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.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Saturday, February 13, 2010
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!
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!
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