Thursday, May 31, 2007

So, You Want to Play WoW (a starting money post)

The same co-worker that thought it would be a good idea to start this blog has picked up his "Wandering Paladin" again. You can read all of his adventures here. So, in conversations, I thought of a lot of the things I've learned throughout my time playing. This isn't a post on the Auctioneer add-on (although that's a great, easy way to help you make money through the AH), nor is it how to get the gold for a flying epic mount. It's just a few simple suggestions that will help you have some extra money and not have to beg in Iron Forge/Undercity for money for your new skills.

1) There are gathering professions and there are producing professions. To be simple and straight to the point, choose two gathering professions as you lvl your new toon. While producing professions can get you some "cool" armor or weapons or widgets, overall you'll lose money in the beginning. By choosing the gathering professions, you'll always have additional things to sell at the AH. Even the lowest stuff (copper bars (smelt all ore before AH'ing it), light leather and peacebloom) will always sell at the right price. So, choose either (A) Skinning and Mining or (B) Skinning and Herbalism. You can only have one type of tracking active at any given time, so Hebalism and Mining is kinda a tough combination.

2) Get yourself some bags so you don't have to go back to the bank or mailbox or Auction House every 5 minutes. Start out small and get what you can afford. Trust me, this will be the best investment you can make at lower levels.

3) Bring everything that's not gray to the Auction House. Somebody might be trying to skill up their cooking and need just one more clam meat. You never know.

Ultimately, you'll want to have enough money to purchase your mounts at 40, 60, and 70. Flying epic mount? Well... you're on your own. ;) At least until I get around to that post.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

First Weekend of Karazhan

On Friday night, we took down Attumen and Midnight on the first try. It's pretty easy, total gear check. Not a lot of strategy needed. If you have two tanks, it's your basic tank and spank. Then we skipped over Moroes and went to the Maiden. I ran the explanation on that one, and it was a bit rough. I always seem to leave out one detail. /sigh. But after about 4 or 5 tries, I think, we took her down. Then it was late enough (had to reclear once or twice) to call it for Friday. But a very successful night in our minds.

Saturday wasn't quite as successful, but still successful. After the maiden, all of us had forgotten to get the quest item near her. So we cleared some of the Moroes linked mobs (each group of mobs is linked to a boss and respawn about every 30 minutes as long as that boss is alive), and made our way back to the Maiden to get the quest item. All of us humans hit friendly giving us the first ring*. Then we pressed back to Moroes. Thellonious wasn't on, so we were using our OT and then another tank. Our "other" tank was either our MH pally (yeah go figure that out) or a PUG druid that was with us Friday night. (Amazing how many people didn't show up on Friday that had committed to be there.) So, Moroes becomes much more about the proper group composition. Moroes comes with 4 undead mobs. If you've got 2 priests and a hunter, you can very easily CC 3, tank Moroes and one of the adds, and DPS them down quick. We only had 1 priest and no hunters, so it got a lot tricker. BUT... the success came by getting Moroes down to 20%. We had switched a couple things, and I think we would have gotten him down if we would have given him one more try, but it was late, so we decided to put it off until next weekend. Thellonious got exalted with Sha'tar and therefore got a new, purple shield, so that should help a bit more as well.

Drops
Attumen: Gloves of Desterous Manipulation and, IIRC, Stalker's War Bands. We sharded the War Bands since we didn't have any hunters or shamans.
Maiden of Virtue: Bracers of Justice and, IIRC, Gloves of Centering. Again, this latter item was sharded.

*Word of caution on the ring. The guy offers you 4 quests, but you can only accept 1. Accept the right one 'cause there's no warnings. If you choose the wrong one, you can get a new ring once you hit exalted and pay 75g.

Friday, May 25, 2007

And We Have Liftoff

So, I'm starting this experiment. My co-worker and I have spoken a lot about blogs and whatnot. With my "vast knowledge" of World of Warcraft, I figured I'd start a blog documenting some of my travels in the wonderful world Blizzard created. I'll dive into more explanations and what not when it's not 10 minutes to 5 (and the boss has already left).

Just a quick note for documentation purposes, our guild is running Karazhan for the first time tonight. I'm sure I'll explain all about our progression, guild make up, etc in subsequent posts. Have a great Memorial Day weekend, I'll post when I get back. (If not sooner)