Level 40 & A Mount

Last week I wrote about how making money for my first mount was very much on my mind as my hunter crept closer and closer to level forty. I kept flip-flopping on the question of how I felt about it - some commenters reminded me that it really wasn't that big a deal, and I also ran into other characters in the low forties who hadn't been able to afford their mount yet. But then I'd have some sort of windfall and feel spurred on again, because just a few more of those and I'm there!

My favourite of these was when I earned a tip of two gold from crafting an advanced target dummy for someone in Thunder Bluff, and from their own materials no less. I would have done it for free as the recipe was yellow for me at the time and therefore likely to be a skill-up, but then they handed me the gold when I traded the finished product back to them and I thought sure, why not. Fastest two gold I've made so far.

Other money-making operations didn't go so well, mind you. After I saw Kurn post about making money from re-selling the pattern for runecloth bags, I checked the price for it on the Pyrewood Horde auction house and was wowed: just re-selling one or two of that item would have been enough to push me over the line towards my mount.

So I stripped down to my cloak and tabard again and made the death run to Winterspring. Much love to the kind human warlock who spotted my cow on the road in Felwood and started aggroing all the wolves in the vicinity in what felt like a clear attempt to protect me - if I'd been smarter I'd have stayed near him, but I blithely ran further ahead while he fought the wolves and then died as soon as I got in range of the next one.

The moment I hit my screenshot key, I heard a loud roar behind me and had to leg it inside the town in order not to be eaten by a bear.

The problem was that when I finally made it to Everlook I found that this clearly wasn't some super secret insider tip as there were already several people camping the vendor (a goblin named Qia). When I looked it up on Wowhead to see if they had any more info on just how often the pattern respawns etc. there were whole instructions on how to write a macro that will buy all the rare recipes the vendor has as soon as they appear as long as you are willing to stand there and spam click on her for a couple of hours.

I quickly decided that I couldn't be bothered with such insanity, so the run was eventually for naught. I did check back a couple of times just to see if I'd maybe stand a chance if I checked early in the morning or something like that, but I had no such luck: I never saw Qia surrounded by less than three people, no matter the time of day.

I also tried to make some more money with fishing but it has very much remained a mixed bag. I got super excited when I found Lordamere Lake completely uncontested one evening and managed to fish up several stacks of Greater Sagefish there, but then it turned out that their price had plummeted over night (of course, that's probably why everybody else stopped bothering) and those stacks didn't end up making me much money anyway.

Still, I persisted with my personalised strategy of doing my daily mining round in Thousand Needles, and this made me enough money that I eventually decided to invest in one final push, so that I had just enough to buy the mount when I hit forty, as long as I ignored my class training for the moment (as that would have cost another twelve gold or so just for my level forty abilities).

And I've got to say: I do not regret it. A mount may not be all that in terms of usefulness, but the matter had weighed so heavily on my mind that it was a huge relief to be able to stop worrying about it. After this there aren't any more expensive purchases that feel like they should be made as soon as you hit a certain level, so I can focus on other things as and when I feel like it.

I hadn't realised how much it had bothered me to have this "problem" (wanting my mount at forty but not having enough money for it) and no clear solution to deal with it. Being able to check that item off my list was such a huge relief, I pretty much flew through the next couple of levels from sheer joy. Now other challenges await!