Welcome to my Main Server. I am Horde Side on Sentinels-US. Meet my bank toon (I want to do a full article about the advantages of Bank Toons later). Ohnekase is wealthy. He is sitting around 500k gold, just on him. Across all the characters on my server, I am about 725k, which is cool. However, Ohnekase himself is kinda useless. He doesn't really have much in the way of professions, and I don't use him for crafting at all. How does he have so much money? One word: Alts.
So, if you look back on our Getting the Grade series, we found that Jewelry on Earthen Ring sold really really well. That is great, but it really only took me 5 - 10 minutes to do with that. And if there was really really cheap jewelry, I couldn't do anything but sit there and wait for it to go away. But, what if that was not the case. While each character can have only 2 primary professions, you can have more than one character.
Alts are an amazing tool. If you look at @Faidtastic, @PowerWordGold, they each have a large pile of alts. Why? Because if you have extra alts, you can have them do extra professions without erasing the progress on a different character. On my main server, I have every professions to max, except Herbalism (cause I dropped it to get Engineering on a character). This is how I have as much money as I do. When I just had Alchemy and Herbalism on my main, and only focused there, I didn't really make a lot of money.
So, lets go over the reasons for alts in more details. Be aware that some of these are gold-making reasons more than game reasons, I will list what they are for.
Goldmaking benefits
1) Diversity: On a recent Justin.tv stream with @Faidtastic and @PowerWordGold, the question was asked what the one profession is that made the most gold. While some good answers were had, the best answer is that the best way to make gold in general is not through 1 profession (though you can), it is to diversify. Let me give an example from my server.
My DK is a Jewelcrafter. He can cut gems and sell them. There is a market for this, but why stop there. When I shuffle (and I haven't done it in a while) for cata ore, I buy Obsidium, Elementium, and Pyrite Ore, prospect it all down, cut the blue gems and sell those on Ohnekase. If I just stopped there, I would still make money, but why stop there, there is more than one way to bake a cake. My green gems turn into jewelry, which goes to my mage to DE for dust to make scrolls. I buy herbs on my Priest for Inscription, then make glyphs, scrolls, and other Inscrip stuff. I take some of that ore and make stuff on my Warrior for Blacksmithing and my Rogue for Engineering.
By itself, the gems might make me 100s or 1000s of gold over time. But with the diversity, now I make make more and more and more, just by having more diversity. Alts provide that diversity. Even at low level, you can always have an alt or two to turn your useless greens from leveling a profession into dust (low level enchanting allows you to DE any of the low level stuff you get, and gets better as you level it, not hard to do). Dust sells. Lets say you get ore somewhere and aren't a miner. Well, a miner alt, or a Jewelcrafting alt can make use of it, again at low levels. And you don't need to be high levels to get high level professions. A 10th level character can train up to 150, 20th level character can train up to 225 (both easy to get).
2) Anonymity: This I am not going to touch on this much, because it is its own category really. Anonymity gives you the abillity to do more than a single character would. This is why most people have bank alts. You can buy items on one character to send to another character.
For example, lets say someone was selling Valor Bracers (at high end) in trade for a great price. You know that you can buy them and put them on the AH for double that. Well, use another character (one that might make use of the items, Rogue for leather, Shaman for Mail, etc.), buy them, ship them to another character, and put them up on the AH shortly after. That way, the person doesn't think he just sold some bracers to someone who just put it up (which creates animosity) and you can still get profit.
Also, this helps you organize your rage emails to a character. If someone gets upset at a character, you know what they do? Frequently, they will mail that person about it. Or message, or switch factions and grief that character (on PVP servers), or just do some general hating wherever people will listen. Trust me, very nice to be able to do it on a seperate character to avoid that.
3) Self-Sufficiency: Part of making money is spending as little as you can for yourself. If you can make your own stuff, why do you need to pay AH prices for it. For example, Inferno rubies are really expensive (Last time I checked, they were 300 g + ea). But if you have an alt, you can cut your own, which saves money, or if you have extra gems, you don't really pay for it itself (this isn't true cause the cost you could sell it for you technically take a hit for, but the idea is still there).
Other (possibly gold making) reasons
1) Diversity: Yes it is the same, but I still think they fit both there. If you have a Hunter, you can only DPS. But if you have a Hunter and a Priest, you can DPS and Heal. And sometimes, healing comes with its own rewards (Call to Arms comes to mind). Sometimes you are at 85, wanna do a dungeon and the queue for DPS is 20 minutes. Well, the Queue for healers and tanks is almost never that, so do it.
A side note on this for people on a PVP server. Having an alt also gives you the diversity to avoid griefing if you want to. Have you been killed by the same 85 Rogue for the 5th time in STV and none of your guild is on. Well, skip him and move on another character. Its not like that Rogue knows where you are. And after an hour of doing something else with your other character, the Rogue will have gotten bored and moved on, I am sure.
2) Seperation of Goldmaking and playing time: This is something that I think might be a good idea for some of my own characters. So, I have a problem. Some days, I don't feel like I really play the game. Sure I am on for 5 hours, but I don't feel like I played. Why? Because those 5 hours were done Running Dungeon X, then doing my Jewelcrafting, the crafting on my blah blah blah. That kind of thing. All in all, I was on for a while, but all I did was craft. This is something that can make the game stale. An alt (say a leveling alt on another server or something like that) can make the game continue to be fun. Honestly, this is why I think I have altidus is that I hit max level and then kinda just stop afterword. Sure I run a few dungeons here and there, and occassionally play a BG, but that is it. But then I play a new alt and it is exciting again. Being able to have some characters that are away from the all the gold making hubub I think can make you appreciate and play more.
But I have yet to do this on my main server, so maybe it isn't quite so.
My Alts
So I have talked about the power of Alts, but what do I have myself and why? There is a reason after all. So lets go over them. Note: For now, I am not going to include my other characters names cause I want to take advantage of my anonymity.
My Bank Alt
Originally, this character was created to play with my wife. He still does occasionally, however, she is very good about staying on her Mage, so I let her be there. For now, this is pretty much where I do all my Auctions. On a given day, I can post 100-500 auctions. I use TSM for it cause that addon makes a 4 hour posting cycle take much less. His guild, <And What Army>, was a guild that I have turned into a bank guild for extra storage, which works really well.
My "Main"
My main, in all his Transmogriphication Glory. I like the look. However, he has some advantages as well. He is an Alchemist and Engineer. So he occassionally makes and sells pets, Flintlocke's Woodchucker, and transmutes.
Btw, let me know what you think of the Transmog set. Also, to add to it, I made sure to use the title "the Argent Champion" and I use the Argent Hypogryph.
My Profession Alts
My Jewelcrafting alt. I also had him grab Tailoring cause I like it for farming cloth. But the JCer makes me the money definitely.
My Blacksmithing character and Tank. For Blacksmithing, there are a lot of good things that everyone seems to want (Belt Buckles and Epic Shields). Occassionally, I will run the Call to Arms and get me a nice set of Bags with money, flasks, and pets. Happy face.
My Mage is a Tailor and an Enchanter. Lots of good money from him, even if he is wearing a pregnancy belt.
My Priest is only level 75. But he has max Inscription and has Alchemy as a side Profession. He make a lot of Glyphs and some potions.
This is what alts get you. I can literally make anything I need for any of my characters and can usually keep Ohnekase Stocked.
One last example...
If I did another getting the grade challenge (which I will do something similar), I would add in the ability for using alts in there as well. Even at low level, I would find a use for them.
Think about it. At one point, I was debating where to move Ohnekase to: Jewelcrafting, Blacksmithing, or Engineering. Well, lets say instead that I just made an alt that was Engineering and Blacksmithing and made Ohnekase a Jewelcrafter. Remember that Ohnekase has a lot of Copper. Now I can start looking at using more of it. Then my copper can make even more stuff to try and sell on the AH. Even the Rough stone could possibly be used. Even better is that I could make another alt that is Enchanting (and probably tailoring) so that I can DE items as well.
So if I did all that, lets look at what I could do for money.
I buy Copper at 20s ea. I send it to my JC to make jewelry which sells for 10-15 gold ea. I then make some low level armor to try and sell for maybe 5 gold ea. Then I make greens with that copper as cheap as I can and DE them for Strange Dust and Essence. Strange Dust fluctuates a lot, but we will say I can sell it occassionally for 1 gold ea.
So with copper, I have literally shuffled it all around and made money on it. Will every avenue work? Of course not, but then I have the diversity to move around if I need to and try other things.
Conclusion...
So, if you are serious about goldmaking, I would say that you really need alts. They provide you with so many benefits that one character just cannot provide. It also gives you some leway to try different things. Even if you want to just power a character through to 85, make a quick Enchanter to DE whatever it can, so you can prepare for it later. The benefits are huge.
See ya next time....
No comments:
Post a Comment