From the ground up: Week 1

Happy Saturday to you all and here's the latest journal entry of the "From the ground up" project where I started a level 1 priest with not a single copper and intend to level them to 80 and amass a large amount of gold without the help of a single person. The only supplies they were given was a set of BoA gear and nothing else. They are starting out with only inscription, herbalism, and their wits with which they must turn a profit.

Here's the run down of my progress thus far.

Level: 38

Gold: 245

Inscription skill: 145

Herbalism skill: 225


Just starting out
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Thank god for BoA gear is all I can say. the first 5 or so levels were excruciating, I could barely afford to train my skills and buy water. Things are definitely looking up though, I got extremely lucky and found three bags off of mobs, a pair of 6s and a 4. Very nice! Bag space is always my biggest complaint when leveling and is especially noticeable when you don't have a banker.

I sold my first auction! It was basic armor vellums which got me an amazing 50 silver. Woo shiny! Heh. I'll be saving that coin for my riding training when I hit 20. It costs 4g to train and another 1g to buy the mount before rep discounts. I think I'll be honored by then so that'll save me a bit of silver which I can put to training my skills and water. I find myself getting excited at finding treasure chests far more than ever, even more than my first toon. Reason being you can get things like silver ore that will sell for at least 2g on auction. Each time I think about my finances I can't help but giggle at the fact that my priest is busy counting their silver while my full business empire is able to drop ten THOUSAND gold on assorted junk in a heart beat without even flinching. When I saw a skill costing 5 silver to train I hesitate and make sure I'll be using it. Things like Fade and Ressurect I still haven't trained as I'll never be casting them so it'll be
wasting money. Hey every silver counts when you're broke.

I found a few greens of the monkey and a pair of common gems which I hope to sell for another few gold. If they sell I'll be saving up for my first major purchase: 32 spot inscription bag. Since bag space is at a premium and the fact that glyphs take up so much damned room this will be a very worthwhile purchase.

I sure am loving my power shield, being completely immune to spell push back is a god send, especially at lower levels, I don't even have to use inner fire. Saving mana = save money on water. Yes I'm being that careful with my funding. Since I have no way of making gold short of begging it's a necessary evil. My plan for the time being is to finish up the starter areas on bloodmyst isle and then head to stormwind and see if I can catch somebody offering some gold for charter sigs. I'll probably just afk there for a bit while I work on other things and occasionally check over to see if there's anybody offering. That is the easiest way to make gold at level 1, albeit unreliable. But money is money, and I sure need it.

I never noticed just how much it costs to train profession skills when you're relying on quest rewards and trash drops for income. Just skills and professions are taking up almost every bit of silver I am getting. If I can sell a few of the random thing I get for a few gold that would provide some much needed breathing room, but for now I need to watch what I buy. Wouldn't it be embarrassing to buy a piece of resilient parchment by accident instead of light parchment? Heh that'd take every bit of cash I have!

Level 15 now and I can pick my first glyph to use. The only ones that will help me are of power shield and smite. But since I'm barely taking any damage with power shield I'll be grabbing smite when I hit 20. That is of course assuming I'll be able to craft it then. Sadly I'll have to be around level 35-40 to find the herbs needed for the ink. Still there's no way I'll be buying it for a few gold when I can wait a bit and craft it myself for far less and get a skill up on top of that. The nice thing about being a scribe is that you can start making good profits right away. I'm only able to use midnight ink right now and can still craft several profitable glyphs: power shield, maul, corruption, mend pet (my first research glyph). If I can sell
them for even a lowly 3g that's almost enough to cover my riding training.

Once I get a mount I intend to spend a bit of time actually farming (/shudder) so I can make at least a dozen or so glyphs and have enough low ink to do my minor research with for a while. At least herbs at low levels are all over the palce so it shouldn't be too hard to get a decent supply for now.

Logged in tonight for a bit of game time and collected some sold auctions, 15 gold! I sold some clam meat, linen cloth, and a few common gems I found. To the AH I go buy some bags, thank god. Spent 6g there and still have enough to pay for riding skill in 5 levels. Still need a lot of herbs to level up inscription, I only know 3 glyphs. The bags were a major spending decision because I have zero income and can only rely on what I have in my pockets. In this kind of situation you have to be very mindful.

Came across a quest where I had to kill over a dozen lvl 18 elites. Granted I'm 19 and in boa gear, it's still not easy and having to repair many times or take res sickness is not an option. Went ok, Pull with 3x smite, power shield, fear when it breaks, dot, power shield, repeat. Thanks to the racial Gift of the Naruu I was even able to take on two when I "oopsed" and fear pulled a second.

The glyph industry has officially started! Woohoo first glyph has sold! Was a hunter glyph amusingly enough, serpent sting which sold for 6g. I also trained a handful of other profitable glyphs which I used for skill ups. I wonder how long I can continue my casual selling until I get noticed and hatedly camped once again. Probably a while because I haven't pissed off any of the goblins of the alliance.... yet!

Ding 20! Just spent half of my gold on training, mount, and skills. Ouch. To top that off mana has become an issue so I had to learn first aid as well so I can top myself off in between battles and not spend mana.

I think so far the thing that has served me the best are my observational skills. Just knowing what might be worth something to a player is what's gotten me a few gold so far. In fat as I'm writing this I've seen 4 random greens sell, each of which were priced at 2.5g each. Not bad I say not bad!

One thing that I'm having to do so that I keep my income high is raise my selling thresholds by a significant amount. Alliance side I'm selling glyphs now for up to 20g. I sort of forgot about this part the other night and probably lost a lot of potential money for my first night of glyph sales. But alas, this is all part of the learning experience from the ground up. Normally I price glyphs at 7g to control the market, but I'm far from a position to do that so I need as much profit as I can get, especially if I'm planning to buy dual spec and epic flying on the level. Though with the speed that I'm leveling at I doubt that'll happen simply because a natural amount of time wouldn't have passed for me to collect that much. Also as you can see at low levels (and low prof levels) there isn't a huge variety of ways to make money. The point of that being is that I can't afford to cap the glyph prices at 7g like on horde side because I don't have the resources to do so and I need to "get while the gettin is good."

I'm in mid 20s now and healed my first instance: BFD. It actually went so well that I did a bunch more. I swear, power shield is OP! I barely had to actually heal a damned thing, just shield the tank and then alt tab while I have a dps on auto follow. Ok not really, but damned close. Once I hit 30 I'll get the glyph for power shield to make it heal for 20% of the absorb amount and then it'll be really cake. Hell I'll be half dps by then because I won't have to heal much and can't just let my mana regen time get wasted.

Ding 30! Power shield glyph ho! I'm up to 100g holy crap I'm rich! I sold another fistful of glyphs last night and collected 50g from my mail. Made me feel very hopeful about the coming weeks of questing. I'll definitely be able to afford my epic land mount and training now. Now I just need to get me some more lion's ink as I just learned to make glyph of judgment and eviscerate, two glyphs that always sell well. I have no idea where to go questing after ashenvale, so I'll head over to dusk wood, my addon Carbonite tells me that it's up to a level 30 zone so I'm sure there's a few quests left over I can do. After that I'll be heading into STV where I
know for sure that the herbs I need can be gotten. After that... I am totally clueless where to go. Maybe arathi highlands?

It seems that I'm going to have to spend a bit of time farming herbs. I can't seem to find any that give me lion's ink, only emerald which means I have to back track a little bit to find them as I can't afford to buy them at 50g a stack.

Closing up shop for this week, things are definitely looking up. I can afford all my class skills at max level and epic riding once I hit 40. The only thing I can't afford is dual spec which doesn't surprise me since I've been doing so many random instances and leveling that way. That means less herbs are found so less glyphs are made. I never thought I'd say this but healing random old world stuff is fun!


Thanks for stopping by!