crafted-gear
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Patch 6.1: Stage 4 upgrades for crafted gear, new alchemy trinket
Good news for those of us who use crafted gear. The latest PTR build has added stage 4 upgrades for all Warlords crafted gear. Armor, rings, and trinkets can now be upgraded to 680 ilvl and weapons can be upgraded to 670 ilvl. The materials are similar to previous upgrades, only this time you need 30 Savage Bloods each. You'll also notice that the alchemy profession has access to a brand new trinket which can also be upgraded to 680 ilvl (requires alchemy to equip). Blacksmithing: Powerful Truesteel Essence, Powerful Steelforged Essence Leatherworking: Powerful Burnished Essence Tailoring: Powerful Hexweave Essence Inscription: Powerful Ensorcelled Tarot, Powerful Weapon Crystal Engineering: Oglethorpe's Octagonal Lenses, Precision Scope Tuning Kit Jewelcrafting: Powerful Taladite Amplifier Alchemy: Stone of Fire (also new are stages 1, 2, and 3)
Latest Pathfinder Online devblog emphasizes player-driven economy
Although players in Pathfinder Online's Alpha 7 run will earn 5,000 XP per hour (in order to help them test more things), the latest devblog warns that things will get decidedly harder once gameplay starts after Early Enrollment. At that point players will face a "cold start," beginning the game with only simple peasant clothes, a club, and 1,000 XP to spend on initial feats. Everything else, from feats to gear to cash, will grow from that. The devblog also details the player-driven economy; by design, nearly everything characters use will be player-crafted. Mobs will drop only starter equipment, coin, salvage, or -- the rarest and most valuable -- recipes. Players can only upgrade gear past the starter level through crafting, and gear can be crafted with certain key words that add bonuses when combined with specific slotted feats. For full details, and a look at what Pathfinder devs are doing at PAX Prime, check out the official site.
The Daily Grind: Can crafted gear coexist with loot drops?
Recently we asked whether you prefer RNG or tokens when it comes to MMORPG loot. There's a third option, though, and that option is player-crafted gear. Games that focus on crafted materials over loot have fallen out of favor in recent years, but they may see something resembling a comeback thanks to the new generation of sandboxes and sandparks currently in development. So, assuming that you don't curl into the fetal position at the thought of needing player-crafted gear, do you think it's possible for it to coexist with loot drops or are the two mutually exclusive in your ideal MMORPG? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Blood Pact: Reputable gear and more for raiding
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill opens up Shado-Pan dailies and then promptly decides that things like having 4-slot farms for all her alts and leveling her shockadin are more important. What a slacker. Three weeks ago, I wrote briefly about the rewards from having reputation with Pandaria's factions. Three weeks ago, all I had was beta to go on, and on beta all the factions had dailies open to me independently of each other. When Mists of Pandaria went live, we found out that it really should have been named the Golden Gate Lotus faction, complete with "You Shall Not Pass into August Celestial reputation" signs. Then we had a hotfix of the Justice Points and Honor Points gear to bring them in line with each other ilvl-wise, a hotfix that removed reputation requirements for justice point gear, and some more hotfixes opened up some of the valor gear behind faction reputation lines. While your heading was spinning with all the faction-made gear changes going on, I was writing it all down to figure out which pieces I should be questing for.
All you ever wanted to know about Rift's gear and were not afraid to ask
While some players may possess the tact not to come right out and say it to a dev's face, when an upcoming MMO is being discussed there's always the inner voice shouting, "What about my loots? Is the gear pimpin' or what?" Forget zones and races and dynamic events -- today at Ten Ton Hammer, the crowd finally got the Rift: Planes of Telara dev team to open up about the outfits that constitute a bulk of the rewards of the game. In this reader Q&A, Game System Designer Drew Clowery tackled numerous questions about Rift's gear. Rift will launch with 48 armor set models -- each boasting a number of variants and texture options -- but will not initially offer armor set bonuses. Veteran MMO gamers will feel at home with Rift's armor system, which is restricted by class (warriors will be able to wear heavier armor than rogues, for example) and can be bound on pickup or equip. Loot comes in one of four levels of rarity -- common, uncommon, rare and epic -- based on its utility and difficulty to attain. Crafted gear will be competitive (and apparently customizable) to dropped gear. And finally, Rift will not launch with an appearance system that replaces the look of worn gear with cosmetic items. Clowery feels that the team has struck a good balance between loot being useful and being a barrier: "Loot is an important part of our game, and so it has to have an important impact upon the characters. That said, it's not completely overwhelming... We don't design encounters to be gear checks. We design them to see if you can get together and do this."
Arcane Brilliance: Level 80 mage gearing roadmap, part 1
Welcome to another installment of Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column of choice for mages who hate warlocks, warlocks who secretly want to be mages, and everybody else who likes their mage discussion sprinkled lightly with random and inappropriate references to Lost, Flock of Seagulls, Lufia, and KFC's new "Double Down Sandwich," or as I like to call it, "population control." I mean, seriously? Who greenlit this? "I have an idea, guys. Let's offer a bacon and cheese sandwich where we remove the bun and replace it with two slabs of fried chicken! Ooh, and then, instead of offering drink sizes, let's work on a way to allow customers to hook themselves directly into our soda machines intravenously. They'll be mainlining Dr. Pepper! Because if there's anything America needs more than ever during these tough economic times, it's more ways for people to kill themselves via food!" Lately, a lot of you have been asking for gearing advice for the new level 80 mage. It seems that a good number of people (myself included) have been making good use of this pre-Cataclysm lull to level their alts, and I'm proud to learn that many of you have chosen to level a mage as one of your alts. For many of you, the gearing landscape probably looks very alien when compared to the way it looked when you were gearing up your last character. New opportunities abound, with the promise of epic gear dangling around every bend. What path should you take? Fear not, young magelings. This week, Arcane Brilliance has decided to draw you a roadmap. Now, a warning: Arcane Brilliance can't draw. Seriously, when Arcane Brilliance was 5, he drew a picture of a "horse" for his mother. As horse pictures go, it was apparently quite disturbing. Arcane Brilliance had to spend some time at a hospital for "special" children, and mom started drinking heavily. So, you're going to have to use your imaginations about the "map" part of the roadmap. It's mostly going to consist of words, something Arcane Brilliance can produce largely without upsetting medical professionals. Largely. So you've hit level 80 with your mage. Your gear slots are likely filled with a random assortment of quest rewards, heirloom gear that suddenly doesn't look so good anymore, and stuff that dropped in normal Nexus ten levels ago. You'd like to start running some of the level 80 content, but your DPS still hasn't cracked a thousand. You're not geared enough for a trip to heroic Ramparts, let alone heroic Trial of the Champion. So what do you do? Where do you begin?
Tailor toys in 2.4
Tailors rejoice! All of that Spellcloth and Primal Mooncloth you've been sitting on isn't going to go to waste! Well, maybe. Shadowcloth, nobody likes you and you smell. Please go away. ...Just kidding!Tailors are going to get two different sets, Sunfire and Eternal Light, each consisting of a robe and a pair of gloves. The former is a DPS set, and the latter is a healing set, naturally. They're loaded up with red sockets, and the socket bonuses are a pretty clear cut boost with no need to dance around to get them. The gloves of both sets require Sunmotes, so keep in mind that you probably won't be able to make these right away. The Sunmotes are likely drops inside of the Sunwell instances, potentially the raid zone. We can hope otherwise though, right? Luckily, the Sunmotes seem to be the only especially rare material required. The rest is just fairly mundane primals and cloth.It is a bit strange that there is no new Shadowcloth set, but it's possible we simply haven't seen it yet. I have my doubts Primal Mooncloth and Spellcloth specced tailors would be the only ones recieving anything new in this patch. Sure, the pieces aren't tied to those specific specs, but Shadowcloth tailors want to put their transmute to good use, too!Stats and materials after the jump, courtesy of our good friend over at MMO Champ.
