Professional Bank Toons

Money Never Sleeps, Pal

Recently over at WoW Ladies, someone asked what professions their bank alt should have.  Amidst gold making efforts and several bank toons I can honestly say it never occurred to me until that moment. 

Monday Money Making: Cobalt Never Quits

Blacksmiths in Wrath of the Lich King could make some decent money, just by pulling Cobalt Ore/Bars off the auction house and heading to a forge.  The two best income sources by this means continues to be profitable and shows no signs that things will stop.

The first method was to make Notched Cobalt War Axes.  These one-handed axes can be made for 10 bars, and guarantee a profit.  No, they aren’t a great weapon.  They’re great for Enchanting materials, namely Greater Cosmic Essence.  More often that not, DE’ing one of these will bring you two Greater Cosmic Essence in return.  Without even looking at whether Lesser Cosmic Essence could make the move even more profitable, you’ve got a system that costs you less than 10g and on average yields 20g (Ore/Bar is less than 1g per, while the Greater Essence is usually around 10g each). 

The other way to make some decent money was to create the level 70 Cobalt tanking armor pieces.  Each piece tends to take 4-6 bars to make and brings back close to double that (or more in some cases).  The reason is pretty simple: you can’t get that kind of tanking gear as a fresh 70.  The Cobalt gear destroys any Outland green or blue someone might have as they come to Northrend and most people aren’t going to raid for epic gear when they can just keep leveling.  They’ll instead take the Cobalt gear which better suits them for the 70 Dungeons.  Just remember with the BoA slot items now, Shoulders and Chestpieces aren’t as popular as they were.

Despite a reduction in popularity, both of these methods continue to work.  The reason I bring them up today is because I’m seeing a drastic drop in Cobalt units as of late.  Both Ore and Bars have been in the 40-70 silver range, which becomes a license to forge gold by way of the two things mentioned today.

The Day Has Arrived

Cataclysm Here We Come!

At 12AM PST the new expansion officially launched. Now we know what Blizzard meant by Stamina was going to be key this go around, am I right? Worgens and Goblins are popping up all over and the elitists out for Server or World first could care less what effect their goal has on you and your ventures.

I set out a few goals this time last week and as I reflect on them, I do so with mixed results. I simply could not get Liouxpold to Honored with the Winterspring Trainers. I don’t know if others decided this is what they wanted to do before returning to endgame, but Winterspring was covered in level 80’s on both sides whenever I logged in on Lioux. I managed to get another thousand rep or each pair of quests once each time I tried. I think Blizzard reduced the number of Winterfall Shamans in the area as well, so the sniping was at a premium.

Neither Liouxpold or Elcombe got to 400 on their professions. In Elcombe’s defense, he can’t. As he’s only 51, he caps at 375. The happy news is that I did get him that far.

My newest Tailor, Egwydorian (Dwarf Shaman), made her way into Wool as I had hoped and I also got her to level 20. I’ll talk more about that tomorrow.

The hardest goal to meet, that I succeeded on, was getting Siori Exalted with Cenarion Expedition. First off, I went against my own views when it comes to achievements.   As I’m not Azeroth’s greatest Rogue by any stretch, and quite often had infant in hand, I stuck to running regular Steamvaults for rep rather than the Coilfang Heroics.  I also knocked off quests in Blade’s Edge.  But a good chunk of my rep came from Coilfang Armaments.  Some I got in Steamvaults, but the rest came from the Auction House at 8-14g a piece.  I think I bought over 150 of them.  The end result is Siori is Exalted with the Expedition and despite popular thought it was not to get the Hippogryph (though I cringe at wanting that for Liouxpold).  You see, The Shattering changed a number of things, including stats on a number of things.  Take for example, Enchant Cloak – Stealth.  The new +8 Agility and +8 Dodge is twink heaven, and I appreciate the tip from Mageshadow (now content manager for JMTC) about the change and how to obtain it.

So out of six goals, I did complete four.  Liouxpold was the toon to get the short end of the stick unfortunately.  It also got me thinking about setting in-game goals each week and Tuesdays work rather well.  So, what’s the plan for this week then?

• Well, I realize Liouxpold is very close to Revered with the Thorium Brotherhood and has enough rep items in his bag that I should have done that quite some time ago.  I’m going to refrain from any Wintersping goals, because further content today has my attention even more divided.
• I’ll be rolling my Worgen Warrior, Horrux.  I will probably wait to play him because the start zone is ridiculous.
• Getting Tumunzahar his Flight Master’s License and then getting his Mining maxed.
• Getting Siori’s Enchanting as far as I can before she needs to level.
• Starting my One Life To Live challenge.
• Leveling Egwydorian’s Tailoring to 150 and getting her Archaelogy to the same.

So, another half dozen goals in the works.  I’m sure some weeks I will have more and others will see me have less.  I just imagine little things will pop up that will grab my attention in the early Cataclysm days (including the new Guild UI, and what Claws of Nature will be focusing on).

Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ve stopped experiencing Cataclysm long enough.

Monday Money Making: Enchanting Weapons

shines like gold

Enchanting is one of the few professions where it really is a good idea to have a vast array of recipes.  Some are not that useful, but most serve some purpose or another.  While you can make a decent amount of coin on endgame enchants, the real gold lies in Weapon Enchants -because twinks love them…and your average Joe likes to see his weapon sparkle.

Look up the formulas for Fiery Weapon, Crusader, Unholy, Intellect, Spellpower, and Lifestealing.  If they’re even on your Auction House, they’re probably not cheap (though Lifestealing has come down).  For the next tier of Enchants, look up scrolls for Mongoose.  Insane prices, right?  That’s because for twinks these are the best at what they do.  If you’re high enough, run Karazhan and kill Moroes because the recipe is a guaranteed drop from him.  Also, gather up the gold and buy Fiery Weapon and Crusader.  Combined, these two recipes will probably cost you 400 or 500 gold (maybe less if you’re lucky).  You can make that back in less than two weeks if you’re a casual auctioneer, just on scrolls of these two.  I’m on both factions and various servers and right now the materials for Fiery Weapon (Essence of Fire and Small Radiant Shards) cost me about 10-20g a scroll.  I sell them for 25-50g.  For Crusader (Righteous Orbs and Large Brilliant Shards), the cost is closer to 50g, but they sell for 80-100g.  You can see the money just on those two, but the other ones I mentioned are worthwhile investments as well.  If you want to take things further, seek out what enchants twinks of all levels are using, be it weapons or even regular, or BoA, gear (because those items are going to continue to grow in numbers).  The efforts you need to go to in order to acquire the recipe will be a mere investment when you start reaping the return rewards.

Speaking of investing, I wanted to quickly mention two items going in opposite directions at the moment.  A hot item for the next few weeks is Small Egg.  If you see these prior to the start of Winter Veil for less than a gold, you’ll want to grab them.  They shoot to 2-5g each thanks to the recipes for The Winter Veil Gourmet.  

The other item, the Recipe: Savory Deviate Delight comes with a buyer beware.  This was one of the hardest recipes to come across prior to The Shattering, and would go for 200-1000g depending on the server and availability.  Now, it’s worth about 10% of that, because the drop rate has shot through the roof.  I know of one person who had three drop in under an hour while questing in Northern Barrens (its new drop zone).  If you can get this for a decent price on the Horde side, it does still hold some value on the Alliance side, so it’s an item that could net you a flip return, albeit at a fraction of what you would’ve gotten for it a month ago.

Karazhan Is Enchanting…Or Not

Taking a break from bringing Tumunzahar up in levels, I found myself taking Siori into Karazhan yesterday. At level 80, the place doesn’t have a tonne to offer. However, I like the place and she’s an Enchanter to boot. There was some disappointment, though, when I discovered there were three other Enchanters in the raid.

Short story long, we whomped Moroes and he dropped the Mongoose Recipe. Opportunity knocked, and I rolled a 16. Not only did I not win, I came in last. Real smooth.

If that weren’t enough, Surefooted dropped from three straight mobs. I lost all three. Yes, that means I was the only Enchanter on the run who didn’t get it. To make the sting sweeter, Terestian Illhoof dropped Soulfrost when he fell. The Priest who won Mongoose took it, too.

So, 0-for-5 on the recipes. Yes, I was tickled pink at this point. Imagine my surprise when Shade handed out Sunfire. Imagine the real surprise when I actually won it! I had to check my inventory just to be sure. I was nice to everyone and congratulated people as we went along. It really was a fun, laid back (albeit inexperienced in many cases) group. At the same time, I wish I had faired out better.