essences
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Tweaks to enchanting in 3.0.8
Are you an enchanter? Have you started tearing out your hair at how hard it is to get things to DE to Infinite Dust or Greater Cosmic Essence, while Dream Shard after Dream Shard piles up in your bank even after you've bought all the enchants? In my case it's Essences that are the issue. Nothing I disenchant seems to want to turn into them, while even lowly greens keep turning into shards. I have all the enchants to learn, I simply can't get enough essences to do any enchants.Turns out this is being retuned in 3.0.8 although I'm not sure I like how it sounds. See, the solution of jacking up how many shards enchants need would certainly make shards more valuable on the AH, but I don't sell mine anyway. Meanwhile, am I going to be getting essences from DEing now? Dust isn't that hard to get in my opinion (certainly not as hard as GC seems to think it is) - it's essences I can't get enough of, and essences that limit the enchants I can and can't do. On my server a Greater Cosmic Essence can run you 50g for one, and when I need 10 for an enchant and only have 1 after DEing two days worth of farmed/quested greens, that's a problem for me. I don't see how making it take more shards to do an enchant would be any great favor unless those shards somehow took the place of Greater Cosmic Essence, and if they do, what's the point of GCE at all? Here's hoping I'm just being reactionary and the changes coming in make it easier to level this profession.
Essences to Motes, pros and cons
We had an idea like this a while back, but now Sweet from Korgath has come up with an even better one. Make 10 Essences equal one Mote just the way that 10 Motes equal one Primal. Since 2.1, Essences (the random crafting widgets that used to drop in Azeroth) are dropping in Outland, and since most of the recipes that use them are pretty old by now, players don't have much to do with them. Way back, we'd suggested an Alchemy Transmute Essence-to-Mote recipe, but Sweet's idea is better-- why not just make them all the same thing?Drysc rains on the parade, however, by saying that because Essences drop so much back in old Azeroth, it would be necessary (in his view) to nerf their droprate there. And that in turn, would cause problems for lower level players who couldn't make it to Outland (Drysc assumes that lower level players are still farming Essences the way all 60s used to, but I might disagree with him there). Also, he says, it would increase the amount of Motes and Primals floating around, obviously, and Blizzard doesn't want those to be super easy to come by.But surely there's some conversion rate they could hit on which would make Essences worth just a little more than worthless at level 70. If too many Essences drop in Azeroth, then make it 15, or 20, or whatever. Better than vendoring stacks of Essences picked up while Mote-farming just because no one will buy them on the AH.
World of motecrafting post 2.1
A couple of interesting Mote related changes have popped up in the patch. I was well aware of the Mote of Shadow change-- those babies are now dropping not off of demons, but only off of void creatures (you can find tons of them in the southern part of Hellfire Peninsula, and in small pockets in many instances). Which makes sense, but makes you wonder why they dropped off of demons in the first place-- or why it matters which one they drop off of at all.The other change was a little more hidden in the patch notes, and most players didn't realize it would be happening until they saw the drops: Essences are now dropping in Outland in the same place that Motes are dropping. You remember Essences-- they're the elemental components of many recipes found on the Azeroth side of the Dark Portal. A few players were unhappy that Essences were dropping instead of Motes, until Drysc confirmed that Essences are actually dropping in addition to Motes-- it's not a matter of either/or at all. Essences are completely extra.And of course that'll have an effect on the economy. Right now, Essences are selling for up to 1g a pop on most AHs (Update: and even higher on other servers, sometimes up to 15g apiece), but they still only vendor for 4s, which is pennies compared to even most gray drops in Outland. And that price will probably drop anyway, considering the market is about to be flooded with them. One solution is to raise the vendor price. And another solution, say a few enterprising players, would be to give Alchemists a Transmute Essence to Mote spell, either at a 2-to-1 exchange rate, or a long-ish cooldown, that would set the economy on these little things right. Clearly there's a need for having Essences around (how else could you enchant firey weapon, right?), but it looks like Blizzard could have put a little more thought into their effect on the economy.
