Hello and welcome back to Raresbane’s Hardcore Journey and today we are NOT hunting any rare spawns because we have some housekeeping to do. Last week we completed Dun Morogh and unlocked a new zone. Don’t you worry you lil’ heads, we will get to that by the end of this housekeeping post. But first here is what we have on the docket:

1. Introduce y’all to Ironforge proper.
2. Auction House shenanigans.
3. Reveal our new hunting grounds!

Okay, so let’s dig our teeth into the exciting world of Capitals! And Capital. And Capitalization. Capital One – what’s in your wallet?

Ironforge is the capital city of the Dwarves in the Eastern Kingdoms and the refuge of the Gnomes as well. It is in my opinion the best capital city in all of Azeroth. Ironforge is peak fantasy. The intricate stonecutting is just stunning. The lighting from the Grand Forge is sublime. The city is well organized and compact making things easy to navigate. 

Stormwind, the Human capital, on the other hand is clunky, Orgrimaar (Orcs) is a sprawling mess, and Darnassus (Elves) is fucking huge. The waterways of Stormwind and Darnassus make cutting across a hassle, and the multiple vertical levels of Orgrimmar are annoying to climb. Don’t get me wrong because I like all the capitals for their own reasons but Ironforge? It has got it all bby! 

The city is literally carved into the side of a mountain that overlooks its kingdom with a 360 degree birds eye view. From the city’s center the Council of Three Hammers rules over the kingdom of Khaz Modan. The lore that ties the three Dwarven clans together is a story for another time, and if we ever reach Grim Batol and the Hinterlands we may have an opportunity to touch on their relationships.

I have only briefly mentioned Ironforge in the past posts but I have been visiting its Auction House, Hunter Trainer, Bank, and various shops between hunting rare spawns in Dun Morogh. As our journey across Azeroth continues it is safe for you to assume that I am always dipping into a capital between hunting rare spawns, questing, and grinding down mobs of boars. But what exactly am I doing in Ironforge now?

Well, It should not come as a surprise to any of y’all that Raresbane is fucking broke. In World of Warcraft, killing humanoids and completing quests are an important source of income for players and I do not have that luxury available to me. Initially, all of my income was generated by selling the trash loot from killing boars and that has not been very lucrative. This is where Ironforge and the Auction House become relevant. 

The Auction house is a place where players can post items they have found across azeroth and sell them to each other. It’s a really cool player driven economy and it is where we will be obtaining crucial gear upgrades, larger bags, and even some one time use consumables to make our journey a bit more palatable. 

When I returned to World of Warcraft in 2016, after a long hiatus, it took no time getting back into the groove of things. I was exploring new content, doing cool dungeons, and having an absolute blast. There were a lot of changes I was in love with, in particular the Transmog and Pet Companions that had been added while I was away. 

Transmog is a system that was introduced to satiate players’ desires to collect unique outfits and let you be the fashionista you always dreamt of being! Pet Companions had always been in the game but as the years of content piled on it was impossible to keep all your favorite outfits and pets in your inventory/bank. The solution? An entire system that catalogued what you had found and summoned them all at will. 

People like myself that obsessed over collecting everything they could get their grubby little hands on were elated to free up their inventories. People like myself also realized something else entirely. This was a LUCRATIVE market to make bookoo bucks!

Side note: Check out my Guild Bank tab that I horde in-game alcohol (In case you didn’t believe me when I said I used to collect digital pets lmao). Maybe I’ll tell you about the Beer of the Month Club or my guild meetings some day ❤

In 2015 Blizzard Entertainment introduced the WoW token. This was their response to players purchasing In-game gold with Real-world money, and a way for players to pay for their game subscription with excess In-game gold. For four years this is how I paid for my game time.

I have said before and I will say it again: I LOVE MINDLESS GRINDING.

I farmed rare Pet Companions & Transmogs and sold them on the Auction house. I tracked in game prices of End-Game materials, bought, and flipped them like Inn-N-Out Burgers. I had the Auction House Mobile App on my phone and could market research during my lunch breakfast at TJMAXX.

I cornered markets, bought out competition, and tanked entire industries. Huge Ogre Cache BBY!

IYKYK. 

I hope you are piecing together the narrative throughlines I am trying to lay out for you but if you’re not let me spell it out for you. I know my way around an Auction House economy and believe me when I say the economy of this particular server is an absolute trash fire. There were a total of 2500 auctions posted. I could easily post 2500 auctions by myself in my glory days. 

It’s fine, this is fine, everything is fine! We will make do with what we got. I began testing the waters and came to a few conclusions:

1. Greens were not selling unless they were dirt cheap.
2. Leather sold well but there were diminishing returns.
3. Bags were ungodly expensive. 

I posted what I had and bought myself the cheapest upgrades I could get my hands on. There was only one luxury I allowed myself and that was a new Gun to replace the Blunderbust we bought back in Chapter one. The DPS (damage per second) upgrade was going to be our biggest boon. I did not buy any bags just yet because I had a plan cooking when I saw what our next Zone Unlock would be.

SO, without further ado, lets reveal our second zone in the Hunter Mode Challenge! Drum roll please <3. The choices are limited this early in the challenge but here are those options:

1. Loch Modan, east of Ironforge thorugh the South Gate Pass
2. Elwynn Forest in the Southern Eastern Kingdoms.

And the random wheel of fate has decided, we are off to Elwynn Forest. Buckle up bby and get ready for the next leg of our adventure across Azeroth to hunt every rare spawn the game has to offer! As aways, thank you very much for joining me in our journey. Till next time FAM and Happy Hunting!