Best Routes for Farming White Items in Reaper of Souls

Diablo 3 Legendary Crafting Items Drop Locations

I was doing bounties and frequently thinking to myself "While in this particular zone, act, or dungeon is there any mob I should check for?" This list was very helpful but I wanted a way to sort through things a bit better, so I used the information and made a spreadsheet today. Thought others may find it useful as well.

>>Click here to get the spreadsheet.<<

Hope it helps!  (Oh, and I didn't include Griswold's Scribblings or Adventurer's Journals because there's no real point to it.)

Lists last updated: 9 AM Mountain Time April 1

Glyphs - Crafting, Storing, and Selling [Video Guide]

It seems my recent posts about competing in the glyph market has sparked an interest that none of my previous posts in years past have sparked. I've had a lot of follow-up questions since writing the posts about how I decide on prices, how I do crafting math, how I store glyphs, how I sell, etc. Rather than answer this question a million times I decided I'd make a video. So here it is; a walkthrough from the beginning of crafting to the end of selling, all about how I do glyphs and why I do what I do.

How to Waste Time, Gold, and Money

Yesterday after posting about how much I missed Liquidate I made a split second decision and resubbed my second account. I only did one month (thank god) to get things set up and figured I'd see how I was liking it after a month.

I hated it after a day.

I spent yesterday afternoon livestreaming the set up (I'm streaming semi-regularly at the moment at twitch.tv/faidtastic) and after the fifteen bucks to resub, several hours moving items around and getting generally set up, and god knows how much gold in posting feels and mailing fees I realized something: It's not worth it.

My original thought was "Yes, I can get my Tiller's Farms done without having to leave the AH, just like old times!" But the more I look back the more I realize how silly that was. I love having a constant presence on the AH, don't get me wrong, but I certainly don't love it to the point of fifteen-bucks-a-month and constant TSM headaches. (I believe TSM's alt account integration is much better than it used to be but even a bit of extra work or concern is still extra work and concern.)

After spending hours trying to get all my glyphs to my old glyph selling toon I was faced with a difficult problem: I had more glyphs than I could reasonably hold. I knew that there were more glyphs in the game than all the bags could hold but I thought that would be counteracted by the fact I still have several unlearned 5.4 glyphs. I was wrong. My bags were promptly filled and I needed many more slots. "Well, I guess it's back to using a bank guild, then!"

So then I put them all into one guild bank, which immediately removed the ability to layer the AH instead of cancelling when directly competing with an undercutter. At least the ability to do that easily, anyways. But oh well, if that's what it was going to take to sell glyphs easily, whatever.

So they went into a guild bank. But as I sat there putting them all into my guild bank it sunk in that I'd paid 15 bucks for no real change. I was still going to have to split my markets, like I discussed in yesterday's post, and that meant I was still going to have to toon swap, meaning I wasn't going to be able to maintain a constant AH presence anyway.

Was that worth fifteen bucks a month? No! So twelve or so hours later I'm cancelling the second account again. Thank god I didn't pay for six months in advance!

Some good did come out of this; it wasn't a complete waste of money and time. I foundmy old guild banks, full of glyphs and herbs, several stacks of Golden Lotus and Living Steel, so I would say I broke even on all this situation. I moved my favorite guild bank to Trixten, my boosted rogue, who will now handle all glyph walling, leaving Misten free to handle all other markets. So I also got another six tab guild bank out of resubbing as well.

Anyways, that was my headache yesterday. I spent the entire day wrestling with inventory just to basically put it all back where it came from.

And I still didn't finish my Tiller's farm. :(

The Misten Problem

Since returning to WoW I've cut down to only my primary account. On a college budget it's tough enough to run one, let alone having the second account (aka the Liquidate account) which was mostly just bank and AH toons anyways. It was super convenient but it's just not in the funds right now.

I miss u. <3

So when I was looking to get started in gold-making again I had my decision largely made for me: If I were to split my stock onto different characters, say by having one toon doing glyphs, one for gems, etc. I would have to clear the bags of my "real" characters in order to do this. I decided instead to work with one character and a guild bank, not because it was the absolute best strategy but because it was easiest at the time and with my available tools.

So that's where Misten came from. She'd been a neglected alt that I repurposed for AH-ing. I got her a guild bank started up and the guild bank holds all the glyphs, gems, enchants . . . everything, really. This has a few interesting effects on how I make gold right now.

In the "pros" column I am able to handle all of my markets from one character and it's easiest to explain where this benefit comes in when comparing my setup to a competitor.

I have a competitor who I will call Greg. Greg competes with me in nearly everything; gems, glyphs, enchants, crafted gear, etc. But he splits all of these markets onto different alts. Gregpaladin posts his gems, Gregwarrior posts his glyphs, Gregdeathknight posts his enchants, etc. This is great for me because I know what he'll be undercutting when. If Gregdeathknight is online I can tell TSM to only scan the enchant market for undercutting, cutting down drastically on my turnaround time for undercuts. When Gregdeathknight logs off and Gregwarrior logs on immediately afterwards I can do a final enchant cancel/repost, then switch from scanning enchants to scanning glyphs. (Then since Greg likes to use the Remote Auction House every once and a while I can throw in a total scan here and there to catch anything he's trying to sneak past.)

This is where having one central bank toon shines; since I'm posting everything from one source there's no big flag to competitors to say "Faidglyphs is on! Worry about glyphs, disregard other things since she's more than likely not undercutting them right now! You'll know when she starts when she logs onto Faidgems!"

I never saw an issue with single-toon posting. Other than a few slower-moving niche markets like transmog or low-level crafting materials which rarely benefit from undercuts I thought that One Toon to Sell Them All was always going to be the best.

But I'm considering splitting a few things up now. I was doing my usual cancel/repost scan and noticed that all of my Tinker's Gears were reposting to their fallback because the market was under crafting cost. This is very strange because, not only is that a silly thing to do, but because I pretty much never have competition on these. So I decided to take a look.

If I had to guess I'd say I wasn't the only one who powerleveled Engineering recently. Someone had crafted a bunch of every one of them and posted them for 3-4g each. (For reference 5g is right around the lowest you can get a single Ghost Iron Bar for on Argent Dawn, so this was under half the crafting cost.) So of course I bought them out to supplement my own stock and raise the prices.

I almost never do this whole "buyout ones under crafting cost" thing. I've always told myself it's because it doesn't happen that often.

But does it? When I do a post scan I literally see hundreds of auctions fly by my screen; I don't have time to notice weird changes in pricing. The only reason I even noticed this Tinker's Gear situation was because I was looking to make sure something else was being scanned properly. God only knows how many of these situations I missed over time since I just "let TSM handle everything" for me. I know TSM has resale scan options but that's the kind of thing I'm not super-keen on automating.

So I'm thinking today that I may play around with splitting markets among my characters, at least until I can afford to get Liquidate up and running again. While I'll lose the great benefit of a central character for all markets it will allow me to have a better view of each given market and so it may balance out over time. We'll see.

How to Make Gold with Professions: A Crash Course

Time for a crash-course in gold-making for new gold-makers. So you just boosted a toon to 90, got a profession you don't know anything about, and want to start making gold with it. How? There are a lot of nuances to profession-based gold-making that rely on server differences, niche markets, etc. but here's a basic guide to getting started with whatever profession you've picked up. This is aimed at new gold-makers. If you already know what you're doing there's likely nothing new here. Just be aware this is not everything to know about any profession, just a general intro to basic gold-making with each. Not everything will work 100% of the time, it's up to you to use your brain. Use this as a jumping off point, not a bible.

Also, WTF I just can't help myself from writing educational stuff, can I? Ergh, I'll never escape it I guess. Oh well. Might as well roll with it.

Alchemy

Alchemy is a decent gold-maker on its own but it really comes into its own when you can pair it with jewelcrafting in order to produce large amounts of gems via transmuting. If you have the Jewelcrafter to pair with it transmute Primal Diamonds and any other gem that's profitable. If doing this you really really really want Transmute specialization to get maximum profit. This is the best way to make gold with Alchemy.

Outside of the pairing with jewelcrafting consider making Potions of Luck and Invisibility Potions (You'll need to get the recipe off the Auction House since it's a world drop). If you're specifically not using a Jewelcrafter consider a specialization for whatever you make most often; if you make a lot of Invisibility Potions and Potions of Luck be a potion master, if you'll be making lots of flasks (not very profitable on most servers) be Elixir-specced. 

Hands down, though, strive to level a Jewelcrafter if you want to get the most out of alchemy.

Blacksmithing

Blacksmithing's bread and butter is Living Steel Belt Buckles. Check your AH for the cost of Living Steel bars and the belt buckle, as long as there's a decent gap in prices just buy Living Steel, turn it into belt buckles (1:1) and put them back on the AH. Try doing this on big raid nights when people are likely to be getting new belts.

Use one Trillium Bar per day to make a Trillium Ingot. (Get this pattern as a drop by killing mobs on the Timeless Isle.) Doing this will teach you a new PvP piece pattern and will save up materials to make 553 Epic belts and pants. Roughly every 3-4 weeks you will be able to craft one of these to sell for a few thousand gold. It's not going to make you rich overnight but will give you a few thousand guaranteed gold each month.

You can also make crafted Malevolent PvP gear, patterns you'll be learning while doing that Ingot cooldown; unfortunately its item level is only 476, putting it slightly below what the new boosted 90s will get and lower than Timeless Isle gear. This has taken a huge toll on the demand for these items, however new PvP-ers still will want teh resilience gear. Consider making a couple pieces to gauge demand on your server. If materials are limited stick to belts, bracers, and boots since these can be used by all Plate classes, compared to other pieces like chest and shoulders that are particular to one class and thus have lower demand.

Enchanting

Believe it or not the best way to make gold with enchanting is by enchanting! Use Trade Skill Master or a similar addon to create a group of MoP-level enchants. Craft a few of any that are listed as profitable and sell them.  (If you don't know how to use TSM you should learn right now.)

You can also look at other, pre-MoP enchants, like Mongoose (pattern from Moroes in Karazahn) and Executioner (pattern from a vendor in Netherstorm).  Use TSM to do some Disenchant scans to resell materials at a profit. (Particularly look for items that DE into Sha Crystals, they're commonly sold for under Sha Crystal value!)

Engineering

Don't listen to the nay-sayers, Engineering can make gold! Here's what you're gonna do: Make a few of each type of Tinker's Gears to sell on the AH. The mats are very easy to come by, just some bars, and you can sell them pretty high on most servers, I sell mine for 110g each. Make some Ghost Iron Dragonlings, start with just two or three, restock as they sell.

Depending on what your specialization is and what patterns you have you can make a variety of different pets. Some are trainer-taught, others like the Tranquil Mechanical Yeti or Lifelike Mechanical Toad come from quests or rare patterns. Find out which pets you can make, which ones you're missing, and try to track down the patterns you still need. Craft one or two of each that you can and sell them.

Make your Jard's Peculiar Energy Source (Get this pattern as a drop by killing mobs on the Timeless Isle.) every day. If you have a good source of cheap Living Steel you can make the mounts or pets yourself to sell but I usually just post my Engineering in chat when I have enough Jard's and have buyers bring the Living Steel.

If you're more interested in farming head to Zangarmarsh and do your respective quest for your Zapthrottle Mote Extractor. You can fly around in BC or Wrath areas and gather gas clouds; the demand for these items aren't high but they're also not usually very common on the AH so can frequently be sold for a good amount. You won't get rich but it's a good way to get a bit extra out of Engineering. (This pairs well with Mining because you can gather Fel Iron and Motes of Fire at the same time to maximize those delicious Burning Crusade profits.)

Inscription

The main gold-maker from Inscription is glyphs. Whether you want to sell glyphs or not be sure to do your researches every day. (Minor Research, Northrend Research, Scroll of Wisdom.) Stop one once you've stopped learning glyphs from it. Even if you don't want to sell glyphs now you may wish to one day and you'll be glad you've finished your researches.

You could dabble in glyphs, crafting what TSM says is profitable. There's nothing wrong here getting started but if you are interested in truly competing in glyphs there's more to talk about than a simple paragraph. I recommend this post for new would-be glyph sellers.

Use your Starlight Inks to craft the epic-level Shoulder Enchants to sell. Some servers do well with the Kite pets but the aren't a hot seller on my own. Don't bother with Darkmoon Faire cards at this point in the expansion, there's no real demand. (ep recommends making decks in the comments. I disagree unless your server is very into challenge modes but, if you have the Scrolls to do so anyways, might as well give it a shot. My server just buys carries in CM so there's very little demand, but your server may be different and it may be worthwhile for you.)

Jewelcrafting

Jewelcrafting is one of the most popular professions among gold-makers. It pairs particularly well with Alchemy and Enchanting but can do very well as a standalone profession as well. The main way jewelcrafters make gold is through what is colloquially referred to as shuffling; the act of buying cheap ore (usually Ghost Iron) and prospecting it down, then turning the materials into different profitable items via cutting gems, making jewelry, possibly disenchanting that jewelry, etc.  You can do this at a basic level "by hand" by just buying Ghost Iron at a cheap price for your server, prospecting it, cutting all the blue-quality gems into the most profitable cuts (Do your Facets of Research if you don't already have all the cuts!), turning the green-quality gems into jewelry, selling the green-quality jewelry to a vendor, and putting the blue-quality jewelry on the AH. This may not be the best possible route for profit on your server but it should turn a good amount for most.  If you want to get more into shuffling check out Xsinthis' shuffler spreadsheet.

Outside of the shuffle be sure you're cutting Primal Diamond meta cuts; the cut patterns are world drops so you may need to play a bit to get the cuts but they're well worth it. For sure cut Burning, Agile, Revitalizing, Reverberating, and Austere. Consider Eternal, Ember, and the PvP-oriented cuts if there's enough demand on your server or you have lots of leftover mats after covering the first ones listed.

Leatherworking

If you're on a character that actually gets Spirits of Harmony pick up the leg patch patterns from Golden Lotus and make a few of each to sell. 

You can also make crafted Malevolent PvP gear, patterns you'll learn if you do a Hardened Magnificent Hide cooldown, learned via a drop that's common on Timeless Isle; unfortunately its item level is only 476, putting it slightly below what the new boosted 90s will get and lower than Timeless Isle gear. This has taken a huge toll on the demand for these items, however new PvP-ers still will want the resilience gear. Consider making a couple pieces to gauge demand on your server. If materials are limited stick to belts, bracers, and boots since these can be used by more classes, compared to other pieces like chest and shoulders that are particular to one class and thus have lower demand.

With the Hardened Magnificent Hides you can make a belt or legs piece every few weeks for some extra gold as well.

Do your Firelands dailies in Hyjal until you've learned the bag patterns; make and sell the gem bags, glyph bags, and mining bags.

Tailoring

Do your Imperial Silk and Celestial Cloth cooldown every day. You have two good choices for Imperial Silk; you can use each piece to make Greater Spellthreads to sell; I do this. Or you can save it up and, with August Celestials at exalted, you can make the largest normal bag to sell. Both are good options, I just find the spellthreads more profitable personally. Check prices on your server.

You can also make crafted Malevolent PvP gear, patterns you'll learnby doing that Celestial Cloth cooldown, learned via a drop that's common on Timeless Isle; unfortunately its item level is only 476, putting it slightly below what the new boosted 90s will get and lower than Timeless Isle gear. This has taken a huge toll on the demand for these items, however new PvP-ers still will want the resilience gear. Consider making a couple pieces to gauge demand on your server. If materials are limited stick to cloaks, belts, bracers, and boots since these can be used by more classes, compared to other pieces like chest and shoulders that are particular to one class and thus have lower demand.

Consider Netherweave Cloth and Embersilk Cloth to make their respective bags; these are very popular bags even now and can be a profitable venture for most tailors.

Note that if you do both cooldowns every day you find yourself in need of a lot of cloth. Try to farm it on the actual tailor since they find more cloth than non-Tailors. I pop a Potion of Luck and farm for the duration to increase my profit and cloth-yield.

Herbalism

This is relatively straight forward. Just fly around and herb. A few tips about it: If you have a Sky Golem you'll be able to herb without dismounting just as druids can. If you get Forager's Gloves from Korda Torros or certain mobs on Timeless Isle you will gather even faster. 

You could also look at specific herbs from previous tiers of content; Whiptail is easily farmed and important for leveling Alchemy. Ghost Mushrooms are usually pretty valuable due to their value in leveling alchemy and their role in making Invisibility Potions in challenge modes. Goldthorn, Fadeleaf, and Gromsblood are also major Alchemy chokepoints and thus are relatively valuable and may net you more gold per hour farming than MoP-level herbs.

Mining

This is relatively straight forward. Just fly around and mine. A few tips about it: You can find an Ancient Pandaren Mining Pick in Jade Forest which (rarely) procs extra gems when mining. If you get Forager's Gloves from Korda Torros or certain mobs on Timeless Isle you will gather even faster. 

You could also look at specific ores from previous tiers of content; Fel Iron, Adamantite, Cobalt, and Obsidium are frequently valuable due to their use in things like leveling professions. 

One of my favorite things to do is buy cheap copper and tin bars off the AH and smelt them into Bronze. Bronze is not farmed, it is only smelted using copper and tin. Because of this a lot of people don't think to craft and sell it or even really remember it exists. You likely won't be able to charge a whole lot for it but it's some easy gold pretty regularly.

Skinning

This is relatively straight forward. Just skin dead things. A few tips about it: You can usually run around Timeless Isle without killing anything at all and just scavenge corpses others leave behind. If you get Forager's Gloves from Korda Torros or certain mobs on Timeless Isle you will gather even faster. 

Keep an eye on the AH for lower-level leathers without much representation on the AH. When leveling engineering the other night I was paying 20g per piece for Medium Leather because there wasn't any on the AH. Gold from skinning will largely be about serving these under-served markets.

Veteran Bonus vs. 1-90 Boost: Which to choose?

Okay, I asked on Twitter and you sadists said you wanted to see me power-level engineering, so here it is, along with my discussion of why I think the veteran bonus is a waste for most gold-makers.

How to Compete in Glyphs

I was hanging out on Jim's stream the other night and got into a chitchat with a few people about glyphs. Another viewer contacted me via message and asked for some general advice on how to make gold with glyphs. Different people will have different strategies but I laid out my general set-up to gaining a glyph foothold and it occurred to me I don't think I've ever laid it out in this kind of way. I'm not really interested in writing a lot of how-tos but I basically wrote the whole thing for this guy so, hey, why not just make some edits and turn it into a post.

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So You Want to Enter the Glyph Market . . .

There are many ways that people choose to compete in the glyph market. Some people choose to only craft the most profitable glyphs, some people craft all of them. Some only keep in stock exactly the amount they post, some manage an impressive backstock. I can't say which one is the best way to approach it but I can tell you what I would recommend and why.

You don't win by sale. You win by scale.

There are probalby some exceptions out there but time and time again I notice two familiar trends: People who don't like glyphs do not have a large infrastructure built for glyph selling. People who do enjoy glyphs do have this infrastructure.

"Well, Faid, if they like it of course they'd build an infrastructure. Duh. Are you stupid?"

But what if, rather than the infrastructure coming from a love of glyphs, their love of glyphs is present because of the infrastructure? By having a streamlined process of crafting and selling glyphs you are poised to love the market: You will spend a very small amount of time and will see profit from even minutes per day invested; something that can't be guaranteed if your glyph process involves scanning the AH, figuring out what's selling that day, buying herbs, milling, crafting, and posting. Take all of that out of the equation, though, and glyphs are fast and profitable, allowing a player to not feel bogged down, leading to the resentment I've seen time and time again from glyph sellers.

And so my advice to you is this: Do not half-ass your entry into glyphs. If you are going to sell glyphs be prepared to sell very nearly all of them. (If you want to save some inventory space then don't do the shitty ones like Voidwalker and Sap, but do almost everything you can.) Craft in bulk, store in bulk, always have your glyphs on the AH. The sales will come.

As I mentioned, I was only Jim's stream and he was doing some glyph management. He doesn't have a solid glyph infrastructure set up because it's not one of his preferred markets and so he actually spent twice as much time managing a significantly smaller, less profitable inventory than I spend managing an inventory of nearly every glyph possible. While a larger inventory seems like it should mean more work the fact of the matter is it takes the chores out of the glyph market. You no longer need to worry about what to craft or if you have enough of something in stock. When you're stocking a shit ton of everything then nothing's ever going to be out of stock and you'll always be able to sell whatever's profitable, turning glyph inventory maintenance from constant crafting to infrequent restocking.

Think of it like this: An organic grocer must sell their merchandise and restock it several times a week because of seasonal changes, selling out of popular products, etc. On the other hand, Faid's Trail Mix and Pickled Food Emporium doesn't suffer from that problem. I can literally order a year's worth of stock at once because it won't go bad. This means I don't have to deal with the ordering place, delivery trucks, shelf-stocking, or restocking when my stuff runs out: It just doesn't run out! So my store largely takes care of itself except for the yearly big order and the occasional mopping up when some brat breaks a jar of pickled okra all over aisle three. Meanwhile Mr. Organic Grocer must deal with all of this nearly daily. Of course he's going to burn out while I'm off living on my trail mix fortune. (THE SECRET IS M&M'S)

I CRUSHED A GLYPH MARKET, FRUIT VENDOR!!
THIS WILL NOT BE THE LAST!

Fine. I'll post everything. So now what?

Step 1: Testing the Waters

After you've maxed your scribe you'll still be missing a lot of glyphs. During the time you're researching these you should be selling what you do know and keeping an eye on the markets. You don't need to know exaclty when Competitor A goes afk for a snack but you should take this time to identify major players in the glyph market. Are there bots? Report them. Are there super-zealous competitors? Poke them with sticks, and by that I mean play with undercuts to see if you can figure out their thresholds, veracity, undercut habits, etc. for future knowledge.

You should be getting some sales here. If you're happy with the sales you're getting just keep with this step. Selling everything and playing nice with others is totally fine if you're okay with it and seeing thenumbers you'd like. Just continue to keep your stock up and post your glyphs. If you're happy there's no reason to move on to Step 2.

Step 2: The Hammer Drop

If you are not happy with your numbers you'll need to make some changes.  You've already got your glyphs learned and your infrastructure set up by this time so the main problem you're likely running into is competition, and that means it's time to drop the hammer.

With your large backstock commence walling the glyph market. Your competitors may try to buy you out. That's fine; if walling correctly you're still making profit. Keep posting, keep restocking. Determine how many of each glyph you need to post to have your glyphs on the AH constantly. During this phase the AH is very hands-off; post for 48 hours and cycle them to keep them up constantly. Enjoy all your free time. Try out that new trail mix and pickle place everyone's been raving about.

I cannot stress this side-point enough: Your profit doesn't matter at this point. You aren't supposed to get rich now. I've known people who start walls and are whining within days that they're not making gold. That's how walls work. You're not making a lot of gold but neither is anyone else. The point is to discourage them. Don't let yourself become discouraged in the process. It will all come to fruition in time. How much time? That's for you to determine.

Step 1 Redux: Six More Weeks of Winter?

After some time walling, usually a few weeks to a few months, lift the wall. If the wall was successful most of the fair-weather scribes are now gone, leaving a much less-competitive glyph market, allowing you to reap much higher profits per sale. Enjoy your delicious profit margins. If competition returns very quickly (within a day or so) then repeat step 2.

You'll alternate between long periods of walls and short periods of higher prices until all your most problematic competitors are thoroughly discouraged. Repeat as necessary for new scribes that start getting a foolish notion they can compete in your market. Whether due to the frequent rock-bottom prices or just the general volatility of the market most competitors will be discouraged in time. Some you may never fully dissuade but shaking the glyph market up and getting several scribes to fall out is better than nothing.

If you're a low-risk person like myself feel free to stick with Step 1 forever, there's nothing wrong with it, but if you have a high-risk/high-reward seeking attitude then try Step 2 a few times. Step 2 is largely meant for markets where you are unable to get a satisfactory amount of sales: If you're satisfied in Step 1 I'd recommend not rocking the boat, but that's just me.

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So there you go. If you've done this entire process and still don't like the glyph market then, yes, maybe glyphs aren't your style. But I believe that most people, if they handled glyphs in this way, would enjoy them much more than they would if they stick to a Just in Time setup.

Not that there's anything wrong with that . . .

Don't worry, more Interacting with Players to come; at least a few more, but the most recent post (Bernard) has finally given me enough of an idea of what I want to say on a subject to actually make a post about it.

For those who haven't already I recommend reading the previous post, Interacting with Players: Bernard as well as the comments. I'll stop referring to him as Bernard since Brongly actually came in and replied himself, so I don't think he minds.

We've been having a bit of a discussion on the concept of casual and/or fair-weather gold-making. He makes a lot more gold than the average WoW player; is probably on-par or a bit above the average gold-maker, but is likely not at the same level as most advanced gold-makers. After saying this I constantly found myself adding in "Not that there's anything wrong with that" type of comments.

And I mean those comments completely sincerely.

Most of what I do is not fun for the majority of people. Hell, it's often times not super fun for me, but it's easy and can be done while doing something more fun. (CKS + D3? Yes please!) I expect that if most players played the way I do they would not have the stomach to stick it out. That's not that they're not up to snuff, but that I have a very high tolerance for boring, repetitive tasks others would find mind-numbing.

Unfortunately the word "casual" has become somewhat of a put-down in the general-gaming world and so I think people see it as a put-down for gold-making. "Oh, you only make gold casually, you're not as good at it as the rest of us."-kind of a thing. But that's not how I'll ever mean it when discussing gold-making.

There is no right way to make gold. I mean, maybe grinding out vendor greys for cash isn't ideal, there are probably better ways than that, but I don't see anything wrong with people who only make 1k a day; and I don't think they're less skilled than someone who makes 20k a day.

Income is largely about effort invested. You can invest effort in many ways: crafting a lot, camping a lot, researching/learning rare patterns, gathering a lot, learning markets, leveling profession alts, managing addons and spreadsheets, etc. and so depending on where you like investing your time and effort you will find a way to make gold that works for you.

I said some time in the past that I consider myself a blue-collar nose-to-the-grindstone gold-maker. I don't flip, I don't go for big profit margins. I spend my effort through flat-out perseverance and stubbornness. This is actually not very efficient. Someone who takes the time I spend on the AH and instead spends it discerning the most valuable use of that time will likely make gold successfully as well; possibly more, possibly less.

And so when I refer to "casual" gold-making it's not meant to refer to people who don't know as much, or people who aren't as skilled. It's people who don't put in the same amount of time, flat out. But if they use their smaller amount of time more efficiently than I use mine they can have much better numbers while still being "casual" in the time-spent sense.

Once again, I recommend you read Brongly's comments on my last post; they're largely what sparked this one. Brongly takes a very different approach to auctioning, dealing with competitors, etc. than my own stance but I hold that neither of us are wrong, just different. In fact, in some ways I would probably say his stance is a better one to take. He probably enjoys the game a lot more than I do, to be completely honest, because it's not mind-numbing prospecting, milling, etc. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the game as well. It's just a "different strokes for different folks" kind of situation and I wanted to clarify that I don't believe that people who make gold differently necessarily do so because they are wrong or lacking in skill; simply that it's not the way I would do it.

Find what you like to do. If you spend five minutes a day reposting auctions you're not any better or worse at gold-making than the guy who spends five hours. You're just doing it your way, and that's what's important in this game.

Interacting with Players: Bernard

Gold-making has a lot to do with numbers and math and other such things. Then there's lots of game mechanics to take into consideration. But one of the biggest aspects of gold-making that doesn't get the amount of discussion you'd expect is the interpersonal dynamics involved.  Be it an intricate undercut, repost, modify fallback to attempt to change your competitor's posting habits setup or an actual conversation we are, in one way or another, interacting with other players; both buyers and other sellers. How these relationships are managed are of the utmost importance to gold-making success.

Like in life, there are a lot of different types of people and even more ways of dealing with them. I'm going to do a little series of the people who have contacted me in-game (or those I have contacted) and what came of our discussions. Names have been changed to protect the foolish.

===================================

#2: Bernard

Ah, Bernard. Bernard's been around for a while, actually. I used to compete with his hunter on belt buckles and other crafted Blacksmith pieces but he wasn't really a big deal; he'd hit the AH hard for a while then fade away, as fair-weather gold-makers are wont to do.

I do believe he's been successful over time, either that or is just incredibly lucky because he has one of the only Mini Tyrael pets on Argent Dawn which, in my mind, is the badge of a rich gold-maker. Anyone can get a Spectral Tiger at this point; it's the Tyraels that are truly rare in my eyes. So when I would see him pop up, while I knew he wouldn't be a real pain in my side, I also didn't shrug him off as I would any other fair-weather competitor. In fact, you could even say he intimidated me a little bit.

Until he opened his mouth.

At some point during this encounter I rolled my eyes so hard I damaged the area of my brain that regarded Bernard as a threat.

The very brief backstory is that most gems on my server have been doing pretty well; no one's owning the market (myself included) and there's a good amount of profit going around. I do probably get more sales than most but I certainly don't have any form of control like I do with glyphs.

For whatever reason Bernard decided today he wanted to be "that guy" and he took several valuable Vermillion Onyx cuts from 160-220g to about 65g. He started out with posting several per cut; his statements lead me to believe that he expected me to balk and back off for a while. However, I continued to post. After a few rounds of undercutting him he began posting only one per cut to save on deposits and/or mail fetching time, and as you can see he logged off within an hour of beginning his short-lived coup.

Let us count the ways in which Bernard screwed up here.

• Whispered me in the first place, "taunting" me while calling me by my main's name.
  This is a multi-part screw up; let's hit each of them. First off, he called me Faid despite being on Misten. I don't hide my alt so I'm not bothered but in a game where people don't even really register the names of people other than guild-members and competitors it's pretty telling when someone calls you by your main's name while on your AH alt. It shows they care enough about who you are to determine your alts (even if it's not difficult) and that shows that you're under their skin for whatever reason. It also is frequently used as an intimidation tactic; a way of saying "That's right, I know who you are. I've got my eye on you." I'm not sure if that was Bernard's attempt, but it's a vibe I often get from such encounters.
  
  So then he decided to tauntingly whisper me. This is a clear sign that what he's doing is not likely going to last. How does it say that? It shows he is doing this for a reaction. If this were market manipulation, similar to a glyph wall strategy, there would be no benefit in alerting the competition to what you're doing. After all, they'll see it as soon as they hit the AH. The only reason to goad competitors is if you care about what they are going to think/do in reaction, and you only care about their reaction if you're doing this for them, and not for yourself. Once you're able to determine that someone is undercutting you as a personal vendetta (either specifically targeted or meant to be about being "that guy") there are two very simple ways to combat him:
  
  1) Not care. Just don't care. Continue as you normally would. Undercuts and low buyouts may dampen my profits but words will never drive me from a market. :P The thing we tell kids is that if you just ignore the bullies they won't have any fun and they'll stop beating you up. Now, I think that's kind of shitty advice to give a bullied kid but it works pretty well in the AH; if their entire desire is to make people balk the best thing you can do is deny them that satisfaction and keep on trucking. It goes very well with the second strategy:
  
  2) Either explicitly say (only if you're already talking like we were) or implicitly show that their tactic is completely ineffective. If someone's goal is to rob others of profit; which Bernard specifically stated was his goal, then making it clear you are perfectly happy with the new, lower profit margins will take the wind from their sails pretty much instantly. Given the rate I pay for the ore I honestly consider 60g to be a pretty decent price. Of course I'd prefer 225g but I'll happily sell gems at 60g all day long and, given that fact, Bernard's tactic was incredibly /facepalm-worthy.
  
• Failure to Know Competition
  Considering he cares enough to identify me and call me Faid I found it surprising he didn't have a clue when it came to my willingness to forego large profit margins long-term. I mean, I'm maintaining my glyph wall (currently @20g/ea) on the same character he's talking to/competing with. If he'd done half a second of research he'd see it's laughable to attempt to dissuade me by claiming he will forego profits long-term in order to keep prices low.
  
• Empty Threats
  I consider a three month glyph wall to be a short-term endeavour. You can imagine how I feel when someone boasts about ruining the market and quits within an hour.
  
  After Vermilliion Onyx he moved on to undercutting a few Sun's Radiance cuts, then logged off, and hasn't been seen since, at least not in any market I care about. I was back to 150g+ sales on my gems within two hours and everything is peachy.
  
  If you are going to threaten a competitor with market manipulation you sure as hell better be ready to put your money where your mouth is when they call your bluff; otherwise you will never be taken seriously.
  

Bernard stands out to me as someone who did nothing but hurt themselves by approaching me. Sammy, from the previous post, may not have gained anything but he had nothing to lose. Before this exchange I was wary of Bernard when I saw him approach the AH but between his actions and his words on this morning just past he has lost that completely. It's the perfect example of why you should never approach competitors; you'll usually end up giving up more than you're getting.

Interacting with Players: Sammy

Gold-making has a lot to do with numbers and math and other such things. Then there's lots of game mechanics to take into consideration. But one of the biggest aspects of gold-making that doesn't get the amount of discussion you'd expect is the interpersonal dynamics involved.  Be it an intricate undercut/repost/modify fallback to attempt to change your competitor's posting habits setup or an actual conversation we are, in one way or another, interacting with other players; both buyers and other sellers. How these relationships are managed are of the utmost importance to gold-making success.

Like in life, there are a lot of different types of people and even more ways of dealing with them. I'm going to do a little series of the people who have contacted me in-game (or those I have contacted) and what came of our discussions. Names have been changed to protect the foolish.

===================================

#1: Sammy

Sammy was one of the first people to respond to my Trade advertisement about how I'm always buying materials in bulk via COD. However, unlike most people who whisper me in response to my ad, he did not open with a "That sounds good" or "Can we work on the price?" (No, we can't!) or any other normal thing to say. He opened with this:

So, right away, it was clear I was in for a good time. Here are some tips we can discuss right off the bat from Sammy's introduction:

• Never presume that you have a reputation.
  If you do have a reputation, then great for you, but if you don't you come off like a complete tool. Not only is this guy not someone who has ever been on my radar but he also thinks very highly of himself for a reason that doesn't seem to hold water. This is not a good first impression to make on anyone.
  
• Even if you know you have a reputation, do not attempt to use it to intimidate or impress people.
  In his defense I was on a brand new toon, not on Liquidate. But even if he is 100% correct and he sells a ridiculous amount of volume the fact of the matter is he likely doesn't even come close to a quarter of the business I am used to doing. While being in the top 10 sellers may make him feel special it really doesn't matter to someone like myself who, in full swing when top sellers were listed, accounted for 5-7 characters of the top 10 sellers and was likely allied with the rest. That's not even considering the fact that most Top Sellers lists take into account amount of auctions posted, not sold.
  
• If you're going to boast you better be able to back that shit up.
  Sammy was approaching me about selling bulk ore. He opened in such a way that, while he was pompous, I was pleased to find someone willing to sell me thousands of stacks of ore that he claimed to have. He talked my ear off about how he farms for hours every day and gets hundreds of stacks every day and oh if only he could find someone who was able to buy all this ore his awesome self farms up. When he asked me how much I wanted to buy and I said "all of it" his tune changed a bit though.
  
  You see, Sammy doesn't actually farm very much at all and had no idea that there were people who would buy so much ore. I ended up getting maybe 100 stacks of ore from him over the course of one month. I'm happy that he sells his ore to me but his credibility is completely and totally shot with me now and he's, in my eyes, rather pathetic which means that all future interactions with him have been met with eye-rolling. I just don't take him seriously and that's not something you want people thinking about you.

So, like I said, I offered to buy as much ore as he could send me and he sends me a bit here and there. He is probably my ninth or tenth biggest supplier. But here comes Harvey.

Harvey is Sammy's friend. As far as I can tell they are friends, probably around fourteen years old. Harvey is a very polite young man compared to his friend, however. He began selling me ore here and there and at one point he caught me while I was online and we talked a bit.

I won't go into Harvey's conversations too much since he's done just fine with the interpersonal thing but he mentioned that he got my name from Sammy and that Sammy said he makes dozens of thousands of gold from me. I was amused because at that time Sammy had maybe made 2,000 gold off me, if that. So I told Harvey his friend was likely mistaken but I tucked that bit of info into the mental Sammy file. 

Through more discussions with Harvey it turned out that apparently Sammy has told Harvey all about me, which is surprising considering none of the conversations actually happened. Apparently I've bought dozens of thousands of gold worth of ore from Harvey and I do so because I'm "exploiting the ore" and that's how I'm making gold. Also, I hack apparently.

I set the record straight with Harvey (that Sammy is talking big but none of the above is true) and pointed him towards Stormspire since he seemed interested in gold-making. But the Sammy file was now a bit more eye-roll-worthy.

Last week, at the behest of many buyers, I added leather into my barking macro. I set my price the same as with other markets; take the lowest I regularly see it at market and subtract 5g per stack. However, because leather prices fluctuate so much this frequently looks much lower than the current auction house price and that has lead to some interesting blowback I never saw before.

Side note before we get into more Sammy lols: I don't care what other people think of my prices. That's not a defensive "I don't care what you think, you're not my real dad!" statement, it's just the truth. My prices are set where they are for a good reason and that reason is not public opinion; if people sell to me that's great, if they don't that's fine. I literally don't care what people think of my prices or what they think of me charging them. I don't hide this fact.

Now, onto Sammy. Sammy apparently has quite the issue with what I pay for leather; so much so he began mouthing off in Trade chat about how I was ripping everyone off. I responded with my usual "I don't care what people think of my prices. Buy them or don't, I don't care." spiel and he apparently took this as a very personal attack.

He whispered me reminding me that he was my ore supplier and I should listen to him or else I'd never get any sellers. I was bored so I decided to engage in the conversation, stating once again I don't really care what he thought. Apparently this was very very upsetting for him since I was immediately put on ignore and told that it must be my time of the month. (Protip for anyone: Nothing makes me think you're a young boy faster than references to PMS/periods as rationale for someone treating you in a way you view as negative. Grow up.)

Now, you'd think that him putting me on ignore would be the end of it, but no, it gets better. You see, apparently he missed me very very much, because he took me off ignore within five minutes and began responding in Trade chat whenever I'd hit my macro. I just disregarded it and finished for the night.

The next day I was doing my usual Shopping List search before hitting my macro and found all of his ore on the AH . . . for 5g less than what I offer for it. Even if he is a tool cheap ore is cheap ore so, naturally, I bought it out. My personal opinions of someone won't get in the way of good gold-making.

He whispered me, thanking me for buying the ore, and began CODing a bit here and there again.

I imagine the Sammy tales may continue; I'll update y'all if they do, but that's where the Sammy situation is right now.

Here are the takeaway points from Sammy's tale:

• Don't talk big at all, but especially if you can't back it up.
• Act like an adult when dealing with others; how you speak to them may not have a great impact on your bottom line but, in the end, it will impact the way they see you which can really help or hinder you in the long-run. (We'll get more into this in a few more posts when I post Alice's story.)
• People are weird.

Let's Talk about Glyph Walls

I mentioned off-hand in my previous post that a glyph wall was currently in effect on Argent Dawn. I still wasn't sure if I'd do a post on it; and truth be told I'm not sure it's such a good idea I'm posting this given I know that many people on my server read this blog. But we'll see where it takes us.

Anyways, like I said, I mentioned in passing that I enacted another glyph wall. I used to call it the 30GGC; 30g Glyph Ceiling, but the price is changing rapidly. Currently we're at a 25GGC. 

Inevitably when I discuss this strategy I get some interesting responses. Most people are confused, annoyed, or both; they see selling glyphs at a low buyout as a waste and why would anyone sell lower when they could sell higher? To put it simply: We are playing a different game.

Think of the time you used to make 5k a month or so; when you quested and did dailies like everyone else, maybe sold a BoE here or there, but you didn't really play the gold-making game. You might not have even known there was such a thing as folks who actively play to make gold.

Now you've moved up from there. Perhaps you're still a beginner setting out and getting your footing, perhaps you've been at this quite some time and consider yourself fairly well-versed. But at the end of the day if you believe glyph walls aren't useful then you are still not playing glyphs to the level they can be played.

Glyphs can always be profitable if played correctly. The level to which you play will determine how profitable glyphs are for you. However, the vast majority of people in the glyph market play the short game. They might feel like they're playing the long game because they're in the game so long or have been in the market since we were all twinkles in our fathers' eyes, but they're still out for today's profit, for this week's bottom lines.

I'm going to link a few blog posts from others at the bottom of this post, many of which are ancient in gold-blog-years, but I think that glyph walls aren't being talked about enough nowadays. The lost art of glyph walling. Other than Twitchie, who is awesome, I just don't see a lot of glyph-centric bloggers playing seriously at glyphs anymore. But I digress.

In 2011 croda wrote that the ultimate aim of a glyph wall is either to permanently reset the fallback of glyphs, thus increasing profit for anyone in the market after the wall has ended, or to force market participants to leave the market, allowing the waller to take over their market share. In response Moxnixx added a third reason: using glyph walls as a learning tool. 

Glyph walls have served me in all of these ways and more. I have learned far more than I can ever write about in regard to the glyph market and my competitors. I have made boatloads of gold both during and after walls, and I have driven many competitors off, never to be heard from again. I also offer a fourth purpose to the glyph walls: Fun. Who doesn't like to mix it up again? Be it spiteful glee or just enjoyment from a change of pace, glyph walls can really break the monotony in an otherwise pretty vanilla market.

If you look at today's bottom line then it would be foolish to sell a glyph for 30g when I could sell it for 300g. But when you look at one sale today at 300g or hundreds of sales at 425g once the wall lifts then you see what I mean about playing the long game. You can even see the effects in comments on my last post. One commenter writes:

I was selling Glyphs for a good profit on Bladefist and when they merged with Kel'Thuzad a Boyfriend / Girlfriend guild and all there alts killed the glyph market. Glyphs were selling from 25 gold up to 700 gold each and you could all ways find the glyph you were looking for. Im not going to sit and fight over selling glyphs for 12 to 15 gold each. I have even tried talking with these people but all they are is rude I'm not saying all the people from Kel'Thuzad are that way just the two of them. I hope one day they will get tired of the posting 10 stacks of glyphs for nothing and the market can be restored back to what it was,

There's nothing wrong with this; if one doesn't like a market they should definitely spend time on things they find more fun and profitable. But this, ladies and gentlemen, is the essence of a glyph wall. Unflinching, discouraging, soul-crushing, cock-blocking market manipulation. It's not about the sales, it's about breaking the will of those who are standing in the way of your maximum profit. (Though admittedly it sucks they were rude. Though I guess I can be pretty snide when talking to competitors myself . . .)

Anyways, sometime in the distant future I'll talk more about this particular wall event but until it has run its course I probably won't talk too much more about my specific goals and intent at this point. Until then here are some great posts from yesteryear on glyph walls:

Critical's War (17 Posts)

Breevok's Glyph Experiment (60+ Posts)

croda's The Glyph Wall - what is it and what is its purpose?

The Gold Mint's Glyph Walls - are for teaching lessons

Faid's Glyph Competition: A Primer

Foo's posts on glyphs

Also, el oh freaking el. I was just reading some old stuff I wrote about the glyph market. "I guess my stance is, if you view the glyph market as a box I'm tired of pretending it's a spaceship, now I want to pretend it's a boat." What the fuck was I smoking in 2011?

I Don't Understand How I Do It

In my last post I mentioned I made about half a million in seven weeks. This breaks down to about 10k profit per day. That's a bit higher than what I'd done back when I was playing super-hardcore but not by much and that could be a reflection of market changes. But it got me thinking about how I'm able to make more gold than a lot of people who do the same things.

Most people who talk big numbers have one or both of these things going for them: They are in nearly every market or they are in high risk markets that bring them higher payouts when they succeed.

I'm neither of these; I used to be in pretty much every market but, while I have the infrastructure, I just don't have the desire to make gold at that level anymore. I've also always been one of the most risk-averse people I know in gold-making as well as in pretty much every area of life.

So I've been trying to determine what's "special" about what I do and I just can't do it. The day after posting that post I had a 40k profit day. I made 100k profit since the last post alone doing nothing special.

In fact, not only was I just plugging away like usual but I actually put myself at an extreme disadvantage: I've started another 30g Glyph Ceiling on my server, gutting the glyph market of almost all profit for myself and others, and I also accidentally messed up my TSM settings. I'd unselected a bunch of groups in the bankui meaning I wasn't pulling items from my guild bank as they sold. I noticed and fixed that today, thankfully, but holy shit guys, I made 100k in 6 days despite all glyphs going for <30g and not restocking my gems. WTF.

I honestly don't understand it; it's like the less I try the more I make. 

Argent Dawn is a bit strange compared to other servers in that we seem to have more inflation than the average. While I see others saying they buy their GIO for 35-40g/stack I'm tickled pink if I can buy it at 55g/stack regularly. So everything costs more, which does explain a bit of why my numbers might be impressive to off-server gold-makers but it doesn't explain why my profit increases as my effort decreases.

I just don't get it. I'm magic. I have magic powers.

Oh, I also have a legendary. :D (Well, a bunch of them, but this is the new one!) I'm not sure what my main effort will be in-game now, outside of gold-making. I wanted to finish Faid's cloak but have no desire to do the same for alts. I've had enough ToT LFR for a lifetime, thanks very much. Faid's nearly BiS from Flex and probably won't do much more beyond that, so I guess I'll be returning to pet battles and stuff.

We'll see I suppose. For now I'm just excited to be able to have the legendary and to be getting closer to being goldcapped again. I just want 1.5m before heading into WoD so I can be sure to buy my Realm Firsts in professions without having to go broke doing it.

Half-a-Millionaire and the Casual Routine

It's occurred to me that my routine may not look particularly casual to some people. I honestly am not sure how to define casual. As someone who, at one point, raided 40 hours a week on top of many other hours per day play time (at one point I averaged 17 hours a day playtime) even playing 5 hours a day could seem casual.

So I've decided to put down what I'm actually doing so I can give a better picture of what "casual" means to me right now.

The main change in how I play isn't actually in what I do in-game but when and how I play. I used to skip classes to play, I'd play late into the night, and there was always something that needed to be done. Now I fit WoW into my schedule, my schedule is no longer built around WoW.

With one exception, and that is the time that I wake up. I have my first class at 8 AM and live 30 minutes from school, so I could get by waking up at 6:45-7, but instead wake up at around 5 AM. I like having a relaxing "sit around" feel to my mornings so I don't feel rushed, and I spend that time cancelling and reposting auctions. So from around 5-5:15 I cancel and repost auctions. Somewhere in there I shower as well.

I try to get my alt army through their Tillers farming and Faid her 20 Elites on the TI done during this time; but depending on how long AH chores took I may not have enough time, especially this week when Crown Chemical is tacked on to every alt's daily farming routine.

On MWF I only have class until noon, then go to the gym, then with the necessary post-gym shower I'm home and free again around 2. On T/R this is much later due to lab times and longer gym visits. Tuesday nights are Flex night with the guild, so no gold making happens on Tuesdays except for the occasional cancel/repost. This sucks because Tuesday nights are prime gem selling nights but gold making is not my top priority while Faid still has to gather Runestones.

When I get home, whatever time that may be, I cancel and repost auctions during my post-gym shower. (Cancel scan, hop in shower. Hop out, Gather mail. Finish drying off, Post Scan, etc.) From then on it's basically free time; some of it's done making gold; usually spent prospecting or milling while doing homework, and I'm usually "done" with my WoW "to do list" within an hour. I may pop on here and there to do some pet battles, cancel and repost, etc. but that's basically my routine. I do one cancel/repost before I head to bed and then keep going.

It's weird to be so loose in my gold-making considering the regimental routine I used to stick to but it's also liberating. Since nothing's perfect anyways I don't feel obligated to make sure I get to every task or be absolutely sure to be the cheapest on the AH. Things are much more laid back, it comes down to "What can I do in the time I have?" instead of "How can I make time for the things I need to do?", and I'm enjoying it a lot.

I'm up to half a million again, so that's like 500k in ~7 weeks? I'm happy with that. Plus I'm 1-2 weeks away from my legendary cloak, so yay!

Caterpocalypse 2014

A few signs have been pointing me toward leveling alts this past week.

I really wanted some glyphs that drop on the Timeless Isle so I was running my 85 shaman out to the island, intending to follow around guildies while they did their 20 Elites daily and scrounge what I could. When a guildmate saw me out there he said "Oh, are you doing Caterpillars?"  Caterpillars? Whachyu talkin bout, Izi?

It turns out that there's a super-efficient grinding method to level from 87-90 (technically can be done before 87 but it's tougher) on Timeless Isle.  Here's a video someone made for those interested in seeing how it goes.  It's a great spot since you level quickly, it can take a bit of time to repop the caterpillars which is great for semi-afk grinding while doing homework, and you end up with lots of Timeless Coins, meaning you're well on your way to your 476 weapon at the time you hit 90.

I still wasn't convinced to go out there, though. They didn't drop glyphs so what did my shaman care? He only exists to make glyphs!

The next morning I was killing twenty elites with my friend John and he mentioned that he sends the Timeless Cloaks, Rings, Necks, Trinkets, and Cloth pieces to his priest to disenchant. I was shocked to find you could do that! Immediately I thought about my other alt needing leveling, my mage Rixen, aka the original Faid from before I ever dreamed of playing Alliance or rolling a paladin.

And so I was off. Over the course of two or three days I spent several hours sitting around the ghost pandaren village, doing homework and killing caterpillars every five minutes or so. And it worked great!

So now all my "alts I kind of care about" are 90. I still have my bank alt Monk, my 60 twink rogue who will never level, and my hunter I pretend doesn't exist but they're all far below even 60 and will never be played seriously. Oh, my other warrior, I forgot about her. I do need to level Verixi, she'll probably be next to get Double Agent. (Fuck why can't Alliance have goblins? Even better, why can't my guild faction transfer so I could make all my toons male belfs and female goblins?)

Thanks to all the Timeless gear tokens I'd been saving up and the tokens they earned while grinding I was able to get full epic (save one trinket slot) on both of them the moment they hit 90. I don't intend to do anything with them except Tillers Farming but, hey, they'll kill those virmen and birds much more efficiently now!

Gold-making's going decently well. I'm spending it only slightly slower than making it because people are sending me humongous shipments of bulk materials, which is great in the long-run but leads to an unimpressive-looking gain this week. Only around 250k liquid total at the moment but I've got more materials than you can shake a stick at so it should all work out in the end.

(Oh, and I killed Garrosh in Flex with my guild and got the 2H Axe Heirloom, so I'm stoked about that!)

Rebuilding My Empire: The First Big Purchase

Awwwwwwyeah, look at that armor. Dat sparkle. Dem goggles. And you know what? I paid for 8/9 of it and I'm not ashamed to say it.

Over the first week or so, operating about 90% in glyphs and 10% in gems, I was making about 10k profit per day. Not amazing but certainly a good pace for a newly-casual player on a relatively low-pop server. With the expansion winding down I still had one big goal on my list from before I quit: Challenge Mode Gold armor. A year ago I finished Gate of the Setting Sun on Gold but never got around to trying for the others. I'm unsure what will happen with CMs in WoD but I've found that if you want something you shouldn't put it off, it may be removed in the future. So I really wanted to get these CMs.

Unfortunately the effort and time needed to find and build a group that had compatible schedules and was skilled enough to get gold without taking 10 hours per dungeon of practice didn't jive too well with my casual attitude. And so I did what any moderately well-off player might do: I paid someone else to do the legwork for me.

I used to take a very negative view of buying carries. While I wasn't opposed to doing it I did feel that someone who bought a carry necessarily was not as "worthy" as someone who "earned" it.  Admittedly I still feel a bit that way and so I'm glad to say I earned at least one gold "legitimately" to keep that feeling at bay; I know I had the skill for challenge mode golds, I just didn't have the desire to go through the group-building process.

But it's brought up an interesting subject of discussion in my guild and has got me thinking about carries quite a bit.

I expect gold-makers probably have a positive-to-neutral view of buying carries; people with more gold than they can spend are usually happy to take opportunities like buying runs. But that's not how everyone sees it, of course.

I didn't receive any blowback, at least not to my face, for buying my carries. I think this is because my guildies recognize my reasoning: a) I did already earn at least one gold, so it's not a skill issue and b) I'm casual and can't put in the time anymore, so this was easier.

So I was surprised when, after I gave the contact information for the group that sold me all my golds to a guildie, a little argument started in guild chat over whether or not it was "right" to buy carries. I won't rehash something that bordered on guild drama but basically some who "earned" their golds were talking down to people who "didn't earn" theirs.

Now, I'm still a bit on the fence on the issue; I think there is more merit in building a group and doing them (or any raid) yourself. But I also see a lot of things that could drive a person to buy a carry and I no longer see it as not having "earned" the achievements, loot, etc.

In the case of challenge modes I still worked pretty hard for it; I played my own character and was a contributing member of the team. I viewed it more as paying for a guaranteed competent group that I didn't have to gather myself, not as paying to avoid work. 

Furthermore, I earned a decent amount of gold to pay for them. (I paid 17k per run which is over the usual going rate; but I paid more so they would accept liquid gold payments on my server, removing my need to get the gold to their server.) And so while other players were sacrificing time out of their day to get their golds was I not also making a sacrifice in the form of over 100k gold? And in that case doesn't the discussion boil down to a "work smarter, not harder" subject in which, if its easier for a player to make the gold than to get the group, they'd be foolish not to buy the carry?

Anyways, I have no strong opinion on this either way; I'm not trying to write a persuasive essay here. Just some things I've been thinking about recently. I'm honestly not sure where I fall on the issue of buying carries anymore. I'd be interested in hearing how others feel about them.

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PS: A special thanks to Phat Lewts for my new Crocket! Check out Phat Lewts' gold blog if you don't already! (You should!)

PPS: Look at that top photo. Look at it. Doesn't Tabard of the Lightbringer look like a Boob Punch Tabard on human females? I call it a boob punch tabard. I think everyone should.

Rebuilding My Empire: The First Hours

At the time I decided to leave WoW I had approximately two million liquid gold and a decent stockpile of materials and crafted items for all professions. Not intending to come back any time soon I decided to do something with that. I sold all of my stock via the Consortium forums and also ended up selling every cage-able pet I had. This brought me up quite a bit and then I got rid of all of my gold as well. By the time my accounts expired I was down to 1,000g and I thought I had no stock remaining. I don't regret getting rid of my gold; gold-making is easy. I do regret getting rid of my pets. I've regained a lot of my favorite ones (I got my new Ethereal Soul-Trader for 10k cheaper than the first one!) but am still missing my Tuskarr Kite and Rocket Chicken, I'm sorry to say.

But basically the bottom line is I came back to WoW pretty impoverished compared to the wealth I'd grown accustomed to. So what'd I do?

I logged on and borrowed 1,000g from Eluniar, who also recently returned to WoW, promising him 10k in return in a few days. This gave me 2,000g investment capital. Like anyone in a desperate situation I returned to what I knew best and immediately set about making glyphs. Glyphs were a superb choice because the cost of materials is typically no more than pocket change the profit per sale is phenomenal, meaning my bit of gold would go a long way. (Plus my old glyph partners were willing to get me back into the fold and so I was able to return to a perfectly pruned and tailored market.)

In the meantime I petitioned Blizzard to request a small amount of time on my second account. Now that I'm not "super srs bsns"-playing I can't justify paying for my second account on an already tight budget; but I wanted to see what was left there. They were kind enough to grant me a two or three day credit and I hopped on to visit Liquidate once more.

There wasn't much on the Alliance but I was shocked to get on Nodes, my Horde glyph seller, and find I'd apparently decided not to liquidate his glyph stock before leaving. I had approximately ten of each glyph just sitting there pre-crafted.

And so it began.  It took me approximately three boring, agonizing, painstaking hours to move thousands of glyphs through the neutral AH one. at. a time. But I did it!

So I was able to pay back Elu's loan within a few hours of him giving it to me, which felt good, and I was off on my new gold-making adventure!

Hello o/

Hi.

You remember back in the Spring I said I was quitting WoW and that, while I would never say never, I didn't intend to come back? Well, now I remember why I always said "never say never."

I returned to WoW a couple weeks ago and am considering a return to blogging. I wanted to explain the . . . conditions under which I'm returning to both before getting into it, since they're going to change the way the blog is written quite a bit. Then we'll see what happens.

I've been doing so well since this Spring. I'm back in school, I changed my major to something I am passionate about and it's going well,  I'm going to be doing Study Abroad this summer if I can scrounge up the cash to pay for it, I'm teaching myself a second language, I've lost a ridiculous amount of weight (in a good way!) and I'm generally doing great.

The problem came because my schedule is so hectic and busy it's hard to find times to do social things, so when I do find free-time there's often nothing to do. I decided to start playing WoW again over the Christmas holiday to kill time. It's been great to come back. I've come back as a super-casual (did I mention those schedule obligations?) so I'm not really raiding other than flex here and there with my guildies. I'm mostly doing pet battles and achievements and it's been a great semi-social timesink for the times when I'm out of school work to do.

I've been playing the game entirely different from the way I once played and I've had some very interesting adventures. I wanted to blog about them but I remembered my love/hate relationship with blogging. I like writing. No, I love writing. And, as you can probably tell, I like talking about myself.

When I originally started NerfFaids back in the day it was not meant to be educational or to provide a service or help to others; it was meant to be more of a public journal while I learned to make gold. I want to do the journal thing again.

So I might be putting up some WoW posts in the coming time. The majority will probably be gold-flavored (once a gold maker, always a gold maker) but I'm going to return to writing for me, and only for me. If you'd like to keep reading that's great. Now I'm off to class.