Traveling Tip

If you accidentally get on the wrong griffon, don't despair, there is no need to travel all the way from Darnassus to Gadgetzan only to catch the next flight back. If you log out mid-flight, you will be deposited at the nearest flightpath point.

Auction House Tip

Buy usable items, such as weapons, armor and potions over the weekend and sell 'em during the week. The majority of players play mostly over the weekend and tend to dump all on the AH after a run or a crafting stint. This results in an overflow of looted and crafted items from Friday evening to Tuesday afternoons, really. (Some auction are placed for 48 hours on a Sunday afternoon / evening). A buyers market is created by an increase in supply is not the best time to sell your wares.

Wednesdays and Thursdays are optimal times for 48 hour auctions. It's when supply is lowest (everybody tends to hold back goods for weekend auctions that are larger) and profits highest, with the additional advantage of also covering the first wave of the weekend crowd logging in on Fridays. Contrary to popular opinion, on my server, I make my best profits through 48 hours auctions placed on Wednesdays.

Screen Shots

It took me a while to find, but I've found the shortcut keys at last! To take a screenshot within WOW without the user interface, press Alt-Z (it all disappers), then PrtSc (as usual), then Alt-Z (UI is back).

When to buy, when to sell

Auction House Tip Of The Day: Buy at off-peak times and sell at peak times.

In other words, for good sales, hold back all your key items for the weekend. If you want to sell things during the week, sell your lower priced items and only commit to 12 hour auctions that nicely cover the evenings.

When buying, log on when nobody else does, i.e. the early morning hours. On the weekend, shop for bargains on rarer items that may not be available at all during the week. On weekdays, buy the common stuff for a tenth of the price you'd pay on a Saturday afternoon.

Auction House Basics

It's virtually impossible to finance levelling up without making frequent use of the Auction House. Not all of us are budding economists, but a basic understanding is required. Even if you never buy an item on the AH, you definitely will be selling a plenty.

I was a little intimidated at first, but now that I have placed a few bids as well as auctions, it's surprisingly simple. There is no hard and fast rules to make money by putting things in the AH, but if you want to give it a go, there are a few simple facts that is most definitely need to know. All the basic formulas are at Wow Wiki.

Three pieces of information are crucial for any auctions in the faction AH.

One: On putting an auction, the AH will charge you a deposit immediately. In the faction auction house, the deposit is roughly as follows:

• 15% of the MSV (merchant sell value) for a 12 hour auction
• 30% of the MSV for a 24 hour auction
• 60% of the MSV for a 48 hour auction

Two: If your auction is unsuccessful, the AH will keep the deposit you paid.

Three: If your auction is succesful, the AH will take a 5% cut.

Happy Auctioneering!

Fishing For Druids

Fishing, like most professions, only really make money later on. Fishing pays in weird and wonderful ways, such as when you catch a valuable item or nice pattern on the line or through cooking bonuses. Being well fed is never a bad thing. It's the mid- to upper level fish that begin to make a little money, like the raw sunscale salmon on my server. These puppies, sorry fish, sell for gold.

Druids learn their only teleportation spell at level 10: Teleport to Moonglade. Not only is this a nice bonus for training (simply teleport to Moonglade and then hearthstone back to wherever you were), it also come in handy for fishing at mid-level. Moonglade is a very safe level 40 - 50 area with plenty of fish that sell well on the AH. Teleport to Moonglade, fish and hearthstone back.

Your fishing level has to be at 205 to be able to fish in Moonglade and at level 300 to achieve a 100% catch rate. This is not as high as it may seem. If you pick up the aquadynamic fish attractor, which provide a +100 fishing and combine it with a nice fishing rods, which provide a +5, it's possible to fish in Moonglade as early as fishing level 100. If you truly dedicated, there are other items which will provide a bonus of +2 to +5, such as fishing hats, enchanted fishing gloves etc.

There's few things that annoy me more than 'your fish has gotten away' multiple times in a row when fishing. I don't want my fish to get away, I want to catch fish to sell and level up my fishing and both are difficult if I'm not catching much fish. I use the +105 fishing points I have to reach fishing level 300, at which point I have a 100% catch rate. (That is if I click quick enough and don't loose the fish because I was taking a bite of toast with breakfast.) My druid's fishing is now above 200 and with the added bonuses from my rod and lure, I am having fun fishing in Moonglade and then selling my catch of the day on the AH.

Black Vitriol

I am ready to craft my philosopher's stone and looking on the auction house for black vitriol, I have been finding that most of it is sold in bulk. I simply do not understand this. As far as I am aware, black vitriol is only used as a reagent for one thing, and one thing only - making a philosopher's stone. Since each alchemist only ever crafts one, and each stone only require 1 black vitriol, why would anybody purchase more than one? So why sell it in bulk? I see this item in lots of 2's and 5's every day for the last fortnight and have come to the conclusion that (i) either the sellers are a little loopy and wrongfully expect it to sell or (ii) the buyers are silly and purchasing multiples when only one is required. I guess if you need one, but only two is available, you will invariably buy two in order to get one.

The irony is that I every morning I search for it, I somehow expect there to be only a list of singles to buy. How silly am I...

Finding the Inn

When you're in a new town, it's often not that easy to know which building is the inn. Don't look for the inn, look for the post box in front of it. With the exception of banks in the capital cities, the mailbox is always located at the door of the inn.

Stranglekelp

It's knowing when to go where that makes life easier. I am discovering as I go along that there is generally an easy way of doing most things if you know the way. In particular, there is an easy place to collect stranglekelp and then there are harder places. As I level up, the harder places become easier, however, Menethil harbour is about the only place I can quickly collect a whole stack of stranglekelp in under 5 minutes.

The time factor is in the travelling. There's no point spending 10 or 20 minutes getting there when I can just as easily spend 15 - 30 minutes gathering it elsewhere. I am learning to think more and more outside the box. Today, I hit level 34 with my druid and it's time to fly from southshore to stormwind for my training. Instead of flying directly, I have a stop over in menethil harbour. Very little additional traveling time and very little hassle. With a stack of 12 stranglekelp two minutes after landing, I'm off again, onwards to Stormwind. Next time, I might stay a little longer and catch some more oily blackmouths and firefin snappers. There's always a school to be found around the harbour.

XP Bar, Experience Points And Rest

The purple / blue horizontal line towards the bottom of the screen is the XP (experience bar). When it's full, you have achieved a new level and the bar will reset to zero. Each level requires more XP points to complete. If you mouse over the bar, it will flash up your progress in numbers, i.e. x/y, e.g. 15000/33800.

The purple bar is the normal bar. An explanation pop up when you mouse over the bar. A blue bar is a well resting bar. You will gain double xp points than you would with a purple bar when the bar is blue. The bar turns blue after spending time in areas, such as an inn or a city where your level bar reads 'zzz'. It's therefore advisable to log out if you can in side an inn or city to accumulate more time in the blue bar status.

A notch will appear to indicate how rested you are. You will accumulate one bar of rest for every 8 hours spent in a resting area. The counter continues even when you're logged off. A maximum of 30 bars, i.e. 10 days of being logged off can be accumulated at any one time.

If you are outside of an inn or city, being logged off still accumulates rest points but at a rate of 25% of that gained whilst in an inn or city.

Do note that only combat points is affected by a rested state. Any xp points gained in any other way, such as quests or discovery / exploration, is not affected.

One last note: resting is based on character not account. By having more than one character you can continuously play in the blue state, earning double xp points and hence leveling up faster.

The official word on resting can be found here: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/basics/resting.html

On returning to the inn

There's always end-of-day type tasks to complete when you come home with bags filled to the brim with treasure - or junk more often. Do them as you come in - that way when you log in again you can head out straight away, without having to do boring chores. As the last action of game play, it feels like reward time. As the first action of game play, it feels like a waste of time.

Here's the list:

• Repair: Hit a repair person first. Don't worry about the content of your bags. When you repair items, it does not repair items in your bag, it only repairs items that are equipped. However, since you're here, you might as well sell or your junk.

• Selling: Do your homework well before you sell anything. Don't go on the colour coding of grey-white-green-blue etc. when selling items. This is a misleading assumption. Certain junk (grey items) which are of inferior quality are used in various recipes as reagents and may sell well on the auction house. When you start in a new area, have a browser running nearby and research each junk item before selling. If there's any resell value, save it for the auction house. If you will be needing it later as an ingredient yourself, stack and deposit in the bank whenever you are near one. You'll be very thankful later when creating a single item requires 4 pearls or 4 large fangs for which the drop rate is miniscule - but you have plenty in the bank from earlier levels. Only sell grey and white items that are truly worthless.

• Cooking: Buy any spices from whichever vendor that sells 'em to cook all the meat you've just collected. Know your recipes by area. If you're in Hillsbrand Foothills, you'll probably come back with lion, big bear, clam and turtle meat. Most cooked products will sell for double what the raw ingredients sell for. Level up your cooking by picking up recipes relevent to your area (either via the auction house, local quests or local vendors). You don't need 'em all, just one or two will do. Buy what spices you need first - particularly if the vendor who sells them is not located inside the inn. Make your way to the nearest cooking fire - usually near or inside the inn - and cook all you have ingredients for. Keep a portion for yourself as needed and sell the rest to the nearest vendor.

• Check your mail - if you have any and action appropriately.

• Log out - If you're not already inside the inn, make your way to the inn. Wait for the zzz bar to come up. Most of the time the zzz bar flashes up whilst standing next to the post box outside the inn. Make your way to the front door of the inn and log out here. This way, when you begin your play tomorrow, you're ready to head out immediately.
  

Repair

The mini-map at the top right corner of the screen has a selection of search and display on map functions. One of these are 'repair'. When entering a new area, select 'repair' and yellow dots will indicate where nearby vendors are located who will repair your gear.

Always repair as you go along, either on returning to the village or just before exiting the village. It's worth the little extra hassle. If you always repair it means your gear will never break on you, you will not neglect to repair significant damage by rezzing in the graveyard and I repeat, your gear will not begin to fail when you're far away from any repair person or break in the midst of fighting a monster.

Look after your gear and it will look after you. :)