Elusive Purple Wrist Candy

It's no secret to anyone of the Holy Paladin persuasion that bracers were a huge problem in Tier 11. Only 4 sets of PVE Intellect Plate bracers were available when Cataclysm first launched: two heroic level 346 bracers, a set that dropped from Cho'gall and finally a heroic-only set that dropped from Sinestra. None of these were terribly common drops, and throughout the entirety of Tier 11 not a single one dropped for me.

Not one.

Early on I had picked up the blue PVP bracers as a stop-gap. Even with the utterly useless Resilience, the Intellect upgrade was more than enough reason to choose them over the iLvl 333 Bracers of Umbral Mending that I was sporting since regular Grim Batol. They were not ideal, but I figured that they would do until something else dropped.

I wore them for six months.

And it's not like I didn't have opportunities to get them, either. I ran Grim Batol until my eyes were bleeding since the Dungeon Finder had a particularly evil habit of choosing no other dungeon for me. The bracers never dropped. Cho'gall didn't drop his either, but since I only ever got him down two or three times it's not nearly as surprising.

Fast-forward to Patch 4.1 and the Zandalari Troll instances and we see two new dungeons, dropping iLvl 353 gear that was designed to fill in the gaps between normal Heroic gear and normal-mode Raid gear. I was very excited when I learned that the Bracers of Hidden Purpose would be available in Zul'Aman; even more so when I learned that it would be off Akil'zon, the first boss in the instance. No more struggling with end bosses to get the nifty Plate Intellect bracers!

I figured I'd have them in a week.

Sadly, the same, familiar story was repeated with these bracers, only with an twist. The Dungeon Finder, with it's cruel, anti-Holy-Paladin bias, would choose nothing but Zul'Gurub for me when I would queue up for a Random Zandalari dungeon. And the odd time that it did choose Zul'Aman I would invariably zone into a group who had already downed Akil'zon and thus not even have a chance to get them. In the whole time that Zul'Aman has been back as a 5-man dungeon I think I have seen and killed the Eagle Boss 3 or 4 times total.

It's enough to drive a Dwarf to drink. Not that we need much of an excuse, mind you.

Jump ahead again to 4.2 and a new guild: Taking my own advice, I was running a lot of guild groups into the Troll-roics and I finally managed to snag the ever so elusive purple wrist candy. I should have been excited as I enchanted them for our first raids into the Firelands, but I wasn't. I was fairly ambivalent, actually, because I knew that not 5 days later I would acquire enough Valor Points to simply go and buy the Bracers of Imperious Truths.

So after eight months of struggling to get decent bracers, within the span of a week I now have two. Admittedly, the new Valor Point bracers are vastly and unquestionably superior, but since they are Bind on Equip the temptation to sell them for a ridiculous amount of gold is extremely hard to resist. There are none of these on the Auction House on my realm, nor have any been listed to my knowledge. Can I live with these troll-rific bracers for another week or so to get a huge, potential payday right now?

I think I can, as long as the money is truly, epicly ridiculous.

So I put them up on the Auction House. I couldn't believe I was doing it even as I was clicking the Post Auction button. The thought of 50,000 gold makes a boy do silly things.

As a responsible raider, however, I set the Auction to time-out just before our raid starts tonight. If they don't sell - and at 50k gold I figure it's a low probability that they will - I'll enchant and reforge them and rock them in Shannox's face tonight.

And if they do sell, then I'll try use the money to craft some of the great gear that's available. I'm sure it won't last long, but the start of a Patch like this is a golden opportunity to cash in. It's not like these bracers will be hard to obtain, after all.

UPDATE: For better or for worse, the Bracers of Imperious Truths didn't sell for my rather ambitious asking price before our raid last night, so I equipped them for our fight against Shannox. The irony is, of course, that Shannox - should we ever kill the fucker - drops bracers too.
 
 

Zero to Wealthy in 85 Easy Levels

These days is really easy to get a new Alt started, and there are various strategies on how to get a quick start in terms of money and gear. Just recently, Big Bear Butt posted a guide for getting a great head-start on money when starting up on a new server. Starting from nothing, on the other hand, is rarely done any longer.

Rades over at Orcish Army Knife took up this challenge recently, and has inspired me to do the same.

I chose to create my new money-grubbing alt on Azuremyst, Alliance side, so that I could hang out with the Eff the Ineffable folks while I was playing. Naturally, I rolled a Dwarf Paladin and named him Fannon. Finally, my blog title and preferred subject makes sense! Of course, I haven't started healing with him yet - in fact I'm levelling Protection - but he's the right name and right class, so I'll call that a win.

My goal for this character is to level to 85 on a new server with no money, no gear and no high-level characters to help him out.  Any blog content that happens to get generated is simply a bonus.

The guild perks are going to mean that I will be getting some bonuses in terms of loot from mobs, but that's the only support I am going to accept from the guild. I joined only to have some awesome people to talk to. I've already had to turn down several very generous offers of startup cash from a very welcoming and kind-hearted bunch of people.

DAY ONE:  0g, Level 0

Bright-faced and with bushy beard, Fannon the second found himself in Anvilmar with lint in his pockets and little else.

In doing the initial quests and not spending money I was barely managing to keep a whole silver to my name.  Blizzard seems to be very tight with giving out cash at the extreme low levels, and I was scrounging to even get money for my new abilities.

At level 5 I picked up Mining and Enchanting, figuring that the low level enchanting market - which did so well for Rades on Medivh - would earn me some easy cash disenchanting any green items that I could get from questing or snag from the auction house cheaply.

I managed to scrounge together 6 silver by putting off buying Holy Light and headed to the auction house to see if I could snag a green item or two to flip or disenchant for some easy startup cash.  Six silver doesn't really buy much, even the really low level items, but amazingly I did manage to snag two green axes and disenchanted them into Lesser Magic Essences, which at the time were going for a really solid 1g99s each.  Sadly, it seems that the low level enchanting mats market is not very strong on this realm, and not long after I posted those the market had crashed down to 40s, which while substantially less, still represented a very good profit.

What really worked well for me is Copper Ore.  Even though it seemed as if Dun Morogh was completely mined out, by the end of day one I had managed to get a couple of stacks of ore and managed to quickly sell them for about 5g each.

I took the profit that I had made and reinvested it in some more greens to disenchant and relisted the Lesser Magic Essences in stacks of 10, which seemed to be selling better than singles.  Along with some more ore, I quit for the day with a healthy 6g6s and about 30g in potential sales sitting on the auction block.

As well, I was level 12 and completely finished with Dun Morogh.  I decided that Fannon 2.0 would level through the new quests in Westfall, which I would begin on Day Two.

END OF DAY ONE: 6g6s, Level 12.

The Expansion Gold Mine

This is the first expansion that I’ve been through where I have been at level cap and ready to go at release, and there are a lot of things that are quite different than any other time.  The crowds, for example.  There are more players in one area than I’ve ever seen before.  Hjyal was just swarming with players from both sides when I played through it.  It was hard to click on anything without accidentally attacking someone from the opposite factions.  Most quest givers were a nightmare for that… assuming that they didn’t have four or five people sitting on top of them on their gigantic flying mounts so that you couldn’t even see them much less click on them.

And then there is the money.  Oh my… the money is goooood.

I’ve never been very good at handling my virtual money, and I certainly wouldn’t call myself an auction house star or anything, but this is a once in an expansion opportunity to seriously rake in some gold.  While I'm not doing any dedicated farming or anything, I'm very happy with the amount of money that I've managed to get so far. 

During my leveling I have been trying to grab every single mining node that I can find to sell on the auction house.  The ore, volatiles and cloth that drops off the mobs have been raking in a very tidy sum for me without any large effort.  The volatiles hardly sit on the AH for more than a few minutes before they’re sold.  As well, the smelted Obsidium and Elementium bars are generating approximately 25% more than the raw ore does.  And some of the Blue BOEs that have dropped off in the dungeons have netted me a very nice chunk of change as well.  Except the Toxidunk Dagger… is that not the most common blue in the game or what?

How are you doing on the AH with the expansion?  Have you found a great market niche that is making you a ton of money that you’re willing to share?  Or are you a buyer trying to get your crafting skills maxed as soon as possible?