Cleaning Up for Release Day

With just a few short days left before the launch of warlords of draenor it is time I finish off the clean up on my characters to get ready for leveling.  It is not something I am just starting now.  I have been doing it a little here and there as the weeks have past, but with only a few days left I need to get my butt in high gear and maybe spend some time this weekend preparing and not soloing every instance ever made on all my characters for mounts.

Cleaning Out the Goods:

Since 6.0 was released I have been clearing out my timeless island items.  Sending cloth stuff to cloth enchanters, leather stuff to leather enchanters, mail stuff to mail enchanters and plate stuff to plate enchanters.  Usually I send some of the items to a server that is not my main, if I have the suitable enchanter there, and use the timeless pieces as a way to make some gold for those lesser played alts on servers where I do not have a lot of gold. It is like sending gold between servers.

Over the last few weeks I have made over 100,000 gold selling just sha crystals.  No, I am not exaggerating at all.  It is probably well over 100,000.  If I were approaching 150 it would not surprise me.  One character on a server where he was alone I sent over many mails filled with timeless island gear and converted it to items and then disenchanted it and sold the sha crystals and he went from having 13K gold to having 48K gold in the past 2 weeks.  Yes ladies and gentleman, 35K gold made just selling sha crystals from stuff I collected on timeless island.  And that is just one character of about 6 I have been selling sha crystals on like mad in the last few weeks.  By the time I get home he could be sitting at 55K if everything I listed last night sells.  He and 3 other enchanters on 3 other servers all listed 60 before I logged off. As high as 110 on some servers and low as 74 on others.

I am listing trillium bars, enchanting materials, anything that has a short life span that I know will go away when the expansion comes out.  Usually things like this go down in value at the end of an expansion but since 6.0 came out these things have only been going up.  I am not ashamed to admit I am milking this great turn of events for every bit that I can.  But I do not believe that this weird turn of events will continue when the new expansion comes out.  I do expect it to be the same as all others and when the new expansion comes out old stuff will be worthless, mostly.

I still have hundreds of timeless island pieces left and I do not think I will have time, or the demand, to sell all those sha crystals, but I could still make a fair deal of gold off them.  Just thinking about it, I still have more than 10 characters that never even opened their chests on the timeless island.  So if by some chance the crystals do sell, I always have a lot of characters to go back and restock.  Have to love having hundreds of thousands of gold just sitting there for the taking.  I think that is the only thing I will miss about timeless island.  The free gold for a tiny bit of effort.

I have to be careful however because as soon as warlords comes out sha crystals are basically vendor trash with no sell value.  So I do not want to over convert the timeless gear into materials.  I need to stay active and do them in small amount of 20 to 40 at a time or I will be left with a bunch of worthless crystals I would have been better off just vendoring the gear instead.  Heck, even at 15 gold or so each, it is still fair deal of gold I have sitting around in timeless gear and I am going to need it for my garrisons.

I am almost completely sold out on herbs and ore of all types, so this is just about crystals now in the last days.  I do have a few thousand leather however, but that doesn't seem to be selling for me.

Cleaning Out the Bags:

I did a lot of clean up when 6.0 first came out but there is still some room to make space.  I am going to sell off any food, potions, flasks, you name it, that are left in my bags.  Old stuff will be worthless shortly so might as well see if I can get something for it now, or I will just use it while leveling or vendor it.

There are also bits of junk I have sitting around to sell, like more than a few characters probably have an overgrown lilypad that I can vendor for a hundred gold.  I will also start selling off the off spec gear, or things I was holding on to "just in case" I needed it.  Also it is time to ditch all that PvP gear, the next time I will need it the gear would be so out of date I would be better off being in my PvE gear.

There are also a bunch of characters I need to head to the island of thunder on.  Still have keys that need using and will free up a bag space when I do so.  Not to mention I have dozens of the incantations of xxx items that need to be used.  Yes I can just throw them away, but it only takes a few seconds to kill the things and sometimes they drop stuff that sells for 20 or 30 gold and I am not the type that just throws away 20 or 30 gold.  So I need to clear them all out of my bags as well on my trip to the island of thunder and if I am going to be there anyway... why not.

Now that bones from the dinos are no longer soulbound I should make one character a catch all for them and send them all to that person.  Even if I have had the mount of ages, I could go back and get another pet.

Speaking of pets, I need to start cleaning up those.  Between imperial moths, sunreaver micro sentry, and the new iron starlet among other things I have pets on all my characters.  I have a bank alt on another server who has a guild bank filled with pets.  So I need to box them on that server, put them in the guild bank, go back to the character that has them, learn them, and then repeat the process until I get all the pets out of all those bags.  I'd say most of my characters have at least 2 pets on them, some have more, much more.

Cleaning Out the Quests:

I had a pattern I established after I leveled my first few characters that seemed to make every character have the same quest left sitting in their logs when they hit 90.  It was the one in townlong steeps where you talk to that plant guy and pull the thing out of his side.  It is the last thing I needed for the zone for loremaster, yes I always did all the townlong quests except that quest, so I might as well quickly run off and finish that quest line on all my characters that have it sitting there.  It won't take long now-a-days and quests are still nice money makers and more important, it will get the quest out of my quest log.  Most likely I will do this on my way to the island of thunder being I pass right by it on my way there.

There are also other quests sitting in my logs, some done and just need to turn them in, some quick to be done, some I will just abandon.  Either way, clearing up my quest log is usually a big part of the pre expansion ritual.

I have a few characters that are at various stages on timeless island quest like 35/50 epoch stones or 4/20 elites and I am not the type to just abandon them so I am going to head over there and finish them off.  Not to mention going to buy the trinket that returns me there for a few characters so I can pop by occasionally and kill some things trying to get the last of the 7 pieces I need for the need a bigger bag achievement.

I also want to make sure I get the blasted lands quests finished on all my characters and there are only a few days left for that.  I am putting the extra pets in my bank for sale later on being they will be gone from the game after this is done (or at least that is my understanding).  I think I have done 15 of my 20 90s and should have another character hit 90 this weekend, so that means I have 6 more to do.  The question is, which ones have I not done it on yet.  I have no clue.

I like to enter the new expansion with a clean quest book.  Not sure if others are that way, but knowing me and my desire for everything to be in order, can you blame me for putting this on my list of things that need cleaning up?

Cleaning Up the Crafting Materials:

I mentioned selling them off, but not cleaning them up.  There is a difference.  I am still a hoarder and I still like to have a nice supply of items on me if I want to make something old or level an alts professions.  This means I want to keep a few stacks of junk around.  But now a few stacks is a lot more material than it used to be with the increased stacking size to 200.

I have so many characters with so many bits and pieces of stuff on them and while I did do some work on condensing them onto one character when 6.0 came out there is still a lot of work that needs to be done.

I want my reagents tab empty on all my characters when warlords comes out.  Yes, you heard that right.  That is how I am going to break things down for my characters.  The reagents tab is going to be for current expansion materials only.  As such, I need to make sure I sort everything out.

My main jewel crafter so far is the only one I would say is done.  Any character that had any gems on them has mailed them to her.  She has three gem bags on her which neatly fit all the original gems, bc gems, wrath gems, cataclysm gems and mists gems.  Thanks to stacks being 200 now, she even has a lot of room left over and her reagents tab is 100% empty and ready to roll for next expansion.

Every single one of my characters I would like to do this on.  Make catch all characters for everything, but not using their reagent tabs for the catching, using profession bags for the catching and leaving the reagent bags for the new content materials.

I will run into one road bump however with cloth as there is no cloth bag.  I always wondered why that is.  So I have to decide which of my tailors will end up using their reagent tab for cloth, or should I just use some royal satchels in the bank for that.  Decisions decisions.  I'll probably go the normal bag route.

Condensing all the materials and stacking them all nice and neat and sorted by expansion makes me happy.  It also makes it easy to find something when you need it, and who would not like that?

Cleaning Up the Skills:

I always say I march to the beat of a different drummer and this is the perfect case of that.  I do things differently when questing than I do when raiding or soloing or PvPing.  As such, if I know that questing is going to be my main focus for a bit of time, like it will be when the expansion comes out, I will change around my key binds to be better suited for what I am doing.

Being I have no intention of doing dungeons, raiding, soloing or PvP while I am leveling and I am going to go straight to 100 and then moving on to complete loremaster, that means I am going to need to change some things around.

I will switch some talents out.  I will change my key binds to be more "quest friendly".  For example (not like it matters any longer) things like hunters mark or serpent sting I would not even have anywhere near my normal binds because I would never really use them while questing.  I keep it short and sweet when leveling as far as abilities go.

This expansion also bring another aspect to it with all the changes there have been.  Looking at the classes and deciding what I want to level as.  I will most likely go shadow on my priests to level and being I have not changed to shadow even for a second since 6.0 I will need to do so and get my bars ready.  Same with my shaman and elemental but at least with my shaman the questing and raiding binds are mostly the same because elemental doesn't have many buttons to begin with.  I'll also need to see if leveling as a tank will be viable because I usually do on my tanks.  If it isn't I will need to set myself up with a nice and easy leveling skill set for them.  One of my druids would be the only problem for me as it has no DPS spec, only tanking and healing.

Some people never put much thought into these things or will use their normal set up.  But as I said, I am different.  And as such, I have different binds for different things I do.  I move them around depending on what I am doing to be more comfortable for me.  Whatever floats my boat right?

Also.  Have to make sure all my characters have 3 mounts bound.  Normal land mount, vendor land mount and water walking mount.  Not like we will need the latter often if at all (I'll talk more about that in my leveling post), but I like to have it.

Then there is the issue of skills and for many classes the skills you might use while leveling would be different from those that you use for anything else and I would rather decide on them before hand then be thinking about it at the last minute.

This weekend for me will be about closing out mists.  Sometimes, for me at least, getting ready for the next expansion is just as much about saying goodbye to the last one as it is getting ready for the new one.