WoW Mundanities

[ralphmelton]

With Mazumok, I've been grinding for reputation with the Timbermaw Furbolgs. The recent patch has vastly improved the grinding process (with repeatable quests that you might want to repeat, for example), but it's still pretty boring. And I've realized that Maz is only interested in the patterns he would get access to for completism. It might be nice for, say, bearform druids, but strength doesn't matter so much for a hunter, and the materials are a challenge.

~//~

I have a new character, a troll priest named Rajana. I'll try to keep her as a peer for Bluatala.

We actually have quite a few in that level zone; we should be able to do a run into Ragefire Chasm as soon as Blue gets a convenient time.

One complication of having so many alts: we have a lot of gatherers. I think that in this bracket, we have two miner/engineers, two miner/herbalists (Rajana is one), and a herbalist/alchemist (as well as a tailor/enchanter and a skinner/leatherworker, but those don't complicate things so much).
As a pure gatherer, I waffle a bit about whether I should give the things I gather to my buddies. On the one hand, they have actual use for the items, and I like being generous. On the other hand, collecting for the auction house is the way I'll be making my money. It seems to me at least that I should provide the materials I can gather for items they make for me, but I'm still sorting out what the right balance is.
I'm also considering switching gathering professions, because leatherworking is underrepresented in this group. But I'm not sure which one to drop. Mining is overrepresented with the two engineers. But I'm more interested in mining than in herbalism, because I have another herbalist already, and I'm somewhat interested in the mining experience.

~//~

Amalefica has progressed to a point such that she can sell enchants for at least a small profit. She's close to the point where she'll need to make a run into Uldaman to learn greater skill and new recipes. She has enough materials in the bank that she'll be able to waste 25 enchants while she's down there and learn all the recipes in a single visit.

~//~

Mahotala has been idle since participating in a raid on Omen (a giant devil-dog to be killed as part of the Lunar Festival celebrations). (Killing Omen was a blast, even if I spent an inordinate amount of time dead.) He has so many fireworks that he has little inventory space left over. His alchemy is at 260; he ought to crank it up to 275 so that he can do arcanite transmutes while he's idle.

~//~

I've learned that I'll be getting a 30-inch LCD display at my desk at work. I'm going to have to come in some weekend to play WoW on the ginormous screen.

Comments

[wtimmins.livejournal.com]

I made Sinjala a skinner/tailor.

Part of the logic was 'well, leather can go to Aurochs.'

There's also the reasoning that 'beasts I can skin, demons and humanoids give me cloth... I get special stuff out of almost everything!'

[bluelang.livejournal.com]

hrm.... I feel a little guilty about wanting to go mining/enginnering now.

I want to take this opportunity to say thanks again. You in specific and the Guild in general have vastly improved this experience for me.

[wtimmins.livejournal.com]

The social element adds SO much. One reason I quit months ago was that friends had scattered to the four winds. Finding a server where a decent chunk of folks are settled in has made my 'second go' a lot more enjoyable.

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

I don't believe that you have any cause to feel guilty. Engineering is what you really want to do, so do that.

What I want to do with this character is "gather lots in order to be rich and generous"--there's no real confict there. And I'm perfectly willing to adjust for a better fit, because people's main characters get special privileges of self-definition and support.

The guild experience really does make it a lot better, I quite agree.

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

One more thing: Engineering isn't a great money-maker, because many of the things you can create are only usable by engineers. I still think that you were right in your choice; you'll have a lot of fun with engineering. It just means that you may need to think a bit extra about money.

The way to make big money is in the auction house or by selling things in cities, not by selling things to vendors. But you've been having lag problems, and the cities are likely to be most lag-prone.

I'm willing to offer you the "auction broker" services that Margle offered me when I disliked the auction house; you can mail your auctionables to Rajana, she'll auction them and send you the money.

[bluelang.livejournal.com]

Regarding the lag - it may have gotten worse this morning (though it may be unrelated) - I had my system lock up twice in 20 minutes of play requiring reboots.

I know that you recommended additional memory. Is this otherwise a known problem? I upgraded for City of Heroes and have a small problem believing WoW needs _more_ oomph. If I look, will I find a driver-based solution?

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

I have no idea what the actual cause of your lag is. I talked about RAM because that made a dramatic difference to me. But RAM generally wouldn't lead to lockups.

How much RAM does your computer have? What are the other stats?

[bluelang.livejournal.com]

Regarding Auctioning/Auction Brokering.... Can you provide any guidance around what it makes sense to try auction?

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

For loot that monsters drop, there is a hierarchy of colors for the names:
- Grey: vendor trash. With a few exceptions, this should all be sold to vendors; players will not buy it.

- White names are things that have at least some use. The auctionability varies widely, though.
Crafting materials in particular can auction for quite a lot more than they sell to vendors for. For example, Rajana has twice now auctioned stacks of 10 copper ore (vendor price 50 copper for the whole stack) for over 70 silver. White armor, on the other hand, will generally not auction.

- Green items are things like armor that provides stat bonuses, and so forth. At level 60, I auction all the green items I get, and about half of it sells. Since it usually sells for three times the vendor price, this ends up being worthwhile. The lowbie market is more precarious, though, because lowbies are poorer, and fewer of them are making the auction house part of their routine. It's also the case that the vendor prices are closer to the auction house prices at the low end, so you don't miss out as much by vendoring green items there.

- Blue items are substantially nicer than green items of the same level. They should just about always be auctioned, because they will bring in a lot more gold at auction than from vendors.
An extreme high-end example that comes to mind: Mazumok can make Black Dragonscale Shoulders, a blue item. They sell to a vendor for 2gold 17silver--but I just auctioned a pair last week for 150 gold. That's an extreme example, but it's not uncommon to get 10-50 more gold for auctioning a blue item than for vendoring it.

- Purple items are considered epic, and rightly so. What I said about blue items applies even more so to purple items. But don't worry too much about it--in Maz's career, I've only seen epic items drop three times.

For you in particular, I would recommend this:
- wear anything you want to wear, and use any crafting materials that you want to use.
- If you get things that you don't want, but think someone else might want, offer it to them. (Feel free to ask on the guild channel if you're uncertain.)
- vendor grey items and white armor.
- Send other green items to Rajana, who will auction them for you. (With your permission, she might send the ones that don't sell to Xaryn to disenchant.)
- When/if you get to a point that you're not using all the copper (or other stuff) you mine, send stacks of ore to Rajana to auction.

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

Also, here's a thread with some analysis of hunter talents. I want to qualify this by saying that you may not feel able to decide on a future diretion yet, and that's okay; you can put off spending talent points, and you can spend money to let you change your talent allocation.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-hunter&t=913006&p=1&tmp=1#post913006

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

I suspect that at most times there are several times as many alchemists capable of transmuting thorium to arcanite as there are actual arcane crystals in existance. My Philosopher's Stone tends to sit in the bank transmuting dust. :)

You could periodically ask if anyone needs leather or metal. Sometimes they'll say no.