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Encrypted Text: Swirly Ball and a bag of coins

glyph of disguise

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here.

When Blizzard reintroduced Detection via the Glyph of Detection, I was ecstatic. Trap detection had been baked into the class when Detect Traps was originally removed, but that didn't stop rogues from waxing nostalgic about Swirly Ball. Warlocks wanted their green fire, warriors were trying to use Titan's Grip with polearms, and rogues begged for Swirly Ball back. The Glyph of Detection is the perfect minor glyph because it's fun and it's purely cosmetic. Or is it?

Balarak, who is unfortunately a hunter, discovered a secret rogue event while infiltrating Ravenholdt Manor. Nobody expected what he found there. Ghosts and spirits, a hidden tribute to the Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson, a rogue-only item with amazing capabilities, and the implication that maybe, even in this age of data mining, we haven't found everything WoW has to offer.



It starts with a ghost

First, find your way to Ravenholdt Manor. If you don't know your way there, ask a friendly rogue to show you the way. I don't even know if the rogue leveling experience includes a trip to Ravenholdt anymore, but hopefully every rogue gets to experience it at least once. Make your way to the peak of the southern mountain range that creates the valley where Ravenholdt sits. You'll discover the ghost of Reislek. Reislek is the reverse of Kelsier, who is the eponymous Survivor and a Mistborn. With your Glyph of Disguise activated, pickpocket Reislek's Ghost to take his appearance.

reislek

Ooh, a shiny!

Now that you have stolen Reislek's appearance, it's time to make a visit to the basement of Ravenholdt Manor. You might recognize this area as the holding pen where Wrathion was kept during Cataclysm.

egg

While our friend the Black Prince is already long gone, you might spot something twinkling in the corner of your eye.

twinkle

Swirly Ball will allow you to detect the spirit of Orsur hiding in the shadows.

orsur

He's waiting for his master.

master

Orsur is a reference to OreSeur, a kandra that aids Kelsier's attempt to start a rebellion in the Sanderson books.

bag

Apparently our clever disguise is "close enough" and he gives us the Survivor's Bag of Coins, which used to belong to Reislek (the Survivor).

A primer on allomancy

Allomancy is a system of magic that uses metals to cause a variety of effects. The coins in the Survivor's Bag of Coins allow rogues to perform allomancy, in the form of propulsion. In order to replenish the coins in the bag, we have to pickpocket enemy targets. Any enemy target with pockets can yield up to a handful of coins, and the bag itself can contain up to 50 coins at any given time. Zoning will cause our collected coins to fade. Our current coin count is displayed as a buff with multiple charges.

By using the bag, we can choose an area on the ground to use allomancy to propel ourselves from. We always move in the opposite direction of where we tossed the coin, which includes being thrown into the air. We can continue to use coins as we're soaring through the air. We can only use the coins in areas where we're capable of flying, and we can't use the coins if we're in combat. A quick Vanish fixes that, and I fully intend to open on an unsuspecting target with Cheap Shot, pop Vanish and use allomancy to disappear into the clouds.

Green with envy

Warlocks thought they were having their wish granted via the green fire quests introduced in patch 5.2, but rogues are clearly getting more love than any other class. A secret rogue mission with one of the most useful and reusable luxury items in the game? Rogues have already been doing great in PvE and PvP, and yet we're getting even more fun tossed our way. Who else has it as good as we do?

Maximizing your allomancy

If you want to get the full effect of the bag of coins, you're going to need to do some prep work. First, gather up a ton of coins by pickpocketing mobs with the Glyph of Pick Pocket. Once you've got a full bag, you can start hopping around. I recommend using the Glyph of Safe Fall to soften any hard landings. You never know when you're going to overshoot your destination and fall into some crater on Azeroth created by Deathwing's emergence.

The biggest revelation is that the coins can be used while riding a Goblin Glider, the new engineering tinker. You can use your coins to propel yourself around the map, while coasting at a comfortable altitude without worrying about falling. You have plenty of time to extract the most value out of each coin, and you can ensure that your flight path doesn't err. You can also use the coins while mounted, although that doesn't seem very useful.


Sneak in every Wednesday for our patch 5.2 guide, a deep-dive into the world of assassination and combat rogue AoE rotations -- and of course, all the basics in our guide to a raid-ready rogue.