I has a Thunder!

I hit level 350 Blacksmith over the weekend and I had grown impatient with the gear grind to meet suggested Karazhan benchmarks. I had planned to go Hammersmith and craft myself the Stormherald series since I transferred Arcten to Draenor, but after buying my flying mount, I didn't have much to spare.

Now, since playing Runic, I had grown accustomed to being in a Karazhan raiding guild, having a weapon and gear to support my chosen talent spec, and being one of the highest-damaging Ret Paladins I knew. Shandris was a small server, and Runic had been gathering the perfect Ret gear (pre patch 2.3) that he could find for some time.

Draenor was huge, however. It'd had been months since I'd waited in a queue to log into the game server. And I knew that separating myself from the bazillion other Ret Paladins on the server would not be easy.

I geared Arcten as well as I could, and I was consistently in the top 1 or 2 damage spot in parties (though since level 70, I've been out-dpsed by even more mages, I'm done competing with them). But it still wasn't enough.

Runic had an epic 2h weapon. I wanted one for Arcten too!

Runic had heavy bonuses on his Ret gear to the right Stats. I wanted Arcten to have that too!

Runic had a couple thousand gold to blow on pretty much whatever he wanted! And dammit, I wanted Arcten to be able to blow some gold too!

So what did I do?

I cannibalized Runic and pawned all his gear.

I shelled out my $25 and transferred Runic to Draenor. Then I abused the linked neutral Auction Houses with my guildmistress, Lanikoa. I posted all kinds of uncommon and rare-quality gems and mining bars and ores for 1 copper from Runic. After which, a waiting Lanikoa quickly bought them all up as we coordinated everything over Teamspeak (actually, I just logged in with Arcten to explain which items where being put up and then logged out to post them).

Finally, I handed my guildmistress a single, Netherweave Bandage and said, "post this for exactly 1647 gold".

Runic logged back on and bought said bandage, effectively draining every last piece of gold he had on him.

The last hour waiting for my big lump of gold to show up in my GM's mailbox was the longest hour of playing WoW, EVER! But finally it came.

The bastard Auction House took about a 400g cut from it all, but some was better than none. Lanikoa handed the gold to Arcten, minus her share of the transfer and I went off skipping to the Auction House.

Now the Alliance Auction House on Draenor is a wonderful thing indeed! Chances are, if you need something, it's there.

In my case, I needed about 17 Primal Air and 13 Primal Water (the some of which I transferred from Runic to Arcten).

So I bought my mats in Stormwind and went off to craft my hammer. It was beautiful. I took it in my hand and raised it proudly and mightily exclaimed in guild chat, "I has a Thunder!"

But see, then the shakes came.

I still had a good chunk of change left over. And I wasn't sure what to do with it. Now when searching for the previous mats, I noticed that were a whole lot of Primal Fires on there, and so just for shites and giggles, I did a level 70 plate search for armor of rare quality.

Ragesteel shoulders came up, for one.

Now they were good. I mean REALLY good. Much better than the Warchief's mantle that I was using. Furthermore, they had some +Hit Rating on them (which I am hurting BADLY for in order to reach Karazhan entry-benchmark stats) AND two yellow sockets, so I could toss a deuce of Rigid Golden Draenite in there too for another +16 Hit Rating.

Yeah, I bought them; bought the Golden Draenite too!

I equipped them and suddenly felt awesome, and I was only out 160g for armor and gems.

"Hmmm... they're part of a set..."

I noticed this after I had purchased them and immediately searched the auction house for the rest of these Ragsteel pieces. None were to be found, and I still had all this gold too! So I went to the Trade channel!

/trade LF Blacksmith to Craft Ragesteel, my mats!

I got a whisper from a fellow Paladin, Betrayed. I asked what the mats were, like a noob, and I saw that the amount of Primal Fires required for the rest of the pieces were going to cost me. Geez, I'd be way better off buying this stuff on the AH, but none there, so I bought everything; the Khorium, the Fel Iron, the Primal Fires, the Elixir's of Major Strength. Everything that goes into these things I bought.

"Allright, I got the mats, meet me in Dwarf District of SW?"

So, Betrayed shows up. Come to find out that he was a mace and shield-wielding Paladin rocking full Crystalforge, cool! I hand him the mats, he crafts my stuff, I give him a healthy tip, and I'm on my way again.

But wait... Enchants! I can still squeeze +15 STR on the gloves and +6 all stats on chest! Oh, and Thunder needs something too, Savagery for me! Kthx!

So yeah, between crafting mats and enchanting mats… that gold is totally gone.

But that’s okay, because now I’m rocking (unbuffed):
1482 Attack Power
27.24% Crit
5.26% Hit

I did have to give Runic one last run through the Barrens… naked… and then end it all by flying his Tawny Windrider to the highest point above Hellfire Citadel, /dismount in the air, and then watch him fall to his doom one last time.

I logged out at the graveyard and hit the delete button for Runic on my character select screen.

Thanks for the fun times and all the gold Runic, R.I.P.