Grab a shovel and dig there
It was a long time since I last participated in Blog Azeroth’s Shared Topic, but here comes the current one from Ringo Flinthammer with a question about Archaeology. Since I’ve been doing it quite a lot recently, it’s a good moment to talk about it a bit more.
I have to admit I wasn’t really paying a lot of attention to Archaeology before the expansion’s release. Obviously, I knew it was going to be in and that it will provide bits of lore and stuff, but that’s pretty much all. I definitely wasn’t prepared for what it really is.
It’s a bloody annoyance and yet I still do it.
Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I dislike the profession itself – after all, I get all kinds of different stuff from it, some useful, some not really, and the most useful ones are very rare and seem impossible to obtain. It’s just absurdly annoying to do, even with the abundance of flight paths all over the world and a 310% speed flying mount.
I like getting new pets, mounts, fun stuff like Bones of Transformation or Innkeeper’s Daughter (speaking of hearthstones, I’ve recently read the Stormrage novel and was surprised at how apparently hearthstones are very rare and expensive artifacts – yet all adventurers have one) and even the gray common items have either amusing tooltips or provide nice lore fragments, but it all just takes a lot of time.
I wish Blizzard would “fix” it a little bit, and I’m not talking about tinkering with the Survey ability, which will happen in 4.0.6 and will reduce time spent on the site itself. That’s all good and a welcome change indeed, but how about some kind of a mechanic that will not spawn a site in Winterspring after I complete one in Uldum?
How about extending the durations on the items? Surely there’s nothing wrong with me running for an hour around Stormwind as a Naga or a Wisp – the transformations either drop if I enter combat anyway or I can’t use spells and abilities in them. 20 seconds is cool for random amusement in raids before a pull, but not for much more.
So… it’s an annoying profession and has a lot of downtime spent on flying around, but it’s still something to do in the time between raids or when listening to some podcasts, as it’s a bit hard for me to focus on tanking or healing while being distracted by people talking. Which is about on the same level for me as Fishing or other gathering professions are.
I didn’t pick it up on my druid and probably won’t do so on either of the alts here on Deathwing, but I might use it to speed up leveling on other realms. And on low level, the new 4.0.6 prices of common items will surely help to get some gold.
Professions in 3.1 – Fishing
The 3.1 patch will bring a lot of good news for WoW fishermen, and I’m really happy with most of the changes. This profession was in need of some help lately, and Blizzard apparently heard the call.
This is the second post the 3.1 changes series – you can check the whole category on the right sidebar, but don’t expect any serious math from me. And now, on to the changes!
The time needed to catch fish has been reduced.
From 20 seconds channeling to 10 seconds channeling. Quick and easy way to speed up fishing.
You can now fish anywhere, regardless of skill. Every catch has the potential for fishing skill gains, but you are likely to catch worthless junk in areas that are too difficult for your skill.
Catching worthless junk (that sells for a bit of copper/silver to the vendor) instead of just failing. Failing to catch anything was just a huge annoyance, good that they’re getting rid of that. A lot of people tends to disagree here – but I’ll be honest, after the first character on the realm, I’ve never leveled fishing again on the other ones – it’s just too much of a pain in the butt to do it. This change (as well as the next two below) will change it and make it not so annoying.
Players are no longer required to do the Nat Pagle, Angler Extreme quest to gain Artisan fishing. The quest now offers a special superior-quality fishing pole instead. If you already completed the quest, you can visit Nat Pagle in Dustwallow Marsh to receive this new fishing pole.
Not bad. Usually I’m not so cool with removing the class or profession quests, but if the quest is just changing its reward, then it’s fine. Running around the whole world just to learn Artisan level was surely annoying, and the new fishing pole is welcome. It will give 25 bonus fishing, which is just awesome for this level. For comparison – the Kalu’ak pole gives 30, and the Outland one from Terokkar – 20 fishing skill.
You no longer need to learn fishing from books. The trainers have finally done their reading and are able to teach you the same thing.
Continuing on the change above – you won’t have to chase books and uncommon fish around Azeroth to get you fishing to the next level. I already did that the hard way once, nice to see I won’t have to do it ever again if I decide to pick up fishing on another character.
New fishing dailies are now offered from Marcia Chase in Dalaran City!
We’ve already seen the new dailies in the earlier PTR patch update. There are 5 of them, they require you to fish stuff all around Northrend, and the quest giver works just like the Outland one – giving one random daily a day. It’s about time they added something like this – and I have to say the mechanics of the dailies are fun.
Also, the dailies have quite nice rewards – some epic gems, new fishing poles, a little crab pet, random highly-priced vendor junk…
You can now fish in Wintergrasp, and the fishin’ is good! A new clam, the Giant Darkwater Clam, can be obtained by fishing in Wintergrasp. This mighty clam has a greatly increased chance to drop pearls, and yields up to five times the regular amount of clam meat.
And here we have another thing to get me ganked to hell and back. How cool is that! ;] The Wintergrasp area will give fish that are needed for Fish Feasts (that’s Nettlefish, Musselback Sculpins and Glacial Salmons) in addition to the new type of Clams. Right now, getting materials for a stack of Fish Feasts takes about an hour, and after the patch it could take a bit less.
A new (and very rare) special mount can now be caught from Northrend fishing pools.
The mount was previewed lately on MMO-Champion, and I have to say one thing – I will have that even if it takes me a month of fishing to get. :]
A new recipe has been added to cooking trainers for making Black Jelly, using several Borean Man ‘O War as ingredients. While it looks disgusting, it restores more health and mana than the highest level food.
And the last change – for a while the Borean Man ‘O Wars were useless, and now you will be able to learn a recipe for them from your local helpful cooking trainer. Not too bad.
Poor no more
Just a quick update before I drop on the bed like a brick. The baby Tauren is already almost level 19, got a very pretty white kitty (though as a Hordie, I think that it’s much more common), and is doing all kind of weird quests in The Barrens. No screenie for now though, but I will add something next time :)
Why the title? I started her as a first character on that server, so of course she started with only the backpack and barely enough silver to buy skills with. That changed not long after I visited Thunder Bluff and got my two gathering professions. Now I have some bank slots, three Netherweave Bags and I finally can loot (and then most likely vendor) everything that drops from mobs. Oh, and still over 60 gold left, so there goes a mount pretty soon. :]
The secret to that? There is no big secret really. Double gathering is one part – on every server there will be alts and mains needing even the basic herbs and metal bars, you can count on that for some profit. Farming [Small Eggs] is another one. The eggs drop from any low level flying mob, and while the Alliance have it a bit easier in Westfall (there’s more space and it’s easier to pick the birds from other mobs), Mulgore isn’t a bad spot for them. [Swiftthistle] is another good thing to sell – it’s used in rogue potions for regaining energy, and there aren’t any alternatives to this potion later on – but as it’s a rare drop from lower level herbs, you can’t really farm it. So it gets quite good prices on most AH, even if you don’t sell it in full stacks.
So if I can easily have 100 gold even before level 20 (and with not that much extra time spent on that – I just pick stuff while questing mostly), I’m not going to believe anyone that will try to say that getting gold in WoW is hard. Especially some dwarves. How can a dwarf be poor?! It’s clearly against our nature! ;]
Professions in 3.1 – Inscription
The patch notes were updated yesterday, so I logged on the PTR to see what exactly has been changed, mostly in regards to various professions. The outcome? Some screens and one quite happy dwarf.
First comes Inscription, as it’s my main gold maker, so of course I’m interested in the new stuff. :) I’ve decided to split the information into a few posts instead of making one gigantic one, so the rest of the interesting changes will be up soon (probably after I make some more screenshots). Also, expect this post to be updated with new screenshots and informations when I farm some more stuff on the PTR.
New recipes
Added a recipe to trainers for creating a level 70 superior-quality off-hand item.
That’s a good change. Currently Scribes can only create level 60 and 80 offhands, so this simply fills a gap there. The new item is basically a crafted version of [Fetish of the Primal Gods] from level 70 badges – quite nice for a caster alt, especially a new one that’s not at all guaranteed or expected to have 35 TBC badges.
Added a recipe for creating a different level 70 superior-quality off-hand item. Scribes will find the recipe is dropped from residents of Silverbrook.
Kinda strange why a recipe for a level 70 offhand drops from level 74 mobs… But I guess that with the on-use effect it has, it makes some sense. I’ll make a screenshot of the effect a bit later – just as I went to farm some Eternal Shadows, the Wintergrasp started a battle, so all the elementals disappeared. I created the item – it transforms you into a big grey wolf for two minutes. No faster running or awesome dps boosts, though, as you’re pacified in this form. Still not bad for laughs once in a while. No screenshot cause pretty much everyone knows how a standard wolf in this game looks like.
Added around 50 new glyph recipes. These new recipes can be obtained from Books of Glyph Mastery found as world drops on Northrend monsters. Reading a Book of Glyph Mastery randomly discovers one of the newly-added recipes.
This is a bit confusing, but I guess it’s a good change after all. With this change we will have two random elements that can grant new recipes – Northrend Inscription Research and Books of Glyph Mastery. That might make Inscription a bit better for making gold with, depending on how rare the drops will be. I didn’t get any so far, but I haven’t really tried yet. Unfortunately I can’t say if the new recipes will be availaible with the Research as well, as it is currently broken on the PTR.
Some new recipes have been added to the Inscription trainers as well.
Minor changes
Glyph icons have been updated so it is easy to distinguish between classes.
This is a really small change, but I like it a lot. As you can see in the screenshot below, the glyph icons are colored with the class colors, which makes it much easier to find specific ones in your bags. The three glyphs in the middle are Priest and Warrior ones – it seems they haven’t updated them all yet.
Players will now learn 3 recipes the very first time they perform Northrend Inscription Research. This does not apply to players who have already discovered recipes from Northrend Inscription Research (sorry).
Personally, I don’t really care as my Inscription is already at 450. ;) But for people starting on the profession now, it will be a nice way to catch up with their glyphs. They still have to keep doing the Research daily after that, but it’s a good start.