Getting There!

I finally attained the ‘Lunar Festival’ achievement on Friday night, pugging Azjol-Nerub and 3/2 guild run/pug on Utgarde Pinnacle (Thanks guys, especially Fli). Thank goodness, no more visiting Elders [I love this]. So just ‘Children’s Week’ to go for the Violet Proto-Drake. To tell the truth, I’m not looking forward to most of the battleground achievements, but we’ll see how it goes.

I’ve decided that, not before time, I will have to bite the bullet and gear up McRaffles a bit, prior to the release of Cataclysm. So as I don’t really have time for raiding, I’m just going to have to do Heroics for Emblems of Triumph and the odd Emblem of Frost. Then I can make up the difference by blowing a chunk of my hard earned cash on some BoE epic upgrades.

After reading the latest patch-notes, I have sold all of my Titansteel Bars as they will probably plummet in price once the cool-down is removed. I have also tried to buy Frozen Orbs but I was too late to cash in on last weeks price of 7g each and had to be happy with picking up the few that were still going sub 15g. It looks like the price is still rising, so I may just see where it stops and relist them for a profit.

I was asked by a RL friend who also has a Jewelcrafter and an Alchemist about which epic gem cuts I usually go for, so I decided to pass on the main cuts I use, this is by no means a definitive list, and by all means I would welcome any comments as to what you think may be better, it is just what I’ve found to be the best seller (not just quickest) for each epic gem type on my server:

Red      –  Cardinal Ruby      –  Bold        –      +20 Strength

Yellow  –  King’s Amber      –  Rigid        –     +20 Hit Rating

Blue      –  Majestic Zircon    –  Solid        –     +30 Stamina

Purpl e  –  Dreadstone          –  Purified     –    +12 SP +10 Spirit

Orange  –  Ametrine             –  Luminous  –    +12 SP +10 intellect

Green   –  Eye of Zul             –    I don’t bother cutting, I just try and sell raw.

Meta    –  Skyflare Diamond  –  Chaotic    –    +21 Critical Strike Rating and 3% Increased Critical Damage

After making a few investments (fingers crossed), I currently have a little over 92,000 gold.

~McRaffles

Onwards and Upwards

Apologies for the lack of recent updates, a mix of RL mishaps and being real busy at work has seriously impeded my ability to blog. So, what’s been happening in-game? Well let’s start with McRaffles achieving ‘Love Fool’ last weekend. After making a concerted effort this week, I only require two Dungeon Elders for the ‘Lunar Festival’ achievement. Being a rogue I managed to solo all the others (mainly thanks to WoWHead). The two left however, (Azjol-Nerub an Utgarde Pinnacle) are not possible to solo, so I should hopefully manage to pick up a group for them either tonight or over the weekend then it’s only ‘Children’s Week’ to go (sigh).

On the gold making front, as I am still plodding away at the holiday achievements, I have not really been concentrating too much on accumulating wealth. Still, even with minimal effort I have raised my working capital to just over 83,000 gold. I now have an extremely kind gentleman who will supply me with Eternal Airs, Waters and raw Chalcedony at a very reasonable price. This will go a long way to supporting the seemingly insatiable demand for Eternal Belt Buckles and Chaotic Skyflare Diamonds.

I had one of those rare occurrences happen to me last night whilst carrying out my daily epic gem transmute, for the first time ever I saw the amazing sight of ‘X5 Cardinal Ruby’ pop up. That made me very happy, I had experienced X2 a few times and even X3 once or twice, but that was a first for my daily transmute, not wanting to sound greedy or anything, but I hope it isn’t the last.

~McRaffles

Nearly a Love Fool

I cracked on a fair bit with my ‘Love is in the Air’ achievement last night; I finished the ‘Lonely?’ and ‘Sweet Tooth’ together then ‘Nation of Adoration’ (I still have a problem finding my way around The Exodar). I then completed the Goblin Quest-line ‘Dangerous Love’ I think it's called. I was a bit gutted that I wasted a ‘Love Fool’ outside Naxx by the Summoning Stone, but it turned out okay as I was invited to join a group by a guy who saw my failed attempt (I guess he Pitied the Fool twice that day :P ). I then hoofed it down to the Battle Ring of Gurubashi Arena in Stranglethorn Vale and crossed that one off too. That means that I only have Wintergrasp, CoS and Arathi Basin left for that achievement, no worries.

Apart from finishing of the last three ‘Pitied the Fool’ locations, I only had ‘My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose’ to go, so I decided to try and get a group together for Utgarde Keep – normal, the easiest of the three dungeons that have bosses that drop the Roses. I thought that 4 or 5 level 80’s would breeze through to the first boss in no time at all – the problem was that I couldn’t get anyone interested. All my guildies were otherwise engaged, so I decided to hit up Dungeon Finder to join a group; between 20–25 minutes later I eventually get into a group of a couple of 71’s a 72 and a 76. I let them know that I was not interested in rolling on anything other than the Roses from the first boss and we buffed up and headed out. Out druid tank was fine, though a little rusty as he confessed he hadn’t bear-tanked for quite a while and everyone seemed to be pulling their weight fine. I had a few aggro stealing problems (obviously) however with judicious use of ‘Tricks of the Trade’ on the tank, all seemed to be going well (if a little slowly).

We cleared the trash and got to Prince Keleseth – I TotT the tank and open up with everything – the Prince is no more. I pass on the blue whatever he drops and need on the Roses – nice, wait up – someone else needed too – WHAT? I wait with baited breath and of course the gods of RNG shit on me – I roll a 16 and he gets an 84, I can’t believe it. He comes out with some rubbish about needing by accident – yeah right!! Then he offers to sell me the Roses – ah, so that’s your game eh!! Okay, how much? 20g, he says. No worries, I would have paid at least 100g; so the trade screen opens, and I even put in 50g, and guess what – No Roses – And the ‘This Item can’t be traded across realms’ bullshit flashes across the screen – Bollocks!

I must admit I was fully intending to stay with the party through the whole dungeon, but after that, my heart wasn’t in it – I apologised and quit. I don’t normally act like a petulant child; however I was so annoyed that it would have ended in tears if I’d stayed – Sorry guys.

Ah well, still a couple of days left, I’ll hopefully pick them up tonight. I’ve got a couple of days off now (Friday & Monday) so I’ll see you on Tuesday with my ‘Love Fool’ achievement (fingers crossed). Have a great weekend.

~McRaffles

(Un) Lucky

As I said in answer to a comment on my last post, they've only gone and 'fixed' the trick to get loads of Lovely Charms from Ulduar. You can no longer loot Lovely Charms whilst in a vehicle - major bummer! Looks like I'll have to head back to the Cultists in Icecrown.

I have however knocked out a few more achievements for the event, including ‘Tough Love’ (killing the three bosses in Shadowfang Keep). Hopefully I’ll manage to get the rest finished before the end of the holiday – I really don’t fancy having to wait another year.

~McRaffles

Love is in the Air

I think I will have to put my gold making on hold for the next couple of weeks, the Love is in the Air holiday runs straight into the Lunar Festival and those are two of the last three holiday achievements that I require for my Violet Proto-Drake from the “What a Long, Strange Trip it’s Been” meta-achievement.

I only started knocking down the achievements last night, as I believed that it was on for two weeks – wrong, just the one so I’d better get cracking. I was a bit behind so it was very helpful to read the tip on both Anaalius’s blog and JMTC - In a nutshell, group with a friend, make a raid, enter Ulduar (your friend can then leave if they want), start the event, jump into a vehicle (I prefer the Demolisher) kill the three Sentinels then start killing dwarves to your hearts content. As long as you have the Lovely Charms Collectors Kit from Kwee Q. Peddlefeet outside Stormwind bank, they drop lots and lots of Lovely Charms. Ten Lovely Charms combines into one Lovely Charm Bracelet and they can be used for the daily quest or exchange 1:1 for Love Tokens. The Love Tokens can then be exchanged for a lot of the items (from the vendor next to Kwee Q. Peddlefeet) required to complete various individual achievements and holiday pets. Alternatively, you can always sell the Bracelets in the Trade Channel - they are currently going for between 10 - 20 gold each.

~McRaffles

Coining It In

I don’t know what happened this weekend, it may be the new patch, or the Valentine holiday thing, but almost every auction I posted seemed to sell amazingly quickly and for a lot more than normal too. Even after spending more than a grand on 60 Eternal Airs (I couldn’t resist at 18.9g each) I still made a fortune. I don’t know if there is such a thing as a gold making ‘zone’ but if there is, I was right in the middle of it. On Friday morning I had a little over 55k in my bank, when I logged in this morning I had more than 65,000g. Ten grand in a single weekend is a first for me, long may it continue.

I was crafting so much that I was running low on ore, bars and chalcedony, as the auction house was bare I decided to do a little ore farming. My good luck held; Icecrown was pretty much deserted and every 3rd node seemed to be Titanium. The only problem was that my Gatherer add-on had stopped working since the last patch. OMG, how could I live without it – well quite easily it turned out. Now I’m not dissing this add-on, it is very handy to have if you’re learning new mining/herbing circuits in a new region. But I know my Icecrown mining circuit like the back of my hand; I could do it in my sleep (and often do). I found that I could not only function without it but I actually preferred not having it at all. The problem with it is that it clutters up your mini-map with all those little empty circles and it seems to slow down the response of the nodes lighting up (especially on a pally with epic flyer and Crusader Aura active). Sometimes I would find myself past the node before it lit up on my mini-map. Now without the add-on my mini-map is a lot cleaner and nodes seem to light up a lot quicker too.

~McRaffles

Blizzard Authenticator

Recently, I heard that one of the guys in my guild got his account hacked. He logged on one day to find his well geared tank sitting naked in Dalaran, all his hard earned equipment sold of and the cash gone. I think at least one of his lvl 80 alts was also in the same situation. What a bummer!! Now I don’t know how strong his password was, or if he’d been frequenting dodgy sites that could have installed a keylogger on his machine. I do know that this is something that scares the hell out of me, especially since I have started accumulating a serious (for me) amount of gold. And not only that, but actively blogging about my exploits too. If that doesn’t make me a prime target for these scumbag thieves then I don’t know what does. The answer – get an Authenticator!

I had actually been meaning to get one for quite a while now (even before the gold making phase), I just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. I work in IT and I know that there is no such thing as 100% impenetrable security. However I use a very strong, unique password with a mix of numbers, letters and characters which I change regularly; my anti-virus, spyware and adware blocking software is constantly kept up to date and I never share my password or succumb to phishing attempts. Still, having a guildie getting hacked like that was the catalyst to me ordering an Authenticator, at only £6.29 it seemed rude not to.

So that was last Thursday, last Friday I get home from work and my wife hands me an Authenticator. Now that was exceptionally fast, I thought. But I was wrong; this wasn’t from Blizzard, this was from a work friend of my wife. Her friends son (thanks Anthony) had ordered an Authenticator too, but had also received another one as a gift, so knowing that I was also into Warcraft, gave it to his mum, to give to my wife, to give to me. The timing was almost impeccable, but not quite. I of course gladly accepted and am glad I did; I got my newly gifted Authenticator setup on my account on Friday night and now feel a lot more secure. Oh and you even get little 2 headed Corehound Pup non-combat pet for  activating it. It’s now Monday and I still haven’t received the one I ordered. When I get it however, I’ll pass it on to someone else who hasn’t got around to getting one yet. Share the love and all that.

~McRaffles

Gone Fishing

Thank goodness, I’ve finally discovered a decent purple epic gem cut that actually sells. I was previously cutting the Balanced Dreadstone as my purple epic of choice (not an analogy). The problem was that it wasn’t selling very well (and the AH charges for posting and reposting epic gems can seriously eat into your profit margin). Then yesterday, I was trawling through the forums over at Warcraft Econ and came across a great post by ‘Kumiko’ listing his best selling gem cuts. He is a Warcraft Millionaire and should know what he’s talking about. Anyway he listed Purified Dreadstone as his best selling purple epic gem cut by far, so I thought I’d give it a go. I cut three, post them and within a couple of hours they all sell out – Ka-ching! I honestly thought I’d have to start selling my Dreadstones raw, like I already do with Eye of Zuls, but it looks like I now have a nice little outlet for them.


I decided to get away form it all last night, after carrying out my routine crafts and posts, I took McRaffles down to our favourite little fishing spot in Dragonblight. It was great for a change, just kick back and reel in stacks and stacks of Dragonfin Angelfish. Very little competition and in no time at all I had about 200 of the little beauties. This was a welcome diversion and by no means a waste of time; when I’d had enough I cooked up 200 Dragonfin Filets, which at an average of 25g per stack of 5, comes in at a sweet little 1000g. Not a bad little fishing trip at all.

As of this morning I am sitting at just over 55,000 gold.

~McRaffles

Caveat Fabricae (Crafter Beware)

StoneKold was in Dalaran the other day; he had completed his Jewelcrafting daily and had picked up a couple of Cardinal Rubies and about 20 Skyflare Diamonds in the mail transmuted courtesy of McRaffles. He was casually crafting his best sellers; 5 each of the usual rare gems, a couple of epic cuts and 10 Chaotic Skyflare Diamonds. Now this is pretty mundane stuff, done it a hundred times, so I was engaging in some random banter in Guild Chat to pass the time. Once complete, I sent all this off to my AH chap for posting.

Log and switch to AH mule, pick up mail and start posting. Now what is the first thing you do prior to posting your goods on the AH? Correct; check the current price of said item. I probably do this the same way you do; by opening the Auction House search window and just shift/clicking on the item in my bag then clicking search and find out whether it’s worthwhile posting depending on the price. So, doing just this, I post my rare and epic gems and I come to the Skyflare Diamonds and get the fright of my life. Chaotic Skyflare Diamonds normally sell on my server from 42g – 57g. Today they were sitting between 8g and 10g. WHAT!!!!, that can’t be right, on further inspection it was correct, the problem wasn’t the price of the gems it was the type of gems. While distracted I hadn’t crafted 10 Chaotic Skyflare Diamonds, I crafted 10 Swift Skyflare Diamonds….what a dick!!! Swift Skyflares look exactly the same as their Chaotic brothers, however they sell for a damn sight less, if they actually sell at all.

Transmuting a Skyflare Diamond takes 1 Chalcedony, 1 Bloodstone and 1 Eternal Air. Though not actually free, I get more than enough of the gems from prospecting. The Eternal Airs however are occasionally picked up from mining Titanium, but obviously in nowhere near the quantities required for my budding gem selling business. This means that until I can locate a dedicated farmer and put them on my payroll, I have to scour the AH to satisfy my needs. I usually pick up Eternal Airs between 20g – 25g and vendoring the useless Swift Skyflare Diamonds at 6g each I therefore made a loss that though not actually bank-breaking, did leave a nasty taste in my mouth.

Well on the bright side, at least I didn’t craft all 20 and I suppose one good thing came of it, I will never make that mistake again!

~McRaffles

The Big 50

I’m very happy; I’ve just reached and passed my first real gold making milestone, 50,000g. I know that in the great scheme of things it’s not that much, and a lot of people have a whole lot more; but for me it’s about 10 times more than the most money I’d ever had before in one go.

~McRaffles

On no, not The Oculus!

So Friday night comes around and for a change instead of spending all night at the Auction House, I decide to run a Random Dungeon just for fun, and of course badges. So I jump in and lo and behold, straight into ‘The Oculus’. Now having never actually entered this dungeon before, the only thing I knew was that there was some dragon flying involved. I declared my virginity to the group and expected to be kicked, but no, the tank said no problems, I’ll keep you right. So on we go, through the initial trash like the proverbial knife through butter and through the portal and on to ‘Drakos the Interrogator’. True to his word, the tank told me about the spawning bombs and to steer clear. Bang, boss 1 down, no worries. I get told to pick up my Azure Drake and follow, after a bit of confusion (on my part) we then group up and start easily taking down the required 9 centrifuge constructs and remove the shield from the second boss ‘Varos Cloudstrider’. The friendly tank begins to tell me about the aoe effect that we need to avoid and the healer tells us not to worry, he’ll just heal through it. Boss 2 down, easy peasy!

Boss 3 was a bit of a different matter, we clear the summoned trash and I was told to hide behind the column when the boss casts his arcane explosion. I’m not sure what actually happened but I either ran to the wrong column or wasn’t fast enough, as I died. Luckily the tank and healer carried on and I (as well as the 2 other dps) was rezzed after Boss 3 went down. Onwards and upwards to Ley-Guardian Eregos, the final boss. I was told to spam ‘3’ until 10 stacks the hit ‘1’, rinse and repeat and hit ‘Time Stop’ when the summons and run (fly away) when told to run. I watched out for the summon, but must’ve missed it, I think I actually misread one of his abilities on DBM and used it too early; anyway the upshot was a wipe. I held my hands up and apologised and rather than take a heap of expected abuse, the top tank whispered me and said not to worry, the other 2 dps didn’t do that great either. We eventually all get back in and up to Eregos and the tank volunteers to shout when to Time Stop as well as run. The second time was a dream, every Time Stop was on the money and boom Final boss down. I was happy to see the achievements ping up for both the normal and heroic Oculus and after thanking everyone for their help and patience I left with my 2 Frost and 2 Triumph Emblems.

Now I know that there are some real horror stories about the Random Dungeon Tool and that bad groups of bolshy tanks and all round rubbish players abound, but even though this was one of my few encounters running random dungeons, I was very happy with the group and really enjoyed what I totally believed would turn out as a nightmare run, thanks again guys.

~McRaffles