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Horde has some pretty odd locations for trainers, resources, etc. But, when you are leveling engineering to 225, if you have a guild bank with the mats or your bank account with the mats and don’t need to continually buy mats from the Auction House, Rachet is your place.

The engineering trainer is right near the flight master, the bank and guild bank are right there, and the smelter/anvil is in a little house just to the west of the bank. A mailbox and Inn is just up the hill in case you have another Alt in a major city next to an Auction House in case you need to buy a few mats and mail them over.

All told, I was able to raise engineering from 80 to 225 making some quick runs back and forth. A few tiny miscalculations on just how many Mithril Bars I needed, or Heavy Stone, but, it sure beat running back and forth to the bank and Anvil and Trainer in Orgrimmar. Alliance, if you’re on a PVP realm, I’m sure you might find Rachet a bit tricky, but, the time savings on a PVE Realm for both Alliance and Horde or, for Horde on a PVP Realm is substantial.

Enjoy leveling Engineering.

Filed under: Enchanting, Features, Factions, Guides, Making money, Enchants, (Professions) Insider Trader

Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.

Last week we took a look at some of the more popular and requested enchants and how to get them for yourself. I also promised that I’d continue the faction recipe series by taking a look at enchanting for this week.

So far, I’ve talked about the following professions and which factions hold appropriate recipes:

• Designs for jewelcrafters part one, and part two.
• Plans for blacksmiths.
• Recipes for alchemists.
• Patterns for leatherworkers.
• Patterns for tailors.

Here is a complete list of the factions to which any enchanter should “suck up” and how far you’ll need to take it:

• Shattered Sun Offensive, honored.
• Consortium, revered.
• Cenarion Expedition, exalted.
• Thrallmar/Honor Hold, exalted.
• Keepers of Time, exalted.
• Lower City, exalted.
• Sha’tar, exalted.
• Violet Eye, exalted.

Continue reading Insider Trader: Faction recipes for enchanters

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We were running a new guildie through to twink out his rogue and decided to farm Arcanist Doan for [item]34227[/item] which dropped on the first run. Having farmed 6 of these over the course of many trips, it was a bit of a shock, so, we decided to farm for [item]7682[/item] since we had time left over, and, wouldn’t you know it, it drops on the first kill.

Getshanked is one lucky rogue. Short of quest gear, he’s got all of the drops and crafted items. Now we just need to level him to 27 to start doing the rest of the quests to get the rest of his gear.

A while back I had a bank alt that I needed to level to 35 to get Alchemy and Leatherworking up to a more respectable level. Along the way, I figured I’d make another low budget twink with relatively easily obtainable items. I didn’t really like the 30-39 bracket much, and now that level 30 players have mounts, I believe that will have changed the entire dynamic of the game. I played this bracket for a while, and will probably leave my hunter where he is, but, I doubt I’ll play much in this bracket. Here are my notes for making a budget twink hunter in the 30-39 bracket.

Head:
[item]8176[/item] Crafted
Neck:
[item]15200[/item] PVP Reward, 20 WSG Marks, 95 Honor
Shoulder:
[item]10774[/item] Boss Drop, Glutton, RFD
Chest:
[item]8175[/item] Crafted
Waist:
[item]13117[/item] World Drop
[item]4131[/item] Quest, Zanzil’s Secret, Obtained at 35
Legs:
[item]1718[/item] World Drop
[item]14605[/item] World Drop
Feet:
[item]9398[/item] Drop from Uldaman
Wrist:
[item]14654[/item] World Drop
[item]33250[/item] Quest, Twilight of the Dawn Runner, Obtained at 33
Hands:
[item]10765[/item] Drop from Bonefinger, RFD
Finger:
[item]29158[/item] Crafted
[item]4135[/item] Quest, Bloody Bone Necklaces, Obtained at 30
Back:
[item]11858[/item] Quest, A Grim Discovery, Obtained at 37
Weapons:
[item]7941[/item] Crafted
[item]1602[/item] World Drop

Ranged:
[item]2825[/item] World Drop, not as rare as you would think
[item]19560[/item] PVP Reward, 30 Warsong Gulch Marks, 469 Honor
[item]9400[/item] Boss drop, Uldaman, its possible while farming the boots that you will get this as well

Trinkets:
[item]21568[/item] PVP Reward, 30 WSG Marks, 118 Honor
[item]21116[/item] PVP Reward, 30 AB Marks, 258 Honor
[item]18846[/item] PVP Reward, 2805 Honor
[item]2820[/item] Quest, This is going to be Hard, Obtained at 36

In this bracket, I dislike guns. You’re a lot more powerful than you had been in the 29 bracket where guns do make a lot of sense. There’s nothing more frightening to the defenders in the flag room to hear the boom of a gun as it hits one of them. They believe the entire team is on the way. With a bow, you can catch people offguard because they never hear their teammate get hit.

As for pets, I’ve seen a few and it depends on what type of player you are. For Defense, I like a cat. They have a little better stealth detection and parked in the right place, rogues cannot get by. For FC/EFC support, I like boars for their charge & stun. Scorpions are interesting with their poisons. Cats also are very good for targeting casters with as they have a very fast attack speed and that interrupts casting. Ravagers do pure DPS in this bracket and since you don’t need to worry about taking aggro from a tank, killing your target fast is a great benefit. I chose a cat for the Caster Interrupting and the increased stealth detection as I run D quite a bit more frequently than I run O. In WoLK, there will be a number of different pet skills added and the entire pet mechanics are going to be changed, so, you might find yourself getting a new pet when WoLK is released.

Remember to put your [item]29534[/item] or [item]29536[/item] on your legs before you equip them.

Again, there are much better items that you can get, but, the goal here was to create a bank alt/transmuter that I could also run battlegrounds with.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, PvP, (BG PvP) The Art of War(craft), Achievements

Ah, world PvP. In many ways, world PvP can be considered the purest form of PvP because when it happens — if it’s not done in association with a quest or other form of reward — it is PvP for the sake of PvP. Some of the best times I’ve ever had doing PvP was in Hillsbrad Foothills, defending Tarren Mill and attacking Southshore. I miss the times when the World Defense channel would be flooded by calls to defend the Crossroads. There’s also something very pure about coming to the aid of a faction leader under assault. And when Wrath of the Lich King finally arrives, I have a good feeling it’s going to happen a lot more often.

I wrote about the many Achievements related to PvP, such as the retroactive Achievements that you can work on before Patch 3.0 hits, as well as the numerous Battlegrounds Achievements. Although PvP for the sake of PvP is extremely fun, Achievements will actually reward something that previously never got anything more than bragging rights and a silly grin. Today we’ll look at the numerous Achievements that work to encourage world PvP.

Continue reading The Art of War(craft): World PvP Achievements

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Filed under: Human, Night Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Orcs, Tauren, Undead, Trolls, Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Draenei, Blood Elves, Wrath of the Lich King

It looks like Blizzard isn’t done tinkering with everything for Wrath of the Lich King. This time, they’ve turned their attention to racial abilities, which many have pointed out to be imbalanced. Kalgan dropped by the forums to answer a good question regarding the Orc racial Hardiness, which grants a passive 15% resistance to stuns. It’s been nerfed a long way from its original 25% resistance, but the poster made a good point about the game’s direction towards reduced durations instead of resistances.

Kalgan responds by saying that Hardiness was being changed into exactly that — an effect duration reduction of 15%. He also goes over all the other racials, some of which were changed, others of which were buffed, and yet a few others of which were inevitably nerfed. The changes should make it into the next Beta push. Check after the break to see the complete list. [CLARIFICATION: This isn’t the complete list of racial abilities. Abilities not listed here are unchanged or, if they will be changed, will be mentioned in the future.]

Continue reading New racial abilities for Wrath

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Filed under: Horde, Alliance, Human, Night Elves, Orcs, Hunter, Rogue, Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves, Odds and ends, Draenei

If you’ve ever been fascinated by the MMORPG statistics provided at sites like the Daedalus Project, here’s something right up your alley; the WoW Armory Character Distribution widget, programmed to comb both the U.S. and E.U. Armories and capture data on the popularity of character names across race, class, faction, and sex.

The project is still in the testing stage, and it’s a bit finicky about how you enter character names. Make sure you’re always hitting the submit button and not using your enter key, as otherwise the widget will keep searching for the last name you looked for instead of your new query. Its creator, Emilis, also wrote to warn that it uses live information from both armories and will occasionally be slow as a result. I imagine it might also be inaccurate if either Armory is having problems.

The widget is tremendously fun to play with and has yielded some rather interesting results even with the completely random names I keep trying. “John” and “Mary,” as you might expect, are overwhelmingly Human toons, whereas the greater share of people playing a “Sergei” and “Yekaterina” are Draenei. 3 people with a “Brutus” are actually playing female characters, and 1 person with a “Laura” is playing a male character (Emilis notes that gender-bending names are surprisingly common, although from what I can tell so far this seems to be a lot more true of male names for female toons than the other way around). Most people with a “Killer” are playing a Hunter, Rogue, or Warrior. Characters named “Bank” are mostly Human Warriors, but “Banktoon(s)” are mostly Orcs. And, yes, most of the people playing a toon named Legolas are Night Elf Hunters. Are you really that surprised?

Thanks to Emilis for writing in!

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Filed under: Galleries, Wrath of the Lich King

In the LK beta build that just went live tonight, build number 8905, there’s a new Options button on the login screen, just above Cinematics, Credits, and Terms of Use. What lies behind its blue mystery? [Edit: apparently it was there in the last build too. I never noticed.]

Unsurprisingly enough, it contains some options that you might want to change before entering the game. Specifically, it has options for video resolution, video effect quality, and sound. For the most part, these are the same options currently available in-game. “Enable Reverb,” “Headphone Mode,” and “Death Knight Voices” have been added to the sound pane. “Disable Resize” has been added under “Windowed Mode” in the resolution pane; I’m not sure why you’d want to do that, though, unless you kept accidentally resizing the window (which I’ve never had an issue with, and I often play windowed).

The big innovation here (and yes, I realize innovations in option dialogs may not strike you as particularly interesting) is a master slider for video quality. Now you don’t have to fiddle separately with terrain distance and ground clutter density if you don’t want to; just drag the slider somewhere on the scale from “Low” to “High,” whatever’s prettiest without being too devastating to your framerates on your particular system. Of course, there’s a “Custom” setting, so if you want to tweak all the little sliders, you are still free to do so. A nice change, and it will especially benefit people who don’t necessarily know what all the options mean.

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While I loved being on my rogue, I thought it was time to make another character. I love defending Blacksmith or Lumber Mill and I love the offensive capability of going forth, sapping a guard at a node, and killing the other guy, vanishing and killing the other guy to take a flag. On our battlegroup, there was this two-shammy team and they just rolled over me. I’d get one of them but with their totems, heals and shocks, one of them would get out of the flagroom and it was up to the folks midfield. I love my rogue, but, the Rampage is short on versatile utility players. Too many times we’ll get 2 twinks on our side and have noone that will carry the flag, or, worse, someone that will carry, but no healers that can keep up with the kind of damage dealt by the twinks on the other side.

While I have run into the glass cannons or twinks so deep into a tree that they have sacrificed utility, I thought about making a hybrid shammy twink. The tough part is getting all of the quest gear that requires level 28 or 29 which allows me to switch from FC to Offense to Defending to escorting our Flag Carrier or supporting DPS. Unlike many of the players that can heal in our battlegroup, I’m not afraid to heal even though I am not specced for it. My shadow priest constantly topped the damage and healing charts in the 29 bracket.

While this set of gear isn’t necessarily easy to obtain, the survivability and the ability for me to switch roles when needed will be a huge bonus. I’ve thought a lot about what gear to have, and going after 3 different weapons and 3 shields along with a few other random item sets will be difficult in terms of experience, but, I believe while I won’t be at the top of the HKs, our side will have a considerable advantage because I can carry and have a good HP pool, or I can heal with a decent healing bonus and mana pool, or I can dish out the DPS when needed.

Head:
[item]6688[/item]
[item]10501[/item]
[item]9492[/item]
Shoulders:
[item]15140[/item] of the eagle
[item]7727[/item]
Cloak:
[item]10518[/item]
[item]19529[/item]
Chest:
[item]4119[/item] (quest chain starts at 28)
Bracers:
[item]4049[/item]
[item]18948[/item]
[item]2032[/item] (To Steal From Thieves, Obtained at 27)
Gloves:
[item]6732[/item] (News for Fizzle, Requires 28)
[item]15355[/item] of the Eagle
[item]6727[/item] (Safety First, Obtained at 29)
Belt:
[item]20198[/item] (AB, 20 marks, 175 honor)
Legs:
[item]5963[/item]
[item]7414[/item] of the Eagle
Feet:
[item]20157[/item] (AB, 20 marks, 175 honor)
Weapon:
[item]9459[/item]
[item]6738[/item] (Parts of the Swarm, obtained at 29)
[item]17039[/item] (An Unholy Alliance, obtained at 28, RFK drop on Razorflank, BC enchants)
Shield:
[item]17508[/item] (Compendium of the Fallen, obtained at 28)
[item]6746[/item] (The Corrupter, obtained at 25)
[item]6725[/item] (A Vengeful Fate, obtained at 23)

While the above list is no means complete, I will try to farm for [item]34227[/item] and will have other engineering items. Some of the trinkets that I had were just absolutely great. [item]4388[/item] isn’t cheap considering the Jade, but, it is a lot of fun.

The enchants are the tough part. I know I’ll put the [item]29536[/item] on the Barbaric Leggings and will put [item]24276[/item] on the Infiltrator’s Leggings. Skullbreaker will definitely get Enchant Weapon – Major Healing which will give +81. From those two items alone, I’ll be at +147 healing. I know that WoLK brings changes to the healing bonus and coefficients, but, they say it will even out. Coupled with the +27 healing from the Headdress and the Cloak and the +30 that I can put on the bracers, I should be able to hit +204 healing just from a midfield gear change. That is a considerable bonus for someone that won’t be specced for healing. I’ll be a utility healer for clutch situations. With some of the basic gear, I’ll easily have +600hp over the average player. With full enchants, I should be in the 1700hp range with about 2100 mana. My build will have Instant Ghost Wolf which limits some of the talent points I have to spend, but, I think this equipment will allow me the flexibility to run hybrid, or, when running with guildies, I can respec elemental or resto and be a little more specialized.

Looking forward to the battlefield.

Filed under: News items, Wrath of the Lich King

In somewhat unusual news, 7-Eleven seems to be moving into the video game sales business in some capacity. I’ve noticed that 7-Eleven had sold a couple select games like Madden in the past, but I never thought much of it. I assumed they just had some deal with the distributor for that particular game.

However, that’s not actually the case. Their Madden sales turned out to be quite the success, and their demographic is rather gamer heavy. Man, who would have thought a 24-hour convenience store would attract a lot of young gamers? My mind is boggled. As of this season, 7-Eleven has begun offering pre-orders of select major upcoming releases (such as Wrath of the Lich King) at their locations. All of their offerings will have midnight releases at the 24/7 chain, so your next midnight release party might just take place between a Slurpee machine a beef jerky rack. I have a feeling they won’t be holding any costume contests.

Oh, if you’re curious, 7-Eleven says Wrath in Novermber, too. Man, I could actually go for a Slurpee right now. AFK.

[ via Kotaku ]

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