Fire Prism: Is it worth your time?

Let's take a look at jewelcrafting today, specifically the Fire Prism. This is JC's daily cooldown, which converts 3 of each uncommon cataclysm gem into 1-3 rares and potentially chimera eyes. The math gets a little complicated, so let's dive right in...

Cataclysm: Week Two Recap

Now that the dust has settled on release week, I've been able to take a better look at my long term Cataclysm strategies, and start focusing on a couple of my intended core markets: tailoring and jewelcrafting.

Alchemy and Engineering Profession Synergy

Don't have a lot of time today, but let's talk real quickly about taking professions that you have (or maybe even those that you don't, and leveraging your relationships) to make larger margins on your investments.

Cataclysm: Read Patch Notes!

This is going to be short and sweet today - but it's worth reading. Any time patch notes come out or a patch is released, it's important to take a look at what has changed. In some cases, there are drastic enough changes that require your immediate attention. I'm sure everyone is already up in arms about the recent changes to the alchemy mount, but I want to focus on one other smaller, potentially easily missed note.

Cataclysm Week One Recap

Taking a quick look back at week one of Cataclysm - seems like it flew by in an instant. Definitely had some hits and misses this week, but overall I've been very happy with the expansion. WoW hasn't been this exciting in quite some time it seems! Let's take a look at some of the results...

Snatch Lists: Making gold off the jewelcrafting rush

Today's post is inspired by a recent frustration I've had while leveling up my jewelcrafter and working on her dailies. As I've mentioned before, you always want to start with what you know, or in this case, with what you're spending gold on yourself.

Alchemy: Making gold on the way to 525

Today was another day spent mostly leveling professions up. I spent a great deal of time farming and buying materials intermixed with some minor dungeon runs. Today I want to focus real briefly on how I'm making some quick, easy gold before I'm maxed out on one of my alchemists.

Cataclysm Day Five: Getting to the good stuff

Today was a pretty productive day, being the first weekend of the expansion. I honestly expected things to turn out a bit differently than they did, but I'm definitely surprised and encouraged by the results.

Cataclysm: Hitting The Cap

No - not that cap, unfortunately - but I did manage to hit level 85 on my druid last evening. It went a bit rougher than expected - but overall I had a very successful session. Here's some quick lessons learned for everyone as they hopefully finish out their first level cap, or perhaps start on their second.

Cataclysm: Day Two Results

Getting down to the wire with the all important first level cap. Things are slowly starting to turn towards a more strategically focused route rather than an all out rush to 85. Here's a quick look at day two, which was a bit different.

Cataclysm: Day One Results

It's hard to believe that it is only Wednesday - Cata is only a little more than a day old. We already have realm 85s, capped professions, and yes - the Europeans are already raiding. Here's what I've been up to in the past 24 hours - somehow I ended up doing almost nothing close to what I planned!

Cataclysm: Time Saving Tips

As the hour draws nearer and nearer, here are some important time saving tips I've extracted out of my last minute preparation for the expansion. Only eight hours to go - are you ready?!

Cataclysm: Week One Goals

It's been important for me lately to have a realistic set of expectations and plans. Whether I'm playing every day or twice a week, it helps me feel accomplished and make sure I'm accomplishing what I want. Let's take a look at my plans and goals for the fist week of cataclysm. Will be fun to look back at this in a week and see how I did.

Weekly Recap: 11/28/2010 - 12/4/2010

This week was rough. Got saddled with a last minute business trip being scheduled for next week (traveling on cata week - oh no!) and generally being way too busy to play.

Overall it was very much a down week, but I'm looking forward to taking the next couple of days off, and then grinding out next week to 85 to get me ready to make some serious income come early January.

Results: Stormwind Vendor Recipe Flipping

Not a lot of time for posting today - so here's a real quick post in what might become a recurring series. It's one thing to read about a gold strategy, it's another thing to see results from that strategy. Here's a quick look at how I've done recently with a topic I've covered a lot early on: vendor flipping.

Cataclysm: Aim High

For the player with less time to make gold, it's important to capitalize on your opportunities when they arrive. A player with limited time ultimately means limited opportunities. This is a simple, undeniable fact. You'll have less chances to make sales than players with more time to invest.

However, the smart player can make the most out of their time by aiming high with their sales and capitalizing on their opportunities. Let's take a look at what I mean with a current example and see how it can be applied to cataclysm.

Cataclysm: Start with what you know

As we head into the final days of wrath and look towards (re)starting our business in cata - I want to take a look at ways to make gold with knowledge you already have. Originally I was going to discuss this within the confines of Inscription my last post, but it's worth taking a more broad look.

Abbreviated Inscription: Lich King Edition

Inscription is currently my main gold making mechanism. I'm not sure of its long term usefulness - cata will surely change how scribes make their money, either for better or worse, and I'm honestly not sure of my personal interest/investment level in it staying consistent. Right now it takes up the bulk of my time - but again, bulk is relative. Right now I'm investing probably between 2 and 5 hours a week to inscription. Let's take a look at some of the key points of what I've been doing these past few months in lich king, and then I'll speculate a bit on what this means come cata.

Weekly Recap: 11/21/2010 - 11/27/2010

Had a bit of a busy week towards the end of this past week - didn't find myself online much and got a bit lazy with my gold making and my posting. Fortunately it didn't affect my income that much. I was disappointed in not being able to update more frequently - and I'll be posting a bit more the rest of this week to make up for it. Now on to the recap!

Cataclysm Essentials [3/3]: Leftovers

As Cataclysm draws near, I've been recapping my focus points for expansion preparation. In today's last installment, I'll talk about all the other "little things" that I've been making sure I have covered so I'm all ready to go.

Cataclysm Essentials [2/3]: Stockpiling

Yesterday we talked about stockpiling quests to get you ready for Cataclysm. Today I want to talk very briefly about 4 key things that I'll personally be stockpiling, that I think everyone should be doing, regardless of their other strategies.

Cataclysm Essentials [1/3]: Quests

This seems to be a pretty big topic lately. There's already some very excellent blog posts on the matter. Some are extremely comprehensive, to say the least.

I will be spending much of this week in game prepping my new raiding toon for the expansion, so I'm here to offer my own series of insights into what I'm doing to get ready for Cataclysm.

Weekly Recap: 11/14/2010 - 11/20/2010

Going to try and make this a recurring thing, simply for my own records. This should give any of my readers an idea on the returns I'm getting with my proposed strategies, as well.

Daily Routine

For me having a daily routine is very important. It means that I start out every session with a game plan, and on days where I can't devote more than a few minutes of quick time, I still come out with a tidy profit.

There's 2 big things that my daily routine offers me:
(1) Sets realistic expectations
(2) Ensures I'm not "lost" making gold

Diversity

Diversity is important in WoW, in gold making, and in what you do in game. Without diversity a player becomes bored with the game. Run Violet Hold 20 times in a row and tell me that you're thrilled at the end (or start) of each one.

In the same token buyers will become "bored" with markets. They might be dying for 4 netherweave bags today, but you can't expect them to need another 4 day in and day out. And obviously the auction house in particular has tens if not more competitors in every market trying to lure your potential buyers away for something more interesting (see: cheaper).

Vendor Flipping

A common theme in gold making, and a great one to start with if you're on a limited time budget, is the purchasing of vendor items and flipping them on the auction house. There are a bunch of these vendors all over the place. For example, here's a guide on all the limited supply vendors in outland  alone.

The focus for today's post is on two specific vendors, who can be accessed quickly and repeatedly for some easy, consistent gold.

First Post / Welcome!

Welcome to "Abbreviated WoW" - first here's a little info about me, and what this blog is about.

I'm currently a fresh out of college 20-something, who much like a lot of you, finds himself with a lot less time on his hands than he used to. Less time for gaming, less time for sleeping. Plenty of time to work overtime though!

Less time and more responsibility for me meant figure out what I really wanted to accomplish, both in terms of real life and in terms of WoW. I've gone from playing far, far too much (40-50 hours a week), down to about 15 hours a week of game time. This is still a lot by some people's standards, but when it comes down to more time consuming popular activities such as raiding, levelling alts, or making gold - it certainly adds a fun twist to things.

The focus of this blog will be, hopefully, a series of tips on how to play the game on a semi-abbreviated schedule. The two key topics will be gold making and raiding, with a fairly up front focus on the former. The idea of this is that we've all read hundreds of blogs and posts on how to gear up, how to make gold, how to farm, but a lot of us don't have time to execute these strategies to the fullest.

If you're looking for something comprehensive, by all means please look elsewhere. Otherwise, stick around for some quick, easy to follow tips for Cataclysm and perhaps beyond!