Trial Of The Crusader Is Making Me Poor!

I’ll tell you right off the bat that I’m not much of an economist. I don’t play the Auction House, I don’t farm for things to sell, and I only do dailies on occasion (usually if I’m determined to raise my reputation with a certain faction). With the guild vault taking care of most of my raiding bills, I don’t usually have a whole lot else to spend money on aside from sending gold to an alt every once in awhile, and that’s almost always repaid by the time they hit Level 80, themselves.

I’ve sat, more or less comfortably, around 4000 gold since Wrath of the Lich King launched. That is, until now. Trial of the Crusader, in all of its incarnations, has made me dirt poor!

Just two nights ago, I finally got the main-hand dagger I’d been looking for, Gouge of the Frigid Heart, off of Twin Val’kyr in 25-man. My guild’s core group also likes to run 10-man Heroic on their own time, and wouldn’t you know it? Nemesis Blade drops off the very same boss. Now, Nemesis Blade is ever-so-slightly better than Gouge of the Frigid Heart, but I’d already gone and spent 7-800 gold on enchanting it with Berserkering and I honestly didn’t have the money left to do it again. So, for now, the superior dagger sits in my bank, completely unused.

I have a feeling that I’m not the only one experiencing this, and it strikes me as something of an unintended side effect. With Heroic versions of standard-level loot and three different kinds of Tier gear, it’s not impossible to find an immediate upgrade each and every time you run Trial of the Crusader. Don’t get me wrong; I can certainly appreciate raid content that I can clear in less than an hour with the right group, but it’s really a double-edged sword. Cutting to the heart of the matter, the wealth of equipment combined with the “speediness” of the content has led me to spend far more gold than I’m actually making.

In the past, with dungeons like Naxxramas and Ulduar, gear came at a slow and steady pace, so all of the money I slowly absorbed through the raids themselves and selling drops was able to account for all the upgrades I needed to purchase (and, as only one of two Rogues in my guild, I got new pieces more often than most). They were longer instances, with more trash and bosses to deal with. And then came ToC. The ability to run four separate versions of the instance, with loads of potential upgrades from each and badges raining down upon me from the heavens, I have had to enchant and gem more gear in a short amount of time than I ever have in the past.

In some ways, I’m happy that Icecrown Citadel is returning to a more traditionally-styled raid. It’ll provide me with the a little bit of extra time to mend my pockets and rebuild my (admittedly meager) fortune from scratch, but I’m still going to have to overcome the lump of initial upgrades first, assuming that even the first bosses drop loot superior to what I’m wearing now.

Until then, it looks like I’m going to have to stack up on Argent Tournament dailies and hope for the best!

What about you, readers? Do you find yourselves with empty pockets after a few trips into the Coliseum?