Leveling Goals
Original Goal: Level 85 on main by tuesday.
Whew - this one sort of just happened. I blew this one out of the water. I got bit by the raiding bug, and then before I knew it I was farming on my alts and enjoying that too much to stop. End results were far beyond what I expected for the first week's worth of work.
Actual results? Level 85 on main, Level 83 on alchemy/mining alt, Level 83 on herbalism/jewelcrafting alt. More than halfway through 84 on my alchemist, who is currently grinding her Archaeology (105) after the recently announced discovery of the alchemy mount recipe location. My continued hope was to have a first alt to 85 by next tuesday and a second alt the tuesday after that. It definitely looks like I'll be 85 on two characters within a week but I wouldn't be surprised if I was capped on all 3 and working on a 4th. It all comes down to how much time I devote to archaeology, I'd imagine.
As far as the main goes, switching around on the alts didn't hurt me too bad, although that's related to the fact that I played more this week than my past three combined (54 hours)! I was able to get some decent gear - all blues in every slot but feet, quite a few heroic pieces and an average iLvl of 339. Definitely more than equipped for heroics, and hopefully good to go when raiding starts to pick up.
Original Goal: Capped Mining Skill
Check, check. Check about 3 times over. I spent so much time mining ore in Uldum and Deepholm that I think I gained a full level of XP just gathering between levels 81 and 82. Some of it was rested - but this one was a no brainer. Loving mining this expansion, planning to leverage it a bit more this week and cash in on some of the ore market now that my JC is at a satisfying enough level where I can wait for cheaper ore.
Original Goal: 500+ Jewelcrafting, 2 Recipes
This one fell through a bit. I wasn't able to get up to speed on my miner, and thus my jewelcrafting, in nearly enough time. I avoided a complete catastrophe by finally dedicating some time to it over the weekend, but I finish up week one with 1 extra token, 1 blue recipe, and a 488 JC skill. Not great, but not terrible as I'm finally able to do my dailies.
My goal here for the short term is to maintain a holding pattern - prospect enough gems to satisfy the requirements for my dailies, and if prices allow it start doing the elementium shuffle with raw ore. I wouldn't expect that to happen anytime soon, though. Maybe in a couple more weeks. Starting to post my single rare cut at aggressive markups (250% over raw gem value) and having limited success so far.
Gold Goals
Original Goal: Break even on expenses/income
This one could have swayed a lot in either direction. If I simply unloaded all the elementium I farmed, I probably would be sitting on close to 30k net this week. Conversely, had I pushed JC to 500 and beyond I'd probably be down a few thousand.
As it turns out, I ended up somewhere in the middle. My total net income for week 1 of Cataclysm was 10,610g. Of course, we always want to balance this against how much effort we're putting into our earning. Across all my activities, be it leveling, auctioning, or grinding professions, I logged a staggering 54 hours this week in game. A meager 196g/hour at that clip. We'll see how week #2 turns out.
Not amazing by any means, I'm hearing tons of great stories about players pulling in 8-10k per day just with gathering. As it is though, I'm happy with where I've set myself up with for long term success. I've built a good foundation with my professions, and I've been able to identify some key short term markets, as well as longer term areas where I'll really be looking to dig in for the long haul. This brings me to a section I'd like to call "stuff I didn't even plan on doing but ended up accomplishing anyway":
- 478 Inscription. Starting out slow here, but already cashing in on some pretty ridiculous margins with [Mysterious Fortune Card]
- 496 Enchanting. Again, just starting to get a feel for the market here, nothing at this level seems too profitable yet. Happy to be halfway through with this, though. Quest green rewards made this not so bad.
- 510 Herbalism. Don't have a huge need for this yet, and not too interested in farming this for profit. It'll get wrapped up easily this week, but I was happy to get it kick started this week
- 471 Tailoring. Started out DEing most of the greens on the enchanter. Just now getting involved in the [Ghostly Spellthread] market. Looking to see if I can at least break even here for some cheap leveling. Would love to get to 500 this week so I can start making dreamcloth, but I'm not going to kill myself to get there
- And finally, 486+ Alchemy on three alchemists. One is as high as 506 - and I would like to get there soon so I can start churning out Truegold. But as I mentioned in my earlier post, I'm pretty happy to already have three of these turning a decent profit so early on in the expansion. Depending on how cost effective it is, I may have to level my 4th alchemist who is 75 but only at 150 alchemy.
Overall - I accomplished a fairly wide variety of goals. I'm pretty pleased to have such a wide variety of starting points, as I think diversity really will be the biggest key and allow me to react the most easily this expansion. Since I know I'll likely be busy at least this week continuing my non-gold oriented focuses (Leveling professions, alts, and working on gear for my main) I'm also happy to have some nice sources of "automatic" income that are low effort-high return. I'm looking at you, alchemists.
How did your first week of Cataclysm turn out? What were your biggest surprises and what do you wish you could have another chance at? Let me know!
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