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3 Simple Things You Never Thought of While Preparing for Mists
May 15, 2012 4 Comments

3 Simple Things You Never Thought of While Preparing for Mists

Matt’s taking the day off today. He’s busy storming the gates of hell in Diablo 3. Today’s post is from guest writer, Aunaka of Aunaka Heals.

I’ve gone through 3 new expansion releases and I’ve dealt with each of them a little differently.

During Burning Crusade, I waved to it as I was doing school work and was unable to play till a later time.

For Wrath, I managed to buy it on opening night, but then a certain show was being opened at that time and I was working 70 hour work weeks. I managed to get to that one later than the pack as well.

Then there was Cataclysm, where I was determined to get it right. I digitally pre-ordered the game and managed to take a week off of work with no distractions with buddies to level with me. It went well, and I managed to get to 85 in about 12 hours.

Within a week and half, I was raiding (It’s a bit of a blur). As I got further in, I thought about all the things I would have done to change what I did before the release and now I’m going to share them with you, and be determined to do them myself when Mists is released.

Don’t worry about the money

It’s a new expansion, and what will I need first?

Gold, right?

Wrong.

You’re about to start a new expansion, not a new raid. You’ll have zero need for money in the beginning. That is unless you plan on buying all your profession mats off the Auction House or gear from there as well.

Good luck with that, and also I have a bridge I’d love to sell you in New York.

I heard from a lot of people before Cataclysm dropped that they needed to make as much gold before the expansion so that they would be able to pay for their repair bills and raiding mats once they actually got to raiding. This made a lot of sense to me at the time, because I wasn’t actually thinking about it.

Once the levelling experience got started, I felt a little sheepish.

In Cataclysm, I made around 6,000 gold the first time around just questing. I am more than aware that to some of you that is next to nothing, and sits in pauper status. If you add profit from selling stuff I didn’t need and the gold earned in dungeons, I started my raiding season with roughly 11,000 gold.

Perfect.

That’s not to say that having additional gold isn’t nice. It’s not going to be something I break my back to try and do again. So when Mists gets ready to drop I think I’ll just sit back and prepare for the coming of the Pandas.

Hoard your mats

This is something I wish I’d thought of before Cataclysm dropped.

Stock up on old mats.

For some reason, when a new expansion hits people irrationally run around changing their professions thinking that maybe… just maybe this is the expansion that Inscription will be useful.

So they dump their old professions, which they’ll come back to in 2 months, and start up new ones. Now these Apprentice Scribes/Engineers/Alchemist/Etc. are sitting at their computers with Wowprofessions.com up and are looking at all the materials they will need to get to the top. That’s when it hits them. Laziness.

“What do you mean I have to go pick 300 million peace bloom?”

Yeah, folks that’s right, stock up on those low level mats, pop them on the AH at the beginning of the expansion and watch the gold flood into your mailbox.

Now, I know that this is slightly contradictory to my first point, but if those people hadn’t decided to change professions then we’d still be fine with not stocking up on money. So blame them for partially negating a perfectly good point.

Personally, my Mage is about to get busy with picking herbs and mining ore. If you’re interested, I’m on the Illidan server so if you want to totally screw over my plan you should start farming that server.

No really, go farm over there.

Sleep well

I know that Blizz runs on PST, but I’m on the east coast so my headlines stick with east coast.

Hands down, the worst choice I made with the Cataclysm release was not sleeping. I woke up at 7 am on the day “before” release to go to class and thought to myself:

“Aunaka, you want to start leveling at 3am when it releases so then you should just stay awake. There is no way that’s a bad plan.”

Bad idea.

Around 12:00AM I was sleepy, but I trudged through. 1:00AM, I was vegged out in front of my computer most likely looking at CAD or LFG, halfway falling asleep. Then 2:00AM hit and I got a surge of energy.

See the plan was that my man and I would just stay awake until we were 85 then sleep, I’d made us sandwiches, I got him Mountain Dew and myself Sprite. I had fruit cut up so that we’d have healthy energy, I was Mofo prepared! The adrenaline had kicked in and we were good to go.

Fast forward to 7:00am, I’ve now been awake for 24 hours with no caffeine. I start to get very grumpy, and sluggish. Did I mention that I play on a PvP server? That is pretty evenly Horde and Ally. So I was also getting a little more than frustrated. I ended up making it to 85 by around 3-3:30PM that day and then passed out.

I didn’t touch my toon for the next 36 hours.

I was tired of playing, and generally in a grumpy mood from seeing “You can’t queue for that dungeon since you haven’t walked there and looked at the damn door.”

It was the stupidest thing EVER.

This could have all been side stepped if I had taken a nap. You know what that says to me? I wanted to stay up and do this my way so badly, that I became stupider than a 1 year old that lays his ass down for a damn nap!

My unsolicited advice to you is get home and take a nap before release time, and if you can’t then I suggest waiting till morning to start playing, or come to terms with not getting to max level in one sitting.

For the great Waddle of the Pandas, I will be taking time off of work, and sleeping during the day.

Cause I DO want to level to max in one go.

Aunaka is a level 85 Resto Druid on the US-PvP Server Bleeding Hallow. To get tips, levelling advice, add-ons, and other World of Warcraft adventures, visit her blog, and subscribe to her feed.

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Stocking Up for Ulduar?
March 17, 2009 13 Comments

Stocking Up for Ulduar?

piggy-bank

Do you find that you have time on your hands lately? Have you been checking on the Ulduar news every hour from work?

If you have extra time in the game, there are things you can do to prepare for the release of 3.1. Stockpiling a few little goodies can distract you from the suspense and even–potentially–improve your raid performance when 3.1 does hit. In addition, I know from experience that prices on many commodities change–in one direction or another–whenever a patch alters their relative value.

As a caveat, though, I’ll tell you that I am directing most of my efforts toward stockpiling just one thing–gold. I’m making as much as I can right now off the sales of flasks, herbs, ore, and bars. Gold is the ultimate stackable quantity, and I don’t have the bank space for some of the other goodies I’ll mention here. As an added plus, gold will let you buy what you need when you need it–quickly. However, there is a potential to make more on some of your auctions if you can wait a bit. I’m no WoW market expert, but based on the information we have about 3.1, here are some of the things whose values stand to change at the release of the patch.

The Winners

The following things, by my best guess, stand to rise in price after the patch. New recipes and profession changes along with an influx of new gear will make some things more coveted than they are now. In addition, everyone’s consumables bill will skyrocket as guilds take on new and challenging encounters.

Titansteel bars
Saronite ore and bars
Blue-quality gems
Arctic furs
Heavy Borean leather
Frostweave cloth
Flasks
Buff food
Potions (Health, Mana, Speed, Indestcructible)
Uncooked meat
Glyphs
Enchanting materials

The Losers

These things will experience some change at the patch. I would expect their price to go down, either a little, in the case of fish (as more people will be driven to fish their own with shorter cast times and the chance at a mount) or a lot, in the case of BoE epics. Many of these items, like Je’Tze’s Bell and the Greatness trinket, will go from being an enormously high-priced item (8,000-12,000g on some servers), to merely outrageously priced (5000 or less). A former best-in-slot will never be as coveted as a true best-in-slot, and I have every expectation that some Ulduar trinket will dethrone these two.

Herbs (nodes will soon yield more flowers per gather)
Raw fish
Nobles cards
Je’Tze’s Bell
BoE Naxx epics
BoE crafted epics–item level 200

So, long story short? Sell your Nobles card now, and buy your Bell later. As for me, the only thing I’m stocking is a few flasks. My guess is that the Flask of Pure Mojo will overtake the Flask of the Frost Wyrm for healers, and I have some that I made for cheap ready for the new market. A further word to those in the Inscription business: I suggest researching commonly-used glyphs now and preparing several stacks for sale at the release of 3.1. Competition will be high among scribes, so prices might not be as astronomical as you think, but the business will dry up quickly as people pick up their second spec. You’ll no longer have repeat business from frequent spec-switchers.

Did anyone see anything I’ve missed? I’d love to see your financial predictions for 3.1.

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On Min-Maxing Professions
March 11, 2009 26 Comments

On Min-Maxing Professions

a-long-walk-off-a-short-cliff

Ever since her creation, Sydera has been a dual crafter. She toiled not, and neither did she spin. I’ve changed the specific crafting professions a few times for one raid advantage or another, but in late BC I decided on Enchanting and Alchemy. I took on Alchemy–without an herbalist alt–then for the Alchemist’s Stone, which was a best-in-slot trinket at the time. I still love Enchanting and Alchemy for raiding. They combine a raid advantage with convenience. The self-only ring enchants continue to be strong, and I love being able to disenchant my old gear and turn it into a useful commodity. Moreover, I always raid with a flask or dual elixirs, and I enjoy the boost to those consumables when it counts. My favorite raiding advantage, though, would have to be the four-hour flasks. The psychological effect is quite positive, and I would say that the boost to morale counts more than the actual gold saved.

However, the big disadvantage to Sydera has always been that she can’t extract anything useful from the game world while she’s questing. Lately I’ve been buying herbs and selling the resultant flasks on the AH. I always make a little bit of money, mostly because of the procs from being elixir-specced, but it’s nothing fantastic. The bulk of my gold earning in Wrath has been from selling the BoE Emblem of Valor bracers. However, it wasn’t quite enough for me.

Min-maxing for raiding is always my priority, but I need money too. The primary reason has nothing to do with me. Rather, the recent discussions of relative tank health among the four classes coupled with the imminent release of a more difficult raid dungeon prompted my A#1 Tank and Significant Other, Briolante, to make a plan to level jewelcrafting to replace his herbalism. The problem? My flask business and his glyph business didn’t make enough money to support a profession change, especially with Ulduar and its higher repair bills looming. So, enter Part B of the min-maxing plan: my under-utilized, underprivileged paladin alt, Marfisa.

professional-marfi

Marfi was my second WoW character, but she was the first one to leave her starting area. I raided with her in Classic, back when I didn’t know what I was doing, and I healed through Kara with her in early BC. She’s been Retribution since mid-BC, but I didn’t really do much with her even when Ret was the Flavor of the Month (for about 10 minutes at patch 3.0). In the last three weeks, however, Briolante and I tag team-leveled her up to 77, and she has a brand-new shiny fully-leveled herbalism to go with the mining she’s had since Dire Maul was a cool new place to go. As for Brio’s jewelcrafting, the last I checked, it was at 200, so we’re moving right along.

Now, I know I could have gone about this differently, focusing on earning money through the AH to buy ore and herbs, but I chose to level an alt for gathering because it’s a solution that will work not just for now, and for this profession change, but future ones should we choose to do so. In the next expansion, Marfi might be leveling skinning instead of herbalism, but now that she’s close to max level, she’s in a good position to be a helper-gatherer over again should things change. With Crusader Aura to help out and the movement speed increase for Ret, she’s an excellent choice for a hunt-n-fetcher as well. My warlock would have been a poor choice in comparison.

For me, leveling an alt just to service my household’s two raiding mains was an extreme move. Now I’ll use Marfi to provide herbs to Syd and herbs and ore to Brio. I have to say, I’m liking the convenience of it. I’ve already made some flasks on Syd just on the herbs I used to level, and I can tell you, I’m not going to be hoarding Frost Lotus anymore. But who knows when poor Marfi will hit 80! Probably in 6 months, when she gets there purely through killing those pesky mobs that like to stand next to my Icethorn.

Here’s what I told my guild when I dinged 450 herbalism. They were teasing me about my ambition to buy a Je’Tze’s Bell, which sells for about 8,000g on my server.

I said: “Now that I’m a gatherer, money is like dirt. There’s always more lying around on the ground.”

I’m proud to say that I came up with that truly terrible pun on the fly.

My question to you, dear readers, is this:

How far will you go to min-max your character?

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Get Rich or Heal Trying: How to Make Money via Dailies
February 27, 2009 17 Comments

Get Rich or Heal Trying: How to Make Money via Dailies

king-mountain

This is a guest post by Sientina discussing earning gold in WoW as a healer.

I’m Sientina, and I heal things to death. You see that warrior over there? He’s been trying to kill me for the last 4 minutes and I’m healing away all his damage, waiting for help to arrive.  Sure, I could probably kill him… eventually, but I rolled a healing class for a reason. I don’t kill things. I don’t grind elementals for eternals. The thing is, raiding takes its toll. I have reagents to buy, armor to repair, and hair to cut when my old style isn’t working for me anymore. What’s a girl to do when she has money issues and no sugar daddy?

I could just heal the daily heroic for cash but if I don’t want to commit to a full heroic run, I can do a few dailies instead and still have the gold for the raid tonight. Besides, have you seen those dungeons? They need to fire their cleaning staff. I end up with more cobwebs in my hair then hair products, and I use a lot of hair products. For a style this good, there needs to be money rolling in. These dailies keep my hair free of cobwebs and my gear free of blood and gore.

Icecrown

Stop by your respective airships and pick these quests up.

Capture More Dispatches / Keeping the Alliance Blind – shoot down 6 scouts just west of Aldur’thar.
That’s Abominable! / That’s Abominable! – Kill an abom in the broken front for his guts and use your newly made Frankenstein creation to blow the undead to pieces.
The Solution Solution / Volatility – Loot some helms, armor, and bones and blow a Frostbrood Skytalon sky-high.
If you’ve unlocked enough quests to have the tabard of the Knights of the Ebon Blade, head to the Shadow Vault for 2 more dailies.
Vile Like Fire! – Grab a proto-drake and burn 8 buildings.  You can re-burn something already on fire, so it doesn’t matter how many others are around.
Shoot ‘Em Up – There are two buildings with harpoon launchers on the balcony. Pick a weapon and kill 15 drakes.  Make sure to grab group with anyone else at a harpoon, you’ll both be done sooner.
Both Alliance and Horde have their own assault point in Ymirhiem.  Join them to help their cause in a non-killing sort of fashion.  Horde, you’ll report to the northern edge while Alliance will be on the eastern side.
Assault by Air / Assault by Air – Grab the transport and hit the spear guns with the blinding shot to stay alive til all four of your infiltrators are dropped.
King of the Mountain / King of the Mountain – Jump up the mountain and plant the flag.  You can click for your next jump before you land so you can scale vertical walls with ease.

Sholazar Basin

For those Honored with Oracles:

Appeasing the Great Rain Stone – Hop around with your little green friend and look for sparklies on the ground.  After he digs them up, loot them.
Song of Fecundity – Go west to the Maker’s shelf and blow the horn around 8 piles of dirt.
Song of Reflection – Go to the top of each Pillar and use the digeridoo at each crystal.
For those Honored with Frenzyheart…
Chicken Party! – Click on 12 chickens or net big groups of them.  You don’t have to dismount to net or gather the chickens up, so catch them rodeo style.

Storm Peaks

You will have to unlock the Sons of Hodir quests to get these. Part of them are Sons of Hodir Dailies, and will give you rep towards your shoulder enchants.  Others are from Brunnhildar. Talk to Gretta the Arbiter to start them.

Thrusting Hodir’s Spear – Only available at Honored. Find a wyrm and slay him using the special cast bar.  Once you get the hang of killing the wyrm, it’ll take you about 5 minutes tops for 16 gold and 500 rep.
Everfrost – This isn’t a daily, but when you’re out and about and you see an everfrost chip, loot it.  Its a free 13 gold and then 7 gold for repeats.  You can do this as many times as you find chips and sometimes someone in general chat will be willing to pay you for the location of one.  If not… more rep for you.
Back to the Pit – Grab a warbear and beat 6 other bear-back riders in combat.
Maintaining Discipline – Beating slaves couldn’t be easier.  If they choose to fight back, you might have to kill one or two.

Grizzly Hills

The Alliance and Horde fight over the Blue Sky Logging Grounds.  Thankfully we can assist.

Pieces Parts / Making Repairs – Loot gears and springs off the ground.  The opposite factions npc’s won’t attack you, but enemy players might.
Life or Death / Overwhelmed! – Bandage 15 of your forces.
Shredder Repair / Shred the Alliance – Shredder time! Use the speed boost and get your machine out of there.  As a note, the keys you get from the quest reward will let you use shredders down in Venture Bay.

Dragonblight

Defending Wyrmrest Temple – Fly to the shrine, disable it and kill all opposing dragonflight in your way.  Simple? Yes… but you can up the ante by trying to complete Rapid Defense as well.

With dailies to keep this girl independent and her hair the best in Dalaran, I’m as carefree as bird. If you’re needing a break from that dreary old dungeon crawl, try a different way to get the gold you need.  Unless the main tank is cute and available. That’s a different situation.

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Be a World of Warcraft God in 5 Steps
September 2, 2008 12 Comments

Be a World of Warcraft God in 5 Steps

wow-god

You’ve got the game. You’ve done the raids. You’ve finished the PVPing. For some reason, and you can’t quite place it, there’s still a hole within you. It feels as if though there is something missing. You were a hardcore gamer before. In Counter-Strike you’d consistently dominate with the AWP in your hand. In Warcraft 3, dominating the opposition was nearly effortless especially with multiple tournament wins and top place finishes.

Not only that, you actually beat Tetris.

You’ve mastered shooters. You’re renowned in RTS games. Now you’ve set your eye on the MMO world. How does one “conquer” World of Warcraft?

Raid. Raid a lot.

The best gear in the game can only be acquired by tackling the hardest bosses in raiding instances. Until you’ve taken down Illidan and Archie (and now Kil’Jaden), you’re just a small pup. Get the best gear you can possibly get!

PvP Endlessly

What good are all those shiny weapons going to do if you can’t actually use them? It’s one thing for your opponents to make a note of the firepower you’re packing. It’s something else entirely when you go up to them and cleave them in half. Furthermore, a strong push to the 2000+ rating is almost a must. Non-stop BGs and Arenas are your ticket to be the Unstoppable Force.

Post often to forums

Forum trolling is an acquired skill. Some people just grow up having the innate ability to cause an uproar. The point here is to make your presence known and felt. A real gaming God is not content with just be a one man wrecking crew. Their name has to be known in households worldwide. The only way to do that is with constant posting. Reply to other threads, answer other questions, or start some discussion of your own.

Have insane amounts of gold

Like it or not, the WoW economy is one of the central pillars that drive this game. Gold makes the world go round. Without money, you can’t buy the supplies you need. Yes, although WoW Gods don’t need trivial things, armor and weapons could use some buffing and shining every so often. Although some players would be willing to do it for free, the merchants in the cities need to make a living somehow.

“Contribute” to Trade chat

It’s not enough to own the forums. You have to own trade chat! Start making references to bad movies! Make fun of Canada! Go ahead and randomly insert support for some political candidate! Get people to react to you! I saw this one guy in trade chat who said that “heals can’t crit” and I observed in amused amazement as the entire channel went off in an uproar for a good 45 minutes citing every resource base in the game that “yes, heals can in fact crit”.

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November 10, 2007 Leave a Comment

No Money No Problem

Can that patch get here any sooner? The faster I get to deal more damage, the faster I can start getting money. Leiandra made a good point the other day. Why on earth do we do daily quests? With all the raiding and the wiping on Vashj, I need income from some source to restock on potions. I need Mana Potions to survive and make sure the rest of my team lives. Here’s my main problem. It’s not the inability for me to deal damage. It’s my lack of time. There’s so many things that I need to do on a given day that I just don’t have the time to farm the necessary Herbs. Therefore, I’m caught flatfooted and placed at the mercy of the auction house minutes before the raid is due to begin. That is why I need the money from daily quests. I’m trading time for money.

During the summer, the gain from doing dailies outweighed the loss from repairs and pots. I was raking in about 100 G per day between Mallet and Saphfira. I was able to pick up an epic mount soon after. It went to Saphfira. Why not my main you ask? Because Saphfira’s professions are mining and herbalism whereas Mallet’s are enchanting and tailoring. It makes more sense. The time I do have to farm can then be increased further.

Now that I have one epic mount already, I just don’t have the desire to collect the gold needed for another one. I just don’t see the point. Prestige? Whoaness? No, I rely on my gear for that. Just about everyone has an epic or a netherdrake already. My income has been cut dramatically short. It’s now something like 20 gold per day. It’s barely enough to get me by on potions and repairs. My gold count tends to stay below 100 among both my characters. I guess I’d be considered impoverished in WoW?

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