Solo grinding, occasional parties with strangers

These days I'm working predominantly on my Mage and Warrior toons, with a smattering of playing on my Hunter to farm various things and disenchant whatever I've bought from the Auction House for mats resale, and regular time on my primary bank toon to keep up with the current Auction House trends and general recipe-reselling.


Warrior Advances to 45, Training At 50?


I got my Warrior to 45 yesterday, and then continued to grind through quests in Tanaris for a while and now I'm halfway to 46.


Apparently at 50 I can train my professions to 375? I'm not sure if that's my primary professions as well, or if it's just the secondary ones of Fishing, Cooking and First Aid.


While I've been levelling my Warrior and Mage I've made a few new "friends" for my friends list - folks who were soloing the same quests I was and we teamed up together to get them done more quickly, etc. Thankfully, I didn't run into anyone who 1) wanted to talk a lot or 2) wanted to leech on to me to get me to help them with other quests once we were done the two or three we worked through at that time.



My Preferred Progression of Friendship On Warcraft, Guild Recruitment


I am definitely someone who likes a slow ramp-up to actual "friends" status on the game... I like my first party with someone to last under an hour and for me to then go on and go about my business after our party has parted ways.


Then, I like to call upon that person in two or three days and offer to quest with them again in the area they're already working on.


Then after that, in the next few days or week I like to invite them into a dungeon party that my guildmate friends are a part of.


After those three times of working together, I know pretty much whether that person will be someone I invite regularly to things that are going on, or whether I keep them "just in case" or whether I ditch them entirely.


I guess at some point after that third or fifth party, that's when I'd let them know that we're recruiting casual, relaxed, independent players into our small, tight-knit guild, and if they've got some alts who are looking for a guild, to let me know since I've enjoyed partying with them.


Generally, people are already in guilds when I group with them on my 45 Warrior, so going for their alts is less "rude" than appearing to try to poach good mid-range players from an active guild. If they like our guild better, they can bring all of their toons over. If they don't (because we're too casual and they have more progression goals generally), they can leave and still be called upon periodically to join parties.


After all, friends don't have to be guildmates :)


Bottomscanner Trigger Adjustments, Selling Enchanting Materials


The first week or so that I used Bottomscanner, I didn't play around with any of the /btm configuration settings. Then at one point, I decided to make the minimum guestimated disenchant profit be 1g (10000c since the config works in copper, not gold), and I switched the minimum guestimated resale profit to be 10g. Both changes were to reduce the number of "hits" when I was scanning, hopefully reducing to higher quality profits (low volume, high profit).


Then, last weekend I was doing a scan while trying to get some cleaning done in my apartment and there were SO MANY hits that I basically couldn't leave my computer - every time I took a step away, DING! another hit. Most things had a 90%+ percentage of disenchanting into Dream Dust and Vision Dust, with very little disenchanting into other things.


Sure, the profits are nice, but I have limited bank space and need my sanity when scanning, so I altered the minimum DE profit to 2g. Now the things I'm disenchanting have a much higher chance (ie: 20% vs 2-5%) of breaking down into things like Greater Nether Essence
Trade Goods
Use: Turn a greater nether essence into three lesser ones.
Item display is courtesy world of warcraft.allakhazam.com. ',VAUTO,HAUTO,FULLHTML);" onmouseout="return nd();">Greater Nether Essence and Greater Eternal Essence
Trade Goods
Use: Turn a greater eternal essence into three lesser ones.
Item display is courtesy world of warcraft.allakhazam.com. ',VAUTO,HAUTO,FULLHTML);" onmouseout="return nd();">Greater Eternal Essence - and they sell VERY VERY well. I saw a stack of 10 Greater Eternal Essence
Trade Goods
Use: Turn a greater eternal essence into three lesser ones.
Item display is courtesy world of warcraft.allakhazam.com. ',VAUTO,HAUTO,FULLHTML);" onmouseout="return nd();">Greater Eternal Essence up for a buyout of 100g over the weekend, and there was so little competition that I'm sure it sold out of someone's sheer desperation. Same with the Greater Nether Essence
Trade Goods
Use: Turn a greater nether essence into three lesser ones.
Item display is courtesy world of warcraft.allakhazam.com. ',VAUTO,HAUTO,FULLHTML);" onmouseout="return nd();">Greater Nether Essence - I posted a stack of 4 this morning for nearly 50g and it was undercutting existing auctions.


I've moved the minimum DE profit back a bit to 1g75s since I went from getting 25 hits a scan to 2-3, and now it's back up to around 7-9 purchases per scan.


I am SO GLAD I advanced my Enchanter to 300 prior to the patch which made materials more difficult to attain and thus has contributed to the drive-up of prices of materials in the Auction House. It's certain that a first toon can't be Enchanter and get anywhere these days (without buying gold or having gold supplied by friends)... you need to have a couple of other toons already in Leatherworking or Tailoring (or maybe Blacksmithing?) to supply the magical items for disenchanting - and for those Greater Eternal Essence, you need to be creating level 50 items to boot.


Enchanting is not an easy path, but that's fine by me as I'm making a killing on mats these days! I fully expect to be able to buy an epic land mount for my Warrior as soon as she hits 60 strictly due to the Enchanting materials profits I'm making. Woo hoo!