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Ask WoW Insider: The ninja debuff
This week on Ask WoW Insider, a reader has a suggestion, not a question, to put forth to you readers. It's about a problem lots of folks are having lately, with the servers as full as they are:One thing that has been annoying most people is the ninjas who spend their time waiting for players to take down a pat so they have unobstructed access to the quest items or loot/ore. It happened to me even with the Oil-stained Wolf quest last night in the expansion. People waiting to steal poo! Sick! Why should the players who take down the pat be disadvantaged and lose out on the ore?The rest of the question and your chance to answer after the jump.
Phat Loot Phriday: Gadgetstorm Goggles
See, this is (one reason why) everyone wants to be an Engineer. Why can't us Leatherworkers get some sweet gear like this?Name: Gadgetstorm Goggles (Wowhead, Thottbot, Wowdb)Type: Epic Mail HeadpieceArmory: 726Abilities: +28 Stamina A meta and blue socket, with a socket bonus of +5 spell damage and healing Requires Engineering 350 to wear -- if you lose your Engineering skill for some reason, you won't be able to wear these anymore. See "How to Get It" below. On equip: improves spell hit rating by 12, spell crit rating by 40, and increases damage and healing up to 55. Pretty sweet for a helm. Also on equip: shows the location of all gas clouds on the minimap, very useful if you've got a mote extractor (and if you're Engineering at this level you should). And on use, allows you to see into the distance. This is similar to the Shaman Farseeing spell -- only really useful in certain instances, but kind of a little added bonus to wearing the goggles. Very good gear for caster Shaman Engineers, which admittedly is a small group. But Blizzard catering to historically ignored gear specs like this is good to see. How to Get It: You've got to be an Engineer to make and wear these -- they are trainable from the regular Engineer trainer at around level 350, and you need to be 350 to actually make them. Total ingredient list is pretty steep: thirty Knothide Leather, 120 Adamantite ore, six Khorium ore, a Primal Fire, forty-eight Fel Iron ore, thirty-two Eternium ore, two Living Rubies, and one Primal Nether, which will run you a few hundred gold just picking them up off the AH. Not to mention the costs of actually leveling up Engineering, although there are tons of costs and advantages to leveling up any manufacturing profession anyway.But get the skill, train the recipe, grab the mats, and the Goggles are yours. In my humble opinion, it's one of the cooler-looking crafted helms out there, too. Assimilate or die!Getting Rid of It: Sells to vendors for 5g 83s 63c, and of course with the Engineering requirement on it, it's BoP. Does disenchant into a Void Crystal however. But it'd be an expensive Void Crystal.
Morality and legality in EVE Online
One of the strengths of EVE Online is that the game's professions can be freeform. Many players take the standard route of being a miner or a mission runner. However, new and deviant professions have arisen in a kind of symbiosis with the more established trades in the game. This is the focus of an article called 'Morality and Legality', written by ISD Magnus Balteus of CCP Games. 'Morality and Legality' looks at two of the sketchier professions that sprang from EVE's more standard career paths. Mining has given rise to ore theft, which boils down to theft that has the side benefit of potentially baiting the victim into combat, even in high security space. If the ore thief or 'can flipper' is successful, he or she can make off with the ore that someone else mined plus the modules looted from the miner's ship wreck. The morality of this type of career doesn't even enter into the equation... this is EVE. CCP's unwillingness to change the game mechanics involved in can flipping means that this is not an exploit, it's a valid profession, albeit not in the mind of the miner victim.
Buying your way through raid content
There's a new game in town, and Artirius of the Aerie Peak server has noticed it, and admittedly, so have I. With attunements gone, it is now possible for any level 70 to go in and see tier 5 and 6 content whenever they want. Of course, they don't generally have a prayer of actually downing bosses unless they have 20-24 well geared people to help them out. That's where gold comes in. With a few thousand gold, you can buy your way into a tier 6 group that doesn't need the tier 6 armor and go along for the ride. A few hours later, you come out on the other end with Illidan dead and a few shiny new drops, even if you've never set foot in Karazhan. It's not just people trying to buy these slots in the trade channel either. As Artirius observes, many raid groups are actively soliciting for buyers for their raid slots. On my own server, one Horde group is trading tier 6 runs for large quantities of certain herbs, promising that all but a few select drops will go to the people who buy their slots with stacks of Netherbloom and Ghost Mushrooms. So what's causing this?
Insider Trader: Jewelcrafting, the final stretch part 1
Despite the overwhelming support from our readers during our brief but flower-tastic adventures as HKO-Insider, I will be unable to delve any further into the professions of the Flower Kingdom. That's okay; they were prejudiced against jewelcrafters anyway.Two weeks ago, I posted Insider Trader's guide to the final stretch of Alchemy, and Runstadrey posted the following comment in response: Excellent article, very in depth and thorough. I'm eagerly awaiting the same treatment for my stalled JC.How could I resist a request preceded by flattery? I might have even produced this last week, had patch 2.4 not have dropped; after all, we can't have all of our jewelcrafters stalled mid-level. I am looking forward to reading the comment section for this guide, as the cheapest way on paper always varies because of unique server economies.For the first part of the guide, which will show you how to reach 355 jewelcrafting in the cheapest manner possible, pass on through the break. Each week, Insider Trader takes you behind the scenes of the bustling sub-culture of professional craftsmen, examining the profitable, the tragically lacking, and the methods behind the madness. For more guides to maximizing your chosen profession, check out the final stretches for Leatherworkers and Alchemists alike. For a complete list of profession guides, feel free to peruse our directory.
TTH features in-depth LotRO resource gathering guide for The Shire
There's an odd feeling of satisfaction that comes from a really productive resource-gathering run -- knowing that you've spent your time at maximum efficiency and have picked up what you need to break into a new tradeskill tier, and can retire to the crafting area for the simple combines. Well, TenTonHammer can help streamline this process, with a series of resource gathering tutorials for Lord of the Rings Online that joins their other guides, and we'll first have a look at The Shire.The guide is more than just fluff, with a resource chart that rates each area of The Shire's usefulness for any particular material that you wish to harvest. You will find both tier 1 and 2 resources in this zone, and the guide has a breakdown of various areas with some specific tips as well -- for example, Rushock Bog is supposedly the best place in The Shire to harvest ore, whereas the southern Shire areas are just very poor for resources in general, so steer clear. The full guide contains other tips that will fill your bags to the brim with useful materials in no time, so have a look before your next resource run.
Mining to get easier in 2.4
Leveling up certain skills has been a pain for some time now, and while some skills have received leveling changes, mining has been left behind. As things stand currently, if you don't run around in circles just looking for ores every 10 or 20 levels or so, you could easily find yourself having to do a massive amount of catch up once your character reaches the level cap. The amount of mining you do in the normal course of leveling just isn't enough to keep up with your experience gain.Drysc says that Blizzard has finally noticed that this "isn't fun" and plans to do something about it in patch 2.4. The various types of ore will be adjusted so that you can consistently level up your skill from the nodes available in the zones where your character will be leveling, without you having to go back and spend lots of extra time in areas where you don't have any quests.
It's beginning to look a lot like Warcraft
Know a Blacksmith or Engineer who haven't really been in the holiday mood? Looking for that perfect present for your friend who took up Mining? (Or are you perhaps the person who just has a World of Warcraft fan as a friend and don't have any ideas?) Well, if you've been hunting for a fun WoW gift for that hard-to-shop-for geek on your list, you should check out this nifty holiday item by Paul Pape. That's right, it's a Khorium Ore-nament, hand-made with little sparkly Swarovski crystals! I have to admit, if my tree wasn't already overflowing with geek ornaments, I'd snap one of these up myself. I know how thrilled I am to stumble across a Khorium vein on my Rogue when I'm running around in-game. It seems like a fun thing to just "run across" in your holiday decor as well. Of course, I suppose you will have to watch out for other WoW players who might gank your node when you're off getting some pie![via Wonderland]
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: Gambling with prospecting?
The other day I got a message in-game from Sigrdrifa. He mentioned that he had been spending the day spamming the trade channel offering his services prospecting ore. In his advertisement he stated that he could virtually guarantee a blue gem from each stack of Adamantite ore. Some players mentioned that this could never be a guarantee and so in a way he was gambling with other people's ore. Now, I'm not exactly sure if we could call this a game of three ore monty, after all he is saying that on average he receives a blue gem with every stack of ore. But it brings up an interesting idea. If there are possibilities of failure with prospecting, can you ask for tips for such a service? And if there is a gamble, could there by extension be a bet on such a risk? I don't know if this sort of thing is frowned upon by the devs or not, but I would definitely be curious to see how a betting system would work within the game. Not with actual money, but rather with virtual gold. Is prospecting more gambling than not? And if there are assumed risks in the game we deal with, would you ever consider betting on them?
"Skinning" for herbs and ore
Enough miners and herbalists have complained about having to depend on random spawns -- and compete with gold farmers -- that Blizzard has finally put in a way for these two professions to control their own destiny. Several mobs, including rock giants in Hellfire Peninsula and nature elementals in Zangarmarsh and Coilfang Reservoir, can be "skinned" for ores and herbs, just as if they were a node. While running through the Underbog in Coilfang Reservoir Thursday night, I got a couple of Ragveils, a Terocone, some quest herbs, and a few useless gray mushrooms from skinning the elite Loatheb-like marsh elementals inside. The skinning results are kind of random, and the mobs will be farmed as easily as the herb spawn points were, but it's still an interesting new way of getting your base materials. Have you found anything else while "skinning" for herbs and ores? If so, what and where?
