Archive for January, 2007

Mmmm, Auction House money… 18 Undead Priest/Tailor

So yes, selling Small Silk Packs on the weekend has proven so far to be very lucrative, as I’ve sold 14 packs for 95s each since becoming Tailoring 150 last night when those silk cloth pieces arrived. I listed 8 last night and 4 had sold by early this morning, so I listed some more, and they’ve all sold. And, when I look at how many Small Silk Packs there are listed, there’s 3 in total, so I’ve just bundled up another 10 and listed them.

42 Undead Warrior

Grinding is a real… grind with this toon now. The quests I have on my books are yellows and are very tough to do solo because the mobs reset so damned quickly in the area. I know the Outlands spawn time was adjusted to make up for the fact that it’d be overrun with players, but my zone was outside Outlands and far from overrun (I didn’t see another player in the zone), so I’m hoping its spawn rate is “supposed” to be like that and is trying to encourage grouping up, without having directly marked the quest as “group”. Otherwise, if this is a new resetting scheme all over the place, soloing is going to be quite a bit harder than it was.

A good piece of news is that I’m right in the middle of quests that involve humanoids that drop Silk Cloth :)

I’m trying to focus my advancement time on this toon, because everywhere I go, I hear parties that need “a tank and a healer”. On my own guild line they’re constantly in need of a “meat shield”. There’s rarely a need for a Hunter in a party (there’s already one there). I think this is the same story on every realm around, and it’s the reason I started up my Warrior and Priest toons.

So, today I’m working on [42] Skullsplitter Tusks, hanging out in hte Ruins of Zul’Mamwe with a few other Alliance and Horde toons. Since we’re on a PvE server, there’s no fear of being jumped by another player, but the Skullspliter Beastmasters and their panthers are mean enough and wandering around, looking for fights to jump into. I’ve already died twice thanks to the combination of the quick respawns and them jumping into battle when I wasn’t expecting it. I remember this quest being a pain in the ass for my Hunter going through, too, but I guess like other quests, it’s here to teach you how to refine your use of the Interface - this time by staying facing one way during battle while looking around at your surroundings to make sure nothing else is approaching.

I made a quick exchange with a mage on the server who was looking for page 25 of the Green Hills of Stranglethorn book while I was beating on Skullsplitters, I have no intention of finishing that backpack-filling quest so when he asked on General if anyone had it, I offered it to him for free if he came to where I was adventuring. In the exchange I got myself some mage bread, which I’ve been happily using as part of my healing repertoire.

I collected the final Skullsplitter Tusk in perfect time. I’m going out for dinner tonight and had just enough time to turn in the quest (4 bubbles to level 43) and then log in quick to my bank toon to see how many of my Auctions have sold since last I was logged in. I’m back up to over 100g in the bank toon and each of my playing toons have 20g or more on them too.

With a whole little family of toons working hard, it’s easy to bring in cash! ;)

61 Troll Hunter, call me Farmer

After doing another run through SFK and netting another 30g worth of “stuff”, I moved on to the Scarlet Monestary, hoping to find the recipe for Steel Weapon Chain for my blacksmith. I went through all four arms of the SM instances and while I didn’t find the recipe I had hoped for, I got a lot of equipment to auction off, and got about 120 pieces of silk for my future tailoring toon.

18 Undead Priest

I dropped Skinning on this toon, and picked up Tailoring. Now that I’m not focussing my efforts on Blacksmithing, my next goal is to allow my Priest to create Small Silk Packs.

Auction House Good Deals, Selling and Buying

Small Silk Packs are 10 slot bags which sell well (95s each) to new toons and are cheap to make because of the lack of real competition for silk in the general marketplace. While many professions use some silk, none use it excessively for a long time, so the cost of it is reasonable in the Auction House, and since there’s always new toons looking to bulk up on bag space, it’s a great little niche market if it’s not already solidly cornered on your realm.

As for buying, I lucked into some under-1g stacks of Wool cloth last night (this morning full stacks are listing for 3-4g each), so I bought up about 120 Wool cloth and mailed it on to my Priest, along with about 120 Linen cloth (which were extremely cheap, 10s per full stack), so it would be there for me today when I logged in to play.

I’m now at Tailoring 130 and able to make bolts of silk, so the silk I got from the Scarlet Monestary runs last night is now on its way to the tailoring toon. I’ll create a bunch of packs and sell them over time next weekend, and if it’s as lucrative an activity as I expect it to be, I’ll pump out a steady stream of packs even when I get no further skill advancement benefit out of doing so.

But, today there’s a lot of real life and not a lot of gaming time, so now that I’ve finished my Auction House scan and a few Censuses on Most Wanted realms, it’s time to go spend some time outside of Azeroth with friends, eating healthy food. :)

This entry is a continuation of “Intro to Deathknell: Warcraft home of Undead”.

Heading Out To Quest

As an Undead, you’ve already learned a lot about moving around and interacting with the game in a way that other races haven’t had to do yet.  If you got lost in the graveyard to the south of the town of Deathknell, or if you have already taken time to explore a little bit, you’re way ahead of Orcs and Trolls who haven’t had to worry about getting lost yet.  From here on in, however, the playability-difficulty is about the same for all races.

Shadow Priest Sarvis has given you a “starter quest” designed to get you to give you a bit of battle experience and get you to level 2, so let’s get to it! Turn around and head back outside, then continue north along the town path, down past Deathguards Bartrand and Randolph and through the gate they guard.

Always re-read your quest objectives before heading out to fight. As your Quest Log (the letter “L” on your keyboard to bring it up) fills up, reading quest objectives and planning your attack becomes more important.

Depending on how many other brand new players are running around, finding Wretched and Mindless Zombies may be easy or difficult. You might want to take a look at the Zone Map before you run too far away from the Deathguards - by hitting ‘m’ you can bring up a map that is much larger than the minimap. The You-Arrow appears on this map so you know where you are and what direction you’re facing just like in the Minimap. The Deathknell area is rather small compared to the rest of the map, so take a bit of time to memorize where the town is, where you’re standing right now, before you head out to take on the zombies. Being able to use the ‘m’ map to find specific spots in a zone is crucial. The World of Warcraft is HUUUUUGE. Start your good habits early.

Zombie-killing Tips

Since you’re in a newbie zone, most of the quest targets are named in yellow, meaning they are ‘neutral’ in status towards you, and you can walk by them without any fear of them lashing out and drawing you into battle. Each newbie zone DOES have a small selection of ‘aggro’ mobs/enemies, however, so be aware! Once your targets get to level 4 or so, they’re likely to also be named in red, meaning they’ll attack if you get too close.

Wretched and Mindless Zombies are level 1 and 2 creatures, however, so they won’t attack you first and won’t try to defend their fellow zombies who are being killed beside them. This first quest is designed to be an easy fight for a new player who isn’t interested in experiencing game death quite yet. You should be able to go into this with confidence, just looking to have fun and explore, and you’ll do fine.

Choosing Between Quest Rewards

Once you’ve toasted 8 Mindless Zombies and 8 Wretched Zombies and picked up all of the loot from their corpses (keep everything!), head back to the town of Deathknell so you can turn in your quest to Shadow Priest Sorvis. I’ll bet you’re level 2 by this time - congratulations! When you turn in the quest, you’ll be presented with a choice of equipment reward before receiving your cash and equipment reward for the successful completion. If you forget what equipment you’re already using, you can type ‘c’ while the quest-solve window is open. As a brand new player with barely any equipment, you’re best to choose the equipment that is NOT colored entirely red (meaning you cannot equip it as the class you are playing) but DOES have the highest AC (armor class) rating.

Cash For Training

Now that you’re level 2, you get referred to your class trainer in Deathknell (probably in the same church as Shadow Priest Sarvis)… but if you haven’t sold the loot you picked up from the boars, you probably can’t afford to train anything! Go find a vendor, like the General Goods vendor or the Apprentice Armorer/Weaponsmith, and sell the junk you picked up.

I’ve actually got a macro for selling “garbage” (grey) items that I’ll share in a later post and link here. Eventually. If you’re savvy, look for ’sell grey items’.

Get into the habit of picking up every piece of junk dropped by things you kill, and selling them at vendors. At a low level, the wee bit of cash this gets you can be the difference between not training skills every two levels and being able to not only train skills, but upgrade your equipment from vendors as you run across them in time as well.

Stay Tuned For Part III

There’s a lot more to Deathknell than I’ve written here, so stay tuned for part three, coming soon :)