Friday, March 31, 2017

High on Highmountain

High on Highmountain

Sista has taken quite a liking to the Highmountain zone. In particular, the base at Nesingway. So consider Sista's surprise when she learned that the flight path showed that it hadn't been opened yet! Sista has been to that spot multiple times.

Sista took the flight path to Thunder Totem, mounted up and rode to Nesingway's Retreat. Yes, it's still there, but she had to activate the flight path. Very strange. Patch issues, likely. I hope it doesn't screw things up worse than a flight path.

Okay, my bad. Sista has not been here before, so it must have been Keya. Mystery solved.

Back to the point, Nesingway is a great spot for skinning stonehide leather and raw meat for food. There are also numerous pools of highmountain fish to catch, and Thunder Totem is a short flight to a good place for killing and skinning basilisks for very profitable stormscale.

Chaitee has been the benefactor of much of this for her contest. Stormscale is in high demand on the AH. Stonehide leather sales are modest, but what Sista lacked in quality she gained in quantity. The fish dinners were an extra benefit.

Keya Update: Keya is back on the prowl on the Broken Shores. She picked up a small ring upgrade (i825 to i830). She then went after a world quest that got her killed. It was worth it, though. Her second attempt succeeded. The victory gave her enough nethershards (remember those?) to buy a piece of gear (just like in Dreanor). Keya turned in an i825 trinket for an i850. That bumped her overall gear score from i823 to i826. Nice. It will probably be a long time before she can buy another.

Keya now has - wait for it - 229 war supplies. There is still no guidance about establishing buildings. It's my guess that starting one will whisk the player into a the Broken Isles version of a garrison. Supposedly that's where all the action is. Keya is not going to waste her time until there is good intel about the best method and whether it in fact is working as intended (many complaints that it isn't working yet). 

PS - I was reading through the patch notes and came across this: "Join a region-wide, CROSS-FACTION effort to construct buildings that open new content . . ." Hmm, what would that look like? Are we looking at the new Ashran?

Anyway, Chaitee has counted her coins: 567,362 gold

Thursday, March 30, 2017

Completely Baffled

Completely Baffled

Keya has flown three flight paths in the Broken Shores. If there are more Keya hasn't found them, yet.

They are similar in that they're perched on a shelf of rocks, surrounded by difficult terrain and the ocean. Enemy mobs patrol, some in small groups, others stalking large areas. Keya tries to avoid mobs that have no value - Keya wants to be on a specific quest or part of a world quest in order for her to gain anything. Actual quests are in very short supply.

World quests pop up here and there, and there is supposed to be a map showing the locations of active world quests, but I haven't found one, yet. Part of the reason may be there just isn't that much going on that Keya can contribute to.

She did get a small world quest to kill crocodiles and take away bird eggs from the poor little dears. That got her some more supplies - she now has 50. Her bag can hold 10,000. That gives you an idea of what she has to acquire. There is also an area where Keya digs up mounds of dirt and kills crabs.

Keya wanders around, looking for mischief, hoping she'll stumble into something fun.

Shouldn't there be more to it than this? Shouldn't combat zones be shown so we know where to go? The few other players Keya talked to are as uninformed as the rest of us.

Sometimes things get waaaay too interesting. Keya wandered into a number of dangerous areas but none of them showed that there was anything to gain - ie, no world quest there. However, there was a group trying to kill elites. Killing special elites are supposed to earn supplies. Keya weighed in with one group. Ten minutes later they were still trying to kill it while holding off endless streams of attacking mobs. I think the thing finally died, but Keya wasn't sure if she got credit.

Kinda fun, for awhile. She rummaged around in her bags to see if anything interesting turned up. Aha! She found a Contorted Eredar Bangle - good for 955 AP. Keya will take it. She also gained 25 supplies. Oooh, now she has 75 supplies. Smurk. Frankly, it's not much when she needs 18k AP for her next weapon trait. Keya feels just a little jipped.

On her last run of the night she was able to pull together enough supplies to start a building. There isn't much explanation of how to go about that, and as of yeterday the feature wan't even working. Keya is approaching that carefully. Tiphaine remembers jumping into the garrison business without thinking it through, which created complications later.

Chaitee checked in with daily count: 558,610 gold

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Patch 7.2 WAR!

Patch 7.2 WAR!

The Broken Isles become a war zone against the Legion assault. The patch is a monster one. All kinds of changes.

One thing that caught my attention and caused my eyes to roll back into my head is that we will be building things. What, do we have to do garrisons all over again? Couldn't we be a little more creative?  

Sista was the first to complete the initial scenario. There are seven stages, some parts of which were pretty hairy since she was all on her own for most of it. Sista was given a sidekick, but she was otherwise solo. One tip - that last boss in stage 7 had Sista worried - she fought that monster for ten minutes without hardly drawing a skinned knee - turns out it was planned that way. A cut scene swept her away to the starting zone of this new assault.

The main ingredient of this new war is collecting legionfall war supplies by killing rare elites and completing world quests. As I understand it, those supplies then go into erecting buildings.

 Beyond that it's been an endless kill fest. Keya, who also has now completed the scenario, agreed. Both made it as far as the two flight paths on the Broken Shores, first at Veagence Point, and then at Deliverance Point. One can wade through the kill zone to get between them, but it's easier to just swim it (assuming you'd rather swim than fight), avoiding the worst of the mess.

I am proud of both gals for the way they've handled the masses of mobs that flood the battle areas. Given that they don't have the gear that dungeon and raid players have, they've managed to survive despite a few setbacks (ahem, deaths). The lack of anything worth keeping in those zones is disappointing, though. In a nutshell, all that killing results in nothing tangible - no drops, no gold - except for supplies for building and a little reputation, despite getting credit for three world quest completions. So not only is the endless killing boring, you don't get anything . . .  anyway, I'm sure I'm doing it all wrong. Keya is investigating. More to follow.

Chaitee has her numbers: 546,668 gold

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Naxxramas Run

Naxxramas Run

Sista went on a Naxxramas run in Northrend yesterday. She figures it's Monday, a fresh week, and time to help Chaitee restock some mats that the AH has been stingy at supplying. Doing repeats of Naxx was trickier than the Twilight Highlands. She has that down pat, running through the raid the max ten times allowed per week.

Sista hasn't quite mastered the repeatable clears in Naxx. She followed the steps, starting with the Plague District and clearing up to the second boss. Something went wrong, though, and she wasn't able to get a reset. Might as well clear the raid, then, and that's what she did. The entire run took about 45 minutes. The catch wasn't all that great, but it certainly helps.

Infinite Dust: 54
Frostweave cloth: 170

A second run just flying around Northrend gathered up 32 more infinite dust and 180 frostweave cloth. There are two places where there are endless battles. Only certain kills drop goodies. Sista located a good position and zapped them with moonfire. Easy peasy. But boring.

Sista expected to craft some more bags this morning, but the morning patch is now going to extend to 2pm, so no WoW until later in the afternoon.

There will not be a gold count today.

Monday, March 27, 2017

Tapping the Leylines

Tapping the Leylines

Someone in the alliance guild, probably Tiphaine, managed to complete at least part of this quest line. Tiphaine refuses to speak of it. Keya sees it as a special challenge. Should Keya succeed where Tiphaine failed, there could be a vote on a new guild leader.

Keya stands outside Anora Hollow, a dark entrance not far from the Meredil flight master in Suramar. Inside the underground fortress are tall pylons that pulse with visible energy. Keya's task is to get four sets of leylines lined up properly to complete the power grid.

Keya burrowed into the underground fortress, working to connect the leylines properly. The effort was made more challenging because I'm colorblind, and can't tell the important difference between the purple and blue leylines. After much experimentation, Keya succeeded in aligning three of the four sets, mostly by random luck.

The last alignment was frustratingly difficult. No combination of pylons and leylines would work. Keya twice stormed out and went off to do other things when the maddening lines refused to cooperate. She read up on how to do it. She watched videos of it being done, but nothing worked.

On her third return for yet another attempt, the gods of WoW must have taken pity on her - the first leyline she shifted completed the seal. At last, she was done with the now active power grid.

On the heels of that victory came another difficult truth. She was running out of challenges that produced artifact power and blocked by mandated dungeon runs.

Here is what is stopping her:

(1) In dalaran it's the Violet Hold dungeon
(2) In the Highlands it's Neltharian's Lair
(3) In Stormheilm it's the Halls of Valor
(4) In the Eye of Azshara it's Wrath of Azshara
(5) In Val'sharah it's Darkheart Thicket
(6) In leather working it's the Scales of the Sea
(7) And there is also the Soul Prism of the Illidari which requires the collecting 80 soul fragments from dungeons

Seemingly blocked from every direction, Keya went after more world quests and focused more on Suramar. After a slow start the quests started to pop up and her progress began to speed up. When she headed for the showers to rinse the muck and blood from her skin and gear, she had earned another AP rank. There are still 14 ranks to go, and the AP cost just keeps growing. 

News from Chaitee:

Chaitee groaned. She was curled into a ball at the base of the Auction House platform, holding a crumpled pile of tickets from her purchases and sales. Early morning business was slow, but that was normal for a Monday. She wanted a bath, but it would have to wait. The money changers wanted their take, and Chaitee needed to count the results of the weekend. She would never admit it, but her confidence had waived more once. Normally she would count the take up front and deal with the consequences, which most often went in her favor. She didn't know if that would be the case this time.

At it's nadir, Chaitee's stash had fallen to 517,593 gold, a loss of roughly 15,000 gold.

Now it was time to count the sales. Chaitee counts in groups: sales under 100g, sales under 200g, etc, which gives her a better understanding of what was selling and what wasn't. She looked for sweet spots, such as the fair return of all those leylights she bought and then sold. She counted enchants separately - there were only three sold, and those were very low bids barely above the 1000g mark. Mats were more successful, particularly for stormscale, which Chaitee captured the market for most of the weekend, thanks in part to Keya's activity.

Okay, it's time to stop counting and get to the bottom line. She's satisfied with the results, despite the tough crowds.

Over the weekend Chaitee earned 22,710 gold. Her tally for the days take is:

540,303 gold

Sunday, March 26, 2017

The Qwertymage Monster

The Qwertymage Monster

Chaitee encountered a nightmare when she opened the bidding on the Auction House Friday morning. If the rest of the weekend goes the way the start is going, it could get very rough.

Qwertymage is a well known buyer and seller on the AH. Chaitee competes with him on many levels although Chaitee doesn't have the amount of resources the guy has. It's Chaitee's opinion that "Q" has more than half his toons doing nothing but churning out mats and goods to sell. Chaitee has been slowly collecting hexweave bags, of which Sista is the sole crafter. On average it takes four days to craft the 36 slot bag, which Chaitee can sell at 1200-1400 gold on a good weekend. She was quite happy to have six hexweave bags available for sale, estimated at 7,200 to 8,400 gold. That would be a very nice haul.

"Q" destroyed all hope of getting a good price on those bags. I've never seen this before - the guy was able to craft 200 - yes, 200! - hexweave bags. Priced at 1000 gold each, it adds up to 200,000 gold worth of bags. Chaitee can't underbid him, she would lose money for one, and he can always outbid her with his 200 bags versus Chaitee's 6.

Chaitee will soldier on, despite the setback.

Sunday Update - The weekend is going to show high losses that may take several weeks to recoup. Chaitee was more buyer than seller, stashing her goods and holding on to them for better deals later. The market is the market.

Chaitee is keeping her books closed until the Monday returns are in. For an inkling of what that might look like on this dreary Sunday is her current cash situation: 519,103 gold.

Most of that comes from holding 8,000 gold in leylights, which will take time to sell.

Friday, March 24, 2017

Stymied Again

Stymied Again

Keya's leather working plans took a side trip when the mail armor guy in Dalaran popped the news that she had to complete three mail armor quests in order to get to her leather work. Keya killed her way through the quests, leaving only one left to put her on her leather working track.

Alas, the final quest is "Eye of Ashara:Scales of the Sea." It's a dungeon run. Say La Vie, which, interpreted, means This Sucks. But not unexpected. Keya can go back to killing things, collecting AP, and working on her weapon rank. The cost of a single new rank costs 11,280 AP now. With each new rank Keya attains, the cost gets higher. Only fifteen more ranks to go. 

In the mean time Keya went hunting in Highmountain where things are usually interesting when Nessingway is around.

After scraping up what's left of the quests in Highmountain, Keya headed back to Suramar. Chief Telemance Oculeth has a complicated job for her to do. The job requires multiple teleport jumps. Keya knew she'd get lost without help, so she went home to pick up an addon to keep track of location - that would be TomTom. With that in hand. Keya felt she was ready.

Keya continued her trek, using a disguise to wander around Suramar City. She was guided (tricked?) into  going deep underground in Felshroud, a place she had hoped to bypass this time around. Not to be. The killing was good, though. She not only gained enough artifact points to earn a rank and a trait, she earned a gear upgrade, too, from i821 to i823.

Chaitee butted in only long enough to call out the morning take: 531,822 gold

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

It's Raining In Suramar

It's Raining In Suramar

Mahakeya got her reins loosened so she could further pursue her leather working. She went into Suramar in disguise to find and kill three men. Being in disguise is fun, but it was even more fun to drop the disguise and kill guards and even patrons of the city. Sometimes she'd drop the disguise, round up some party goers, and kill them just for fun.

Once that was done, however, she ran into another roadblock, which ended in a screaming match with Namha Moonwater, the leather working trainer at Dalaran. Something about crafting felhide bracers.

Keya is in the wrong business. She hates leather working. One can picture her sneaking into the shop one night, battering the workbench into splinters and burning the tanning rack.

This is Wednesday, the worst day of the week for the Auction House. Tuesday wasn't very good. Wednesday is already looking worse. And the newspaper is reporting rain today and tomorrow.

The meager take for today: 523,431 gold

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Coincidence or Not?

Coincidence or Not?


Still struggling with the computer. There is spillover with other PC issues. Microsoft keeps trying to force me to name its Edge browser as the preferred. Edge isn't bad, it just isn't what I want to use. Email sort of works, but I'm going to have to figure out what to do with Outlook.com. It doesn't work right but is so twisted into the email setup getting rid of it could undo what progress has been made. I foresee another bout with a Microsoft tech to fix their software and make it behave.

I'm tired of talking about my PC woes, though. Let's talk about my characters. I use a button and bar setup using the addon Dominos.  I have ten bars each with 12 buttons to work with. The setup won't be exactly what I had before because it's never quite the same after a wipe no matter whether I did it a year ago or last night.

So far I've gotten Chaitee and Sista's setups done. They can take care of the Auction House and the crafting, which is 90% of the activity. The rest of the family will just have to wait. Sista is planning a Bastion of Twilight run. Chaitee is getting low on mats and the AH pricing is currently too high.

Today's Take: 522,866 gold

Monday, March 20, 2017

A New Day - Same as the Old Day

2017-03-20

A New Day - Same as the Old Day

Not much has changed since yesterday as far as the computer is concerned. It's functional and at least Microsoft Office appears to be working. That took three days of 4-6 hour effort by one failed tech replaced with a Tier 2 tech who knew what he was doing. Sadly, it doesn't surprise me that two Microsoft products, MS Office and Windows 10, can't seem to coexist without drama.

The best thing I can say about this is that I was able to keep the drama away from my wife's PC. She is still running Windows 7 and I wish I still was. She watched the mess that is Windows 10 from afar and is now contemplating going with Apple should her current PC, which is more than ten years old, finally calls it quits. I pray nightly that beast keeps on kicking.

Today I will be installing the Dominos addon I use to set up each character. The last time I set it up I used Chaitee as the model for the rest. That makes it easier when buttons and keys all have the same functions across all characters.

As for the day's take, Chaitee is still attempting to churn out the gold as best she can under the circumstances.

The take: 516,724 gold

Saturday, March 18, 2017

Help Arrives Today - Hopefully

 Help Arrives Today - Hopefully

Nothing much has changed since yesterday. I sent a gmail this morning with todays gold take (510,186 gold), but it doesn't look like it went through. So maybe blogger will get through.

I'm getting a little more familiar with Windows 10. Mostly I'm bending it to look like Windows 7 so I'll have a comfortable layout to explore further. One thing I don't like is that it can be pushy as programs and features line up to get my attention and activation. On a number of occasions I wanted to load one thing, but found that to get to it I had to login to other things first. I'm taking that very carefully. My highest priority is to get my email settled. Following that, Microsoft has to fix Office.

If I can get both of those things fixed today I will be a lot more confident I can get most everything else working.

THEN, after that is running smoothly, I'll start carefully to install the other programs I want loaded.

Friday, March 17, 2017

It Gets Worse

It Gets Worse

Out of several programs I've been trying to revive from the debacle of this new computer, there is one small shining light. World of Warcraft is still up and running, just about the only program that hasn't tried to suicide itself. I was even able to install Auctioneer and Postal, the two programs Chaitee needs the most to work the AH.

Then there are the disasters. When the computer seemed to be cogent awhile I figured I would go ahead and install Microsoft Office for Word, which is a necessary evil in the publishing world. "Evil" is the right word, because its attempts to install failed. Worse, I let a Microsoft tech try to fix it. An hour later he gave up and told me to try again tomorrow when the second Tier help was available.

The half installed Office keeps asking questions every few minutes. To make things even more interesting I am still buried with problems sending mail and receiving mail. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. I have another tech from Cox cable also coming tomorrow to fix my email.

But there is one even crazier event. I was so frustrated that I couldn't get my iphone working, I called my Mom to cry on her shoulder (she has been through the Windows 10 install and she's still not recovered). So I used the tried an true regular wall phone to call her - and I got a wrong number. Twice.  The lady who answered was nice, but I figured two wrong calls were enough and left her alone.

So phone-wise the same rules apply - sometimes it works, sometimes not. Let me know if blog post reaches you. The others have gotten to me. That's something, at least.


Checking In On Progress

Checking in on Progress

Some time between yesterday and this morning, I got WoW up and running. My blogger is lagging by at least a sentence as I type this, but at least it works. This morning I installed Auctioneer and started clearing the inbox.

My new figure for today is 505,431g. Nice to see Chaitee got the family over half a million gold!

I need to install the Mailbox addon now. I "think" that is everything Chaitee needs to run the AH. But things are not well. The new, expensive PC is slow and regular email is still belly up. The rest of the family has gone on vacation until all the fixes are up and active. Outside of WoW my wireless mouse and keyboard wont function and using them tethered is a pain. Cox Cable has a tech who handles email issues and I'll be seeing him tomorrow. Wish me luck.


Thursday, March 16, 2017

Not Out of the Woods Yet

Not Out of the Woods Yet

A real live emergency is under way. My computer failed yesterday. Completely dead. Follow along while I figure it all out. Or not. 

Well, I've found a way to communicate, through the blog. My Outlook email remains unreliable. Otherwise, Gmail is the best place to find me at this point (cbwayne.cb@gmail.com).

The new computer is very nice, but putting all the pieces together is a nightmare. If email was reliable it would be a hell of a lot easier. I had to give up long time friend Windows 7 Professional for the current Windows 10. On the surface I think it will be a good thing, if I survive the learning curve. Between equipment issues, installation craziness, and uncooperative programs, progress has been slow.

World of Warcraft refused to cooperate until this morning, when a real person finally untangled things. WoW is currently loading. At the pace it's going, I may be able to get in game by the end of the week. Okay, maybe not that long, but its at a crawl.

Firefox at least is working, security is intact, I can now get Netflix, and now Blogger is working. Small victories, but I'll take what I can get.

More hopeful posts to follow.


Monday, March 13, 2017

Flinging Open the Auction House

Flinging Open the Auction House

Chaitee ran rampant through the Auction House this weekend. Constipated buyers finally took their laxatives and released a flood of sales. Chaitee sold 28 bags over those two days, which might be a record. Chaitee is much relieved.

Sista will back at work farming mats for a major restock. Hypnotic dust will likely be tough to get again. At this moment most of the dust on the AH belongs to Chaitee. They were leftover from an attempt to sell them at a very high price (since at the time the bags weren't selling), but got no takers. That was fine, the dust can now be used to make embersilk bags.

Sista and Keya will be more active, working on their professions. Keya is getting very tired of Felshroud Hold (I think that's the name). The underground demon world is a crazy quilt of tunnels, drop offs, and dead ends. Being lost is the usual state of being down there. Stumbling into elite demons is also a frequent occurrence. Keya had help the first two times she was demon cornered, then learned on her own that she could take them solo, though it took time. That's what I really like about Keya. She's damned hard to kill. She is pushing through a long thread of quests to get her leather working completed. I'm not looking too far ahead because I expect to find out eventually that she'll be blocked by a raid or dungeon requirement. Keya remains ignorant of that likelihood for now.

Sista will make a return to the Bastion of Twilight for her weekly embersilk run. She'll check on the Maw as well. Could that thing still be chewing up soul claimers?



Sunday, March 12, 2017

Doubling Down

Doubling Down

Tiphaine directed Chaitee to take the day off from the Auction House. Stagnation has set in, and not much can be done until the pall breaks. That didn't mean she wasn't working. Chaitee took the opportunity to explore other avenues of revenue for the guild. That includes digging through the rift of discarded items in other players pockets and bags, for anything that could be sold on the AH. Though distasteful, she is considering price cuts to generate some income for those few buyers still out there. She has a large stock of silkweave satchels she's been holding on to because they are marked way below value. In a good market Chaitee would buy them and resell at a better price. In this market, she is forced to consider selling low or risk watching the low priced bags go to buyers other than her. She can still make a profit at 444g each (average price 525g), but she still needs someone to buy them.

Chaitee even tried to sit on the sideline and let things play out, but it didn't take long before she hurled herself back into the fray. She continues to buy respected but stupidly low priced goods she knows will find a market eventually. The morning take was up a bit, enough to show a profit, if not exactly overwhelming. A number of bags were sold, and one enchant. Sista has enough leylights to craft three more enchants when the right price is there to sell them. She has a number of other items on the market that contributes a small additional stream of sales, and a well stocked warehouse
.

A Crack in the Dam


Chaitee prides herself on knowing her market, but she has to admit she can't figure what the weekend will bring. So she was surprised when silkweave bags disappeared from the AH. The bags weren't selling, but taking them off the market opened it up for Chaitee to swoop in. Chaitee is flush with silkweave bags and quickly posted five at 525g each. She'll keep close track to ensure her offerings are at the top of the list. If other buyers begin weighing in there will likely be a bag war, but Chaitee is well stocked to fight that battle. Again, everything depends on the buyers, but it is starting to look up just a little. Chaitee's world is hers again.

The "bag war" never quite manifested and prices did fall, but not as badly as first thought. She managed to make significant sales at 497g, less than the 525g standard, but better than the 444g others were selling for. In fact, bag sales for all three bags - silkweave, embersilk, and frostweave - did decent business.

As for the contest, Chaitee is happy to continue, but it's clear that Almond's gold making ability surpasses that of Chaitee. That's not a bad thing. Since the start of the contest Chaitee has increased her gold from 442,526 gold to this morning's tally of 470,213g, an increase of 27,687g. The daily average over 12 days is 2,307g. Multiply that by 7 and she gets a weekly average of 16,150g, which is well over Chaitee's weekly baseline of 10,000g.

One other point - Chaitee can do all this work without leaving Stormwind City or the Auction House.

Wednesday, March 8, 2017

No End In Sight

No End In Sight

Chaitee got a one-time boost for her contest yesterday when she sold all four of her hexweave bags for 1,498 gold each. They usually sell for around a thousand each. One hexweave bag takes several days to create due to a forcing factor that restricts the amount of mats that can be produced on a daily basis.

As for the rest of Chaitee's bag sales, the current situation looks much like moving around the deck chairs on the Titanic. It seems buyers are done with buying bags, at least for now. Don't much care about buying mats, either. It's also Wednesday, the worst day of the week for the AH.

Don't believe each day of the week as it's own mini-AH? Okay, here goes . . .
Monday is bargain day, when buyers clean up on low cost leftovers from the weekend.
Tuesday is mat day, when sellers start pushing their goods.
Wednesday is dead day, full of too expensive leftovers from the weekend and new posts that cost too much.
Thursday is straddle day, with a few bargains and more hopeful sellers getting ready for the weekend.
Friday starts the dungeon and raid crowd, prices start to rise and specialty items can bring in higher sales.
Saturday is madhouse day, where most of the buying and selling happen and where great bargains and greater mistakes are made.
Sunday is yard sale day, picked over items of little worth but also the occassional treasure.

On the positive side, cloak enchants are starting to show some life. Chaitee posted two at an acceptable price. That market is very unpredictable. In the "when it rains it pours" side of things some crazy seller posted 102 hypnotic dust on the AH for under 2g each. Note that the dust sells between 20-30g each. So hypnotic dust goes from hard to get to overstocked. Then again, one can never have too much dust. Meandering on, silkweave suddenly became expensive, which doesn't affect Chaitee now, but could be an issue if the price doesn't come down.

Opinion: Every now and then the Auction House goes through a major restructuring of goods and prices. It isn't something that gets scheduled, it just happens when market factors line up and  the market, buyers, and sellers are all out of sync. Things are definitely not in sync right now, and the signs are there that a major shakeup is coming.

Tuesday, March 7, 2017

The Last Days of the Golden Goose?

The Last Days of the Golden Goose?

Doom. That is one prediction among the auctioneers plying their trade behind the podium of the Auction House. Chaitee finds herself standing uncomfortably empty-handed, in a chamber full of potential buyers who aren't buying anything that she's selling. Stormwind Auctioneer Jaxon, who Chaitee does all her business with, is sympathetic. Jaxon gets paid regardless, but even she feels some of the pinch since she gets a percentage of everything sold through her.

 Chaitee cautiously ponders the thought of going to one of the other auctioneers to see if her luck changes. However, like deciding to stop going to your long time barber, such action has it's own kind of consequences. Word gets around that you're shopping for a new barber (or a new auctioneer) to work with. Hurt feelings result. Sometimes there are repercussions. Chaitee did stop by Auctioneer Chilton's podium a couple of miserable days back. Now she wonders if Auctioneer Jaxon knows about that exchange. Like she said, word gets around.

Chaitee sold eight bags on Monday. That's a paltry take. No enchants. Mats aren't selling, either, including the wharehouse full of embersilk, hypnotic dust, and silkweave. Faintly good news is that embersilk and frostweave bags have held their value and position on the AH, but that's worth nothing if no one buys them. Disaster hovers over silkweave sachels. They typically bring over 600g each. This morning the price plummeted another 200g, from 575g to 397g.

The lull will eventually break. It has to.

Erik maintains the daily gold production results for the contest. Here is the March 7th statistics. The swing is positive, but far, far below normal sales.




Monday, March 6, 2017

Supply and Demand

Supply and Demand

A "Did you know?" Note: When I was in the Navy my job was logistics. Believe me, handling logistics on the Auction House is far harder than handling logistics for the Navy.

The weekend is not shaping up like Chaitee would have wanted. Prices are stale with not a lot of activity. As of mid-afternoon Chaitee has sold only two bags. Chaitee's crafters are having to work a lot harder, farming mats in hopes the extras will be put to good use once the dry spell ends. Chaitee knows from long practice that these phases come and go. Still, sitting in a storeroom filled with unsold bags is a little depressing. Worse, is sitting in that same storeroom wondering how all of her many wiles have not gotten her a good price on the still plentiful hypnotic dust she needs. She wants that dust.

Once a week Chaitee sends one of her "minions" - in this case Sista - to make her weekly trip to the Twilight Highlands Bastion of Twilight raid. There, she sweeps through the first chamber of the raid the full ten times she's allowed. Sista separates the gear to be disenchanted into hypnotic dust. She also sets aside all of the embersilk drops. The dust and silk go to make items that Chaitee will sell on the AH. Sista keeps everything else.

Sista also caught a break while in the Twilight Highlands. The "Maw of Madness" was open. I don't really know the specifics, but I had read somewhere that if a certain quest thread was not completed, the Maw would remain open for some period of time. At the Maw, there is an almost continuous stream of mobs called Faceless Soul Claimers pouring though the area. Sista parked herself at the center of this stream of mobs, shifted to bear form, and started slamming swipes at everything that came in range. It was all she needed. I lost track of how long she was out there. But the stream never faltered, and the piles of bodies grew and grew and grew. The piles grew so high Sista had to work in break periods to pick up the detritus. And of course, there was embersilk, over 600. She finally dragged herself away, still half thinking she should wade back in there.

I am guessing that someone started the quest chain, and Sista was lucky enough to be there at the right moment to take advantage of it. She was there when the tentacle formed, the Tentacle of Iso'Roth. As the day turned to evening, Sista contemplated a return. She can almost hear the siren song of the Faceless Soul Claimers throwing themselves into the burning flames. Sista grabbed her gear. She had to get back out there!

It's late saturday night. Sista spent an hour in the Maw of madness, which as far as Sista knows is still churning out the faceless soul claimers. Java figured out how to make potions of treasure finding and Sista tested it's strength. The potion delivered 37 tiny chests with a large assortment of goodies. There were also 16 pieces of gear. The biggest haul was the embersilk cloth - over 1100 this time. That will make quite a few embersilk bags, but that depends on the status of hypnotic dust. It's so hard to think about leaving the area with such a boundless flood of goodies. Sista may just spend the night, once she clears out the treasure boxes and has more room in her bags. But once she had cleaned out her bags she was too exhausted to continue. 

Sunday Update: Chaitee got her hypnotic dust wish this morning. The price of dust fell to 20g apiece, 5g less than the going price. She bought all that the AH had, 405 hypnotic dust, which works out to 27 new embersilk bags. Meanwhile, Chaitee has to deal with a dumping of frostweave bags, depressing prices from 280g each to 220g. Following that, the price of silkweave bags tumbled from 577g to 471g. Chaitee will let others buy them and then reinforce the higher price. She really wishes sales would pick up, though. Her hold on the bag market is tenuous at the moment. She will put embersilk cloth from the Maw on the AH. The profit is less than selling the bags, but it will help the bottom line. She should also see some profits soon from her sales of stormscale. She holds out some hope that the Sunday crowd will be more willing to part with their gold.

In the long term view of logistics the dust buy is a major coupe, saving her 2,000 gold. In the short term Chaitee has just spent 8,100 gold for that dust. Over time Chaitee will make a lot of gold from this purchase, over 14,000 gold.

But come Monday, it's going to look really, really, bad in our contest.


Sista's Haul from Maw of Madness


Dead Soul Claimers

Sunday, March 5, 2017

The Game of Gold

The Game of Gold

Beginning on the first of March, the families of Chaitee and Almond agreed to a friendly bet on which family could increase their coffers by the most gold over the course of one month, March first through March 31st. Friend Erik agreed to keep track of the tallies (and active provocateur) to keep things interesting and fun.

The rules are as follows, courtesy of Almond:

Charlie/Chaitee Rules: Your main banker toon can buy and sell anything on the AH. You can buy mats, have other toons craft it into something, and be sent back items to sell. Toons can send you collected mats to sell, since you are the banker. What you cannot do is get gold mailed to you, or sell things you typically would not. This meaning, if Wild usually crafts and sells bags himself, he cannot send you the bags to sell. If he usually crafts them and has you sell, that is allowable. [Note that "Wild" is horde, the name should be Sista instead, because she is the one that crafts them and has Chaitee sell them in accordance with the rules.]

Tanis/Almond Rules: Almond is the toon I will use, since she is my main. She will quest, raid, and do class hall follower missions. If she wants something for herself (which will be gems and enchants) she will buy them. She does not typically sell stuff on the AH, most the time she sends them to Cerulean to deal with, so for the experiment, she will not sell items on the AH.

Gold counts are posted each day whenever the player first logs in. Perodically, the count will appear here as well, along with whatever commentary there might be.

Two posts of note below provide insight into how Chaitee and Almond operate.

Chaitee: I am a slave to the market, and right now it's not particularly good. For example, cloak enchants are usually good for 1500g or so, but selling now right around 1000g. Chaitee can't make a profit on that, so she waits until there's a better deal. It might get worse before it gets better. Chaitee expects some mat dumping over the weekend, and she'll pay a lot for it. The return via selling bags takes time to show up on the ledger. There aren't any quick fixes.

Almond: Steady gold: Eh... There is some steady factors, I tend to the the daily WQ area, and maybe some offshots if the quest is quick. So that is pretty steady. I did not finish yesterdays WQ area till this morning, I was one quest short of it last night. Also follower quests. I usually get a gold quest from that. Usually about 1 ever day or every other day. Yesterday had two. So those things are steady too.
Semi steady gold: Tuesdays - Thursday are raid. Tuesday is a crank through (7-10 bosses + usually a WQ), few more bosses Wednesday (3-5), and Thursday is usually pure progression (0-2). The more bosses we get down the more gold. Last night, other then light trash loot, there was not any gold from the raid, and on the whole it may have been flat due to repairs.
Variable gold: Weekend LFR... that depends on my mood and on time. If I feel like it, and I see extra healer gold (which usually is a bag with a little more then 800g per) I may go in. As far as LFG.. I only do dungeons for artifact power, and again extra healer gold. Sometimes a guildie will drag me into a mythic, but that is really just random.

The weekend is upon us. Chaitee has some stocking up to do with a good chance to pick up some bargains.