World of Warcraft - Tales from the AH

I did it!!!

What did I do you ask well I finally sold my first 400g Glyph. Even though I spend too much time reading gold blogs I only recently noticed that I have 5 glyphs of mage armor hidden in my glyph stockpile. Clearly though it is not a main earner for me so I thought I would tell you a little of what invested in and put up for sale.

·         Glacial bags – Expensive to craft but usually sells within a week of posting. I farm my frostweave on my tailor when she does dailies and the infinite dust comes from the saronite shuffle which is thankfully cheap on my realm about 15g a stack.

·         Abyssal Bags – Thanks to Miss Mediocre for this. Cheaper than a glacial bag with no cooldown I craft two a week and list them one at a time with a little spamming of trade because people still don’t understand it is a 22 slot bag.

·         Meta gems – Yeah more saronite shuffle shenanigans the prices here vary dramatically so i do not invest to much into this there are better ways to invest eternals at least on my server

·         Frostweave bags – On a good week these can be selling for 65-75g gold a piece and unlike glacial and abyssals tend not to take 5 days with a couple of relistings to shift. Once again my main which I used to use to do 10 dailies a day probably 5 days a week is a tailor and so generated a fair amount of excess frostweave for free and I disenchanted cheap jewelry crafts into the infinite dust. A slow and steady earner this one.

 

I am also sharing what I am stockpiling for patch 4.0.3 when the new race/class combinations come out and we will get a flood of new alts.

·         Runecloth –gathered from running Scholomance to get rep for my 3^rd Crusader

·         Netherweave cloth – all the blogs say bags sell well so I figure it is worth a shot

·         Saronite ore – I pick it up whenever I can prices are already started to spike

·         Eternals – Fire, Life, Shadow and Earth mainly

·         Fish – on my way to fishing to 450 so I stockpile the fish to sell later

So that is my take on World of Warcraft gold generation. However if my word is not good enough why not check out these blogs to get some tips.

Miss Mediocre

Capped By Cata

Anaalius's hunt for gold

Shaft's Words - Going from Strength to Strength

So I have noticed almost by accident that I have got a lot more serious about blogging recently with the number of posts really starting to pick up. I’m hardly going daily but I am getting close to two posts a week which I think is probably near the ideal for me. I have decided to diversify my blog posting as before but at least now I try to identify the subject of a post in advanced so if you wanted to you can skip ones if you are say only wanting to hear about World of Warcraft stuff and are totally not interested in Anime or US TV.

So I feel I owe to myself and you the readers (as seemingly invisible as you are) to take steps to improve things on this blog and to seek new audience in order to enrich the blogging experience all around. The blog will be looking inward over the next few days using some tips found from other established blogs who know what they are doing while also trying to establish some links with other websites that are relevant.

It is all mostly in the planning stages now but hopefully we will be moving forward soon but don’t worry the posts will still be coming as thick and as fast as possible.

World of Warcraft – Retribution Paladin 4.0.1 CHANGES

So I have been busy in my Warcraft stuff trying to make a little gold here and there slowly relearning my classes and sorting them out in terms of gems, glyphs or reforging as necessary. I certainly don’t have the nightmare as some of my friends I only have three level 80s, the first a Priest, the next a Death Knight and finally a Paladin. Guess what this post is about.

Paladins are one of the most popular classes in World of Warcraft heck on my realm I checked the populations once by class and paladins made up something like 20% of the level 80s here. Paladins have a reputation as the faceroll class of WoW and get a lot of stick because of the interesting changes that they have been through since BC.

If you visit MMO Champion or stake out the official WoW forums then you will know time and again Blizzard often in the form of Ghostcrawler will say that paladins need a revamp blah, blah, blah. It seems now that this revamp, reimagining or whatever you wish to call it has come to pass. BEHOLD the Holy Power system – cue dry ice, mood lighting and some faux angry rock song. Hmm even with the bells and whistles it seems to lack something.

The main problem with the 4.0.1 changes is the shock to the system, the other two classes i play are pretty much the same as they always were yeah they were alterations to spells that might affect rotations at 85 but for now I can contribute well to a group with only a little research and messing about (minus the fun of reglyphing and reforging which takes time), with a paladin it is like a whole new class that just stole the paladin’s skills.

I felt so lost standing at the training dummies in Silvermoon vainly trying to build up Holy Power charges to use Templar’s Verdict and just trying to get a hang of this new system. I have been reading some blogs on the Paladin changes like THIS ONE and I tend to agree in that now ret feels like a cheap rogue knockoff direct from Hong Kong. Reading into things it seems that things don’t get started until we hit level 81 and get a new spell that should help in adopting a rotation but of course that is not a lot of help at the moment.

This is a weird time for learning how to DPS as to be honest I don’t have the time or inclination to try and get into the often fail PUGs that go to ICC 10 or 25. I suppose I should but alts don’t level themselves.
So at the moment I am incredibly unimpressed by the ret changes but I am not quite ready to give up yet queue ANOTHER reading of the ret paladin thread at Elitist Jerks and tomorrow I will try to get into some sort of raid to test my dps after going back to the training dummies.

After that fun, I get to go try and relearn how to heal badly.

World of Warcraft - Honor Weapons + Easy Gold

HONOR WEAPONS

First off thanks to MMO Champion for the first part of this post as without them and the Boub for something that otherwise would have totally gone unnoticed by people like me. For some strange reason and I tend to assume that this is some sort of strange error as a result of the emblems, marks and honor to Justice Points/Honor Points conversion, you can now get arena gear and weaponry for just honor points with no rating requirements needed at all.


Please note a few things though:

1. These are the 1st tier of weapons and armour so not the best you can get ilvl 270 and down by the looks of it.

2. Taking the time to check the vendors shows according to tooltips that you still need ratings, IGNORE THIS just click to buy them and you will be able to should you have enough honor.

3. I would act fast there are hotfixes and mini-patches galore I would suspect before Cataclysm due to all the game breaking this holiday is causing plus all the fun dps level changes that have the raiders gnashing their teeth endlessly so this could be returned to how it was.

Why is this important well for me it is a godsend and I will tell you why. As someone who (used to?) like playing on his paladin shields both the defensive kind and the caster ones were a nightmare to get a hold of especially like me if you didn’t like to raid as a tank and usually just went as a healer. The shields only cost 70 honor points whereas weapons and the like start at around 1400 for one-handers. That has got to be an error so as the commercials say ACT NOW.

For those non-palas (or shaman that like to have all specs covered) this might be a good time to supplement that second spec weaponry I for one will be farming up the honor in the hopes of purchasing a nice two handed weapon with those lovely PVP level stam numbers for my DK to tank with. She is usually frost dps.
And remember all you young goblins better weapons can often open up new lines on your gold making businesses.

EASY GOLD

In order to cast Easy Gold – Shaft's Word (Rank 1) you need the following reagents:

- At least one level 80 (DK are ideal), more level 80s means more gold
- To log in before the end of the current WoW Holiday event
- About an hour or so of time

Once you have all these things you are ready to go, just log in and jump on a flight patch in Northrend, Outland, Eastern Kingdoms or Kalimdor then just fly from settlement to settlement on your factions side pop into the inns there and click on the big pumpkin and boom nearly 14 gold per inn at maximum level. Sure the flying gets a little boring but then you can always queue for something (Oh no you can’t at least on EU servers no end of gremlins in the system currently). You have to remember this is the best kind of free money literally only taking you the time to click on the fat pot of gold at your destination, there is no chasing down mobs, clicking on silly usable items to free souls or flying around collecting stuff it is just go here, click that and profit. Nuff said.

Poke. Poke. Poke

?

??

Hey reader why are you poking me? Oh so you say you don’t have a level 80. Boo hoo, ok no that was harsh I tell you what you can still make some use of this money trick but for you it will be an XP trick to speed you on your way to level 80 (or lower if you intend to be a twink for some reason). Through some discovery of my own I have noticed that clicking a giant pumpkin head will net you something like half the xp that a yellow quest should at your level so for anyone above level 40 who by then should have a good choice of inns that they can get to without much trouble it should be more than worth your time so get out there and profit.

World of Warcraft - PATCH took my money :(

Well not really but it took me a full day to install that damn patch, having to restart it twice at various points because of various errors which was rather frustrating. I was one of the many trying to quickly in and get crafting on the glyph market to make some quick gold though obviously it did not come to pass. I felt rather frustrated to be honest but upon having a good look at the AH over the past few days (since Thursday when I could log in) Glyphmas it seems did not quite reach my server.

A little background my realm on the EU servers has always been a little weird compared to most in terms of the AH activity.  I used to look to my friend on Sunstrider for advice and generally all the trends he used to mention really never showed up on my server. Now I do scans and check on trends I just find my economy seems a lot less diversified than others which seems to make it harder to get ahead in the gold race. I am currently sitting on 20k but to be honest I would say at least half of that is good old gold grinding, dailies, soloing instances and the like with only a few lucky wins on the AH from enchanting mats and some blacksmith crafting of ilvl 264 stuff.

The Glyph market itself is much like it was before the patch with glyphs going as low as 6g and not a lot higher than 40g barely worth the time and certainly not worth the money if you dropped 2k or so on herbs which fortunately I haven't plus I'm still levelling inscription being only on 441 as I write this so I didn't get burned too badly.

I'm obviously monitoring things closely and hoping to make some more gold soon 20k isn't enough for me at least I want to be rolling in the stuff for Cataclysm when hopefully you might be able to transfer things cross realm and make economies truly interesting (cue maniacal laughter).

BOOK POST - Vampire Academy 1-4

[BEWARE, SPOILERS FOLLOW FROM THIS POINT ON. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.]

So lately I have been reading the Vampire Academy series by Richelle Mead currently in fact I am reading Spirit Bound. Vampire Academy is a huge book series for anyone with more than a passing interest in YA novels. It is the kind of book you see on display in bookstores like WH Smith that will maybe have all of one shelf and an end display for children’s reading combined with YA but for some reason it never appealed to me. I put at least some of it down to the fact that all the Twilight hype started kicking off and I was loathe to just assume that another vampire book would be as good and it also comes off as very girly after a browse through of the back cover.

Strangely enough I first came to an incredibly similar series called House of Night which as far as I can see doesn’t quite have the reputation that VA does but it easily as good or even better a read but that is a discussion for another time.

So here is a quick review of the books so far in the series up to Blood Promise.














VAMPIRE ACADEMY
The first book reads like a blur there is so much going on it becomes quite difficult to keep up. Although now I am sure a lot of you guys are questioning my reading age I am just giving my opinion. The things that left me feeling a little bit lost was the constant movement back and forth from before running away and back to the present aftermath of the capture. There just seemed to be a lot of things to absorb, while it was still entertaining that part of it was a little annoying. Rose is somewhat likeable though the whole dedicated to Lissa and being the number one party girl thing did start to jar with me a little, it felt like she was incapable of noticing how she acting.
The book itself is exciting even with all the baggage of being the first in the series and having to lay down so much background and the romantic stuff doesn’t suffocate the rest of the story from moving on.
3 out of 5 stars. A Solid Opening.














FROSTBITE
Frostbite, the second in the Vampire Academy series is a big step up from the first not suffering from the limitations of having to fill in too much back story as a result the action kicks off and instantly you find yourself eager for the next page or chapter. The change of scenery worked well too and the interaction between the characters made you begin to care for the other supporting characters in a way I didn’t in the first book. Adrian is an interesting character and instantly makes you like him despite his vices.
The second part of the story is compelling and leaves the pulse pounding you just know something bad has to happen when they are left in that situation and it is truly heartbreaking when it does come to pass. Rose’s near obsession with Dimitri is to me hardly worth mentioning at this point, we all knew from the first book that this was the main romantic story of the series and sometimes it gets a bit repetitive to hear her whine about why her love life is a mess. For me Frostbite is where Vampire Academy truly gets started.
4 out of 5 stars. An Excellent Read.














SHADOW KISS
Shadow Kiss deals with the aftermath of the death of Rose’s friend and would be romantic interest. It doesn’t stop there though as it delves into the further implications of being a shadow kissed guardian. There is further political intrigue in small part due to the upcoming trial but mainly the attempt by royal Moroi on campus to organise themselves which leads to a very tragic if unexpected outcome.
Rose spends the book doubting her sanity and reeling from her grief at the loss of Mason with so many things left unsaid between them. The Spirit bond and the issue of darkness rears its head as first Lissa then Rose lose control of the dark emotions that using Spirit can create after Lissa is tortured by her classmates eager to make use of her power to compel. The result of this is the consummation of the relationship between Lissa and Dimitri something most readers will have been waiting around to see happen me I’m still a little put off by the difference in age.
There is then a huge battle with the Strogoi and another inevitable tragedy as the prophecy comes true as Dimitri falls in battle and it is later confirmed he has been ‘awakened’.
3 out of 5 still an enjoyable read but not the height of excitement that Frostbite was.














BLOOD PROMISE
Ok this one is weird and takes the series in an entirely different direction. Rose attempts to burn all her bridges as she leaves the Academy to kill her lover as part of a promise she felt she made once to him. It feels at first reading through the book like you have fallen into another series but an interesting one nonetheless. Though Rose does wallow a bit which can become a bit annoying the first part of the book is interesting especially with the reference to the landscape and cityscape of Russia.
The new character is interesting I do hope we see more of her in the future though at first this whole human side of the hidden world of vampires jarred with me a bit I just thought maybe a little background could have been laid beforehand but that is just me and it is not all that important.
The parallel story back at the Academy is also interesting even if you only slip in and out of it briefly. It comes with one hell of a twist though that stretches the realms of possibility somewhat.
And here we come to the low point of the story Rose’s imprisonment for me it just dragged on and on for hours and it was just... boring. The escape was handled well and the drug addict storyline had some interest in it but things just stretched on and on.
3 out of 5 stars but a low 3 due to that whole imprisonment thing it nearly ruined the book for me.

And there we come to the end of my small report on the Vampire Academy series books 1-4.

World of Warcraft - The END is Nigh

So if you are a follower of all things Warcraft you will know that the release date for World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is now set in stone. From time to time I like to blog about my experiences in WoW it can seriously suck you in. Making gold for some of us becomes a bit of an obsession which is silly after all it is just a game. I just thought I would go over the basics of what I do to make my gold in World of Warcraft.

THE DAILY GRIND

Yes it is boring and when you have 3 level 80s it can be ridiculously repetitive. Repetitive yes but ultimately it is rewarding especially if you do dailies around a hub as in a relatively small area connected by flight paths as opposed to flying all over Northrend and therein wasting time. My chosen path is starting from the Argent Tournament and going west to the Ebon Blade quest centre. That is good for 10 quests per character who runs them at 13 gold each with a couple of extra gold bundles with a few of the Argent Tournament quests.
It is certainly not as sexy as some of the ways of gold making but it helps to keep a steady income stream to pay for repairs and consumables.

CRAFTING
I have had some success crafting ICC blacksmith items but it can’t now be relied upon this close to Cataclysm’s launch everyone is starting to zip their money purses for the new expansion.
I really can’t wait till the new patch hits which will give us access to the new talent layout and will throw out things like armour penetration and easy tanking . Scary stuff, indeed it is nearly time for change.

PART II
So now that we know Cataclysm is coming on the 7th of December it is time to do some planning for those of you who are like me and spend far too much on our machinations in Azeroth. So I thought I would talk a little about my plans for when the patch launches to prep us all for the new expansion.
[A levelling we will go, a levelling we will go]
The patch opens up new race/class combinations of the existing races of course. The Horde changes are the ones I find interesting so I will be levelling the following in the few scant days between the patch and the expansion:
A Troll Druid likely to be feral in nature.
A Blood Elf Warrior just for giggles.
I shall report back after the patch drops and shitstorm begins =o)

CHUCK season finale and Screwing the Pooch

So I caught the Chuck Finale as broadcast on Channel One here in the UK (formerly Virgin1) it was pretty good, a thrill ride with the same mix of high kicking and comedy. I have to say though i was really disappointed with the first half of the season in my view there were a lot of throwaway episodes and I tend to hate that still I guess in the end they were able to thread together something that was worth watching.
So on to the screwing the pooch. Channel One wasted no time in revealing that if you wanted to catch Chuck season 4 you’d have to stomp up the cash because it is going to Living home of quite a few top American shows like Supernatural, CSI and Grey’s anatomy. There is no worse crime against TV viewers in my opinion then stealing shows that started on Freeview. House was a good example going from Channel 5 to Sky after like 3 or 4 seasons that hurt to say the least.

It is stunts like these that mean people seek other ways to get their TV fix. One only need to look out how long it takes Smallville to get here after the season goes out in the US it is beyond a joke and something like 10 months from premiere over there to premiere over here. In this era of Internet and instant information do the various tv execs really take into consideration how much spoiler dodging one has to do if they are to wait for official broadcasting of a show they follow? Just something to think about.