WoW Journal - 21-March-2006

In the last couple of days I did a surprising amount of raiding. I visited Molten Core twice, and Zul'Gurub once. As guild event, for hanging out with friends, these raids are fun enough. I'm just still not convinced of raids being the "purpose" of the game, the pinnacle for which the whole leveling up thing is just the preparation. And of course for loot raids suck.

I usually get nice loot in smaller dungeons, because there is lots of it, and the group size is small, so you are bound to receive *something*, even if it wasn't what you had hoped for. In the two Molten Core raids, each taking 5 hours, I got basically nothing. The first raid got me one "Burning Pitch", grey item of about 5 silver piece sales value. The second raid netted me a piece of coal, worth even less. As each of these raids cost me over 10 gold for repairs and potions, I need to farm gold just for being able to pay for my raids.

That isn't because my guild is so bad that we don't get any epics, or our loot system is so bad. We killed 3 bosses on the first MC run, and a 4th on the second run, and only failed to win against Geddon. But from all the epics that dropped, only one was useable by priests, and that was a wand with 72.3 DPS, which all casters wanted. 4 of the 12 players who wanted it (me included) had the maximum number of raid points, but somebody else won the roll, and I went empty. Basically raid loot is a lottery, few loot of very high quality, divided by a large number of people, resulting in a very low chance of getting anything. I'm generally not lucky in such lotteries. The best loot I got this weekend was a nice casters ring from Dire Maul West, because rolling against 2 other casters in a group of 5 is a lot easier than rolling against 11 other casters in a raid.

In Zul'Gurub I didn't get anything either from the 2 bosses we killed, because I passed on the Primal Hakkari item, which could theoretically have gotten me some epic priest armor item from a quest. But for that quest I would need to have revered faction, which I probably never will achieve, so I passed in favor of somebody who used it for an enchantment quest, which only needed friendly faction. But as I said, going raiding with friends from the guild is fun, even if I'm not lucky with loot.

To pay for these raids, I'm on several "get rich quick" schemes at once, as I dislike the monotonous monster farming method of making money. One scheme is trying to buy cheap resistance rings for arcane or frost protection. Having seen how high the prices for fire, shadow, and nature resistance rings went up when people started visiting the dungeons that needed those resistance, I figure it is only a question of time until Blizzard makes a dungeon which needs frost or arcane resistance. Of course that is more of a "get rich slow" scheme, as I'll have to park the rings on some alt for a couple of months before making money from them.

A similar scheme, with a much quicker payout, is hording volatile rum for making goblin rocket fuel. The rum and fuel are currently very cheap, between 30 and 80 silver. But supply is low, as you either need to buy the rum in limited amounts from the drunk in DM North after a successful tribute run, or you will have to slaughter lots of pirates in Stranglethorn, where the drop rate of the rum is very low. So now I hope that when patch 1.10 comes, presumably next week, and goblin rocket fuel is needed for an early part of the tier 0.5 upgrade quest, I can sell the fuel for at least 2 gold each, tripling my investment.

Of course those schemes are all speculative, and could go horribly wrong. So I did have to find a way to make money more reliably, but without farming monsters. It turns out that I enjoy gathering herbs with my warrior alchemist, and that gathering high level herbs pays as well as farming mobs. But the only alchemy I'm still doing is transmuting essences into more expensive other essences, and making greater fire protection potions. Making standard potions is downright stupid, I just buy them from the auction house. For example I just bought a bunch of major mana potions for 1 gold each. If I made the potion myself, I would need 3 Dreamfoil, 2 Icecap, and 1 vial. Each Dreamfoil sells for 60 silver in the AH. Add the price of the Icecap and vial, and making the potion costs me twice of what I need to pay somebody else to make them. What a borked economy!

Gathering herbs isn't that easy as you would think. Of course at level 60 I rarely have any problems with the monsters running around the herbs. But I *do* have problems with other people gathering herbs as well. There is a huge difference in my yield depending on time of day. If one or two other players are gathering herbs at the same time as me, gathering herbs isn't all that profitable. If I'm the only herbalist in the zone, it is jackpot time, with half a hour of gathering netting me up to 20 gold.

My first instinct was gathering herbs in the early morning, on weekends, because I'm an early riser, and the server population at that time is low. That turned out to not work well. Server population is low, but of those high-level players that are on, most are doing solo activities for gathering money and stuff for their group activities later, and there are lots of herb gatherers around. Then on Sunday, after finishing our MC raid at 10 pm, I go picking flowers and find Azshara totally deserted. All the high-level players are busy in a group or raid, and nobody is gathering herbs, so I'm able to gather loads of them. The trick is to pick *all* herbs you see in a zone, even those with a lower market value. Due to the way respawns work, it seems that clearing out an area of herbs totally increases the chance of something respawning, which could well be something of higher value. And even a lowly Sungrass sells for at least 10 silver, so bowing down once to pick one, netting you up to 3 of them, is still faster and more profitable than killing an average mob in that zone.

Well, at least now I know what to do during week days when my guild is raiding and I don't participate. Due to my guild not using voice chat, our raids last too long for me, starting only at 8 pm. As I have to get up a 6:30 am, I just can't raid until around midnight on the night before a work day. And with part of the guild living in the UK, one time zone earlier than me, we can't start much earlier. So my usual weekday play schedule from 6 pm to 10 pm doesn't quite fit into my guild's raid schedule of 8 pm to midnight. And I thought I had escaped time zone problems, when I quit the US servers! I'm afraid I didn't account for the "personal" time zone of the many people that get up later and go to bed much later than me.
- posted by Tobold @ 12:26 PM Permanent Link