Wotlk Preparation Part 4: Leveling Advantage

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In Part 3 of our Wotlk Preparation series, we realized that a huge amount of honor is needed for the new level 80 PVP gear and that you should be trying to hit he honor cap of 75,000. In Part 4 we will find some tactics that will give you an edge on leveling to 80. This can include consumables, gear, and even being the right spec.

Consumables that may reduce downtime

There are many ways to speed up the leveling process and reduce your downtime once you hit Northrend on launch day. Blizzard has already provided us with two starting zones (Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord) to reduce the lag and competition for quest items. Lets take a look at some of the ways to provide you with an advantage on leveling.

• Play the beta– If you are in the beta, one of the best ways to prepare for leveling is to actually level in the beta. Get yourself acquainted on where everything is located as well as which starting zone you want to go to. Note where the flight paths are, vendors, trainers, quest items, and other points of interest. If your profession has daily quests associated with it, try and get a port up to Dalaran and start doing them. I believe that Jewelcrafting and Cooking at the moment have daily quests. I’ve been doing the cooking daily recently, and now I have a good feel for where to go and what materials to save for them. Quests are one of the best ways to gain experience so at least do some of the starter quests if you don’t want to level all the way to 80. This will get you out of the starting zones and into he next one which will have less players stealing your quest items and mobs. When Wotlk launches, you will be prepared on what to do and where to go in your starting zone.
• Leveling spec– All classes have certain specs that is the best for leveling or grinding. Find out what your leveling spec is, most of you should have a good idea what that is already. It is usually your DPS or hybrid specs. I have even seen protection specs be very effective at AOE grinding mobs. If you plan to level as a group or run instances full time, than being a healing or tanking spec would be an obvious choice. Elitist Jerks has a thread devoted on leveling specs if you are still unsure which is the optimal one for you.
• Gear– There are various items that offer lots of spirit, health/mana regeneration, and defensive stats. Equipping these items may help reduce the amount of downtime while killing mobs in Northrend. In both starting areas, I have found that the mobs start at about level 68. They are not hard to kill at all, but after killing a bunch of them for quests, your health and mana will eventually get low. This is where any type of regen item comes in use. You should consider losing a bit of DPS stats in favor of health/mana regen stats. A good example of this would be the [Mark of Defiance]. It gives an offensive stat as well as mana regen. When I used to farm, I used [Darkmoon Card: Heroism] to regen health. For casters, I hope you saved that staff or trinket with a high amount of spirit or MP5 (Mana per 5) like [Nightstaff of the Everliving] from Karazhan. Maybe even throw a spirit enchant if you choose. There may be a point where killing mobs becomes very easy, at that point, just switch back to your full DPS gear since your downtime is almost non existent.
• Consumables– From my experience, very few people use consumables outside a raid setting. I am one of those people that do. From flasking in a battleground or using food buffs and scrolls for grinding. If it gives you an advantage, than why not? I guess most players excuse would be the money. However here at Warcraft Econ, money shouldn’t be much of a problem, seeing that over 40% of our readers have 10,000 gold or more according to our poll. You may also want to hang on to some of that left over raid consumables for leveling. So choose your favorite battle elixir as well as a guardian elixir that either offers health or mana regen. Some examples would be [Elixir of Major Mageblood] (16 MP5) and [Mighty Troll’s Blood Elixir] (12 HP5). Don’t forget about Health/Mana potions for those clutch moments where you need to stay alive or even just to save time eating or drinking. To save bag room, I had my potions crafted in to [Healing Potion Injector]‘s. As I said before in a previous post, you can turn in your [Spirit Shards] for potions. Make sure you have your class reagents and food on hand as well. In the recent patch, if you haven’t discovered already, includes some new and more powerful food like [Pungent Seal Whey] (9180 Mana). Speaking of food, many of the high level raid food in Burning Crusade offers +20 Spirit as a secondary buff. If you are a mana user, [Blackened Sporefish] is always a good choice for mana regen. For melee, pick any of the offensive foods, since the secondary stat of spirit is what your looking for. Also pick up some temporary weapon enchants like [Superior Mana Oil] or poisons for that extra boost. If you really want to go the extra mile, than all those water breathing/walking potions may come in handy when doing those quests in or near water. Personally I am adding items like [Drums of Restoration] and [Greater Rune of Warding] to the list just because I have them around. Consumables are dropping in price as we get closer to the expansion, so this is a good time to purchase them.
• Leveling Guides– There are not too many of these floating around the Internet yet, let alone one you don’t have to pay for. However I did find one that has a free step by step guide for the first few zones. At the moment it looks like the author is releasing the full guides on specific days. This will certainly give you a leveling advantage over the average player. The guides will tell you exactly what to do for your quests, as the order to do them in for time efficiency. Your average player will take much more time trying to explore areas or read the quest text on what to do. Whatever information that is not included in any leveling guide can most likely be found on sites like www.wowhead.com

As you can see, there are many ways to give you an extra edge on leveling. Use them to your advantage since you may eventually pull ahead of the pack of levelers. Once you do, the zones you go into will have much less players and thus less competition over quest items and mobs. Also don’t forget the opposing faction will be in the starting areas as well, so moving to a higher level less populated zone is a good thing. Hopefully we will all have some fun with the leveling rush to 80!

In [Part 5] we will attempt to answer the question of how much gold is needed in Wotlk. The amount needed is fairly low, if you just want the basics. As you may know, we at Warcraft Econ want more, from multi-passenger mounts to crazy gold sinks. Stay tuned!

Wotlk Preparation Part 3: Honor and PVP

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In Part 2 of our Wotlk Preparation series, we will discussed liquidating your items, organizing, and freeing up bank slots in preparation for all the new items and mats you will be collecting in Wotlk. In Part 3 we will crunch some numbers to see how much Honor Points you should save up in preparation for the new level 80 PVP gear. There are 3 different sets of PVP gear per season!

• Savage Gladiator (Good)
  • Blue Quality
  • Item Level 200
  • No Arena Rating Required
• Hateful Gladiator (Better)
  • Epic Quality
  • Item Level 200
  • 1600-1800 Arena Rating Required
  • No Rating on Accessories, Belt, Boots, etc.
• Deadly Gladiator (Best)
  • Epic Quality
  • Item Level 213
  • 1800-2200 Arena Rating Required
  • 1600-1800 Arena Rating on Accessories, Belt, Boots, etc.

Deadly Gladiator Accessories

As you can see, Blizzard is trying to provide everyone with arena gear by providing 3 sets rather than 1 set with rating requirements like in season 4. With previous season, some of us were able to stock up on honor for all the accessories, belt, boots, bracers, etc. which was about 75,000 (honor cap) total. I had logged on to the beta Build 9155, and noticed that this was no longer possible. The honor cap is still 75,000 but the cost of all the PVP has gone up significantly. We all knew that Blizzard had announced that honor points will not be reset, but all the gear would have their prices increased. You bet that they kept their promise, prices are as high as 62,000 honor for a Deadly Gladiator belt! Even for the full 5 piece set of blue quality Savage Gladiator gear, it costs 50,000+ honor along with 1500 arena points. Now add the cost of all the rings, cloak, belt, bracers, trinkets, and weapons. You are looking at 100,000+ honor for a full set of gear! So the only advice I can give is to hit the honor cap, which is 75,000 honor. I did noticed that on the beta you have the option of purchasing Savage Gladiator gear with either a combination of honor/arena points or just honor points. The honor only option however costs about 60,000 honor per piece of armor. I am not sure if this will change once Wotlk goes live, but that much honor for blue quality gear still seems a bit steep. 

In the current beta build there is no requirement of battleground marks for any gear. So on live you are can turn in your marks for 314 honor, however there is a new and better trade in system on the beta. You may be thinking right now that it will take forever to get all your PVP gear since some items cost almost as much as the honor cap. Don’t worry, there are plenty of ways to gain honor in Wotlk as well as in increase in honor rewarded. An interesting note here, you are able to do PVE content to get PVP rewards. In the most extreme cases, you can do a 25 man raid for Deadly Gladiator gear which normally requires 1800+ arena ratings. Here are some ways to gain honor that I have found in the current beta build as well as other ways to obtain your PVP gear with out cashing in honor.

New battleground marks trade in rewards

• For Great Honor – New mark trade in quest that rewards 930 honor. One from each battleground is needed, excluding marks from Alterec Valley. I recommend saving all your marks for now.
• Wintergrasp Commendation – Awards 2000 honor, bind on account item. Purchased with 30 [Stone Keeper’s Shards] which are obtained by doing various quests in Wintergrasp and killing instance bosses while your faction is in control of Wintergrasp. Shards are similar to spirit shards in TBC.
• [Wintergrasp Mark of Honor] – Awards 5000 honor for winning team and 2500 for the losing team in a Wintergrasp battle.
• [Emblem of Heroism] – Tokens similar to the current Badge of Justice that can be traded in for Savage Gladiator PVP gear. These are obtained through level 80 heroics, heroic daily, and 10 man raids. About 40-60 tokens for one piece of gear.
• [Emblem of Valor] – Tokens that can be traded in for Deadly Gladiator PVP gear. These are obtained through level 80, 25 man raids only.
• Wintergrasp PVP Zone – On the beta there are about 100 people on each side during the event, once live, there will be hundreds of people that can be killed for honor. Remember that a player can be killed up to 50 times before no honor is given. Siege vehicles are also used in this zone, which can take out multiple enemies. Daily quests are available which rewards gold and [Stone Keeper’s Shards]. Shards as mentioned before can be traded in for honor, mounts, meta gems, jewelcrafting recipes, enchants, and Heirloom (bind on account) items.
• Vault of Archavon Raid – Once your faction wins/controls Wintergrasp, a raid instance is unlocked. It is available in 10 and 25 man versions. In the 10 man raid, surprisingly the boss drops Tier 7 (Naxx 10 man set) PVE gear, the PVP gear it drops is unknown at the moment. In the 25 man raid, T7.5 (Naxx 25 man set) and Deadly Gladiator gear drops. Remember Deadly Gladiator is the set that requires 1800-2200 arena ratings.

With all these different ways of obtaining honor and PVP gear, 60,000 honor for an item doesn’t sound as bad now. So get to it, start working towards that honor cap of 75,000!

In [Part 4] we will find some tactics that will give you an edge on leveling to 80. This can include consumables, gear, and even being the right spec. Stay tuned!

Wotlk Preparation Part 2: Liquidate your Assets

In Part 1 of our Wotlk Preparation series, we talked about hitting level caps and saving materials to get a head start in leveling professions. In Part 2 we will discuss liquidating your items, organizing, and freeing up bank slots in preparation for all the new items and mats you will be collecting in Wotlk

Liquidate your assets: Time to do some spring cleaning in your banks. Many items are going to lose their value when Wotlk launches, like when essences dropped in price when new primals were introduced in Burning Crusade. Lets start by taking a look at what’s taking up your precious bag space first.

Spring Cleaning

• Mounts & Non-combat pets: Hopefully by now you have clicked on all your non-combat pets and mounts so they go into your pets tab, this is a big space saver for some people.
• Reagents: Since the new patch, some items are no longer required for certain skills. An example of this for Rogues would be like [Flash Powder] and [Theives’ Tools]. Free up some bag space by vendoring these reagents or tools since you no longer need them.
• Consumables: Unless you are still raiding, take a look at what flasks/elixirs/potions/food you are no longer using. You can either sell them on the auction house or save a few for a small advantage in leveling. Some noteworthy consumables you may want to hang onto for leveling are anything with spirit or health/mana regen. Also start selling off those [Mark of the Illidari]since you are probably not going to revisit those instances in Wotlk. In an upcoming post I will list off some consumables I plan to use to reduce down time during leveling in Northrend.
• Badges & Tokens: Either buy some gear with your [Badge of Justice]‘s or purchase epic gems to resell on the auction house. You may even want to go one step further as to get the raw gem into a popular cut to get a higher resale value. Check your local auction house for which gems are going for the highest. [Crimson Spinel]is usually a popular gems across most servers since blue and yellow cuts are usually only used to fill meta requirements. Take a look in your bank, chances are there are some [Spirit Shard]‘s. Fly over to Terokkar Forest to cash these in. I would pass on the gear unless it is a good upgrade for you. Trade in your shards for health or mana potions, this will help during those Wotlk grind sessions. You are not able to vendor these by the way. Also check your bank for Halaa tokens to trade for some gear, mounts, or even a 18 slot bag. So far in the beta, there are no battleground mark requirements for the new PVP gear. However this may change once it goes life, but if you have PVP marks you want to get rid of, they can be traded for various tabards, mounts, and gear. There is also a quest that allows you to turn in 4 of the different marks for honor as well. Please remember to save your honor points, Blizzard has announced that they will NOT be reset. You may have other forms tokens or daily quest items, but you get the point, cash them out and free yourself some bag space.
• Cloth: Many of us have plenty of [Netherweave Cloth] sitting in our bank alts, there are many ways to liquidate this abundant item. You can put them on the auction house, however it is not recommended unless your making over 5g a stack. The reason is that you can craft 10 [Heavy Netherweave Bandage]‘s with a stack of cloth and vendor them for 3g. So putting up the cloth on the AH for less than 3g is completely pointless. Start making bandages and vendoring them, some people will even buy the cloth for very cheap use this method to make some quick gold. Another way to get rid of your cloth is if you are a Tailor/Enchanter, you can craft things like [Netherweave Bracers] and disenchant them. Then sell the enchanting mats on the AH, but be aware at how much enchanting supplies sell for in the current economy. You can always use an enchanting mod or Wowhead to check what items disenchant into what materials. One last way to burn some of your cloth is to make [Netherweave Bag]‘s with them. These are 16 slot bags that you can use in your 7 bank slots and for your bank alts if you have smaller bags you can replace. All it takes is 20 cloth and 1 rune thread to craft. Make sure your not paying too much to have these crafted since you can buy them on the auction house for around 7g. That stack of cloth for the bag is already worth 3g in bandages, so tipping your local Tailor anymore than 4g per bag wouldn’t be worth it. Also consider specialty bags since they can carry various items like primals and various items you wouldn’t think would go into that type of bag, check Wowhead for what bags can hold what.
• Crafting Materials: These materials have always been valuable, there will always be people leveling professions. Keep in mind the new wave of Death Knights that will level professions from level 1, including secondary professions (except first aid). We may see a slight rise in pre Burning Crusade mats. The idea is that new Death Knights most likely won’t be farming low level things for crafting mats, but rather just buy them off the auction house. The save thing to do right now is to just sell off whatever mats you have on the auction house. A more riskier plan would be to save them for the first week of Wotlk and sell them at a higher price to new Death Knights. Obviously, save crafting mats you plan to use yourself if you are choosing to roll a DK or level a new profession. Remember to save some if you plan to craft some recipes from TBC for those extra skill points at the beginning of Wotlk, as mentioned in Part 1 of this series.
• Gear: Check for gear that you may not need anymore. Since the latest patch +healing/+spell damaged have been consolidated into +spell power. Some classes may be able to get rid of some gear that they have saved because it had one or the other. I have not been a huge fan in saving old gear, but some people love collecting old word weapons or sets for aesthetic purposes. Look for old trinkets that you may not use anymore, I personally will keep the trinkets that summon combat pets.
• Miscellaneous Junk: Do a quick check to make sure no vendor trash got mixed up into your inventory. If a certain item is not BOP (Bind on Pickup) and you don’t use it very often, you may want to consider moving it to a bank alt. I personally have moved things like extra scrolls, food, consumables, and crafting materials over to a bank alt till I need them. Look also for things like random Holiday or event items as well. Use your best judgement on deleting all this random junk in your inventory, it should be pretty clear by now that most items will be worthless after Wotlk. Just keep in mind what new Death Knights will be most likely to use while they are leveling.

This should conclude your inventory cleaning, if you are still unsure about certain items and their use after Wotlk, just hang on to them. After Wotlk gets release, you can free up even more old world junk if you don’t see a need for them. After you have liquidated all your assets, do a quick organization of all your items. In my extra bank slot bags, I usually separate things into categories like gear, consumables, quest items and marks, crafting materials, old trinkets and vanity items, etc. Some of you may prefer to put all the old world items into a few bags, and leave the rest open for new incoming Wotlk items. I wish the very best to all of you in your quest to organize and liquidate your assets, I know this can be a chore for some of you. Suggestions are always welcome and please let me know if I had missed any items.

In [Part 3] we will crunch some numbers to see how much Honor Points you should save up in preparation for the new level 80 PVP gear. There are 3 different sets of PVP gear per season! Stay tuned!

Wotlk Preparation Part 1: Hitting Level Caps

Over the next few weeks before the launch of Wotlk, I will be talking about how I am preparing for Wotlk as well as offer advice to our readers on how to prepare for it. It seems to be a question that keeps coming up as we get closer to launch (November 13th 2008).

Hit level caps: From a profit standpoint, being at level cap with your character, professions, and skills will make you the most money. If you are not level 70 yet, try your best to get there before the expansion. This also goes for your professions, including gathering skills and secondary professions. Bring them up to 375, this includes cooking, fishing, and first aid. The price of some materials have dropped significantly so getting the rest of those skill points shouldn’t be too expensive. Even if you don’t plan on using your secondary professions, it is still a good idea to since it will unlock the daily quests for them. You can always sell the rewards from them like [Northern Spices], which will be in high demand at first. However I still recommend using cooking to turn all that meat you will loot into profit by cooking it.

You may also consider leveling your weapon skills to their cap if there are not there already. Some people still are not at cap with their ranged weapons like wands, or maces for healers. This can mean the difference between killing that totem or finishing off a player when you are out of mana. By doing this, you will save some time later on when you have to level them in Northrend. After all the whole point in preparing for the expansion is to do what you need to do now, while you have the time, rather than later, when you have better things to do.

Save materials for your professions: Once you get to one of the Northrend starting areas, you can train to become a Grand Master in your professions and start leveling past 375. Some of your recipes from Burning Crusade may still be green, yellow, or orange. You can check at www.wowhead.com to see which recipes go grey when. Start to save up some mats to level some of these to get a head start in leveling the profession. Of course some end game recipes would not be reasonable to craft because of the high cost of materials. I would only do that if you really wanted to get that extra edge.

Some cooking recipes don't go grey until 385.

I’ll take cooking for example; [Spicy Crawdad] is still green, [Fisherman’s Feast] and [Hot Buttered Trout]will still be yellow at 375. I have already started saving up a few of the mats for these so I can save my Northrend meat and fish for better recipes. Kaliope over at WoW Crafting Blog has attempted to level cooking in the beta and has reported that it is going to take a lot of mats to get those final skill points to 450.

I don’t know about all the professions, but please leave a comment if you know of any reasonable recipes that you can use to give you those few extra skill points in Wotlk. My only trade skill at the moment is Leatherworking, and the drums are the only reasonable things I can make to get some extra skill points before I start with Northrend mats.

In [Part 2] we will cover liquidating your items, organizing, and freeing up bank slots in preparation for all the new items and mats you will be collecting in Wotlk. Look for it in the next few days.

Cooking: Raid Buff Foods

Food in TBC

Whether you are on a PVE or PVP server, there will always be end game raiders. This means there is always a demand for raid food. Although cooking at its’ current state isn’t the biggest money maker, it is a small market with very little competition. Also take into account the low number of people to actually spend the time to level to max cooking, it is down there with leveling fishing as peoples’ least favorite professions. I personally love both. I have been using cooking to my advantage ever since they implemented the cooking daily’s. Your average stack of raid food will sell for 20g, not anything too amazing, but for the time involved for the gold gained is very worth it. It takes 40 seconds to cook a stack of 20 food, add about 20 sec for buying the food and your up to approxamatly one minute spent per stack. If each stack sells for 20g with an investment of 10g, that’s 10g X 60 stacks an hour, which equals 600g per hour. Obviously prices will fluctuate between your servers and which type of food you are making. Below is my process for providing my server with raid food.

• Buy Meat & Fish – Go to the auction house and filter your search for “Trade Goods” then “Meat”. Search down the lists for your typical raid food mats, this may include Zangarian Sporefish, Talbuk Venison, Warp Flesh, etc. I like to buy my meat at 50 silver or less so I can make a decent profit from the cooked product. A few patches ago Blizzard had implemented a PPU (Price per unit) tooltip, which can be access by mousing over the icon of the item. Addons like Auctioneer can sort by PPU to make things a bit easier. Beware that some uncooked meats will cost more than its cooked counterparts, these may include Spicy Crawdad and Golden Darters.  Spicy Crawdad can only be fished up from a handful of pools in Terokkar and requires a flying mount to get to. It is also is used to get the last few points in leveling to 375 cooking and becomes a popular tanking buff when cooked, which may explain the higher prices. Keep in mind items like [Huge Spotted Feltail] is not considered a fish, but an off-hand, so search for those by name.
• Cook it– Very simple, but can be boring while waiting. I used an Addon called “Advanced Trade Skill Window” to make things easier. It will enable to queue up foods you are going to cook and automatically buy the needed reagents when you click on a vendor. Very nice since it will buy all the reagents at once from the vendor, saving valuable clicking time. When you process your queue, once a certain type of food is done cooking, you have to press the button again.
• Sell it – Do a quick search of the item to see the current price. Popular raid food will sell for 20g+ sometimes all the way up to 40g in the recent economy. Tuesday is a good day to list and re-list your items because raid instances reset that day and most guilds have raiding planned that night. One week, I had decided to save up all my food and sell them all on Tuesday afternoon. I listed about 60+ stacks of various cooked food, and by night time, I had made about 1000g.

Cooking can be a profitable profession, especially if your in the world killing things that drop meat. Some may not like the whole micro management aspect of it, but I don’t mind and it’s a nice consistant market that has items that are always in demand. If anything, the profit I make from cooking offsets all those auction house cuts and fees. If you are a max level cook, you may want to give it a try or add it to your current list of markets you participate in.

Wotlk Beta: Cooking was buffed tremendously in the beta. This is great for cooks who profit off this profession. They have introduced a new semi-rare reagent called [Northern Spices], which a only a few are rewarded from the Wotlk cooking daily quest. In addition, you can also use your daily cooking token, [Dalaran Cooking Award] to purchase 10 of these spices. The tokens are also used to buy some of the higher level recipes so it becomes a balancing act on buying spices vs. recipes. All the high level food require one of these spices to cook one piece of food. So if you wanted to cook a stack of the new raid food, it would take you two days just to get 20 spices to make it. This implies that level 80 raid food prices will be closer to potions and elixirs. These spices are only used for recipes 400-450, however there are some decent buff foods before that. The mats are just standard one meat to one food, so you will still be able to afford that stack of your favorite raid food. For example; [Shoveltusk Steak] has +35 Spell and +30 Stamina, vs the version that uses spices, [Firecracker Salmon] which has +46 Spell and +40 Stamina. Also note that the duration has been increased from 30 minutes to 1 hour. I hope to write more about this when Wotlk ships, I really like where cooking is going now, as well as fishing. Here is a sample of what Wotlk cooking looks like, note the new “tracking” foods. [Wotlk Cooking Screenshot]

Wotlk Beta: The Motorcycle Costs How Much!

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10 Days to make 1 Motorcycle

We have all seen or heard about it, the infamous motorcycle mount! A few posts ago I wrote about some gold sinks in the beta, but I left out crafted items since it was still hard to gauge the price range of these items in the beta. The [Mechano-hog] / [Mekgineer’s Chopper] had spiked my interested, this item for sure in my mind was going to be an expensive gold sink. I had looked up the mats on wowhead and found that half the items were sold from a vendor in Storm Peaks. I had visited the place with my premade level 80 on the beta, however Roxi Ramrockethad nothing to sell to me. Recently I had learned that you need to learn the recipe to be able to buy the mats, the prices now are available, and they are quite scary. Below I am going to at temp to estimate the price of the horde version of the mount with this new data. Engineers will most likely be able to make some big money with this item, since it is BOE (Bind on Equip) and can be sold on the auction house.

[Schematic: Mechano-hog]– Req. Exhalted Horde Expedition, 450 Engineering, BOP (Bind on Pickup)

Materials Required:

• 12 [Titansteel Bar]
  • 36 [Titanium Bar]
    • 2 Ore = 1 Bar
    • 20 Hour cool down on each Bar
    • 10 Days to make all 12
    • Requires 450 Mining
  • 12 [Eternal Fire]
  • 12 [Eternal Earth]
  • 12 [Eternal Shadow]
• 40 [Handful of Cobalt Bolts]
  • ~40 [Cobalt Bar]
    • 2 Bars will proc. 1-3 Bolts
    • 1 Ore = 1 Bar
    • Entry level ore in Wotlk
• 2 [Arctic Fur]
  • Rare drop from skinning
• 1 [Salvaged Iron Golem Parts]
  • Vendor
• 8 [Goblin-machined Piston]
  • Vendor
• 1 [Elementium-plated Exhaust Pipe]
  • Vendor

Costs:

• 12 [Titansteel Bar] (Add ~1200 fee for miner to use their CD 12 times)
  • 36 [Titanium Bar] ~400-700g
  • 12 [Eternal Fire] ~300-600g
  • 12 [Eternal Earth] ~300-600g
  • 12 [Eternal Shadow] ~300-600g
• 40 [Handful of Cobalt Bolts] ~100-300g
• 2 [Arctic Fur] ~75-200g
• 1 [Salvaged Iron Golem Parts] 3000g
• 8 [Goblin-machined Piston] 8000g
• 1 [Elementium-plated Exhaust Pipe] 1500g

So your looking at about 27,000g+ on the top end and a minimum 12,500g just from the set vendor prices! Plus the mark up when engineers list them on the auction house. If the prices stay the same when Wotlk ships, that is still a minimum of 12,500g just for the vendor parts. Please keep in mind my estimates on the other materials are loosely based on average server prices of equivalent items; ie. Cobalt Bolts and Fel Iron Bolts. I tried to keep inflation in mind since everyone will be making more gold in Wotlk, therefore increased prices. This mount may even end up more expensive than the [Reins of the Traveler’s Tundra Mammoth] which sells for 16,000g at exhalted reputation. Finding a miner willing to blow their [Smelt Titansteel] cooldown for you may be hard when everyone is trying to level up their professions. These numbers are still estimates and the vendor prices may change when Wotlk launches. For now, we know this mount has a minimum price of 12,500g, that is if you farm and mine everything else. We now have a ball park figure we can use, which is a whole lot better than  what we had to work with before.

This may be another gold sink I am interested in. With its’ 10 day crafting period and expensive price, this will become a pretty exclusive mount at first. However, the Mammoth has vendors, reagents, and repair ability which I simply cannot pass up. Between the two I would have to get a Mammoth since it has more features.

Bank Alts: Gigantique Bag vs Wotlk Glacial Bag

The question is should you wait until Wotlk for the new 22 slot [Glacial Bag] or buy the current 22 slot [“Gigantique” Bag]? At the moment on the beta, 22 slot universal bags are the biggest ones you can obtain, including raid drops. While the mats for a [Glacial Bag] looks expensive and has a total of 32 days (16 with specialization AND trading) worth of cloth cool downs, speculators seem to think the final cost of the bag will still be less than 1200g. The current materials that are needed for this bag are; 4 [Moonshroud], 4 [Ebonweave], 1 [Eternium Thread].

The materials broken down are:

• 120 [Frostweave Cloth]
• 8 [Eternal Life]
• 8 [Eternal Shadow]
• 1 [Eternium Thread]

The cloth will essentially be free plus the 3g for the thread. The eternals can be farmed or bought off the auction house. My prediction is this bag will have to be priced lower than the current 22 slot to remain competitive. At first when there is a huge demand for the specialized cloth, these bags will probably be around 1000g, over time as more and more players hit level cap, they will start to fall. So in the mean time, wait till Wotlk until you buy your new 22 slot bags.

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Bank Alts: New Wotlk Bags

Wotlk Beta: Gold Sinks Video

Recently I wrote about the many and expensive gold sinks in Wotlk. Here is a video highlighting some of the items. The hit points I am refering to on the mammoth mount is part of Wotlk’s new siege vehicle mechanic. You can even survive a 1000 yard fall on the mount, once you hit the ground you dismount and you can resummon. It can also take damage, once HP hits zero, you are dismounted. You do not take damage yourself like when you are on a regular mount. You cannot be cc’ed or slowed while on the mount. The [Mechano-hog] / [ Mekgineer’s Chopper] are also like this. Flag runners can hop on these mounts during WSG as well.

[Update] Blizzard just announced that a flying mount is required to complete leveling in the 77-80 zones. However you won’t need to buy [Cold Weather Flying], a loaner mount will be given to you so you can access this content. So this is considered a gold sink instead of a required purchase. For example the flying mount requirment to access Tempest Keep instances in TBC is not considered a gold sink.

Blue Post:

“Cold-Weather flying not required to level up at higher levels.
This is not true. You are not required to have Cold Weather Flying to complete leveling in the 77-80 zones. If you do not have Cold Weather Flying, you will get a “loaner mount” that will permit you to complete leveling in the zones.” (Source)

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Wotlk Beta: Gold Sinks

Bank Alts: New Wotlk Bags

The new standard in Wotlk.

With the upcoming release of Wotlk, new bags will be introduced. It looks like the new 20 slot bags will be the standard, and the 22 slot will be the biggest universal bag.

• [Imbued Netherweave Bag] 18 slot -> [Frostweave Bag] 20 slot
• [Primal Mooncloth Bag] 20 slot -> [Glacial Bag] 22 slot

Other 22 slot bags:

• [“Gigantique” Bag]1200g Biggest universal bag in TBC
• [Dragon Hide Bag] Wotlk Obsidian Sanctum Raid Drop

I am looking forward to upgrading all my bags to [Frostweave Bag] in Wotlk. The mats are some of the new cloth [Frostweave] and enchanting dust [Infinite Dust]. So basically similar to netherweave and arcane dust on live. Currently I’m using only 16 slot bags on my bank alt, ya I know with the amount of gold I have I really should upgrade. With 11 bags to replace, that is a gain of 44 slots for me, not to bad for the welfare bag of Wotlk.

Specialty Bags (Build 9038):

• [Mysterious Bag] 32 Slot Enchanting
• [Pack of Endless Pockets] 32 Slot Inscription
• [Scribe’s Satchel] 10 Slot Inscription
• [Trapper’s Traveling Pack]24 Slot Leatherworking
• [Mammoth Mining Bag] 32 Slot Mining
• [Abyssal Bag] 32 Slot Soul

Just a tip for those of you that may not know, you can store many different things in specialty bags. Take Leatherworking bags for example, wowhead shows that the bag can store 400+ different items! These include things like primals, patterns, armor kits, and various reagents used for leatherworking. I had discovered this when I had a bag in one of my bank slots and right clicked an item in my inventory. The primal went directly into the leatherworking bag, I realized then that the bag could store so much more than just leather!

Wotlk Beta: Toy Train Set Video

Annoying, yes, funny, oh ya! This [Toy Train Set] can be yours for 250g, has a 30 minute cool down, and has a 1.5 minute duration. I have also included a preview of what [Noble’s Elementium Signet] looks like when equipped. Every few seconds you will see my right had sparkle. This ring is one of the current gold sinks on live. Some people have bought one for their bank alts just because they can. Priced at 2400g this is not for the feint of heart and is sold by Haris Pilton in Lower City. The ring even reads “Finely crafted from the rarest materials, this exquisit ring is worn by the world’s elite“. I wanted to try this item out in the beta before I bought one for my live bank alt. I must say, this is the few items that will set you apart from the rest.