Update on Profession Approach

I've put my professions on the backburner for now. A lot of internet resources haven't caught up with updating all the new recipes, set items and efficient-leveling techniques for the new expansion yet. Plus my leveling plan for my characters is more focused. I'm going to level my druid Moneyball to 80 first and start planning my Naxx starter set. Since a lot of that is group focused, I'll be able to spend my free time working on alts and my profession empire. So it looks like:

Druid --> then (most likely) Mage/Rogue/DK concurrently (with an emphasis on the mage perhaps to get everyone good bags and since the mage is my cook/fisherman).

That said, I have leveled my druid's leatherworking slightly past 400, to keep my LW-bag uncongested if anything. LW is an easier profession to get the early points on, so it hasn't been time-consuming. But, Blizzard is on record as saying that they don't plan on making the early crafted gear from items as powerful as they were in TBC. This is a disincentive for me to farm, since I don't really like it and do it mostly for rewards.

So when it comes to capping LW, I'm going to compare the crafted gear to the pre and Naxx rewards, and if there is better gear I can get more easily than crafting then I may do that; and just get LW high enough for the drums I want and the bracer augmentations (I can already do fur lining at 400). If the crafting gear is on par then maybe I'll just stick with that, since soloing doesn't force you to rely on others (unless they're tagging your mobs). Once I cap or finish my major crafting assignments beyond things like future drums or fur linings, then I anticipate dropping skinning for enchanting. The ring enchants are great for healers and I'll always be able to DE in instances. The only other option is Blacksmithing for the extra sockets, but that seems kind of unusual to me to do.

I've also been storing necessary trade mats on the character who uses the profession. I might however take an alt, give it a "guild bank" and then use that character as a storehouse for all my wares. This way I can mail everything to one source, and then that source can parcel it out. Then I only need to buy bag space on one character instead of all of them, too. That said, there are some rather expensive vanity mounts in Wrath (the choppa! the elephant! flying mounts!) so I may play my cards close to the vest for the time being. Time to start brain-storming cutsey guild bank names. How about, the Nouns of the Modifiers But In Latin?

Pre-Expac To-Do List

Here are the things I either did or tried to do in anticipation of Wrath, done over the last month or so of the game:

1) Sell outdated items -- I had well over 200 badges saved and nothing hugely pressing to spend them on. So I converted them all into epic gems and sold them on the AH. Even though the price had dropped a lot from when they were more useful, I still got a few thousand gold from it all. Additionally I've managed to sell off all my miscellaneous stored items that will be replaced very soon. Things like old TBC leather, Aldor/Scryer stuff, even unnecessary potions. The only thing I've held onto is a bunch of ore, both original WoW and TBC stuff. I figure those things might rise in price once people are capped and I'll sell them then (or whenever I need the space).

2) Centralize my money supply. Most players probably already do this, send all their cash to one character who they then use to sell and buy AH items. Since I had a mage as my main character this was never a big issue for me, just teleport back and forth. But with a new expansion and 3-4 characters to level, I need to centralize things a bit. So I've sent most of my gold to my bank character, and my other characters each have about 500-1000g pocket money on them for training skills, repairs, and random expenses. Since I might (haven't made up my mind) level all my chars at once rather than one at a time, this will make it easier to send all my "saleable" goods to one location too.

3) Clean up mods! This is something I hope to do tonight. I need to go through every mod and decide if I really need it for WotLK. My main UI has always been X-Perl+WoW Default Action bars. But I've been toying with either moving to Pitbull or using Bartender, or a combination. I think I might try to start using Bartender but stay with X-Perl, I don't see a huge difference between it and Pitbull and I'm more familiar with the former. Last, I need to dump all my saved Auctioneer data a week into Wrath and start recompiling new information since all prices are likely to be affected.

4) Clean up bags! I've already done a good job slimming down my character's personal inventory (my mage has 51 free slots!), but I need to clean up the bank. The worst offender is my druid, who has his resto set and 3 partial sets of balance, feral dps and feral tanking gear in his bank. I need to decide whether to junk all the feral gear (since I'm gonna level balance/resto) or only junk as things are replaced. My mage needs to go through all her archived gear, decide which to hold on to as mementos, and vendor the rest. The rogue's in a decent place, although there are still a lot of low-level cut gems clogging up the bank.

5) Decide on which zone to start off leveling in. Howling Fjord and Borean Tundra are both available. Well, look at the name of this blog. I guess I know where I'm going.