Goldlocked 04

JD Kenada2 Comments

Welcome back to Goldlocked! And would you look at that, we’ve cleared 2k!

We have a Transmog sale to thank for that. Not one of the greys, sadly. A green that I….ashamedly forgot to note before I collected the 190gp. All the herbs and ore/bars we put up also contributed to getting this far. However, I found myself at a bit of a conundrum over what to do next. I wasn’t quite ready to try a crafting profession yet. So I could revisit a farm, or I could try to farm some of the mobs we haven’t explored in Mulgore.

While I wanted to do that, I wasn’t entirely sure it would be very efficient and here is why: everything levels with me but I’m not getting any gear. So while Sabatdor might be a shiny 24, his item level is 7. So even though Subtlety can kill things pretty easily, it’s not instant kill farming. So it also means I can’t quite tell if I’m in a hyperspawn location. I’ve talked about those before, but in case you’re unaware, hyperspawn points are areas where there has to be at least one mob spawned at all times. So the faster you kill them, the faster they come back and you get to rinse and repeat to decent numbers.

But, then with that, I decided to give some a try anyway. Specifically I spent time killing Harpies, Grimtotem, and then Venture Co. Miners.

Quick aside…low level rares need to drop more than just 6-slot bags. Just saying.

Getting back to the task at hand, this was admittedly a very weak venture. I think the handful of ore we got while near some of the mobs resulted in more gold than all the kills and pickpocketing…and that’s saying something. Was it bad luck or is there really nothing that drops from these? It’s hard to say, but things can’t always go according to plan. We’re going to have some low periods in this challenge and this is one of them. That said we’re going to get right back on the horse, er…windrider.

That Death

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Just a heads up that this post is going to include spoilers for patch 12.1.5 and a major character in the story. I’ve waited for it to be out a bit to talk about it.

Still with me? Okay, let’s talk a bit of nonsense today. And by a bit of nonsense, I mean a character’s death that was worse than Vol’jin’s. If you remember back to Legion, Vol’jin died from the poison of a Felguard’s blade. He had been Warchief for what amounted to a cup of coffee and did even less in the role. And for the past decade I would always suggest that was the worst death of a major NPC in World of Warcraft. Until now.

Let me be clear: I’m not upset that Liadrin died. Since her introduction in Burning Crusade she has featured off and on, being the leader of the Blood Elf Paladins. As of late she has been at the front of the story, which I’ve been happy to see. I’m sick of it always being Thrall or Khadgar.

On the other side, Lor’themar has had a good character growth over the years and has been not only a good leader for the Blood Elves, but for the Horde as well. I feel like I need to interject this observation that most people will agree on, because it makes the video even worse.

One of the greatest Paladins in the world just…dies in the background?!?! From exertion???

For starters, you’re telling me that with everything that has happened since the Burning Crusade Liadrin has never exerted herself before? Heck, have we ever heard of a Paladin dying from strenuous use of the Light? The short answer is: we have not. So, her cause of death is horribly contrived.

Now let’s talk about the death itself. Not only does she die in the background, nobody notices? Not one person who saw her exert herself in the fight sees her drop to her knees and struggling. The two boneheads closest to her are oblivious to it? This sounds like something out of a Dungeons & Dragons game when foolish players somehow forget their ally is bleeding out post-combat. It sounds dumb there, and yet Blizzard went and actually executed this nonsense.

Again, I’m not upset that she died. I actually prefer the story when there are major casualties (pity Khadgar wasn’t one of them). But this not only took the poster child of the expansion but, a prominent and strong character, one who used the light to summon allies from all over Azeroth…and ended her with about as much excitement as a yawn. It goes against everything we’ve learned about Paladins and makes everyone around her look like fools.

There are often times over the course of WoW’s life I’ve applauded the writing, and other times lamented it. This one is very much in the latter.

Goldlocked 03

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Welcome back to Goldlocked, where we can’t leave a zone until we have earned enough money to purchase a WoW Token. We’ve started in Mulgore, and we’re starting to get our feet wet. From a few sales of herbs, copper, and other trade goods we’ve been lucky enough to have drop, we have reached our first one thousand gold. It’s not as big a deal in retail as it was back in the day, but a milestone is a milestone. And we’re still waiting for a hit on those grey transmogs we snagged.

I said today I would be looking at a farming option we hadn’t yet fully tackled before and that’s the plan. We are going to see just how lucrative the dual gathering of herbs and ore can be. I’ve done some in the first bit of this challenge, but never fully focused on it. The main reason is that we didn’t have flight, so it was going to take a bit longer as a result. Now that we’re 20, mobility is a lot quicker.

I honestly considered doing three separate farms. One of herbs, one of ore, and one of both. But in Mulgore, there’s so many Earthroot and Copper nodes close together that I don’t think it warrants that. Anyhoo, we’ll skip the boring parts and just move on to the results after one hour.

  • 170 Rough Stone (approx 3.4gp)
  • 100 Copper Ore (189gp)
  • 83 Copper Bar (165gp)
  • 82 Silverleaf (approx 159gp)
  • 51 Peacebloom (approx 114gp)
  • 55 Earthroot (approx 109 gp)
  • 3 Malachite (approx 1 gp)
  • 1 Tigerseye (1.89gp)

If everything sells, we’re looking at 750 gold, which per hour isn’t awful in this start zone. As it stands we’re at 1,115 gold. The token today is 273k. I think I might consider dropping one of the two gathering professions and seeing if a crafting profession is more financially viable. Inscription and Engineering could both turn out to be good. I might also have to try Skinning at some point. There’s a lot to be had between the wolves and cougars in Mulgore. But, those are thoughts for another day. Instead let’s see how these goods do on the Auction House.

Forever: What’s In A Name

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Image courtesy of WoWhead

As of 4pm EDT tomorrow, those who paid to get into the WoW Forever beta will have the opportunity to reserve up to three names prior to the game’s launch on November 4th. I started thinking about which names I want set aside and the more I’ve thought about it, the more I realize I really don’t think I have anything to worry about.

Going through my entire list of retail characters, only about half have a shared name on North American realms. At least among characters that show up in the search. That’s 20 years of names. There was a time I could probably count on a single hand how many names were shared. It’s only been in more recent years names like Tumunzahar and Logard showed up in searches.

So, while Forever only has one name per region, I feel pretty confident the second name will make it almost impossible for any of my characters to be a duplicate name at the time of creation, especially on day one when I’ll make most of them. Now, having said that, I will probably lock up two names ahead of time and more than anything it’s just because I can.

What about you? Are they’re any names you’re snagging for yourself or do you feel pretty comfortable with availability of what you might want?

Goldlocked 02

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Welcome back to Goldlocked. Today is what I would consider the true start for Sabatdor and his quest, which as a reminder is that he cannot leave a zone until he’s earned enough money in it to purchase a WoW Token. As we start today, the token is sitting at 270k. We have 321gp. So we still have a very long way but we have a decent start. A few trade goods have sold, namely herbs I’ve picked up and something else that I expect will only go up as we get closer to Winter Veil: Small Eggs. And that friends is where we are going to start today.

The eggs can drop off of many birds in Azeroth, but two in particular are very prominent in Mulgore and that’s the Plainstriders and the Swoops. If you want to, you can almost do a complete lap of the zone and just keep killing both mob types. However, to increase efficiency, I focused my efforts on the two spots below as they have the most density of birds. I would clear out all that I see in one area, and then ride over to the other.


After an hour I ended up with 42 Small Eggs. At 6.5gp each we’re looking at 273gp. The birds also dropped Strider Meat and Light Feathers. If those sell as well, I’m probably going to end up with about 280gp total for the hour. Definitely not the most efficient means, but it’s a farm we can fall back on as Winter Veil approaches (and people start to make cookies) and really mow through when we’ve exceeded the zone’s level.

Today I also paid a visit to Nata Dawnstrider. She is the Enchanting Supplies vendor and I specifically grabbed the Strange Dust and Lesser Magic Essence she had, as well as the formula to Enchant Boots – Minor Agility. In total I spent about 30 silver, but will bring in ten times that and then some. It might be small potatoes, as Yelena Belova says, but small potatoes is better than no potatoes when we’re trying to raise gold in Mulgore!

The final thing we tried for this week was Red Cloud Mesa. There is a small lake in the back, so I thought we should see what is in it. Unfortunately nothing more than Raw Brilliant Smallfish and Raw Longjaw Mud Snapper. Both worth just a few silver. Not a complete waste of time, but also not worth any more efforts. But, there were also some mobs to farm. Specifically those Bristleback. We got lucky while leveling earlier in that we had two great drops in the piece of Ancestral gear and the Charger’s Shield. Both the Charger and Ancestral have a chance to drop from these particular Quillboar so it was time to see if luck was on our side. Any Battleboar we came across we killed as well because they can also drop some valuable greys.

And weren’t we lucky! We ended up getting another Ancestral piece. Specifically the boots, which tend to sell for no less than 5k but can go much higher. On top of that we saw a pair of Battle Chain Boots drop which, while less valuable, average in around 1.2k. Not too bad at all. If the greys sell, we’re seeing gold production around 3-6k per hour. Not at all numbers I was expecting when starting in Mulgore. And, we haven’t explored all our options yet. We’ll see what some of those unexplored options look like next time.

Forever Beta Fun

JD Kenada2 Comments

The World of Warcraft Beta officially ends today. Players have gotten the opportunity to get a feel for the game and have a lot of fun as we enter the two weeks before the game officially goes live. And it seems with all of that in mind, the developers decided to have a little fun of their own.

Yep. That’s Doom Lord Kazzak outside of Orgrimmar. And he wasn’t alone. We saw Patchwerk, Infernals, and more. If that wasn’t fun enough for all the groups trying to chase them, it turned out their loot tables were legendaries and T1 items from Molten Core!

Image courtesy of Icy Veins

Needless to say last night was chaotic, and yet oh so much fun. The developers had no obligation to make this happen. They could’ve just quietly closed the Beta today and everyone still would have had a good time with said Beta. But to do this was such a cool act, and one could argue it was a show of good faith by the devs that Forever is in the hands of people who want the game to be fun and exciting.

They’ve made mention in the podcasts that there are things that were turned off for the Beta specifically so that they would be new and exciting when the game went live. If they’re going to offer this up now for everyone, I’m looking forward to all the unexpected discoveries that this different Azeroth has to offer us.

Where Will I Call Home?

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We are a day under two weeks before the launch of World of Warcraft Forever, barring anything last minute. I only say that because the beta has already been extended by two days into tomorrow. But honestly, I think it’s going to be fine on the 4th. Or maybe I’m just optimistic because I don’t want to reschedule the two vacation days I have scheduled for the 5th and 6th.

When the game launches, and the queues settle down, there will be three possible destination locations: PvP, PvE and RP. At a later date, we’ll get Hardcore as well. So where does one call home? I’ll admit it, maybe I’m a bit soft and that’s why I won’t be on PvP. That and honestly there’s a lot of community vitriol, to the point an addon has been created with a sole purpose of muting an entire group of people. I’m sure there’s a lot of good for PvP fans but I also am just not the kind of guy who likes that in my game 24/7. For people like me, there’s always BGs.

With that in mind, PvE makes sense. It’s essentially what I play in retail and have played almost exclusively for most of my time in Azeroth. I’ve had toons on RP servers, but only remember indulging in actually RP at one point in time in particular. I enjoyed it, but was still kind of lost in the ways to get the most out of it.

And yet, that is exactly where you will be able to find me in Forever. I will eventually give Hardcore a try too. I’ve mentioned that before and I think general Forever, some retail, Goldlocked, and Hardcore will keep this blog busy. Plus something about Hardcore just seems fun.

Where was I? Right…RP realm. There are a couple of things in the rules for the realm that appeal to me most as I get set for November 4th. One, petty as it may seem, is stricter name rules. I feel like this is where the young folk would be telling this boomer to shuffle off (even though I’m Gen X), but I just don’t want to see names like “Dutch Rudder” or “Beef Ladyparts.” Yes, I’ve actually seen those already. There will still be some, I’m sure. But it will ideally be the minority.

The other reason, and I’m admittedly generalizing here, is I’ve found in the past RP servers tend to have a general level of maturity that is a bit higher than what I would refer to as the “normal” realms. The blog says Middle Age for a reason. And to you these reasons might be silly, but that’s okay. The beauty of Forever is having the three options for each person’s playstyle and this just happens to be how I plan to best enjoy the game. And to clarify, playing on an RP server doesn’t mean you have to roleplay actively to be there. But, I won’t be surprised if I’m end up hopping towards that rabbit hole when I ssee how others do so.

But what about you? If you’re headed to Forever in a couple of weeks, which realm is most appealing to you?