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Grinding Levels for Gold
Ding. Another 110.
Congratulations.
Yep, got another Death Knight to 110.
Uh, what? Don’t you have, like, six DK’s at 110 already? And most of them on the same server?
Okay first, I only have five Death Knights at 110. Second, I just leveled him up for the gold.
Again, I ask – uh, what?
Like in Warlords of Draenor, I strive to make gold with minimal time investment. This means having many alts set up in such a way that each can earn a bit of gold quickly, rather than one or two characters grinding for longer periods of time to earn gold. It all adds up, in both time and gold, and both are valuable.
In Legion, I feel like I’ve found the best way to make gold with minimal time investment. How? A mix of professions, World Quests, and Class Hall qualifications. Let me explain. No, that would take too long. Let me sum up. For each character –
- Cooking at 100 – World Quests with Bacon rewards. Bacon sells well.
- Gathering Profession (specifically Skinning, Herbalism, and Mining) – World Quest with a rare drop reward. This usually involves killing only one mob to get 1-5 of those rare mats. Those mats also sell well.
- Tailoring Profession – Make Hexweave Bags every three days. It’s like a recipe for printing gold.
- Enchanting Profession – Complete a World Quest with a purple drop. Disenchant drop, sell Chaos Crystal for muchos gold.
- Order Hall – Class Upgrade that allows for the ability to auto-kill one World Quest every 18 hours. Use that nuke to gain Blood of Sargeras, Resources, or Professions rewards (see above). Not all classes have class halls that provide this. Death Knights do, as do Warriors (AKA my two main groups of alts).
If I manage to get all of that done on a character, it can take about five minutes and net me mats that will sell for a grand or so in gold. Repeat every day, and that’s seven thousand gold a week, twenty-eight thousand a month. Multiply that by four and I’m damn near buying a token a month with not all that much time investment, all things considered. That’s all above and beyond what I earn just by playing World of Warcraft on my main.
While poking around on one of the servers I had an army of alts on but no longer really play, I found a DK with some potential. He was level 100, with maxed Herbalism. His garrison was also sound – Level 3 with enough followers to generate resources and the Pleasure-Bot for buffing my Tailoring Emporium. Coincidentally, I had just bought a couple of tokens and was flush(?) with Blizzard Bucks. So I thought, what the Hell. Level another toon up, transfer him somewhere I may be more active and plug him into the gold making routine.
So like I said at the beginning of this post – Ding 110. I’ve just unlocked World Quests, and finished the Broken Shore scenario on my latest addition to the family. Once I get him a little further along (geared to the point where he can survive the necessary World Quests), he’ll be yet another cog in the production wheel.
Only that wheel’s got some golden hubcaps, playa.
Addendum – I swear, being a shift worker messes with your concept of time. I had no idea it had been so long since I posted. Seems like only a week or two, rather than a month.
Order Hall Champions – Patch 7.2
I’m in the midst of a thing.
It’s a good thing, but it’s a thing.
See, as with most things with me this thing involves making gold. It also involves making gold without making it a full-time job or eating up an obscene amount of time that could be used actually playing the game. I don’t care about spending gold on things like mounts and transmog and plan on using it strictly to buy tokens to fund my gaming crack addiction World of Warcraft account.
A side-effect of this has been wanting to improve my Order Hall. My Super Hero DK, Scaredevil, doesn’t have a clue Legendary yet. So why not work on getting one? Since these things appear to fall like rain, might not be a bad idea to unlock the slot to get two of them.
It was during this planning session that I started looking at my Order Hall champions. I hadn’t changed them in a while and was still leveling them to Epic and beyond. Imagine my surprise when I saw that I could actually get SEVEN of these mammer-jammers running missions for me! Naturally being a gamer, I wanted to know which ones were the most fun best ones to use.
This spawned a whole other mission, which was to get a new sidekick for Scaredevil. Every superhero needs a sidekick, right? Koltira had been doing a fine job, but I really wanted to kick up my game. Another story for another time. But for now, it was time to build up the ol’ clubhouse roster.
This was the recommended Order Hall Champions for Death Knights in Patch 7.2
- Thoras
- Thassarian
- Koltira
- Minerva
- Nazgrim
- Morgraine
Champions for other classes can be found at the Reddit link over HERE, so check it out to find out if you’re running a top shelf Order Hall.
In the next few weeks, I hope to discuss the new, casual gold-making method I’ve been using that will (fingers crossed) earn me enough gold per month to buy my own tokens without spending all day in-game. I also hope to reveal Scaredevil’s new sidekick.
Legion beware!
The Fun Guy?
So it looks like I’m starting over.
Again.
Kinda.
When you have a couple dozen leveling misfit alts, several of which are the same class, everybody tends to blur together. You know, like that one toon had that one thing that you thought was cool, but got lost in the shuffle after leveling another three characters of the same class. That old song and dance, knowwhatImean?
I happened to be bouncing between servers, looking for something on someone, when I came across a Death Knight that I had leveled to 100. For some reason, despite leveling a number of Death Knights, this particular one I associated with fun. He had a PVP tabard that I liked, and had repped up with a few MoP factions that got him close to unlocking some sweet mounts and such. He was fun to play.
Fun. I like fun.
That’s when the broken pieces of my thought process started churning like spaghetti in a blender. There were aspects of Legion that I enjoyed. Why not enjoy them once again on my Fun Guy. That’s like fun with a side order of fun! I mean, what’s the point of playing if you’re not having fun, right?
Step one was getting his professions sorted out. I started this process pre-7.2, and looking back I might not have made the changes I did. I dropped Blacksmithing and Enchanting, both capped at 700, and picked up Jewelcrafting and Skinning. I had some time and some spare change, so getting both to 700 did not take much effort at all.
The Skinning I did here:
The Jewelcrafting happened thusly:
The question, of course, is why those two professions?
Jewelcrafting has gold-making potential. From what I’ve read, reaching 800 skill level is no longer an expensive nightmare grind in the Patch 7.2 world. Granted, this is also going to cut down on potential profits. But since I also ground out the Cloud Serpent rep and got the recipes for all of the Jeweled Panther mounts, there’s still gold-potential to be had. Also, I haven’t done the Jewelcrafting questline yet so it’s a slightly new way to level. Anything is better than the usual grind.
Skinning? Yeah, on the surface it doesn’t seem like a very logical fit. Skinning and Jewelcrafting seems to go together like Peanut Butter and Sardines (don’t judge). But the draw from Skinning isn’t the skins. It’s the Blood of Sargeras. Skinning can pile up the most Blood if you happen to be leveling with the Blood enchant on your shoulders. More Bloods, more chance to make gold in one fashion or another.
My Death Knight was at Revered with the Shado-Pan. I probably won’t get flying for another few months, so I’ll take a few days to get Exalted and unlock their Big Cat mounts. I also hear a rumor that there’s also another flying mount that shows up at Exalted.
So much win! So much fun!
Next: My failed 300k gold investment.
Z and Cinder’s Blog Challenge – Changing Mains
Call it dumb luck. Call it good fortune. Call it whatever you want, just do it quickly and then come back here because we have things to discuss. Important things.
…
Back? Ok.
Z and Cinder’s Blog Challenge for this week involved changing mains. This is where the whole “fate” thing kicks in. Not only do I like a good blog challenge, but the topic caught me at a time where I was actually giving this an honest thought.
My main has been Death Knights for quite some time. Let’s call that time years. Blood DK’s are essentially unkillable, and Frost/Unholy DPS tend to be quite respectable in both PVE and PVP. My DK army has spread across several servers. If I was bored and wanted to try and make gold on a brand new server, which I have a tendency to do on a semi-odd-regular basis, I’d roll up a DK and start doing work. Hell, I even tried to get a Death Knight t-shirt made up (I needed to have a minimum of five reserved before they’d manufacture them, and I only had two. Both were mine.)
So when Demon Hunters came out, I wasn’t exactly chomping at the bit to give them a try. Just another Hero class, and a wannabe class at that. The hype annoyed me, and I wasn’t impressed with what I saw about them. They could glide? Double jump? Yawn. Still, I made one, got him out of the starter zone, then sat him on the bench while my cast of characters made the trudge to 110.
I wasn’t looking to add another character to my roster. Between professions, class quests, artifacts, and gearing, there was enough to keep me busy by focusing on only one or two characters. On top of that, I already had a bunch of characters I wanted to level. Hard cuts had to be made. I decided that most of the toons at 100, several of which were DK’s and former mains, were going to sit there for a long time. The last thing I needed was to add another log to the fire.
My Human DK, Rokkthor, was designated my new main. He was the first to reach 110, hit 850 iLevel, run a LFR raid, and dip his toe into Mythic content. He held up strong, putting up decent DPS numbers during his Mythic+ run and just being a solid character.
Meanwhile, my Night Elf Demon Hunter became my twink farmer. The DH was given twink privilege because he had good AOE damage, decent burst damage, and more importantly I found enough high iLevel leather gear to get him twinked. Since DH was the only leather-wearing character I had on the right server, at the right level, he became my gold maker. He was my farmer, with skinning and herbalism professions. and brother he was making me bank. The gliding that I had been so quick to poo-poo, helped me get around quicker. He’d glide from Highmoutain to Stormheim, dropping out of the sky to pick up herbs when he saw them. Another glide or two and he was killing packs of wolves for skins.
That’s when I decided to try an experiment. I had a level 100 Tauren DK on another server. I’d start a Demon Hunter there, and see just how much gold I could make. (Dude, you do this kind of thing all the time. DUDE! — Editor)
My boy Scaredevil was born.
The result of my experiment was that I could make about 20k gold a week. The unexpected side effect was that I was really starting to like the DH.
It was that damn gliding and dash ability that really winning me over. They just felt… fast. So fast. Even in combat he was a literal blur of violence. He wasn’t topping the charts, but he was holding his own.
I like being self-sufficient. The DH was good in that he could self-heal, tank, and had mobility I could only get on my DK using engineering toys like gliders and rocket boots. In fact, when I switched back to using my DK I got him killed by jumping off a cliff and tapping the space bar to deploy my wings.
“Wrong class, dumbass,” said the DK from the bottom of the crater his body dug into the dirt.
Soon I was leveling my Nelf DH, and grinding Honor & AP on my Belf DH. My Death Knight was tapping his foot, waiting to get his chance to get some attention.
This past Tuesday my Death Knight, my main, had a Legendary drop from a Warden’s loot box. My first Legendary. That was it – the crown would remain on his head, locking down his status as my Main.
Wednesday, Rokkthor was sitting in Dalaran while my DH ran his World Quests. He did the same thing on Thursday.
Hmph. Will this infatuation simply be a winter fling? Or will it blossom into… something more? Guess I’ll figure it out eventually.
Meanwhile my Monk sheds a single tear, and sighs.
Also, sweet Demon Hunter transmog.
Rokk Talk – Casual Heroes
My Demon Hunter has been getting a lot of airtime lately.
I’ve been playing (and loving) Death Knights since Wrath of the Lich King. In fact, of the nineteen characters I had at level cap in WoD, eight of them were DK’s. When I switched my focus from a Horde guild to an Alliance guild, my main switched from Orc DK to Human DK. I dig the class, is what I’m saying.
So why am I playing my Demon Hunters all the time now?
That’s right. Demon Hunters. As in plural. I’ve got my Horde DH gearing up at 110, and I’m leveling my Alliance DH. My DK main, Rokkthor, still gets some attention now and then. I’ve run a couple of Mythic + dungeons with him, and he put up respectable DPS numbers despite only having an 850’ish iLevel.
But lately, when I log into WoW, I’m looking at my DH at the Character Select screen. When I research Transmog gear, I’m looking at Leather armor. It’s not even a balancing act between characters, or factions. I’ve forsaken one Hero Class for another. What I’m trying to figure out is why?
- They move to thrill. They dash. Double jump. Oh and don’t get me started on the joy of gliding. I glide so damn much now that I’ve killed my DK by jumping off a cliff out of habit and spamming my space bar to pop my non-existent wings. If he could shit in my RL shoes, I’m sure he would by now. Demon Hunters are dynamic, which is a nice change of pace from the usual style of melee DPS I’m used to – stare at the ass of the dungeon/raid boss and try to stab it to death.
- I’m finished with the DK. When I say finished, I don’t mean that I’m done with playing the class. Not at all. But at this stage of the expansion, I just don’t feel motivated to play my DK. At least, not in a meaningful way. He’s pretty much as geared as he can get without running Mythic dungeons, or getting into a serious (or at least non-LFR) raid team. Now that I’ve done a couple of Mythics, I’m confident I could run them successfully if my goal was to fatten up my iLevel. I’ve gotten the sweet class title, so the Order Hall questline is done as far as I’m concerned. World Quests don’t offer much except gold and AP. I’ve maxed out the Artifact Research I can do, but other than capping all the artifact talents I’d just be playing for the sake of playing. I’ve even completed all the prerequisites for unlocking flight that I can do. There’s no reason to better Rokkthor any more than he is currently. If I was raiding or pushing cutting edge content, then maybe. I’m just not there. There are other characters who need gear and artifact power. Characters who can benefit from my attention.
- Class motivation. I think most people who play World of Warcraft are familiar with Twitch streamer, Youtube creator, and PVPer / Bodybuilder / eSports Announcer, Bajheera. Watch his Twitch stream and feel the enthusiasm he has for his Warrior. It’s infectious. He got me interested in PVP back in the day and has more than once motivated me to blow the dust off my Warrior and wreck faces. Death Knights don’t really have that name associated with the class like Baj is with Warriors. Hazzed is a Frost DK that I follow and he has a fairly strong presence on Youtube (32,000 subs and counting). But as far as a breakout Twitch personality that brings eyes to the class, there really doesn’t seem to be one. Demon Hunters, however, have Fragnance. He’s the Twitch streamer from the EU who actually blazed to 110 in just over five hours with a Havoc DH when Legion launched. He mains a DH in Serenity, a group of raiders who felt that the raiding powerhouse Method was just too warm and fuzzy for their liking and split off to do their own thing. That probably isn’t entirely accurate, because I don’t follow the bleeding edge raiding scene and can’t be bothered to research it more thoroughly, but the point is that Fragnance has an entertaining stream, is a damn fine player who plays the snot out of his DH. His 64000 followers on Twitch is a testament to his success, and I have yet to find a DK with numbers like that
Will my Death Knight regain my love and attention? Yeah, probably. But for now, I’m looking to tear things up with my flapping bat-elf thing of death. From one Hero Class to another, and back again.
Soon… ™…
Rokk Talk 