Archive for alts

Will MoP Get More Alt-Friendly?

Posted in Main with tags , , , , , , , , on February 26, 2013 by Epic Diapers

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I have fun raiding, acquiring gear and rep on my main, but I also had fun doing it on my alts. My main was always better geared than my alts, but that gap was much narrower than it is in Mists of Pandaria. While I understand the philosophy of how Blizzard is handling alts in MoP, I personally enjoyed my alts more in Wrath and Cataclysm. Now, I can barely log onto an alt because of the time it takes to grind reputation, farm (literally) and raid on my main, and the fact that I know I can’t level more than 30 minutes a week on any given alt. We’re not even talking about touching pet battle or going on transmog runs!!

After 5 months in Cataclysm, I had 7 level 85s with about the same amount of playing time as I have today (6-10 hrs/week). After 5 months in MoP, I have one 90, and those other 6 alts are still sitting at 85 (disclosure, I RaF-boosted a Panda monk to 81 and leveled him to 85)…I haven’t been able to touch them.

As someone with limited playing time, I long for the days that I could quickly gear up an alt and experience a raid from a caster or healer point of view (frost DK is my raiding main). However, it’s not keeping me from the game, or is it a major complaint, just a disappointment, really. I still thoroughly enjoy MoP on my main, as my “main dish,” but I miss all of the alt “sides” that I used to be able to enjoy.

I personally would like to see an “alt leveling perk” system for every level 90 toon that you have. I’m not sure of the actual buff levels here, but maybe now that I have one 90, Blizzard could give me a permanent 25% leveling experience boost to all other toons on my account, and every additional 90 would boost my account an additional 5-10%. I would also like to see some of the reputation grinds lowered even more than it is currently (100% bonus to all server toons when you purchase a faction commendation at revered). I guess I’m a bit put off by doing even half of the same rep grind over again.

I’ve been playing WoW continuously since October 2006, but I will never be that player that claims to have walked uphill in the fel-tainted snow both ways to the auction house, I don’t care if things are easier for the newer players!

Do you like the way Blizzard has dealt with alts this expansion? Are you happy it’s not easier to level and gear up alts? Or, do you wish it was a bit easier to level and gear alts because that’s what you enjoy? Could Blizzard award leveling speed perks to alts for every 90 you have?

-Sihx

@epicdiapers

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BoA Heirlooms…are they just hand me downs?

Posted in Alts, General, Main with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 4, 2011 by Epic Diapers

Choose wisely (from wowhead.com)

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Download the mp3 here

Bind on Account heirloom gear is the focus for the latest audio segment. If you are an alt-oholic like me, heirlooms have been a god-send. They can stack to a maximum of a 40% boost to your leveling speed. Most max out at 35% due to the difficulty in getting the fishing derby ring (+5%). Some heirlooms don’t provide a leveling boost, but they are blue-equivalent gear, level up along with you, and don’t require repairing. Plus, you can sell even more questing/dungeon gear that you acquire, saving you significant gold along your journey.

First, you pretty much need a max-level character (although you can earn heirlooms through the argent tournament, starting at level 77). The most common way to purchase them now is with Justice Points. There is a specific heirloom vendor in each main capital city. If you have multiple alts, try and consolidate your gear across multiple alts. For example, you can use agility leather for your hunter, enhancement shaman, and feral druid. The armor bonuses aren’t crucial, especially considering the grinding time you’ll save.

You can also spend your time pulling your fingernails out by grinding seals through the argent tournament, but personally, that’s not my recommended method.

Helms and cloaks are available through your guild vendor, and require reputation and quite a bit of gold. However these pieces work from 1-85, and all other heirlooms lose their benefits at 80.

You can follow me @epicdiapers and follow my blog and hear all of my segments at epicdiapers.com.

And remember, it’s hard to balance the pew pew with the poo poo.

Sihx

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Brewfest Loot Pinata….Gear Those Alts!

Posted in Alts, Main with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on September 29, 2011 by Epic Diapers

It's only my 9th stein of the morning, lad!

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Brewfest is back, baby! I know this guide might be a tad late, but all that in game drinking and whacking the loot pinata they call Coren Direbrew over and over has me in a tizzy. If you’re a fresh 85, his loot is a great way to boost your item level, and if you run him enough, you may even see a 365 dagger or mace drop, and if you have a cloverleaf tatooed on your rear end, perhaps you have even received a brewfest kodo or ram!

I took the many, many, many opportunities to run this guy almost every day with 5 toons, and all I got to drop was one tankard o terror. Not that I’m bitter or anything, but that’s besides the point. You altoholics out there need to take advantage and wrap up these last few days of brewfest by running this guy at least once a day for the dagger, mace and mounts, and until your eyes bleed on the last day of the holiday if you haven’t yet received your 365 trinket of your desired flavor.

By the way, I’m going to BLIZZCON BABY. So, hit me up if you’re on the block.

And remember, it’s hard to balance the pew pew with the poo poo.

Sihx

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RAF Update!

Posted in Alts, Main with tags , , , , , , , , , , on July 22, 2011 by Epic Diapers

Hey all! Hope you got to hear my last segment on “The Instance” about the Firelands dailies! Unfortunately life has gotten in the way of producing a segment for today’s show. My daughter’s at camp, I’ve been diving a lot, and I was honored to be selected to play in my baseball league’s all-star game a couple nights ago (not bad for a 37 yr old!).

I’m still a few days away from unlocking the Molten Front vendors. I have 10 orbs saved up to immediately craft some 365 gear for me, but since that time, I finally have equipped 359 in every slot. I’m not sure it’s worth expense, or rather, missing out at the potential income of crafting and SELLING the 365 gear…especially the weapons. Could be a quick 20-30k or more. Not much to gain for 6 item levels in my own gear.

I haven’t had much time to dungeon (nor desire), but I have hopped back on my Warrior/Priest dual boxing RAF team. They hit 40 last night, and they are at 13 hours played. That also includes a couple of hours just tweaking my ISboxer settings. Last night was smooth grinding. Just skipped the collection quests, focused on the kill/target quests, and I went from 30-40 in 2.5 hours last night. And remember, that’s for 2 toons, not 1, and I’ll be able to grant 40 levels to another level 40 character once these hit 80. Both toons are guilded, so that’s a 10% mount speed increase and another 10% leveling speed boost, on top of all the heirloom gear and RAF boosting. Typically 3-4 quests completed equate to a full level. It’s almost unfair.

Off to 1k Needles and Tanaris for another quick 10 levels….

EDIT: I posted this one hour ago. Since then I’ve gained 4 levels on both toons…sheesh….

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Segment #4 as heard on “The Instance”

Posted in Alts, Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , , , , on June 3, 2011 by Epic Diapers

copyright Blizzard Entertainment...I don't want to be sued.

You can listen to Segment 4 of “Epic Diapers” at the end of episode 232 of “The Instance” at www.theinstance.net.

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If you’re like me, you like alts…a lot. But, I don’t have the time to level them one by one. Heirlooms are nice, but dual boxing with recruit a friend is about 5 times as fast. What you get with this program is 300% experience gain from all sources.

10% bonus reputation gain, each toon can summon each other once an hour, and the recruit can donate up to 30 levels to the veteran account….plus, you get a swanky rocket mount.

So, how does it work exactly? Well, without going into the fine details of the process, you basically send yourself an email through the recruit-a-friend option on your battle.net account management page. Once your new trial account is established, your two WoW accounts are now “linked.” You will need to purchase a full copy of WoW, about $20, or you can wait for Christmas like I did and pick up a copy for $5. These accounts are linked for 90 days, and in that time, each account gets a free month. So, in all, you’re only shelling out $35 for everything…it’s the same cost for a winged eagle lion and cenarion hatchling, and quite honestly, I think it’s way more worth it to get lots of level 60s for this price…and you still get a mount on top of it, which is a $25 value anyway!

To play, just launch two sessions of WoW on your computer and create two toons that will be grouped together for the next 60 levels. As far as class selection goes, it’s generally easier to level two of the same class, say two mages, double pyroblasts anyone? It’s really up to you and your end goals. Either way, it will take some time to set up your follow and assist macros.

I generally get a pair of 60s up in 24 hours or less of played time. I then start another pair of toons, level them up to 30 in about 8 hours, and with the original recruit level 60, I can now grant 30 levels to my level 30 veteran toon, making him a level 60 instantly….man, you should see the language in chat when you gift these levels in the middle of Orgrimmar! Anyway, that’s 3 level 60s in about 32 hours played total!

You can do this as many times as you can within 90 days. If you have additional cash lying around, you can even transfer your level 60 toons from your recruit account to your veteran account.

And if you wondered, yes, this is completely legal, does not violate the terms of service; Blizzard has absolutely no problem with multi-boxers…I mean, it’s more money for them in the long run! And personally, I feel it’s a new, different, and challenging way to play the game.

Very detailed guides are available at dual-boxing.com.

You can also find a beginning dual boxers resource page here

Blizzard has a good FAQ about their RAF program

Multiboxing software info here

Follow me on twitter @epicdiapers and shoot me an email at epicdiapers at gmail.com.

And remember, it’s hard to balance the pew pew with the poo poo.

-Sihx, Earthen Ring US

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Epic Diapers, Segment #3 on “The Instance”

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 27, 2011 by Epic Diapers

If you want to listen to segment 3 of “Epic Diapers,” please download episode 231 of “The Instance” at www.theinstance.net or look for “The Instance” on iTunes.

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In this short segment, I continued from last week how you can make lots of gold with your limited time. There are a few addons that I use to make several hundred to several thousand gold a day:

Auctionator: This is a great addon that helps you price your auctions with a 5% undercut and in stacks of your choice. It saves time.

Altoholic: This addon helps me find that item or look up a profession skill across all of my many alts.

ArkInventory: This addon will organize your bags, including your bank bags, into virtual containers that you can set up rules for. I set up my bags to sort soulbound items by item level, BoE items by item level, and all my materials into sections by profession.

www.theunderminejournal.com: This website is fantastic! You can look up the price history for the last two weeks for any item on your server’s auction house. What’s nice about this is that you can also set up email alerts for items that cross a certain threshold. For example, if you want to purchase volatile life under 10 gold, it can email you when it drops below that amount. Or, perhaps you have been stocking up on a certain item that you want to flip for a specific price. Once it rises above that threshold, again you are emailed! It gives you the opportunity to capitalize.

Mobile Auction House: The Underminejournal ties into the mobile auction house. Granted, it’s $3 per month, but for me, it’s worth it. In conjunction with email alerts from the Underminejournal, I can quickly log onto the mobile auction house on my iPhone and post or buy such items. Great money making opportunity enhancer!

Feel free to share your tips on how you make most of your limited time in the World of Warcraft by sending me email at epicdiapers at gmail.com or tweet me up @epicdiapers.

Stay epic, my friends!

Sihx

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Don’t drink too much

Posted in Alts, Main with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 22, 2010 by Epic Diapers

This hasn’t been too hard for me lately as I’ve succumbed to the P9oX fad; only it’s not a fad, I love it. 40 days in and I’ve lost 10 pounds, put on decent bulk, and feel fantastic! Of course, doing any vigorous activities for 60-90 minutes, 6 days a week will yield some results, no?

Actually, what I’m talking about is Brewfest baby! It started a couple of days ago, and I’ve been running all 5 of my 80s through it since it dropped. Not only are the queues for DPS under 3-4 minutes, but it’s 2 frost badges, a trinket here or there that my low geared 80s need anyway, and a chance for Coren Direbrew to drop some rare loot like a mount or the Tankard O’Terror, which my rogue happened upon in his loot barrel. Now, my Auctioneer data reported that the weapon is around 2-2.5k in value. I quickly mailed said mug to my bank alt, salivating at the 2k drop, only to look at the board and see about a dozen tankards already up. The lowest price was 109 gold. WTF?! Ok, so maybe getting this weapon isn’t going to be a money maker, but it’s an ilevel 226 weapon, good for rogues and enhancement shamans. I guess it’ll end up with one of them as I level in Cataclysm :( . Besides the drops, each alt gets 20 gold as well. Include that with occasional vendoring of trinkets, and I pull in 100+ gold plus 10 frost badges in about 15-20 minutes. Not bad, not great, but not bad for gold/hr.

That’s about all the time I have on my toons now. In fact, “Call to Auction,” a great podcast about making gold in WoW, answered my email on air in their last episode. I asked how I might take advantage of my maxed professions with the 10 minutes per day I have to spend in the AH. They actually recommended that I drop scanning the AH daily, as I should know what sells. Also, focus on my profession cooldowns, sell what sells for a moderate price, and that’s about it. I was surprised about the AH scans, but the economy of WoW has been a bit upside down lately. Usually, my red cut epic gems would sell between 140 and 160 gold. I’m lucky to sell them for 110 these days. Even raid nights bolds, brights and runed cardinal rubies are going for under 100g. Ouch. With this trend line pointing down, and 4.0.1 dropping any week now, I suppose I need to have a fire sale to get any value out of my 2 dozen gems or so. Better than nothing, anyway.

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Make money in minutes

Posted in Alts, Main with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 18, 2010 by Epic Diapers

I’ve been playing WoW since October 2006, so I’m approaching 4 years played now. In that time I have gotten 4 toons to 80, 2 are in their 70s, and a 61. I suppose I’m a bit of an altoholic, and it’s hard to focus on one goal on any given day. That said, I’ve tried to become more re-focused lately…what do I want to do in game?

I thought, as Cataclysm approaches, I want to stockpile gold. I have no aspirations to get “gold-capped,” but 100k would be nice entering the new expansion. How to do that? I cruise gold making sites such as Just My Two Copper and others for ideas, but at times, their strategies are clearly being employed by other readers, or I have incredibly bad luck. I figured I would start by getting some professions maxed. In the past several months I have leveled tailoring, jewelcrafting, and most recently, alchemy to 450. That is in addition to several max level skinners, an herbalist, miner and blacksmith. I have yet to max out inscription, leatherworking, and engineering.

Now that I have some decent money-making professions, it’s time to talk about how I use them to make money in my very short windows of playtime. I raid twice a week for 3 hours each night. That alone is a lot to ask of my wife, but I do raid after the kids have gone to bed. The other 5 days of the week I try and hop on just for 20 minutes a day (I never make it on all 5 days, btw) and do the things that will make me the most money per minute.

Transmute – quickest 100+g you can make: I focus on the money making cooldowns first. Primarily, I do my daily alchemy transmute (blue to epic gem) because that’s an easy 100-130 gold per day for 2 minutes of work. That beats dailies any time. If I have the mats on hand, I also transmute meta gems. I then ship those gems to my JC and cut them to whatever I think will be most profitable. Any additional time goes to my JC daily to earn my daily token. These tokens will eventually buy patterns that in turn, will eventually enable me to diversify what I can cut. I usually also make an icy prism with that daily cooldown as well.

The Saronite Shuffle: If I’m really fortunate and have a few more minutes to spare (wife is doing something for 10 minutes), I can hop on my bank alt and run a quick Auctioneer scan and also purchase as much saronite ore as I can, usually if it’s under 20 gold a stack. I then mail most of the ore to my JC to prospect for green and blue gems used to cut, craft rings (Sun Rock ring), vendor, or send to my alchemist for the aforementioned transmutes. I also send some saronite to my blacksmith for smelting into bars, then back to my alchemist for transmutation into titanium bars. However, my server’s economy doesn’t really make this profitable in mats alone, only if I use the titanium in special patterns that may or may not sell, so it’s a bit more risky and unknown.

It’s in the Bag: I will also buy cheap netherweave cloth and send them to my tailor to make netherweave bags. Lately, frostweave bags are not profitable, so I focus on the BC bags.

Make Money Actually Playing the Game: It’s important to not get too focused on the economy and forget to play the game. It varies, but some weeks I can squeeze in a Wintergrasp battle on all 4 80s. My server is dominated by Horde, and we win 9/10 times, which is nice for the honor and stonekeeper shards. Not only is WG fun for me, but I will typically get around 20,000 honor for each toon for just 25 minutes of PvP. Plus, the stone keeper shards add up and 150 of them can be turned in for another 10,000 honor. I then use the honor to purchase epic gems to be cut by my JC. If I can turn in around 10-11 gems a week, that’s more than 1,500 gold for playing 4-6 Wintergrasp sessions per week, or about 2-3 hours of playtime. That converts to 500 gold or more per hour, which rivals many other money-making endeavors in the game.

As my professions have been used a bit more lately, my random dungeon participation has abated quite a bit. As of a couple months ago, I was routinely running 2-4 toons through my random daily to get my frost badges, plus an occasional weekly, if I could find the time. I was using the frost badges to buy primordial saronite and then sell it on the AH. I was maxing out around 1,500 gold, but it’s been steadily decreasing in value for months now. On my server, it’s now around 800-900 gold. As far as money per hour, it’s not very good, but alas, you are looting gold, DE mats, BOE chances, frozen orbs, cloth and other supplies, and of course, emblems of triumph, which can be used to upgrade your toon, buy gems, or converted to emblems of valor for bracers or other BoEs that can sell.

Anything else is Auctioneer-based in terms of my resale and vendor searches. I have a lot more to learn about this and other addons that can really make your money-making endeavors more efficient, but that’s for another post.

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