I think I'll skip graduation this year

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.

Gathering in Cataclysm

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.