My Setup

Since some people are curious, here you go:

I have every profession in the game maxed out over my TN characters.

Priest #1: Tailoring/Enchanting
Paladin #1: Blacksmithing/Jewelcrafting
Priest #2: Inscriptions/Alchemy (Potions spec)
Mage: Leatherworking/Alchemy (Xmute spec)
Hunter: Herbalism/Alchemy (Flask spec)
Druid: Herbalism/Mining
Rogue #1: Skinning/Engineering
Paladin #2: Enchanting/Alchemy (Xmute spec)
Shaman: Herbalism/Alchemy (Xmute spec)

I need to make a new skinner, and replace skinning on the rogue with Alchemy (Xmute spec). I want to swap leather working off of my mage onto something that it makes sense on. I'm eyeing my shaman's herbalism to be replaced. I will swap the mage's LW to herbalism if I do that.

Lowbies Will Be:
Warlock #1: Alchemy (Xmute spec)/??
Rogue #2: Alchemy (Xmute spec)/??
Warlock #2: Alchemy (Xmute spec)/??

To be rolled in future:
Warrior: Jewelcrafting/Alchemy (Xmute spec)

Currently, I have 5 alchemists, 3 of them xmute specs. So, every day, I get 5 epic gems. Even purchasing the mats, that's still a quick and easy bit of profit.

I average one proc every other day. Between three xmute masters, that's an average of 1 in 6 will proc.

With a plan to add at least 4 more xmute masters in the future, that will give me 9 epic gems every day, assuming alchemists xmute epic gems in Cataclysm. It wouldn't make sense if they didn't....

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Also, for those curious about my gold income, I have an Alliance DK which I use for my xfaction needs. She is inscriptions/herbalism.
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And yes, I'm going back into stockpiling gold for Cataclysm. I'd like to hit the cap before the xpac. Wonder if I can make it....

Gold Goal: Week 12

Looks like it's been nearly 12 weeks since I decided I wanted to hit the gold cap, and I'm around halfway there. Compared to others, I seem to be fairly slow at making my way up the gold mountain, but that probably just means I need to take some time to figure out what I'm doing right - and what I can do better.

The inscription market was previously my biggest earner, but lately a slew of new auctioneers have slaughtered the market faster than I could manage to fix it, and it's now become a weaker backbone for my auctions.

I need to invest more, and do so more confidently. Part of my problem is that the only things I do solidly are inscription, restocking my glyphs every few hours, and my daily epic gem xmutes - all 5 of them. I need to expand my library of epic gem cuts, level my next two alchemists, and a whole slew of other things.

Right now, Cataclysm is looming on the horizon, and I feel I need to get my ducks in a row for that - collect BoEs on my second account for my blood elf warrior (JC/Alchemist) and my goblin warlock (??/Alchemist) as well as the materials I'll need to power level their professions.

I'm being set back with my gold goal, however, as my WoW decided to begin crapping itself and crashing every time I loaded Dalaran and Icecrown. Repair utility came to my rescue, and it repaired WoW... and then started downloading all of the patches from 3.2 on! Bad words go here!!

Milling: Cutting the work in half. Literally.

Hello! Today's post is really short and simple, but it can pack a real punch for your productivity.

If, like me, you're in the glyph market and usually milling your own herbs into inks, you're probably familiar with that sinking 'there goes my afternoon' feeling that can crop up when you're faced with over 200 stacks of herbs that need milled.

If, also like me, you're a dualboxer, hope is on the horizon! I've been playing around with Keyclone with my dualboxing for a few weeks now, and I must say, I simply adore it. So today I'm offering a simple tip that just crossed my mind a few minutes ago. That means I haven't been able to put it to the test, but you can bet that sooner or later I will.

On your second account, level inscriptions to the point where you can mill all of the Northrend herbs. Copy the usual milling macro over to that character, and keybind it to the same keys for both scribes. At that point, it's just a matter of mailing half your herbs to one scribe and the other half to the other, and sitting down to dualbox mill. If this goes how I imagine, you'll have effectively cut your milling time in half.

Grid+Clique vs Healbot, Round 2 - FIGHT!

I have long been a staunch proponent for my side of the battlefield in the war between Grid+Clique and Healbot users. I began my healing job with the standard 'click the user frame, push the button' mode of healing, and to this day I'm more than capable of whipping the raid groups out and manually healing. But, it never feels as fast and efficient as addon-assisted healing.

I, personally, am on the side of Healbot users. It is a fast, efficient addon that is usable almost straight out of the box. My position was more firmly embedded when I made an attempt to install Grid+Clique when I heard that it was superior to Healbot. To make a long story short, there was a tutorial, and a list of around 10 additional addons to add onto Grid and configure, and, in the end, the goal felt like it was simply for Grid+Clique to impersonate healbot after hours of set up before it ever became usable. Halfway through reading the tutorial and attempting to configure Grid into some semblance of usability, I completely gave up and found myself once and for all in the anti-Grid camp.

To this day, I remain a staunch supporter of Healbot. However, it has been over a year since I last attempted to make Grid+Clique work. In that time, there may well have been some changes to make the addon far more friendly to users. With this (perhaps vain?) hope in mind, I am indulging in an experiment as I write this post! I will be downloading and installing Grid+Clique to attempt and set it up to be usable by me, and I will see just how long it takes to set up.

The addon that I am accustomed to using can be found here: Healbot Continued.
The addons that I will be comparing it to are found here, and here, and don't forget here.

So far, I think I've managed to make the Grid look something like what I can tolerate. I've yet to test it in a group setting, but at the moment it's only usable for selecting targets. I haven't yet gotten Clique configured - or even figured out how to configure Clique. It has been half an hour.

There is no menu for handling Clique off of my default addons menu. This is highly annoying, and /clique gives me a fairly cryptic list of / commands for the addon. I don't see anything yet that indicates how to set it up.

/clique showbindings brings up a small window with the words 'Clique Bindings' and an X for closing it. Mousing over this window results in nothing at all enlightening. Shift, alt and ctrl left-and-right clicking does nothing to this strange little window. I now decide to go to the addon's page on curse.com to see if it holds any further enlightenment.


'To begin with Clique, simply open your spellbook, and click the new tab that exists there. This is the Clique configuration tab, and you can open it anytime you are not in combat to configure your clicks.'

 Okay, that's a little enlightening, so now I try that.

Ah-hah!

Now I seem to be getting somewhere.

I have now cloned my mousekeys for healbot onto Grid. It's not that terribly bad, but I can't see my hots! This is a problem. I should look into fixing it. Let's have a side-by-side comparison.

Left, Grid. Right, Healbot.

So, back to Grid's configuration with me. I need a larger icon, and a timer, just like Healbot gives me by default. It's been an hour now. 

This is dumb. I afk for pizza. It is tasty.

Moving on.

Time to navigate the Labyrinth.

Status - Auras - Buff: Renew looks promising at first, but proves itself a dead end. It's just something to do with 'priority' and what classes to show it on. 

After a through investigation, I come to the conclusion that this simply is not possible. I wonder if there is an addon to the addon that I can add on to add on the functionality I need that is given to me by default by the other addon. If this is true, it will take it up to 4 addons to make Grid function, vs one to make Healbot function. 

I give up and go take care of my glyphs sales while I search for an addon to add on to the addon. On my search, I discover GridStatusHots, which sounds like it will do sort of what I want, sans the icon. Just color.Unfortunately, I never got around to trying it out.

It seems to come down to preferences, in the end. Both are UI mods that display your group in a customizable manner, and allow you to select and-or click-cast on that target. None of Healbot's bad rap from the days of vanilla WoW are true anymore, any anyone who uses Grid+Clique is doing the same thing as a player who chooses to use Healbot. Healbot also utilizes the Healcomm library, which is apparently did not do in the past. At this point, I do not believe that one is superior to the other.

Round Two - End!

I'll stick with Healbot.

EDIT: This post was initially written a few days ago. I intended to get back to comparing the addons, but in the time since I first started writing it, I've come to my conclusion, so I finished up the post.

The Daily Grind: Hodir

Dailies are a great, quick way to make gold. Sure, they're repetitive, boring, and sometimes result in pvp, but you're generating gold without needing to make an auction. While doing your dailies, you can sometimes get world drop epics (I've gotten four that I can recall), and plenty of greens to DE and vendor trash to convert to gold.

The first daily quest hub I'm taking a look at is The Sons of Hodir. The Sons of Hodir are the faction from which you can purchase pve oriented Shoulder Inscriptions. Once upon a time, these were BoP, and every character leveled needed their own faction reputation with Hodir to enable them to glyph their shoulders - unless of course, they were an inscriptionist.

Nowadays, since Hodir's glyphs were changed to BoA and everyone only needs one character with reputation, as well as the availability of rep tokens from heroic badges, Hodir's valley is often a virtual ghost town. This means less competition for the daily mobs, more discoveries of Everfrost Chips, and a quick, often painless place to visit to make some quick gold.

Once you are exalted with Hodir, you will have access to:

1: Blowing Hodir's Horn  (13g 23s)
2: Feeding Arngrim (13g 23s0)
3: Hot and Cold (13g 23s)
4: Polishing the Helm (13g 23s)
5: Spy Hunter (13g 23s)
6:Thrusting Hodir's Spear (16g 53s)

This is a total gold value of 82g 68s plus loot from mobs. Quick and easy. 

However, the chain to unlock Hodir is a long, arduous journey. The upside to this is that it becomes available at level 77, and provides delicious XP. At level 80, the chain itself is an excellent source of gold, leading to a source for gold!


It all begins in K3 with Gretchen Fizzlespark's They Took Our Men! The rest of that chain is as follows:


1.They Took Our Men!
2.Leave No Goblin Behind
3.The Crone's Bargain
4.Mildred the Cruel
5.Discipline
6.Examples to be Made
7.A Certain Prisoner
8.A Change of Scenery
9.Is That Your Goblin?
10.The Hyldsmeet 
11.Taking on All Challengers
12.You'll Need a Bear
13.Going Bearback
14.Cold Hearted
15.Deemed Worthy
16.Making a Harness
17. The Last of Her Kind
18. The Warm-Up
19. Into the Pit
20 Prepare for Glory
21 Lok'lira's Parting Gift
22. The Drakkensryd
23. Sibling Rivalry
24. Mending Fences

25. The Refiner's Fire
26. A Spark of Hope

At this point you should be neutral with Sons of Hodir, and able to begin the rep grind to unlock all of the dailies. Don't forget the Everfrost and Commendation Badges!

Getting Started

We all have to start somewhere, but if you're like me, you feel that you need a strong foundation to start on. Since I'm still getting my act together in the auctioning department, I think now is a good time to document the steps I've taken.

While I'm still getting into the auctioning aspect of things, I've been earning gold for a while. I believe it started back in Burning Crusade, when I realized that doing dailies on multiple 70's was a good thing. I got into the habit of doing a set pattern of dailies. This made them more predictable, if not more entertaining. Lately, I do dailies on only my main, though I keep kicking myself for it. I have unlocked pretty much all of Icecrown and use that for my basis of doing dailies.

This progressed into farming old-world instances on my protection paladin once she was the proud owner of a vendor mount.

I have now begun to farm and purchase materials off the auction house to use my professions for money in addition to all of the above.

I imagine I'll be taking additional steps in the future, but for the current time, this is the point I'm at.

Gold Total Update: 47,916g 77s 20c
Total profits since May 20th: 9,669g

Auction House PvP

This marks day two of my latest insanity, and so far, the payoff is already noticeable. After dedicating about three hours to studying glyphs, I made my first move into the glyph market on my main server, and the results have been surprising. I'm refining the list I initially drew up based on sales - those that sell, I'm posting three more and judging their performance after that point. The ones that don't sell, I'll be re-posting and keeping an eye on. I will not make more of the glyph until I am sold out, at this point, to avoid overstocking what turns out to be an unpopular choice.

I have by now come to recognize yet another auctioneer on my server by their name, and am now engaging in Auction House PvP with them as we speak ;D (I wish I could remember which blog I read that on first - I do agree that the Auction House is yet another form of PvP). So far, we've elbowed each other back and forth  in the Blacksmithing markets and such, and I'm curious if he's simply re-posting unsold merchandise or crafting more and undercutting. The action has been particularly drastic, ranging between 50 to 25 gold undercutting on his behalf. I always reply with a much less drastic cut in price when undercutting him, to try and teach by example. So far, in my opinion, I find it better to undercut by coppers, and no more than a couple gold. This will make you the better price, and put you at the top of the list, but won't cut into your profits too harshly, especially if someone like my new dear friend comes along and starts throwing the undercutting around like it was going out of style.

Part of me wonders if he's attempting to elbow me clear out of the market by making me unable to get the sales I'm after due to his erratic pricing behaviors, but I also wonder if his intent is irrelevant as long as I don't give up and keep perusing the dream. Well, that sounded corny.

But that's what it is. A dream, a desire, a goal. It's a good thing to have, especially while facing the End of the XPac Woes. I want to head into Cataclysm with a strong financial start, and I want to keep going strong throughout the next expansion.

Gold feels like a high score to me. They're points to acquire and later spend on rewards. The higher the score, the better the potential rewards, as well as the better the position for helping others.

But, what's the best approach to Auction House PvP? This feels like another thing I'll be learning on the quest for the gold cap. Any thoughts or pointers on the subject will be appreciated. :) 

For those who are curious, here's the most recent standings for my main server:

 

Abbreviated Screenshot.

It wasn't a phenomenal day, but considering that was made dipping into unfamiliar markets with little else, I'm happy with it.