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Gold Capped: The fastest way to make 10,000 gold
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Fox and Basil's reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! Every so often, I get asked something to the effect of "What's the fastest way to get 10,000 gold?" It's usually asked by someone who is perpetually poor in game and is looking to get a BoE or some other sort of reward that costs gold. The fastest way for me to get 10,000 gold is to log in and check my mail. My daily haul is many times that and scales based on how much time I have to craft, list, and relist. This isn't a useful answer to someone who lives paycheck to paycheck, though. So what advice would be helpful? First off, if you're below level 85, get to level 85. This nets you quite a bit of gold simply from quest rewards and vendoring gear you acquire. If you're already level 85, the first thing you need to do is identify how much money you can make per hour running 5-mans for valor points that you can use to sell BoEs. On my realm, I could sell a BoE costing 1,650 VPs for about 10,000 gold. That means every valor point I earn could be worth 6 gold, which makes the 150 points I get from a 5-man worth 900g. I can do seven per week per character with the requisite gear. Also, every trash kill and boss kill has a chance of awarding you with valuables, including enchanting mats (if someone can DE) and BoEs.
Dark Age of Camelot gears up its newbies
As part of Mythic's continued efforts to introduce a "New User Journey" experience that's friendly to Dark Age of Camelot beginners, the studio has turned its attention to the ever-crucial subject of gear. In a new dev diary by DJ Frazier, the dev spells out the problem: "For a new player who wanders into battlegrounds, especially ones like Thidranki or Molvik, they will often find themselves losing almost every fight they encounter, simply because they are playing against people who have had a chance to outfit themselves out in the best equipment they can find for their level range." Because the team fears that this armor disparity proves to be a dealbreaker for many newbies, the devs are retuning the gear that players get during their leveling up process to be more durable and competitive on the battlefield. The two main paths of leveling -- PvE questing and RvR battlegrounds -- will both offer solid picks of gear when patch 1.110 hits. Players who risk the battlegrounds will find themselves in possession of top-notch weapons and armor, whereas those who choose to quest will find themselves "90% of the way there" with their gear. Hopefully, these changes will create an environment that's much more welcoming to newcomers to DAoC.
Blizzard debuts the World of Warcraft Game Guide
The new World of Warcraft community site has, in my opinion, been a marvelous success for Blizzard. It's gorgeous, informative, and updated regularly. We've always wanted this type of outreach from Blizzard, and we got it in spades. And now, Blizzard has expanded the site with the new World of Warcraft Game Guide. The Game Guide features four illustrated chapters detailing what World of Warcraft is, getting started with the game, basic game mechanics, very detailed visual representations of game and chat etiquette, and an entire section explaining the late PvP and raid game. It is truly a sight to behold, and the people in charge of visualizing and explaining some nebulous concepts have gotten it right in a simple and aesthetically pleasing way. It's really awesome. But the game guide doesn't stop with describing the game alone. The new race and class pages up the ante on player race information, detailing the story of each race, capital and starting cities, faction leaders, and the story so far. Each race's page is lovingly crafted with gorgeous artwork and awesome story bits. The class pages are just as robust, with lore on the various classes, role descriptions, and more. Blizzard had a lot of fun making these pages, and it shows.
Blood Sport: Beginner's guide to arena, part I
Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women? Blood Sport investigates the entirety of all-things arena for gladiators and challengers alike. C. Christian Moore, multiple rank 1 gladiator, examines the latest arena strategy, trends, compositions and more in WoW.com's arena column. Listening Music: Royksopp's Remind Me. We were emailed last week by Kohl, who politely recommended some listening music for Blood Sport this week. I was planning on featuring another kind of chill electronica, but Kohl just happened to recommend Royksopp among Hybrid and Kosheen -- so enjoy the beats, Kohl. If you'd like to contribute listening music to the column, please make your recommendation in the comments below. If you want to reach me on a personal level, you can hit me up at colby <at> wow.com. Last Week: We discussed how to improve our play. We talked about humility, the myth of luck, practice, team hopping, and having fun. These are all important aspects of a winning player's attitude and belief system. However, as a commenter or two mentioned -- last week's article is helpful if you're already into arena, but what if you're just starting out and have never really played arenas seriously before? That article will help you out a lot. Err, it will...kind of. Maybe? Okay, probably not. Sorry for jumping the gun. Advice for how to improve can definitely be beneficial for the beginning arena combatant, but it's not going to help in comparison to an arena start-up guide. This week, we'll nickel and dime arena for fresh blood. We haven't talked about tangibles in the past two weeks. That's gonna change now. Prepare to get your pumps primed. That sounded dirty. Interested? Check out the arena starter guide after the break.
Patch 3.3 PTR: Easing the curve for beginners
The patch 3.3 PTR notes are out, and the most interesting thing to me, after just a first look, is that Blizzard is making some serious tweaks to the level 1-10 experience, of all things. Dazed is getting changed a bit -- characters from levels 1-5 will be completely immune, while characters 6-10 will have a much lower chance of getting slowed down. Health and mana regeneration at the lower levels is being increased (mana costs on the lower levels of spells are also being decreased, though we're not sure yet which spells are being changed and what the difference is). The default equipment is being tweaked, and most notably, rogues will start out right away with dual wield and two daggers do it with.
Tanking for beginners
Maybe you've heard that there's a tank shortage and you've rerolled to help your buddies out. Maybe you just like the idea of one of the tanking classes and you're interested in being as valuable for groups as you can be (and in the case of two of them you don't like healing). Maybe you enjoy being in the forefront of things. For whatever reason, you've decided you want to tank. It's not too late. You can still run. There are quite a few DPS classes, and you can even spec DPS with each of the tanks. You don't have to do this.You still here?Okay, don't say I didn't warn you. The positives of tanking are many: it can be fun to consider yourself as a cussing, roaring, or even holy juggernaut who can take the beating and keep the enemy focused on you. It can be challenging, and mastering that challenge can be extremely rewarding. With the right group, tanking can be a heck of a lot of fun. If you dedicate yourself to tanking and do it well, eventually you may find yourself annoying some of the most powerful and evil bosses in the game.But tanking is a fundamentally group related activity: it consists of two major tasks and you cannot succeed at either without the support of your group. Being a tank is essentially sacrificing soloing utility and the ability to succeed at your class' other focus in order to excel at a group utility role. And of course, whenever anything bad happens... bad pull, lose aggro on a group pull, what have you... it will be your fault. It will be your fault even if it isn't. Heck, after a while you'll start taking it personally even when everyone else is amazed at how good a tank you are. Tanking seems to create a perfectionist mindset, one that measures every single moment and always wants to do better. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is something to keep in mind. Okay, on to the basics. There are essentially two tasks involved in tanking. Holding aggro, and surviving having it. Both of these things are impossible without group support and even group sufferance. (Long time tanks, you will find little new here, and may in fact find it to be overly simplistic, so feel free to add class specific comments or details that simply didn't fit the constraints of the post.)
Raid Rx: Transitioning to 25-man raiding
Raid Rx is designed to encapsulate and cure the shock and horror that is 25-man raid healing. Ok, so it's mostly horror... Anyways, if you're a big fan of X-TREME Whack-A-Mole (or are being forced into it against your will) this is the column for you. More often than not, when your guild is about to work on a new boss, everyone reads the same strat covering the same information. There are handy diagrams, complete with colored ovals for where the masses are to stand, run, or more often, die. If you're lucky, you'll get a paragraph at the end that says something like "Healers: Keep the raid alive. Watch for spike damage on the tanks." Not always useful... My goal with this column is to explore what it is to be part of a 25-man raid healing team and tips to be successful at it. Much of what I'll cover will be from a healing lead's perspective, but the more everyone knows about the healing big picture, the better. I'm going to discuss what I have found through experience, so if you have Illidan questions, please give me couple of months (or more, silly holidays!) and I'll get back to you. Transitioning to 25-Man RaidingBeing my first post, I figured the best place to start is at the beginning. You have finished off most if not all of Karahzan. ZA looks cool, but you're just not that into trolls or wooden armor. (If you've already beaten it, +50DKP!) Plus, at least 24 other people you know are chomping at the bit to down them some High King Maulgar. So what do you need to do to make that happen? Here are some basics to get you started:
EVE Online: Jetcanning for beginners
I have to say that I'm a relative noob still at EVE Online-- lots of people have been playing for a lot longer than I have, and so I don't purport to know any more about the game than they do. But it's a tough game to get into, and considering that there are probably a few newer people than myself out there in space (mostly on OS X and Linux), I thought it might be useful to tell you something I do know about: jetcanning. Here's a short guide to how you can pull in as much ore as possible, even if you're by yourself and only have a short time to play.
Breakfast topic: I wish I knew then what I know now
A simple topic, but so difficult to figure out the answer to. If you could go back to when you first played WoW and give yourself some advice (WoW-related only, you can't tell yourself not to date that skeezy dude with the '80s hair from the Rockford), what would you tell yourself? In retrospect, I probably would have advised myself not to make a Rogue as my first character to level. They're a nice class, but having a primary Rogue made it difficult to get into groups and raids. I would have made a Druid or Priest instead. Additionally, I would have never tried to level in Silverpine Forest, entered Stromgarde Keep, or tried to solo all the seven billion elite quests before Outlands. I would have never tried to raid hardcore, and generally spent less time thinking about loot and more time cooking deviate fish. What would you do differently if you started WoW again?
Learning AppleScript
AppleScript is the leprechaun of OS X. If you can catch him, you'll get a pot of gold. However, as we all know, leprechauns are elusive little beasties. AppleScript can seem daunting when you first try to tackle it, especially if you are just working with the Apple provided documentation.Good thing Craig Smith is on the case. He is penning a series of AppleScript for Beginners articles on MacScripter. Soon you will have your Mac bow to your every whim.
