Leveling My Pacifist: Levels 1-14 (Herbalism+Mining)

     If you've been following me on Twitter, you might have heard a while back that I started the ridiculously daunting task of rolling a purely Pacifist toon. I first heard about these from an article back in Cata, and it always sounded like something that was really the essence of the game; creating personal RP-related xp-grinding goals and achievements and seeing if you can follow through. Long story short, Pacifist toons level all the way from 1-90 without killing a single mob, so that's purely from mining, herbalism, exploration, delivery quests, and Oh yes Archaeology. On the gold making side of things, I currently have on toon with mining and another with herbalism, and logging back and forth when I could do both on the same toon is getting really old, so it's time to roll a full time gathering druid; might as well cross off somethin from my WoW bucket list while I'm at it, right?

500 gold to the first commenter who gets the joke.

      What really surprised me about this whole journey so far is that, even at level 14, this character has taken on a life of her own. While, yah, it has been very slow, mining your way to cap...as you might expect. But think about it, back on our first toons, before we knew how to play, leveling felt slow, and it took us (or at least me) a couple hours of playing just to level once. Now with full set of BoAs people can go from level 1-20 in thirty minutes if they really push it. THAT USED TO TAKE THREE DAYS! Thing is, now, people then complain about how easy this is to do. With this Pacifist character, and when you actually give in to the time commitment, it brings back "the good old days" of slow and steady leveling. I'm currently at 21 hours played (probably 5 of those spent tabbed out in Stormwind) and I feel connected to this druid in a way that I definitely do not to my powerleveled 41 mage.

     Alright, down to brass tacks. You wanna join in on the fun? Here's what I recommend. First off, commit to not killing anything. Take any abilities that have any chance of doing damage off your bars. My bars consist of Rejuv, Nourish, Shapeshift, Prowl, and Shadowmeld. I recommend having autoattack somewhere but just not keybound, so that if you're accidentally attacking something, you can click your autoattack off before you accidently kill something and ruin the whole experiment. But all that's the boring stuff, right? You wanna know how to level. Ok? Ok.

Levels 1-4: 
     Honestly, this bit was pretty simple, once I figured it out. I started out thinking "Alright, I got a Pacifist! I'm gonna Mine my way to 90! Wooo! Not gonna kill anything!" Went to go learn the profession of mining and the trainer said "18 copper, please." While that's a pitiful amount, I was doing this character independantly, and going full RP with it, otherwise what's the point? So I went to go do a quest. The quest said kill 5 spiders. No thank you. I went to do another. Collect a windchime from the Furblog chieftain's corpse. Dammit. So here's the deal, intro quests have you killing piddly stuff. However, there is a ton of land to explore that will grant you 15%-20% xp per section. So, go spend an hour running around all the different starting zones in (Alliance bias here) Elwynn Forest, Dun Morough,Teldrassil, and Azurmyst Isle. For bonus points, do the lvl 10+ zones like Bloodmyst Isle and Westfall. Pick up any quests that you can, and if they're not too far out of your way, go ahead and complete em. Use your judgement on this.

Ugh, let me take my "Ding" screenshot in peace, Mr Mrglglrl

Levels 4-10:
     For this section, I stayed in Elwynn Forest, did all the quests in and around Goldshire, and just mined and herbed my heart out. Honestly, I can't imagine doing this with any race other than a night elf because Shadowmeld is amazing. Also, being able to throw a heal on and run away is fantastic when that is on cooldown. With rested XP and it takes roughly 50 nodes to level (opting not to use BoAs for this toon) so it goes pretty quick and even gray nodes give the same XP, at least at these levels. If you like to keep the rested XP buff up, you can gather until rested falls off, hearth to stormwind, log off for the day, and let rested accumulate, and then continue the next day - slow and steady for this playstyle never hurts.
     What surprised me about this is that after a while, it wasn't just mining. The fact that I couldn't kill the mobs added an interesting element to the mix. It was similar to the horror games where you don't have a gun and only have a flashlight, so you have to start thinking and planning more ahead of time. I dunno, maybe other Pacifists can chime in here but it was more than just a mining route. You have to think about where you're gonna go and play a game of Splinter Cell with the mobs aggro radius. I reccomend it.

Levels 10-12:
     Did a little experimentation at level 10. Went over to Westfall to try and see if I got more XP from higher level nodes since I was capped out on my professions, and there would be higher XP quests over there. Turns out, the nodes give the same XP and the aggro radius from the mobs is so much larger that you waste a lot of time running back from the graveyard. Sure, there is a little bit of XP from a quest here and there, But I think the best course of action is not to move on to the next area until you outlevel it by 2-4 levels so that all of the quests in the zone are available and you can safely run around. Back to Elwynn forest.

The Singing Sunflower is optional. Actually, I'm about to kill it.

Levels 12-14:
     Ran back to Goldshire. Farmed up a bunch more. Yada yada. Also, it's worth noting that even though these are basic lvl 1 herbs and this toon is walking from node to node, this toon has earned over 1,000g so far and has 3,000g worth of goods on the AH.

Conclusion and Future Techniques
     If anything is ever too hard, or I stop gaining experience, I can just unlearn mining and herbalism and start over again. A really interesting thing about this character that I absolutely love is that, unlike my warrior or any other character that I play where it's "kill-kill-kill as fast as I can" there is this Buddhist, Zen-like quality where you sit back and accept the grind. It will take time, so you do it, and it ends up not actually taking as long as you think when you accept it. Then once you do, it actually starts to be more fun than the the alternative because it makes you think and strategize. Funny. Worthwhile mindset to carry over into goldmaking as well.


Thanks for reading my little WoW blog! You can find me on Twitter Here, and on YouTube Here. I strongly suggest you download the TradeSkillMaster addon and the TheUndermineJournal GE addon. My brief setup guide is here, feel free to email or tweet any questions. And remember that the key to making gold in WoW is just to

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<Prev: Holiday Reflections from a Newb                                             5 Ways to Make Gold With Justice Points: Next>

Holiday Reflections from a Newb Huntard

     Recently Marcus Ty posted a thought provoking comment on Phat Lewts blog, "For players new to making gold and at a low level, a few minutes farming small eggs during the peak time of Winter Veil is a great strategy... Having accumulated several million gold over the years it's not something I do now, but for a level 10 player with little gold capital the strategy is still valid...As a blogger you sometimes have to think of new players starting out." This was in reference to a great post Phat Lewts did pointing out that the ever popular small egg farming strategy for Winter Veil only brings in an en estimated "1,801 gold per hour. Ouch." The whole conversation resonated with me though, because of a recent talk I had with an IRL friend, and rather than giving a long comment that was pretty tangential anyways, I thought I'd share a full length post with everyone.

     Ok, so, my buddy is a newb by all accounts and until last night at my going away party, I didn't know he even played WoW. I mentioned I was a blogger, and he told me that he has a lvl 63 hunter and a lvl 40 "Darni Paladin." Not sure I've ever /facepalmed that hard before.

Not at all how the conversation went, but dangit I love this video. #GetASporebat

 He's never been to Stormwind other than to learn how to ride faster or fly, and spends most of his time out in the world questing. As someone who visits a home city at least once or twice on each of his toons every day, this was both refreshing and eye opening. It's as if I've spent years dealing with LFR tanks who pull whole instances in greens, and LFR dps who are mind bogglingly miserable at their class, somehow doing only 1/3rd the dps I do when I autoattack, only to realize that a large portion of the WoW community doesn't even know what a raid is, let alone the LFR system. It forces you to take a step back and think about how great the game is when raiding, which we take so seriously, might actually be a minority of the population who plays. (BTW, if you're reading this buddy, don't worry, I'll get you leveled and geared! WOOOO!!!)

     Focusing on people like this, as Marcus Ty said, can be great. Despite how new my friend is to the game, he knows his class. He could recite his rotation from memory, taught me the difference between Call Pet can Revive Pet, AND all tanks will be glad to know that he knows how to turn off taunt.

And there was much rejoicing. Also, This list is awesome go check it out  

But back to the point, he's never had more than 500 gold on his account. If he read these blogs, went to Westfall and farmed eggs for 30 minutes, not even a full hour, he would have almost twice as much gold as he's ever had on his account since he's been playing. Sure, there are better ways to do it, but this is one very quick way to break his gold making paradigm. For anyone worried about, "What's the best way of making gold?" Stop. Take a breath, and just go through your professions. Make some flasks. Farm some ore. Run a dungeon. Put that stuff on the Auction House, and as that money comes in,  read a guide on how you could have done those things a smidge better.

     All in all, gold blogs and gold making would be pretty boring if we only paid attention to the maximum profit potential possible. There is a best Server-Profession-TimeofDay combination; Medium population enhancement professions on the first week a new raid is released are absolute cash cows, whereas gathering is also in high demand when a new expansion is released as everyone is leveling new professions. But if we all recommended the same thing, and that was to only play the game for one week out of the year, then that would be boring. Also, that's not why any of us play World of Warcraft. While we spend a lot of energy focusing on maximization, our driving force isn't REALLY to maximize gold per hour.

     We play because goldmaking is fun.

      So, today, I have a little holiday request for anyone reading. Go out and help a guildie. Don't give them gold, but teach them how to set up TradeSkillMaster. Or show them how to work the Auction House. Or run them through your favorite transmog dungeon. A little WoW charity for that one person in guild that is always complaining about never having enough money to buy that Sky Golem. Happy Holidays, everyone!


     Thanks for reading my little WoW blog! You can find me on Twitter Here, and on YouTube Here. I strongly suggest you download the TradeSkillMaster addon and the TheUndermineJournal GE addon. My brief setup guide is here, feel free to email or tweet any questions. And remember that the key to making gold in WoW is just to

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Every Day.

<Prev: How to Make 6500 Gold w/Blackrock Caverns                                     Leveling My Pacifist Toon 1-14: Next>

How to Make Gold With: Blackrock Caverns (6,500 gold per hour)

Introduction     If you haven't done dungeon farming for gold, get to it! This is a great resource for gold farming, and each dungeon has it's own unique resource, from transmog, to leveling greens, to craftable goods, to rare BoE twink weapons. If you HAVE been around the block and have read a few gold guides before, the reason I started this particular series is because I find it slightly unethical to tell people that they can make "X gold per hour" when the person writing the guide only tests the instance by running it once, twice, or even five times. With 0.5% drop rates on gear, and when the blogger/youtuber extrapolates from a lucky drop, you then go in thinking that lucky Gold per hour is the average, when it isn't. So, I'll be running each dungeon 15 times- 5 times each on 3 differently geared toons (tank, healer, and dps) to give the most accurate information possible. Also, rather than just the gold made I made, you'll also be getting pretty much everything you'll need to know about the dungeon to prepare yourself for your goldmaking journey. I hope you find it useful, that it raises the bar for gold bloggers out there, and that everyone reading this demands more from dungeon guides you read in the future. Enjoy!


Blackrock Caverns

     Oh, who doesn't love Raz (RAZ SMASH), the sweethart? BRC is one of the first dungeons you run in Cata and is a surprisingly good farm thanks to 1) lots of mobs being tightly grouped together, 2) ever-in-demand cata 77-79 BoE greens, 3) lots of humanoids for embersilk cloth, and finally 4) the ability to use the Potion of Treasure Finding get an extra 500-1,000 gold per hour. The dungeon is located in the interior eastern ring of Blackrock Mountain. To get to it, run into the the southern entrance of the mountain, once inside follow the right wall around until you get to a corridor, and then at the split take a right. The entrance is straight ahead.

The Stats

Run time: <11 minutes
Bag Slots Req'd/run: 25
Mailbox: Searing Gorge-Iron Summit(N)
Main Loot: 77-79 Greens
Vendor @ Instance: No

Boss Count: 5
Lootable Enemies: 97
Mob Level Range: 82-85
Run Back Req'd? No, portal@3rd boss
Dangers: Evolved Zealots,
     Shadow Prison debuff

Walkthrough

     I like to start off pulling a the first big group together and killing all the mages and then the first boss. The first boss' Skullcracker isn't a problem anymore, so just burn him. Raz has a nice trick where as long as you DPS the other guys a little, he'll finish em off whenever he gets released (Raz hits harder than you do, but feel free to help him out...or loot, whatever). This saves a decent amount of time if you're going for speed, or if you're running on a low dps class. After you cross the bridge, you'll an fight Evolved Twilight Zealot (big monster guys). Kill these quick! They do an ability that knocks out 60% of your hp, so guess what two hits will do. :)
      Anyways, take a right after the zealot (away from Corla) for a couple extra mobs, kill another Evolved zealot down the ramp, burn Corla, then round up the huge pack of zealot humonoids by hiding behind a pillar and just AoE them all down. After you cross the next bridge (thanks Raz!) don't kill the boss immediately. Make a ring and a couple small stops along the perimeter looting the 19 mobs there; I got a Blue or Green from them almost every single run for some strange statistically deviant reason. To kill the Karsh Steelbender, hold him in the fire and single target him. Easy Peasy.
     These next packs can actually be pretty tricky if you aren't paying attention. Gathering up the 6 Twilight Obsidian Borers will give you 6 or more stacks of Shadow Prison that end up ticking for 24k damage per second each if you're moving. This hurts at 90. So even though you're in a hurry, stand still until the debuff falls off or is low. You can handle running around with a stack or two, but it's remarkable how quickly things can spiral with those guys so watch your debuffs after the forge. Also, I've found it much more efficient to skip Beauty and her pups entirely.
      Finally, for the run back there is a portal, although it is a little hidden. Just run to the forge room where you killed Karsh Steelbender, and it's located in the corner. It will take you all the way to the entrance. The run should take somewhere in the range of 7-11 minutes.

Profit-Results:

     For this test, AMAZING!  But first there are three things you can do to increase your gold take on this dungeon. First (and my only recommendation) is to use a Potion of Treasure Finding. I got an average of 2.8 chests per run from the 97 mobs with a minimum of 0 chest drops per run, and maximum of 7. The loot contained within averages out to a +850 gold gain per hour. Also, if you're not hurting on DPS, you can equip the Golden Fleece and the Golden Moss for an extra ~150g/hr and 300g/hr respectively, but since you actually have to click around and pick up all the gold piles, I dunno. I'm just too ADD for all that. I prefer speed.
     In this 15-run test we earned

"Cash" - 433g
     Gold - 312g
     Vendor Trash - 183g
     Repairs - (62g)
Loot - 16,494
     Greens - 12,673g (71 @ an average 172g/item)
     Blues - 3,821g (15 @ an average 253g/item)
     Embersilk Cloth - 2060g (497, 33/run)
Chests - 2,597g
     Embersilk Cloth - 218
     Volatile Life - 8
     Volatile Fire - 31
     Volatile Water - 7
     Volatile Earth - 15
     Volatile Air - 15
     Pyrite Ore - 16
     Elementium Ore - 10
     Greens - 4 @ 224g avg
Total: 19,524g
GOLD PER HOUR: 6,508g

Conclusion

     This is a fantastic dungeon for making gold, especially if you have a decent-dps Tailor who can get some extra cloth off the mobs. Greens are almost always in high demand, and you can even sell them for more than the prices listed recommend by the undermine journal. Jim, over at PowerWord:Gold recommends selling them most at 245 or 395 a piece and has kept those price points since Cata. You'll make fewer sales, but will make more per sale, so it's your call (adjust your prices depending on how often you farm up gear). If there's anything you think I left out of this one that could have made it better or more thorough, feel free to leave me a comment.
      Thanks so much for reading! I'll see you next time [btw, sorry for not posting in a while; I'm getting married in a few weeks and have been moving, blah blah first world problems] You can follow me on Twitter here and YouTube here (Want to see a video of the most efficient way through the instance? Well lucky you!) Until next time remember that the key to making gold in WoW is just to

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<Prev: 20k per week Alysrazor Runs                                                             Holiday reflections from a Newb: Next>

Why You Should Be Selling Alysrazor Runs

     Alysrazor is one of those quintessential bosses from the Firelands raid; she loves Ragnaros, is made of fire, has fire abilities, spits fire everywhere, avoid fire by fire the fire, and she fire fire Mcfirefire. In other words, if you did this raid when it was current, you were pretty sick of the colors orange and red by the time it was all over. Luckily for goldmakers, there's so much of the nasty stuff on the ground that even at level 90 with ilvl 500+, people still have a lot of trouble soloing this boss. That's where the goldmaking opportuntiy is.

     The goal of killing this boss is to get the ground mount Flametalon of Alysrazor, which looks absolutely fantastic for those who have flame-theme transmog sets. And before you ask, no, this is not the mount that looks like Alysrazor, that's the Smoldering Egg of Milagazor which drops off Rag (the purple one is from the Firelands Achieve). As far as profit potential goes, I recommend either posting out 5k/run or just letting people offer their own amount. You'll get haggled either way, but with the offer version, you'll occasionally get a nice 10k run offer.
     (Math Break: This mount has a very low drop chance, 2%,  and if a comparable epic ground mount is worth ~100k, then each Aly kill has an expected value of 100,000g/50 or 2,000g. However, people who want the mount and are willing to pay for the run will very rarely be risk averse or risk neutral, and instead internalize a higher drop chance for the mount than it actually has - i.e. they'll feel lucky - and will be willing to pay more for it because of that. So, because they feel lucky they feel like it has a 10% chance of dropping, and the run is worth 100,000g/10=10,000g. If they can get a run for 5k, that's a half-off discount and both parties walk away happy; they don't have to fly through those stupid rings and you get more than the expected value of the run.)
   
STRATEGY
     Start off the fight behind the boss as she will claw the ground whenever she's near it. I personally like to grab the last three feathers so I'm always close to Aly's tail, but that's personal preference. DPS her and fly through the first four rings that spawn before immediately returning to the ground to kill the two hatchlings. These adds take 1000% extra damage for a brief period but if you don't kill them, begin to just absolutely wreck you. When they enrage, they are very naughty little baby birdies (I've solo tanked Garrosh with no problem on my Guardian Druid, these guys wreck him). So kill em quickly with the buff and get back into the air. If your flight buff falls off, grab a feather and you should get boosted back up. From here it's just 2 minutes of flying through rings and staying in bounds until the tornado phase.
     The rings themselves give an 8% haste buff and refresh your ability to fly. When you get 25 stacks of the buff, you get an extra 75% crit. Because of this, if you're super-geared, some people just skip the hatchlings all together and kill Alysrazor before the tornados, but why risk that when you're selling the run, right? If you're having trouble with rings, an easy way to do them is to start above and behind Alysrazor until one spawns. Then, without moving, aim for it and fly straight forward. After you hit the ring, hold or tap spacebar a little bit to get back up in the air, so you can get your bird's eye view (lolz, get it?). Repeat this process of going ring to ring. However, if you have good reflexes, and can manage to follow your rotation while flying behind her without doing the aforementioned ring-to-ring strategy, you'll probably get more damage in. Really though, if you're terrible at rings, don't worry, just relax, because everyone was terrible at first. Give it a couple attempts. :)
   

One of my favorite guide pictures from when this was current.
Too bad the arrows are pointing in the wrong direction.

     For the tornado phase, you land and deal with a billion types of fire on the ground and the fact that you can't see anything over the sheer amount of particle effects on your screen. The goal here though is to strafe around in a big circle and follow a tornado. If you do so, you should avoid most of the damage. The middle lane tonado is best since it's closest to your speed, but be aware that you will catch up to it, so don't be one of the countless raiders out there that didn't let go of their "run" key and died by hugging a flaming tornado. Also, you can still hit Aly while she's flying overhead, but if you need to focus on where your feet are then feel free to do so. With a geared dps toon, she should drop pretty easily after some practice, and either you or your customer will eventually have a shiny new mount!

CONCLUSION:

     All in all, I like this mount run; 5 minutes of haggling, 5 minutes of flying, and 5 minutes of fighting for 5,000g is a pretty decent deal when an efficient mining route brings 3,000 gold per hour. I would prefer it to be a guaranteed drop, but maybe then everyone would already have the bird. It's not at the top of my to-do list, but this is definitely something that I can do once every week and is more fun and exciting than an SSC run. Eventually, people will have high enough gear/ilvl that even the worst players will be able to solo her, but until that day comes, an opportunity for profit exists.
     Thanks for reading my WoW blog, everybody. You can follow me on Twitter HERE, Google+ HERE and you can subscribe to my YouTube channel HERE.  Until next time, remember that there is no true secret to making gold in World of Warcraft. All you gotta do is

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< Prev: Farming Sha Crystals on the Timeless Isle                                    6500 Gold with Blackrock Caverns: Next>

3 Ways to Farm Sha Crystals on the Timeless Isle

     Who doesn't miss the days of 2,000g Sha Crystals?  Luckily, now that people are finished with their Shaohao rep (those that went to grind it out ASAP), the commotion in the Timeless Isle has died down and Sha Crystal prices are starting to rise back up from their miserable bottom we all experienced at the start of 5.4 (let's just hope the end of progression doesn't absolutely kill demand). Now that we're all geared enough that the elites on the island aren't the "OMGWTF!" that they were at release, I thought I'd do some testing to see how much gold we could make strictly from Sha Crystal farming by D/Eing Timeless drops on the island. This is a little unconventional, since generally I include transmog greens, gold drops, and rare items in my totals, but today I want to focus on one item only. (If you sit still and keep your shoes on all the way to grandma's house, I'll include both). So, let's go and get to testing!

That stupid charge.

Method 1: Berserker Farming
      To do this,  I went over to the Burning Berserkers. Grab a food and flask buff, a shrine if you can on the way there, a Timeless Nutrient buff from the Roasted Seeds around the Ashleaf Sprites, and as you go get Singing Crystal, Book of Ages, and  Dew of Eternal Morning. The Berserkers act a lot like Korda Torros; they cast an AoE, and an enrage. While they're unengaged though, they'll cast a 5-second ability called Forage. If you're having trouble with them, start attacking as soon as they Forage and you've got 5 seconds of free damage. Interrupt/stun their AoE a couple times, and run slightly out of it when you can't interrupt it any more, but stay close to them because their charge hurts if you get too far away. Other than that they're a pretty simple mob to burn down without taking too much damage.

      Alright, results: marginally depressing. From 30 minutes of farming and killing 32 mobs, I got a grand total of (drumroll please) ONE sha crystal from those and two more from rares that spawned in my face. Turns out, according to WoWhead.com, this is actually exactly what I should have been expecting. With a 3.2% cumulative chance of dropping timeless gear (adding up all the 00.08/7/5% chances of the timeless legs/rings/chests dropping) 30 mobs should have given me just about 1 drop in my 30 minute test - and it did! Cool. Now, because you're running around and killing yaungol and the occasional sprite, you may spawn Leafmender and the Champions of the Black Flame like I did; anyone who's done rep grinding has seen these two a lot.

     On the gold side, the grand total per hour would be about 1200 from the crystals alone, minus probably about 450 for a leeway of rare spawning. If you include expected value of all drops, you'll get somewhere around 3k per hour. Not bad, but really nothing to write home about, especially if you're on a PVP server where bloody coins are still being farmed and getting ganked will impede on your progress. Now. if I just happened to accidentally kill two rares and triple my sha crystal results from efficiently farming berserkers in heroic raid gear...maybe I should look into rares...

Method 2: Rare Farming

     Turns out that while the Burning Berserkers have a 3% drop chance of the Timeless gear, some rares have a 30% drop chance, and the harder rares like Cinderfall and Archiereus of Flame have as high as a 50% chance.

     If you know where all the rares spawn, and don't care about rep, you can DEFINITELY get your hands on some crystals with this strategy. In a one hour period, during peak time on my medium pop server, I got 10 Timeless pieces from rares, along with 5500 Timeless Coins (thought that number would be higher, honestly). While this comes out to significantly more Sha Crystals than the previous test, it's still only 1500-2000g per hour, and this time, you aren't getting any other loot, since rare elites unfortunately don't have anything else on their loot tables. Well...that's even less than before! And we're even trying to be creative. There's gotta be some way to make 5000g or more on this dang island!

Method 3: Mogu Runes
     While the money from pet farming is still there, that's not the best way either, since those prices have stabilized, so pets are more of a bonus than a primary income; you don't go out saying "I'm going to do nothing but kill Garnia today for the Ruby Droplet pet." After some brief mathing, turns out one of the most profitable uses of Timeless Coins right now is actually Mogu Runes of Fate. The introduction of Flex, and the way the new crafted epics work has really slowed the price decay on Haunting Spirits. While they would have been selling for 300g-500g right now in any other patch, they're still selling for 1000g on most servers, and are still getting 1500g+ on small/med pop. So, here's what you do; grind out 13,000 Timeless Coins with a party by killing yaungol. It should take an hour. Go buy 13 Mogu Runes from Mistweaver Ai and then run ToT with your guild or a good OQueue group. Coin every boss, and get all the normal drops your group will let you have. After a full clear, you should have about 6 pieces of loot. That's roughly 7 Sha Crystals, 7 haunting spirits, and 9,000g for 2 hours of play without including raid trash drops or anything we may have picked up while farming yaungol. With that stuff we're looking at least another 1k, an average of around 2-3k extra.  *Note: Very important, don't be skeezy in raids. If someone does Need loot, don't take it just for the 1000g worth of haunting spirits and a sha crystal. You don't know what that person had to go through to be able to raid and get a chance at that gear. (Friends|People) > Gold *

Conclusion:
     All in all, not a very productive place when just about any Vanilla, Outlands, and Cata dungeon run can not only beat this but double most of these methods on a gold/hour basis, but here's the thing, you can't have a failed experiment if it yielded usable results. For this test, we have some simple take-aways. Remember to save and D/E all the loot you get by grinding Shaohao rep rather than throwing away timeless gear like you've probably heard of many guildies doing.  Keep a healthy stock of Mogu Runes in case you run a ToT.  Sell Sha Crystals when they're expensive on your server. To find when this is, go to TheUndermineJournal.com and look at the weekly price and availability history for your realm. Prices bounce around a lot for crystals so even though prices are 150g now, how high can you keep 10 or 20 individual posted so that over the next 48 hours, they'll probably sell: 200g, 250g? Also, tag any rares that are close since they have huge chance to drop easy timeless gear. However, each rare tag may not be necessarily as valuable as you may have thought  (50% drop)x(150g/ShaCrystal)= 75g/rare so don't go chasing Evermaw all around the island for 20 minutes just for 75 gold worth of expected value; it's not worth it on a strictly gold per hour basis. If you want their loot though, go for it. :D Everyone has that one item that they're trying to get off a rare on the Timeless Isle.

Make em go Ah Ah AH!

As you shoot across the sky-y-yyyyyy!

     And on the Katy Perry note, I'm out, guys. Hope this had some helpful information in it. If you want to see a short video guide of this, I put one up on my YouTube channel here. You can follow me on Twitter here for future updates and gold tips. Thanks for reading, guys! I really appreciate everyone of my readers and fans. See you around in the LFRs! :) And until next time remember that the secret to making gold in WoW is just to

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Every Day.



     P.S. As an end note, can everyone just scroll back up to that picture of the berserker up there? Open world mob with a fire weapon. Here's a screenshot of a mob to compare where we've come from graphically since Vanilla WoW - same Ultra gfx settings - a level 47 Darkflight Soldier from Badlands. Just look at the fire on the weapons. And the feet. And the face. Way to go Blizzard. Thanks for always trying to make the game more enjoyable!

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Troubled Waters on the TCG Front

     Last week, I made the biggest investment I've made in the game so far, or at least the biggest purchase of a single item. I bought a slightly underpriced Ghastly Charger's Skull the awesome new flaming ghost horse mount from the Trading Card Game. Almost immediately I regretted the decision, as I know very little about the TCG market, but in the end, what better way to learn, right?

     The first step was doing what I normally do with items, spamming trade. Most things sell pretty quickly but expensive items take a while, so I wanted to make a macro for it. Unfortunately, you can't actually shift+click to link items into a macro (ikr? Try it if you don't believe me). If you don't know how to make a macro for items, PowerWord:Gold did a good video a while back. But if I can try and explain in a few sentences, with the cursor where you want the link to go, press "Escape" to back out of that macro window then "Enter" to open up the normal chat pane, and type  Anyways, I looked up how many there were being sold in the US and had a nice fancy smancy bark "WTS Ghastly Charger, Rare TCG Mount! Only 27 available Worldwide! Pst with Offer" Got a couple offers the first day but no one followed through and actually purchased.

     Then something funny started to happen. In economics, there's something called Ownership Bias, also called the Endowment Effect. It's actually a really simple concept that everyone experiences almost much every day: when you start to claim ownership over something, you begin to value that object more than you did beforehand. I have a really cheap Ibanez-knockoff guitar that is scratched-up, hardly works, and was $79 when I bought it with my saved up allowance 12 years ago, but it's priceless to me because it's mine. A professor did a fun example of this with in one of my classes where he had a bunch of really cheap cups and a bunch of decent pens. He asked us how much the pens cost. "Meh. About a buck or two." And how much did the cups cost? "Probably about a dollar or two." (He clearly ran through the 99 cent store on the way to work.) Anyways, he passed out the pens and cups randomly to the students at the beginning of class, and at the end of the two hours went back around asking everyone if they wanted to trade in their cup or pen for a different cup or pen. Almost nobody did the trade! Even though monetarily there was absolutely no difference (and the students had been told so upfront!) the cups had transition in everyone's minds from just part of an experiment to a possible favorite coffee mug or a gift for the little sister.

     Back on topic, my TCG mount, went from a quick investment, and only an investment, to "man, you know, it would look pretty cool if I was on that outside of raid." And then the little devil popped up on my shoulder a little later adding on "Didn't your raid team's main tank lowball you? If he wants it, just think how jealous he'd be." And then the angel chimed in the next day, "Your priest is almost lvl 90, doesn't she deserve a new mount to ride around on? Oh, wait a second, this is a lvl 20 mount and you're leveling your monk next! How great would it be to see him on it at level 20!?"  I'm just completely fascinated that, over the course of a week, I have gone from being willing to sell it for 250-275k to putting it up on the AH for 375k and legitimately wondering if I should post it for more. Usually, with almost any other item I've sold it's the other way around; you start high and then when it doesn't sell, you lower the price until it does sell. Here, I'm subconsciously raising the price so that it doesn't and I can convince myself that I'm better off learning the mount myself.

"For real though, guys. I'm just trying to go do proving grounds. Get off me."

     I'm not saying I'm gonna stay out of the TCG market forever, but I'm gonna have to get a better deal next time, cause I am five minutes away from learning this thing and wasting that initial investment.


Thanks for reading! You can follow me on Twitter, and until next time, remember that the best way to make money in the World of Warcraft is to

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Is It Really Better to Buy Ore than to Go Mining?

     "Only Noobs mine ore." We've all heard it a million times in various forms. The more experienced and less snobbish goldmakers will tell you that it's just more profitable to do just about any other gold making action in-game. Personally, I've had at least one gathering toon for years and enjoy it immensely. For me, it's relaxing to just fly around mining while listening to Alanis Mori... I mean Snoop Dogg. Unfortunately, many new Jewelcrafters or Blacksmiths who choose mining as a secondary profession will still occasionally be hazed on goldmaking forums, since "it's OBVIOUSLY much more profitable to buy ore off the AH." While there's been a lot of talk from different screen names I haven't seen anyone do a breakdown of whether or not the above statement is actually true or not, and I like testing game-changers analytically, so let's do that now (note: general consensus is usually correct, but I learn a lot with my testing). This is hopefully going to be a little more mathy that most of my posts, so for anyone who doesn't want to read all the mumbo jumbo, just scroll down to the conclusion at the bottom for a nice, easy wrap up. Ok, so, once and for all, is it really cheaper to buy ghost iron ore or bars off the Auction House, or should you mine them yourself?

 "He sure has the reach advantage, and she has...What the?!...Is that a rack of blunderbusses and greatswords?!"

Guess:
     While a bunch of people say that it's always more profitable to buy ore off the AH, I'm gonna have to go with a hypothesis of, "It depends." The times that I would rather be lazy and buy ore are the moments when I don't have very many gems to cut; the miscellaneous flight time seems more weighted when you're only farming 5 or 6 stacks of ore versus the massive 200-stack grind sessions. So, I naturally feel that it's better to farm ore for bigger stacks than smaller stacks. But enough guess work. On to math!

Calculations:
     First off, we'll start with the basic profit equation of Profit=Revenue-Expense. In this case, our revenues are the gold earned from selling gems or armor. The expenses are going to have to be monetary, but the big problem with mining, or the blessing, depending on how things turn out, is that it is pure profit from trading in time and prospecting ore. So, we'll turn the time spent mining and prospecting on both sides into an expense. Jewelcrafting should be more fun to play with than Blacksmithing, so let's focus on that profession, ok? The process for buying will be 1) purchasing ore for gold, 2) spending time prospecting which we will convert into potential gold lost, and then 3) selling cut gems. The process for mining will be 1) mining ore (Duh), 2) spending time prospecting, 3)and then selling the gems. Alrighty, here we go duhn du-duh-duhhnnnn: when is it more profitable to buy ore?

Profit(Buy) > Profit(Mine)

Revenue-Expense(Buy) > Revenue-Expense(Mine)

GemSales-[(#Stacks)(Price/Stack)+(#Stacks)(ProspectTime/Stack)] > Gemsales-[(#Stacks)(MiningTime/Stack)+(#Stacks)(ProspectTime/Stack)]

     Gem Sales (the only revenue) are the same on both sides, so that cancels out. The awkwardly named MiningTime and ProspectTime are in terms of "gold/stack." We can put in variables to make all this shorter and easier to read as well. Also, the inequality flips when we subtract out Gemsales and divide by the -1, my least favorite algebra trick that I always forget to do.

GemSales-[(#Stacks)(Price/Stack)+(#Stacks)(ProspectTime/Stack)] > Gemsales-[(#Stacks)(MiningTime/Stack)+(#Stacks)(ProspectTime/Stack)]
X: #Stacks,  Y: Price/Stack, Tp: ProspectTime/Stack, Tm: MiningTime/Stack
XY+XTp < X(Tm+Tp)

X(Y+Tp) < X(Tm-Tp)

Y+Tp < Tm-Tp
Y < Tm
Ore Price < MiningTime/Stack

     So there ya go, we have a surprisingly simple and obvious answer after almost everything cancels out. in short, it's cheaper to buy ore if your time is more valuable than time it would take you to farm. That's not 100% the right interpretation though, as we'll go over quickly in the conclusion. Also, I'm ignoring small miscellaneous time costs like buying from the AH, mailing between characters, and flying to the Valley of the Four Winds, since most of those can be reduced to almost nothing with addons like TradeSkillMaster. Basically, this should answer a bunch of the questions you might have been having about the process.

Either way, when you mine, lookout for that one stupid tiger that always freakin aggros.

Conclusion:

     It is only more profitable to mine when ore is more expensive than other alternatives. It essentially comes down to the age old question of "is mining a good profession." Assuming, you know what you're doing and can farm up 40 stacks every hour, at current US prices of 3.49 g/ore that comes out to about 69g per stack or 2,800g per hour. There are many other farming options and dungeon runs that can net 4k+ per hour, but the question is, are you going to do them? Mining remains a fantastic option for trading time for profit. 

      To give an example of this all, one hour of mining would yield 40 stacks of hour, giving you about 7 of each rare gem and 40 of each uncommon after prospecting (for values, hover over the number in the % column on any prospecting tab of WoWhead). Prospecting takes about 13 seconds to work through a stack of ore (2 second cast w/avg 1.25 seconds of looting), so at least 8 minutes just doing that in this example.

Profit(Buy) > Profit(Mine)

Revenue-Expense(Buy) > Revenue-Expense(Mine)
11,400g - [(40stacks)(69g/stack) > 11,400 - (4k+)
11,400g - 2,760g > 11,400 - (4k+)
8,640g > 7,400g
[Buying ore is 1,240g/hr more profitable than mining.]

     The trick to all this though is that if you DON'T go run dungeons, or if you just buy up ore on the AH, prospect it, and log off, when you would have been willing to go and mine it, you're losing that potential profit, and mining would have been the way to go. Here's why. That opportunity cost varies according to what you would have done in that specific hour. In other words, if you would have sat around in /G talking about how overpowered holy pallies are, then you're making zero gold and MiningExpense/OpportunityCost/last-part-of-the-formula, changes considerably.

"Logging off after Buying n' Prospecting" Scenario

Revenue-Expense(Buy) < Revenue-Expense(Mine)
11,400g - 2,760g < 11,400g - 0g

8,640g < 11,400g
[Mining is 2,760g/hr more profitable than AHing.]

     So, as you can see, either course of action can be more profitable depending on the mining expense - whether or not you make gold in ways other than Jewelcrafting. My concluding thought of all of this is that it's only better to buy ore if you, in the same session (or some scheduled time), go out and make up the debt you've accrued by purchasing that ore rather than farming it, because you've cost yourself 3k in potential profit if you do nothing. Don't be that guy. On the other hand, if you're super busy, raid's about to start, you have four other professions to manage, and you just don't have that much time to spare, then don't worry about it, you're still making 8,000 gold for 8 minutes of prospecting, a little bit of gem cutting, and a quick cntl+scroll on TSM 2.0. So, grats!

     Thanks for reading my little WoW blog here! Subscribe to my Twitter for future updates, and until next time, remember that there's no secret to making gold in the World of Warcraft, all you have to do is just

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     P.S. For anyone calculus inclined, I apologize, I was hoping the math would get exciting, too, but it all just cancelled out all nice and purdy. If you really want to play with derivatives or whatever, find the minimum hourly profitability of a dungeon run to make buying ore better. Honestly though, the answer is right there on the other side of the equation. Whamp whamp. I'll find something more fun next time.

Exciting New Upgrades Coming to WTBGold

Heroic progression is in full swing and it looks like it's anyone's game, although Blood Legion and Method are both destroying content. Paragon, the reigning champion, went with an interesting strategy by running flex and killing world bosses before starting heroic mode; no doubt that gear will come in handy. While the top guilds in the world are improving their rankings, I've been working on some big improvements on this site.

I've been in the planning stages for about a month and am about a month or two away from actually releasing everything but dangit I'm just too excited to keep it a total secret anymore. At the moment WTBGold has this WoW blog, my Twitter, and a YouTube channel, but that's just not enough. So, there ya go; big exciting upgrades are coming to the site, even though I'm not going to tell you what they are or exactly when they'll be released. :) #Teaser #TwitterHashtagsOutsideOfTwitterAreTheCoolest

Other than that, I'm just about finished with my new battle pet leveling guide. The old one is a little obsolete since the destruction to the Vale killed off half the Eternal Striders that made grinding them so easy. Critter spawn rates in the Valley also seems to have been nerfed, but I may just be paranoid there. Right now though, I need to go get ready to meet a whole bunch of people I don't know at my girlfriend's high school reunion. Get excited! Until next time, remember to

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Week 1 is Over, How Did You Do?

     The first week of Patch 5.4 is over and for those of you who have been following along, we've been spending a lot of time prepping for the release. Now that all the hullabaloo is dying down, I'd love some feedback from y'all to hear about any successes or failures. So, what's been working for you? What hasn't?
     Real quick though, a little QQing on my part, the AH has been really awkward for me and I don't really know why. As soon as the patch released, any time I searched for an item, it would rescan every 3 seconds, as if I cancelled the scan, typed in the item name of another time, and hit "scan" again. @Sapu94 tried to help me out, but we both ended up with the general idea of "well, just wait it out cause it's probably lag from an overpopulated server." What this meant though was that posting a bag full of ~200 items on the most potentially profitable day in 6 months took 15 minutes with TSM, rather than the normal 20 seconds.

"Click 'Post,' Wait for scan, Watch an old Episode, Conrol+Mousewheel, loot malbox. Repeat"

     While it took me about two freakin hours to post my auctions, I suffered through and posted three times in the first two days while I was doing errands and chores around the house. The good news is that this earned me about 60k. I really wish I could have camped the auction house more and actually participated in the goldmaking action, but it just wasn't fun, so, I chose having fun over having boring, which is usually a good choice. (btw, this still hasn't fixed itself, so if anyone knows what's going on, let me know)

No More QQ:

     Oh my gosh, 5.4 is fantastic! I absolutely love this patch and have been having so much fun exploring and just fun. There are so many little easter eggs and cute little additions added. The first thing I did was go and grind out some glyph techniques on my priest, and suddenly I was the most popular person in the guild. From there I went to go check out the Timeless Isle on my main. I got the legendary dps cloak, which has one of the coolest procs I've seen in a while, especially when you're farming tigers since they claw at you, and you scratch em right back. 

     Moved on to the Celestial Tournament, which I failed miserably at, because I only had 17 pets at level 25. However, it gave me the incentive I needed to go on a pet grinding spree. By the end of day two, I had 22 max-levels, and found a way to level two pets to 25 in thirty-five minutes, which I'll probably be putting together a guide for soon after a few tweaks. I still failed at the Celestial Tournament, but have had a lot of fun playing around with it. I've also gone from 220 pets total to 296. Oh, and by the way, if you're having trouble with Lil Oondasta, try any pet with Howl (i.e. Chrominius, Stitched Pup), and then have the Tranquil Mechanical Yeti get swapped in. Call lightning+Ion Cannon absolutely destroys Lil Oondasta: free coins.

     On the raiding front, Siege of Orgrimmar blew us away. It's beautiful, has some wonderful lore, and really interesting mechanics that aren't so complicated/awkward that they annoy you *cough cough* Tortos. We're currently 12/14 Normal and are hoping to get to get Garrosh down next week before reset. We also went back in 10 man and finally got our Heroic Lei Shen and Ra Den kills. /yay!

Siegecrafter Blackfuse is down. Paragons...yeeaaah, not so much.

Goldmaking:

     The best thing that's been working so far across all servers is probably noodle carts. Anyone who's been posting the cooked mats up has had a consistent stream of at least 10k a day, upwards of 40k. For this strategy, farm up the materials, cook them into the requirements for each noodle cart, and post em up for a huge markup. Since people are still finishing up the quest, prices are still high, and will probably be for the rest of the week. But competition is increasing so work your game now. I put together this google document for y'all showing what each cart requires. It's been updated since initial release to include materials and crafted food. Personally, I'm selling everything in stacks of 5 at a threshold of 25g each and a fallback of 50g each, so 125g-250g per stack.

     Glyphs are selling well. From my first (and only) posting, I was able to make 4,286g mainly from the new glyphs, which sold pretty easily for 750 gold each. I really tried to keep my previous guides up-to-date as new information was released or made available through guild exploration, but all in all, these two were the biggest showstoppers of the expansion. There has been a lot of talk about companion and battle pets, but honestly, I haven't seen a lot of people actually purchasing them, so I'm not really sure how well that market is doing. Then again, you only need to sell 2 or 3 a week at 15k to make the same amount of gold as all the noodleage research from above. :)

     That's all for me. I just wanted to touch base with everyone and let you know that I wasn't dead after a week of not working on my lil ole WoW blog here; just enjoying the new expansion and giving y'all (and myself) a little rest from the Countdown preparation. It's good to take a break every now and then so you don't wear yourself out, and I took mine. However, I did put together a fun little video on YouTube for you about my adventures in Proving Grounds Healer Mode as a Fury Warrior, and will be putting together a guide for everyone about how to level 2 battle pets to from 1 to 25 in under 35 minutes. Use that tip for enjoyment, Celestial Tournament, or leveling for profit, your call. Thanks for reading and again, I'd love to hear from your perspective what has been working on your realms. What's been selling like crazy? Has it been the same stuff or did the 87-88 green market just randomly explode? Thanks again for reading and talk to you soon! Until next time, remember to 

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Countdown Wrapup: How To Prepare for and Make Gold in Patch 5.4

For the past two weeks, we've been doing a series about preparing for Patch 5.4. If you've read everything, then thanks for following along, and I applaud you; it's been a lot of information.

/clap

With Patch 5.4 at our doorstep, it's time for an abridged recap of everything you need to know to make gold with the auction house, crafting, and with no professions, 1) in case you missed a few posts, 2) to correct any changes Blizzard has made on the PTR or any accidental reporting errors on my part, and 3) to provide a link you can bookmark and easily come back to in the next few weeks, since many of these tips will be valid goldmaking strategies for Patch 5.4 for the first month or two.

The Build Up

Step 1: Sell off 522s and Spirits
     Unload any crafted 522 armor you have, Haunted Steel Headguards, Quillen Hide Helm, etc. While TheUndermineJournal.com states the median price in the 25k range, the moving price for both helms and boots has dropped to about 18,000 so post in that range if you want them to sell (my recommendation, servers vary and of course yours may be different).
     Sell your Haunting Spirits if you have any. Their prices are mirroring Blood spirits trend so they should plummet to 1000g in the second week, 600g in the first month, and bottom out to 300g in month two. Don't get caught holding the bag. There's still a week left to make gold with spirits before the opportunity is gone.

Step 2: Build up an inventory of crafting mats
     The new daily cooldowns for tailoring, blacksmithing, and leatherworking require a lot of basic materials: 1 Trillium bar, 10 Bolts, and 2 Hides. In addition, the new ilvl 476 crafted PVP gear will need about 50% more mats to make than the old ilvl 458 stuff. So, stock up now on cloth, ghost iron, trillium, or hides before prices jump up. Trillium's increase will influence Living Steel's price, but since no crafted gear requires it, expect Living Steel's demand to drop until about October 10th, when the first Engineers are able to craft the Sky Golem/Sky Claw mount, and the price will rise some. The new mount requires 30 Living Steel and 30 Stabilized Lightning Source, the new Engineer daily cooldown.

Step 3: Get enhancement professions ready
     Generally, this refers to Jewelcrafting, but Enchanting and Inscription as well. Glyphs are getting a rework so that'll be covered later in the guide, but include those mentally here too. If you're prepared, you could potentially make 20,000 gold an hour from jewelcrafting as a few people did in patch 5.2. Here's why. Many of the classes' spells are changing, and because of this, lots of players will need to reforge, regem, and re-enchant when they log in after 5.4 drops. In addition, with everyone running Siege of Orgrimmar on Normal and Flex immediately,  they'll be getting replacement gear en masse, which needs optimization.
     Prospect a large stockpile of gems, cut a stack or two of each of the solid-color pure-stat cuts, and then look at your server's history, read my rundown of spell changes, and determine if my list of recommended mixed cuts (crit/agi, haste/agi, haste/int, spirit/int, and mastery/str, along with block and parry cuts) makes sense to you. If not, head on over to Stormspire.net and see if any other seasoned JCs have other input. You can make a ridiculous amount of money here in the first two or three days.
     Other professions should follow the same general advice and build up an inventory of materials, have basic sure fire sellers precrafted, and study your market for any specialty items.

Step 4: Noodle Cart Prep Work
     Patch 5.4 is introducing an easier way to buff up: Noodle Carts. In short, they let one person become a vendor (Blizz keeps the gold, whamp whamp) and people buy multiple max level food buffs from them, rather than just the one use that the raid feasts have. They're more efficient than feasts, but still requires a royal ton of materials. Moreover, everyone will be doing the same quest chain to get these mats all at once, so you can load up on them beforehand (since the materials will probably sell out) and mark em up to 500-1000% the normal price. No one wants to spend 20 minutes flying around just to farm out 5 Wildfowl Breasts. The quest chain is pretty long so I expect most people to take a break after the "Noodle Cart Kit" but I put together a Google Document outlining all the mats for each kit so you can farm all the mats for everything if you choose to own the entire Noodle Industry.

Google Doc Preview

Noodle Cart Kit
(Materials) - (Cart Kit Requirements)

5 Tiger Steak - 5 Charbroiled Tiger Steak

10 Juicycrunch Carrots - 5 Sauteed Carrots

5 Jade Lungfish - 5 Swirling Mist Soup

5 Giant Mantis Shrimp - 5 Shrimp Dumplings

5 Wildfowl Breast - 5 Wildfowl Roast

5 Ginseng - 5 Ginseng Tea

PATCH 5.4 RELEASES - GARROSH MESSES $@&% UP

The Post-Release Hustle

Step 1: Jewelcrafting Sellof
     If you're a JC, get everything posted up. Depending on how crazy the AH is, this could be a small time commitment, or it could be a full-time thing. We'll see, although honestly I don't think it will be quite as ridiculous as the 5.2 rush was. Follow TheUndermineJournal.com, WoWuction.com, or Stormspire.net for news from your server and others on what price trends are going on and what demand for different gems is looking like. If you use TSM 2.0, make sure you have your Cancel scans set up; you will be undercut often.

Step 2: Profiting from Battle Pets and LFR
    Four new tradeable battle pets drop from LFR and Flex that will sell very well on the Auction House: Droplet of Y'Shaarj, Gooey Sha-ling, Blackfuse Bombling, and Kovok (baby Garalon, Eeeeee!) Additionally, any boss drops that you don't need can be disenchanted for Spirits of War, the new version of Haunting Spirits. These will start off very expensive (10k+) and then slowly become more reasonably priced, so sell them as soon as possible. Make sure to run Flex, Normal, and LFR Siege of Orgrimmar as soon as you can on as many toons as you can in the first week or two. LFR part four won't come out for a while, but keep running these for your chances. They're adorable and good pets that you'll be able to sell for a bundle, especially if you take 45 minutes and level up to 25 before you AH them.

Step 3: Grinding New Glyph Patterns (Corrections)
     42 new glyphs have been added,  but these aren't learned on a daily cooldown for once!  These recipes are learned from killing mobs, similar to Jewelcrafting meta recipes. Some of the glyphs are Bind on Pickup from Pandaria mobs and some are Bind on Equip from Timeless isle kills. El from ElsAnglin put together a great comment on which glyphs drop where. If you can get your glyph toon geared above ilvl 500, go to the Timeless isle and grind there. If you can't, grind your favorite 90 pandaria spot, then switch to your main, and grind Timeless Isle on that toon. On my original post, I made a big deal about bind on pickup, but it looks like you can mail patterns from Timeless Isle between toons.

Step 4: Noodle Cart Quests
     So, you posted up all the mats for noodle carts before the patch was released, now it's time to actually learn the recipe for the cart itself and sell those, because they'll be overpriced themselves. The quest chain starts northeast of the lake in Timeless Isle. Here's a guide I put together about how to get the noodle cart.

The short version is run Temple of the Jade Serpent, kill the bonus boss, go to Halfhill, catch sacks in the Imperial Granary, and run Stormstout Brewery. But watch the video, cause you might have to redo a step or two otherwise, cause there are a few tricky parts. When you get the +300 kits, but a few on the Auction house and you should make a very decent profit for the first couple weeks as all the lazy people procrastinate on doing the full quest chain.

Step 5: Timeless Isle Pets
     There are going to be 12 great (read: profitable) pets dropping from rares and elites on the Isle in Patch 5.4 (couldn't get the filter to show only the 12, but you'll get the idea). You'll also be able to purchase some new pets with Timeless Coins, which drop off NPCs (x10-40) and Bloody Coins, obtained from killing players (x1). Oh, and of course, Blingtron 4000 is finally dropping a pet. Hazaa!

Lil Bling Bling

If you need a map of all the rares, Wowhead has a great guide here. As you can see, they're all on the perimeter, so rare farming is just a nice Un'goro-style route around the outside, rather than zig zagging around like in Isle of Giants. 

     Clarification: The Celestial Tournament reward pets, the Celestialets, are NOT cageable, so you will not be able to sell them, as I alluded to in the first version of my pet post, before I was kindly corrected.

And that's it. Each of these step should be able to, by themselves, be able to earn 50k at least in the first week if you spend just a little bit of time working on them. If you call in sick to work all week (I'm sure your boss will understand) then the sky is the limit. Good luck, everyone. Remember to subscribe to this lil ole WoW blog, follow me on Twitter, and until next time remember to 

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P.S. I also wanted to say, sincerely, thank you for all the comments, tweets, and general support from you all. WTBGold has been growing recently because of y'all spreading the word and I really appreciate it. I look forward to helping more people start and continue their goldmaking journey. 

Countdown to Patch 5.4 - 4 Days: Making Gold With 20 New Tradable Battle Pets

     Some people like to make gold on the auction house, some like to use professions or mob grinding, but a select few get bored of all that jazz and turn to more creative means: using Whiskers the Rat or a Lashtail Hatchling to make a massive stockpile. That's right, don't think I forgot about you Battle Pet aficionados, and don't think Blizzard did either. Patch 5.4 is currently introducing 92 new Battle pets according to WoWhead, of which 20 will be tradable. And yes, finally, Blingtron 4000 is dropping a pet!

Lil Bling is the cutest thing EVER!

Celestial Tournament:

     This blog is dedicated to goldmaking, so I want to focus on that aspect and how people who prefer pet battling could go about making gold in 5.4, but there is one thing I wanted to touch on first that is worth mentioning, and luckily it could be fairly profitable. Blizzard has introduced a really neat addition called the Celestial Tournament. This is a single-person non-PVP weekly scenario that requires you to have fifteen level 25 pets in order to enter (recently hotfixed from a requirement of thirty). While in the tournament, you fight one round of 3 legendary NPCs, and then a second round of the four celestials in pet form. You can choose the order of your fights during each round, but the trick is, that you have a debuff preventing you from healing or reviving any of your pets during the entire scenario. In short, have a lot of max lvl pets (The minimum recommended "all goes well" number for completion is 21). Upon finishing the scenario you recieve 1 Celestial Coin, and for 3 coins each you can buy the Battle Pet versions of the four Celestials ("Celestialets") Yu'lon, Xuen, Chi'Ji, and Nuizoa. So, get to leveling if this interests you. Unfortunately, Blizzard has stated that these new Celestialets are not tradeable, so we won't be able to sell cute little Xu-Fu, Cub of Xuen. Whamp whamp.

Battle Pet Rundown:

     In the spirit of "OMGITSANEWPATCHTHERESSOMUCHTODO!" I'll try and sort this list by easiest to hardest. Here's what you need to know to get the best pets in Patch 5.4. These are the pets that you can attain, cage, and immediately sell on the AH to make some decent cash. Most new pets sell for an absurd amount of gold when they're first released, so if you find a way to obtain a few of these, feel free to share your secrets in the comments!

Things You're Going to Do Anyways

     You're probably going to run LFR, but make sure you also try to run Flex every week too, and make sure you pick up a daily Blingtron somewhere. Not only is he adorable, but his new pet is actually pretty OP.

Lil Bling - He makes it rain. As in, that's actually an ability he uses. What more do you want?!

Gooey Sha-ling - Get your very own sha! Deals good damage and reduces healing, so it should be good for Celestial Tournament bosses with healing abilities, according to MestMistel. Drops from Sha of Pride in Wing #1: Vale of Eternal Sorrows, on LFR and Flex.

Droplet of Y'shaarj - Sha: now comes in purple! Also, it's an elemental pet with magic, aquatic, humanoid, and undead abilities. I'm all kinds of confused with this guy. Y'shaarj is a jerk. Anyways. Drops from Sha of Pride on Flex, Normal, and Heroic, but not LFR.

Blackfuse Bombling - Adorable walking mine. Drops from Siegecrafter Blackfuse in Wing #4: Downfall, on all difficulties. The LFR and Flex won't be released for another ~40 days though, just FYI.

Kovok - Oh my god, we get a mini-Garalon! This guy is actually really overpowered from the videos I've watched, to the point where I'd expect it to be nerfed a little. He has Pheremones (about 200 dmg to all pets for 4 rounds) a poison, and a poison-modified bash. He's like Lil Ragnaros on steroids. Anyways, he drops from Paragon of the Klaxxi, Wing #4: Downfall.

While You're Out and About-Rare Drops

     There are plenty of rares and elites on the Timeless Isle, just like there were on the Isle of Giants, and some of them drop pets. The coolest look ones are the pandaren spirits, although the Darkmoon Faire has some new goodies as well.

Ruby Droplet - Red Pandaren Spirit dropped from Garnia at the Ruby Lake. My personal favorite, and I might even just camp this one for a little bit; I have a thing for red though. Good undead skills. To access the mountain top, attack an albatross, and have it carry you.

Ominous Flame - Blue (kindof) Pandaren Spirit dropped from Foreboding Flame in the Cavern of Lost Spirits. 

Jademist Dancer - This guy is absolutely cute as a frickin' button, and has a very decent aquatic setup with Acid Rain->Rain Dance->Steam Vent x2. These don't drop from rares, but just normal elite mobs by the same name, so feel free to grind some out.

Dandelion Frolicker - And we finally get sprite pets! These drop from Scary Sprites, another elite creature located on the Isle. Not impressed by this guy's skill set, but hey, who doesn't want to own a sprite after grinding out Alani?

Moon Moon - First off, props to Blizz for the meme reference. lolz. Possible drop from killing the new Darkmoon Faire boss, Moonfang.

Grindy Things

     In the Timeless Isle there are two new main currencies, Timeless Coins and Bloody Coins. Timeless drop off mobs at a rate of about 10-40 per mob. Bloody drop off people after turning in 7500 Timeless coins for a special trinket that turns you Hostile to both factions. Every kill, whether Alliance or Horde, grants you 1 Bloody Coin.

Harmonious Porcupette - This little guy is sold from Mistweaver Ku in the Timeless Isle for 7500 Timeless Coins at Revered reputation with Emperor. You'll be getting coins anyways, by doing your dailies and spending time on the Isle. Might as well spend it on this pet ASAP and put him on the AH within the first couple of days. Rep can be grinded out by killing Yaungols (i.e. Black Prince Rep 2.0)

Vengeful Porcupette - For the vengeful version, talk to the Bloody coins vendor, Speaker Gulan. This required 2500 coins. Grindy Grindy. You can try and survive on your own, but much like farming Kokron mats, it's easier to team up for this. Timeless Isle is going to be a wild place to be for the next couple of weeks.

Gameplan:

     In my opinion, Pet Battling is an entirely personal gameplay style, so it's up to you. I will be focusing on the more profitable aspect of selling gems and enchants on the first day or two, but if you don't have a JC, and enjoy pets, this could be very lucrative. Several guildies sold 3 or 4 of the Spectral Porcupettes for over 12,000g each when those were new, and they hadn't even leveled them up. So, you have options:

     Option 1- Find one thing that you're good at or enjoy doing. For instance, you're just awesome at Timeless Coin farming or can make the rounds of the rare elites like a boss. Just do that one thing and load up on a bunch of one type of pet and be the go-to guy (or girl) for that on your server.

     Option 2- Focus on everything pet related. Figure out a route that works for you that lets you hit everything I've listed here. Note: I left out a few of the boring/repetitive pets.

     Option 3- Do the main questline, work on the story, and do whatever else you feel is important, but keep pet farming in the back of your head so that you can earn a little extra from it. For instance, if you're running around the Isle and see a Scary Sprite or Jademist Dancer, for the first week or two, it's worthwhile to stop and kill it until prices fall on the pets.

     Either way, any of the pets you farm out should sell for 10k pretty easily, worst case, you spend 45 minutes leveling them to 25 and THEN sell them for 10k. It shouldn't be very difficult to farm out 5 or 10 of these in the first week if that's what you decide to devote yourself to, and there you go: 50-100k gold in a week. Bling Bling.

And that's it guys, hope you enjoyed what is the last full guide of the Countdown series. I'll be doing a wrap up and compiling everything into a nice, clean, pretty (and hopefully short) list for Saturday's post. See you then! I wouldn't be at all hurt if you Followed me on Twitter or shared this with you friends on Facebook. Until next time, remember to 

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