The Path to 85

Cataclysm has been out for nearly a week now and while I should have written something about it sooner I have to be honest and say that every last bit of my free time as been spent in Azeroth leaving no time to blog.

Fade back to 10am Tuesday (1pm on Monday PST) and I am sitting at work hardly focusing knowing what tonight brings. We wont be having a midnight release as the servers come up at 9pm our time but I am obviously excited none the less. Just the day before however I find from my local EB Games that there is some "situation" with Cataclysm but no one knows what it is until I get a message to my phone from EB. The message basically reads that due to one EB selling Cataclysm early, all EB's can sell it early starting immediately.
All focus I had left is gone right out the window as I now wait until Lunch time so I can drive across town to pick it up.
12 comes around and that is exactly what I do, it takes my entire hour break to do it but I now have two Cataclysm Collectors Editions sitting under my desk. The next 4 hours were painful but somehow I got through and the it was home free.

Since I had already had the Cata pre download run I simply had to upgrade my account and I was ready to go.
The first thing I did when I logged in was collect my Lil' Deathwing


Then it was a waiting game for 9pm and the message to log out for Cata.
When the message finally came the authentication servers were so heavy hit that I keep DCing for the next 15min. Once I was finally in my first step was to buy Azeroth flying.


From there it was off to Hyjal and an introduction to that gank fest that was leveling.
After 30min of questing and 1 hour of being dead I finally got my first look at the big baddy Deathwing himself.

Boy is that sucker huge.
From there I continued to quest and get swarmed by horde for the next 16 hours. I took a break to do some mining and after six stacks of Obsidian realized that I had not trained my new level of mining and had wasted all that ore.

On the topic of leveling on a PvP server, this was my first ever time leveling on a PvP server and boy was it crazy. The entrance to Hyjal was white with bones.
The census sites put us at a 2:1 Horde to Ally ratio but looking at the numbers visible its more like 5:1.
Several times I would get jumped by a solo Horde member and every time I would beat then down until they ether got 2-7 more friends or ran away into a group of leveling Horde who would lend them a hand.
It still continues like this now at 85 while doing daily where I will be jumped by ether one Horde win then have him return with friends or 2-5 of them jump you all at once and always when your already fighting. This proves that we have the better PvP's and is shown by our constant domination of Tol Barad.

As I finished up my leveling in Hyjal I got to see a wonderful site of the long lost Jarod Shadowsong and the great Cenarius.


From there is was off to Deepholme through the Maelstrom.


I love questing in Deepholme, as great as Hyjal for lore was the quality of quest in Deepholme is just so much better and more enjoyable.
Your character gets a lot more involved for example this guy

who literally grabs you by the face. Least he get what he deserved.

Once I was 83 and my quests were up to date with Therazane I was off to the beautiful Uldum.

The quests here are in my opinion the best in the game, funny, engaging and very diverse.
Among the plethora of NPC you quest for you spend a lot of time working with Harrison Jones seen in this archive file photo.

and work to recreate the better parts of any movie that his name sake is from.


While questing in Uldum you will find possible the greatest quest ever made if you are like most people and hate Gnomes.


What we have here is basically a big ball of fire that you use to run down very large numbers of screaming Gnomes. If this was a daily I think it would win hands down, instead best quest has to go to the daily "Thieving little Puckers" that involves smashing very funny sounding pygmy's with a very big hammer.

After I had dinged 84 and found out that the bug's stopping you from leveling in Twilight Highlands were fixed I popped over there for a bit just to see what it was like. Before I could go I had to help out Varian by escorting Anduin around on some duty's.
After a brief introduction I was met by this very moving piece of dialog.


That was quickly followed with a great 24 reference.



While questing I leveled my Jewelcrafting up to 475 to unlock the new daily's and in doing so unlocked new world drops and the ability to finish a quest for this lovely little tanking trinket with a not to shabby 421 stamina on it.


I finished my leveling off in Vash'jir to raise my Earthing ring rep for the Helm enchant. I had not spent much time there before I dinged but I was not thrilled by the whole being underwater thing.


I went and picked up my GoAK


and it was then off to run my first Heroics which were BRC and HoO. I have to say after how easy the normal instances were while leveling the Heroics are a very welcomed challenge. If the Heroics are this hard I can not wait to see the raid content, but what I have seen if filling me with hope for the perfect level of content.
Also HoO has one of the coolest bosses ever, he is a Flame Marrowgar that you fight on Camels what more do I need to say bar.

Gold Plans for Cataclysm

With Cataclysm literally just around the corner everyone should have a strong idea of what they will be doing with their professions and how they are going to level them.

I though I had mine worked out, the changes to Engineering were looking very attractive and I had stockpiled a new guild bank alt with mats to power level it at 85. The recent changes that have been made to it however have thrown a rather large spanner in that plan. Losing the ability to have Rocketboots and the Shield at the same hurt but I could live with it, the other bonuses more than compensated. It was the painful raid wiping and frequent backfires that were given to both that really made me question it. Sure there are some nice toys in the skill list but was wiping a raid worth the risk?
For me it was now obvious, the large profits that Blacksmithing have to offer were slightly out weighed by the fun and usefulness of Engineering, but when you take away some usefulness and add in more risk then the gold just plain wins out.
So I now plan to be a Blacksmith / Jewelcrafter in Cata and have filled up the banks a little more just to make sure I will have enough mats.

Now I am sure of my professions for the expansion I can properly plan for how to make gold.
I have played the AH a little this expansion but its only really been a growing part of my game since the release of epic gems. At best my total net worth has only capped at about 20k liquid with very little in assets. That is going to change in Cataclysm.

I have spent the last few months delving into the world of gold making. The site JMTC and its podcast 'Call to Auction' have been an immense help and just by applying the basics of what they teach I have been able to amass a large stock of items for Cata and keep myself at the 10k liquid mark to.

So what have I been stockpiling you ask? Its simple, items that will raise in value later in Cata.
Think about the value if you remember of Adamantite ore in TBC, most likely it was around the 20g mark during the middle of the expansion. Now think about the value it had middle of this expansion, on average I saw it sit at 40-50g a stack that's quite a difference. As History teachers will tell you the point of learning about the past is that when it repeats itself you do no repeat the same mistakes and better still repeat what worked. We can rather confidently say that Saronite will rise in price as Cata moves on and less and less people farm it, this means that the ore you buy at today's prices could be worth twice as much in 6months to a years time.

So what exactly is in my stockpile; three guild tabs of Saronite ore, two of Infinite dust, 1 Borean Leather, 1 Greater Cosmic Essence (sold as lessers) and a splattering of Eternals, Titanium ore and Titansteel bars.
That is a rather long term plan, I won't see a return for months maybe even a year depending on how long others wait until they unload their stockpiles.
How about the short term plans to fill my pockets?

My very first plan is to not repeat last expansions mistakes. Last year I leveled my JC as I leveled mining but did so in no real rush. As a result I was not first on the AH with gems (I had no real desire for it then) and I missed the brilliant golden opportunity that is early expansion gathering. In the first few days of Cata gathering mats will be very rare. Not many people will be farming them particularly in the opening hours after midnight and particularly the mid level ore from Deepholm and Twilight Highlands. The result of this rarity is HUGE prices, I am talking possibly into the thousands of gold a stack. The profit comes from very rich people who seek the realm first achievements. These people will not be able to get enough of that precious ore and herbs and due to their large wallets will pay near anything for them and with little competition your mats should fetch a very nice profit.

Its now been a couple days or even weeks and the mat prices are dropping, at this point my JC will have been leveled enough to get me into the new dailys and I will be stockpiling ore to help the final levels of Blacksmithing. After that I should be able to drop mining once and for all and use my ore stockpiles to powerlevel Blacksmithing and the remainder of Jewelcrafting up to cap and start putting my new piles of gold into mats. The first couple weeks will be big money for those that can get their hands on cheap mats and craft the epic weapons and armor, again following WotLK examples epic crafts will fetch 50% odd profit. The biggest factor to this is that the new Frozen Orb 'Chaos Orb' is BoP so any epic gear you want is going to be on the AH far more than in your own mats.

As the gear market starts to drop a little people will be well into raiding and the gem market is going to flourish by this point I should have more than enough recipes to make a killing selling gems on the AH.


From there onwards I plan to bring over my priest and use her to bring the Enchanting and Alchemy professions to the AH table. I certainly do not plan to ever reach the new gold cap of 1 million gold but I do aim to reach well into the 100k's this time round.