The AH never changes

Entry is posted in it's entirety over at warcraftecon.net today. It's on the subject of why all of you wow players will still find valuable insight in the AH from reading my blog and why all of you rift players would do well to read a few of the wow gold blogs that are out there. Here's the first part

"And why does it not change? How does it stay the same no matter what game your playing? Because at it's core what drive the AH to function are people and we never change. The lazy people on wow are going to be lazy on Rift, the morons will stay morons, and the goblins will stay goblins. This means that everything I have learned from the AH game on wow will apply to rift and vice versa. The only changes are how you shuffle around names and numbers. Every situation I found myself in wow I'll find once again in rift and the same methods will need to be applied to work with it.

Hell I've even ran off my first camper."

Click here to read the whole thing.


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Making a few predictions

I've been following the development of the Rift economy very closely as you may imagine since I started playing. And as such I've noticed a few subtleties of trion that lead me to expect a few things in the not so distant future. I wanted to take today to share a few of my thoughts on this matter and have it officially in writing what I expect to see how close I am. Mind you that NONE OF THIS is official or hinted at by the developers, it is only my thoughts and expectations. So don't take any of this as gospel, just something to keep in the back of your mind.


Crafting plaques will be obtained easier.
With the dozens of new recipes that have been added in requiring 5 plaques a piece to learn these won't become common for a long, long time. They were added in to help people fill in gaps in their raid gear to help them progress faster through the raid content without nerfing the hell out of the raids. Because of this I expect there to be another way to gain plaques or a better chance of getting them. This may be done by increasing the drop rate from dailys and crafting rifts, or merely allow you to buy them with artisan's marks, or increase the weekly quest award up to 2-3 plaques instead of only one.


Crafting rifts.
I expect that these will soon include the new CD based materials as potential drops. For one to make these a bit more profitable for those that do them because right now no matter how lucky you are, you lose money compared to the lure cost. Lets face it, the minor cats are the only thing that's worth actual money from them as the common mats don't even make up 1/8 of the lure's cost to craft.


More vanity items.
This one is a given, the mathosian guard's armor is very popular and is the only costume set you can craft. People love this sort of thing and that was proven by how many people dove on it when it was made live. I expect outfitters to get the next full set and eventually artificers or RC's will get something that will add a little "woo-shiny!" to what you already have. By that I mean something like the random things you get from the event seals that add a little storm cloud over your head and the such or the apoth potions that let you turn somebody into a critter.


More augments.
With the release of patch 1.4 apothecaries can craft primary stat augments. While this is a great addition and much needed boost to a poor (see what I did there?) profession it is not nearly enough. Add to that the fact that the best and highest demand augments are mixed stat ones, I expect these to be eventually added in. More specifically I expect at least stat/power and endurance/block to be added if nothing else. While I would love to see some stat/crit ones put in I am not expecting this and I certainly hope that they don't add in the terrible stat/endurance ones. But regardless of which ones they do add, I am positive that there will be new ones put in.


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Rift 1.4 crafted gear

It's been almost a week since the patch hit so I've had enough time to go over it all on live and see what is what. Today I'm going to give you the important info that you'll need to know about all of these new goodies that have been added in. I'll go on a profession by profession basis and list off anything unique about them outside of what applies to every one of them.


Foraging, mining, butchering.
All gathering professions can craft a new type of material which is on a 20 hour cool down. Each one requires two of the top end materials related to that profession such as steeled leather, shadethorn lumber along with two items sold by the associated vendor with cost 4.2 platinum each. This puts their base cost at approximately 9 platinum + fee for the cool down. If you have a toon with all three gathering profs on them they can do each of them when the CD is up so they do not have a "shared" cool down.


Outfitter.
As with each of the gear crafting professions, there are a whole slew of new recipes. Each recipe for armor/weapons cost 5 plaques each to learn and require (on average) 8 items that are crafted by other professions with a 20 hour CD. Outfitter is unique in that it has a CD to use in addition to the new materials.


Rune crafting.
This profession does not have any new crafted recipes, but does have a CD to use for new materials.


Weapon/armor smith.
These professions do not have a CD but have the most sought after pieces of gear from the new recipes.


Artificer.
The big one here is the burning powerstone. It adds 200sp to your main hand or 2h weapon which includes both hammers and staffs. This is obviously the best weapon consumable in game for any caster, healer, or dps/support cleric so they are in very high demand. And you know what the best part is? They're cheap to make! To craft them it takes two refined gems and to get those they require your artificer to make any piece of gear that uses a brilliant or lights bane diamond and salvage it. Each salvage will produce on average 3 gem fragments and it takes 5 fragments to craft one refined gem.

The best items to craft are brilliant diamond bands (platinum bar and one gem) and lights bane diamond band which takes a lights bane diamond and a platinum bar. In total that costs maybe one platinum and I've been selling these things for as high as 15 a piece.

This profession does not have a CD to use.

There are also the new recipes that they can make which are rings and a staff. So far out of all the recipes added in, the most popular request that I've seen is the staff. And that's out of all the professions and not just this one.


Apothecary.
Out of all the professions, this one got the most love. First is the new ability to salvage essences. Note that there is a bug and any lesser essences that are BoE cannot be salvaged. Trion has stated that they're looking into this. All of the materials gotten from this salvage are all used for crafting augments of different levels. Here's the low down on what you get from this.

Green essences turn into basic "powder" and it takes 5 of them to make one inert thingy. The inerts are what are used in crafting augments and the type inert is tied to the item level that you salvaged. This is true of both blue and green essences. In addition to this powder, you will also get anywhere from 1-3 planar dust of the associated level which is enduring, endless, or eternal.

Now we come to the epic essences. Any epics that you buy from a vendor (that I've seen at least) cannot be salvaged, it's the BoE ones that you're after. The epic lessers can be any level from 10 to 50 and produce the same results. They will give you Prism fragments which turn into the mats needed for epic augments and 1-3 eternal dust. So depending on how you value eternal dust this can be some easy money for very little effort. Also of note is that the inert prisms sell for as high as 30 platinum each and the lowbie lessers sell as low as 5, heh you do the math.

Then are the epic augment recipes, each one takes 3 plaques to learn and requires one of the CD materials, two eternal dust, and an inert prism. After those are the pure augments which need a mighty vial of a related stat and inert crystals which come only from salvaging high level blue essences. To learn these recipes they take 212 artisan's marks each. The lower quality augments take much fewer marks and require level appropriate inert salvages.

To make these you'll need to salvage green essences that are BoP (until this is fixed) and rare greater essences. But since you can still get augments from planarite this isn't too much of a concern as they'll remain in the throw away category.

Leaving off on a potentially huge money making tip right now. You know all of those rune king seals that you probably have a million of? Trade in 75 of them for an epic lesser essence and salvage it for a few eternal dust and prism shards. They're suddenly not totally worthless! And the same thing goes for the new epic lessers gotten with dragon tears with the current world event so get going on those daily quests! And the best part is that both the tokens and the essences themselves are all boa so that means that you can do the quests on every toon and mail them all off to your apothecary. Pretty neat-o huh?


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The freedom money brings

Another entry is posted today over at wowecon and it's on the subject of why I bother to even do any of this. The money, the blog, the AH, etc, it all has a reason. Many reasons in fact. Here's the first part.

"One of the obvious questions that AH players get asked is "why?" Why bother making thousands and thousands of gold or platinum in wow or rift? The answer is the freedom that it allows us. They say money can't buy you happiness, which is certainly true. I mean after all, I have not once seen it on the shelves at the local Wal-Mart. Happiness is supposed to be in isle 4 isn't it? But money can definitely buy you things that will make you happy. In an MMO that means independence and convenience. Two words which I'll never spell right without a spell checker.

To me, happiness in the world of an MMO is being able to take care of any alt that I make without scrambling for funding. As soon as they hit the level cap I want to be able to kit them out in high end blue gear at the least so they can hop into the harder dungeons right away and not get carried. Having even more money means they can get suited up with shiny as hell purples and jump right into raiding if so desired."

Click here to read the whole thing.


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Take the E-peen out of the AH

Today I have another article posted over at warcraft econ. Today it's on the subject of how your ego is the most likely thing to hold you back. Here's the first part:

"A great writer once said a very blunt, but very pertinent one liner about how to write a great story and that is "stop getting your balls in the way of your writing! You keep trying to put your nuts in the middle of everything just tell the story!" Pretty in your face sort of visual isn't it? But it's a very important point and applies to virtually everything you will ever do, including the AH game.

First let me explain where they're coming from and the point they're trying to make with such a quote. The idea is that when you're trying to do something well, your ego is going to hold you back. It's as simple as that. Like I've said many times when it comes to the AH or writing a blog in general, do it for the sake of doing it. If you write for the sole reason of popularity you're probably going to fail. If you make money on an MMO just to show off you are going to have the opposite of fun. Sure it's nice to brag and to have 2,345,567 readers but if that's your goal you're obviously going to fall short."


Click here to check out the whole entry.


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Fill in the gaps

Aloha all, today I have another entry posted at warcraft econ. The subject today is things you should pay attention to while leveling that will make you a profit. More specifically, it's about what you should look for to identify what leveling items you should focus on selling first. Here's the first part.

"When you’re busy leveling your toon, there’s a lot more to pay attention to than just questing. I’ve already written at length about how everything sells and to try and AH everything that isn’t grey so I won’t be covering that today. Instead I wanted to cover something that’s mentioned every now and then but never in depth. I refer to the concept of niche markets which we’re all aware of to some degree.

A niche market is just what you would expect, a small specialized market. More often than not it is used in reference to a certain type of customer base, primarily collectors and vanity items. However there is another niche market that I have only seen talked about in great detail by the epic penny pouch, great wow blog found over yonder, and that is specific level ranges. In every mmo there are different items that are more easily acquired at certain level ranges such as rings or necklaces."


Click here to read the whole thing.

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PSA: How to properly AoE

Aloha all it's time for another public service announce from yours truly. Today's lesson in how not to fail is on the subject of AoE dps and how to do more than hit your channeled spell and scratch your balls. What's that? Why yes there is far more to aoe than just that. And before it gets brought up, I am fully aware that some classes are rather limited in their choice of aoe. For some of them, such as some rogues in wow, your only aoe is an on/off switch. By that I mean that either you're spamming aoe non stop or you are doing zero aoe with nothing in between. Bear this in mind with your class if you have the capability to do more than mash one button.

In fact, there are several different types of aoe "styles" to pick from. Choosing the right one for the situation is what will separate you, the super cool johnny awesome player, from the power drooling inbred mongoloids you'll come across in randoms. I'll start by listing a different style of aoe and then explain exactly what it is.

After that I'll go over when to use it and why it's important that you use that style instead of smashing your single "enemies explode" spell. The goal essentially is to get the best of both worlds. Aoe does more total damage, but won't kill a single mob as fast as focused fire will. Adopting these different aoe styles will do the most to have great spread damage while still focusing on the primary objective for the given situation.

You might ask why this is important or wonder why it is at all. Yes, yes I know, aoe dps are srs bsns! But when a fight requires good aoe, guess what? It is very serious business. Any time that I've seen aoe as even a slightly of an important factor it was always VERY important and was literally a pass or fail. If you couldn't do enough aoe in the right place the right way then it was a guaranteed wipe without question. Hence the PSA on aoe.


Full on AoE.
Obvious one comes first. This is where you're supposed to hit you're single enemies explode spell/attack, lean on back and scratch your nuts. The only time to do this is when there is a shit load of mobs all in the same spot. The amount that is needed to make this worthwhile varies greatly from player to player. This is because different classes have different aoe abilities and different groups of mobs might really need one focused down like a healer before aoe even matters. However I think that a good rule of thumb to follow is anytime there's 5+ mobs that do not have a high priority target (such as a healer) is when you should spam your big bombs non stop.


Cleave based AoE.
If you're not familiar with the term it means to replace your primary spam attack with one that hits multiple targets. Now you don't spam this attack and only this attack, it just replaces your standard filler ability. Meanwhile you continue your usual single target dps rotation on the marked target. One example of where this style should be used is when you have a pull that has 1 elite mob and 5 non elite buddies. Your single target priorities will bring down the elite almost as fast as normal, but all of the little buggers will drop rather fast which will greatly reduce tank damage.


Emphasized AoE.
By this I mean that you still want to focus on your single target, but throw in as much aoe as possible at the same time. Let me give you an example of what I mean by this. Lets say your mega aoe spell is a big fire nuke you cast a ton and also have a talent that makes your 4 second cast meteor spell instant. For prioritized aoeyou'll spam your aoe until you get that instant cast proc and use it on the primary target. Or if you build up a buff on yourself with aoe skills and have a big nuke that consumes that buff this is another example of where this comes into play. Now the time to use this is once again when there are a lot of mobs around. There's no point to spamming aoe on only 2-3 dudes, that's a waste.

The proper time to use this depends entirely on your ability to do it and the group of mobs that you're facing. One easy example is another pull with a single elite and 50 little ones that die fast. Another good one is if you're facing a boss that summons swarms of mobs that get killed in 2-3 hits from aoe. Those types of fights are fairly common and it's always important to keep at least some focused dps on the boss at all times. If there's any sort of time limit on the fight with swarms of aoe adds this is imperative to downing the boss before you get eaten.


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