Personal Gold Challenge: 3 weeks left

I've got about 3 weeks left to finish my gold challenge.  How am I doing?

Well, let's consider that question in two different ways:

How am I progressing towards my goal?

vs.

 Am I enjoying progressing towards my goal?

   

A few quick notes for reference:

My goal is to reach 40,000 gold on one character before my time card ends on February 25th.

I am focusing on three characters on this secondary account: a warlock and a shaman that had reached 90 before the original trial account time ended and a warrior that was boosted to 90 when I got WoD.  All three are on different servers so I can't pool their gold.  The warlock and the warrior are DPS and the Shaman is healing but I was planning to pick up the DPS off-spec.

How am I progressing towards my goal?

 

Tackling the success angle first, allow me to present you with this high-quality, totally worthwhile graph.

Half-assed Nerdery

The sudden drops in gold are when I hit 100 and had to pay for the level 3 garrison.

Okay, so when I play for more than a few minutes at a time I can make a fair amount of money.  Despite the advice people gave, I haven't been consistent in gold generation from my garrison.  The suggestions were good, I just haven't taken the time (or really had the time) to set everything up and get it rolling.  The large gain for the gnome had been a day when I had been able to run something like 8-10 LFRs with DPS goodie bags, plus some old raids and other such.  That was a good day.

Real life has intruded some, so I haven't been able to get on every night to play.  Sometimes I can get on and do garrison chores, but sometimes I can't even do that.  That's to say nothing of the 12 or so other garrisons I have on my main account, so that if I do get time to get on, managing the other garrisons and these can take up a lot of my time.

But what I have gained out of this experiment so far is that IF I focused on one character and IF I could put in some consistent, reasonable amount of time to playing, I could almost certainly make gold each month.  I'm not declaring my challenge over but I think I can rule definitively that I could make the gold necessary to purchase WoW tokens.

Yes, I would still need to make double what I do now, since this challenge is over 60 days and not 30, but looking at how things are going, when I do play for sustained amounts of time, I could probably do it.

With that in mind, I'm continuing the challenge for my own satisfaction and because there is another part of it.  Not just the generation of gold, but how I have to change my playstyle to do it.

Which brings me to the second question

Am I enjoying progressing towards my goal?

 

As you can likely surmise, not so much.

The biggest issue is that I feel compelled to play each day and to focus on activities that generate gold.  And not just play each day, but restrict myself to characters that can make the most gold.  So if a character is better at soloing old raids or knocking out dailies or whatever, they get to take priority over the sub-30 alt I've been itching to play or the slow characters that I just like to do whatever on.

 

Another issue is that LFR goodie bags referenced above are probably my best daily source of gold.  I can run old raids once a week for gold and do the weekly LFR 150whatever gold reward, but that's once per week.  The 500+ gold that comes from the LFR baggies alone is a nice bump.  The catch is, that the DPS goodie bag is not reliable.  It's happening a LOT now but still not every time.  It is one of the reasons why I'm thinking of switching to my shaman for the remainder of the challenge.  I do see the baggie come up a lot more often on the healer role.  But, I'm not sure I'm good enough to be someone the raid needs to depend upon so much. Yes, there will be other healers and the raid likely won't fail, but I already dislike how much I get carried as a DPS, I'd prefer not to be carried as a healer too.

 

Even if I was top of the charts with healing or DPS, it still means I have to do LFR, which means grinding the same fights over and over and over again, in that unpredictable atmosphere that is LFR.  Where you can have good raiders in for their weekly valor or just fun or you can have the people who seem to be playing World of Abusecraft and I am their content.

What's next?

I had been reading Fussypants' post about healing and it made me remember how much I can enjoy playing a good support character. The Shaman is sitting at 92 with a level 2 garrison, so it'd be a bit of work to get her to 100, with as little of time as I've had to play lately.  But I think it might be fun and perhaps worthwhile.  If nothing else, if I get her to 100 I get a level 25 pet stone and can get some more heirloom upgrades pretty easily.


I do still like my gnome warrior although I feel pretty clumsy with her.  She's fun and I love her attitude, but I haven't gotten a hang of the warrior mechanics yet, so I'm pretty weak there.


I'll also need to figure out what to do with the gold when this challenge is over, since I'm pretty sure I won't be using it for a WoW token.  The guild the shaman is in could use any and all gold it can get.  The other two, well, it's not like those guilds couldn't use the influx but it might be an opportunity to get the garrison mounts and pets I haven't bought yet.  We'll see.

My own personal gold challenge

So, background. A while back, the spouse and I decided we wanted some Recruit-A-Friend (RAF) mounts and the short-term leveling bonuses that came with it. It was during one of those sales where the base game costs $5 and the current expansion is like $15 or something. We looked at the cost of the game plus 60 days (since you need to do that to qualify for the RAF mount) and what we’d get out of it and decided it was worth it to us. So we created second accounts, got our mounts, and leveled up some alts quickly. It was fun and, for us, worth it. We let the time lapse and the accounts went inactive.

This past Christmas break, I received a 60-day time card. Now, I could add it to my main account but it was an opportunity to try something for this blog and my own curiosity. Are WoW tokens an option for me? Could I realistically support my WoW playing via the token?

The RAF account I was thinking about already had two 90s on it and I was going to get a boosted 90 since WoD was on sale. I decided to try to level to 100 quickly and I opted to purchase the garrison upgrades, since I figured once that was rolling it would pay for itself. It has on other characters, but that has been over the course of a few months of mostly neglectful tending. I don’t check all of my characters every day. It would take too long. But the ones that I do check more often are doing well and a few could purchase a token.

For the RAF account, these characters basically started off level 90 with no gold, or at least under 100 gold, and I’d like to get them up to self-sufficiency. I’d like to see if I can generate enough gold before the time card expires and how I have to play to do that.

What is your gold goal?

40,000 gold, on one character, by February 25th.

Why?

To be able to purchase a WoW token and still have gold to upgrade garrisons or anything else that is needed. Basically, if this were a realistic thing, I wouldn’t want to spend all of my money on WoW tokens but not have enough left over to do anything. The goal is above the recent token prices by a little more than 10% for this reason. Plus, by being a fair bit above the average, when the price fluctuates I’d still be able to buy a token that month.

Any limitations?

Nothing yet per se. Not making this a huge personal challenge like the ironman or anything like that. Just curiosity really. I was using BoA gear and leveling potions to try to get up to 100 quickly so I could run old raids for gold and doing other dailies.

What things have you done so far?

Questing mostly. Bonus missions and quests have been pretty good for generating gold. I’m planning to get the level three Inn for missions and more followers but beyond that, I’m not going to go out of my way to do a lot of crafting and other collection based gold-making on these characters. (The because to that why is in the next question.)

The biggest daily influx of gold has been from doing the LFRs that have the bonus satchel. That’s close to a minimum 700 gold per run. It isn’t something I can do everyday, but this past weekend I was able to run 3-4 LFRs with the baggie in one day. As a DPS. Which I think says something, but that’s for another post.

What about crafting and playing the auction house?

I’ve never been great about playing the auction house but I’ve had some success. Still, that is not a game for me. I could research it and perhaps get better but that is not something I want to invest my time in. I could stand to be better but I don’t log on to play World of Auction House.

That might come across as looking down on those that enjoy the auction house, but that’s not my aim. It is just isn’t what interests me. So while I’ll do those things, and perhaps get better and learn to support myself more, that isn’t the way I play nor would I want to.

Why not just do it on the account you already have? See if you can generate the 40,000 gold on already established characters?

Well, that’s kind of the point. I am curious if my playstyle would allow me to both explore the game as I like to and generate enough gold to pay for it. If I started off with money in the bank and established garrisons and full-speed flight etc, it doesn’t address what it would be for me to both experience the game the way I like it and make enough gold.

60 days is not a month.

That’s true and an even greater point for my playstyle. If I can’t even make 40,000 gold in 60 days, there’s no way I can do it in 30. This extra time gives me the greatest chance of success and I’m still not very optimistic.

I’m tracking my 3 WoD characters on the account. One is 91 (resto shaman), sitting in the level 1 garrison not doing much, with about 1,000 gold. She’s a healer, so that might be a good way to go because healers and tanks get the bonus satchels much more often. But right now, she’s just gathering resources and leveling followers while I work on the other characters. I plan to get her garrison to level 2 soon so that I can start doing the mine at least – although again, another character to log onto and do chores with.

Another character is 99, just short of 100 (arms warrior) and has around 4,600 gold and is in the level 2 garrison. She’ll be getting to 100 soon and I hope for her to be my main focus for this. Because I like her the best as a characters, not because she's good at generating gold. She’s not having the very good gold luck.

That would be my, begrudgingly, 100 destruction warlock (because demonology). She’s just short of 10,500 gold and has had a fair amount of luck on drops and gold and LFRs.

My initial thoughts are that while I could support a subscription with WoW tokens, I don’t find it very fun so far. I have a chore I have to do every day (make over 1,300 gold) and every day that I don’t do that, it gets a little higher the next day. I need to log on and check follower missions, run raids I don’t really care about, do other events that are good for gold flow but aren’t really fun for me. And most importantly, for an alt-loving person like me – I can’t play my other, lower alts very much. That’s to say nothing of how draining it is becoming to log on to each and every garrison and do the chores.

This is not a new problem I’ve discovered. Many others have talked about it for a while, and I think even I mentioned it at some point. But in trying to focus on these other characters to make the gold necessary, it really brought it home how much it isn’t working for me yet.

I have said “so far” and “yet” because I am trying to be open to the possibility. I’ve mentioned before that one of my favorite characters I’ve ever made was on a RaF account and it is the warrior mentioned above. She is such a fun little gnome warrior. Love her. I’m not very good with her yet but I enjoy playing her and she just looks awesome. But I can’t justify paying for this second account and I won’t. But if I could pay for it with WoW tokens? Would it then be worth it?

To be honest, that’s a whole other problem I have with WoW tokens. For me, specifically. The money I spent on the token could be used to purchase some mounts I don’t have. Or toys. Or pets. Or support other characters as they get garrisons. 40,000 gold would upgrade a garrison to level 3 with most (all?) buildings to level 3 and I’d be able to do that each month.

The 60 day time card will expire on February 25th, so I have over 35 days left to make the money I need.

We’ll see what comes of it by then.

An interesting read

I haven't meant to neglect this blog for this long but things have been busy with the recent holidays and at work, so...well, I guess I did.

I was just starting to work on a post about my own personal gold challenge when I saw that Grumpy was talking about gold this expansion.  I'll still get to mine (unlike my other lost topics) because it is slightly different and specific to my situation, but I saw this article that I thought was worth sharing.

The secondary title of the article sets the stage What happens when the vast universes in massively multiplayer online games go offline?

From the perspective of the characters who inhabit a doomed MMO’s diegesis, it is truly the end of everything, their world, as the poet Philip Larkin put it, “[soon] to be lost in always, not to be here, not to be anywhere.” For players, the apocalypse is, of course, not real, but nevertheless imparts a real experience of what the apocalypse might be like, to see a world they have come to care about lose its ability to be.

I don't agree with the entire article but I found it worth my time and thought I would share.

Hell Hath Frozen Over...Again

Back in August over on Hunters Rhok, Phyllixia had a post about a bizarre and unexpected thing.  A wait for DPS in the Looking For Dungeon tool.  Not just a wait, but the bonus satchel for those that joined.

As I said at the time, I was astounded.  I didn't even know that they had code for that.

Well, last night I was bopping about on a hunter and thought I would do a dungeon and perhaps a short raid while I wrapped up some quests.  I open on the LFG tool and...

LFR for the Walled City with the Savage Satchel of Cooperation for the DPS roll.

What?!?  That can't be right.  Well, I sign up and as I'm happily flying around Draenor (just driving that point home) I keep that window open, to see if the bonus drops.  I've signed up as a healer before with the satchel there and by the time the queue actually popped, the bag is gone.  So I was sure it was going to happen on a DPS one.

It took a while, but finally I get in.  My DPS is comparatively low, even for me, so and I'm terrified I'm going to be booted and miss out on the satchel.  But, I think it was just that I was in a group that was beyond over-geared for this raid and I was just getting back into the rhythm of that character.  I never did great, but I improved throughout the raid as I got her playstyle back.

Whatever the case, we finished the run and I got my bag for being DPS.  500 some gold and 3 BoA Savage plate whatevers.  I'm just happy and astounded it happened.

Apologies to those that commented on my last post, I just responded and apologies I haven't written much.  I'll be back here and there.  In the meantime, keep an eye out for the impossible!

Alternative leveling - part the third of 3

Part 1 covered pet battles, archeology, and PvP while part 2 covered dungeons, material collection, and profession quests.  So far, I'd say dungeons seem the most feasible with mat grinding second.

Perhaps the final day can bring more?

Holiday Events Only

I would probably include the Darkmoon Faire.

Good - Some holiday events can really give a lot of XP so some would have a lot of leveling.

Bad - While some holidays give lots of XP, others give nothing or almost nothing, so there could be long droughts between leveling. When holidays with lots of XP are up, I'd have to truly dedicate time and energy to playing this character - which real life often limits anyways.

Grinding Only
Just killing mobs.  The very essence of grinding.  Obviously I 'd have to do some quests to open some areas, but beyond that, just mobs.

Good - Getting into a good grind groove can be fun and go quickly if you have a good area or good character for it. Good grief, could I have put "good" into that sentence more? Might get some of those rare world drops if I'm grinding out 99 levels of just fighting.

Bad - Grind. GRIIINNNDDD. No real reputation accomplished. I already have to grind out for collection quests or kill count quests so it's not like this would be new ground to cover.

Combination

Rather than just doing only one thing, perhaps limit it to some small number of the above.  For example, Pet Battles, Archeology, and Mat collection only.  So I'm out in the world but not there fighting mobs, but experiencing all of the rest of it.

Good - More sane leveling. Less grinding. More options.

Bad - Seems to steer away from the challenge aspect of things a little bit.

Quests Only

I can only do quests to level.  I included this one just to counter the grinding only - just looking to the other extreme. But, to some extent, isn't that just playing the game?  What would be excluded?  If allowed at all, no dungeon more than once.  Do the quests for that dungeon and then no more.  No grinding for mats or rep or tokens or whatever.  This one feels out of place, so I think I'll skip the good and bad.  I won't cut it out entirely, since I mentioned it before, but I don't quite see what it would be to do quests only.

___


So what was the point of all of this?  What do I get out of this?  Well, for me, I think this misses what Kamalia did with the Underpowered Death Knight.  It was interesting for me to think about but I don't think it provided me with spirit of the challenge I was looking for.

In re-reading the limitations that the Underpowered Death Knight was based on, I think I'm going to craft something more like that.  It keeps more in the spirit of what I enjoy about these games, which is coming up with characters and their stories.  Even if only in my head.

I think I'll take a few days or a weeks and ruminate some more.  Here are my seed ideas that I might combine or refine as I think about this.  I'm not sure if I like all of these but they are a starting place:

The survivalist - avoids cities (and even towns) at all costs

Racial purity - only take quests/interact with characters of the same race (that just screams elf or blood elf)

Vow of poverty - character will keep some minimal amount of coin.  Any thing else will be "donated".  Options to donate - Just giving to random characters; buying stuff off auction house, reposting for very low;  Give to guild. This might be good fit for a priest or a monk.

Backpack only - no additional bags or perhaps allow one 1-slot penny pouch and one of the 6-slot pouches.  Basically, something that a person could logically carry, as opposed to the 1 backpack and multiple giant bags we have now.

Greedy - The character will be given a gold goal for each level and they cannot level up until that gold goal is reached.  XP will be locked until then.  The money to lock XP would be given for the first level but then it would need to come from the character directly.  Given how long it takes me to make money, this would be a long challenge.  They've upped quest rewards so I'd have to look, but I'd say, you have to earn your current level x 100 gold to level.  So to get past level 1, 100 gold.  To get to level 2 you'd have to earn an additional 200 gold.  To get to level 3 it would be an additional 300 gold.  VERY slow start and not easy in the vanilla range, but it would get considerably easier as time went on.  And if successful, over a half million gold upon 100.

No repairs

Only crafted items - the challenge here would be that by the time you collect enough mats for some gear, it wouldn't have much, if any, use.

Snob - Epic items only.  If there isn't an epic item that fits that slot, it is empty or you wear the old stuff until you get one for that.  Given my bad drop rates, I'd be in empty slots or 20 level old purples.  Could consider lowering it to Rare if impractical.  At times would be very easy (cruising on purple) but challenging between drops.  No heirlooms allowed.

Only common or poor quality items.

The cloth tank - protection warrior or paladin or a blood death knight that can only wear cloth gear

The thinking warrior - warrior that can only equip weapons and armor with intellect or spirit.  Would need to decide if agility and stamina can be overlooked a high levels since I'm not sure pure single stat gear exists anymore

Shipyard Changes

So, did you read this blue comment about Shipyard changes?:

General
• Rare Naval Missions have an increased chance to appear.
• The bonuses provided by assist equipment, such as Ammo Reserves or Automated Sky Scanner, have been increased by 100%.
• Increasing the chance of success on a naval mission will now also decrease the chance a ship will be destroyed on failure. If the mission success chance is increased to 90% or greater, no ships will be lost on the mission.

Blockade Missions
• Blockade Mission duration is now 30 minutes (was 4 hours).
• Blockade Missions will respawn after 7 days (was 5 days).
• The Oil cost for Blockade Missions is now 50 (was 100).

Crews
• The bonus chance to Mission success provided by Human or Undead crews will be 50% higher.
• The bonus chance to Missions success provided by a Pandaren crew will be 33% higher
• The Pandaren Crew bonus will apply to Missions that are 12 hours or longer (was 18 hours).

The changes above are all live now. Here are a couple of notes to keep in mind:

• If you try to use a scroll that instantly completes a Blockade mission that was already in progress when we made this hotfix, it will reset the time on the mission.
• Blockade Missions that were already in progress will still need 4 hours to complete.

While I'm still not a fan of this shipyard, this will make it SO much less terrible.  I never lost at 100% but I lost in the high 90s and it was infuriating.  Such a simple thing that never should have been.

Alternative leveling - part 2 of 3

So last time I covered three leveling options - Pet battles, archeology, and PvP.

This time I want to think about using the group finder for dungeons, getting experience from collecting herbs and mining, and doing the daily cooking and fishing quests.  Hold on to your hats, here we go!

Dungeons

I would make my restriction be that I could only use the group finder, be it random or custom. I’m not in a guild that I could just hop in with other guildies when I wanted to run some, so that option is out for me. I’d, of course, have to be whatever the minimum dungeon level is, but I’m above that on enough characters. I’m not sure if dungeon quests would count as part of the dungeon or not. An argument could be made either way.

Good – Generally quick. I would get gear and money. I could use heirlooms to make it easy or only rely on dungeon gear drops. I think I’d generally lean towards gear drops only, unless I’d be letting down the group too much. I might keep heirloom gear on hand, in case I wasn’t pulling my weight. But with dungeon bags and drops, it probably wouldn’t be too bad. Reputation gains would move along for the core factions and perhaps a few others. One of the quicker options, I'd think.

Bad – Silent runs would be the norm. As it is now, I say “hello” at the start of almost every dungeon and typically get one or two responses and then nothing. It'd be soloing together, which can be okay but I'm not sure for 99 levels. I’d also be subjecting myself to a higher-than-normal incidence of the "gogogo" crowd. I can’t say why, but this feels even more repetitive than the other options. There are more dungeons than battlegrounds, I think, but it just feels more restrictive. Maybe because I’ve spent more time in the PvE world, I know many dungeons by heart.

Material collection only

Farming mats as the kids say. Mining and herbalism would be my focus.

Good – I can start at level one and collecting skill can be somewhat connected to character level. There would be a tons of mats for sale or use as I leveled. After a slow start, they would likely be self-supporting. It would be a big help to guild achievements.

Bad – I think the picking/mining skill can get out of whack with character level at times, if I remember correctly. I’d need to collect lots of mats in an area that are grey to my collection skill for the XP to level my character. They would initially need support for gear (unless wearing heirlooms) and bags. If not doing well on the auction house, I might have to play space management games. This would be a grind on a level that would be unprecedented for me.

Profession quests only

While a few professions can have dailies or side quests, I’m mainly thinking of the cooking and fishing dailies in the racial capitals. I would need to get to whatever skill level is necessary to unlock those quests. And perhaps character level? I’m not sure.

Good -They give a fair amount of experience for the investment.  It wouldn't take me long each day to do them, so the character would level slowly but I could move on to other characters quickly.  I'd be able to spend all of the tokens I'd accumulate on a lot of mats.  Money and reputation wouldn't be much of a problem.  Well, reputation of the core factions anyways.

Bad - Excessively repetitive game play.  Two quests a day.  If I included the Darkmoon Faire profession quests I'd get two extra that week.  Whee.

Dungeons seems like the most feasible one so far and I'm pretty sure that is how some people actually level.  I'm still not that enamored of it.  The mat collection path seems like it might be a nice way to make money and collect mats.  Let's see if Friday produces better leveling ideas.