You can buy light leather pretty cheap, depending on the server. On one server I see it regularly go for 30 silver each, on another for 50-75. Plus you can just walk out of Goldshire, massacre a bunch of random shit, and skin away. It won’t take long.
I’m still grinding away on my rogue. Taking it relatively slow, to keep my mining/skinning skill in synch with my level. Just hit 68, gathering skills both over 350, so I think I’m ready to move on to WotLK zones. The Warlock is only 63, and I haven’t been working his tradeskills much. Probably going to just wait until 90 and powerlevel something. Maybe tailoring, so I can get the flying carpet mount…
Well, in the case of Chimtahna, it’s simply that I retired him at level 50, almost 5 years ago, and haven’t done anything at all with him except log him in on certain holidays (mainly Winter Veil and the WoW anniversaries, just to get him the relevant achievements-of-the-year).
My nelf hunter has maxed leatherworking. Like Chimtahna, he’d taken Skinning and LW early on, but I pretty much ignored his LW until he got to level 80 (or maybe 85). By that point he had enough gold from selling leather that he was able to power-level LW, using a guide.
Most of my other toons have two gathering professions, and when or if they ever reach max level, I’ll consider switching them to production professions. My two 90s on Alexstrasza are a rogue and a hunter, both of whom benefit from LW, which the hunter has. So the rogue has no motivation to learn LW, or any other production prof at the moment. She’s been a skinner and miner since the beginning, and that’s a major reason that she’s my wealthiest toon, sitting at around 88k gold ATM. (She’d be over 100k by now, except that when I transferred her from Wyrmrest Accord to Alexstrasza, she had to divest herself of a substantial pile of gold to get down to 50k, the max amount of gold she could take with her. She blew 13k on a fancy dagger, and then sent about 7k to one of my alts on WrA.) But that still means that she’s made 38k since the server transfer. OTOH, my hunter is a skinner/LW, and is my second-wealthiest toon, with about 86k gold. He made some good money selling the crafted 476 leather/mail gear early in the expansion, and has recently made a chunk of change by selling a couple of the 553 crafted pants (though I’m annoyed that the only 553 patterns he’s learned have been +INT pants, which are not helpful to either him or my rogue).
My lvl 90 human paladin (on Lightbringer), my main since I started playing, is lagging behind. As an alchemist/enchanter, she’s just not pulling in much gold. But then, she’s not trying too hard to make money. She’s busily enchanting her own gear, and mailing enchants to my 90 priest and 90 warrior, and also making flasks for herself and the priest and warrior. My 90 priest, though, is doing pretty well. She’s an herbalist/tailor, and between selling herbs and crafting a couple 553 cloth belts, she’s done okay. Since my paladin was so poor, my priest bought one of those iLvl 502 Lionheart Executioner, Reborn swords for her. My paladin/enchanter made a bit of gold selling the Dancing Steel weapon enchant, but that’s come to an end. The going price for that enchant has dropped to around 800g on Lightbringer (way down from a high of 2000+). Given that I don’t raid, and that it takes 10 Sha Crystals to make that enchant, it just takes her too long to obtain the mats via the farm and disenchanting the occasional plate drop from the Timeless Isle to make it worthwhile to try to make money from Enchanting. (If only I could send the Dancing Steel enchant scrolls to my tauren paladin on Cairne. The last time I looked, that enchant was going for 10k on the Cairne Horde AH.
Last night I decided to pull my level 86 mage out of retirement to try to get her to 90. She was my tailor on Lightbringer until I replaced her with my priest, so when/if I get her to 90 maybe I’ll have her trade tailoring for jewelcrafting or inscription. Playing a fire mage was so frustrating in Cataclysm. But playing her again last night, I recalled the joy of flinging fire at the bad guys and blowing them up real good. Granted, it helped that she’s questing in Jade Forest at 86, against lvl 84 opponents. But it was fun.
It’s partly my fault, to be sure; I just usually don’t have the patience to go back to lower-level zones and grind away killing critters just to skin them. 
Also, I’ve been trying to figure out what good, if any, Valor Points are nowadays. All the quartermasters in Pandaria now want Justice Points for the gear that used to cost Valor Points. Are there quartermasters on the newer daily zones that take Valor points for gear (I haven’t done much on the Mysterious Isle – or whatever it’s called – because every time I venture there, even with my LFR-geared Death Knight, I suffer far too many deaths).
Valor Points at this point are mainly for upgrading your gear at the Item Upgrades ethereal in the Shrine. 250 VP gets you 4 iLvls, and you can do that twice on each piece of gear. 496 -> 500 -> 504, for example.
As far as deaths on the Timeless Isle I’ve found that, aside from gear, it’s a matter of figuring out which of the elite mobs your class/spec is best-suited to fighting and which to avoid, and understanding each one’s special attacks. Most of the elites don’t have especially dangerous normal attacks, but their uninterruptible special attacks are huge.
My ret paladin makes short work of the Guip Frogs. The main key to the frogs is to never pull more than one at a time. They put a stacking poison on you, and you will instantly die, regardless of how many hit points you have left, if the poison reaches 10 stacks. If you’re decently-geared you can burn them down before you get 10 stacks, but if you pull more than one the poison will stack faster than you can kill them. Pull one, kill it as fast you you can, wait for whatever poison stacks you have on you to drop off, heal yourself to full, and then pull another frog.
Death Adders: They don’t have a “regular” attack, they just have that “Huge Fang” attack that they spam, so they’re a case of “try to kill them faster than they can kill you”. I avoid these on my hunter, mainly because his pet simply can’t hold aggro on them for some reason. He doesn’t have that problem with any of the other lvl 91 elites, just the adders.
Big Blue Crabs, Pink Cranes, and the elite Oxen: These all have a frontal-cone special attack that does big damage, but they can’t turn around while they’re channeling it. So it’s simply a matter of getting behind them as soon as they start channeling the attack. My newest 90, an arms warrior, pretty much sticks to these elites for the time being. He’s well-geared, thanks to my paladin and priest sending him plate tokens before he got to 90, and also finding plenty himself, but I simply don’t have the mastery of his rotation like I do with my other 90s. So it’s best if he sticks to the “simpler” elites.
Tigers: These also have a frontal cone attack, but I pretty much avoid the tigers on all of my toons. Not because they’re hard to kill, but because they’re annoying as hell with the way they leap all over the place. When they leap away from you, you have to run right up to them so that they don’t Pounce, because the Pounce will stun you for a few seconds. But because of all the jumping around, it’s very easy to end up with as many as three of them (both elite and normal) on you, and they’re all leaping and Pouncing in different directions. And sometimes I swear the non-elites are deliberately trying to draw you into the path of those passing giants. Too much trouble, IMO.
Turtles: Very easy to kill if you can avoid/counteract their spin attack via stuns or roots. Biggest hazard, aside from the spin attack, is drawing social aggro from the smaller turtles. Or accidentally running/getting knocked back into the opposite factions base 
Cursed Swabbies (hozen with helmets, underwater): I don’t bother with these guys any more. They have three different, uninterruptible attacks. First is their “Rusty Shank” attack, with does big initial damage, and I think some DoT. When I was still fighting them, I’d just accept that attack, saving my stun/root for the next special attack, “Depth Charge”. If you can stun them before they get off the Depth Charge, well and good; just keep attacking. If they manage to cast the Depth Charge, get the hell away as fast as you can. If your timing is a bit slow and your stun/root hits them just after the cast Depth Charge, this is okay too — get out of range, and when the bomb goes off it will damage them. But don’t get too far away from them. I don’t know the exact range, but if you get too far away they’ll use their third uninterruptible attack, a harpoon gun that does massive damage, and they’ll keep spamming it at you until you’re dead.
The only real reason to target the Cursed Swabbies is to get to the weekly chest they’re guarding in the sunken ship. But that chest requires a key, and you have to keep killing them until one of them drops the key, and then fight through more of them to actually get to the chest, which, aside from the first time you open it, seems to drop nothing but Lesser Charms and Timeless Coins. It’s worth doing once, though, because the first time you loot the chest you’ll get an underwater-breathing/swim speed buffing helmet that lasts for 15 minutes each time you use it. It’s pretty essential to have for fighting anything underwater on the Isle.
There are some of those Pandarian elemental things on one beach. I avoid them simply because, aside from the huge damage of their special attacks, it’s too easy to aggro more than one at a time. There are also elementals that look the same, but have different abilities, in the big inland cave. I also avoid these, as well as the swamp monsters deeper inside that cave. In the case of the swamp monsters, it’s mainly because of my GPU. Their “fog” attacks just kill my FPS to the point that I can barely fight back.
The yaungol mobs I don’t bother with at all (you really need a group for those), and I stay away from the lvl 92 elite fire mobs.
Yay! Green fire.
My new PC came so I can actually run instances. The first thing I did was try the green fire quest. Reminds me of some of the crazy raid soloing or the Shartuul event I used to farm.
Well dammit. Two days off work, and no WoW. I just paid for some car repairs and paid my rent, leaving me stretched thin until payday on Tuesday. And today Blizzard tries to auto-bill my debit card a couple days earlier than I expected … and my bank balance was about a dollar short. I really need to get a credit card for these unexpected repairs so that they don’t put me in the hole.
OTOH, I guess this will let me reset my billing date to be in line with my current job’s paydays, which are two days later than my previous job’s.
I’m finally considering leveling up my Anglers Rep so I can get the water walking pet. I’m already Honored thanks to the quest chain in Dread Waste and however long I’ve had Anglers as my star-rep. Anyway, at 1650 rep for dailies + 500 for daily dungeons/scenarios it’ll still take me…awhile. 6 days to Revered and maybe another 9 for exalted.
I’m also working on my second legendary cloak. this one for my healing druid. Just need some good RNG starting tomorrow while running lfr from tot+soo. I need 5 runestones from those 12 bosses. (one is guaranteed - Lei Shin)
Really not a fan of the chess event in Karazhan. That’s a lot of time spent just to have the Prince not drop his pet. Again. Jerk.
I’m wondering how the Burning Dog Inn guild’s doing. It’s been a couple of years(? can’t remember how long ago offhand) since I joined it & I stopped logging in because my old raid team got back up & running so I didn’t have time to play there too. Things have quieted down a bit & I was wondering if it was still worth it to work on my old toon again.
Do you mean the Burning Dog Legion, on Cairne? I sort of became the guild “leader” by default, what with being one of the few remaining semi-active members (My main toon, the “guild leader”, is Donoma, the tauren paladin (formerly Keliraeda, the blood elf paladin). I try to log her in at least once a week, though I’m not always good with that.
But the BDL is a level 25 guild, so the perks are all there. If you have a toon in there, I’d be happy to see you online. There are one or two other players other than myself who are online, but the BDL is not as active as it once was. (And honestly, I’m not as active with the BDL as I once was.)
Yeah, BDL on Cairne. While I was there for a spell, I enjoyed a bit of banter while levelling. I’m a long, long-time lurker on here & I was excited to see a SDMB guild on WoW. 
But since BDL-Cairne has gone quiet, did peeps move to a different server or larger guild?
As I’m getting older I find it harder to be as focused on raiding as I once was so I was hoping to find a medium-sized guild that’s a little more than puttering through MoP content.
–I’ve noticed that most of my old servers are eerily quiet & not just for end-of-expansion blues either. I’m currently in a massive guild system on Aerie Peak (Convert to Raid (world boss name here)) with I think 8 co-guilds now. (A raiding focused spin-off of the alea iacta est guild system, Horde-side on Earthen Ring.) While it’s nice to have a lot of raids available nearly 24/7, it doesn’t have a strong, close-knit community unless you find a stable, solid raid team.
Some moved on to other servers/guilds so that they could raid seriously, but I think the larger proportion of former BDL members simply stopped playing the game. The guild currently has a roster of ~258 members, but aside from my own 8 toons and the toons of the handful of people still active, the overwhelming majority of characters in the guild have not been logged in for months (or years).
Even I’m not that active there any more. I prefer Alliance over Horde, and spend most of my time on Lightbringer (my original server, where I have three 90s, a paladin, a priest, and a warrior) and Alexstrasza (two 90s, a rogue and hunter).
Well, I’ve never been a raider at all. I started playing the game at age 42; I’m 47 now. Basically, I grew up on single-player games and just prefer playing by myself. And I don’t think the BDL ever did any “serious” raiding. Some members joined PUGs and such during WotLK and Cata (I wasn’t around during Vanilla/TBC), and during WotLK I got talked into tagging along on a guild run through one wing of Naxx, which just confirmed that raiding isn’t for me.
Basically, the BDL is a social guild for SDMB members (and some friends and family).
I miss the days of the active BDL. But I’ve been off WoW for about two years, and my life is better for it. Some days though I’m tempted to drag Kene out of storage – until I read this thread and realize I have NO idea what most of the posts are talking about even though I played from BC up until just before MoP dropped.
I still feel the same way. I took a 5 month hiatus a month or so after MoP came out & when I got back I was so far behind in raiding I just gave up or did extremely casual LFRs & a few dailies. Maybe when WoD comes out I’ll pick up raiding again.
Well, as “wipes” go, that’s fairly gentle. No death, no repair bill, just a small delay and then try, try again.
Yeah, it bites that soloing the Chess encounter essentially means betting on the kindness of the RNG (specifically, that Medivh’s pieces make dumb moves rather than smart ones)… in my experience, about one time in three.
But still, the annoyance of failing out of sheer RNG hate makes me skip grinding Malchazar’s pet in my weekly cycle of soloing old content for fun and profit. I’m focusing on mount-dropping bosses for now.
Even if you win it’s an annoyingly long encounter. I usually don’t bother if I’m doing a Kara run. If I really want the pet I can buy multiples with the proceeds from selling a single pet drop from Lady Vashj, which seems to be the most valuable pet (goldwise) from soloable raid content.
167 mounts and counting! There are enough ‘easily’ acquired mounts out there for me to get my armored dragonhawk before the next expansion. I’ll just have to slow down on the leveling alts.
I may just give up on Malchezaar’s pet if I hit Exalted with The Violet Eye and I still don’t have it. Doing Attumen runs is wonderfully easy and I’ll keep that up for sure, but considering I’m just a pet/mount/reputation/achievement whore who doesn’t even do pet battles, it’s a waste of time to keep banging my head against the RNG wall. It’s like :smack: x1000 for nothing.
I had no idea that buying a caged pet qualified for those achievements. (Not all, but a lot of the pet-count ones; and that one specifically.)
Shoot. I’m going to have to rethink my approach to those. Not to the first “Raiding with Leashes” achieve: On a whim, I paid a quick visit to Naxx and Maexxna dropped the Dusty Clutch of Eggs I needed to finish out that achievement. So I’m happy with Mr. Bigglesworth. Whom I won’t kill like I usually do.
I’m up to 183 myself, but like you, I’ll run out of solo-attainable ones before 200. I only have yet to get the two from Zul’gurub, the one in the Stonecore, and the one in Stratholme, plus most of the soloable old raid ones (TK, EoE, Ony’s Lair, VoA). I got the drop off of Attumen in Kara waaay back when I was till trying to farm the Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle for transmog. (That was a couple dozen runs… so going back into Kara seems a lot less desirable.) And I already have the “guaranteed drop” achievement ones from doing Sarth 3d (both 10- and 25-man versions).
Then there’re about four profession mounts I can do, if I can scratch up enough money for the 11 Orbs of Mystery they’ll need :eek: )
So… yeah, like you, my prospects of getting the entire achieve before more mounts become available in Patch 6.0 are pretty low.
My latest project is leveling an alt I had originally envisioned as a bank alt.
It’s even embedded in his name.
He’s a Tauren Sunwalker (Paladin, for those who don’t buy the lore). I was content with just piddling around questing and stuff, but Timeless Isle made it very important (to me) to level him up.
I have tons of Timeless plate tokens in bank and bag slots. All of my plate-wearing toons have full 496 gear and a backup set of tokens in their bags in case they get a Burden of Eternity.
So, I want to convert and disenchant those surplus tokens. But the toon that converts the token has to be a level 90 plate wearing class, and because the resulting item is souldbound, that level 90 plate wearer has to be the enchanter to do the disenchanting as well.
I have no level 90 plate wearing enchanters. The bank toon is the only plate wearing chanter, so I have to level him, starting from about level 45.
Getting to 85 went shockingly fast. With full heirloom gear (upgraded kind that’s good to 85), he could never finish a quest area before the quests became very very green, and that’s not a good way to use your powerleveling time. So he has left quest chains unfinished all over Outlands, Northrend, and Cataclysm. (Just as well. Vashj’ir was a steaming hellhole of ganking.)
Now that I’m in Pandaria, it’s slowed down some. I’m replacing the heirloom stuff with either appropriate plate greens from my blacksmithing alt, or quest rewards.
Fun. It’s hard for this toon to die. It’s pretty true still that ret paladins are overpowered. I have to pretty much stop paying attention to die.
Pretty soon I’ll be able to clear up that backlog of Timeless plate tokens. And then I can start on my clothie enchanter, a level 42 belf warlock. 