Tag Archives: professions

Game Info

Epic Gems and Jewelcrafting in 3.2

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Look, it’s a post! Yes, I know it’s not a pally post, but the 3.2-related stuff is still brewing.

4 July 09: Unfortunately this post has lost all its comments due to technical reasons.

Patch 3.2 brings with it WotLK’s long-awaited epic gems. The item names have been known ever since they were datamined during the beta, but they’ve never been available until now.

What Gems Are There?

There are six new gems, of epic quality.

  • Red: Cardinal Ruby
  • Yellow: King’s Amber
  • Blue: Majestic Zircon
  • Orange: Ametrine
  • Green: Eye of Zul
  • Purple: Dreadstone

What Cuts Are There?

As far as I can tell, based on datamined info from MMO-champion’s internal DB, every uncommon/rare cut in WotLK has an epic equivalent except the prismatic “Enchanted” gems (the ‘all stats’ pearls).

Edit: as of PTR build 10072, there’s now an “all stats” epic gem – the Nightmare Tear, +10 to all stats, unique-equipped, matches any socket, and requires a Dragon’s Eye and 5 Infinite Dust to cut.

The values on the gems are increased by 25-33% over the rare cuts, except with mp5 (which is in line with the boost to mp5 on gear in 3.2). So a +16 attribute rare cut will be a +20 attribute cut in its epic versions.

I’ve revised the Jewelcrafting Quick Reference Sheet: WotLK Edition to include all of these cuts.

This table includes all jewelcrafting gem cuts excluding BoP gems that are JC-only. It is current as of 25 June 09.

Jewelcrafting Reference TableJewelcrafting Reference Table

If you prefer it in PDF form, you can download a copy here: jc32a.pdf.

Last updated 25 June 09.

What Cuts Aren’t There?

The ‘prismatic’ quality of jewelcrafter-only gems is being removed – the Dragon’s Eye JC-only cuts will now have a specific color. Bold Dragon’s Eyes will be red, Brilliant Dragon’s Eyes will be yellow, and so on.

This will make it harder to meet socket bonuses and meta gem requirements for unpopular gem colors (*cough*blue*cough*), and many people had expressed a hope that Blizzard would add orange, purple and green JC-only gems.

Alas: such things are, so far, absent.

Where Do the Cuts Come From?

As you can see in the images linked above, there are 72 cuts for epic gems.

The patterns are BoP and require 450 Jewelcrafting to learn. They can be purchased from the Dalaran Jewelcrafting trainer, Timothy Jones, for 5 Dalaran Jewelcrafting Tokens each – so you’ll need a whopping 360 tokens to buy ’em all.

Edit: As of 3.2 going live, the patterns cost 4 tokens each, requiring 288 tokens in total.

Where Do the Gems Come From?

Blizzard have made it pretty easy to get epic gems, but nothing’s sure except death and taxes:

Jewelcrafting

You can prospect Titanium Ore for epic gems, although they’re not guaranteed. As a guide, I just did 13 prospects (ie 65 ore’s worth) and got:

  • 4 epic gems,
  • 3 rare gems,
  • 20 uncommon gems, and
  • 8 Titanium Powder (which can currently be used for a quest handin on the PTR; according to commenters Catreina and Megree, this rewards 1 Dalaran JC token per 10 powder).

Obviously, this isn’t a big enough sample to get a realistic idea of drop rates; this could have been a very unlucky (or lucky) batch.

Edit: I just did another batch of prospecting (9th July, PTR build 10072) and 350 ore netted me 18 epic gems, 8 blue gems, 99 green gems and 62 titanium powder. This looks like about a 1-in-4 ratio for getting epic gems out of a prospect, which is pretty expensive given the scarcity of titanium; that will likely keep epic gem prices high.

Alchemy

You can transmute all six colors of gem. The transmutes for five of the gems are taught by the Dalaran Alchemy trainer, while the Cardinal Ruby transmute is taught by a quest from the same NPC. It’s a simple quest, requiring you to complete 5 epic gem transmutes of any other color.

Edit: the transmute mats have changed; thanks to Simes for alerting me.

  • Red: Cardinal Ruby (mats: 1 Scarlet Ruby, 1 Eternal Fire)
  • Yellow: King’s Amber (mats: 1 Autumn’s Glow, 1 Eternal Life)
  • Blue: Majestic Zircon (mats: 1 Sky Sapphire, 1 Eternal Air)
  • Orange: Ametrine (mats: 1 Monarch Topaz, 1 Eternal Shadow)
  • Green: Eye of Zul (mats: 3 Forest Emeralds)
  • Purple: Dreadstone (mats: 1 Twilight Opal, 1 Eternal Shadow)

(Edit: Note that the mats for the Eye of Zul have changed again, as of build 10072; thanks to Michelle for the headsup.)

On the PTR the transmutes have no cooldown; however, Blizzard has given stuff a cooldown late in the testing process beforehand, so there’s no guarantee they won’t on this one too. (Edit: they now all share the same 20-hour cooldown timer as the titanium and Eternal elemental transmutes.)

Emblems

You can buy all six colors of epic gem from the Emblem of Heroism Quartermasters in Dalaran; they cost 15 Emblems each. (Edit: red, blue and yellow gems now cost 20 Emblems, and orange, green and purple gems cost 10 Emblems each.)

PvP

You can buy all six colors of epic gem from the Jewelcrafting Quartermaster in the PvP vendor centres in Stormwind and Orgrimmar. They’re currently set at 10,000 honor, which is the same price as rare gems on live servers, so I suspect that price may increase.

Playstyle, Wishlist

A Note of Dissonance

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Blizzard has tried hard to make so much of the game smooth and fun, cutting out factors other MMOs think necessary (like, say, corpse runs or XP loss on death) because they recognised they’re not fun.

Take tradeskills. For the most part, they’re streamlined and simple to execute – I have some issues with the amount of reward they offer, but there’s no “because we can” obstacles…

…except in Enchanting.

If I’m levelling up Alchemy on an alt, I can give her a couple of stacks of herbs, a stack of vials, and click one button. I walk away to get a coffee, I come back, I’ve got a stack of elixirs in my bag and 20 shiny new skill points.

Getting those skill points for an Enchanter? You have to execute your recipe individually each time – and if you’re grinding your skill up a bit, you’re probably re-enchanting the same item over and over with the most efficient recipe you’ve got. Each re-enchant requires an extra click to confirm that you really did mean to overwrite the last enchantment on the item, which is identical anyway. So your twenty skill points cost you forty mouse clicks instead of one, and a lot of boring staring at the screen. It’s as bad as fishing, and you don’t even get to get out and look at the scenery.

It’s only a minor niggle, and the world’s not gonna end if they don’t fix it – but it’s so jarring and tedious in an otherwise streamlined world.

Game Info

Inscription Still, Still Not In

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Inscription update for the day: it’s mostly still not implemented, so still no guide from me.

To be more accurate: a lot of recipes are now available from the trainer, from skill level 1 up to 400 at present. However, the materials for the recipes have not yet been tuned. Every glyph currently requires Moonglow Ink (made from Peacebloom, Silverleaf, Earthroot, or Mageroyal), one of each type of parchment (bought from Vendors), and one piece of Mageroyal. Obviously, 400-skill recipes aren’t going to require a level 10 herb, so clearly they’re placeholders until the correct list of mats is implemented. So, there’s no point in creating a powerlevelling guide just yet.

Update: Druid glyphs appear to have the correct mats requirements. However, it’s clear that Inscription is still very unfinished, and any powerlevelling guide would be premature and inaccurate.

Also, note that the Glyphs pane of the spellbook now has three slots for Major Glyphs and three for Minor Glyphs; it looks like the model of two Major, two Minor and two Lesser has been abandoned.

Game Info

Inscription Still Not In

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I notice I’ve had a lot of hits today from Google searches for Inscription guides – presumably fuelled by today’s announcement that Inscription will be available pre-Wrath Day.

This is just a headsup for you visitors: I’m still planning to write a guide to levelling Inscription once all the information is available. Currently, Inscription still isn’t implemented in the Wrath beta, beyond some basic lowbie abilities (no Glyphs, just stat scrolls).

So, you’ll all be the first to know once I’ve got data to work with, but until then, no-one can give you a meaningful Inscription guide because the information is just not available yet. Watch this space!

Game Info

Wrath: Jewelcrafting Tokens

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Note: this post contains information on Wrath of the Lich King, although it’s not hugely “spoilery”.

As a followup from my last post about new jewelcrafting dailies and patterns:

  • Dragon’s Eyes are purchasable from the Dalaran Jewelcrafting vendor, Tiffany Cartier, for one Dalaran Jewelcrafting Token each
  • Twenty-three rare gem cuts I discussed in the last post are now five tokens each, not eight. The eight meta gem cuts are still eight tokens each. This brings the total tokens required to 179 – about six months of daily questing, rather than eight.
Game Info

Wrath: Jewelcrafting Dailies & Epic Gems

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Note: this post contains information on Wrath of the Lich King, although it’s not hugely “spoilery”.

In my recent introduction to jewelcrafting in WotLK I noted that there were a few missing stat combinations that we could expect future jewelcrafting cuts to fill. Read more for information on a number of new rare gem cuts, jewelcrafting daily quests and new epic gem cuts in Wrath.

Edit for visitors from Google: I have three more recent posts you might find more useful: a guide to the epic gems in patch 3.2, a quick reference sheet for all WotLK gem cuts, and a guide to the Jewelcrafting daily quests. Hope they’re useful!

Continue reading Wrath: Jewelcrafting Dailies & Epic Gems →

Game Info

Jewelcrafting in Wrath of the Lich King

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Note: this post contains information on Wrath of the Lich King, although it’s mostly mechanical and thus not hugely spoilery.

The most recent WotLK beta patch introduced a number of new Jewelcrafting recipes, showing us the Northrend equivalent of some very familiar Outland gems – as well as some new contenders.

Read on for details of Northrend’s new uncommon, rare and meta gems, the many new gem cuts included in the expansion, and a new Jewelcrafter ability: Gem Perfection.
Continue reading Jewelcrafting in Wrath of the Lich King →

Game Info

2.3: The Last Cooking Daily (Manalicious)

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Well, it’s been a while since my last post; sadly RL has intervened. (Fear not, the “Write Post” window has been sitting open in my web browser the entire time, looking at me accusingly.)

Time to cover two things: first, a new addition to the blogroll: Moar HP Than Jesus, a druid (tanking) blog from a friend of mine (who has apparently been WoW-blogging since October and never told me!).

Second, the fourth and final cooking daily, which hadn’t appeared on my server until a couple of weeks ago.

Manalicious
The Rokk will give you a quest to go to Netherstorm and gather 15x Mana Berry for a tasty dessert. You can find the mana berries in Netherstorm, in the ecodomes (not the manaforges, which is what a mage friend of mine assumed, leading him to spend a fruitless [ha!] hour combing a blood-elf-infested area closely for some totally non-existent berry bushes) on bushes like those shown to the left. If you don’t have the quest, they blend alarmingly into the ecodome foliage, but if you do have the quest, they develop a case of gold sparklies to help them stand out (as shown in the picture to the left) until you’ve gathered all 15. If you have herbalism as a profession, your Herb Tracking ability will show the berry bushes as gold dots on your minimap, until you’ve gathered all 15.

Game Info

2.3: Cooking Dailies (More Info)

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Well, so far we’ve seen a couple of the cooking dailies hit the live realms, and as the info I’d provided so far seems to be popular, here’s a bit more info:

The quests are given by The Rokk (<Master of Cooking>) in the Lower City, at around 61,16 coordinates. He gives a new one each day, which changes when the daily quests reset. Here are two known quests so far:

Revenge Is Tasty
Requires 1 Giant Kaliri Wing (drops off Monstrous Kaliri at Skettis, a quest item so you can’t farm for them in advance) and 3 Warp Burgers (made with 1 Warped Flesh each, which drop off Warp Stalkers in Terokkar at a 50% rate and Warp Chasers in Netherstorm at a 25% rate). Combine the Giant Kaliri Wing and the Warp Burgers in the cooking pot provided, and turn in the resulting Kaliri Stew.

Super Hot Stew
Requires 1 Crunchy Serpent and 2 Mok’Nathal Shortribs, which are made with meat from windserpents and raptors, respectively, in Blade’s Edge Mountains. Once you have the two components, go to Forge Camp: Terror in Blade’s Edge and kill yourself an Abyssal Flamebringer; stand over the body and use the provided cooking pot to combine the Crunchy Serpent and Mok’Nathal Shortribs into Demon-Broiled Surprise. Turn in the Surprise to complete the quest.

There are at least two more possibilities for the daily quest; I don’t have details on either of them yet. I’ll post again when I’ve seen them.

The cooking dailies require 275 cooking to complete; I haven’t yet checked to see if they also require level 70. The two quests listed above both require access to flying-mount-only areas (Skettis to get the Kaliri Wings, Blade’s Edge Plateau to kill the Abyssal Flamebringer), but a sub-70 character summoned to the area may be able to do them.

Game Info

A Guide to Daily Quests: New in 2.3

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Patch 2.3 has not yet been released, but it’s going to include a number of new daily quests. Here’s a brief introduction to them:

Instance Dailies

From the 2.3 Patch Notes:
New daily quests are available in the Lower City for 5 man heroic and non-heroic dungeons (Once at a time, a bit like battleground weekends, each day you will get quests for a different dungeons). The following non-heroic dungeons are concerned: Shattered Halls, Steamvault, Shadow Labyrinth, Black Morass, Botanica, Mechanar, and Arcatraz. All dungeons will get quests in Heroic mode. If you’re getting the non-heroic and the heroic quest on the same day for the same dungeon, you can complete both by running it in heroic mode once. Non heroic quests will reward you with a Ethereum Prison Key (various reputation), gold, and reputation with the Consortium. Heroic quests will give you 2 Badges of Justice, gold, and reputation with the Consortium

As an example, I’m looking on the test realm right now. The quest givers are two Ethereal NPCs in the Lower City, one aligned with the Consortium – Wind Trader Zhareem and Nether-Stalker Mah’duun. (They can be found by looking for a blue ! on the minimap – another new feature in 2.3.) The normal-mode daily quest today is for Steamvaults, and requires you to kill 14 Coilfang Myrmidons – reward: 16 gold and an Ethereum Prison Key. Today’s heroic-mode daily is for Heroic Old Hillsbrad, for the Epoch Hunter’s Head – reward: 24 gold and 2 Badges of Justice.

Battleground Dailies
Each day you can do one daily quest to win a battleground; the reward is 12 gold and 419 honor. The questgiver is in Lower City; I don’t know if there are also questgivers in other cities, or if it can be done before level 70. The problem with this quest, of course, is that it requires you to win a battleground, which is a problem in battlegroups where one faction dominates.

Cooking Dailies
I’ve been wondering how these are going to work, so here we go! The quest giver is a goblin called The Rokk <Master of Cooking> in the Lower City. Today he’s asking you to cook “Demon Broiled Surprise”.

“I want you to take my beloved cooking pot and head out to Blade’s Edge. Throw in some shortribs and crunchy serpent – already cooked for extra flavor – and broil it over an abyssal’s corpse, the only thing hot enough to do the trick.”

Rewards: 7.5 gold and either a Barrel of Fish (flavour text: “A warning label reads: Do Not Shoot”) or a Crate of Meat (flavour text: “Mostly meat and whatever else was sitting around.”) Both items are white-quality and BoP; they contain a few high-level cooking mats (scarce fish, useful meats, etc) and also have a chance to contain a new cooking recipe.