That's What Friends are For: Power Levelling

Mining Followup

Just remembered a quick tidbit I learned about mining: you can "share" mineral nodes with your friends. Multiple people can mine the same node (and get the experience) as long as there's still something left in the node (rock or minerals or gems)

I haven't tested this with herbalism, but I suspect it is the same, and it might even work for skinning!

See you at the Darkmoon Faire!

Still in a Cavern, Clementine; Lernin 'Bout Minin'.

Part 2 (after a 4 day break from work & play...)

Ok, From here on out, I will be talking primarily about mining & blacksmithing. I will try to point out similarities to other professions as things come up, but those will only be happenstance...

The Choice is Made. You paid you copper pieces, and now are an apprentice miner. What now?


Picking a second, Primary Profession

Depending on your preferences, there are three, possibly four, other professions that would compliment mining:

• Blacksmithing - uses the ore you mine as well as the stone and most of the gems you find
• Engineering - same as blacksmithing
• Leatherworking - it's another "gathering" profession, and can easily be done alongside mining
• Jewelcrafting - it uses the gems you find, but has no use for the metals or stone.

What you chose is up to you...

Herbcraft is another good gathering profession that might seem complimentary at first, but it can interfere with mining. This is due to one reason: both use the same resource: the "find" function of your minimap on your user interface (your "UI")

The find function can find EITHER minerals OR herbs (or old quests, or undead, or whatever you have spec'ed) but it can only show one thing at a time. If you are hunting one farmable, you can't be finding the other. (well, at least not with the help of the UI)

If all you are doing is farming (and not questing), it's actually not that bad in that you look for minerals on one "lap" of an area, then change to herbs for your next "lap". By the time you finish your second lap, the minerals from your first lap should have respawned, and you can keep running laps, getting more & more materials (aka "mats").

Overall though, in a "normal" usage, where you will quest some, farm a bit, and just run around a lot, it's best not to have herbalism & mining together.

And "ADD-on"s

One thing I STRONGLY recommend is installing the add-on called "Gatherer" LINKY (also, the included database is needed) It basically remembers where most of the mineral (and plants & treasure chests) are, and displays them on your mini-map as well as your world map.

It's not 100% complete, as I have found a few that aren't listed, and the add-on doesn't PREDICT what will be at a given place, only what has been seen there before. (Quite often mineral nodes don't stay the same. One time will produce silver, and the next may be tin, with or without gems) But the usefulness in helping you find your loot is invaluable.

Another great resource if you are so inclined, is the thenoobschool.com power levelling guide: LINKY Even if you aren't looking to go from level zero to level 400 in a week, it has invaluable tips, maps and suggestions. They also include a step by step guide (5 or 6 steps) for installing Gatherer.

Let's Get Digging!

I Owe My Soul to the Company Store: Tips for a Mining Beginner (and other professions)

Part 1

As may be obvious, I have tried to slant this blog towards folks that are fairly new to WoW. I spell out all acronyms I use (I try to, anyhow) and provide as much explanation as I can, given my own "newish" point of view with WoW. With that in mind, I want to explain a few things to those folks that don't have someone around to explain things.

The Basic Basics:

Can you make some good money off of mining and the other professions? Yes you can, but it can vary widely. "Gathering" professions (mining, herbalism, skinning, fishing, etc) are profitable right from the get-go. You collect your stuff, and sell the stacks in the auction house. No muss, no fuss. (well, other than the occasional flood/glut of raws - especially from the professional farmers that sell gold for dollars over the internet) One note: low level fishing won't pay much at low levels, and your best bet is probably to just sell it to vendors...

That leaves the "Craftsmen" professions (such as blacksmithing, engineering, leatherworking, alchemy, and MANY others) I have only direct experience with Leatherworking and Blacksmithing, but I've read a good bit on other blogs (Alterac Volley among others) that all seem to say the same thing: Craftsman professions CAN be profitable, but depending on the item you make and your server, it can be a challenge at best. I would also say that they are NOT profitable at lower levels (ie, skill level below 150)

Some more in reading from wowwiki.com : LINK (note much of the information I cover here is present in some form at wowwiki, but is not always an easy read)

So Why Bother?

There are a few reasons to get into a profession. Some tangible, some not. The reasons would include:

• Make some extra gold
• Get "cheap" items that you can use
• Add depth/playability to the game
• Because every primary profession gets a special perk or ability.

The perks vary widely from profession to profession but they can be VERY useful:

• Herbalism - "Life Blood" an ability to heal
• Mining - "Thoughness" increased stamina
• Skinning - "Master of Anatomy" an increased critical strike chance
• Alchemy - "mixology" improved performance from all potions
• Blacksmithing - Ability to add gem sockets as well as making Skeleton Keys (which open locked boxes)
• Engineering - various goggles and other gadgets
• Leatherworking - cheap leg & bracer enchants
• Tailoring - some cheap enchants and flying carpet mounts
• Jewelcrafting - epic gems and special trinkets
• Enchanting - Ring enchants
• Inscription - shoulder enchants and scroll of recall

The Not Quite so Basic Basics...

Professions are all "controlled" by your skill points in that profession. The more skill points you have, the more things you are capable of doing, and some things you simply can't do until you reach a certain skill level. With mining, when you first start, all you can mine is copper, and all you can smelt is copper. Later you can do tin, silver, iron, etc... At certain points, you will have to find a trainer before you can advance any more:

Level..............................Name..........

Zero - 50/75 . . . . . . . . . . . . .Apprentice

50/75 - 125/150 . . . . . . . . . Journeyman

125/150 - 200/225 . . . . . . .Expert

200/225 - 275/300 . . . . . . .Artisan

275/300 - 350/375 . . . . . . .Master

350/375 - 450 . . . . . . . . . . . Grand Master

(the range for the top & bottom of each level is because you can "level up" at the lower number, but aren't forced to. However, if you do not train at the top number, you will not advance any more without training)

There are also character level requirements that you must meet. For example to become a Journeyman Blacksmith, you must be at least level 10.

Also, every item you gather or make will have a relative difficulty based on the item and your current skill number:

Grey . . . . . . . . doesn't increase skill

Green . . . . . . . increases skill, but only a little (might need to make/gather 10-30 to get 1 skill point)

Yellow . . . . . . .moderate increase in skill: you get 1 skill point for every 1-5 items

Orange. . . . . . highest skill return. You get 1 skill point for each & every item you get/make

Red . . . . . . . . . you can't make/gather that yet

So, if you are trying to level your profession, it is much faster (per item made/gathered) if you work with orange/yellow items as much as possible.

Lastly, the color of the item/recipe has no bearing on the "color" of the final item. (ie, if an item is common, uncommon, rare, epic, etc)

More stuff from wowwiki.com: Beginner's Guide and Choosing a Profession.

Due to length, I'm going to pause here, and finish this up in Part 2

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly: Bad Sportsmanship Continued

My post the other day about jerks in PvP (the spawn campers and others) was done on a phone, and unfortunately, when I clicked "Save", it ended up publishing, and not just saving a draft. Doh.

So , I made a small edit, and just left it as it lay. However, I still had more to say and questions to ask, so here's the continuation:

As I mentioned a while ago, I play a ton of console games, such as HALO, Gears of War, Forza and others. With all the time I spend on XBOX Live (XBL), I see/saw a bunch of amazingly offensive assholes during games. Sexist, racist and any other nasty "-ist" or "-phobe"you can think of. If you don't have a group of friends to play with, I'm not sure there's a whole lot of value in playing long term. (unless you're one of those amazingly annoying assholes)

I know that you can /ignore idiots that won't shut up, but I wish there was more that could be done. On XBL I can "avoid this player" which (in theory) makes it so that you are less likely to get stuck playing with the jerk, but it DOES have one distinctly real world result: your "Reputation". Any time anyone looks up your gamertag (your "handle" on XBL) it shows your card (see below) that has your gamerscore (total points for your achievements) your recent games and rep(utation).

I have 5 stars (5 all white stars) which means I have a good reputation. People that act like jerks will have lower reputations, and are stuck with a bad reputation. It's your badge of behavior, good or bad.

In WoW, the /ignore is nice, but the bad apple will never realize they've been ignored, unless everyone on their server ignores them.

So how do we deal with this in the PvP portions of WoW? I guess make sure you have a group of friends when you play (be it just friends or your guild) so that you can avoid PUGs (pick up group) At the very least, try to bring ONE friend with you into the fray...

Heartbreak Hotel, No Tickets for You!

Tomorrow is the beginning of E3, the "Electronics Entertainment Expo" in downtown Los Angeles. (E3 is where Sony, Microsoft and other software & hardware sellers show off their latest & greates. Blizzard usually has a large presence there as well) A friend of mine tried to get me a ticket, but no luck. For the first time ever, this year you can BUY them, but they are over $400 each. (I had briefly considered it when this was announced last fall, but given the the current economy, as well as the crazziness of the cost, I decided not to)

And Saturday was the second & last time that Blizzcon tickets went on sale. The first time, my other half and I had both our PCs logged in and hitting F5 trying to get tickets. I got closer than she did, but tix ran out when I was still 1,500th in line.

Since I'm out of town this weekend, Kattastrophe was left alone trying to get tickets. Twas not meant to be... Tickets ran out, and her last noted update said "6% left, 316 people in line ahead of you". Evidently the % left didn't update as often as the number of folks in line does. A little heartbraking.

It's an odd thing, and/or an interesting problem to have: a product/event so popular, that you can't get enough "stuff" (tickets) to sell. Though to be honest, Anaheim is not the largest venue here in southern California. Perhaps Blizzard keeps it small to keep it so "intimate". (17,000 people is a fairly small number of attendees for many conventions) Maybe it's an attempt to keep them rare, and therefore more desirable, but it does make you sad that you can't go ti an event like this.

I guess we'll be using (for the first time ever) Pay per View. Evidently you get a pet or something with your purchase, and someone in the house wants it.

Badly... lol

Bad Boys, Bad Boys: Bad Spotsmanship

I've played literally hundreds of hours of multiplayer videogames; HALO, Gears of War and tons of others, and more recently a couple dozen Battlegrounds. One thing always stays the same: people love to act like jerks to each other.

The biggest jerk things I've seen are enemy players waiting in the graveyard for people to resurrect (what we call spawn camping in other games) so that you are attacked/killed before you can even buff youself, or just dragging out a game (by the winners) that should have ended quickly, just for honor points. I've been on teams that were victims and the guilty. ( I got yelled at for saying to cap the final flag or to leave the spawn area)

EDIT - this wasn't supposed to be posted yet, but thanks to me doing this on my phone, I "oopsed" and here it is.
...doh...

Twink-le, Twink-le, Little Star. How I Wonder How BLUE you are...

We all see twinks, and if you've ever played a Battleground (or Arena, I guess) you've played against (and been killed by) them. You know, the level 29 guy with all blue equipment, and the ability to kill you in 2 hits (or one!) Yeah, those guys.

I'll be honest here: I'm a *little* envious of them. Heck, I spent several days grinding through Warsong gulch, just to get a silly sword (and I got the ring -Protector's Band- a couple days before that) So this is NOT a dig at them. They put in a TON of time and gold to create them. (and to be honest, the only thing that really pisses me off are the rogues. None of their abilities, BY THEMSELVES are all that bad, but the combination they have is just horrid: stealth, ability to stun FOR 8-10 SECONDS, and immunity to stun (the last is the worst) seems to leave them mostly invulnerable, and WAY too deadly.

I know that the auction house (AH) offers many things that are cool, but it still doesn't really explain ALL the stuff they get, since much of it is "BoP" (binds on pickup) or is a quest reward, or simply never makes it (or rarely) onto the AH.

So, my question is this: HOW do people get all this stuff, and still remain a low enough level to be so lethal? This is NOT a dis on twinks or anything. It's a serious question.

For example, I get curious about who has what, especially Paladins that are around my level, so I do a lot of "Inspect"-ing. (right click on a toon to highlight them, then right click on their picture and "Inspect" is a pull down option) The other day, I ran across a level 29 pally that is clearly a twink:

(color represents item color - note, all blue except for one green)

Frostreaver Crown.........................Helmet ..drop/AH ...lvl 27 ....182 armor.. +4.. str ..+15 sta ...+4 spi
Sentinel's Medallion.........................Neck .....PvP ..........lvl 28.....none ..........+8 agi ....+5 sta
Azure Shoulderguards of Soldier...Shoulder 4 Aces... lvl 20.....151 armor.. +5 str.... +5 sta....+5 crit
Caretaker's Cape............................Back ....PvP......... lvl 28.... 25 armor ......+6 sta ...+4 spi ...+70 armor .+7 spell power
Shining Silver Breastplate..............Chest .created ..lvl 24 .....214 armor ...+14 str ..+6 sta ....+4 all stats
Green Iron Bracers.........................Wrist ..created... lvl 28....... 131 armor.. +5 sta ...+9 sta
Grubbis Paws .................................Hand.. Boss...... lvl 29......144 armor.... +6 str... +5 agi ...+9 spi ..+15 agi
Highlander's Lamellar Girdle ............Waist... PvP........ lvl 28......128 armor.. +11 str ..+4 sta.. +5 int
Dreamsinger Legguards ................Legs ....drop/AH ...lvl 21.....179 armor ...+8 str ...+8 sta.. +5 spi
Highlander's Lamellar Greaves.......Feet ....PvP ...........lvl 28..... 157 armor ..+6 str ...+6 agi.. +4sta... +4 int.. +7 sta
Protector's Band............................. Finger... PvP ........lvl 28 ..... none ..........+6 str... +6 agi ...+4 sta
Seal of Wrynn ................................Finger .....Quest ....lvl ? ...... none ..........+3 str +...3 agi ..+4 sta... +4int.. +3 spi
Rune of Duty.................................. Trinket..... PvP .......lvl 20......none ..........+4 sta ....+3 health /5sec
Insignia of the Alliance ...................Trinket .....PvP .......lvl ?........none .........Removes all movement impairing effects
Crescent of Forlorn Spirits ............1hnd Axe .Quest... lvl ? .......22.8 DPS ....+29 spell power ......+8 crit
Resplendant Guardian ...................Shield ....drop/AH...lvl 26......680 armor ...+14 block ....+7 sta... +7 spi ..+5 block

I plan to ask this guy how he did it. (his name is a fart joke, and even as "old" as I am, I still find funny) If he responds, etc, I'll post what he has to say...

I have an idea as to how SOME of it's done:

1. Plan ahead, and figure out EXACTLY which items you want to get.


2. Plan out which instances to go on, and when.


3. Get a (or 2 or 3?) level 80 (or whatever) level buddies to help out.


4. Enter the instance as a group/party as soon as twink is JUST high enough level to enter.


5. Disband the party in the instance to prevent the twink from getting unnecessary Exp.


6. Lvl 80's kill all "un-needed" mobs. Since twink is not in party, (s)he gets no Exp.


7. Twink gets first hit on Bosses, lvl 80's clean up.


8. Twink picks up good loot.

Or, if the "random" dropped stuff is where the good loot comes from, get even more buddies to join in, so that the Exp are diluted and prevents the twink from levelling too quickly. And, I would assume, the same buddies would get together and repeat the process for THEIR twinks.

To me, that sounds like a TON of planning work, and cooperation. And that's exactly why it doesn't bother me. (unless I just got 2 hit killed by them ;) ) The amount of effort it takes is just amazing.Now, I will say it's just a *BIT* unfair when a group of 3-5 (or more) of these uber twinks go into PvP and mop the floor with the rest of us poor mortals. As long as it's over quickly, I won't complain TOO much. It's not fair, but it isn't really bad sportsmanship, and I still get my Mark and Honor Points.

Bad Sportsmanship will be the subject of another post...