More with 5.4

5.4 is right around the corner and there are some major changes on their way. As gold makers we are prone to hoarding material in anticipation for new recipes but this patch brings more than the standard profession, class changes and a new raid thrown in. The way raiding functions will be changing and our auction houses are going to change as well.

Don't panic and grip your towel firmly. If I know anything about goblins it is that they have an amazing ability to adapt and be very innovative. So think of the changes as a new adventure. If you are feeling a bit of burn out then 5.4 is a perfect opportunity for you to shake off the boredom and get creative.

Lets have a look at the quick and dirty breakdown and how it might affect us as gold makers. For the full list of changes, check out the Patch Notes.

Flex raiding

No longer will we be limited to 10 man or 25 man. The raids will now scale with the amount of people in the group. It requires 10 people minimum and is meant to be a transition from LFR to regular raiding.  So guilds or friends who would like to raid but aren't quite able to participate in regular raiding now have a middle ground. I expect this will create more spontaneous raiding for some guilds. With any luck this means more enchants and gems flying off the shelves.

Timeless Isle

From what I understand, this will be similar to Isle of Thunder but with new and interesting things. Including new world bosses.

Proving Grounds

Proving Grounds is place for people to practice their class and spec. This is meant to be educational for the "noobs" and challenging for the "pros".  It's an interesting concept and I am curious to see it.

Connected Realms

Realm merges without removing any realms. Basically, multiple realms will be sharing the same space and be able to interact with each other as if they were on the same realm. This means more activity on the auction house. If you are on a low population server then expect some changes to your auctioning. However, it might be possible to create more characters on the realm yours has merged with and more characters means more cooldowns!

Class Changes

As usual there are tons of class changes. If you are looking for the changes to your specific characters then I recommend looking over the 5.4 patch notes. There is tons of info for each class.

Arenas Updated

You will now be able to queue for area like you do for scenarios. This may mean more people will PvPing so be prepared to craft the new PvP gear as your learn the recipes.

Enchants for all level gear

Enchants will now scale down with low level gear. gear. This means you can add a high level enchant to a low piece of gear and it will scale with the gear. This is great news for heirlooms.

Professions

Inscription

Various class changes will occur but none more important to gold making than new glyphs! This means you should be stocking up on ink so you will be ready to craft the new glyphs as you learn them. In addition, some glyphs will be changed which might make them more desirable.

Blacksmithing

New Recipes learned from crafting a Balanced Trillium Ingot (requires 1 Trillium Bar).

Enchanting

Sha Crystal Fragment added. Gear obtained with Justice points or crafted from new PvP recipes or plans will now disenchant into Sha Crystal Fragments.

Engineering

Jard's Peculiar Energy Source added. Useful for crafting the new Sky Claw (Sky Golem mount) which lets you pick herbs while mounted! Finally, everyone else can try to catch up to those pesky druid herbalists.

Tailoring

New Recipes learned from crafting a Celestial Cloth (requires 10 Bolts of Windwool Cloth).

Leatherworking

New Recipes learned from crafting a Hardened Magnificent Hide (requires 2 Magnificent Hide).
Drums of Rage added as a trade able Bloodlust/Heroism/Time Warp.

Cooking

New recipes for +300 stat food.



Are your gears moving yet? I hope so! Despite my aversion to change, I am excited to see what new things the gold making community comes up with. I am waiting patiently to dive right into the changes and see how it plays out.

TSM 2.0: A New Beginning

I will admit that I am not fond of the idea of my favorite addon being changed drastically. TSM works so well for me that I had my reservations about TSM 2.0. Part of me was determined to hate the changes. If you can relate then I have great news. TSM 2.0 has delivered an awesome evolution of the addon. Once set up, adding new things or changing currents things is a breeze. I was surprised at how intuitive it is to use.

One of the important things to remember is that you will want to remove your saved variables for your old TSM. I didn't do this out of laziness and I discovered that the old TSM dealfinding lists were popping up each time I logged in even if I had deleted them previously. I highly recommend deleting the TSM.lua files before downloading TSM 2.0.

Step one in making any changes is you back up the information you are about to change just in case you make a mistake. So I recommend backing up your WTF folder. However, if you prefer to not back up that much information then you can simply back up the SavedVariables folder before you make changes.

You can do so by finding your WoW folder and opening the WTF folder. Once in the WTF folder you then open the Account folder. From there you will need to select the account that your auctioning characters. If your account existed before the battlenet merger then the folder name will be what your WoW account name used to be (i.e. TradePrincess). If your account was created after the battlenet merger then it will be a series of numbers (i.e. 5555555555#1). If you have multiple then just open the folders and locate the server your auctioning character is on and check to see if your character's name is listed. If you only have one account simply click on the account folder and select your the SavedVariables folder (Be sure to back up this folder before making changes). Your progression through folders will look something like this:

In the SavedVariables Folder, scroll down until you reach the TradeSkillMaster files.

You have two choices here. You can either delete them all and have a fresh start or you can keep some of them. The files you might want to keep include the Accounting, AuctionDB, ItemTracker, and WoWuction folders. The way I chose to do it was to delete all of the folders that said TradeSkillMaster_ and added back the four types from my previously saved copy. Each type has two files .lua and .lua.bak so keep that in mind.

I know that the less computer savvy can be intimidated and less inclined to mess with files. I am fairly familiar with some aspects of the computer and I am still intimidated. Just keep in ind that you should always make a copy of something before you make changes to it. that was you can go back and start fresh. Also keep in mind that, even if you deleted the entire folder, WoW would just automatically recreate it. you won't break the game you will just lose your saved settings (like bar addons or unit frames settings).

Once you have cleared out the old then you can download TSM 2.0! This is the Beta version so be sure to update it often. I like to update it once per day but changes are being made constantly and it can change multiple times in one day. There is also an update to the desktop application located on the TSM 2.0 post so be sure to grab that if you use the app.

Take some time and play around. My resistance was quickly smashed by the overall functionality of the upgrade. I honestly didn't think that TSM could be improved but I was glad to be proven wrong. TSM 2.0 is worth the change and it has actually helped me to streamline and control my auctions better. TSM 2.0 gets my seal of approval!