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!

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:

• Cut high-selling rare gems. Things that you can easily sell in large quantities (JMTC recently published a post about Wowpopular and the Best Gem Cuts to Sell), so if you got undercut people whill simply buy through the undercut gems and reach yours.
• Jewelcrafting/Enchanting: Make Carnelian Spikes. You can even buy the raw [Carnelian] from the AH, if they're cheap enough. To see if they're so, just compare their price to those of Greater Celestial Essences: if 3x[Carnelian] < 1.5 x[Greater Celestial Essence], do this ([Carnelian Spikes] disenchant on average in 2x[Greater Celestial Essence], I put 1.5 in the formula so you'll have a good gain margin).

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!

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*Available from February the 2th.

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?

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Other posts about the PTR 4.0.6 patch notes:

• New metagems on the way!
• Sockets will be added on crafted epic gear
• New enchanting recipes (and nerf to [Enchant Off-Hand - Superior Intellect])
• Engineers won't need Volatile Air anymore (well, not as much as they need now, anyway)
• Alchemists and 4.0.6

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!

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.

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.

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)