Ummm BoP

So, one day into my "personal shopper" alt concept, and boo boo number one happens.

After a guild meeting that left with tons of people squirming with cries of "help me, help me", I decided to go play an alt. Its reached quite a new level of intensity, and following the meeting it was extra funny, as nearly the entire meeting was dedicated to informing people on the correct way to ask for help, namely be prepared, be specific, be understanding if people are not available to help at a moment's notice. Then again, I suppose the type of person who blindly asks to be handheld through quest chains, lower level dungeons, or raid attunement processes is also the type who doesn't listen to the guild master during a meeting. But I digress.

I slip on over to my Enchanter alt. Something I noticed over the past few days is that he's somewhat limited on enchants that a low level priest might like. So why not take a look at what enchants are available from vendors. I try to use an "algorithm" of choosing the lowest level thingie that I'm missing, in any of WoW's general pursuits, and go after that thingie first. There's so many decisions and compromises to make in this game, that I often fall back on the "lowest level thingie first" method as my default choice when there's no compelling reason to choose something else. I believe you'd call it "breadth first" if you were using more exact language, but if you've ever read my posts, you know that's not my bag, baby.

Examining the output from my profession what-formula-is-missing addon (called Ackis Recipe List, for those who are wondering), I see an enchanting formula available in limited quantity from a vendor in Darnassus. Perfect, because my personal shopper is still parked in Auberdine after picking up a shirt pattern the day before.

Quick hop to Dar, and a few minutes of snooping around looking for the vendor. Find him, and ding, there's the formula.

But wait? What's this? If you scroll all the way to the last page, he's got another one listed. This one is a pretty nice looking +7 shield stamina, which would actually be nice for my Paladin tank, who also happens to be the enchanter. I have some addon or other that shows you which alts any given formula/pattern/recipe would be useful for. So I'm expecting it to tell me that my enchanter could use this, as its required skill level is below his. But all it says is "unuseful". I thought about it for a sec, but assumed it must be buggy, as it sometimes is.

I bought both formulas, and headed over to the mailbox. Doh. Can't email the one formula, as its soulbound. Damn bind on pickup formulas. There's a gold thrown down the toilet. Oh well, lesson learned.

Here's the funny part. Now driven by spite, I switch over to my enchanter, and run his butt from Iron Forge over to Darnassus. A few hours later, I check the vendor, and ding, the recipe is listed again.

But what's this? The tooltip STILL says its unuseful, when in fact it should be useful to this very toon.

This time it must be a bug, and the price appears to be reputation based, because its substantially lower than the price my other alt was charged.

Buy it, right click to learn it, and ding, I've now got a new stamina enchant for my shield.

And the nice part is that Moody the lvl 6 Druid, my alt family's personal shopper, got to shop near Teldrassil where she spent some time questing. When do I get fun forms to morph into? I want, I want.