I Want Patience And I Want It Now

Like many others, I’ve been following the announcements at Blizzcon about what to expect with both Cataclysm and the much closer Icecrown patch.  All I can say is summed up in the title of this post.

Bearing in mind that what was announced was (in the case of the expansion) very much open to change between now and release (the closest they’ve come to a date has been “targeted for a 2010 release date” (as mentioned here), there’s not really anything they’ve said that I’m not interested in seeing.  Between the class changes (yay, more Dwarves!), leveling in the new old Azeroth, the new profession and Paths of the Titans, guild experience and leveling, and ranked battlegrounds, there' will not only be plenty for level 80s to do when the expansion launches but there will also be a lot of appeal to level new characters from scratch.

But that’s a long way off – and patience was never a strong suit for me.

The Icecrown information looks interesting, though, but the downside for me is having to endure the Coliseum raid for a couple more months – I’m seriously not looking forward to the hard-modes.

Icecrown Citadel – Raid

• The dungeon will have 4 different floors.
• There will be 12 "Epic" boss encounters.
• There will be an epic cinematic for defeating the Lich King.
• Waypoints from Ulduar are being used in this instance.
• Sindragosa, the ultimate Frost Wyrm is one boss in Icecrown.
• The Spire with the frozen throne on top runs through the entire instance.
• At one point you will board an airship with your faction leader, and race the opposing faction to the top of icecrown.
• There are cannons and rocketpacks and catapults to aid you in your battle with the opposing faction.
• The 3rd floor has 3 wings.
• Parts of the platform on the 4th floor with the Lich King will break apart and fall during the encounter.

Icecrown Citadel – Dungeon

• There are three different wings in this dungeon.
• You must progress through the wings linearly.
• An "epic" quest series unlocks the wings.
• 8 bosses in total

On a more personal note, I think I’ll stop with my glyph sales reports after this week’s one; I’ve proven to my satisfaction that not only is Inscription profitable, it’s consistently so.  And to be quite honest, it’s almost turning into bragging, so I think it’s time is done.

For the seven days from 17th August – 23rd August:
Total glyphs sold: 1882
Average price per glyph: 10.37g
Average sales per day: 2787.71g
Total income from the AH: 19,514g

Let’s compare that with my first report:

For the seven days from 21st June – 28th June:
Total glyphs sold: 622
Average price per glyph: 9.74g
Average sales per day: 865.86g
Total income from the AH: 6061g

I have to say, I love being fiscally self-sufficient, and the process has become a lot easier to manage compared to when I first started.  And, if I can do it, there’s little to stop anyone else from doing so.  (Other than the ability to come up with a system, to manage their time effectively, and to pony up with the gold to get stock to start with.)

Moving on, I’m looking at the possibility of un-retiring paladin Bingle from bank-alt services, and getting her to 80.  I’m also looking at the possibility of giving a Death Knight another try.  The biggest issue I’m finding is that I’m running out of character slots – 10 sounds like lots, but if you’re as serious about high-level alts as I am, they disappear pretty quickly.

I currently have 6 level 80s, one 70 bank-alt, and the 35 druid bank-alt – Snowfall, my Blood Elf hunter, has been removed from my roster in order to free up her slot, as the BE aesthetic was just too unappealing to level her any further (that darned matchstick).  That leaves 2 free slots on this server, and while I’ll have the Dwarven shaman and mage to make space for, that’s quite possibly a year off.  For now I’ve rolled my DK (I’m sure I’ll introduce you to Ninglethouse, eventually), and my current plan is to level her to 70, then decide who to take to 80 first between her and Bingle.

But errands await, and I think it’s time to put off making today’s glyphs in order to get some more PvP time on Pringle.  (I’ll probably put together a Rogue’s starter PvP gear post sometime soon)

/wave

On Cataclysm, Commenters, And Lore Changes (Oh, And Gold)

I’ve been perusing the various comment threads of people’s posts regarding the rumours about the Cataclysm expansion, and a couple of things have come to my attention.

There seem to be a few categories* into most of the commenters seem to fit (although some manage to fit into more than one), and here’s what they look like from my perspective.  (Consider my tongue planted ever so slightly in cheek while you read this)

• The Lore Lawyers – These people are very much fixated on what currently exists in-game (and sometimes in previous games such as Warcraft 3), and refuse to entertain the possibility of anything that hasn’t been seen already.  They can use their knowledge to both support and refute any rumoured changes (sometimes simultaneously).  Can end world hunger if they use their powers for good.
• The Druid Denialists – A sub-category of Lore Lawyers, they may be much more open-minded about most things, with the exception of non-Night Elf and non-Tauren druids, which Blizzard would obviously never do.
• The True Believers – If it’s on the internet, it must be true.  They take the rumours as gospel, and have a lot of posts containing “ZOMG!!ZOMG!!”
• The Imagineers – A sub-category of True Believers, they love what they’ve read, and then they take the ball and run with it.  Posts which expand on the rumours with a lot of wild speculation (sometimes reading like a fan-boy’s wish-list) can usually be traced back to them.
• The Pessimists – Another sub-category of True Believers, they can usually be recognised by their “-Change X- sounds awesome, but Blizz will ruin it like everything else they do” posts.  Firm believers that every silver lining has a cloud.
• The Skeptics – They may admit that the rumours look interesting, but they don’t believe anything until it’s confirmed officially.  Possibly the most boring to read (Kidding! I’m kidding!), but they help keep the True Believers grounded.
• The Denialists – A sub-category of the Skeptics.  While they may say the rumours look interesting, they don’t believe Blizzard would ever make changes so sweeping to a game as established as WoW.  If the rumoured changes are confirmed, may still not believe them until they’re actually playing the expansion.
• The Logisticians – A sub-category of Denialists (which makes them a sub-sub-category of the Skeptics, I guess), they believe the reason Blizzard would never make the rumoured changes is due to technical issues.  (“Instance full”, anyone?)
• The Politely Hopeful – With no visible sign of hyperbole, they just say “It sounds good, and I can’t wait for official information at Blizzcon.”  (Probably your favourite category if you’re an over-worked forum moderator)

I’m sure any number of my more literary readers could add more categories (and probably more amusingly).

Personally, I’m somewhere between a True Believer (my inner fanboy is going “ZOMG! Dwarf Shamans and Mages!”) and Politely Hopeful (a new, old Azeroth sounds verrrry interesting).

One thing that I think gets missed by a lot of the people who’re saying Blizzard would never do “X” because of existing lore, is that it’s Blizzard’s sandbox and they can do anything they want with it.  If they disagree, I’d suggest taking a good look at the Draenei, pre- and post-TBC.  Ret-con much?

Do they want Space Goats arriving on Azeroth to bring Shamanism to the Alliance?  Done.  Elves joining the Horde, giving them Paladins?  Done.  Compared to that, are Troll Druids and Gnome Priests really all that outlandish?

Anyway, on a completely unrelated matter, as it’s the start of a new week it’s time to gloat over sum up my glyph sales for the week just finished.

For the seven days from 10rd August – 16th August:
Total glyphs sold: 2073
Average price per glyph: 8.84g
Average sales per day: 2616g
Total income from the AH: 18,312g

The irritating undercutter who was listing glyphs at a flat 3g/ea has been and gone, and been replaced by another merchant who sits in the AH and undercuts almost immediately upon my posting.  I have a contingency plan for this situation, but time will tell if it’s actually needed.

Needless to say, I’m kind of overwhelmed by the sheer volume of gold that’s passing through my hands currently (even after taking into account the expense of restocking).  The only down-side is the amount of time it takes to mill herbs and make inks – thank heavens for updates to Skillet and Panda.

I invested a few thousand in retraining Bingle in the noble arts of Transmutation-Specialised Alchemy last night – about 3.5k in mats and training to 450, and 1k for a Tome of Cold Weather Flight so she could get to Dalaran for the epic-gem transmute quest.  I don’t think I’ll be making the training costs back from transmutes any time soon, but on the positive side it gives me an additional transmute cooldown to play with (and completes the trio of specialists, with Elixir-specced Kringle and Potion-specced Fingle).

As I mentioned in my previous post, Pringle is now a happy little level 80 rogue (and is still nursing a hangover of world-shaking dimensions, but Dwarves are used to that – it’s the reason they’re stereotypically so dour).  I’m looking at gearing him up for PvP, and in the crafted gear he’s wearing so far, my experience is that rogues are ridiculously squishy.  Seriously. you’d think he was wearing cloth.  Or possibly was naked.  Rogue PvP is nothing like the fun of disc priest PvP, at least in his beginner-gear.

Also, in the mail today (the RL mail, not in-game) my Authenticators arrived.  Yes, I’m practicing an additional layer of account-protection (and it was pretty painless to setup).  I’ve taped it to the keyboard, as it’s not something you want to lose.

Well, my chores await (not least of which is milling my fingers to the bone), so it’s time to go fake productivity.

/wave

* – There are two types of people in the world.  Those who divide the people of the world into two types, and those who do not.

DND, Making Gold

From my experiences so far with 3.2, I’d have to describe this as the patch that both emptied and filled my wallet.  Seriously, have you seen the prices for Titanium Ore?  (I practiced some semblance of financial prudence, and only bought 20 overpriced stacks…)

Apart from the new crafting bits and pieces (which was almost entirely jewelcrafting – incidentally, it’s surprising how well Earthsiege and Skyflare diamonds have been selling), I’ve mostly been speculating in the leatherworking leg armor and tailoring spellthread markets.  It’s just a matter of keeping an eye open for cheap components to stockpile: frozen orbs, arctic fur, eternals and (oddly enough – their price has been astronomical over the weekend) iceweb spider silk.

I’m surprised that alchemists got most of the gem transmutes right away – I would have thought Blizzard would have preferred to make it more time-consuming to acquire all of them, such as making the five-transmute pre-requisite before you can learn the Cardinal Ruby transmute apply to most of the others as well.  Still, considering that it’s on a cooldown, I guess they didn’t want to limit it any further right out of the gate.

I’ve managed to pick up 21 of the new JC cuts so far (of 73 – I’ve a way to go yet) using my backlog of tokens, starting out with ones I’d need on my various toons, and I’m now taking requests from guildmates for specific cuts they need.  Buying damaged necklaces to complete and turn-in for tokens seems to be the only economic way to get more than the 1-per day from the jc daily – with titanium ore starting at 350g/stack (and dust around 30g each), they’re not really all that viable.

Glyphs have been selling like nobody’s business (apart from a substantial dip on patch-day eve), and yesterday was my biggest day yet - you wouldn’t believe how many DK glyphs I’ve sold.  Here’s how last week treated me:

For the seven days from 3rd August – 9th August:
Total glyphs sold: 2782
Average price per glyph: 5.07g
Average sales per day: 1659.92g
Total income from the AH: 11619.5g

I’ve also (finally) finished discovering all the northrend glyphs on Mingle, so now that she can make all of them I can now say with a little more accuracy that she’s a master scribe. (Yay!)

I celebrated my financial success by purchasing the BoE Northern Barrier for my warrior, which dropped in Ulduar25 last night.  (Our guild keeps everyone supplied with raiding supplies by selling un-needed BoE drops on the AH, which can be purchased by guildmembers for a discounted price – it’s nice to not have to buy your own flasks for progression raiding)

I still haven’t completed the new 5-man instance – I should really get around to that, as pretty much all my non-raiding characters could use items from there (especially tank Dingle and disc healer Fingle).  I’ve run quite a few heroics on Fingle though, and (apart from the occasional over-enthusiastic gnome tank who pulls entire rooms) I think I’ve done pretty well.  It’s also been kind of fun, but I’m not sure if it’ll translate well if I try raid-healing on Mingle (whose new disc spec is still pretty virginal); my impressions of raid-healing, especially hard modes as we’ve been doing quite often of late, is that they’re very different to the slap-dash approach I’ve been taking with 5-mans.  Time will tell, though.

Speaking of time, it’s time to get my glyphs restocked so I can go do other things.

/wave

Patch 3.2 - Broken Addons Time!

It’s not so much that addons haven’t been updated yet, it’s more that they aren’t breaking gracefully.

And I’m feeling less than graceful myself, following a tooth extraction yesterday – I guess I’m not breaking gracefully either (although I surprised myself by coping with the extraction more gracefully than I was expecting to, being a woos of a guy, especially when it comes to dentistry).

I’m still working on the third part of my PvP gear guide, and it’s taken so long that a lot of it has been rendered outdated by the arrival of 3.2 and the new PvP items from Wintergrasp.  I might have to make a filler post (part 2.5?) to cover the few new items.

Speaking of 3.2, it’s been very much “a patch of appealing little tweaks that should have happened years ago,” at least for the most part.  Low-level mounts, check.  Character names coloured by class in chat, check.  Vendor prices listed on items when not at a vendor, check.  Item level can be displayed on item tooltips, check.  Make the Chef’s hat actually useful, check.

The epic gem transmutes have the potential to make transmute mastery profitable at last (wtb third alchemy specialist), new pets dropping from world mobs are nice (especially from old world mobs), and people have been hearing about the engineer buffs and going “That sounds awesome.” (I suspect that last of those is one of the signs of the impending end of the world)

The new raid instance has been about as underwhelming as I was expecting – having done both 10 and 25 man versions, I can safely say “Is that it?”  I’ve only managed to finish the first encounter in the 5-man instance (the tank had to leave), but that’s only managed to reinforce my dislike of jousting.

As an aside…  Night Elf druid cat form?  Awesome.  Night Elf druid bear form?  Ridiculous.  Just look at the tall hind legs and short front legs.  If I wanted a hotrod, I’d make one on my engineer.  (Mind you, I also want to make my druid roller-skates for bear form)

On the subject of “Things that don’t suck that much,” I’ve sold a ridiculous number of glyphs of the last week.  (It’ll be interesting to see how the new glyphs, Glyph of the Claw and Glyph of Command, sell this week)

For the seven days from 27th July – 2nd August:
Total glyphs sold: 2606
Average price per glyph: 4.07g
Average sales per day: 1515.35g
Total income from the AH: 10607.5g

Admittedly my average price per glyph has dropped yet again (which fortunately works against my competitors as much as against myself), but I’m still well and truly in the black overall thanks to the (substantial) increase in sales and some appealingly priced Ink of the Sea purchased in the AH last week.

For now, however, I have both Wintergrasp (if I can get in the queue) and the new battleground waiting for Fingle.

/wave

Passing Time While Waiting Impatiently

My playing has slowed down a little lately, which I think in part is due to the pre-patch anticipation starting to make itself known – it’s hard to think of a reason to spend time running heroics now, knowing that if I wait a week or two* I’ll be getting something useful in the shape of Emblems of Conquest instead of just sharding or vendoring everything that drops and stockpiling Heroism badges.

It’s kind of telling that, apart from time spent with glyphs and scheduled 25-man raids, I’m probably spending more time helping a guildmate out with farming heavy junkboxes for Ravenholdt rep (for the achievement, Insane in the Membrane) than anything else.  I’ve been exploring Lower Blackrock Spire, and I have to say, that’s a nightmare of an instance to navigate if you’re used to the almost-linear designs from Burning Crusade and Wrath – still, for all its faults, it’s not as bad as Maraudon.  Anyway, it makes a change to get out and about on Ringle – it’s been too long since I’ve spent much time being rogue-ish.

On a mostly unrelated topic, it’s easy to tell when Darkmoon Faire is coming, as the cost of herbs goes through the roof due to people who hadn’t planned ahead and are frantically trying to get enough inks and eternal lifes to make their cards (as has been happening over the weekend).  Oddly enough, Lichbloom has stayed around the same price (starting at roughly 26g per stack), but Adder’s Tongue and Icethorn have both rocketed up to 30g per stack and higher.  For a change, it’s substantially cheaper to just buy Ink of the Sea instead of buying and milling – sure, I miss the free Snowfall inks, but it’s easier (and cheaper) to start re-stocking those after prices return to more sane levels.

I’ve been letting my dailies slide a little as well – the rewards from fishing are pretty ridiculous when the RNG doesn’t like you, and I’m getting tired of travelling half-way across Northrend to get a handful of useless glass as a reward.  I’m still doing the JC quests with Pringle, though, as the tokens are well worth stocking up on in preparation for the 3.2 landrush.  I’m also trying to get Mingle and Fingle caught-up with the Tournament dailies, but it’s proving to be something of an an uphill battle; as far as irritating grinds go, the tournament is (from my perspective) one of the more tiresome (especially jousting, now I’ve done it as much as I have).

For now, though, it’s time to do dailies and mill herbs and craft glyphs.

/wave

* – My money’s on 3.2 going live this week, with next week being my backup guess.  When do you think we’re getting it?

Busy Is As Busy Does

And at the moment, busy makes glyphs.  Seriously, I’ve been spending waaaaay too much time making glyphs.  And milling ink to make more glyphs.  And cancelling and relisting glyphs to annoy my competitors.  Because glyphs have been selling like you wouldn’t believe.

The lesson I’ve learnt from these usurpers trying to steal my market away from me is that one man’s undercut is another man’s opportunity.  Cue the last week’s sales:

For the seven days from 20th July – 26th July:
Total glyphs sold: 1457
Average price per glyph: 5.28g
Average sales per day: 1097.53g
Total income from the AH: 7682.74g

Despite the savage drop in price-per-glyph, it’s still a nice improvement over last week, and although the profit margin has shrunk considerably, my sales leave me in the black all the same.  I also suspect I’m proving something of an annoyance to those who insist of undercutting me, which cheers me up to no end.  (If you’re in a similar space I’d recommend the addon Quick Auctions 2, which has given me something of an advantage by reducing my turnaround time substantially.  If you’re one of my competitors, please feel free to skip over this paragraph)

25-man raiding took a step back last night, as we spent most of it wiping on Yogg-saron – quite a turnaround from the awesomeness of our raids on Wednesday and Thursday.  I’m sure he enjoyed the opportunity to kill us again and again and again.  And again.  And then some more.  It’ll be interesting to see how we do after the reset tonight.

The “New races in the expansion!” theory took a bit of a hit when Blizzard added several additional new masks, at least until we saw them.  Naysayers have held up the additional new masks as evidence that the first new masks are purely cosmetic, and are not evidence of anything new that may or may not have anything to do with the expansion.

As for me?  I’m still of the “Yay, playable Goblins!” school of thought.  Sure there are new masks, and the Vrykul ones actually look almost as good as the Goblin and Worgen ones.  But the Murloc ones don’t look all that detailed (just look at their teeth).  Although the male ogre actually looks decent, the female ogre is apparently line art from one of the RPG manuals.  The male naga is pretty poorly done, and don’t get me started on the female naga, that’s just awful.

Needless to say, I don’t think Blizzard’s non-response was quite as effective as they would hope,  Still, it’s under a month until Blizzcon, so we’ll find out for ourselves soon enough (hopefully).

I’m also still working on the last installment of my PvP gear guide, so for whoever is actually waiting for that, it’s still coming.  (Fingle’s actually getting quite well geared as well – time to start looking for an arena team, i think)

Time to go do things – I’m about to try healing Naxx-25 on Fingle, and I suspect things could get interesting.  Or painful.  Or both.

/wave

Competing For Profits

AKA “There ain’t enough glyph sales for the both of us.”  Needless to say, I expect my profit margins to take a hit while I try out my cunning plan to get my share of the market back from some rather insistent competitors.  And I’ve been amusing myself with a resurrection quote addon.

Thanks to a bit too much time spent in Wintergrasp, Fingle’s PvP gear is coming along nicely.  In about 17k more honor, she will be able to pick up the Hateful chest, which will give her the four-piece bonus, and she’s now wearing both the Titan-forged boots and belt.  I’ve been distracted by other things, so the frequency of her PvPing has come down a bit, and I’m seriously considering not putting too much time into it until after 3.2 and the battleground changes that will make them less painful (especially Warsong Gulch – yes please to a 20 minute game limit!).

It looks like my healing with Fingle will be affecting my raiding as well, as I’m going to be changing Mingle’s second spec to discipline to help out with healing Iron Council hard-mode.  We tried it a few times last night, and the raid damage was just flattening us.  I was on primary dispelling of Steelbreaker’s Fusion Punch (with our very talented other shadow priest backing me up), and with all my attention on that I didn’t really have the time to do much dps.

After a couple of wipes I whispered our healing officer and suggested that it might be a good fight for me to do as disc, to help with raid healing (or at least raid shielding) when I’m not dispelling.  The suggestion went down well, so if we go back to that fight tonight I’ll be sporting my shiny new (mostly repurposed) disc gear and a positive attitude.

Last night’s raid actually went surprisingly well, considering how often we’ve been off-form lately.  We started by one-shotting Flame Leviathan with four towers up, followed by one-shots of Kologarn and Mimiron, and two-shots of Auriaya and Thorim.  Iron Council was troublesome, as new hard modes usually are, but we were keeping a pretty good attitude about it all.

I’ve finally reached another milestone on Pringle, and it’s surprising they haven’t made an achievement out of it.

I mean, seriously.  450 fishing isn’t worth at least some kind of achievement spam?  That’s just ridiculous (and kind of disheartening).  They’re failed to recognise when you max out other professions as well, and I think it’s a missed opportunity on Blizzard’s part.

Speaking of professions, I’ll touch on the interesting times I foresee ahead of me thanks to some increasingly persistent competition in the Glyph market.  I noticed over the last few days that my sales have dropped considerably, and when I checked after posting my glyphs on Monday I found that by the time I’d finished listing my second group two people had undercut almost every glyph I’d listed in group one.

Needless to say, I’m not taking this lying down.  (Actually I’m seated, but that’s beside the point.)  I’ve changed my posting system to minimise the effect of being undercut, and lowered the undercut percentage in Auctioneer while I work on regaining a more substantial share of the market – I only started yesterday, and while my net profit has dropped quite a bit, I am still making a profit, plus I think I’m cutting into their sales as well.  I’ll see how things look later in the week, though, and see if further changes need to be made.

For now, though, I have things to do, fish to catch, and other chores to complete.

/wave

The Week That Was

(Not to be confused with the Week That Will Be, or The Week That Is)

PvP is, I must admit, a lot more fun when you’re doing it with a group of guildmates who know what they’re doing – random battleground pugs (at least the Alliance-side ones) are awful at least 50% of the time by my calculations (although perception bias may have some small effect on that number).  All the same, I’ve managed to get Fingle off to a good start with her PvP gear (which I’ll probably post about before too long), and I’ve picked up a little how-to about disc priest healing from both my desperate efforts to keep teammates alive in battlegrounds, and the couple of PvE instances I’ve healed since starting to gear her up.

I’ve made some changes to Mingle’s UI based on what I’ve learnt from PvPing on Fingle (and setting up Vuhdo), which helped last night when our main dispeller died early on Yogg-Saron last night, and I had to help make up for her absence.  Also, after last nights raid I splashed out and made both the Ulduar crafted belt and boots for Mingle (the latter using discounted orbs from the guild bank, but the former completely on my own coin) – I’ve been regularly selling the crafted items I’ve been putting on the AH, so I have enough gold to treat myself to something nice every now and then.

I’m beginning to consider dual-speccing Mingle to shadow/disc after my pleasant experiences with Fingle (which is to say healing as disc has been fun, but it’s no comment on battleground pugs).  I’ve been juggling gear to try put together a set to try healing with – admittedly that mostly means trying to find pieces without hit rating, at this stage.  She will have two pieces of t7.5 to start with, and a badge trinket, so she’s not starting off too shabbily.

I’ve been enjoying the “New Races in the Expansion!” rumour that surfaced after someone found new Halloween masks in the PTR data that have been interpreted as evidence that we’ll be playing Goblins and Worgen when we enter the Maelstrom.  My take on it?  I like the thought of Alliance finally gaining a bestial race, and the goblins have been a loooong time coming to the horde.

I’m not sure if I’d roll a goblin to level to 80 (or 90, considering expansions raise the level cap), but I might give a worgen a try (depending on what classes are available – I’m still hanging out for a new dwarf class, of course).  Certainly a goblin would be the ultimate bank alt, but considering all my active toons are on the alliance side, it’d be kind of ineffectual if it’s a horde-only character (which I expect will be the case).  In any case, the idea is covered pretty thoroughly over on Random Ravings of Warcraft, which I recommend checking out.

Finally, this weeks glyph industry report.  The changes I made to my undercut value pushed my average sale price up by over 1g, and while my gross volume of sales was down, the total was up slightly from last week.

For the seven days from 13th July – 19th July:
Total glyphs sold: 612
Average price per glyph: 10.51g
Average sales per day: 918.814g
Total income from the AH: 6431.7g

This would have been better, but there was a huge drop in sales on the last day of the week – weekdays seem to be much more reliable for glyph sales than the weekend, quite possibly due to casual players doing their undercutting thing.  I’ve also trimmed my stock based on what hasn’t sold over the last three weeks, so I’ll see if that makes any difference over the coming week’s sales.

Anyway, time to get my chores done (I’m doing the dalaran fishing daily on all my 80s, cooking daily on Pringle, Kringle and Fingle, and the JC daily on Pringle) so I can decide what I want to do with the rest of my day.

/wave

So How Long Do Glyphs Take?

In terms of a glyph industry, that is.  I was wondering about this, and decided to see how much time I put into it each day.

1. Cancel unsold glyphs
   4 minutes
   (There was 821 unsold today)
2. Collecting unsold glyphs, part one
   9 minutes
   (This is the Priest/Rogue/Shaman/Warrior/Warlock glyphs. The 50-mail-at-a-time limit slows things down quite a bit here, as does the delay between emptying 50 and waiting for the next 50 to arrive)
3. Back to the bank to change equipped inscription bags
   1 minute
   (I list so many glyphs that I can only work with half of them at a time.  It’s a little unwieldy, but I’ve made it work for me.)
4. Collecting unsold glyphs and sales, part two
   12 minutes
   (This is DK/Druid/Hunter/Mage/Paladin glyphs.  See #2 for mail server delay complaints)
5. Log onto Mingle, do Inscription Research, craft 10 of the new glyph
   2 minutes
   (Yay, I discovered the last Druid glyph!  Anyway, I only make the glyphs if they’re profitable – most glyphs discovered from Northrend research are, thankfully, so it’s then just a matter of finding out if they actually sell)
6. Check Bingle’s inventory levels and queue glyphs needing to be restocked.
   24 minutes
   (Thanks to the BankItems addon, I can see Bingle’s stock levels from the tooltips in Mingle’s crafting list.  I also record sales in a handy Excel spreadsheet, which adds to the time it takes – however, the extra information is well worth the extra time invested)
7. Brief interlude in Wintergrasp on Fingle with timer paused.
   - cue elevator muzak -
    
   (Yay!  Plus we won Wintergrasp back, so I scored three Marks)
8. Start crafting, and mail the glyphs to Bingle
   4 minutes
   (57 glyphs today)
9. Log back onto Bingle and perform a full scan with Auctioneer
   5 minutes
   (Not forgetting to set price levels for the new glyph I learnt and enable it for batch posting)
10. Start batch-posting the first glyph set
    15 minutes
    (Fortunately I can go AFK to make myself a nice cup of tea while this runs.  Unfortunately I have to remain in the auction house while this runs, and it takes quite a while with the numbers I’m posting currently.  I’m currently listing 4 each of 120 glyphs, so it takes a while.)
11. Back to the bank to equip the other bag set, the back to the AH to list the second half
    18 minutes
    (There’s fewer glyphs in this group, only 4 each of 112 glyphs.  Total glyph listed, 928)
12. Profit!
    (Or at least, there will be tomorrow)

So, 94 minutes later, that’s how it’s done.  That’s 61 minutes where I have to pay attention to the computer, and 33 minutes (while batch-posting goes on) where I can do other activities (such as catching up on my daily browsing).  It’s not the quick and efficient setup that, say, Gevlon uses, but it turns a regular and respectable profit for me for an affordable investment in time.  (I use lower price-points than he does, which is why my stock is so much larger, and the result of larger stocks is more time spent managing it – I suspect I’d do well to rethink my approach at some stage)

At this stage I can calculate how much gold/hour glyphs make me (which I’m curious to actually work out – up until now I’ve just collected my gold without thinking about it).  I think I’ll be reducing the range of glyphs I’m making soon (again), as I didn’t realise just how much time the lower profit glyphs are costing me (and also how much they’ll be cutting into the profit from my higher-valued glyphs).

So I think what I’d taking away from this exercise is that a little careful analysis of your gold-making activities has the potential to save you time (and increase your profits).  But of course, YMMV.

For now though, my dailies are waiting.

/wave

You Dirty Rat!

Well, considering how long the critter would have been swimming in the sewer before you fish it up, it’s a tad more likely to be filthy than clean…  Unless it’s a clean sewer?  (Isn’t that an oxymoron like “military intelligence” or “an honest politician”?)

Financially, it’s been a pretty busy week.  Between my raiding needs (flasks, potions and fish), wheeling and dealing (with eternal belt buckles and leg armors), my investment in Fingle’s PvP gear and enchants, and the crafted Ulduar gear I’ve got on the AH currently (along with two Ulduar patterns that I’ve bought), I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel…  er, of my wallet at this point in time.  I also off-loaded those books of glyph mastery (at around 52g each), so that’s one less thing nagging at the back of my mind.

I made one small change to my glyph listing process (reducing the undercut value in auctioneer from 50% to 40%, which increases the minimum price at which my glyphs would be listed), and in the days since I’ve experienced both a reduction in overall sales along with an increase in price-per-glyph that keeps things roughly equivalent in gross turnover.  Essentially, it means I’m selling fewer items (lowering crafting costs) for more (increasing net profit) – this kind of adjustment would be something to bear in mind if you’re regularly listing items on the AH.

But here’s how the glyph market has been treating me this week:

For the seven days from 6th July – 12th July:
Total glyphs sold: 676
Average price per glyph: 9.26g
Average sales per day: 894.41g
Total income from the AH: 6260.85g

This wasn’t helped by a substantial dip in sales on the day I made the undercut change, but if today’s sales are anything to go by, this week could be quite a bit more profitable (only time, and sales figures, will tell).

Yesterday I did a few battlegrounds with Fingle (including my first visit to the Strand of the Ancients), and the decrease in her mana pool in PvP gear has been quite noticeable – I probably spent as much time drinking yesterday as I did while I leveled her from 70 to 80.  I also have to make up my mind whether I want to be dps or healing, as quite often my dps has been more than triple the amount of healing I’ve done in a BG – I guess my shadow priest upbringing is shining through.  But I think it’s time to put together a new UI for healing – Vuhdo has been suggested as an addon to look into.

All in all, considering how few healers there seem to be in BGs, I think I could prove useful in that regard.  But as the screenshot above shows, I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me.

But it’s time to get today’s glyphs listed, and fishing (and cooking and jewelcrafting) dailies completed, then time for some more PvP.  (Fingle should have her first piece of non-crafted PvP gear today!  Hurrah!)

/wave

More Numbers and an Ex-God

You’d think the flu would end a lot more quickly, but nooooo.  Which isn’t to say I still have the flu, because I’m no longer contagious, but I’m still coughing.  Needless to say, I’m getting rather tired of the whole thing.  (cough)

Raiding with Mingle has progressed, and above me is exhibit A.  Meet the ex-old god, Yogg-Saron.  Of course, that’s the good news.  Now we’re going to be doing hard-modes in an attempt to reach Algalon.  (Sadly, I wasn’t blessed with any loot to commemorate the event, so I had to make do with a fleeting feeling of relief – it’ll be interesting to see how we do next week)  We followed that up with a 6-minute Malygos kill which was quite satisfying.

I’ve spent a bit of time on Dingle as well, running Naxx10 and some Ulduar10.  Naxx was as much of a pushover as you’d expect, but Ulduar was a tad more punishing.  (Just a tip:  The trash before the cat lady Auriaya can’t be 9-manned by alts – we had someone go afk to go to the dairy and buy some cigarettes who didn’t come back for over an hour, and we had to do something with our time.)

Also, PvP.  Yes, Dingle actually did a little, and even picked up a couple of the simpler achievements from it.  (She picked up the end of a fail AV, an AB, a couple of EotS, and the tail end of Wintergrasp)

The Midsummer Fire Festival has been and gone (yes it was very funny, celebrating summer in the middle of the southern hemisphere winter while I was sitting in front of a heater, wrapped up in multiple layers of clothing, sipping a hot cider vinegar and honey drink while recovering from the flu), and I mostly ignored it.  I did a little exploration while honouring/extinguishing fires to get Tingle some flightpoints and a little more xp (she’s currently in Southshore, sitting on level 35), but I didn’t spend much time on it with any other characters.  (My money is on the next in-game event being Northrend Children’s Week, which is apparently being introduced some time after the 3.2 patch goes live.)

Glyphs are continuing to treat me well, not to mention profitably.  I’ve switched from manually price-checking and listing them over to batch-posting, and the time it takes to post them all has more than halved (plus I can be afk while they go up).

Anyway, here’s the (100% batch-posted) numbers for last week:

For the seven days from 29th June – 5th July:
Total glyphs sold: 721
Average price per glyph: 8.88g
Average sales per day: 914.89g
Total income from the AH: 6404.22g

Remember those extra books of glyph master that I assumed I’d be able to resell for a profit?  Well, do you remember the saying about assumptions?  Needless to say, I suspect if I want to sell these anytime soon, I’ll have to eat a small loss on the deal.  On a more profitable note, I’ve sold about half of the decks I made for the Faire; I still have a handful to go, but I expect to have them sold before the faire moves on.

I’ve spent quite a bit of the proceeds already, on Runed Orbs to make a pair of Spiked Deathdealers for Dingle (which was a little cheaper than it would otherwise have been, thanks to Mingle being able to buy four orbs with Emblems of Conquest) and a Scroll of Blood Draining to put on Stoneguard, which dropped from Kologarn.  The crafted plate tanking belt from Ulduar is the next upgrade I have planned, but I’ll have to check if we have a blacksmith in guild who has the recipe.

After the mixed results from my minimal time spent tanking in Ulduar, my respect for Ulduar main-tanks who also lead their raids is substantial.  I had enough trouble keeping track of the things currently pummeling me, without keeping track of everyone else at the same time.  But on the positive side, I’ve managed to get an achievement on Dingle that my ‘official’ raiding character hasn’t managed yet:

Meet Flame Leviathan+2.

/wave

(cough)

The Moderately More Human Edition

The best thing about the flu?  Ideally it’s not to catch it.  Failing that, it’s the part when you start feeling like yourself again.  I’m not quite at the latter stage, but at least I’m no longer feeling like I have a murloc in my throat.

I’ve finally got some numbers together from my glyph business, and it makes for quite satisfying reading.

For the seven days from 21st June – 28th June:
Total glyphs sold: 622
Average price per glyph: 9.74g
Average sales per day: 865.86g
Total income from the AH: 6061g

Most of my profits over that period have gone back into books of glyph mastery in order to learn those glyphs and Mingle now knows all 57 new glyphs, which just leaves the other glyphs to be learnt from Minor and Northrend Inscription Research.  (I also misjudged the number of books Mingle needed, and now have 9 surplus that I’ll re-list when the price goes back up – I picked them up for 50g-60g each, and prices last week peaked at 100g, so I should be able to make my money back on them pretty safely)

As Bingle is struggling to manage the glyphs she currently holds, I’m going to limit my inventory to the eight 32-slot bags she carries.  That gives me 256 different glyphs I can work with, from the 340 in-game, with 41 remaining for Mingle to learn.  Now it’s a matter of winnowing out the less profitable glyphs so I can replace them with new discoveries.

I’ve also burnt through half of my stockpile of Snowfall Ink, and made 40 Darkmoon cards.  All I need now is a six of nobles, and I have a nobles deck ready to go when the Faire is back in town.  I also managed to get a complete Undeath deck (plus I’m only two cards short of a second deck, to boot), and purchased three cards on the AH to complete a Prisms deck and Chaos deck.

I’m going to use the returns from my glyph sales for the next week to purchase the other six stacks of eternal life I need to turn the rest of my snowfall inks into darkmoon cards, and then it’ll be time to see how the pre-Faire market treats me.

For now, though, I have a part-guild Alts Naxx10 run to tank.

/wave

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

Glyphing It Up

With things still going slow when I’m not raiding (which is most of the time), I’ve spent some time (and gold – oh, so much gold) to break into the glyph market, as inspired by a post by the Greedy Goblin.

Despite the poorly thought-through method I’ve used to start working on it, I think it’s going pretty well (all things considered).  Never mind that I’ve been milling herbs in my dreams – that’s perfectly normal, isn’t it?  (Although, I have to admit, I found the Gameboy Tetris dreams from my youth to be much more entertaining)

I’ve turned Bingle into my AH mule, and she’s been equipped with enough inscription bags to hold the myriad of glyphs that Mingle has been making – it’s getting closer to the one-bag-per-class level than I’d like, and I’ve only learnt 5 of the Book of Glyph Mastery glyphs so far.

One handy side-effect from all the northrend herbs I’ve milled, is having enough Snowfall Inks to make many Darkmoon Cards of the North – Pringle (who’s acting as my Darkmoon-card and general AH mule) currently has 6 different cards towards the Nobles Deck, which is used to get the very desirable (and profitable) Greatness card.  Two more cards, and that could well be an extra 5k gold in my greedy little hands, thanks to Darkmoon Faire being in town.

The downside to this, at least of my current efforts, is the time-consuming aspect of it.  I think it’s time to work out how to use Auctioneer more effectively (or at least, to use it smarter).

/wave

But Vacations Don’t Last Forever

Well, maybe I’m not taking as much time off from 25-mans as I expected.  Due to an unexpected reduction in raider numbers (and another unexpected increase in raiding numbers after another Dath’remar raiding guild stopped raiding, and we picked up a few new faces) I’ve decided to get back into the game.

I have to admit, after just a couple of nights off I’m happy to get back to it (and the possibility that the new raiders will stand in the fire less than some of the old ones is appealing as well).  I might take the occasional night off in future (raid numbers willing), but for now the vacation’s over.  (It was kind of novel while it lasted, brief though it may have been)

We had a less than optimal run last night, thanks to low numbers (as well as some undergeared new raiders), but we managed to get Ignis, XT, Kologarn, Iron Council and Auriaya down anyway (even though our lower-than-normal dps meant we actually hit Auriaya’s enrage timer, which was kind of embarrassing).  Still, considering we were also 24-manning a lot of it, we pulled through better than we could have.  Next week’s raiding could be very interesting.

I’ve put a couple more levels onto Snowfall, but she’s just not as enjoyable to level as my dwarf army has been.  I’m not sure if it’s the blood elf aesthetic, or just the complete lack of friendly guild chat (which is to be expected, not having a guild horde-side).  It’s an unusual experience though, to be leveling somewhere completely new (as I haven’t leveled a horde-side character since pre-TBC).  I guess I’ll see it goes.  (I could just go back to my nelf druid, and see if playing her has jelled any more for me, but my enthusiasm is fleeting)

The last couple of days have been largely non-fishing ones, due to the fishing daily being in Wintergrasp – nothing kills the mood quite like PvP getting in the way of your otherwise solitary and enjoyable past-time.

Ah well, time to publish and then pretend to be productive.

/wave

Nothing Beats A Vacation

Well, maybe chocolate does, but other than that vacations are great.  Taking a break from 25-man raiding is proving to be very enjoyable, even if it means listening on vent to everyone else raiding (and collecting their epic loots) without me.

I’ve dabbled a little, taking Mingle in for a couple of 10-man Ulduar achievement runs (and picked up a fourth T8 piece for that very nice shadow priest set bonus), but I’ve probably spent more time out of WoW than in it (apart from some extended periods spent fishing and herbing).  Mingle is also sporting a new haircut, to try minimise the really blatant clipping that the priest T8 head has with most hairstyles.  (I find it quite annoying, but I guess it’s the price you pay for being fashionable)

Speaking of herbalism, it’s proving to be surprisingly profitable on Snowfall who has just reached the dizzying heights of level 13; the small assortment of beginning-zone herbs she’s picked and put on the AH (along with some Small Eggs, which are ridiculously profitable) have raised her bank balance to 15g already.  Needless to say, this has clearly demonstrated (to me, at least) that if I ever have the desire to make a clean start on a server, gold won’t be too much of a problem.

Snowfall has finally completed the starting zone quests, and is ready to begin exploring Ghostlands (unless I get distracted again).  It’s quite a change of pace, as the starting zone I usually run is solely the Gnome/Dwarf area.

It’s just unfortunate how…  anorexic the Blood Elf character models are.  The animations are really quite lovely, but the models themselves are personally rather unappealing.  I’m undecided whether to continue leveling her or if I should try rerolling a race that has a bit more substance to it.  (I guess it says something about my aesthetics that I find the dwarves most visually appealing – apart from their really awful dances, of course)

Kringle is facing the possibility of some time spent pet-levelling, and I’m keeping an eye open for a spirit beast (Gondria would be awesome, although it’s me and pretty much every other hunter looking for him).

I’m following with some interest the new addon manager from WoWInterface:  Minion looks interesting, but the early bugs have left me wary of trying it out for now, especially with the large list of addons I run (rough estimate of around 135 or so, between all my characters, including class-specific ones).  But I’ll probably be giving it a try when it’s a little more mature, and the addon-identification bugs have been stomped into submission.

Finally, I’m currently battling an old keyboard, having celebrated a return to drinking coffee by spilling some of my first cup in almost six months on my lovely Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000, leaving it with several unresponsive keys.  I’m now looking at buying a keyboard protector and hoping I don’t have to buy a new keyboard (although fortunately the 4000 isn’t a hard model to find) to protect – with luck it’ll be possible to clean the spill off the traces inside the keyboard, but my initial disassembly and examination has left me uncertain about it.

And on the subject of buying stuff, I was reminded of an young-adult fantasy novel from my youth while browsing the comments of a post on Welcome to Spinksville!  As someone who’s ready prolifically all my life, the thought of revisiting fiction from my past is quite appealing, and in that spirit not only have I ordered a copy of So You Want To Be A Wizard by Diane Duane, but I’m also getting a copy of Next of Kin by Eric Frank Russell from a local speciality bookstore.  (Yay for literacy!)

For now, though, time to get a couple of dailies done before 10-man General Vezax.

/wave

Contemplating Change, Leveling, And A Meme

Well, 25-man raiding is slow and…  not really fun, to be quite honest.  I’ve had a chat with an officer about my dissatisfaction raiding on Mingle, and have decided to take a couple of weeks (while I continue to raid) to think about what I want to do next.  (I’ll be passing on loot in Ulduar as well, as it wouldn’t be right to take loot that other people can use if there’s a chance I may be not raiding on that character)

Unfortunately there’s no openings for another tank, with one of our old guildmates returning his gnome warrior to the game.  (He’s a far better tank than I am, and a nice guy, so I’m not complaining about it)  I’m trying to come up with ways I can get raid time (in some capacity, probably outside of the guild) on my warrior, but options are pretty limited.  I might have to go raid-hunting, and see if there are any guilds who’d be willing to take a tank from outside their guild, and who raid on nights I’m not raiding on Mingle.  Possibly a bit of a reach, but I’ll see what I can find.

Speaking of Dingle, she has ventured into 10-man Ulduar again, and has another boss kill under her belt.  Most of the raid members are from another guild, and we managed to kill FL, Razorscale and XT-002, but Ignis and the Iron Council proved too much for us.  Sadly, Dingle has no shiny tank loot to show for it (although she did pick up a dps helm that would otherwise have been sharded – I really need to gem and enchant it at some stage).

My tanking inexperience showed itself with two bosses during the raid, both bosses we couldn’t get past.  First was Ignis, where I finally realised my taunts were ineffective if I hadn’t first damaged the target – I was on construct duty, and at the start had trouble keeping aggro on the constructs long enough to get them into the scorches.  I also caused one wipe when I wasn’t tanking the construct far enough into the scorch, so it wasn’t picking up the debuff that turned it molten.  By the end, though, I’d worked out what I had to do (and was doing it correctly, as best I can tell).

With both of these issues worked out (to my satisfaction, at least), we were left with issues with dps (we only had one character capable of enough burst damage to kill the molten constructs, who was unfortunately very attractive to Ignis, and kept getting hot-pocketed) and main-tanking (a DK who was having problems getting positioned correctly, and kept getting the scorches positioned either too far from the pools needed when killing the constructs, or positioned too close to the healers/dps who died pretty rapidly when accidentally scorched).  Eventually the raidleader threw his hands up in despair and we moved on to XT (who we one-shot).

I had a brief positioning issue with the Iron Council, where I was tasked with tanking Steelbreaker at the start, and didn’t pull him out of his damage-amplifying rune quick enough on one attempt, but in general the group just didn’t perform well enough get any further (although it was getting pretty late at that stage).

Other than that, I’ve been putting some time (and gold) into leveling Kringle over the last few days.  He’s currently about a third of the way through 79, and should be 80 today if I don’t get distracted (which is pretty likely).

Some time fishing on Kringle yesterday means he’s now officially a fisherman – which by my standards means he has the 200 points of fishing skill required to equip and use his Fishing Pole.  That gives me 6 characters I can do the fishing daily on, which is about the only daily I’m doing regularly currently (apart from the cooking daily for Fingle and Kringle, who are both working towards the 100 Dalaran Cooking Awards achievement – they’ve both passed the 50 awards part, and are on the home stretch now).

But before I get back to my leveling, here’s a meme that caught my eye.  (Snagged from Mend Pet)

The instructions:

1. Go to “wikipedia.” Hit “random… Read More”
   or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
   The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2. Go to “Random quotations”
   or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
   The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3. Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
   or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
   Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4. Use photoshop or similar to put it all together.

And what did I end up with?

The first album from BNS Turag.  Brought to you by random wikipedia links, a quote from Socrates, and a photo that felt surprisingly appropriate (well, to me it did).  I’m not going to do the ‘name people to continue this meme’ thing, as I’m just not really into that, but if anyone reading this wants to give it a try, put a link to your results in the comments.  (I’d love to see what other people come up with)

Time’s passing, so I guess I should log on and get Kringle to 80.  (That Nesingwary 4000 he has in the bank is waiting to get brought out and equipped)

/wave

So, What’s New With You?

It’s been a quiet few days, with just the usual raids and a couple of nifty new toys for Dingle to play with.

Yup, this is 3 Tournament pets worth of chopper.  And I have to say, the appeal of the tournament dailies wears off quick when you have multiple characters doing them – Fingle, Mingle and Dingle are all champions now, with Mingle and Dingle champions of four of the five alliance factions.

Dingle has also ventured into Ulduar at last, downing Flame Leviathan and tanking Razorscale.  The zone has been nerfed substantially since I first ventured in there – I suspect it’s actually within my ability to tank it now, provided the raid is geared enough (and 10-man Naxx gear may be good enough, if the players know what they’re doing).  Sadly, she didn’t get any gear from those bosses, but hopefully next time will be more profitable.

Anyway, I’ve cut down my playing time lately because it’s currently just so unsatisfying; Mingle is doing 25-man Ulduar, Dingle will be tanking 10-mans (whenever we can scratch up enough players (which has been once since 3.1 went live), and what’s left is basically just the fishing dailies plus whatever other dailies I can be bothered doing.

I’m deliberating whether or not to put together some gear lists from Ulduar – a list of tanking gear from 10-man Ulduar is appealing, albeit mostly out of curiousity about what there is in there for Dingle to work towards.  I’ve also roughed out a quick guide to setting up Power Auras to display on-screen when Mingle’s flask has worn off while I’m raiding. (it’s happened so often that it got quite annoying).

But for now, I have a little fishing to do (and maybe a handful more dailies) before I head out this afternoon for my second viewing of Star Trek.

/wave

Eggs: Spawn-Camp Or Run Circuits?

As someone who spent a couple of hours running in circles while shape-shifted into rabbit-form, picking up eggs around Azure Watch, I’ve been surprised at the number of people who’ve spent their time camping at a spawn-point for several eggs (quite a few I picked up from in front of them as I travelled past at near-supersonic speed).

If I wanted to sit in one place and click on an egg when it spawns after however many minutes, I’d probably be missing the old 30-second duration of fishing.  Actually, even the old fishing system would be more fun than egg-camping, for me at least.  I just don’t get it. 

But I’ve completed the meta-achievement on Mingle, so I don’t have to stress over it any more (until this time next year, maybe).

Mingle’s endeavours with rod in hand have been rewarded with another fishing item, the Weather-Beaten Fishing Hat.  Besides giving her a certain stereotypical-adventurer-chic, the on-use lure ability is very convenient.

In 25-man raiding news, Auriaya came to a sticky end last night (and I was dead for most of the fight, just like I was for the 10-man kill of her I was party to).  We then moved on to wipe all night on Thorim and Hodir – it…  really wasn’t pretty.

Also, I’m the guildmember responsible for logging the fights to put WWS and WMO reports on the forums for the guild after raid, but after replacing the logging addon I’d been using when 3.1 broke LoggerHead (which has been updated, finally) I forgot to enable it for Ulduar.  Thankfully another raider was able to log the fight (thanks Tame), so my poor performance wasn’t lost to the ages.

Last of all for today, I stumbled across a couple of interesting links that I thought I’d share.

• An enlightening article by Matticus entitled “Frustrated by Ulduar? Here’s Why.”  (And I’m certainly frustrated with it lately)
• And on an entertaining, Noblegarden-related note:  Hannelore.

Back to my dailies (and fishing), anyway.

(I’m beginning to wonder if I should rename the blog to “One Of These Fishermen”)

/wave