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.