ten :: Patch 4.3 Today

Not minutes after I posted yesterday, I received rss feed from mmo-champion that patch 4.3 will go live November 29. My "too-late" feeling for stockpiling was spot on. Quick post with links to other blogs that have compiled great information to read about for the patch.

What am I going to do once I log on? (Off the top of my head)

1. Void Storage! Every one of my holiday costumes will go in there. More bag space is always a great thing.
2. New 5 man instances. Lots of new gear and start building up Valor Points.
3. Find out about epic gem transmutes.
4. Start picking up epic gem cuts on Jewelcrafter.
5. Transmog some gear. ^_^
6. Read up on Hour of Twilight raid fights for guild raid tonight.

Sadly I have my dentist appointment in about 2 hours. I will miss the start of the patch. However, I have a haunch that there will be some patching problem. Either Blizzard will extend the maintenance time or there will be tons of problems with the new instances just like it was in patch 4.2.

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Other sites to check out:
Mmo-Champion: Patch 4.3 Overview
Wowhead New: Patch Notes
The Golden Crusade
Powerword: Gold: Megalist
The Gold Queen: List
The Gold Mint
Altos Goldish Advish
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nine :: A Small Break from WoW & Belated Friday Overview

Oh boy, there went another Thanksgiving holiday and another Black Friday shopping rush. This is usually the time of year where you loosen your belts, suck it up, and then eat some more. However, surprisingly I didn't eat much this time even with two dinner parties back-to-back. When I slave over the stove (oven in this case) to prepare food for a lot of people, I find that I don't have much of an appetite when the dinner hour rolls around. A 22 lb turkey this year guarantees many nights of trying to creative with turkey related meals.

I also didn't get much out of Black Friday. Due to the back-to-back dinners, this year I went out much later than usual (8:00 a.m. anyone?) and didn't manage to bag any of the items that I really wanted. A new waffle maker and a knife set? All. Sold. Out. That's what I get for oversleeping! My last hope is my brother, who goes to school up in Boston. He usually goes up to NYC for Thanksgiving and Black Friday shopping at the Nintendo Store. The past two years he bought me a super cute 6" Kirby Plushie - love it to death - and a Dust Mite cell phone holder (Totoro). This year I've been requesting a 12" Pink Domo Plush.  Hrmm pink seems to be my color these days.



Also, I started playing a neat app game on my iPhone called Tiny Tower. It reminds me of all the fun I had playing SimTower. Super simplified, but super cute. It's been my obsession since a friend recommended it to me on Thanksgiving. Currently at 13 floors (dun dun dun), it should be a little higher if not for the fact that I restarted my tower at least 5 times when I first started due to bad choices and trying getting the hang of the game mechanisms.

Back to WoW: Belated Friday Overview!

I managed to start bringing in a steady profit from various small items. Not a single large sale this week. So far it seems like I can average around 20-30k a week. Not exactly stellar, but it will do. Maybe in the future I will be more ambitious, but for now I am content.


Stockpiling and Inventory Efficiency

Recently, Nerf Faids posted about her personal stockpile for patch 4.3 and it made me realize that I haven't done much myself to prepare. My so called "stockpile" is like a grain of sand compared to Faids'. Way past time to get busy, I find myself wondering if it's too late to get a good stock. The patch is due to hit anytime in these upcoming weeks.

On a side note, after looking at all my character banks, I see that I have a lot of space I could utilize. Using my Priest as an example, I have filled her bank and inventory slots with 36 slot enchanting bags. She is my enchanting mats hoarder and to DE all the random greens I don't want cluttering up my raiding toon's bags. I need to do something similar with my other alts. My rogue, the miner, I can easily start stockpiling ores and bars. I currently have too many holiday items and vanity costumes. I will be a painful to toss/vendor/ah the items, but out they must go. A better use of inventory space will help with more efficient processing and leads to more gold in the long run.

eight :: Happy Thanksgiving! Gobble Gobble!

Happy Thanksgiving! These past few years, my family and I have been hosting thanksgiving dinner at our home, and roasting turkey has become our special thing. This year however, we will be celebrating at a friends place. Even then, we will still be making the turkey... no thanks to a certain someone eagerly volunteering to do so... 

Now for in game news. Yesterday, I went a little mad. Mad as in crazy. Loco, coocooforcocopuff. I became obsessively mad about having my auctions at the top of the list. Even going into undercutting wars with other auction toons. Thankfully we were all 1 copper undercutters. One thing I learned is that it's not worth it, this obsessiveness about being on the top. This morning, being super busy with preparing the food for dinner, I've only had time to post auctions before logging off. I managed to sell just as many auctions as the previous day while I was battling with prices. Post, and go do other stuff, even if you know someone else will undercuts right away. There's no reason to be so stressed about that aspect of the game.

Being undercut not withstanding, sales have been very steady recently. I have not made any crafted items, so in turn I have not made any big sales. This is a nice volume of profit in my humble opinion.

seven :: Finger in the Jewelcrafting Pie, Friday Overview & Goal

As the title states, I finally decided to put a finger into the JC pie. I haven't really tried to mass sell any cuts since Wrath, and I wish I took part in the Obsidium Shuffle when the prices were rock bottom. Oh well. I take what I can get these days, and it's a fairly nice deal. There is definitely some stiff competition in this slice of the market and your ability to sell the gems is timing and a lot of luck if you can't stand at the auction house all day guarding your posts. A few times, mere seconds after posting, I have had someone buy the auction. Any lasting longer would usually be undercut well within 10 minutes. I took note of the top competitors and their posting times on TUJ and posted only after they have all logged off. Then I hop to bed and wake up the next morning with most of them were sold. Works great for me! Less stress at having to constantly cancel and repost.

There is a balance between selling gems and saving for possible uses for Epic transmute.

Next stop, enchanting scrolls with all the mats I've stocked up on DE'ing the jewelery I made. I don't think making glyphs would ever be an option for me this expansion. Maybe I will try it in MoP... maybe.... As for inscription, I wonder what the future of the Darkmoon trinkets will look like in Patch 4.3.

I am glad that I started this blog. I has allowed me to become more goal oriented and it is great for taking notes in a fun way. It has also brought me back to Photoshop, and I'm having tons of fun with that as well. In my raiding guild, there was recently a paid name change and I had the opportunity to make a new header for the guild site. I am rather proud of the work I did on it. Cheers to more in the future!

And as for that, I have hit my first Gold Goal - 100k gold! Now, my next would obviously be 200k. Let's see how far I can get before Patch 4.3 hits.

White Ribbon - Heart of Gold

"Our message is simple.

With one voice, as one community,

we are speaking out and working to end 

violence against women."

Silence is NOT an option.

The  White Ribbon Campaign  starts 25th November until 6th December.

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http://whiteribbon.ca/

http://whiteribbon.ca/international/

https://twitter.com/#!/whiteribbon
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six :: Blog Re-Color and Addition of Pictures

I thought the default color scheme was really dull, so I took inspiration and changed it all. Now it's a lot more vibrant and good looking. Kind of has a box of chocolate feel, at least in my opinion! In addition to the new colors, I have been slowly adding pictures to the site. This project really has prompted me to revisit Photoshop and dust off what little I used to know. And I actually found it to be fun, not annoying like I envisioned it before. So gotta pump out more while my creative juices are flowing. Maybe later I'll try relearning now CSS works and REALLY change the design.

In other news, my pets sales have finally started again, after two weeks of nothing. Although the engineering pets are a bit hard to get out there due to increased competition. When I'm not in the game, I've been checking the Undermine Journal to see if anyone has undercut me, but one can only do so much with what time one has.

five :: Blacksmithing 525 & Friday Overview

I cheated at the end and bought all my elementium ores. Now that I maxed out Blacksmithing, it's time to finish those Molten Front dailies. I have enough Chaos Orbs stocked up from the warrior's engineering that I can churn out a few items for sale. I look forward to what the patch brings, since I'll get a small slice with this added profession. That's all for recently, I haven't had much chance to work on auctions. Just reposting ones that expire. Now that I'm free from mining, it's back to my old schedule. Also have the addition of the items crafted for leveling, that should at least make up for the gold spent on training, if not some extra profit.

Weekly Friday Overview:

four :: A Look at Professions for Patch 4.3

Mining is boring. I don't really understand how come people can stand hours and hours of nothing but farming one thing. It truly brain numbing for me, even while watching videos. Now with about half the mats for blacksmithing checked off, I need to suck it up to finish the remaining ores. In the mean while, I've been reading up on the patch 4.3. Here are some of the items I want to compile:

three point two :: Power Level Blacksmithing - Gathering Materials

In a sudden change of heart, I decided against max leveling my priest to get blacksmithing maxed and grind for the Molten Front recipes. Why not make it easier on myself? Just have my 85 warrior drop the unused enchanting for it instead. He also already started the daily grind, and it's much more simple to do them on a toon that already have decent gear to breeze through the quests. To remedy the change, I plan to have my priest pick up alchemy for another cooldown. I will keep her enchanting for now until she hits 75. Then I will decide if I want to grind her to level 85.

Because AH sales has been slow recently, and I'm down more money than I care to admit, I plan to mine everything on the rogue. While at it, it will help my small humble guild hit the mining guild achievement. Two birds with one stone. In addition, I can catch up on all the Asian dramas I've been missing out on. Make that three birds with one stone!

three :: Negliected Secondary Skills

Ahhh! In a frenzy to get all my professions listed, recipes recorded and blogs read up-to-date, I completely forgot about another set of potential gold makers - secondary professions - namely cooking and fishing.  (Arch not so much) I haven't bothered with either for ages, only occasionally cooking up a few Seafood Magnifique Feasts for raids using fish bought from the AH when my stack nearly used up. Looking at my realm's pricing, those raw fish goes for quiet a nice profit. Definitely something to look into.

Another idea, to break the monotony of farming is to break them up into hour chunks. Say, spend one hour farming Cobalt, then move on to another alt to farm embersilk, and etc. List the items gain in each hour chunk to determine efficiency of time spent.

two :: Slow and Steady

Starting a new blog is a daunting task. You start from nothing, and there is so much I want to do and so much information to sort out and organize and then post. I haven't had much time to actually work on anything in terms of making gold. Most of my supply is low and stocking up sets me up to a start in the red. No worries of course. 5 darkmoon cards ready to sell to reap in nice profits.

one :: Great things to come

The official start of my gold making blog.  Here I will keep track of daily spending, goals, ideas, tricks, and other neat internet finds as I go along.

Things I can post about:

• Farming done by the hour
• Special crafts
• Markets to break into
• Markets to get out of
• Costs vs Profits
• Crafting lists
• Character goals
• Daily to-do
• Links to helpful blog tips

As a note, I do not intend for this to be an advice dispensing blog. There are plenty out there that are much more well thought out and writen (with nice looking designs too). Rather, just something I can use to keep track of everything, make notes to myself. Whether there is anything to be learned from my success or mistakes is open for the reader's interpretation.