My Undead Priest toon hit 35 this past weekend, after trading favors with another alt-o-holic in our guild and finishing off all the RFK quests I still had in my book.

Note: About 10 BOE greens dropped during that run, whereas whenever I farmed that instance without a level-appropriate toon in the party with me, I came out with only one or two BOE drops to sell/use with alts, and a lot of BOPs from the bosses that I could only sell or disenchant. Moral of the story? When farming lowbie instances, bring a lowbie friend with you and you’ll probably still get more loot than if you ran the instance on your own.

So, now that she’s 35, life is about “running around” for a while, as I level my Jewelcrafting and Tailoring skills as a focus, with levelling Cooking and First Aid coming along afterwards.

I’ve got my Tailoring and Jewelcrafting both up to 280 already, but things are slowing way down, now, because materials aren’t so easy to buy up and process in bulk like they were prior to 280.

My Costs Associated With Powerlevelling Tailoring, Jewelcrafting

I’m one of those types of players who didn’t blast through my professions the first time around, but now that I’ve got a family of alts that cover almost all of the professions, plus a couple of bank toons to store professions materials that will be needed in the future, I tend to park my new-to-20 or new-to-35 toon in a city near a mailbox for a week or two after they hit that mark, specifically to power through profession levels to max it out quickly.

One of my bank toons is for storage, while the other is the “central selling funnel” for goods I pick up or create on my play toons, and by continuously using my selling bank toon to keep things like recipes and uncommon+ drops cycling through the Auction House listings every day, every time I log in to play for a few hours.

The result of this always-selling-things bank toon is that when I need cash, the cash is already available and all I have to do is mail it to the correct character.

Also, another result is that when I hit 20 or 35 and can level my professions again, I can visit the Auction House every day and buy up materials that are being sold cheaply compared to the “average sell price”, instead of having to farm for all of my materials on my own.

So, over the last three or four days, I’ve been hitting the Auction House and buying stacks of Runecloth when they’re under 2g50s a stack, Thorium Ore and Thorium Bar that are under 15g a stack. I’ve also purchased a bunch of Aquamarine when I can find them for under 1g each as well.

I’ve spent about 300g so far, I’d estimate.

Processing The Materials, Processing The Results

Then, I mail the mats to my Priest, and some time later process through them. Now that I’m making equipment for level 45 and beyond, I send all of the Tailored items to my 63 Hunter who is an Enchanter, to disenchant. I send some of my Jewelcrafted items over to the Enchanter as well, but only things that look like they’d have to be listed under 2g or so in order to sell.

I’ve been able to create some blue rings in Jewelcrafting that certainly helped defer some of the material-purchasing costs I’ve been incurring… some sell for 10-15g despite the novelty of Jewelcrafting and the fact that many people are still advancing it and the sheer number of Jewelcrafted items available is high right now.

Supporting My Own Toons

I do, of course, review each of the things that I make, and send one over to an alt when it looks like something in particular would be useful over there. Adding the MP5 (mana restored every 5 seconds) crown, rings and necklaces will certainly help my Mage when he gets high enough level to use them all, and any trinket or ring or necklace that helps a lowbie toon get into the “more interesting” levels that are beyond 25 is pretty great, too.

But, for the most part, I disenchant what I create so I can get my other toons all ‘chanted up in the near future, again trading favors with another alt-o-holic in my guild. Perhaps this weekend I will begin preparations for the ‘chantfest!

This past week has been pretty busy in The Real World, so my play time has been limited. My next three weekends are booked pretty solid as well (two out of town, including the Friday and Monday around the weekend as well), so I guess I’ll be gathering up a lot of rest bonus!

20 Undead Priest

Since I last wrote, I’ve levelled my Priest up 2 times and she’s now level 20.

43 Undead Warrior

Some quest grinding has brought my Warrior up to 43.

24 Troll Mage

Same here. Quest grinding, level up.

Professional endeavors

I realized once I got my Priest to 20 that my Mage also needed some professions work, especially in the Secondary professions area. Now that both toons could max out Cooking, Fishing and First Aid to 225, I wanted to take advantage of that for a while, while everyone regained rest bonus.

I used my 61 to farm cooking materials since the Auction House didn’t have any regular Clam Meat or Tangy Clam Meat, and also did some fishing in Tarren Mills with my 20 Priest to get some Sagefish to cook. Plowing through mid-20s murlocks in TM with my 61 Hunter was pretty fun, nevermind 2-shotting the teen-level crawlers and Wraithheads in Zoram Strand… but avoiding the spiders and bears near the river (lvl 22-25) while fishing with my 20 Priest wasn’t as fun.

20Priest and 24Mage are both up to using silk for First Aid now, but I have been funnelling my silk through the Priest for Small Silk Pack purposes, and never have any “left over” for first aid use. Ah well, my 61 and 43 can supply Mageweave bandages which all my toons are high enough level to use. :)

Auctioning Continuously

While I don’t have a lot of playing time right now, I’m still making sure I spend a few hours keeping the Auction House stocked with my regular sellables, so I’m still earning money while I’m not able to play. Sometimes I need to send some of my toons on “recipe buying excursions” to keep the stocks up with my Banking toon, but that’s nowhere near a daily thing.

I’m selling cooking recipes and Small Silk Packs predominantly, but on occasion I can get out and do some grinding/mining with my Warrior Blacksmith and I am able to create 5-10 smithed items to sell slowly over the week (+sta items mostly). Oh, and I’m selling Thick Leather Ammo Pouches and Quickdraw Quivers, too. The weekend is more lucrative for sure, but throughout the week I make a steady trickle of coin as well, so I never stop the cycle of listing items and picking up the cash or rejects from the mailbox whenever I log in.

THREE Bank Toons

So yah, I bit the bullet recently and turned my 10Pally into another bank toon, so now I have three. One does most of the generalized buying and selling of items from my play toons. The second holds mostly herbs and some low level first aid materials. The third holds potions and various “mined” components.

My theory with all of this is that I’ll make better use of potions that were created as part of the Alchemy Grind, and I’ll be able to quickly generate another batch of low level potions without spending more than mailing fees. Every time my miner and herbalism toons run across a node, I harvest the resource available whether or not I need it for levelling up. I figure if the stuff sits there for too long and is not useful, I can always auction it off.

I’m pondering turning my Pally into a Jewelcrafter since these mats are being sent her way anyway… but haven’t quite committed to that one.

Well, that’s enough writing about it. I don’t have much time to play, so I’d like to get back to it :)