To Herberdt the rating is actually of no use (except for a slight E-Peen increase), but Xic could finally replace his scruffy Silvery Sylvan Stave with a Deadly Gladiator’s Staff – not really his first choice, but unfortunately the Journey’s End is not in sight for him so far.

Xic

Almost in time for its first anniversary, ‹Kasten› is celebrating a new member: Xic! After he had been hanging out with us in BGs or arenas for weeks anyway, and we were also on the same wavelength on TS, he has now ventured the step and turned his back on ‹Source of Force›. It must be said though that his departure from SoF did not lead to bad blood – we are always in close contact to the guild anyway, and Xic even continues raiding with them regularly. It was rather that (quote Xic:) “your guild should finally get the props for me when I’m in a BG with you”.

His admission is special in so far as we usually don’t recruit “strangers”. ‹Kasten› has always been a guild (alternatively: Clan) which only consisted of relatives, RL friends, longtime acquaintances and the like. We’ve already quashed (or skillfully ignored) many enquiries like “hi can i jnoi ur guidl?”, but as for Xic we all knew immediately: We must have him! Can it really be a coincidence that he – like the historic ‹Kasten› founding members – is from Cologne? Anyway, thus he has the necessary mentality for our little circle and was able to settle in quickly. To a good time together!

Stupid buyers - stupid sellers

I think if you look at the relationship between guild size and gold stocks, ‹Kasten› is surely the richest guild of the whole server. The main reason is that Coldinchen and Phony grind their gems diligently every day – no, that’s not a nasty phrase! –, but also that I have a good nose for worthwhile AH transactions and a high expertise in the use of Auctioneer that I developed over many years. While the other two are dominating the gemstone market almost cartel-like, I keep enjoying the stupidity and inexperience of my buyers and sellers.

Gold limit

So it came that we recently talked about the topic “gold limit”. Coldinchen had already reached 180,000 gold, and we wondered whether the limit on our server would also be 214.748 36 46. Without further ado, I thrust 40,000 gold in Coldinchen’s hand, and really: 214,748 was the max! The ~5,200 gold difference didn’t get “reversed” to me, but instead disappeared forever into the Nirvana. But who cares!

Moped gang

Our wealth allows us to always get ourselves the most expensive and exclusive things. It is considered good form for each guild member to have a Mekgineer’s Chopper in the garage and a Traveler’s Tundra Mammoth in the stable. Furthermore, on the battleground one shall always drive in a motorcycle convoy; that looks more swanky and gives the poor riff-raff a better basis for gazing, drooling and whispering.

Mount stacking

Off to Icecrown!

Look what a funny thing I found! Ok, I admit, I read it somewhere: When you start to cast a mount, and then right in the middle of the cast jump on someone else’s mount, you end up with your mount on top of the other one! That only works on private servers, of course, and has unfortunately been fixed on ours after only a few days – but it was nice while it lasted.
The problem with this trick was that you could also mount on battlefields while carrying a flag this way. Really a shame, it was so much fun. And it looked incredibly retarded while riding.

Two-man Alterac Valley

À propos battlegrounds: Today there was a huge lag in the middle of an Alterac Valley, and yet I didn’t lose the connection to the server. So I made myself a coffee and did some other things, when suddenly, after twenty minutes, something happened on my screen again! I was still in Alterac Valley – along with another Alliance warrior and two Horde players. All others had probably been less patient than me and pressed Alt+F4.
Well, after we had encountered the Horde guys two times – I think they were clothies –, they finally left the BG, too. What now? We had no other choice than to try the boss. Surprisingly, the scaling of the Boss’s strength with the team size worked properly: He did very little damage and had not much life, so we could kill him very easily and lead this completely empty Alterac Valley to a glorious victory for the Alliance!

Saphiron

Yes, yes, I haven’t written for too long, I know … but I was simply too lazy!
Well, as you can probably imagine, it has been slightly more than two months since the expansion came on our server, and we have long since leveled to 80 and resumed our daily routine: massacre in the BG, massacre in the BG, maybe a heroic instance in between, massacre in the BG … Many, many “Hateful” and “Deadly” items are waiting to be bought by us for a zillion honor points. Promenized has, incidentally, leveled a rogue named Prommes, who still needs to get equipped a little, too.

Tribunal of Ages

Surprisingly, Northrend and the Death Knight weren’t as bugged as I had foreseen it in my dark visions. Of course, here and there a few things didn’t (don’t) work – but that’s something you have to expect and get along with when you play on a private server. But overall, leveling went quite well, and the instances that are open (10 at the moment, including Naxxramas and Vault of Archavon) work well, too. One of the few things that do not run quite as intended is, for example, the Tribunal of Ages in the Halls of Stone. Here, waves of non-attackable mobs run up to Brann Bronzebeard and each beat him for 1 damage per hit, which he just takes with a tired smile. Well, the ten minutes, in which he converses with his nutty computer, are very suitable to make yourself a coffee. After that, the door to the end boss finally opens.

Naxxramas (10)

Yeah, and we also went to Naxx with our friends of ‹Source of Force›. Both 10‑ and 25-man mode. That was quite nice on one hand, but on the other it immediately reminded me of how much I dislike raiding now, and that it was exactly why I lost my passion a year ago and left the official server. Added to this, it was really loud and “undisciplined” in the TS, which of course only increased the strain on the nerves … So, I guess, we’ll probably never become real raiders again. Nevertheless, it was fun to play the instance once again.

Wowhead

It’s actually been a while, but I have written a new Greasemonkey script: Wowhead Tooltip Links. It is intended for use with the Wowhead tooltip script that is described here in more detail. The idea is to create those pretty little item links that you encounter everywhere on this site.

Now, instead of having to create links like this

<a href="http://de.wowhead.com/?item=5263">Fussel</a>

Quick Guide:

1. First you need Firefox, Greasemonkey, and my Greasemonkey script.

2. After that, add the following to your site somewhere between <head> and </head>:

   <script src="http://static.wowhead.com/widgets/power.js"></script>

3. Then go to the Wowhead page of the item or whatever you want to link, and copy the automatically generated link from the text box:

   

   Automatisch generierter Link

4. Paste that link to the desired place on your site. The result are pretty little links like these:

   

   Finished item links

Enjoy linking!

The boat to Northrend

Almost nobody believed in it anymore, and I too hadn’t expected the opening of Northrend any sooner than the date when Blizzard already launched the next addon. But today was the day: About one year after the release of “Wrath of the Lich King”, we can finally level up to 80 on our server, too.

Bugged ore deposits ftw!

As expected, not everything worked smoothly on the first day – for example, you all the quests granted far too little experience. So we decided to first push our professions and quest later, when the experience rate got fixed. To our aid came a bugged ore which, after mining it, immediately spawned again as soon as you moved an inch. Needless to mention that, as a blacksmith and jeweler, we particularly benefited from that. Within minutes we had pushed our professions to approximately 410. Unfortunately, the ores were repaired a few hours later. But luckily we were there in time!

Even for the higher skill points, we were well supplied: By Hardcore Darkmoon Faire farming, I had already collected Eternal stuff, different leathers, arctic furs and other things – although they shouldn’t normally have been available to us at that time. Thus, we had a small supply of everything in the guild bank and could all level up our professions smoothly without having to farm for missing reagents or buy them expensively.

But now it’s time for us to level!

Shopping at the Darkmoon Faire

Every month the Darkmoon Faire offers its exotic goods for one week. But to be honest: How often do you really get something there? Whenever you talk to one of the vendors, everything useful is already sold out, and most often it seems obvious that it must have something to do with those level-1 characters standing around there day and night. The only way to play a trick on such “buying bots” is to bot back against them! (For the fainthearted: No, this is not really about true botting.)

Admittedly, this post comes a bit late. Eternal stuff, lotuses, furs, etc. are no longer as sought-after and valuable as they once were. On the other hand, a new addon is coming up soon, and who knows, maybe there will be new buyable reagents there again which people will be panting for, especially at the beginning.
However, even now you can still reap some good profits off some of the things. I’ve compared the purchase prices of some items to the average AH prices according to Wowhead:

Item	Purchase	AH value	Profit in %
Eternal Fire	2 40	30	1150
Crystallized Fire	24	4	1567
Eternal Air	2 40	20	733
Crystallized Air	24	1	317
Eternal Life	2 40	15	525
Crystallized Life	24	1	317
Eternal Water	2 40	5	108
Crystallized Water	24	1	317
Eternal Shadow	2 40	5	108
Crystallized Shadow	24	1	317
Eternal Earth	2 40	5	108
Crystallized Earth	24	50	108
Frost Lotus	4	30	650
Arctic Fur	12	50	317

Gold in a box!

As you can see, you can do quite good business, especially with fire, air and life, but also with Frost Lotus, the more so as their deposit costs are not too high. Depending on the server, prices will surely vary a little bit, so it might be worthwile to search through all the herbs, leathers, etc. in the AH and then decide which ones to buy best.
However, perhaps you don’t actually want to deal in them, but only buy certain reagents to skill your professions, or simply stock yourself up with certain items.

The method

There are two methods to farm these vendors. The first is to get the addon FreeRefills and add all the items you want to buy from the faire. Once you open a merchant window now, the addon checks whether the items are available and buys them if possible. To make the whole thing work automatically, you now need a program which is able to record mouse clicks and movements (e.g. Mouse Recorder Pro). Set it up so it keeps talking to the vendor and then closing the window again. This way, you can also farm two vendors that are standing side by side.

Although this method is quite simple and is probably more comfortable to most people, I prefer the second option: the use of purchasing macros. You can write as many macros as you need to buy everything you want. Then write a “master macro” that calls all these purchasing macros within a split second. Now set your Mouse Recorder to repeatedly talk to the vendor, click the purchasing macro and close the window again. Then go to sleep or AFK, and when you come back, your bags will be full of treasures!

Below you will find some sample macros that can of course be changed/extended at will – I think they are fairly self-explanatory. You just have to fiddle a bit to squeeze everything into the 255-character limit. (There is said to be an addon to override this limit. Never tested it though.)

The macros

Macro 1:

/script local function buy(n,q) for i=1,100 do if n==GetMerchantItemInfo(i) then BuyMerchantItem(i,q) end end end buy("Crystallized Life",1) buy("Crystallized Shadow",1) buy("Crystallized Water",1) buy("Crystallized Air",1);

Macro 2:

/script local function buy(n,q) for i=1,100 do if n==GetMerchantItemInfo(i) then BuyMerchantItem(i,q) end end end buy("Crystallized Fire",1) buy("Crystallized Earth",1) buy("Borean Leather",1) buy("Heavy Borean Leather",1);

Macro 3:

/script local function buy(n,q) for i=1,100 do if n==GetMerchantItemInfo(i) then BuyMerchantItem(i,q) end end end buy("Arctic Fur",1) buy("Frost Lotus",1) buy("Lichbloom",1) buy("Adder's Tongue",1) buy("Tiger Lily",1) buy("Talandra's Rose",1);

Macro 4:

/use Crystallized Life
/use Crystallized Water
/use Crystallized Air
/use Crystallized Fire
/use Crystallized Earth
/use Crystallized Shadow

Place these buying macros on your main action bar on the buttons 2–5. The first button is reserved for the

Master macro:

/click ActionButton2
/click ActionButton3
/click ActionButton4
/click ActionButton5

If you like you can add a /cast Stealth or /cast Shadowmeld to macro 4 – provided you play the according class/race for that. (On the other hand, merging crystallized stuff should usually not remove stealth anyway, so you could also leave it away.)

Nuisance leather ball

Once the surrounding Darkmoon customers, who desperately hope to snatch just a single mote, notice your cunning machinations, they will often try to fill up your inventory with balls. In theory, they could of course do this with Happy Fun Rocks, Voodoo Skulls, etc. as well, but since there is that nice little boy on the faire who sells Heavy Leather Balls for 20 copper, it will in 99.9 % of the cases be these balls that end up in your inventory.

But no problem, even for this there is a macro:

/run for x=0,4 do for y=1,GetContainerNumSlots(x) do l=GetContainerItemLink(x,y) if l then if GetItemInfo(l)=="Heavy Leather Ball" then PickupContainerItem(x,y) DeleteCursorItem() return end end end end

Simply put the macro on Button 6 and extend the master macro by a /click ActionButton6, and from now on, with every click, all possibly existing balls will be removed from the inventory.

And now have fun shopping!

There it is!

Well, how about that? I went to the Weeping Cave for a moment, just to reveal the map, and killed a few of those disgusting slimes, and suddenly held an Oozing Bag with a cute little Disgusting Oozeling in my hands! That’s how it must be!

Actually, I only wanted to see for myself what the slimes in the cave carry with them. For due to a bug, they have an almost 100 % chance to drop Hakkari Shrouds, Hakkari Breastplates and Marks of Hakkar. These items should normally be contained exclusively inside the Hakkari Urn, which can be obtained only once through a quest in the Sunken Temple. However, it is quite nice this way, too – and above all it’s an inexhaustible source of Dream Dust, Lesser Eternal Essences and Small Brilliant Shards!

Instant rep the Second!

Apart from that, we recently went into the Shadow Labyrinth with our junior star Promenized, because he could use some experience and reputation. Of course, we walked in there in a threesome, which made the instance fairly challenging and a lot of fun. The reputation gain, however, sometimes reminded of our experiences in Stratholme.
By now, up-and-coming talent Phony has also reached the 70th level and is now beginning to get equipped in order to be a real help someday.

Boo!

On 18th October, Hallow’s End began, and of course we immediately checked out the Scarlet Monastery to see if the Headless Horseman was also doable by two players. Happily he was, so we have since farmed him five times a day at least – sometimes even more, for that’s also possible on our server.
Besides the three rings (Witches Band, The Horseman’s Signet Ring and Ring of Ghoulish Delight) that we now own twelvefold, he also dropped The Horseman’s Blade, Hallowed Helms and Sinister Squashlings.

Creepy!

As for the flying brooms, I can hardly see through it anymore either. While nowadays, there should actually be only one broom for everything (Magic Broom), we additionally got Old Magic Brooms, Flying Brooms, Swift Magic Brooms and Swift Flying Brooms. With all the required levels and skills, you don’t really figure anymore which one of them was included or patched out when or why. Furthermore, you can mount some of the brooms instantly and others not. The former are of course a funny gimmick for PvP – unfortunately for merely fourteen days.

A lucky devil on her horsie

For one of us however, instant mounting should become a habit: After Coren Direbrew had still not deigned us a second Kodo until his disappearance from the Blackrock Depths, we had settled that Coldinchen should therefore get the first horse of the Headless Horseman. And indeed, The Horseman’s Reins dropped after relatively few tries. The grandiose thing about it is that you can mount this horsie without any cast time, too. Sadly, a second mount was again not granted us, which is especially annoying, because there was a bug on one certain day that caused a greatly increased drop rate. Of course, every Tom, Dick and Harry immediately ran into the Monastery with all his alts to get the horse – only I took up too much time, and when we next went there, the drope rate was back to normal again.
So now every cripple char is riding around with such a great horse, but whatever – the most important thing is that Coldinchen’s got one, for when she, being the healer, is focused in the arena, she can simply escape a few meters as a wolf until she is out of combat, and then mount instantly and ride away.

As concerns the arena, there isn’t much to tell at the moment – the last two weeks, we only did our ten “obligatory matches” in order to get points. Yesterday (Saturday) evening we stupidly didn’t find any opponents anymore, so we had to quickly play our matches early this morning before the points were calculated. However, we had to wake up a little at first, which cost us a whole two wins! Yet we saved ourselves to 9 : 2 subsequently. Ok, I admit it: Two of the wins were free, because we competed against a single paladin who apparently hadn’t been able to find a partner so quickly for his ten matches.
Altogether, the score is now 66 : 16, which is equivalent to a win ratio of 76 %. I told you: We’re getting worse!