Mining Companions.

So, as I was collecting my 882 Saronite ore (and then a couple more) I kept on seeing a Tauren Hunter, Bigmacdaddy. He was very well geared and could have stomped my face into the ground.

He was also, clearly, trying to mine. He did have the rare Ony drop mount that has a 310% flight speed, but I had my Violet Proto-drake and my Crusader Aura so I was slightly faster than him. This means that I got many more nodes than he did when we both came to the same one at near about the same time.

Yet never once did he show any signs of frustration. He would just stay on his mount, circle round and go after another node. He even called his pet off me whenever it decided to attack.

All in all, it shows good signs for relations with the horde. They think that we are a passive people.

Class Change Previews

I'll get to them. About a month or two after everyone else has had their three pence opinion.

I assure you, my opinion will be worth at least four pence!

Seriously though- I will get to them.

I'm sorry about the shortness of this post and the lack of effort I have put into it. It makes me sad. But I said that I would post daily and daily I shall post.

However, I am in the middle of writing my final papers- which of course, you may very well get to see because it saves me from actually thinking of what to write.

~Your Lovely Procrastinator

Financial Aid

So- I've been filling out tax forms and financial aid and I'm starting to hate it.

But besides that, I've been known to give out financial aid in game. I feel that it is a good thing to do sometime while playing WoW. You should- at some point borrow and lend gold. You can choose not to pay it back promptly (or at all) and charge interest on your loans, but it is something that needs to be done.

I say that it needs to be done because it encourages you to work at making some money. If you owe a friend 1k, you are more likely to be able to pay that off quickly rather than if you were just grinding that gold from scratch with no motivation. When I was grinding gold for Epic Flying, I was about 200g a day (I was also leveling JC). When I got a 2k loan from a guildie and friend, I increased my revenue to about 500g a day and paid him back four days later. My increased revenue continued for another couple weeks and I almost had enough gold to get a second character Epic Flying.

So- clearly, by my experience, borrowing gold is a good thing. Therefore, it can be extrapolated that lending gold to people who are as trustworthy as me makes their play experience better. Thus, lending gold increases the overall fun had while playing.

In conclusion send all the gold you have to Alenena on Ursin (Alliance).

Servant of the Dragonmaw

While doing the Netherwing quests you get turned into an orc. It looks SOOO cool!

You all should start the rep grind.

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Compilation Guide!

So I'm pretty much done with Greedy Gronko for now. In the future, expect to see my economy posts under this header.

Anyways, without further ado, the list of Greedy Gronko posts for your perusal:

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: The Basics

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Begging

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Mob Killin

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Dungeoning

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Questing

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Professions- Alchemy

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Professions- Blacksmithing

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Professions- Enchanting

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Professions- Engineering

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Professions- Inscription

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Professions- Jewelcrafting

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Professions- Leatherworking

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Professions- Tailoring

And there you have all of my GGGGGs.

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Professions- Tailoring

If I remember correctly this is the last of the non-gathering, non-secondary professions.

So- as a Tailor, you, again, have few options as most of what you can make is BoP, one time purchase.

However, you do have an advantage of BS and LW in that anyone can wear what you sell so the RPers will be more likely to buy from you. Tailors by far make the best RP wear. Especially their capes and shirts.

Then there is the 'Craft to DE method". WoW.com recently posted this article, covering the subject matter- look there if you're interested in that.

Finally, tailors can make bags. Bags, bags, bags.

Everyone loves bags. Most people who have a toon above 60 can afford to outfit their alts with four netherweave bags, made from twenty netherweave and sell for about 10g.

You can make frostweave bags, 60 frostweave plus 12 infinite dust and sell those for 40-60g.

Finally there are the glacial bags which are monstrously difficult to find the mats and can sell for 400-600g.

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Professions- Leatherworking

Yet another profession of which I have not maxed. I promise you, after the tailoring guide, I'll go back to writing random stuff that none of you will ever read. But sometimes random stuff is good.

Right- so today we are gonna cover leatherworking.

Leatherworking is fairly limited, like blacksmithing and tailoring because it creates wearable items- and once you get one of an item, you don't need another.

So, of course, you can create entry level epics and twink items and sell them for a profit.

Also, for twinks, the lower level armor kits can be slid onto their armor making them even more annoying.

At 80, you have a few routes- of course you can create leg patches, which I thank you for as I don't have any LW to make some for me.

The other primary option- released in 3.3.2 is drums. The drums you can make at 450 are wonderful profit makers. Even buying mats off the AH you can spend 50g (approx) to make 100g per drum. Since drums are used very often, you should generate some decent cash.

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Professions- Jewelcrafting

Today is a happy day. Jewelcrafting is actually one of two professions that I have at max skill, so I would like to consider that I know something about it.

However, there isn't much that I can say about the profession. Similar to inscription, jewelcrafting has one purpose. Crafting jewels. If you're not doing that, you're doing it wrong- or you are below skill 300.

At lower levels JC's can make some fairly nice items for twinks and pseudo-twinks. Once you finally get past 300, the real money starts pouring in.

For a while you can make a load of green gems fairly cheaply and sell them- but not for much profit. You begin to profit when you hit the current tier of gems- so (as of this writing) the Northrend gems.

As a note- for the rest of this piece, unless otherwise noted, the gem color denotes the rarity, not the color.

You can easily but a stack of green gems for abou 15-20g, cut all of them and sell them for about 1-3g each, depending on the cut. Stamina gems are more likely to sell, and for higher prices, as are spell power and hit gems.

Blue gems follow the same pattern, but cost 10-30g each but can be sold for 20-70g depending on the cut and the color of the gem. Red gems usually are the most expensive because of their apparent rarity.

When you get to epic gems, you can make a lot more money for each cut, but it is riskier as the initial investment is several times greater. Uncut epics cost at least 100g and sometime go as far up as 200g.

Your first goal should be to learn the best epic and rare cuts for yourself. For PvE those would be the Stamina, Spell Power, Int, Haste, Strength and ArP. Other stats, such as Hit and Defense are very important, but most people in full t9 don't need any additional Hit or Def, as their gear already gives it to them.

For PvP look for Stamina, Resilience and perhaps Spell Pen.

After you have gemmed yourself you can begin to look into buying large numbers of lower quality gems, cutting them and selling them.

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Professions- Inscription

Again, like most professions, I don't have a high level inscriptionist, so I don't know all of the possible options.

You do however, have a few ways of making the Gs come pouring in.

The most obvious is making Glyphs. I don't even know why I said that. If you're not making glyphs, you're doing something wrong. Look up the most profitable mats::sell value glyph. Make a half dozen. Then pick a new glyph.

Another method is milling. Many inscriptionists are too lazy to get the rare pigments they need and would often rather buy them.

The last option (that I know of) is cards. People still need/want Darkmoon Faire cards of Greatness because it is still an amazing and 'easy to get' trinket. Also, if you know someone stupid enough to be trying to get "Insane in the Membrane" (like me) they are going to need somewhere on the order of a few thousand rogue's decks. Yeah- that is a lot. And if they don't have an inscriptionist, they will need to buy them. All of them.

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Professions- Engineering

Engineering is by far one of the most fun professions to have. They can create all sorts of fun little tools that can be useful, but more commonly, are just fun.

But this article isn't focused on how much cooler engineering is than the other professions. I feel that I have to have a max level engineer before I can rant on that.

Engineering is limited on the production front. While many of what it can make is BoE or unbinding, most of it requires engineering skill, so you can only sell it to people who can make it.

Engineers can make a few pets, and those can sell for anywhere between 10g and 100g.

The other profitable thing engineers can manage is ammo crafting. Ammo is cheap to make and can often be sold for significant prices on the AH.

Greedy Gronko says that if you want gold- don't take engineering. If you want explosives and toys and explosive toys- take engineering.

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Professions- Enchanting

More recently, enchanting has become less lucrative. Pre 3.3 and the LFD system, enchanters were able to control whether or not greens that dropped in instances were DE'd. Generally, most non-enchanters Greeded and vendored the items. Now, many pick the DE option on the need/greed scale and sell the mats to the poor enchanters.

Of course, it is still possible to get large amounts of mats by running older instances and the like and DEing the items found there.

With inscriptions Vellum's enchanters can now lay their enchants on paper and vendor them for often significant amounts of gold.

Other than the new AH option and DEing for mats, enchanters can hawk their business in an attempt to find twinks or other people who are interested in lower level enchants.

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Professions- Blacksmithing

Blacksmithing is one of my favorite professions to request.

But, putting that BS behind us, lets get to the real meat of this profession.

The one problem with being a BS is that most of what you can do is a one time deal, per customer. Even if every player on the server wanted a specific item, you would create it once for each of them. An alchemist will be in constant demand because everyone will continually want more flasks. The only item people go back to a BS for is the belt buckle.

The belt buckle is one of BS's most prominent money-makers. Other options include cheap greens that can be DE'd for the mats.

But don't discount BSers. They are very valuable in creating gear for new max-level alts (or mains) and they can continue to create gear upgrades, albeit learning at a slower rate. In fact, my tanking bracers are off a max skill BS who had a very specific pattern.

As a BS, make sets of about a dozen belt buckles or create greens to AH or DE. The final option, which can generate large amounts of gold if successful is to create BoE epics and AH them.

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Professions- Alchemy

I don't have a high level Alchemist, but there are a few fairly simple ways to get yourself covered in gold if you rolled a Alchemist.

One of the most profitable methods is flask making. The flasks are practically required to raid and any raiding guild demands that everyone has flasks up all the time. They last for an hour and so a guild that raids a 'mere' three nights a week for a 'mere' four hours each night will require 12 flasks per raider.

That mats aren't too difficult to find floating around Northrend and you can make a tidy profit off those. If you specialize in flasks you also have a 10-25% chance of creating an additional 1-4 flasks each time you make one.

There is the option to make health and mana potions, but those don't generally sell as well, considering that they drop off mobs and are much more situational.

The other way to turn your skills into gold is transmutation. There is a one day transmutation and I'm not sure if it carries over for all types, but there are transmutations for bars, eternals, and gems. You can also specialize in this and get the same chance to create more. Epic gems still cost a few hundred gold uncut and you can create them from just a few rare gems that will probably run you under fifty gold.

If you get the full proc you can generate up to five epic gems for under 50g. That will result in about a profit of 700g for a couple minutes work.

Yeah- those sites that say you can make over 600g per hour- they ain't got nothin on me.

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Questing

I would go in the order specified, but I'm going to do a separate post for each of the professions, so that will take a while. Anyways- on to questing.

Questing is the primary way most players make their gold as they level. This is because it involves mob killing as well as dungeoneering as integral parts.

Most quests will reward you with gold (or lesser forms of money) as well as items. You will quickly upgrade these items and you will be able to sell the previous items for more gold.

However, the most gold comes to you when you hit the level cap, because then all xp you earn from quests is turned into extra gold generated for you.

For the best quests, do dailies. They're simple, repetitive and they never run out. Since they're dailies, they come back every day and you can hit them again.

For TBC you get around 6g per daily (at cap). For WotLK you get a bit over 13g per daily. You will clearly want to be running the WotLK dailies as much as you can.

I would personally suggest doing dailies in Storm Peaks- so as to get Sons of Hodir rep (if you need it). If not them, you can work in either HF, DB and BT to get Kalu'ak rep or go to Sholazar to get Frenzyheart/Oracles rep.

After you get all rep'ed up, definitely go to the Argent Tournament. If you can't joust well at all, I suggest that you try the other dailies in Icecrown. However, if you can manage to joust, the dailies at the AT will also give you Champion's Seals, another form of currency.

Another option is speed-running old world and TBC quests. You will be able to one shot nearly all classic regular mobs at 80 if you're dps specced and most TBC mobs won't present any form of challenge at all. If you run enough you can make some serious bank as well as earning the benefits of getting the rarer things that you can only find in Old World Azeroth.

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Dungeoning

Greedy Gronko strikes again!

So today we have another wonderful guide on how to Gather Gold!

Its a grand ol' day for me because I shot down Northern Beasts last night and cleared up to Anub'arak tonight.

Anyways.

Gold.

You want, we know how.

1. Roll a tank or healer.
2. Hit 'I'.
3. Hit 'Accept'.
4. Kill some stuff.
5. Get Gold.

Thats a pretty simplified version- but it works.

You do get some gold from finishing the instance as well as more than usual from killing each mob.

The real cha-ching-bling comes in when you sell everything you get at the end of the run.

In Classic WoW, you have instances that are up to 4 hours long. Looking at you Wailer! This means that you will get many, many lootz. And many, many lootz will sell for equal many, many goldz.

When you get the goldz, you now have gold.

One important thing to note is that you need to be able to play your class.

You don't need to be able to spreadsheet like a pro, don't need to be able to make perfect gear descions.

Just don't be that hunter, or that paladin. Please. For the love of all that is related to WoW. Don't suck.

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Mob Killin

The term "grinding" really comes from ye old days of classic WoW (which I was sadly not a part of) where to get 1% exp to go from level 1 to level 2 you needed to kill 100,000,000 boars (approx). Thats a lot of boars. To get all the way to level two you need ten billion dead boars or so.

Anyways, grinding has now become a term to mean "doing something that gets ridiculously boring and repetitive after doing it for at least two hours." This can be anything, but this post will refer to the classic sense of the world.

When you are grinding by killing mobs for gold, you aren't killing the mobs for the fun of it, you're killing them for their drops.

These days there are a few things that sell consistently well and drop from mobs.

1. Runecloth: This sells because it helps 80's get their rep up with the Faction cities without them having to grind.
2. Frostweave: This is the endgame cloth- of course everyone is going to want it.
3. Relics of Ulduar: These give rep with the Sons of Hodir, which is practically required for most endgame raiding.
4. Marks of Kiljaedan, Marks of Sargeras, Fel Armament: These give rep with the Aldor- end game BC. Not as good as Relics, but if you're stuck at 70 a good place to go.
5. Firewing Signets, Sunfury Signets, Arcane Tombs: Same as above, but for the Scryers, the opposite faction.
6. Fertile Spores, Sanquine Hibiscus, Glowcap, Bog Lord Tendril: These are Sporeggar rep items and will sell slightly better than the Aldor/Scryer rep items because Sporeggar have a pet, which makes their rep more desirable.
7. Pets: A list of 'dropped' pets can be found here. Be sure to note that some of the pets come from either items you buy from The Oracles or from Winter's Veil, an annual event. So while those are not mobs, they still can generate significant amounts of gold.

Of course, weapons, armor etc... can be either sold to vendors, or if it is of uncommon or better quality, it can often be auctioned off for more than a vendor will pay for it.

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Piles

You may have been wondering who Greedy Gronko is. Well, this is he. He is not in fact, a goblin.

Perhaps future posts of his may be lead by this particular image.

Additionally, it is interesting to note that Greedy Gronko is currently floating around 20g as he is leveling his JC.

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Begging

I've decided to start with the most interesting topic of the Grinding section of this guide.

Begging is often frowned upon because of the whiny, persistent nature of most users of this technique.

However, there are good ways to beg, and to collect cash.

Please use this technique only if you really need the cash.

These are techniques I've used on reroll's and alts on a different faction/server.

Kindness Tip 1:

Whisper your target, don't use general or trade.

Kindness Tip 2:

Be sure that your target will have enough money to give you- don't ask like-leveled people or even people in their mid 50s-70s- they probably are still living on the day's wages.

Kindness Tip 3:

Thank your benefactors.

Strategy 1:

Explain yourself.

Explain why you need the money. For example, I wanted to buy a skinning knife on an opposite faction, and a new server. I had 34c and the skinning knife costs 78c. I was so very sad when I saw how expensive it was.

I saw an 80 (So he probably has a couple copper to spare). I asked for 44c to buy a skinning knife, because that is all I needed. He rode over to me and dropped me a good 5g.

Strategy 2:

Don't ask for large amounts.

While you can still get a donation of several gold, never ask for more than 5 (at starter levels) and don't ask for much more than you need at your current level. If it costs 5g for each of three skills you need to train, don't ask for more that 20g.

Strategy 3:

Don't ask for a donation, ask for a loan or loan-donation combination (a lotion or doan).

Generally this is for somebody you know, a friend or a guildie. Here you can ask for a large amount of gold- eg. 2k loan for the rest of epic flying, or something similar. Figure out a payment plan (for that it was 100g whenever I got it- I got 1.5k from auctions the next day so I sent all of it). For some people it may be 10g everyday until you've paid back, some may be 100g a week, or lots of 100g whenever you can spare it.

Don't default on your loans- thats just a bad move. It gives you a bad reputation and you won't get any more gold from that person.

Strategy 4:

Gambol.

Many people offer lap dances in the Stormwind auction house for 5g. You can do better than that. Put together a series of macros that include a speech, some standard emotes and some custom emotes. If you have cool trinkets or pets, you can use those. Put on a magic show in a heavily populated place- Orgrimmar or Stormwind and then ask for tips.

Strategy 5:

Gamble.

Make bets that you feel confidant that you can win, but that look like the odds are in the other person's favor. If you have the Really Sticky Glue bet an (reputable) 80 200g that if you duel them you can flee before they can kill you. This works best if you are a lower level.

Thats what I have to say for today... I'll try to continue Gronko's guides for you in the next few days/weeks.

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: The Basics

Yeeesh- that's a long, alliterative title. Anyways, it is an excellent description of what I'm writing today. How to get gold. The basics of.

1. Buy it
2. Hack (the game)
3. Hack (accounts)
4. Grind

The ToS and Eula both say that the first three are bad. So don't do those. You'll be stuck grinding it out, watching those flashing pieces of gold come off the spinning stone of gold grinding.

There are many ways of grinding. Many of them are very simple, and I will not go into detail here, but I will in the future.

1. Questing
2. Professions
3. Dungeons
4. Mob-Killin
5. Begging

Each of those begs its own guide, possible several for a couple of them. However, while begging is on the list, many people will get mad at you, and those who don't get mad will give you nothing and those that give you something will give you very little. There are tricks... but wait for those later.

The best way to get gold and stuff is to play the game. The only way you can play the game and not get gold is by PvPing. You can theoretically loot the corpses of the opposing team, but they drop pocket change. Additionally, you die a lot more for each one of them you kill than against normal mobs. So while it is an option, it is not a good option.

In the following days, perhaps weeks, I will continue this guide with various Marketing strategies.

Up in UK

As I've been leveling one of my DKs I've been revisiting old (WotLK) instances. Because of the slower pace of regular instancing rather than lolheroics (combined with more ghost-runs) it allows me to look at the architecture of these places and take many a screenie.