The Golden Plateau

The usual profession question is back in my mind. To keep the dual gathering, or to try playing with some other crafting profs. The option in the lead at this point is dropping mining and picking up alchemy. My guild doesn't have any high level alchemists, and the AH seems to have limited availability of the potions, flasks, and elixirs that I want. What good is having all the gold from dual gathering if there's nothing to buy? Hell, I couldn't even find any Superior Mana Oil, so I had to resort to buying the formula and donating it to a guild enchanter, only to discover that there was no Netherbloom available on AH at the time, so I couldn't even reap the benefits until I farmed the herbs myself!!!!

I actually think that the real reason I'm debating the switch is due to my spending. Ever since getting my epic flight, I've loosened the purse strings a bit. Prior to that, I barely spent money on anything. Occasional greenie equipment purchases on AH, every 10 levels or so. That's probably the biggest expense I ever had and it really didn't amount to a whole lot over the grind from 1-70. I think I wore the epic bracers I got from WSG at 39 until well into my 50's.

Then I hit 70, grind out the last little bit to buy the fast birdie, and then the flood gates opened. Biggest expense was enchants. Before I got the 300 flight skill, I don't think I ever enchanted anything, besides some 2H sword I had Beastslayer put on in my 30's because it looked cool :-) Easily dumped near to a thousand gold into a full set of enchants/glyphs/inscriptions/gems (including the price of buying rep items like Coilfang Armaments to gain access to that stuff) inside of a week. Add to that repeat enchants on a few items that got replaced immediately after the enchant.

Then a case of the altitis and profession-ism hit me, shelling out the dough to buy mats to level up enchanting, engineering, tailoring, and alchemy on alts. Granted, none of them have gone to too high level, but still, compared to my previous spending habits, this is a spending spree. Plus, to help my alts level as fast as possible, I've been buying them gear every 2 or 3 levels, or at least as frequently as I can remember to look. Plus enchanting their stuff, albeit with low level enchants, and only on BoE stuff that can be mailed to my enchanter prior to equipping.

Then add to that, I spent a king's ransom on 3 Primal Mooncloth Bags to satisfy Amava's purse fetish.

And a growing pile of gold going towards Fel Armaments to get me to Exalted with Aldor. Luckily there's 2 folks on my server who like to sell theirs for 50% of the market rate, which wowhead confirms it a legit market and not hyper-inflated, so I'm their favorite customer. Keep 'em coming.

The end result of all this is that the wonderful and exciting world of watching my gold supply climb climb climb has been replaced by watching my gold level more or less stay stagnant over the course of a week (with nice dips and dives if you look at a short enough time horizon) while various other things like rep bars, profession skill levels and recipe lists all increase. Bah.

The good news on that front is that I'm running out of places to spend. Strange, but in a distorted way, its true.

Enchanter alt hit 275, which was all I needed. Unless the DE mats enable him to grow beyond 275, he'll stay there or grow to 300 without any cost. He's at 35, with no intention to play him (other than maybe to lvl to 40 and give myself another place to dump some money on his mount) in the near future. He can still dump money into engineering from 225 to 300.

My alchemist/tailor is maxed at 225 on both profs, and he just dinged 23 friday morning, so there's going to be a little while before he can spend any more on his professions, other than the occasional unlearned recipe that comes up on the AH. If Amava took up Alchemy, this guy would drop it and pick up Jewel Crafting. And my Blacksmith/JC would drop JC for mining, but he's too low level to even consider. But he looks bad @$$, so I want to bring him out.

Punky Brewster, the Gnome Rogue, is developing her skinning and leatherworking organically, through grinding, skinning, and crafting, and only purchasing random assorted parts like belt buckles as needed. She's also going to stay in the stables until my alchemist hits 35.

So, where's all this going?????

To help revive my love for dual-gathering, I'm going to stop the spending for a week or two. Or maybe, rather than a time-based thing, maybe I'll set a savings goal and remain stingy until then.

The only forseable expense, besides the random pet food, arrows, and mana pots, will be mats and tip for a +35 agi enchant on the S3 Arena Axe that I should be eligible to purchase on tuesday.

Yeah, maybe that's it. I'll go buy the mats for the +35, and then cut myself off and send the money to an alt that doesn't even have any professions and not stop until that guy's got enough dough for his own epic flyer that's 69 levels away.

Hmmm? I wonder? Or maybe I'll just take up Alchemy :-)

Indecision, FTW!!!!