enchantments
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Materia system detailed for Final Fantasy XIV
Characters always wind up acquiring old and beloved pieces of equipment, ranging from a valuable dropped weapon to just a particularly nicely itemized ring. But with time, equipment grows obsolete or just no longer serves your needs. Normally, that means a trip to the nearest vendor, but Final Fantasy XIV is introducing a new system that turns your old gear into boosts for your new gear. The Materia system is coming with patch 1.19, and a detailed preview has been added to the official site. When the patch goes live, all equipment will have a "Spiritbond" value that rises from zero to 100% as you make use of the item. Once the value is at 100%, the item can be converted to materia that is subsequently attached to a new item, giving enhanced values to the new item. The system makes full use of combat, gathering, and crafting professions, and from the looks of the overview it will enable all three to make some significant gains in power.
Arcane Brilliance: A poor mage's guide to enchants
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we're discussing enchants and the mages who love them. Which would, of course, be all of us. So you've got all kinds of awesome gear now. Your guild is raiding, you've been farming heroics for the better part of the month, and you're exalted with everybody up to and including my mom, a fact which you're more than happy to declare in the trade channel to anyone who hasn't already put you on ignore. Your DPS is what the kids call "phat," or at least they would have called it that if it was still 1998. Oh yes, your gear is fancy. You're the envy of all. Small children look up to you, women swoon in your presence, and warlocks whisper your name fearfully in the dark of night, from the closets where they hide, cutting themselves and adding extra zippers to their clothing so they can look more like a villain from Kingdom Hearts. And now it's time to make that gear even fancier. You flag down your friendly neighborhood enchanter and begin perusing his wares. It's then that you begin to notice something. Maelstrom Crystals are expensive. I'm not even kidding. It's pretty ridiculous right now. Yesterday I traded the title to my car, a dozen years of indentured servitude, and my firstborn child for a weapon enchant, and I still feel like I got a pretty sweet deal. My weapon's all glowy. I'm psyched. So unless your guild is on the bleeding edge of the current raiding scene, or maybe if you have so much extra cash lying around that you sleep in a bed made of money, the majority of us simply can't afford to put the absolute top-end enchants on every upgrade that drops in whatever heroic the dungeon finder chose to give us today (Stonecore). The good news is that we here at Arcane Brilliance understand. We're going to talk enchants today, yes. But instead of simply listing the best enchant for each slot, wherever possible we're also going to include, at no additional charge, an alternative enchant for the more budget-conscious among us.
TERA enchantment crystals explained
While we've seen plenty of screenshots, videos, and armor renders for En Masse Entertainment's upcoming TERA MMORPG, in-depth information on game mechanics has been a bit scarce. Today, the game's official website has been updated with a lengthy article on the basics of enchantment crystals, giving TERA fans a better idea of the game's equipment customization and playstyle flexibility. In a nutshell, crystals are consumable items that players place on their weapons and armor. Unequipping them and/or dying may destroy said crystals, and this mechanic is presumably based -- at least in part -- on random number generation. Basic crystals grant increases to HP or MP, while rarer crystals only activate under certain conditions (but provide a much larger bonus). The article also mentions the three tiers of TERA bosses and how crystals affect them, as well as a few example crystals and their effects. Read all about it on the official website.
Lichborne: Glyphs, gems and enchants for the blood tank
Welcome to Lichborne, your weekly peek into the latest news, tips and strategies for the death knight class. Last week, we went into the basic outlines of what makes a blood tank: your talent choices, your gearing choices, your threat rotations and things such as that. Once you've got all that down, though, the next thing you can do to take your tanking to the next level is to get some decent gems, glyphs and enchantments. They'll separate an adequate 5-man tank from a tank who's ready to step on and start taking on the game in earnest.
Twinking post patch 3.1
The twinks were a little doom-and-gloom before the patch, but it seems like the end of the world has come and gone, and they're still interested in twinking. As Drayner over at Twinkinfo predicted, all of the changes on the PTR went live: enchants have level requirements, as did profession buffs, and those aren't scaling either. At this point, it sounds like the only way to twink out your character (which means make it super powerful at a certain low level) is to fit them out in the best gear you can find for the level.If you can keep them at that level, that is -- apparently there's a bug in the game with queuing up for BGs where you are sometimes accidentally transported to a graveyard when you queue. And for some twinks sitting just on the brink of leveling, that extra few points of exploration XP could ruin everything. Be careful with that, though we're sure a hotfix is incoming soon.But nevertheless, people apparently still twinking -- while there are good numbers of people ready to leave twinking (or even the game), the majority of answers on their poll over there say that people are still going to try ruling the lower level battlegrounds. Which is about what we expected before the patch: these people live to bend the rules as far as they'll go, and a few more probably won't stop them.
Ask a Beta Tester: More mounts, raid gear, and emotes
We have a few more questions about the passenger mounts today, but a lot of Mammoth-related questions are repeats of ones we've answered previously. So if you still have a question about them after today, I recommend checking the last few editions of Ask a Beta Tester to see if it's been answered already. Now, let's get started with Iceman's question...Are the flying passenger mounts? Ground mounts are lovely and all, but once everyone takes to the skies will they become useless to everyone with cold weather flying?I haven't seen any flying passenger mounts yet. Whether the passenger ground mounts are 'useless' or not with Cold Weather Flying is really up to the individual. You can still use it in the old world, you can still use the Mammoth's vendors. There are also places like Lake Wintergrasp where flying is turned off permanently so you don't 'cheat' and skip over all of the fighting to get from Point A to Point B. You and a bunch of your friends charging people down in a huge Mammoth is sweet.If you don't care about any of that stuff though, yeah it could be seen as useless. It's an optional purchase, though. You don't need to spend the money if you don't want to do so.
The Light and How to Swing It: Gearing up your Retadin for Karazhan part IV
Alright. Let's call a spade a spade. I nubbed last week's installment by putting down Agility as a stat. Agility is good -- still not a Retadin's primary strength (pun intended), but definitely part of the equation. An informative article can be found on WoWWiki comparing Strength to Agility and determining the point where investing points in Agility gives better DPS returns than investing in Strength. Unlike Rogues or Hunters, who will never reach a point where Strength gives better returns, there is a certain point for Paladins (or Shamans and Warriors, for that matter) where it becomes better to invest in Agility. It's quite a bit of math, but suffice it to say that the equilibrium point is pretty high and not achievable by a fresh 70 gearing up for Karazhan. I also dismissed Expertise (pfft, why make one mistake when you can make two!), a new stat introduced in Patch 2.3, which reduces the chance a mob will Dodge or Parry your attacks. If you can manage it, you should always attack from behind, negating Parry to begin with, but barring that, Expertise is a good stat to pursue after you're Hit capped. In fact, as some readers pointed out, the Shard of Contempt is the best melee DPS trinket in the game right now as it prevents even yellow, or special, attacks from being Dodged or Parried. With all the technical stuff out of the way, let's move on to the last part of this series, where we'll take a look at all the permanent enchants, gems, and even consumables that you'll need to do a good job in Karazhan.
Death Knight News: Rune swapping gone, Runeforging to be powerful
The introduction of runeforging to the Wrath Beta was a bit of surprise and slightly unexpected. Instead of rune swapping -- the idea of being able to change the nature and configuration of the runes on your runeblade -- Death Knights got a solid 2 Unholy, 2 Blood, and 2 Frost runes. Runeforging itself became a weapon enchantment system whereby Death Knights could enchant their weapon with various special procs and buffs for various situations. There has as of yet been no sign of an ability to swap runes, and Jayde, aka Jadefury, recently asked if there were still plans for one. The short answer, according to blue poster Ghostcrawler, is no. The long answer is perhaps a bit more complicated, and reinforces Blizzard's stated goals with the Death Knight class role and the new runeforging ability.
Inscription to allow enchanters to sell on the AH
Blizzard has been saying for a while that they're working on letting Enchanters ply their trade via the Auction House. When the Wrath beta launched, we didn't immediately see any way that this feature has been implemented. However, Elisalia, a beta-tester, wrote in to let us know that she'd figured it out. The link between Enchanters and the AH is going to be Inscription, and it looks like it will work as follows: Inscriptors can create blank parchments, such as the Bleached Parchment seen in the picture. Each type of parchment works for one type of item to enchant -- armor, weapon, etc. Enchanters can cast enchantments on those parchments, to create, for instance, that Scroll of Enchant Cloak - Greater Defense. These scrolls can be listed on the AH, mailed, or traded like any other unbound item. The scrolls can be right-clicked by anyone to apply the enchantment to their own items. It's a good system, and I like it. In addition to using the AH, of course, this will also allow enchanters to give enchantments to their own alts -- about time. I wonder if Inscriptors will be able to use a similar system to vend their own spell enhancements. Also, hopefully the cost of the parchment will not be too high; if it's more than a few gold, people will likely circumvent this system entirely and keep doing enchants the way we do them now. Enchanters, does this look like a good system to you? Would you rather preserve the face-to-face, personalized nature of the enchantment transaction?
Enchanted in Northrend
Being the only non-gathering primary profession that has, thus far, been implemented in the Wrath beta, enchanters should feel special. No word yet on the long-rumored ability to sell enchants on the AH, but we do at least have some interesting new enchants to look forward to. Here are some of my favorites: Enchant Cloak: Haste Enchant Cloak: Spirit Enchant Boots: Icewalker Enchant Cloak: Shadow Armor Enchant Gloves: Armsman Enchant Bracer: Expertise Enchant Weapon: Lifeward Enchant Gloves: Gatherer
Enchantment Issues?
Logging on to WoW this afternoon (a US server, at least - the EU realms may not share this issue), I received the following in-game message: We are aware players are experiencing an issue with the display of recent enchantments to items. We are working to resolve the issue and recommend players refrain from placing enchantments on items.Now, I can't yet find anything about this on the forums or the website, but with such an vague yet ominous message (and as expensive as enchants can be), how can one help but listen?Update: Still not much detail on what the intial problem was, but this was hotfixed later in the evening.
