Glyphing in Cataclysm - So much for that idea.

I know it's been a very long time since I posted something here, but that will change as we get closer to the launch of Cataclysm. There really isn't much to write about in the current Lich King game world. Epics are dropping from the sky from badges, ICC 5 man dungeons and a nice 30% buff in the Icecrown Citadel raids. Essentially anyone who cares to pay attention for a few hours a week can get fairly well geared and as we all know, most people raid for the gear.



As I wait for Cataclysm, I keep up with the beta patch notes a few times a week. I'm not in the beta because I don't want to spoil too much and game mechanics are changing so frequently that it wouldn't be too much fun for me. One thing I noticed today from MMO Champion is this blue post:

"All glyphs are now found in the spellbook of each class on beta servers. Ultimately, classes will learn glyphs as "spells" and will only have to buy the glyph once to definitely learn it and swap it at any time."

This certainly does not bode well for scribes in Cataclysm. I'm sure there will be other interesting ways to make money in Cataclysm other than farming. Well, I hope there is because farming makes me mental. I guess it's just part of the "dumbing down" that Blizzard is doing with their general game design.

Until we see more of the changes to Inscription, I suggest you make as much money from it as you can before Cataclysm ships.

The sky is falling!

If it's one thing bloggers know how to do, it's bitch. I've read plenty of blogs talking about the "death of 25 man raids" and from a raiding perspective, I really don't care. Here's how it will play out. If your guild is big enough, you'll probably do 25's unless you have several strong raid leaders that want to fight over who's going to come to their 10 mans. I think the logistics of gettign 2 10 man raids going every week will be more complicated than having 1 25 man. Of course this all depends on the size of the guild in question.

Personally, I love the change and I think a lot of people like me will too. See, Blizzard doesn't really cater to the hard core raiders anymore. Those of us like me, who don't want to raid 4+ nights a week are all cheering the fact that we won't feel pressured to PUG a 25 man raid to augment our 10 man progression gear. That's a huge change for those of us who have other stuff to do on weeknights, like maintain our house and deal with adult responsibilities.

But what will this do with the economy? Well, having one less version of a raid to do every week means less potential gear up grades for players every week. That means fewer gems, enchants and their raw materials being purchased. It also means fewer glyphs purchased when specs are switched. So in general, a lot of crafting professions will have fewer sales once everyone hits the level cap and gets settled into raiding for a month or so. The time before that should be ripe with opportunity to make a LOT of money, so capitalize on it while you can!

Gevlon's Ganking Guild

So, I read the Greedy Goblin this morning and the more I read about this ganking guild, the more I like it. Here's the article in question. He found that the supplier of 90% of herbs for Horde was a player that he thinks is a bot. His ganking guild is alliance. His goal is to deathgrip/kill the bot to a point where the computer program can’t get away and will just run into walls. They will then get the guild to report it as a bot and get the account banned. This will cause real players to farm, or they won’t get any materials cheaply. This will cause more people to be vulnerable to the ganking guild and thus the hilarity will insue :) By ganking and camping farmers, prices should skyrocket as people get fed up and stop farming or can’t farm. It should be interesting!

How to buy your way into a raid.

No, this isn't about how you can literally buy a raid slot, much like Gevlon did many months ago. This is more about how to spend your money to get great gear. It may seem a little obvious, but it's a lot easier to learn how to make money on the auction house and then buy epics than to run hundreds of heroic dungeons to get geared up. Ideally you should be doing both but making money will dramatically reduce the amount of time you spend in the dungeon finder queue. I recently (with a lot of help questing from my wife) leveled a hunter alt to 80. A mere 3 days after I hit 80, most of my gear was at least an iLvL 200 epic. There's a ton of great crafted gear out there for new 80's to buy. Before I even hit 80, I had the Crusader's Dragonscale chest and wrists for a total of around 6k gold and those are iLvL 245 pieces. Just spend a few days shopping around and eventually you can get a good deal on enough epics to get you into ToC 10 man raids.

On a related note, I recently came into possession of Rowan's Rifle of Silver Bullets, which is a tanking gun that drops off of trash in Icecrown raids. I was reluctant to take it at first, because other than Hit, it has NO hunter dps stats. But, one of the hunters in the raid made a very good point. He suggested I take it anyway and use a hunter dps spread sheet, like the one from http://www.femaledwarf.com/ to see if it would be an upgrade. So, I did and I was shocked. My hunter had been using the True-Aim Long Rifle from ToC 5 non-heroic. It's a good starter hunter weapon and better yet, it's a gun and no self respecting dwarf would be caught dead with a bow. I plugged the Rowan's Rifle into the spreadsheet and found that it was a 311 dps increase! I then wanted to compare it to other ranged weapons and found that it was higher dps than the iLvL 232 crossbow that drops off of Ick in Pit of Saron heroic. Compared against the BRK-1000, Rowan's Rifle is only 11 dps lower (unbuffed).

So, for all you fresh level 80 hunters, if you can find a good deal on Rowan's Rifle, pick it up and you'll be using it for a long time. Just be prepared to defend yourself if someone inspects you and sees you using a gun with tanking stats. Better yet, prove them wrong by showing them your dps in Recount.

It's been a long time...

No, I'm not going to quote Led Zeppelin songs here. I just wanted to do something I haven't done in quite a while, which is post a blog. I haven't been writing for a number of reasons, mostly because I've had a lack of things to write about that would be different from what the other WoW economy blogs are covering. Plus, there had been some guild drama that was bumming me out. I'll be writing more often now, as I've found a new guild and I'm making a lot of money in something that I've wrote a bit about in the past - inscription. More on that later.

Ti

This little tidbit caught my eye on MMO-Champion yesterday:

Alchemy
Transmute: Titanium no longer has a cooldown!

I thought it was interesting because it should drop the price of titanium ore, titanium bars, titansteel and possibly crafted gear that uses titanium bars. Another thing I think it will do is increase the price of saronite ore and bars. It may also make Transmutation specialization a bit more profitable. On Bleeding Hollow, the price of a stack of saronite ore usually bounces between 15 and 20 gold. Find a reliable miner to smelt your stack of ore that you purchased for 15 gold and your cost per transmuted titanium bar is (1.5g/bar * 8 bars) a whopping 12 gold. I'd say there's room for some profit by selling individual bars to the masses.

I have a feeling Blizzard is doing this because they are going to introduce a few new high end alloys that will be used to craft Icecrown level gear, similar to Felsteel or Hardened Adamantite back in the Burning Crusade. If they do, I'd bet that these alloys will require titanium bars. I've already read that there will be something called Primordial Saronite, but haven't seen any details of how to make or buy it.

For those who have a stockpile of titanium bars, it may be a good idea to start liquidating your stock before 3.3 hits and you end up taking a big loss. I'm not quite sure what will happen to titanium ore. It will most likely take a slight drop in price as miners won't need to buy as much (or any) of it to make titansteel, leaving it to the jewelcrafters, which will most likely keep buying as much as they can to prospect for epic gems and powder to buy jewelcrafting tokens with.

Mountain o' Mounts

When my wife wants a big blue dragon/butterfly crossbreed, well I help her get it. It's been a long and difficult process, but it's finally hers. As of October 11th, 2009, Tamaril of Bleeding Hollow is one of the very few with 101 mounts. It was a combination of time, luck and money to get to 100 mounts.

For those of you who want to try for 100 mounts, here are a few tips. First, make yourself a spreadsheet of every mount available and group them by their source, e.g. purchased with PvP tokens, gold, random drop, etc. Do the Argent Tournament dailies every day. This will get you to exalted with all 5 city factions so you can buy all the faction land mounts and also get you Champion's Seals to buy the Argent mounts. That alone, with the "no rep required" purchasable mounts will get you to 58 mounts.

When you are getting close to 100, be sure to farm the first 4 Anubisath Sentinels in the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj for the four Battle Tank mounts. Once my wife got to 96 mounts, she dropped Skinning to power level Tailoring and then Engineering so she could craft the 2 mounts from each profession. You can level one up, craft the mounts, add them to your mount inventory and then drop the profession to level another one. They will still count as mounts in your inventory for the achievement even if you can't actually ride them because you lack the skill in the appropriate profession.

I'm glad it's over so my wife can focus her energies (and mine) on gearing her death knight tank for Icecrown Citadel.