What 5.1 Brings to (and takes away from) the Table

5.1 brought some changes as a patch, noted in the Patch Notes, but has also brought around some stealth changes that were not anticipated.  I'm going to go over some of the ones that I think are important to us as gold makers, feel free to chime in if you think I missed one or want to add!

SoH + Node Nerfs
In the official Patch Notes, they noted that 1 SoH will only get you 2 Golden Lotus now (as opposed to 3).  Also, you can now purchase SoH for 600 Conquest Points if you're a PvPer.  Now this significantly decreases the value of your SoH, consider growing some of the higher value plants on your farm instead of Motes!  Check out my previous post here for more info on determining what your SoH is worth.

Also, Blizzard announced that all nodes in Pandaria have gotten a 50% nerf.  This is pretty big, as they're trying to make the ore/herbs more valuable (see the post).  This is good for us as both crafters and farmers.  Assuming that we make the same percentage return regardless, having the mats cost more means that for each thing we craft we're getting more gold.  For farmers they're getting more for their work, for crafters they have to do less work to make the same profit.  It's a win win situation for all of us!

Pet Battle Changes
There are a few major pet battle changes that I think (sort of) impact the gold making community, one is that for completing the full chain (EK + Kalimdor, Outland, Northrend, and Pandaria) you are rewarded with 3k.  For me this is nice because I enjoyed the pet battles to begin with and it gives me an excuse to go finish the quest line!  Also, a reward from the bags for completing these quest now includes the Flawless Battle-Stone which can be sold on the AH.  This item will automatically upgrade your pet to rare, which is a helpful thing for players with pets that are only uncommon (learned from items), or for the ones in the wild they're too lazy to hunt for.

Mr. Bigglesworth (image from Wowhead)

It's also useful to note that a few pets have been added to the game, I'm not going to go too in depth into these, but a lot of raid pets have been added, the reward for getting them all being the much coveted companion, Mr. Bigglesworth, from Naxxramas!  If you want to read more about these pets check out Wowhead's article here  I think this will encourage some players to get into the new pets as this is one awesome vanity pet that's hard for anyone to pass up!  Another nice addition for Tailors is that they can now craft 2 new pets, the Imperial Silkworm and Imperial Moth, which can both be created by using your Imperial Silk Cooldown.  A potential extra profit/reason for tailors to burn their CDs every day!

Darkmoon Trinkets Upgradable
Another nice feature they added in 5.1 is the ability to upgrade epic items with valor points.  Previous to this Darkmoon Trinkets were BiS, and now they are upgradable as well, helping ensure their value for at least a few more DMFs!

The one last thing that may be of value is that we can now enter old raids by ourselves, and some solo friendly changes have been made to some bosses.  This could be useful if you farm raids, but was not essential, just makes your life (slightly) easier.  So, what is your favorite or least favorite part of the new patch?

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!

Battle Pet Update

For today's post I just wanted to go over some news on battle pets that you may have missed in the past 2 weeks.  5.0.4 is just around the corner, and although the Theramore event is not going to be released Tuesday, I look forward to seeing what happens with glyphs!

As prerequisite knowledge for this post, the overall limit on amount of pets is 500, and 3x is the most you can have of a single pet (for some the limit is only 1, see below for more info).

Duplicate Pet Problem (Launch of MoP)
As you may remember from my previous post or elsewhere, pets were originally slated to be mailed back to you caged if you had any duplicates.  This has been changed.  Instead, for MoP launch, the limit of 500 pets total is going to be lifted as well as the 3x per pet limit.  So on pets that are not unique you will be able to have an 'unlimited' amount (although per account, 50) of each non-unique pet, granted you have one on each character.  This is a one shot deal kind of thing, other than at launch, you will be held to the limits for the rest of the expansion.

From my point of view this is good, my idea on camping Jadefang should work out, at least in a minimal setting, if not better (being able to learn the extras and sell).  Otherwise, this will be great for those sellable blues that we have tons of across alts (for a full list see my Rare Battle Pets link at the top of the page).

SO...Which Pets Are Unique?
As of now, there are 4 types of pets that are unique:

1. Achievement Pets
2. Blizzard Pet Store Pets
3. Promotional Pets
4. Guild Pets

So these pets, even at launch you will not be able to have more than one of.  Going into launch these pets, are currently slated to not be tradeable anyway.  Also of note, the TCG Pets will be cageable/tradeable on launch, according to this recent post.

**Edit: "Standard" Pets
After I released this post, Nev from Auction House Addict pointed out to me this blue post from today, that says "standard pets" will be merged upon 5.0.4 release with a cap of 3 each.  The examples of a standard pet that they gave are "Orange Tabby Cat, Brown Prairie Dog, Crimson Whelpling" which is a bit odd, considering the Crimson Whelpling is slated to be a "Rare Battle Pet".  That being said these changes are going live before MoP release, so we should have time to fully analyze the breadth of this change before Mists comes out.

Wrap it up!

In all, these changes seem beneficial to gold making with pets.  Also, although some in the gold making community are skeptical, I expect all the companion pets that are slated to turn into rare battle pets to be so at MoP launch, until Blizzard indicates otherwise, citing the "Beta is Beta" principle.  So, What aspect of Battle Pets do you most look forward to in Mists of Pandaria?  Also, how long do you expect servers to actually be down Tuesday?

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!