Still Selling

Still making glyphs, still selling them, but now I’m trying not to undercut everyone else out of the market.  (Gevlon wouldn’t approve.)

I’ve been reconsidering my approach (sell often, sell cheap), and will continue in a mostly similar vein, but with a higher limit to my prices.  After reading Gevlon’s old post on his routine, I’m also going to reduce my inventory even further, and I’ve managed to make some sense of the batch-posting system built into Auctioneer which should cut down the workload even further.  A Just-in-Time system will be more efficient, given a sufficient stock of ink.

I’ve spent a little time (and a little gold – a level 30-ish character shouldn’t be wearing gear in to low 20s) on Tingle, and she finally went up from 30 to 31 yesterday.  I think her new gear will make a difference with the upcoming levels.

Dingle had another 10-man Naxx run, and we may get into the other 10-man instances this afternoon – maybe not Ulduar, perhaps, but certainly Archavon, Malygos and Sartharion.  (She won Thane’s Tainted Greathelm, which was one of the few upgrades left for her outside of Ulduar).

Before I go, some other links that were food for thought about my growing glyph industry:
From QQ pwn more; My Goal: 100k Gold
A guest post on Warcraft Econ; Inscription & Glyph Market II

Time to check my mail (here’s hoping I can afford to splash out on another ten Books of Glyph Mastery – Mingle is getting closer and closer to having the entire range of glyphs available to make!) before getting dailies done.

Oh, and don’t forget that it’s the Midsummer Fire Festival!  Easy xp (and exploration, and flightpoints) for low-level characters!

/wave

A Merchant’s Work Is Never Done

Inscription is proving to be surprisingly time-intensive, but the semi-steady income makes up for it to a surprising degree.  But does it really need to take an hour to price-check and list the 580-odd glyphs I put up last night?  Well, at least I had 10-man Naxx to distract myself with.

Not bad for an off-the-cuff group of ex-guildies, alts, and bored mains is it?  (We killed Patchwerk in 2:50, and cleared the entire instance in just over five hours)  Dingle picked up that rarest of the rares, a tanking trinket, but there wasn’t anything else worth rolling on.  Maybe next time we’ll go explore Ulduar.  (Incidentally it was surprisingly profitable; Dingle was 257G better off from gold looted)

The latest Ulduar nerfs have meant the unofficial guild 10-man progression raid downed Yogg on Friday night (I sat out this week), and we’re quietly optimistic about our chances in 25-man tonight and tomorrow

Back to the subject of Glyphs, the exercise is slowing coming together – Bingle listed a substantial number last night which I’m dreading checking today, and yesterday’s goal was to have 10 each of the saleable DK, Druid and Hunter glyphs before I started re-listing.  If I’ve made enough sales today, I’m looking at increasing my pre-sale stocks of the remaining class glyphs from 6 to 8.  (It’d be nice if my nobles deck was to sell, but I may have missed the rush at the start of the faire – time will tell on that one)

But for now, time to do stuff!  (I suspect ‘stuff’ will be ‘Fallout 3’)

/wave

Busy, Busy Busy.

I had a pretty full-on afternoon (and evening) last night, and somehow managed to finish Naxxramas, Vault of Archavon and Malygos 10-man raids with Dingle.

Now, for an alt I think that’s pretty good. (At least, it is for my alts, the rest of whom aren’t getting out of Dalaran much) And the group worked pretty well, with quite a few one-shot bosses (including Gothik, who crushed last week’s group). I got to experience the terror of tanking both Kel’Thuzad and Malygos, but our DK tank had the death-of-boredom that is tanking Loatheb all to himself.

Tanking Sapphiron wasn’t that hard (having Dingle defence-capped in her frost-resist gear helped, I suspect), but KT was something of a challenge – originally the DK was tanking KT, but after a couple of wipes I inherited the position and he tanked the adds. It was tricky to fit both HS spam and frost bolt interrupts into the routine, and to move out of the things that appeared on the floor underneath me (at least, to get out of them without moving the boss too much – rotating around the boss slowly seemed to work) but I pulled it off (somehow).

Malygos was something of a shock to the system – in all my (short) time tanking, that’s the first time I’ve been seen my health dropping so drastically, so often and so quickly (no, Gluth doesn’t count). And I have a new respect for our 25-man Main Tank/Raid Leader, for being able to tank and watch for sparks and raid lead.

What I’ve learned from all this is that my tanking, while not as bad as some of the green-clad newly-80 DKs lurking in trade channel, still needs work. I was often rage-capped, and kept letting both my Sunder Armor stacks and battle shouts drop (when I remembered to put a shout up at all).

Fitting Heroic Strike spam into my rotation is tricky, and I’m definitely needing practice getting it all together a bit better. I also need to do a bit more research into the various battle shouts, to get a better idea of which to put up and when to do so. I will probably also have to put together more warnings in Power Auras to help keep track of whether a shout is up or not, although I should probably have a look to see if there are other ways to track them. (I’ll be sure to post my findings on here – if I don’t get sidetracked by new shiny toys and other distractions)

I have an empty ring in Opie that could be very useful for putting up short-duration buffs like battleshouts, but I think this is something I might have to get some advice with – I might see if I can have a word with our Guild Leader (who’s a very skillful prot warrior) and get some tips.

And the run didn’t leave me empty-handed – Dingle has finally picked up some T7, in the shape of shoulders and chest tokens, and Malygos blessed her with a shiny new shield.

Well, dailies are waiting for my participation, so I must get to it. But here’s an image of the fruits of yesterday’s labours.

/wave

Sometimes Your Best Just Isn’t Good Enough

Dingle has had another venture into the depths of Naxx-10, along with experiences with the Vault of Archavon in both 10- and 25-man flavours and the Obsidian Sanctum in 10-man.  While both VoA and OS turned out fairly well, the Naxx run clearly demonstrated that when your group is undergeared it can be a rather unforgiving.

The first part of the Naxx run, on Saturday night, wasn’t too bad – at least, not until we got stopped cold trying to down Grobbulus.  After 6 attempts where we had multiple problems with poison clouds being dropped in the middle of the raid, and some bad timing a couple of attempts with Dingle getting the injection debuff while attempting to pick up and tank the slime adds, we called it a night.  (We did manage to clear the Spider and Plague wings, and downed Patchwerk, so it wasn’t too bad.  Plus I managed to get the 50 Emblems achievement)

Last night we went back with a few less pug members and a few more guildmate alts, and apart from managing to get Razuvious down, failed miserably on the only two other bosses we could attempt after him.  We didn’t have anywhere near enough dps for Gothik (I was tanking the live side, and on our best attempt we only just managed to get down the last adds right before he spawned – the dead side didn’t do as well) or Grobbulus (I switched from tanking the slimes to tanking the boss, and it was an… interesting learning experience). Still, 60G in repairs isn’t that bad for a single emblem, is it?  Right?

However, Dingle needs many more emblems (and yet more loot) to finish gearing up before Ulduar, so I suspect I’ll have to brave the world of pugs again, regardless of whether I’m looking forward to it or not.

Perhaps I’ll get lucky, and get in with some groups who’re capable, competent, and well-geared.  Failing that, I guess I’ll find out if there’s any truth to the saying that suffering builds character - if I have a really well-built character by the time 3.1 goes live, this will be why.

/wave

Continuing In The Deep End

After our latest attempt to complete The Immortal in this week’s 25-man Naxx run was defeated by server lag and player disconnections, I was given the chance to sub Dingle in to off-tank for the rest of the night, and it proved to be even more effective in gearing her up than the 10-man run I participated in last week.

Nine bosses later, I’ve not only picked up one each of the best tanking rings and tanking cloaks in game, but also three additional gear upgrades.  And I’ve also been reminded (again) just how good our healers are.

• Pauldrons of Unnatural Death replaced Abomination  Shoulderblades
• Breastplate of Tormented Rage replaced Tempered Saronite Breastplate
• Cloak of the Shadowed Sun replaced Tattered Castle Drape
• Callous-Hearted Gauntlets replaced Daunting Handguards
• And in the biggest upgrade, Sand-Worn Band replaced Stoneguard Band

I’ve also spent a couple of days farming Kurenai rep with Dingle, and the end result was the addition of several Talbuk for my favourite tank to ride around on.  Admittedly, they look better when someone else is riding them – from behind they look like skinny Ironforge rams wearing stilts, but it’s more mounts for her collection (although she only has 16 so far), and one more exalted faction.

In not-related-to-WoW news, I’ve finally been watching the last season of Battlestar Galactica over the last couple of days.  3 more episodes to go, then I can join the masses in complaining about the end of the story.

Starting In The Deep End

I did indeed end up tanking something with Dingle.  We did a guild run of 10-man Naxx.  An achievement run, to do The Dedicated Few, where you have to defeat most of the bosses (apart from the Four Horsemen) with only 8 people.  Talk about trying to fly before you can walk.

All I can say is that our healers are awesome.  And I only occasionally failed (such as a death to a soft-enraged Patchwerk), thanks to an equally awesome main tank (who kept me from looking foolish, especially on the AoE trash pulls).  Of all the bosses, we only have Four Horsemen, Sapphiron and Kel’Thuzad left to clear; we called it after a single attempt at the Horsemen, as we need another couple of people (at least one more healer) for that (and it was ridiculously late, especially by NZ time).

But I managed to get not only two straight upgrades (new shoulders and leggings), but also a couple of items (another pair of shoulders and leggings) towards a DPS set that may possibly get some use when dual-specs go live.  I crafted a set of frost-resist gear as well, for when we go back to Sapphiron, so I’m pretty much set for the rest of the run.

I think I need to start running heroics, though, if I want to get Dingle geared up any further; there’s only so many more Naxx runs left before we get Ulduar to explore, and there’s a few toys I can still pick up from heroics before then.

For now, though?  Time for dailies.