Project Shoofly - Update 14th July

Distractions

So I finally got my little project priest to level 40 & bought her the fast ground mount & training. Dragging through the Hinterlands & feeling so slow, I treated myself to a little alt for a change of scenery. I went for a Tauren Paladin with the idea of leveling as holy spec - my main & first ever character was retribution & protection through most of Wrath of the Lich King but it was only last summer that I dabbled with holy spec for her - at level 85! Learning a whole new playstyle at 85 proved disheartening hence this new alt.

My project girlie will keep going, I do enjoy the priest at 85 so I will persevere with her & keep her banking/auction house activities seperate, I just need a little break for now. I've almost managed to sell everything she's picked up so far & just topped the 2000 gold mark so I'm fairly pleased with that. I think it will be interesting to see just how much she can accumulate by 85 just by leveling via questing.

So the screenshot is a summary of all my sales on this project so far (well, the top half anyway) so you can see how random the stuff is that I am selling!

Now I mentioned my new Tauren Holy Paladin but I kinda got a little bored with her too - the Tauren starter zone seems very slow but I did get her to level 10 before getting sidetracked by my new Goblin Arcane Mage! Bearing in mind that I've only ever rolled about 5 Horde alts before, all these starter zones are new to me, especially the Goblin zone. I quite enjoyed it even though the mage is my least favourite & most deleted class. This time, I was nudged into leveling as arcane spec & already she is level 20 & nowhere near being deleted!

But my mind is kinda all over the place at the moment so I soon got a little fed up her too & rolled a Troll Druid! I've tried leveling as feral before so this time, I think I'll try either resto or boomkin & maybe that will suit me better. She's only level 6 for now but I'll move her along too in dribs & drabs probably.

Last but not least, my new Undead warlock - yet another class that I've never really got to grips with. She's only level 1 but I liked her look so wanted to show her off!

So yeah, a bit distracted in general & hopping all over the place but should be fun to build my new empire from the ground up & actually plan which professions go with which alt. I wonder if I can take over the Auction House before Cold gets bored with Diablo3 *insert evil laugh*

Project Shoofly - Update 16th June

Shoofly

It's been a bit of a weird, hellish week but I did manage to put another 5 levels on my baby priest - she's growing up now though - level 35! Woo hoo! I have been asking myself why I chose a priest to level for this. Although the questing is more straightforward than it used to be, it still feels very slow - I think it's the lack of heirlooms, the seemingly long cast times & of course, I'm horde now so I get lost more often!

Being Horde though, I knew about the battered leather set that they could buy from the vendor in Silvermoon - so in the absence of any pretty dresses, my little warrior banker went for the sexy red leather! Not a transmog, she is only level 5 but nice for running around town anyway.

As for the Auction House - well you can see from the screenshot, I broke through the 1000 gold mark to almost 1600 gold now. I had a lucky drop of Silver-thread Boots which boosted my total almost 200 gold - probably should have gone higher but the Auction House seems very quiet these days The Dalaran Wizard's Robe also helped boost my total but that's been hanging around for weeks. Nice little boost but not really something to try for when leveling.

I also made a boo-boo by listing my Goldthorn so cheaply - I have some listed at the moment for around 10 gold each - selling at 2 gold something was guaranteed income as someone snatched a bargain almost as soon as I listed them.

I've managed to keep my herbing & skinning almost at the correct level for my questing area - I'm in The Hinterlands area right now - did I mention I hate those darned troll ruins - up & down, one or two quests at a time then kill all way back up to do the next couple of quests then back down again, rinse, repeat, try not to scream in frustration too loudly & not even a blue quality quest reward at the end of it all - arrgghhh!

Anyway, not sure how far I'm going to get with this for a while. Real life sucks big time at the moment, stealing not only playtime but inclination to play, even when I have the time. It is one of my easier little projects though so I hope I can keep going. Stay tuned to find out if I do :P

Project Shoofly - Update

So it's been a few weeks since I logged my baby horde priest for the Project Shoofly stuff - between my holiday & recovering/getting back to normal, I haven't really had the inclination to play much. I have been popping in at random to post the few bits that haven't sold yet so I thought I'd just pop an update post here for now.

As of Friday evening, 8th June, Shoofly officially hit 1000 gold - just stuff picked up, looted or purchased whilst out levelling. The whole idea behind this project, is to try to think like a novice goldmaker - selling everything I pick up & maybe any vendor recipes that I come across. I thought it would be interesting to see just how much gold one can pick up/make whilst just levelling.

This represents almost the last few pieces my project banker had left to sell - I think there is one Lynx Steak recipe & one Dalaran Wizard's Robe left to sell & then I must get back to leveling.

Project Shoofly - End of Week Two

It's almost end of week two of my lowbie horde leveling project & I'm off on some travels for a few days tomorrow so I thought I'd leave you with an update. I finally made it to level 30 somewhere in the wilds of Arathi Highlands. My herbing & skinning are coming along nicely, both up around the 160 skill points without too much extra effort now.

I'm still struggling with being horde - flight paths & safe havens are all in the wrong places! I almost ran into Refuge Point earlier - luckily I woke up fast enough to realise that was not a good idea! I've been sending all my herbs & leather to my little banker as well as anything else that is for the Auction House. Most stuff is selling really well even though everything is very quiet since Diablo 3 went live.

I've picked up a few recipes on my travels but in keeping with the 'think like a novice' idea of this project, I've only bought 1 or 2 of each recipe if I had the gold available. You can see from my list below, herbs at this level like mageroyal & briarthorn are selling almost as fast as I can list them but even peacebloom is selling well & I often find that I am the only one listing it!

So at level 30, I have 807g on my banker with 35g on my leveling alt after buying a few netherweave bags for them both. I'm interested in seeing how far this will go - I remember having about 6000g on my main by about level 60 & I knew very little about the whole auction house thing at that point but I was making a bit of effort in that direction.

I'll resume leveling in June when I return - will be interesting to see how much more gold I can accumulate in this way. I'm guessing a lot of newer players probably play in this way. Sometimes as keen goldmakers, we forget that not everyone plays like we do so when we put stuff up for high prices, we may be seriously limiting our markets to other players who play the Auction House & therefore know our tricks!

Project Shoofly - Mid week 2

I've been barrelling along, leveling my herbalism & skinning as well as questing. I decided to brave the random dungeon finder last night - ugh! Have I ever mentioned how much I hate pugs? Well, I do - a shaman healer decided to roll need on a cloth intellect waist even though he was full on heirlooms & I had only crap quest gear. For once I stood up for myself & queried it but I did pretend to be a bit noobish just in case he got nasty! lol

After the tank spent the next 10 minutes reposting recount scores after each fight, I think the shammy took pity on me because he traded me the belt! Yes, my DPS was that bad! But I did get a pretty new dress after I left the dungeon, I just finished a quest chain so that made a huge difference and it kind of matches her hair too :) Shame about the gloves & boots though.

One thing I have found out is that keeping my herbing & skinning leveled to the zone I'm questing in, is a bit of a pain! I spent about 2 hours questing & dungeon last night but over an hour or more, trying to get my skinning up to a level where I could skin the beasties I was killing! Having said that - skinning on a priest? Seriously, WTF was I thinking??? lol

But on the other hand, I did end up with several full bags of herbs & leather as well as a few green items which mostly all sold overnight. I've just pulled almost 200 gold out of my mailbox this evening, giving me a nice current total of 359 gold. Out of that, I've bought 3 netherweave bags & a couple of items for my priest to wear as well as paid for my riding skill & sent 30 gold to my priest for pocket money. So at a rough reckoning, I think I'm upto about 440 gold overall if I hadn't spent anything.

Now I know that may not seem much but remember, this is my non-goldmaking experiment :) I'm trying to think like a new-ish player - just selling everything I pick up from questing & the odd recipe here & there when I find them.

I'm going to try to get to level 30 tonight & dual spec into Holy - I have an 85 Holy Priest but I never did lowbie dungeons as a healer so I thought I'd give it a try this time through. Wish me luck - I think I'm going to need it!

Project Shoofly - End of Week One

So I've been poodling along on my baby horde priest, just made level 15 last night - woo hoo! I have to admit I am finding it pretty slow going - a priest isn't the quickest class for leveling anyway but not knowing where anything is on Horde-side is also slowing me down. I am also missing my luxuries like heirlooms & my army of alts support system.

My banker Shoofly has been busy though - we're up to 161 gold so far from selling herbs & leather than my priest is picking up as well as meats, cloth & a few low level green items too. Somehow, I've managed to wipe out my MySales data again so this little screenshot is just my overnight sales

Now in my first post, I did say I wasn't going to do any real goldmaking stuff, well I may have to modify that a bit! I'm trying to think more like a novice goldmaker so when I stumbled across the Tradesman upstairs at the inn in Falconwing Square, I had to have a look. He sells the Recipe:Lynx Steak for a whole 40 copper - I've managed to sell 2 so far for 15g & 18g each - now that is the sort of mark up I like!

Many moons ago, my other half started playing this game & he quickly got lost & confused. It took me another 2 months or so to realise that resistance was futile so I signed up too. Around the time that I signed up, hubs purchased Zygor's Leveling Guide. Now I know a lot of people say they'd never pay for a guide etc but this one has saved me so much time. I used it extensively when I first started playing & I get regular updates for no extra charge. So now that I'm lost & all alone on Horde - it's in full use yet again!

Without wanting to sound too enthusiastic, it is a great guide. It always was but since they've updated & improved the whole thing to keep track of XP, the guide will jump steps to keep you on track. So that means that if you do a load of dungeons or battlegrounds & get ahead of the guide, it will jump to an appropriate place for you to restart questing! No more green or grey quests clogging up your quest log!

Regular readers will know that I finally finished my Loremaster achievement around Christmas time - another fantastic part to this guide - once you've been through part of a zone when leveling, it can be tough to find the quests when you come back to complete for your Loremaster. Zygor's Guide has that under control - it lets you choose your zone, it will flip & skip past quests that you've completed & then you just follow the steps until you're done. If you still haven't finished the zone when the guide finishes, there is then a little Loremaster section with all the other quests in the zone that are still available.

So why would there be quests still available? Well the main leveling section of the guide is designed to maximise XP gains & also time so some 'pain in the ass' quests are skipped to improve your leveling speed.

That all sounds super positive doesn't it? So do I have any negatives to talk about? Well, yeah, there are a few silly little bugs dotted here & there - the odd quest may have wrong text or it will skip a step near the end of a zone & leave you lost for a moment or two but that really is nit-picking with a microscope to be honest. Even better, right now they have a 25% discount on the World of Warcraft guide & if by any chance, you are one of the people champing at the bit for Diablo3 next week, they also have a 33% off their Diablo 3 guide if you've already got the WoW guide. How cool is that?

I, unfortunately, won't be able to play Diablo3 - my graphics card is too old & finances are pretty tight right now. I never had much interest either so I didn't sign up for the Annual Pass for my free copy of Diablo3 so that would be even more expense. I'll just have to live it vicariously through all my lovely Twitter friends who are posting vids on Youtube & livestreaming on Twitch.tv.

Project Shoofly - New Server Leveling Project

So I think I've worked out why I'm not playing much WoW right now - I have no direction! Too many alts still need gearing up that I don't know where to start & not sure I have enough time before Mists of Pandaria hits anyway & when I do pick one, guildies sidetrack me or Facebook, or Twitter or any number of other bits I have going on.

So I've started a new little side project away from the madding crowds, on my US account. I know there's always some sort of leveling project going on but for me, this will be a whole new game - no heirlooms, no other high level alts, no professions already leveled - oh and horde-side!

Why Horde? - well, I've never played a horde character beyond level 20 so it should feel almost like a new game & I've often wondered just how much an ordinary non-AH player can easily make whilst leveling so I thought I'd give it a go.

I have just about 2 weeks before I wander off on a trip so here's the rules I have set for myself:-

• 2 horde alts - 1 to level, 1 as banker (seperate from any other gold making activities)
• no help from anyone unless I go through trade but I think most new players wouldn't do that anyway.
• As I don't know where any of the vendors are, I've switched off my Recipe Mate add-on, again, I'm not sure totally new players would have many add-ons
• only Auctionator add-on (no TSM or Auctioneer) for the Auction House
• no playing the Auction House on my banker, she is just there to sell stuff I pick up whilst leveling
• no rushing - I will just play as & when I feel like, with no special emphasis on gold-making
• most advice to newbies is 2 gathering professions so I'm choosing herbing & skinning

In my last post, I told you about my baby Alliance Hunter, well I haven't played her much, did a few battlegrounds but my twinking partner has been kinda busy so she's on hold for now - I didn't want to get too far ahead! But I have still been popping in now & again to the banker on Alliance side. Just a bit of low level herbs flipping, the vendor bought herbs & a few of the cooking recipes later & I have a princely sum of 457 gold already!

I'll probably keep going on her as well - it only takes a few minutes for each visit & if ever we do continue our twinking, at least I will have a bit of cash behind me :)

It will be interesting to see how different it is horde side & I wonder how far I will get before Mists of Pandaria is released? Had a challenge on Squidoo the other day to write a product-based lens so as everyone says 'write what you know', I wrote about Mists of Pandaria! I'm quite enjoying myself over there, I must admit but the whole SEO thing has me baffled. It's keeping me busy, that's for sure & makes a nice change from World of Warcraft end of expansion blues!