Prospecting FTW!

Well friends, I decided to see whether ore is really overpriced or not. Here's what I did.

I went to the auction house and bought up all of the obsidium ore and elementium ore I considered to be decently priced. This, obviously, is an arbitrary quantity, but in the end I wound up with 17 stacks of obsidium and 12.25 stacks of elementium for the grand total of 5220g5s65c. That equates to approximately 178.5g per stack.

I prospected all of this and would up with the following gems:

Color (uncommon, rare)
Red (21, 3)
Orange (20, 2)
Yellow (31, 2)
Green (30, 3)
Blue (28, 2)
Purple (27, 3)

Hessonite and Nightstone (orange and purple) are the biggest sellers, being used to level up jewelcrafting, so naturally I got screwed on my hessonite prospects. That, though, is not the point. Then I commenced the cutting.

* All the Shadowspirit Diamonds became Austere metas (the cut I have)
* The three Dream Emeralds were cut to Regal and the two Ocean Sapphires to Rigids
* I then found someone with the Bold cut for Inferno Ruby and tipped him 90g total for three cuts

After that all gems were shipped off to my auctioneer.

* 2 diamonds were listed at an 800g buyout.
* The rigids were listed for 177g
* The regals were listed for 230g
* The bolds were listed for 225g
* 5 nightstone were listed for 90g
* 8 hessonite were listed for 69g

All told, I spent 5310g5s65c. I didn't do the math for deposit fees or AH cut; those are figured in when the money comes back in the mail.

When I logged in three hours later, I had 3022g63s10c in sales. The diamonds had both sold so I listed three more at 950g apiece. One of those sold almost instantly and in an hour that brought the entire total to 3949g99s65c.

When I logged in in the morning, more sales brought my total gold haul to 5185g39s95c. For those keeping count, that means I was down a total of ~125 out of ~5300 gold I'd spent 18 hours previously -- plus I had 5 more meta gems, and a pile of uncut uncommon red, yellow, green, and blue gems.

Prospecting is awesome. You should be doing it. A lot. Be careful how much you spend per stack of ore but when you find some at the right price, buy it ALL.

A pile of gold in a shattered world

328,000 right now. I hadn't been doing any gold making since Glyphmas, but I decided to use my stockpile of inks to make and list glyphs in the two-week window when Jessica Sellers wasn't trading for Ink of the Sea. I'm listing only glyphs that will sell for 65 gold or more. Go me!

320K in the guild bank

Cheating a bit, as I had my main auctioneer ship off 5000g he'd made from selling Dragon's Eyes and Nightmare Tears (of which I admittedly have way too many at the moment, but I've almost broken even on that investment).

All told, that brings me up 75,000g in the past week. Viva patch day!

A great Glyphmas!

Just thrilling. The demand for glyphs was precisely what we all hoped it would be, and I swooped in and took advantage.

True to form, I didn't pull down as much gold as some of my compatriots whose exploits I've been following. Still, with 311,000 gold in my guild bank and a good number of glyphs remaining in my bags, I'm 66,000 gold ahead of where I was when the servers went down on Tuesday morning. 71,000, really, because I spent 4K on Master Flying and 1K regemming my warlock.

I know I'm out of some of the more popular glyphs, but it's all good. As soon as nothing's selling, I'll craft more. For now, I'm content to post, cancel, collect, and repost. I'm using a 1c undercut and posting 4 glyphs at a time, with (and this is the key to my success, I believe) a 27g threshold. The philosophy is that at some point enough of a given type of glyph will sell out sufficiently to allow me to list mine at 27g. So, I'm not even looking at what's selling or trying to buy out the few glyphs that are listed at 8g or 10g. I'm greedy, but not THAT greedy ;-)

Do I wish I'd hauled in more than 300K like some of the people on other servers? Do I wish that I'd realized that the Glyph of Mage Armor exists but can't be made and listed mine for 350g each? Do I wish I had prepared more and made 3 stacks of every type of glyph and had 10,000 inks left over? Most definitely. But I've done all of this while still maintaining my normal life and playstyle, so I'll take my 60K gold and live with it.

Hope your Glyphmas is still going strong!

279K in the guild bank

Plus 4000 I already spent on super-duper flying for my paladin. Yes indeed, life is good.

245K in my guild bank

Glad I didn't go to GDKP on Sunday.

Let's see how much cash I bring in tomorrow. I'll probably be on my AH toons all night.

244K in my guild bank

Just ran out of Ink of the Sea after making 20 of each glyph for 6 classes. Underpreparing FTL.

227K in the guild bank

Not much to say. Got paid to get my 25 Kingslayer (awesome GDKP FTW). Mail BOEs seem impossible to sell. More on this later.

215K in the bank (gold capped again!)

No real update. Glyphs suck; I've moved my threshold progressively higher and I'm listing fewer and fewer of them. (It's north of 6g per glyph now and occasionally I'll go to list and QA will put up fewer than 10. C'est la vie.)

I've been turning a profit on my GDKP runs so that's good, but I'm sure it's annoying since I'm doing relatively low dps. I'd be fine with not securing an invitation in the future; I'm so ready to just sit back and wait for the cataclysm to hit. I'm not even doing the weekly raid quests unless I'm completely bored; it still feels like grinding for those primordial saronites.

Still, this weekend I am planning to revisit some old content, maybe snag a mount or two, and push toward a quarter million gold.

200K in the bank

We're in full liquidation mode here, minus purchasing cheap herbs and saronite whenever we get a chance. Next stop: gold cap (again).

185K in the guild bank

Would be a ton more if I wasn't buying all these mats. Also I went on the worst GDKP run of all time ... four bosses downed in ICC25. Two wipes on Festergut and the called it. Thank you very much, huntard doing 2800 dps with a 30% zone buff and full raid buffs.

Still, it grossed me 1000g and I increased my Ashen Verdict rep, so I'm not complaining.

Shifting into gold-making mode

I made a deposit today that put my GB tally back up to 180,000 gold. Sadly I slacked a bit on getting in to work this morning so I had to skip the GDKP raid on our server -- but I've mostly talked myself out of the need for gear, and thus, spending gold on the acquisition of said gear. Sometimes the key to putting more gold in the bank is making sure you don't take any out.

If you look at my last few posts, what you'll realize is that this tally (180K) is exactly where I was two weeks ago. The reason for this is that I paid 20K to go along with a guild on their Lich King kill. We downed Sindragosa to get me to 11/12 in the Citadel, then went on for three(!) nights of wipes of various lengths to down Arthas. Finally, I wound up with my Kingslayer title (and an embarassingly small dps tally) and now I consider my "work" in WOTLK complete. Halion? Why bother? Who cares?

So, what to do now that I'm "done" with WOTLK? Why, go full-bore into gold-making mode. There are still plenty of people who aren't done; the Lich King hasn't fallen for everyone, there are Shadowmournes to be made, and there are even just people who haven't read about the massive gear and stats overhaul headed our way with the Cataclysm.

So, my in-game activities are generally focused on filling my bank vaults for Cataclysm. My general activity has consisted of doing the weekly raid quests for Frost emblems so I can buy Primordial Saronite and doing Wintergrasp for honor and the resultant epic gems. Other than that, it's buying mats and making cash. I can't keep Titansteel in stock, glyphs are moving well, and at some point I swear I'm going to figure out enchanting.

So, off to the Gold Cap again. We shall see it soon!

190K in the bank

This is way too easy when glyphs are profitable.

180K in my guild bank

Enchanting scrolls aren't as profitable as I'd hoped. However, I've seized control of glyphs for the moment. Laissez les bons temps rouler.

170K in the bank

What can I say, sales are brisk. Glyphs are good when I can make a sale; we have a full-time camper on the server now and it looks like myself and one other seller are trying to maneuver around his/her three posting alts. A couple days' worth of 4g undercuts will take the profit right back out of the profession. Sigh.

I'm hoping this will be "150K in the bank" some time in the next few days. A guild is currently offering 10-man Kingslayer for 20K. Considering I've made 10,000g since Thursday, I don't think that's such a bad price to pay. At least I can be done worrying about getting the stupid thing done.

I have events on my usual raid days this week so I'll be missing out on 25-man action. But next weekend I'm going to try to be judicious about my purchases but join in a 25-man GDKP run. There are a few pieces that would capture my attention: the neck and/or ring off of heroic Gunship, a more nicely-itemized cape off of Dreamwalker, the Dislodged Foreign Object from Rotface (which will probably end up costing more than I'm willing to spend), and of course a pair of Sanctified tokens (the objects of my greatest desire, honestly). Of course I will probably be unable to square the concepts of bidding a lot of money now for 25-man loot with the knowledge that there will be iLvl 346 craftables right off the bat in Cataclysm. The goal will be to get some upgrades (it's been forever!) and try to make most of the money back off of my share of the pot and the Primordial Saronite.

Once I get my Lich King kill, my warlock will essentially be an inscription bot and will likely only show up for Tuesday raid nights. The focus will be my shaman and getting as much profit out of late Patch 3.3.5 enchanting as possible.

160K in the GB

Making a lot from glyphs these days. On the agenda: automation of enchanting. Plus, I can't keep enough Titansteel in stock to meet demand.

I hope people don't read about the gear reset in Cataclysm.

Cataclysm gear inflation

Wow. Level 78 items that outpace ICC epics? http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/1841-Cataclysm-Item-List

What is Blizzard thinking?

Down to 140K gold

But now I've killed Algalon.

OK, so the nine people I hired to come with me killed Algalon and I lay dead on the floor for the last 70% of the fight.

Still ... 9000g well spent.

Update: the tally is in

And after moving my gold around I've got 144K in my dwarf's guild bank.

~70K to go before I reattain the gold cap. Piece of cake, right?

Back in the game.

I suppose it was inevitable. I've been combing the internet for Cataclysm leak information, and after stumbling upon some item stats, I've decided to get out of the gear grind on every toon I have save my main. Now, granted, my main is pretty nicely geared -- only 1 piece that's still iLvl 245 (a trinket, no less), and 4 pieces that are 251 -- but I still want to continue to do progression with him, which, of course, is dictated by the gearing process. Last weekend I got the crazy idea to get into a GDKP run on an alt -- my pally who I want to level with as prot -- and thank goodness I didn't, as every holy or prot drop would've been an upgrade for him, and by God I would've bid as such. However, visions of level 78 dungeon drops at item level 279 gave me pause, and I do so firmly declare: no gear grind for my four 80 alts. That means positively no using the dungeon finder to run random heroics in order to get one more piece upgraded to 245, no weaseling into GDKP runs to gear up an alt I won't play at all until the expansion drops (and who will then proceed to shard the gear I bought at a four-figure bounty as soon as a quest giver rewards him with a level 80 blue), no hunting down discounted Crusader Orbs or Primordial Saronites to get high-end pieces crafted.

In essence, my WoW goals until Cataclysm are simple:

1. Kill all the raid bosses I haven't dropped yet.
2. Make gold.

The boss kills are straightforward: Algalon, Sindragosa, and the Lich King himself. I don't really care about difficulty levels (I haven't done any Ulduar 25 hard modes, either of the incarnations of TotGC, and I'm not sure I'll have the patience to progress through ICC hard modes) but I do care about completing the content while it's relevant.

And making gold is self-evident. I want to get the achievement for Realm First for at least one of my professions so a huge outlay of gold will be necessary to snag all the inflated mats from the AH. And I want to turn my huge pile of gold into an even huger one come Cataclysm.

Right now I'm sitting on better than 140,000 gold. I'd like to be capped again when Cataclysm rolls around, if not more. I've started clearing out my vaults so that I can stockpile bolts of netherweave cloth and Ink of the Sea for the newly-announced "medium glyphs." I'm almost wholly relying upon enchanting, alchemy, and jewelcrafting to make a profit. I imagine I'll be up beyond 150K by the weekend and after that, who knows.

I think the gold cap by October should be easily achieved.

Now I'm down to 175K gold

And I'll be spending more soon, I hope.

I've all but stopped making gold; after a while, it really didn't hold my interest, and I'm glad to be rid of it. Still, it bothers me; people bid too much in GDKP runs and I can't gear up and profit simultaneously anymore. Epic flipping is more of a gamble for some reason. And now we can trade Frozen Orbs for whatever we want and I don't want to take the time to relearn the economy.

Fortunately, I've made some headway on a few goals. My priest has shot up from level 36 to 65 since I've used the time I used to devote to turning a profit for more fun purposes. My warlock has but a single iLvl 232 piece to shed and has two pieces of Tier 10.251. I've downed six bosses in Icecrown Citadel. And I'm three Ulduar achievements away from my 310% speed mount.

Overall, my WoW life is good. Still, that tally is so far from the 200,000 gold I told myself I'd keep on hand. I wonder when it will bother me enough to get back into the fray.

226Kg in my guild bank

Yeah, seriously. I'm still going.

The person or people who decided to drive down glyph prices are gone and we have a new part-time camper (one who doesn't even undercut by 1c ... he matches the price and cuts the bid value. Brazen, eh?) so I've been playing with Inscription again. Plus I've been realizing that I never should've stopped making Eternal Belt Buckles. And I moved almost all of my Darkmoon trinkets and a Tankard of Terror and found mats for old-world enchants at a reasonable price and have been doing my JC daily again and ... and the beat goes on.

My DK is a tank and I am LOVING playing that toon. I didn't think I'd like a DK. I didn't think I'd ever want to tank. I was wrong. I hope I can let him go at 80 or else I'm going to be spending an inordinate amount of time on WoW. He's three bars from 76 as we speak.

My healing priest has been enduring waits of 16-18 minutes in the Dungeon Finder queue. Seriously? I'm a healer, we should be going in SECONDS.

I've missed the GDKP runs on my server. I haven't been doing my daily heroic on my main because of all the time I'm spending on the DK. I need to step that up.

And my net worth is quickly approaching a quarter million gold. Crazy.

Ding!

I hit the cap at 2 am. Actually, across all characters, I'm sitting on about 220K gold, but if you've been reading this blog at all you know that I only count what is in my banking dwarf's guild bank. I made the deposit that took that sum to 215,000 at 2:00, then spent about 90 seconds trying to get 214,748g 36s 47c into his bags (to no avail, of course) and then hit the hay. But now I'm up, full of coffee, and in a celebratory mood.

It's been an occasionally fun, sometimes arduous journey. From the boom times when I was selling titanium ore at a profit of 200g per stack immediately after the TOC patch to the down times when someone crashed glyphs to almost zero profit, I've stuck with my gold acquisition, and it has made me rich. Now I'm at a point where I can buy anything I want in-game and do so comfortably. I don't farm, I don't grind, I just play.

My interest in gold started over a year ago, back in January of 2009. Back then, I had one main toon -- a wonderful draenei retribution paladin who was one of those casuals that Gevlon hates so much: a level-capped noob who would grind Badges of Heroism relentlessly, doing circles of Sholazar Basin looking for saronite and titanium nodes, occasionally cheering when he mined up a Scarlet Ruby by chance. He was 450 mining and only hit 450 blacksmithing because of a completionist itch, spamming trade to make titansteel gear for the other fresh 80s ("Your mats, no tip!")

My paladin would do the usual noob stuff: For the Alliance? Sure, I'm in! Zul'aman run? OK, great! Heroic Culling of Stratholme? I'd love to help you get your drake! (Not to mention checking in with the Oracles to finally get that Green Proto-Drake!) My alts were ignored, all my time in-game was spent on my pally.

Then one day I got curious: I leveled blacksmithing for a reason, right? I wonder if people buy stuff from blacksmithing. So I acquired a ton of cobalt and saronite (by farming and via the AH), all the crystallized/eternal elements I required, made one of everything that didn't require titansteel, and listed them all for 48 hours on the AH. To my great surprise, a lot of them sold! It was crazy! Someone bought a whole set of Savage Saronite gear, and I realized I was on to something.

I made belt buckles like crazy. They sold for 80g apiece. I was doubling my money every time one sold! I bought out the saronite bars in the AH. I mined furiously. I made Tempered Saronite gear. I made Savage Saronite gear. I cleaned out the adamantite ore from the AH and made enchanting rods. A stack of adamantite ore makes one rod. I bought a stack for 10g and sold the rod for 20. It didn't require re-listing. I sold the next one for 25g. The next one for 30g. Eventually I was listing adamantite rods for 60g. It was incredible! People just paid! Didn't they know how cheap the materials were? And why weren't others competing with me?

Pretty soon I had epic flight and was sitting on 22,000 gold. At that point I wondered, "Why bother? I'll never spend all this gold." And I stopped trying to earn money in-game and focused on my next goal: raiding. It was toward the end of progression and all the retribution paladin slots were taken. So I learned to heal, respecced holy, and was accepted into one of the second-tier guilds on the server. Every SP plate drop in Naxx went to me. I got the healing chest from Sartharion. I won the roll for the quest item from Sapphiron and was soon rocking an iLvl 226 neck courtesy of Malygos. I participated in my guild's first kill of Sartharion + 3 drakes and was a Twilight Vanquisher before Ulduar opened up. I was sitting pretty. It was good times. When the Ulduar patch dropped, I went in and participated in the Alliance side first kill of Flame Leviathan. We spent the night wiping on XT.

And I got benched.

Three weeks later (after getting benched three times in a row) the guild broke up. At that point I made a decision: I wanted to raid, but if I was getting benched as holy, I wanted to raid as the playstyle that suited me: I wanted to raid as retribution. The #5 guild on the Alliance side of our server was recruiting a ret paladin, so I went all out before applying. I re-enchanted, re-gemmed, grinded Valor badges. Then there was only one thing to do: pick up the Greatness card.

Now, I had 20,000 gold on hand. But that Darkmoon deck was running 13K-14K at a time. I checked the AH numerous times each day and bought the cards individually. In a coup, I assembled my deck for the low, low price of just 9000 gold. I auditioned with the guild, killed everything in Ulduar up to Mimiron ... and was rejected.

But I had learned something in all this. I learned that Inscription was a huge moneymaker, because those Darkmoon cards were crazy expensive! I took time off from my paladin and rediscovered the old world with a brand-new warlock. As he went, he leveled inscription to the maximum at every opportunity, those beautiful Nobles decks ever getting closer to his grasp. (Isn't that funny? I leveled Inscription to get to DARKMOON cards. Glyphs? Are those profitable? Who cares!)

When he finally became a Grand Master Inscriptionist (haha ... Scribe!), Eternal Lifes were prohibitively expensive, and Darkmoon deck prices had been cut in half. It seemed like dark times ... and then I started reading about making gold. And eight months later, here I am, at the gold cap.

Of course, more than 220,000g has passed through my hands. Since this is pretty much a bragging post, here's the tally:

* 220,000 gold on hand
* Several Darkmoon trinkets ready to sell
* 3 80s, a 75, a 42, and a passel of bank alts
* The 80s all have epic flight. The 75 has cold-weather flying.
* One chopper (a level 40 gift for my hard-working JC/Enchanting shaman)
* Epic gems in every socket
* GDKP loot for my main, the warlock (TOC25 gear for main-hand weapon, back, and a Reign of the Unliving I spent 12,500g on, plus four-piece tier 9 thanks to four purchased Trophies)
* A whole boatload of FUN in-game!

So, what's next? I dunno. I think the same thing that everyone else says when they hit their gold-making goal: why stop? I know what to do now! There's easy money at every turn! I'll probably cut out the more annoying tasks, like making/listing/canceling/relisting glyphs and focus on easy stuff like belt buckles and daily transmutes/titansteel smelting. I'm going to get my 75 and 42 to the level cap so that I'm ready to go when Cataclysm hits and I can have every profession except Skinning maxed out. I may try to find my way into a guild that doesn't raid on Tuesday nights or weekends. I'll give 20,000g to my friend who introduced me to WoW and then focus on keeping my bank balance over 200,000g. I might give my noob friend who I've been leveling with some money for dual spec or epic flight. I want to buy my Ulduar proto-drake. Ultimately, I want to kill the Lich King. I was only doing 6K dps on Patchwerk though so that might be a way off. And I want to make a huge profit in Cataclysm. I bet I can easily reach half a million when that drops with some savvy profession usage.

Thanks to all the people who've made this whole deal possible! Gevlon, Marcko, Zamboni and the rest of the motley crew in the JMTC forums, and a whole bunch of other people who are part of the gold-making community. I got here slowly, but steadily, and without boring myself to death or grinding.

As for the future of this blog ... who knows. It was never regularly updated, it was never intended to function as a "resource." If that changes, I'll let you know. Either way, I'll be in Azeroth, asleep on a pile of hard-earned lucre, enjoying my virtual fortune the way I want to.

Peace!

190,000 gold in the bank

Creeping so, so slowly toward my goal of hitting the gold cap. I haven't done a good job of crafting lately -- haven't sold much gear from blacksmithing, haven't made many scrolls. The vast majority of my time in-game has been spent using the dungeon finder tool. I love it! I do the random daily heroic on my main (gotta get those 95 Frost emblems!) and I've also decided to level my priest and DK to 80 solely through instances. I am going to craft the cobalt tank set for the DK once he hits 70 (which will be after like 8 more quests in Borean Tundra -- amazing) and he will happily plunge through multiple runs of each Northrend dungeon. My priest just hit 40 and is healing his way to the level cap. I'm starting to get sick of running SM-Cathedral and Uldaman with him but those are the breaks. (I'd be even sicker of questing in Desolace and Felwood, so there is that to take into account.)

The other thing I've been doing is getting into GDKP runs. Runs of TOC25 take about an hour and a half and have been excellent for gearing up my main. He's in 2-piece Tier 9 gear now and has the remaining two Trophies to finish off the set. Also, Reign of the Unliving dropped off of Anub and, although I should've stopped bidding, I wound up spending nearly 13,000g on the damn thing. However, there's a silver lining here: I made almost all of that money back already. My entire outlay for the day was 14,000g for the trinket and the trophy, and then I bought three BOE pieces to sell off. I got 2500g back from the GDKP pool, taking my expenditures down to 11,500g. Then, within 24 hours, two of my BOEs sold, including the DPS cloak for over 11,000g. Profit on those two items combined turned out to be 11,000g. So if I can flip the last ring for more than a 500g profit I'll have my biggest moneymaker of the week being ... the very run that was supposed to take gold OUT of my pocket. I have to say, I love that. (As it stands I've got the ring listed at a 5500g profit so I'll actually be pretty unhappy if I have to keep cutting the price down till it's only 500g. Ha.)

24,749g to go! Let's get this done!

184,000 in the bank -- but there could've been more.

Yesterday I hit the 190,000 gold mark. I cheated, though; my shaman finally dinged 80, and after securing crafted blues for his chest and shoulders to replace his heirloom gear, I (a) passed the mail shoulders and chest off to my DK, (b) trained up his level 80 spells, and (c) shipped off his gold to my banker -- just a shade under 2000g if you're curious. Now after months of leveling, he'll be leaving Dalaran once a day to do the JC daily and cutting the gems my DK transmutes. He'll be a goldmaking bot but he'll net me at 1000g in profit every week if he only does the bare minimum. Seems sad, but at least he's not like my paladin, who raided at the bleeding edge up to the second or third week post-3.1 and now basically logs in to smelt titansteel. The shaman's in quest blues and greens and is eagerly awaiting the Cataclysm and the opportunity to max out JC and enchanting when that hits. I'm confident he'll be meleeing his way through postapocalypse Azeroth in a few short months.

So about that 190,000 gold; it turned into 184,000 courtesy of a GDKP run of TOC25. Only one true upgrade dropped for me, and I bought that. Plus, I picked up some Trophies, and redeemed one on my way out of the Argent Tournament grounds for a Tier 9.3 piece. After this week of dailies I'll be rockin' a sweet two-piece set bonus. I have an awkward extra Trophy as well, which is clearly third-wheelin' it and needs a partner. So I have to raid TOC25 at least one more time in order to get my raider up to speed. This GDKP run was interesting; people were getting really gunshy when bidding on a piece of loot hit 2000g. Makes me wonder; why don't they flinch about paying thousands of gold for a crafted BOE item, but the BOP stuff from raids doesn't fetch that? I think it's because people think that dungeon loot is "free" and they feel weird paying for it. Luckily I know better than that, and I was able to snag something from every boss except one -- and get over 1000g back when we downed the last boss. Also I was pulling upward of 4000 DPS and that was only good enough for 16th on the damage meter. Now that's humbling.

So now I basically need to not get bored with making gold so that I can hit the cap. Don't get me wrong -- I have been getting very bored. And I think people have been catching on to the low-level enchants I've been selling to make ridiculous profits: the mats for those have been getting terribly expensive, and with the prices of epic gems dropping like a rock, my profits are coming pretty strictly from transmutes, smelting, and the piddling few hundred gold I make on glyph sales every couple of days. But 30,000g should be easily doable before Super Bowl Sunday and after I give my friend his gift, I'll be able to relax on the obsessive goldmaking front. Well, kind of; the fact that I'm planning on leveling my DK and priest to 80 now are effects of the goldmaking craziness. What am I getting myself into?

175K in the bank ... thank you Battered Hilt!

Well, I didn't hit the gold cap in 2009 like I thought I might, but I'll be pretty surprised if I don't do so before the end of the month. That is, of course, unless some major GDKP opportunities come along in January. In fact, I've banked over 50,000 gold in the last two weeks so we should be well beyond the cap in short order.

However, I have to thank the RNG for 12,000 of that gold. Yes, the famous Battered Hilt dropped in Heroic Halls of Reflection and I won the roll! What a beautiful thing. If I hadn't when hog-wild in a GDKP run a few weeks ago and purchased the dagger out of ToC25, I might have actually started the quest line to get Quel'Delar, but since it's only an upgrade up 6 iLvl points, all I saw were dollar signs. Luck was with me, and even though we wiped after it dropped (and the run wound up breaking up a couple wipes later) I was thrilled. I put it on the AH for 14,000 gold, and within half an hour someone was announcing "WTB Battered Hilt 12K" in Trade. Well, I couldn't pass that up, so I ate the deposit and made the handoff on the Ironforge bridge.

Other than that, it's been the usual ritual of buying saronite ore, smelting it, transmuting it to titanium, and profiting from those bars; transmuting and cutting meta and epic gems; and the occasional foray into blacksmithing for profit. Actually, Eternal Belt Buckles were miraculously selling for 40g or so a couple days ago, so I made a stack and turned a few hundred gold profit off those. I also moved two Tankards O' Terror at 1100g apiece somehow, so I only have five of those left. I've started firing up the glyph machine again, although I don't know what the hell is wrong with the glyph sellers on my server; I sold two glyphs for over 40g for the first time in months yesterday and now everything's back below 10g again. Whatever, for someone who still has stacks and stacks of herbs anything I sell feels like a profit now.

Oddly, my focus has now turned to Cataclysm. Yeah, we don't have a release date yet, but what I'm referring to is making sure that I'm putting myself in a position to maximizing profits when the expansion hits. That means that my two 80s won't be sufficient; in order to level my professions to the new maximum, I'll have to have everyone at 80 and ready to go in advance of the launch. Worse, the two toons I have sitting at 80 only have two crafting professions (inscription and blacksmithing) and also have herbalism and mining. Yuck! I'm not going to drop those because they're kind of a pain to level and farming mats while leveling in the new zones will beat paying inflated AH prices. My JC/Enchanter is 76 (halfway to 77) so that's not bad, but my DK with LW and Alchemy is 69 and my tailor is still down at 36! Thus, my new plan is to:

A) Level the shaman to 80. He's rockin' heirloom shoulders and chest, so his last few levels shouldn't be too arduous. Definitely doable within January even at a really slow pace. Plus, he's getting a bunch of experience from the jewelcrafting dailies (to give you an idea, he's halfway to 77 and only half-done with Dragonblight. That's a lot of extra XP from JC dailies!)

B) Then I'll pass off the heirlooms to the DK and he'll be in enhancement shaman mail through Northrend. Hopefully my fellow dungeon runners won't inspect me!

C) At the same time, I need to gather 40 Emblems of Heroism (remember those?) and buy the heirloom chest for my 36 priest and speed him through the content. I want to at least get him to the point where he can make netherweave bags -- I really think there are untold thousands to be made from selling bags once Cataclysm hits and everyone and his mom is creating a worgen on the Alliance side. Getting all the way to Frostweave capability would be great but I don't know how much tolerance I have for going through Outland again. The second profession the priest has is Enchanting, but since the shaman has that maxed out already, he'll be dropping it for Engineering. At that point I'll have all of the crafting professions covered. By leveling the DK to 80 and waiting on the priest, I'll be gambling that at least one of the other six professions will be more profitable than engineering or tailoring. I don't think that's too far-fetched.

I've decided that I only have the tolerance for gearing up one toon as a raider at a time. Through Naxx/OS/EoE this was my paladin, and he cleared up to Mimiron in Ulduar before my schedule became too ridiculous to raid. Then, when this patch hit, I picked up the warlock and never looked back. Because of the hours I spend goldmaking, any additional time in raids and chain heroics would be absurd. So the warlock will be the only one going on GDKP runs and spending gold in huge chunks (he dropped just under 3000g on Bejeweled Wizard's Bracers yesterday in fact.) So these level-capped 80s that I'm proposing to accumulate will be sitting there as professionbots, seeing no new content, getting no achievements, nothing. As a point of reference, by paladin's last achievement besides logging in during the 5th anniversary of the game came in early August. I have over 20 days /played on that toon. Kind of heartbreaking, isn't it?

Less than 40K to the cap! Don't stop me now!