Sunsong Ranch Options - March Gold Blogging Carnival

Cold's Gold Blogging Carnivals

Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival - March 2013


Welcome to another 2013 edition of Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival. These carnivals will continue to take place the 11th day of every month and will be hosted here at Cold's Gold Factory. All World of Warcraft bloggers are welcome to participate and feedback both here and on the original authors' sites is strongly encouraged. So show some support and please leave some feedback in the comments section. These bloggers put a lot of time and hard work into these blogging carnival posts so please tell them what you think.

If you would like to be included in the next month's carnival, please review the guidelines for Cold's Gold Blogging Carnivals and submit your live post link via email (ssmith0911 at live dot com) before the 10th of the month. Read up on the benefits of participating in blogging carnivals at my other blog designed to help new bloggers, Blogging Vitals.  (Lots of tips for those of you starting out or interested in blogging.)  Articles for the CGF carnival are listed in the order they are received. Thank you to all the bloggers participating in this month's carnival!

If you are not a blogger, you can still participate in the monthly carnivals as you can have a post hosted at Goldgrubs.com. Now I present to you this month's participants on the topic of:

"What Are You Doing With Your Sunsong Ranch?"

Sunsong Ranch by DaCheng of The DaCheng Diaries

What To Do With My Sunsong Ranch? by Nev of Auction House Addict

What Are You Doing On Sunsong Ranch? by Soco of Vault of Light

I Use Sunsong Ranch For My AH Salad by Selltacular of Copper To Gold

Still Farming Songbells On Sunsong Ranch by Jason of WoWRounded


Thanks again to all of this month's participants.  Be sure to check back later for next month's carnival topic and remember to look for next month's gold blogging carnival on the 11th.  If you have a topic idea, don't be afraid to send it in.  We may use your idea, which will get you proper credit as well.

Until next month,

Keep on Keepin' On!



If you enjoy the monthly carnivals, spread the word and help support the carnival as it continues to grow:



 

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Topic For March Gold Blogging Carnival

Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival - March 2013 Topic

A big thanks to all of the participants who submitted entries for last month's blogging carnival. Everyone is welcome to write a post for the blogging carnivals at Cold's Gold Factory. Again, thank you to all the bloggers who submitted posts for the February Blogging Carnival on Our Beginnings as Gold Makers. If you missed the last carnival, be sure to check it out! 

What If I Don't Have A Blog And I Want To Participate?

If you don't have your own site, you can still participate in the gold blogging carnivals. Sometimes a topic may tickle your fancy or you may have a unique spin on a blogging carnival topic that you would like to have read by others. Well, you are in luck. There are blogging sites that will post and host your content as a guest post. Just follow the normal blogging carnival rules that the others follow and get your post hosted and live prior to the carnival. Then, just submit the link to me for inclusion in the upcoming gold blogging carnival.  

Be sure to check out How To Get More From Blogging Carnival Participation.

The friendly sites willing to host your content are:

1. Goldgrub's Goblin Academy - Contact: Me (Cold)
2. Squidoo - Join up and make a lens on the topic and earn money monthly with Squidoo.

  

March 2013 Gold Blogging Carnival Topic

We are a ways into the Mists of Pandaria expansion now.  Remember back to the beginning of Mop, when the Tillers Union and Sunsong Ranch where super popular?  Now that we've had months of plowing, tilling, planting, and killing pests let's take a look at how we are currently using our farm plots at Sunsong Ranch.  We've got major changes coming to the farms in Patch 5.2, but what are you currently up to on your ranch?

What Are You Currently Doing With Your Sunsong Ranch / Ranches?

Are you growing crops to level cooking skills?  Growing raw materials?  Doing the Ironpaw Shuffle?  Abandoned the farm all together?

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How To Get Rare Gems From Your Sunsong Ranch Farm

Getting Rare Gems From The Farm


Yes, you can actually harvest raw Rare Gems from your Farm on Sunsong Ranch.  I've been getting Rare Gems on my farm, even though hardly anyone knows it is possible.  I can officially confirm that you can get Rare Gems from your farm.  Here's how to grow for rare gems.

What You Will Need To Get Rare Gems On Your Farm:

• Level 90 Character, Revered with Tiller's Union
• Ancient Pandaren Mining Pick
• Snakeroot Seeds

I've written about the Ancient Pandaren Mining Pick before, as it is one of the very useful Top Rare Treasure Items that can be found around Pandaria.  The Ancient Pandaren Mining Pick is a tough one to get, so be sure to check out that earlier post. 

The Ancient Pandaren Mining Pick will give you a chance to get Pandaria Gems out of ore nodes in the Pandaria zones, but when used on Snakeroot Seeds (purchaseable at Revered) on your farm, you get a chance to get the rare raw Pandaria Gems.  Getting a rare gem is one of the possibilities when you harvest the ore from the Snakeroot Seeds on your farm, while carrying the Ancient Pandaren Mining Pick in your character's bags.  I've been getting 1-2 Rare gems each day when planting a full 16 Snakeroot Seeds.  The rare gems are in addition to the normal Ghost Iron, Kyparite, and Black & White Trillium Ores.

This was another of the many undocumented stealth changes that came in WoW Patch 5.1.  In addition, the proc rate for the Ancient Pandaren Mining pick has also been increased as prior to Patch 5.1 I got barely any gems from mining ore nodes with the Ancient Pandaren Mining Pick, but post Patch 5.1, I get them much more often.  I get 1-2 free gems just from gathering Ore while doing 1-2 Daily quests hubs per day.

Note:  The Ancient Pandaren Mining Pick is Bind-on-Account, so if you growe Snakeroot Seeds on multiple characters' Farms, then be sure to send the Pick over to the other alts via the mailbox so you get more chances at Free Rare Gems!

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Recommended Guides: Secret Gold Guide | Journal of Marcus Ty | WoW Secrets

WoW Patch 5.2 Brings New Farm Changes

New Changes Coming To The Player Farms In Patch 5.2

I spend a lot of time on my Sunsong Ranch farms on my various characters, so I am always interested in the newest changes and improvements coming to our individual character farms.  We've seen a few upgrades and changes already and not all of them have been that great, or even worth a damn at all.  Yes, I'm looking at you, worthless portal shards.  Let's look into what is on the way for our Sunsong Ranches.

While the Patch 5.2 PTR isn't up just yet, we do have a glimpse at the Patch 5.2 PTR Patch Notes, which can be found at this source.

Upcoming Changes To Our Farms:

1)  Buy The Farm

"Players that have grown attached to working the land at Sunsong Ranch can now purchase the land from Farmer Yoon.  Once the farm is owned by a player, it becomes a rest point like an inn, where the player can bind and instantly log out.  Work orders will pour into the farm from factions across Pandaria, and completing a work order will earn a reputation boost with the issuing faction."

When I read this I see 2 main changes, A)  We can buy our farm and turn it into an inn.  B)  More ways to raise faction reputation gains.

EDIT: PATCH 5.2 UPDATE:  No longer purchasable.  You can get the farm by completing a quest chain. Must be Exhalted with the Tillers Union and have unlocked all 16 farm plots to start the quest chain.

A) Make your farm an inn.  Really?  This is almost as useless as the Portal Shards addition in Patch 5.1!  Do we really need the farm to be an inn, when the farm is 2 buildings away from an actual inn?  And converting your farm to an inn is going to cost you gold, but for what benefit?  You can log out instantly instead of it taking 20 seconds to log you out, or you can save 30 seconds it takes to ride two doors down to the inn that is free to use.  This is not needed at all.  Unless it is a precursor to getting individual player housing, it is not worth wasting gold on when you have an inn practically right next door!

B)  Work Orders For Rep?  Sounds good, oh wait, does it?  Any other way to increase the rate at which you can grind out the various factions is a nice addition for those of us with multiple alts.  Problem is, by the time this gets implemented into the live game, many of us will already have completed the faction grinds on the reputations that our alt crafters need.  Once I'm done with all of my profession reputation grinds, I will be wanting them to STOP making it easier for competition to catch up to me.  The Grand Commendations have been a nice boost, but this will help to earn reputations faster for those factions that you have yet to unlock a Grand Commendation.

2)  Faster Planting

"Seed bags have been added that allow planting of crops 4 plots at a time."

Finally a way to plant more than one seed at a time!  This is a nice addition that will make managing the daily crop cycle across multiple alts much easier.  Let's hope it applies to all seed types and not just the vegetable seeds.

3)  More Special Crop Production

"The yield from special crops has been improved to make farming them competitive with gathering these items out in the world."

Another welcomed addition!  Getting more crops per plant is always a nice benefit, especially on the special crops, which tend to mainly be used for farming either Herbs & Golden Lotuses or Motes of Harmony.  Although with the crappy proc rate on Potions of Luck and the nerf to limit them to 1 20 minute use per hour, I've actually switched to growing Snakeroot Seeds (Ores) on a couple of my characters.  While the harvest isn't horrible it could be increased to rival the output of some of the other crops.  I do enjoy getting Black & White Trillium Ores from my farm though. 

Pro-Tip Secret about Snakeroot (that I discovered myself) is that you can get Rare Gems out of them too if you are carrying the Ancient Pandaren Mining Pick.  It seems as if the proc rate for the Pick has been increased since Patch 5.1, and I've now been able to get rare gems from my Snakeroot plants on the farm, but don't tell everyone!

4)  Master Plow 2.0 aka Virmen Spanker

"Running the Master Plow across underground Vermin willcause them to pop out of the ground at 30% health and stunned."

Yes, finally something to help with rodents, but still lacking overall.  While I am all for running over Vermin to do 70% instant damage and stun them, what the hell about all these damn disco light loving birds!?!  Of course this will help to decrease the time it takes to complete a full plant and harvest crop cycle, but like I said, this doesn't help with all the damn birds!

5)  Less Wild Crops

"Wild Crops will now occur less often."

I'll believe it when I see it, lol.


Hopefully these changes make it through the PTR with the addition of even better tweaks and changes, like something that helps with the bird attacks.  Hell, the scarecrow could come to life and assist you or the lame vanity scarecrow could become a pet defender for your farm.  Something else to assist with vermin and birds would be nice.  Or Blizzard could add the slave to the farm that Rez always talks about wanting on The Eviscerated Gaming Podcasts.


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Portal Shards? To Plant Or Not To Plant?

Portal Shards - To Plant Or Not?

One of the newest items added within WoW Patch 5.1 has been the addition of the ability to till and farm Portal Shards on your Sunsong Ranch.  These new Portal Shards take up a slot on your farm, thus preventing you from planting and growing an item that will be worth selling or using for cooking quests and dailies.  Are they really worth it?

HELL NO!  Portal Shards are the biggest pieces of shit introduced into WoW since...ever!

Why Portal Shards Suck Ass:

I can't think of a single reason anyone (with a brain) would waste a farm slot on a Portal Shard, other than the first one you get for free from the vendor's quest because you just tried it out to see what it did.  The portal shards are absolute garbage that actually cost you more than the 2-3 gold the seeds cost.  Understanding opportunity cost, shows us that it not only costs the price of the seed, but also the profit of the item you could have grown in that farm slot instead. 

Example:  A portal shard costs you 2 gold.  If Witchberries sell for 10 gold each, then growing a portal shard just cost you roughly 52 gold because you could have grown a witchberries plant instead.  Just using Witchberries as an example - something else may be a more profitable option on your server.

 That's just 1 sacrifice of wasting a Sunsong Ranch farm slot on growing a Portal Shard.  There are plenty more reasons not to grow Portal Shards.

1. Farm Only - Portal Shards can only be used from within your phased personal Sunsong Ranch Farm.  WTF?  That means you cannot carry them around with you and expect to use them while out adventuring. 
2. Random Portals - When grown on your farm, you get a random portal that leads to a specific major faction city.  Not only does this suck ass in general, you also have multiple bag slots wasted on the various different types of Portal Shards that only go to the single cities.
3. Not Even Needed - With Hearthstones at 15 minute cooldowns, is there even a need to Portal off of your Sunsong Ranch, especially when there is a flightmaster within Halfhill that is only a single flight away from the Vale of Eternal Blossoms capital cities that house all of the portals?
4. Using a portal off of your Farm saves what 10 seconds as opposed to hearthing to the capital city where your Hearth should be set anyway?

Since the Unstable Portal Shard Seeds can only be purchased at Revered reputation status with the Tiller's Union, you will already be level 90 and have access to your capital city within the Vale of Eternal Blossoms.   Within your capital city is a portal room with a portal to each major city for your faction.  Be smart and set your hearthstone to there.  If you are not level 90, then you can't grow Portal Shards and your alts that are camped at their own individual Sunsong Ranch won't have access to them anyways.

Overall these Portal Shards are nothing but absolute garbage with no reason ever to be planted.  I've seen images of farmers growing a full set of 16 Portal Shards and I've just got to laugh and ask myself if people really are that dumb or just that lazy?

Anyone actually have a legit reason for using these stupid things?

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Tillers Union Cooking Quests & Dailies - Easy Gold Making



Goblin Farmer

 Tillers Union Cooking Quests & Tillers Union Dailies:

Easy WoW Gold Making

The Tillers Union series of quests and daily quests offer plenty of gold making opportunities.  We can supply the items needed for the various Tillers Union quests as well as the cooking materials needed for the Tillers Union daily friendship quests.  It is entirely possible to use your mob killing skills, farming skills, and fishing skills to gather all of your own materials to complete both the starting quests and the daily quests with the Tillers Union.  Due to the sheer volume of items required on a daily basis, it is worth selling these various items on the auction house to those that either don't have the time or don't want to bother farming the items themselves.  And a player that has multiple alts working on these same daily quests is really going to be interested in just purchasing some of these items straight away.  Let's take a look at what all items are required for these Tillers Union quests and Tillers Union daily quests.

Cooking Specializations

The first round of quests for the Tillers Union is what unlocks the various Cooking specializations.  Unlike other profession specializations, the Cooking specializations can all be learned by the same character.  Unfortunately, anyone who previously told you to level your multiple alts' cooking skills to max to be ready to cover each of the Cooking specializations coming in Mists of Pandaria told you wrong.  A single character can unlock all of the Cooking specializations and the various Cooking recipes associated with each.

Tillers Union Cooking Quest Chains

The first round of Tillers Union Cooking quests will teach you the various Cooking specialities, will give you a follow-up quest, and will get you started on the way to unlocking the Tillers Union daily Cooking quests.  The daily quests are not available until level 90, but the initial rounds are available at Cooking skill level 530 and can be completed ahead of time.  Not all players will have a farm running and they may not be able to harvest their own crops yet when they try to complete these quests initially.  They also may not want to fish at all themselves and may be more willing to buy the fished materials for completing these quests.

The Initial Round of Tillers Union Quests

The quests are avialable from the various Tillers Union farmers in the Halfhill Market in the Valley of the Four Winds.  Here is a list of the first 6 starting quests and what materials are required.

• Way of the Wok - 5 Juicycrunch Carrots
• Way of the Steamer - 5 Giant Mantis Shrimp
• Way of the Pot - 5 Jade Lungfish
• Way of the Oven - 5 Wildfowl Breast
• Way of the Grill - 5 Raw Tiger Steak
• Way of the Brew - 1 Ginseng

Each of the require materials are currently easy sells on the auction house, excpet the Ginseng.  On my server these materials are selling between 5 gold each (Wildfowl Breast) and 60 gold each (Jade Lungfish).

Ginseng can be purchased for a little over 3 gold right near the quest giver, so I don't recommend selling those. 

Juicy Crunch Carrots are available from some vermin-type mobs, can be planted and harvested in your own farm, or can be purchased (1 Ironpaw Token for a Sack of Juicycrunch Carrots, which gives 25 Carrots).

Giant Mantis Shrimp are fished up from pools or along the coasts of the Krasarang Wilds.

Jade Lungfish are fished up from fishing pools or in the lakes and rivers of the Jade Forest.  You can also buy a Sack of Jade Lungfish for 1 Ironpaw Token.

Wildfowl Breast are drops from bird-type creatures in Pandarian zones.

Raw Tiger Steak are drops from killing some cat-type beasts, like Tigers and Prowlers.


Master Shopping List For Tillers Union Friendship Dailies

The Tillers Union Friendship gaining daily quests are only available once per day (unlocked at level 90), but completing each one for ever Tillers Union farmer every day takes a ton of materials.  These daily requirements can get pretty hefty if you are trying to complete each quest on multiple alts.  Due to the sheer volume required on a daily basis, all of the required materials are nice additions to your gold making business.  Even if you don't plan on completing a single one of the Farming quests or don't want to raise your Tillers Union reputation, you need to still be aware of the value of these items.  You will collect some of these materials just from looting mobs while questing, so be sure to sell them and don't vendor them or delete them.  As more players start to reach the required level 90 for these quests, the demand for these items will continue to increase.

Here is a master list of what materials are required on a daily basis to complete each Tillers Union quest every day.

Meats

• 5 Raw Turtle Meat
• 5 Raw Tiger Steak
• 5 Wildfowl Breast

Fish

• 5 Reef Octopus
• 10 Jade Lungfish
• 5 Giant Mantis Shrimp
• 10 Krasarang Paddlefish
• 5 Emporer Salmon

Crops

• 15 Scallions
• 25 Juicycrunch Carrots
• 15 Striped Melon

If you are looking for crops to grow on your farm to be able to sell for a profit, then be sure to look into all 3 of the require crops for the daily quests.  Juicycrunch Carrots are required in the initial quest, more are required for the follow-up quest (unlike the others which award your 5 items back), and even more are required for the Tillers Union dailies and they are required in the largest quanities of all.  It's no suprise that the Juicycrunch Carrots have been very profitable on many of the WoW servers thus far.

So know what you loot, grow, or fish up and make sure to either use them items yourself or sell them to wanna-be Tillers.

 How have your crop sales been thus far?

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