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.