Get rich quick (or at least, as quick as possible)

The money has been rolling in better than I expected. Since the other day I've now made numerous trips out to Sholazar Basin to mine saronite, and I've made two complete sets of Savage Saronite Battlegear as well as selling stacks of ore directly. The first set sold almost completely (the only piece that didn't sell was the gauntlets, which is a shame because they're about the highest priced); the second set is up for sale as I speak and I'll check later to see if there's been as much interest as there was for the first set. After buying my bird the other day I had a bit over six hundred gold; last night I was up to almost two thousand.

The fast bird makes things very much easier for gathering ore. The full set of armour requires two hundred and four chunks of ore, as I mentioned in the last post; even with others mining around (some of whom are greedy, rude bastards) I can collect that much in something like an hour. Most times I've also been able to collect enough titanium to cover a day or two's manufacture of titansteel bars (Kate currently has a stack of fifteen bars; once this stack is complete I'll start making my own stack again and then probably make two complete sets of titansteel armour, one set each for me and Kate).

I mentioned before that the saronite deposits also often yield crystallized earth and crystallized shadow, both necessary for making the saronite armor (actually they need the 'Eternal' equivalents - ten crystallized X converts to one eternal X). However the armor requires crystallized fire, air and water (and the titansteel bars need fire) - and that doesn't come from saronite deposits (titanium deposits often throw up crystallized fire but those deposits are rare; cobalt deposits give crystallized water reasonably frequently, but I don't really have time to mine cobalt just for the crystallized water; I have no idea what mineral nodes might yield crystallized air).

Kate mentioned that the water elementals in and around the lakes in south-east Wintergrasp often drop crystallized water, and I also found that the fire elementals further east, and the air elementals to the south, are similarly the best sources for crystallized fire and air, so I've been starting out the last couple of days by taking a trip into Wintergrasp to gather these things before moving on to Sholazar, and for the most part it's been fairly quick - the revenants in particular usually drop at least two pieces of crystallized X, so grabbing enough to make a couple of days' supply doesn't take long.

Unfortunately all this mining means that other things have had to fall by the wayside for the time being; I still haven't managed to get to Warsong Gulch and all my outstanding quests are still there waiting to be completed.

What's more, one of the biggest hurdles I have now is that my reputation with various factions is nowhere near high enough for me to buy certain items that I want. For example, the Alliance Vanguard quartermaster in Valiance Keep has blacksmithing plans that I want, but my rep with the vanguard is too low right now.

So at the moment here are my priorities: first, get my cash up to around 6,000. At that point I'll decide whether or not I want to spend a thousand on dual spec to that I can work as a healer or perhaps a tank in the battlegrounds. Second (and I can be doing something about this between mining runs) run quests or do whatever else I need to do to push my rep up with a number of factions - the Alliance Vanguard and the Sha'tar, just for starters. Third, get into more battlegrounds; I need honour points and marks of honour to be able to buy some better gear (if it's better than stuff I can make, that is).

So for example the plan for later today is: go to Wintergrasp if necessary to pick up more crystallized X; move on to Sholazar and mine saronite; then see what I can to to increase my rep with the Sha'tar (probably - maybe I'll try the vanguard first) and if there's any time left after that lot, see about getting into a battleground or two.

Acceleration

I mentioned before that I'd decided on a target of 6,200 gold before I bought my epic flying mount; this would cover the training (5,000) and the cost of the bird (around 200) and leave me about 1,000 in the bank so that I wouldn't be completely broke.

I dropped my target to 5,500 last night, for the simple reason that while mining around Sholazar Basin I was getting beaten to one saronite deposit after another by two or three other guys mining the area. The final straw was one bastard who jumped on a deposit while I was standing next to it, delayed a couple of seconds because I fat-fingered my keyboard.

I had a little over 5,000 at the time, so I was desperate to get the extra I needed. However a while ago I lent Kate eight hundred gold (I think it was when we bought our first flying mounts) and when she saw my distress (i.e. the fact that I was getting truly pissed off) she paid it back, and it couldn't have been a better time.

I immediately hearthstoned back to Dalaran (Kate was right behind me), got flight training from the trainer at Krasus' Landing (the Dalaran flight platform) then bought a swift blue gryphon for a hundred and eighty gold.

What a difference. I flew the new gryphon back to Sholazar rather than taking a rented bird, and I swear it was faster (I'm going to time a couple of flights to compare - it'd be interesting to know for sure). Once there, I got back to ground-hugging saronite mining, and even though those other guys were still there I managed to collect over two hundred ore chunks in a fairly short time. My target was two hundred and four - enough to make a complete eight-piece set of Savage Saronite Battlegear armour.

Once I had all that ore I went back to Ironforge, made the armour and put it up for auction; if it all sells it should make about four hundred or so - enough to get me back up to about a thousand in the bank, right where I'd planned to be.

What to do, what to do...

Cooking

I'm at 442, just eight points short of max. I also have a main bank slot full of cooking ingredients, and I need that space. Plan: cook eight more items to max out, then sell everything except succulent clam meat and musselback sculpins. After that, I can live on grilled sculpin and dalaran clam chowder.

Mining and Blacksmithing

Both maxed. Last night I mined about ninety chunks of saronite ore, and about a dozen cobalt ores, smelted them to bars and put them up for auction. I also had something like a dozen quite high value items for sale. I'm not expecting everything to sell but I should at least push over the 5,000 gold mark.

Battlegrounds

It turns out that I only have one more battleground to fight in to complete the one quest I mentioned yesterday - Warsong Gulch - so the plan is to get in there as soon as possible. Also, I still have to be in Alterac Valley during an Alliance win.

Quests

I still have a herd of old quests in Dragonblight and Storm Peaks, which I guess I'll get to eventually.

In General...

At this time I think my best plan is to continue mining and blacksmithing for stuff to sell, interspersed with runs in battlegrounds for honor points and also to break the monotony of mining.

Battlegrounds

Quite some time ago (October last year, actually) I mentioned here that we'd had a go at the Alterac Valley battleground and that it hadn't worked out too well; Kate's system was just too slow for one thing and mine wasn't much better.

All that same that hasn't stopped her from going battling recently. Having taken on Wintergrasp a few times she got the bug, and now the first thing she does when going into the game is to check how long we have until the next Wintergrasp battle.

I've joined in a few times too, although frankly until we both get machines with faster processors and graphics cards, I've pretty much decided I can't handle the main action - when the Horde come through the fort wall things turn into a free for all with probably forty or fifty players on screen, and my system has a hard time keeping up. It's easier to move away and perhaps take on one of the towers to the south or at least move outside the walls and take on horde that have separated from their main force.

Wintergrasp isn't the only battleground, though, and we've been trying out in some of the others - including Alterac Valley, the place that gave us so much trouble before. As it happens we have quests involving battlegrounds; for example I have one that just involves going through one battle in each of five battlegrounds (win or lose) - if I remember right I have two more to hit to complete that - and another that'll be complete when I'm on the Alliance side when we win in Alterac (the one time I've been in ended up a draw).

The battlegrounds are fun - more fun, I'd say, than Wintergrasp, because there are hard limits on the numbers of players that can be in the instance. Wintergrasp is not an instance; it's a complete zone that happens to be set so that you go PvP just walking in (or riding, or flying, although it's a no-fly zone and you get dismounted with ten seconds if you go in on a flying mount) and it seems that there are no fixed limits on the number of players - each raid party is limited to forty players but from the look of things it's possible to start a second party once the first is filled. The result is complete and utter mayhem. There's a rumour that the latest patch (which may very well be activated today) will address this by adding a queue system to Wintergrasp, like the regular battlegrounds.

Anyway I'll continue battling; I'll make a start by completing battles in those last two grounds that I need, then I'll take on Alterac again until my side gets a win.

In the meantime, though, I still have priorities - I'm still building up the cash reserves toward getting my epic flying mount, so I've been mining and blacksmithing to make items to sell (and incidentally, two items I made last night gave me the last two points I needed to max out my blacksmithing at 450). My gold reserves are just a few hundred shy of the five thousand mark and I have a number of fairly valuable items up for auction which, if they sell well enough, will tip me over that mark.

My target is currently 6,200 gold - that's enough to pay for the Artisan level riding training (5,000) and a bird (190-200 depending who I buy it from) and still have a thousand left in the bank. That may change, though - there have been rumours that the prices are coming down with this new patch. We'll see about that.

Mad Max

Since the last post I've been concentrating on continuing to push my blacksmithing skill and as such, pretty much all I've done is to go out into various areas mining for materials. As I mentioned last time, there's plenty of cobalt all over Northrend - especially in Zul'Drak, Borean Tundra and Dragonblight - so it wasn't hard to get from 350 to 400 and I think it was somewhere around there that the plans I was learning began to include saronite.

At that time I started mining Sholazar Basin pretty much exclusively. There are some saronite deposits to be found in Icecrown and Wintergrasp (and I think I've seen a couple around the Storm Peaks) but Sholazar is definitely the place to go.

Unfortunately every other miner knows that too, so there are times when it can take time to gather everything you need because there are just so many others grabbing the stuff as fast as they can find it. All the same I worked up a tactic, and a strategy, that seemed to help.

The tactic is quite simple and relies on the fact that most of the people who have fast birds, and use them to beat me to mineral outcrops, tend to fly high. I found that on my slower bird, if I stay much lower - hugging the ground - I can still spot an outcrop at the same distance and have a slight edge in getting to it. The Crusader Aura helps a bit, I'm sure, because it gives a twenty percent boost to mounted speed. There is one guy I've seen around Sholazar a few times, an Orc flying an epic dragon, and while he's beaten me to the punch most times there have been several times where being closer to the ground got me to the saronite just ahead of him.

The strategy works like this: at every five points many of the 'orange' plans that are guaranteed to make you a skill point turn to yellow. At the same time the Grand Master blacksmithing trainer in Valiance Keep (and presumably the trainers in Dalaran and Valgarde) has new orange plans. The trick is to look at all the new plans and select the item that takes the least amount of materials; often there will be more than one that'll work (for example I think there are plans for cobalt helms and boots that both take four cobalt bars) and in that case I generally picked the item that had the higher market value at the auction house. Also it helps to pick things that don't have expensive extra ingredients that you'd have to buy - for example some items require Eternal Earth or Eternal Shadow and those aren't a problem because I found you get a fair amount of Crystallized Earth and Shadow from the saronite deposits; on the other hand some plans call for Eternal Air, and Crystallized Air just isn't in evidence so you'd probably have to buy the stuff.

Once you've picked the best item to make, figure out how much material you need to make five of them (that is, look at the plans and multiply everything by five). Now go mining until you have what you need, then go back to the forge and make your five items. Go back to the trainer, get the next set of plans, and repeat as necessary.

I was able to do this and because of the sheer amount of cobalt and saronite around I didn't have to fast-track the process by buying ore or bars from the auction house, so for the last few days my money reserves haven't been draining away.

This strategy works fine up to 435. There it breaks because at that point all of your orange plans turn yellow and the trainer has no more plans until you hit 440. It's possible that there are plans you can buy from a vendor, like the adamantite ones I had to get from Telredor earlier, but I wasn't able to find any. In any case the best bet seems to be to pick one of the newly-yellow plans (likely the same plan you used to get from 430 to 435) and go grab enough material to make ten of them. Yellow means that you should average a point for every two items you make - you can't count on that but if you've got enough to make ten then you should be at least close to 440 by the time you're done. It worked for me.

At 440 you get a bunch more plans - but now you have another problem because these all require titansteel. Lucky for me I had my stack of twenty so I was able at least to make a couple of points, and while I was at it I made for myself a Titansteel Destroyer - a two handed mace that does some serious damage. I'll probably make another one, because those things are worth around a thousand gold at auction and I could really use the cash right now.

Since then I've made a few more things, including a couple of saronite items from 'green' plans that through sheer luck made me two points. As a result I am, if I remember right, at 447 or 448 (you think I'd remember something like that, but I really can't be sure until I look again).

As I mentioned, my money pile hasn't been shrinking but at the same time it hasn't really been growing either. Some of the items I made have sold, but many haven't and in particular this mostly includes the high value items. I was able to sell one titansteel item for close to five hundred, but I've had two shields, a helm and a breastplate - each worth over four hundred - up for auction for a couple of days without a bite. It's a bit frustrating because at the moment I'm back down below the four thousand gold mark in the bank and money from those sales would be enough to get me up to five thousand. I can't make people buy them, unfortunately. If they bounce back to me I think my best option would be to try to hawk them on the trade channel at, say, twenty-five percent below market.

Being so close to maxing out the blacksmithing, there isn't the urgency any more to go mining so often (although I still have to provide Kate with eight saronite bars each day so that she can make titanium to help with the titansteel bars - of which I'm continuing to make one every day). As such I'm now free to pursue other things. Kate's been battling in Wintergrasp, sometimes two or three times a day, and I've joined in a few times too. We created a 2v2 arena team, although we've still got to get to an arena and have a go (I know we'll get cut to bits, at least at first, but I'm still anxious to try it). I've got a stack of old quests in Dragonblight and Storm Peaks to close out. There are a stack of achievements to go after. And of course, I can mine and smith for stuff to sell to keep some cash coming in, so that I might eventually get my fast flying mount. There's plenty to do.

Grand Master

It's taken a while but I finally managed to get blacksmithing up to 350 points.

Since the last post here I was able to get hold of enough thorium to get to 300 and at that point I began to get plans using fel iron. I bought some when it was cheap, to speed things along, but I also spent a lot of time around Hellfire Peninsula and Zangarmarsh mining the stuff. Unfortunately I'm not the only one out there so the pickings were a bit slim at times.

All the same I was able to push through to 335 in a fairly short time and then I started getting some adamantite plans, including a couple I bought at Telredor. By that time I already had a small stock of adamantite bars but I bought some cheap ore to help along again.

With the final stock of materials in hand I was able to get to the 350 mark at the forge in Stormwind; I dumped the stuff I'd made in the auction house (if it sells I should recoup around four hundred gold) then took the boat to Valiance Keep and hit the Grand Master blacksmithing trainer.

So now I'm a Grand Master, and along with that I got a handful of cobalt plans. I should be able to dump the excess thorium, fel iron and adamantite that's clogging up my bank slots and use the space for cobalt and saronite going forward.

Things should be a bit cheaper now; Northrend is teeming with cobalt deposits so it shouldn't be hard to gather all I need without needing to buy from the auction house, and I generally don't have much of a problem gathering saronite either - on one circuit of Sholazar Basin a couple of weeks ago I was able to pick up a hundred and eighteen ores in half an hour or so.

So I'm hoping that getting that last 100 points to max out at 450 won't take too long now. By the time I get to that point I should be able to make us some exceptionally good titansteel armour.

On the subject of titansteel I have a stack of nineteen bars in the bank and the one I make today will complete the stack. Should I sell it? That stack would give me a one-time hit of around 1,300 gold. But it took three weeks to make it and I may need a stack like that when it comes time to start making our own stuff. I think I may hold onto it until I have a better idea of when I'll be able to make titansteel items and how much stuff they take.

Armo(u)rsmith

The armoursmith quests were bugging me and I decided I just wanted to get them out of the way, so I made a big push to get them all finished. If I'd done things the 'right' way - by mining all the mithril I needed myself - I'd still be doing this a week from now, so I checked the auction house and found ore at a decent price. Added to what I already had in the bank it was enough. All that remained was the work of running around to get the quests, making the necessary articles, and closing out.

It all begins in Ironforge where Grumnus the armoursmith trainer gives you a quest to make three types of ornate mithril armour - but you can't make it right away because the plans are rewards for other quests that you have to complete along the way. Worse, he doesn't tell you where you have to go to get started.

The first step is actually to see Hank the Hammer at the forge in Stormwind, who asks you to make six mithril scale bracers. He'll then send you off to Booty Bay to see a guy called McGavan; in turn he sends you off to find Galvan the Ancient, who's at a forge in the middle of nowhere, up in the northeast of Strangethorn Vale.

Galvan then gives you three quests to gather a bunch of materials (one hundred and twenty mithril bars, forty iron bars, five truesilver bars and four citrines) - this is where I fast-tracked by buying the mithril to save time. Iron's not a problem; there's plenty around the Arathi Highlands so one trip out there was enough to take care of that pretty quickly. As it happened I had enough truesilver sitting in the bank, as well as a couple of citrines (I had to buy two more to fill the quota). All that remained was to smelt that lot into bars and take it back to Galvan.

The reward for each quest is the plan for another kind of ornate mithril armour - but unfortunately none of these are the ones you need for Grumnus back at Ironforge. Once you have all three the next step is to run across to the far side of the world to see Trenton Lighthammer in Gadgetzan.

Lighthammer then gives out three more quests, each to make some more items for him, so there's yet more mithril involved as well as other materials. As it happened I'd made sure to get plenty of mithril so it was only the other materials that I had to get together, and that didn't take long.

In return for completing these quests Lighthammer teaches you how to make the three items that Grumnus asked for at the start, so finally it's off back to Ironforge and then buy or gather the materials (I bought) and make the items.

Finally you present these to Grumnus and presto, you're an armoursmith.

Completing this cleaned a stack of low level quests off my list and made two more armour plans available, with more to come as I continue to push the skill level up. It also freed me up to get back to the main task, which is to get the blacksmithing level up as fast as possible. This diversion was worth it, I hope, because it took time away from mining thorium that I need for blacksmithing skill points and also cost money that I haven't been putting back. I'm something like a thousand gold down from where I was a week ago, but on the positive side I'm up to 290 in skill points - just ten points away from being able to learn a stack of new plans and hopefully to be able to put the thorium mining behind me in favour of better areas with more abundant materials. Frankly, I'm getting sick of the sight of the Eastern Plaguelands.

I'm planning on taking a break first, to get some other quests done and mine some higher value metals to auction to try to get the money situation fixed. I really want to get that epic flying mount.

Master Blacksmith

I reached skill level 275 at blacksmithing and got Master level training yesterday. I also spent some time chasing a series of low level quests that should ultimately make me an armorsmith, but the next step requires a hundred and twenty mithril bars (I have thirty-four, I think) so that'll take a little while. In the meantime I think I still need some thorium but I'll be shifting to higher level materials very soon.