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The OverAchiever: The good, the bad, the ugly, and the weird
Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, we reminisce on that auld lang syne ... that nobody really misses. It occurred to me recently that we've never really done a retrospective piece on achievements. Sure, we've rounded up stuff like entertaining achievements and evil achievements, but we've never really looked at their impact on the game as a whole. There's an article in that, but it won't be this one. New Year's Eve is tomorrow, and I'm in the mood for some brainless fun. While I was writing this article, a number of the achievements that came to mind were the product of tier 7 raids, and I think I know why. Wrath raiding achievements were the first time Blizzard had experimented with their inclusion in raid content, and the implementation occasionally had some bizarre results. There was also the pressure cooker of having to finish Glory of the Raider before the rewards disappeared (a very belated announcement), and there was never that sense of urgency with Ulduar or Icecrown achievements. Anyway, let me know what you think.
Cataclysm Beta: Engineers provide new version of Great Feast
The sun is shining, the birds are singing and the humidity is down to a comfortable percentage. It is truly a beautiful day for a raid. What do you say we break out the picnic tables, slam down a Great Feast and then fire up the ol' goblin barbecue. Wait, what? Goblin barbecue? Datamined from the next beta patch, engineers will now be able to craft a Goblin Barbecue, an engineering version of the chef's best friend, the Great Feast. Giving well fed group and raid members 60 stamina and another 60 points in another useful stat, this barbecue promises to be delicious in all the right ways. In my opinion, engineering has been getting some amazing love this expansion, truly cementing the profession as the utility-focused trade. I cannot wait for the graphic to show up. Sing it with me, engineers: Engineering, best profession.
An analysis of all the food and drink in WoW
Not long ago, a friend of mine from college asked me to resurrect his WoW account so he could get back into the game before Cataclysm comes out. The first week that he was back, he messaged me quite frequently with various questions about trends in raiding and PvP at level 80. I answered his questions without much thought until one afternoon, he sent me a different type of message. "Did you notice there is nothing but meat in WoW?" My thoughts stumbled over the question for a moment before he continued. "There is meat, fish and fruit, but no vegetables." (My friend became vegan since the last time he played WoW -- thus his sudden epiphany.) He then proceeded to tell me about a quest in Teldrassil where you gather spider meat for a kabob recipe. He said something along the lines of, "They're on a big freakin' tree, full of plants and they're eating spiders! Spiders!" I'll admit, he had a good point. Curious, I decided to start looking over the types of food in WoW to see just exactly what Azerothians eat.
Breafast Topic: Do you use all available buffs when pugging?
I rarely notice buffs when I'm running heroic dungeons. Granted, every buff helps in maximizing DPS or survivability, but I personally don't find it really necessary. Do you absolutely have to have Blessings of Kings or a Prayer of Fortitude? I've had players who have absolutely refused to pull until they get all the buffs they want. I'm sitting there looking at their health and their gear and it isn't like they're fresh 80s or anything. We're talking tier 9 level stuff or higher. I don't think having Dalaran Brilliance is going to shave off a significant amount of time in a run personally. Now when it comes to raiding, I make sure I have everything. On progression raids, I always check to make sure every buff that is available is active. At the same time, I'm a little more relaxed about it when taking on trash. I don't drop a Fish Feast for the trash leading to Lord Marrowgar, for example. I wait until we get to the boss itself before laying out one of these. What? The feasts are expensive! Anyway, what about you guys? Do you require every buff before tackling anything in a heroic? Are there certain buffs you can live without during raids?
Spiritual Guidance: Food, flasks, and potions
Every Sunday (and the occasional weekday) Spiritual Guidance offers holy and discipline priests advice on how to wield the holy light and groove to the disco night. Your hostess Dawn Moore will provide the music. I'm the fish girl. I never wanted it to be this way. I never wanted to be that girl. You know, the fish girl: the woman in the raid who takes it upon herself to make sure all her fellow raiders are eating right by supplying Fish Feast after Fish Feast. Sure, sometimes it's a fish guy (in fact, just the other day my heal captain joked that he had brought Capri Sun and orange slices for the raid) but usually it's a woman. I guess it's a maternal thing, or maybe it's wanting to save time by always going in with max buffs. Whatever it is, I wasn't always like this. In fact, I used to wonder why my raid leader's wife would so willingly spend her feasts on our raid as we wiped all over 3-drake Obsidian Sanctum. I admired her generosity, particularly because I felt they were going to waste on stupid mistakes, and her efforts deserved better. Then one day, after I had moved onto another guild, I found myself surrounded by raiders who were lacking vital nutrients in their diets. That's how it began: first I was helping with the fishing, then I started spending my own precious spices. The first day I laid a feast in a raid, I felt my feminist side cringe. But before I go off on that tangent, let me clarify that this article isn't about fish (not exclusively anyway), it's about the various consumables available to priest healers.
The OverAchiever: 5 lucrative achievements
Last week we discussed a set of achievements likely to drive the average player to the poorhouse. This week, in the spirit of consoling people who may not necessarily have a Traveler's Tundra Mammoth in their immediate future, I'd like to present a series of 5 achievements where at least one of the following is true: They're an unusual means of making gold in a way people wouldn't necessarily expect, or: It would be almost impossible not to make a pile of gold while doing them. Now, a disclaimer; the most obvious picks here would be achievements like Got My Mind On My Money or The Bread Winner, but they're more a record of your previous looting and questing rather than being something you really have to go for consciously. I'm on the lookout for slightly more interesting ways to grow rich from achievements that are not so directly concerned with moneymaking:
Fishing for profit
I'm an admitted and proud fishing junkie, but had long ago resigned myself to the fact that my favorite ingame pasttime was never going to be a source of revenue. But Alterac Volley has a great post on the degree to which fishing has actually (gasp, shock, horror) become a moneymaking endeavor in Wrath. While I'll grant that on most servers it's probably nothing compared to, say, Mining or Herbalism, there's gold to be made in them there streams -- and this is all the more true if your server hosts a large raiding population.AV observes that there are four types of fish most likely to be lucrative, and it's no accident that three of them (the Musselback Sculpin, the Glacial Salmon, and the Nettlefish) are the main ingredients of the Fish Feast, a valuable (although generalized) raid buff. I spend roughly an hour a week fishing up the materials for these to cover our raids and had never even looked to see what they retailed for. After reading over AV's comments, I took a peek at my server's AH and had a /headdesk moment discovering that my main could have been a much wealthier character if I'd just spent a little time yanking up a few extra fish here and there. So if your character is at or close to the Northrend fishing cap (and especially if you're still on the lookout for the Sea Turtle, which requires you to fish in Northrend pools anyway), give your AH a look and see how the fish are selling. You might be pleasantly surprised. And, as always, I highly recommend El's Extreme Anglin' as a great resource for the beginning and advanced fishermen out there.
Breakfast Topic: Good eats
Blizzard has generally done a tremendous job with in-game items. Aside from the mandatory epic gear, of course, they've also given great detail to even the most worthless (or seemingly worthless) items. One aspect of the game that they've put as much effort into are the food and drink. Some foods in game actually make me crave for the real thing, like the Delicious Chocolate Cake. I mean, I know eating it certainly make me very happy.Most of us keep food that serve as raid or utility buffs, usually from Cooking. This is actually one area that Blizzard still needs to polish, with some foods harder to come by than others. That said, I pack some Dragonfin Filet for those dungeon runs, and a stack of Great Feasts for raids. I would love to bring Fish Feasts, but my Fishing is still at a deplorable 1 (I'm too poor to keep buying the fish off the Auction House).However, my current favorite food these days are Blackened Worg Steaks, and I never go around without the tracking on. It's an extremely useful buff, specially on a PvP server, so I hardly get jumped and it's very easy for me to track down nasty gankers. I also keep stacks and stacks of Festival Dumplings for general use and because I just love Chinese food. Lastly, I have stacks of Star's Lament because it's the only drink you can take in Arenas.
Patch 3.1 to make Cooking easier
It's being reported that high end Cooking has received a bit of an overhaul in the latest Patch 3.1 PTR build. Well over 20 recipes have been changed so they won't go grey quite so early, making the trip to 450 Cooking a much easier process.The test realms haven't actually come back up yet so I'm unfortunately unable to get a list of recipes that have changed, but it sounds like leveling Cooking will suck much less. I think my it took my Priest longer to hit 450 Cooking than it took my Paladin to hit 450 Blacksmithing. After grinding through that, I never want to make another Feast again. Unfortunately, I'm sure I'll be making them by the dozen when Ulduar rolls around. Sigh.I would do a great many things to be able to summon Jillian on demand.
The Northrend Gourmet made possible in patch 3.0.8
The Northrend Gourmet has been a hot topic achievement since Northrend hit live realms, because it simply wasn't possible. Four of the required recipes were completely missing. As of the current PTR build, that's no longer true. Two of the recipes have been re-added to the game, and two recipes have been wiped out of existence. Not added to the game, but no longer an achievement requirement either.Shoveltusk Soup and Succulent Orca Stew were the two that didn't make it back into the game, which makes one of 3.0.8's patch notes make a lot more sense. You know, the one about Shoveltusk Meat being converted to quest items? And orcas are just Chilled Meat fodder now, it seems.
