WoW Update - 7 Jul 2008; Welcome Back To Penury

As I write this, I have around 800 gold shared across two toons - the lowest amount of gold I've had in recent memory. As neither of my toons has an epic flying mount, this is a particularly alarming phenomenon.

And it all started this weekend.

With no time to game last week, I had to make do with spamming instances on Saturday morning. Hung over and short on sleep, I started my day with an 8 am Heroic Magister's Terrace with four guildies... only to find that one of them hadn't completed Magister's Terrace on normal difficulty yet. So we stepped out of the instance, reset to normal, and cleared it in just over an hour.

We started wiping when we walked into Heroic MgT. We managed to down the first boss but wiped over and over again on the second. We called it at just before lunch (four hours in Magister's Terrace... /cry) with just one Badge of Justice to show for our efforts.

After lunch, we picked up the daily heroic (Heroic Arcatraz) and walked into the instance. Unfortunately, this run was as sloppy as the day's first run, so we only managed to clear it after 4 pm, when the heroics reset. But it was enough: Froufrou turned in 105 Badges of Justice for a Blade of Serration.

With both badge daggers in her greedy little hands, Froufrou now does more than 500 dps and shows up higher in DPS charts. Next up: Tunic of the Dark Hour, at 100 Badges, by September.

I found a friendly enchanter on the Trade channel and got Mongoose on my new dagger, along with an Enchant Gloves - Superior Agility for my Netherblade Gloves. And I was set!

Just before midnight, I pugged Heroic Mana Tombs, which gave me three more badges. 97 to go...

Sunday morning dawned bright and early. Too early, as I got home from bar crawling at past 5 am. I was at my PC and raid-ready by 9 and even got a few dailies done before 10, when Kara would start.

And then I found that I wasn't on the raid list.

I was mulling a few more hours' sleep when the raid leader asked me to step in for someone else. I got summoned into the raid three pulls away from Attumen, which gave me not a lot of time to prepare. But we downed Attumen and we downed Moroes and we downed Maiden. (Froufrou even got her long-sought-for Edgewalker Longboots.)

The trouble is that we were really, really sloppy in going about it.

Everyone was at fault. The tanks weren't holding aggro, the DPS kept pulling aggro, and the healers were not on top of healing. The tank died during the Maiden fight, taking half the raid with her. And we wiped a few times to trash. No one was happy.

The raid leader asked me very nicely if they could have Avierra for the run, so I hearthed out and brought Avi in. Things went smoothly from that point on. We cleared every boss in Kara except Nightbane, and Avi just kept looting tanking drops (Justicar Handguards, Shermanar Great-Ring and Panzar'Thar Breastplate). Avierra walked out of Karazhan with 46 Badges total... not all that far from her next badge purchase, Anveena's Touch.

I next logged in after dinner so we could run Damasso through Shadow Labs. We'd been trying to get him to ding 70 for the past two weeks, running him through Auchindoun instances so he could get better gear and experience. (The Lower City rep was a bonus to that as well.) We'd helped him through the prerequisites of Karazhan attunement and now it was time for him to get his first key fragment.

Amihan joined us for that run, which was good as we weren't going to be able to three-man Shadow Labs. We cleared Shadow Labs by midnight... and were pleasantly surprised to find that Damasso had dinged 70 in the process.

So why am I poor? Well, it's like this...

I started the weekend with around 2,800 gold on Froufrou.

When I looked through the Auction House I saw an epic I'd never seen before: Belt of Deep Shadow. A glance at Shadowpanther.net confirmed that this was one of the best PvE rogue belts in the game. Unfortunately, it cost 1,750 gold on buyout... no way was I going to just bid on this! That brought me down to 1,050 gold. and I blew 60 gold on two gems to fill out the slots.

Then I needed gems for my new boots, so I bit the bullet again and bought a Rigid Lionseye for 300 gold. I already had a Deadly Fire Opal from a previous heroic run, so that went in the boots too.

I made back some money with dailies and spent some money on raid consumables. Then I loaned Damasso 600 gold for his flying mount.

Which left Froufrou with around 170 gold.

So I guess it's time to farm extra hard. Because time is running out for my epic flying mount. Hell, I don't even need two. Just one.

I can't wait till I see my little gnome on her own nether ray.