Been Awhile!

I don't know if any of my readers even read this anymore! Clearly, I unfortunately do not update this site anymore. I stopped playing WoW about a month ago; just lost interest. I'm going to leave this site up -- hopefully it can help some people!

I am currently playing Everquest 2, on the Lucan D'Lere server. My character's name is Jherdarr.

Happy WoWing!

Jewelcrafting Guide, part 2

Okay, so here's part 2 of my jewelcrafting guide. First of all, let me say this: Jewelcrafting lets you cut gems, and make jewelry. I will be focusing on the gems, because it is the best way to make money from the profession.

Pretty simple rules for Jewelcrafting. First, get to 350+ as soon as possible. (Search my blog, I linked to a good guide some time ago. Or Google it.) Once you are at 350, the fun begins. But first, I have bad news: trained cuts and vendor recipe cuts don't sell for a huge deal. Sure, they sell, and you don't have anything else to do with your raw gems, except for sell uncut ones to other jewelcrafters. So, you can make some money by selling those unremarkable gems.

Now, the REAL Jewelcrafting moneymaker comes from cutting gems from dropped recipes. Unfortunately, that means you have to be lucky enough to get one, or have the stomach to buy one. These things can cost from 200 to 500 gold, depending on the recipe. Now, unlike some professions that have lots of cooldowns, in Jewelcrafting only cutting a Meta gem causes a cooldown, and it's only for one hour, and doesn't keep you from cutting non-Meta gems. So, once you get a good recipe (or recipes), you'll be able to buy an uncut blue gem or purple gem, cut it, and resell it at quite a nice profit. Try that with alchemy transmutes!

Jewelcrafting is fairly cheap to level up, but yes, it does require some investment in the end. It takes money to make money, people! But any time someone upgrades their gear with something with sockets (which is most good gear), they need new gems for it. There is ALWAYS a market for good gems, and if you bite the bullet and buy/find a great recipe, you'll rake it in.

Now, which recipes? First of all, in the course of your adventuring in Outlands, you're going to get rep with various factions, and some of them sell recipes! Here are a few to watch for.

• Design: Insightful Earthstorm Diamond (Sha'tar Friendly)
  
• Design: Blood of Amber (Sha'tar Revered)
• Design: Falling Star (Lower City Revered)

These are all bind on pickup. So, you can make them for yourself, but not to sell. Still, it's nice to have a gem or two hardly anyone ever sees!

Quick primer on gems. Which color gems can have which stats:

• Red: strength, agility, +damage and healing, +healing, attack power, dodge, parry
• Blue: stamina, spirit, mana per 5, spell penetration
• Yellow: intellect, hit, crit, spell crit, defense, resilience, spell hit

Now that we have that established. The most common gems you'll be cutting will be blue quality gems. The different types of raw, uncut blue gems are:

• Noble Topaz (orange)
• Dawnstone (yellow)
• Living ruby (red)
• Star of Elune (blue)
• Nightseye (purple)
• Talasite (green)

Keep in mind, a green quality RAW gem can be cut into a blue quality CUT gem! But they generally have a higher quality counterpart, which is cut from a blue quality raw gem.

You can also craft meta gems from Earthstorm Diamonds and Skyfire Diamonds, which are made by Alchemists. But these are expensive to make, and not as efficient or as easily sold as the blue ones, in my opinion.

For a complete list of ALL gems, with stats on mouseover, go here.
And for a handy graph of what gems have what stats, go here.

Now, market value will vary some, but some gems are clearly useful for many classes, and so are worth more. General rule of thumb seems to be gems with multiple stat bonuses are better than ones that focus on a single stat (with the exception stamina). I've decided to turn that into a third post, due out soon. Really, the problem is that with all the different classes, builds, and gear sets, almost EVERY gem has a place, and a certain degree of demand. But I will try to go over the most commonly bought ones.

Christmas Break

Hi everyone. I've decided to take a little break from World of Warcraft over Christmas. I need to let the monotony of it all fade from my mind! So, I won't be updating much for a month or so. Please enjoy the information I've already put on the site, and I'll be back in the new year or before, I hope! (Or if I happen on something unbelievable and must share it with you.)

Jewelcrafting Guide, part 1

This is part one of a guide about how to make money using Jewelcrafting. I'm going to copy a bit from a previous post I made!

First of all, the most straightforward way to make money with Jewelcrafting is to prospect ore and sell what you get. Following is a list with the necessary skill levels:

• Adamantite Ore - 325 Skill
• Fel Iron Ore - 275 Skill
• Thorium Ore - 250 Skill
• Mithril Ore - 175 Skill
• Iron Ore - 125 Skill
• Tin Ore - 50 Skill
• Copper Ore - 1 Skill

If you're a miner, save the high-end ore you mine. If you need to, buy it from the Auction House. Once your Jewelcrafting his 275, you can prospect Fel Iron Ore, and once it hits 315, you can prospect Adamantite Ore. Prospecting means you use the ore in order to look for gems in it. Gem drop rates have gotten a boost lately, which is nice, though it knocked prices down. The process is simple: get ore, prospect gems, hope for a blue, sell uncut gems. Even if you have to buy the ore, you might be able to easily make up the profit by selling the gems. Check your Auction House prices on gems before you do this! If they're really low, you might want to wait for the market to go back up.

Really, this is a fairly straightforward thing, but it requires some work from you. Focus on prospecting ore that has the best chance to yield whatever gems (especially blue) are selling the best. On my server, that tends to be Noble Topaz (about 50g a pop, uncut), but it will probably vary.

Conceivably, if the prices are right, you could turn a profit from simply buying a stack of 20 ore, prospecting the entire stack, and selling what you get. Experiment!

My next post will focus on cutting gems, and which are the most profitable.

Finished!

At last, I am on break from school! I am on vacation from now until after New Year's! So, I can post again! Ahh, no more stress. =)

Yes, Sherretz (see comment from previous post), there is money to be made from Jewelcrafting! In fact, I'll get to work on a mini-guide very soon, and hopefully have it posted in short order! =)

Reader Submissions

Got a great tip you don't mind sharing for the greater good? If you do, send it to me at jonathan.lee.san@gmail.com!

This is my 101st post on this blog, and to be honest, I'm hitting a bit of a wall for above average ways to get gold! Or maybe it's post-exam stress, I don't know. I'll try to get back in the saddle asap!

So in the mean time, if you feel like sending me one to put on the blog, I'll give you whatever kind of credit you want, so everyone will know who did it!

More Delays

Okay, here we go again. I've got 2 huge projects due tomorrow, so I won't have time to post tonight. Hopefully, I'll be able to post tomorrow or Wednesday. After that, my schedule will have finally died down for awhile! Bear with me.

Miners Trick with Felsteel

Here's a quick little trick I have found decent success with as a miner. Get some Fel Iron from Helfire Peninsula - it's all over. Make Fel Iron Bars. Now, hit the AH and look for Eternium Bars. It takes 2 Eternium and 3 Fel Iron bars (4 Eternium ore and 6 Fel Iron ore) to make a Felsteel Bar. I usually find 2 Eternium bars for 3-4 gold. So, I pay the 3-4 gold for it, smelt a bar of Felsteel, and turn around and sell that for 12-15 gold! It's a quick trick, very easy to do, and as long as you aren't overpaying for the Eternium, it's always a profit.

Mining in Nagrand

One of my friends was, at one time, a very dedicated WoW player. He could put so much time into it that it baffled me, and still does. I can only go for maybe 2 hours of play at a time, and usually only once a day! My friends, through a combination of question at 70 and mining, made the 5000 gold for his epic mount in about 3 weeks.

Now, I've already done a post about questing at 70. If you've got the stomach for it, grind as much as possible. That will leave you with tons of quests to do at 70, and you'll get gold for each. I may, if I can stand it, do that with my shadow priest, once I get there. I'll definitely keep track, though, and post the results if I do.

Now, mining. The best place to mine in Outlands is Nagrand. Almost all the nodes are adamantite, or rich adamantite deposits. I did about 30 minutes there just now, and got got 27 ore, 20 motes of earth, and 4 eternium ore. All told, that's about 70 gold. I know, 70 gold an hour isn't huge, but it's RELIABLE. I'm going to put this money to use in the Auction House, which I still think is the best way to turn a little money into a lot. I'm going to start keeping a log of what I do with a starting amount of 70 gold or so, rather like Derek's Gold Project X. It'll be an interesting way to show Auction House tactics, and it'll force me to not be lazy and abandon it! Thoughts?

Delays!

Hey all, sorry for the lack of activity! My workload is going up as the quarter winds down. I just spent my Friday night in the library. =(

Anyway! I'll definitely be posting this weekend, so don't give up on me please! :D

Reselling With a Twist

I've been investigating one of the suggestions left to me in a comment: find items that can be bought, re-worked into something else, then sold for a profit.

The results are going to disappoint you. Given the variable pricing of different servers, different factions, even different days, prices are just too variable to say: "Here are some items that can be bought low and crafted and resold, always."

Really, the best way to approach this kind of thing is on an individual level. I can say, with some authority, that there are very few instances where you will be able to reliably make a big profit by buying materials and crafting them into new items to sell for profit. There are some notable exceptions, aside from just hoping someone stupidly sells something for too low:

Rare Crafting Recipes. Yes, those blue and purple schematics, plans and patterns that you see selling for hundreds of gold. If you're really going to make it work, you need a rare crafting item. Everyone else can make the vendor recipes, and do, so even if you do find the materials for a good deal, the new item will be worth very little. Actually, it's often the case that the new item is worth LESS than the materials, because demand for raw materials tends to be higher than for individual items.

Okay, so let's say you have one of those rare patters, either bought (easiest), or found (pain in the #!@%$). I hope you did some research on what the item requires to be made, because you can get screwed here with a final product worth less than the materials. A good example that I am familiar with is shield spike recipes - these recipes sell for a lot. I almost never see the spikes themselves for sale, simply because so few people bother to farm or buy the recipe. The same holds true for other professions. If you see a recipe for sale, and notice that you rarely see that ITEM for sale, consider the market wide open. It does take some individual research, and you'll be out a chunk of change if you buy the recipe, but over time you stand to make it back and then some!

Really quickly, here are some little deals to keep an eye out for:

• Motes. Sometimes you can buy 10 motes for less than the 1 primal.
• Unworked Cloth, Ore: Sometimes you can find the raw form, work it into a bolt of cloth, fel iron, whatever, and sell it for a profit.
• Uncombined enchanting items: Anything that can be used individually, or turned into something else when you get 3 of them, 10 of them, etc.
• Alchemy ingredients to turn into potions

It's a small list, and I'm sorry for that. If you want me to add stuff, leave a comment and I'll add it. Unfortunately, if it were easy to turn a big profit from buying-crafting-reselling, the market would be flooded with those items, and so balance itself out.

The Daily Quests

Okay, here we go, time for me to go over daily quests. If you don't know why they are good, here is why: there are about 15 daily quests over all of the factions, and they give an average of 10g or so per. However, you can only do 10 per day, so plan accordingly! This is how people usually get the 5,000 they need to get their flying mount! Anyway, here we go!

Netherwing Quests
First of all, you need to be Neutral with Netherwing to begin the daily quests. If you aren't neutral yet, follow this link to the WoWHead list of the quest chain, with lots of helpful comments! Netherwing is the faction that allows you to get a Netherdrake at the end of the long, long road.

Once you are Neutral (9 quests later), and have some sort of flying mount, you can do the dailies. Here they are, with links to WoWHead for details. I will include gold approximates, but if you want the real skinny on them, follow the links.

Netherwing Crystals : 12g, 250 rep
A Slow Death : 12g, 250 rep
The Not-So-Friendly Skies : 12g 250 rep

When you get to Friendly, more become available.
Picking Up the Pieces : 18g, 350 rep
Dragons are the Least of our Problems : 12g, 350 rep
Booterang: A Cure For The Common Worthless Peon : 12g, 350 rep

At Honored you can begin to do one more.
Disrupting the Twilight Portal : 12g, 500 rep

Two more become available at Revered.
The Deadliest Trap Ever Laid (Scryers) : 12g, 500 rep
The Deadliest Trap Ever Laid (Aldor) : 12g, 500 rep


Skyguard Quests
There are two Skyguard quest hubs, one north of Skettis in Blackwind Landing, and Skyguard Outpost, in Blade's Edge Mountains. You need to do do these prereqs before you can do dailies. Skyguard is the faction that allows you to get a Nether Ray at Exalted.

Threat from Above : 250 rep
To Skettis! : 10 rep

Now, the dailies.
Fires Over Skettis : 12g, 350 rep
Escape From Skettis : 12g, 350 rep


Ogri'la Quests
To do the Blade's Edge Mountains quests, you need to unlock the Ogri'la quest chain. The best 2 Ogri'la dailies also give rep for Skyguard, which is handy!

Speak With the Ogre
Mog'Dorg the Wizened
Even Gronn Have Standards
Grulloc Has Two Skulls
Maggoc's Treasure Chest
Grim(oire) Business
Into the Soulgrinder
Speak With Mog'Dorg
Ogre Heaven

There are two pre-quests to being able to do Ogri'la dailies (28, 56, Blade's Edge)
The Crystals
An Apexis Relic

Now for the dailies:
The Relic's Emanation : 12g, 250 rep, 15 Apexis Shards

When you get Friendly, do these pre quests:
The Skyguard Outpost
Bombing Run
Wrangle Some Aether Rays

That opens up Bomb Them Again! : 12g, 500 rep (Ogri'la AND Skyguard), 15 Apexis Shards
and Wrangle More Aether Rays! : 12g, 350 rep (Ogri'la AND Skyguard), 15 Apexis Shards

Once you get Honored, you can do Banish the Demons
Which opens up Banish More Demons : 12g, 350 rep

That's a lot of quests! I hope I presented it in a form that makes it easy to understand. As always, leave a comment if you need to point something out to me; I always read them!

Help me!

That time again, everyone. I'm having trouble deciding what to put up. I'm also starting to have problems remembering what I have ALREADY put up, which I guess is a good thing, because it means I've posted a lot.

Anyway, someone give me some suggestions, please? Class-specific, level-specific, zones, etc etc.
Leave a comment! Thanks!

Work, work, work

Hi everyone!

Sorry for the slow posting schedule lately. This is the time of the quarter when I tend to get really quite busy! Also, it's taking more and more time to find, research, and add decent tips. Anyway, the reason for the post! I will be delaying until Friday, unfortunately. I'm not going to be home much these next two days. I've tried to never put more than 4 days between posts, but Friday will break that tradition, unfortunately. Just wanted to let you all know!

Fishing for Motes of Water

Tired of grinding water elementals? Have a high fishing skill you never use?

Well, let's be honest. Grinding water elementals is probably the most efficient way to get motes of water. Fishing, great skill though it is, isn't one many people keep up to snuff in Outlands. However, aside from being able to fish for then cook some very nice +stat food, you can fish for motes of water, if you'd like a change of pace!

Fishing spots work a bit differently from other nodes. The best place to fish for motes of water is in Nagrand, in the 3 MAIN lakes (the 3 that almost touch, biggest on the map, hard to miss). Across all 3 exist about 30 pools of water (bluefish school, mudfish school, or pure water). When you fish one, it immediately respawns at another location, as one of the 3 types I listed.

Now, you want to look for the Pure Water, though you need to fish ALL of them you see, in hopes that when the spot respawns elsewhere, it will be pure water. There's about a 90% chance you'll get a mote of water from it. If you get 4 or 5 motes per pool at maybe 8 pools an hour, that's somewhere between 2.5 and 4 primal water per hour, roughly. The good thing is that fishing is somewhat hard to get to the level needed (about 450, preferably), and pretty annoying to boot, so your competition should be minimal!

New Chest Farming for Rogues

So, Blizz fixed the old Mechanar chest farming exploit, which flooded the market with world blues, and generally contributed to a large drop in price for many items. Well, someone has already figured out a new one for Manatombs, if you have a decently geared 70 rogue.

So, here's the thread on the WoW forums discussing it, and here is the link to a handy instructional video!

Have fun not-quite-cheating, you sneaky people. :p

Ragesteel Shoulders

Okay, here's one that's time based, but it works pretty well for now!

Everyone is all abuzz with the new recipes out in the 2.2 patch. One of the nicer ones if the addition of Ragesteel Shoulders to the Ragesteel set for warriors. The shoulders are probably the nicest part of the set, and at the moment, not many people have the plans for them. (Plans drop from the Enraged Air elementals in Shadowmoon). The materials to make them are pretty ordinary, except for Scroll of Strength V, which you need 2 of.

Ordinarily, that wouldn't mean anything. You can't buy them, and pretty much need to rely on drops for them. Now that they have a part in a nice recipe, prices have skyrocketed, especially because buying them on the AH is the only way to reliably and easily find them. Or is it? If you haven't finished up Zangamarsh, you might be in luck! Unfinished Business for the Alliance, or A Job Undone for the Horde, has FIVE of these babies as one of the optional quest rewards! So if you haven't done it, go do it! Put those scrolls on the Auction House, and underbid the competition by a fair amount. No matter what you sell them for, it's pure profit.

Happy Happy Birthday!

It was my birthday a few days ago, so I've been a little busy. I'm home this weekend to see my family, so probably won't be posting a real post until Sunday night. Sorry for the delay! See you all Sunday.

PPP: Flask of Chromatic Wonder

Time for another PPP installment, that is a "Particularly Profitable Pattern"!

New patch (2.3), hurray! New content! I haven't done a post about pattern reselling in awhile, so here we go. The Flask of Chromatic Wonder! Probably one of the coolest sounding recipes ever. Quite useful, too. It is sold by Apprentice Darius, the Karazan vendor in Deadwind Pass. It also requires Honored with the Violet Eye to buy it. But, it doesn't bind, and a lot of people have no idea where it comes from yet! So, reselling it should work fine, especially to Alchemists who aren't running Karazan, and have no way of getting it.

Same routine as ever, folks. Buy some (seems like they are unlimited supply?), resell them to other players. This should work well, until everyone finally figures out where they come from. But even when they do, only people who run Kara will be able to buy it! So, expect these to sell decently for some time yet, but the best time would be right now.

AoE Farming in Silithus

A lot of people look at grinding for gold in Wacraft with faulty logic. Everyone is so gaga over Outlands that they never leave, or consider there might be places just as good in Azeroth! Well, they are partially correct. For sheer value of items, level of mobs, etc, Outlands is king. However, there are some great places in Azeroth where a level 70 can grind extremely quickly and efficiently, which makes up for the lower value of the mobs.

Case in point, Twilight Avengers and Twilight Geolords in Silithus. This is a great place, especially for Mages who can AoE grind effectively. Check the links above for the locations of these mobs -- the good thing about them is they are very densely populated, very weak (for a level 70 mage), and are HUMANOID. So, they drop silver, frequently drop cloth, and the traditional greens or maybe world BoE blue. Round them up, knock them down. Runecloth, which is what they drop, still sells very well on my server, and probably yours. (Used mainly for bandages and pre BC recipes). You can grind here safely, and with little fear from being ganked by another level 70 player, so enjoy the change of scenery!