Recruiting Farmers

I think that the time has come to actually recruit some farmers, though not necessarily for herbs or ore as I know some people do; I have come to the conclusion that I now require someone to supply me with a steady stream of Eternals. Eternal Earth and Shadow are fine; I can’t move for those, got stacks and stacks on MacNeilly. The main issues are Fire, Air and Water; I need Fire for the daily ‘Titansteel’ smelt, daily ‘Cardinal Ruby’ transmute and transmuting ‘Earthsiege Diamonds’, Air for transmuting ‘Skyflare Diamonds’ and Water for ‘Eternal Belt Buckles’.

Come to think of it, I would probably pay for a steady supply of ‘Titanium Ore’ too, if I could get it at a reasonable price. This would leave me more time to play the market and maybe even get into a dungeon or raid for a change. I can’t remember the last time I was in a dungeon, never mind a raid. Well that’ll all change once I make my fortune. I’ve just realised that one of the benefits of spending all my time trying to make gold is that I am actually really looking forward to getting back into raids and dungeons. I may even level up MacNeilly to 80 as well, as the idea of questing no longer fills me with dread (well ish…)

~McRaffles

What's the Point

Apologies for the lack of recent posts, I have absolutely no excuse other than work has been distinctly hellish this last week or so and I have not been playing that much Warcraft either. I have however, still managed to scan the auction house and keep up with posting my epic, rare and meta gems and also the odd eternal belt buckle or two. Even though the bottom seems to have fallen out of the purple and green rare gems market, I am still selling red, yellow and blue and metas with no real issues apart from an average 5-10% drop in prices across the board.

I did quite a lot of prospecting over the weekend and replenished my stocks quite a bit. I also enjoyed a fair amount of good luck when prospecting Titanium, with an average of 3-4 epic gems per stack (the average was raised quite a lot from one particular stack yielding no less than 6 epic gems.

I have been on the lookout for cheap(ish) Cardinal Rubies without much joy and I have also invested a fair amount into the Eternal market; Eternal Fires for daily Titansteel Bar and Cardinal Ruby smelt/transmute, Eternal Air for transmuting Skyflare Diamonds and Eternal Water for crafting Eternal Belt Buckles. I have more than enough Eternal Earth and Shadow from mining. As usual all mined Saronite is split 70/30 into prospecting and bars respectively and all Titanium is prospected too.

After investing about 800g on Eternals I am now sitting at just under 41,000g. At least it’s still heading in the right direction. I’m not actually sure what I’m expecting to achieve from this, I don’t believe that I am looking to reach the ‘gold cap’; 214748g though obviously obtainable just seems like too much effort. I play Warcraft for fun; I go to work for work (or sometimes to write this blog). I think that I’m probably going to aim for around the 120,000g mark, then I can invest in a ‘Battered Hilt’, a mount with vendors on it and probably whatever is the best available Ring of the Kirin Tor at that time. This should also leave me enough to buy a couple of high end BoE epics and leave a nice little cushion to go into ‘Cataclysm’ with. And whilst I can’t ever see me giving up playing the market for good, it would be nice to be able to just dabble occasionally.

~McRaffles

Market Spikes

I would just like to thank ‘Bobreaze’ for his comment on my last post; we seem to have amassed about the same amount of cash and are investigating similar markets. This should be an interesting experiment, to see how two guys on different servers get on in the gold making stakes, I, for one, am looking forward to seeing how it works out – not that’s it’s a competition or anything :)

Oh and still on the subject of his comment, he said that he was going to post in his blog (see link in my Favourite Sites on the right) on the value of ‘Titanium Shield Spikes’. I don’t know how he gets on with them, but I personally will be leaving that area of the market to others on my server. For me they give too little reward versus crafting materials and take an age to sell. I’ll just stick to my gems and belt buckles and keep an eye open for any other opportunities.

A fairly profitable weekend, as of this morning I now have 31.7K in cash.

~McRaffles

Friday Gold Update

Not really a lot happening at the moment. Last night I crafted and posted a few ‘Titanium Shield Spikes’ and ‘Eternal Belt Buckles’, the usual selection of rare, epic and meta gems and a few Titanium Bars. I woke up this morning with most of it sold and a running total of 25.5k in the bank, happy days.


Have a great weekend and I’ll catch you next week.

~McRaffles

Making Warcraft Gold

I haven’t really had a lot of time online the last couple of days, however it doesn’t take long to do a Jewelcrafting daily, create an Icy Prism, smelt my daily Titansteel and transmute a Cardinal Ruby. I decided to use up a few Jewelcrafting tokens by adding a couple more rare gem cuts to my inventory and as the mining circuits were pretty busy I even gathered a few herbs (got a nice amount of Frost Lotus too).

The rest of my limited time was spent at the Auction House. I spread about my usual cut Epic Gems plus a healthy sprinkle of cut Rare and Meta Gems for good measure. I also sold a couple of Titansteel Bars but the price has plummeted recently so I thought I’d save the rest for later. I had accumulated a few stacks of Titanium Powder with all my recent prospecting and as it is as rare as rocking horse shit on my server at the moment, I have been drip feeding them onto the market with some success.

As of this morning I am up to just under 24k, which, for me, is not a bad rise for minimal effort.

~McRaffles

Guilty Secret

Away from the subject of accumulating wealth for a moment, I was kindly invited to run normal Nexus on my Level 71 Pally by a guild-mate of mine (Hey Adam) the other day. The run fell through however I was appalled to realise that I was actually quite relieved that it had. To explain; I (slowly) got MacNeilly to 70 through The Burning Crusade as a mainly Protection spec’d solo leveller. I had not read any class guides, forums or websites and was just really messing about. I never ran (m)any dungeons, and therefore did not inflict my obvious 'FailPlayerness' on other people. It wasn’t until I began playing McRaffles that I that I started researching my class and actually learned how to play a Rogue, what gear to get, what gems and enchants to go for and what rotations to use. Since WoTLK I had only ever used MacNeilly as a Miner and Blacksmith. I respecced him as a cookie-cutter Retadin for no other reason than to make it a little easier to get him to 80, if I ever got around to it. But mainly he just cruised around Icecrown and Sholazar Basin mining nodes, running and bubbling when jumped and basically doing a good job of taking care of business. Then came the call to arms; I could (and probably should) have just turned down the offer and carried on mining, however, I believe that if a guildie calls and you are free, then you should always lend a hand.

I now feel obligated motivated to learn to play a Retadin properly, if for no other reason than to not look like a complete prune if I ever take him into a dungeon.

~McRaffles

Gold 'n' Gems

This weekend I was mainly just mining in Icecrown on MacNeilly and sending the proceeds off to StoneKold for prospecting. I have a strange little ritual that I carry out when prospecting, I don’t know if it helps but I always do it lie this: I prospect Saronite Ore until I get 3 single uncommon gems in a row, then and only then do I prospect some Titanium. If I get 2 uncommon gems or an uncommon and a rare gem from the Saronite then I just keep going until I get 3 singles in a row. As I say, I don’t know if this does any good but I do seem to get 2 to 3 epic gems per stack of Titanium quite consistently.

I currently make most of my epic gem cash from Cardinal Rubies cuts (Bold, Runed and Delicate mostly). I have a decent stock of most of the other epics; however I am not really that sure of the best cuts. I read on an older JMTC post that says:

Yellow - Rigid, Smooth and Quick

Blue - Solid
Purple - Sovereign, Glowing, Purified
Green - Enduring, Jagged
Orange - Accurate

I honestly don’t have a clue and was planning to go trawling through some class specific guides and websites to get a better idea. I would also appreciate any feedback. I’d rather not waste my precious Jewelcrafting Tokens if I could help it. I am also making a steady income through transmuting Skyflare Diamonds and cutting them into Chaotic Skyflare Diamonds. Also transmuting my spare Saronite bars into Titanium Bars and AH’ing them still brings in a decent return. Not doing too bad though, just under 19.5K as of 05:15 this morning.

-McRaffles

Happy New Year

Well that’s the festivities over for another year. I hope that you received everything you wanted and you feel better after the over-indulgences. Me, I was glad to get my Merrymaker title and get the Feast of Winter Veil achievement under my belt. That just leaves the ‘Lunar Festival’, ‘Love is in the Air’ and ‘Children’s Week’ to go until I get the ‘What a long strange trip it’s been’ meta-achievement and the coveted Violet Proto-Drake.

I also, as previously intimated, decided to replace Skinning and Leatherworking with Herbalism and Alchemy on McRaffles. I am happy to report that they are now both maxed out and I have been enjoying transmuting titanium and gems and making flasks and elixirs. I decided to go Transmute spec and have had some great bonuses so far. This coupled with my extensive mining and jewelcrafting has had the remarkable effect of bumping my finances up from about 3.5K a week before Christmas to 15K this morning. ChaChing!

I know that some people say they can make that in a good week from playing the Auction House but it is the most money I have ever had in one go and I am thoroughly enjoying its gradual increase. There have been some great bonuses from the recent patch, one of which is that Frozen Orbs have plummeted in price and you can now pick them up for a song. This certainly takes the sting out of my daily Icy Prism. I have also been doing some serious mining too and sometimes it seemed I was the only miner in Icecrown. I currently have a hundred Titanium Ore ready for prospecting and over a thousand Saronite too. So with all this and my daily Titansteel and Epic Gem I am looking forward to a very prosperous New Year.