ring-of-blood
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Grimoire of the Four Winds offers BoA Pandaria flying for alts
There may not be any flying on Draenor, but if you have alts that you haven't boosted to 90 and still need to take through Pandaria, you might be wondering how they can learn flying early. Bind-on-account flying manuals have been in place since Wrath of the Lich King, and although it appeared at first that there were no manuals present for Mists of Pandaria -- or at least the flight vendor out at each faction's respective shrines didn't seem to be selling anything along those lines. However, there is in fact a Grimoire of the Four Winds available -- it just requires a little hike and a possible bidding war to acquire. The Grimoire of the Four Winds is only sold at the Black Market Auction House, which has been relocated from its old home in the Veiled Stair to the Ring of Blood in Nagrand. The approach to the Ring of Blood, located at roughly 53,14 if you have coordinates available in your game, is crawling with level 100 mobs. However, once you get to the Ring of Blood itself, all guards are neutral. Madame Goya is in a small building at the back of the Ring, and offers much the same items as usual -- raiding gear, transmog gear, and of course, the Grimoire of the Four Winds. While bidding starts at 1,000 gold, be aware that this is of course an auction house, and you might find yourself outbid. Reports on Wowhead suggest that either the tooltip or the manual itself is bugged for the moment -- players that have successfully bought the tome and tried to use it receive a message that the item cannot be used until level 90. It's likely we'll see this hotfixed or addressed in the future -- after all, if you're level 90, you're going to be on Draenor and not really caring about flight at all anyway! But if you've been looking for the Grimoire, just head to Nagrand and see if you can pick one up.
Arena of Annihilation provides a quick and easy blue weapon at level 90
Ever since Nagrand, the latest version of Ring of Blood has been a great rite of passage. Once you're close to max level, you beg, wheedle, or cajole 4 friends, strangers, or even enemies to join you in fighting a series of elite mobs, with the final reward being a blue weapon that will serve you well until you get something better from a heroic dungeon. Luckily, this tradition continues in Mists, and it's even easier to get started. Once you're 90, head to Kun-lai Summit and the Temple of the White Tiger. Gurgthock will be standing next to a gong just outside the temple proper, and he'll give you a quest to enter the Arena of Annihilation, with the reward being the choice of a couple weapons tailor made for your class. Once you get the quest, what you'll want to do is queue for the Arena of Annihilation scenario. Open the Dungeon Finder Interface (The hotkey should be "I" by default) and choose the Scenarios option. Choose Specific Scenarios from the drop down menu, check the box next to Arena of Annihilation, make sure no other boxes are checked, and hit Find Group. Within moments, you'll be in the Scenario and well on your way to your weapon. Once you defeat the final boss, Wodin the Troll-Servant will be waiting right there in the scenario to reward you. The weapon will be a nice, solid rare weapon of ilvl 450. It's not as good as a heroic dungeon drop, but if you just dinged 90, it's bound to be better than the quest green you're likely using, and it'll help boost your item level so you can run heroics that much faster. It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
The Queue: Cathedral picture
Welcome back to The Queue, our daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. I'm completely out of witty intros. It's Sunday! Deal with it! DarkSpade asked: Was the WoW miniatures game ever officially announced as dead or is it still out there flapping in the breeze? Any chance of it coming back? The license for the WoW Minis game was originally held by Upper Deck, a company with whom Blizzard no longer does business. Cryptozoic, who picked up the WoW TCG license, did not pick up the Minis license. I think you can probably extrapolate the status of the WoW Minis game from there.
Arcane Brilliance: Mage leveling guide, 59-68
It's time once again for Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column that would like to thank its readers profusely for the deluge of screenshots it received last week. Arcane Brilliance sent out the call, and you guys responded in droves. There were so many, in fact, that it was an impossible task to select just one for the column. Arcane Brilliance finally went with this one, apparently of an undead pimp of some type, simply because it made Arcane Brilliance chuckle. Also, the column this week is about leveling through Outland, and this is a pretty good representation of how your mage will look throughout that leg of the journey: like the mutant love-child of the entire cast of Saved by the Bell. Seriously... you guys are awesome. Sooooooo many good pictures to use. I may have to start writing like 12 of these a week, just to have an excuse to use all of them. Thanks again, and keep them coming. Even if I don't get to use them, I just enjoy browsing through them. So many mages, so little time. Last week, our mage leveling guide hit level 58 and fled vanilla WoW for the alien landscapes of Outland. This week, we'll tackle the 10 levels your mage will be spending there, amongst the hellboars, sporebats, and ravagers.
Team Fortress 2 meets World of Warcraft
Yo dawg, we heard you like Arenas, so we put an Arena in your Arena! Behold, WoW's Circle of Blood Arena map, transformed into a Team Fortress 2 map. Sure, it might not have the subtlety of Dustbowl or Well, but as a reproduction, it looks terrific. They even got the starting areas working right. And look at that sky!You can download this map for TF2 and a very similar one for Counter-Strike: Source over at the creator's blog. I doubt it'll jump to the top of any major playlists any time soon, but if your usual group of TF2 friends also have spent some time in the Arenas, they'll probably get a kick out of it.
Ask a Beta Tester: Tradeskills, training, and rep gains
As the beta winds down, Ask a Beta Tester becomes a little more infrequent, but as long as we have questions, we will answer. Let's start with Rob's question...Are they planning to put in recipes for green items between 350-375 to make it easier to grind up professions? Or should i just suck it up and make (obsolete) blue/purple items to level up.Many professions start with new recipes at 350 skill in Northrend, and some of them at 360. Nobody starts at 375. 360-375 is usually taken up by 'end-game' items so you won't have to grind those out to skill up before Northrend. I recommend checking Wowhead to see where your particular profession starts out.Locke asked...I know there's the Wrath Gate cinematic and so on, have you come across or know any other cinematic events like this, or was this the only one? I'm sure there has to be in game scripted events. Thanks.
Back in the Day: A week of EBay, Karazhan and class QQ
What was going on in World of Warcraft this time last year? Back in the Day looks into the past of WoW Insider and brings back posts notable, controversial and sometimes humorous reflecting the state of the game one year ago this week.For the week of January 27 - February 2, 2007:The big news in the third week of TBC was E-bay's announcement: they de-listed all the gold sellers. Not that that stopped the black market for in-game gold sold for real life cash, but just today Blizzard struck another blow in the unending battle: they used the U.S. courts to shut out a major player in the gold selling industry from doing business on the Blizzard servers. The dance continues.On the official forums, there was a mixture of apprehension about how classes were falling into their new roles and speculation about the nature of the post-60 raid game. One article addressed both these issues when it brought together the concerns of the community about Karazhan. Complaints included trash mobs in the zone being too difficult, bosses being too tough on melee classes, Nightbane's fear unfair to Horde and itemization out of line with the difficulty of the encounter.Nowadays, the trash has been nerfed repeatedly, some bosses are still tough on melee classes, all Priests have Fear Ward, but a nerfed version making the Nightbane encounter difficult for both factions and the debate rages on whether itemization is good or not, but really, it depends on your class (hint: don't get a Priest started on the subject.)
Mad rogue beyond Thunderdome: Your guide to the Ring of Blood
The Ring of Blood is probably the most talked-about quest in the Outlands. It definitely has the most talked-about rewards -- a choice of six excellent weapons, including a two-handed axe, a rogue dagger, a fist weapon, a nice caster staff, the aforementioned Staff of Beasts, and a healing club. I know a lot of people are really interested in successfully completing the quests, and since I aspire to please my reading public and get that sweet, sweet fist weapon, I grabbed four of my guildmates and took the plunge into the Ring of Blood. What followed was an excellent lesson in how Alliance and Horde, by calmly working together and trying to help each other, can turn a simple fifteen-minute quest into a two-hour nightmare.
