Warlords of Draenor Alpha: Alliance Zone and Profession Guides

     The Alpha is two weeks in and is in full swing. So far we've been confined to testing Frostfire Ridge, the level 90-92 Horde starting zone, a sprawling snow-drift-filled expanse filled with towering bone castles and hidden ice caves. After the reset, we'll be able to head down south and begin testing the Alliance area and bring you the Alliance area, Shadowmoon Valley, where the main base of operations is the Temple of Karabor. For the lorehounds out there, this is the same base that will eventually become Illidan's Black Temple.

     My plan for this phase is to explore the questline first. I'm a huge fan of the Alliance and am grateful to be in the Alpha so I want to bring you guys everything you need for professions, but want to do a little due diligence first on the testing front. After that, I'll continue on my Alpha testing professions spree. So far, I've got full guides out on all the Alpha changes with Herbalism and a first look at the Alchemy changes. But the main thing I'd like to let everyone know about is the WTBGold Profession Hub, since any guide I put out will be linked from there for easy reference. It's an easy central location where all video guides can link back: a homepage for Profession Guides on YouTube.

     Alpha Mining Guides and Fishing Guides will be released as soon as possible, and then whichever craftable profession gets the most /cheer's will get leveled next. (Of course if you're looking to make gold right now you can read this or this). I'd like to open this question up to you guys though. What would y'all like to see for the crafted professions? I can either level them 1-600 in order to craft the 4 or 5 items they let you craft when you learn the profession, which takes quite a while since I have to farm the mats (there's no Auction House on the Alpha), or I can just walk you through the profession spellbook like I did with the Alchemy guide after learning 1-700 and put out more guides more quickly. One guide a week or one guide every day or so?

Thanks for reading my little WoW blog! You can follow me on Twitter here and Google+ Here. Visit my YouTube channel or just subscribe.  I recommend that all goldmakers download the TSM Suite and the UndermineJournalGE addon and you can read my setup guide for that if you'd like. And remember that the key to making gold in WoW is just to

Search. Craft. Post.

Every Day.

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Warlords of Draenor Alpha: Mining and Herbalism Node Changes

     Noticed an interesting change today while testing on the Warlords of Draenor Alpha, so I thought I'd do a quick post before I go back to grinding out the rest of my profession guides.

     After 10 years, it seems like Blizzard has finally decided to update and upgrade the looks of their node spawns! This is not altogether true, actually. I remember at one point there being an option for more sparkles, and then sometime around the release of Mists of Pandaria the extra sparkles became a standard feature, but up until now, it was sparkles or sparkles. Now, we have a new look entirely!

      If you have the gathering profession learned, all nodes have a soft outline around them the color of that herbalism node or mining vein. The glow will turn on and off depending on whether you have "Find Herbs" or "Find Minerals" selected. From far away while the plant is smaller, the outline remains the same pixel size. This has an interesting effect. It's easy to spot initially from a distance because of the "glow," and then you focus more on the graphic of the plant as you get closer because the glow disappears, and as you can see below, the artists have really stepped up their game on the artwork of the herbalism and mining nodes. I've tried to capture it in the pictures, but they look different from far away than they do up close. To keep the load time of this page down, I put the full-size and full-resolution image of that up on one of my new Pinterest boards (I'm trying it out, it's actually kinda fun, lol).
      So, what do y'all think of the new changes? Is this something that you farmers have secretly been begging for? Do you think that it brings World of Warcraft up to the times? Are you going to scream on the forums that it changes the face of the game (herbing does actually have a different feel to it, oddly)? Do you not care about herbs and ore and just want to kill things?  Let me know!

     And as an added bonus, here are the two new herbs from the horde starting zone: Frostweed and Fireweed.

Left to Right: Frostweed and Fireweed...in case you needed the help

P.S. Added bonus, I didn't put this up on YouTube, but I had a spare second so I put it up as unlisted. Here's my reaction to getting the alpha invite

Thanks for reading my little WoW blog! You can follow me on Twitter here and Google+ Here. Visit my YouTube channel or just subscribe.  I recommend that all goldmakers download the TSM Suite and the UndermineJournalGE addon and you can read my setup guide for that if you'd like. And remember that the key to making gold in WoW is just to

Search. Craft. Post.

Every Day.

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12,500 GOLD WITH BASTION OF TWILIGHT

     Do you have a level 90, decent gear, and know how to play your class? Good! Then read on and let's make over TEN THOUSAND gold per hour in Bastion of Twilight, the level 85 Cataclysm raid.

     This method has actually been around for a while, and is known as BoE farming, but with the new change where you can run 10 instances in an hour, this run is particularly profitable. While most dungeons take more about 10 minutes to clear once you run back to the entrance, this one is just one room and is a very quick in-an-out so you can kill everything and reset it all to get the full 10 runs. As far as strategy goes, we're going to go to Twilight Highlands, enter the raid, and just clear the first room of mobs and hope that we get some good epic drops (and a boatload of Embersilk Cloth). The cheaper items like the trinkets sell for around 500 and more expensive transmog items sell for 2500g on most servers because they're amazing and no one really goes out here much anymore. Oh, and sometimes level 85s use these for their stats.

     For my test I ran the dungeon for a full hour. The room consists of 48 total mobs: 4 stationary up front, two lines of 5 patrolling mobs, and four rings of 8 rogue-caster...things. They all have between 400k and 1.5 million health and melee for about 15-30k so they're not too bad but if you pull the whole room, just be ready. I recommend killing one group at a time. Even slow and steady, a pack at a time, one run is over in 4 minutes. Oh, and there are two mobs in the hallway that have a double chance of dropping epics. Kill those before you leave.

Dat Second Wind

     Over the course of one hour I was able to clear the room 8 times. Since I was testing several different pulling strategies and died (embarrassingly) about 20 times in the process, I see no reason why you couldn't make 10 runs. Still, a test is a test so we'll stick with my results and I won't extrapolate. I gathered 5 epics and 30 stacks of Embersilk Cloth. You can expect more if you're a tailor and have Northern Cloth Scavaging.

Possible Loot
   499 g - Bracers of the Dark Pool
   733 g - Unheeded Warning
   866 g - Phase-Twister Leggings
1,597 g - Carbine Crossfire
1,975 g - Tsanga's Helm

2,264 g - Chelly's Staff of Dark Mending 

2,897 g - Soul Blade
9379 g - Heaving Plates of Protection
2526 g average (1722 excluding high/low)

Loot from Test
   733 g - Unheeded Warning
1,597 g - Carbine Crossfire
2,264 g - Chelly's Staff of Dark Mending
2,897 g - Soul Blade
2,897 g - Soul Blade
1,380 g - 30 Stacks Embersilk Cloth @46g/stack
1,000 g - Greens/DEs/Gold drops
Total
12,768 g

That's all for this run. Although we won't get a good measure of an average drop rate until we get ~30 epics, we've gotten enough to start getting an idea. If 5 drops/400 kills holds true, you should get 1 more Epic if you do 2 more clears to get your 10/hour. Although, why stop at just 1 hour? This would add an additional (est) 2,500 g to your total, bringing the value of this dungeon per hour up to 15,000g. SO GET TO IT! Farm your heart out. :D

Thanks for reading my little WoW blog! You can follow me on Twitter here and Google+ Here. Visit my YouTube channel or just subscribe.  I recommend that all goldmakers download the TSM Suite and the UndermineJournalGE addon for all goldmakers. You can read my setup guide if you'd like. And remember that the key to making gold in WoW is just to 

Search. Craft. Post.

Every Day.

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