Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Chasing the Gold Cap: What's Your Ideal Reserve?

Chasing the Gold Cap was a series that documented my slow, steady quest to reach the maximum amount of gold allowed on a character. I finished the task in June '13. It took me nearly a year to spend it. Occasionally, I'll use the topic generally for all-things-auctioneering. 

As the expansion wanes, I can't avoid the beckon of what was a regular safe-haven during the end of Cataclysm and throughout much of Mists of Pandaria: the Dalaran auction house. At this point, my main character is as progressed as he can be, and I don't have the stomach to build up another alt just now. When I log on, likely the first thing I'll do is my profession shuffle, working raw mats into something more valuable with the hopes of turning a decent profit. Unfortunately, the market is saturated right now. There's an excess of material and a smaller pool of buyers. While there's still money to be made, prices on most trade goods remain low, and high volume is the best way to guarantee a decent reward.

While I've opted not to hit the auction house hard---no dreams of another gold cap chase just yet---this means that my gold reserves creep upwards ever so slowly. Perhaps an hour's time on the auction house will yield 10,000g gold in a week, but I tend to spend a good percentage of what I yield each week. This got me thinking: how low am I willing to go? What's the lowest amount of gold I can have on hand without beginning to feel uncomfortable?

The answer came easy: I like having the ability to buy the gold sink mounts that come with each expansion, and those tend to hover right around the 100k gold mark. So long as long as I'm above that mark, I'm feeling OK. Fall below it---like when I transferred from my gold-capped server to my current one---I start to get antsy.

What's your ideal gold reserve?


1 comment:

  1. Ideal gold reserve implies that I have enough gold, to have a reserve. I'm fine as long as I have enough to repair my armour at the end of my day. That means somewhere from 100 to 150 gold.

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