WoW Journal - Day 21

I start the day with an adventurous journey: Travelling with a level 4 gnome rogue from Dun Morogh to Gadgetzan. It turns out that the only difficult part is getting through the wetlands. The crocodiles in the swamps are close to the road, and have a huge aggro radius on low level characters. I die three or four times, but of course every death brings me a bit closer to Menethil Harbor, where I eventually arrive. I take the boat to Theramore. Looking at the map I decide that swimming along the coast to Tanaris is a lot safer than crossing the Barrens and Thousand Needles. Good call, it turns out that there are no monsters whatsoever on this part of the coast, and I arrive in Gadgetzan without further deaths.

As you might remember, the idea is to put up my worthless newbie loot, a primitive rock tool, for 2 gold on the auction house, and then buy it with my troll warrior, thus effectively transferring gold from Horde to Alliance, which is otherwise impossible. I put up the item, camp, log in Raslebol, bid on the rock tool, and get an error message: "You are not allowed to bid on your own auctions". Clever. Probably implemented to prevent people from bidding up their own goods with a mule, but it also works against my idea.

I refuse to give up. Fortunately there are nice people in my guild. One of them comes to Gadgetzan, I give him 2 gold, and he buys the primitive rock tool in the auction house from my gnome. I log on my gnome and receive ... 1 gold 70 silver 20 copper. The 20 copper are the fee the gnome had payed in advance. Looking up the info on the WoW website I find: "All auctions will be initially charged a deposit fee. The deposit fee is refunded upon the successful sale of the item. All successful sales are charged an auction consignment fee which is extracted directly from the final sale price. All fees are higher in Gadgetzan.". Seems the fee in Gadgetzan is 15%. Well, 1 gold 70 is still a lot of money for a level 4. Aeh, level 5, the exploration xp on the way here made me gain a level. :)

So Atchoum, my gnome, uses his hearthstone to teleport back home, and goes to Ironforge for some shopping. I bid on the lowest level dagger in the auction house, but that is level 9. And I buy tons of bags. A 10-slot and three 8-slot bags for me, and a load of 6-slot bags for my friends. Can't afford 8-slot bags for everybody. As I'm now level 5 and in Ironforge, I go and train two professions, herbalism and alchemy. Then I go back to Kharanos and buy a complete set of level 5 leather armor. And start collecting herbs. I seem to be the only herbalist around, there is an abundance of herbs to be picked, with seemingly no competition. Nice change from mining, where the ore nodes are few and far between.

I switch character back to Horde, Raslebol. He has 4 deviate fish in his mailbox, we he bid on in Gadgetzan. I cook them into Savory Deviate Delight, for which I had a recipe, but didn't know what it was good for. I eat one of them, and it transforms me into a human pirate for 60 minutes. Lol! Thottbot says it produces random effects, all of which are more or less harmless. A bit like talking to the apprentice witch doctor in Senjin village. Very funny, I like it.

Now being a pirate I run around in Ogrimmar, and then to the Barrens, confusing a lot of people on the way. I visit the pirates south of Ratchet, to see if they are still aggressive to me when I'm a pirate. They are, it is just my looks that change.

Meanwhile my D&D friends arrive one after the other, so I switch back to Atchoum and we play in a group on the Alliance side. I give them their bags. We finish all the quests in the gnome/dwarf newbie area, and head over to Kharanos. There we take the quest for the beer basted boar ribs and start hunting boars and other animals. Not really a success, the boar ribs drop only rarely. The main problem is finding enough boars to kill, and in a group of four the quest is four times more difficult instead of easier. But at least we all level to 6, head back to Kharanos for training, and call it a day.
- posted by Tobold @ 11:59 PM Permanent Link