I’ve been stockpiling herbs in preparation for picking up Inscription on Wrath Day (now, even sooner on Patch 3.0 Day).
I may have gone too far.
Herbal Remedies – Am I Overdoing It?
Tag Archives: wotlk
Shared Topic: What I Will Be Doing…
…when Wrath of the Lich King hits.
This is this week’s Shared Topic from Blog Azeroth, a question posed by Dechion of Dechion’s Place.
What Will I Be Doing On Wrath Day?
…Trying to update my mods.
No, Seriously…
I actually hope to have my UI all fixed and ready to go, testing it on the 3.0 PTR and on Beta.
My basic plan will be:
9 Hours before Midnight Launch: Get six hours of sleep.
2 Hours before Midnight Launch: Drive to store, start queueing.
1am Wrath Day: Get home, start installing Wrath. Log on teamspeak to chat with guildies doing the same thing – or catch an extra hour’s nap, who knows :)
3am Wrath Day: Finish installing and patching. Have a coffee.
3:01am Wrath Day: Start playing! Head to Northrend. Train Grand Master tradeskills. Start questing on the paladin. Have a coffee and eat something for blood sugar. Try and force myself to keep the mage on follow to gather ore and herbs.
When Northrend starts crashing from load: Head back to Shattrath and do all the stuff I had saved up – level tradeskills as far past 375 as possible with TBC-level mats, for instance. Have more coffee.
When Northrend gets really bad: Get some sleep.
Repeat ad infinitum… or at least ad 80. ;-)
Inscription Still, Still Not In
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.
Inscription Still Not In
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!
That’s What Now! or, Things To Do In Azeroth When You’re Bored
I recently posted about my difficulty in finding things to amuse me in the pre-Wrath period: everything I could think of to do was either boring, or irrelevant in the face of the upcoming expack.
Well, here’s something that’s been occupying me for the last few days: catching up on Achievements, in advance!
I’m a completionist and an explorer at heart, which means the Achievements system is going to occupy a lot of my time during the lifespan of Wrath. However, there are a bunch of Achievements that I can easily work on before Wrath Day.
First, I logged into the Wrath beta to check out the Achievements panel and found all the pre-WotLK achievements I hadn’t yet completed. (Those of you without access to the beta can do the same thing by checking out the WoWHead Achievement list.) I broke these down into subsets:
- Achievements I won’t get credit for until Wrath goes live: certain boss kills, a lot of PvP achievements, achievements like ’emote /love to one of every type of critter’, and so on. No point doing these in advance as I’d only have to redo them.
- Achievements I can’t complete until a certain time of year: these are all the Achievements for seasonal events that I haven’t yet completed, from ‘get all three pets from Azeroth’s Children’s Week’ to ‘discover an Elegant Dress by opening eggs during Noblegarden’.
- Achievements I can complete, but shouldn’t: yes, I can go and get 15 different non-combat pets right now, but I won’t have bag space for them until Wrath goes live with its new pet-and-mount storage system. I could do it now, but it’d be a lot smarter to wait.
- Fast and easy achievements I can complete now: mostly finishing off map exploration, chasing down those pesky few unexplored subzones, and making sure Achievement-earning quest chains are finished off (for example, the Nesingwary quests, completing X many quests in a given Outland zone, etc).
- More time-consuming achievements I can complete now: Can you say ‘rep grinds’? I knew you could! There are Achievements for gaining Exalted with specific factions and groups of factions, as well as getting a certain number of factions to Exalted overall.
And now I’ve been working on them. So far I’ve finished off a few of the individual general Achievements (like buying and equipping the “Gigantique” bag) and finished exploring every single Eastern Kingdoms zone. Now I’m working on factions, and I’ll break that up with some Kalimdor exploration.
None of it has any mechanical advantage, true. But it warms the cockles of my obsessive completionist heart to tick off all these little things I’d always meant to do but never had time to do – now I have time to do them, and a reason to boot.
(Tangentially, in one of my next few posts I’ll talk about some tips and tricks for levelling old-world factions, for those of you stranded in the doldrums of Revered reputation.)
Bear Mounts – Awesome at Any Price?
I started thinking about this after seeing yet another “WTS ZA Bear Run, 10K. PST!” in Trade channel tonight, and the resultant discussion of “I’d never buy one!” “Good for you!” “That’s such a ripoff!” “n00bs!” “Chuck Norris!” “Murlocs!” (It is Trade channel, after all.)
Zul’Aman bear mounts from the timed chests are, as most people know, no longer available once Wrath goes live, because they were intended to be a reward for completing a non-trivial challenge and doing the run at 80 will be far from challenging. Bear junkies will be able to get polar bear mounts from another source, but the Zul’Aman bear will remain a reward for those who got them at 70.
So, that’s got me thinking. My guild is doing Zul’Aman, but not all the time, and we haven’t conquered the timers yet – but we’re not far off. Do I want a bear mount? Yep. Do I want one enough to pay for it? ….I’m not sure.
How about you?
[poll=8]
Wrath: Jewelcrafting Tokens
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.
Wrath: Jewelcrafting Dailies & Epic Gems
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!
I love it when a plan comes together…
Recently I talked about my indecision over how to have my cake and eat it too. I have since achieved enlightenment!
This was also a Blog Azeroth shared topic from two months ago! With all my indecision, though, I had no answers for it – until now.
What I’ve Decided
- My main will drop Alchemy just before Wrath’s release, and pick up Mining. At some point between Wrath Day and level 80, she’ll drop Mining for Inscription. She’ll have enough herbs to get Inscription to 375 or beyond, and hopefully by then I’ll be able to find time to get the mage out for a run around Northrend picking pretty flowers.
- All my alts will retain the same tradeskills, except my rogue, who has been Engineer/Skinner until now – she’ll be Engineer/Alchemist (so I can at least make my own mana pots).
What I’ve Done So Far
- Started stockpiling gold and tradeskill mats – cloth for First aid, herbs for Inscription, gems for Jewelcrafting (so I can get 5-10 skillpoints off Outland gems before having to start on expensive and hotly-contested Northrend mats)
- Got my priest’s enchanting to 375 so she’s ready to be a DEbot for Northrend BoE drops.
- Got my rogue’s Alchemy to 375.
What I Still Have To Do
- Stockpile more gold. I hope to have at least 10K put aside by the time WotLK hits – preferably more. I have a chart labelled “Goooold!” stuck to the side of my computer, with cash milestones I can cross off – a good incentive to stop me spending money.
- Set up my UIs and the CloneKeys app so I can comfortably dualbox my pally and mage while levelling, if I choose.
- Sell off anything high-value I have that I don’t need, if I’m not going to need it in WotLK and it’s going to lose its value. Surplus primals, for instance.
- A week or so before Wrath Day, drop Alchemy on my paladin and skill Mining up to 375.
- Finish my Inscription guide, including a powerlevelling guide, and make sure I have herb stockpiles to cover all my Inscription needs.
What I’d Like To Get Done
- Get my 68 rogue and 59 shammy to 70, so they’re available to level as alts in Northrend if the fancy takes me.
- Get my rogue’s engineering to 375 (it’s at 365 now). I’m not sure why, it just bugs me having it uncompleted.
- Get my shammy’s skinning to 375, so she can farm for leather if I need it.
- Stockpile honor points and arena points up to the cap on my paladin, in hopes that they’ll carry over to level 80 (which I think they probably will).
- Likewise, stockpile as many arena and honor points as possible on my alts – particularly the mage, who’s likely to remain my primary alt.
- Level my poor little druid, who is still sitting at level 38.
Is that it? I can’t help but feel like I’m missing items off the to-do lists. What am I forgetting?
Jewelcrafting in Wrath of the Lich King
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