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All the World's A Stage: Gift-giving in Azeroth
With Winter's Veil behind us, it is not too long until Valentine's Day is here. Between these two holidays, I'm frequently left pondering the best gifts available for our loved ones . . . in game. There's a subtle art to simulating gift-giving between characters, since there's obviously a few factors to be considered. First, it's difficult to be creative. Everyone has the same access to the items and gifts in-game, so you're going to be incredibly challenged to pull off something "no one else has considered." Second, it can be difficult to pick out just the right gift, since it can be a little hard to get excited over a trade window. Still, when it comes time for one character to give something a little special to his or her in-character spouse, it's good to have some ideas ready to go. Take a look behind the jump and let's talk about 5 of my favorite in-game gifts.
Insider Trader: Fishing, the final stretch
Until very recently, with patches 2.3 and 2.4, fishing was a skill mainly taken up by those players aching to relax. Casual questers who couldn't play for hours and be all business, or raiders looking to escape the pressure, took to their favorite remote and beautiful areas with a rod, some music, and a <DND> tag. In my small and tight-knit guild, fishing often meant story time. While I was feeling Zen fishing from the Forgotten Coast, another guildmate was storming the shores along Stranglethorn Vale, and we would exchange anecdotes and gossip. We took pleasure in our secret source for cloth, leather, ore and greens, as well as fish for alchemy, and helped finance our level 40 mounts through fishing. Still, many players, if not most players, seemed to find fishing boring, slow and annoying. Fortunately, fishing has never been necessary for any character if it does not provide pleasure. Even cooks, who stood to benefit the most from fishing, could work around it, and push through any rough patches by buying small stashes of certain fish from other players. Of course, now that fishing is more lucrative, its secrets more widely known, more people have shown an interest. As cooking became more important, so did fishing, not because you couldn't maximize cooking without it, but because some of the best buff foods are made with fish. Those who need a constant supply can't rely on the auction house. Recently, Robin Torres wrote up some tips to leveling fishing at level 70, and this week, Insider Trader is taking an in-depth look at maximizing your fishing skill. For the inside scoop on reaching 375 as quickly as possible, or as profitably as possible, head on through the break.
Making money along the way
My wife sold another Captured Firefly at the Auction House just a few minutes ago for 800 Gold. When I mentioned this in our virtual WoW Insider foxhole, Daniel remarked that he didn't have the patience to farm it. I don't have the patience to farm those things, either, but my wife surprised me by telling me that she doesn't farm for it. Instead, she makes it a point to kill all the Bogflare Needlers in Zangarmarsh on the way to her daily quests in Blade's Edge Mountains. She'll often end up with a bunch of Fractured Carapaces and Twitching Legs, but when she lucks out and gets the awesome pet, it's guaranteed Gold.I guess it's just a smart thing to do that I never really thought about. Killing those Needlers won't take most 70s too long and Zangarmarsh is along the way to Blade's Edge, anyway. Making a short stopover to take a chance on the Firefly is a prudent move as far as making money is concerned. It doesn't take too much time and the gray item drops are worth a decent amount when sold to vendors. Making money is easy if you make short stops along the way, such as fishing the pools of Pure Water on the way to wherever you're going for guaranteed Motes of Water. Engineers can do the same thing by extracting Motes of Air from the gas clouds in Nagrand while doing The Multiphase Survey in Osh'gun. Sure, they'll probably need to keep swapping goggles, but it doesn't hurt and gives players more loose change.
