Blog Archives
Why? Just why?
Why did I think it was a good idea to start playing Stardew Valley for the first time this weekend? The Fallout 76 Beta is coming out like tomorrow, and I decided it was a good idea to boot up a game that has already consumed 10 hours of my time in two days? Good lord.
As a side note, it’s amusing experiencing the same synapses firing off when I farm and plant crops as I do when playing survival games. It’s starting to make me wonder whether I like survival games, or if I have been using survival games to scratch the itch for farming simulators.
Either way, it’s trouble. I gotta do stuff this week.
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.
BfA: Quick Thoughts
The latest WoW expansion quietly came out yesterday. I say “quietly” because I actually had no idea it was supposed to be released on Monday, rather than the traditional patch Tuesday. It also felt rather seemless traveling to Silithus again, grabbing the Heart of Azeroth, and then continuing on with questing in a new area.
As an aside, I was momentarily confused with Magni talking about how “the soul of Azeroth” was basically a clock floor in a Titan cave somewhere. Did I miss something? I get from context that Azeroth has a gestating Titan soul or whatever, but why does it look like that, specifically? Did the Pantheon craft around the soul? Then I realized none of it matters, and I went on with my life.
I started completing some of the quest hubs on the demon hunter before I realized that what I should have been doing is hitting all the resource nodes instead. There really is no better time to gather herbs/ore than the first few days of a new expansion. Three seconds of mining translating into 70g worth of materials? Yes, please. Here are some tips:
MAKE SURE TO TALK TO THE PROFESSION TRAINERS
I was hitting nodes for almost an hour before I realized that getting 1 herb was not normal. As it turns out, you have to pick up the skills from the Herb/Mining trainers before you start getting normal yields. Make sure to stop by again once you hit 25/50 skill, so you can start getting the Rank 2 versions, which increases yields again.
Check in with the Trade Goods vendor
Ask a guard for directions, and then buy a bunch of the ingredients. The base-level Cooking recipe can be made entirely with four different vendor items, which is nice. Even nicer is the fact that you can turn around and sell these 20s ingredients for like 10g+ apiece on the AH. Take advantage of it while you can. Also, people will apparently buy your food too, so sell the excess.
Jewelcrafting is back
At least for now, anyway. I have had incredible success in buying BfA ore for 30g apiece, and then prospecting it away for gems that sell, uncut, for ~400g. Unless you get a red one, which sells for ~1500g because it can be cut into a +5% XP gem that sells for 2000g (prices have crashed a bit). Or take those gems and turn them into rings that sell for a few thousand gold more.
Maybe Buy and Hold Instead
While there was some easy gold early on from selling herbs/ore, I did notice that by the time I logged off for the night, prices were in freefall. There are a lot of reasons for that, but the main one is that nearly everyone is going dual-gathering and hitting nodes left and right.
It’s tough to know what prices things will stabilize at, but look at the requirements for Flasks and such: dozens and dozens of herbs for one Flask. Nobody will be raiding for a few weeks yet, and no one is going to bother Flasking while they level, so demand for Flasks is zero. However… in a few weeks, everyone and their mother’s main tank will be gobbling up bushels of herbs. So the likelihood of BfA herbs staying around 10g apiece is minimal. In particular, you might want to check on Anchor Weed, as it appears to be a herb that replaces other herb spawns, and thus is going to be more rare.
In fact, I just looked at the TUJ and slapped my forehead. Around 9pm yesterday the price for Anchor Weed was 53g. As of this post, it’s 182g. I just talked about prospecting ore at 30g apiece, right? Now Storm Silver is up to 88g. That particular train has probably left the station already, but this seesaw action is something to keep an eye on in the coming days.
Farm nodes and sell when the price is high, buy and bank mats when the price is low.
Finding the Zone
I continue to play Guild Wars 2 every day.
I also continue to make almost zero progress on the story.
That may not be technically accurate. I have completed Living Story Season 3, Part 3, e.g. the Winterberry Farm. I used the remaining gems I had left over from cashing out my gold years ago to purchase the missing LS3 parts (1, 2, 5), and then worked my way through the LS3:P1 to start generating that map’s currency. While I had read that the Winterberry farm is by far the best place to, well, farm things, I had not quite realized how bad the others could be. With Winterberries, all my alts can farm ~50 a day. All the other maps can only be farmed once per account, and I get maybe ~13 currency if I manage to find a zerg. Considering the reward is Ascended-level items (the best possible now and possibly forever), I probably should not complain that it could take me 10-20 days of constant farming to get those rewards. But comparably, it’s much worse.
Farming though, is just a symptom of my larger problem finding a class and spec I enjoy. A problem that I might have actually solved. See, I had chosen the Necromancer as my GW2 main, and actually geared her up pretty far. I still farm Winterberries for my other alts, such as the Thief and Engineer, but the more I play them, the more I realize that the Necromancer is better in every conceivable way.
There are three main areas one needs to concern themselves with in GW2’s combat. The first is survivability. Everyone has a self-heal ability, but it typically has a ~20 second cooldown and a lot of things can happen in those ~20 seconds. Plus, there is nothing worse than sitting at less than half health, desperately waiting to heal again, and having to choose between continuing your attack as normal or dancing around the edge of combat. To this end, it’s extremely nice to have some kind of ability or talent that allows you to gain health by attacking or some other means.
The second area is, well, AoE capabilities. As mentioned before, I very much enjoy the concept and execution of Pistol/Pistol Thief vis-a-vis Unload spam, but that is a decidedly single-target attack. Having to focus on just one mob at a time when there are 4-6 guarding your Winterberry node simply isn’t fun. Plus, it impacts your survivability insofar as unanswered cannon fodder can promote themselves to deadly threats if you ignore them.
The final area is ranged options. I honestly don’t understand how Warriors and Guardians and Thieves do it, but every time I have moved into melee range of a Champion/Legendary mob as part of a zerg, I have ended up eating dirt, hoping someone finds the time to rez me before the end of the event. Beyond the zerg though, and especially in the Winterberry farm area, there are Griffon enemies that take to the skies and rain down an extremely annoying (and surprisingly deadly) AoE in melee range beneath them. My Daredevil Thief deals well with grounded foes, but having to Dodge away and wait for them to land ain’t something anyone got time for.
But then there’s my Scourge. My beautiful, capable Scourge.
Scourge is the Elite-spec for the Necromancer and by far the most powerful character I have played. It has two healing abilities that also create a damage-absorbing bubble, on top of a 5-second debuff cleanse, on top of a debuff-transference skill (from off-hand Dagger), on top of passively gaining 10% of the damage I deal as HP, on top of having a Flesh Golem tank. The AoE capabilities of the Scourge as pretty much the benchmark of all other classes. And, as you might imagine, all of this is at range. Instant-hit range too, I might add.
It all honestly reminds me of leveling Warlocks in WoW. You know, running around DoT’ing half a dozen mobs at a time, and just standing there letting them beat on you as you they die one-by-one, healing you all the while. You can’t quite be that cavalier in GW2 given the level scaling and such, but it gets closer the better gear I get.
So, yeah. I’m having fun in GW2. Just not in a way that progresses the story as of yet.
Making Gold in Wildstar
If there is one thing that I hate in MMO websites, it is when people allude to the fact that they are making gold (etc) but never explaining how. What’s the point? Bragging rights? In fact, that frustration was my part of my impetus for creating Player Vs Auction House way back in the day (which later morphed into this site).
Preamble aside, allow me the great pleasure of presenting one bulletproof gold-making method in Wildstar and two more that depend on the obliviousness of AH shoppers:
No assembly (usually) required.
“But I’m not an Architect!” “The AH is flooded with these things!”
No, my friend. Sell them to… the vendors.
Bulletproof Method: Challenges
[Edit]: Carbine has since nerfed the vendor prices for many decor items, including the ones listed below, to about 60% of their prior value. The strategy still works, but not as quickly.
Extremely early on while leveling, I noticed that some of the Challenge options were awarding Decor. It’s kinda hard to get a handle on how valuable the Decor would be on the AH without seeing what it looks like, but there was one language I understood immediately: vendor price.
I’m going to be presenting you an Algoroc map to give you a few chances to nab the Chua-Tech Loading Arm (1.31g 79s) and the Shardspire Canyon FABkit (1.23g 74.1s). The following farming route is for Exiles only; I’m going to assume that a similar route exists for Dominion, but I have no such characters. Here it is:
Money Run #1
In text form:
- Swiftpaw Slayer: Kill the wolves. Since this is a fairly early-level quest, you might actually have a hard time finding enough mobs depending on the number of other players.
- Skug Egg Destroyer: Kill the spider-looking eggs that alert/explode when you get nearby. You can typically dodge all the normal mobs in here and just kill eggs, which only have a few hundred HP.
- Scrap Yard: Pick up items off ground. It is highly recommended that you finish area story first. Once finished, 90% of the mobs in the area go neutral, which makes it considerably easier to pick up the scrap. Don’t bother with trying for gold-level; just click the “x” once you hit silver.
- Skittering Slaughter: Kill the spiders. The lone spider mobs seem to count for more, but I’m not sure. As before, don’t bother going higher than silver medal. There’s technically another easy Challenge in here to run through eggs, but it’s only worth about ~24s.
There you go. The exact odds are unknown, but silver medals give you a 4x higher chance of getting the decor. Nab all four, and you’ll walk away with over 5g 3g in vendor loot for something that likely took you less than 10 minutes (assuming mount, already completed area). Challenges can be repeated every 30 minutes. The one downside of this reset period is that time only counts down while you are online.
And why the hell not, here are two more in Celestion that can award the same items:
Money Run #2
In text form:
- Dancing with Data: Perform a DDR-esque mini-game. If it’s your first time here, you’ll need to complete the quest at the same console to unlock the challenge. I recommend using the default Ctrl-F1-F3 buttons rather than trying to mouse-click them.
- Licking Lolli-Lopps: Click the mushrooms. This is actually a bit harder than it sounds, as you receive a low-gravity buff and have a tendency to lose all forward momentum when running around. There are some mushrooms higher up in the trees, but they’re tricky. High chance of out-right failure if there are other people doing this one.
Nab both, walk away with 2.5g. Nab all six, and you’re looking at possibly 7.5g 4.5g every 30 minutes until you can’t stand it any more. There’s always a chance the dice roll against you, but it sure beats whatever the hell else you were doing to make gold.
…or maybe not:
Vendoring the AH
That’s right, my friends. Despite the fact that most items default to their vendor price when you list them, somehow the AH gets stocked up with below vendor priced goods. While I fully expect things to be fixed soon – either with a patch or an add-on that will vacuum all these deals automatically – for now just keep in mind to check the vendor price when looking at items. For example:
Three-way profit.
There are actually three ways to profit here.
- Straight-up buy items to vendor. I don’t recommend vendoring mats (see below), but if you’re looking for quick cash, this is literally free money.
- Check Bid prices to see if they’re beneath vendor. This FABkit, for example, had a bid price of 1g and yet vendors for 1.79g. The guy was actually trying to sell it at 5g or whatever with his Buyout Price, so technically you could try and flip it if that’s your style. For now, I’ll take 79s profit for tying up 1g for ~24 hours or so. Also, keep in mind that just bidding for shit is a good way to nab normally expensive things.
- Create Buy Orders for less than vendor. This one is a bit trickier, because there is a minimum charge of 5s for Buy Orders; in other words, you’ll definitely want to put in a large order and otherwise do the math to make sure you’re coming out ahead. In my case, I basically put in an order for 100 of these items (it really doesn’t matter what they are) and each one I get is +1s to me. Low-margin, sure, but the overall principal can scale to whatever size you please.
Here’s a third-level method to making gold, and the one I assume many “I can’t tell you” players are doing:
Crafting the AH
One again, we’re focusing on ultimately selling things to vendors. But instead of looking at mats to vendor, we’re looking at mats to craft into vendor bait. Example:
Something like this, but better.
The above isn’t actually the best example, as the margin is (relatively) razor-thin here; mats cost 15.93s (2.6*3 + 8.13) and final product vendors for 24.87s, for a net profit of 8.94s. Will you churn through the crafting interface for almost 9s a cycle? Maybe. There’s crafting XP in it for whomever would rather do this than find a tree that drops Ironbark wood. Due to the nature of crafting, you might be able to toss a few copper towards additives that can morph the final product into a slightly more valuable vendor good.
The other professions should work the same in principal, although I don’t currently have a non-beginner Weaponsmith (etc) to try it out. Just keep in mind that all of the various components (Power Cores, etc) have their own costs, and also the vendor price seems to be a function of the overall stats of the item. For example, I “over-charged” a weapon (adding more stat points at the cost of chance of failure) and it increased the vendor price by 2s. Might not sound like much, but these margins can become important later.
____________
In any case, there you go: three methods of making gold in Wildstar. Needless to say, I highly recommend Challenge farming. It is profession agnostic, simple, and relies on nothing more than Carbine not nerfing anything. I have identified six Challenges worth more than a gold apiece, right in the starter zone for Exiles – now that you know about them, you can keep an eye out for similar payout in future Challenges for yourself.
Saw That One Coming
Just another Black Temple clear when…
What? Even monks can use them?
Ayep. Called that one.
The funny thing I realized, inbetween the tears, is how the error message is “You can never use that item.” Challenge accepted – I’m tweeting Ghostcrawler as we speak.
In An Age 