Preparing for Mists, Part Three: A Preface to Part One

So, in all that talk and crude maths about the new feast in Mists, I neglected to let you in on just how difficult it will be, at least in the very beginning, to level one's cooking up to a point where one can even purchase the main feast, let alone cook it. Just to illustrate, here is the total count, excluding 525-535, as it is very easily done:


535-551(you go to 551 because the next set of recipes give you 2 points each):
16x Giant Mantis Shrimp
16x Jade Lungfish
32x Juicycrunch Carrot
16x Raw Tiger Steak
16x Wildfowl Breast
16x Ginseng

550-575:
12x Raw Turtle Meat + 60x Juicycrunch Carrot
12x Emperor Salmon + 60x Scallions
12x Reef Octopus + 12x Wildfowl Breast
12x Jade Lungfish + 60x Striped Melon
24x Karasang Paddlefish
50x Witchberries + 50x Jade Squash

575-600:
5x Soy Sauce + 50x Giant Mantis Shrimp + 50x Raw Crocolisk Belly + 250x Red Blossom Leek
5x Soy Sauce + 50x Emperor Salmon + 50x Wildfowl Breast + 250x Jade Squash
5x Soy Sauce + 50x Reef Octopus + 50x Mushan Ribs + 250x Juicycrunch Carrot
5x Soy Sauce + 50x Redbelly Mandarin + 50x Raw Crab Meat + 250x White Turnip
5x Soy Sauce + 50x Karasang Paddlefish + 50x Raw Turtle Meat + 250x Mogu Pumpkin
5x Soy Sauce + 250x Green Cabbage + 250x Witchberries

Final Quest:
1x Black Pepper + 50 Pink Turnip
1x Rice Flour + 5x Tiger Gourami + 5x Raw Turtle Meat + 25x Scallions
1x Rice Flour + 5x Jewel Danio + 5x Raw Crab meat + 25x White Turnip
1x Black Pepper + 5x Emperor Salmon + 5x Raw Crocolisk Belly + 25x Mogu Pumpkin
1x Black Pepper + 5x Giant Mantis Shrimp + 5x Mushan ribs + 25x Green Cabbage
1x Rice Flour + 5x Redbelly Mandarin + 5x Raw Tiger Steak + 25x Red Blossom Leek

There are a couple big things to pay attention to here. First, and most importantly, is that you will need a total of at least 36 Ironpaw Tokens, the new cooking tokens which are used to buy the 100 Year Soy Sauce, Black Pepper, and Rice Flour. You only get about 6-7 of them in the beginning, with the introductory cooking quests, and then either can get them through the one(as of right now) daily, and through Bundles of Groceries, which you can only do once you get at least one Way to 600. The Bundles of Groceries take either 100 of a single vegetable, or 20 of a meat or fish to make, and only give you one token in return. Let's just say that it will be very counter-productive to use the meats and veggies that you need to cook with to buy tokens.

Second, christ, have you looked at just how much you will need!? Almost 300 of many kinds of veggies, and hundreds of fish and meats. If you are looking to get the best feasts for your raiding group in the beginning of your progression, the numbers speak for themselves. Simply, you will not be able to level your cooking alone, quickly, and keep your sanity.

Working together, though, it should be quite doable. Here is the plan I propose:

• First, make sure everyone in the guild(or at least the raiding group) deposits all of the cooking materials they get through questing into the guild bank, or some other central deposit.
• Second, make sure everyone in the guild(or, again, at least in the raiding group) starts a farm as early as they can(at 86), and plants what Jogu says to plant(because you will get more), then deposit all harvested crops to the guild bank.
• Third, designate a person in the guild to be the cook. This person will be boosted to get the feasts quickly. I have not yet been able to find out if the feasts are soulbound, but if they are, MAKE SURE the person you choose is able to attend all raids. Just saying, no use wasting the mats.
• Fourth, when people get to 90(leveling to max level should be the priority, of course, and it should take no more than a week to get to 90, if that. I have done it twice and it's not long), schedule times throughout the week to go fishing or farming meats as a guild. I know it isn't the most glamorous thing to do, but you want to progress, right? Gotta do what you gotta do. If every member participates, in, say, fishing, then each person only has to catch about 36 fish each, easily done in about an hour. Additionally, all of the fish can be caught in pools, which can be fished at level 1 skill, so there is no skill barrier, and thus, no excuse.
• Fifth, people will also have to give up their tokens, initially, to back the cook. I suggest taking all the tokens in the beginning(which should be about 60?) and turning them into mostly Soy Sauces, and 3 of Black Pepper and Rice Flour. They shouldn't have to give up any more of the tokens for a while, at least until the good feasts will have to be made.

Anyway, let me know in the comments what you think!

Preparing for Mists, Part Two: Market Speculation

In the first part of this series, I went over what will be the main feast for raiders in Mists, and how to go about getting the huge amount of Pink Turnips necessary to make them. In this second part, I want to go over some potential hot markets(and not so hot ones) to pay attention to come Mists.

To preface, this is all speculation, and pretty uneducated speculation at that, as I am no expert by any means,  so I encourage you to think about this yourself, and perhaps prove me wrong if need be. So, that said, here are some market predictions!

Pink Turnip: Remember when I pointed out that my guild is going to need A LOT of these things every week? Well, this is going to be the case with every guild who decides to use the main feast for raiding. As I doubt many of them will have the foresight or coordination to produce these in-guild, at least in the first few months of the expansion, I expect this vegetable to become relatively scarce and high-priced during that period. Don't expect to be selling many until about a week or two into the expansion though, as it takes a week for the first raid to open up, and it also takes a lot of cooking(and thus, a lot of other materials) to get to the point where you can even buy the recipe for the feast. Here, to illustrate what I think will happen, a highly scientific analysis made with Paint:

The Jogu Flip: There is a little drunk NPC in Halfhill(the main city in Valley of the Four Winds), who, for a fee(free if you raise his reputation to exalted) will let you in on what crops are good to grow that day, meaning that you will get more from those crops. Now, there are two ways to go about using this information. The first and most obvious is to plant what he says is good to plant, and thus have more to sell on the AH, or to turn into Bags of Groceries for tokens. The second way is to take advantage of people who use the first way, and buy the crops that they post the day of/after heeding Jogu's advice. I predict that the price for these crops will be temporarily lower due to the increased supply on the AH, but will quickly return to normal, because most crops are used a lot in cooking recipes(meaning, that there will be a lot of movement in this market). If you are observant, you can take advantage of this temporary fluctuation in the price, and flip the crops after they go back up to non-inflated prices. Now, this depends on if the profit you can gain will be more than the price for listing the crops, or will be enough to even make it worth the time. I think it will be, at least in the first few months at least, as I think cooking materials will be very high priced during that time.

Archaeology Keystones: The Lorewalkers are likely to be a very popular faction in Mists. Not only do they give a sweet-looking mount at exalted, but they also are the faction one has to grind(to revered, so not too bad) to get belt buckles. Thing is, I really doubt that many people have taken the time to get their archaeology up during Cataclysm. This may just be my perception, but it just didn't seem too popular, especially with the non-casual crowd. Well, when they find out that the best way to grind reputation with the Lorewalkers is to have archaeology(and specifically on their Blacksmith), there will be a lot of people going out and grinding it. This means, obviously, many more keystones(the items used to help complete certain relics) being in demand. Of course, the increased number of people grinding out archaeology may bring more keystones into the market, but I doubt it will be enough to cover the amount in demand. I have ground the profession to 525 myself, and I can attest to not getting enough keystones from just my grinding. If they are cheap on the AH now, pick some up and hold them until the start of the next xpac.

Anyway, that is it for now, hope these three markets end up panning out, and working for some of you! Let me know what you think!