skinning
Latest
Arcane Brilliance: Professions for Mages, part 1
Each week Arcane Brilliance thinks about its career as a Mage. It considers which profession to pursue, and polishes up its résumé:Previous job-titles: Sweet DPS, Table-whore, Sheep-botJob skills: Can blow stuff up good. Able to conjure 400 strudels per minute (depending on lag). Can teleport. Hates Warlocks...Now that the PTR class changes for patch 3.1 seem to have died down a bit, we can finally talk about other things. I asked last week for topic suggestions, and you guys responded in typically spectacular fashion. That's one of the best parts about writing a column for Mages: my readership is made up of freaking Mages. I can always count on you guys to be smart and insightful...as well as complete nutjobs. Suggestions ranged from relatively normal (PvP tactics), to angry and bitter (One guy is switching his main to a Death Knight because Mages apparently suck now), to mean (I should rename the column from "Arcane Brilliance" to "QQ"), to clever (the most effective places to AoE farm, since, you know, we are the kings of AoE), to disturbing (Top 10 ways to cook and serve Warlock on a budget). Okay, so I made the last one up. Several of you thought a column on profession choices for Mages would be a good idea. So, that's what you're getting this week. Well, the first part of it. I plan to do this in installments, which may or may not come on concurring weeks. The next part will probably be coming along next Saturday, barring any crazy patch-news or my sudden demise.Those of you who've been reading this column for awhile may remember the last time Arcane Brilliance dealt with professions for Mages. So much has changed since then--both for Mages as a class and for the professions themselves--that I felt an all-new multi-part guide was in order.
All the World's a Stage: So you want to be a Skinner
This installment of All the World's a Stage is the thirtieth in a series of roleplaying guides in which we find out all the background information you need to roleplay a particular race or class (or profession!) well, without embarrassing yourself. I should say at the outset of this article that I am a vegetarian, and I generally think of animals as cute and fuzzy friends of the human race. I have no moral objection against hunting animals and using their bodies for food or clothing, however. Logically, it makes sense that people have needed this to survive, but emotionally speaking, I find skinning and eating animals rather distasteful. Things would have been different for me if I had been raised on a farm or in a hunting community instead of a city thoroughly saturated with the culture of Disney movies about cute animals singing songs and having adventures, but... anyways, you are what you are. Hunting enthusiasts should feel free to write their own articles on the topic if they have different points of view.So, anyway, as my vegetarian brain started churning around this idea of how skinning can be roleplayed in World of Warcraft, I couldn't help but admit to myself that I don't have so much real life experience of the topic. In fact, my first google search of "Skinning" turned up none other than WoWwiki's page on skinning in WoW, and I realized most people living in cities probably haven't got the first clue of what skinning animals is really like.So I searched again for "skinning animals," and this time I found various articles about how to skin an animal for people who are interested in surviving in the wilderness, or just into hunting in general. One site even had simple hand-drawn animations of the proper way to kill and skin a rabbit, and I was struck by how very different this was from my experience of skinning in WoW. In the animation, we see the head and feet get cut off, a slice go down the middle of the animal's body, and the skin slowly peeling away to reveal all the flesh underneath... while in WoW we just right-click on a dead animal, loot its hide, and poof -- it disappears before our eyes.
Are disenchanters getting robbed by rolls?
Sardonis sent us a note the other day, with an interesting, if probably controversial, point inside: when we're in instances, Skinners take their skins, Miners take their ores, and Herbalists take their herbs (or of course they rotate around if there's more than one). At the end of the instance, we don't sit down and /roll on all of the herbs or ores that people have picked up. So why do we do it, Sardonis asks, with disenchanting shards?Good question. My first response was that everyone needs enchants, and everyone can use those mats. But if everyone can get their friendly guild enchanter to enchant something, can't you get your Leatherworker to use skins, or your Blacksmith to use ores? Of course, you could argue that Leatherworkers can get skins from anywhere, but disenchanted blues only show up in instances. If it's an item that required five (or even 25) people to get, everyone should have a chance at it. There are herbs and ores in instances, true, but those can be found elsewhere as well -- they don't need a group to get them. And what about Rogues who unlock chests in instances -- sure, we need them to open the chests, but they need us to get them there.You can get blues through questing and drops, though, too, so who knows who deserves what. Sardonis is at the point where he won't even say he's a disenchanter -- he'll just do a greed roll like everyone else, and if he gets the item, then he'll DE it. The tradition seems to be that we all roll when we've all helped drop some boss loot, but it's true that we'd never get the shards if it weren't for DE'ers. Maybe they do deserve to take what they make.
10 things I learned from a destitute alt on an RP realm
I have a few alts on an RP realm that I visit from time to time, and I remember thinking to myself at one point: "These characters are a bunch of deadbeats." I'd gotten too used to the alts on my main realm being a bunch of pampered brats, spoiled rotten by the presence of a hardworking main, so financial discipline had grown to be a thing of the past. Not so on another realm where you don't have a main, and I realized that unless I went back to a few monetary basics, my alts would wind up dancing naked on mailboxes in pursuit of gold. This is a fine tactic with a long and storied history, but when your most promising alt is a level 16 Undead Mage, you're up the proverbial creek. No one wants to see a rotting, naked corpse.So I started not being a deadbeat, and it was with surprise and delight that I logged on to find the little tyke sitting on a pretty respectable pile of gold by level 21 -- as in, he can afford to pay for his level 30 mount and training several times over, and still have enough left over to train himself all the way to 45 even if he doesn't make another penny.
Poaching for skins
I have to thank you, other players on my realm. If it wasn't for you, I probably wouldn't have reached 450 Skinning already. Yes, the garbage of dead mobs that you leave behind becomes my profit -- when you leave that worg corpse or the dead drakonid behind, I'm all too happy to run over, skin it, and clean up that little mess you've made, while sticking a little gold in my pocket as well. Matthew is right there with me -- he calls it poaching, though we're both referring not to stealing, but to simply skinning the leftover mobs of all those players before us.Truth be told, I probably poached more than ever down in the mines of Netherwing Ledge -- there were always players killing down there, and what they didn't skin, I did, both for the quest skins and for my own Knothide. But in the expansion, things are even better -- everywhere I go, there are fields of leftover mobs, and even when someone is able to kill a mob before I get there, I hover over them to pick up the skin afterwards.Matthew has put together a list of all the great places to pick up extra skins -- I'll agree that Coldarra is full of poaching options right now, as is Kamagua on the other side of the continent. Grizzly Hills, also, is not only full of creatures to skin, but lots of leftover corpses as people quest across the zone (though odds are that if you keep up on skinning, you'll be 450 by then anyway). Think of it as a service -- we're the garbagemen of the realms, cleaning up your kills so the next can spawn and the circle of loot can go on.
Patch 3.0.2 guide to the new Gathering Profession Abilities
The new gathering profession abilities were undocumented in the patch notes, but they are definitely live in Patch 3.0.2. I was very pleased to discover that my Herbalist Druid has a new self heal and that my Skinner Rogue and Miner Paladin also had some unexpected goodies. Over the summer, Blizzard experimented with some abilities for all of the professions, but all that are live in the patch are the ones for the gathering professions. At least Mixology is trainable, and other ones may be available, though undocumented in the patch notes. This will be covered in a later post.Each ability can be found in your Spellbook under the General Skills tab. They have 6 ranks, with 5 being the maximum you are able to achieve before Wrath of the Lich King. The first rank is acquired with Journeyman or the skill of 75 and scales with your profession's rank. So, for example, a Master Herbalist will have Rank 5 of Lifeblood. Details for each ability are after the break.
Professional benefits in Wrath
Thanks to the information slowly (we just can't get them fast enough around here...) leaking out from the Wrath of the Lich King Beta, we already learned that the professions trend started in The Burning Crusade will continue in the new expansion. The Burning Crusade (or Patch 2.0) introduced new items or enchantments that confer bonuses exclusively the character with the profession, such as ring enchants for Enchanters or Bind-on-Pickup gems for Jewelcrafters. This was a welcome change that rewarded players with their choice of profession -- almost to the point where such profession-only bonuses compelled many to choose professions somewhat incongruous with their class. Hardcore PvP players pursued Enchanting for the ring enchants, for example, while hardcore raiders leveled their Leatherworking for the Drums of Battle. In Wrath of the Lich King, the different professions get even more exclusive goodies designed to keep professions more or less in tune with their intended classes. Eliah reported about the passive buffs for gatherers, and they seem to be in thematically tuned to some classes. Take Master of Anatomy, for example, which seems to be a benefit given to Skinners. Traditionally, Rogues, Hunters, and Shamans were the classes who pursued Leatherworking and its complementary profession, Skinning. The passive benefit to critical strikes are certainly welcome to those classes, so players who chose to stick to their Skinning will actually receive a pleasant boost in Wrath.
Passive buffs for gatherers
We've seen some interesting things come out of the Wrath beta already for some of the crafting professions, including Jewelcrafting, Alchemy, Enchanting, and the new Inscription. But what about us humble gatherers? Skinners, Herbalists, and Miners need love too. Well, it looks like Blizz is ready to give us some of that love, at least for Skinners and Miners. Check out the following spells: Toughness (categorized under Mining) Master of Anatomy (categorized under Skinning) Note that those buffs are passive. 35 stam all the time for all grand master miners, and 25 crit rating for grand master skinners. Each of those abilities have six ranks, which I take to correspond to the six ranks of profession skill: apprentice, journeyman, expert, artisan, master, and the new grand master. This is awesome stuff, if you ask me. My analysis is that these benefits are meant to stand in for the epic BoP items that the production professions get access to. Why there is no benefit for herbalism is something of a mystery; it might not be implemented yet, or it might be absent on purpose. Natalie pointed out that it might be because several herbs already give buffs when you pick them, so that's another possibility. I think these benefits are low enough that people with maxed-out professions aren't going to be dropping them just to get the extra 35 stam, but high enough to provide a meaningful, stabbity perk for those who've just about had it with skinning their ten-thousandth beast (who am I kidding, skinning is fun). Good change, and I do hope we see something for herbalism.
Skin that On Tour peripheral
Now here's a neat video. For those of you who have picked up Guitar Hero: On Tour and want to add a little bit of your own personal style to the included peripheral, the above video will aid you in doing just that. It's surprisingly easy to create your own skin insert for the thing. While the video doesn't showcase the most artistic replacement, we're sure you creative folk out there wont have much trouble coming up with some really badass skins. Anyone going to give this a try? %Gallery-19362% [Thanks, Max!]
Making professions easier, on Death Knights and everyone else
Just in case you were hoping that due to Inscription or any other of the huge profession changes coming in Wrath of the Lich King, you'd get another expansion slot, Bornakk confirms that you will not -- despite all the changes to professions, the way that characters choose them will not change.But Kevin G (who kindly sent us this tip -- thanks!) brings up another interesting profession topic -- just how are Death Knights going to deal with leveling up their professions? Surely, since Blizzard doesn't want them running around level 1 areas like noobs, they wouldn't actually have to level up from the beginning, would they? As hilarious as the thought of a black armorclad bringer of devastation chasing wolves around Elwynn for their leather is, it's probably a good bet that Blizzard will avoid that scenario.But how? We have no idea yet. We do know that Blizzard wants to make things easier for people leveling professions all the way up (especially from the higher levels), so maybe there'll be a plan in place that Death Knights can get in on (maybe a quest to do, or a simple charge of a few hundred gold, since that's probably what it would cost to just buy the lower level stuff off the AH). Either way, hopefully we'll see a solution that's both easy on Death Knights and fair to characters who've leveled it up the hard way.
Keys to a successful alt?
I am a terrible leveler. I started playing back in January 2007, and in all that time have managed to produce a single 70. Admittedly, I think she's a very good 70 and she stays busy, but you would think that nearly 1 1/2 years would be a sufficient period of time to level another class to the endgame. Guess not.Lately I've been trying to fix this and have gone back to leveling a few alts. While talking to a friend last night about his propensity for leveling alts at the approximate speed of an SR-71, it occurred to me that I have two warriors, only one of whom has leveled quickly. The other just can't seem to fill up the XP bar. Obviously there's no class difference to cite as a possible reason, so I started thinking about what affects the leveling speed of an alt, and why I've got so many unsuccessful ones littering the character selection screen:
Sunday Morning Funnies: Rouges in Azertoh
This week we have an NPC coup, a battle of the bands, two strikes, and of course, the much beloved mischief. In the Scout Report, #37, a new activist wanders onto the scene. From the Noob Comic comes Area Effect. Sometimes, a mage just can't help himself. Messy Cow has some adventures in Skinning, although she should have been healing. The best part? The "rouge" who was stealing corpses! Teh Gladiators battle their stealthed opponents, and the Murlocs heat up the scene. This week, the commentary beneath the comic is decidedly worth the read. Sockpuppet holds the "Azertoh Battle of the Bands." Yes, I said "Azertoh." Want to see a raid with the characters from Real Life? NoObz #9 brings you to a special mob-held meeting of sorts, where you get to meet the gray kangaroo (wolf). The old computer has finally broken him. A friend of Monkey Punchers is finally Losing It. In LFG this week, my favorite character breaks into a song and dance! Shakes and Fidget have made their Preparations, and with proper hilarity ensuing. This week on Dark Legacy Comics, the NPCs launch plans to take over the world, through Operation: Horace. From Action Trip comes Impressive Knowledge. Seriously, kids these days really know their stuff! Sure, they might lose a finger or a hand, but then they'll know which faction they're dealing with, right? Pass through the break to vote for your favorite from this week's selection.
Scattered Shots: Professional development
Last week David covered pet control, in case you missed it. This week I'll be talking about a question people ask on the forums quite often: "What profession is good for a hunter?" Each profession, of course, has its pros and cons. Most professions, in fact, have a variety of professionals involved at all levels, and in many cases you couldn't get two of them to agree on their career of choice for love or money. A cursory look at the professions forum will confirm it most days. But over the years, and with several hunter characters, I've picked up a few ideas from my own experience and from that handed out in the forums. Herein, I'll share what I know, and perhaps what some others have taught me as well!The "Basic Income"Not all players take pleasure in crafting. It can be tedious, time consuming, and the gear you produce can be replaced with drops in many cases at the same level. Hours can be spent running back and forth from auction house, to bank, to forge, to auction house, to forge, to bank, to Wowhead, back to auction house, and so on. If that doesn't appeal to you, the "Basic Income" might be perfect.The problem many crafters run into is an age-old problem of "independent merchants and distributors" everywhere. In many cases, the stuff you can sell for the most profit is also the stuff you need to consume to make things. In many cases, professionals in WoW have to decide between leveling their profession and being able to afford pet food. One way to avoid that conundrum is to take two gathering professions. That way everything you gather, you can sell without consuming it, and you won't be worried about using up your ore to make armor or using up your herbs to make potions. You won't be able to make either!
Leatherworking loot, too!
Continuing our crafting parade for patch 2.4 is Leatherworking. Leatherworkers get a total of four sets, covering a myriad of class/spec combinations. There is a physical DPS set for both Leather and Mail, as well as a healing set for both of those.The -of the Sun and the Sun-Drenched sets cover healing. The -of the Pheonix set covers the Mail DPS, while the Gloves of Immortal Dark and Carapace of Sun and Shadow handle Leather DPS. A couple of those are quite a mouthful!As with the other tradeskills, the gloves of these sets require Sunmotes and the breastplates require Primal Nethers, so be ready to put some effort into acquiring these pieces. A lot of Wind Scales and Heavy Knothide Leather goes into these as well, so you may want to get a head start on those. Most of these pieces are very heavy with red sockets accompanied by relatively useful socket bonuses, which is ideal for most of the classes these are aimed for, though not all. For the classes that love their reds, this is a pretty sweet deal. For everyone else? It's not like you need those bonuses, this gear is impressive without them.If you have any interest in these sets, hop on across the jump! Once again, my thanks goes out to Boubouille of MMO Champion for these images.
Insider Trader: Gatherers behaving badly
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling and using player-made products. In the spirit of Amanda's genteel post on tipping etiquette (and how social networking gives you a distinct edge), Insider Trader brings you further discussion of two of the finer points of WoW trading etiquette: node/farming etiquette and transmute etiquette. Unless you're interested in building a rep as "Internet N00b Behaving Badly," you'll want to be sure you're aware of how your actions are most likely interpreted by players around you, both in the field and back in town.It's worth noting right off the bat that attitudes about farming etiquette vary from PvE to PvP servers, and even from server to server on the same server types. You may find yourself on a rather combative server, where crotchety players will slay players of the opposite faction before allowing them to reach a node first. On other servers (even some PvP servers), Horde and Alliance respectfully yield to whoever clears the area or arrives first at harvesting points. You'll definitely want to keep your eyes open and see what other players on your server are expecting. Try reading the server forums, too, to see if ninja-farming is a frequent bone of contention.
Encrypted Text: Tricks of the trade(skills)
We've covered many different aspects the world of Roguecraft has to offer thus far -- from class quests to gear to number crunching. However, one of the things I've heard from people who are new to Rogues is the question of what trade skills are useful to take up and why. As such, this week's edition of Encrypted Text will contain some of my views on what each trade skill can offer a Rogue. Obviously, short of starting a wiki -- this is not going to be a fully comprehensive version of all that Trade skills can offer. But hopefully between my experience of bouncing between many, many trade skills, and comments from the seasoned Rogues in the WoW Insider crowd, we'll be able to de-mystify one of the earliest choices facing the new Rogue.
Insider Trader: When good patterns go green
Insider Trader is your weekly inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.Nothing interrupts a peaceful night of crafting like a lunatic guildmate ranting about learning a coveted new pattern, only to find that it's already green in skill level – nothing, that is, except that sickening feeling in your stomach as you consider what you'll do when your favorite patterns go green. Skilling up a profession can be a rollercoaster ride, if you don't hit the right patterns at the right time. (Of course, all the professions have those infamous "dead zones," when skilling up seems to be based on either unfathomable luck or unfathomable finances – or maybe both. But we'll cover dead zones in another installment.)Skilling up in a profession can happen when you create an item that's listed in green, yellow or orange in your tradeskill window. Items listed in grey will not give you any skill points for creating them; red listings anywhere means you don't have the required skill level. Just as it does with creatures you fight, pattern color indicates difficulty and skill-up potential. Green items raise your skill occasionally, yellows about half the time and oranges every single time. (The exception to orange skill-ups occurs in skinning, in which successfully skinning an orange creature does not guarantee a skill-up.) As a burgeoning crafter, your goal is to find patterns that are relatively easy to get the materials to make while providing a solid shot at skilling up. While orange patterns offer a guaranteed chance of gaining a skill point, the best bang for the buck is often a yellow pattern.And that's where things start getting murky ...
Taking the production out of itemcrafting
Here's an interesting suggestion from Mystic Worlds: take the production process out of crafting.When I used to play Dark Age of Camelot, the crafting setup was my least favorite part of the game-- it seemed like crafting materials were expensive, the crafting process took way too much time (I having long conversations with others standing around the crafting area), and the stuff you made (at the early levels anyway) just wasn't that great. So WoW's system may not be perfect, but it seemed like a breath of fresh air after that-- materials come from actually playing the game, and putting things together is something you can generally do as an afterthought rather than as, well, a profession. The gathering is the important part.So Mystic Worlds says, why not make the gathering the whole thing? You still go out and get mats from the world, crafters turn those raw mats into usable mats, and then you'd actually take the bolts and gems and tanned leather that crafters made to NPC crafters, who would turn them into items. That way, if you want a Robe of the Void but you aren't a tailor, you just take the mats to an NPC tailor who can hammer one out for you.
Hey! I needed that!
Nikol of WoW Ladies posts about something I shouldn't get so worked up about, but often do anyway-- higher level characters farming mobs that lower levels need for quests or rep.Now, Nikol is actually on the opposite side of the equation from the one I remember being on more. She was wondering if there is a certain etiquette when she goes to farm Timbermaw rep (as a level 68) and starts competing for mobs with level 58s. Which is actually very nice of her, because usually I'm in the other situation: I'm playing a lowbie alt and I have to go kill 50 pigs to get their spleens. Suddenly, a level 70 mage roars through the area, AoEing every pig he sees, rounding them all up in a pile so he can level up his skinning. A few seconds later, I'm left with nothing to farm, and he's standing over a pile of piggies, skinning away and humming to himself. For some reason, that makes me just see red. There are lots of other places he can farm skinning, so why does he feel the need to gank my quest mobs? It makes me seethe just thinking about it!Unfortunately, as Nikol finds out, there is no set etiquette-- outside of a group, it literally is a free-for-all. If you're in my place, your only real option is to just find another quest to work on while all the mobs respawn, or poke around to see if he missed any. And to tell the truth, I shouldn't get so angry anyway-- it could be that the mage didn't realize I needed those pigs, and in fact, there is probably a whole other cache of pigs just over the hill that I haven't found yet.But for some reason it just drives me nuts. Have you been on either side of this situation? And how have you handled it?
Unsanity releases beta of Universal ShapeShifter
In a post aptly titled 'At Long Last!', Unsanity announced a beta of a Universal version of ShapeShifter, their UI haxie for skinning Mac OS X. As the post states, your Intel Mac can finally "get its spank on" (what on Earth are those guys at Unsanity selling??). Obviously, as their post states, this is a beta so things could very well go wrong with it. On the upside this Universal version should work just fine with any guiKit (skin) that you throw at it.This ShapeShifter 2.4 beta version is a free upgrade for registered 2.x owners and is available from this Unsanity blog post.
