What is your first buy from the Trading Post each month?

Each time World of Warcraft players turn the page on their calendars, they’re faced with the most challenging decision in the entirety of Azeroth’s cosmos — which items to spend their precious Trader’s Tender on. There are a number of ways to approach this often-heartbreaking challenge, but no matter what your thought process when you first browse a new set of offerings, we’ve all had a month or two (or twenty) that made us question everything we thought we knew about ourselves.

Last week’s podcast episode had me evaluating my own feelings on the Trading Post, and what I found most surprising was the fact that it has now been a part of World of Warcraft for over two years. By my count, we’ve had 27 different lists of mounts, pets, and transmog looks up for grabs. With that much decision-making practice under your belt, you’ve probably fallen into a fairly predictable buying pattern each time your chest of Tenders starts to overflow. So what’s your typical first purchase?

My first instinct is to always go for the mounts. I can’t really even identify what it is about a brand new trusty steed that has me breaking the bank most months. Perhaps it’s because I know that I’m guaranteed to see continuous use out of a new mount. I have my entire collection on my favorites list, so I am eventually going to see that Violet Darkmoon Charger again for a ride across a no-flying zone.

I feel like pet collecting is a fairly niche category among World of Warcraft players. With big, flashy mounts on one side and the unstoppable force that is transmogrification outfits on the other, sometimes a cute little baby salamander that follows you around can get lost in the shuffle. For me, the draw is the price tag — many of the battle pets in recent months have been coming in at 200-400 tenders, and if I’ve got the spare change kicking around, I hardly ever decline an opportunity to add another sidekick to my stable.

I like to think I have my fingers on the pulse of the World of Warcraft community, and so I’m fairly confident when I say that for most heroes, transmog reigns supreme on their Trading Post wish list. With such a wide variety of options, thematically-relevant outfits, and the affordability to pick out a handful of pieces each month, I’m betting that the non-wearable rewards barely register for a lot of players each month.

So what category of item do you typically bring home from the Trading Post first? Do you have a pattern, or does each month’s list of wares give you a 30-day decision paralysis debuff?