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Moving Targets
Syp has a post up about how Battle for Azeroth really isn’t that bad.
[…] I had left last October after burning out a couple months into the new expansion, feeling both overwhelmed at the grind and underwhelmed by the direction and features. I think I needed that, as I had been playing more or less nonstop for two-and-a-half years before that point.
And with a somewhat negative exit alongside of many others who were very vocal with expressing their displeasure over the expansion, it kind of got cemented into my mind that BFA is terrible. Coming back, I can’t say that’s the case, and while it’s trendy to bash BFA these days, I’m also seeing that it’s not as bad as some of the hysterics have made it out to be. It’s no Cataclysm, and it’s not suffering the content drought of Draenor, that’s for sure.
As I commented over there, I find it kind of glib to suggest that an expansion that has had almost 11 months worth of time to be fixed, including two major content patches, is “not as bad as some of the hysterics have made it out to be.” Indeed, the two initial points Syp brings up – overwhelming grind, underwhelming features – have not, to my knowledge, actually been fixed. We may not still be in the situation of needing to grind out Azerite Power to unlock abilities we already had before upgrading a piece of gear, but the very fact that Ion and the rest of the clownshow at Blizz HQ thought it deserved to make it off the whiteboard is embarrassing. Or how Titanforging makes it so that you are never actually done with gearing, ever, with zero possibility of being “complete” save for the sweet release of death (or subscription lapse). Or how you never gained anything from level from 110 to 120, and only grew weaker against the same mobs you had been fighting all along.
Suppose those things had been fixed though. I stopped playing mid-October of last year, so maybe they even have. Could that mean Beta for Azeroth was actually a good expansion?
The question seems nonsensical. It was clearly a terrible expansion for me and tens of thousands of others. It was a terrible expansion for Syp who identified the precise flaws and quit too. I can understand being able to “come back” and revisit the experience with a fresh pair of eyes and expectations. But is it even the same game? Is Syp playing it in the same way? Can an MMO expansion be “good” if the limited PvE content is fun, but everything else about its design suffocates long-term play?
Less than two months ago, I wrote a post called Bygones in which I talked about how holding game grudges doesn’t always make sense. If someone asks about Diablo 3 these days, bringing up the Real Money Auction House is basically a non sequitur. No Man’s Sky’s original release state might give you some perspective about its developers, but… actually, it wouldn’t, because the current difference is night and day.
Should Beta Battle for Azeroth receive the same courtesy?
Maybe. Perhaps some grudges take deeper root when it feels personal. The last time I played WoW was a whole baby ago, so maybe everything feels improved. Nevermind the fact that it does matter what sort of experience you are looking for in the first place – an endgame being crap shouldn’t concern a tourist just looking for leveling thrills and some plot.
And yet… nah. I won’t begrudge Syp’s fun anymore, but I do take BFA’s design almost personally. I wasn’t a big subscriber to the whole A Team vs B Team thing, but there isn’t a whole lot of explanation as for why BFA released in the state it did on the tail end of Legion, which got so many things right. When you look back, it goes BFA (bad), Legion (good), WoD (terrible), MoP (good), Cata (awful), Wrath (amazing), TBC (eh), vanilla (supposedly good). This probably bodes well for whatever comes after BFA.
Fulfillment vs Excitement
There is an Asmongold video out that has received at least 27 Reddit gold after it was posted:
(All the good stuff is within the first six minutes)
Among the criticisms he makes regarding Battle for Azeroth, one that resonated a bit with me was the distinction between Fulfillment and Excitement. Essentially, Blizzard used to give you a 8% chance to get a specific piece of gear that was your Best-in-Slot piece. It might take a long time to get it, but once you finally got it, it was an event. You were complete. Done.
When Titanforging was introduced though, suddenly BiS gear was rendered largely impossible. You might receive your “BiS” piece, but if it didn’t proc with an extra gem socket and/or numerous bonus stats, it wasn’t actually BiS. Moreover, it was entirely possible that someone just dicking around in Warfronts could luck into a piece of gear that surpassed something that dropped from Mythic Uldir.
Asmongold’s point is that while you can feel excitement over a drop that suddenly Titanforges up to insane levels… that excitement is short lived. It’s the pull of a slot machine. That’s fundamentally different than working towards an end goal, even if said end also requires some RNG along the way.
When Titanforging was first introduced, I was impressed. It seemed like a clever solution to the problem of completing content that was no longer rewarding in any way. I distinctly remember my tanking days back in Wrath, and how I was asked to clear dungeons with guildies despite the fact that I could get nothing from it (once I capped out with Justice Points). With this new wrinkle, there was always a chance I could get an upgrade from any content I completed.
What I did not realize at the time was how destructive that notion really is. You are never “done.” And not just in a “there will always be another content patch with better loot” kind of way, but in a more literal “never experience satisfaction in current content” way.
As Asmongold points out though, Titanforging by itself is not what is killing the BfA experience. Indeed, the concept of Titanforging has been around for several expansions now, and nobody seemed to have been complaining about it until now (or at least to this degree). The real problem is that BfA is so mechanically weak on so many fronts, that the fundamental issue with Titanforging is poisoning the experience more than usual.
I’m sure Blizzard has the stats on the number of people who just stop playing the game after they achieve BiS, and found the numbers problematic. Certainly in my case, once I finally got the two piece of transmog gear I had been farming, I found myself at a loss of what else to do. This could explain why they are trying to get everyone back to collecting a bunch of full suits of extra gear. With the deprecation of the concept of BiS though, I don’t think these extra suits are going to satisfy players for as long as it may have before.
What is the solution? We already had it for years: vendors. Bring back Justice/Valor Points. Everyone rightly complained in Legion about the Legendary system and how RNG could lead you to a situation in which your spec was basically broken the whole expansion… up until they introduced the Legendary vendor in 7.3.5. The initial rollout was still a bit lame RNG until they allowed you to straight-up pick the ones you want, but it was there eventually. Collect “Wakening Essence” from a variety of sources (WQ, missions, ect) at your own pace, and know the end result.
Titanforging is dumb. If it’s some kind of design imperative to have raiders running WQs or dungeons all the time, fine, make it Justice Points. Except this time, put in consumables, gear you can buy for alts, and other nonsense to give everyone potential reasons to collect it all day.
Give us back some goddamn agency for once.
Azerite Armor as Regression
As evidenced by the latest Q&A – and the Reddit response threads – Azerite Armor is still a big issue within the WoW community. I would say “contentious issue,” but I’m pretty sure it’s only Ion and Rohan who like it.
That said, it finally struck me why I hate the system, and why Blizzard doesn’t care: Blizzard is trying to regress gearing back to the TBC days. In a recent LiveStream interview, Ion says:
(paraphrase) If you look at how most items work, if you want to play another spec, you want another item for that slot.
Ion goes on to say that Azerite gear is more flexible than that, in that you can technically respec (for a price!) the traits if you change roles. Which is fine… if not for the fact that Legion just had tier gear that automatically changed to match your spec. And the expansion before that (WoD) introduced dynamic primary stats, such that a Retribution paladin switching to Holy will see most his Strength gear turn into Intelligence. It felt like we were progressing to a point at which we simply had one major set of gear and were done.
I feel like players’ confusion and anger as to this sudden design reversal is justified.
Now, all this is probably a bit unfair to Blizzard. Weapons and trinkets were largely spec-specific even in Legion days, to say nothing about how Legendaries forced you to commit to specs to a ridiculous degree. On top of that, everyone knew that even if primary stats swapped around, different specs valued secondary stats differently, even after the super-specific ones like Dodge (etc) were removed. If you were a paladin tank and switched to Retribution, you knew that your tank gear would deal less DPS than something focused on the stats that Retribution favored (without even getting into Artifact Power differences).
And yet… Azerite still feels bad. Because its a regression back to a time that was inherently more frustrating for people with multiple specs. A split baby option of reforging doesn’t make anything better, nor the opportunity to split another baby by choosing generic Azerite traits (actual suggestion from Ion) rather than spec-specific ones in an effort to save gold. And Blizzard’s big “solution” to fix things in 8.1? They’re adding another ring with only spec-specific traits. Which means the power delta between each piece of Azerite gear is actively getting worse for your other spec(s).
This sort of thing is not an accident. Ion wants the game to return to the point at which players need a full set of different gear for each spec. That used to be okay. Hell, it used to be you needed a PvP set of gear on top of everything else you needed for PvE. But it is a regression from what we had before.
That’s the problem with Azerite.
The concerns people have about not being able to get 370+ Azerite pieces from content? Not actually an issue from the old design rubric – you only had 1-2 shots at a piece of tier gear from a raid boss each week anyway (the glory days of Justice/Valor Point vendors notwithstanding). Traits needing to be simmed, or some being wildly more powerful than others? There were many times in expansions past where two different two-set tier bonuses were better than the four-set tier bonus. Traits being boring? Again, welcome to many tier sets in WoW’s past.
On a final note though, I do believe that Azerite Armor will likely go down as one of the worst experiments in WoW history. Leveraging it as a means to regress gearing philosophy is one thing. But I also blame it for the fact that we got no new skills or abilities or talents to look forward to in this expansion. Why add a new talent row or button to push when you can just slap a random assortment of buffs on a piece of gear that will naturally cycle itself out come next expansion? In a single design, they seemed to have “solved” ability creep, added a substitute to Legendary items, and gave everyone a grind outlet via AP.
All they had to give up was… fun.
Two Days
My WoW subscription expires in two days, and I think I’ll let it.
This isn’t particularly Big News or anything, but experiencing the internal process has been interesting to me. I have been cashing out my gold for the past several weeks, to the point where I keep around 200k liquid gold, one WoW Token in the bags, and applying Blizzard Balance to the rest. Even now I could just right-click the WoW Token and be good for another month.
But what am I even doing?
Well, making gold. I still make Hexweave Bags because they still sell for 1400g despite current-expansion 30-slot bags go for 800g. I still do the MoP farm on one character, because those mats sell daily for around ~1500g. I herb whenever I run around on the Demon Hunter doing dailies (towards unlocking Pathfinder, Part 1), and that pulls in a couple extra grand. All told, I log in every day to the tune of 5k-10k a day. Peanuts to any serious goblin, but since I’m not seriously doing anything, getting paid $30-$45/month to play WoW seems pretty good. Especially when there is a spike in demand when the Warfront Contributions come around.
But… that’s it. There’s a bit more involved than the Garrison days, but I’m essentially logging in to collect my gold, muck around a bit to see if there are new markets to explore, and then logging off. That was good enough to justify things last month. Not so sure it still holds up this month.
Yeah, it’s probably for the best to let things lapse. I’ll check back in patch 8.1. Maybe. Fallout 76 beta should be in the next three weeks, so who knows.
So… Now What?
The problem with goals is that you complete them.
When I originally wrote Monday’s post about farming transmog pieces in WoW, I had not yet acquired the Tunic of Unwavering Devotion. Since I had technically been farming since Legion (via LFR), I was buckling in for the long haul. After a presumed failed run over the weekend, I was going to get back to leveling my Monk character to the cap and then seeing if she can also solo Nighthold.
Alas, like a strange monkey paw curse, I got exactly what I was looking for.
Oh, and have I mentioned that my Demon Hunter is sitting at ilevel 340 now? It took a dozen dungeons to go from 310 to 320, but about three days of casual, mostly solo content to go from 320 to 340. So there really isn’t much of a point in doing much of anything on the Demon Hunter now. I will do the occasional WQ if it offers reputation, but only in the off-chance that I continue playing WoW once flying is (re)(re)(re)released.
Leveling alts to the cap seems like a fine goal on the face of things, but… eh. They will not be used for raiding or dungeon running or farming transmog, so what’s left? PvP? I usually reserve my Warlock for PvP endeavors, but the forums are pretty clear about the apparent sad state of Warlocks this expansion. I could try going the healer route for giggles, as I do have a Priest at 111.
The real problem I have is that I somehow lack the motivation to do much of anything, anywhere. Post-game Depression is a thing I talked about a few years ago, and it may well triggered when I got that last piece of transmog gear. Or maybe WoW has been on its way out with me for several weeks.
I dunno. I have a million other games I could be playing, but no motivation to load any of them. The 7 Days to Die Alpha17 patch keeps getting pushed into Star Citizen territory, and Fallout 76’s beta isn’t until the end of this month. In the meantime, I am just logging into WoW and puttering around on the AH, or closing the client and watching people play Hearthstone on Twitch.
Guess my next goal should be to get more goals.
Active Goldmaking in BfA: Gathering
The last two gold-making posts have been about “passive” income in Battle for Azeroth. What follows is what I have specifically been doing since the expansion launch.
Herbalism
End of post.
Not really, but close. While you can sometimes make tens or hundreds of thousands of gold by flipping AH items or getting a BoE epic drop, spotting an Anchor Weed node and looting the equivalent of 1200g on the spot is one of the few means for the everyday player to experience something similar. So, ideally, whatever herbs you are picking, you will want to maximize those Anchor Weed nodes. Usually.
My personal go-to farming route is the Tiragarde Sound/Norwington Estate river area:
Courtesy of WoW-Professions.
There’s a short flightpath that drops you off in Hatherford, and just follow the river in a counter-clockwise manner. If you don’t see any Riverbud within about 100 yards, that means someone is already farming the route ahead of you, and you should either wait in place for respawns, or go somewhere else.
I farmed for about 7.5 minutes and received:
- Siren’s Pollen x24 (1314g)
- Riverbud x62 (1319g)
- Star Moss x12 (155g)
- Sea Stalk x31 (413g)
- Total = ~3200g per 7.5 min, or 25,608g/hour
Prices current as of this past Saturday on Sargeras-US. Your own prices may vary. Also, I had 3-stars for every herb but Anchor Weed at the time, so your own yields may vary too.
Another option is the extremely well-known Drustvar Winter’s Kiss loop:
Courtesy of WoW-Professions.
I have never had any particular amount of success on this route, precisely because everyone is doing it. While the sheer number of densely-packed Winter’s Kiss makes this area great for “forcing” Anchor Weed spawns (since Anchor Weed has a chance to spawn after a node is tapped), the problem is that Winter’s Kiss itself is practically useless as an herb. On Sargeras-US (as of this past weekend), Riverbud is 22.83g whereas Winter’s Kiss is 15.58g. That might not seem like much, but it’s a difference of 1450g per stack of herbs farmed. Or put another way, you can expect to receive ~35g more per node of Riverbud than Winter’s Kiss.
The unsung hero herb of this expansion is obvious in retrospect, but bears repeating now: Siren’s Pollen. Current pricing on Sargeras put this at 67g per herb, which is almost as much per node as a single Anchor Weed. It was “obvious” that this herb would hold the most value because A) it’s used for Agility/Intellect potions, health pots, and Strength Flasks, B) it cannot spawn Anchor Weed nodes, and C) it’s annoying to gather (growing on trees). Star Moss is also annoying to gather and doesn’t spawn Anchor Weed nodes, but is only really used for Strength potions (and Stamina potions/flasks).
There is not one particularly good route for Siren’s Pollen in any case. The Riverbud route will give you a few nodes, or you can follow the east side of Drustvar like so:
Courtesy of WoW-Professions.
After farming for 7.5 minutes, I received:
- Siren’s Pollen x34 (1862g)
- Winter’s Kiss x19 (225g)
- Star Moss x7 (91g)
- Riverbud x11 (234g)
- Anchor Weed x7 (3315g)
- Total = ~5727g per 7.5 min, or 45,816g/hour
The yield seems amazing compared to the Riverbud route, but any route will be amazing after hitting two Anchor Weed nodes. If we assume those two nodes would have been Riverbud instead, the actual yield would have been 21,000g/hour. Given the price of Siren’s Pollen, it’s possible that this particular route was already being farmed – there certainly weren’t many nodes until I hit the south – but that’s a risk you take.
Kinnings Lodge route is another option:
Courtesy of WoW-Professions.
- Siren’s Pollen x45 (2464g)
- Riverbud x3 (64g)
- Winter’s Kiss x14 (166g)
- Star Moss x35 (453g)
- Sea Stalk x49 (653g)
- Total = 3800g per 9.5 min, or 24,000g/hour
Note that the above took longer than 7.5 minutes to complete the loop. I was also less familiar with it, but you can get the general idea.
Leatherworking
Specifically, farming Blood-Stained Bones. Leather prices are up and down, but Blood-Stained Bones are pretty consistently 35-48g apiece. Many of the hyper-farms have been nerfed already – apparently there were a few 3k HP mobs that could be skinned for full rewards somewhere – but the Quillrat farm in Drustvar continues to spawn endless amounts of walking leather:
Small pic courtesy of WoW-Professions.
I turned my Boomkin into a Skinner specifically for this farm. Gather up ~10 mobs, lead them ~10 yards away (important!), DoT them all, then use Treants to survive and nuke the rest down. Any Calcified Bones you get are a total waste, and Alliance can’t really get 3-Stars with bone gathering before level 120 (requires a Horde dungeon), but you can still get a couple dozen Blood-Stained Bones relatively quickly.
Herbalism is higher gold/hour generally, but killing mobs does give you a slight chance to hit a BoE epic or some other drop that can sometimes make up for it. Plus, occasionally Coarse Leather prices creep back up.
Mining
Don’t bother.
Seriously though, it’s a waste. On Sargeras-US, ore is around 28-32g apiece no matter what kind. In fact, you often lose money anytime a Platinum Ore node appears, because Blizzard is a small indie company who can’t spare the resources to make reasonable Professions. Prices are better on smaller servers, but so too are herb prices. Plus, you know, you can herb with Sky Golem and hit nodes within 0.5 seconds.
As mentioned before, sometimes you can hit it big if the Warfront Contribution requires something like Monelite Ore, which saw prices increase to 80g per ore. That is definitely more than most other herbs. The problem is that those prices last for maybe a week, and then collapse back down. It’s a better use of time, IMO, to farm slightly lower-priced herbs with a chance at Anchor Weed, and then just buy the ore you need when you need it.
Fishing
Fishing has rapidly fallen on hard times compared to the beginning of the expansion. Midnight Salmon is still worth 206g apiece, but that is down significantly from where it was at. On Sargeras, there are two fish worth around 40g apiece: Slimy Mackerel and Redtail Loach.
Slimy Mackerel can only be caught off the coast of the Horde island. There are pools for it, but you are likely better off just free-casting into the ocean, where you have a 50/50 shot of Slimy Mackerel and Sand Shifter. Slimy Mackerel will likely maintain its price for a while, as it can be cooked into +Haste food.
Redtail Loach is the inland fish also caught on the Horde island. I’m not particularly convinced it will maintain its price, given the fact that it’s only actually used for creating the raid feast.
Beyond that, the remaining fish sell for 20g or less, and thus not worth it, IMO. In fact, Fishing in general is a pretty poor choice of gold-making activity unless you enjoy it specifically. It might seem exciting getting 40g per fish, or even nabbing a Midnight Salmon, but keep in mind you can get 5-7 herbs per node that sell for just as much.
Active Goldmaking in BfA: Warfront Contributions
The last two gold-making posts have been about “passive” income in Battle for Azeroth. What follows is what I have specifically been doing in an active way since the expansion launch.
Warfront Contributions
Holy shit, guys. If you were not online during the first four hours of the Alliance Warfront Contributions on a high-pop server… then I’m sorry. You can still make some coin, but probably not “selling a 2g item for 250g” level of coin.
Overall, I collected 120,000g in AH sales on Sunday, without expressly stockpiling anything.
Hand over fist.
Warfront Contributions are a week-long event in which max-level characters of a specific faction can turn in items for +500 Azerite Power and +75 reputation. There are two default turn-ins of 100g and 100 War Resources. The other nine turn-ins are “random” items from various professions.
This week for Alliance NA, we have:
- Coastal Mana Potion – 20x
- Meaty Haunch – 60x
- Monelite Ore – 60x
- Coarse Leather – 60x
- Battle Flag: Phalanx Defense – 1x
- Straddling Viridium – 15x
- Incendiary Ammunition – 2x
- Enchant Ring – Seal of Versatility – 3x
- War-Scroll of Intellect – 3x
- Donations: Gold – 100
- Donations: War Resources – 100x
If you’ll recall, Horde had a similar Contributions list two weeks ago:
- Steelskin Potion – 2
- Monel-Hardened Stirrups – 2
- Enchant Ring – Seal of Versatility – 3
- Crow’s Nest Scope – 6
- Great Sea Catfish – 60
- Straddling Viridium – 15
- Coarse Leather Barding – 2
- War-Scroll of Fortitude – 3
- Tidespray Linen – 60
So, the first thing to note is that the same item can appear week-to-week. This will severely complicate the notion of buying up stockpiles of items for the next turn-in. On the other hand, when certain items fall to levels that may as well be vendor priced, well… sometimes that 1000:1 odds may work in your favor. For example, people were selling the Crafting glove enchants for like 1g apiece. I bought 300 of them. Maybe they will become the turn-in in October, and I can make a killing. Maybe it won’t.
This leads to only note that matters:
Raw Materials Are King
I have consistently been purchasing any ore priced under 20g. The idea was to collect some spare mats to level up Blacksmithing and/or Engineering on an alt in the future, but it allowed me to capitalize on the fact that Monelite Ore went from 20g to 80g apiece. For those keeping track at home, this meant I made a profit of 12,000g per stack. I did not sell them in stacks though, of course, I sold them in auctions of 60 to match the Warfront quests.
Incidentally, I did not have a stockpile of Straddling Viridium ready to go when the Warfront Contributions went live; my bet was on Insightful Rubellite. But I do have a JC character, so let’s look at the prices of Storm Silver Ore and Platinum Ore…
Let’s do this thing.
It was barely above 25g, and that’s because I bought out everything below that amount. So, I prospected all that Storm Silver Ore, then cut all the Viridium and sold them in groups of 15, with each individual gem selling for 250g+. The precise numbers might have been needed to be crunched to see how I fared fishing for Viridium – it costs at least 125g every time I pressed that Prospect button – if not for the fact that every other outcome was pure bonus. Well, most of them. Owlseye is 580g and Kracken’s Eye is nearly 2000g. But then, someone decided to pay an absurd amount for even raw Rubellite and Kyanite for some reason, so my averages kept going up.
Do they know something I don’t? Who cares! I have always been a huge advocate for mild success over complete dominance, assuming the former takes a fraction of the effort as the latter. Besides, in a worst-case scenario, I simply prospect some more ore and compete with them on their secret strategy or whatever.
Some other easy wins on the Contribution list were Coarse Leather and Meaty Haunch. If you have a Skinner, they can drop from the same mobs, and hey, Blood-Stained Bone still sells for 35-50g apiece too. That’s practically a triple-threat all by itself. More farming tips will be in Friday’s post.
Strategy Going Forward
As with real life, the key to making bank via Contributions is owning the means of production. In this case, raw materials. Instead of stockpiling Coarse Leather Barding in anticipation of those items making a return, just bank a bunch of Coarse Leather instead. Profession alts are easy to make this time around, and one Leatherworker will let you take those materials and turn them into whatever you need crafted. Or in this week’s case, just sell the material straight-up.
While I recommend primarily raw materials, do keep an eye out to those selling below mat-cost just to recoup leveling costs. I’m note sure if any of those glove enchants will come up as an item turn-in, for example, but they sure as hell cost WAY less than the 5 Gloom Dust that it takes to craft them.
Passive Goldmaking in BfA, part 2
If you want to actively make gold in Battle for Azeroth, go farm some herbs.
If instead you want to kinda kick back and get a couple hundred gold a day for doing not much at all (assuming you played in these expansions), then stick around.
Garrison (Warlords of Draenor)
Oh how the mighty have fallen. Mostly.
Back in the day, your Garrison was printing gold every day with missions worth thousands of hard currency. All of that has been stripped out, to the point where even opening those salvage bags rewards gear that vendors for 5 copper. But here’s the thing: there’s still gold in them there hills. You just have to dig a little deeper.
Mission Table: Medallion of the Legion
If you have a level 3 garrison with full followers, there’s still the possibility of lucking into one of those missions that rewards a Medallion of the Legion. This is a reputation consumable still in high demand because it allows you to get that much closer to unlocking WoD flying. On Sargeras-US, the current price is 8222g but I sold one a month ago for 15,000g. It’s not consistent money, but it’s something worth checking out on occasion.
Garrison Resources
You will naturally accumulate up to 500 Garrison Resources (GR) every ~ 3 days per character. Additionally, if you have high-level followers and Garrison overall, there is the possibility of landing missions that reward up to 1650 GR by themselves.
Why does this matter? If you build even a level 1 Trading Post, you can turn GR into a few trade goods that still sell for a pretty penny. Those include:
- True Iron Ore (15.26g)
- Sumptuous Fur (8.82g)
- Raw Beast Hide (11.94g)
- Sometimes fish meat
With the best trader (changes daily), you can get 1 good for every 16 GR traded. If that good is worth 8g on average, then each individual GR is worth 50s. This means that the 500 GR you receive every few days is worth 250g, and those big GR missions can net the equivalent of 825g. This is not as lucrative or consistent as a MoP farm, but considering you likely have Garrisons on all your toons already, it’s decent coin for doing nothing other than logging into characters twice a week.
Hexweave Bags
Guess what? Hexweave Bags are still a thing. Somehow.
If you have a Tailoring alt, have them endure a loading screen or two and pump out a Hexweave Bag every 2-3 days. According to this Reddit thread, at peak efficiency the material cost is 116 Sumptuous Fur (1023g), 16 Gorgrond Flytrap (12g), and 10 Sorcerous Earth (98.5g). That’s 1134g in mats for something that still sells for ~1900g or more.
Incidentally, stop buying Hexweave Bags. Sell them, don’t buy them. Deep Sea Bags are also 30-slot bags, and at Rank 1 the material cost is 30 Deep Sea Satin (910g) and 15 Tidespray Linen (296g) and 9g in thread. Deep Sea Bag prices are crashing down currently, and sell for 1250g less than 1k gold (!!!) on Sargeras-US. That’s barely above Rank 1 material costs, but the bags are great for leveling up Tailoring, and the Rank 3 material cost is ~210g cheaper.
These prices are high because Tidespray Linen is almost 20g per cloth on Sargeras-US. That’s likely because a lot of the hyper-farms in BfA have been nerfed in the past few days, but I expect prices to lower over time naturally. This will drive down the costs for making Deep Sea Bags. Which appear to have zero bearing on the price of Hexweave Bags, but it’s something to keep in mind.
Primal Spirit Vendor
Have a bunch of Primal Spirits laying around? Convert them to gold, vendor-style!
Primal Spirits are BoP crafting materials that you used to earn in WoD content, much like Blood of Sargeras in Legion. Whether you have an unknown stockpile of them on one of your alts, or if you end up running Garrison Missions that have them as rewards, 25 Primal Spirits can be traded for a Savage Blood, which can be traded back to a Trading Post vendor for a bag which always contains ~50g and some change. So, in other words, each Primal Spirit is worth about 2g minimum.
You can technically trade Primal Spirits for other things, including BoP crafting materials like Hexweave Cloth and the like. However, the conversion rate is fairly abysmal for anything but the Savage Blood route. Technically, converting 500 Primal Spirits into one Hexweave Bag is an improvement – whatever Hexweave Bags are selling for vs 1000g – it it is not usually worth the hassle. And besides, who has 500 Primal Spirits hanging around? It’s much more likely to convert any of those “30+ Primal Spirit” Garrison Mission rewards.
Goblin Glider
No engineer? No problem! You can still craft Goblin Gliders with just the engineering hut active in your Garrison. The material costs are:
- 8 True Iron Ore (122g)
- 5 Sumptuous Fur (44g)
Since you receive 5 Goblin Gliders per craft, that comes out to be 33g per Glider. And you can currently sell them on the AH for… 30g. Oops.
Still, Goblin Gliders are worth checking out as a revenue stream once the prices of True Iron Ore and/or Sumptuous Fur come down. If we look at the median prices of these mats instead of their current prices, each Glider costs around 28g to make. That’s… still not even close to being worth it.
In any case, that’s that. Definitely not as good as the MoP farm, IMO, but it’s likely that you have a stable of alts with high-level Garrisons already, including a free hearthstone. As always, you could earn a lot more per hour by farming herbs or whatever in BfA zones. These “passive” income streams don’t require any thought however, and can easily fit into your warm-up or cool-down routines while playing.
Passive Goldmaking in BfA, part 1
If you want to actively make gold in Battle for Azeroth, go farm some herbs.
If instead you want to kinda kick back and get a couple hundred gold a day for doing not much at all (assuming you played in these expansions), then stick around. I might just blow your mind.
Sunsong Ranch (Mists of Pandaria)
Did you unlock all 16 slots in your MoP farm back in the day? Congrats on your free money.
Easiest/Quickest Sale: Spirit of Harmony (avg 480g/day)
Right now on Sargeras-US, one Spirit of Harmony is selling for around 300g apiece. If you plant Songbell Seeds in all the plots, you will generate 1.6 Spirits of Harmony per day, per character. A bag of Songbell Seeds has 10 “charges” and costs 30g, so your outlay is 75s per node (30g / 40) or about 7.5g per Spirit of Harmony.
Overall, you should be earning the equivalent of 480g without much thought or particular effort.
Medium-level Effort: trade in Spirit of Harmony (avg 707g-793g/day)
Keep in mind that Spirit of Harmony can also be exchanged for various other things, which can potentially be sold for more. The vendors will be in your faction hub in Vale of the Eternal Blossoms, and they sell things like this:
Most of these are not worth it, for the record.
For example, it’s possible that 20 Ghost Iron Ore (or 10 Ghost Iron Bars) will be worth more than a Spirit of Harmony by itself. On Sargeras-US, the price of Ghost Iron Ore is 22.1g apiece, so turning the Spirit of Harmony you just farmed (or bought on the AH) into 20 Ghost Iron Ore will net you 442g with six Motes of Harmony left over. Or looked at another way, each Mote of Harmony is worth 2 Ghost Iron Ore, so you should average 707g (32 * 22.1g) a day, assuming these prices.
To kick it up another notch, check the prices of Ghost Iron Bars. Right now, they are at 49.57g apiece on Sargeras-US, so having a Miner who can smelt bars will turn that haul into an average of 793g (32 / 2 *49.57g) a day.
Maximum Profits: Snakeroot Seed (avg 1016g-1428g/day)
Can we go deeper down the rabbit hole? Yes, we can. Specifically, Snakeroot Seed-deep.
Instead of planting Songbell Seeds, you plant Snakeroot Seeds. Now each node you harvest will result in 1 Trillium Ore (black or white) and 0-2 Ghost Iron Ore. The results are highly random: sometimes you will get 8 Trillium of each color, sometimes you will get 16 of one color. The total amount of Ghost Iron will also be random, but I typically net between 7-17 Ghost Iron Ore.
So, again, Sargeras-US figures:
- Black Trillium Ore: 91.5g
- White Trillium Ore: 53.96g
- Trillium Bar: 359.8g
- Ghost Iron Ore: 22.1g
- Ghost Iron Bar: 49.57g
Assuming a worst-case scenario, with the least-profitable outcomes: 1,016g (16 * 53.96g + 7 * 22.1g). If you achieve balance in all things, you can see 1428g (8 * 53.96g + 8 * 91.5g + 12 * 22.1g)
You may note that Trillium Bar is currently selling for well below material price (it takes 2 Trillium Ore of each color to smelt one bar). That’s because Alchemists can transmute 10 Ghost Iron Bars into 1 Trillium Bar all day long, with zero cooldown. That method is also below material cost, but it’s augmented by the fact that Transmute specialists can get Trillium Bar procs.
I’m listing Snakeroot Seeds last despite them being the most profitable because it’s inherently more risky. Spirits of Harmony is something that can be turned into all sorts of other things, as needed. The demand for them is constant, and high. Golden Lotus is selling for 188g apiece, for example, so you can technically turn that 300g Spirit of Harmony into 376g of Golden Lotus pretty quick. Meanwhile, it’s hard to tell who is buying Trillium Ore at these prices.
Bonus Round: Sky Golem (avg 2613g/day)
If you’re curious as to why people still need any of these materials, it’s probably because of Sky Golems. One of the required mats is an Engineering daily (x30) “transmute” which requires 10 Ghost Iron Bars. The other required material is Living Steel x30, which is a daily Alchemy transmute of 6 Trillium Bars (or 3 Trillium Bars and 3 Spirit of Harmony, with no cooldown).
If you bought everything off the AH, that would mean:
- 300 Ghost Iron Bars (14,871g)
- 30 Living Steel (55,730.1g)
- or 180 Trillium Bar (64,764g)
Considering the current price of Sky Golems are hovering around 149k, that is a tasty profit margin. Unfortunately, there is no way to speed up the Engineering transmute cooldown, so the Sky Golem can only be crafted after 30 full days. However, if you want to be a do-it-yourselfer, then a Snakeroot Farm will actually give you all the materials you would need to craft the Sky Golem from scratch. Eventually. I wouldn’t recommend it though, unless you don’t have the starting capital laying around.
…which you can certainly start accumulating by working your farm. Or actively farming BfA mats.
In An Age 
Beta for Azeroth
Sep 17
Posted by Azuriel
The expansion honeymoon phase is over for the WoW playerbase, and the rabble is’a rousing. To which I say, “about goddamn time.” The latest fuel on the fire? Ion Hazzikostas himself went into a Reddit AMA and basically said shit is broken on purpose. Which then led to this amusing exchange:
While it might not have quite the meme potential of EA’s “sense of pride and accomplishment” disaster, it remains one of those insidious bits of accidental truth that rusts out the suspension of disbelief. And lest you extend any sort of doubting benefits to Ion, just read his response to a question about the sad state of Resto Shaman thus far:
In other words, the design team knew that the spec was weak at launch, but felt like gear would fix the problem later, so they decided to do nothing. Did they end up buffing Shaman? Yes… “measurely,” with trepidation. But why wait for a hotfix if you already knew the interim was going to be bad? And more importantly: why make your players wait for the game to fix itself?
Look, I understand the delicate balance the devs are trying to make here. If Blizzard made Resto Shaman competitive in PvE from the beginning, they would have to nerf them in the future to ensure that the Mastery scaling (or whatever) didn’t make them clearly better than any of the other healers. Nerfing always feels bad. But do you know what else feels bad? Being gimped on purpose because there’s some master plan in which you become adequate later.
This perverse philosophy really explains everything that we have been seeing in Battle for Azeroth thus far. The wonky Warfront timing, for example, will “fix itself” later on when there are 3-4 of them running consecutively. Some Professions not having any use for some dungeon/raid crafting materials, is another exa…
Just kidding, none of the devs put any thought into Professions at all.
Or maybe they did, and they are just waiting to introduce the Expulsom Trader, ala the Blood of Sargeras Trader, into patch 8.1. That would certainly maintain the consistency of “reuse every aspect of the game’s design” method, which more and more seems like it’s done out fear of fucking up the formula than intentional design. But again, why wait? You know the solution, so just do it. Or be bold and make Expulsom/Sanguicell Bound-on-Account.
This entire fiasco reminds me of the advice I gave new bloggers six years ago: don’t “save” your best stuff. In the most charitable, optimistic scenario Blizzard is planning for the final months of the expansion to be fantastic. By then, everyone will have the appropriate Azerite Levels to use the outer rings of any gear drops right away, and there will be hundreds of new Azerite traits, and so on. It even jives with the way Blizzard has handled PvP gear looks for a long time – the first tier looks pretty generic, but by the end you are a proper badass.
The problem is… why should someone play during the broken part? I already used a WoW Token a few days ago, so I feel kinda stuck already, but if I had read this AMA before renewing, then I wouldn’t have. Everything that people praise about the expansion – the music, the questing, the general environment – is still going to be there after 8.1, or six months later, or whenever. I’m not suggesting that you go full Gevlon and essentially wait for the next expansion – which at this point, may end up having the same exact issues again – but waiting for 8.1 or 8.2 seems pretty ideal.
If you ever wondered what the deal was with people complaining about Destiny versus Destiny 2, this was precisely it. Or the Complete Edition of Civilization 5 versus Civilization 6 without expansions. Designers make mistakes, and that is okay. It means they are trying something new. What is not okay are designers who make mistakes, fix those mistakes, and then come out with a new product with the old mistakes baked in so they can sell you the solution all over again.
Posted in Commentary, WoW
11 Comments
Tags: AMA, Battle for Azeroth, Broken, Game Design, Ion Hazzikostas, WoW