Friday 29 April 2011

Trion announced when the Event Merchants will depart!

Trion finally said clearly how much time we have to spend Otherwordly Sourcestone!

  • the Otherworldly Sourcestone gift must be spent before 12am PDT on 10th May, 2011, when the Event Merchants will depart!

If you missed it (I'm sure you haven't), remember to check the mail of all your characters created before Wensday, 20th April... Even if they didn't take part in the River of Soul event, they'll recive a gift pack with some goodies and 250x[Otherworldly Sourcestone]

Saturday 9 April 2011

Another Rift Free Trial Code!

HAs I preannounce, here you have another Rift Free Trial Code for this week-end!

Ally Code:
MZGG-Y69R-XYWD-TJPH-2WT7

As the last one, this code can be redeemed by five people, and will let you download the client and play from 10am PDT April 8, 2011 throught 10am PDT April 11, 2011... so some of the time has already been "consumed"

You can visit www.RIFTgame.com/en/ally for instructions on how to apply this Ally Code.

Friday 8 April 2011

New Look

All the old World of Warcraft pages have been moved to a "container page", to make some space for the Rift ones... Also, since images from Rift where looking very odd on the old version of the blog, I've changed it to something else.

This evening I could get another Rift Free Trial Code... It will still be valid from 10am PDT April 8, 2011 throught 10am PDT April 11, 2011, so it will be partially "used"... But that's better than nothing!
If you have a Rift Free Trial Code for this week-end event and you want to share it, please do it in the comment section!
You'll probably won't use it (if, like me, you've taken all the people you wanted to the Rift's side of things), but someone out there could be looking just for that!

Thursday 7 April 2011

Remaining on Rift + Another Rift Free Trial Code!


Hi again!
First I waited a few weeks to be sure, then another few days to avoid this announcement was taken as an April's Fool. As you've seen, my blog has been quite dead in the last month, and this is because I'm not playing World of Warcraft anymore.
I don't have time for both games, and Rift has the great ability to be casual-friendly without being repetitive. When I started playing Rift: Planes of Telara I was sure the rifts themselves would become boring after a while... I was totally wrong.
The impact rifts have on the game is great: it's by no means just a way to farm some kind of currency, but something that dynamically changes your quest-flow. You log in to do something, and most of the time the world is different from when you left it (unless you're parked in your faction main city... but even then, you could have some invaders at his entrance).
The game itself is incredibly polished and tended by a caring developing team, which is releasing patches at a steady pace, addressing the few issues left and adding more content (like the River of Souls in patch 1.1!).

I still don't feel confident enough in my knowledge of the game to give you great tips, but I'll use my blog to let you know about what's happening and what others are writing, like in this great post by MissMediocre: On My Way To Becoming A Platinum Princess. MissMediocre is doing really a better job than me: I thought that keeping at 15-19 platinum while raising my professions was a great success for a level 34 character, but she totally proved me wrong!

Another reason to keep coming in this blog if you're interested in Rift are free codes to play for a few days in Rift (just if you aren't already playing)! I posted one of them a few days ago, and today I'm posting another one!

Here it is:

Ally Code
X7FW-Y3TK-HM6L-PMQJ-DN6G


This code can be redeemed by five people, and will let you download the client and play from 10am PDT April 8, 2011 throught 10am PDT  April 11, 2011

You can visit www.RIFTgame.com/en/ally for instructions on how to apply this Ally Code.

I'm quite sure Trion will release some more of these during the next weeks, and I'll keep giving them to you!
So, if you wasn't one of the lucky five who could redeem this code, keep looking at this blog for other codes! (or directly buy the game ;-) )

Thursday 31 March 2011

Rift free trial

Hi!
As some of you already know, I've become very fond of Rift lately.
Today Trion sent me (and, I suppose, everyone else) a code 5 people can redeem to get some free days on Rift: Planes of Telara... And I thought that, since I've been so silent, I owed you this:

Ally Code:
G9PD-LKRJ-93FW-YXQT-7J7E

Event Dates: 10am PDT April 1, 2011 through 10am PDT April 4, 2011

You can visit www.RIFTgame.com/en/ally for instructions on how to apply this Ally Code.

Keep in mind that only the first 5 will be able to redeem the code... Good luck!

Update: Added a new code here: Remaining on Rift + Another Rift Free Trial Code!

Wednesday 23 February 2011

The Second Best Add-On for the AH

Today Cold published an interesting post on his blog about The Only AH Add-On Required... Well, actually on the Cold's Gold Factory there are interesting posts every day, but I wanted to talk about this one in particular.

For Cold, the only add-on you will never need is your brain. Well, I quite disagree: there is another fundamental add-on you should use (especially if you're really using only your brain): Pen and Paper.

Writing notes is fundamental, even when you're using a lot of add-ons: since you're the one inserting manually your notes, the old fashioned pen and paper (or even better: pencil and paper) is nearly free of data-pollution risks.

Writing things down helps reasoning, and makes visualizing a lot easier. You have to choose what to write and what not to write (you can't just mindlessly collect data as Auctioneer would do), so every time you take your pencil you're making decisions. Having to make decision is good.
You learn more by applying and deciding than just by watching.

I remember that in my first days on the AH I used just my brain, pencil, paper, rubber and sometimes a calculator. This was years ago, at the beginning of the BC, and I used to strongly refuse to download any kind of AH add-on. Years later I finally decided to start using add-ons more and it certainly made the AH easier and faster... But I'm quite sure those years weren't useless (and, well, glyphs didn't exist back then, so I didn't have to post those huge amount of different little things).

(BTW, in Rift I'll have to go back to those methods, since there aren't add-ons O.o)

Tuesday 22 February 2011

Win a Pet with Ele-Mental Gold

For those who love pets, but don't want to pay real money for them, there is a great oppotunity to get one for free! You have a week to join the Ele-Mentalgold's Win A Pet Contest
To participate you just have to go there and make a comment answering the question: "What makes you such an avid collector of mounts or pets?"

Well, if you're going to participate you surely have an answer for that, don't you?

Sunday 13 February 2011

Rift: The Planes of Telara (Open Beta soon)

I wanted to talk about this new MMORPG, Rift: Planes of Telara, which is due to be released in March.


I didn't take part in any of the closed beta, but I looking forward to participate to the Open Beta, also to decide if I will buy or not the game.
If you haven't heard of Rift: Planes of Telara yet, let me summarize what I know for you.

Rift will keep a lot of mechanics and an interface very close to what we're used to see in World of Warcraft, but will make both substantial changes to the class system and subtle adjustment to other aspects of the game. 
It will also use something similar to Warhammer Online's open quest system in what they'll call Rifts: openings to other planes of existence that players will have to close to avoid them spawn invasion forces on the world of Telara. If left unchecked they can dramatically change the landscape of the world surrounding them, and also conquer villages, replacing friendly villagers with rather unfriendly elementals.

Class System
The class system is really different from everything I have experienced before. You have to choose one out of four Callings, and then you'll have to choose which three "talent trees" will compose your "class". For instance, the Calling named "Rogue" has in itself both what we know has a Rogue and what we know has a Hunter (and other things we don't have in World of Warcraft). If you want you can choose your "Souls" (i.e. which talents trees to have) to be something similar to a Rogue, or to be something similar to an Hunter. But you could also create a mix of the two, like a rogue-like melee-fighter with a pet or something totally different (thanks to the Soul that don't resemble neither of the two classes). One of the exemples of an official video was a "Teleporting Ranger".
The four Callings are Warrior, Cleric, Rogue, Mage.

Professions
Since this is a gold making blog I suppose you'll be interested in the economic aspects of the game.
Professions closely resemble those of World of Warcraft, with gathering and crafting professions and even an equivalent of Enchanting (Runecrafting... And instead of "Disenchant" you "Runebreak").
There are twelve professions and each character can learn three of them (yep, three!)

Gathering Professions
Butchery - Gather hides and useful parts of animals
Foraging - Gather herbs and wood
Mining - Gather minerals and ores

Crafting Professions
Outfitting - Craft Cloth and Leather Armor
Armorsmithing - Craft Mail and Plate Armor and Shields
Weaponsmithing - Craft Weapons
Artificing - Crafts Necklaces, Rings, Staffs, Totems and Wands
Runecrafting - Equivalent of Enchanting, Enchants here are called Runes
Apothecary - Equivalent of Alchemy: crafts Flasks, Potion, Philters, Tonics and Vials

Most recipes will be learned directly from the trainer for gold (money is actually broken down in Platinum, Gold, instead of Gold, Silver, Copper), but others are bought with tokens gained through daily quests.

I didn't found a lot about the AH itself, except the fact that it actually exists and a comment about it working well.

The Open Beta
The Open Beta event, titled "Telara the Merciless" will begin on Tuesday, Feb. 15 2011 at 10:00 AM PST (18:00 GMT) and will and on Monday, Feb. 21 2011 at 10:00 AM PST (18:00 GMT). So it's a full six days, great if you really don't know what to do that week-end.
For me, this will be a great chance to get the feel of the game before buying it. I'll definitely participate!
I suggest to everyone to go try, so we'll help the guys at Trion Worlds to test their game (and their servers) and at the same time everyone will be able to form an idea of the game.
Obviously it's not the same as having the true game (you can't even reach max level in the Beta), but it's surely better than just reading websites about it!


Did you play at the Closed Beta events? Are you planning of participating at the Open Beta?
Do you think you'll buy Rift?

Friday 11 February 2011

A Trip Down Memory Lane

Hi,
I didn't post in the last days because I'm not really feeling well, and writing in a foreign language when you can hardly read a even a book in your isn't the best thing in the world.
I know I should have material prepared for this kind of things, but this time I didn't... So, this is the reason I'm not posting these days, the blog will became more alive as soon as my body temperature goes back somewhere between 36 and 37° Celsius.

In the meantime, someone linked me this post: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2059307163?page=1
I suppose mmo-champion found it first, but well, I think it's funny, so I'll repost it here for you.

I'm sorry for being such a bad blogger this month.
Exams were hard enough without getting sick.

How are things going for you? 4.0.6 made you a lot of profit?

Tuesday 8 February 2011

Patch 4.0.6 are you prepared?

So, Patch 4.0.6 is now coming (really soon if you're in the US, tomorrow if you're in EU servers).
I've already written a good number of posts about this patch, so I'll divide them by profession and add some other comments:

Jewelcrafting:
Other changes to metagems: [Eternal Shadowspirit Diamond] the block value has been lowered from +5% to +1%
This is really a change to Tailoring/Leatherworking/Blacksmithing, but it has a great impact also on JC, since most people will need two more gems for their equip. No changes have been seen on PTR regarding [Dragonkiller Tunic] / [Assassin's Chestplate] / [Belt of Nefarious Whispers] / [Corded Viper Belt].

Another gem cut had been added: Vivid Dream Emerald provides resilience/spell penetration and can be purchased for 3 Illustrious Tokens.


Enchanting:
Other things:
Enchant Cloak - Dodge can no longer be cast on capes below the character level 35 requirement.
[Formula: Enchant Cloak - Dodge] was one of the better enchantments for BoA cloaks (obviously not as good as [Formula: Enchant Cloak - Stealth], but still good)... So now there won't be this option anymore.

Enchant 2H Weapon - Mighty Agility required Runed Elementium Rod, which is learned at a higher skill level. This has been addressed.


Engineering:
Engineers will both need less [Volatile Air]s and find more of them.

Alchemy:
I said they would have made [Lifebound Alchemist Stone] not disenchantable anymore, and they actually did so the day after I posted that... All the other information in the post are still valid, as far as I know.

Saturday 5 February 2011

Best of January

Here we are again for January's Best of the Month Blogging Carnival!
If you're a blogger and you missed this chance, remember that you can submit an entry for February as soon as you have a post you love to submit as an entry... Check the rules at the Best of the Month Blogging Carnival page!
Now, let's see what this month has brought us:


The Auctioneer Hot Spot In New Orgrimmar, form Cold's Gold Factory
New Orgrimmar

You aren't still basing your auctioneering operations in the near front gate of Orgrimmar are you? The front gate commerce area in the new Orgrimmar era is one of the least efficient areas to use as your base of operations since Cataclysm. It is really bad compared to my new favorite area. (Read More)


TradeSkillMaster Glyph Crafting Part 1 & 2, from Ele-Mental Gold
(Instead of showing you the first lines of the posts, I'll put here a table of contents. Kreaton)
TradeSkillMaster Glyph Crafting Part 1
What is TradeSkillMaster?
Installation
Scanning
Configuration Part 1
TradeSkillMaster Glyph Crafting Part 2
Managing Crafts
Crafting
Shopping and Adjusting Prices
Finishing the Crafting Steps
Posting Configuration and Groups
Adding Items to Groups

Cata Darkmoon Cards- Fighting Competition with Singles? This is the Time to Buy! from ALTOs Gold"ish" Advice- The Worst WoW Blog Ever!
Last night, while I was selling a bunch of Mysterious Fortune Cards, I hit the AH, and I noticed a few things. One, when I searched the quest tab, there were a TON of cards listed, even more than normal (there are alot of Scribes on my server). So I started typing. Of Waves. Of Embers. Of Stones. Of Winds. And to my surprise, I was able to pick up a few items... (Read More)


Profit Margins: "Go Big or Go Home" or "Slow and Steady", from Bank of Wukam
This is an issue that troubled me quite a bit when I first started getting into serious jewel crafting for profit toward the end of LK. Since I was buying the uncut gems and not prospecting for them (I'm not sure it was profitable to prospect Titanium Ore for epics) I often ran into problems when the cut gem was selling for maybe 10-15g more than the uncut. I would usually just ignore that gem completely and focus on the ones that sold for a wider profit margin. However... (Read More)



THE GOLD QUEEN'S MUST-HAVE ADDONS, from The Gold Queen
I want to tell you about some of my favourite addons for buying, selling and keeping track of my auctions and gold making online.

1. Auctioneer
Download from Curse addons at http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/auctioneer.aspx
The grand-daddy of them all, Auctioneer is modular, and lets you download the entire suite or just the parts that you need. It keeps track of auction data, makes the auction house easier to use and navigate, lets you search for items, sell, check prices, everything! (Read More)

Kill Some Critters, Get A Critter!, from Miss Mediocre
Though I hate to encourage the slaughter of innocent bunnies, squirrels, sheep, cats, and all those other cute little critters scampering about Azeroth, I love pets. Offer me an Armadillo Pup companion, and I’ll slaughter 50,000 critters with a smile on my face! Well, maybe not a smile, but I’ll at least do it... (Read More)


Coattail Surfing, from Player Vs Auction House
Being a highly successful auctioneer is a lot of work. It is all about risky venture capitalism, identifying nascent markets, tapping into hitherto untapped fonts of wealth, cultivating your own army of farmers, constant awareness of breaking-news patch notes, daily (or hourly) scanning of the AH, commercial espionage of your competition, and occasionally downright sabotaging of said competition.(Read More)


Why I make Gold? My story, from Trading with Zoxy
For me MMOs started when LOTR came out I had played games like Baldurs Gate and the such but never got into a MMO until some mates from work asked me to join them and play LOTR . I Really enjoyed the Crafting aspect and Worked out a way to make a lot of gold with my top level professions... (Read More)

Thursday 3 February 2011

Getting rid of what I had


This is a follow-up from my post What should I do?.... I wanted to report what I did with all that material (well, not all... let's say one third of it)... For those of you who wonder how having problems with this is possible, look at Zoxy's "What should I do?" post... Yes, Zoxy had my same problem, as many others! It's funny we choose the same name for our posts ^_^ I posted just ten days earlier, so this is clearly a problem of these weeks.

I'm still drowning in a huge amount of gems, but things actually started working great. What really did the trick is this comment from Altolycus, from ALTOs Gold"ish" Advice- The Worst WoW Blog Ever!:
What has also worked for me is checking the opposite faction and seeing the prices over there. Normally, the major farmers hit one side and not the other. 
I know I should have thought about it, but sometimes the most obvious solution are the most difficult to find!
I sent to my Horde toon 15 stacks of [Greater Celestial Essence], 10 stacks of [Hardened Elementium Bar] and a lesser quantity of some other things (two stacks of [Hypnotic Dust], a Darkmoon Fair  card of which I had three and the usual pets). My alt didn't have a lot of gold, just 3k (I had transfered some expensive items the other way round just days before). Next evening it had 25k, and I didn't had sold half of what I had sent. [Greater Celestial Essence] where going for ~80g each (40g Alliance side),  [Hardened Elementium Bar] for nearly 200g (120g Alliance side). Prices dropped a bit in the following days, so acting by without checking Horde's AH for sometime actually did me good. Prices are still a bit higher than in the Alliance, and things move faster.
This gave me the ability of smelting nearly all the Elementium I had left (I just have other 50 stacks in Ore form now) and made me trust disenchanting a bit more.
What I'm doing is keeping selling hardened elementium bars, but now to both faction... That's a lot quicker!

So, thanks Altolycus!

Dailies aren't enough to get rid of [Nightstone], [Zephyrite] and [Jasper], and I still hadn't time to craft all the [Jasper Ring] I should... When I have some spare time I cut a bunch of [Zephyrite] and sell them to the vendor. If some "Perfects" proc, I try to sell them on the AH, no more than two at a time (I vendor the others. No way I'll keep all of them in my bag).

[Alicite] Is the worst so far, since [Alicite Pendant] don't sell at any price (at least on my server). [Alicite] is consistently put in the AH under the vendor price of the cut version... Usually around 8g 50s, but I'm not buying them since the work of cutting and vendoring is quite long and boring even considering just the [Alicite] I already have.
[Hypnotic Dust] is going for 10g, and not selling very well. Since [Alicite Pendant] really don't sell, I still don't think crafting [Alicite Pendant] would be great. There isn't really a lot of profit I can make from them.
The same applies to [Jasper Ring], but since the [Jasper Ring] already repay themselves ([Jasper] is aroung 9g on my server, while [Hypnotic Dust] is sold at 10g each), I don't have any problem in crafting them.

I still have a big amount of [Shadowspirit Diamond], but they're starting to sell (both cut and raw)... I get 10k just this night from selling them. I started whispering to other seller searching those who will agree not to undercut me if I post things exactly at the same price they are posting them, making them doing the same for me. Some of them actually thanked me! I now have to be less vigilant on the AH and this actually helped my sanity a lot.
I'm selling some [Shadowspirit Diamond] every day, for prices that can vary a lot... from 140g to 330g!

I haven't tried engineering pets yet, since I don't have an engineer alt. I should have started to work with a friend of mine (the same that helps me cross-trading), but we were both quite busy in the last days.



It also seems that botters are having an hard time now, due to some hotfixes made by Blizzard... This could very well reduce my problems if the AH stops to be flooded by raw mats. I'm actually still seeing some gold-farmers, but surely less than before (this supposing that people with name composed by twelve random character are gold-farmers).
I have still a lot of [Obsidium Ore] stockpiled, so this would really be great!



You have just one day left to participate in January's Best of the Month Blogging Carnival
It's very easy to participate: you have time until February the 4th to choose your favorite post of January for your blog, add a link to the Carnival and send me an e-mail at kreaton05 (at) gmail.com
On February the 5th I'll publish the posts I've received for the month of December... Go to the Best of the Month Blogging Carnival page to check all the rules!
You can also see the Best of December post!

Tuesday 1 February 2011

January it's over. What was your best post?

You have now 4 days to participate to the Best of the Month Blogging Carnival I host.
Last month we had a lot of cool participants, and you actually don't have to do nearly anything to participate: just select a post you made in January, link it to the Best of the Month Blogging Carnival page and then send me an e-mail at kreaton05 (at) gmail.com

Simple as that!
You don't even have to write a new post...
It's "just" a way to show the post you're more proud of, giving everyone a second chance to read it. How many times has happened to you to think "the topic of this carnival is cool, but I have this other great thing to say!"? Now there is a Carnival for the posts YOU value the most!
Don't miss your chance!

Sunday 30 January 2011

Gaining without (nearly) logging in


Hi! This post is my entry for this month  WoW Gold Blog Carnival. This month we have a great topic: "How would you make gold if you had limited play time?", so let's start!

Let's take a look at some professions

Inscription:
What surely won't work:
First of all, having limited play time, IMHO, excludes Inscription almost completely. You won't be able to make glyph and re-post them efficiently when you get undercut if you can't log in several times a day or for long periods of time.
What could work:
There could still be two things you can do, depending on your server:

  • Darkmoon Cards: That's quite obvious. It has a great number of advantages: the cards are random, so people can't just make more to keep undercutting you. Even if someone undercuts you, they will do so with just one card. If you can't sell singles, decks sell great during the Darkmoon Fair, since there is not so many people getting into the trouble of creating a full deck, so there are usually very few of them.
    The only problem is that 1 out of 4 you'll get cards "of Stones" which don't sell very well.
  • [Mysterious Fortune Card]: This is a bit tricky. Normally it takes a lot of barking to sell these cards well, as Cold said in a lot of post in his Cold's Gold Factory (I'm not linking them all, since they're a bit out of topic... But you'll find some of them in his "Top 10 Popular Posts" sidebar). But if the gambling craziness has already taken your server, you could probably sell some just putting them on the AH and leaving. Start with small amount to check how this could go.

Jewelcrafting:
What surely won't work: Prospecting to cut and vendor IS time consuming. So pay attention to the amount of ores you buy. Prospecting is still a great way of making money in no time when raw gems sell well.
Even creating jewelcrafting items and disenchanting could be quite time consuming, but you should still do it for [Carnelian Spikes].
What works: Remember that you don't have to cut and vendor instantly. If you think that in some weeks you'll have more time to play, you could still prospect to get the mats you need and put somewhere.
Things you can still do:
Enchanting:
What surely won't work: Scrolls are still selling for really low prices so, no matter the amount of time, you won't be making money from this.
What works: Disenchant. Create [Carnelian Spikes] if you're a Jewelcrafter, otherwise check your AH to look for green items to disenchant. This won't take long, and will net you some good profit totally risk-free on most servers. You're not assured of finding those greens, but it's not an hard work checking.

Mining:
The only not time-consuming thing you can do with mining in smelting Hardened Elementium Bars, and it can easily become time-consuming if you have to smelt [Elementium Ore] into [Elementium Bar]. However, this is an activity your character can do alone even without any add-on or macro, so if you can run the game on a computer while you're doing something else you will be fine.
Just check [Hardened Elementium Bar] are profitable on your server.

Alchemy:
Just remember to do your transmutes every day.
Check the AH to see if there are potions/elixirs that can be made for a gain. In my server [Mythical Mana Potion] and, to a lesser extent, [Mythical Healing Potion], are good sellers.


Without needing any profession:
Well, there are basically two things you can do without any profession involved:

  • Flip items on the AH:
    Make yourself a good snatch list, if you already don't have it. The Consortium Forum is a great source of good advices about snatch lists. Don't stop at the post with their suggested Snatch List, but roam around in the forums... It's full of very useful things.
    Another thing you could do, if you have the money to invest in it, is slowly buying Darkmoon cards at the AH when they're cheap and then sell the complete decks (if you buy when there isn't the Darkmoon Fair, and sell the decks when it's there, you'll surely make a profit). Avoid the [Earthquake Deck] (->[Darkmoon Card: Earthquake]) (so cards "of stones"), since most tanks who needed it already have it. Prices are now half what they were two weeks ago, and are still going down.
  • Flip items bought from NPCs:
    People could think this isn't very appropriate if you don't have time to travel around, but they're wrong. You just need an alt parked near some vendors, ready to buy their goods when needed.  Now that Dalaran is totally empty anything sold just from those vendors sells great at the AH.

Now, if you are looking other ways to make money without investiong too much playtime in it, check this month WoW Gold Blog Carnival* hosted by Just My Two Copper: you'll surely find lots of useful information to get rich or richer come Cataclysm!



I'm now organizing a new Blogging Carnival of my own, the Best of the Month Blogging Carnival. If you want to participate you have time until February the 4th to choose your favorite post of January for your blog, add a link to the Carnival and send me an e-mail at kreaton05 (at) gmail.com
On February the 5th I'll publish the posts I've received for the month of December... Go to the Best of the Month Blogging Carnival page to check all the rules!
You can also see the Best of December post!


*Available from February the 2th.

Saturday 29 January 2011

Blizzard realized the new Fishing Quests were useless


From the PTR 4.0.6 Patch Notes:
  • Rare fishing poles now have a chance to be found in the Bag of Fishing Treasures earned via the Stormwind and Orgrimmar Fishing daily quests.

Will this be enough to make the quest worth the time it takes?
Well, I don't think we have the informations to know it for sure. Some people are saying the two poles will simply be the [Bone Fishing Pole] and the [Jeweled Fishing Pole], which I would find strange and disappointing, since anyone serious about fishing has already one of those or the [Mastercraft Kalu'ak Fishing Pole], which is obtained just by a rep-grind many people have already done before Cataclysm and that is surely better.
And the poles they'll have to put on those [Bag of Fishing Treasures] will better be really good, otherwise they won't still be enough. The old [Bag of Fishing Treasures], obtained from the Dalaran fishing dailies could contain lots of useful things and some high-vendor-price grays, while the [Bag of Fishing Treasures] we have today contains at best a gray item with a selling value of 18g.
My hope is that Blizzard will go further buffing the [Bag of Fishing Treasures], putting in there some other useful items and increasing the average value of the grays it holds...
This quests aren't "gold-making" quests, but it would be good having something to avoid the feeling of wasting you're time when you do it. 

Probably the biggest problem Blizzard is facing, is that [Bag of Fishing Treasures] is easily obtainable at nearly every character level (except maybe for one Alliance quest which is done quite near some lvl 85 sharks... I'm not sure if there is an Horde equivalent... Please tell me if you know!), so they didn't want to put any big reward in it. I don't know why they made it this way. Even if they wanted fishing quest lowbies could do, couldn't they put two different quests rewards, depending on character level? Or two different quests, one with an higher level-requirement, made for high-level characters?




Other posts about the PTR 4.0.6 patch notes:

Friday 28 January 2011

Best of the Month Carnival and JMTC

You thought I wouldn't come back? You were wrong!
I'm really sorry, but I really couldn't post anything in the past few days... These months are full of exams at my University, and I totally stopped living to better prepare for them!
I'm still really busy, but I'll try to start writing again.

What really gave me a shock was finding JMTC's Marcko talking about the Best of the Month Carnival in is last post... Even if without link, I'm quite sure he's talking about my "best of the month" ^_^
(well, maybe also about those of something else... if you host something similar, please comment this post with a link! I love this kind of things!)
So, today I'm just posting a brief reminder about the "Best of the Month Blogging Carnival" I'm holding this January. You have time until the 4th of February to send me your entries. You just need to choose your favorite post from this month (or make one, you still have a few days) edit it so it links to the page of the Best of the Month Blogging  Carnival and then send me an e-mail with a link to your post.
I'll post everything you send me on February the fifth... If you want to see how it went last month, here there is the Best of December.

See you tomorrow!

Saturday 22 January 2011

Selling Obsidium Bars

As you have seen if you read my post "What should I do?", I'm trying to get rid of a great amount of [Obsidium Ore] and related uncommon gems...
My server (or at least my faction on my server), as a great number of gold-farmers selling [Obsidium Ore] at less than what I call the Magic price for Obsidium Ore... i.e. the amount of gold you would make cutting the uncommon gems and selling them at the vendor (you usually make more gold than that just putting them raw on the AH).
I actually buy only when the price of [Obsidium Ore] is less than 40g a stack, and I still have too much Ores to sell everything I can make from them.

Well, something I found is going very well is selling [Obsidium Bar].
I'm actually putting them at 185g a stack and they actually sell very well... This seemed a bit strange to me, but I've been doing this for nearly a week without a great deal of competition. I checked the horde-side of my server, where there are less farmers, and there the prices for [Obsidium Bar] are a lot closer to what you need to make them.
I suppose that [Obsidium Bar] are selling well on my side of the server thanks to the gold-farmers: lots of players get tired of mining, since the competition was too hard for them... And they just forgot totally about that profession (or learned another one in its place) and so they're not smelting [Obsidium Bar].

This makes this knowledge very server-related, I know... But if your server is full of gold-farmers you should want to check if miners have stopped smelting [Obsidium Bar] (and maybe also [Elementium Bar] and[Hardened Elementium Bar]... Some time ago I made a post about selling Hardened Elementium Bars). I sell at least 10-15 stacks every day. Each one costs me less than 80g, and I price them all at 185g (even if there are some at less than that price... Usually there are so few  [Obsidium Bar] that people start to buy mine in a brief time... Also because I'm the only one selling stacks and not singles).

What I like more in all of this is that... Well, smelting takes a lot less effort and thinking than prospecting! I just put my miner near a forge and go to do something else. When I come back I don't have 12 different kind items which I should sometime cut, sometime sell raw, sometime cut and vendor. I just have a good number of stacks of something I can immediately put in the AH! This cannot be done in all servers, but it's great if you can.

Thursday 20 January 2011

Off-Topic: How an idiot ruined my day (and probably more than one)

They are depriving some village of its idiot. 

I'm sorry, but I'm not going to make a gold-related post today, since I'm too angry for what just happened to me.
I had an exam (I'm studying Physics at the University, I won't say which one), a stupid exam of Analysis. I already passed all the physics related exams, and I need to give very few exams before I can get my bachelor degree.

In the same room people where giving two different, but very similar, exams (two questions out of three were identical... they basically are the old and the new version of the same course). The professor gave to each of us 3 exercises, asking to each one what exam he/she was going to do. I clearly stated what exam I needed, but he mistakenly gave me the wrong exercise.

I didn't notice it, since there is no clear way to see the difference between the two.
It was a "strange" exercise for the course, and I was quite sure the thing that was asked in that exercise wasn't in the course... But since my professor isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, it would not be the first time he adds something we never done in one of his exams... And you can't make him reason about it.

So I stupidly tried to do the exercise (It was something I had done in another course, some years ago... quite rusty in my mind, but with some time I was sure I could do it) before finding the official... uhmmm... "program of the course"? "list of subject of the course"? I don't know how it is called in English. I had printed it in a flash of genius exactly to contest problems like that.
This happens after one hour and an half (I did part of the other two exercises in the meantime). The total time we had were three hours.
I suppose I lost half an hour because of this error the prof. made.

I finally get the real problem I had to solve, and I do it fast. I get back to the other two, and things go quite well... But I'm a bit late with everything. In the last minutes of the exam I ask him if I can get 10 minutes more, since I lost time due to his mistake.
And... He actually didn't understand what I was asking.
He told me "all the other students are giving the completed exams now, it cannot advantage you over them giving you other ten minutes" (well, this is a bit of stretch in the translation... the actual words were more like a mumbled "there are also the other students", but the meaning was this). I tried to explain again, but he was clueless. I didn't get my ten minutes.
Afterwards, in the same instant I got out of the room, I realized that in the last minute of the exam I made a mistake because I hadn't the time to double-check part of the text (I remembered a vector wrong... It was written (-1,1), I wrote (1,-1)). This error alone will count a lot on my final mark, since it led me to wrong results.

Now, this is it.
Let me just rant a little more about this poster child for birth control, so you'll see how he actually is just one IQ point above brain death.
Our University asks to all professor to fill some paper about their course, which then gets published on the website of the University. Things like the office number, the subjects touched by their course, the hours in which it will take place...
One of the question is "What are the expected learning results of the course?"
The answer should be a concise summary of the subjects, pointing out the more important ("The students will learn how to do <this> and <that> and will know about the existence of <this other thing>"). My prof answered:
"adequate."

Ah, I must admit that writing this post I used a lot this "Not too Bright List", which I found googling "sharpest knife in the drawer" (I wanted to be sure to say that right)... It's quite funny, go see yourself.

Wednesday 19 January 2011

What should I do?


I'm not quite sure of how much [Obsidium Ore] I have. In the last few days I've bought it only when it was selling for less than 45g, but that's still a lot of stacks.

I can't prospect fast enough to empty my mail, and I can't sell or craft/disenchant fast enough to get rid of the gems I prospect. I think I'll make some kind of "craft and vendor" feast (I already cut and vendored some of my gems, actually... but not a lot of the,. I guess less than 100), the problem is that this takes time and I need to watch the process, since cut gems don't stack and fill my bag quite fast.

You can see in this image the gems I cut in the last two days. You can notice [Hessonite] and [Zephyrite]s are slightly less than the others, this is because I've crafted/disenchanted a lot of them... But since I don't want to flood the AH of enchanting mats, I've something like 120 Greater Celestial Essence in my bag, trying to sell them a few at a time (soon I'll stop trying this and just put everything on the market). Prices for [Jasper], [Alicite] and [Zephyrite] are ~9g, so the auction house cut doesn't make it worth to try to sell them (except, in the case of [Jasper] and [Zephyrite], when there is the daily... But I think that by then I'll have too much of them to sell everything). The price of Hypnotic Dust is now ~10g and lowering, so crafting [Alicite Pendant] isn't an option.


I decided to use the [Hessonite] I have also to do a little experiment (which may or may not involve also [Nightstone])... Since I'm obviously using them to make [Hessonite Band], I decided to write down everything I get from them, so I'll have some good statistics of the blue procs and the quantity of mats made disenchanting the greens. I know that similar things have already been done, but it doesn't hurt to bring some other data. For now I crafted 155 of them, getting 17 blue rings. I could also try to sell them raw, since they're one of the few gems selling for more than 9g, but I prefer to get my numbers.
Do you have any creative idea of what to do with the gems and/or the [Obsidium Ore]?
All my [Alicite] are going to be cut and vendored, and the same goes for [Zephyrite] and [Jasper] gems.
I've tried to cut them in "rare" cut learned only from recipes and not from the trainer, with mixed results: [Stormy Zephyrite] sold well for some time, especially perfect ones. Have you seen any of this recipe-learned cut selling well on your server? Do you want me to try some of them?

(I should also find a way to get rid of [Elementium Ore]. There are hundreds stack at 44g each in the AH right now, and everything I do can't make them disappear... someone is simply posting more of them.
Since now I have had great results selling Hardened Elementium Bars, but I'd be more happy if I could diversify, and my BS isn't yet at level 84)