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Gold Capped: The market for enchanting mats for BoA gear
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make money on the auction house. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! A long-running, profitable business is selling enchanting scrolls that can be put on BoA gear. These all have no minimum level, since BoA gear is considered level 1, which means they typically take lower-level enchanting mats. Some good examples of these mats are Large Brilliant Shards and Greater Eternal Essences, which are used for a bunch of enchants like Crusader and Spellpower. The price for these mats have gone up quite a bit on most realms since Cataclysm, and the reason is clear: The ilevels of the drops in Stratholme were reduced in patch 4.0.1, and the drops in there no longer disenchant into the same mats.
Scourge Invasion: Lord Blackwood
Lord Blackwood, found in the bowels of Scholomance in the Western Plaguelands, was one of the most popular invasion bosses back in 2006. One of his drops were so cool because it had a particle effect! Holy crap! That was a rarity back in our day. These days they'll put stars and glitter on any damn thing, but back when we were 60? We got our sparkly weapons from once (twice, I guess) in a lifetime world events or the bosses that were the very pinnacle for 40-man raiding. Yeah. Forty men. Sometimes women. Well, not forty women. Some men, and some women. Man, it doesn't matter. My point is, you kids don't know how good you have it!Anyway, head on into Scholomance! If you don't know where this is, you should take the Western Plaguelands map and beat yourself with it. I'll give you a hint, though. It's on Caer Darrow. You 'need' a key to get in the front door, but if you don't have one there are alternatives. Bring a Rogue. If you lack Rogue... Kite dozens of undead all the way to Sorrow Hill so they can murder you outside of the door of Scholo, thus allowing you to rez on the other side of the door. Easy! Okay, clear through the dungeon, you know how to kill things I'm sure. Fight your way down through the Summoning Chamber, and you'll come across this room here. See the purple glowy guy? That's him. He patrols around the entire backside of the room, and I recommend clearing out the room, even some of the areas back there. He likes using his bow and arrows, so if he runs in that direction to get range, you're going to get some adds. That's bad. When you engage Lord Blackwood, you'll very quickly discover he has a ton of health and armor. This fight is going to last awhile. Blackwood is the most difficult of the invasion bosses so far, because he has a lot of tricks up his sleeve. One, the most basic, is he has Shield Bash. Keep him away from your Casters and Healers or he'll have a lot of fun interrupting them. To get to range, he'll use Smoke Bomb. You get stunned, and he runs off to start pelting you with his bow.While at range, he uses a basic Shoot which does more damage than his basic melee swings. He also uses a Multi-Shot that hits multiple targets for Arcane damage. Basically, leaving him at range is a lot more dangerous than keeping him in melee, but he'll use Smoke Bomb fairly frequently to escape. That's why I suggested clearing as much of the room as you can before pulling him. When he starts running around trying to get range, he could easily pull a lot of extra mobs.Once he's dead, you can take a look at your loot! He drops primarily tank loot, a shield and a sword. The shield is Lord Blackwood's Buckler and the sword is Lord Blackwood's Blade. Truly, that sword is a relic of the past. Back when particle effects meant something.*For an added piece of trivia, Lord Blackwood shares his name with Blackwood Lake in the Eastern Plaguelands. It's very possible he used to own/oversee that region of Lordaeron before the Scourge came. These little details are sprinkled all throughout the Plaguelands. It's part of what made me love those zones so much back at 60.Now that Blackwood is done, let's bop over to Stratholme and check out Balzaphon!*I'm completely joking around here. I'm glad everyone gets cool stuff and there are more unique weapons in the game.
Undocumented ZG boss tweaks in effect
You alert players have noticed a few undocumented changes in Zul'Gurub lately. Reader Ajax (or "Ajaxthegreat," his choice, I guess) writes to say that his guild noticed tonight that the bat boss seemed buffed. Actually, that's not new as of 1.12.1-- my guild went in there a few weeks ago after 1.12 came out, and noticed exactly what Ajax did-- that High Priestess Jeklik had a little more bounce to the ounce. She's got more HP for sure, her mind blast seemed harsher to us, and Ajax's guild guesses that there's more bat spawns coming out with each wave.But the newest news is this: with 1.12.1, the bats leading up to Jeklik are now exploding again. That's right, one of the great joys of running ZG-- avoiding the exploding bats-- got nerfed on a previous patch, but apparently, according to Jenn over on lj, the bat-splosions are back. OMG run away from the bats! You have to love the exploding flying rodents.Makes you wonder if the whole non-exploding thing was really a nerf or just a bug. The only other unlisted change I can think of lately is that hitting V no longer works to find the real Jandice Barov in Scholo-- you've got to use a macro ("/target Jandice") or just hit Shift+Tab to focus on last target. Anyone else notice any undocumented mob buffs or nerfs, in ZG or anywhere else?
Finding Your Way Through Azeroth Lore
Garst from Stonemaul has a really interesting question on the forums: where can a lore newbie go first for information?Recently, I've been trying to get more and more into the lore of Azeroth-- instances especially are much more fun to play when you know exactly who you're fighting and why they're doing what they're doing. In the thread, Neth recommends a few books-- Day of the Dragon, Lord of the Clans, and The Last Guardian, and I agree with her in recommending scanning through (it's long and sometimes boring) the timeline of the WoW universe over on the website. For all of my interest in it, the only thing I've really done outside of the game is go back and replay Warcraft III (or just watch a few cinematics from it). Both Wikipedia and WoW Wiki have lots of good lore info. And one thing Neth doesn't mention is that there's lots of lore inside the game itself. Don't laugh, but especially in Scarlet Monastery and Scholomance, reading through a lot of the books laying around will give a really good background on what's happening in Azeroth.You're laughing, aren't you? Ok, well, a lot of players may just say "lore lol," but believe me when I say that giving the history a read definitely fills out the game a little bit, and shows you even more deeply the care Blizzard has taken in putting this universe together. Wielding Ashkandi is fun, but it's even moreso when you know who that sword used to belong to.
How to Hit 60 In Style (Or Not)
Yesterday, my Orc Shaman finally hit "the most fun part of the game," according to one of my guildies-- yep, after long last, he dinged 60.Originally, I had hoped to do something really interesting with it-- hit 60 by discovering Stormwind, or finally downing Hakkar for the first time. But in the end, I happened to be in the middle of a Scholo run, and it rolled right up on me. Not that it wasn't exciting-- later that night I used all my new stats on a raid and picked up a great mace, and I couldn't wait to get into AV afterwards and finally put the beat down for real. And my experience wasn't as bad as Belle's over in the WoW Ladies livejournal group-- she hit 60 while AFK and offline.Fortunately, I have another character three levels from 60, so I'm just a week or so away from another chance to make the ding special (I think for this one I'm going to at least try to get my guild to take me to Onyxia for the occasion). Did you try to hit your 60 somewhere specific, or did you just play through until that yellow sparkle showed up for the last time? Or if you haven't reached the holy grail yet, got any plans?
