If you have a Safari Hat, a single battle with Aki the Chosen can raise your lowly level 1 pet to a respectable level 11. Of course that’s just theoretical, you’re thinking. No level 1 pet can go toe-to-toe with a level 25 pet (and legendary no less) and expect to survive even 1 round. And plus that stupid Stormlash is a stupid fat CHEATER.

It is possible though.

The first pet, Chirrup, is kind of a pushover. He is only there to make Stormlash extra powerful with the Shattered Defenses debuff applied by Swarm. Swarm only very rarely does more than 150 damage in the first round. So, just throw your level 1 pet in there first thing and hope for the best. This usually works as long as your level 1 has more than about 160 HP (and isn’t undead, because critter beats undead). Sometimes you’ll get some bad luck and Chirrup will crit, but not usually in my experience. Now let the poor little guy limp to the back row and go to town. Since Aki’s team does no damage to your back row, your level 1 will be safe for the rest of the fight.

Now you just have to defeat the whole team with only 2 pets. Good luck with that.

Actually, I’m going to tell you how to do that too. I used to hate this fight because, as everyone knows, stupid Stormlash is a stupid cheater with his stupid cheating lightning all the time. But then Liopleurodon over at Tamer Liopleurodon’s Battle Pet Roundup explained, in a calm inside voice, all the subtleties I was clumsily ignoring. You should go read about that at Liopleurodon’s guide to Grand Master Tamer Aki.

Here are the main points:

• Shattered Defenses applied by Chirrup’s Swarm ability makes Stormlash seem more powerful than he is. It can be completely avoided using some type of damage reduction ability like Shell Shield. The attack has to do actual damage to apply the debuff so if you have an ability that blocks more than about 50 damage from every attack, no Shattered Defenses. I prefer a crab with Shell Shield, Renewing Mists, and Snap (a beast attack vs Chirrup’s critterness)
• Let your “damage reduced” pet without the Shattered Defenses debuff take the first hard (now not so hard) hit from Stormlash and then swap out.
• Now exploit that Lightning Storm. During Lightning Storm, mechanical abilities do extra damage and each attack causes a lightning strike that deals even more damage. It seems like this was tailor made for the Clockwork Gnome’s Turret ability. If you don’t have a Clockwork Gnome, go get one right now…I’ll wait… If you like battle petting, it is worth leveling archaeology just to get this guy. Anyway, Turret is a mechanical ability, so extra damage. Also it attacks 3 times each round which means 3 lightning strikes which means….yes, it means extra damage, pay attention. I first drop a turret, then use Repair to heal (usually he dies during the repair but he’s mechanical so no problem), then drop another turret. Two turrets means 2 (or 6…9…I don’t know how many but a lot of) times the damage and Stormlash just melts away like the monsters under your bed when your mom shines the flashlight under there. It’s not scary at all, see?

At this point your 2 pets should have more than enough left to manage Whiskers.

So that’s it, collect your bag and your new level 11 and move on to the next one.

My wife and I have most of our characters (and our “mains”) in a single guild. The entire guild membership is made up of characters from our 2 accounts. When I first created the guild I didn’t expect that we would ever level it all the way to 25. We can’t make a “guild group” for dungeon, raid or battleground challenges. Neither of us is particularly interested in 2v2 arena. Our only option to level the guild was through questing. Prior to the release of Mists of Pandaria only max-level questing really contributed much to guild leveling. The changes to guild XP brought by patch 5.0 have been a real boon to our guild progression. You can read more about this at Leveling Small Guilds in Mists of Pandaria.

When MoP launched, our guild was level 5.  We had 2 85s each plus assorted lower level characters.  Now, we have 3 90s and an 85 each and assorted lowbies.  The great thing is the lowbies have been contributing to the guild progression.  The table below shows the timeline of our guild progression based on achievement dates:

As of patch 5.2 the Darkmoon Faire daily game quests award a Darkmoon Game Prize instead of a Darkmoon Prize Ticket. The Darkmoon Game Prize is a container that contains a Darkmoon Prize Ticket and has a chance to contain many other vanity items that are normally purchased with the tickets. A notable fact is that the Darkmoon Game Prize doesn’t bind to the character that wins it. It can be traded.

This might be old news to many by now, but I just noticed it tonight (haven’t done much DMF since 5.2). When I say “I noticed it” I mean “my wife pointed it out to me.” This is interesting because Darkmoon Game Prize always contains a Darkmoon Prize Ticket. Before 5.2 and the introduction of the Darkmoon Game Prize, there was no way to transfer Darkmoon Prize Tickets from one character to another. Now you can send your 5 daily game prizes, and consequently your 5 daily tickets, to anyone. This allows you much more flexibility when deciding how to save or spend your tickets. It also allows you to help a friend purchase Darkmoon Faire items and even heirlooms. Insanity!!

Keep in mind that if you want to transfer tickets you have to leave them in the Game Prize. The tickets go straight to your Currency tab when you pull them out of the box and can’t be traded at that point.

I’ve said before that Darmoon Faire is my favorite place to get heirlooms. The fact that the game prize has a chance to drop many of the other items purchasable with the Darkmoon Prize Tickets (pets for example) makes the decision to save your tickets for heirlooms that much easier.

This is my submission to Cold’s Gold Blogging Carnival for April 2013. The topic for this month is “Name one of your historically profitable markets that is now defunct and what can we learn from that old market.”

I got into the enchanting rod market because I wanted to level my blacksmithing without gathering and without transferring gold from other characters. I knew enchanting rods could be profitable because I had helped my wife get the rods for her enchanter. I ended up buying her Adamantite Rod on the Horde auction house and transferring it to Alliance side via the Neutral Auction house because I just couldn’t find one on the Alliance AH. The most profitable rods, by far, were the rods that used materials from Outland, specifically Fel Iron, Adamantite, and Eternium. The average player didn’t (and still doesn’t) spend a whole lot of time gathering in Outland and also the plans to make the rods were in out of the way places so your average power-leveling Blacksmith didn’t have any particular motivation to get them.

Enchanting rods were probably my first “real” gold making market in that I was buying all of my mats from the AH, flipping undervalued rods, and making some effort to maintain a consistent stock. I made more than enough to finish up blacksmithing and then plenty for everything else that toon would need. At one point, I saw a whole bunch of Etermium Rods on the AH for really cheap. Except for the quantity, this didn’t surprise me. Eternium Rods were routinely flippable so I, of course, bought them all up. Not too long after that (after a couple of inactive weeks IIRC) I logged in and found that my entire stock of enchanting rods were now gray vendor trash. This was, as you could likely guess by now, right after patch 5.0 hit. It wasn’t that big of a deal as the gold I lost by holding that stock was only a small fraction of the gold I had previously made selling rods.

Lessons Learned

I had been paying some attention to game changes coming in 5.0. I wasn’t into most professions at the time and there were so many other changes happening that I completely missed the bit about the enchanting rods. So, the lesson is: If you want to maximize your gold making you should read patch notes, share what strikes you, and pay attention to the gold making community. Regardless of how much we pay attention, there is a chance that somebody might find something you miss or that you might find something they miss.

Enchanting rods were an annoying bottleneck for a lot of leveling enchanters so it makes sense that Blizzard decided to do away with them. The rods were one of the few places where leveling one crafting profession relied on a product of a different crafting profession. It seems that Blizzard is planning on making more changes to streamline profession leveling that will end up changing the way we make gold with them. This gives us just that much more incentive to pay attention to upcoming changes.

TL;DR: Enchanting rods went gray, so use Twitter.

This is my submission to Cold’s Gold Blogging Carnival for March 2013. The topic for this month is “What Are You Currently Doing With Your Sunsong Ranch / Ranches?”

On my LW/Skinner, I am still planting Songbell Seeds for Mote of Harmony which I use to make leg armor kits. Most of the other LWs on my realm are selling the leg armors for 400-700g but I am still occasionally able to sell a few for 700-1000g. I like to keep a decent stock of Spirit of Harmony for when the AH supply of leg armors dwindles. Also, the motes are the only plantable item I can’t get with gold and they can be converted to many other things. Since the release of 5.2 I have been testing out the new work order system for reputation farming. I have been planting 8 plots for the work order and 8 with Songbells. I’m not sure I will stick with the work order system. I’ll try it for a week or 2 before I decide.

On my miner/BS I was planting Songbell Seeds as well, but I didn’t have a particular use for them. Eventually I stopped going regularly and now make it over there maybe once per week. I may start planting Snakeroot Seeds to augment my Ghost Iron/Trillium supply for Jewelcrafting research and Living Steel cooldowns. They modified the yield of the Snakeroot Seeds slightly with patch 5.2 so I will have to compare the results of planting versus actual mining to determine if it is worth the effort.

My third farm is still on the first 4 plots. This farmer is a Jewelcrafter/Engineer. When I get around to unlocking them, I will definitely plant some Songbell Seeds at the beginning since there are some things I want to make that require Spirits. After that, I probably won’t bother much with this third farm as it takes some time I would rather spend elsewhere in game.

This is part of a larger Guide to the Modern Use of Enchanting Materials. This part concerns only Crystals that are gained by disenchanting items. To find information about Dusts, Essences, and Shards, follow the link to the main guide and reference the other sections.

Please notify me if you spot a mistake. Also, this guide is certainly incomplete, so let me know if there is something you think I should add. This is a work in progress and will likely evolve over time.

Numbers in parenthesis after an item in the “Modern Use” column indicate the number of Crystals required for that particular use.