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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Every day.

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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<PREVIOUS Say Goodbye to Inscription's Daily Cooldown!                                                              Wrap Up NEXT>

Countdown to Patch 5.4 - 6 Days: Say Goodbye to Inscription's Daily Glyph Cooldown!

     Oh my goodness, can you believe the Vale is going to be destroyed in less than a week?! I'm so nervous I'm actually a little queezy. Actually, that may just be because I've got a cold. :-( Yah, I'm a little sick today so I'll keep this one short for y'all but here's the information you need to get your scribe ready to make some serious gold. That's right, they're making some serious revamps to glyphs for Patch 5.4 and introducing a new way for inscription to learn the recipes, doing away with the glyph daily cooldown. So, here are the five major points to be away of, my recommended gameplan, followed by the full list of the current glyph recipes in the PTR database right now. In the list, any that I've heard substantial buzz over (i.e. you should sell these for a lot ~ 1-2k initially with no competition) will be marked.

Glyph of One With Nature: Teleports you anywhere...that has trees. 

Cause you know, druids like trees.

Changes:
1. Continue to learn all your old recipes through the daily CD. It's still in place. It's only the new 5.4 recipes that are affected by the change. Just wanted to get that out there, first and foremost.

2. Currently, there are 42 new glyphs that are being introduced, and this patch will go down in history as being the first actually introduces some useful minor glyphs: Warriors get Glyph of Subtle Defender, Druids get Glyph of Sprouting Mushroom, DKs get Glyph of Long Winter and there are many others.

3. There is 1 new iLvl 476 craftable PVP trinket, the Crafted Malevolent Gladiator's Medallion of Tenacity.

3. The Patch 5.4 Glyphs are learned by killing mobs; half the techniques are Bind on Pickup from killing mobs in Pandaria and half the recipes are Bind on Equip from killing in the Timeless Isle (Note: Since the Isle is in Pandaria, the BoP patterns can drop from Timeless Isle mobs as well as BoE techniques). The Medallion is a World Drop.

4. The requirements for learning them are Inscription 500. The Timeless Isle quest chain requires lvl 90, and while I haven't tested it, I suppose you might be able to teleport there with a warlock and do the grind in a party if not lvl 90. Just be warned, the mobs in the Isle hit VERY HARD, and are designed for ilvl 500+ geared players. My warrior is 545, and on the PTR they knocked out 1/3 of my health per hit. It's actually kind of embarrassing, but exciting at the same time. In short, be 90 and geared or with friends.

Gameplan:
     I'm not quite sure how the breakdown will work out, but have not heard promising things from people who have grinded out Timeless Isle. To make gold in patch 5.4 from inscription quickly, go ahead and find your favorite Pandaria lvl 90 farming spot: Dread Scar, Krasarang Daily mobs, Golden Lotu...oh wait...From there, move on to Timeless Isle and kill a bunch of guys there for the coins, which you need to grind out anyways.
      For now, what you need to do is just focus on gearing your self by running LFR and your daily Heroic Scenario cache, if you don't have a regular Normal/Heroic raid team. Six days is enough to go from zero to hero with the current gear available, if you load up on coins from the Isle of Giants Palace of Lei Shen scenario.

Update 9/11/2013
     The new patch has been out for a day and I wanted to clarify a gameplan that seems to be working well.
Situation 1: Your scribe is geared and 90. Go to Timeless Isle and kill stuff, following along with the normal quest chain. Both BoE and BoP inscription techniques will drop. Expect to grind out to about 50,000 timeless coins before you have all the patterns.

Situation 2: Your scribe is not geared but 90. Do the Timeless Isle quest chain on your main. After killing a bunch of mobs, you'll have a bag full of 496 bind on account gear and a few Burdens of Eternity so you can just send those over to your scribe and after an hour of just questing, WHAMMO! alt is geared to the teeth. Then send your scribe to the Isle.

Situation 3: Your scribe isn't 90 yet. With the Noodle Cart Kit quests, people are running old dungeons a lot, so take advantage of that on alts and level em. The techniques can drop from dungeon groups as well, so kill turtles in the valley (if you're level 80-86), monkeys in the wilds, or bugs in the scar while you're waiting for your queue to pop. Once you hit 90, proceed to Situation 2. End Update

Full List of New Glyphs in Patch 5.4
Death Knight
     Major
          Glyph of Loud Horn - TI
          Glyph of Regenerative Magic - TI
          Glyph of Festering Blood
          Glyph of Swift Death
     Minor
          Glyph of the Skeleton - TI
          Glyph of the Long Winter
Druid
     Minor
          Glyph of the Sprouting Mushroom
          Glyph of One with Nature - TI
Hunter
     Major
          Glyph of the Lean Pack - TI
          Glyph of Enduring Deceit
     Minor
          Glyph of Chameleon
          Glyph of Focused Fire
Mage
     Minor
          Glyph of Condensation - TI
          Glyph of Evaporation - TI
          Glyph of the Unbound Elemental
Paladin
     Major
          Glyph of Divine Shield
          Glyph of Hand of Sacrifice
     Minor
          Glyph of the Exorcist
          Glyph of Pillar of Light - TI
Priest
     Minor
          Glyph of Angels
          Glyph of Shifted Appearances
          Glyph of Inspired Hymns - TI
          Glyph of the Sha
Rogue
     Minor
          Glyph of Headhunting - TI
          Glyph of Improved Distraction
Shaman
     Major
          Glyph of Purging
          Glyph of Eternal Earth
     Minor
          Glyph of Spirit Raptors
          Glyph of Lingering Ancestors - TI
          Glyph of Spirit Wolf
          Glyph of Flaming Serpent
          Glyph of the Compy
          Glyph of Elemental Familiars
          Glyph of Astral Fixation
          Glyph of Rain of Frogs - TI
Warlock
     Major
          Glyph of Havoc - TI
Warrior
     Major
          Glyph of Impaling Throws - TI
          Glyph of the Executor
     Minor
          Glyph of the Raging Whirlwind
          Glyph of the Subtle Defender
          Glyph of the Watchful Eye - TI
          Glyph of the Weaponmaster - TI

And that's about it. We scribes are no stranger to long grinds, be it posting or learning recipes, so get out there and get killing things. However, if you aren't geared on your scribe, go run some LFRs and Normal mode Throne of Thunders, because you will need the gear. Other than that, remember to follow me on Twitter, share this with your guildies if it was helpful, and to

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<PREVIOUS Noodle Cart Devastation!                                                     Making Gold with 20 New Battle Pets NEXT>

Countdown to Patch 5.4 - 8 Days: Are You Ready For Noodle Cart Devastation?

     This is the only time you'll hear me say this but, KEEP THIS POST A SECRET! For real, normally I tell y'all to share things with your guildies, but don't share this one. Here's why; if you talk about the new Noodle Cart quest chain there will be an terrible, epic, violent revolution...or at least you won't make any money from the new buff food.

Quick Backstory:

     In 1929, Wisconsin milk farmers had what's called perfect competition, where they could increase supply without dropping price. The Great Depression hit though, a few years rolled around, and prices everywhere started falling. Milk farmers reacted in an understandable way, they each increased their personal production in order to try and sell more to feed their own families. But see, when everyone made more, this caused prices for milk to plummet even further because they were producing too much of it. The government attempted to correct prices and farmers interpreted this as causing the change. The milk farmers banded together against the government and went on strike in 1933, leading to some of the most wild photographs of the depression. The Wisconsin Farm Holiday (silly name, serious business) set up roadblocks so that other farmers couldn't sell milk.

"Flaming Logs Stop a Car Near New London"

     Anyone who tried to get through these roadblocks would be punished; the group of 130,000 farmers ended up stealing and dumping out a massive amount of their own neighbors' product over the following months.

"The Last of Seven Carloads"

Pictures via Wisconsin magazine of history: Volume 35, number 1, autumn, 1951

     Here's the interesting thing. They dumped out thousands and thousands of these containers of milk, unloading cars, trains, you name it. This decreased the supply by enough to create scarcity, thus causing an (accidental) increase in price. They won the war and made more money in the long run by literally dumping all their own product and not making anything for a couple months. Also, there was tear gas and people died during later riots. The 1930s were pretty horrible. Ommitting those pictures.

Noodle Cart:

     So, how does this all relate to the new Noodle Cart Kit? Ok, sure, we probably won't have Obama calling in the National Guard on this one. But here's the thing. The new food buffs are BiS and there's only one type of the max level food: the Grand Pandaren Noodle Cart. When you have a server full of people flooding the market with uniform goods at the same time you have something very similar to the milk scenario above. In other words, everyone is expecting to make money from their product but nothing differentiates them from Joe Blow, Mary Sue, and the 10,000 other people on server who just completed the quest and are also expecting to make the same amount of profit selling the same amount of goods. While maybe not as drastic in its process and end result, it can end poorly if we all spread the word to everyone in guild on Patch 5.4's release day, so while it makes me a little sad to limit other players' initial patch experiences, I recommend being sneaky here. The quest chain for the noodle cart has gone relatively unhyped so far. If you play your cards right, my expectation is that you'll be able to get outrageous prices for the +300 carts throughout the first week or two until prices start to level out.

     The quest chain to get it starts in the new zone, the Timeless Isle, to which you gain access by talking to Chromie and teleporting. The video below explains the rest of it.

Worst Case (Best Case?):

     Let's say that everyone finds out about the carts and there is a NOODLE CART RAMPAGE! What then? Well luckily, these take a pretty substantial amount of mats. The first quest, which we can pretty much count on everyone doing at some point in the first week, requires the following raw mats:

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

Edit: 9/15/2013 Since release, the most profitable way to make money has been selling mats, specifically, the cooked materials and not the raw mats, although it's a good idea to have some of each up so that you can corner the market. Sell stacks of 5 for ~250g or more if you think your server can afford it. End edit

A google document I put together containing all the noodle cart materials is here.

Not as bad as it looks. Hint: Timeless Isle=Meat.

Conclusion:

     If you want to prep for 5.4, here's my final advice for the day. Go out and farm the mats above. There are different mats for the lvl 275 and 300 food, and go ahead and grind out the quest yourself and put those on the Auction House on the 10th. But tomorrow, and in the coming days, spend some time farming up some Wildfowl Breast, Tiger Steak, and various fish. These are relatively easily farmed, but the recipe only calls for 5 of each. Would you pay 250g for 5 Wildfowl Breasts-Wildfowl Roast just to save you the time and get your cart after spending two hours on a quest chain? I know I would. If 100 people do that, it's a profitable afternoon of farming Cliff Kites. (Would you pay 300? 500? Set up a couple tiers to test the market's comfort levels.) This way, you're making excessive gold off the people who are too lazy to farm their own mats AND the people who are too lazy to grind their own noodle cart quests. 

It's a lactose-free win/win!

Until next time, remember to 

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