134K in the bank and a quick flip

The sales continue apace. I found a few good deals over the past day or two and have turned those to my favor. Someone was selling uncut Cardinal Rubies and Ametrines for 100g apiece right before I was about to log off last night; I bought those and flipped 'em fierce. I picked up a new epic cut thanks to the JC dailies -- Purified Dreadstone -- and now can cut all the epic gems but Eye of Zul. The fact that they almost always sell makes me not worry about diversifying the cuts I have. Happily enough, Greater Cosmic Essences and Titanium Bars were going for 23g and 25g respectively this morning; I've been selling them for 16g and 17g apiece so the profit margin is skyrocketing. My daily transmutes and Titansteel smelting are keeping me fat and happy.

But the best thing of all happened today just as I was about to leave for work: someone was offering up the Agility version of the Greatness Card for 3000g bids in Trade. I jumped on it and offered 2700g, but the seller wound up putting me in a bidding war with another Darkmoon Card flipper (I know he is one because I sold him one for 4000g this week and saw him immediately list it on the AH for 4800g. Of course, I put one of my own up for a 5g undercut not a minute after he listed his.) In the end I wound up paying 3200g for the thing. Not 15 seconds later, I kid you not, someone in Trade is offering 4200g for the EXACT version of the Greatness card I'd just bought. I became immediately suspicious that I was somehow being set up for some type of scam (I don't know how that's possible, but hey, seemed too good to be true.) I immediately invited the person and we met up at the Deeprun Tram and made the exchange. In less than 5 minutes I had made 1000g. No effort. Not even as much effort as collecting something from a mailbox and listing it on the AH.

I doubt I'll have that opportunity again very soon but holy cow. That was one thousand of the eighty thousand I have to make before I hit the gold cap. Incredible!

122,000 in the bank

Sales have been moving at a pretty nice pace lately. I haven't seen the same post-patch results as many other goldmakers but I'm not well-organized and I didn't do any preparation. My bad; epic gem prices are up 100g across the board. If I would've focused on that niche alone I'd be looking at thousands in profit. Still, the glut of new gear from instances of all sizes is causing enchants and gems to sell like crazy. I've taken advantage of the titanium transmute being taken off the cooldown and have been selling tons of converted saronite ore that way. I've also been buying cobalt ore at 25g a stack, making axes, DEing those, and selling that essences for about 19g per ... I'd love that to be higher but I'm not going to complain about turning a ~80% profit.

I have been burned on a few things; primary among these was a large purchase of abyss crystals that the RNG saw fit to turn into dust.

And let me just say that if I hadn't leveled JC and enchanting, I'd be bleeding gold right now. Glyphs are still in the basement; I do a QA post every couple days at random times, and I can't remember the last time one of them sold for more than 10 gold. I have held off completely on buying herbs, and in fact cleared the AH out of Frost Lotus even though my alchemist is transmute specced, making Flasks of Endless Rage for 60g lotus and effectively-free Lichbloom and selling them at 46g apiece. Nice profit there. I've even taken to buying out our resident idiot discounter's stock of flasks (he lists at 33g) and flipping them. He lists more, I buy em, mine sell, screw you.

One of my goals this weekend is to get serious about managing my enchanting scrolls. I have a couple hundred stacks of saronite ore to burn through and a bunch of recipes to buy from the shard trader. Hopefully I can find a way to soak up these piles and piles of cheap dust and turn them into heavy profits.

Up above 115K, finally

Quick update since I finally guessed the right password and got into this account.

* Glyphs have crashed. I'm barely participating in that market. I haven't done a restock in weeks.

* I've leveled my shaman (previously "my little shammy") to 73 already. Nearly 74. He's got maxed out JC and 440/450 Enchanting. The recipes for both are pretty sparse but the ones I have are big sellers. I'm so grateful that I got the MC/heirloom SP enchant, I sell one every few days at ~250g profit.

* I'd be further along but I got epic and cold-weather flying for the shaman. Man does that speed things up in Northrend.

* I do my daily transmute with my DK and my daily JC quest on the shammy and everything works out.

For the third time - 100K in the bank

Well, I've dropped another 5000 gold in my guild bank, bringing the total there to 100,000 once again. Hopefully this time such inspirations as "I should buy a chopper" and "a whole pile of epics to flip sounds like a good investment" won't hit me.

Speaking of those epics, I haven't listed a single one yet. The prices are still too low. Hopefully people start equipping these things and we can get on with the profit-making.

It's also become my sad duty to make sure that there is no profit in glyph-selling. I got sick of the constant undercutting wars yesterday so I set my undercut to 15g apiece. I don't want anyone making any gold off the damn things. Hopefully I can drive a few competitors away for a while. I certainly don't like having a new crew of numskulls taking profit from me.

Needless to say I've been much more vigilant about buying ore and doing blacksmithing. I've also made half my money back from buying the Spellpower enchant recipe (after four sales) so that's something I'm counting on from here on out. I've been doing the epic gem transmute on a daily basis and the gold is trickling in from that. Now I have to keep leveling my Saronite Shuffler in order to start realizing legitimate profits. He's 49 and looking forward to leveling through the worthless BC profession content. (Seriously, is there anything in JC or enchanting besides Mongoose that still sells? Worst set of skillups ever.)

If you total up all the gold that all of my characters have, I'm sitting right at 107,000 -- half of the cap. But it doesn't count till it's in the guild bank.

Current state of affairs

I don't have a good measure of how much gold I have on hand or what I'm making -- which is great, right? -- but I do know that I haven't made any new deposits into the guild bank lately. Inscription is back to a low point; we've gained a new competitor or two and I've gone to a bigger undercut/low threshold on my glyphs. My most consistent moneymaker is blacksmithing, believe it or not, as well as my epic gem transmutes.

I've leveled my JC and enchanting to the current cap of 300; this is good because I acquired the recipe for +30 spellpower to a weapon for 2000g. I've sold two scrolls for over 350g apiece, so I've recouped almost half of what I spent on this in under a week. I keep buying out all the golden pearls that turn up on the AH so that I can keep making these and eliminate competition as well. (Thus far I've seen one other person list this scroll.) I've also been hoarding righteous orbs in case another Crusader formula is listed on the AH; one was up last week with no buyout(!) and I lost it. The bids were only in the 30g range!

I've also invested in close to a dozen Tankards O' Terror. Each was purchased for under 1000g and will hopefully sell for north of 1500g. I'm waiting for a week for those that are currently on the AH to drop off and then I'll start listing at 2000g and see whether they sell.

I'm getting impatient! I want to have over 107,375g in the bank so I can officially consider myself half-capped! I guess I need to hustle on this JC/enchanting leveling.

Doing better than I thought: 100K in the bank again!

For whatever reason I thought that my goldmaking had really slowed down lately, but then I went back and read that just three weeks ago I only had 75,000g in the bank. Well, this afternoon, right before I left for work, I made the deposit that put my total back up to 100K. Considering there was nearly a full week where I only logged in at coffee shops, and another five days when I didn't log in at all, I guess I'm doing pretty well after all! With a couple of major things finally settling down in my life, I'll have a bit more time to focus on my in-game efforts; I'm set to be a force to reckon with!

The profits are coming from (1) glyphs, (2) blacksmithing, and (3) the daily epic gem transmute (still for over 100g profit, incidentally.) Leatherworking has been a complete wash; with the price of arctic furs, currently, the leg armors sell for a loss, so I've stopped making them. Blacksmithing would be even more profitable if I could convince this cadre of idiots to stop selling Eternal Belt Buckles at cost, but my plate armor and enchanting rods have been doing nicely. Now that Frozen Orbs have tanked, I'm considering making a couple epic off-hands from Inscription and selling them at a mere 100g profit (bottoming that market out and considering Snowfall Ink to be free).

I'm still unable to profit off of the "saronite shuffle" version of the JC/enchanting cash cow. I'm considering taking a harder look at the low-level dusts and seeing if I can't magic a bit of a profit out of that. The shammy is sitting at 37 and is currently meandering through Desolace (and not really looking forward to the upcoming Dustwallow/back to Stranglethorn/back to Tanaris sequence). I'm eagerly anticipating hitting 40 and dual-wielding (not to mention cruising around on my Hog!) but since professions are primarily what I'm about, the next tier of level seems ever so far away ... back to the grind, I suppose.

The gold is back in glyphs ...

For whatever reason, there's gold in glyphs again. After weeks of never selling a glyph above, say, 8g, all of a sudden yesterday the majority I sold were over 10g, a few were over 40g, and I even sold a couple over 100g. I'm gonna mill and craft like whoa tonight.

92,300g in the guild bank. Hopefully I'll be half-capped during the weekend at some point. I just need to figure out leatherworking ...

90K gold in the guild bank

Yes, this is essentially just a rearrangement. My one seller had a lot of gold that had been withdrawn from the guild bank on him and I simply deposited this, alongside some proceeds from glyph sales, into the bank. Sitting on 90,000 now. Not bad.

Vacation tomorrow, and then on Monday ... my server's sellers had better watch out.

Back in the saddle ... till Wednesday

Well, I leave for a trip on Wednesday and won't be playing WoW regularly until a week from Monday, but I guess an update right now won't be completely pointless.

Right now I have just 75,000 gold in my guild bank, but I've made progress in other areas. My DK dinged 68 on Friday night and went ballistic, finishing the Transmutation Specialization quest in record time and powerleveling Leatherworking almost all the way to the maximum. I sold the four leg armors that I crafted without a relist, but unfortunately Arctic Fur prices have gone through the roof on my server (they were hovering around 20g a month ago and have since jumped to 60g ... what?) and this is not a profitable venture at the moment. With Frozen Orbs sitting in the 20-30g range, I was hopeful that I could enter this market and make a killing, but no dice. I'll be watching material prices like a hawk, though, so once the market is right you'd better believe I'm going to be a player in it. I've also been doing my daily Majestic Zircon transmute; with mats going for 15g and the gem selling for 150g uncut, I'd be stupid not to! I should have the Cardinal Ruby transmutation quest complete before I leave for my trip so I'll be ready to soak up the multiple procs when I get back.

I did sell a Nobles Deck during the Faire, happily, so my cash on hand is looking to be a bit more than I'd expected. Unfortunately, Eternal Life hasn't been cheap anytime I've checked it, so there probably won't be more cards in my future. Fortunately, nobody else has entered the glyph market during my hiatus, although I'm sure my competitors are loving the lack of competition.

Plus, my shaman is approaching level 35 (and 300 JC/enchanting, of course)! I just finished up the Mirage Raceway quests, so that means lookout Stranglethorn! Then the slog toward Outland begins (and eats away at my soul).

That's the update! Later!

Bringing my total down: 75K in the bank

After all that I posted this afternoon, I needed a bit of "therapy" via WoW to calm my day down and get refocused. That session ended up lasting 3 hours (thank you to the kind people at Caribou Coffee!) and included:

• Glyph posting on all my alts. All told: 550 glyphs! I guess the undercutting has gone down a bit while I've been off; usually there are many sub-threshold offerings and as a result my glyphs don't post.
• A bit of leveling on the DK. Went from 3% to 20% of the way to 68 in Netherstorm; too easy with a flying mount and two heirlooms! I shudder to think of how quickly the kills would come if the DK was wearing well-itemized plate shoulders and chest instead of the caster gear he has now. (I didn't want to farm more emblems to get him to 68! Sue me!)
  
• Powerleveling leatherworking on the DK. His skill went from 0 to 231 today, then I ran into a bit of an issue with whether I was willing to purchase rugged leather at 1g per. I opted not to. In hindsight, that's really kind of a clumsy thing to do; one powerlevels a profession because one sees profit at the end of the tunnel, and a bit of additional cost shouldn't slow the process. (If it was 200g/stack instead of 20g, then yes, you wait. But hoping to find it for, say, 15g a stack next time you log in instead of 20g? That's a poor philosophy.)
• Disenchanting every piece of skill-up leather gear made by the DK with the shammy. My bank is overflowing with various dusts; at some point I should re-read my enchanting power-leveling guide and figure out which dusts I should just be putting on the AH instantly.
• And finally, I bought my little shammy his turning-40 present: an epic mount in the form of Mekgineer's Chopper. Yeah, possibly dumb, and yeah, it sets my earnings back and is a significant delay in my march toward the cap. But I knew I wanted one on a toon, and I knew I wanted the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth as well. But that mammoth is BoP and comes with significant discounts at exalted with the Kirin Tor, and I would never pay 20,000g for a vendor item that I could get for 16,000g instead. So I dropped 15K on the chopper. I was considering offering up "13,000 plus my titansteel, arctic fur, and cobalt" for a nice round 500g tip, but right now on my server the hog parts plus titansteel bars are over 14K combined. Essentially, this means that I was maybe looking at saving 200-300g when all was said and done, and since I can make that back by blacksmithing two Savage Cobalt Slicers, I figured screw it. So now my 31 shammy needs to ding 40 and I can haul ass around Dustwallow Marsh and Felwood with a questing partner in my sidecar.

I probably have 100,000 gold between all my characters but I only have 75,000 in my guild bank. And because of my lack of gold-making ability with my internet connection down, I think I'm fine with that. When I get my new computer built and my home re-wired, we're going to start the real moneymaking.

Gold-making on hold

Well, it took me seven years, but I'm finally rid of the worst ISP in the universe. Unfortunately, the reason why is because I moved into my new house, and five days later my internet connection promptly went out. It's been five days since then, and although I've managed to sneak a little WoW in with my meals (free internet at Panera FTW) I've devoted almost no time to gold-making. I did post a batch of glyphs on Friday and managed to make all of 30g off of seven sales; the competition is evidently still there and not letting go.



The good news is that my DK has dinged 67 and will have the mats to level a good chunk of leatherworking once my connection is restored (on Thursday ... another five-day interval. Weird.) So he's one level away from transmutation specialization and is going to get there by questing through Netherstorm (a zone I've never been to at all with my two other characters who could survive there.)


All told, I'm probably still around the halfway point to the cap. With inscription burying me, I'll be racing toward 68 on that DK and leveling up the shammy (who sits at 31 currently) to get the mega-synergy between alchemy/JC/enchanting online.



Oh ... and I have all the components at home for a powerful gaming rig. Here's to getting work done on the laptop while I do my AFK work at WoW on a dedicated machine!

I have 100,000 gold in my bank

And you can't have a single copper. Mine mine mine.

A weird combination of events led to some 7000g showing up in my mailbox last night. The least odd thing was that someone bought one of my Nobles Decks off of the AH. I think it was listed at 3700g; after the AH cut it was right around 3500, so maybe I put this one up for 3650? Hard to know.

The next strangest thing was that I listed seven Nobles cards individually, and four of them were purchased within 24 hours. One of them for over 800g!

But the weirdest thing was that evidently someone successfully reset the market for Arctic Fur. I bought in a while ago at 22g apiece and have been sitting forlornly for weeks looking at my three stacks of furs that were (to my knowledge) still selling for 17-18g. Checking in yesterday ... the lowest buyout on the AH was 60g! How did that happen!? Since I'm not raiding, I confess that I haven't kept up on Trial of the Crusader craftables, maybe there's a demand now because of those? Anyway, I unloaded the majority of my Arctic Furs at a profit of 30-35 gold apiece, and then I mailed off 5000g to my banker, who put my guild bank into the six-figure club.

An auspicious milestone for sure, but I'm still over 7300g away from the halfway point. Let's finish strong!

Hovering just shy of 95K ...

I wasn't going to post until I met my next major milestone (which, if it's not bleedin' obvious, would be 100,000 gold), but a new and tenacious competitor has arrived on my realm, and real life has taken a substantial bite out of my playing time. These two concurrent events have conspired to drive my gold-making down -- way down! Add to that the fact that my titanium stockpile has disappeared, and you can see what I'm contending with.

I can't do anything about real life, and I'm certainly not going to farm more titanium. Didn't really farm much in the first place, maybe two stacks of ore. That was enough for me. And the competitor, frankly, doesn't bother me. For some reason he posts his auctions from Stormwind, so I haven't had a chance to check his statistics to see how much gold he makes since most of my auctioneers are in Ironforge, but it is annoying to watch my auctions go up between 4.5-8 gold where they used to be 20-50 or more. Still, if we both play the game the same way, the one with the most gold will eventually win; I just hope it's me!

I've been able to find a little bit of time to eke out levels on the DK, and holy cow does that process absolutely speed along when you're wearing two +10% XP heirloom items and, frankly, you can do what a DK does. Fevers and strikes and obliterate and dead! And death grip and fevers and strikes and obliterate and dead! And fevers and Dancing Rune Weapon and strikes and obliterate and dead! It seems like it's that fast sometimes. One fun part about this process that I didn't expect was the potential to explore new parts of Outland. WOTLK was released before I had a level 70 toon and both of my 80s sprinted through the Burning Crusade content like a it was a tiresome chore. This time I'm planning my route more carefully -- with the help of Jame's Alliance Leveling Guides -- and exploring regions I haven't seen before. When I hit 325 skill in Alchemy, for instance, I flew into Telredor in Zangarmarsh to pick up the recipe for Super Mana Potion and noticed that there were quests available to me at two hubs. I was surprised at this since, after all, I was only level 60, but here I am on the cusp of dinging 63 with a grand total of 10 completed quests in Hellfire Peninsula (one of my least favorite zones in the game). I've spent very little time in Blade's Edge Mountains, Netherstorm, and Shadowmoon Valley, so I'm hoping that when I finish up with the very wonderful Zangarmarsh, there will be questing opportunities in these three zones (although I fear that I'll have to spend a bit of time in Nagrand and/or Terrokar before these "new" places become available to me).

With any luck, I'll outlast this annoying new competitor and be posting about the 100K gold that's in my guild bank. But for now I've deposited 90,000 and am moving glyphs at deep discounts.

The Plan: updated

Nobody reaches the gold cap by accident. Or, if they do, well that's impressive. A couple weeks ago I outlined my short-term WoW plan. It's prudent to update it now.

1. Gold making. Log in on all three glyph-posting bankers, cancel undercuts and all auctions at "medium" time left or lower, collect mail, post. If gold on hand reaches 1000 or more, mail it to the main banker. Log in to the scribe, do Northrend Inscription Research, make 5 of those glyphs, email them to the appropriate banker. If Savage Saronite sets and enchanting rods are sold, check that I have the mats on hand to make more. If not, do the usual AH run, which is: (a) saronite ore, (b) Icethorn, (c) Adder's Tongue, (d) cobalt if necessary, (e) price checks on abyss crystals and eternal belt buckles to see if they're worth listing. Craft plate pieces, mail them to the banker, list. Continue till the gold cap is reached, mail off 20K to my friend as a thank you for introducing me to WoW, continue till the gold cap again, and drastically reduce operations until I'm below 200K gold again. Possibly ruin the glyph market once I hit the cap by listing every glyph at 4g apiece when I log in.

This long term goal remins intact. However, I've dumped abyss crystals from consideration given their free-fall with the implementation of Trial of the Champion.

2. Crusader title on the main. Currently an Exalted Champion of four different factions, but maintaining Valiant status with Ironforge in order to double up on the dailies. Will continue to do the following dailies until I'm exalted with the Argent Crusade (about 9000 reputation points to go until I hit that): A Valiant's Field Training, At the Enemy's Gates, Threat From Above, Battle Before the Citadel, Taking Battle to the Enemy. Skipping the weapon-fetching quest and anything involving jousting in a ring. Additionally, if there is time each day, I will try to run the Heroic daily while wearing the Argent Crusade tabard in order to speed up the march to Exalted. (After Patch 3.2 goes live, this will become a mandatory activity in order to gear up the Warlock for raiding and so that Emblems of Conquest and Triumph can be collected so I can be a "scrub running around in full 8.5.")

I haven't been insisting on running the Heroic daily as much as I thought I would be; our server still struggles with a major tank shortage, and it's sometimes difficult to even put a group together. Rather than waste my time sitting around Dalaran in a group with two other DPS doing nothing, I've focused on other aspects of the game, like leveling my shaman. (I have run Trial of the Champion on regular difficulty several times; of course my loot never drops. QQ.)

I did manage to get Exalted with the Argent Crusade and thus the Crusader title is what I rock on my warlock. I also bought him dual-spec and am doing much better damage with Destruction than I was with Affliction. He only has about 20 emblems to go to buy that first piece of tier gear; hopefully that will be in hand within a couple of weeks.

3. Level the DK to 68. I really ought to just mail him the cloth +10% XP shoulders that are languishing on my never-played priest and get on with this. He's at 58 right now, and in order to get an alchemy specialization he has to be 68, otherwise I'd just stop at 65 when he could max his skill. Still, since the DK is still an OP class, I should be working on this much more fastidiously at the current moment before the inevitable nerf, but establishing myself as a gold-maker has taken so much of my time that it's usually time to hit the hay before I can log in on him. I have no interest in playing the DK but starting at 55 is very appealing.

Haven't even logged over to this guy in over three weeks according to Altoholic. I imagine I should pump him up to 68 so I can take advantage of the meta gem transmutes when my shammy is going for 450 JC skill. Plus, I've made so much money since the patch dropped that I can afford to pay inflated AH prices for alchemy-leveling bottleneck mats.

4. Level the shammy and his big money professions to maximum. Do I need another 80? Probably not. But I need a 77 to do that Damaged Necklace quest and if you're at 77, why not 80. Plus, it might be fun to smash face with a melee shammy in raid instances, and at the next boss drop back to heal. What I need to do is make a list of all the chokepoint ingredients for JC I need, and maybe send my paladin back to the Old World to grind out some mining (sigh) if things are too expensive.

I'd almost forgotten how long leveling takes. Even with four heirlooms on this guy (four!) and the accompanying 20% XP bonus, leveling is still a chore. Grinding on skeletons in Duskwood is never as unappealing as when you're impatient to level a new profession or two. However, it's always genuinely hilarious when Crusader procs so that's a bonus (I bought the scroll for 60g off the AH ... great price!) Happily, I'm now to the point where Jame will help me level clear up to 77 in the Grizzly Hills. (For what it's worth, I wanted to test the quality of the other leveling guides on wow-pro.com and stuck to the early level guides; I don't recommend them. Jame's guides, though, should be printed out and kept next to you at all times from 30-77.)

So, what's the new plan?

Besides having no plan, the worst thing one can do is to follow an outdated plan. Therefore, here's my new plan for the foreseeable future. I will reexamine this when I have reached 100,000 gold, or after four weeks, whichever comes first. (I bet you know which one I'm hoping will come first.)

1. Continue making gold as I have been doing. This means doing my usual AH routine and engaging in copious amounts of inscription and small amounts of blacksmithing. It also means purging my remaining titanium ore stockpile.
2. Make gold in a new way: by buying and reselling underpriced mats. I asked a question over in the JM2C Forums: what can you do with a huge sum of gold? And what I'm going to do is convert my priest to my fifth (yes, fifth!) bank alt and have him be Mr. Markup. I'll be buying, collecting, and relisting any Trade Goods that are underpriced. Wish me luck!
3. Max out alchemy on the DK. Yep, it's time to suck it up and ride through the Dark Portal. Like a fool, I'll probably drop 6000 gold on both levels of flying just to save time on leveling, but if I do I'll be able to recoup the money that much sooner with sales from alchemy. Even though I anticipate that it'll be less fun than playing my shammy, I am prioritizing this because it simply needs to get done.
4. Level the shaman to 35 and get enchanting and jewelcrafting to 300 each. Baby steps. If I'm going to spend all my time in the AH listing and relisting, I won't be able to do much in the way of leveling. Therefore if I can pick up five levels in four weeks while grinding up my DK, I'll be happy.
5. Obtain my Tier 8 chest for my warlock. This one. Four weeks is a reasonable time frame to accomplish all of the above and still farm 27 Emblems of Conquest.
   

Pushed past 80,000

The Lord loves a titanium hoarder. Sales of ore that I acquired pre-patch pushed me over the 80,000 mark yesterday. I only have 15-20 stacks left so that well will be drying up soon.

I did manage to level my enchant/JC alt to 30 yesterday. Small steps, yes, but steps FORWARD. That's the important thing.

The next benchmark I'll be looking at is 85,000 gold, but more importantly 85,900. Why? Because that number is almost exactly 40% of the gold cap. Can I get there this weekend? We shall see.

I spent 45 minutes crafting death knight glyphs this morning. Nine more classes to replenish. I haven't made glyphs in well over a week. My sales are going to take a dive if I don't do this soon.

To the next 5000 gold!

Somewhere above 75,000 gold

... but still below 80,000. The competition has returned to the glyph market, and my profits are decreasing because I've been slow to craft replacement glyphs for those that I've sold. I thought I would do that last night, but I wound up running the regular and heroic dailies for emblems. (Only 27 to go till I can buy my tier chest!) I have also run out of savage and tempered saronite gear to sell, so I've crafted that and listed it. Hopefully I'll come home to find that all of that has sold.

I'm in the middle of a giant experiment at work, one which will require me to be in from 8 am till midnight tomorrow (on Friday! I know, right!?) but I'm planning to use that as an excuse to not come in at all on Saturday. Once I finish my exercise (a fifteen mile run, ugh) I plan to sit down and power that little shammy up to level 35 and with that, his enchanting and jewelcrafting to 300. That will be a gold (and time) sink, but the JC/DE combo is so potent that it's worth my time to invest in this toon and get him to max level so that I can reach the cap more quickly.

I know I say that every time, but this time I'm pretty close to believing it. Till then, it's strictly glyphs and blacksmithing.

Barely past the 70,000 gold mark

This morning's glyph sales just pushed me beyond the 70,000 gold mark. Well, pushed me beyond it again, I should say; I was there last night and decided it was the right time to level my alts' professions. My JC is only 26 so he's now maxed out for jewelcrafting and enchanting at 225 apiece. (Of course, this came with a bit of heartbreak, including buying several stacks of Heavy Stone off the AH at 9g a pop ... curse the marvelous bastard who wrung that gold out of me!)

With that in mind, I have a tough choice ahead of me: do I suck it up and level the DK to 65 so I can have a maxed-out alchemist? Power the little guy up from level 26 to 35 to reach the next tiers of JC and enchanting? Farm old-world herbs and thorium ore on my 80s so they can get there cheaply? Or chase gear upgrades with my two 80s in the Trial of the Champion (regular and heroic)? The latter option would be appealing, but I spent Sunday running that dungeon eight times. I looked at the loot table and there are five drops in there for my paladin: 4 for my retribution set, and one upgrade for holy. My first piece of loot dropped on run #7: my holy trinket. Exactly what I didn't want! I shouldn't complain though; my friend who came on his hunter got zero pieces of relevant loot. Zero. In eight runs.

On the other hand, 70,000 gold! 1600 more and I'm a third of the way home!

Up over 65K (or: I LOVE PATCH 3.2)

I just deleted what was to be this post's original title: "I couldn't be happier with the results of this patch." That's just wrong; I could, of course, be happier about that. But as it stands, I'm pretty damn happy. In under six days I've added another 30,000 gold to my net worth, putting me a tad over 65,000 total. That means I'm more than a quarter of the way to my goal of hitting the gold cap. Exquisite!

I'm at work right now and I got here a bit later than I intended; someone pulled me into a PUG of the new five-man instance, Trial of the Champion, and while I was there the chest for my paladin dropped, which was excellent. Then my Northrend Inscription Research was up in 15 minutes so I spent some time doing a talent respec for the pally, and once again the RNG failed to give me the ability to make the Glyph of Obliterate. So I logged into my main banker to check how the Death Knight glyphs were doing and whether I should post some more before leaving (answer: yep!) and I noticed that the same person had purchased all of the titanium ore stacks that I'd put up for 330g. I whispered him to ask whether he wanted more at 325g a stack and he said yes. 21 stacks later I was looking at 6000g and depositing my riches in my guild bank! Worth the wait for sure, but now I'll probably be at work past 10. Them's the breaks.

I hope to make another 5000g tomorrow. Shouldn't be too tough; I've got a ton of herbs (at least 50 stacks) in my scribe's mailbox and, if I finish everything I need to tonight, I'll have basically the entire day to be logged in for undercutting purposes tomorrow while I take care of things around the house.

I hope 3.2 is filling your pockets! It's doing so beautifully for me!

The Patch 3.2 Profit Machine

Now that Patch 3.2 has gone live, it's time to cash in! And cash in I have; over the past two days I've seen my gold pile increase by some 12,000 (and that's after having bought close to 90 stacks of herbs for under 20g apiece).

Titanium ore is moving, but slowly and at a price I was hoping would be an absolute minimum (that is, double what I paid). Oddly, it's really only selling in stacks of 5; I've moved a few stacks of 10 and 20 but 5 is the size that gets it out of the AH and the gold into my pocket.

The real money is in glyphs, especially DK, paladin, and hunter glyphs. The first two I expected, considering DKs had all their talent points refunded and respecs were in the offing and one of the main ret paladin abilities (Seal of Blood/Vengeance) was removed from the game (and its glyph was changed), but all the hunter glyph sales surprised me. Maybe people really are logging on to those shelved alts and getting them glyphed.

It's not over yet, though. I'm going to lay low tonight -- hopefully run a bunch of heroics to FINALLY get to exalted with the Argent Crusade -- but you'd better believe I'm going to be crafting glyphs from every single ink I can make. The more Glyphs of Dancing Rune Weapon, Howling Blast, and Seal of Vengeance I can sell for 120g a pop, the better.

The Plan.

1. Gold making. Log in on all three glyph-posting bankers, cancel undercuts and all auctions at "medium" time left or lower, collect mail, post. If gold on hand reaches 1000 or more, mail it to the main banker. Log in to the scribe, do Northrend Inscription Research, make 5 of those glyphs, email them to the appropriate banker. If Savage Saronite sets and enchanting rods are sold, check that I have the mats on hand to make more. If not, do the usual AH run, which is: (a) saronite ore, (b) Icethorn, (c) Adder's Tongue, (d) cobalt if necessary, (e) price checks on abyss crystals and eternal belt buckles to see if they're worth listing. Craft plate pieces, mail them to the banker, list. Continue till the gold cap is reached, mail off 20K to my friend as a thank you for introducing me to WoW, continue till the gold cap again, and drastically reduce operations until I'm below 200K gold again. Possibly ruin the glyph market once I hit the cap by listing every glyph at 4g apiece when I log in.
2. Crusader title on the main. Currently an Exalted Champion of four different factions, but maintaining Valiant status with Ironforge in order to double up on the dailies. Will continue to do the following dailies until I'm exalted with the Argent Crusade (about 9000 reputation points to go until I hit that): A Valiant's Field Training, At the Enemy's Gates, Threat From Above, Battle Before the Citadel, Taking Battle to the Enemy. Skipping the weapon-fetching quest and anything involving jousting in a ring. Additionally, if there is time each day, I will try to run the Heroic daily while wearing the Argent Crusade tabard in order to speed up the march to Exalted. (After Patch 3.2 goes live, this will become a mandatory activity in order to gear up the Warlock for raiding and so that Emblems of Conquest and Triumph can be collected so I can be a "scrub running around in full 8.5.")
3. Level the DK to 68. I really ought to just mail him the cloth +10% XP shoulders that are languishing on my never-played priest and get on with this. He's at 58 right now, and in order to get an alchemy specialization he has to be 68, otherwise I'd just stop at 65 when he could max his skill. Still, since the DK is still an OP class, I should be working on this much more fastidiously at the current moment before the inevitable nerf, but establishing myself as a gold-maker has taken so much of my time that it's usually time to hit the hay before I can log in on him. I have no interest in playing the DK but starting at 55 is very appealing.
4. Level the shammy and his big money professions to maximum. Do I need another 80? Probably not. But I need a 77 to do that Damaged Necklace quest and if you're at 77, why not 80. Plus, it might be fun to smash face with a melee shammy in raid instances, and at the next boss drop back to heal. What I need to do is make a list of all the chokepoint ingredients for JC I need, and maybe send my paladin back to the Old World to grind out some mining (sigh) if things are too expensive.

Over 35K, but with a brief radio silence

35K bit the dust a short while back. Those saronite PVP sets from blacksmithing are such a gigantic profit every time they sell, and I've had a lot of buyers lately. Maybe people are gearing up their DKs and doing PVP to bide their time before 3.2 drops? I don't know.

However, I had a big weekend planned despite being on a trip, and naturally before I even got to the hotel my Blizzard Authenticator had managed to jump ship and I've been unable to log in for almost 72 hours. I'm planning to call Blizzard customer service as soon as they open up tomorrow and spend my lunch hour at home listing glyphs.

Also on the agenda is a port to Dalaran for all of my bank alts. I don't know why I haven't done this yet, it seems so simple; generally the alt who carries most of the gold hangs out in Stormwind and has his hearthstone set to Ironforge so that if a farmer comes on and wants to drop raw materials for cheap, he has a high probability of getting where he needs to be very quickly. But if patch 3.2 is coming on Tuesday as Boubouille seems to think it will, I'm going to want to log out Monday night in Dalaran right near the jewelcrafting trainer to more easily offload those stacks of titanium ore.

Finally, I'm nearing the end of the road with the stupid, silly Argent Tournament. My warlock is exalted with all of the Alliance cities save Ironforge, and he's 500 reputation away from that. He's now exalted with the Silver Covenant, and is just over 9000 points away from exalted with the Argent Crusade. I need to get the Crusader title and then I will likely focus on leveling my shammy (along with his jewelcrafting and enchanting) as soon as I can purchase the 10% experience heirloom chest.

Sadly, my original main, my beloved retribution paladin, will likely remain shelved in the coming weeks and possibly months. He'll basically function as my blacksmith and Smelter-In-Chief, a sad an inauspicious fate for a guy I played almost exclusively for months. He sits sullenly in Dalaran, remembering that April night when he downed 10 of the 14 bosses in Ulduar ... and then never went back in. Poor fellow.

30K is in the rearview mirror

The gold meters were spinning mightily this weekend and I left 30,000 in the dust (before I dug in to buy 1500+ gee worth of herbs). Part of this was thanks to someone finally buying the Je'Tze's Bell I've been trying to flip (got it for around 2800, sold it for 3500 on the AH, putting just over 3300 net, 500g profit in my pocket). But mostly it's been inscription and the full armor sets I've been blacksmithing. I haven't listed a belt buckle in ages; people are driving the prices down too far and I don't have time for that. But hopefully patch 3.2 will drop in a couple weeks and I can clear out my mining bags and enjoy the benefits of titanium hoarding.

Over 20K

Pushed past the 20K mark yesterday thanks to my new glyph strategy, which is:

JUST. MAKE. EVERYTHING.

There are some glyphs that people outright shun because they simply don't sell. It's easy to tell which these are; I have a little alert that tells me which glyphs I'm the only one posting. These glyphs get the special honor of listing for 100g. At 30c per posting, it doesn't matter; assuming it costs me 5g to make a glyph, I can list the thing and not have it sell 28,000 times before I am losing gold. So I post and post away ...

... and then this morning I have 100g in my mailbox because someone bought a copy of that terrible Glyph of Dark Command that nobody seems to want!

20,000g! Not quite 10% of the way to the cap but the profits ARE increasing!

Two weeks later

... 17 days, rather. And the gold pool has risen from 10,000 on the dot to 17,000. Not great; this represents a profit of just over 400 gold per day ... surely we can (and must!) do better than this. If we take my original starting date and 10,000 gold and assume I'll make 400 gold per day, it will take me until mid-November of 2010 to reach the cap. That's unacceptable. I want my stockpile complete in 2009!



So, why the slow progress? Well, it hasn't all been a matter of my incompetence; I'm also leveling professions to increase that amount of money I can make. As everyone knows, this takes money! Especially if it's done via powerleveling. So now I have:

• An alchemist almost to 300. This is my death knight who I started leveling just for this purpose. I got him safely to Stormwind to pledge his fealty to King Varian Wrynn and immediately sent him to the alchemy trainer. I've hit a bottleneck, though; there doesn't seem to be any Arthas' Tears on the auction house on my server, like, EVER, and when the rare one does turn up, it winds up having a ridiculous buyout (think 10g+ per herb). One of these days I'll run through the Eastern Plaguelands and pick a stack of these for my poor DK. And then I'll have to level him to 65 so I can max out alchemy!
• An enchanter almost to 225. This is my little guy who just dinged 21. For all intents and purposes, he's maxed out. At least I will be able to insta-DE any unneeded quest items and old gear. With heirlooms and rested XP, 35 doesn't seem to far away. 65, on the other hand ...
• A JC up to 100. Same deal, this is my 21 alt. It's not so much that I'm stuck at 100 as it is that I was focusing on enchanting first, and with the amount of time that Inscription is taking up, I just don't have the hours to move forward. Which is fine; I figure that if this guy doesn't move much before 3.2 drops, I can get him the heirloom chest piece once I get my Crusader title and accelerate his leveling with the regular mount at level 20 and the epic at 40. So as you can see I'm in no rush with this.

I've been making most of my money with Inscription, although Blacksmithing continues to be profitable as well. Inscription, to be perfectly honest, is no fun to make money with. It consists of the following:

1. Checking the AH for herbs of all sorts multiple times a day on the first bank alt. Then buying every single stack of Icethorn under 20g and Adder's Tongue under 19g. If I have more time I check Outland herbs and a few select types of old-world herbs too.
2. Checking the price of Eternal Life on the AH. If it's under 15, it's usually a buy, depending on my stock.
3. Mailing everything I just bought to my scribe.
4. Logging over to the second bank alt and doing the Terrible Auction House Sequence: checking for undercuts, canceling undercut auctions, running to the mailbox and picking up the canceled glyphs (fifty at a time; usually there are between 150 and 250 glyphs that get undercut, so I have to wait for the mailbox to refill 5 times).
5. Running back to the AH and batch posting those glyphs. Again, 200 or so glyphs takes time.
6. Logging over to the third bank alt and doing the same thing. See, for simplicity I have the glyphs split into two groups, with a different alt handling each group: Banker A gets DK, Druid, Hunter, Mage, and Paladin glyphs, and Banker B gets the other five classes. So he does the Terrible Auction House Sequence, and then:
7. Logging over to the scribe, if applicable, and doing any of the following: milling (and milling, and milling, and milling, and milling), making ink, trading ink, buying parchment, making glyphs, and mailing glyphs. Occasionally, if the number of Snowfall Inks exceeds 80 or so and I have enough Eternal Lifes on hand there is also Darkmoon Card making to be done here, which thankfully doesn't add much time to the whole routine and can be deliciously profitable. (Yes, selling Snowfalls makes the most sense, but the thought of making all the gold you've invested back when that Five of Nobles procs is too tempting sometimes.)

So, why only 7000 gold up in over two weeks? I'm also investing in Titanium ore in advance of Patch 3.2, of course. I now have 60 stacks of the stuff that I've bought for 160 gold or less per stack. Conservatively, I think I have 10,000 gold tied up in titanium, and that's if I sell it without turning any sort of a profit. I'm simply hoping to double my money with that; I don't think 300-350g per stack is unrealistic. I'm also sitting on 30 Abyss Crystals that someone batch posted to the AH for 60g apiece; I'm selling them when I can list them for 95g or so. All told I paid about 2000 for those and should have 3000 when I clear them all out, so assuming I liquidate those for my desired price and I break even on titanium, my actual bankroll is on the order of about 30,000 gold currently. Add to that the fact that I'm sitting on almost complete Chaos, Undeath, and Prisms decks from clearing my bags of Snowfall inks as well as a full Prisms Deck and five Nobles cards (including three Eights ... how does that happen? sigh.) then the picture starts to look a bit brighter.

UPDATE: and as I write this some clown posts a bunch of Titanium ore stacks on the AH for 140g per, and then I find 15 stacks of Adder's Tongue at 16g apiece. So instead of 17,000 gold let's call it 15,000. Easy come, easy go :)

Welcome to Gold Capped!

Welcome, one and all, to my blog about reaching the gold cap in World of Warcraft. Join me on my adventures over the coming months and let's get rich together.

Yes, it may be a bit ambitious to call the blog Gold Capped! when 214,748g 36s 46c is so far away. But through various tricks I've learned on my own and from other helpful posters on the web, I know I can do it. It might take a year or so but I want to make it happen.

Why max out your gold reserves? Really, to see if I can do it. Also, my schedule with work and exercise has become quite sporadic (and demanding!) lately, so raiding doesn't seem to be a possibility, much less a priority. Leveling is something I have come to see as a necessary evil rather than an intrinsically enjoyable aspect of the game. RP is straight up mega-nerdy, and PVP/Arena has never appealed to me (it just feels like a waste of time). The economy in WoW fascinates me and I like the idea of trying to beat the system.

Where are you starting from? Not from scratch, that's for sure! Let me give you the rundown on my toons:

• I have two level 80 characters. Their tradeskills are maxed out; I have a scribe, a blacksmith, a miner, and an herbalist. You can probably guess how those professions are distributed among the two toons.

• I have two bank alts. One is strictly for glyphs, which on my server are not a big money-maker, but profitable enough. Selling glyphs requires an immense amount of management and it forces me to play the AH meta-game differently than I do with other goods. So there's the glyph-seller and the seller of everything else.

• I have a smattering of other lower level toons. As I said before, I'm not big into leveling, but I also don't delete characters just for the hell of it. I wanted to learn which class best suited me in WoW and eventually the two that I leveled up wound up providing the answer to that question. In the end, I find four of the classes in the game exciting and the other six rather dull; I'm going to keep all of this intentionally vague so people don't figure out who I am, but suffice it to say that the two 80s I have are both "interesting" classes.

• The bank alt just hit 10,000 gold last night. That's the pool of gold that starts this experiment: 10,000 even. I realize that to a lot of people, that sounds like a lot, but let's put it in perspective: I'm still less than 5% of the way to where I want to be! 10,000 lets me do a fair bit of investing but doesn't allow me to take huge risks.

So what's the plan?

The plan has three prongs:

• Play the AH for fun and profit. Buy low, sell high. Buy in bulk and sell in small stacks. Remember that profits of 2g or 3g add up (way up!) over time.
• Craft! With inscription, this is a must. Blacksmithing is more of a challenge but there are still items that reward the skilled crafter.
• Level alts to gain access to more professions (and the gold that comes with them!) I've barely touched my DK, and I don't plan to make a raider of him or anything. But he's going to be picking up two professions that I don't have at this point. I also have big plans for a little guy who's just sitting at 16 right now. If the DK leveling goes quickly enough I'll work on him before patch 3.2 drops, otherwise he'll get the benefit of the new heirloom chest!

I expect I'll flesh things out more thoroughly in the future, onceI have a handle on what I'm doing; for now this will have to serve as the introductory post.

Stay profitable!