Flask Changes

The following post is the result of a slow day of reading material to fill up a lunch break and a desire to see how many times I can fit the word "flask-hours" into a blog post.


So WoW Insider reports that Flasks change in patch 3.1.

Old: Recipe crafts 1 flask. Flask lasts 2 hours. Flask-Hours / Materials = 2

New: Recipe crafts 2 flasks. Each flask lasts 1 hour. Flask-Hours / Materials = 2

In both the old and the new, the number of hours I can be under the influence of a flask is 2 for the same material cost.

So why predict a change in the market price of flasks?

Some anecdotal evidence to start off...

Reflecting on my own situation only, I will be wasting less flask-hours.

My raids are three hours in length. To be continuously under the influence of a flask, I need to drink two of them. However, one full flask-hour is totally wasted (well, technically it benefits me while questing or farming or doing BGs after the raid, but that is time I would not actively choose to have flask buff for).

Lets say I raid Ulduar 4 nights per week, 3 hours per night.

In the old configuration, I would drink two flasks (4 flask-hours) each night, and a total of 8 flasks (16 flask-hours) each week.

In the new configuration, I will drink three flasks (3 flask-hours) each night, and a total of 12 flasks (12 flask-hours) each week.

Time for some conjecture here

I'm going to guess that the average raid has a duration that is close to an exact multiple of 1 hour.

A much smaller set of raids have a duration close to an exact multiple of 2 hours.

Blizzard makes this change, and the result is much fewer wasted flask-hours. For my raid, 25% of my current flask consumption is pure waste. Given how easy things are, you might argue that 100% of my consumption is waste, but go do OS+3D with a progression group a couple times and then we have a chat.

Impact

In the current setup, demand is artificially boosted. I'm forced to consume 4 flask-hours when I only want to consume 3 flask-hours.

Its like bread companies selling buns in packs of six, and wiener companies selling hotdogs in packs of 8. They're artificially forcing you to purchase 2 extra items which often go to waste (unless I plan on having 24 hotdogs, or if I like eating peanut-butter-on-a-hotdog-bun sandwiches the day after I eat hotdogs. did i get that right? maybe its sliced up bunless hotdogs mixed in mac n cheese. i always forget which one comes extra since I always eat 24 at a time anyways).

Now that we can purchase in more efficient quantities, we will be consuming fewer (wasted) flask-hours.

So demand drops. If supply of flask-hours remains the same (same materials input will produce the same number of flask-hours output), price per flask-hour should drop.

But that's not all folks

Next they tell us that gathering a node will yield more herbs than in the past.

So the expected impact is that supply for mats for flasks will increase. If you look at this in a vacuum, and keep demand for flask-hours constant, that should reduce the price of a flask-hour.

But we're not in a vacuum. We just said above that the demand for flask-hours will drop.

Hmmmm.

Lower demand for flask hours, this reduces the price for flask-hours. But then reduce the cost to produce a flask-hour. If they get it right, the profit per flask-hour, or cost/income ratio, might remain stable.

Just how good are the economists at Blizzard?

The question is...just how good are they?

If they have some existing data regarding how many wasted flask-hours there are on a server (perhaps measuring how much time players are under the influence of a flask but NOT in a raid instance. not perfect, but perhaps indicative of trends), and they have existing data on the herb gathering rates on the server (easy to gather since blizz controls the spawns and the parameters that control how much herbs show up in the loot window), they just might be able to tweak the herb drop rate to keep price per flask-hour stable.

They need to address the Elixir Spec procs as well. The current procs provide between 2-10 extra flask-hours (or is it 2-8? whatever). If the new procs provide the same number of flasks, they'll be providing half the number of bonus flask-hours for the alchemist, in effect increasing the cost to produce a flask-hour.

Of course, it'll need some time to settle since the first week after the patch hits, all sorts of craziness will happen as people dump stockpiles of herbs or flasks (bad idea, craft them after the patch or else your existing flasks will change from 2 hour to 1 hour overnight), or other people try to jack with the market.

Also, we've got another, less easy to predict factor. Is Ulduar hard enough to drive demand for flask-hours up? That might totally skew the entire market. I'm thinking that demand will increase quite a bit, but that's pure speculation.

Or a new limiting reagent appears like Frost Lotus. So all the other herbs are plentiful, but Frost Lotus doesn't change. That then becomes the price driver for the flask market.

Its enough to make you go crosseyed

Since I farm my own herbs, have stockpiles galore, and I brew my own flasks, I'm excited by the change since my three hour raids will be less wasteful, but it will be interesting to watch what happens to the market.

My only hope is that Ulduar is hard enough. Or rather, that the hard modes are rewarding enough to encourage ongoing participation beyond the single achievement kill. Default Mode Ulduar will be only slightly more difficult than Naxx, which is good to allow access to wide audience and also to allow rich folks to buy farming spots months after the progression experience is gone.

If hard-mode Ulduar is both hard and rewarding, there's going to be lots of demand for flask-hours, which will benefit me if I choose to sell my raw herbs or my refined flasks.

Plus, flask-hour economics aside, its hard-mode content that I'm actually here for.

Earning Middle Class Wages

Having just re-dinged the 20K gold arbitrary threshold of happiness, and prompted by a reader's comment, I figure I'll throw out some ideas about how I earn my gold.

There's plenty of sites focused on earning gold with the least effort, min-maxing the gold game in the way that raiders min-max the gear & stats game. Just My 2 Copper is one such site. Follow those ideas if you want to find the most time efficient ways to earn your gold.

For me, its a middle class approach, I have enough gold for the fun things I want and the raiding stuff I need, but I'm not cornering any markets or becoming so filthy rich that I can collapse the server's economy.

You can look at the gold tracker on the right to see that my techniques result in steady progress. The flat areas are more due to me forgetting to run my tracking program for a few days in a row (still cant get Vista scheduler to work properly over a year later), and the big drop offs are when I buy fun stuff like mini vans or dragons or when my sac became gigantique (the doctor gave me a cream to fix that).

Note - This is how I got to where I am now, not necessarily what I'm doing in prep for a new patch. I really don't do a whole lot, economy-wise, when a patch is looming in the distance, but I'll think that one over and post about it later.

So here's some of my basic moves:

Gathering Professions

Its no secret...I love 'em. I've got 'em on as many toons as I can. While min-maxing for raids in TBC for a bit I waffled away from mining/herbalism on my main, but even then had Skinning as one prof.

My income is mostly from gathering stuff while I'm out and about doing my thing (daily quest for rep, flying to/from raids & dungeons, flying to sholazar to buy new egg, questing, etc), and then selling on AH.

I like Herbalism & Mining, because I treat them as a passive activity. Fly some place. See herbs. Pick herbs. Sell herbs. Buy Mammoth. I almost never specifically go on "farming" missions, unless there's 15 minutes until raid invites and I've already eaten dinner and the uber gf is nowhere to be found, in which case I'll take a swing around Storm Peaks or Icecrown for some quicky saronite and lichbloom lovin.

Skinning on the other hand is active. Since the mobs are everywhere, you sorta choose when to go skinning or not. So if you like the concept of setting aside 15 or 30 minute killing/skinning sessions, then you might like this one. It is nice because its not dependent upon the random nature of node spawn timers.

AH Mule

If you've not got an AH alt yet, this is a big help. Create a level 1 toon. Run him to the nearest city. Main mails everything to that alt.

There's tons of reasons to do this, however the one for me is psychological. There is a distinct break between when I'm out playing and when I'm doing financial stuff. Having the separate toons helps me mentally separate the activities and I can choose when to engage in either one.

Personally, I like having a guild bank for that mule. It helps me stockpile stuff during times of stupid market conditions. Some coconut destroying the Lichbloom market by listing tons for a few silvers? Just store your incoming herbs in the bank and wait things out. Once the joker is gone, you can trickle your supply back into the market.

Whether or not you want to buy this guy out and hope to deplete his supply at low price and then sell high once he's gone is up to you. I generally avoid the buy low/sell high speculation in WoW because I'm risk averse. If you choose to take the risk, you might be able to profit nicely.

Make a disenchanter

Disenchanting is a big money maker. Your main will bring in lots of disenchantable BoE gear. Some BoE items sell for a pretty penny, but most are worth more as dust.

Yes, you can have a friend DE for you, or if you have no friends you can hire a DE, but the convenience factor of having your own is fantastic.

DE is also for when people try to mess with your gatherables. If you're a miner/herber like me, you deal in raw commodities and you sometimes run into people who try to totally fiddle with the market.

Sometimes its just a kid who doesn't know market values, sometimes its a person trying to play their hand at the economics game, and other times, who the hell knows. Normally just wait a week and they go away. Other times your DE will come in handy for....

Craftable Alternatives

In the past, I would have viewed this as an "advanced strategy", but depending upon your server's market, you might need to consider this a basic move if you're to generate suitable profit out of dual gathering.

My old server had a very straight forward Ore market. Gather stuff. Sell it for generally stable price. Ka-ching.

The new server seems to be a much more competitive environment, both in raid progression and in the economy. Seems that there's continuous undercutting, attempts for monopoly on a specific item, barking in trade with a friend to artificially boost the price to make AH listings seem more attractive, and on and on with the schemes.

So I've had to be a little more creative to sell my gatherables.

Somebody messing with Cobalt prices? Craft some entry-level plate armor (either your own BS alt or hired help). Depending on your market, maybe that plate will sell nicely, but more than likely, DE it into dust for max profit.

Somebody messing with Goldclover? Brew up some elixirs. You need to experiment with your own server to see which elixirs will bring the biggest margins, but I've had pretty good success across the board during times when people try a focused financial attack at a specific raw herb.

Eternal Earth is another great example. Well, actually, Crystallized Earth, since that's generally what to sell, since ppl buy it for 10% more than the Eternal equivalent. I've got stacks and stacks of the stuff from mining. But so does everybody, because the demand is pretty low, so the prices are just insane low. So find a JC, craft that ring that only requires 2 Eternal Earths as mats, DE, sell dust, obtain gold.

On a server with competitive business folks or just plain stupid undercutters, you need to search out alternatives since it'll be much harder (or impossible) for a player to dominate all possible outlets for a given material.

Like I said, I used to reserve this as an advance technique, but on my new server, its a way of life, and in fact has replaced nearly all of my raw material sales just to prevent myself from crying over how ludicrous the competition is.

But don't feel bad if you're just selling your ores, you're still going to bring home the bacon, even in a competitive market.

A Penny Saved...

My last note regarding basic middle class economics...

The path to riches is simple....spend less than you make. The bigger the gap, the higher the slope of your own gold tracking chart.

I know, it sounds silly or simplistic, but there you go. Only spend on things you can afford. Do you need to enchant your level 57 alt's gear? Probably not. Do you need to buy that Kirin Tor ring? Its up to you, but personally I've chosen to not go there. Do you need all the JC recipes from Isle of Quel'danas? Not anymore.

Sure, you're fine if you do choose to buy things, useful or frivolous (train smasher, ftw), have fun. But if you're hurting for gold, think twice before spending.

The only place I recommend NOT skimping out is on gear enhancements if you're a raider. When 9 or 24 other people depend upon your performance, a few hundred gold on enchants or gems goes a long way, both in terms of stats, and more importantly, sending the message to your team that you value their time as much as you value your own.

Mammoth, FTW

The Mini-Van is one of the funnier parts of WotLK for me. Everybody's got an opinion on whether its a waste, a good idea, or simply another form of ego stroking.

I dunno where I stand on it. Largely a novelty, I suppose. If I were hurting for gold as a result of the purchase, I'd probably regret it, but since there's no interest-bearing savings accounts in WoW to justify massive gold pile, and I don't really care for playing the true goblin game of flipping AH items or buying mats to sell end products, I'm pretty happy with the Mini-Van.

But since its soulbound, its kind of a moot point anyway, isnt it?

Features

For a hefty price tag, she provides:

- Room for two other riders. Mildly fun for other actual people. Very helpful for multi-boxing.

- Vendors. They provide the basic foods, drinks, reagents, ammos, and what not. Great for when there's no mage biscuits available or you run out of arrows. Also great for saving a flight to a town to dispose of revenue-generating bag-filling grey trash items.

- Repairs. Perfect for those wipey progression nights, especially in mount-able instances like Malygos or Obsidian Sanctum.

- Down Elevator. Jump off of a cliff of any height. Mammoth dies. You don't. Just mount back up for a brand spanking new ground level mammoth.

- Speed. Aspect of the Pack affects the mini-van, making it as fast as a Paladin with Crusader Aura. But it does get dazed if it gets hit, which makes for fun when exploring low-level Horde territory. Sorry, but this one is exclusive to Hunters.

- Endless Conversation. No, not the obvious "oh look at that guy, he must be compensating for a tiny little..." kind of conversation, but rather a whole spectrum of opinions regarding whether the mammoth owner should get a discount, or a cut of the profits, or free repairs, or so on and so forth. Good clean fun.

- Adorable jumping animation. Awww, isn't she cute?

Tips for people who raid with a Mammoth rider

Between wipe attempts, the mini-van can provide a handy service. Lets promote some general awareness:

1) To the left - Repair guy is on the left butt cheek.

2) Run away - Since we're getting ready for another attempt, the mammoth rider wants to dismount as soon as possible to start preparing. He cannot eat the feast, drink the elixirs, feed the pet, or cast any spells while mounted. Once you're done with the vendor, please run away.

3) Buff the Pet - Tied in with #2, Hunters really really want to dismount as soon as possible, because while mounted, our pets do not get any buffs. When the whole raid is casting their wonderful buffs, our pets miss out if we're mounted. So buffers, wait till the mammoth guy is dismounted, or please give spot buffs to the pet after the fact.

Tips for people who want to ride on the Mammoth

Mammoth owners love to take people for a ride. Here's some tips:

1) Party Only - Anyone of the same faction can use the vendors, however you need to be in the mammoth rider's party to get on.

2) Vendors - The rider needs to kick off a vendor for each passenger. If you see both seats occupied by players or vendors, that means you can't get on yet.

3) Damage - Yes, you can take damage while riding. Hell, each passenger can be in combat independently of one another, such as when taking baby alts for a ride and running past mobs. The babies aggro nearby mobs while the level 80 driver does not. Confusing. Funny when you run past Fel Reaver in Hellfire Peninsula and see your baby get one-shot since the aggro range is different by about 10 miles for a level 58 and a level 80.

4) Glitchy - The passenger part glitches out all the f'ing time. Most commonly manifesting itself in not being able to get onto what appears to be an empty seat. Annoying, I know. You think they'd test this crap out before charging us an arm and a leg for it.

5) Phasing - This is the weirdest. When two players are Phased to dramatically different views of the same landscape, you get confused and crosseyed. Had an alt riding on the mini-van, running through Dragonblight. All of a sudden, the alt gets knocked off and killed instantly, while on Amava's screen there was nothing but snow. Glance over at the alts screen and see masses and masses of plague-infested ghouls. Phasing, FTW!

Whaddya Think?

What's your experience been with the Traveller's Tundra Mammoth?

Like the Greedy Goblin, do you think it's the stupidest thing you've ever seen?

Did you want one when you first heard about them, but change your mind once you saw them in action?

Do you wish there were interest-bearing savings accounts in WoW so you'd have somewhere useful to dump 20k?

Added to the Must Read Section: Greedy Goblin

Greedy Goblin.

So much fun. Be warned, he comes out pretty harsh with the Social Darwinism and is pretty "classist" ;-) but if you can look past that, its an outstanding read.

I'm not sure which camp he'd put me in: goblin/rich/businessman or dumb/naive/poor.

To phrase it in Greedy Goblin style...


On surface, I never hurt for gold, so rich.

However, (A) I buy frivolous luxury item (mini-van, cenarion war hippogryph) so dumb, and (B) I make my gold through gathering and daily questing so poor.

To truly be goblin, I need spend time on AH buy low sell high, earn substantially more gold/hour than poor working-class dual-gather.


Whether he'd classify me as a goblin or a dumb, I could care less, but his posts are both entertaining and insightful. I wish I'd have found this gem sooner!

Never considered wanting a cut of the Mammoth's profits until...

A night of wiping on Malygos. As luck would have it, the little platform that you fight on is considered outdoors, so you can mount. Wipes mean repairs. Traveler's Tundra Mammoth to the rescue!

Roughly 2.5 full repair bills for 25 people.

Well over 1000 gold paid to the repair guy on my Mini-Van. One player alone spent 200g on repairs, lol @ dual 2H epic weps.

Can I haz a cut of the profits? Pretty please? Even 1% or .5%. Over time, would add up nicely.

The only real annoying part is when you mount up so everyone can repair, and then buffs start and your pet doesn't get them because you're still mounted.

/grumble

Wooly w00t

Alternate title: Is when I reconsider Dual-Gathering

Very special thanks to a friendly Mage who helped me get to Dalaran at 70! Couldn't have done it without you!

Swami Says

Looking back through my archives, there's a post I made on March 25th with a little prediction of the next big gold sink in the game.

At the time, I was comparing the costs of the Epic Land travel which was the gold sink of Classic WoW with the cost of the Epic Flying travel which was the gold sink of Burning Crusade.

Not including any faction discounts or whatever, we're looking at basically a 500% increase in cost.

So the swami predicted that the gold sink in LK would be another 500% increase over that, which would put it at roughly 25k gold.

Currently, with no faction discounts in place, the Mammoth mount is expected to cost 20k gold.

Will that price hold steady and prove me wrong, or will Blizzard alter the price and keep a linear progression in economic inflation from expansion pack to expansion pack?

Ding Two Zero

So its official. 20,000 gold mah pockets.

Not quite sure what to do with that.

Its kind of taken on a life of its own. I thought I could stop grinding out gold via daily quests and skinning for profit.

I was wrong. Its an addiction.

Must. Stop. Getting. Richer.

The Big Two zero

Mmmmmm. I get on an airplane in a few hours.

When I land and get home, I plan to log in.

And check my auctions.

And I fully expect to ding 20,000 gold.

I'm right on the doorstep now, and if my hotel's housekeeping hadn't swung by with a mint for my pillow a little early, I would have completed the 5 more daily quests needed to ding the big Two Zero.

And I can now rest in peace, and pretty much put Daily Questing on the shelf for a lil while.

Liquidation Sale. Everything Must Go!

WotLK is right around the corner.

The patch is coming that's gonna prep us for WotLK, perhaps only a few weeks away.

I have no idea what will happen to the economy when all this goes down.

I've got 4 full guild bank tabs filled with junk.

Junk that people are willing to pay for.

At least, they're willing to pay today.

I've no idea if they'll be willing to pay once the patch or xpac come out.

So its all for sale.

Giddy. Simply giddy to come home, and rake nearly 2.5k out of my inbox.

I'm sure I'll have to keep relisting some of the stuff, but for now, its all going like hotcakes.

More random thoughts: selling cloth

Seems that something went crazy with the market for Netherweave Cloth on the Terokkar AH.

Netherweave Cloth used to be a staple, list it for the Auctioneer Recommended value, sells every time. Maybe a random dry spell here or there when no buyers are around.

But its gone insane now. I'm listing such that the price leaves me making only a small profit over the alternative of making Heavy Netherweave Bandages and reaping 6g per stack by vendoring those.

And nothing is selling.

I've got two entire Guild Bank tabs filled with Netherweave Cloth.

That's quite a bit of cloth. One tab is on purpose, as I was saving it in case I ever decided to keep expanding Amava's family and leveling up her Priesty brother's tailoring. The other tab is just housing all the expired AH listings.

Its the damn Isle of Quel'Danas, I tell ya.

Curse that place, its flooding the market with too much cloth.

I suppose I'll have to see if any guildies need it, and if not, just put Amava on autopilot, making stacks and stacks of bandages.

Fiftythree Hundred

edit: after writing, but before posting, this entry, I received a comment on another article that leads me to believe I'll get little sympathy from this story. :-( Please, do read on, and let me know what you think :-)

Anybody following the blog here knows that one of my favorite parts of WoW is being rich.

I started the game as a complete and total coconut. Somewhere around level 24, a newly acquired RL friend kicked me in the @ss when she saw me without any professions trained yet. What can I say? I was stuck in analysis paralysis, and couldn't decide. And I'm dumb.

That's the point where the days of dual gathering, and swimming laps in my pile of Dubloons, began and ever since the moment I plucked my first Peacebloom in Teldrassil and first Copper Ore in Darkshore, I've fully enjoyed a vast income, and always been frugal on the expenses.

Along came raiding. Some expenses, sure, but as a herbalist, not too much expense for Alchemy products, as I farmed all my stuff myself and my Guild has helpful Alchemists with all the recipes I need. I farmed my own foods, and I cook them myself. Only enchanting and gems cost me some dough, but lets face it, Hunters' really don't have any of the really brutal enchants like a Mongoose or Executioner.

Then I had to go read an article on WoW Insider saying that all the fancy folks use Leatherworking because drummers get all the chicks.

Blizzard hadn't implemented the economy crushing patch 2.4 yet, so I felt fine sitting on 10k.

Bye bye Herbalism/Mining, hello Skinning/Leatherworking.

And with it, bye bye endless income potential.

Skinning isn't too bad. Stacks of Heavy Knothide Leather and Thick Clefthoof Leather sell for a pretty penny. And while grinding Clefthooves you pick up some loose change from vendor trash. But it just feels like work.

LW has been pretty much exclusively for the Drums. I make leg armors too, but since they're BoE, I don't actually need to do it myself (lol, and i'm not exalted with HH yet, so I still have to buy my Nether Cobras). I've made a few items for guildies and friends, nice, but not like I have any rare patterns that make my crafting something special.

Mining & Herbalism just came naturally. Flying somewhere? Pick some flowers on the way. Cash in on massive profits.

Along comes Patch 2.4.3.

Haris Pilton bats her eyes at me and I fork over 3600 gold to get 6 additional bag slots. Bag space is always in short supply, so I'm a big fan.

Along comes Gruul's Lair.

I got a pair of gloves off of Gruul the other night. DPS-wise, they're sorta side-grade from my leather Gloves of Dexterous Manipulation, but they're Mail, so I caved and rolled.

I wish I hadn't. I wish I had just passed them to another hunter. But, it was gloves. My one and only piece of Leather, so I went for it.

2 other hunters in the raid. Hunter A passes. Hunter B rolls. Amava rolls higher than B and wins the gloves. Gloves bind to soul. Instant looter's remorse.

Loot distribution continues. T4 shoulders. Amava and Hunter B pass on shoulders. Hunter A rolls, but loses to a Mage.

Hunter A grumbles about having passed on the gloves in hopes of getting shoulders. Meh. You shoulda rolled on the Gloves.

Well, my conundrum continues. The only reason I'm still using the leather gloves is the lovely Blue gem slot. The meta gem all raiding hunters should be using (Relenteless Earthstorm Diamond, +12 agi and +3% crit damage) requires 2 Blue gems. Seems as though purple gems in a red slot do not count as a blue gem, even though I thought I had read somewhere that they do count as one red and one blue, regardless of what color slot they're in. appears to not be the case.

So, now its time to find another piece that's useful and contains a blue gem slot.

Enter Belt of the Black Eagle.

Very nice. Not as good as my Guardian's Chain Girdle, but why not? Blue slot, Yellow slot, nice stats.

So, to make these new gloves work for me, I needed to:
1) Get two red gems for the gloves.
2) Get 2 Primal Air, 3 Small Prismatic Shards, and 3 Arcane Dust to enchant +15 agi on the gloves
3) Get 2 Nether Vortex, 10 Primal Air, 10 Wind Scales, 4 Heavy Knothide Leather, and 2 Rune Thread for the Belt
4) Get a blue and a yellow gem for the belt.
5) Find and tip a LW for the Belt (grrrrr, made me hate LW even more that I cant even make the stuff I need myself)
6) Find and tip a JC for the jewels.

Jimminy Christmas.

In total, cost 1700 gold.


So, between the bags, the gloves, and the belt, tuesday's cash outflow was 5,300 gold, bringing my gold savings to the lowest its been since March. I can't tell if the shakiness in my hands is from the 4 hours of sleep, the associated overdose of caffeine, or the gold.

All for 6 bag slots, what might amount to an actual reduction in DPS, but a little saving face with the guild because I didn't take the gloves and never equip them.

I'm feeling Herbalism/LW in my bones. Not sure how much longer I can hold out

Spending Gold to Reduce Anxiety

Yeah, I think I figured out that consumables for raids was causing most of my burnout feelings. The past few weeks, and next few weeks, are chock full of road trips, birthdays, family member surgeries, charity events, and just plain old enjoyment of the spring weather (lol, its 38 degrees in Buffalo today, not very spring-like).

My raiding schedule fits very nicely into this schedule. Preparing for the raids does not.

The stress of ensuring I've got all the random stuffy stuff I need for a raid each night became too taxing.

So I'm gonna put my money to work for me, and see if the stress of watching my gold horde decline outweighs the stress relief it provides.

Biggest burden seems to be mana potions and elixirs/flasks. Most of the food consumables go pretty easily, largely because the whole raid group has high level fishing and so we all trade cooked fishies, and I only eat talbuks during boss fights so not too much quantity needed there.

But those damn alchemy products.

I went to the AH and luckily enough, there was a huge amount of Nightmare Vine listed at slightly below market price. There was a ton listed at or well above market price also, but I'll be damned if I'll be funding those extortionists if I can help it. I used to be a herb supplier as well, so I know you can make a fortune without being a greedy punk.

Mana Thistle too, so I got enough for 100 Fel Mana Potions.

Then there was a bunch of agi and intellect elixirs listed for fair price. ka-ching.

And Fel Lotus, just in case I feel like sticking with Flask of Relentless Assault, which is falling out of favor for me other than for expected wipe fests since it persists through death.

Of course, the money grubbing fat cats were listing the necessary Terocones at 3-400% of market price. Litterally 10 or 15 stacks of it, all listed by different players, at outrageous prices. Inflation much? Either way, I got enough cheap cones to tide me over for 2 weeks of flasks, so I didn't have to contribute to those day traders' kids' college funds.

Some stress at seeing the gold balance decline.

Some stress relief at sending off stacks upon stacks of mats to my alchemists, knowing that most of my raid prep for the next month or so is largely taken care of.

Perhaps I'll recruit an AOE farmer and go kill all the Buzzards in Hellfire to collect a couple stacks of Kibler's Bits to knock that one off the list as well.

Why must I always want a new profession?

After a brief stint below my new sea level of 10k gold, I'm back up treading water again. I suppose buying a War Hippo, a new Bank Mule Guild Vault tab, and more Super Mana and Fel Mana potions than I can imagine (grrr 2.4 mana changes) will do that to ya. But extra dailies and a constant stream of metals and herbs to sell bring ya back up to the surface nice and quick.

In separate news, when I was 32 gold away from re-hitting sea level, a guildie came on /gchat and was singing his woes at only having 32 gold. I had to restrain myself from asking if I could borrow it so I could ding 10k. Better judgement prevailed and I instead yelled at him to get out and do a couple dailies.

And in yet another twist of fate, I find myself once again debating a profession switch.

I'll probably let it slide and stick with my herbs and minerals bread and butter, but Skinning/Leatherworking has a nice appeal to it. It'll be a giant sink while levelling up, but once LW is maxed, the skinning will be a nice income. And a couple T6 BoP crafted items never hurt, or a raid buff from some Drums.

Just gotta stick my head in the sand and stay away from any profession trainers until I come up with some new absurd savings goal to remind me why I love dual gathering.

What else is there to spend my money on?

I've been looking for some of the new world boss BoE ranged weapons on AH but there's been nothing. I'm debating contacting some guild leaders of guilds that wowjutsu says have killed these bosses and offer a fat bounty for a weapon.

Pimp my Mount

Wrestling with the idea of what to spend my gold on, I had a few short-list candidates.

Fiddled around with some alt professions. Only limit to spending there was the availability of Rune Cloth on the AH and the level of my alts. Although there was still some left for sale after my buying spree, I simply refuse to cater to those guys trying to prey on my impatience and offering cloth at 3-400% of the going rate. On principle alone.

Also debated blowing some dough on really expensive recipes. Sure, it would be fun to collect as many as possible, but no real reason. I did find the Lifestealing enchant listed for 5g when it normally goes for 100g or so. That was a nice score. I'll probably never use it, but a 5g click of the mouse to indulge the collector in me.

Then I checked my blackberry and noticed that Kestrel left a comment singing the praises of the Cenarion War Hippogryph.

I just happened to be passing by the Cenarion Refuge on the way to Coilfang Reservoir, and oopsie, clicked the buy button.

The new mount is so choice. I fly it more than the Netherwing Drake now. Just feels sportier.

I think my only option for getting a new set of wings would be to take up Engineering now. I'm gonna go with "no" on that one.

Ding 10K

Rather unceremoniously, my collection of Primal Fires hit 20, and as per my normal habit I dump the whole wad on the AH in single listings.

Those sell easily, and provide some nice chunks of gold closing the gap to my savings goal of 10,000 gold.

Took about 2 months, without really doing anything special. Daily quests whenever I could. No specific farming of marketable goods, but naturally herbing and mining along the way.

Spent a whole lot of money on bags, gems, leg armor kits, glyphs, enchants, raid repair bills, flasks of relentless @ss, among others, along the way. Donated tons of mats to guildies for crafting profession skill-ups and enchants.

Ok, so what to do?

First thing I did was power level up some tailoring and alchemy on an alt up to 300, and started dabbling with engineering on its way to 300. And I bought some recipes that I'll never use, but figured "why not?"

I looked at 2 primal mooncloth bags for 400 each. Was gonna get them but figured I'm not in a rush so I might try to fund a guildie who can get skill points out of making bags for me.

Now to find a Mutual Fund or CD to invest in and earn interest until the Wrath of the Lich King comes out.

Scrooge McDuck

Just dinged 9,000 gold, and my 10,000 savings goal is within a week or so reach, without too much fuss. Just complete a handfull of dailies and farm herbs along the way, and I'll be all set.

The question is...wtf then?

And this makes me think of similar things in real life.

Have you ever saved RL money towards a goal? What's the first thing you do when you hit that goal? Spend it. Strange.

Have you ever lost weight or reached an exercise goal? What's the first thing you do to celebrate? Lin's Chinese Buffet. But of course, poor Old Man Lin went out of business since you were single handedly keeping him profitable before your diet, but that's neither here nor there.

Once I save my 10k, what am I going to do? Probably spend it.

Only two real things I can think of to spend on...

1. Alt professions. I've got an engineer that could use a boost from 225 to 300, a tailor/alchemist who's going to ding 35 any day now, thus opening up the door to level from 225-300 in those two. I've also got a little baby Jewel Crafter who could level up a bit, but she's only level 11 at the moment so not too much gold to dump there.
   
   I could spend on collecting every recipe I can find for those professions. Not hugely practical, but then again, what's the point of a pile of virtual money? Any more practical than a pile of virtual recipes?
   
   Seems the only limiting factor on my spending here is the speed at which I can level the toons.
   


2. A Cenarion War Hippogryph. Why? Just because. I get bored of the Netherdrake sometimes, and the Aether Ray isn't all that much fun. The normal Swift Purple Gryphon is pretty cool, so why not a totally pimped out skinny crack-head version that's a 2k gold dump? Yeah, Baby!!!
   
   Of course, that means I'd need Cenarion Expedition Exalted. My speed run through Slave Pens leaves me 170 reputation points away from Exalted, so either splurge on a couple Coilfang Armaments or get 2 or 3 other people and kill the first few mobs in Steam Vaults.
   
   I've never seen one of these puppies flying around my server, so I might just have to do that.
   

There supposedly is a new sweet bow or gun from a world boss that's changing to BoE in the next patch, so maybe I'll wait for one of the fancy pants guilds on my server to put one of them up for sale, and then cry myself to sleep as I part with some ridiculous sum of gold for it, but oh well.


My jury is still out on what is a reasonable nest egg to walk into the next expansion pack with. Something's nagging in my head saying that the economy will be roughly 5x inflated, similar to how the economy from original WoW to BC expansion jumped about 5x (using only the fanciest mount/riding training as the measure, as its the game's biggest gold dump).

That would lead me to wanting 25k gold before WoTLK comes out, but I'll have to see how much damage my upcoming spending binge will do before I commit to something that lofty.

Fel Lotus Bloomin' Early

Just a quick thought....

In patch 2.4 they announced that Fel Lotus will drop more frequently from herb nodes.

Mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, the rate that I farm at tends to net me sufficient Fel Lotus to have enough relentless ass brewed for raiding, with maybe one extra for sale on a daily basis. Its random, and goes in cycles, but generally speaking. And they sell for about 22-24 gold without any problem, so I'm a big fan.

With the increased supply in patch 2.4, the price will generally decline. Sure, you'll have more to sell, so as long as they set the spawn rate to not be too crazy, there will always be buyers and it should wash out, perhaps even increasing the net income since the cheaper lotus's and corresponding Flasks will be accessible, cost-wise, to a larger audience of raiders.

Here's the kicker.

Like I said, at the rate that I farm, I've been getting 2 or maybe 3 Fel Lotus a day on average.

What's the deal with Sunday?

I didn't do any specific targeted farming, I just flew around for about an hour and a half doing the daily quests in netherwing, skettis, and ogri'la.

14 Fel Lotus.

Me thinks that was either the yin to the yang of bad luck I had on the rolls on Curator's loot, or maybe they implemented part of the 2.4 stuff early?

In any event, sell sell sell, before the price plumets.

Spend, Spend, Spend

For those of you who read via the website, you get the beautiful visual treat of Amava's Savings Tracker, the little chart on the upper right of the screen, which chronicles the depths of my coffers on a nearly-daily basis. I still can't figure out how to stop Windows Vista's scheduler from erroring out on my stupid little .bat script that runs my stupid little java extraction program and my stupid little java chart generator, so it runs as regularly as I remember to double-click the .bat. Nearly every day.

You'll notice a nice, roughly linear progression of income from daily quests and AH sales of gatherables, with occasional dips, most of which are from when the Fel Lotus gods are out to get me and I actually have to go buy my relentless @ss rather than have it brewed (alchemed???) from raw mats.

Then you'll notice a gross disgusting awful 1200 gold dropoff the other day. :-(

Well, its actually :-)

First off was my new Primal Mooncloth Bag. Yummy. Already making it easier to harvest the entire load of email attachments that Amava sends to her AH mule without having to run back and forth from the bank/guild vault and mailbox a million times in IF.

Next up for bids....some new leg armor kits. I decided that, although my 10k gold goal is a nice fun little project, I really want moar MQoSRDPS. Those AoE packs of dinner guests near Moroes are just giving my Warlock friend a bit too much of an edge on the WWS reports for damage dealt. While I don't approve of wreckless, aggro-gaining, raid-wiping behavior in an effort to top the meters, I do like healthy competition that encourages people to kit themselves out nicely for the betterment of self and team. I'll show him, gimme some leg packs.

Mmmmm, Nethercobra Leg Armor.

I really want that extra 10 AP and 2 crit points. Costly, but f- it, money's no object, lol.

I started randomly barking in Trade "WTB nethercobra leg armor, have mats, name your price for your nether" over the course of a few days. Maybe that's a silly way to advertise, I got no responses over 3 days, and nothing listed on AH. The recipe comes from Exalted with Honor Hold, and none of my LW friends are even near that, so there wasn't even a short term possibility of running somebody through Heroic Ramparts until they could qualify.

If I was smart, I'd have advertised in the official Blizzard realm forum. Any time I've done that, its resulted in success in a day or two, when looking for crafters/enchanters. But I wasn't smart. Well, not too smart.

Putting on my thinking cap, I look on AH. I see some Nethercleft Leg Armors listed, all by the same guy. Figuring that he's a high level LW, maybe he's got the pattern I want. I look him up on Armory to see what his HH faction rep is at. Lol, he's level 33. Hopefully a mule for a fancy pants lvl 70 who's got all the LW patterns in the game. Yep, that's what I'm hoping.

I send him in-game email asking if he can make me some nethercobras.

Next time I log in, he whispers me instantly....

sure, I can take care of that. 450g

That's pretty much the going rate for the server. Not really in the mood to negotiate too much, I say...

i'll take 2 for 850g

deal

Its about 4 hours until my Thursday night Kara run...

how long you need? kara run at 8:00, i'd sure like to have one of the two before that.

sure, I'll have one, if not both, shortly.

cool man. i'm gonna log and check back in an hour or two, the pup needs a walk. pls send COD.

um, can you hang, I really could use the dough right away.

ok, I got a few minutes. but i don't want to keep pup waiting, he gets cranky when he needs exercise


Next thing I know, he's starts running in a circle out front of the bank of IF, like he's just holding down W and D. Then this f-ing guy is broadcasting on Trade and General...

LF LW to make 2 nethercobra leg armor kits, my mats, your nether

COME ON!

F-ing middle man.

Like 3 seconds later, he whispers me...

kk, 2 minutes and you're all set

Really? d@mn.

Next thing I know, he's on General...

WTB port to SW, will pay lots for fast service

Would you look at this guy?

3 seconds later, some mage runs up and opens a port for the guy.

Couple minutes later, and I see him in Deep Run Tram, clearly on his way back to IF.

So I trot over to the train station to meet him when he gets off.

And there he is, opening a trade window with my two Nethercobra Leg Armor kits.

D@mn if he isn't a hard working little merchant.

I gladly gave him his 850. It was worth it just to see him in action.

What size nest egg?

Randomly wandering through my thoughts for the afternoon, an idea popped into my head. More of a rhetorical question, but food for thought, nonetheless.

How much gold will be "a lot" of gold when Wrath of the Lich King comes out?

Blizzard engineered The Burning Crusade economy to make the gold earning capacity of those who purchase the xpac to be substantially higher than those who don't have the pack, as incentive to purchase the new software. They basically obsoleted the economy of the old world. Sure, you can make money without the expansion. H3ll, some people can make a fortune doing nothing but playing the AH with a low level toon starting with little or no seed money. But for the normal player, who is playing via questing, grinding, professions, and basic AH activity, its no contest. Outlands econonmy trumps Azeroth.

I'm assuming that pattern will be repeated going into the next expansion. The question on my mind is how much?

One way to try to predict is looking at the most tangible money sink in the game: epic riding.

To make the math easy, lets pretend that the epic riding skill plus a mount costs 1000 gold for epic galloping, and 5000 gold for epic flying.

Using just this as the basis for the whole economy (which is not really correct, but whatever, work with me here), Blizz made the expansion's major money sink grow 500% from original game into first expansion pack.

I'm not sure what the story is with flight and mounts and such in WotLK, but I hear tell that there won't be a new level of riding training as the next big money sink. Who cares, because whether its riding or not, there will still be some kind of single giant expense built into the game to help keep inflation under control. Or they might F things up entirely and build in a small-ish recurring expense on top of the already recurring raid expenses, but that wouldn't fit with my little thought exercise here, so skip that.

So how much will it be? They could continue in a linear fashion and increase the cost by another 500% over the original Azeroth prices, which would indicate that the next big boy will cost about 10k gold. Or they could continue exponentially and increase the cost by 500% over the Outlands prices, at a whopping 25k gold.

Naturally, which ever price they go with will be arbitrary, as the whole economy and game will scale equally, meaning that if the exponential growth option were chosen, that 25K gold would be roughly equivalent in difficulty to save as is 5k in the current economy.

What do you think? If one was to set a goal for a nest egg to carry into the next expansion pack, what would you go with?