Adventures in Strip-Mining

Look, some things…some things we just can't get around. Case in point: Heartichoke. Heartichoke must be a gnome with green hair, and a Death Knight. The name is too awesome to squander on a lithe Night Elf or sturdy Draenei. Heartichoke…damn little gnome, where are you? Stand up! Oh, you are standing up…okay…sorry, apologies…(clears throat)…you are much neglected character, my dear, and the size of my guilt is contrasted by your small stature. But what you lack in vertical achievements you apparently have in engineering skills: weeks, nay months ago, I must have quickly leveled your engineering skills and then promptly put you on the shelf.

Oh, the regret.

Oh…oh no.

You have every cool engineering skill possible, but have squandered days of cool downs. By now, you could have been Level 90 three times over just from mining all the ghost ore you need alone, not to mention the days of 24-hour spell timers.

(Which I hate.)

So, let's take stock, shall we?

 Geosynchronus World Spinner: Forget the Orbs for now - you can never afford them even for your JC mounts, so let's just put that on hold, much like your trip to Paris or new shoes.

Each bar of living steel takes 6 trillium bars. A trillium bar takes 10 bars of ghost iron ore.  Ten bars of ghost iron takes 20 stacks of ore. That means 6 trillium bars = 60 bars, or 120 stacks of ore. Okay, doable. I need twelve living steels, so that's 60 bars of ghost iron x12 = 720 ghost iron bars or 1440 stacks…wait, is that right?

 But these Jard's parts need ghost iron ore too, and have a daily cool down: each one of these requires stacks of ghost iron bars: 10 = 20 ores, so in order to make my rascal bot I need 150 bars, or 300 stacks of ore. Okay, okay. At least there's no cool down to make bars.

So for the Rascal Bot, too, I need 1800 stacks of ore to make 900 ghost iron bars to make 6 trillium bars to make one living steel.

 And then there's the Sky Golem. Add some more of those parts, and I need 30 Jard's, which equals 300 ghost iron bars, which equals 600 stacks of ore.  With me still? Not to mention the living steel, which will take 1800 bars (how come I feel like I lost the math thread somewhere?) or 3600 stacks of ore, or divided by 20, 180 bag slots available.

So: Just for Rascal, Sky, and Geo, am I looking at an ore tab of 6,840 stacks of ore: I know I didn't carry the five or come up with the Pythagorean theorem, but..

It's not like Turk didn't warn me well ahead of the patch, that I would need a ton of materials if I wanted this cool stuff. If I had listened to him, I would have only played my Death Knight, Paladin, and Shaman, who are all skilled miners, and done nothing but hit rocks in the hot sun all day. Kind of makes my real life stuff not so bad in comparison. Too bad I can't crowd-source these items. I don't really mind farming, just…that…oh well. I think the Rascal will be my first choice -- and thank you jeebus for friends like Tome who already gave me Pierre (whom I love). At least Pierre makes me pancakes with a smile.