For those of us who didn’t play the beta, or read prior to release, we went into Garrisons pretty blind. As I’ve touched on, they are a far better mechanic than I first expected. When I heard they were a “required” part of leveling, I was not impressed. Until I actually did the leveling and it does tie in very well together. Plus, instead of just being a hero, you’re at the forefront as a commander. It’s a nice little touch.
However, that doesn’t mean it’s all sunshine and lollipops. Take, for example, yours truly. Out of the gate I built a Gem shop and an Enchanting shop. The Enchanting shop was a no-brainer for a toon who had no professions at the time. Free disenchanting is a fantastic feature for all the BoP mail rares like to give my Druid. Plus, at level 2, weapon enchant transmogs. Good deal. The gem shop not so much.
For the most part I did it thinking I would get a gem or two every work order…which I could easily fill via the mine. Instead I got a bunch of soulbound crystals that are fantastic if you’re a Jewelcrafter. I know Tumunzahar will definitely be looking forward to one of those. Occasionally my work order would result in Sorcerous Earth or Sorcerous Air, which in the first week of the expansion yielded some solid returns on the Auction House. So after a while I realized the error of my ways and just switched to the Storehouse. Not the most viable choice, but gives me bank and eventually guild bank access. So I’m ok with that.
The big thing for me is the desire to get the Garrison to level 3. I want to open up the Pet Menagerie and also get my other buildings leveled. What I hadn’t been able to figure out, is why that wasn’t happening. To do so, you need 5k in gold (which in this expansion is ridiculously easy) and 2k in resources. For the longest time, I couldn’t stockpile half of said resources. I had no idea why. I know the best way to get them is through your Garrison, rares, quests, etc (without changing your buildings). What I knew, but didn’t pay attention to? This:
Yup. Silly, right? I normally run anywhere from 8-15 missions a day, and did so all along as I leveled. At no point did it occur to me that I was burning through more resources than I was acquiring. At 10-30 resources a mission, there was no way I was ever going to meet my goal. Now that I’ve made that discovery, and righted myself, I can begin the push to 2k.
What about you? Any foolish errors along the way or did you plan yours out well in advance?
To this day, I think this remains my favourite moment in World of Warcraft. Rounding up a bunch of friends randomly (well, as far as they knew) and handing out a Winter Veil present to each of them. As you can guess by the back row, it was the Jewelcrafting Panthers. Alas, those who rolled alts on Runetotem obviously weren’t able to mount up with the rest. It was something important to me that is really hard to describe. Knowing how much each one appreciated it certainly helped. I said it then, and I’ll say it now, I just wish I had planned it sooner so that I could have amassed more gold to get a few more made.
This shot is of Mrs. Amateur’s Mage, Taelainne. I had her call down the flame as one of three covers I did for her dice case (the other two were, of course, Arcane and Frost), to match the dice inside.
I took Tumunzahar out last night for about an hour as I try to come back. Aside from lowbies, he seems to be the one (class?) I still remember how to play pretty well. I didn’t queue for an instance or anything, as I wasn’t sure what my window of opportunity looked like. But, in that hour, I did come to a few conclusions:
the auction house is as easy to make quick gold off of as it ever was. I’ve played maybe 5-6 hours since coming back and made 5k.
No, I’m not an auction junkie again, I just realize I left the game somewhat broke. It was totally worth it though!
The Ironforge cooking dailies are still simpler and faster than Stormwind.
The chickens in front of Ironforge no longer run around like their head is cut off when you need to catch them.
Oh Illidan. The chickens sparkle. Twilight jokes aside, it’s like they think the players can’t see that it’s a chicken, or might be confused that it might not be the right chicken.
I still don’t like much of the Jewelcrafting dailies in Stormwind. Oh, yay, look, back to Cataclysm.
If it isn’t the goo, it’s no doubt the gems I don’t have and will cost 40g each on the auction house.
Pet Battles are just as I remember them, and so is my affinity towards having one of each.
I seriously need to remember to heal them first. That or I need to level a lot more. That might actually not be a bad idea, as I can see my son really liking that.
They mark rares on your map now?
There are a tonne of rares in Pandaria.
There are a tonne of rares in Pandaria when there’s no one around to kill them.
As a Holy Priest, I cannot kill very many of them. In fact, I finally killed one on my own with Tum last night.
It’s the Nannermancer up there. I swear, Tum’s underneath him there quite alive and quite well.
Yup. The next rare I found slaughtered me. The dog he summoned was doing more damage than I was.
The Pandaren lore still doesn’t pull me in. There are nuggets of interest, but for the most part it’s just “there.”
In the rest of Azeroth, I’ve always wanted to read the quest text. Now…*shrug*
This game still has way too many “collect x of this, while killing y of these and activating z more of these things.”
Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed myself. Smite spamming isn’t exactly my cup of tea, but Tum is 88 and at the moment I’d just like to get him to 90. I’m in no rush, and will heal dungeons when I get the chance. I’m just a bit too busy to commit to one without going “afk” more often than I would like.
The success of this blog stems from this time last year, when I took part in the Blog Azeroth Thanksgiving event put on by AmerPriest. I even finished second in said contest, and have been humbled ever since. I signed up for it again this year (the event, as I don’t believe there was a contest) but my mind was blank on what to write. I knew something I was planning on doing, but I sure couldn’t write about that because it would spoil everything. So I kind of played dumb when people asked about it, and the Thanksgiving event came and went.
Remember when I posted about wanting to earn a fair amount of gold by Winter Veil? No one ever asked me what it was for. Actually, Magik did and I dodged the question rather well. But other than that, people supported my effort but never questioned why I was trying to hoard it. Well, try I did. However, in six weeks or so I made less than 30 thousand gold. So I knew I was never going to achieve my goal. I was dejected, but was going to make the most of it anyway.
So I’ve quietly gone about my business, nickel and diming wherever I could. I acquired most of the things I needed in anticipation of Winter Veil when I would execute my plan. Well, with all the talk of Thanksgiving this week, and some things I will get to in a moment, I began thinking about moving up said plan. Low and behold yesterday came. I looked at my Friends List prior to the Laid Back Raid and there were seven of the eight people on that I needed to talk to. The only one missing was Healblade and while I knew he was coming to raid, I still e-mailed him and ninja’d my wife’s Facebook to message him there as well. Fortunately as I was rounding up the others, he made it on.
First I had to get Navimie, Helke, Repgrind, and Tome to roll toons on Runetotem. Then I had to say no DK’s, Worgen, or Pandas. I needed something that didn’t have to sludge through a start zone considering I gave them zero notice. They all obliged, and as we started to come together there were many questions I refused to answer. Instead I had the Mages take everyone to Ironforge while I zipped to Shattrath quickly (because what I wanted wasn’t closer!). I circled back and picked up Repgrind and we arrived at Bruuk’s Corner. This is a significant location as it’s where I used to hold our guild Winter Veil parties.
With everyone gathered, I began handing out a present to each one. Once I was certain everyone had their gift, I allowed them to open them. Now before I get to the what (and someone of you will know from reading other blogs), let me get to the why. I hold friendship in very high regard. Each of these people, and more, are incredibly important to me for their own reasons and it comes down to being who they are. So, it was a short time after Mists launched that I got the idea to give my friends each a Jewelcrafted Panther Mount for Christmas/Winter Veil.
As I said, I decided to bump up the timeline. Arv was supposed to be one of the recipients, but I found out he snagged them all at some point, and as such I was able to move on to another person. That’s good because I was disappointed I couldn’t make one for each person that I wanted to. Jai, Matty, Shoryl, and more were all people I really wanted to give this gift to and I couldn’t make it happen. Yes, it disappoints me. I could have pulled it off, but I refused to accept someone’s offer of gold (or buy it online) because I wanted to earn each of these my way. It was more rewarding, but in the end I didn’t get to give to everyone.
As it was, talking to a Jewelcrafter and saying I had the money and mats for eight panthers was enough to floor someone. Heck, they thought with all those materials that I wanted the Black one. Thank god there was no red stack of gems or my plan would have been foiled (I had them made 20 minutes before I rounded everyone up). But everything did work out just fine in the end. I would have liked to have celebrated with everyone for far longer, but there was a Laid Back Raid scheduled that some of us had to get to.
Firelands was interesting. It didn’t occur to me the zone would look very much like it did amidst all those bloody dailies. I’m also glad for the folks that came along, because I never would have known where to go. We had a few wipes, but we pressed on. It was nice to have content that had its challenges, but we perservered in such a casual manner. I again have to thank Arv and others who provided great leadership with each fight. Alas, we were not entirely successful on this night. Despite many efforts, we were bested by Ragnaros himself. The mechanics of that fight are still pretty tough. But he can rest assured we will be back.
I had dying down to an art form.
I had a great time in there, but the truth is…I didn’t want to go in the first place. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go to Firelands, I didn’t want to do LBR or really even be on WoW. I haven’t for some time. I kind of just go through the motions off and on. Up until now, very few people knew that I am suffering from serious depression at best, more likely it’s bipolar. Don’t know for sure, because I’ve not yet had the referral processed for proper analysis (long wait around these parts). But needless to say, it has diminished my interest in a number of things and one of those is WoW. For a long time I’ve been logging on just to get those panthers made. Add in my video display issues when I have been wanting to play, and my time has been slim.
Christmas is coming. That’s a busy time for me, and I will also be sending my laptop away for repair at some point. Combined with my mindswings and it’s hard to say when I’ll want to be on or what I will want to do. I like LBR runs, because all of the people involved are great to be around and do cheer me up. At the same time I have to recognize there will be a period where I’ll simply be offline and not able to run them. Whether someone else is able to take over in my absence or not will be determined before I take off. But I will be taking what I’m terming a sporadical. It’s not a full sabbatical but my appearances will be much more, well, sporadic.
I also recognize with the holidays coming, it would have been harder to get all those people together as I was able to in that instant last night. It was important to me to be able to have them all together at the same time, because that’s just how I am. I know there was some concern I was doing it because it was my swan song, and in some ways this post might suggest that, but that’s not the case and nor was it the plan. These mounts were always meant to be a Christmas gift to great people. Nothing more, nothing less.
I’ve just had a lot going on mentally as of late and that’s becoming a focus for me because it’s gotten worse in the last month and in ways I’m becoming much more concerned about it. I’m taking the appropriate actions of course, with counselling and meds and a strong network of support. So that’s why I moved up the date, why you haven’t necessarily seen me online as often, and most certainly why I haven’t been posting or commenting nearly as much. I just haven’t had it in me, and when my laptop goes on repair vacation it will be even more so.
To those I gave the cats to, I’m going to reiterate just how important each of you are to me and how awesome you’ve been just being you and this is a small way for me to say thank you. To others, I wish I could have fully shared that thanks. But if you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’re one of those people and I just wanted to thank you from the bottom of my heart.
So, quite some time ago I picked up the Shield of Impenetrable Darkness during a Laid Back Raid. I had always meant to make an outfit for it, complimenting it with the Crystal Spire of Karabor. Today was to be that day. All I needed was the legs and gloves and I was set. Husband of Ysera’s Daughter happened to be on and made me some Vicious Ornate Pyrium Legguards and Boots. I then hit the JP vendor for a set of Bladebreaker Gauntlets and was good to go. Or, rather, I thought I was. I realized I still needed the Wailing Nightbane Pauldrons from The Unforgiven in Stratholme. Fortunately it only took killing him twice to get them.
However, you’ll notice in the picture Saintvache isn’t sporting a Mace. That’s because of a very annoying transmog limitation. You see, you cannot put a Main Hand item over a One Hand item that you’re holding in your main hand. So, that idea went out the window (no 85 Maces on the AH either at the time). So, his tanking look remains the same as it’s been for the past six months. Instead, I took his healing gear and knowing he was holding a sword grabbed The Turning Tide from his bank. The other pieces of the outfit are Bogslayer Breastplate, Gilded Thorium Cloak (which dropped last night during a Kara run with Ratshag, Helke, and a few more), Vicious Pyrium Belt, and Heroic Skullcap. I used the Argent Crusade Tabard to cap it off. Made him just a hint less of a Death Knight. And yes, as I pointed out to Arvash this morning, in pure ass-backwardness my tank outfit is light and my healing outfit is dark.
Now I no sooner finished that and switched over to Larfleeze to see what the Runetotem Auction House had for me to discover (cheap Primordial Rubies was the answer), when I came across my first Jeweled Onyx Panther in-game. Brezell barely sat still long enough for me to get the shot, but you can see it alright. That’s what happens when you take the four colours and merge them. So you’re looking at about 100-125 thousand gold there. Sexy, but I like the four others better. Speaking of which, I still haven’t seen a green one in-game.
I’ve been rather excited to have snagged two of the Panther mounts already, and have made no bones about wanting the other two. I just happen to be cheap. Well, not cheap. I just don’t like dropping below certain gold thresholds. I’ve had a few comments about having more than enough gold and that’s true. But I’m the only one who knows where my gold comes from or even how much I have these days, so that suggestion is made without knowledge. Also, while others were buying Yaks and Tundras and pets and gear…I was saving. You have your gold vices and I have mine. Sorry, where was I?
The panthers. I’ve purchased two now, and to be honest they are the only ones I’ve seen in Azeroth so far. It’s kinda nice being the only one, but I do honestly expect that to change. Plus, most people are in Pandaria at this time…and while I’ve not seen anyone riding them I have seen people trying to sell them. Emphasis trying.
The going rate for the Panthers is roughly 30k, slightly higher for red because Blizzard’s absurd emphasis on putting the Intellect, Strength, and Agility cuts in one colour continues to cause red gems to sell for more than any other colour. To me, 30k is about right. On most servers, that’s going to be a slight profit for you unless you’re just buying the mats at whatever the Auction House price is. Let’s look at it closer:
Orb of Mystery is 20k from a vendor. Now, you can get that reduced to 18k via your guild, but no lower.
Living Steel is about 1k a bar. You need four. There’s ways to lower that cost via do it yourself, but not everyone will want to wait four days.
Serpent’s Eye vary in price and you need two per cat. I got some as cheap as 22g, while other servers are in around 70g.
A stack of colour appropriate gems (green=Wild Jade, red=Primordial Ruby, yellow=Sun’s Radiance, Blue=River’s Heart). At this stage, getting a stack for less than 2k can be done, but mileage varies.
So if someone is selling the Panther for 30k, they’re probably making a 2k profit. Perhaps a little more, perhaps a little less. Still, I don’t see the panthers ever settling in for less than 25k unless someone’s basically just giving them away for the cost. The thing is, the players who want the mount now like myself -we’re going out and having it made. We’re doing the legwork. Others are no doubt just making it themselves. So I just don’t see a market for the Panthers -yet. I know plenty of people who want them, they just can’t afford them.
I think that’s where the real issue lies at the moment. The people that can buy them are making them privately. The ones who would openly buy it, can’t afford it. There seems to be no grey area in-between. Now, raiding is starting and players are getting capped. That means more dailies and more gold drops, so the gold should start coming in. Once a couple of panthers start to pop up, you’ll see players having financial goals and they’ll start saving to buy them. That’s when I think there will be a market for these mounts. Until then, I’d really only make it for yourself, a friend, a guildie, or someone looking to have one made.
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