Farming Flamescarred Junkboxes 4.0

Exclusively to rogues, or people with rogue alts, the Flamescarred Junkboxes are an interesting gamble of your time with the hopes of pocketpicking a mob that happens to have a spare poison, class-specific healing potion, valuable mat, or heaven forbid an epic.

What exactly do they drop? Well if you haven't clicked the wowhead link above, you should do so and have a look. There is a chance for a junkbox to drop an inscription material, which might net you 30-50g a piece, which isn't too shabby. There is also a chance to drop rare gems, which can never go unappreciated. But the best part is the Rogue-useable epics that also drop:

The Twilight Blade Isn't too shabby, however anyone capable of killing the Omnitron Defense System in BDW, is likely to choose the Organic Lifeform Inverter.

The Krol Decapitator On the other hand, is a viable purchase for any rogue going combat. Combat isn't very popular at the moment, but Blizz is still trying to tweak them, so this item will still sell.

Edit: It's a bit late now, but I realised this in the middle of Omnitron trash tonight: Rogues aren't the only class that can use the above two weapons, but clearly are the most likely to.

Spinerender Is one of two Epic throwing weapons available to rogues. The stats aren't terrible when compared to the DTA that drops in BoT, and would likely sell well too.

Worst case scenerio, you now have a BoE epic to do a multitude of things with, but likely will sell well on the AH. All of these items sell for 30k+ on my server, and sometimes are great flipping items (as most BoE's are). I picked up a Dragonwreck Throwing Axe for 12k back at the start of the expansion.

So, what's a good way to farm these junkboxes?

Wowhead's comments direct us to the troggs in Deepholm. However, since it's on Wowhead, how many rogues are going to be thinking the same thing and heading over there and farm those troggs? While I agree, the troggs are the best bet for these, since they are in close packs, I have an alternative for when the area is over farmed. The lost city of Tol'vir and Grim Batol.

Tol'vir and GB are the only instances that you do not need to kill any bosses to get access to all the trash mobs. You set the dungeon to normal so the mobs have less of a chance of aggroing, and you farm your little heart out. You can take all your gear off and aggro a boss and die, to get back to the start, and you have free reign on the entire instance. Actually, if you're brave, you could even go in and farm the trash in BoT in the first room, but something tells me you'd likely be spending more time avoiding trash mobs trodding over you, than actually picking pockets.

Any ways, that's my two-bits. Happy farming, and good luck.

Upcomming patch 4.0.6 Justice Points and Honor vendor additions!

I'm so very excited about this. I've been Justice point capped for AGES, and I was really hoping they would be introducing something I could do with the damned things. So let's take a look at how these new vendors will alter the game.

Let's look at the prices (Source MMO-Champion):

Hypnotic Dust x1 200 JP or 100 Honour
GCE x 1 800 JP or 400 Honour
Heavenly Shard x1 1200 JP or 600 Honour
Savage Leather x5 750 JP or 375 Honour
Embersilk Cloth x 20 2500 JP or 1250 Honour
Elementium Ore x 20 2000 JP or 1000 Honour
Satchel of Herbs 3000 JP or 1500 Honour (Reported to give 20 assorted Cata herbs)

Right now most people working for honour are doing it for gear. Anyone running endless heroics are doing it for gear, and will likely spend their JP on gear instead of these items. However, some people do Tol Barad to win access to extra dailies, Baradin Hold, rep and also currency to purchase reputation items. So people will eventually accumulate extra honour.

Then you have people like me, who run a daily heroic for the VP and have all this JP accumulated. Personally, I'll certainly be utilizing the new vendors to purchase mats to level up professions, craft items I need for "free", but I doubt I'll be purchasing any of the enchanting mats. For my time, I gain more profit by shuffling ore into enchanting mats. Savage leather, however, is fairly scarce on my server, and my leatherworker is teetering on the very last edges of being maxed out. So 750 JP for one heavy leather, is actually fairly profitable for me.

As far as markets are concerned, though, I don't see much of an impact. All Blizzard are doing here is giving you more options to get a hold of materials, but they aren't any more convenient. The AH is still the most convenient way to obtain any of these materials, however, it does provide a way for people who can't figure out how to earn gold, but know how to grind it out, to get things they might need... But it'll take a pretty long time. But the prices are too high to cause any long-term market effects. You might see a few things flood in the first week of this, as people dump their 4000 JP on various items, looking for a quick buck. But any goblin knows to simply not post in those markets that week, buy out any of the flood items, stock for later sales, or convert to something that sells and increase the profit ratio. You could even take a risk and attempt to manipulate the market by posting low and buying out the undercutting flood. But in the end I don't see market prices declining any faster than they already are, as the demand for materials decrease.

However, there's news of a popular farming bot being bashed with the ban hammer, which may effect the supply of ore and herbs. Supply is already low enough on my server, so maybe I won't see a difference, but it could mean big profit for legit farmers with cheating competition knocked out of the game.

On the topic of hackers:

An officer in my guild was hacked recently due to battle.net being down an a very inconvenient time while they were disassociating one authenticator and associating a new one (phone upgrade). Either way, the hacker figured that, while officers needed an authenticator to access the guild bank, their alts, which have their own rank, didn't have to have an authenticator. The hacker cleared out the guild bank, and their characters for good measure, by inviting his own characters to the guild. Interestingly enough, the invited toon was one of my main competitiors on the AH. So, the moron flagged himself by putting his main bank toon in our guild logs. I do believe this person was banned, but likely will just pull out another account.

In the end the GM's replaced everything from the guild bank and the hacked account, and we've adjusted our ranks and taken more precautions to prevent this from happening in the future. But I thought the story would be a good warning to other people, especially with your own alt guild banks for storage. Unfortunately, this doesn't prevent hackers from putting an authenticator on your account  once hacked and accessing things that way, but it's worth utilizing this tool.

Other than that, I'm looking forward to the tooltip updates, dungeon nerfs, profession material nerfs (buffs?) and over all post-expansion release game tweaking.

Also, if you haven't had a chance to start raiding yet, get into a raiding guild! The new raid encounters are a blast, and I've been enjoying my guild's progression.

So, yes, I've been away, and my last post had nothing to do with WoW at all, and I do apologize. I've been on a bit of a hiatus, and without going into too much personal detail, due to life being a royal pain, it's likely my posts will be a bit sporadic, as I have warned in the past.

On with the actual wow-related post.

I thought I would start with what I've been up to in-game the past week or so that I've been back into the game more regularly.

My main gold generating is currently gems, which I posted about awhile back. Raw gems, cut gems, rare gems and uncommon gems. Why gems? Because I like shiny things I suppose? If the price is right, I buy out whatever ore is at that right price. However, if ore is over my budget, I have a nice little stash, but we'll go into that bit later.

I'll be honest, there's no real rhyme or reason with my gemming, because my JC recipes are scattered. However, I do not sell cut uncommon gems, usually. I get more out of them as JC > Enchanting conversions, raw on JC daily days, or converting into uncut meta gems. Meta gems are one of my favourite gems to cut.

I'm looking forward to the upcoming patch that will bring in the new JC meta cuts. I've got both the recipe and the cut gem in my snatch (well waiting to be put there once it's actually in the live game data) so I can scan to catch the first recipe on the AH, or to see if anyone has any of them already.

Design: Agile Shadowspirit Diamond  Agile Shadowspirit Diamond
Design: Burning Shadowspirit Diamond   Burning Shadowspirit Diamond
Design: Reverberating Shadowspirit Diamond  Reverberating Shadowspirit Diamond

The last item I make with JC is Brazen Elementim Medallion. I know that this is currently better than any neck in game until Heroic Valiona and Theralion. It costs roughly 2500g to 3100g to craft, last time I crafted one, and sell for about 5000g+. It's a fair profit when you can support the crafting costs, so you likely will have little competition. I'm not sure whether it's sought after by other classes, or whether other classes are after other JC crafted items, sorry.

Cooking has also been a fair gold-generator, since a lot of people don't know about Fortune Cookies, or just don't like gambling for the price they are sold at. Fish, as always, is very popular, and no one really likes to fish. My guild is still trying to get to 10k fish for our Seafood Magnifique reward. Anyway, keep a snatch list on the prowl for raw materials to turn into buff foods. Fathom Eel can sometimes be found for less than 50g a stack, but other days there's none of the AH. It's end product Skewered Eel (agility) can sell for up to 500g a stack if the demand is right. I usually cook up and toss a stack or two of buff foods before I go for dinner on a typical server raid night.

Speaking of cooking, on the PTR patch notes, they're lowering some of the material requirements for feasts. This is great news for us, but likely not great if you're a fisherman. Sorry guys. :(

Aaaand speaking of farming. That's what I've been doing in my dull, boring afternoons. Whilst catching up on some seasons of various television shows, I sit on my death knight and farm my brains out. Herbs get sold, or made into flasks, potions or ink for DMF cards for my freaking "The Insane" title. Ore becomes a reserve stash for when I need it.

Alright, well hopefully I'll be back soon with a more exciting topic.

Natural Disaster: QLD Floodings 2011

I'm dedicating a humble post to those whom the  flood effects in Queensland, Australia, because I do not think the world understands the severity of this disaster. This is for my family, extended family, friends, and guild mates who live in Queensland.

This morning 75% of the state is underwater, flooded, or isolated. Death toll is currently over 10 people, and there's still more than 60 people unaccounted for. The Prime Minister and Premier of Queensland are both stating that the death toll may rise. ABC (Australia) has had the best coverage of the events so far. Also, here is the QLD flood relief page.

The damage that has already been done is unbelievable. Watching this happen over the news and youtube is surreal. Thousands of homes are completely underwater, businesses are being lost, vehicles, schools etc. For some people their entire community has been destroyed. I'm not exaggerating here. The devastation this flood is leaving behind will leave months if not years of reparation in its wake.

Several of the flood effected people do not have flood insurance. No, not because they were not smart, but simply because they live within X distance of a river and the insurance company refuses to insure them. So when these people go to build new homes, they will be looking for help from the State and Federal governments, as well as relief funds from generous donations. Food will be difficult to receive for a time, since several super markets have been flood effected. Power has been cut in several places. I could go on, but you can imagine the amount of damage that has been done. I feel for the people who could not be prepared for this situation, which would be many people; who could be prepared for this?

Brisbane, Queensland's capitol city has already begun to be flooded, and is bracing for the worst. There was a flood there back in 1974, which was disastrous, and they have been forecasting that this flood will be equally as bad, and it's possible that things could get worse.

To get an idea of how large Queensland is:
Australia is 7,617,930 km2 or 2,941,299 sq mi. Compared to the US which is 9,826,630 km2 or 3,794,101 sq mi, including Alaska. Queensland is 1,852,642 km2  or 715,309 sq mi, Texas is 268,581[2] sq mi (696,241 km2). So, Australia is only slight smaller than the USA in area, and Queensland is a little over twice the size of Texas and 75% of it is currently flooded or affected by flooding.

Aka: OMG that's a lot of people screwed!

And here is the flood effected areas:

The floods are spreading south and are now effecting northern NSW, the state that I live in. There's some rural parts of NSW that was excepting to get an entire years worth of rain from one rain storm, according the weather man on the new last night. There's also flooding expected in Victoria, which is the state Melbourne is located in.

From top to bottom, far right: Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria. Keep in mind most of Australia's population lives closer to the coast, as the further in land you get, the more desert-like it becomes. Click to enlarge image.

I currently live too far south to (it's believed) be affected by these floods. However, it is a fear of ours, because our house backs on to a flood plain that hasn't properly flooded for the entire life of this house. This summer has been the highest river level in many years, as this area was effected by the drought that has obviously ended recently. It's been a very wet summer. It wouldn't only take a similar amount of rain here, as Queensland has received, to get a decent flood since everything is so saturated. It's a very frightening reality thinking that what I see on the news is so close to home, and a possibility for my own community.

"The floods may break out hearts, but it will not break out will." Premier Anna Bligh.


*Click images to enlarge/ find source.