Project Lore

It started out great. Hitting 80, jumping into dungeons, my first downing of the Black Knight and subsequent farming of ToC. Then came the daily heroics. I was slowly building up my collection of purples, and it showed as my DPS jumped from really crappy to only moderately crappy (still working on that part - hoping rounding out with more purples helps!) Yes, Locomomo's advancements in Azeroth made me giddy. What did not was the depletion of my bank from a couple thousand gold to only a couple hundred; mostly from high repair bills and buying gems to socket into my shiny new gear. Those stupid jewels, if you want the good ones, are ridiculously expensive. And I DO want the good ones, at least for the gear that I probably won't replace for a while. I haven't even started looking at enchants yet, unless it's something a guildy can help me out with. In the grand scheme of things, what I've spent so far isn't all that much gold - I'm sure I could make it back pretty quickly if I really needed to. But therein lies the problem. If I take the time each day to run the dailies I need to make back gold, I lose out on raiding time. If I raid, I get more awesome gear that needs gems to make it even more awesome. Not to mention higher repair costs. What's a girl to do!? I'm thinking it comes down to time management. I don't play as much during the week anyway, but if I can manage to pop on for a few dailies each day, then save up longer raiding sessions for the weekend, that might be the key. Finishing up my exploring may have to be put on hold. Another possible solution - finishing off leveling up my leatherworking so I can get my buffs from the profession, and maybe even making some money off what I can make. Then once I get the leatherworking up, I could drop skinning and pick up another crafting profession. But then there's the issue of leveling it up without the gathering profession - of course, that takes more money! Then again, if it's jewelcrafting I pick up, then I won't have to buy jewels anymore, just the reagents. Ack, too many decisions! Any readers out there with two crafting professions? For that matter, any with dual gathering? Do you use it more for the benefit of your own buffs, or for money making? What other methods have you found to manage gold-making and gold-spending?

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By now, it's probably pretty obvious that I have a new 70 which I am pretty excited about. Somebody brought up a good point on vent the other night, though. With Wrath of the Lich King creeping up on all of us pretty quickly, I have to decide how much time and gold I should put into gearing up my little warlock. I could save all of my money and be pretty well off for when the expansion comes out, or I could put tons of money into upgrades that might prove meaningless in 6 months while having fun and learning a thing or two along the way. I'm probably going to end up closer to the latter than the former. I've nearly maxed tailoring and have made two out of three pieces of my frozen shadoweave set, which has already cost me a fair amount of gold. I still need to gem those pieces and make the final piece of the set, and then I will probably start running more heroics and maybe head into Karazhan with an over geared guild group. I don't think I will be spending tons of money to completely maximize Xeno's performance, but I won't hold back if I've got the resources on hand. Learning the dynamics of playing a warlock in instances and raids will also help me as a player, even if warlocks' play styles change in Northrend. So, given the amount of time I have to enjoy playing at level 70, I think I just won't worry about being rich in WotLK until it comes out. After all, spending money is more fun that saving it, and I play to have fun.

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