Getting Ready for MoP: An Overview

This post is a part of Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival, hosted by Cold of Cold's Gold Factory. 

The World of Warcraft is all abuzz lately with news of the next expansion, Mists of Pandaria. Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that a lot of Annual Pass subscribers already have access to a (rather unfinished) beta. Speculation about the release date is rampant. I won't speculate, because I'm terrible at evaluating the situation objectively; I just want MoP to come out this summer because Dragon Soul is a drag. I'm ready for new content.

Since I'm new to goldmaking, I've never before prepared for an expansion in terms of anticipated profit. I don't necessarily recommend following any of the strategies I'm using, but I'll give a quick rundown of each tactic and my reasoning for it. I'll continue to make posts as we learn more and my strategies change.

Companion (Non-Combat) Pets
Since the announcement of the Pet Battle System, I've been keeping an eye out for somewhat unique BoE pets. Vendor pets don't qualify (unless they state that some of them will go away) since they're easy to acquire and would just take up valuable bank and bag space. It's a fairly popular theory among goldmakers that pets will rise in value as players get involved with pet battles. There are a few things that might affect this value; for example, if Blizzard makes your pets account-wide the market will be smaller. And there's the question of whether we'll be able to sell pre-leveled pets -- frankly, I have no idea what will happen with that. I'm not going to fill an entire guild bank, but I am trying to get one or two tabs' worth. Word on the street is that Cataclysm drop pets like Elementium Geode will be less prevalent once folks aren't grinding in Cataclysm zones anymore. That's code for "buy them now when they're cheap and sell them later when they're not." That's just one example of what I'm looking for in pets.

Leather Transmog Gear
I hate the transmog market; it doesn't seem to do well on my server, and I find it tedious and frustrating. However, I'm collecting another one or two guild bank tabs' worth of leather gear I think monks will find appealing. Jim at Power Word: Gold has a good post on transmog gear that might appeal to monks; I agree with some of his conclusions but am also trying to draw my own based on what I like.

Profession Leveling Mats
Specifically, TBC, Wrath and Cataclysm mats. If you've ever leveled a profession, you know there are chokepoints -- materials you really need but which are in short supply because nobody's farming them anymore. Most of what I'm stockpiling are the Cataclysm mats. For example, I'm keeping a lot of my Hypnotic Dust which is almost always below 1g right now on my server. But the dust from Wrath goes for about 8 times that much, since you need a ton of it to level, and you don't get nearly enough just leveling through the zones. I'm also keeping gems, elementals, etc. This is a long long term investment; I anticipate that at the beginning of MoP, everyone will be unloading their excess Cataclysm mats and the market will be saturated. However, three to six months in, the prices should rise.

Getting Professions Ready
I have three alts at 85 and one at 80, all with maxed professions: JC x2, Alchemy x2, Enchanting, Inscription, Herbalism, and Leatherworking. I'm working on leveling my alts and maxing their professions so they're ready to go when the expansion hits. As far as I know, we don't know yet what the level requirement will be to train max professions, so I'm going to try to just get them all to 85 anyway. My plan once MoP is actually here is to spend a few weeks gathering, since mats should go for high prices initially. I also plan to level my Inscription as soon as possible. The other crafting professions will wait, since their items tend to be more important once players have reached the endgame (flasks, cut gems, crafted gear, belt buckles, enchanting scrolls, and so on).

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So those are my strategies as they stand now. What do you think? What are you doing to prepare?

Just a Hunter and Her Pets, Part the First: Cats

The main reason I started playing hunters at all was so I could have pets. My hunters have stayed Beastmastery from TBC until now, because the pets are the best part. BM puts the focus on your pet and lets you tame extra beasts, so how could it be wrong? I was thrilled when the challenge tames were introduced in 4.2, because they're unique and interesting to actually acquire. (If you're one of those people who runs around killing them to piss off hunters, don't tell me about it.)

Since my stables are almost full (Dear Blizz: Please give BM hunters bigger stables!), I thought I'd do a post and show you some of my favorite and most often-used pets. If you're looking for something cool for your own hunter, I also recommend Petopia, where you can browse pets by looks and family. Also, if you don't have it already, get the _NPCScan addon to track rares. _NPCScan.Overlay isn't a bad idea, either. You'll probably notice a preponderance of cats. I have three in real life and a heck of a lot more in game. I just like them, OK? I'll do more posts later with some of my other hunter pets.

Pez
This is my favorite cat, who sadly lives in my stable almost all of the time. She doesn't have any super special abilities, so she gets passed over in favor of pets who do. But I love Winterspring, and I love the Frostsabers. She's named after one of my actual cats, who is also stripey, though not purple. Of course I have the matching mount and non-combat pet. Getting everyone in position for this screenshot was like, er, herding cats. I'm still trying to come up with a mail transmog look to match them all. This is not a rare pet, but I get a lot of whispers asking me where I got it: Go to Winterspring and find a Frostsaber Pride Watcher, et voila.

Mistral and Cierzo

These are the two Spirit Beasts I use most frequently. Their Spirit Heal ability is pretty useful when you're farming, say, Lovely Charms in Throne of the Tides. I used to use them in raid fights where we needed just a little extra healing bump (a very little one) but we're past that now, so they just sit around with me in Stormwind and head out for solo battles. The NPC beasts are two of the challenge tames located in Mount Hyjal, and require you to basically strip down so they don't one shot you. How can you argue with that? I got Cierzo (Ankha) first, but I like Mistral (Magria) better because of the blue tint. They're named after the Mediterranean wind; same direction (northwest), different languages.

Itztli
This is Skarr, of course, who hangs out in the Molten Front on a rock platform. He shares a spawn timer with a similarly stony crab, Karkin. This guy took me forever to actually find. Certain hunters who already have him apparently find it amusing to go to the Molten Front and just sit near the spawn points with their tamed pet out, so they can set off your NPCScan and trick you. I hope you guys have to spend, like, 10 months camping to try to get Ban'thalos or something. (NB: I checked the zone for hunters and made a little announcement before taking this screenshot, so no NPCScan caches were harmed.) Mine is named after an Aztec god of stone. I don't actually especially care for this appearance, but I swear he does better DPS than other cat pets, so he's the one I raid with.

So there you have four of my cat pets. I've got more of them, but we'll save those for another day.