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Maintankadin

Soloing raid bosses for fun and for profit

Novara
Tue Apr 01, 2008 8:42 am
I've been doing this without passive uncrushability (still working on that set). In fact I only had about 86%. I found all I had to do was keep wisdom on him and prioritize rank 1 holy shield, and then seal of light. Keeping frost aura up helped alot as well.

Eventually you will take some unblocked hits and probably crushes so basically I just shielded, drank a mana potion and healed up. I go through about 8 shields and pots during the 50-ish minute fight. Since I'm an alchemist this is well worth the chance at a tome drop.

I had about 790 block value which helped alot. Anything below 700 and you probably won't be able to keep up with the damage.

Pics of my first kill. The next day it reset and the kill went alot smoother since I knew what to do. You won't be able to AFK this without passive uncrushability, but it's certainly doable:

http://home.charfles.net/~chuck/almost.jpg
http://home.charfles.net/~chuck/done.jpg

Oh, and I haven't seen the tome drop yet Sad
wayjin
Tue Apr 01, 2008 11:08 am
You can solo many, many things as a prot pally, if you have the patience, and bag space for enough mana pots.

However you kill that "fish" (Looks like an Hydra to me) boss, doesn't matter. What matter is... OMG A TOME DROP !!!

Don't panic! There is two things you can do :
- Give it to a friend. You played with a mage buddy for years? Or is it a good RL friend? It's the best present a mage could get !
- Or sell it. Though I recommend giving it away. To much hassle selling it.

Why shouldn't I sell it ?

To determine how much it could be worth, let's look at fact first.

- 10% drop, from a boss on a 3days reset timer. That's at most 1 tome per month, and per group (or person, if you solo'ed)
- If you're scanning the AH on a daily basis you probably already know but... It's virtually never on AH.
- Its value that will not decay over time ! Two years from now, after WotLK release, after patch 3.5 release, you will still be able to "turtle", while all the noobies/alt mages will only be able to sheep/pig.

Now let's see how much gold people do have/spend :
- Darkmoon cards sell like hot pan : 1-2k each.
- Rerolling enchanter to get that +24sd to rings? 2.5k++
- Crafting full spellfire+spellstrike for that alt mage? 2K+
- Doing a bunch a dailies (understand 15ish) can easily net you 300g in, after selling drops.

After reading that, how much would you value your tome? Priceless? Kinda.
2500 Gold IS a realistic estimate for such a rare and desired item !
Now, what an item is really worth, and what people THINK it's worth might not be exactly the same, to say the least. But whatever people say, never sell it for 500g-ish. Two days worth of daily? I'd rather vendor it.

How to sell it The "why you should give it to a friend" Guide.

Warning : I have experience selling tome on two different servers, but both of them are very busy and populated servers.

First, and foremost, you are holding something rare and, more important, HIGHLY desired. You will understand after spamming trade channel for a while. Remember that you will only get MAXIMUM ONE PER MONTH, theorically. You can take your time to sell it.

With a 100g price tag, I would sell 100 a day.
With a 500g price tag, I would sell 20 a day.
With a 1000g price tag, I would sell 1 a day.
With a 1500g price tag, I would sell one every few days.
With a 2000+g price tag, It will be more like one every week or two, at best. But you won't get more than one every month anyway, remember?

You decided to sell it instead of giving it, fine. Don't sell it under 1500g, ever. At that price you won't have too much problem finding a buyer.

That doesn't explain me how to sell it! Yes, yes, I'm coming to it :

- First, do it from your secret bank alt. No really, you will get much, much hate, so better do it from your lv1 troll.

- Second, always have it posted on AH, at an overpriced price, to make sure you don't sell it - The AH 5% cut is a lot of money when dealing in K gold - for exemple 2499g/2999g. It cost 1g a day - think about it as advertisement cost. If it sells anyway... well, you won't complain.

- Last, but not least, Spam Trade.. Few people knows it exist at all, and many don't have a clue about how much it's worth. You have to "teach" your server its value. Preferably at peak hours, one message every 30s, or every minute depending on the current spam going on, is a good idea.
"WTS Tome of Polymorph : Turtle - pst with offer"

You will (very quickly) notice by yourself, but the shear amount of hate you will get might make you want to give up.

Every time you spam your message, between 0 and 5 ppl will message you. Let's quickly review the different sort :

/x Whisper you : <insert a 10 to 100g offer here>
They are cute, but don't bother bargainning with those. Don't answer, or just answer "1.5k+ please" or "2k+ please", and then stop answering. (since you will get lol'ed at.) You have to teach people its value, remember?

/x Whisper you : How much? (or) What's the best offer so far?
Same deal... you can just not answer, but having a "I refused a 1.5k offer" ready to paste (ctrl-v) is a good idea. Once in a while a serious client will be amongst those, so be careful.

/x Whisper you : <insert a 4 digits price here>
It gets serious, you might be able to bargain with that guy! If you are still not satisfied with his price, and cannot go higher, add him to friend list anyway... you never know.

/x Whisper you : <insert some message of hate>
You can let it pass, or /ignore. Don't answer either way.

Once in a while, when you are tired getting those 10g offers (and you will get many.) you can just spam the trade with a pricetag "PST with offer (2k+ please)" Remember to not feed the trolls roaming on /trade. It usually means not answering at all.

That's about all you have to know about it... Be patient, don't bother arguing with people about the price tag : You are right, they are wrong but they waaaant it badly "qq lolol 2k you crazy noobface"

Good luck, and... be patient.

FYI I sold one tome at 2100g, and another one at 1500g so far (I gave in ! so bad.) The highest I've heard off is a 2700g deal.
Warrender
Tue Apr 01, 2008 11:51 am
Bah, I'd try and sell it for over 9,000 golds!
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wayjin
Tue Apr 01, 2008 2:05 pm
double post =.=
Hankthetank
Sun Apr 27, 2008 5:53 pm
Finally managed to do it!



I forgot to take a screenshot of him dead. Sad

Allow me to take this time to say that trying to solo a boss that does elemental damage and mana burns as a paladin is really really, um, annoying. Dropped under 1k hp several times, fight took about an hour total, video is of just the last like 5% hp

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ty1XtmCHva4
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Worldie
Sun Apr 27, 2008 6:07 pm
So hum, i'm supposed to have 800ish Block value and passive uncrushable for this guy...

I guess it's impossible to do if i don't pick shield spec again QQ

How much fishing did you need for that guy, 300?
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Uord - Prot Warrior
Darkworldie - Death Knight

Tanking... srs business
ozweepay
Mon Apr 28, 2008 10:28 am
Not to be a nay-sayer, but consider this: tome drop rate is listed at 3% (YMMV ofc). That's an estimated 33 kills per tome, at 70mins per kill (not counting travel time and the time you spend fishing to get the mudskunks, nor the time traveling to DWM to get the lures).

Since you seemingly cannot afk for this fight, you'll need to be on the ball for those 70mins. Assume you can get 3000g for the tome (which is a bit high), then you made 1.3g/min or about 78g/hr.

You can do much better with dailies or gathering! Not to mention, your repairs should be a lot lower. Smile

So, from a pure-profit standpoint, this adventure seems inferior to other activities. However, for a I-love-a-good-challenge standpoint, it's a cool thing to have done.

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Not sure about this, but look at mudskunk lures and the fish themselves, neither is soulbound. This means you could just buy them if you don't want to lvl fishing yourself. I know someone sells the fish for 8g each on one server (you need 5 to summon the boss). Or get a guildie to fish them for you. I have 40 in my bank, just waiting for the right time to go and try this. Smile
Novara
Tue Apr 29, 2008 1:24 pm
I think the drop rate is more like 1 in 5. Thottbot looks way off. Wowhead has the drop rate alot higher than the epics he drops and even those aren't that rare. Haven't got one personally but I saw them quite a bit on a couple characters pre-bc.

For an hours work where I can go afk long enough to clean my apartment, its worth the trouble.