alternative power leveling method

[zenga]

The idea is to level through cooking with a repeatable quest, and you buy the mats of the AH. I'm playing on high pop realms, and there were barely enough mats to provide the 3x guys I took to 90. Took me roughly 40k gold in total and a good 10 hours while watching DVDs and doing other stuff.

Not gonna repeat the whole explanation here, since this comment on wowhead (http://www.wowhead.com/quest=31535) contains the info you need.

[djensen2010]

you got them from wat? 85-90?

[zenga]

yes 85 something to 90

[Owltoid]

It only took you 10 hours to go from 85-90? Wow, that's worth 40k gold for sure!

[lans83]

Not sure about using this method for leveling up, but I'll definitely check on it for using my tokens to resell the cooking ingredients from it like the Soy Sauce, Black Pepper, and Rice Flour.

[zenga]

It only took you 10 hours to go from 85-90? Wow, that's worth 40k gold for sure!
That was per character btw. But you get so many ironpaw tokens that you can use to buy other mats to sell on the AH, although I'm not very familiar with that market to estimate how long it will take before I make most of that back. Some people even report that they made crazy profits with this method, though I guess that's really server dependant.

And you can do it much faster than 10 hours btw, I was doing a ton of other stuff meanwhile.

[crowdx]

I presume this is 10 hours across multiple days?

[JohnGabriel]

Looks like something I can do to make some gold in the AH, and doing it on toons I am leveling is a bonus so the experience wont get wasted.

The comments on WoWhead say the quickest is 3.5 hours using the macro and having all mats already.

[zenga]

I setup 3 shopping lists in auctionator, based off that list on wowhead. One for 20 one for 60 and one for 100.
Then I made a few macro's with the /use empty bag name. Fairly easy to setup up a keymap in isboxer that ties those together.
This is the big job, gather the mats, stock them and process them.
For turning in I used that macro that is posted on wowhead together with IWT.
It's one big spamfest.

Also levelled my cooking meanwhile from zero to 525. It takes no more than 15-20 minutes and you just need to talk to that npc all the time and craft stuff. And it costs almost nothing, didn't really keep track of that but my guess would be a few 100 gold max.

Looks like this might actually turn out to be profitable for me. I bought my stacks at 20-30% of the price that black pepper sells for. Not sure how long it;s gonna take to unload 10k black pepper though :D

Honestly I think the most sane way to do this if you are not on one of the high pop realms, is for an alt team that you want to get to 90 over time, and do every day a little bit.

[crowdx]

Understanding this a little more now from reading. I am thinking this would also be a great fast way to get RAF characters from 81 - 85. From what you are saying in this thread, leveling cooking from 1 - 525 is currently painless? Correct?

[heyaz]

Wait, it was 10 hours per character from 85-90 with cooking? So 50 hours for a 5-box team? And 5x the gold I guess?

There are better ways if you want to get a single toon. There are several mob tagging areas, one in kunlai that'll get you a level an hour almost if you have a boxer friend (or your own 90 toons) to burn the mobs.

Then again.... 10 hours just cooking stuff and using macros, not having to deal with mobs or quests? Actually may be a great alternative.

[zenga]

Understanding this a little more now from reading. I am thinking this would also be a great fast way to get RAF characters from 81 - 85. From what you are saying in this thread, leveling cooking from 1 - 525 is currently painless? Correct?
Leveling cooking from 0 to 525 took like 15 maybe 20 minutes (and hardly no gold). And easy to do on all your toons at the same time. Talk to that trainer, learn recipe, buy the mats from the same trainer, then cook an item that gives you 5 points. Incrediblly fast.


Wait, it was 10 hours per character from 85-90 with cooking? So 50 hours for a 5-box team? And 5x the gold I guess?

I lvl'd 3 toons simultaneously, within approximately a 10h timeframe. I say 10h timeframe cause I watched the last season of the wire meanwhile, which is 10 episodes long.


There are better ways if you want to get a single toon. There are several mob tagging areas, one in kunlai that'll get you a level an hour almost if you have a boxer friend (or your own 90 toons) to burn the mobs.

Then again.... 10 hours just cooking stuff and using macros, not having to deal with mobs or quests? Actually may be a great alternative.

It's definitely not the most efficient/fastest way, but it can be a good alternative if you are tired of aoe killing/questing. And depending on your server economy you can make a buck or two.

[Lyonheart]

Leveling cooking from 0 to 525 took like 15 maybe 20 minutes (and hardly no gold). And easy to do on all your toons at the same time. Talk to that trainer, learn recipe, buy the mats from the same trainer, then cook an item that gives you 5 points. Incrediblly fast.



I lvl'd 3 toons simultaneously, within approximately a 10h timeframe. I say 10h timeframe cause I watched the last season of the wire meanwhile, which is 10 episodes long.



It's definitely not the most efficient/fastest way, but it can be a good alternative if you are tired of aoe killing/questing. And depending on your server economy you can make a buck or two.

This will be good to do on Sunday when i watch Football.. (GO BRONCOS!) But i prefer the tagging for single alt PLing. I have not tagged in MoP yet though. Need to research that.

[Lyonheart]

Looks like this went viral lol..price of mats are too high for profit. the mats you can buy with the tokens are selling for 250ish, and a stack of 20 meat..fish or 100 vegis selling for 300+ a stack 8( .. I got all the mats that where at cost or less and only had about 10 turn ins with them. ( Nazgrel server )

Does the auction addon search and buy stacks at a predefined cost for you? so if you want to buy any of the needed stacks at at least 10% profit ..it will buy 20 meat for you? ( for example )

[Multibocks]

On a pvp server you get ganked a lot here. Not sure you could do it at 85 without dying every time a 90 glanced your way.

[zenga]

Looks like this went viral lol..

haha yeah, that's why i tend to share stuff only after I' done. Talked to a couple of people on my realm, made a couple of posts as well on forums where there are people from my realm, but that was only after buying out all cheap mats and relist them big time :D

[Lyonheart]

The hardest part ( after buying the mats ) is the long cast time on combining the mats into the basket.. the turn in with that macro is super easy!

[Sam DeathWalker]

Of course as the cost of the food items goes up so does the sale price of the pepper and stuff you get from the tokens.

For clarity you should point out that first you have to have cooking somewhere over 500, then do some five quests "master of the wok" or something etc. then do some small quest from the same npc then you can finally do the grocery bag turn ins.

The guards do attack anyone who attacks you, but ya I can see where a pvp server is going to have some well ... pvp.

[Lyonheart]

Of course as the cost of the food items goes up so does the sale price of the pepper and stuff you get from the tokens..

No.. because so many people are doing this now.. the mats are high to make to baskets and the token items are going down because a lot more people are getting them from leveling up. At least on my server.

[JohnGabriel]

Like most hidden gems in WoW, they start out profitable but eventually settle into a sweet spot where both selling the mats or the item made from the mats would earn you about the same amount of gold.

[Owltoid]

Theoretically the mats should be worth more as the finished product also gave the user exp

[Lyonheart]

Theoretically the mats should be worth more as the finished product also gave the user exp

Aye, I just was posting my findings for those intending to do this for profit. Exp is worth whatever one is willing to pay. If there was enough mats on the AH to do this, profit or not, I would do it. But people are keeping it cleared out..there were some stacks at ridiculously high prices that i would never pay.. like 500 a stack!

[JohnGabriel]

My initial testing shows its slightly more profitable than using the plots for the songbell/golden lotus method.

350 gold/day/toon farming songbell to sell golden lotus
250-500 gold/day/toon farming whatever crop is in season and turning in groceries. The soy sauce, rice, etc all vary greatly in price on AH.

So its good gold plus experience, and thats a BIG plus.

Strictly from a gold making point of view I would start selling the crops, they would put me around the 800 gold/day/toon. I am sure that will come down though.

[Lyonheart]

My initial testing shows its slightly more profitable than using the plots for the songbell/golden lotus method.

350 gold/day/toon farming songbell to sell golden lotus
250-500 gold/day/toon farming whatever crop is in season and turning in groceries. The soy sauce, rice, etc all vary greatly in price on AH.

So its good gold plus experience, and thats a BIG plus.

Strictly from a gold making point of view I would start selling the crops, they would put me around the 800 gold/day/toon. I am sure that will come down though.

You do realize that the Enigma Seed grows herbs with a HIGH chance of golden lotus right? I got 8 on one farm yesterday, 6 on two others. One of mine only had 2. I have never had less than 2 ( worth 180-220g on my server ) so all in all, i think its far more profitable than your 250-500.

If you used to plant Enigma Seeds and did not get many golden lotus.. try again.. it was buffed when they nerfed the herb spawn rates out in the world last week.

Back on topic. Unless this is profitable on your server to use the OPs method, i was tagging mobs with lowbies in the new quest area ( lvl 90 mobs ) And i got my mage 2 levels in 90 minutes.. i hear there is far faster methods of tag leveling. But I was happy with that. ( from 85-87 btw..rested )