Altocaust Edition

First, an apology. This is going to be a bit long. And there will be some bitching, but please let me assure you there will be considerably less bitching than last week’s post…

Bleh
Ok, let’s get it out of the way right now – my computer is FUBAR. I reformatted, and it was running fine. I installed windows updates and it did all right, then I noticed that the window download for my video drivers failed, so I grabbed the one from the NVIDIA site. I rebooted to finish the driver installation, and it never booted again. The problem was bad enough that I took my baby to some local professionals to fix it. Now, for those who haven’t known me for any real appreciable amount of time, I built this computer. I’ve built multiple computers. This one in particular is my baby… And so, I’m understandably distraught.

Down to Business
One of the most common questions I receive is, “what is your secret, how do you make gold?” well it comes down to a very simple idea – mass production. Most people realize that transmuting inexpensive materials into an epic gem is a good idea: it’s a good profit, low risk, and it only takes a few seconds. If you have Transmutation Master there’s even the chance of producing bonus gems, money made with these bonus gems is pure profit.

Now, I hate to spoil things with mention of such a bad movie, but there is some relevance in a scene from Contact. Late in the movie Jodie Foster is contacted by an eccentric old man from a Russian space station. She’s upset because this experimental machine created for space travel has been destroyer by some religious fanatic (Jake Busey), at this the old man tells Foster it’s ok, there’s another machine created on the other side of the world. At which point he utters the words, “Why build one when you can have two at twice the price?” for some reason I’ve always remembered that line, and in the case of my wow profits it’s rather poignant.

If having one Transmutation Master is good, then it follows that having two or more is even better. And that is my real secret, I’ve got a lot of alts. Now, some people are incredulous when they find out how many characters I actually have, in fact I have more than what I have listed in the table below. The fact is, those shown here are representative of what I have on Bloodscalp.

How did I get so many characters, and why? Well several of these were once mains, my rogue and warlock in particular I played extensively in vanilla and BC. BC was an especially big “alt” time for me as I wasn’t raiding at all. I would level to 70, get arena gear, get bored, and repeat. The other reason I have so many of these characters is multi boxing, I did it for some time. I was even interviewed for an article on the topic The Escapist: Multiboxing to Level 80 Nirvana by Greg Tito (I’m referred to as Hor).

When I quit boxing I was left with a large quantity of characters “collecting dust”. So, when I started looking into hitting the gold cap it was an obvious choice to work up professions on these excess 80s…

My Cataclysm Setup
So, with Cataclysm coming I needed to think about what professions I wanted. First, with a pool of twenty crafters to work with I had to cover the basics: one of each gathering and crafting profession. And a lot of Alchemists, this goes without saying. Transmutations are here to stay, by their very nature they remain profitable and should continue to do so. Likewise, the cooldown nature of transmutations ensures that Blizzard is not likely to get rid of it anytime soon. If anything, they will expand on it. Which they already have in mining and tailoring, which brings us to the next thing – I’ve got a lot of tailors, the reason is I want to be able to produce lots of specialty cloth. Three Jewelers keeps my main stocked up on the “new” Dragon’s Eyes, as well as supplementing my income with excess eyes daily.

In the event that a new profession is released and I need to make room – Tailoring is the most likely to go. And so, as you can see I have a group of characters that epitomize mass production. I hesitate to use the term future proof with regards to wow economics, but this is my goal. To create a setup that should stand the test of time and patches.

This list is subject to change, but is current as of this writing.

The Bloodscalp Report
The Kids are all right, as expected I’ve found some “seasonal” help. And in some of the oddest places, I look at herb prices daily, looking for good deals so I can make cheap ink. Now, you might expect Adder’s Tongue to be my target of choice, but lately it’s actually been Icethorn. I’ve been finding these things for sale lately CHEAPER than even Deadnettle or Tiger Lily (8g per stack). So take my advice friends, if you’re milling keep an eye out on all Northrend Herbs, just because it’s normally too expensive to consider for milling doesn’t mean it’s not there cheap now…

That’s it for this week guys (ok it wasn’t as long as I expected it to be), thanks for reading…