing sending chills down your spine or making your toes curl in horror? Well, I guess you're a more organised person, one who, perhaps, is more suited to specialising in one or two markets & doing them really well? You know what? That's good too! There's room for all of us in this game after all :)