tradeskills
Latest
Preparing for 2.3: Post-patch item farming, part 1
Nearly every patch includes new items for players to farm up. While these additions are typically new tradeskill recipes, occasionally other goodies are thrown into the mix. The upcoming patch 2.3 contains both of these types of items for your farming pleasure (or annoyance). I'll quickly cover the items, where they're dropping and the creatures that drop them in order to create a consolidated resource to help plan your farming once the patch hits the live realms.First off is the new leatherworking bag. The pattern for the Bag of Many Hides can be found through the mass slaughter of the Gordunni ogres in the Barrier Hills above Aldor Rise in Shattrath. This recipe will allow a leatherworker to create a 24 slot bag to hold the essential tools and materials of their trade.
Profession revamp preview
Professions have been on the drawing board for changes for a good while, but until now Blizz have been very tight-lipped about what specific modifications they might be making. No more! Nethaera has posted a nice preview of changes that are being made to many professions for "the next content patch," i.e. 2.1 (The Black Temple). Before I go into detail, note that Neth said her post "does not contain all of the upcoming changes, but instead gives a brief look at what is to come," so bank on more surprises to come. Anyway, this round is mostly buffs and new recipes, with a major nerf to alchemy.Full post copied after the jump as usual, but here's the changes I found more interesting: Alchemy: Elixirs now stack in two categories, Battle (Offensive) and Guardian (Defensive) Elixirs. You can only have one of each type of Elixir up at a time. As a result Elixirs now stack with class abilities such as "Arcane Intellect." I totally called this (as did many others, I'm sure). The intended effect is obviously to reduce the maximum possible effect of consumables in raids and other such situations, and this will go a long way towards producing that effect, without hurting alchemists too much (in my opinion). Engineering: "Seaforium" now opens locked chests as well as locked doors. About time; having to skip locked chests if I didn't have a rogue in the party has been annoying. But will Powerful Seaforium Charges open the top-level locked chests, or are we going to see new seaforium? Engineering: 11 new epic goggles have been introduced at 350 engineering skill and are available from the trainer. They range from cloth to plate, and have a variety of stats to appeal to most talent specs. This is probably the biggest change to any profession. I've always loved the goggles Engineering had to offer, and now engineers have something epic to work towards. Exciting! Fishing: The fishing timer has been reduced from 30 to 20 seconds and it now takes less time to fish. Sweet! I always though 30 seconds was a bit too long. But on the down side, Fishing has been removed from Arathi Basin and Alterac Valley -- what, you mean I have to actually fight now?! Jewelcrafting: The jewelcrafting UI now has gems split up by color so it is easier to find gems of a specific color to create. This is long-overdue; Blizz's profession UIs are so primitive it's not even funny. I would recommend ATSW as a replacement, but it tends to crash my client sometimes. Now where's my gem category in the AH? Jewelcrafting: Jewelcrafters can make two new melee oriented meta gems. One is found randomly as a world drop and the other sold by the <Faction> reputation vendor. Definitely needed -- but what do they mean by <Faction>? Scryer or Aldor? HH or Thrallmar? Any faction? Jewelcrafting: New recipes have been added that use the Jaggal and Shadow Pearls. Time to stop vendoring those, I guess. Skinning: Skinning higher level creatures will give more leather; you will no longer get a single leather scrap. Good, it was getting silly. Read on for the full blue post.
Breakfast Topic: Favorite profession
Even with the addition of the new jewelcrafting profession in the Burning Crusade, each player is still only allowed two primary professions. And choosing can be daunting. Pick up two gathering professions to make the best money? Grab herbalism and alchemy for the convenience of always having the potions you want? Mining and blacksmithing for that craftable epic armor set? You must have a favorite -- so tell us about it!
Breakfast Topic: Moments of regret
Whether playing WoW while intoxicated, tired or simply under the weather, we all make mistakes. We vendor items we didn't mean to vendor, we destroy quest items thinking they're trash; it happens to everyone, sooner or later.One of my least favourite things to do is accidental disenchantment. It sounds hard - after all, you have to click on the Disenchant skill, then an item you're probably wearing - but after disenchanting several items in a row and then deciding to enchant a worn item, it's all too easy to click Disenchant by mistake. This happened to me, yesterday, for the second time; I disenchanted my tier 0.5 bracers rather than giving them a stamina enchant.Should this happen to you, don't worry -- it's not the end of the world. You can get the item restored, though the European GM I spoke to warned me that this process was only available once per account. Knowing that I'll be getting some better gear very soon, I decided not to choose this option, but since the tier 0.5 quests are non-repeatable I'm stuck in tier 0 for the time being. I'm happy it was only the bracers, which are blue, and not any of my epic items -- I'd have a hard time deciding whether epics today were more or less valuable than epics I might get tomorrow.Have you ever danced the disenchant tango? Had any other moments of regret? All I've learnt from this story is to install a "safe disenchanter" addon, and to be doubly careful when playing late at night.
Fishing FAQ
I've always been an avid fisherman ever since I started playing WoW; I find it to be one of the easiest ways to make money & although I understand why some players find it boring, I happen to enjoy watching for that little bobber to splash.So, for all you fellow anglers out there, the Azerothian Trade Union has posted a great Fishing FAQ, detailing all the good spots to cast a line, and all the goodies you can reel in. It's a very well-done guide that I plan to be referencing often; check it out here.
The daily grind: when playing turns into work
There's an interesting back-and-forth discussion over at Terra Nova on the subject of gameplay and labour; as the boundaries between work and play become blurred, what are the issues and where will the trend lead? Unless you're a pro gamer or gold farmer, playing games is unlikely to net you any real-world salary, and yet many of us log into MMOs to continue our "daily grind". A serious commitment to World of Warcraft, for example, can leave one with a raid schedule more gruelling than a day job. The boundary blurs elsewhere, too, when you carry out a complicated task in-game that you couldn't do in real life. The difference is that by playing a game, you have control over what you do, rather than relinquishing the reins to an employer. Perhaps this will lead to higher self-employment and entrepreneurship amongst gamers--certainly worlds like Second Life let you work in-game for real cash. A warning, though--once the game becomes a job, the roles may reverse, leaving real life as the fun distraction.
Do characters do too much?
My WoW characters are amazingly skilled; without any training, they can instantly kill enemies, cast spells they've never seen before, learn how to make complicated devices, potions, poisons and bandages... and I only need to press a few buttons to make this happen. In different games, I have to do a lot of this myself; in FPS games, for example, I have to choose my weapon, aim, shoot, jump and run -- all as part of normal combat. In MUDs, learning a spell takes time and effort, and I get it wrong a few times before I correctly cast it the first time.This article on GamerGod points out that our avatars in MMOs are increasingly handling more of the "tedious" side of gameplay, as decided by developers, leaving the more interesting parts for players. However, it's not all perfect, and there are some parts of gameplay that become tedious simply because they are abstracted into "click this button, go AFK". One of my favourite tradeskill quests in WoW is the Artisan First Aid quest, which requires a modicum of skill and is a lot of fun--when you receive Artisan level First Aid you really feel you deserve it. The gathering professions do take the hands-on approach, as you have to scout out the materials yourself, but the other professions are based more on button-clicking. It's hard to please everyone, though; mini-games or mini-quests to learn new skills may work well (imagine taking WoW with you as a mobile game so you could train up your Engineering by playing a Tetris clone on the bus) but add another time-sink into the game which would put many players off.Do you like the way the tradeskill system is handled in WoW, or would you prefer a more involved approach?
