Sticking with it

Bit of a down week posting and gold wise week. I've simply been too distracted with real life activities to commit to updating or even playing that much. Today's post focuses on battling just this idea - and gives an example of how I'm fighting the brief downturn with a diverse approach.

Long term strategies

I've focused fairly heavily on long term strategies for this expansion. What I mean by that is that I didn't really push too hard early on with gathering and selling ore/herbs - and I haven't tried to spend too much time or energy in what I suspect to be "temporary" markets. Take jewelcrafting for example: this is just personal opinion, but I would offer that any 5 garden variety blue cuts will outlast 3 neck/ring pieces long term, in terms of usefulness, and therefore lead to a higher income over the course of play.

Now, eventually I'll be able to get every cut (One day? More like 200 or so, last I checked), but for now tokens are at a premium. My single biggest long term focus for cata is the blue gem market. I really think long term this will pay off - I'd expect come 4.1 when new zones are out, old content gets trivialized, and we see a surge of new hardcore firsts and casuals cleaning up old content - we'll see a huge peak in demand. This pairs nicely with my strategy of collecting a cut every 3 days. I'm a bit of a compulsive tracker and I've done my daily every day since December 13th - not too bad!

The downside to this is that it has an incredibly slow ramp up time. Right now I'm at 8 cuts and aside from a couple of them, the margins honestly are falling. I had a bit of a down week and I find myself wondering "is this really worth it?". The important thing for me to realize was that this is not a instant cash cow, and it won't make me a million overnight. It's still bringing in decent profits each day (Worst day has been about 500g so far), and it should only get better as I go on.

I definitely have a bit more hesitation about cutting 10 gems at 20g margins instead of 40g margins though, which brings us to..

Short term guarantees

Let me start off by saying this - there are no guarantees in WoW. People have had all sorts of strategies that are "sure things" backfire recently. A good example of this is the razzashi hatchling. Anything can look great on paper, but fall apart at the drop of a patch note. That being said, there are some fairly consistent items that I'm making a great profit off of, that require far less effort than JCing, and are at much nicer options.

My "strategy", or contingency plan as I like to think of it, to keep me happy during these down weeks basically involves a lot of alchemists, and tailoring. I've got my tailor up to 84 for the past 3 weeks now, and he's churning out dreamcloth like clockwork every week. Margins on these are starting to fall, particularly with belts, but I'm still making 500-700g raw profit per dreamcloth cooldown selling these as threads. This takes no more effort than a daily scan of "Oh, good, embersilk below 6g" and I'm set for the week. This will likely slowly trickle down to lower and lower margins as we move onward, but I'm anticipating bringing in anywhere between 2k-3k a week for a while with this, which is great given the 5 minutes of effort a week it's taking me. It's certainly not a 'daily' money maker to keep your spirits up though, which brings me to...

Alchemy. I can't talk enough about this. I'm loving alchemy so much this expansion that I just finished bringing up a 4th one from 200ish to 485 skill this weekend. The short term costs were negligible - probably spent a couple thousand or so bringing it up. I now have 4 characters, 3 xmute specced capable of churning out 15 volatile air a day in uldum.

The great thing about this is that first of all, it's flat out profitable as hell. I average 20-22g profit per volatile, and they all sell. I need to get back to trying to flip these as electrified ethers - but even without this this is "guaranteed" money at about a 2300g/week per alchemist rate. This 4th alchemist brings my total volatile income to just around 9k per week.

The second nice thing about this is that it's "something to do". On the one hand, jewelcrafting can be rough at times because it feels like a lot of effort, but on the other end of the spectrum I feel like I hardly use my tailor at all. The transmute is a good 2 minute operation per day on each character (Port, hearth, mail, repeat), and is a nice way to feel accomplished for checking something off each day. Sounds silly - but it's nice to have something to "accomplish" daily, if you can call it that.

Don't be too stubborn - prioritize

I have a daily checklist - I follow it pretty regularly. It's no surprise that things like "Do JC daily, Transmute volatile (x4)" are on this list. There's other things though such as "Post cooking recipes, post netherstorm pets" that honestly haven't been pulling in a very exciting margin lately. For whatever reason this past week I went from bringing in almost 1k a week off of SW recipes (what?) to only about 200g.

Now don't get me wrong - this is still a great margin. It's about 200g for a 2g investment which is insane, but when I compare 15 minutes spread over a week posting and reposting, and the total value is less than a single transmute, it gets to be a bit of a chore. I know it's still good gold, and even decent g/hr (800g if i look at this week's numbers), but the long and short of it is this: wow isn't a job, if it's not fun, don't do it! I'm not missing out on thousands a week - at worst I'm robbing myself of 100g a day - I can live with that!

Reducing burnout, keeping things fresh, and not taking yourself too seriously can make these "down" weeks a lot more manageable.

Weekly Recap

Wrapping this up with some final thoughts - this was overall a still successful week. Highlights include:

• Raising a 4th alchemist to (for my purposes) max level
• Picking up my first 3 tank epics on the warrior + some other good gear (iLvl 328->339 this week!)
• My best gold per hour of the expansion: 19,100g in just under 20 hours /played (955g/hr)
• A good time with friends during new year's weekend! Not impacted at all by a small morning 20 minute daily session

All in all, it sure felt like a "down" week (almost half as much gold revenue), but it's important to look at the big picture. I'm getting closer to my goal of being able to make steady, consistent gold in less timer per week, my g/hr is going up, and it should only increase as the weeks progress. And last but not least - 19k in a week still isn't bad at all. I know many players who would be happy with that amount, so I should be too - right?

How is everyone else doing almost a month into the expansion? Are you getting frustrated with any early markets? Find any fun ways to stem off early apathy towards more long term projects? Share your thoughts!