New Race & Class Combos, Shadow Hoods and The Shattering Event

The Shattering Event Coming Soon
The Shattering Event will be upon us quicker than you might think.  The elementals have already started to invade the cities of Azeroth.  The World of Warcraft, as we know it, will be changed forever.  Twinks have already begun to crop up as bored players decide to make a twink.  One of the biggest changes coming to characters is the addition of new race and class combinations.

New Race and Class Combos
These new race and class combos in WoW will be able to be created once The Shattering patch goes live.  This means as soon as The Shattering goes live, some players will be rolling up their new alt, their new main, or their new twink.  Here are the new race / class combos.

Horde

1. Orc Mage
2. Undead Hunter
3. Tauren Priest
4. Tauren Paladin
5. Troll Druid
6. Bloodelf Warrior

Alliance

1. Human Hunter
2. Dwarf Mage
3. Dwarf Shaman
4. Night Elf Mage
5. Gnome Priest

I expect to see Troll Druids and Tauren Paladins as the most popular on the horde side.  Looking at the new combos allowed the Alliance, 4 out of the 5 are caster classes.  Can you think of any great leveling and PvP head slot items that these characters may want?

Shadow Hoods

One of the hardest to get gear slots in the early levels are head pieces, hoods, helms, etc.  Some comments have people stating that these are already starting to sell well.  The demand will rise even higher come The Shattering.  The alliance side will be particularly profitable as they are getting a lot more caster race and class combos.  Shadow Hoods are also excellent choices for twinks as they currently have a boat load of stamina after the recent stat changes.  The pattern for Shadow Hood is a rare drop so keep an eye out for it on the auction house.

Profiting Off Shadow Hoods

The problem with crafting Shadow Hoods is that they take a Shadow Oil per hood.  Each shadow oil requires 4 Fadeleaf and 4 Grave Moss.  To be efficient making these requires the use of a tailor and an alchemist, so this may discourage some players who are not into multi-profession crafting.  This will be another feasible market of vanilla items much like Barbaric Bracers, Toughened Leather Gloves, Spidersilk Boots, Deviate Scale Belts, Robes of Arcana and other Vanilla craftables that continue to sell.  

So be prepared and start snatching up Fadeleaf, Grave Moss, and Shadow Oils to turn into nicely profitable Shadow Hoods for twinks and levelers.  Myabe you have been looking for a use for all the extra Grave Moss you found while farming herbs and chests in Scarlet Monastery during the Headless Horseman instant queues. Silk is usually dirt cheap on the Horde side, so importing silk from the other faction could help bring your material costs down on the Alliance side.  Let me know how it goes or if you have been selling these already on your server.

Profiting on Rated Battlegrounds: Reader Submission

"Hello again Cold.

I'm writing because I would love to hear your thoughts about the following subject: Profiteering on rated BGs in Cataclysm.

With the introduction of rated BGs in cataclysm, I have been considering whether a market will rise for BoE profession items. Assuming BGs will work the same as now, with usable potions, flasks, bombs etc etc I have been speculating if I should invest in some of the follwing items:

Alchemy:

Swiftness Potion: Swiftthiste & Briarthorn

Free Action Potion: Blackmouth Oil (Blackmouth) & Stranglekelp

Invisibility Potion: Ghost Mushroom & Sungrass

Purification Potion: Icecap & Plaguebloom

Living Action Potion: Icecap, Mountain Silversage and Heart of the Wild

Rage Potions

The two big questions I have to ask.

1. Will hardcore Arena/BG players/teams want to stock up on these items?

2. Is there a profit to be made now, so close to Cataclysm with the prices as they are now, or should this stuff be added to a snatch list in Cataclysm with (perhaps) lower herb prices due to levelling?

Are there any other professions aside from Alchemy where we might see a chance for profit when the rated BGs go live? I can't think of anything besides EZ-Thro Dynamite II, however, the healthpools in Cataclysm will effectively make this ~200 dmg non-engineer dynamite useless.

Thank you for a good blog

Kind regards, Dahmek"

Player Versus Player Battles On The Rise

The twink community will return.  Rated battlegrounds will lead to more players and guilds doing

PvP.  The PvP supplies market could be a great gold making niche.  The PvP market varies 

greatly on each server.  If you want to try out this market, I suggest you do it slowly.  Only craft a 

few of the items that you think will sell.  List a few and see if they sell before going all out with 

production.

Alchemy Potions

Regarding you alchemy question on herbs and potions, I would grab any herbs you can get that 

are priced low.  Save them as herbs without crafting anything so that you can move them as 

stacks of herbs if needed.  There could be more profit in moving the herbs themselves and 

crafting potions may not be cost efficient.  Early into Cataclysm, especially on the Horde side, I 

would think that selling herbs to players leveling alchemy and inscription may be more profitable. 

Then once those markets settle down, the PvP market consumables may become a better option.  

You are on the right train of thinking for those potions, it just may be a little later that they are more 

reliable sellers.

Other Items To Sell To Player Killers

I agree that EZ-Throw Dynamite isn't worth selling.  What kind of things can be profitable?  Here 

are a few items that PvP players could buy.  Again, test these markets out before jumping in too 

deep.

1. Blacksmith crafted weapon sharpening and bludgeoning stones.
2. Rumsey's rum from Old Hillsbrad Secret Vendors.
3. Poison removing anti-venoms.
4. BoA useable enchanting scrolls.
5. Flash Bombs can be used by anyone.
6. Old School awesome gear for twinks and people who like to level in style or in maxed gear:  Barbaric Bracers, Spidersilk Boots, Toughened Leather Gloves, Deviate Scale Belt, etc.

Bored? Level Your Alts or Make a Twink

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New Gold Blogs & Markco's Defense

Welcome New Gold Bloggers

I'm going to point out a few new bloggers to welcome to the WoW Gold Blog Community. Take a look at these sites and add some feedback, subscribe to their RSS feed, and see what you think. Both are in my blogroll as they are great finds.

Sorry for the late post, but all week I have been covering shifts for an employee who's mother died. So 6:45am to 6pm every day this week and here I sit working on Saturday as well. Overtime is good, but death is bad. Feel sort of guilt profiting off of someone's demise. Regardless, I put in around 65 hours at work, plus blogging and research time. Not much WoW game time this week.

Kammler's Korner - An excellent site with heavily detailed strategies. Got an email from him thanking me for inspiring him to start his own site. Kammler has been a great commentor within Cold's Gold Factory and continues to comment regularly.

The Vayaz - Gold Reaping - Great new site. Not posting daily, but worth the read.

In Defense Of Markco
The JMTC Blogging Carnival has come under attack by the fool that writes at GTFOOTF. Read this fool's rants and incorrect assumptions about Markco and all of us suckers that participate in the monthly blogging carnivals. Leave a comment with your opinion on the matter and show this fool how ignorant he looks. Markco's blogging carnival has helped many of us newer gold bloggers by providing us a steady boost of traffic. Thanks Markco for all you do to help solidify us as a community. I know myself and other bloggers appreciate it.
Here are some true facts related to the carnivals:

Content isn't stolen. All content is hosted on the author's site.

This brings traffic to us from JMTC, not to Markco's site.

Blogging carnival day (2nd of each month) readership nearly doubles and continues to be much higher for around a week after.

Looking at tracking analytics shows that many people find this site initially by the carnival posts.

Carnival readers subscribe and become regular readers.

The carnivals continue to bring new readership even months after they have been posted on JMTC.

Content is the lifeblood of any blog, but traffic is the vessel that delivers this blood to new locations.

So from Cold to Markco: Keep Up The Good Work!

Patch 4.0.1 New Leather Working Patterns Available (For Now)

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Patch 4.0.1 Leather Worker Changes

Patch 4.0.1 brought about many changes.  With the removal of the specializations, leather workers are now free to learn the recipes that were currently only available to your specialization choice.  There are no more tribal, elemental, or dragonscale leatherworking specialties.   Leather workers should stop by their trainers and pick up the 4 new recipes.

Careful Crafting These

I was an elemental leather worker, so I was able to grab 2 tribal and 2 dragonscale patterns.  They require either 260 or 330 skill to be learned from the trainer.  All 6 of the old specialization crafted items appear to be bugged.  The crafted items are still showing the specialization requirement and thus are unwearable by any characters since no leather workers have a specialization anymore.  These patterns may end up being removed completely. Weaponsmiths suffered that fate on all of their patterns that used to require the weaponsmith specializations.  Wouldn't suprise me to see these 6 leatherworking patterns disappear in an upcoming fix.

Ammo Pouches

The following recipes have been removed from the game since ammo is no longer required.

1 Light Leather Quiver
2 Small Leather Ammo Pouch
3 Heavy Quiver
4 Heavy Leather Ammo Pouch
5 Knothide Quiver
6 Knothide Ammo Pouch
7 Dragonscale Ammo Pouch
8 Nerubian Reinforced Quiver
9 Netherscale Ammo Pouch
10 Quickdraw Quiver
11 Thick Leather Ammo Pouch

The only ammo pouch to stay in the game is for Quiver of a Thousand Feathers, although it only requires 99 feathers to craft.  The quiver is now a 20 slot BoE bag, which puts it in competition with Frostweave Bags.  Looking at the materials required, don't waste your time crafting the quivers.  They have much higher material costs.

Photo from: wow.joystiq.com

Winter Veil Clothing Sets - Start Selling Now

Discounted Price For Early Buyers
Last month I gave the heads-up to start stockpiling the 6 Items to Get Rich During Winter Veil.  Hopefully you have already accumulated a hefty supply.  Winter Veil is around a month away.  There is no need to wait until the holiday starts to start selling your Winter Veil Clothing.  With just a couple weeks until December and the Winter Veil holiday in World of Warcraft, start unloading a few of the sets on the auction house and in trade chat.  Last year I used a macro in trade chat with my prices and the action statement "Get yours now before the prices go up next month!"  This had me selling a few sets a day for a couple weeks prior to the holiday.  Funny thing was the "early discounted price" ended up being more than I was able to sell them on the auction house last year once competition ensued.


Fashionable Winter Veil Garb
The Green Winter Clothes or  Red Winter Clothes and Winter Boots are needed to Complete the Winter Garb set for the Achievement.  The Red or Green Hat is also required, but cannot be farmed until the holiday event goes live.  By selling these items ahead of time, you are helping those players that are willing to spend cash to save time.  Obviously this only works for tailors that are over a year old and already have the patterns to craft these.  If you are a new tailor, you will have to wait until Winter Veil in December.


Bank Alts Buy Winter Clothing Too
Not only achievement seekers purchase the Winter Veil clothing.  A lot of players like to purchase these for their bank alts or for dancing half naked on the mail boxes.  Understand that these will sell now and for a nice price.  I recommend testing prices on your server, but a good price set to start at is:

1. Your Faction Color Clothes - 120-125g
2. Their Faction Color Clothes - 150-200g
3. Winter Boots - 25-35g

Dress shoes (25g)and green holiday shirts (10g) also sell during these times as well.  Again, you must be an older tailor to already have the pattern for the green holiday shirts.

URGENT ALERT: Insane Changes

It's a question you've been asking us for a little while now. And, based on all the posts, emails, petitions, and letters we received following the announcement that the Insane in the Membrane achievement would no longer be in available in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, we started to wonder if maybe we had gone a bit loco.

So, we went back to the drawing board. After carefully reviewing all the feedback and discussing the matter amongst ourselves, we're now happy to report that we will be making the following changes to the Feat of Strength:

Exalted reputation with Shen'dralar will no longer be required. As this is the only reputation that will be unobtainable in Cataclysm, we've simply decided to remove it as a requirement.

For those who already earned Exalted reputation with this faction, don't worry -- we haven't forgotten about your accomplishments. In a future patch, we'll be adding in a separate Feat of Strength to recognize your deep love of Dire Maul.

Bloodsail Buccaneer faction reputation will remain in-game. Also, to ensure that this change does not negatively affect Cataclysm quest progression in Stranglethorn Vale, Booty Bay Bruisers will now provide reputation up through Exalted.

This will ensure that players will still be able to attain Insane in the Membrane and "The Insane" title in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. Please note, however, that these changes will not take effect until The Shattering in patch 4.0.3a -- excluding the separate "Exalted with Shen'dralar" feat, which will be introduced in a future, but currently-undetermined patch.

And, of course, those who are already Insane in the Membrane will retain their title and current Feat of Strength. Shine on, you crazy diamonds. 


Dump all of your Pristine Black Diamonds ASAP!  Dump Your Librams ASAP!

Free Knot Quest Removal and Potential Profits

Free Knot For His Recipes

Free Knot Being Removed
The repeatable quest Free Knot has been confirmed as being removed in Cataclysm as part of the Dire Maul dungeon changes.  Knot Thimblejack is the goblin chained up in Dire Maul North.  Many people are freeing him to get the Steamweedle Cartel reputation while trying to finish the Insane in the Membrane feat of strength.  Once he is free, Knot's Thimblejack's Cache can be looted.  This box of goodies will contain 1 crafting recipe.  There are 5 BoP patterns and 4 BoE patterns.  These 4 patterns can be sold on the auction house.  There isn't much market for these old vanilla recipes, but their value could raise massively, if they are no longer obtainable.  Thistle Tea is a recipe that is now obsolete and brings in heavy prices for those lucky enough to still have the recipe unlearned.  The 4 recipes from Knot's cache could be worth buying for cheap and holding to flip.  I have seen these patterns dropping as low as 50g.  At that low, it's not much of a gamble at all.  I suggest stocking away a few of each, if you can find them for a nice low price and let's see what happens in Cataclysm.

Knot Thimblejack's Cache Patterns
These 4 BoE patterns only come from Knot's Cache:

1. Pattern: Belt of the Archmage
2. Pattern: Chromatic Cloak
3. Pattern: Hide of the Wild
4. Pattern: Shifting Cloak

The Consortium Forums Hot Topics

Click to Join The Consortium Community

The Consortium and Wind Traders
Have you been to consortium.stormspire.net yet?  This is a bustling forum with the majority of gold bloggers freely discussing ideas, strategies, speculations, and much more.  There is even a section for private "Wind Traders" discussion.  Only 2 Wind traders are allowed per server (1 Horde & 1 Alliance).  There are RSS Feeds from the major gold blogs so it's also a good place to find new authors to read.  If you go and sign up to join our community, please mention Cold as your referrer.  (No benefit to me - just tracking.)  The admin, Sterling, runs an un-named featured gold blog on the sites main page as well.  Sterling has been banging out some great topics, so don't miss out.

Consortium Hot Topics
Instead of trying to paraphrase or discuss topics that are already fully engaged on the forums, I will instead provide you with some links and summaries of some excellent topics on the consortium forums.  Enjoy!

1. Item's You Should Have In Your Snatch List - This is the mega list of snatch items of rare recipes and items for flipping.  Read this Snatch List and review my Undermine Journal Notifications post.  Combine the knowledge and reap huge rewards!
2. Sinshroud's Guide To Monitoring Your Competition's Cross Faction Trading as an extension of Sterling's Shady Business - Cross Faction Trading post. -  Excellent articles for anyone interested in the neutral auction house business.
3. Tips and Tricks For Archaeology - nice basic guide by Kiseki.

There are a ton of great guides and posts.  The community is also good at continuing the discussions.  So check it out, if you haven't yet.  It's a great place for some new fresh ideas.

**This post sponsored by Skewter's Goblin and Worgen Leveling Guides - Beat the race to server first with these cheap and helpful guides.**

Pilgrim's Bounty - Easy Cooking Skills & Sales

Cheap Cooking Skill Ups

Pilgrim's Bounty will run November 22nd to November 28th. This World of Warcraft holiday event is a great time to raise the cooking skills of any characters that haven't been levelling their cooking. Maybe you haven't even rasie your cooking skill on your main. This will be the time to raise you cooking skills. By using just the 5 recipes only sold during Pilgrim's Bounty, you can raise your cooking skill to around 350. The final recipe turns grey at 355. This method only uses materials bought during the holiday and is the most efficient way to level cooking.

Selling Cooking Recipes
Pilgrim's Bounty is also another great time to sell cooking recipes. Since many people will use this holiday to level cooking cheaply, they will also be looking to purchase other recipes to continue to raise their cooking skill higher. Since the easy skill-ups end around skill 340-350, focus on posting various recipes that start around this cooking level. It is also a great time to unload some meats and fish that you don't need. Prices will jump as people leveling cooking need raw materials to cook.

JMTC Markco's Challenge For Gold Blogs

Markco's Challenge
Markco of Just My Two Copper has issued a challenge to all of us gold bloggers.  Today I answer the call.  Here are the questions that he has challenged us to answer:

1. What was your first post ever? Why did you write it? (don't use an intro post)
2. What was your favorite post and why?
3. What was your least favorite post and why?
4. Find a reader comment you like and respond to it regarding one of your posts. Call them out and thank them for the comment.
5. Ask your readers to pick a post they found useful on your site.

1)  First Post
The Wintergrasp Shuffle - Outdated information as of Patch 4.0.1, but was a very useful post detailing the shuffling of honor points into cut gems.  I wanted to start the blog off with a juicy tidbit of information as I was raking in the gold with this strategy.  I also wanted to inform readers of how I think and string ideas together across multiple professions.

2)  Favorite Post
Blacksmith Lockpicking with the follow-up Blacksmith Lockpicking Revisted - When I wrote the original post, I was in a severe case of bloggage (blogger's writer's blog).  I was looking for an idea that I hadn't seen elsewhere, yet was very useful.  Then the idea to focus on blacksmith lockpicking came to me.  I hadn't actually been doing this myself at all.  The topic got me curious to see what the break even point would be for blacksmiths that "wasted" bars on keys to open locks.  It turned out that this was an excellent way to make easy profits and I had been ignoring this market all together.  The follow-up post was a great example of how lucrative this could be and supported my original post very well.  I really like these posts as I actually taught myself something in the process of looking for a topic.

3)  Least Favorite Post
Saving Money With Pre-paid Game Time Cards was meant to be a helpful post on how (in some states) you can save money by purchasing (non-taxable) game time cards instead of using the subscription renewals (which charge tax).  Unfortunately, the post was taken as nothing but a referral to an affiliate program (Amazon).  I guess people thought I was baiting them to buy cards through my link.  It was really just an informative post, but the comments showed that readers didn't understand my point very well.  The Time To Pre-Order Cataclsym post was received much better, but still stirred some debate on forums and blogs I read.  I still say screw the digital download and get the release date delivery.

4)  Reader Comment
I published my Stocking Up For Children's Week post 3-4 weeks before the start of the event.  The follow-up post about Exploiting Children's Week had a comment from "Joe" that really made me feel that people weren't just reading the blog.  They were reading and implementing.  He followed my advice and was able to turn 50g into 2k gold.  This was the first post that showed that my blog was actualy helping others.  I don't think I have any other comments from this "Joe", but here's a big "THANK YOU" to him.  You really helped light a fire in me for blogging as it was now obvious that I acually was helping others.

5)  Please Comment
You the readers are why I write this blog.  I enjoy spreading my crazy thoughts around the blogosphere.

What blog posts did you guys find useful or enjoyable?

X-53 Touring Rocket From Trade Chat - Update

X-53 Touring Rocket

X-53 Refer A Friend Deal
Remember my post X-53 From Trade Chat?  In September, I paid 15k gold for a X-53 Touring Rocket and 1 month of game time.  Some of the posted comments warned of this "common scam." Some were expecting that this deal was made with stolen credit cards and would be reversed.  This would have left me without my 15k gold and without my new mount.

Deal or Scam?
My free game time from this deal just expired today and I am still the owner of this mount.  This was a legit deal so I got a free month of game time and the Recruit-a-Friend mount for 15k gold pieces.  The mount is really nice as it behaves just like the Headless Horseman's Mount.  It can be used as both a land mount and a flying mount. Just another riding option in my quest for the Mountain of Mounts achievement.

Recipes, Schematics, and Patterns Oh My!

Pattern Prices Are Dropping
Last Friday I wrote about how markets are crashing as Cataclysm nears.  Today I would like to discuss one specific market that you may be overlooking.  Low level recipes for all professions have been plummeting in price on the auction house.  High end recipes are also dropping in price, but those are going to continue to lose value.  High end recipes are good to snatch up, if you are a collector, but the high end craftable recipes won't make you hardly any money either by flipping or by crafting those items.  Low end recipes are dropping so low in price that they will be another good option for flipping once the Cataclysm arrives in the World of Warcraft.

Undervalued Patterns
If you use the add-on Auctioneer, then you have no doubt been seeing a lot of low end recipes showing up within the blue percentage color indicator showing that they are grossly underpriced for their actual value.  If you haven't already noticed, then do a scan and a quick look into the many pages of recipes for sale on the auction house.  Many of the low level patterns are showing up as a good purchase price.  Many of these patterns are dropping in value as most players already have most patterns for their crafters.  I'm not talking about super rare patterns that are mistakenly posted for the wrong buyout price.  If you are interested in tracking super rare patterns or items, then review my post on using The Undermine Journal to track super rare items.

Demand Will Return Soon
As soon as Cataclysm is released we will see a huge influx of both new and old players. 

1. Many old players will return to the game to explore the new changes.
2. Many players that have just been sitting out the last month or two will return.
3. The game will draw a lot of brand new players.
4. Many players will roll new characters to experience the new goblin and worgen races.
5. Many players will be leveling new professions.

All of these will contribute to a much higher demand for low level recipes that are currently hitting insanely low prices.  Many of these low level recipes will sell to new crafters looking for new recipes.  Some recipes sell very well because the materials required to gain professions skill-ups are much cheaper than the standard trainer learned recipes.  Players that tend to level their professions casually buy these patterns more than those that power level.  They may buy a pattern because they have more options to use for skill-ups or it fits better into what materials they currently possess.

Prices So Low You Can't Pass Up
World drop patterns or quest reward patterns that are not selling are hitting low prices of just a few silvers.  You can't pass these deals up.  I just bought a few Recipe: Discolored Healing Potion alchemy recipes for 6 silver each.  These are a Horde only quest reward and have been selling for 22-25g on the neutral auction house as there is no other way for an alliance character to obtain one.  So snatch up all those horribly low priced patterns and save then to unload in a month for far more than the silvers you will pay for them now.  If only these dang things stacked.

Why You Should Save Your Deeprock Salt

Preserved Holly Machine

Deeprock Salt & Winter Veil
Deeprock Salt spikes in demand one time every year.  This happens during the Feast of Winter Veil every December.  After completing the Metzen The Reindeer quest chain, a follow-up quest becomes available.  This quest, The Hero of the Day, requires 5 gold and 1 Deeprock Salt in order to award 5 Preserved Holly.  (Note:  Refined Deeprock Salt won't work, so any leather workers that have already ran their salt through a salt shaker have missed this opportunity.)  The preserved holly are just for flavor and are pretty worthless.  The real reason to complete this quest is because the reindeer chain quests and The Hero Of The Day quest all count towards the 3000 Quests Completed achievement.

Converting Those Salts To Gold
If you haven't figured it out yet, I love to rape the auction house for massive profits by planning ahead each and every holiday season.  Must be the evil goblin coming out of me.  Start now by looking on your auction house for deeprock salt.  Anything super cheap or in big stacks at a good price go ahead and buy it out.  On my server, they are going for 4.2g per stack, which is dirt cheap compared to what I will mark them up to when the time is right.  If you want to farm some, click on the Deeprock salt link (First word in this article) and it will list all the mobs that can drop the deeprock salt.  Knot Thimblejack's cache in Dire Maul North is also a good source for these salts, which may result in a few nice priced stacks on the auction house as people are rushing to finish their insane title currently.  Store all your deeprock salts until the night before Winter Veil.

You should always post your highway robbery priced demand spiked holiday goods the night before the holiday and on a 48 hour sale.  This insures against problems getting to post in case their are server delays.  You want to be the first and only one to have these posted once the holiday goes live at 3am server time.  You do know that all holidays start at 3am right?  So posting the morning or afternoon of the holiday start date has already lost you a ton of sales.  When you buy these salts up now, then post the eve of the holiday while setting your own prices, you can easily bring in 25g per deeprock salt.  They will sell and they will sell well.  They always do, until some idiot comes along and throws his up for 5g each.  By that point though, you've already sold pages of them at your crazy prices.  You can then undercut him or buy him out to raise your prices back up, until too many copycats try to get in on the holiday sales.  It's fun to watch these late comers fight over undercutting each other down to 1-2g or less per salt, while you continue to laugh as you sold 80 of them for 25g each while everyone was still asleep.  This works particularly well if you are on a server with an aussie presense or a lot of overnight / late players.

Got any stories of Winter Veil price gouging?

Ins And Outs Of Guest Posts

Guest Posting
Here at Cold's Gold Factory I like to feature other writers as guest posters in order to help them create traffic to their site as well as pick their brains for new ideas.  I have had several guest posts here and have also posted as a guest on various other blogs.  This post will serve to get you up to date on the guests that Cold's Gold Factory has featured as well as informing you of the guest posts I have provided on other sites, in case you missed them or can't get enough of Cold's Nuggets of Knowledge.  If you would like to be featured as a guest poster, just contact Cold's Gold Factory for more information or to submit a topic idea.

Guests of Cold's Gold Factory

1. Markco of Just My Two Copper :  Twinking in Cataclysm
2. Mageshadow of  The Gnomish Coin : Selling Flowers
3. Inkobah of TwinkInfo : Making Gold Off Cataclysm (most popular response to a guest post)
4. Wes of CappedByCata : Mining Profits In Cataclysm

Thanks to all the previous guest posters.  I look forward to more guest postings in the future once Cataclysm drops.  I also welcome newcomers to the gold blogging scene to submit guest posts as well.

Cold's Guest Posts Elsewhere

1. Twink Gears To Profit On @ Just My Two Copper
2. The Spectral Vendor @ The Gnomish Coin
3. End of Expansion Blues and Preparations for Cataclysm @ Capped By Cata
4. Professions In Cataclysm @ Just Another Goblin

Thanks for the hosts that allowed me to guest post or swap posts.  Anyone else interested in a guest post just shoot me an invite or a swap idea.  Thanks to everyone for their help and support as Cold's Gold Factory continues to grow.  Please feel free to share my site within your social networks to help continue the growth.

Demon Forged Breastplate: Learn It Now

Quest Removed
The quest, The Demon Forge, that rewards the blacksmithing pattern Plans: Demon Forged Breastplate will no longer be available in Cataclysm.  If you have a blacksmith and do not know this pattern yet, I would go ahead and complete the quest to get the pattern and learn it.  Whether Blizzard removes the recipe itself is yet to be seen.  Lately they have removed a lot of patterns from our previously learned crafting recipes, so this recipe may get the axe as well.  Once you have this recipe learned, go ahead and farm the BOP demonic runes and craft a few of these excellent leveling chest pieces in case the ability to craft them gets removed.  If these are no longer craftable in a few weeks, the value will rise as this is the top leveling chest piece for aoe farming and leveling paladins.

Pally Leveling Uber Gear
The demon forged breastplate is the absolute best AoE farming and leveling chest piece for insanely fast herding and killing of mobs.  This chestpiece has a chance to proc a heal-over-time that is also a damage over time spell, basically a drain life type spell.  Why is this so powerful?  The proc can trigger off multiple mobs at once and it scales upwards with spellpower on both the damage and the healing components.  This is even better than before thanks to the new changes with the talent system.  All protection paladins get Touched By Light, which adds 60% of their strength as additional spellpower and helps to buff the spell coefficient of the demon-forged breastplate. 

Selling Points
In the early days of The Burning Crusade, my paladin would solo farm a mess load of undead in the undead fields with this chest paired with a skullflame shield.  You can sell these chest pieces for a nice price, especially if you can snag a skulllame shield to sell as a combo.  Attach a shield spike to the shield and you have some serious AoE farming ability.  It's so good that when I would lose connection, I would log back in and the 8-10 mobs that were on me when I dropped connection would all be piled up around me dead.  You've got to love killing while disconnected.  With a little promotion these sell for nice profits and should see much interest on the horde side when the tauren paladins become playable.  So learn the recipe, if you don't have it yet, before it is no longer learnable and potentially not craftable.

Paladin Gear Combos
If you are going to level a new paladin, trust me get the uber combo:  Demon-Forged Breastplate (with enchant of choice - I like the +heal +mana one for less downtime), Skullflame Shield (with the best shield spike you can get), and a speed enchant on your boots for easier herding.  You can solo insane amounts of mobs at a time.  Add a weapon with a built in drain effect and /or a lifestealing or crusader enchant and it realy gets crazy.  Then if you like this kind of AoE herding, you can grab the Sporegar poisoning shield next.  Or if you are ridiculous like me, get all the mobs around you maxed on poison DoTs from the Lichen Shield, then swap back to your Skullflame Shield as the poison ticks away.

Day of the Dead, Bread of the Dead, Marionette Pet

Catrina during Day of the Dead

Day of the Dead Walk Through
Day of the Dead is a 2 day holiday that runs on November 1st-2nd.   You can get an achievement and a temporary pet companion.  You also can make some profits off of lazy or clueless players.

Notes: The Marionette is only a temporary pet. It will disappear after the Day of the Dead event is over.

1. From a cooking supplier and any innkeeper, purchase Ice Cold Milk and Simple Flour.
2. Go to your race's major city's graveyard. Orcs to Orgrimmar, Humans to Goldshire, Night Elves to Darnassus, Blood Elves to Silvermoon, ect.
3. Target Catrina and /dance for your achievement, Dead Man's Party.
4. Purchase two Orange Marigolds from the Day of the Dead vendor.
5. Use one of the Marigolds to see the ghosts of the graveyard. Find the quest giver and accept the quest The Grateful Dead.
6. Acquire Bread of the Dead. You can purchase the recipe from the Day of the Dead vendor, Chapman, or just find someone hanging around with extra bread.
7. Use one of the Marigolds again to see the ghosts and turn in the quest to get your Macabre Marionette pet.

Making Gold
You would be amazed at the number of people who either are too lazy or too time crunched to cook their own bread of the dead.  You can craft and sell these for some easy money during the event and all they require to create is ice cold milk and flour.  You can sell milk and flower on the auction house, but unfortunately these breads cannot be sold on the auction house.  Barking in trade will get you some sales though.  As with any World of Warcraft holiday, setting up shop early will yield the most customers and potential profits.