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.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Didja know?
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.
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.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Guild....Alone
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!
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!
Friday, January 7, 2011
Where the HELL are my bombs?!!!
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.
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.
Friday, December 24, 2010
And now for something completely different
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.
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.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Spring...I mean, Winter Cleaning
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.
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.
Friday, December 10, 2010
Congratulations to all Realm Firsts!
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!
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!
Monday, December 6, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Realm First!
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!
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!
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Mission: Impossible Turkey
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.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
The Shattered (Patch 4.0.3a)
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 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
Sunday, November 21, 2010
The Spirit of Sharing
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.
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.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Wintergrasp Alone
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.
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.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
No more portals
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.
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?
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.
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.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Sell, sell, sell!
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.
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.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Wrap-up to Hallow's End
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.
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.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
How do I love thee 4.0.1? Let me count the ways...
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.
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.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Update to Cog of Doom
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);
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);
Monday, October 18, 2010
Gold making with Hallow's End
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.
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.
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