Whirly: good to go

I just can’t solo in WoW anymore. I’ve been trying to force myself to play for just one bubble of experience at a time. Last night, I only squeezed out half a bubble before camping. And that was probably less than 5 minutes total. I’m having a good time getting rich in the WoW auction house, but it’s not enough to keep me engaged full time. I need something new.

I figure it’s got to be a MMO. Nothing else is interesting for more than fifteen minutes. It’s got to be new to me – While EVE still calls to me and I think I could get some fun out of City of Heroes it’s time for something fresh.

I just did a search of what’s available and I think I’ll go with City of Villains. It’s not going to be completely fresh, more of a CoH II, but I see nothing else out there for me. I’ll let you know how it goes.

My Priest required bat guano from Razorfen Kraul for a quest in the Undercity. I think the boys did as well, so we headed there Monday.

We had to use, what I think is, a questionable technique to get through a couple bosses. We only try this when we can’t get past them any other way.

The priest, me in this case, mind controls one of the mobs. The boss and other mobs kill my guy then it’s back to normal minus one guy. It works great unless mind control breaks, at which point a group of mobs we couldn’t kill is heading towards the priest. It worked perfectly though which I didn’t expect.

I just received mind control at 30. I found some level 8 humans to experiment on with terrible results. I tried a half dozen times and it never lasted more than 10 seconds. You can imagine my surprise when it worked in the instance.

I got my bat poop and we killed a very large pig before calling it a night. If we had a leather wearer among us, he would have made out well. We didn’t so I disenchanted the bind-on-pickup leather stuff. Mark later said we were almost to the last big boss so I guess that calls for at least one more visit.

The next part of the quest calls for some work in Scarlet Monastery. I’ve been itching to go in there. It was always fun.

I’ve made some changes to my World of Warcraft Auction House game this last weekend. It was getting to be just too much work.

First, I’ve upped the profit minimum of the things I buy. I’m looking to have fewer auctions, each with a higher profit. I’ve eased my way up from 1 gold to 2.5 gold minimum. I’ll keep going up till I find a sweet spot.

I’ve switched to using 3 mules. One armor, one weapons and one everything else including all purchasing. Trying to do everything with just one mule was getting bulky. I couldn’t carry all the inventory and had to leave it in the mail box when not up for auction. I’ve downloaded ct_mailmod so I can send bulk items to my other mules.

I’m experimenting with auctioning all week and not just weekends. I hate putting stuff up for 24 hours because the competition can come in below my price, and the extra expense of 24 hour auctions eats into profits. I haven’t decided what to do about that. Living in Alaska, prime time is past before I get home from work. An 8 hour auction starting at noon my time would work, if I can figure out a way.

Though our trip to Gnomeregan Friday was a loot bonanza, it was not without problems.

We had no need of the clean room or the bedrooms. Our plan was to jump off the rim near the entrance. It would probably be best to take a look down and see what we were jumping into. Maybe move a little to the side and avoided the three bad guys and the named fellow. That’s what we did the second try with much better results. I don’t recall the circumstance of our next death, but I think it included an alarm bot and an intruder alert.

We entered via the back door next. Whoosh, those boys are tough. I don’t know how we managed to get through them. I hope it will be a little easier next time as we all dinged 30 and we’ll have new spells and skills.

In a moment of boredom I purchased Civilization III. Why III and not IV? I don’t like these games much. It seemed better to spend $20 on a game I won’t like than $50. Surely you can see the logic in that.

I’m not an engineer, I’m an auction house gold farmer, of sorts. I don’t sell gold or anything like that. I purchased my first Goblin jumper cables simply because the price seemed low and I thought I could make money selling them. The second jumper cables were probably the same, I’m not sure, I wasn’t paying that much attention. The third pair I bought because they were being auctioned for less than I wanted to sell mine for. I’m now stuck with three jumper cables I can’t seem to sell.

Yesterday I logged in to find somebody selling jumper cables 4 gold cheaper than the last ones I purchased. I logged into my old server to check the price. That low price was what they were going for, Alliance side, there. Hmm.

I considered purchasing that other jumper cable, but decided not. I don’t mind being the king of jumper cables I just don’t want to be the court clown of jumper cables.

I don’t worry about profit on each individual sale as long as I’m making money over all. I made 90 gold last weekend so I’m good. If I worried over every purchase I’d do nothing.

I am worried a bit though. I’m now buying more expensive items that might not move as easy. I don’t know how else to improve cash flow without increasing my work load. I’m auctioning 100 items every eight hours from Friday night to Monday morning. Maybe that’s not a lot, but it’s just about enough for me.

We were wondering how Horde players could get into the Gnomergan instance. Mark found the information – you teleport from Booty Bay. That’s easy enough. Let’s go.

I guess we went in at a lower level as Alliance players because we had a much harder time than we did last night at 28 as Horde. With Mark’s Warrior leading us, we marched all the way to the Crowd Pummeler room before hitting the wall. The little walking alarm bots are a pain, as they call for help at inopportune times, but we keep an eye out for em as best we can.

We didn’t know how they would treat us in the Cleaning room, them being Gnomes and all. They were very snotty, so we killed them and turned it into a Horde Cleaning room.

We picked up the key to the backdoor, plus lots of good loot. I received the Acidic Walkers with a roll of 100; Mike is a terrible roller. I’m just lucky I guess. We’ll have to go back and get him some as well. They are good shoes for cloth wearers at our level.

I never liked Gnomergan before. It might have been I didn’t like Gnomergan while playing a Warrior. I found it a fine place while playing a Priest. We all dinged 29. A great evening’s play.

The difference going into Blackfathom depths was we were all a level higher and we’d done it before. My fear that the last time was a fluke and we might fail was unfounded. It is easier when you know what’s going to happen. We plowed through everything without much trouble. Mike received a new stick, Mark a new back, and I new pants.

There is a terrible feeling that the Warrior and Priest’s job is to line them up for the Mage to kill. Not much you can do about it other than go along for the ride. My role, as Priest, is minimal in these things, but it’s enough to keep me engaged. I prefer a mechanical grind more than most anyway. It’s best to have a little risk so I don’t forget to watch health bars.

I looked at alternative user interfaces (UI) with the healer’s needs in mind, but decided to remain with the default. My concern is a UI breaking patch would leave me crippled. I do wish I could see all group members buffs and debuffs all the time.

A terrible toothache tainted most of my week. Everything about last week was a sorry piece of crap because of it. There were a few game highlights though.

I didn’t play the auction house game very aggressively. Still, it looks like I’m at, around, 550 gold, one quarter of the way to my goal.

Friday, Mike emailed to say he would be late. Mark and I decided to see what kind of trouble we could get into in the Shadowfang Keep instance. Not much, it seems. A 26 Priest and 27 Warrior own that place. Well, at least till after the bat room. We started running into problems soon after that, on the wall, with larger groups. Luckily, Mike and his Mage showed up to escort us the rest of the way.

This was our first attempt at the big-boss, and it didn’t go well. He jumps around the room and we couldn’t lock him down. The Warrior and Mage died. The boss conveniently forgot me, so I resurrected them and we tried again.

I went down first, this time, followed by everybody else. Our return found a complete re-pop, minus the named mobs. We poked around a bit, but it was too late to do the whole thing again.

We made another run at Blackfathom Depths Monday. Mike and I were 26, Mark 27. We killed everything including the three headed hydra at the end. I was focusing on healing and didn’t know the hydra’s health until he dropped. It was good he went down because I was completely out of mana, I’d used a mana potion and even bandaged the tank at one point.

I got a new stick, Mike is terrible at /roll. Mark picked up a 2 hand sword from the hydra. We also completed a quest that netted Mike and I nice wand upgrades and Mark a new shield.

Mark mentioned going back for other drops. We had a few close calls so it will still be a challenge. I love winning.

To upgrade my first-aid skills I needed two, maybe three, stacks of linen cloth. Luckily, I found three stack in the Auction House at incredibly low prices, bid only, no buy out price. Two of them were short term auctions (less than thirty minutes) and one, long term. Perfect. I bid on all three.

A couple minutes later, I see the message that I’ve been out-bid. I returned to the Auction House and re-bid, soon to be out-bid again. Thus began the bidding war for three stacks of linen cloth. Something I’ll sometimes do, in these situations, is bid full price on the item. Linen cloth, full price, is somewhere in the mid 20s silver, a price I was more than willing to pay.

The thing is, what can happen is, you can put your curser in the wrong box, enter 20 and bid, and then find you’ve just bid 20 gold for a 20 silver item. The other thing is, once you’ve made a bid, you can’t take it back. I sat hoping he would bid. Didn’t happen.

I haven’t checked this morning, but my guess is I won that auction. One stack of linen cloth done, two to go.