TSM: I don't know what I did before thee

TSM (Trade Skill Master) is a suite of addons that just makes the whole process of scanning, crafting, posting and reposting just too too easy. I can't say enough about how great these addons are.

The official site can be found here.

Some really good tutorials can be found here:

http://www.justmytwocopper.org/2011/01/trade-skill-master-guide-part-1-of-3.html

http://tradingwithzoxy.blogspot.com/2011/01/tradeskillmaster-addon-guide.html

http://www.ele-mentalgold.com/2011/01/tradeskillmaster-glyph-crafting-part-1.html

I will post a step by step of how I personally use these addons once I get some free time.

I would love to hear from others that use this tool. Do you like it it or dislike it? What hidden features have you found and what else would you like to share?

You'll Feel Right as Rain

With all the bad weather around the country lately, this achievement made me laugh.

Basically the achievement is to feel 1000% better by eating Chocolate Cookies. This is accomplished by eating about 91 Chocolate Cookies. Eating the first one makes you feel 100% better. Each subsequent one adds another 10%.

 The actual recipe calls for  1 Simple Flour and 1 Cocoa Beans. The flour can be bought from pretty much any cooking vendor. The Cocoa bean is purchased from either Bario Matalli or Shazdar.

Don't forget to put on your Chef's Hat to speed up the cooking process. (But take it off and put back your normal helm when you go to raid...ahem..)

WoW Addons: How I love thee, let me count the gold!

Addons some people love them, some people hate them and avoid them like the plague. But when it comes to making money in WoW, they are an invaluable resource that just can't be ignored.

Obviously everyone has their list of "must have" addons. My list is pretty similar to most. (Note: * Denotes addons that I will go into detail in future posts.)

• Ackis Recipe List : The ultimate list of recipes and how to obtain them.
• Altoholic : Now where did I put that? Keep track of your alts, who has what item, how many, etc? You can even share your information with other Altoholic users.
• Analyst : Tracks all your golds comings and goings. How much did you make with auctions? Quests? How much did you spend on repairs?
• Auctioneer : * Love it or hate, it still provides lots of features not found in other suites of auctioning addons. 
• Auctionator :I use this for buying and selling items in any stack size with whatever prices. I really love the buying features that allow you to buy quickly from those annoying ppl that post 150 stacks of 1.
• BankStack :I love this addon cause it stacks odd lots of items both in your bag as well as your bank, or from one to another. I love organized bags.
• GatherMate2 & GatherMate2_Data & RecipeProfit for GatherMate :Similar to Gatherer but kept more up to date. Track nodes from mining, herbing, archaeology, fishing, gas clods, you name it.
• GnomeWorks Tradeskill Frame :A re-do of the trade skill window that tracks items both in bag and in banks or alts.
• MySales :Keep track of who buys your auctions. Can view by buyer or by item.
• Postal :Speedy opening of all you mail box items. Really helpful when you need to open 900 items quickly and efficiently.
• Routes :Create farming routes per node type per area. Rather than randomly flying to and fro.
• SellJunk :Quickly sell all those grey items that clutter up your bags when questing or farming
• TradeSkillMaster : * I LOVE LOVE LOVE this suite of addons. I can't say enough about how easy it is to scan, craft, post, and re-post quickly and efficiently. I don't know what I'd do without these addons.

What about you? Are there others that you use, and what do you love about them?

Start of my Blog plus 4.1 Patch day!

I'm excited! And no its not cause 4.1 is supposed to hit today (although that's pretty exciting on its own). I'm excited cause I finally decided to take this leap to begin a blog about my experiences with World of Warcraft and the wheeling and dealing of virtual toons that make up the biggest factor in the game for me. GOLD!

Now I know what you are thinking, so what? There are plenty of blogs already out there, and you are correct. In fact I follow most of them. But what I really like is the concept of virtual collaboration. There are hundreds of realms in WoW. There are thousands of characters (toons)! The ways to make money (gold) in this game is a factor of exponential proportions.

I don't know how often I will be able to write these blogs, but I do want to use this site to share things I've learned. Both personally in the game, through connections with friends and guildies in the game. And throughout the various venues of the these virtual blogging communities.

Let me begin this journey by first giving you a background on myself.
My real name is Jacob. I was born in the mid 70s which makes me older than the average WoW player. I have a wife (who does not play) and a son (who is too little to play). I have a full time job that requires me to travel from home (Monday-Thursday). Lots of alone time in the hotel means playing WoW to keep away the boredom. Since I am away from home most of the week, weekends are usually spent catching up on chores around the house and spending as much time with my little one as possible.

Now let me talk to you about my Wow "empire". My main toon and my first toon ever is a human paladin on the Velen server , Ezraiel. I began playing shortly after the release of Burning Crusades. At that time I really did not play much at all and it took me quite a few months to level my toon. I did absolutely nothing in terms of PvP, raiding, or auction houses other than occasionally paying for items I needed to complete quests. I was never a part of any guild either. One day I randomly met a mage that helped me finish a few higher level quests and he invited me to his guild, Honor Bound. Again didn't really do much with the guild other than chatting with them while doing quests.

It wasn't until the release of Wrath of the Lich King (WOTLK) that I even bothered to level any other toons. And even then it was to start a level 55 Death Knight, Ezknite. But once I started leveling again, I found I liked it. In fact, I started to create and level multiple toons, to the point that I actually started a secondary account, and multi-boxed multiple toons at once.

During this time, Ezraiel joined a raiding quild, Section XII that was just getting into Naxx and Ulduar and even some TOC. As my raiding experience grew, the appetite for it grew. I was able to join another guild Unity, just as they were starting some of the LK raids. I have been with Unity since and we are progressing through the current raid content.

During the Ulduar raids, I manged to get my first epic BS pattern. I not only managed to create the item for myself, I was able to figure out that if I could get the mats cheaper than what the item sold for, I could make a decent profit. Once I did this once, I was as they say "hooked".

Since I've always been pretty detailed orientated, I started to track my "work" with Excel. I created a pretty detailed spreadsheet. The first tab, which had all my "raw" materials along with the current price in the AH. The subsequent tabs, were built over time, but included the detail behind different epic patterns that I could create. How much the raw prices added up to and how much the items were selling for currently in the AH. The "difference" would hopefully be my "profit".  (This spreadsheet has since been revised, since most of my work can be done with some really nice addons)

I soon learned that even though Velen was a low population server, there still was a lot of competition in the AH. I soon scoured the web, and came across various "gold blogging" sites. In particular, and still my favorite to date is Marko's (Just My Two Copper). I learned a lot from the daily postings, as well as stalking the forums. With the knowledge gained there, I soon began to implement things I learned, and diversified into as many markets as possible.


Which leads back to my current "empire".

Name	Guild	Faction	Level	Class	Main Spec	Profession 1	Profession 2
Lijumon	EzDoesWow	Alliance	59	Death Knight	Banker	-	-
Troom	Consoritum	Alliance	4	Priest	Banker	-	-
Amelmara	Syndicated	Alliance	1	Paladin	Banker	-	-
Ezraiel	Unity	Alliance	85	Paladin	Heal	Blacksmith	Inscription
Ezknite	Unity	Alliance	85	Death Knight	Tank	Enchanting	JC
Eznun	Unity	Alliance	85	Priest	Heal	Alchemist (Potion Spec)	Herbalism
Ezshammy	Unity	Alliance	85	Shaman	Heal	JC	Miner
Ezranger	Unity	Alliance	85	Hunter	DPS	JC	Miner
Ezwar	Unity	Alliance	85	Warrior	Tank	Alchemist (Elixir Spec)	Miner
Ezkitty	Unity	Alliance	85	Druid	Tank	LW	Engineer
Ezninja	Unity	Alliance	85	Rogue	DPS	Engineer	Skinning
Ezlocke	Unity	Alliance	85	Warlock	DPS	Tailor	Skinning
Ezmagi	Unity	Alliance	85	Mage	DPS	Alchemist (Transmute Spec)	Herbalism
Yakuranger	Creepy Nightmares	Horde	21	Hunter	DPS	Herbalism	Miner
Yakubank	Creepy Nightmares	Horde	5	Shaman	Banker	-	-
Leiarze	Corpus Invictus	Horde	85	Paladin	Tank	JC	Miner
Yakuzå	Creepy Nightmares	Horde	47	Rogue	DPS	Herbalism	Skinning
Yakuior	Creepy Nightmares	Horde	10	Warrior	DPS	Herbalism	Miner
Yakutotem	Creepy Nightmares	Horde	3	Shaman	DPS	-	-
Yakuid	Creepy Nightmares	Horde	11	Druid	DPS	Herbalism	Miner

Sorry for the tiny print, but in essence I have eleven maxed toons with every profession covered at least once. I also have four Banker toons that have their own 6 tab guild banks  (3 on Alliance and 1 on Horde)

As of April 20th, 2011 I have amassed approximately 725,000 in gold across all of my toons and guild banks. My current goal is to hit 1 million by June 30th of 2011.

Most of my money was made during the later part of WOTLK with BS, Tailoring, LW creating the epic patterns from Ulduar, TOC, and LK raids.

I spend quite a bit of my money since Cataclysm (Cata) dropped. This has been mainly to level all of my previous level 80 toons to 85 and to not only max out their professions, but to also get them enough gear to be able to run heroics. 

I hope to cover my journey to a million. I also want to share ideas and get comments and feedback from others.

That's all for today, need to finish downloading the patch and get ready to try to make some money. Stay tuned. Please share this link with others, and please provide any feedback so that I can continue to improve.

thanks,
Ez