A Boy and his Death Rays

Guild Level 25 - Finally!

2012-01-23T00:58:00.000-08:00

1-23-12

Wraith Flight on Demon Soul finally hit level 25 yesterday, with a big sigh of relief from me. I don't have to pay people anymore!! It's not about the gold, but I felt obligated to log in to see if I owed people money, as I didn't want people to have to wait forever to get paid, like the copycat guild Guild Bonus made them do.

Exactly how much gold did I pay out? Given that I leveled it to level 2 myself, that's 16.58 million gxp subtracted from the grand total of 845.67 million gxp, leaving 829.09 million gxp needed to get from level 2 to level 25. Grand total of contributions from all my toons = 150,107,791 subtracted from 845,670,000 = 695,562,209 guild xp that my guildies were paid for. At 1 gold per 1k guild xp, and allowing for people who didn't hit a payment mark, I probably paid out 695 THOUSAND gold over the past year.

In retrospect, I probably should have just paid someone for their high level guild, like E at the Altchronicles did, who I discovered from a comment on a BigBearButt post.

The difference between owning the guild, as opposed to just being a regular member and contributing, is that I can never ever be /gkicked. I am free to set policies, and I have faith that the Cash Flow perk, as well as the gold rewards for guild challenges, will eventually pay me back for the gold I've spent. I'd definitely have to /kick everyone if I decided to go on a long break, as you can be dethroned by members petitioning GM's if you've been offline for more than a month.

I don't know what it is, I'm just highly self-reliant (loner), probably from the influence of Diablo II, where I would buy items I wanted from players using my carefully hoarded gems (P Rubies ftw!), instead of doing countless Baal runs hoping that the items I wanted would drop. In WoW, I pay people to help the guild, instead of just hoping that they would, or having to run dungeons/BG's ad nauseum to benefit them, even when I didn't want to, so they'd stay in the guild.

Being a GM of a guild has drawbacks, you always have to be offering something, be it gold, dungeon runs, PvP, or raiding. If you offer nothing, people will leave.

20 Days of...WoW Blogging Challenge - Day Two

2012-01-22T12:51:00.000-08:00

Why did I start this blog?

I started this blog back in November of '08.....well, not really. Actually, I had a bunch of posts that I had written on my laptop beforehand, and started throwing them up there when I finally got around to making my blog. That's why there's about 50 posts within the first 3 days. The introduction was actually written a year before that. :)

Why do bloggers write? It's usually for a multitude of reasons, not just one. I had been reading BigRedKitty for a while beforehand, and BRK's sheer joie de vivre in playing his hunter was infectious. I've always enjoyed writing, and really like teaching/sharing my knowledge with others. The best way to learn is to teach, as by going over a subject from the ground up, you often learn surprising new things. I had noticed that nobody really talked about the Engineering profession, treating it like a bastard crafting profession, and that annoyed me. Ever since my 4th toon picked up the Engineering profession, I was hooked. I dropped max level herbalism on Bloodshrike to take it up, and haven't looked back. As of right now, 26 of my 30 toons are engineers, with only my priests and my mage Banesidhe not having the engineering skill (Priests have Levitate/Resurrection, Bane had too many hard to find enchanting/tailoring recipes to give up).

So, I started a blog with the intent of perhaps swaying people's opinions towards engineering, through the enthusiasm I showed for it in my posts. That's the reason for the blog title, as well as the picture.

The blog is also my release for stress, such as when my guild bank on Darrowmere got items ninja'd from it. As a Spider Robinson quote says, "Shared pain is lessened; shared joy, increased — thus do we refute entropy." Just typing out my feelings and thoughts is a release in itself, and if people comment, that's a bonus.

20 Days of...WoW Blogging Challenge - Day One

2012-01-21T19:50:00.000-08:00

I was blog-crawling the other day, and somehow I ended up at the Dwarven Battle Medic. Looking through his previous posts, I stumbled on the 20 Days of...challenge, originally presented by Saga of Spellbound over a year ago.

The idea seems fun, so I'm gonna try it. Given that my posting has slowed to about once a month, this'll serve as a goad to get the creative juices flowing.

Who am I?
I'd have to say my first toon is Bloodshrike, a Troll Hunter on Demon Soul. I was wooed into playing WoW by a friend at work, after years of resisting. Not because I didn't think I'd like it, quite the opposite. When I play a game, I stay for the long haul. But, after 7 years of playing Diablo II, developing variant builds for classes (Crushplosive archers for all class types), and posting on the forums, it was time for a change. From the first moment I logged in, I was enthralled. The ability to look up, down, around....which happened a lot, often unintentionally, as I had changed the controls to have my mouse used for movement, which I was used to on Diablo II. But once I figured that out, I was off and questing. I avoided the AH at first, but got used to it after a while, and my 4th alt Banesidhe actually funded a lot of my professions, using gold gained from selling enchanting mats to buy mats for engineering/blacksmithing.

Bloodshrike has been my nom de guerre for a while now, ever since reading the Westmark novels by Lloyd Alexander, and feeling curious about the name "Shrike." The blood got tacked on to the front of it, and I've been Bloodshrike while playing Half-life, Halo, Diablo, and now WoW.

Blood is certainly my achievement whore, but I hesitate on calling any of the toons I play my "main." I don't RP, I don't identify strongly with any one toon, I just like playing them all. I've got at least 3 or more (cough, hunters) of each class, and enjoy them equally.

On Leveling

2012-01-18T12:38:00.000-08:00

1-18-12

The Grumpy Elf has some very thought-provoking posts up on his blog, A New Leveling Model and Is the Leveling Model Dated in particular caught my eye. I do like a lot of what he's advocating, but I'd like to offer a caveat (well, two actually).

Talents - One of the reasons for gradually unlocking spells and abilities is to let new players get accustomed to them. I don't know about you, but I use more than 4 abilities when playing. Hell, I have more than 20 abilities usually mapped to my left hand, and those are the ones that I consider using regularly, or at least in specific situations that pop up fairly often. Granted, I have an odd setup, using 1-6, Q-T, A-G,Z-B, hitting all of them with my left hand, with a bunch of them having Alt functions macro bound to them. My right hand is used for movement and target selection with the mouse.
Dumping all the spells available to an 85 on a fresh new player would be overwhelming, especially if they used the default WASD setup that Blizzard gives them. "I'm supposed to use ALL of these spells? How am I supposed to hit them if my left hand is stuck hitting those 4 keys??? Bugger this, I'm gonna go play Farmville instead!"

Altoholics - I have 30 toons that I am un-concentrated on leveling, at a veryyy relaxed pace. I would like to offer an extension of the Grumpy Elf's thoughts, in that quests/reputations credit should be account wide if this new model goes through. I've got 8 85's, and have only done the Tol Barad dailies to completion on 6 of them. Since all your toons would be level 85, gear would not be over-powered, so there would no reason for currency that one toon has acquired not to be used by others. For example, the Crocolisk daily in Tol Barad is slightly irritating for me to do, since I want to skin the damn things for Savage Leather. But my priest Burizadokyan(JC/Alch) and warlock Bonescourge (Scribe/Eng) can't do that, and it wouldn't be feasible to log out, and log back in with my skinner. Since my rogue Thrillkiller is my skinner, and has done everything I want to do in Tol Barad, why not allow him to gain Tol Barad Commendations, and let Bone or Bur spend them? You could have an account wide reputation level, but you'd still have to put in the time to do dailies on at least one toon for the currency. You could do the dailies on more than one toon if wanted/needed, but...speaking from experience, that wears you down and burns you out.

Anyways, those are my thoughts. Cheers!

Not Impressed

2011-12-15T21:43:00.000-08:00

12/15/11

It's time for the Feast of Winter Veil once again, but with a twist. For long-time players, we're used to the Greench in the Alterac Mountains being a level 40ish elite, and a pushover. Do it once to get the achievement, and don't bother with it again.

This year, however, Blizzard decided to make the Greench into a mini-boss, but, and here's the kicker, not in its own mini-dungeon that you can queue for. Instead, you pick up the daily quest in Org, then take a zeppelin or get a port to Eastern Kingdoms (I'd advise getting one to SMC, since it's really close to the portal to the UC courtyard in the throne room). Once you're over there, go to the Alterac Mountains, where you find a revamped Greench, boss level with over 3.5 million hitpoints. I suppose you could probably solo it, if you use some strategy, but as of right now, there's usually people killing him already, so you can usually just leech off their kills, and get the credit for the daily without firing off a spell. What I'm worried about is if/when people get tired of this extra hassle, and stop going over there, making it a lot harder for altoholics to get this done.

If you're an altoholic, and plan on coming back daily, set your hearth really close to the Alterac mountains (Tarren Mill for Horde), so you can skip a lot of travel time on your alts. Since you have to be level 80 for the daily anyway, you can get a Dalaran Ring, or a teleport cloak to quickly zip you back to....Orgrimmar. Aargh, this would suck if I had high level Alliance toons, since their teleport cloaks and Ring would only bring them quickly to Stormwind, not Ironforge.

Here's what I don't get. I've logged on faithfully for at least 4 years now to get my Winter Veil present from under the tree, which I later received a Feat of Strength for. Feats of Strength are achievements which are damn near impossible to get later on. Like the events that led to the Shattering, with the elemental invasions going on every few hours non-stop, it gives you a sense of history in your character. To have that given out to a player that only started playing a few months ago kinda defeats the purpose, don't ya think?

I guess I'm just annoyed at the multitude of backward changes to the holiday, and the lack of a present that I'd actually WANT (c'mon, a sweater, REALLY?).

Gone Fishin'

2011-12-06T12:43:00.000-08:00

12/6/11

The Darkmoon Fair Island is awesome!!! Not just because of the rewards from the vendors, not only for the chance to gain rep with the faction easily, but because of the fishing opportunities. You can literally just fish the Shipwreck Debris pools to farm mats for all professions. Embersilk cloth drops a ton, plus Heavy Savage Leather, Pyrite, Obsidium, and Elementium ore. You even get Cataclysm herbs from them too. And btw, don't bother buying the items needed for the eating/drinking Achievement, you'll get more than plenty from the Sealed Crates. Clicky clicky, check the drop rates....34% chance to get 8-12 Embersilk Cloth per Crate? Yes please!

Hey, if you try your luck at open water fishing, you still might come away a winner. Ghostcrawler promised me a pony is not only an achievement, it's the literal truth. Just steps away from from the petting stables, you come to open water. While you'll mainly catch Oily Blackmouth, Firefin Snapper, and other vanilla fish, you have a verrry slight chance of getting an adorable pet, the Sea Pony.

If you are fishing from the pools of Shipwreck Debris, be aware that they ring the entire island, as well as being located at each of the smaller islands shown on the map. Elixir of Water Walking, Path of Frost (DK), Water Walking (Shaman), will help you make fast circuits of all the pool locations. BTW, the Elixirs of Water Walking will sell extremely well on the AH, at least 20 gold for a 5 stack.

Edit: I got my Pony, and the Menagerie achievement along with it!! I was mistaken, apparently you can get them in the pools of Shipwreck Debris too.

I was Affirmed against my will!

2011-11-10T18:33:00.000-08:00

11-10-11

I'm taking a Humanities course for my pre-req's, and as a part of a warm-up for our test, we were supposed to tell a little bit about what we think about creativity/art/imagination and what it means to us. I was starting to share that I possess no imagination whatsoever, when all of a sudden people started speaking up for me. "On the first day of class, we were supposed to make name tags by tearing up pieces of paper, and he made an origami frog." "He's shared some very interesting stuff in class."

I wasn't trolling for compliments, but it was nice to hear. What I wanted to convey was that I don't really have much of what is considered classical "artistic talent." I can't really picture anyone's face in my mind, even people I've known all my life. Also, my stick figures are crooked, and my handwriting is atrocious. No hope for painting for me. :)
While I took piano for 6 years growing up, I had to memorize each piece before playing it, unlike my sisters, who could just look at a hymn, see that it was in the key of B minor, and play it perfectly for church.

However, I do have some talents in writing, and definitely am talented in video games and video game economics. I'm comfortable admitting my shortcomings, instead of trying to mask or cover them up. I'd rather concentrate on what I do have talent for instead.

We also learned there are two definitions for Artists. The narrow sense is that they are professional artists who get paid for what they do. The broader view is that we are all artists, living creatively each day. As long as you put all of yourself into what you're doing, you're creating art.

You can create art by having a beautiful tackle, preparing a tasty meal, or having such a connection to a game that it becomes an extension of your own body. I'm reminded of seeing an arena match between my Rogue partner (Vicious geared) against a Blood DK who was Conquest geared. They were both so familiar with their classes that it went on for 30 minutes before the Blood DK finally won. I'm sure the DK's partner was bored outta his mind, but I was fascinated. Having so many alts means that often I forget some of my classes skills, but seeing someone utilize all of them so effectively is like seeing a master at work.

So get out there and make some art in your life!

P.S. By request, here's a pic of the frog. :)

Glyphing 101

2011-09-20T03:14:00.000-07:00

9-20-2011
Originally, this was gonna be called "Scribbling fer fun an profits," done entirely in the style of Ratshag, just for the hell of it.

7-14-2011
Inscriptionist....scripter.....inscriber.....scriber...scrivener....shriner....bugger it, I calls meself a scribbler. The scribblin' perfession be a diffrent beast altogethers, far from the more genteel craftifications of blacksmithies, tailorerers, an them buggers what smush leather together and calls it armor.

And then I discovered he had done it already, in his own inimitable style. So, scratch that, I'll just do in my own way.

That's 6 full 32 slot inscription bags, with an additional 12 slots on the 7th. 6x32=192+12=204 different Northrend inscription research/Books of Glyph Mastery, Techniques, and minor inscription research glyphs.

Now, you've done all your research, learned the techniques, and read the books.....but what you haven't done is actually make gold with your profession. You've tried, but never seem to make a lot of sales. It's confusing, because you always give the customers a great discount, compared to those other scribes who only undercut each other by 1 freakin' copper, just to get their glyphs at the top of the list.

Sit back, while I illuminate the situation.
Ur doeing it wrong!
The thing about glyphs and enchanting scrolls is that they have NO sales price to vendors. Therefore, their posting cost to the Auction House is only 1 silver. 12 hours, 24 hours, 48 hours.....only 1 silver. This allows you to post, then cancel and re-post any time you get undercut by a competitor, at a very minimal cost to you. Compare that to Blacksmithing, where the vendor price of the armor and weapons you make are so high that the deposit cost at the AH, even for 12 hours, is still over 1-2 gold apiece. Contrast that to 4 gold TOTAL for posting 400 glyphs, and you'll start to realize that the margins are higher, and the overhead costs are a lot more lenient than the other crafting professions (not including enchanting).

Like the Industrial Revolutions effects on industry, so too is the effects of addons and macros on crafting and making gold in WoW. Even having a macro that does "/Cast milling /use Stormvine /use Whiptail..../use etc" can save you a lot of time, just by not having to click on each stack that you want to mill, as long as they're in stacks of at least 5. If the macro follows its script, and encounters a stack of less than 5 herbs, it won't allow you to mill, even though there are full stacks of a herb further down the macro list.

But, I digress. The macros will only save you time, the addon(s) will make you money. The two main ones I use are TSM and Auctionator. Edit - I also remember I use Millhelp and Millhelp_Glyphs, which I guess is included in Millhelp. If you look at the first image, you can see it displaying the inks/pigments needed to make the glyph, which is very useful.

TSM (TradeSkillMaster) is probably under-utilized by me, as I only use it for posting and cancelling auctions, not the crafting queues that Mysscia has told me about. But.....for posting and cancelling, it's unrivaled. Set up your groups of items, with posting time, undercut amount, minimum price you'll sell at, and maximum posting amount (for when nobody else is in that market, heh!).

Auctionator is the addon I use for storing my search lists. It searches for what you have specified, then displays them in descending order of price per 1 unit, whether it's a single or full stack. The great part of this is the ability to quickly buy out auctions, without the annoying confirmation that you'd have with the standard Blizzard UI. The drawback is that it doesn't show the bid amount, only the buyout. Also, it doesn't show the time left, which could save you gold if you saw the item only had a short time left. Cancelling and re-posting with Auctionator....I wouldn't. The anonymity of Auctionator doesn't let you know who you're going against in that particular market, which can be verrrry important.

Dealing with Competition
There are a few types of competitors.
1) Power-levelers.
These people are leveling inscription to get to the max level, primarily with trainer taught recipes. If you decide to sell trainer taught glyphs, these are the guys that will mess you up. If you post glyphs in an open market at 250 gold each, these guys will come along and post at 10 gold each, even though the mats cost more than that.
2)"Happy, freinly peoples" - as Gevlon would say.
These people want to supply glyphs at a cost only slightly high than the material cost. They'll sell research/book taught glyphs at a much lower price than you would prefer, and mess up glyphs markets for a long time, as the next guy will post lower than them.
3) The One-percenter.
When I first started posting (manually, took me forever to post a hundred glyphs), I hated the people that would undercut me by 1 copper. "It's not fair, they'd post higher if they could." - is how I felt.
But in actuality, these are the scribes you want to be in competition with. With a 1 copper undercut, it would take 1000 undercuts to drop the market price by 1 gold. With the first 2 types, their drastic undercuts affect the market for a long time, until either a scribe buys all the glyphs to reset the market, or people stop posting, leaving the market empty for the next scribe to post at their preferred price point.

One last thing about 1-percenters. They are the ONLY safe bet to buy out when you want to reset the market. Since they're almost chained to using their set discount with using an addon, they will rarely if never undercut by the huge amounts the other classes of scribes do. And that's why I like TSM, since it shows me the other people in the market. If I have to buy out 3 glyphs at 50 gold each from a percenter, to reset the market up to 300 gold, so be it. But I'll be damned at buying 6 glyphs at 35 gold each from powerleveler who did 1 northrend research on his way up to max level, he'll just post again at the same ridiculous price point. Buyout percenters when it's feasible, undercut the noobs, and you'll gain power over a ton of markets.

Shoot, this is turning into a wall of text, but....
Stalking the Competition
Add everyone you see posting in your glyph markets to your friends list. If they do huge undercuts, add a note to that person like "idiot glypher." One-percenters would be "glypher." If you notice them come on when you're posting, do another posting scan to see if you need to undercut them when they're done. Scribes that are serious competition could also be added to your alts friends list, just so you'd know if you might want to jump back and re-post. This is another reason to favor TSM over Auctionator, since the auctions shown in Auctionator are anonymous.

Supplies and Demand
I'm trying to keep around 6-10 of each of the 204 glyphs, so I don't run out, and cause a hole in my bags. This allows me to quickly post when I get on, then run a cancel scan to clean up the remnants of my last post. It's a lot better to get your stuff to the front of the market, rather than cancelling when you first get on, waiting for the 8-10 minutes for your 400+ glyphs (I usually only post 2 of each glyph) to dribble in at 50 items per one minute mail scan, then posting for the first time that day.

Yup, it's a lot of info, but it can pay off.

1 MILLION DOLLARS!!!! I mean, gold.

2011-08-30T03:17:00.000-07:00

8/30/2011

It's been a while since my last post. I just haven't really felt like I had anything noteworthy to talk about. However, this happened.....

So, as to the title of the post, yup, I dinged 1 million gold on 8/18, despite paying out a crapload of gold to my guild members in Wraith Flight (lvl 12). As a matter of fact, I'm at about 1,075,000 gold right now, only a few days later.

In contrast, Warshrike on Daggerspine just dinged level 8, and I've gone from about 230k gold there, down to about 125 k. I'm not as vigilant about posting, usually only once every couple of days with glyphs and enchanting scrolls. Plus, my scribe Doomslinger is only level 60, so I haven't gotten to the Northrend Research recipes.

Psychrometrics on Darrowmere is level 3, at 160k gold. I'm usually burnt out after doing Horde stuff on Demon Soul, so unless the fishing or cooking daily is something I need for their respective achievements, I don't bother.

BTW, there are several members in all three guilds at between 6 to 12 million guild xp. At my ratio of 1 gold per 1k guild xp, that's between 6 to 12 thousand gold that I've paid to each of those members (excluding Mysscia, who has adamantly refused payment).

So, now what? What would YOU do with a million gold? My main Bloodshrike is a 525 alchemist and 525 Archaeologist, and after a mind-melting 40 hours of digging up fragments, he haz the Sandstone Drake recipe. I already made one for myself, and am saving it for my 100th mount, since I'm currently at 98.

Buying weapons/armor? Since my warrior Bullkathos is level 85 with 525 Blacksmithing, why would I pay for weapons when I can make them myself if I stop being a lazy altoholic and actually run dungeons for Chaos Orbs?

I already buy all my non-mage alts the Dalaran Teleport rings when they ding level 80, but since Burizadokyan just got to 80, I only have 3 more alts on Demon Soul to get it for. I don't buy the rings for the achievement, I get them for the ability of traveling back to Dalaran, then to Orgrimmar, while allowing me to set my hearth someplace else.

I could buy them all the Mammoth vendor mount, for the ease of selling and repair when running dungeons back to back. However, the Guild Page is a pretty cheap pet AND vendor at 300 gold, AND you can summon them inside dungeons if needed.

Seriously, I am looking for opinions on what you would do with the gold. Give huge chunks of it away to low levels? Make up contests in your guild with cash prizes? Offer a prize in Trade Chat to the person with the highest total engineering recipes learned for their level range? (I've already done something similar to that when cleaning out AH alts on other servers).

Midsummer Fire Festival 2011

2011-06-22T04:33:00.000-07:00

6-22-11

Wowinsider has a great write-up on the achievement, so I'm not gonna add much to it.

All I have to add is that it's wayyyy easier to do the daily torch juggling in Thunder Bluff for Horde, and either Exodar or Ironforge for Alliance. My computer is decent, and I've done the juggling daily at least 100 times, but a tiny bit of lag in Orgrimmar will mess you up big time. Not to mention, Thunder Bluff has a smaller area in which to juggle, so you usually have high arcs, not wimpy 30 degree arcs like in Org. The contrast between the torch shadow and ground is also superior in those cities too, Orgrimmar and Stormwind will have you lose sight of the shadow sometimes.

I figure it's also a good time to contrast my progress (or lack thereof) in a full year, since I had a checkpoint of it last year too.

Then (2010) and Now (2011)

Demon Soul
Bloodshrike - 80 now 85
Bullkathos - 73 now 85
Thrillkiller -68 now 85
Bonescourge - 53 now 73
Banesidhe - 73 now 85
Kukoshakaku - 51 now 66
Clockwrknyt - 58 now 85
Burizadokyan- 41 now 67
Morticide - 34 now 61
Pallormortis -80 now 85

Daggerspine
Clockwrkmage -60 now 74
Preyonyou - 37 now 55
Tsuris - 52 now 64
Aosdanasaoi - 50 now 63
Hangfire - 42 now 60
Panzergishi - 49 now 63
Kishigishi - 50 now 63
Ryoushigishi -52 now 63
Gwiddonyn - 46 now 62
Doomslinger - 39 now 55

Darrowmere
Bloodshrike - 49 now 67
Clockwrkmage -31 now 57
Psilentkill - 37 now 51
Didactylos - 27 now 42
Gavelofpain - 29 now 45
Wartraveler - 28 now 44
Misericorde - 30 now 45
Ghostflame - 25 now 43
Gimmershred - 29 now 43
Annihilus - 26 now 42

Hide yo wife, hide yo kids, they robbin' everybody out here!

2011-05-28T07:35:00.000-07:00

Blaaargh.......that's how I feel. I don't check the log on my guild tabs that often, because only the officers (me) and GM (me again) have access to the guild bank. Or so I thought. Apparently, over the past week, 2 members of the guild took advantage of a glitch that must have happened. I know I double and triple-checked access for each rank on the guild tabs before I first started inviting people into the guild, but I just found out that Veteran rank had access to all tabs, and were able to withdraw 2 stacks a day. Dasoidon and Demolisher exploited that to the fullest, taking out whatever they pleased. The gold cost of it all doesn't worry me that much, it's the availability of the quest items that is fucking annoying.

I scanned the AH for a long period of time for deals on some of those items, especially the Arcane Tomes, and for someone to just blatantly take them ALL? There's no excuse for it. You'd only need about 60 of them to go from neutral to exalted, I believe, so they just took them to sell.

I can't explain what happened. I know I AM a forgetful person, so I cope by checking and re-checking things that are important to me. I can't believe I would do something so stupid as to leave one rank with open access. Besides, as I recall, I think you'd have to actively enable that, and I know I didn't do that. All I can think is that they either found out a hack to get in, or there was a glitch in one of the patches that enabled that rank to have guild access.

Demolisher had earned over 1.75 million guild xp, and had been paid 1,750 gold for doing that. Dasoidon had earned 250 k guild xp, and had been paid 250 gold for that. Not only that, but since Dasoidon had invited Demolisher into the guild, another little bonus I offer is that if you recruit someone, and they get 1 million gxp, you get a 500 gold bonus. Dasoidon had been paid that.

I just feel betrayed, and angry. It's like inviting neighborhood kids to your house to do work for you, paying them triple what they would normally get, and then you find out that they stole your coin collection to go buy some Mountain Dew. They have no idea what you went through to get it, what it's even worth, they only know that it will get them a little bit of satisfaction.

UPDATE: I talked to Demolisher in-game about it, and he said he was planning on surprising us by putting epic items back into the guild bank, since he had used the items he got out to level his Blacksmithing. I've never asked for ANYTHING from guild members though. You keep your items, and I keep mine, and everyones's happy.
In retrospect, I see he took out stuff that he could use for his profession, but like Mysscia said, he should have known to ask before taking out the truesilver bars and tons of volatiles. I wish him luck in his next guild, and am sorry that this episode happened.

I GOT MY STUFF BACK!!!

As for Dasoidon, in my mind, there's no excuse for what he did.

Apparently, I'm the Asshole

2011-05-24T04:06:00.000-07:00

5-24-2011

One of the funniest things about WoW is how people behave in the game. You can troll trade chat all day, and you'll have at least some people lol'ing at what you say. But dare to correct them on grammar or spelling, and they'll fly into a frothing rage, hell-bent on making you pay for opening your mouth.

My comment was innocous enough, just a minor correction. Hell, I wasn't even doing the regular "It's ROGUE, not rouge" thing. But I'm the insensitive person in this minor drama, I realize now. By rectifying what the first person said, I made them look foolish, and that's an unforgiveable insult to some of these people. After all, WoW rep is almost like real life reputation. Gotta represent!
Oh, if anyone is interested, remember this site? You'll identify many of your fellow players there.

Children's Week 2011 wrap-up

2011-05-08T12:12:00.000-07:00

5-8-2011

Don't forget to check WowInsider for the actual achievements of the holiday. Well, this year kind of sucked. I meant to get all the pets that my toons were able to get, but procrastinated, and ran out of time. I got all 10 of my toons on Darrowmere an Orgrimmar pet, and Bloodshrike got a Shattrath pet. Doomslinger and Tsuris on Daggerspine got a Stormwind pet, and Tsuris also got one of the Shattrath pets. On Demon Soul, Bloodshrike/Bullkathos/Thrillkiller/Bonescourge/Banesidhe did all the orphan quests (Bone is only 69, so he couldn't do the Dalaran quest-line). So 17 toons out of 30 did do the quests, and I got 28 new pets. Being an altoholic is a bit exhausting sometimes.

For the Orgrimmar/Stormwind quests, you have a vehicle ride quest, a visit to a fallen leader in another city (TB/IF), and then you have to continent hop to visit a faction leader (Sylvanas, Malfurion). When you're done with those, you come back to Org/SW, and have to get ice cream and fly a kite with your orphan before you buy a sword rack and turn it in to be able to pick your pet. Unless you have a mage traveling with you, this will probably take you at least 45 minutes to an hour to accomplish.

For the Shattrath quests, Horde goes to the Dark Portal/Sporeggar/Throne of Elements/Caverns of Time/Silvermoon City. Alliance goes to the Dark Portal/Auchindoun/Aeris Landing in Nagrand/Caverns of Time/Exodar.

(Set your Hearth to Orgrimmar).
Horde route doing both Orgrimmar and Shatt orphans together. Azshara for riding the rocket/Org/portal in Cleft of Shadows to Dark Portal in Blasted Lands/Shattrath, pick up the Orphan quests there/portal in Shatt to Org, get back to the Dark Portal in Hellfire/take a windrider to Zabra'jin in Zangarmarsh to get to Sporeggar for Hch'uu/then fly to the Throne of Elements. After that, use your Dalaran teleport ring or Gadgetzan teleport to get to Tanaris to visit the Caverns of Time (if you don't have either of those, take the portal in Shatt back to Orgrimmar to get a port from a mage to Dalaran). Hearth to Orgrimmar, and either get a port, or use the zeppelin to get to Brill so you can go to Silvermoon City to rock out with the Elite Tauren Chieftains. Ride back north to the teleport to UC, then go visit Sylvanas. Go back to the Mage quarter to the portal to Blasted Lands, go through the Dark Portal, fly to Shattrath, and go turn in your Blood Elf orphan. Take the portal in Shatt to Org, then either get a port or fly to Thunderbluff. Ride east to Red Rocks to honor Cairne Bloodhoof, then take the nearest windrider back to Orgrimmar (for those with flying, you can fly over the mountains to your east to the Hunter's Hill flightpoint). Go get Ice Cream, fly a kite, pick up the sword rack, get your choice of pets.

(Set your Hearth to Stormwind).
Alliance route doing both Stormwind and Shatt orphans together. Fly to Westfall for your Chopper ride, then come back to Stormwind. Fly or get a port to Ironforge to visit King Magni Bronzebeard, then take the portal in the Mystic Ward to Blasted Lands, go through the Dark Portal, and fly to Shattrath. Pick up your Draenai orphan, then go through the portal in Shatt to Stormwind. Walk down the mage tower to the portal to Blasted Lands, and go to the Dark Portal in Hellfire. Take a windrider to Allerian Stronghold in Terrokar Forest, then fly to the middle of Auchindoun. Fly back to Allerian Stronghold, then take a windrider to Telaar in Nagrand. Fly to Aeris Landing (the Consortium guys), and talk to Jheel. After that, use your Dalaran teleport ring or Gadgetzan teleport to get to Tanaris to visit the Caverns of Time(if you don't have either of those, take the portal in Shatt back to Stormwind to get a port from a mage to Dalaran). Following all that, it's time to take a boat or get a port to Darnassus to visit Malfurion Stormrage. Don't leave the Temple of the Moon, just take the portal there directly to the Exodar, then follow the spiral walkway all the way down to visit O'ros. He gives you a follow-up quest to visit the Farseer in the Exodar. Go to the mage/portal trainers in the Exodar, and take the portal to Blasted Lands/Dark Portal to take a windrider to Shattrath. Turn in your Draenai Orphan for your pet. Take the portal in Shattrath back to Stormwind, get ice cream, fly a kite, pick up a sword rack, and finally turn in the orphan for your pet.
______________________________________________________________________________
(Disclaimer - Be very, VERY careful in picking your orphan in Dalaran. Check through your pets to see if you have either the Curious Wolvar Pup, or the Curious Oracle Hatchling. Don't pick up the whistle for an orphan that you already have, or all you have to look forward to is an awesome 5 (five) gold reward.)

For the Dalaran quests, there's no variance between Horde or Alliance. I usually went through this route. For the Oracle orphan - Dalaran to Grizzlemaw in Grizzly Hills/Bronze Dragonshrine in Dragonblight/then Winterfin Retreat in Borean Tundra. After that, the Oracle Orphan sends you to Shaper's Terrace through Sholazar Basin, then Alexstrasza in Dragonblight.

For the Wolvar Orphan - Dalaran to Grizzlemaw in Grizzly Hills/Bronze Dragonshrine in Dragonblight/then Snowfall Glade in Dragonblight. After that, go back to Alexstrasza in Dragonblight, and THEN go to Sholozar Basin to meet Hemet Nessingwary .

When those quests are done, it's back to Dalaran to fly a kite at the Wonderworks, and you finally get to turn in the orphan. You recieve your pet through the mail in a few moments, so don't worry about not getting it from the Matron.

Noblegarden Slacker

2011-04-25T14:27:00.000-07:00

4-25-11

I did a write-up for altoholics doing Noblegarden last year, so I'll just link that post.

Even though I had a whole year to do Desert Rose on 6 toons on Darrowmere, I only recently got Clockwrkmage and Psilentkill the titles. I guess I just haven't cared to run them around to the different zones.

But if you want a title for your characters, this is THE 2nd easiest one to get, other than "The Patient." Be glad to get it while you can, because next week is Children's Week, which has the dreaded achievement "School of Hard Knocks." I'll take the orphans out on all 30 of my toons to work toward Veteran Nanny, but I'll only concentrate on the toons that are high enough for Utgarde Pinnacle to do the School of Hard Knocks.

Weapons make the Man (or Woman)

2011-04-21T17:06:00.000-07:00

Ever since Bloodshrike (hunter), Pallormortis (DK), and Banesidhe (mage) hit 85, I started doing the Tol Barad dailies. Bloodshrike got a pole-arm, Pallormortis got a sword, and Banesidhe got a kick-ass staff. Most of the weapons from the quartermaster are ilevel 346 versions of the ilevel 333 weapons given from this quest in Twilight Highlands.

When I first started doing them, I was totally excited about the rewards. Heroic level weapons, without having to step foot in dungeons? Sweet! Then, my paladin Clockworknyt, my warrior Bullkathos, and my rogue Thrillkiller hit 85, and started questing there, and I realized, "what the hell am I doing?"

Here's the breakdown on getting commendations to buy stuff from the quartermasters. There's the weekly PvP quest, which gives 3 commendations and 200 honor once a week.

In the Northern part, there's 6 daily quests that you can complete for 6 commendations (for the most part). You can usually pick up another 3 commendations if you log in at 3 AM (after having done the 6 dailies earlier than 3 am), when they have quest givers switch their dailies, before the daily quest reset at 4 AM.

In the Southern area, if your faction wins the battle, you can pick up 3 static daily quests, and then 3 rotating dailies that involve collecting quest items, killing mobs, and killing a boss mob. The thing is, the rotating dailies CAN change each time your faction wins TB that day, so you can check back each time to see if you can complete more quests.

However, it takes a while to do some of the quests, especially the ones that have a high mob kill count. If you figure a half hour each for Northern and Southern, that would be an hour for each toon. Figure 12 commendations for a toon on normal days, 1 hour spent. With 85 needed for a ilevel 346 weapon, that's at LEAST 1 solid week of dailies, with 6 to 7 hours spent.
With 6 85's, that's not happening. Especially if you want to get the 200 commendation Drake, you'll hate yourself for wasting the 85 commendations.

Enter Blacksmithing. As long as you have the mats, all you have to do is pay the BS for the Chaos Orbs, and you get instant high-level weapons. The reason I'm going on about weapons is because without them, it feels like your fighting monsters with a dull butter knife. My rogue Thrillkiller had dual level 81 blues, and trying to take on even one mob in Tol Barad would take me down to 1/4 health. Even my mage had more killing power and survivability when he first started doing those dailies.

So I'm going to change my tactics.
1)No more saving for the weapons, just the mount.
2)Take any quest that only asks you to kill a named mob.
3)Avoid almost any quest that has a high kill count. The only exception would be the kill count quests in the Southern Peninsula that are coupled with going into the caves for the named bosses. Avoid the infantry kills, take the crocolisk quest.

This should reduce the amount of time spent on each toon from 1 hour to probably 25 minutes, with only a small loss of commendations.

A Dirty Little Secret

2011-03-22T07:11:00.000-07:00

3-22-11

Don't tell anyone, ok? (looks around nervously)

I actually like questing in WoW. Unlike about 95% of the population, I quest to level up. On each of the 3 servers that I have guilds on, it feels like I have to beg, plead, cajole, or even threaten to get people to get quests done to get guild xp. Since a lot of them don't bother trying to group together to do BG's or dungeons, questing is their only option to actually contribute to the guild, and get paid for doing so.

I've even dropped the requirements to get paid, from 250 gold each 250k gxp, to 50 gold per 50k gxp. This allows lower level toons to get paid much more regularly.

Despite all that, on Demon Soul, with my level 4, 80 member guild, probably about 20 of the members are still at 0 gxp. One dear little frost mage logs in daily to do a few solo BG's, doesn't say anything, then bounces.

To me, leveling solo thru dungeons or battlegrounds is boring. Yes, questing can be boring too, but every so often you'll stumble across a quest that makes you laugh, or makes you sad, but in a good way (Little Pamela's quests in Darrowshire for example).

The original thought for this post was questing. I have kept all my toons in Orgrimmar or Stormwind for the past 3-4 months now, with only sporadic forays by select toons to actually go questing in zones, just so I could level them all slowly with the daily cooking and fishing quests. Yup, of the 3 85's, and 3 84's on Demon Soul, none of them except Pallormortis has done any serious questing in Cataclysm zones, and Pallor only did Mount Hyjal and Uldum by the time he dinged. I think it's time for a change.

I'm going to make a point to enjoy the game again, instead of just having each day be about the same dailies x20 for each server.

Surprisingly, I'm not going to drop my policy of paying guild members for their contributions to the guild. I have way too much gold, won't ever spend it all, and despite being jaded from being constantly exposed to the trollish behaviour of immature people (see Penny Arcade link), I......still like helping people.

However, I don't like being used. When a guildy will constantly ask for a port, and I'm playing my warrior, that's kind of annoying. Or begging for gold/bags, that stuff drives me up a wall. But I love explaining how to do a quest, how to make gold, how to grind rep, where to find a difficult NPC, or where to go to find how to spec their class.

All I ask for is appreciation, just a simple thank you. I stopped answering questions in Trade long ago, those little attention-deficit moon units will spam a question, ask why nobody answers it after 30 seconds, then won't even say "thanks" after you do give them an answer. WE DON'T GET PAID TO HOLD YOUR HAND, WE'RE TRYING TO ENJOY OURSELVES TOO!

What do YOU call it? Part One

2011-03-14T20:35:00.000-07:00

3-14-11

So, I'm taking a night Economics class, and as an exercise for myself, I wanted to share some terms that I've learned, and how they can relate to WoW. The first definition is the textbook one, the second is the Warcraft equivalent.

Scarcity -
1. The limited nature of society's resources.
2. The limit of a server's materials.

Economics -
1. The study of how society manages its scarce resources.
2. The study of how servers use or sell the materials that are farmed.

Efficiency -
1. The property of society getting the most it can from its scarce resources.
2. This is shown by the "invisible hand" of the Auction House regulating prices. If materials are easy to get, the price will steadily drop from the initially high price. If the material is rare, but the AH price gets too high from gold-gouging Goblins, players won't buy it, and the price will fall to a lower equilibrium so the seller doesn't keep wasting deposit fees.

Equality -
1. The property of distributing economic property uniformly among members of society.
2. No WoW equivalent.

Opportunity Cost -
1. Whatever must be given up to obtain some item.
2. Grinding rep, gold, winning battlegrounds.....mainly it equals time.

Rational People -
1. People who systematically and purposefully do the best they can to achieve their objectives.
2. Playing the Auction House, doing dailies every day to get rep with a faction, and those who research to find the best rotation/spec/gems/glyphs/equipment for playing. Players who aren't Morons & Slackers, as Gevlon would say.

Social, gold, and drama

2011-03-08T21:26:00.000-08:00

3-8-11

I recently found the magic word to recruiting people was "social." I know I'm not as anti-social or introverted as Gevlon seems to be, but I had thought that just talking about how much gold they could make by leveling alts through my guild would be enough to get people to join. Boy, was I wrong.

People in trade chat talk about how broke they are, but will do nothing to change that. You can tell them to take up dual-gathering, do more quests, or even to loot everything and sell it to the vendor, and they will just continue on as they have been, ignoring everything that you've told them.

You can tell them that they'd make 10,000 gold from leveling from 60 to 85 in your guild, based on the 40 million plus xp that they'd need to get them to 85, and they would only be interested in your guild level.

You will find very few people in the game who are actually, truly interested in making gold. In most cases, not because they need it, but because it's almost a mini-game within WoW itself. Mysscia in my baby Horde guild on Darrowmere is one of the exceptions. I've had fun talking to her since the moment she joined, and she will try out any of the ideas I suggest to her. I told her about the pools of fire in Mt. Hyjal that you could fish for Volatile Fire, and she went and fished there for quite a long stretch of time. I recently told her about the Darkmoon Fair selling herbs from old world, Outlands, and Northrend, and she camped that vendor for the next couple of hours.

I have always stressed that my guild Wraith Flight on Demon Soul was a leveling guild. I made no promises that it was a PvP or raiding guild, but apparently the guild no longer fit 2 members today. One of them left after he had made a very off-color remark, and I had said that this wasn't trade chat. He said "Oh, I didn't know this was one of 'those' guilds," and /gquit.

Another one, Indorath, had been with the guild for a while. He was almost to a million gxp, but apparently he wasn't having fun questing anymore, and wanted to do dungeons. He had also /gquit the guild a few days before based on some drama with another guild member, but because of another member stepping in and mediating, he re-joined.

I had/have no problems with members doing whatever they want, but I'm also going to do what I want, which is to do dailies, post stuff on the AH, and whatever else I feel like doing. I don't want to be pressured into doing dungeons with other guild members, just because they're bored of questing. I've also stayed away from the Cataclysm dungeons because I have heard they take wayyyyy longer than Wrath dungeons, and I can't have another time sink that my OCD mind will be compulsively drawn to do.

I want this guild to be a fun, friendly, mature place to be, with members stepping out to join other guilds after they've gotten to 85 and outgrown questing. I also want it to be an amiable split, no harm, no foul, with them wanting to recommend us to anyone still leveling to 85.

The state of the Guild(s)....or, apparently I'm autistic

2011-03-02T05:49:00.001-08:00

3-2-11

Wraith Flight on Demon Soul recently dinged level 3, helped by my relentless recruiting in trade chat.

/2 Want to earn some extra gold while leveling? I would appreciate the guild xp for my personal guild. I pay 250 gold per 250k gxp. I also pay for all repairs from the guild bank.

I've gotten about 29 members who AREN'T me now, with several high levels who I have paid about 2k gold each during their leveling through Cataclysm zones. I've had quite a few lower level members quit suddenly, when they realized they couldn't just level in dungeons AND get guild xp at the same time, not to mention the low amounts of xp/gxp you get from lower level quests.

I've been greeted with a lot of skepticism, some puzzling questions (see pics), and a general dawning of comprehension about how people level nowadays. Even though Blizzard re-designed all of Azeroth, most low levels seem to level primarily through dungeons, foregoing questing entirely. How do I know this?

Guild xp. Hit your guild icon, select the Roster Tab, and View All Guild Activity. Most low levels that briefly visit my guilds will get a few thousand xp, then stop. They'll still level up, but get no more xp. That means they are either leveling in battlegrounds, or in dungeons, neither of which grants gxp unless they were grouped with 2 other guild members from my guild (as far as I know).

Warshrike on Daggerspine and Psychrometrics on Darrowmere are proving to be a bit harder. On Daggerspine, I think we just have a small Alliance population, so they've already settled into the mega-guilds, and don't want to leave. It could also be that I usually don't log into Daggerspine until late at night, and post my recruitment macro while I'm doing the cooking and fishing dailies.

Psychrometrics on Darrowmere.....despite the fantastic efforts of my one high-level member Mysscia, it's slow-going. I haven't been able to attract any other people willing to grind xp for my guild. Again, I should probably try recruiting earlier in the day.

I've come up with a new macro that I'll be trying out.
/2 Want to earn some extra gold while leveling? I would appreciate the guild xp for my personal guild. I pay 250 gold per 250k gxp. Guild repairs. BTW, you could earn over 10k gold from me while questing from 60-85.

How do I know that? Google "how much experience from 80 to 85," 2nd site, scroll down to the table.

You need 4,722,000 xp to level from 60 to 69, another 17,651,500 xp to get from 70 to 80, and 20,494,000 xp to level 5 levels from 80 to 85. Total is 42,867,500 xp
If you divide by 4 to get guild xp = 10,716,875 gxp. 1000 gold per 1 million gxp, minus losses of xp earned by killing mobs/gathering......it would still be a hefty chunk of gold.

Hopefully that will spark some discussions in trade chat, which will lead to more members for me, once people realize what other guilds aren't doing for them.

Waaaahh!

2011-02-20T12:35:00.000-08:00

2-20-11

I had already talked about some quests getting marked obsolete, but I found some more that are even more of a bummer. It appears that any quest that would make you travel the world was ruthlessly eliminated. In general, I agree with the decision. It wasn't fun picking up a quest in Stranglethorn that told you to go to the Hinterlands, when you had so many more quests left to do in STV. Then, if you put it off until you finished STV, it was already gray, making it next to worthless.

However, in particular.... I for one enjoyed doing 2 particular quest lines, especially since they both shared a couple of zones. The "A Yeti of Your Own" and the quest line that ends with "It's Dangerous to Go Alone" are now marked obsolete, and cannot be completed.

Edit: On further digging, you can still get the Yeti schematic for engineering, and complete the "A Yeti of Your Own" by following the quest line from Lilith the Lithe.

But the Linken quests are gone, which does suck. My girlfriend's 16-year old sister Molly is starting to get into WoW thru seeing her friend play it, and was intensely wanting to see the Linken quests after I had told her about them. She had grown up playing the more recent Zelda games, and was anxious to see Blizzard's homage to them in the game. While they have additional references to other games now, like the Atari Joust! game that you play in Mount Hyjal, nothing comes close to beating Blazerunner to get the Tri-force, and getting the Master Sword and boomerang as quest rewards.

Ding! I leveled my guild!

2011-02-08T04:46:00.000-08:00

Yup, on January 29th, on Demon Soul, I leveled my stand-alone guild. The release date of Cataclysm was December 7th, so after a month and a half, I had accumulated the 16.6 million of guild xp needed to advance to level 2. That's not easy, btw. Here's a link to Wowwiki's guild advancement tracker.

Unless you're a level 85, it feels like any quest you do is a drop in the bucket. My 2 level 85's (Bloodshrike and Pallormortis) get 17,350 guild xp for each of the daily fishing and cooking quests in Orgrimmar and Dalaran, so logging on to them for about 15 minutes to do the quests is usually one of my first concerns.

Granted, I don't spend too long on each character, and since a few of them had recently gotten to 80 before Cataclysm, they were still working on their Crusader titles from the Argent Tournament, which, no matter how high of a level you are, only reward about 5k guild rep.

I am considering outsourcing, though. Basically, advertising in trade "Looking to hire leveling mercenaries, 500 gold per 1 million guild xp, repairs fully covered by the guild." That way, they get to do whatever they like, be it PvP, heroics, or just questing, and as long as it gets guild xp, I'm happy.

I think I'll skip graduation this year

2011-01-24T10:43:00.000-08:00

1-24-11

I was reading J's Cache's archives, and I was struck by something interesting. In Mount Hyjal, the last quest chain you start actually LOCKS you out of gathering in the south-east corner of the zone. The second quest in the chain is Graduation Speech, and for any toon that's a gatherer, you DO NOT WANT to complete it.

There were at least 10 nodes of Obsidium ore there that my DK Pallormortis can no longer obtain, since he did all the quests in the zone. The only benefit you get from doing the rest of the quests in the chain would be XP and gold (duh), and some ilevel 272 green armor from Might of the Firelord. The quest rep isn't enough to tip you over to exalted, you'll still have to run dungeons wearing the Hyjal tabard to get to exalted.

I've only done Hyjal and Uldum with my DK, but I believe I noticed something similar in Uldum. When I was just going there to gather, I seemed to find a lot more nodes on the north side of the Obelisk of the Sun mountain. My memory sucks, so I couldn't tell you when that stopped. Probably after I did most of the Brann quests, but don't quote me on that.

What I'm wondering is......wtf? Why punish people for completing quest chains? I'm all for phasing, and seeing the landscape and structures change as you progress through a zone. I even would like to see more nodes open up as you help clean up a zone, as a reward for doing what you're supposed to do in the game. This basically rewards you for being a half-ass who leaves zones as soon as they ding high enough to go to the next one.

If you think about it, it even rewards gold farmers (the real ones) who powerlevel to the max level as quickly and cheaply as possible, then spend their time gathering to be able to sell to players and the AH.

Didja know?

2011-01-22T12:01:00.000-08:00

1-22-11

Waaaay back when, I had written some posts about faction specific recipes, notably the Kaldorei Spider Kabob recipe quest. I just wanted to inform you that those hard to obtain faction-specific recipes are essentially GONE.
Tasty Lion Steak from a level 30 Alliance quest and the Kaldorei Spider Kabob recipe from a level 1 Night Elf quest have been deemed obsolete, and can no longer be gotten. However, the Moongraze Tenderloin recipe, from a level 4 Draenai quest, can still be gotten, it would just take more time to level a throw-away toon to level 4.

However, if you do happen to have the Spider Kabob or Tasty Lion recipe sitting around in your bank, they will sell very well on the AH. I just recently sold a Tasty recipe for 1,500 gold, with another one priced at 22k-25k to make it look more attractive. And on Wowhead, a commenter said that he sold it for 10k gold, with no advertising.

On Horde side, my main items for grabbing off the AH and selling on Alliance side had their drop rate jacked wayyy up, making it very hard to sell them reliably for a decent amount of gold. Yup, Elixir of Giant Growth and Savory Deviate Delight would probably not be worth bringing over to Ally side anymore if you're on a high-pop server, since there will be so many other Allies leveling up alts in the Barrens now. On a low-pop PvP server though, there's not as much competition, so if you bring them over, have one alt post a few at lower price, and have another alt post them at a much higher price, and they'll sell....eventually.

On a different note, 2 pets are no longer available post-Shattering. The Smolderweb Hatchling from the quest En-Ay-Es-Tee-Why(Nasty), and the Worg Pup from Kibler's Exotic Pets can no longer be obtained. This doesn't have anything to do with making gold, since the pets were BOP, but for all pet collectors out there, it's kind of annoying.

Guild....Alone

2011-01-18T06:39:00.000-08:00

1-18-11

Back in Wrath, I wasn't just a one-man army on 3 servers, I was also about 4 guilds on each server. Whenever someone advertised they were giving a guild away, or selling it very cheaply, I'd snap it up with a low level toon, which was usually a shaman (LW), warrior (BS), or whatever toon had Jewelcrafting on that server.

I like planning ahead, so when I found recipes for the 350-450 range for my crafters, I stockpiled them. LW/BS/JC recipes are usually the most prolific in my opinion, and so a guild bank was a perfect place to store those recipes until I could level the toons up to be able to learn them.

Fast-forward to Cataclysm, and guild perks. I hate waste, and having my quests/looting/kills/crafting count for a guild that I don't care about is just wrong. Besides, it's much nicer to have any of my toons being able to access all of the mats in the main guild bank.

So, I'm trying to consolidate my toons back into my original guilds - Wraith Flight on Demon Soul, Warshrike on Daggerspine, and Psychrometrics on Darrowmere. I've cleaned out or learned recipes in those guild banks, and then sold them for a profit, or at least took a slight loss on what I paid for the tabs. My Ally guild on Daggerspine is 10/10 again, and the 2 Horde guilds on Demon Soul and Darrowmere are almost re-united, with only a couple of toons on each server with a TON of mats and recipes stuffed in their stand-alone banks.

I guess I was inspired to write this because of another solo Wow'er. In it, Skaut was talking about the impression she got that if you're not in a huge guild, you're not going to get anywhere. I respectfully disagree.

After about a month, I'm not level 2 on any of my guilds, but I'm not at 1% either. On Demon Soul, with all my 80+'s, I'm at about 80% to level 2, with an average of 300k experience added the total each day. It could be more, it should be more, but again, my dogged persistence in avoiding waste. I wanted several of my toons to finish out getting the "Crusader" title from the Argent Tournament, the tabard for teleportation, along with the most interesting of the Argent mounts (at least to me), the Dragonhawk.

On Daggerspine, JUST from doing the cooking/fishing dailies, with 10 level 45-60's, I believe I'm around 10% or more.

On Darrowmere, JUST from doing the dailies, with 8 level 30-50's, I believe I'm at 18%. Granted, this belies the title of the post, since I'm not alone in the guild. A very nice person joined the guild after we had a long conversation about how Cataclysm got rid of unnecessary quest items, and they have been graciously allowing me to gain the benefit of their questing XP. Thank you!

Where the HELL are my bombs?!!!

2011-01-07T21:31:00.000-08:00

1/7/2011

Ever since my main Bloodshrike on Demon Soul started out, I have been in love with engineering. I dabbled a little bit with mining, skinning, herbalism as secondary professions to his Alchemy, but once I realized the true power of engineering, I made almost every toon after that have Engineering as one of their professions.

Engineering does 2 things.
One, it gives you limited access to abilities other professions have, if only for a limited amount of time, with a cooldown.
Two, it gives you explosives! I had been seduced to WoW from Diablo 2, where I had developed a build for characters to give any class Zeal, which was a multi-hit or AOE (crap, I can't even remember what AOE stands for anymore, whatevers, it hits any monster standing close to you) build.
I figured out that bombs would shave off at least 10% of a monsters hit points in one blast, more if you powerleveled engineering to the max whenever you hit the level caps to advance the profession.

Of course I'm not going to rage-quit over this, but it does seem like they neglected a major portion of both specialities of engineering. Goblin engineering is about bombs, they go boom! Gnomish engineering is about trinkets, they go snap-fizzle-zap-aaaaargh aaargh it burns!

Basically, we got a modified mote extractor in the Electrostatic Condenser, but it only works for gatherer/engineers, not just any engineer.

The Dragonling is a generic trinket that any class can use since it adds mastery, and the combat pet bonus aspect of it is pretty nice.

The Bolt Gun is a useful interupt and damage dealer, but it's single target only and requires 1 Handful of Obsidium Bolts each time it's fired.

The belt upgrades are awesome,you might want to put them on different belts to keep in your inventory. Target Dummy, Nigh-Invulnerability Belt, and the Gnomish Cloaking Device.

The glove enchants are ehhhh, again being ideas from Wrath. Armor, Runic Healing Injector, Runic Mana Injector, moar Intellect/spellpower, and a combo of the Gnomish Lightning Generator Trinket/Hand-Mounted Pyro Rocket in the Tazik Shocker. I'm not much of a fan of tying up a glove enchant on an average of 50% more healing/mana from potions though.

The Loot-a-rang is awesome, being an original idea that could definitely be useful if you kill an enemy that's fleeing, or on a hillside. I love the fun items in engineering.

Bigger Bags - Toolbox and Tacklebox. Really? There's people out there that go fishing enough to warrant needing a 36 slot bag for it? I just hate being forced to make 3-4 of these to level up engineering, because all other engineers have to make 3-4 of these as well, making them useless to sell on the AH. I only usually need 1 engineering bag with me, and maybe 1 in the bank to use for extra mats or bombs.

Scopes - Hit rating and Haste. Heh, just glanced at the Safety Catch buyout price in Wowhead, which said it was about 2 gold. That's 100 gold or so worth of mats that you're just giving away. I hate being MADE to make stuff that I'll never use. I probably won't be able to use all the scopes I've made on my hunter, not to mention my Rogue/Warrior/Paladin/Death Knight that soon will be maxing engineering as well. Granted, I should probably be just selling the mats right now, and wait until prices come down before maxing professions, I'm just kinda bitter that you're forced into making extra stuff for no benefit. Remember the Gnomish Army Knife? An awesome item that should have sold well, but made worthless by making it the most economical way of skilling up engineering.

Guns and Crossbows - Throat Needler and Volatile Thunderstick. Sell them at a loss, yay!

Pets - Actually, I might take back what I said about the toolboxes and guns. If you make sure to visit your appropriate specialization trainer at 475, the 2 new pets might actually give you a profit (it looks like they stop giving skillups by 500 though). From Gnomish trainers - the mechanical rabbit. From Goblin trainers - the Fel REAVER!!

Food and lures - Even though Kaliopes guide says to do the lures from 510-521, I'm looking at the guild achievement of putting out 5,000 feasts or whatever, and thinking that the BBQ might be a better option.

edit - Oh yeah, remembered later that AOE means Area of Effect.

And now for something completely different

2010-12-24T01:10:00.000-08:00

12/24/2010

Lovers Drugs - "Into the Light"

This is a video by Lovers Drugs, the 4th incarnation of a Bay Area group that I first saw while I was living up in Sacramento. They initially attracted me because I could actually hear them clearly in the club, whereas most live bands I've seen couldn't be heard coherently unless you were outside the club walls.

Over the years, I've gotten the chance to get to know them more personally, as my brother has helped them out by being their road manager, key grip and gaffer (whatever the F that means), and general go-to guy for any construction project they need.

We're from completely different worlds, yet the same type of passion that I have for WoW, they have for music. I took 6 years of piano while growing up, and it was a struggle every day for me to sit down to do my half hour of practice. These guys play and think about music constantly; it's what drives them and brings them happiness.

That's the same level of passion that got me theory-crafting in Diablo 2, to develop my crushplosive variant builds, or the barbarian singer build. When you really love your hobby, no amount of time spent on it seems to be too much.

So, if you have a couple of minutes, give them a listen. They're a well-polished group, have a catchy song, and they're really, genuinely nice people as well.

Spring...I mean, Winter Cleaning

2010-12-21T12:39:00.000-08:00

12-21-2010

The Cataclysm has hit, and that brings changes for not only max level characters, but low level toons as well. Blizzard went through their quests with a fine-tooth comb, and marked oodles of them obsolete, and can't be obtained or completed. This is a very good thing, don't get me wrong.

However, hidden among the hundreds of "kill 10 rats, come back, turn it in, go back to the exact same spot and kill 10 Elder rats" type of quests were some quests that I had come to rely on at certain levels for fast XP and sometimes rep.

Wool (12), Silk (26), Mageweave (40), and Runecloth (50) turnins are gone. At those levels, my toons would make the rounds of the capitol cities, turning in 60 pieces of cloth to 5 different NPC's, and gaining a good chunk of rep and XP in the process. Those NPC's are now goooooone. Sell your stockpiles of cloth, use them in Tailoring or First Aid, but you can't use them for rep anymore.

Next up, we have a quest located in one of the busiest ganking spots on a PvP server, Stranglethorn Vale. It used to take 14 seperate pages to do all the quests needed for the Green Hills of Stranglethorn Vale, now it only takes 1 page. Sell any and all pages in your bank, even old page 14 won't work for the new quest.

Blasted Lands had about 5 quests with extremely low drop rate quest items, doable at level 45. It was a nice XP boost if you did it right at 45, bringing you almost to 46 if I remember correctly. Basilisk Brain, Blasted Boar Lung, Scorpok Pincer, Snickerfang Jowl, and Vulture Gizzard were all needed to finish the quests, in varying amounts. The Vulture Gizzard drops were particularly horrendous. Toss them, you can't sell them. Here's an example of how many I had saved up, on my baby Horde server Darrowmere.

And finally, Argent Dawn rep. I wanted rep with factions as soon as it was possible, and I wasn't high enough to solo instances yet, so I started collecting the quest items. Dark Iron Scraps, Bone Fragments, Crypt Fiend Parts, Core of Elements, Savage Frond.....I collected them all from the AH, when they had a low bid of a few silver for several. Sell them, you can't do anything with them.
Anyone wanna buy some Dark Iron Scraps?

Surprisingly, the Craftsman's Writ quests, even though marked in Wowhead as obsolete, CAN be still completed if you have the writ and items needed. My warrior Bullkathos did the Stonescale Eel one last night, and instead of being given the choice between Insignia of the Dawn or Insignia of the Crusade, he just got a straight 150 rep. Dump the Insignia's btw, you can't redeem them anymore.

Am I mad that Blizzard got rid of these quests, making the items useless? Hell no! I'm glad that we no longer have quests that require 12 raptor heads, and all the raptors you kill in the Barrens seem to be headless. Random Number Generator items should be on important stuff, like Rivendare's mount. It shouldn't take an hour to do one simple quest, and Blizzard finally recognized that.

Congratulations to all Realm Firsts!

2010-12-10T16:43:00.000-08:00

12/10/2010

And I mean that sincerely. I had been hoping to snag at least one, but it wasn't in the cards. The snafu of the Cataclysm launch had me try logging out at about 12:05, and I wasn't able to get back in until 12:20. I quickly used my mats to powerlevel to 525 cooking, but someone already got realm first on that.

Unfazed, I immediately used my ring to teleport to Dalaran, determined to go for realm first in fishing, and hopefully fishing up a Rat that had been eluding me for so long. I ran into someone else down there with the same goal, and he was maintaining a 15 skill point lead on me for the hour I was down there, so I switched gears again.

Maybe, I could get Realm First Archaeology?
I picked up Archaeology, slung my surveying pick over my shoulder, and headed out. I was following Kaliope's guide/suggestions, so I made sure to wait until level 75 to start solving artifacts, but I probably should have waited longer.

I would really, REALLY recommend you do most of your Archaeology before 85, because at least you'll get some XP for digging up fragments, and that's about the most exciting thing that will happen to you during that time. It's basically a LOT of traveling, followed by a mini-game of Minesweeper when you get to the dig sites.
Like Kaliope says when surveying "The survey tool has an indicator light on it, which glows in one of three colors depending on your proximity to the artifact you are tracking. Red means you’re pretty far away, but the large end of the scope is pointing you in the direction of the object. Yellow means you’re getting closer, but probably at least 50 yards away. Green means the object is very close, within 40 yards of you."
My take on it was "Red-mount up and fly for about 3 seconds in the direction of where the telescope is pointing. Yellow- mount and bound forward for about a second of flight time. Green- start spamming the survey tool every 5 feet, while enjoying the 5 second cooldown that Blizzard has on it."

-Tips to not go mental while surveying. Kill stuff! There's a guild achievement for critters killed, so while you wait for the cooldown, kill those level 1 critters you see roaming around.

I think I got to about 225 Archaelogy in my first 12 hours of play, and that was pretty hardcore grinding too. After that, I had some prior engagements to take care of, so my time doing Archaeology was pretty spotty during the week. I had some free time today, and wasn't sure if anyone had gotten the Achievement yet, so I decided to go all out and try for it. I had gotten to 420 skill level, when all of a sudden, the Realm First message popped up. The annoying thing about it was that I had just seen that guy in Zul'Drak, and he had whispered to me, but Infinite Ignore had blocked it, which meant that he was a regular Trade Troll, which I normally ignore. If he was a normal player, I would have whispered congrats, but people that make a practice of being idiotic in trade chat I have no respect for.

At least I'm not self-pressured to only do Archaelogy now, I can play my other toons!

Gathering in Cataclysm

2010-12-06T00:25:00.000-08:00

12/06/2010

As you get ready to head off to the new zones, you might want to bring along some secret weapons. The Gatherer enchant for gloves was introduced in WOTLK, but there are some other items that could help you as well.

Herbalism
Pattern: Herbalist's Gloves, sold to Allies only in Ashenvale, gives a passive +5 to herbalism. Add the Advanced Herbalism enchant to them, and you've got +10 to Herbalism to be able to pick herbs higher than your regular herbing level.

Mining
I haven't forgotten about Mining, either. Either put the Gatherer enchant on a pair of level 60 gloves, or Advanced Mining on a level 1 pair of gloves. But that's not all! If you happen to have engineering, and happened to go Goblin spec.....you could make the Goblin Mining Helmet for an additional +5 mining.

Skinning
Gatherer on gloves, and maybe make 1 or 2 trips to Blackrock Spire for your skinning knife of choice, depending on if you can dual wield or not. That's +15 or +25 skinning to add to your skinning level, so if you happened to come upon some higher level beast corpses that other players left behind.... it's all yours!

Of course, you wouldn't be using these tools all the time, but it's nice to be able to give yourself a little jump on the competition if you need to.

Realm First!

2010-11-30T04:30:00.000-08:00

11/30/2010

With Cataclysm around the corner, we have the opportunities for rare Feats of Strength; namely, Realm Firsts. Since I don't raid, I'm not going to worry about those. However, I would like to go for realm first on some professions.

Since I do have a lot of alts, doing the daily cooking quests in Orgrimmar or Stormwind nets me 1-2 Chef Awards per day, per alt, per server that I'm on. Now, on Demon Soul I'm going to try to have Bloodshrike get the Cooking and Fishing Achievements. Fishing I'm gonna try to get by fishing in the Dalaran Sewers, and hopefully I'll get the Rat while I'm doing that.

As for Cooking, with 9 other alts doing the cooking quests, and getting the crates of meat, that allows me to have access to a bunch of meat at the start of Cataclysm, which I'd probably not be able to get without leveling up to 81-83 first.

Now, I mentioned that I'm doing it on all my servers. Why? Two reasons. I've always been a sucker for Dailies, because I know where to go, and what to do. Especially when I have more than one alt doing them, I have my routine down to a science by the 4th toon. This allows for fast, easy XP and gold for all my toons.

The second reason is that if you're not going to use the meat, at the start of Cataclysm, I'm positive it will sell for ludicrous amounts of gold on the AH, to other people going for the Realm First, or just desperate to level up cooking for some reason. Since my highest toon on Daggerspine is 63, and on Darrowmere my highest is 52, I'll be selling the meat.

Save it until the day before Cataclysm drops, and post it late at night, so it's ready for people to buy buy buy!

Mission: Impossible Turkey

2010-11-27T05:35:00.000-08:00

11/27/2010

I was peacefully enjoying my friday night daily chores, when suddenly my Goblin iBrick beeped to tell me I had e-mail.

See, I'm a member of Wraith Flight, a super-secret Orgimmar organization, used only when missions are too dangerous for the Kor'kron Vanguard to handle. We're the best of the best, expected to get the job done, no matter what. It's not all bad though, we have access to all the best Goblin and Gnome engineering has to offer; the trick is to field-test extensively beforehand, so you don't rely on equipment that will explode every 5th time you use it.

The message read:
Shrike, I have a last-minute mission for you. Pilgrim's Bounty is almost over, and I need you to disarm some bombs we had inadvertently placed under Bountiful Tables in the enemy capitals. We'll provide you with a disarming device, but your butt needs to hit those chairs before tomorrow night, or we'll have another incident with the Alliance to deal with.

As always, should you or any of your WF force be caught or killed, the Overlord will disavow any knowledge of your actions. Good luck, Shrike. This e-mail will self-destruct in five seconds.

-Garrosh

Shaking my head, I put the iBrick down on a handy table, and stepped away. A few seconds later, a puff of smoke hissed from the device, and it melted into a useless puddle of goo. Damn, I had just gotten all my contacts into that one!

I hopped on my favorite ride, and headed up to Felwood, since 2 of my targets lay in that direction. If ONLY I had gotten this message a week earlier, it would have been a lot easier. See, Darnassus has a table in the middle of the city, and Exodar has its table just within the city walls. A few days earlier, a massive tsunami had ravaged that coastline, destroying the the Auberdine port which serviced both cities. Since that time, they had been on high alert, and also called out the city watch, which meant that the guards would be a lot more vigilant than normal.

Along the way though, I stopped off to buy a souvenir. Hey, business trips don't mean you can't take time out to enjoy yourself!

I had bribed one of my Alliance contacts for info, so I was able to plan out my route beforehand. I left from Darkshore's highest north-western point, and used a potion to book it across the sea to Rut'theran Village. After spending a few minutes on the non-moving boat at the eastern dock, I checked my notes, and found that I needed the boat at the western dock to get to Exodar. After approaching the middle of the dock, I hopped on, and rode to Azuremyst Isle. I circled around to the north, plunked my butt down, and headed back to Darnassus. I got around to the back of the portal, got into the city, got killed, but rezzed at the graveyard in Teldrassil. After the bomb was disarmed, I hearthed back to Orgrimmar, and considered my options.

I could take the portal in Cleft of Shadows to the Dark Portal in Blasted Lands, and then go to Stormwind. Or, if I had a teleport device, I could run from BRD to Searing Gorge, and go through the Stonewrought Pass tunnel to Loch Modan, which lets out into the Valley of Kings. From there it's an easy run to Ironforge. However, after checking our inventory, it seemed that one of other team members had the device, so I headed to Ironforge first.

Those city guards are buggers! I ran up the hill almost directly south of the gates, as there's a way up the hill that allows you to come out right where the tables are. However, the 2 guards there are intensely watchful, and it took at least 5 times to get the timing right to get into a chair.

Three down, one left. Hearthed back to Orgrimmar, then Blasted Lands, then rode to the gates of Stormwind. After all that, it was almost a letdown to see the tables unguarded, and easily accessible outside the city.

Man, the things I do for my faction.

TL-DR....check the comments on the last page for tips on how to do it. I had let it go until the last day, kinda QQ-ing Blizzard for having level 85 guards RIGHT on top of the tables, but figured I'd give it a shot. I was able to do it for some of my toons, but since I have things to do today, I won't get all of them done. Ehh, it's not part of the meta, so I can do it next year, when I've gotten them to 85.

And you Alliance only players can suck it! Orgrimmar - outside the gates. Thunderbluff - outside (apparently there's a great wall blocking Mulgore that you can ride around the right side of). Silvermoon - outside. UC might be the only place you might have problems. Check here for tips.

The Shattered (Patch 4.0.3a)

2010-11-24T01:51:00.000-08:00

11/24/2010

The Shattering hit servers today, to a lot of mixed emotions. New content, yay! Portals in Shattrath and Dalaran gone, boo! I had known they were going to be gone, but theory and practice are two different things.

The portals being gone are something that makes being an altoholic really, REALLY hard. Getting one toon to traipse around the continents for a holiday event can be time-consuming, but imagine trying to do 30 of them. With the portals in Dalaran, if I needed to travel to or around different capitol cities, I'd go to one directly from Dalaran, then hearth back and log out. Do the next toon, repeat. It was a time-saving technique that I had gotten used too, since by the time I was done with the 10th toon, the 1st toon would have their hearth back up.

If you have daily quests that will be used by max level toons, who generally have their hearths set somewhere in Northrend, why oh why would you have those dailies take place in Orgrimmar? The cooking tokens from the Orgrimmar cooking dailies will be used to buy level 450 and UP cooking recipes, which lowbie toons won't be making use of for a long time. So, it's expected for 70-80 toons to come back to Orgrimmar to do those dailies, every day, then get back to where they want to be, which is in Northrend or Deepholme or whatever.

Aaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!

Whew, enough venting. I also wanted to recap where I am with some toons. Bloodshrike missed out on Loremaster by only 13 quests in Zul'Drak, and all of Grizzly Hills. I should have kept more in the loop, but I was kinda excited by being able to gear up my newer 80's with the elemental invasion bosses. He also missed out on getting his Shen'dralar rep to exalted, along with Zandalar. I had plenty of librams and Pristine black diamonds, I just had slacked off on getting the BOP Blood of Heroes/Skin of Shadow/Frayed Stitching. I should have just let one day of dailies with my other 80's pass, and concentrated on that rep grind. I turned in about 22 librams in Dire Maul about an hour before the servers were supposed to go down, then headed to Zul'Gurub to try to max out my Zanzibar rep. Got there with about 15 minutes to spare, but the instance portal wouldn't let me in, even though I was in a raid group with another 80. "Instance could not be found" my ass! The instance is right in front of me!

Ah well, C'est la vie. I'm not going to let it worry me, instead, it'll be nice to get those librams out of my guild bank(s).
I figure I might as well do a recap on my servers, since this is a fresh start to the world.

Demon Soul
Bloodshrike - lvl 80 Troll Hunter
Bullkathos - lvl 80 Tauren Warrior
Thrillkiller- lvl 80 Orc Rogue
Bonescourge - lvl 61 Undead Warlock
Banesidhe - lvl 80 Undead Mage
Kukoshakaku - lvl 58 Tauren Shaman
Clockworknyt- lvl 72 Blood Elf Paladin
Morticide - lvl 45 Tauren Druid
Burizadokyan- lvl 48 Blood Elf Priest
Pallormortis- lvl 80 Orc Death Knight

Daggerspine
Clockwrkmage- lvl 63 Gnome Mage
Preyonyou - lvl 41 Draenai Priest
Tsuris - lvl 56 Draenai Shaman
Aosdanasaoi - lvl 54 Night Elf Rogue
Hangfire - lvl 48 Night Elf Druid
Panzergishi - lvl 55 Dwarf Warrior
Kishigishi - lvl 53 Human Paladin
Ryoushigishi- lvl 55 Dwarf Hunter
Gwiddonyn - lvl 53 Gnome Warlock
Doomslinger - lvl 42 Night Elf Hunter

Darrowmere
Bloodshrike - lvl 53 Blood Elf Hunter
Clockwrkmage- lvl 39 Blood Elf Mage
Psilentkill - lvl 41 Blood Elf Rogue
Didactylos - lvl 32 Blood Elf Warlock
Gavelofpain - lvl 34 Orc Shaman
Wartraveler - lvl 35 Undead Warrior
Misericorde - lvl 35 Blood Elf Paladin
Ghostflame - lvl 30 Blood Elf Priest
Gimmershred - lvl 34 Tauren Druid
Annihilus - lvl 31 Undead Rogue

The Spirit of Sharing

2010-11-21T20:55:00.001-08:00

11/21/2010

While I've seen some people complaining about having the Pilgrim's Bounty holiday in the midst of the Cataclysm ramp-up; honestly, they're probably also the ones that started complaining about the event screwing up Orgrimmar by the second time it happened.

But think about this for a second. Not only are there easy dailies for your alts to accomplish, with mats you can pre-make to hand in, there's another bonus for us achievement hunters.

Sitting down at the Bountiful Table and eating each dish 5x will give you the Spirit of Sharing, which is a HUGE bonus on some lengthy rep grinds. I believe you need about 80 + librams of rapidity/protection/focus to get exalted with Shen'dralar, which is 80 x 500 =40,000 or more rep. With 10% bonus, at 40 turnins, you're already at 22,000 rep, instead of 20k, putting you 4 librams/mats ahead of the game. So, this could make the rep grind only around 70+ librams, instead of 80ish. And when you're hunting for Blood of Heroes or either of the other BOP mats for the librams.....it could be your sanity on the line.

Wintergrasp Alone

2010-11-19T02:23:00.000-08:00

11/19/2010

Though it's not mentioned in the patch notes here, Wintergrasp now has a new mechanic. Apparently, on some severely unbalanced servers *cough* Demon Soul *cough*, even a 20 stack of tenacity on Alliance players 24/7 is not enough to guarantee them a fair shot at getting VOA on a consistent basis. When they did manage to get it, it was usually very, very early in the morning.

Imagine my surprise when I decided to queue for an upcoming WG, I zoned in, and I was the ONLY person in the raid group for 20 minutes. I had a few fights with the apparently only Ally in the zone, a druid named Xime, and while his moonfire spamming killed me a couple times (me in my PvE gear at 29k health, him with 3 stacks of tenacity and 39k health), I did manage to get a few kills on him as well.

I had decided to stop trying to take the Broken Temple workshop and instead go for Sunken Temple, when it showed he was finally trying to attack Flamewatch Tower. Goodie for me! I had just gotten to lieutenant by doing a little npc kill farming, so I quickly rode back to Broken Temple, hopped in a siege engine, and putt-putted my way up to the south-west wall of the keep. Just then, another Horde joined the raid, and a matching Ally paladin named Jcr came over the wall and demolished my tank.

I tried taking a demolisher straight up from the Westspark workshop to the front gates, but with only about 2 minutes left when I got there, we didn't get the front wall taken down after dealing with the druid's patrolling siege engine.

It would have been epic, though!

So, Wintergrasp is now strictly enforced with balancing teams, as well as tenacity.
Ahh, I searched a little more, and found the source post.

No more portals

2010-11-16T05:07:00.000-08:00

11/16/2010

The portals to capitol cities in Shattrath and Dalaran will be disappearing in Cataclysm, which is a bummer. Back in vanilla WoW, for the month I played before BC came out, I HATED waiting around for boats or zeppelins to arrive, then waiting on board for the vehicle to start again, and finally arrive at their destination. As soon as I heard that I could set my hearth to Shattrath, I happily paid 5-10 gold apiece for all my toons to go there, just so I could quickly continent-hop at my convenience.

When WOTLK came out, it was even better! No longer did I have to run down from the Scryers tier to the portals, they were just around the corner from the inns.

I understand that it's an attempt to try to get more players to stay around the capitol cities, where they will be more likely to be available as crafters, teleporters, or general advice givers to new players. I just don't like it very much.

I'd like to see a continuation of the portal concept. What about being able to access a portal in capitol cities that allowed you to instantly warp to any inn that you had been to? Same concept as talking to flight masters, but due to the higher cost of magic or gnomish engineering mats, the cost would be greater than flying there. That way, new players could still get around at a decent rate, but richer, more experienced players didn't have to deal with a 10-15 minute flight to get to where they needed to turn in a quest.

WTF?

2010-11-16T04:07:00.000-08:00

11/16/2010

As an altoholic and recipe hound, I have a lot of addons installed to make my life easier. CT-mod forms a great deal of my UI, Recount for my personal knowledge of how well I'm doing in groups, Omen threat meter to know when to back the fuck off on my DPS so the mob doesn't decide that I'm a tastier target than the tank.

However, Ackis Recipe List has recently made opening my profession books kinda....agonizing. With addons turned off, it's instant. With Ackis and ProfessionsBook turned on, it can take a few MINUTES to load my alchemy book when I'm trying to do my daily transmute.

I finally decided to find out what the problem was, and with a little googling, I determined that deleting my WTF and cache folders would probably be a good idea. I did it, and it made a world of difference.

So if you ever have a problem of lagging while checking your professions, try deleting the WTF and cache folders.

P.S. You might want to make a copy of the two folders on your desktop first, just in case.

Sell, sell, sell!

2010-11-02T04:58:00.000-07:00

11/2/2010

Since it's now common knowledge that the "Insane in the Membrane" achievement and title will be becoming a Feat of Strength in Cataclysm, if you happen to have any diamonds or Focus, Protection, or Rapidity Librams, now's the time to sell.

On Daggerspine, I put up 11 diamonds at 500 gold each, and they sold out immediately. I had been carefully hoarding them, intending for at least one of my alts there to get the title, but since my highest toon is 63.....it's not gonna happen. The only chance I'll have to do this would be on Demon Soul, with Bloodshrike, who is my achievement whore anyway. I figure if I can get my Zandalar rep and Bloodsail/Goblin rep locked down, I might have a chance of getting it done even after Cataclysm comes.

If you are going for the title, don't forget that those 3 libram quests reward you with Arcanums, which surprisingly aren't useless, since you can turn them in at Zanza in Zul'Gurub for Zandalar rep.

Some might say that it's price-gouging to charge so much for items, but really, people who are going for all these achievements usually have tons of gold already, and are bored and looking for something to do. You're just helping them circulate currency. hehehe.....

Edit: Apparently you will still be able to get this achievement in Cataclysm, due to the immense QQ-ing of players who didn't relish the rushed grind you would need to get it done before December 7th.

Wrap-up to Hallow's End

2010-11-01T18:56:00.000-07:00

11/1/2010

Hallow's End came and went, and I now have 5 level 80's to pursue titles and achievements. How did I make out?

All 5 80's on Demon Soul now have "the Hallowed" title, even though it was a close call for some. Bullkathos barely completed Sinister Calling a couple days before the holiday ended, even though I did the daily and trick-or-treating probably 4-6 times a day with all 30 toons. I also slacked off on doing the candy bucket quests with Thrillkiller and Banesidhe, making me have to frantically fly around on Sunday to get that done.

However, I did manage to snag 5 sets of the super-duper flying Horse, with Bullkathos getting 2 sets, and Thrillkiller missing out.

Bloodshrike also luckily managed to get his sword and helm, yet my 2 plate wearers Bullkathos and Pallormortis missed getting the helm.

My non-80 toons also got a fair bit of leveling done during this time too. The 2 dailies you can do, "Stop the Fires" and "Smash the Pumpkin" can be completed for up to 10 alts at one time, with a little preparation. I had my Alliance toons head to Goldshire for the entirety of the holiday, and my lower level toons on Demon Soul and Darrowmere went to Falconwing Square.

First, go pick up the "Put out the fires quest" from the Matron for all your toons. Don't worry about the Headless Horseman until all of your toons have the quest picked up that day. For Allies, have them positioned in the doorway of the Goldshire Inn, ready to rush out and click on the pumpkin. For Horde, have them logged out where the pumpkin usually falls.

For these toons, I usually had all my addons turned off, as having all of them loaded slowed loading each toon to a crawl. However, be careful when switching between toons quickly, as the game might think you're still logged in, and kick you out to the login screen. I usually counted up to about 7, then logged in on the new toon.

Allies usually seem to be pretty good about doing this daily, so just check every so often with one of your ally toons while logging in to do trick-or-treating of the innkeeper, and then help out to save the town. Once that's done, click on the pumpkin to accept the quest, then immediately head back to the Inn. DO NOT pass go, do not turn in the quests. You don't have time if you're doing multiple toons. Quickly (but not too quickly), cycle through all your alts and go get the pumpkin quest. You also get credit for the fires being put out at the same time. Once you've got completed credit on all your toons, turn in both quests, and you've just done 20 dailies on 10 toons, in a short amount of time.

For Horde, I prefer Falconwing Square, as you can solo it if nobody else is around. I would usually use my druid in travel form for the fastest running speed, then head immediately to the far building when the Horseman sets them on fire. If you catch the fires quickly, they don't have time to spread, and you can put out the building easily. Just remember, contrary to common sense, these fires are affected by gravity, not by the usual tendency of fire to climb upwards. Take out the highest fires first, as they will drip fire downwards.

So, how did my toons fair?
Demon Soul - 7 levels gained
Bloodshrike -80
Bullkathos -80
Thrillkiller-80
Bonescourge -58 to 59
Banesidhe -80
Kukoshakaku -54 to 56
Clockworknyt-68 to 69
Morticide -41 to 43
Burizadokyan-45 to 46
Pallormortis-80

Daggerspine - 15 levels gained
Clockwrkmage-62 to 63
Preyonyou -39 to 41
Tsuris -54 to 56
Aosdanasaoi -53 to 54
Hangfire -46 to 48
Panzergishi -53 to 55
Kishigishi -52 to 53
Ryoushigishi-53 to 55
Gwiddonyn -52 to 53
Doomslinger -41 to 42

Darrowmere -21 levels gained
Bloodshrike -51 to 52
Clockwrkmage-36 to 38
Psilentkill -38 to 40
Didactylos -29 to 32
Gavelofpain -32 to 34
Wartraveler -33 to 35
Misericorde -33 to 35
Ghostflame -27 to 29
Gimmershred -31 to 33
Annihilus -28 to 31

Update 11/16/2010 - My Flying Brooms finally expired, leaving me very sad. Those insta-cast mounts are awesome! For gathering toons, any time wasted is annoying, and having to wait to mount when you see someone heading towards the Titanium vein YOU spotted first is agonizing. I'm not sure why there is a casting time for them, as being in combat automatically prevents you from mounting anyway, so it's not implemented that way for PvP reasons. I dunno, but I wish all mounts were instant.

How do I love thee 4.0.1? Let me count the ways...

2010-10-20T02:27:00.000-07:00

10/20/2010

Despite the Cog of Doom bug, and the inevitable addon disruption, I really, really like the new patch.

For a player who doesn't raid, and only does heroics, it allows you to get high level gear in a relatively short amount of time. 95 Frost Badges for a piece of gear? That took me over a month and a half to earn at 2 badges per day. When Brewfest rolled around, my toons doubled their earning power to 4 Frosties per day. Wahoo!!

I haven't even run any heroics yet, the only instance I've set foot in since the patch is the daily to kill the Headless Horseman, but according to MMO-Champion, the average amount of Justice Points you'd get per heroic is either 23, or 39, if you're adding together the Heroic dungeon and Heroic boss. Not sure.

You get 24 Justice Points for killing HH each day, and say if you got 23 JP for each random dungeon.....1100/23 = 47.8 heroics to earn enough JP to buy my ilvl 264 chest piece, which, you guessed it, took me over 47 days to earn previously.

I'm probably a bit OCD in that, if I can only do something once per day, I MUST do something once a day. Remember the Arcanite transmutes, where you could only transmute every 48 hours? Yeah, I had about 90 of them saved up before they changed it.

So, for a casual player like me, the changes with the patch allow me to run heroics til my eyes bleed if I really want a piece of gear, then just let my toon do nothing, and be free to go play my other toons without worrying about "missing out" on opportunities to get better stuff on my main.

I have to say though, it's gonna make me lazy. With the previous Triumph and Frost badge division, I would run heroics for Triumphs to get me to the 232-245 level of gear, while waiting for enough Frosties to slowly, agonizingly slowly, replace piece by piece of gear.

Now? My mage Banesidhe is in Frostsavage Battlegear, with the BOA chest and shoulders. I'll replace my level 187 pieces with level 251-264 pieces, or if some level 200 pieces drop, I'll go for them in the meantime. With heroics being tuned for Wrath talent trees, we are way OP for heroics nowadays, so I doubt my lower dps will really even raise an eyebrow, or get me kicked.

I'm a patient person, and I just don't see the point of spending 591 JP for XXX, or 935 JP for YYY, when I could run a few more heroics and get ZZZ for 1100 JP.

Update to Cog of Doom

2010-10-19T00:58:00.000-07:00

10/18/2010

Just wanted to share this. A very enterprising person posted this in the Bug Report Blizzard forums. Link

Deyneth made up scripts for 2 macros, the first of which you'd use whenever there might be a possibility of freezing the game. I'd recommend turning off the tooltips whenever going into a random dungeon, like when zoning into the Oculus, your mouse naturally lands right on the entrance portal, causing the freeze-up. Also, definitely do it when going for the Headless Horseman. The first script will still allow you to interact with objects, it just won't pop up a tool tip description when you hover over them.

And, when the danger has passed, like after you've killed the HH, use the second to turn tooltips back on.

I've taken the liberty of posting the scripts here as well. Copy & paste into macros for your toons, and you shouldn't have any problems. /cheers for Deyneth!

Turn Off Tooltips

/script GameTooltip.Temphide = function() GameTooltip:Hide() end; GameTooltip:SetScript("OnShow", GameTooltip.Temphide);

Turn On Tooltips

/script GameTooltip:SetScript("OnShow", GameTooltip.Show);

Gold making with Hallow's End

2010-10-18T19:12:00.000-07:00

10/18/2010

Oh yeah, I had forgotten about this. The wands you need for the Hallow's End Achievement The Masquerade are not limited duration. I had saved mine from last year, so immediately when the event started this year I was able to post "Selling wand charges for the Masquerade, X,X,X,X for 20g each."

I probably have about 5-10 wands on most of my 30 toons, and I've probably sold about 400 gold worth of charges so far, just in the course of continent hopping thru Dalaran while doing Hallow's End quests.

I'm not gold hungry, otherwise I could just stay in Dalaran and constantly spam trade with it. If you wanted to do so, the first few days would be your best market, as the demand will definitely wane.

The Cog of Doom!!!!!! ...... Or, how a mouse-over throws a wrench in the works

2010-10-18T02:32:00.000-07:00

10/18/2010

Hallow's End is upon us, and I was looking forward to getting my Loot on with the Headless Horseman, especially since I only managed to do the event once with Bloodshrike last year.

Instead, I've only managed to become like Ichabod Crane, dumped unceremoniously from the instance when I zone in. When you get in the graveyard, directly in front of you is a pumpkin, which you almost are invariably already mousing over. Unfortunately......there seems to be a bug in the 4.01 patch, which will frequently cause WoW to freeze up when mousing over or clicking on almost anything that shows a cog. Mage tables, flags, anything of that sort can cause problems.

I had thought that some of my addons were causing the problem, as I noticed Deadly Boss Mods message load, then WoW immediately froze up. But after poking around the forums, it looks like it's on Blizz to fix it.

Lolcat nation

2010-10-12T09:45:00.000-07:00

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

10/12/2010

Every generation strives to differentiate itself from the preceding, be it with dress, hairstyles, mannerisms, cuisine, or slang. The last one often causes the most problems, as you can look at someone and think they have a weird haircut, or dress funny, but as long as they use proper grammar in talking to you, you can still understand them.

Slang is the point where communication breaks down. It's almost reminiscent of cryptography, where 2 or more people have devised a system of substitution in messages, only comprehensible to another person possessing the means to turn the information back from code to intelligible words.

With slang on WoW, it seems to be split mainly along acronyms "LFM 4 VOA 25" and lolcat, which is basically a transposition cypher. It may look like the person can't spell to save his life, but there's a method to their madness. It's a mixture of baby-talk and deliberate misspelling of words, that, while annoying, still can convey a message.

However, the root word of lolcat is "lol", which I do have a problem with. When I was about 14, my family had a boarder. While she was a very nice lady, she had the nervous habit of laughing constantly while carrying on a conversation, even when it was a serious or boring subject. "So I went to the store (haha), and bought a bottle of water, and brought it to class with me (hahaha)."

LOL means "laughing out loud", and is used to show that the writer is talking about something funny, or literally laughing while writing the words. Unfortunately, it now seems to be overly used, much like our lady renter used to do. "Can I haz 2 gold pz lol" is not a funny message, nor is "we just raped allies in WG lol." It also seems that "lol" has replaced the period, as you will see it artificially tacked on to the ends of sentences, without any punctuation following it.

I'm nowhere near as introverted as Gevlon seems to be, with his list of rules for "The Pug." I congratulate someone who dings a new level during a dungeon run, as I am always happy when one of my toons gets to a new level, where they can equip new weapons and armor, and learn new skills. I also end every dungeon by saying "Good tanking and heals, thanks!" because after having played three tank classes (DK, warrior, paladin), I understand how hard tanking can be, especially when running with dps who overgear you by 1-2000 Gearscore, and have no concept of throttling their dps to allow you to maintain threat. I believe that a few well-deserved words can boost a persons spirit, and make the grinding of running dungeons a bit more enjoyable. My pally tank Clockwrknyt ran Shattered Halls at 68, and while the level 70 dps came and went, the healer stayed with me, congratulated me at the end, and said that they would really like to run Utgarde with me next.

I guess I'm just venting here because of boredom, while waiting for maintenance to end, so I can log in and check all the shiny new things we're getting with the patch.

Just Leave

2010-10-05T13:37:00.001-07:00

10/5/2010

Yes, Utgarde Pinnacle is not a hard heroic. But when you get that amount of rampant disrespect and ass-hattery, it's better to cut your loss, and just get out of there. I was just caught unaware by the sheer selfishness and laziness of that priest, so much that I wanted to get out of it asap. As a tank, you have to develop a thick skin, since you'll get blamed for a lot of things that aren't your fault.

DPS died because they pulled an extra pack of mobs to make the run go faster? Your fault. Everyone wipes because they don't know the fight? Your fault.

You don't have to put up with it though. There was a priest and druid in the group, and I was expecting Prayer of Fortitude or even individual buffs of the Fortitude and Mark of the Wild, if they were too lazy to pick up the ingredient to do a raid cast. Goodness knows, it's hard to click a button to buff people individually.

What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been

2010-10-05T11:56:00.000-07:00

10/5/2010

Well, right around this time last year I was starting to get into the holiday achievements. After the fun of the Fire Festival, with 2 easy dailies that all my toons could do, I started doing the Brewfest dailies. Those are the actual opposite of fun, when doing them with a lot of alts. If you click on the brewfest label for this post, you can see how much time and effort I put into them last year.

This year? Meh. Gwyddion on Daggerspine racked up 200 tokens, and got the Brew of the Month membership. I didn't bother going to 350 tokens, because she already had the Disturbing the Peace achievement from last year. I had gotten to 350 tokens, got the clothes, gotten drunk, and was racing the clock back to Ironforge to turn the clothes in and get the membership. Unfortunately, she didn't make it.

But..........I was able to pick up a little something extra for my main Bloodshrike. I wasn't comfortable trying to get into the PUG groups to kill Coren last year, but with the LFD tool this year, it's supremely easy to kill him daily. That completed my last requirement for this achievement, and got me my 90th mount, the 310% speed Violet Proto-Drake.

I also was able to get Brewmaster for Pallormortis, Bullkathos, and my soon to be 80's Banesidhe and Thrillkiller.

Doing the dailies netted me 5 tankards, a teleporter for Bullkathos and Bloodshrike, a dagger for Bull/Thrill/Blood/Pallor, a Kodo for Bull, and a Ram for Bull/Pallor....and Pallor again.
No luck for Bloodshrike. Random number generator iz random....

So on Demon Soul and Daggerspine, ALL toons now have either the Brewmaster title, or need to be high enough level to use the food/drink and kill Coren, and they'll have the title then. On Darrowmere, I'm just gonna wait until they're close enough to 78 to be able to kill Coren and get the one-time 40 token quest, then go from there. There's only 7 toons that I would have to do that with, so I'm happy to put it off.

Here's hoping I'll have better luck at Hallow's End.

My love affair with Engineering - Part 4

2010-09-21T12:52:00.001-07:00

9/24/2010

Level 65-80 (376-450 engineering)
Bombs - Saronite Bombs, 'nuff said. You could use explosive rabbits, but you need to have the EMP device on your belt to set them off. Portable Nuke for Goblin engineers, but you'll want to use a shield spell/item with it to offset the damage. It does have the highest bomb damage in the game, though.

Goggles - You will want to make the Mechanized Snow Goggles at 65, which will automatically make the armor type you can wear (Cloth,leather,mail,plate). Enchant them with the 45 stamina Mind Control enchant, and replace them at 72 with your class type epic goggles, which are ilvl 200. These will last you until 80, and even will be useful until you've gotten all your other armor up to the 226-232 level.

Flying Mount - At level 70, you can build your own epic flying mount, but you have to go back to Shadowmoon Valley to learn the recipe.

Trinkets - Noise Machine and Sonic Booster can be very useful for a level 65 tank, as well as any other class. I've been playing around with having my paladin use 1 of each while going thru BC dungeons, and they seem to work out well. I'm not sure if I'd want to use the Noise Machine on a Warrior Tank, since it might interfere with rage generation. There's the Gnomish Lightning Generator trinket, and if you make 2, the crit will stack, but you can't activate them individually. Also, I've found that if you only equip 1, and have the other in your bank/bags, you can't fire the equipped one with a macro. Either make only 1, or never use them seperately.
BTW, Gnomes can equip any of the 3 trinkets at level 50, since they have a +15 racial engineering bonus, they can get up to 390 engineering.
Have a level 420+ engineer make 2 Noise Machines for your level 50 mage, equip your Xtreme Lite boots with Greater Fortitude, your belt, and your goggles of choice, and you'd have at least 173 spellpower and a buttload of stamina and other bonuses.

Self Portal - Wormhole Generator: Northrend is awesome. Not only is using the flight taxi expensive in Northrend, it takes forever to get from Dalaran to Borean Tundra to do the fishing daily there. Not with this, you drop from the sky right into the lake, and are easily able to complete the quest within minutes of accepting it.

Cloak Enchants - Melee and caster varieties, you probably won't even think of getting another enchant for your cloaks.

Glove enchants - Haste, armor, or long range attack to finish off a fleeing foe, your pick.

Do-it-yourself Rocket Boots - Nitro Boosts 24 critical strike rating and blazing speed, hell yes!

Mailbox on demand - MOLL-E If you ever think of going for the Insane in the Membrane achievement, you would kick yourself for not having engineering to be able to turn in multiple librams to the Shen'dralar. Also useful for mailing off stuff to an auction house alt when your bags get too full while farming.

Robot Butler - Jeeves is really nice while in a dungeon to sell your trash too on your 20th run thru Stratholme for the Baron's mount. Or, your tank threw a drama fit and left during a heroic? Pull out your tanking equipment from the bank, and show the rest of the PUG what you can do.

Resurrection - And so much more! The Army Knife is everything you need for your tradeskills, plus you can rez your healer if you survived a wipe.

Land Mount - It's a motorcycle, and it always makes you feel like you're going fast, especially when it shifts into second. C'mon!

I'm not going to discuss ammo, scopes, or ranged weapons, since they don't have very much of a profit margin now, and ammo will be going away with Cataclysm.

I hope that some will be inspired to look more closely at engineering, and not just at the few enchants, port, butler, mailbox, and mounts that are useful at level 80.

My love affair with Engineering - Part 3

2010-09-21T12:51:00.000-07:00

9/22/2010

Level 50-64 items of note. (level 300-375 engineering)

Bombs such as Fel Iron Bomb, Adamantite Grenade, and Cobalt Frag Bomb (which is made at 350 engineering, and already is a WOTLK recipe) will be made while leveling up, but once you've burned through those, and are heading into Outlands, you'll want Saronite Bombs. The Box of Bombs recipe is learned at 405 engineering, but you only need 350 engineering to use them! Look for them in the AH, and buy them when they're a good price, or pay a max level engineer to make some for you.

Goggles are also back in fashion. Now, you could go with Cogspinner Goggles, and hope you get some good stats on the helm. Or you could go for Power Amplification Goggles, which are decent for casters, with no hoping and praying needed. You could wait for level 62 to make and use your class specific helm, but you'll probably be replacing that at level 65 with your cloth/leather/mail/plate version of the Snow Goggles, which usually have pretty nice stats on their random enchants. It's pretty much of a waste of Khorium Bars to make the BC class goggles now, so I don't recommend it. What I DO recommend is the Ultra-Spectropic Detection Goggles, which, while cloth, have a mix of stats that will appeal to any class. Either do the Libram of Constitution quest for more health, or have a level 60 add a Heavy Knothide Armor Kit to your BOE goggles before you equip them. Hint, go for the heavy knothide!! The 10 stamina will multiply with Blessing of Kings, but 100 health won't.

Goblin Engineers will want at least 1 Rocket Launcher, 2 if they're tanks.
Gnomish Engineers would want the Poultryizer, 2 if they're tanks.

Self Portals - Area 52 Ripper for Goblins, Toshley's Teleporter for Gnomish.

Paladin/Warrior Tanks - When you step in Outland dungeons, a Force Reactive Disk on your arm can help you make sure that you stay on top of the threat list, even despite those newly minted DK's doing their best to wipe the run.
Mount - At level 60, you can learn and make your Flying Machine, one of the few profession created flying mounts.

Money Maker - Are you tired of constantly dumping gold into the engineering profession, with nothing to show for it other than being overpowered at your level? The Mote Extractor will start filling your pockets with gold once you hit Zangarmarsh and go thru the quest to learn it. Especially useful in Nagrand for the Windy Clouds, which drop Motes of Air, since Primal Air is usually the most expensive Primal. It continues being useful in Northrend too, with plenty of clouds in Sholozar, Wintergrasp, and other areas to give you free Crystallized elements.

Bubble Belt - Finally, an upgrade for your Gnomish Harm Prevention Belt. The Nigh Invulnerabilty Belt can be equipped at level 50, yet its ilevel is high enough that you could socket it with a belt buckle at level 70.

Xtremely Overpowered Boots - The Xtreme boots for melee toons, and the Xtreme Lite boots for casters. These are yet another engineering item that can accept enchants of a higher level, which would be WOTLK enchants like Icewalker and Greater Fortitude. I know for a fact that they'll take those 2, and they'll probably take Tuskarr's and Greater Assault.

My love affair with Engineering - Part 2

2010-09-21T12:50:00.000-07:00

9/21/2010

On to the level 35-49 range! (level 225-300 engineering)

Even more powerful bombs are available, though I only list the ones I usually use, since the others are to costly for my tastes. Dense Dynamite at level 250, and Fel Iron Bomb at 300. I never actually make Fel Iron bombs at this level though, since I hate not getting skill points. I usually just shuffle them from my level 50+ toons, since they make them to advance their engineering at that level.
Not much in the goggle department in this range, since you'll have started to get stats on your helm drops by now.
More class borrowing though.

Resurrection - Goblin Jumper Cables XL have a much higher chance of working. /yell "Live, dammit!" when you're gonna shock someone.

Underwater Breathing - Don't have a shaman/warlock with you? Don't feel like stocking breathing potions from an alchemist? Just pop on your Deepdive Helmet when you're running low on air, then switch back.

More Attack Pets - The chicken, walking bomb, and two dragonlings become available in this range, though you'll have to be level 40 and 50 for the dragonlings, goblin engineer for the bomb, and a gnomish engineer for the chicken. Also, unlike before, they've been severely nerfed. They used to scale in level with your engineering level, meaning that you could have a guardian pet that was a lot higher in level then you were. Plus, if you are a dedicated engineer, at level 50 you'll be crafting Burning Crusade trinkets, making the Arcanite Dragonling unnecessary.

Mind Control - Mind Control, not just for priests! Tricky to use though, the one time I tried it I couldn't get out of combat, and kept getting swarmed by mobs.

Death Ray - The signature attack of the new Cataclysm hero class, the Combat Engineer! Seriously though, if you use this during the 35-49 range, it will help a lot. You really need to couple it with the bubble belt/paladin bubble/Mana shield/Void Walker Sacrifice/Power Word: Shield to get the most use out of it though, since it will hurt you severely while charging otherwise. This is one of the reasons that all of my engineers go Gnomish except paladins, and even they go gnomish first to get this and the chicken, then go Goblin after. And this was when you had to drop engineering to switch specializations too. And go uphill to school, in the snow, both ways......

Self Portals - Before the portal in Dalaran was available to drop you in front of the Caverns of Time, you had a long flight from TB or Org to get to Tanaris, and an even longer one from Darnassus. The Gnomish Gadgetzan teleporter and the Goblin Everlook Ripper give level 260 engineers a time saving device that they can use every 4 hours. Just remember, keep fire extinguishers and healing spells handy when going to Winterspring, and keep your parachute on when going to Tanaris. Accidents can and will happen. Also, be prepared to /yell "You no take candle!!!" when tranformed into a kobold in the teleport chamber.

Other fun gadgets - High Powered Flashlight, Goblin Rocket Helmet, and the Gnomish World Enlarger.

My love affair with Engineering - Part 1

2010-09-11T14:11:00.000-07:00

9/11/2010

Ever since my warlock Bonescourge on Demon Soul picked up engineering, I have been in love with that profession. Why, do you ask?

The sheer versatility it grants you, of course! Let's face it, the other professions have a rising curve of items that you can use, so it's better to leave off leveling them until you are at the level of the items that you can equip.

In contrast, there's actually a decline on how useful engineering can be to a toon, which starts at each level cap that you can advance the profession. Level 5,10,20,35,50,65.....at each of these levels, you want to max out the profession in order to make the most use of the items you can get.

I'm not going to discuss the level 5-10 gap, since you probably wouldn't even visit a capitol city yet. However, at level 10, you can powerlevel engineering up to 150 which gives you access to three different goggles, the stats of which would normally not be gotten until the late 20's. You also have a limited time portable tank in the target dummy, which does what a tank is supposed to do, by attracting monsters and allowing you to dps without the mobs beating on you. You also have some AOE bombs, which probably do a lot more damage then you would be able to crank out at that level.

Moving on to level 20-34 (level 150-225 engineering). A few more goggles become available at this cap, though I've never made the Craftman's Monocle. Melee toons go with the Bright-Eye Goggles, casters go with Spellpower.

More AOE bombs, with Solid Dynamite and Goblin Land Mine being the top contenders.
And now, we start really getting into borrowing from other classes spells, with major cooldowns.

Resurrection - Goblin Jumper Cables

Combat pets (like hunter and warlock pets) - Reaper and Dragonling. Unfortunately, the Reaper does kinda suck, but every little bit of damage helps, and you can get most of the mats back when he self-destructs.

Vanish - Gnomish Cloaking Device. I've used this on my level 20 paladin to get past the elites in Winterspring Gorge, to get to the demon vendor who sells gromsblood and felcloth.

Paladin Bubble - If you've gotten a toon to level 30 and picked Gnomish Engineering, you could make the bubble belt for any class that can at least wear leather. Going up against an elite or doing some PvP? Extend your life by popping this when you get low on health.

Druid Root - Gnomish Net-o-Matic Projector could be useful by rooting 1 elite in place while you beat on the other one. Again, have a Gnomish Engineer make it for you.

Dash/Sprint - 2 boots, the Gnomish and Goblin Rocket Boots. I highly advise using the Gnomish ones, since the Goblin ones can explode permanently.

Perception (human racial talent) - Keep getting ganked by an annoying rogue or druid? Catseye Goggles will boost your ability to see stealthed toons, cutting their advantage decisively. The only problem is the lack of stats on the goggles, meaning that you'll be killed at least once before you think to put them on.

Slow Fall/Levitate - Parachute Cloak is a must for any non mage/priest engineer. Since it's ilvl 45, it will accept the +12 agility to cloak enchant, unlike any other cloak under level 35. With 20 agility on my cloak, I usually end up keeping this equipped until level 65, when you can max out engineering to 450, and get the tinkering parachute enchant. For casters, you can just put +50 armor on it, and that's fine too.
This is the first item that is able to take higher level enchants, but it's certainly not the last.

The most useful pet in the game

2010-08-25T07:10:00.000-07:00

8/25/2010

Hey, only one month since my last post!
I've actually been mulling over a few topics, but one of them leapt to the front of my brain tonight.

The most useful pet you can get is.......a Death Knight of the opposite faction!
If you're stuck trying to get reputation from rarely visited areas like Hellfire Peninsula (Thrallmar/Honor Hold rep) or Nagrand (Mag'har or Kurenai rep), they can really help you out. Now, I realize that you can just grind rep by killing ogres, but if you want Halaa Battle Tokens, you're usually outta luck. And why would you want those Battle Tokens? The two Talbuks that you can buy, of course! If you're going for the Mountain o' Mounts achievement, every little bit helps. I'm currently at 89/100, and getting those plus the 8 Talbuks from exalted with the Mag'har would definitely come in handy. So, do the daily PvP quest in Nagrand, and after 17 days, you'd have 8500 rep extra, plus 170 tokens.

Here's the catch, though. You gotta be around the same level as the DK. They have to be at least green to you, so they give you honor for kills. No honor, no tokens. So, the only way I'd be able to get those mounts for my main Bloodshrike would be to get my friend to level up his DK to whatever level gets him to be green to an 80. I'm not sure that's gonna happen anytime soon.....
If you've blown past Outlands, you really have to kiss those mounts goodbye, because it's gonna be extremely hard to find a level 80 cruising around Nagrand, that's also landed around the outskirts of Halaa, and the chance of you killing them 170 times is slim to none.
You could still kill your pet DK to get the daily quest done, for an easy 500 rep with the Mag'har, but you won't get the tokens unless they're green to you.

In contrast, Thrallmar rep can still be earned fairly easily playing solo, in 2 ways. One, with the daily pvp quest. Two, you can solo Shattered Halls at 80 for the rep needed to level from honored to exalted, since rep from Ramparts and Blood Furnace stops at 5999/6000 Honored, and you can't earn any more from mobs until level 68, and have access to Shattered Halls. But guess what, at level 68 you can go to Northrend, and so nobody runs those dungeons anymore.

Here's where the rules get fuzzy. Any level player can kill a player of the opposing faction when in the three stadiums, and still recieve a Mark. Turn those marks in 5 at a time, and get a rep boost buff. Now, if you manage to get a rep run with other players, or do it solo, you're getting more reputation per mob than normal.

Getting those marks is also pretty sweet for a toon that just hit Outlands, too. My paladin Clockwrknyt was able to get her first Libram and a sweet trinket that should help her with tanking. Mana AND life back, without having to use judgements or seals!
She earned the marks with a combination of the daily PvP quest, which gives you 3 tokens, and also laying the smack down on my pet DK, one kill at a time.

The reason that this came to mind was because of an encounter I had while doing the daily pvp quest for the tokens and rep. My pet DK was standing outside one of the stadiums, waiting for Bloodshrike to fly over, whereupon he would go inside, tip the balance to neutral, and let Bloodshrike recapture it. A level 80 Blood Elf DK swoops down, and slaughters him. I whispered to him to please leave him alone, as I was using him to do the daily. Not only did he try to camp the DK's corpse, he also squatted on the stadium, pushing the balance all the way over to max Horde side. He also pretended to speak french when I asked him to stop it.

When I armoried him, I just had to laugh. Apparently, he liked the starting Relic and trinket so much, he kept using them. He also seems to be unsure of whether to PvP, tank, or DPS, based on his gear and gemming. I truly understand the term "faceroller" after dealing with this illustrious gentleman.

2 months since my last post

2010-07-20T15:00:00.000-07:00

7/20/2010
....and I don't know why. I just really would rather play the game then talk about it, I guess. But, WoW is down for maintenance, and extended maintenance on Demon Soul, where all my mains are, for the entire day, so now's a good time.

I didn't post anything about the Midsummer Fire festival, kinda because I was bummed I didn't get the Frigid Frostling, even though I ran it every day of the festival.
Here's a quick recap of my toons leveling during the Festival. Keep in mind that most of the leveling was just off the 2 dailies, the Torch Tossing and Catching. Those reward basically the max xp of a quest at that toons level, which is generally enough for at least a bubble's worth on your xp bar. Only the toons that were around level 70 did the Ice Lord lieutenant killing, since it was easy to take a portal from Dalaran to Thunder Bluff, do the dailies and get the Striking Back quest, take the portal there to Blasted Lands, go thru the Dark Portal, kill the Glacial Templar, then hearth back to Dalaran.

6/21 Start of Midsummer Fire Festival.
Demon Soul
Bloodshrike - 80
Bullkathos - 73
Thrillkiller - 68
Bonescourge - 53
Banesidhe - 72 (and dinged 73 that day)
Kukoshakaku - 51
Clockwrknyt - 58
Burizadokyanon - 41
Morticide - 34
Pallormortis - 80

Daggerspine
Clockwrkmage - 60
Preyonyou - 37
Tsuris - 52
Aosdanasaoi - 50
Hangfire - 42
Panzergishi - 49
Kishigishi - 49 (got 50 off dailies)
Ryoushigishi - 52
Gwiddonyn - 46
Doomslinger - 38 (dinged 39 on dailies)

Darrowmere
Bloodshrike - 49
Clockwrkmage - 31
Psilentkill - 36 (dinged 37)
Didactylos - 27
Gavelofpain - 29
Wartraveler - 28
Misericorde - 30
Ghostflame - 25
Gimmershred - 29
Annihilus - 26

6/22 - (Darrowmere) Clockwrkmage->32, Gavelofpain->30, Misericorde->31
6/23 - (Daggerspine) Gwiddonyn->47
6/24 - (Demon Soul) Clockwrknyt->59
(Daggerspine) Preyonyou->38, Hangfire->43, Gwiddonyn->48
(Darrowmere) Wartraveler->29, Gimmershred->30
6/25 - (Demon Soul) Bonescourge->54, Morticide->35
6/26 - (Demon Soul) Thrillkiller->69
(Daggerspine) Tsuris->53, Kishigishi->51
(Darrowmere) Didactylos->28
6/27 - (Demon Soul) Kukoshakaku->52
(Daggerspine) Aosdanasaoi->51
6/28 - (Demon Soul) Thrillkiller->70, Burizadokyanon->43
(Daggerspine) Panzergishi->50
(Darrowmere) Ghostflame->26
6/29 - Nobody dinged
6/30 - (Daggerspine) Gwiddonyn->49, Doomslinger->40
(Darrowmere) Bloodshrike->50
7/1 - (Daggerspine) Ryoushigishi->53
(Darrowmere) Clockwrkmage->33, Psilentkill->38, Gavelofpain->31
7/2 - (Demon Soul) Morticide->36
(Daggerspine) Preyonyou->39
(Darrowmere) Bloodshrike->51, Misericorde->32
7/3 (Demon Soul) Bullkathos->75, Bonescourge->55, Clockwrknyt->60, Burizadokyan->44, Morticide->37-38-39 (yeah, he put out a lot of torches that day )
(Daggerspine) Clockwrkmage->62
7/4 (Demon Soul) Clockwrknyt->61

So, most of my toons got at least 1-2 levels during these 2 weeks of leveling, with the star being Morticide, bouncing up 5 levels. I could have done more if I had everyone do the torches in each zone, but that takes about 4-5 hours each, with all the flying and traveling you have to do. Since this was added to my daily regimen of Bloodshrike and Pallormortis' Frost Badge dungeons and Argent Tournament dailies, plus Bloodshrike/Pallor/Bane/Thrill/Bull doing the Dalaran Fishing and Cooking dailies.....I'm happy with what I did. The Midsummer Fire Festival is definitely my favorite holiday for leveling.

ur doeing it rong, lol!

2010-05-22T17:30:00.000-07:00

5/22/2010

Urrgghh....just seeing that on the screen makes you cringe, doesn't it? That means that someone is about to drop a pearl of wisdom on you, swiftly summarizing your playstyle as bad, because it's not done according to what they're used to.

I just finished doing heroic TOC for the 54th time, just gathering my daily 3 Champion Seals for the last mount I need from the Argent Tournament. The first tank dropped out after the first wipe, we kicked the healer after the second wipe since he wasn't really doing a great job of healing, and after the 3rd wipe and subsequent victory over Lady Paletress, the new tank commented that the dps was terrible. Then, he started blaming me! He said, "Oh, Beastmaster. You should go Survival, you'd do 4k dps easily. And your weapons are wrong too, even Marrowstrike (which had just dropped) would be better."
I currently have Blood Weeper and Nighttime equipped, with 65 AP on both of them. Here's my armory link.

But, excuse me? I was tops dps of the group! My pet gorilla was doing about the same dps as the rogue. Just because I had 5k GS, that means that I should carry the whole group? It seems that PUG's tend to rely on the fact that people with higher equipment are still forced to run heroics to get emblems or seals, so they feel comfortable showing up in sub-par gear, confident that they'll still get carried thru the instance.

As Beastmaster, with my pets damage added to mine (Diznizzia is my pet), I was doing about 3300 dps. Plus, I was using Misdirect as much as possible so that the tank could do their job without worrying about someone like me pulling aggro. The rogue was at 3300 GS, the DK was probably 4400. And yet I'm supposed to "know my roll?"

I might change my second spec from Marksman (since I've never used it) to Survival, but that's just because I want to try it out. I brought sufficient firepower to the instance to justify my being in it. The others should do the same.

In Soviet Russia, mounts pay you!

2010-05-18T12:04:00.000-07:00

5/18/2010
Yakov Smirnoff

Unlike most rep grind mounts, the Argent Tournament Champion Seal mounts pay for themselves, many times over. I'm currently at about 81 mounts (I think), on my way to the 100 mount achievement, and only have the troll 100 seal mount left.

Let's look at what getting ALL the mounts entails.
Each capitol city faction quartermaster offers 2 mounts, one for 100 seals, the other for 5 seals and 500g. All of them (Horde and Alliance) also sell the Argent Hippogryph flying mount for 150 seals.
11 mounts for 2500 gold, 675 seals

Sunreaver or Silver Covenant - 1 land mount 100 seals, 1 flying mount 150 seals.
2 mounts for 250 seals.

Argent Quartermaster Dame Evniki Kapsalis sells the Argent Warhorse for 100 seals to any class, and the Argent Charger to paladins.
1 mount for 100 seals (100 seals more for a paladin)

Grand total: 2500 gold, 14 mounts (for most classes), and 675 + 250 + 100 = 1025 seals required.

Add the teleport Tabard, and if your toon isn't an engineer, you might want the mailbox/vendor/bank option that the Pony Bridle offers, for an extra 150 seals.
Tabard and bridle = 200 seals.
I've already bought the tabard, and since I already have Jeeves, I'm very doubtful I'll go for the bridle, even though it does give you an achievement. Why not? Urggghhh, I am very, very, verrrrry tired of doing those AT dailies. Yes, it's a nice amount of gold, but it's a time-sucker, when I want to be working on other toons.

Let's break down how long it takes to earn 1025 seals, using only the dailies, once you're exalted with Argent Tournament.

3 seals + 3x(13.23 gold)= 39.69 gold from Sunreavers or Silver Covenant tent NPC's.

7 seals from the Argent Tournament tent. 6 quests, but 7 seals since TFA gives 2 seals. These quests also reward 6x(13.23)= 78.78 gold + 40 gold from the grab bag = 118.78 gold, plus the chance of extra Champion seals dropping occasionally from the bag.

So, 9 Daily quests, 118.78 gold, 10 seals per day. Let's also toss in the Heroic Trial of the Champion for an extra 3 seals, bringing us up to about 13 seals per day, give or take. I usually specifically do heroic TOC first, while doing quests, then do my random for Frost badges after that. Sometimes, you get TOC as the random, so you could have 16 seals that day.

1025/13 = 79 days. Well, really, 1075/13= 83 days, since you're definitely going to want to get the tabard to minimize travel time to the tournament grounds as much as possible. This is assuming you do all the dailies plus TOC every day, 7 days a week. Assuming you do this, 83 days times 118.78 = 9,858.74 gold. That's a profit of almost 7,400 gold, even after you pay for the 500 gold mounts.

So if you ever see a level 80 whining about gold, tell them to go buy all the Argent Tournament mounts. They won't have to worry about gold for a long time after that.

Children's Week

2010-05-04T14:53:00.000-07:00

5/4/2010

Another meta achievement, with some more pets available. No daily quests that come from the holiday itself, so no easy XP for my multitude of alts.

However, Bloodshrike, Bullkathos, Thrillkiller, Banesidhe, and Pallormortis on Demon Soul are able to do the Shattrath Orphan questline, with Pallor able to do the Dalaran as well (perhaps Banesidhe too, if I level soon enough). Since Bloodshrike already did the Dalaran questline when he got to 70, no luck with picking up the Oracle orphan, unless Blizz fixes the code to allow it. Oooh...I just remembered that Clockwrkmage on Daggerspine is my first Alliance to hit 60, so she can do the Shattrath quests too!

You know what the kicker is? The only thing that could keep me from getting the title on 5 of my alts this year is food. Yup, while you only need to be level 68 to queue for Utgarde, you need to be level 75 to eat some of the foods listed in Bad Example. You don't even need to be that high to accomplish the dreaded School of Hard Knocks, since Eye of the Storm is available at level 61.

Edit: Utgarde Pinnacle is actually accessed starting at level 78, so Bloodshrike will be the only toon I really need to stress about this year.

The Most Valuable Item in the Game

2010-05-04T14:36:00.000-07:00

4/29/2010

What is the most desirable mat for recipes in the game now? Primordial Saronite? Abyss Crystals? Titansteel Bars? Frozen Orbs? Not likely. Prices for high level mats are falling fast, with Primordial Saronite, once up to 1.8k gold each, now down to about 800 gold on the servers I play on.

And, exactly how much profit margin can you make with high level recipes? My enchanter Banesidhe can barely get work, even after dropping my crafting price from 30 to 20 to 15 gold for any of the Wrath enchants (of course I don’t have Blade Ward or Blood Draining, since he’s only level 69). Even when I enchant scrolls with those recipes, I find that the Auction House already has Berserker/Massacre/Super Stats in there already, at….and get this…..less than mat cost. So, enchanters get mats together, pay for or make their own Armor/Weapon Vellum III’s, then put them in the AH at less of a cost than the mats would sell for. Ludicrous!

What is it about the fact that it’s a game that prevents people from considering making a decent profit? I always measure things against how much gold my level 80 Bloodshrike can make doing the Argent Tournament Dailies, which is 13g 23 silver per, plus 4 of the quests have the option to make an additional 10 gold and a chance at another Champion Seal. When someone wants me to craft something for them, and they want to party up and then spend time gathering the mats, and 5 minutes later are ready for me to start crafting, then I get a 5-10 gold tip…..It’s not worth it to me.

My Blacksmith Bullkathos had someone whisper him to come to Orgrimmar to make a Razorplate chestpiece for them. I said sure, but I wanted to discuss the crafting fee first. This guy, just because he had mats, thought that that entitled him to have me make it for him free. I’ve bought all the Ulduar and TOC recipes that I have off the AH, and I’d like to make a profit on them.

I’ve probably used this analogy before, but I think it’s a good one. When people get accustomed to you crafting for free or for tips, that’s like them showing up at a carpenter’s house with bunch of lumber, and asking the carpenter to build you a house. When the carpenter is done, he maybe gets a $20 tip. Having mats means nothing! You can have all the mats in the world, but unless someone on your server has the recipe you want, you aren’t getting the item you need.

Getting the recipes, which for the most valuable ones means going out and either grinding specific mobs or building up reputation with a faction, that’s what makes you stand out among the crowd of other crafters who “LFW [Profession] Your mats free, tips appreciated.” I refuse to lower my standards on pricing. I spent hella gold/time either searching for bargains on the Quest items tab in the Auction House, or by doing dailies or killing monsters to gain rep with factions for the recipes that I possess. And for someone to compare that to a Max level enchanter who doesn’t have any other recipes than what the trainer taught him, and want to tip me the same? Hell no.

/end rant

So, getting to the original point of the post. Large Brilliant Shards are the most valuable items in the game to me right now, offering 500-5000% return on the cost of buying them from the AH. They have a multitude of uses in enchants, for heirloom items as well as enchants for equipment slots that don’t have heirloom pieces. Crusader, 15 Agility to 1hand, 25 Agility to 2h, Spellpower, Healing Power, and various other enchants to gloves and chest pieces.

So stock up, enchant scrolls, use the Auction House, and save yourself the grief of dealing with customers!

.........and that ain't bad!

2010-04-12T15:56:00.000-07:00

27 out of 30.
Yup, 27 out of my 30 toons either got, or are able to get the Noble title this year.

I can't camp eggs on my servers. Even on sunday, when it started, there wasn't much of a turnout for the holiday on Daggerspine. Demon Soul and Daggerspine are PvP servers, and while Darrowmere is now a PvE realm, it just recently switched from PvP, so there still isn't a big population.
So, when I'm getting eggs, I have no choice to but to hunt them down individually. I'm sure glad I move with the mouse, because if I was WASD moving, there's no chance I would have gotten as many eggs as I did. Tons of them are hidden in pots that you have to tilt the camera over your shoulder to see, or placed under a wagon, behind a wheel, with a noblegarden rabbit hiding in front of it going "bok bok bok" (just kidding about the last part).

For the most part, I was able to get all the items needed to complete the achievements as drops, with a few exceptions.
Hangfire and Doomslinger on Daggerspine had to buy both the rabbit and flowers, as they didn't drop while I was getting the 100 eggs that I needed to eat. 300 more eggs needed total. I'm sure there were others who needed to buy the flowers or the robe, but hey, what's 50 more eggs?

On Daggerspine (my Ally server) everyone except Ryoushigishi got the title already, and Ryo just needs to finish up Shake your Bunny-Maker and the Badlands part of Desert Rose, and he's got it.

Demon Soul has 7 Nobles, with Kukoshakaku, Clockworknyt, and Morticide needing the Badlands rose to be planted.

Darrowmere has Bloodshrike (number 2) who already got the title, and then all the other level 20-30's who still haven't gotten the Badlands flight point, as well as need to finish up the bunny-maker achievement. Here's where my 3 failures reside as well. Gavelofpain, my shaman, who had completed the Bunny-maker achievement LAST year, but I ran out of time this year to finish up getting eggs to eat, and didn't get the Spring Robes to drop, so that would have probably been another 50 eggs to collect. Misericorde and Ghostflame....I just couldn't stomach the time and concentration needed to get the eggs for them.

Not to mention, as low levels, none of my toons didn't have the Tanaris or Un'Goro flightpoints, and couldn't survive in those zones safely. My method of getting it? Take the portal from Dalaran to the Caverns of Time, mount up and ruuuun to Tanaris for the flight point, drop a flower, run north to 1k needles for the next flower drop, come back to Tanaris, and head west, dodging all those ??? skull monsters determined to take a chomp out of my toons. Once I reached the rim of Un'Goro crater, my obsession with engineering let me use my Parachute Cloaks to jump from the cliff to a safe point partway down the wall, then jump from there to a plateau on the east side of the mountains. Run down to the valley, grab any Thorium veins if they're miners (at level 20, you can still have up to 300 mining if you powerlevel by smelting ore), and hug the mountains going north, then west to Marshal's Refuge.

Here's where I deviated from the normal method. For low level alts, after you grab the Refuge flightpoint, run down, then keep heading west until you get to the path up to Sithilus. Go get the flight point there, drop your flower, then come back to Un'Goro. After running through the level 50+ monsters to get to the Golakka Hot Springs, you're going to want to hearth out of there when you're done. Get transformed into a bunny, lay an egg, hearth to Dalaran, take a portal to Thunder Bluff or Darnassus, and fly over to Desolace for the last flower drop needed on Kalimdor. Now I just need to get.....oh, 6 toons to run from the Arathi Highlands flightpoint thru Wetlands, up to Loch Modan, and into Badlands. Sounds fun, right?

"I do not eat green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam-I-am."

2010-04-06T09:07:00.000-07:00

I would not, could not, in a box.
I could not, would not, with a fox.
I will not eat them with a mouse.
I will not eat them in a house.
I will not eat them here or there.
I will not eat them anywhere.
I do not eat green eggs and ham.
I do not like them, Sam-I-am.

I don't like eggs anymore............
It's hard to be an altoholic sometimes. The Noblegarden meta is upon us, and as an altoholic, I feel compelled to try to complete it with all my toons, especially since it's one that doesn't require you to go into Northrend dungeons, and it will be the first title that they can achieve. Theoretically, you could get this done at like level 1, not counting the XP you'd get for discovering areas.
You'd need at least 105 eggs collected (100 to eat, 5 to buy an egg for Noble Garden) , assuming you got the
Spring Rabbit, Spring Robes, and Blossoming Branch as drops. You can buy the pieces for the Blushing Bride off the AH, so don't worry about them.

WoW.com already has a write-up for normal folks that are concerned with only getting the title for their mains, but I thought I'd add a few ideas for the people who want it for more than a few alts.

1. Collect 100+ Eggs. You're going to need to eat 100 of these for the Chocoholic achievement, and if you're not lucky enough to have the Spring Rabbit drop while you're collecting them, you'll need to buy the rabbit for an ADDITIONAL 100 eggs. Oh yeah, if you're a mage, you'll need 100 MORE eggs for the Rabbit Morph book. My strategy has been to collect about 100 eggs, then start eating everything over that. If I haven't gotten the rabbit to drop by the time I get the 100 eggs eaten, then I just hand in my overstock 100 eggs for the rabbit, and never, EVER pick up an egg again if I can help it.

2. Get your Spring Rabbit ASAP. People will be doing the Spring Fling achievement only in the first few days of the week, and after that, it'll be a lot more difficult to get it done, especially if you need it for 10 alts in each town. I'll probably end up paying someone to come out to each town to romance my rabbit for a few of my alts.

3. Get Hard Boiled done quickly as well. Hopefully you can just ask people in the zone to help you get it done, since they'd be coming to do the same thing. However, after the first day, it's hard to find people doing it. If need be, just get all your alts but your highest to the Hot Springs, and have that one back in the capitol city spam trade chat for someone to come out with enough Blossoming Branches to be able to transform all your alts. I figure 5 gold for each one, times 9 or 10, should be a decent reward for someone's time.

4. Desert Rose is actually not something you have to worry about. It doesn't need to be done during the meta week, you can get it done anytime during the year. Banesidhe, my original mage, actually got this done the day before Noblegarden started.

5. Another achievement that can be accomplished during the year is Shake Your Bunny-Maker. Bloodshrike on Darrowmere was actually my first toon to ever get the title, and she got it on (I'll have to check the date when wow is done with maintenance). No time limit on this, probably because Blizz realized that some of the races are rarely represented on some servers.

I'm going to need at least 2100 eggs this year, to get this done for all my toons. Why not 3150? Well, I was dedicated enough last year to get the Spring Rabbits for all my toons on Darrowmere, before just giving up on the achievement. It might be a bit less than that, since I haven't checked what toons have the rabbit on Demon Soul, but none of my toons on Daggerspine have the rabbit, since I really didn't like the way any of the Alliance towns placed the eggs.

I've got the title already for Clockwrkmage and Tsuris on Daggerspine on Sunday, Bloodshrike on Darrowmere already had it, and I think I'm pretty close on most of Demon Soul. Wish me luck!

LFG Steamvault at level 80

2010-03-10T21:37:00.000-08:00

3/10/2010

While perusing the list of blogs I read, I came across Mania's tweet about wishing there was LFD available for running lower level dungeons at 80, i.e. ZG. Seriously, why not? It's hard enough to drum together a group using the trade channel, and you already could group for these dungeons when you were a lower level, why not at a higher level?

I'm still grimly pursuing my Loremaster achievement, with only 20-30 quests left on both Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms. I've gotten most of the quest achievements in Outlands, and gotten Sholozar Basin, Icecrown, and Storm Peaks completed in Northrend.
I'll finish up with Borean Tundra, Dragonblight, Grizzly Hills, Howling Fjord, and Zul'drak after I've gotten Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms Loremaster finished.

Most of the quest achievements in Outlands, I said. However, Bloodshrike probably did 3 or 4 of the quests in Hellfire Peninsula before moving on to Zangarmarsh, because I stumbled on this little tidbit of info. Thrallmar - "If you do the bulk of the Thrallmar quests instead of quickly moving on to the next zone, you might expect to reach Honored after 1 or 2 levels of play. However, once you reach Honored, you hit an earnings barrier that you can only remove when you are level 68 and can start re-earning points in the Shattered Halls dungeon.....One option is to grind reputation via Ramparts and Blood Furnace runs to 5999/6000 before doing any Thrallmar quests outside the instances, as those continue to yield reputation up to Exalted."

At that point, I seriously never thought I'd see the inside of a dungeon unless I was soloing it. So, I just ignored the quests, and took myself to Zangarmarsh. Now, being the achievement hound that I've turned out to be, I wanna get exalted with Thrallmar. I'd also like to not have to solo those dungeons ad nauseum to do so. I just ran Hellfire Ramparts for the hell of it with my Ally mage Clockwrkmage, and had a blast with the group, Blizzarding everything in sight. Granted, at level 80 it wouldn't be difficult, it's just going to be boring, and even running it with a group of 60's would speed things up.

I'm not sure why the capability to join any dungeon isn't available. Apart from the possibility of Stockades being farmed by Horde for the easy availability of wool cloth, I don't think someone is going to constantly run Wailing Caverns for the greens that drop.

Also, going back to the title of the post, I'd like to go for the Guardian of Cenarius title, but again, I missed the boat on that one. While it's simplicity itself to turn in Twilight Texts until you ding exalted with Cenarion Circle, it's a bit harder with Cenarion Expedition.

I do have to say I like how Blizzard has refined dungeons and zones in Northrend. Dungeons are shorter, zones don't have a lot of quests that force you to go to a different zone, come back, go to a 3rd zone, come back, and finally the quest chain is completed. Everything is more linear. When you're on your first toon, you don't mind doing all these far-flung quests, as everything is new and exciting. On your 10th toon, you look at the quest, you evaluate on whether Blizzard actually provided enough mobs to complete it on the first pass, or whether the quest item has a ridiculously low drop rate, and then you might decide to not pick it up at all.

While I do want all my toons to be at least exalted with the home cities, I'm passing up a lot of quests nowadays, just because I don't want to do them. Like in Harold & Kumar go to White Castle, I've gone too far.
Kumar: I forgot my cell phone.
Harold: You wanna run back and get it?
[both turn and look at their front door 20 feet from them]
Kumar: No, we've gone too far.

I AM the fail Tank

2010-03-05T01:28:00.000-08:00

2/5/10

I'm finally getting around to having my Tauren Warrior Bullkathos get the Elders in Kalimdor, since it'll save me time next year when I'll be 80, and able to get all the achievements done. I might be able to do it all this year, but I think some of the Elders are in Heroics, and Bull is only 71 right now.

I dual-specced to Prot a while back, and while I organized my action bars for Battle/Defensive/Fury to be almost the same as when I'm Arms specced, I didn't actually....play like that. Bad tank, no biscuit!

Since I solo most of the time, I go with the higher DPS of Arms. However, flying around to get the Elders gets really boring after a bit, and since I've gotten more used to the LFD tool, I saw that Bull could get Emblems of Triumph, just like his big brother Bloodshrike!

I selected tanking, hit the "Find me a group!" button, and I swear, about 2 seconds passed since the time I clicked it to when I got the message that my dungeon was ready. Instant queue times indeed.....

I get into Nexus, switch to Protection, switch to Defensive stance, and realize that my Charge macro that I copied from a blog a long time ago, would be totally wrong for this. Shoot, I should have copied it before I erased it from my macros, but basically it would take you from any stance into Battle Stance, hit Bloodrage and Fury, and charge the monster, ending in a Hamstring. If you tapped it twice, it would switch you to Fury stance.

So, after LoS pulling, and throwing knives at monsters to get them to look at me, I came up with the simple macro I had used in the beginning of my warrior's adventures.
/cast Bloodrage
/cast Berzerker rage
/cast Charge
So you're already getting some rage while charging the monster, and will continue to do so while getting hit, and hitting them back.

After about 2 minutes of very slow going, I revealed that this was my first tanking experience. After about 10 minutes in, I said they could boot me if they wanted, no harm no foul.
Nope, they were all very friendly and helpful, encouraging me to use Thunderclap and Taunt (I remembered Mocking Blow on my own) more, and since I actually communicated and thanked them for their help, nobody insulted me or dropped out. We wiped on the first boss (Telestra), got the second(Anomalus) and 3rd boss (Ormorok) down with no problems, and I was getting into a more of a groove with my aggro and rotation.

We then wiped on Keristraza 2 times, and I died on the 3rd try, with the other guys stepping up and taking her down the last 20k health.

I have a lot more respect for tanks now. I never disrespect them anyway, and I'm always careful to start my dps after they start building aggro, with Misdirect going up as soon as I can. However, the sheer amount of things you have to concentrate on while tanking is kinda stressful.

I think Bull needs to level as Prot for a bit, until I can get my skills built into muscle memory, like it is for Arms spec.

My First Fail PUG

2010-02-27T15:16:00.000-08:00

2/27/10

Well, not really. We still finished the run, we never wiped, but it wasn't a very fun run. I've started running Heroics (surprise, surprise), and generally have had a very good time. I've wiped once or twice, but the groups are pretty fun. However, doing Heroic Azjol-Nerub, I fell behind the group when my pet got killed, and had to resurrect him. By the time I wound my way down the spiderwebs, I couldn't see anyone, and it took me a bit of time to find the hole to fall down.

They started the fight when I was on the ramp, and the Dungeon Guide Pally Tank didn't see fit to tell me that the circle closes up when the fight with Anub'Arak starts. So, I spent the entire fight outside, twiddling my thumbs and feigning death. After the fight, I apologized again, and while the DPS and healer were cool, the tank said "You guys suck," and left after Needing on the Frozen Orb.

BTW, what's up with that? I've found that most tanks need on the Orb nowadays. I know that it'll become valuable to trade in during the next patch, but is it cool for anyone to need on it? Or is it just considered a perk of tanking?

It was embarrassing, but at least that Heroic got me the Northrend Dungeonmaster achievement, so I presumably now have knowledge of all the dungeons. No more mistakes!!

I have also discovered that instead of endlessly grinding quests for the Argent Tournament, I can just use Emblem of Triumphs that drop like rain from these heroics, and trade them down to get any BOA heirloom items that I might want for my alts. Just like my Argent Tournament rep, I did it back-assward.

I currently only need the Elders in the Sunken Temple, Blackrock Spire, Blackrock Depths, and the Nexus to get my Elder title for the Lunar Festival. Wow, that achievement takes a LOT of time to get, just because it requires so much flying from zone to zone in Azeroth. Now, imagine doing that 30x. Yeah.....

I'll do what I can for my alts, but I'm NOT even going to try to get all of them to do the Eastern and Kalimdor Elders. They'll fly down, and get the easily accessible ones, but the ones in enemy territory will get a miss until next year perhaps.

Tipping Vs. Crafting Fee

2010-02-15T13:50:00.000-08:00

2/15/2010
Wow.com has an article up right now that relates to something near and dear to me. Specifically, the idea of getting just compensation for crafting goods and items for other players in the game. Charging a crafting fee, or depending on the kindness of strangers to provide tips.

I’ve always been a perfectionist with professions, seeking to get as many recipes for each character as I could. Just like Pokemon, I “gotta catch them all!” Because of that, I have the expectation of being appreciated for putting in time and effort that might have been more happily spent elsewhere. Grinding for reputation with the Timbermaw, or paying 20-30 each for Lava Cores/Fiery Cores to turn in to the Thorium Brotherhood to boost your rep to Revered………not a lot of fun.

However, I do it for a couple reasons. First, and foremost, I do it for profit. Always one of the best reasons, in my opinion. Having ANY sort of recipe that requires either a ton of gold to acquire, or any type of grinding or work, and you knock out at least 50% of your competition in that profession. In my RL job, my company charges $200 an hour for my time. I currently get a much smaller percentage of that, but as my skillsets and knowledge base improves, I’ll start getting more of that income.

Same goes with professions in WoW. If you only have trainer taught recipes, with maybe the recipes you can buy in Dalaran for Dream Shards, expect a low tip. You’re not bringing anything special to the customer. If, however, you have recipes that dropped from a boss in a dungeon, with a very low drop rate, and nobody runs that dungeon anymore (cough, Enchant Weapon – Spellpower), expect to get paid much more for providing that service to customers.

Secondly, I take pride in what I do in life, both in life and in WoW. If I spend time learning how to be a master carpenter in real life, then charge $8 per hour for making a gorgeous table for a customer, I’m doing a disservice to myself, my profession, and the customer. I could have taken a job doing fast food for about the same amount of pay, not learned anything, and would not have a different skillset in my life. When people pay a lot of money for something, it tends to make them value and appreciate it more, no matter what it is.

Take painting, for instance. If you splash some color on canvas, and sell it for $10, or give it away, is anyone really going to appreciate it if they aren’t related to you? They might think it looks nice, or maybe encourage you to take up painting full-time if they think you’re really good, but they’re not going to offer $10,000 for your next masterpiece, which might take you months or years of your life. However, if you put your painting in a gallery, and someone buys it for $300,000, you feel vindicated and proud of your abilities, and the customer is happy to have obtained a piece of art that moves them and causes introspection.

When there are people like this guy (Elmo), “I'm a real cheap ass but willing to tip for enchants or gems. however most people don't dare ask for a little sum, when their trade window goes green I accept and don't pay anything. I think the crafter should take the initiative when it comes to money. I get the enchant I want and if I don't have to pay for it I won't.”

It makes me not want to even bother with Trade Chat at all. My philosophy is that you should get paid for anything you do for someone you don’t have any connection to in the game. For guildies, fine, I could see doing enchants and such for free. But for anyone else, they didn’t run you in dungeons, they didn’t help you with group quests…..you don’t owe them anything. If they don’t have the gold to pay for Enchant Weapon – Spellpower, either by giving me a 75 fee +mats or buying the scroll off the AH for 500g, they need to have kept some of that gold they got for doing the dailies that got them the Champion Seals needed to buy that Heirloom weapon in the first place.

Granted, I am specifying Fee vs. Tip. When I bark in Trade, I say “Heirloom [Enchanting]! I have those hard to find rep recipes that most enchanters don’t have. Get it from me with a DECENT fee, or pay way more for it on the AH.” 2nd macro says “Specializing in [Enchant weapon – Spellpower][Enchant weapon – Strength]. I’ve got more recipes than some enchanters at 450!” (I'm currently at 375 enchanting with my 60 mage Banesidhe and my 54 mage Clockwrkmage)

I suppose this guy is justified (Methuus)“f you expect a certain amount of gold for your services, then it's not a tip. It's payment for services rendered. If you say "tip", then don't act all surprised when you get 1 copper. I really wish that tradechat crafters would stop being vague and wishy-washy with the whole "tips welcome" thing. Just come right out and pick a number and require it. As in: "[Enchanting], your mats, anything for 20g payment." Again, these are probably people who powerleveled their professions, don’t have anything other than trainer taught recipes and maybe some epic patterns. They don’t value their professions, and it shows. There might be some people who are so nice in life and in game that they genuinely don’t care, but usually if you spend time trying to get a recipe, you want to get paid back for the effort.

I should wrap this up. Basically, if you know you want payment for your skills, tell the person at the very start of the conversation. When you’re barking, mention a fee in your macro, and when you set up a deal with a customer, try to tell them the fee before they gather up the mats. It’ll waste your time if you have to wait for them to get mats, come to you, get ready to make/enchant an item, then the guy offers a 1g tip for all the effort and time that they used.

If you want to just have fun, have NO expectations of a customer. Be honestly happy to get gold, and don’t worry if they give you nothing. You could /ignore them after that, so they’d never be able to contact you with that toon again, but they could always use an alt. You’ll be happily surprised sometimes, you’ll get nothing occasionally, but you won’t have to worry about seeming “mean” in the game.

As for me, I’ll continue to be upfront with my fees, and not back down if people get upset with me. It’s just gold, and if you want special things in life and in the game, you should realize you have to put some effort into it.

Love is in the Air waypoints - Horde

2010-02-12T17:03:00.000-08:00

2/12/2010

Just a quick post about my method of getting the most out of the Valentine's Day holiday for tons of alts.
BTW, this applies to someone who gets tons of Charm Bracelets, either by grinding for them, or by buying them from people.
I usually start in Orgrimmar, do the daily chocolate or cologne giveaway, pick up the Crushing the Crown quest appropriate for my level, take the quest to turn in the Charm Bracelets to Thrall, then hearth to Dalaran.

Depending on if I have a level 60+ toon or a 70+ toon, I go kill the Crown agents by Dalaran or Shattrath.

From there, I go thru the portal to Silvermoon City, go to the Bazaar in west SMC to pick up the quest for the bracelet, go all the way back to Lor'themar , turn it in, go thru the portal to the courtyard of Undercity, pick up the quest for Sylvanas right before the elevators, go down the elevators to the Apothecarium, and go down the middle corridor to turn the quest in to Sylvanas.

Log out, repeat the process with another toon, and come back to the first to hearth back to Dalaran, then go to Thunder Bluff, pick up the bracelet quest by the bottom entrance to the flight master, turn it in to Cairne, then take a flight back to Orgrimmar to turn in the Crown quest.

Granted, the above is for my toons that are 60+. For all the rest, I log in, do the daily cologne/candy quest, maybe turn in a bracelet to Thrall if I have any extras, and I'm done. Since I'm no longer able to get the Lovely Charms from doing mass destruction dailies, I'm not going to worry about the low levels. Plus, 10 toons on each account doing a 2 minute daily equals 50 EZ Love Tokens per day, which they can turn in and share the rewards equally (except the Peddlefeet pet, which they can earn themselves in only 8 days).
Yup, the Box of Chocolates chocolates can be shared among your toons if they have a common guild bank, as well as Rose Petals, and I believe Love Fools. You can't mail items that have a limited duration, but you can put them in your guild bank. Candy Hearts CAN be mailed between toons, but you're better off saving the Love tokens, since they're usually really cheap on the AH.

Dropping Bombs - a Love Story

2010-02-07T21:53:00.000-08:00

2/7/2010

Hey, just wanted to throw up a quick post about the Lovely Charm Bracelets that people are so eager to get for the meta achievement. As Markco pointed out, you can farm for them in Ulduar. However, what if you've never been to Ulduar, or don't want to go? I think it requires a raid group to do it as well...

Well, since I just recently spent a LOT of time in Icecrown for Loremaster, I immediately thought of 2 quests that I did a few times. Riding the Wavelength, and Total Ohmage. Since you don't have to loot the mobs to get the Lovely Charms for the Bracelet, ANY quest or action that you do that allows you to kill mobs near your level in a quick fashion will suffice. And dropping bombs on all those mobs in the Bombardment netted me about 40 charms in 3-4 minutes.

This is especially helpful if you're looking to get those dailies done for lower level alts, and don't have the time to go out and kill with each of them.

As of 2/6/2010....

2010-02-06T02:13:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to jot down what I have at this point in time, compared to my meager achievements of a few months ago. I think I had 1 or 2 titles then, and maybe 5 exalted reputations. Feel free to think to yourself "TL-DR," and move on.

As of now, I have 16 Exalted reps (5 home cities, Netherwing, Sporeggar, Sha'tari Skyguard, Shattered Sun, Scryers, Argent Crusade, Kirin Tor (mainly leveled off cooking and fishing dailies), Sons of Hodir, Horde Expedition, Sunreavers, and the Oracles (finally!)).

11 unique tabards including one from Shadowmoon Valley .

65/100 mounts.

75+ pets.

472/550 Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms, 615/685 Kalimdor, 15/90 in to Hellfire and Back with all the other Outland zones done. Summit of Stormpeaks and Into the Basin are my only completed Northrend zone achievements, but I'm 112/140 in Icecrown.

I'm 2187/3000 on the Seeker achievement, plus 1474 dailies equalling 3661 total quests done.

Merrymaker and Hallowed make 2/8 for the Violet Proto-drake grind.

Titles: I can now call myself Bloodshrike the Ambassador, Chef, Crusader, Merrymaker, Explorer, Hallowed, or Pilgrim. Or affiliate myself with Of Orgrimmar, Sen'jin, Silvermoon, Thunder Bluff, Undercity, and the Shattered Sun.

Out of Phaze

2010-02-06T01:21:00.000-08:00

So, Bloodshrike, and ONLY Bloodshrike, will be going for the Loremaster achievement. I'm not going to put myself through the misery of slavishly trying to complete all those quests again on another character. I'll do the rep grind for certain factions if they have recipes that that toon needs for their profession(s), but I'm done with being a perfectionist.

I guess this whole thing kind of spun off from me doing the Icecrown quests. I'm currently about 104/140 on them, and I grouped with a BE rogue for a few of the group quests. One in particular was kind of funny. See, I only really got into Northrend at about level 76. I did all of the Sholazar Basin quests by level 77, then came back to Northrend for the Storm Peaks, and I know I got 80 before finishing the quests there.

When I finally started in Icecrown, I went straight to the Argent Crusade, did the intro quests, then became an Aspirant. I did those quests for 25 days, becoming "Champion of ..." and "Exalted Champion of .." at the same moment, since I was already exalted with all the home cities. It wasn't until about halfway thru Revered that I realized that the OTHER quests in Icecrown probably would help boost my Argent Crusade rep, so I wouldn't only rely on the dailies for the rep grind. Doh!

Needless to say, when I finally hit Exalted with the AC, I had over 180 tokens to spend. The first 50 went for the teleport Tabard, and another 120 went for my clothies to level up in style.
I also spent about 10kg for another teleport, though this one actually helps me kill stuff faster.
So, between the tabard, ring, 3 engineering teleport devices, and my hearthstone....I'm almost a mage!

Anyways, back to the original story. The BE rogue and I were about to kill the dogs and the casters for the Guardians quest, but when he came to join up with me, I couldn't see him. We could both see the monsters, but since we were in different phase stages of quest chains, we couldn't see each other. It was quite interesting to coordinate attacks on the monsters, especially since I'm a suspicious basterd, and don't trust that people are pulling their weight unless I actually see them fighting. But, we got it done with only 2 people, so it was a lot better than trying to solo it. I had tried before, and died twice while only killing one of the mobs. But, since we had also done Basic Chemistry and Coprous the Defiled, that finished my list of group quests that I need, except maybe the Banshee's Revenge. Ahh, I'll be happy to get this zone over with.

"Jump, jump, jump around!"

2010-02-06T01:01:00.000-08:00

What's your favorite quest in WoW? There's some quests you loathe, and breathe a sigh of relief when you complete them, and others that you always enjoy, even after the 20th time. My favorite is this one. I don't know why, it's just fun to see how fast I can jump up the mountain, with as little time spent on the ground as possible.

And conversely, I really came to dislike the hunt for shiny baubles that I completed, ad nauseum, after I got exalted with the Frenzyheart, and rashly decided to go for both reps. Luckily, I did get the transformation item from the Frenzyheart on my first Ripe Jar, but then I had to start over again on the rep grind with the Oracles. The shiny treasure quest just bugs me for some reason. I don't mind killing Frenzyheart, it actually is kinda fun to send my gorilla and Jaloot into the middle of the flat rock on the north side of Kartak's hold, gather 22 of the warriors, then annihilate them with 1-2 volleys. The other quests where I have to fly around to the tops of mountains don't bother me either, as it gives me a chance to search for Loque.

This <- ^ -> way to Achievements

2009-12-08T17:39:00.000-08:00

12/08/09

Since I'm waiting for the patch to download, I might as well post!

Well, thanks to the advice and comments of Joar and Kring, I finally got 2 achievements that have been bugging me for a while.
On the Blade's Edge
Check here for tips on how to get this. I had picked up the Orb of Grishna at one point, but I must have thrown it away, because the Ravens Wood Stonebark were still hostile to me. This achievement is very dependent on you doing 2 things.
1) Kill ALL the sons of Gruul.
2) Get all the Pick-up quests - i.e., all the items that drop that say "this item starts a quest." This item from the Bladespire Ogres is good for quite a long quest line.

I also got Nagrand Slam after deciding to run through Auchenai Crypts for Auchindoun, which is 8th in a 14 step chain quest.

Now I just need do about 78 Hellfire quests for the Achievement, and after getting Exalted with the Netherwing (sweet, sweet dragon mounts), I will never, EVER go back to Outlands with Bloodshrike if I can help it.

Woot! Download finished, time to play.

I level......Daily

2009-11-24T15:56:00.000-08:00

11/24/09

Well, Pilgrim's Bounty is now upon us, a new title and pet available from it (though you don't need it for the World Event achievement, it's always fun to get a new title, now that I've recently started getting them.

I'm not going to delve into the specifics of the achievements much, since Darth already has an excellent write-up on them, which adds to the guides already out there.

Instead, I'll add my viewpoints from the altoholic standpoint. Before, when world events came along, I'd do some of them, then give up, because I knew I couldn't finish all of the achievements needed for the title. I figured I'd get back to them later, when I finally hit 80 with one or some of my toons. However, I had been ignoring something very, very nice that happens during these times.

Daily Quests

Normally only available to level 70's and above (unless you're a cook, which allows you to do the Dalaran cooking daily at 65), World Event Daily Quests are usually easy to complete quests that offer a decent amount of gold, sometimes rep, and most importantly, usually a bubbles worth of experience for a few minutes work. With the Midsummer fire festival, I'd log in to do Torch Tossing and Torch Catching, and gain an easy 2 bubbles of experience a day for each of my alts. That's huge for me, since months or even years can go by for a toon before they get out of a city. Banesidhe (my first mage) stayed at level 40 for at least a year, before getting up to level 46 recently with the Hallows End and I believe the Midsummer Fire Festival earlier this year. If I can get to level 48, I'll be ready to zerg out to level 50 with grinding Timbermaw rep, same as I did with Clockwrkmage on my Ally server.

So, my tips on getting some easy gold and xp for your alts, without pulling out your hair in frustration over the lore cooking quests that you think you might have to do. Don't worry about the quests that aren't Dailies, do them as you come to them, but the reward? you get from doing the "Lore" related quests isn't something you will want to rush towards.

Tip #1:
Stock up! Clear out as much of your bags as you can, and stock up to 80-100-120 of each area specific item (Cranberries, Sweet Potatoes...). You never know when someone will offer gold for you to cook food that costs copper to buy. Plus, it really, really, really sucks to run out of Cranberries when you're in UC, and you only have to cook 5 more to turn in a quest. Trust me.

Tip #2:
If you can stand it, try to get as many Wild Turkey stocked up as you can. It's not a problem to replenish your stocks of pumpkins, but it's annoying to have to go out of the city to kill another 20 turkeys each day. Just try to get 60+ the first time, while you're going for the Turkinator achievement, and see if you need more after that.

Tip #3:
Try to do all 5 dailies with all your alts. It only takes a few minutes to run from a portal to where the dailies are, cook up the mats, and turn them in. Then hearth back to Dalaran, portal to the next city, turn in or pick up a daily there, and log out. Rinse and repeat with the next toon. By the time you've done this with your 10th alt, your first one will definitely have their hearth up, and will be ready to go to the next city.

Tip #4:
If you're going to visit the enemy capitals, you might as well explore the zone around there, since I doubt you'll want to come back again when doing all your exploration for the Explorer title. Darnassus and the Exodar are annoying zones to get to as a Horde, so you might as well kill 2 achievements with one trip.

Loremaster or Bust!

2009-11-24T15:31:00.000-08:00

11/9/09
I’ve been trying to get around to having Bloodshrike on Demon Soul get the Loremaster title, since he’s the closest in terms of quests completed in Kalimdor/Eastern Kingdoms, missing only about a 100ish on Kalimdor and a little more in the Eastern Kingdoms. That’s fine and dandy, but what I’ve noticed is that it’s kinda impossible to do the Outland Loremaster without going into Auchindoun, since you stall out at 77 out of 87 quests in Nagrand at that point. I really don’t like being forced to go into dungeons, especially ones that would take me forever to solo. I’m sure I could probably get a group together for running it, since they’d appreciate having an 80 along, but I hate getting into PUG’s.

I guess this is just whining, because it’s really not that hard to get the quests needed for the Outland Loremaster achievement. Heck, I’ve still got a bunch of Consortium quests I could do in Netherstorm, including the quest line that leads up to the X-52 rocket helmet. It’s just that my philosophy has been “If I can’t solo it, I don’t want to do it.” I hate waiting around in Trade, spamming “LFG for whatever,” when I could be out completing other quests, or on an alt, finally getting around to leveling them.

One thing’s for sure, I’m not going to even attempt Loremaster on any other toon. It’s even worse on Alliance side, requiring 700 quests each for Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms. And, correct me if I’m wrong, but they aren’t all this easy. – Ding!

I’m also going to need to do a lot of quest catchup in Northrend too, since I mainly leveled to 80 while still in Outlands, doing all the dailies I could there. I’ve really only touched Sholazar Basin and a little bit of Borean Tundra. I guess it’s a good thing that Pallormortis, my DK, is almost to 70. It would be fun do the quests in Northred around their level, and actually get good amounts of XP for completing them, plus the quest rewards would be around my level. I’m really, really tired of doing quests that are gray to me, just to tick off 1 more number on quests completed.

Edit: Due to completing the Shadowmoon Valley quest achievement, I got some more quests to take back to Nagrand, to visit Altruis the Demon Hunter. So, I'm about 84/87 for Nagrand, and the Auchindoun quests should be filled this week, since I'm going to knock out the Thanksgiving holiday achievement on Bloodshrike at least.

And, after being 80 a few weeks, I finally remembered to visit a hunter trainer and get my level 80 spells, as well as retraining my gorilladin to be more of a tank. Doh! That allowed me to solo the quest in Netherstorm, where you have to defend Area 52 against a Fel Reaver, using a weak version that dies after a little while, leaving you to try to solo it, since there's nobody else out there. I couldn't do it at 79, but finally got it done at 80.

The Start of an Era

2009-11-24T15:19:00.000-08:00

11/2/09
Thanks to Kring and Darth’s advice, I decided to try late night dailies of the Headless Horseman, and I was able to get the Hallowed Helm on my 2nd try. It was a good thing too, because I did it once halfway thru the week to get “Bring me the Head of….oh wait,” and didn’t get around to doing it again until the Friday before the event ended. Since I had gotten the Sinister Squashling pet as a drop from trick or treating the innkeepers, that got me all the achievements I needed for “The Hallowed” title.

Funnily enough, on Darrowmere, my other hunter Bloodshrike was able to get a title just yesterday. She finally nabbed the last 18+ female she needed for the “Shake your Bunnymaker” achievement to get “the Noble” title. Yeah, I’m a little behind the times, I know. It’s just hard to find females in Dalaran, since a lot of the high level armor makes it impossible to see faces. You have to basically inspect every toon of that race that you need, in the hopes of seeing bumps on their chests.
However, in addition to Bloodshrike #1 getting the title, I was able to get about 2-4 levels on each of my toons between the Hallow’s End Dailies and some of them going to get the candy bucket achievements.

Bloodshrike on Demonsoul actually leveled to 80 doing the daily in Brill, funnily enough. I was also able to get several toons on each server either the Squashling or the Hallowed Helm, which will make it easier on me next year, when I will hopefully have a lot more 80’s that I can kill the Headless Horseman with. At this point, I’m not worried about getting the mount from the HH, but it would be nice to have it SOMEWHERE on my account, even if it’s not on my main. And if I get 10-20-or 30 toons up to 80 by next year, that’ll give me tons more chances for it to drop each day.

Here’s the list of who got what from Hallow’s End.
Demon Soul:
Bloodshrike – Squashling and Helm (and Title)

Daggerspine:
Clockwrkmage-

Darrowmere:
Bloodshrike -

Still need to fill this in…….

The easiest way to win the Lotto.....is by having won it already

2009-10-23T17:19:00.000-07:00

So, I dragged all my toons back from the far corners of the world, to concentrate on the Hallows End achievements.

My Alliance server Daggerspine has all the toons in Goldshire, even though it's a 2 building fire, Allies do it often enough to park all my toons there, and reap the rewards from one succesful fire quenching. Kharanos in Dun Morogh is a ghost town (heh, a pun), and though I've heard that Azure Watch in the Draenai starting area is easy, I haven't gone out there yet.

Darrowmere, my baby Horde account, has all the toons in Brill. Why not Razor Hill, since it's close by Orgrimmar? Because Brill only has the right side of the town hall set ablaze by the Headless Horseman, whereas Razor Hill has 3 buildings to quench. Needless to say, that quenching doesn't happen very often. Why not Falconwing Square by Silvermoon City? Yes, it only has one building front set on fire, but there's nobody there! It could be different on other servers, but I've noticed a tendency for nobody to go to the BC Expansion areas anymore.

A side note: If you do have a lot of toons, and don't want to have to worry about doing the town dailies more than during one login loop, do some preparation. I usually log in with my first toon, accept the "Let the Fires come" quest, then dump it and get "Put out the Fires" immediately. Go back inside the inn, and have all the other toons accept the "Put out the Fires" quest as well. Now, when you're logging in to trick or treat the innkeepers, and hear "My fires have died, left not a spark....." immediately run outside and loot the pumpkin, and this will also give you a completed status on the "Put out the Fires" quest.

However, this doesn't mean you need to turn in the quests immediately. In Brill, since the pumpkin and Matron are so close together, go ahead and turn it in and get your rewards, then dash back in the inn for the next toon.

In Goldshire though, you'll want to loot the pumpkin, then run back to the inn to get your next toon. With a lot of toons, seconds can count, and it's better to get the dailies over as soon as you can, because more and more people won't care to do them as the festival winds on. This philosphy would also apply to Razor Hill in Durotar, since the pumpkin lands straight out from the inn, and the Matron is a good distance away.

Now, as to the title of the post. The Sinister Squashling pet and the Hallowed Helm are needed for the Sinister Calling Achievement, which is part of the Hallowed Be Thy name Achievement, which rewards the Hallowed title after your name. If you don't feel like dealing with PUG groups to kill the Headless Horseman, you can also get them as drops from Trick or Treating the innkeepers every hour (usually 3-4 times a day for me, as I'd really rather be out questing).

Here's my luck so far:
Sinister Squashling
Clockwrkmage on Daggerspine
Doomslinger on Daggerspine
Aosdanasaoi on Daggerspine
Tsuris on Daggerspine

Hallowed Helm
Gwiddonyn on Daggerspine
Aosdanasaoi on Daggerspine (giving her the Achievement)
Bonescourge on Demon Soul x 2
Kukoshakaku on Demon Soul x 2

So, if you want something, get it, and you'll be sure to get it again.
I've also noticed a tendency to be repeat tricked - as in, if I'm a snake, and login an hour later, I'll most likely be transformed again, instead of getting a treat.

I know, I know, it's just numbers and statistics, but it feels weird to get your third Flimsy Male Troll Mask on one toon, without having any other masks received. The Random Number Generator (RNG) doesn't seem so random at that point, more like vindictive.

Ah crap, not another holiday event!

2009-10-18T23:27:00.000-07:00

It's time for Halloween.....strike that, it's Hallow's End in WoW. Despite the title of the post, I actually don't have a problem with any of the quests/achievements in this holiday.

Visiting candy buckets in Azeroth and Outlands, and getting XP for each one? Check, gotta love it. This allows me to give some levels to some of my alts that I haven't played in a long time (clothies and druids, mainly), as well as perhaps getting some exploring and flight points unlocked.

So, I'll have all my toons parked at either Razor Hill or Goldshire, be able to Trick or Treat the Innkeepers every hour on the hour if I remembered to do it, and be able to cash in on one of the toons helping out with the daily, then having all the rest come in to pick up the pumpkin head.

This holiday, like the Midsummer Fire Festival, actually rewards altoholics with XP for trying to complete the achievements. Brewfest......not so much. Spending 2-4 hours ram riding, with no "Ding" of leveling, kinda made me not want to log on. With the candy bucket achievements, I've already gotten some toons to their next level, just by flying around. Much, much more fun.

Also, the pet available during this event isn't something I have to save up tickets for, it's completely random, and I can probably get it by just doing trick or treating enough. Sinister Squashling

Wish me luck, and have fun with Hallow's End.

About Last Night.....

2009-10-04T04:36:00.001-07:00

Well, since Blizzard decided to extend the Brewfest deadline by 2 days, I decided to see how many toons could save up 350 tokens by Monday night. Here's my progress up to now.

Demon Soul

Friday

Saturday

Daggerspine

Friday

Saturday

Darrowmere

Friday

Saturday

Most of the toons on Demon Soul, ALL of the toons on Daggerspine, and Bloodshrike and Psilentkill on Darrowmere will have the 350 tokens necessary for the Brewfest garb, then they'll return it for the refund, buy the Brew of the Month Membership if they don't have it already, and maybe buy the Beer Goggles with the rest.

Hindsight is always 20/20

2009-09-29T23:12:00.000-07:00

To Kring, HokieJayBee, and David....

I'm kicking myself right now for not investigating the event more thoroughly. I should have looked up a strategy guide for the event, or even posted sooner, and all this would have been avoided. I originally wanted just the Elekk, and only after a couple of days had passed (and I had already gotten the Elekk on all toons on Demon Soul) did I start thinking about getting the achievement.

But, as has been pointed out, it's not necessary to drink each Brew of the Month to get the achievement, you just have to join. So, if I only get my toons enough tokens to join this year, I'll just wait for next year to see if my toons are high enough to warrant getting the other 350 tokens for the clothes, as well as killing Coren, thus getting the title at that time. Or, I could just hang on to the tokens that I get this year, wait til next year to get to 350, and follow the advice of buying the clothes, wearing them in Dalaran, returning them, and THEN buying the membership. I dunno, I'll make up my mind at the end of the week.

Wish me luck on getting some of my toons enough tokens this year that they won't have to repeat the hell of running kegs ad nauseum next year!

What Price Sanity?

2009-09-28T17:02:00.000-07:00

9/28/09
I've been meaning to post, I just haven't had the time. Why? Brewfest. More specifically, getting the pre-requisites done for Brewfest NEXT year. Bloodshrike on Demon Soul is the only toon even close enough to being able to get the Brewmaster title this year, but, since he didn't join the Brew of the month club LAST year, he still wouldn't able to get the title until next year anyway. So, I decided to take all of my toons and camp them in the brewfest grounds, all to get the Pint-sized Pink Elekk and the Brew of the Month Club done in the 2 weeks that Brewfest lasts.

Let's break down what that entails. 100 tokens for the pet, 200 tokens for the membership. Not too hard to do with one toon, although a bit tedious. Times 30 = mind-numbing insanity.

One-time quests:
There and Back Again = 10 tokens.
Chug and Chuck = 10 tokens
Catch the Wild Wolpertinger = 0 tokens, but gives you the Wolpertinger pet and achievement.
Pink Elekks on Parade = 40 tokens.
= 60 tokens so far.

Daily Quests
Bark for the beer vendors = 15 tokens, 4 minutes or less completion time.
This One Time, When I was Drunk = 10 tokens, 10 second completion time, and you can have all your alts complete it since the gear sticks around for 10 minutes after you've defeated the Dark Iron Dwarf attack on the camp.

Semi-Daily Quests
Remember the guy that had you pick up 3 kegs? Talk to him again, and he'll offer a semi-daily that you can do every 18 hours, to get as many kegs as you can with a diminishing timer. I can usually get 14-16 tokens from Horde side, but up to 30 tokens on my Ally server. Horde side is almost a straight shot, whereas Ally side takes you thru trees, but I guess the apple barrels are placed more strategically, because I hardly ever have my ram get exhausted.

So, as it stands, all my toons have the Elekk, and are working on the 200 tokens for the membership. Bloodshrike already got it, so he's going to see what pieces of the Brewfest regalia he can buy before the fair ends.

P.S. I got all the toons on Demon Soul the Elekk on the first day, with about 30 minutes needed for each toon to get 100 tokens. After that, it slows down, with only the 3 dailies to give you tokens. 10 + 15+ 16(or 30 for allies) = 42-50 average per day (and about 15 minutes needed), if I was able to do all toons every day. I've just been mostly doing the This One Time, When I was Drunk turnin, then seeing what toons are lowest, and focusing on them.

Questing in Northrend

2009-09-18T20:59:00.000-07:00

9/18/09

From the last post until now, I've changed my mind a little bit. I took a simple travel quest Where in the World is Hemet Nesingwary to the middle of Sholozar Basin, to just meet the legendary Hemet Nesingwary and to do the Ghostfish Daily fishing quest for Dalaran. At least, that was my intention. So, I introduce myself to Hemet AGAIN, even though I've already done bucketloads of his quests in Stranglethorn Vale and Outlands (that dwarf has a memory as bad as my own), and run on down to the River's Heart to catch the elusive Ghostfish.

After I catch the fish, I look around, and I notice a ! over Tamara Wobblesprocket's head that I hadn't seen on the other few times I had done the Ghostfish daily. So, I accepted her Part-Time Hunter, since it seemed like it would be close, and I should be easily able to solo whatever mob I needed to. That led me to the Frenzyheart questline, and then I started doing the Nesingwary questline, since I now had 2 (two) tanks ready to soak up and deal out damage. As long as you keep Hoofing It, you've got a pocket tank with Zepik the Gorloc Hunter. As a hunter, I already had a tank, so this made questing SUPER easy. I got thru 39 out of the 75? quests in Sholozar before I stopped. And, I stopped because I dinged 77, and could learn Cold Weather Flying. :)

So, there is a bonus from spending time past 68 in Outlands, at least on your first toon on the server. I only really spent about 1 level stuck on a ground mount in Northrend, before I could fly again. With only 2.5 levels to go to 80, I'll probably ding 80 before Pallormortis, who is currently 67 and doing Netherstorm quests, will need or want to start to start flying in Northrend, so I'll be able to provide the Bind on Account Book of Cold Weather Flying.

My First Title

2009-09-18T20:54:00.000-07:00

9/16/09
Last night, Bloodshrike on Demon Soul got his first title. At Exalted with the Shattered Sun Offensive, you can buy the “of the Shattered Sun” title from the NPC in the high tower on Quel’Danas. After probably a month of dailies on the Isle of QD, as well as the Sunfury Attack plans in Netherstorm and the Spectro-graphic disturbances in Nagrand, I finally got to Exalted. And while the Alchemy trinket plans are useless compared to the highest level alchemy trinkets, the necklace I bought (Shattered Sun Pendant of Might) was actually a small upgrade compared to what I had. Couple that with being exalted with scryers, and having it proc because of that, and it becomes really nice (though I haven’t noticed it doing that). I haven’t been finding much on the AH for upgrades at level 76, maybe because people have found that quest rewards are better in Northrend than what drops? Dunno.

Speaking of Northrend, I’m level 76, Honored with the Kirin Tor because of the fishing and cooking dailies, and yet I’ve barely done any quests there. I did all the D.E.H.T.A. Little P.I.T.A. quests, and a few around Warsong Hold, but I haven’t really done much else there. I want to get exalted with whatever factions in Outlands that give me Alchemy/Engineering recipes before really moving on to Northrend.

How many Professions have you gone through?

2009-08-31T14:47:00.001-07:00

At level 72, I finally decided to level Bloodshrike the rest of the way from 420ish Alchemy all the way to 450. One of the easiest and cheapest professions to max, I only had to do some Earthsiege and Skyflare transmutes, and badda-boom, I'm 450. Along the way I noticed some very nice bonuses that Alchemists have - Flask of the North, Endless Mana Potion, and Endless Health Potion are 3 potions that an Alchemist can use, and will not be consumed on use. Think about that, people! While the health from the potion isn't much for someone with 10k health already, it's nice to top off after a fight. Same with the mana potion. Before, I would have to switch to Aspect of the Viper after every 5 mobs or so, to regen my 5k mana. Now, I make it a game to see how low I can get my mana before chugging the mana pot. With only a 1 minute cooldown, I literally would never have to switch to AotV again while questing.

And with a proper macro, it can be made to be easily used.

#showtooltip
/cast [nomodifier] superduper high level healing potion, for use in combat
/cast [modifier:alt] Endless Mana Potion
/cast [modifier:ctrl] Endless Healing Potion

Demon Soul is my first server, and as such, I made some mistakes or choices that I rethought with my other 2 servers. On Daggerspine, I have a warlock as my alchemist, and on Darrowmere, my priest is my alchemist/inscriptionist. But, it's nice to know that it's not a wasted profession slot that one of my other toons could have done for me.

I even had my Rogue on Demon Soul going for Weaponsmithing for a while, before I made him into a miner, and then when my DK blew past him in Mining/Skinning, had him take up Skinning for when the DK would drop Skinning for Engineering at level 60.

Anyone else have any stories about changing professions midgame?

Just having fun with the game

2009-08-27T19:00:00.001-07:00

Hey all, I haven't fallen off the face of the planet. I tend to write posts when I have nothing to do at work, and since I've been busy, I haven't been writing.
But, since WoW is down for urgent maintenance, it was time to try to remember my password to Blogger, since I've gotten a new computer and the password wasn't saved. :)

I could write them at home, but.....I'm having too much fun with Burning Crusade content!
(Dude, BC came out like 2 years ago, what's so special about it?)
Well, I'm just getting into playing those areas. I've always been one to play a game to explore all areas of it, not just get to the end. I put 300 hours on Final Fantasy 7,8, and X each, and by the time I beat X, my levels were so high from doing the monster arena over and over, it would have been a 1-hit kill except there was a damage cap of 99,999.

(All areas of the game, that means character classes and professions, right?)
Yup, I'm on 3 servers, 2 Horde, 1 Alliance. Demon Soul is my only one with a Death Knight, but all the other classes are represented at least once on each of the servers.

(All Professions? What about dropped recipes for those professions?)
Each server has all professions covered, and I've bought/found most of the recipes I could. I'm not stressing on dungeon drop BOP recipes, as I don't like tying myself down to a toon for that long of a time. I like being able to hop around. Once I get high enough to solo the dungeons, maybe I'll go for the recipes then.

So, playing 30 toons at once tends to slow your leveling rate way down. Not to mention the time spent in the AH, looking for recipes that I want for the future.
But, I came to the realization that I.....pretty much got them all. I haven't learned a lot of the recipes, but I've collected most of the high level recipes for each profession, on each server, and am just waiting to get to the level caps to be able to powerlevel to the next cap of the profession. For example, Bullkathos finally hit level 50, and was able to advance to 375 blacksmithing. I leveled him to 372, and was able to learn all these recipes. 2-4k gold spent in a few minutes, and probably would have been worth 20k gold a few years ago.
Fel-Edged Battleaxe
Runic Hammer
Hammer of Righteous Might
Dirge
Khorium Champion
Steelgrip Gauntlets
Blessed Bracers
Felfury Gauntlets
Felsteel Reaper
Eternium Runed Blade
Fel Hardened Maul
Storm Helm
Oathkeeper's Helm
Black Felsteel Bracers

These are the recipes I've collected over the years, and after Bloodshrike stepped onto the shores of Northrend, I've learned they're useless. Same with all the level 300 plans that Burning Crusade greens put to shame. I kinda wish they'd revamp them so they'd have slightly better stats then the low level greens you get when you first get into Hellfire. They did modify some existing recipes, like the Radiant set, to give it Hit rating and resilience, instead of whatever idiotic stats that it had before. Here's hoping.

But, on the plus side, I am enjoying how well quests are strung together in Outlands. No more go here, kill these mobs, come back to the quest giver, get given a quest for a zone across the ocean, and get a quest to come back to the original mobs for a different thing that they can drop! Instead, if you collect all the quests in a zone, you will only get a few travel quests, and those are usually just to introduce you to the next zone.

I've also decided to not attack players unless they're my level or above. A hunter combat engineer is just too overpowered for most players I come across, who usually have a few thousand health less then me, even if they're only 3 levels below.
I was killing ogres in the Burning Blade ruins in northern Nagrand, when I saw a level 68 warrior (I was 70, I believe). I'm at about 10k health, he's at maybe 7k. I had picked up the daily PvP quest to kill 10 enemy players in Halaa, and thought that this would be a start on that total. Well, you don't get credit unless the kill is in Halaa, I found out. But, I found out that I can utterly annihilate any player around my level. Between my gnomish lightning generator bolts, the rockets from my gloves, and my bullets, he was downed quickly.

I continued killing ogres, and he respawned, and must have asked for help, because the next thing I knew I was being attacked by him, with a level 64 boomkin helping/healing him. I went down after a fight, almost taking the druid with me.
I ran back up from the Spirit Healer, and after rezzing and flying off to heal and buff up a bit, I came back. My gorilladin took on the warrior, with occasional Concussive shots and Immolation traps help from me, while I kept up Serpent Sting on the druid and kept bringing down his health thru his constant self-healing. Booya! 2 down. After that, I got almost 1-shotted by a level 80 hunter that they asked for help. :)

Bringing the Lightning, bringing the Pain

2009-08-04T10:07:00.000-07:00

8/4/09

Patch 3.2 hit today, while I'm at work....cough cough. Hmmm, maybe I should go home? :)

Well, since I can't talk about the new patch yet, I'll talk about powerleveling engineering. Being a gnome rox for engineering, recipes give skillups longer, and your crafting max limit is +15 of the normal cap, allowing you a taste of the level above you.

I made 9 Arcanite Dragonlings while skilling up, as Clockwrkmage was the first toon on Daggerspine to hit 50, and able to advance engineering past 300. I never make an item without getting a skillpoint for it, if I can help it, and this recipe got me from 330ish to about 340 (I think).

Remember that warrior that attacked me in Felwood? I think he had around 2500 health, way over my 1900 health. Well, I'd do a heck of a lot better in a fight against him now, being able to have my Stamina Trinket, 4K bubble shield, and my new stamina/crit/SP goggles. From 1900 HP to 3k HP, in three easy steps!!!! (and a few hundred hard steps, and a few K gold, but who's counting?)

I could have made this for my goggles, but I don't care about the spirit that much, and I had already made my goggles of choice for right now.

Oooh, I wants! Rocket Boots Xtreme Lite. And, requiring 420 engineering to make, but only 390 to use......Noise Machine. 375 engineering + 15 racial max skill cap = 390 engineering. Gnomes get the coolest toys.

Well, since I don't have my two favorite burst damage items (Gnomish Lightning Generator and Hand-Pyro Mounted Pyro Rockets, I shall have to make do with an old favorite of mine. Gnomish Death Ray. One of the main reasons I took up engineering, and my favorite trinket for any newly minted level 35ish alt. Cloth wearers don't get to use the Harm Prevention belt, but they can use the Nigh-Invulnerability Belt.

However, if you open up the comments on the Death Ray, the consensus is that you actually DO want to take damage while charging it. I usually would use the Harm Prevention Belt to absorb the damage, but I noticed I wasn't getting more than 900 damage or so when doing so, so I had stopped using the Death Ray. I think my new strategy will be to use the Death Ray, THEN pop the Nigh-Invulnerability belt to deal with the incoming damage from the mob/player I'm fighting.

"They Love me in That Tunnel" - Or, the quest for Twink Enchants

2009-08-03T13:34:00.000-07:00

8/3/09

Clockwrkmage was on a mission this weekend. The mission was to commit xenocide on a whole bunch of furbolgs in Felwood, all in the name of cleansing the land and allowing another tribe to lay claim to valuable mineral rights, yadda yadda. I didn't care, all I knew was that at level 50, I'm allowed to bump my 2 professions (enchanting & engineering) up to 375, and I figured on making use of the 15 agility 1h and 25 agility 2h weapon enchants (From Timbermaw Hold)as a profitable way of leveling enchanting.

Twinks pay big for those to be put on their weapons, and they're actually really good enchants for any class that uses agility (rogues, hunters, feral druids). Instead of putting enchants that proc (and often don't), why not use an enchant that boosts dps, crit, and I believe dodge rating, all at once, all of the time?

My former twink Doomslinger is using it on her Twisted Chanter's Staff, and I haven't had the urge to upgrade her weapon because of it.

But, I digress. Using the level 48-51 southern furbolg's to level was good, because I got rep and good xp at the same time. I only intended to go to Honored, since that would allow me to turn in feathers and quests as I built them up, not waiting until Revered like the guides tell you to do. Bullkathos is doing that on Demon Soul, and it's a long, agonizing process, knowing you could turn in 100+ feathers at 300 rep per 5 feathers, giving you an instant 6000+ rep, but holding off until Revered, because that's when mobs stop giving rep for killing them.

Killing the those mobs was fun, but also dangerous. Since Felwood is so close to Orgrimmar, and Deadwood Village has a Horde quest to kill Overlord Ror, it's natural to assume that I'd be seeing Hordes pop up occasionally. Two encounters stick out in my mind. The first, being attacked by a level 51 warrior while I was level 48 still. He charged in and attacked me while I was finishing off 1 mob, so round 1 went to him.

Round 2 went to me, with my Gnomish Shrink Ray cutting him down to gnome size, and my Mechanical Dragonling getting in his face and landing some good hits. He made the mistake of focusing on the dragonling, which made me think he hadn't ganked many hunters.....Ignore the pet, go for the master, the pet disappears when your enemy dies!

Round 3 went to me again, though he ignored the negligible damage from my Gnomish Battle Chicken and went for me, a Frostbolt followed by Firebolt followed by Fire Blast took off a chunk of his life, then Frost Nova to hold him in place for Arcane Torrent, and a Fire Blast and a few Arcane Explosions took him down. Didn't even have to use my Gnomish Cloaking Device to buy myself some breathing room.

Final round 4 went to him, as I had tired of spamming /target player name to try to find him when he rezzed, and wanted to get back to grinding. Even popping my Mithril Mechanical Dragonling didn't help this time, as he got too close and just kept hitting me too fast.

After that, he rode off, probably figuring this was a waste of his valuable ganking time, since it wasn't an easy kill for him.

The flip side of that was meeting a level 48 Tauren Hunter, who ran along the hills behind all the Deadwood, obviously coming just to kill Overlord Ror. I had actually just overpulled or something, as I remember having to drop a target dummy, drop a Fel Iron Bomb for its daze effect, Frost Nova, and I think I even Blinked to be able to bandage a little. I ended up having to wand the final mob to death, as I was totally out of mana. Ahh, I remember, I had pulled a mob over, killed it, and immediately was attacked by a mob that spawned right there. We had a running firefight, and ended up by ANOTHER mob spawn.....Whew! Anyway, the hunter applauded my being able to pull that off, so I /bowed and /thanked her. I then /pointed to Overlord Ror, who had just spawned, and /pointed to her, then back at Ror. She got the hint that I would help her, so she sent her pet in, and I rained some firebolts and arcane torrents into him to help out. After that, she did the same /point thing, so I said /no, and went back to killing deadwood.

It's always nice to be able to connect with someone, even if you don't speak the same language, and be able to realize there are nice people everywhere, even on PvP servers.

WWGD – What Would Gevlon Do?

2009-07-31T10:56:00.000-07:00

7/31/09

I’ve been reading Gevlon’s blog for a bit now, and I’m wondering what Gevlon would have to comment on about getting recipes for professions other than Inscription. Would it be worthwhile to a goblin to pay gold for recipes, instead of farming them themselves? Also, would it be worth getting all recipes for that profession, no matter if they were moneymakers?

From a goblinish standpoint, the trick is to get rare, midlevel recipes that few other people on the server have, or make trainer taught items that require quite a few different mats. For example, the Helm of Fire will cost me about 15-20 gold in mats, but can be sold for 60-65 gold easily. It’s a great helm for its level, and even though it’s leather, I’m using it on a few of my paladins and warriors around that level, just because of the high agility (crit) and awesome fire burst damage every five minutes (great for a PvP server). Add to that all the rogues, hunters, druids, and enhancement shamans, and you have a wide market base. You just have to market it effectively, and don’t flood the auction house. Post one at a time.

Farm World Dragons, if you can. The recipes they drop are very rare, like the Lifelike Mechanical Toad and the Radiant Belt.

I also am a sucker for recipes. All of them. If it’s a dropped recipe, it’s a decent price, and I don’t have it…….sold. That means less time that I would have to spend bored out of my mind, mindlessly killing the same mobs over and over again, cursing Blizzard for making recipes have such a low drop rate. Case in point: Pattern: Stormshroud Armor. When I finally got Tsuris to level 35, and powerleveled LW to 300, I noticed this high crit/dodge armor set, perfect for feral druids or rogues. The pants recipe is vendor bought, and the gloves and shoulders are usually readily available on the AH, but the armor…….the armor……
I ground the Arkkoran Oracles in Azshara for 3+ hours on Daggerspine to get the recipe, and then decided to do the same on Demon Soul. Another 4 hours of grinding, an almost infinite amount of zesty clam meat from the clams they drop, and Kukoshakaku had his own recipe. And on Darrowmere, it dropped for me on the AH, for a mere 10 gold. Aaaarrrrggggh!!!

Since I've gotten to Outlands, and have started to replace my 50's blues and epics with Outland greens, I've come to this conclusion: Don't kill yourself. Unless the recipe is for stuff below level 59 that a twink could wear, don't spend a lot of time or gold trying to get the recipes (this applies to Blacksmithing/Tailoring/Leatherworking recipes). If it drops, or if it's cheap on the AH, get the recipe. But after having the Arcanite Champion recipe learned for for months, and finally getting my warrior Bullkathos high enough to use it, and spending 150+ gold on mats even after I had Bloodshrike make the Arcanite Bars..... then replacing it with Fel Iron Hatchets at level 61 with Fel Iron Greatsword right around the corner.....Priceless. Granted, I'll still use it when I'm just doing some grinding for quests, but as soon as I hit 63, that's going in the bank.

Finish – I’m not trolling for comments from Gevlon, or flaming him, or anything like that. I just came up with the headline, and had to write something to match it.

Holla!!!! Holler? Hola…. Halaa!

2009-07-07T17:54:00.000-07:00

7/7/09

Well, I only ended up with Bonescourge and Pallormortis getting the Spirit of Summer pet on Demon Soul, and I think Clockwrkmage got it on Daggerspine. But, I didn’t care too much about the pet, I appreciated the 2 bubbles of EZ XP per character, per day.

So, once the Fire Festival ended on Sunday morning (4 am server time), I decided it was time to start leveling some professions. Annihilus on Darrowmere needed to level her JC skillz to 225, Thrillkiller on Demon Soul needed to get to 375 engineering, and Doomslinger my former hunter twink was in need of 225 Inscription and Engineering.

Annihilus didn’t take too long to level, and I loved making the mithril settings, as I was able to go from 150-190 JC with just one recipe.

Thrillkiller, on the other hand….. It takes me a while to level each stage of engineering. The guides that are on the interwebs are designed for people who want to level up their professions as fast and cheaply as possible. They usually don’t have dropped recipes included in them, and really, nobody will ever be rich or even break even using just trainer bought recipes. Looking back on it though….I didn’t really make anything special to sell, it just took me a while to get all the mats together. I know I made a bunch of Elemental Blasting Powder, then Fel Iron Bombs until 330+. Then I switched to Adamantite Frames, and 5 Adamantite Scopes, and got to 350 with a Cogspinner Goggles of the Bandit (31 Agility, 46 Stamina, 62 AP). After that, it was smooth sailing to 375, making Volatile Blasting Triggers, with 1 point coming from the Gnomish Poultryizer.

I didn’t make the Nigh-Invulnerability Belt yet, as Khorium Bars/Ore couldn’t be found on my Auction house, and I hate asking in trade for items, since buyers know they have you over a barrel at that point. When they have metal in the AH, they paid a deposit for that, so they want to sell it. When in trade, they’ll jack up the price or simply refuse to talk to you because your initial offer didn’t match some price they had in their head, and they punish you for not being able to read their minds. I’m somewhat used to haggling, or at least offering low, being countered high, and usually settling in the middle. With some WoW players, you only have one shot to give them a price, and if you offer low, they laugh at you and /ignore you. Idiots…..

So, because of the need for Khorium Power Cores, Bloodshrike went on a field trip! I had intended to wait to adventure in Outlands until the new patch, when I’d be able to get my flying training at 60, training and mount prices would be reduced, and I could finally get mounts for all my level 20+’s on Darrowmere. But, needs must, I suppose.

So, Bloodshrike set off from Falcon Watch, ran thru Zangarmarsh (getting the FP on the way), thru Blades Edge Mountains (getting the FP from Mok’Nathal Village), and on to Area 52 in Netherstorm. I was freaking on the way, especially in Blade’s Edge, since I was running thru a cave with a bunch of higher level spiders, and I was expecting to be automatically dismounted or knocked off by a spider at any second. I’m used to ghost-running, or even corpse-hopping exploring, but being able to explore high level areas without getting killed repeatedly is still a new one to me. Of course, having 7.5k health at level 63 does help a lot. :)

I left Bloodhrike at Area 52 for a day, checking in occasionally to what I could buy from Qiff. I got 1 Khorium Power Core for 4.8 gold, a few Fel Iron Bolts for 60 silver each, a few Adamantite Frames, and some smoke flares just because.

After a while, I realized I was only a half bubble away from leveling to 64, so I decided to go out and explore, and maybe pick up some Alchemy recipes for Bloodshrike. I also realized that I could get the Gnomish Toshley’s Station transporter recipe, since I had 450 engineering, and you only need 350 to learn it. After I picked it up from Smiles O’Byron, I headed west to the other Horde town, Thunderlord Stronghold. Got the flightpoint there, and flew back to Zangarmarsh. I picked up the alchemy recipes Recipe: Elixir of Major Frost Power and Recipe: Sneaking Potion from Seer Janidi, then decided to go get the fp for Nagrand. After looking at ProfessionsBook, it showed that a vendor in Halaa sold a couple of alchemy recipes as well, so I headed over.

Along the way, I got waylaid by a quest. The quest giver for the Cenarion expedition had a simple exploring quest, which got compounded by me running into Fahssn on the way over. So, I got sucked into grinding the Bog Lords and picking up spore sacs, but it was actually pretty fun! With the burst damage from Hand-Mounted Pyro Rocket and Gnomish Lightning Generator, using each one every 30 seconds really, really speeds up grinding those bog lords. I got to almost friendly with the Sporeggar, then decided it was time to call it a night, and just made a run to Garadar in Nagrand. That’s some really beautiful scenery to run through! The funny part is, even though I’m 64, and the monsters are higher than me, I have way more health than them, and me and my gorilla didn’t have a problem dealing with a few pesky 67’s that attacked.

Midsummer Madness

2009-07-07T17:38:00.000-07:00

6/29/09

I freakin’ love the Fire Festival! Not just because I’ll be getting some of my toons the Spirit of Summer pet, but because of the daily quests that all my toons can do. I’m running 30 toons on 3 servers, and I’m trying to level all of them. With the ability to log into each of them for 5 minutes, and get 2 bubbles of experience a day, it’s going to make leveling them a whole lot easier.

Preyonyou, my Draenai priestess, has been stuck at level 26 for……probably 6 months or more. I specced to Discipline on one of these Talent rollbacks, but she still doesn’t seem to do a lot of damage. But, she dinged 27 last night after I had her do the dailies in Darnassus! I can’t wait to get to 30, and after 2+ years of playing, finally get to (Levitate)! --- Edit, I looked at the training, and it's actually 34.

Bonescourge, my Demon Soul Undead Warlock, went from 44-47 over the weekend, just by exploring, honoring flames, and desecrating Ally flames. Well, he maybe have done a quest or two, but I’m not making it a habit, I swear! :P
I snuck over to the Draenai starting area, and desecrated both flames there. Bloodmyst Isle has WAY too many little areas to discover, and it’s annoying, because they aren’t listed on the map, and the fog of war on the map isn’t always helpful in finding what you haven’t discovered yet. Vindicator’s Rest, anyone?

I think this will also prompt me to take Bloodshrike and Pallormortis to Outlands, since there’s more fires to honor and desecrate out there, as well as some vendor-sold recipes and pets that I’ve been looking for.

Mouse Vs. Keyboard – 2 peripherals enter, 1 peripheral leaves.

2009-06-25T22:21:00.000-07:00

6/25/09

I’ve been trying to get Francois and Steve to try using their mice for turning and movement, instead of just using it to click attacks. Why? I believe it’s far superior to have your right hand control your movement, and you’re already used to using your left hand for typing, why not use it to hit attack spells?

This isn’t something I developed while playing WoW, I’ve used this strategy for Half-life, Counter-Strike (when it was still a mod), Diablo 1, Diablo 2……and basically any computer game I’ve ever had the option of changing the command keys on.

Francois’ first toon is a druid, and having played druids, I concede that you could probably do fine with WASD for movement, and just clicking through your attacks. You might miss an attack, but you really don’t need all that many keys for your attacks.

In contrast is…….every other character class out there. Hunters, Mages, Warlocks, Shamans, Paladins, Warriors, Rogues, Death Knights, and …..Priests. Ok, ok, I haven’t played a Priest past 30, and my highest Druid is 35, but they haven’t racked up enough skills at this point to really NEED the whole keyboard like the other toons do.

It seems like a lot of people fall into 1 of 2 categories.
1) Mouse for looking around, keyboard for movement with the arrow keys, and either clicking attacks or using the number keys.
2) Mouse for looking around, WASD for movement, clicking or using Z,X,C, Alt, Ctrl, and maybe the number keys as well.

I don’t fit into any of that. I use my mouse purely for movement AND looking around (very handy to do 360 spins of the environment on a PvP server), with only the right click button to start auto-attack, and either press both keys to run, or a button on the side of the mouse.

The keyboard is where everything else is. My first toon Bloodshrike is a hunter, and I quickly found my action bars filling up with all the new skills he was learning. And to me, they all seemed pretty useful, so I wanted instant access to most of them, without having to look at them in my action bar, and then click them when needed. I don’t understand how people with chance on hit/dodge/block/parry abilities like Rogues and Warriors can manage to click Riposte, Overpower/Revenge with the narrow window of time that’s offered. I don’t have to look at the action bars during a fight, all my attention is focused on my opponent or mob.

I use A-G for my main attacks, with usually some cast sequence or Alt or Ctrl modified macros thrown in. Space Bar is jump, Z-B are my less used spells, with V and B being my “Oh Shit” or melee hot buttons. Q + W up top are usually my potion keys, or in the case of my Warriors, W is always Charge. I don’t PvP much, even though I’m on PvP servers, but I just figured out that I could have E be Strafe left, and R be Strafe right.
1-6 are the last set of keys that I press.

Since most of my toons are engineers, 1 and 2 are usually bombs or target dummies. 3-5 is up for grabs, or for Warriors, who have 3 different Stance bars, I’ll have 4 set for Shoot, since all Stances can use it. 6 is usually Blink for mages, or the Gnomish Harm Prevention Belt or Nigh-Invulnerability belt for those toons that can wear it. 7 is ALWAYS my mount button. Since I use an ergonomic keyboard, it’s still pretty comfortable for my index finger to hit it. Everything else on my action bars (usually I have 2 stacked above my XP bar, using CTMod) is clickable.

So, in total, I have 20+ keys/spells that are very easy to reach and use, with more being available with Ctrl and Alt modifier macros.
Anal-retentive? Sure. Handy? Very much so. Hmmm, maybe I’ll do a series of posts for what I’m using for each character class, using my highest level of each of those classes.

Weapon Skills

2009-06-24T19:13:00.000-07:00

6/24/09

Hey, just a quick little thought for those interested in achievements. One easy way of leveling weapons skills is to always switch up your weapons while leveling. .

Every 4 levels or so, peruse the auction house for a weapon that you have the lowest skill in, and start using that one. Buy a rare one if you can, so the weapon skill AP modifier won't be as apparent.

Maximizing low level quests for fun and profit.....well, maybe not fun, but definitely profit

2009-06-24T15:26:00.000-07:00

6/24/09

Production Line Assembly of Alliance-Only Quest Reward Recipes.

My previous post about ez gold – which we will expand upon.
Post- Spider Kabobs

From Step Two, you’re logged into your throwaway Night Elf, level one. This time, run around and do some quests until you get to at least level 3. Then, go get your 625 XP by getting the Kaldorei recipe in Dolanaar, and continue on to Darnassus. Fly over to Darkshore, and set your hearthstone in Auberdine.

Take the boat at the very end of the pier to get to Azuremyst Isle, You should be pretty close to level 4 by now, with the XP bonus from discovering different areas. If you’re not, kill Moongraze Stags to the south and east of Azure Watch to get the 6 needed Moongraze Stag Tenderloins needed for “The Great Moongraze Hunt.”

Send your recipes to your bank alt, or your Booty Bay transfer character, and stop for a second.

Do you want to spend a few more hours and get three more Ally recipes? They don’t sell as well as the cooking recipes, but they will sell to completionists. I wouldn’t try it until you’ve built up either a stockpile of Copper Ore/Bars (the rough stone can usually be bought anytime for 20 silver a stack), or the necessary items by scanning the AH religiously by typing “copper” and clicking on Weapons, and then Armor.

So, you decided to go for the recipes, you masochist you. Hit your hearthstone to zoom back to Auberdine in Darkshore, then run down the dock and take the boat on the left, going to Stormwind. Run FIRST to the Windrider Master to get the flight point, then go to Dwarven District to take the Tram to Ironforge. Coming south from Tinker Town, go directly to the Windrider to pick up the flight point.

Pick up Blacksmithing and mining, then go pick up 100-160 rough stones from the AH, or have an alt send you them, along with the copper weapons and armor, or the copper and mats to make them. However, you don’t learn the recipe for the Heavy Copper Maul till 65, and the Runed Copper Belt isn’t learned until 70, so its up to you how you want to play it.

Ally Blacksmithing Quests: Get to level 60 Blacksmithing, using only rough stones. Do about 35 rough sharpening stones first, then switch to rough grinding stones. Once you hit 60, both of the BS quests will be ready to pick up at Tormus Deepforge, right at the Great Anvil in Ironforge. The quests are detailed at the end of the post.

If you like, you can drop blacksmithing, and pick up skinning, because you’ve already accepted the quests. Now, it’s time to run to Loch Modan. Make sure you have the 6 copper belts and 6 axes in your inventory, because you’ll turn in the quest before you come to a mailbox. With the mauls and runed belts, keep them in the mail system, so you can get them out of the mail once you get to Redridge.

Follow the path, and feel free to zig-zag a bit if you see a copper node or a rabbit you want to skin. You might as well make some gold while doing this.
Go thru the Southern Entrance to Loch Modan, and turn in the Supplying the Front quest in the Valley of Kings (the round building ahead of you as you come down the path). Now continue North up the path until you get to Thelsamar, then take the gryphon and fly back to Stormwind (you DID remember to get the flightpoints for both Ironforge and SW, right?)

Once you land in SW, just jump into the water below. Follow the path to the east towards Redridge Mountains, and I’d advise walking a little to the right of the path (south) so you can spot the copper nodes that are on the edges of the hills. Try to kill enough mobs along the way so you’re about 1100 XP under dinging level 8, as you’ll need that level for the leatherworking quest.

Once you get to Redridge Mountains, hang a hard left. There’s a little path up thru the mountains that can actually let you get to Lakeshire unharmed, if the mobs are far enough away. If not, just rez at the spirit healer, and swim across the lake to the mailbox at the inn. Get your mauls and belts from the mailbox, turn them in at the eastern edge of town, and you’ve gotten the Ironforge Breastplate recipe! You should be level 8 by now, so hit your hearthstone to zone back to Auberdine.

Take the grypon back to Darnassus, drop mining, and pick up leatherworking. Once you hit level 70 LW, Lotherias will have a “!” over her head, and you’ll have the items already in your inventory. Turn in the quest, send the excess mats and the recipes to your alt to sell off or give to a friend, and never, ever, EVER do that again. It takes way to long, for too little gain.

Definitely take advantage of the Kaldorei recipe being easy to farm, and if you have the time, or if you have a mage friend, have them come to Dolanaar and have them port you to Exodar after you’ve gotten to level 4 (do it with a few of these throwaway toons at a time, so it’s worth their time and yours.

In conclusion, here’s the mat cost and expected sell price of these recipes.

Recipe: Kaldorei Spider Kabob -- 1-20 silver if you buy the mats off the AH, sell on the neutral or Horde AH for 250-350 gold
Recipe: Roasted Moongraze Tenderloin – 0 mat cost. Seriously, there’s a 100% drop on the meat, so you might as well farm it. Sells for 250-350 on NAH or Horde AH.
Recipe: Tasty Lion Steak – 50 silver to 20 gold on the Ally AH. As long as it’s not too expensive, buy it every time you see it on there. Horde will snap it up. 250-350g

The most I’ve ever gotten for the BS or LW recipes on Horde side was about 200 gold, but usually they sell for around 100-150.
_______________________________________________________________________

For the quest Supplying_the_Front, you’ll need 6 Copper Axes and 6 Copper Chain Belts. For the Axes, that means 36 Copper Bars, 12 Linen Cloth, and 6 Weak Flux. For the Belts, that’s 36 Copper Bars.
Total: 72 Copper Bars, 12 Linen Cloth, 6 Weak Flux.
Reward: Plans:_Heavy_Copper_Longsword

For the quest Gearing_Redridge, you’ll need 4 Runed Copper Belts (40 Copper Bars), and 4 Heavy Copper Maul (48 Copper Bar, 8 Weak Flux, 8 Light Leather)
Total: 88 Copper Bars, 8 Weak Flux, 8 Light Leather.
Reward: Plans: Ironforge_Breastplate

Leatherworking Quest: try using this guide http://www.blizzardguides.com/wow_leatherworking_guide.html or whatever gets you to 70.
For the quest Moonglow_Vest, you’ll need to get to level 8, and level Leatherworking to 70, plus turn in 1 Embossed Leather Gloves (2 Coarse Thread, 3 Light Leather) , 5 Embossed Leather Boots (25 Coarse Thread, 40 Light Leather), and 5 Embossed Leather Cloaks (10 Coarse Thread, 25 Light Leather). Follow the above guide to 59 (probably about 100 Light Leather worth), then make the required quest items from there.
Total: 168+ Light Leather, 37 Coarse Thread.
Reward: Moonglow_Vest

The Diplomat

2009-06-16T16:01:00.000-07:00

6/16/09

Continuing with my plan to escape the AH, and get out to leveling, Bloodshrike (Demon Soul) dinged exalted with Orgrimmar and Undercity, and maybe Thunder Bluff as well. I can't remember, but I know I got to 1000 achievement points, and the Armory is only showing 960 right now. With Tsuris on Daggerspine, I purchased all the low level SW and Darnassus mounts when I hit Exalted with those cities, but I'm going to hold off on that for right now, until the patch hits. Why?
With the new patch, mounts and training will be SO much cheaper.

Apprentice Riding (Skill 75)

60% land mount speed
Requires level 20
Cost: 4 gold
Mount cost: 1 gold
Mail will be sent to players at level 20 guiding them to the riding trainer
Journeyman Riding (Skill 150)

100% land mount speed
Requires level 40
Cost: 50 gold
Mount cost: 10 gold
Mail will be sent to players at level 40 guiding them back to the riding trainer

Expert Riding (Skill 225)

150% flying mount speed; 60% land mount speed
Requires level 60
Cost: 600 gold (faction discounts now apply)
Mount Cost: 50 gold
Can now be learned in Honor Hold (Alliance) or Thrallmar (Horde)

Artisan Riding (Skill 300)

280% flying mount speed; 100% land mount speed
Requires level 70
Cost: 5,000 gold (faction discounts now apply)
Mount Cost: 100 gold

You might as well show them off, too. Here's a handy little macro I just spotted on Wowmacros.com, that selects an appropriate mount for your location.

/run if IsMounted()then return end local t if GetRealZoneText()=="Dalaran"and GetSubZoneText()~="Krasus' Landing"or GetZoneText()=="Wintergrasp"or not IsFlyableArea()then t={1,12,16}else t={6,7,15}end CallCompanion("MOUNT",t[random(#t)])
/dismount

Here's another one of their macros I've been using for a while, to randomly select a pet companion.
/run CallCompanion("CRITTER", random(GetNumCompanions("CRITTER")))

I've also started Bullkathos on farming rep with the Timbermaw, as they have recipes for Blacksmithing that he wants. It doesn't hurt that he's actually in the level range for grinding on them, since I've been doing gray and green quests recently, trying to get Exalted with Undercity with him too. I think I'll try for Exalted with the Timbermaw, so I can add to my trinket collection, and have a pocket healer Furlbog. I'm going for Revered anyway, as the belt recipe is available to a Honored, and the boots at Revered.
Of course, there's no recipes for Engineering. As usual.

How are you doing?

2009-06-08T14:06:00.000-07:00

6/8/09

I finally, finally got around to leveling Bloodshrike on Demon Soul from 445-450 engineering. I was dreading it, because my chief method of skilling up was making Heartseeker Scopes, as I had this crazy idea of, y'know, actually making SOME gold while leveling a profession. But, when I was buying Twilight Opals at 20 gold each, and the recipe takes 2, plus 10 Saronite bars, and other people were posting them at 34 gold buyout......I said screw it, and started making more Gnomish Army Knives.

Granted, I'm a big fan of the Army knife. Almost all of my toons have one, except for my first mage, who's a Tailor/Enchanter. But Engineering forces you to almost oversaturate the market with just one person skilling up engineering up to 450. You learn the recipe for the Knives at 435, and even though I tried skilling up with the Heartseeker recipe to 445, I still ended up with at least 15 knives for one of my bank toons to sell off.

When I finally hit 450, and went back into the engineering shop in Dalaran to learn the 2 gun recipes, the engineering supplies vendor had the nerve to ask "How are you doing?" I'm freakin' pissed, that's how I'm doing!

If it required me to make a consumable to level engineering, I wouldn't care. A 20-stack Big Box O' Titanium-cored Titan bombs would be awesome, dealing 2500-3000 each bomb. Make the mats 1 Titansteel bar and 5 Saronite bars, it wouldn't bother me in the slightest.

Instead, the highest level regular bomb you get is:
Saronite Bomb
Requires Engineering (350)
1150 to 1500 Fire damage to targets in a 5 yard radius. This explosive is powerful enough to cause moderate siege damage

It's sad when Target Dummies exceed bombs in damage.....
Explosive Decoy
Requires Engineering (350)
Use: Summons a decoy that explodes when attacked, shredding enemies for 1440 to 2160 Physical damage. Lasts for 3 min or until it explodes. (2 Min Cooldown)

And, yes, there is one more bomb, available for Goblin Engineers to make AND use. But, my only Goblin engineers are Paladins, as you might have picked up.

Global Thermal Sapper Charge
Requires Engineering (400)
Requires Goblin Engineer
Use: Explodes when triggered, dealing 2188 to 2812 Fire damage to all enemies nearby and 2188 to 2812 damage to you. Also causes major siege damage. (5 Min Cooldown)

I haven't tested it yet, but this will probably be negated by the Nigh-invulnerability Belt, so Pally's wouldn't have to expend a bubble or a Blessing of Protection to soak up the damage.

I'll test it when I have my DK pick up engineering and go Goblin, since Pallor is 61, and Clockworknyt is only level 44.

Or perhaps they could make depleted-uranium Titansteel Bullets or Arrows..... but as of right now, it's not worth leveling to 450 for any of my other engineers. Level to 440 for the BOP helm, then stop. The 2 guns and the motorcycle can be bought off any other engineer, since they're BOE.

Where’s MAH money?

2009-06-01T18:10:00.000-07:00

6/1/09

I’ve been reading http://wowalone.blogspot.com/ about a guy’s adventures in solo WoW, during downtime at work. He was talking about being proud of having 32 k gold again, after spending 21 k on the Kirin Tor ring and a motorcycle mount. I’m a recovering AH house addict, but I felt like helping him out with a few quick tips on making gold, especially since he had an Ally toon. So, I typed aboyandhisdeathrays into gooogle to go cut and copy some of my tips, and this was the first entry on the list http://www.cubestat.com/www.aboyandhisdeathrays.blogspot.com.
Website Worth: $273,750,000.00 Daily Pageviews: 125,000,000 Daily Ads Revenue: $375,000.00

So, where’s my money?!? I should have installed a pageview counter a while ago, but there’s been only 1 comment on the site, so I figured there wasn’t any interest in it. I tried BigBearButt’s site, and BigRedKitty’s, and both had less Daily Ads revenue coming in. Granted, both of those are their personal websites, so they don’t do advertising. But I tried www.4haelz.blogspot.com, who is someone that BigBearButt links to, and also had low pageviews.
Website Worth: $2,842.62 Daily Pageviews: 1,298 Daily Ads Revenue: $3.89

I’m guessing those are real people though, who leave comments and have interaction with the author, which I’d much prefer. I also saw that further down the list one of my posts was cached on an Asian site, but it was a post about Fury Warriors, not gold making. Strange.

Don’t call it a comeback, I didn't go anywhere.... :)

2009-06-01T18:01:00.000-07:00

5/29/09

I’ve been concentrating on leveling toons lately. On Demon Soul, Bloodshrike is now 62, Bullkathos is 52, Thrillkiller just got to 50 last night, and I buckled down and ground out levels with Kukoshakaku, so he went from 28-35. I had to, he has about 400 clefthoof leather that I’ve been keeping in the mail system forever, and I want to just keep it in the bank once I learn all the recipes in there. Plus, since I got Tsuris on Daggerspine to level his LW to 300, I found some nice, actually useful leather items that I wanted to make for my rogues/hunters/shamans/druids when they got to those levels.

Helm of Fire is an awesome leather helm, and the mail Dragonscale chest is pretty sweet for hunters and shamans. The Stormshroud pants aren’t that great though, only giving slightly more crit than the level 37 pants Thrill had, and a lot less Agi and Stamina. I’ll see if it’s worth making the whole set for Thrill. They’re basically a dodge/crit set, and designed for rogues or feral druids, since one of the set bonuses is for regaining energy.

Speaking of Thrillkiller, he went on a rampage this last weekend. I was tired of having old quests clutter up my quest log, and I realized that since I had been so anal about completing every quest I came across, Thrill was already half-way or better on most of his reputation levels with the capitol cities. I figured I might as well get more rep by knocking out the dungeon achievements and quests. So, during the Memorial Day weekend, I had Thrill solo Wailing Caverns, Blackfathom Deeps, Razorfen Kraul, and Razorfen Downs. Downs was the hardest, since Ammenar the Coldbringer had his summons swarm me, and I had already used up a Fel Iron bomb on him, and had just used my Harm Prevention Belt on Glutton. I think I was still 48 when I took down Glutton, but he hits pretty hard.

This Dungeon clearing kick got started by Thrillkiller being in Booty Bay, and deciding to do Gnomer. I had already snuck down in there before to get the Discombobulator ray schematic from the Punchograph-D machine, but I didn’t kill Thermaplugg. Since the last patch changed how the engineering Lil Smoky and Pet Bombling recipes drop in that you can now get both of them from Gnomer, and you can’t get them from renewing your membership, I figured it would be a good time to pop in there, get both recipes and kill Thermaplugg, and be on my way. No such luck. Thermaplugg is supposed to have a 100% drop on the Pet Bombling recipe, which may be, since I only killed him once and he did drop it. But Warcraftpets.com lists the drop rate of the Lil Smoky recipe from the Arcane Nullifier, Crowd Pummeler, and Peacekeeper mechs at 20%. Thottbot lists it at around 2%, which is how it was for me. I probably did 6 runs on that blasted instance, killing 1 Crowd Pummeler, 4 Peacekeepers, and 10-15 Arcane Nullifiers each run. I think it was the last Arcane Nullifier in the area on the 6th run that finally dropped it, and it was a good thing, because I was ready to just forget about it. Luckily, Bullkathos already has the Lil Smoky recipe, so when he goes into the instance, he’ll just use seaforium charges to blow the back door, come in thru the Engineering Labs, get the Discombobulator recipe in the Engineering Labs, then go kill Thermaplugg and get the Pet Bombling recipe.

I also worked on Bloodshrike (Darrowmere), my Blood Elf hunter. She knocked out Ragefire Chasm (very good Thunderbluff rep on those quests), and Wailing Caverns (decent TB rep). I was surprised that the Leaders of the Fang quest gave no rep at all, even though you usually get rep when you have a quest to kill a boss in an instance. But, the Glowing Gem quest that drops from Mutanus does give a good bit of TB rep.
I’m mentioning TB rep because I want Bloodshrike to have a Kodo, and not the Hawkstrider that Blood Elves get. Granted, the Hawkstriders are a lot better looking than the elephants that Draenai get, so I guess I should be grateful.

While Bloodshrike was finishing up quests, I took her to Ashenvale to do the Test of Lore section of the whole quest chain that starts in 1K needles. It ends up with quests to go into Scarlet Monastery, so I want to do it with SOMEONE who can actually benefit from the quest rewards that drop. While I was there, I noticed I hadn’t killed Shadumbra, so on my way back from dropping off the book in Stonetalon, I swung by the Laughing Sisters and took Shadumbra’s head. Since I was there, I figured I’d go up to Feralas and pick up the neutral flight point there, for when I could come back to it at 45 or so. So, I ride up there, and I noticed a Human Rogue that was a skull to me. He had about 2500 hp, and I had 1900 at level 39, so he was probably 10 levels above me. I’ve gotten used to higher level players not attacking me, and I figured he’d do likewise. I figured wrong. I’m heading toward the flightpoint, when all of a sudden I got sapped. I stand there, swaying dazedly, while he calmly proceeds use my back as a pincushion. I got a bit annoyed at that, so I charged back from the graveyard, found him starting to use his hearthstone, so I rezzed and immediately started attacking. He hadn’t killed Arikara, so I was able to summon him instantly, then I popped my Mithril Mechanical Dragonling trinket and my Gnomish Harm Prevention belt. The Mithril dragonling (unlike the others) has a limit on how much it can scale up with your engineering. It can only get up to level 50, whereas the Mechanical Dragonling and the Arcanite Dragonling scale up based on how high your engineering level is. So, my level 62 Bloodshrike has an Arcanite Dragonling guardian that’s probably level 75 or 80.
But I digress. Between Arikara, my dragonling, and me riddling him with holes, the rogue got kilt. He tried to do the smoke bomb escape, but since I always start out with a Hunter’s Mark/petatttack macro, I was still able to see him, and of course my dragonling could too. I bet that sucked for him, thinking he was big and bad by taking down someone gray to him, then that player coming back and just annihilating him in retaliation. In hindsight, I should have stuck around and killed him a few more times, just to drive home the fact that it’s not cool to pick on lower levels.

After that, I decided to take Bloodshrike to Badlands, since that’s a 40-45 area, and it would be a good place for her to work on her skinning. Plus, I’ve had the items for all the turn-in quests in that zone for far too long, and I need to start clearing out her bank.
I’m so relieved to finally be able to level Kukoshakaku in Leatherworking. Not only that, but due to my pack rat mentality, I’m able to make multiples of items that will actually sell well on the AH, instead of having to sell them for less than the cost of the mats. I was looking ahead at what the mats are for the Stormshroud set that I’ll make for Thrillkiller, and I noticed it took a bunch of Ironweb Spider Silk and Essence of Air……..hmmmm, Clockwrknyt just so happens to have a hundred or so Essence of Air in her bank, and probably about 50 Ironweb Spider Silk. I just went from 275 to 285 last night, and was able to learn about 10 new recipes. I did notice that the Stormshroud chest recipe wasn’t among them, and apparently it drops off a specific mob type in Azshara. Looks like Pallor needs to make another trip up there.

Poof! Whaddaya need?

2009-04-15T22:41:00.000-07:00

4/15/09

It's the day after patch 3.1, and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth (qq'ing for those of the younger generation) by twinks as their beloved leg armors and other twinkish stuff were removed by the evilness of Blizzard. :p

For me, it don't really matta. Doomslinger hasn't fired a shot in anger in a looooong time. It's probably time for her to go kill something, and get the last bit of XP needed to tip her over to 20.

But what I really, really don't like about the patch is that Arikara's summoning puff of smoke and sound effect no longer exist. It was very cool having one of the rarest pets that an Ally hunter can get, and now there's now difference between her and a Rogue Vale Screecher from Feralas.

Ehh....just another thing in my list of general apathy about the game currently. I've severely curtailed my selling on the AH, and haven't even been looking for mats much anymore either. I'm not logging in every hour to gallop around Stormwind looking for Lil Timmy, but I do log in every few hours to try to kill the Dalaran Spellscribe.

I want to play all my characters, which leads to me playing none of my characters, because I'm always thinking "Oh, Ryo needs to do this" or "I forgot to get this item for Kuko off the AH." I haven't even finished leveling Bloodshrike to 450 in engineering, and he's already level 61. I usually powerlevel my toons to the max they can get whenever they hit the appropriate milestone. I know it's a game, but....I hate wasting my mats on making stuff, and then having to sell it for pennies on the dollar. Or, making stuff for other people, and paying them for every skillup.

On the other hand, I have had a lot of fun leveling my DK. Since he's a dual gatherer, and I haven't really played in the Outlands yet (except for going there to talk to the mining trainer), Pallor had a blast in Un'goro, Sithilus, Burning Steppes, and all the zones earlier than that which helped me to level up my skinning and mining skills. Since I'm only limited by my skill level in skinning, I'm free to move to the next zone as soon as mob skill level x 5 = or <>160, that only takes 5 kills. But...... Pallor will have to drop skinning. I gotta drop one profession so I can take up engineering when I hit Outlands, and now, he's my highest miner. With the level 300 mining skills of being able to break apart Primal Earth and Fire, that lets me consolidate the hundred's of Mote of Fire and Earth I've saved up for when you need to make Elemental Blasting Powder from level 300-310. It takes a lot, and I hate being unprepared, and having to get ripped on the AH because of it.

Besides, I think Thrillkiller would benefit from dropping mining to take up skinning. Critical strike chance benefits rogue's and hunters (who are my usual skinners) way more than it would help out a Death Knight at 60.

Demonsoul has 67k gold, Daggerspine has 59k, Darrowmere has 31k, Lightbringer has about 8k, and I've made about 6.5k gold for Steve on Bladefist. I'm not bragging, it's just a thing so I can track how much I made over the last few months or so, and how much more I'm making than when I started out.

The Kindness of Strangers

2009-02-21T01:55:00.000-08:00

2/21/09

As we’ve already established, I’m an altoholic. I’m also a bit of a recluse. Most of the time I prefer doing my own thing, and don’t like having to deal with people on a regular basis. When I first started WoW, I joined the first guild that invited me. I left after a little while, because the conversation scrolling by on guild chat was about as interesting as trade chat, and I didn’t want to double my punishment (yeah, I know you can turn trade chat off, I just keep it up because very occasionally there’s some topic that’s interesting, or a good deal comes up on it).

Nowadays, I play WoW like I used to play Diablo II online; I kind of view people as my gatherers. I don’t have the patience or time to grind for dropped recipes on 3 different servers, but if it happens to drop for someone, and they happen to put it on the AH, and I don’t have the recipe, I’ll probably grab it, no matter the price. It’s not that I’m shy around people, and I don’t talk about WoW ALL the time - though Steve or Francois might beg to differ.

Anyway, I had started toons on both Draka (PvE)(Horde side) and Gurubashi (PvP)(Ally side) to help out Kevin and Francois, respectively. They both ended up transferring those toons from those servers, and I was left with a few more toons on my account, bringing me closer to the 50 toon limit set by Blizzard. I decided to get rid of the temptation of playing those toons, and went ahead with it this evening. I logged into Gurubashi, and discovered that I still had a bunch of engineering stuff that hadn’t been moved to Horde side before Francois’ toon got transferred. I didn’t want to waste the recipes/mats/gold that I had collected, so I decided to host a giveaway. I posted on trade “Looking for dedicated low level engineer. I don’t want advice, pst link to engineering for a reward.”

People are naturally suspicious of strange posts, so I didn’t get many replies at first. So, I decided to make my message a bit less cryptic. “I’m deleting this toon, and I want to give my stuff to a low level engineer that shows worthiness. You won’t be disappointed.” The criteria I was looking for was someone who took the time and effort to actually acquire dropped recipes, either by buying them on the AH, or by grinding for them by themselves. The Johnny-come-latelies to engineering that powerlevel it at 80 are usually the ones that sneer at the low level trinkets and bombs, and refuse to admit how useful they could be. I didn’t want to reward them, so I was looking for someone a bit like me, who powereleveled engineering to 225 at level 20ish, and would appreciate the gift I was giving them.

Well, a couple of high levels posted me, wanting to know what I was up to. One level 72 said he had 360 engineering (I think, fuzzy on the numbers). That didn’t sound like my type of player, so I kept looking. Another level 80 had a whopping 99 out of 150 engineering. No, sorry. The level 72 was persistent, though. He asked, “What about a level 19 with 165 engineering?” I said he could log him in, and I’d check him out. He posted his engineering list, and while he was definitely a twink, he didn’t just do it for the goggles. He had the Goblin Jumper Cable recipe, and the Minor Recombobulator and Gnomish Universal Remote trinkets equipped. I thought he deserved a reward.

So, Endeavour of Gurubashi, I salute you. You showed perserverance in talking to me, and dedication in engineering by getting all the recipes you could for your twink. You deserved the 462 gold, the Schematic: Arcanite Dragonling, the Schematic: Sniper Scope, and the rest of the stuff in my bank that I gave you. Oh yeah, I also gave him 3x Recipe: Tasty Lion Steak, and explained how much it could sell for on the neutral AH.

One toon deleted. On to Draka. Pretty much the same story, a disbelieving audience, a couple of high level engineers were the only ones to post. One, a level 70 Tauren Hunter named GSMoomoo, posted his Goblin recipe book. 315 out of 375, not bad, and he had learned the Goblin Jumper Cables XL, the Mechanical Yeti recipe from Winterspring, and the Snake Burst Firework recipe from Feralas. He deserved it, in my opinion.
On Draka, I had most of my stuff transferred to Kevin, so all I had to give him were 45 Truesilver Bars, 57 Thorium Ore, 4 x Pattern: Bright Yellow Shirt, 4 x Recipe: Elixir of Giant Growth, 4 x Recipe: Discolored Healing Potion, 5 x Formula: Enchant Chest - Lesser Mana, and also 152 gold. I asked if I could give him some advice, and he said yes, so I told him what to sell in the Horde AH, and what to sell in Booty Bay AH. He said he wished that we could play together, which would have been cool, but the whole reason for the giveaway was so I could delete some toons. I gave him my blog address in case he ever wanted some advice, I /saluted him, logged, and deleted the toon.

That was pretty fun, actually! I’m thinking of perhaps doing this weekly on Demon Soul/Daggerspine/Darrowmere, seeking out a deserving engineer to give a a Lifelike Mechanical Toad or 50 gold, or give them the choice to post it on the AH while I price higher, so they could double their money. Hehehe, I’ll hook them on the AH before they know what hit them.

I might even do it on the opposite faction of those servers, seeking out a worthy Alchemist to give a Recipe: Elixir of Giant Growth to, since I usually have a backlog of those recipes on Ally side. They just don’t sell as quickly as the Savory Deviate Delight recipe.

Gold? I got a guy for that.

2009-02-20T15:59:00.000-08:00

2/20/09

Well, I’m helping out another friend at work with gold. My dispatcher Steve is a fellow player, but like most normal people, doesn’t worry overly much about making gold. He just hit 64 with his main Mage, and noticed he was starting to have a tough time taking down mobs. I told him to start buying armor and weapons on the AH, and he said he couldn’t. He only had 40 gold at level 64……….

That’s a bit of a shock to me. My level 20 characters are regularly raking in at least 100 gold a day, after only 5 minutes of reposting items. I couldn’t let that situation continue, so I offered to help him out. I started 2 Orcs, ran one to Booty Bay and the other one to Orgrimmar (well, I flew from Ratchett, after making some coin), and logged out. His level 3 warlock ghost ran down to Booty Bay from Elwynn, and then his main bought 12 Fillet of Frenzy and 12 Clam Chowders (since he was by Auberdine), then he did about 5 flips of the Recipe: Kaldorei Spider Kabob. He sent them to the warlock in BB, my Orc bought the recipes, and sent them to the Orc in Orgrimmar. I posted 2 each of the Frenzy and Chowder recipes for 16-18 gold each, and the Kaldorei recipe for 90-99 gold.

I checked back an hour later, and they were all sold out. I put up more of the Frenzy and Chowder, and another Kaldorei for 99-110 gold. It sold almost immediately, as I was checking for enchanting bags on the AH (Steve has 240 enchanting at level 64, which is pretty decent, but his entire bank was full of enchanting mats, with only one bag slot bought, and no bag in it.)

After another recipe sold, I had enough for a 32-slot Mysterious Bag (enchanting bag). I checked back later, and I had enough to buy a Recipe: Savory Deviate Delight at 150 gold. We did the swap at Booty Bay, and after selling the Savory recipe on Ally side for 399 gold, he now has about 430 gold, plus ALL of his mats in one bag, and a lot of empty space in his bank.

On a side note, I took yesterday off sick since there wasn’t any service calls, and as I was finishing up transfers from Ally to Horde side on Demon Soul, a level 80 hunter asks Thrillkiller, my level 44 Rogue, if I wanted a free run of Zul’Farrak. I was like “sure, let me clear my bags and get the quests, and I’m ready.” Well, it took a bit of time to get it organized, since we were waiting for other people, but once it started, it was pretty fun. We knocked out most of the ZF quests you can get in Gadgetzan (along with Gahz’rilla from Shimmering Flats), and only when I logged into Bloodshrike later did I discover that there’s a couple more quests that Thrillkiller hadn’t picked up. Oh well, I don’t really mind. I just want to do dungeons once, or maybe do them solo at 80 for the achievements.

After we had run ZF a few times, the level 80 said we were going to go to Blackrock Depths. Wow, that’s a huge instance. The biggest one I’ve seen so far has been Wailing Caverns, but BRD is WAYYY bigger. Pretty cool, even though I died multiple times because I was trying to help the hunter’s gorilladin on DPS, and ended up grabbing aggro. I’m sorry, I just can’t put myself on follow, and sit on my ass doing nothing, like the hunter/mage/druid that the level 80 hunter was rushing. The hunter was getting knocked down to 10% of his health on a lot of these encounters, and so I’d run in with a Fel Iron Bomb and an Advanced Target Dummy to distract some of the mobs, and hurt them a lot. Since the druid was with us, it wasn’t annoying to get killed, since I wouldn’t have to run back from the Spirit Healer outside. He got killed, but luckily my Goblin Jumper Cables XL worked, and we were able to continue on. In the ZF runs, a couple of the other guys got killed, and I tried the jumper cables, but there was no reaction. I think it was because they had already released their spirit to the Spirit Healer. When the druid died, I immediately said “Don’t release!” and when I selected him and hit the cables, the channeled Defibrillate showed up on my screen, and it rezzed him. Gogo engineering!!

After an hour or so of running around BRD, we had had enough, so they ported back to UC, and I teleported back to Gadgetzan. Level 47 3/4ths, after only 4 hours. Pretty cool, though now I’m out of well-rested XP.

"Yum, those Spider Kabobs are tasty! What's your secret?"

2009-02-20T15:48:00.000-08:00

2/20/09
This is/will be posted on Markco’s site, when he has a slot open for it, but I figured I might as well post it here as well.

Here’s another quick thing to keep in mind for making gold if you’re Ally side on a PvP server, or if you’re whatever on a PvE server. Quest:Recipe_of_the_Kaldorei
is a low level quest available to Ally only characters. How low level? Well, actually, level 1 ONE one (1). So, if you happen to scan your auction house, and find 5 full stacks of 10 Small Spider Legs for 10 silver a stack, you’d have all you needed to make a TON of gold.

Step 1: Make a bunch of Night elf toons. I usually name them Kaldorone, Kaldortwo….

Step 2: Log on to your toon with the spider legs and at least some money. Send 7 small spider legs AND 95 copper to each of these throwaway toons.

Step 3: Zone in to the starting area, and immediately run to Dolanaar. Pick up your copper and legs from the mailbox, make a hard left towards the lake, and talk to Zarrin to learn the cooking skill for 95 copper. Ding! The quest appears immediately over Zarrin’s head, and you accept it and immediately turn it in. Sell off the extra Kaldorei Spider Kabob and your starting food, and you end up with 1 silver, 19 copper. Run back to the mailbox, send it to whoever, along with the 89 copper (leaving you broke), and delete the toon. Rinse and repeat for as many times as you can stand. While the entire process only takes about 2-3 minutes, it is extremely boring, especially if you have mods (CT mods always cover my screen when logging in a new toon. I guess I could turn them off, duh!)

Step 4: Collect your recipes, and go to the neutral Auction House in Booty Bay/Tanaris/Winterspring. I prefer Winterspring, since it’s not that popular, because if you’re high enough for it, you’re high enough for Outlands. Posting with an alt on a PvP server at Booty Bay is extremely frustrating, since you can get ganked a lot, or even accidentally ganked by a high level going for the Bloodsail achievement, and his AoE spells kill you.
Now, if you only have access to one account on a PvP server, here’s where it stops. I’d say experiment with posting at 60-100 gold, and keep increasing until sales drop off. You can even have another alt Post at 200-300 gold, to get people wondering why these recipes are so expensive. They look it up, they see it’s Ally only, they buy it. Cha-ching!
By the way, Horde toons can do the same thing by buying the Recipe: Elixir of Giant Growth and Recipe: Savory Deviate Delight recipes from the Horde AH, and reposting at a large profit on the Neutral AH.

Extra Credit Step 5: If you have access to a second account, or another person you know plays WOW and isn’t on your server, ask them to help you get it to Horde (If you’re on a PvE server, you could get a guildy to make a Horde toon to help you out.). You post the Kaldorei recipe for 1 copper bid/1 copper buyout, and they immediately buy it out. They or you post it on the Horde Auction house for 80-100-130 gold, and wait for the money to roll in. Now, if you use Auctioneer to make money on the margin, this long of a process won’t appeal to you. But, considering that you could get 8 of these recipes in under 20 minutes if you had the 8x7=56 Small Spider Legs and 8 silver, that translates to over 800 gold on Horde side. You (or your friend) can use that to buy mats for your professions, or buy the Recipe: Savory Deviate Delight at wholesale, or just buy Abyss Crystals to bring back over to Ally side and sell off.

Hope you liked it,
Bloodshrike