Kaliope's WoW Crafting Blog

5.3 Leveling Changes to Mining

2013-05-20T15:42:00.001-07:00

"Miners of low skill can now mine mineral deposits in Pandaria for a small amount of usable material. The yield a miner will be able to harvest from each node is determined by skill level."

-- 5.3 Patch Notes

We've already covered the new option to level Herbalism in Pandaria, so I thought I'd run through Mining to see if it works in a similar fashion. I grabbed my premade Mage, trained Mining and bought myself a Mining Pick. Once again I went to Valley of the Four Winds to grab up some of the plentiful ore there.

You can see here that I encountered my first ghost iron deposit and it was orange to me at skill level 1:

I went ahead and gathered from 20 nodes to see what kind of volume to expect. I ended up with 26 ghost iron nuggets, which seemed a bit lower than the herb gathering session. It was close enough to be random, so I'm going to assume they are comparable.

I didn't bother to do a head-to-head this time since I assume the results are similar to our herb gathering test. Once again you can combine 10 ghost iron nuggets into 1 ghost iron ore. And obviously if you mine 20 deposits and you get the equivalent of 2.5 pieces of ore, you're not getting a great return on your time investment.

Instead I tried to visit some of the other nodes types and confirm that they can also be mined. I was not able to find some of the high end nodes on the PTR (not for lack of trying, I visited Kun-Lai twice, Dread Wastes twice and Townlong once) but I did find a few Rich Ghost Iron and some Kyparite. I was able to mine both of those types of deposit and gather appropriate types of fragments from them.

The good news is that this new system works well and should enable players to collect Pandaria nodes even before they reach Pandaria skill levels. If you're questing through Pandaria anyway, this will be a convenient way to pick up skill points at the same time. The downside is that I don't think it's an efficient way to skill up and it's actually quite wasteful of the nodes that are available.

The other major drawback (as one of our readers mentioned on the Herbalism post) is that older materials will be even more scarce on the Auction House for those trying to level other professions. Personally I would still mine the older minerals if I was planning to focus purely on gathering for a given game session. The older ores are going to be much more valuable than "nuggets" of ghost iron, and therefore a more valuable use of your gathering time.

The only reason I could see to collect Pandaria nodes at lower skill levels is when you are questing through an area and just grabbing a few skill points while you're there. Perhaps there are other situations in which this is a reasonable option, if so feel free to discuss your ideas in the Comments section!

5.3 Herbalism Leveling Changes

2013-05-09T11:19:00.001-07:00

"Herbalists of low skill can now pick herbs in Pandaria for a small amount of usable material. The yield an herbalist will be able to harvest from each node is determined by skill level."

-- 5.3 Patch Notes

This (and the accompanying changes to ore collection) is the only change currently scheduled in the next major patch that relates to professions. I wasn't sure how long it would take them to get this implemented, but it's starting to look like a release may happen soon so I thought I'd check into it.

I created a pre-made 90 and dropped one of her professions for Herbalism and grabbed an Herbalist's Spade while I was in town. Then I flew down to Valley of the Four Winds and turned on my herb tracking. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I located an herb on my map and swooped down after it. You can see in this image that my Herbalism skill is only 2 but the Silkweed is showing as orange difficulty:

So even at a skill level of 2 (plus 10 for my spade) I am able to pick the Pandaren herbs. It's important to note that I'm not actually getting Pandaren herbs, what I'm really getting is bits of herb. When you collect these herbs at low level, you receive things such as a Silkweed Stem or a Torn Green Tea Leaf. Ten of these can be combined to make one regular herb, much the way you'd convert motes into spirits. You cannot convert back to fragments, not that I think you would want to. Luckily these shouldn't be bag space hogs, I had a stack of 24 and Wowhead indicates that they will go up to 200 per stack.

I decided to run a head-to-head between herbalism leveling results and max herbalism results. I picked 20 nodes on my leveler and another 20 nodes on my capped Herbalist. Both runs were done in Valley of the Four Winds.

Level 1 Herbalist	28 Herb Fragments	10 Spirits	1 Golden Lotus
Level 600 Herbalist	61 Herbs	10 Spirits	0 Golden Lotus

Level 1 Herbalist

28 Herb Fragments

10 Spirits

1 Golden Lotus

Level 600 Herbalist

61 Herbs

10 Spirits

0 Golden Lotus

Of particular interest I think is the fact that bonus materials are dropping at roughly the same rate for beginners and capped players. You can see that I got 10 Life Spirits on my leveling Herbalist and the same number on my 600 Herbalist. I also snagged a Golden Lotus on the leveling toon. I can easily see folks opting to go this route to level up a new toon.

The downside is that these changes don't appear to have rolled out to any other continent. I was hoping I could use this with my wee panda (46) who seems to level past zones before she does much herb/ore picking. But after visiting several older locations (Outland, Tol Barad, Blasted Lands) it's clear that this new system only applies to Pandaria. I would love to see this system expanded to the full range of content but I'm sure that's a bigger task. I still appreciate this new option for 85+ toons who want to switch professions.

UPDATE: I just did a second pass with mining and happened upon a Golden Lotus node. I was able to pick it with a skill of just 20 -- and got an actual Golden Lotus! So it seems that Golden Lotus is not subject to the fragmentation process.

Questions? Comments? Leave 'em if you've got 'em!
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Thunderforged Weapons & the Market

2013-04-30T20:19:00.000-07:00

So I posted a question on Twitter and got some interesting responses regarding the sale of Thunderforged weapons. I thought I would toss this out to the larger readership and see what kind of dialog might stir up about this :) I must have Spring Fever, I'm feeling a bit impish!

My hunter Korlyn is also my Blacksmith. She is not in any position to benefit from the new Thunder Forge-crafted weapons we learned in 5.2. Obviously my best course of action is to make and sell them. I could make them for my alts, but I'm not seriously gearing any of them for raiding. I know a lot of folks have been making weapons to use themselves, but even at this point most of us have surely made our first piece. So now is the time to be thinking about the market and how to benefit financially from these recipes.

I actually didn't bother making my first weapon up to the 502 level since I knew I'd be selling my goods. I opted instead to stay with the 476 weapon. My thinking is this: if I sink a month's worth of cooldowns into this thing, I better make serious bank on it. Sadly I don't think there are many people on my realm who will pay that kind of money. So I saved my ingots to unlock a new weapon instead.

I think I guessed right on this. From my casual research on TUJ I'm seeing higher sales for 502 but the best price per ingot from 476. I think the main reason for this is because crafters who take 30 days to make an item are going to be anxious to cash in on that item. Hence, they tend to keep cutting the price until it sells. Crafters who make a 476 item have less at stake and are more willing to stand by their price. I also feel that the 476 are in a better position to move because it's not as big of an investment to the buyer but it's still a strong enough gear upgrade to justify the cost.

Here are the stats I got from TUJ today:

502 weapon = average price of 51570g (1719g per ingot used)
476 weapon = average price of 30046g (2003g per ingot used)
463 weapon = average price of 7798g (1559g per ingot used)

These calculations are based on the "US Alliance Market Price" value given for each weapon. You can see that the 476 weapons are selling for a higher "per ingot" value than the 463 or the 502. It's pretty easy to see it even with these three numbers because the 502 value should be exactly double the 476 value and it is not. If you want the best bang for your buck, it looks like 476 weapons are the way to go.

Thoughts? Criticisms? Leave a Comment below!
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Fun Cooking Recipes

2013-04-24T22:07:00.001-07:00

Believe it or not, I am only just now collecting certain Cooking recipes! I know, right? I figured if I'm still working my way through obscure content like this, surely others are as well. So I've put together a guide to help folks who haven't gotten to these "hidden" goodies yet.

There are two recipes available to cooks who've mastered the Way of the Brew (you must also be level 87 or higher). The first item is a recipe for Banana Infused Rum, which is a novelty drink that instantly makes you "completely smashed" for 30 seconds. It also turns you into a Hozen pirate. Unfortunately you are stunned while the effect is active and your screen is quite blurry. Even so, it could be entertaining as a way to pass down time during raids.

Finding the recipe for Banana Rum may be a bit of a challenge. It spawns from a barrel in Nayeli Lagoon, above the cave at the far east side of the southernmost island. This is the same spot where you can find Spriggin (one of the rare Pandaria mobs). There is a large ship jutting out high above the cave, which is where Spriggin and the barrel can be found. All you have to do is fly up and click the barrel:

The brown barrel on the right side is the one you're after. If you fly up here to check and there are only three barrels with no brown one on the right, then the recipe has not spawned yet. Here is another pic with the right-most barrel missing:

Comments on Wowhead seem to indicate that the barrel is set to autoloot, so make sure you have room in your bags for the recipe. I got a stack of five flasks as well, so you may need to have two free bag slots. I also saw a few folks claiming that this recipe can be looted even without the required Way of the Brew and 87 character level. I have confirmed this with my Mage (above) who currently has a Cooking skill of 372.

The second recipe is called Four Senses Brew and it is found in Kun-Lai Summit. To reach it, you'll need to fly to the very top of Neverest Pinnacle (NE of Winter's Blossom). There's a lore object up there as well as a statue of a Pandaren. You may have to wait for the tablet to spawn, which you can see here:

The brown rectangle in front of the statue is the item you need. When you loot it, the recipe will be inside:

The mats for both of these recipes are quite high. To make the Four Senses Brew you'll need 3 Ironpaw tokens and two stacks (200) of Red Blossom Leeks. That's a heavy commitment to one item, especially something with a rather vague tooltip. Since the materials are worth 500-1000 gold, I decided to go ahead and make it to see if it was truly useful. When crafted, you really get just one of them (I was hoping that was a tooltip error). After you use it, you get a 5 minute buff called Four Senses Brew and your screen looks like this:

It may not be super-obvious, but there is a haze effect on my screen. I flew around the Half Hill area a bit (down to Galleon and back) but didn't notice anything different around me. Commentary on Wowhead does not shed any new light on what this brew might enhance for you. These are still worth grabbing for completion's sake. They also count toward the "Relic Hunter" set of achievements!
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Archaeology Experience Revisited

2013-04-09T15:11:00.003-07:00

Confession - I have a Mage that I don't enjoy playing. She's a glass cannon and killing mobs with her drives me nuts. Every other toon I have comes with decent survivability. Druid has kitty (or bear for really hard mobs). Check! Hunter has pets that get the smack down. Check! Warlock has the same pet deal. Check! Warrior has lots of plate gear and impending victory for when things get bad. Check! Mage has a water pet that can't hold aggro + they are squishy and die in 5 hits. Sucks. Unfortunately, she's my Scribe so I can't really ignore her. Which means I am all about other ways to level her up.

And this is how I found myself leveling Archaeology on her even though I had no real intention of doing Archaeology on multiple toons. It became a welcome break between dying and nearly dying. I noticed that I was actually progressing from collecting fragments. So I started doing some testing to update my information for the blog.

At level 85 you need 13 million experience to level up. Archaeology isn't really going to help you get there by itself, but it might eat up a few bubbles for you. Here is a chart of various XP options at 85:

Action	XP Earned
Kill Level 85 mob	20460 rested
Loot 1 Pandaria fragment	15290
Loot 1 "old world" fragment	38170

Action

XP Earned

Kill Level 85 mob

20460 rested

Loot 1 Pandaria fragment

15290

Loot 1 "old world" fragment

38170

As you can see the Pandaria numbers are fairly close. And since you can loot 6 finds at each dig site, you'll be getting over 90k XP for a Pandaria dig site. That's not too far off from most Jade Forest quests. If you opt to go back to older content you can get even better XP. Bear in mind that you do not get skill points for solving artifacts from older content if your skill level is too high. Working on older dig sites may only be helpful if you're purely focused on easy XP or you're trying to unlock a particular rare item.

The best time to take advantage of Archaeology is when leveling lowbie alts. I did some additional testing on a couple of my lower toons and the XP is really inviting below level 60. My level 32 monk was getting almost 5% of a level from each find. Basically, you hit 4 dig sites (times 5+ finds per site) and you've completed a level. I zoomed through 8 levels this way. It's really nice if there are places you'd prefer to skip over, you can level off dig sites until you get back into content you enjoy. By contrast picking an herb with my monk only got me 52 XP.

Once you get to level 60 the XP from Archaeology isn't quite as enticing. I tested on my 61 druid and she was getting about 1.5% xp from each find. Not exactly as appealing as 5% with my monk, but nothing to sneeze at either. For leveling in Outland, I was getting 2000 xp per ore node compared with 5100 xp per Archaeology find and 1100 xp per mob kill. Archaeology would likely be the more efficient non-questing choice since finds can be collected 5-6 at a time. If there's a particular Outland zone you really can't stand, you could probably dig your way past it without too much effort. Here's another chart for lower level toons:

Level	XP Earned
32	1756 of 35700 xp
33	1886 of 38400 xp
34	2016 of 41100 xp
35	2114 of 44000 xp
38	2536 of 53000 xp
61	4800 of 317000 xp
62	5100 of 349000 xp

Based on these numbers, it would take about 11 dig sites to complete a level once you're in the 60-70 range. In general Archaeology feels pretty easy to level now. I was getting a skill point for each find, regardless of location. So my 85 warlock working through the Zen tier was getting skill points for dig sites in Duskwood. Again, solving old world artifacts will give you no points beyond 300, but digging still does. Or you can stay in Pandaria and get skill points for digging and solving.

On a completely different note, pet battles give even better XP! My mage has gone up almost a full level mostly from pet battling. She's getting about 185k xp for each pet battle in Pandaria, which is comparable to completing a Kun-Lai quest. Your mileage may vary based on your pet levels.

Thunder Isle Blacksmithing Quest Update

2013-03-28T20:38:00.002-07:00

I'm sad to report that there have been some issues regarding the Blacksmithing quest content on the Thunder Isle. We had a couple of comments yesterday from a reader asking for specifics on the drop rate and faction requirements for quest items. I went out last night to check on my hunter and I couldn't even get into the location where Itoka, the Master of the Forge, is found. There were massive walls near the Beast Pens, making it impossible to get to any of the mobs beyond that part of the island.

I had previously reported on the PTR that you only needed to find him and kill him to get the quest drop once his section of the Isle was unlocked. I also recommended getting your rep up to at least Honored just in case that was part of the requirement. Including myself and a few guildmates I spoke with about this quest, it appears that you may not be able to breeze right out and kill this guy. On the other hand, we've had readers (in the Comments below) indicate they had no trouble doing just that. If you are not able to reach this guy when you first get to Thunder Isle during Stage 4, try completing the new Scenario and running through the daily quest chains.

For me, I could not access Itoka, until I did the scenario for Stage 4 and also ran through the regular daily quests all the way to the Conqueror's Terrace. After turning in those quests, I got two follow-up quests. There may be phasing active on Thunder Isle which would make this area unreachable unless you are on this portion of quest chain. At this point you should be able to find Itoka and take him out. He is a shared mob, so any number of players can participate in the kill and loot the quest item. After he's dead, you will enter the Thunder Forge (door at the north end of his area) and click the book to complete the quest.

You can read my original post here for more details about the fight and the recipes you'll receive from the quest. There is also a map with locations marked for Itoka and the Thunder Forge door.

Blacksmiths should do this quest as soon as possible if you haven't already. The spell to craft a Lightning Steel Ingot is on a one day cooldown, so you'll want to start cranking them as soon as you can. Each time you make the ingot, you'll learn one of the new Crafted Dreadful plate recipes or Haunted Steel 522 epic patterns. Finally, you will learn the upgrade versions of each weapon only when you craft that weapon. Ingots will be required as materials for each version of the weapon. So making ingots is something you'll be doing for a while :)

If you have any questions or relevant information to share with others, please leave a Comment!
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Patch 5.2 Coming Today!

2013-03-05T11:07:00.000-08:00

I'm sure you all know that we're getting the latest patch today. For those who may have missed a post here or there, I've put together a quick list of the information we compiled so far:

Blacksmithing: The Thunder Forge Quests (my walk-thru of the process for getting your hands on those new weapon recipes! May not be available until later in the Isle progression).

Stockpiling: Items you may want to hold onto, grab at cheap prices, or charge insane prices for!

Jewelcrafting: New patterns and statistics on gem output.

Leatherworking: New patterns and statics on daily recipe discoveries

Tailors: Use your daily Imperial Silk cooldown to learn new recipes!

Engineers: The new 5.2 plans did not make it into the patch and the status of the new Stabilized Lightning Source is unknown.

Fishing: Visit El's Anglin to read all about the new Fishing goodies. According to El, the biggest patch for Anglers since 3.1.

Archaeology: The Mantid are added as a new race, plus two new BOA weapons and some additional trinkets.

I would like to remind all armor crafters that while the new 458 PVP gear is the majority of the discovery recipes available, 5.2 raid-quality recipes are also in the mix. Even if you don't care about PVP gear, use your daily discovery mechanic to unlock those new raid recipes!!
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5.2 Blacksmithing: The Thunder Forge Quests

2013-02-26T13:41:00.001-08:00

Today I finally made progress on accessing the Thunder Forge. I wish I had a firm grasp of the true progression, but the test realm has been forcibly progressed by the developers and I'm not 100% certain of the player requirements. We were in Stage 5 of the unlocking process until today and I don't know if this quest is available sooner than that. From what I've read in comments on Wowhead, this quest chain was not implemented until this past week or so, which is when Stage 5 was already active. I also have no way of knowing whether there are rep requirements for accessing this quest, but I am currently Honored with the Kirin Tor Offensive.

It may well be that Stage 5 is required, that is when I completed the new scenario for the Thunder Forge. I don't know whether you'd be able to reach the Thunder Forge area until after you finish that quest (done via scenario). For now I would hedge your bets and make sure you do every non-daily quest that Jaina offers you.

It's possible that you could just find Itoka (Master of the Forge, blue dot) outside the Thunder Forge and kill him. He drops the Strange Metal Ingot you need to start the quest. You can find him at the marked location on this map:

After you get his item, you enter the Thunder Forge room (red dot) and there will be a book laying by the forge that you can click to complete the quest. Your reward will be a Lightning Steel Ingot and Notes on Lightning Steel. The note contains seven new recipes: one for making a Lightning Steel Ingot and six plans for "Reborn" weapons. The six plans are Drakefist Hammer, Reborn | Fireguard, Reborn | Lionheart Blade, Reborn | Lunar Crescent, Reborn | Planar Edge, Reborn | Thunder, Reborn. Each of these recipes is still orange at 600 skill, even though they are marked as learnable at 500 skill.

I went ahead and learned the Lightning Steel recipe and made one - as suspected it does indeed have a daily cooldown. This will put a pretty effective throttle on the creation of Lightning Steel and limit how many Reborn weapons show up for sale. That's at least 4 days for a rare weapon and 14 days for epic weapons. If the tooltips are to be believed, you'll need to make each rare weapon in order to learn the epic version. Then you'll need to make the epic version to learn the upgraded epic version of that. This seems to model the original path of progression for these recipes where you were able to upgrade each weapon twice to get a more powerful version.

You also learn new recipes when making lightning steel. Today I learned the recipe for the Haunted Steel Greathelm. Apparently the item for this recipe is not yet implemented. I will post additional recipes as I learn them from the daily cooldown. I also plan to run my Engineer through this quest and report back on that process. Feel free to leave questions in the Comments!
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New Solo Scenarios in 5.2 "Treasures of the Thunder King"

2013-02-23T16:01:00.002-08:00

This is just a quickie post to share some details about the "Treasures of the Thunder King" scenario that's coming in the 5.2 patch. This is unlike most scenarios where you just kill stuff and collect justice points. In this scenario, you run a gauntlet-style area and avoid bad stuff. At the same time there are treasure chests sprinkled throughout the chamber which you can loot. I picked up a couple of the necessary keys while doing other scenarios/quests, so I thought I'd use one and see what kinds of booty I could collect.

I only made it through the first room because I was unable to find the key to unlock the second door. But I took notes on the treasure I collected from the first room:

20 Motes of Harmony

4 Elder Charms

1 Shan'ze Stone

10 Justice Points

3 Tattered Parchment

97 gold

Plus another 52 gold from quest turn-ins

This seems like quite a good haul to me for 5 minutes of work. As you get used to this run I'm sure your cash and goodie pile will increase. If you want to learn more about the scenario, you can read about it on Wowpedia. The main reason I wanted to share my information with you guys is because this is a substantial source for motes of harmony as well as rep items. So if you end up with a key from doing dailies, don't be afraid to use it and beef up your stash of SoH for crafting!

5.2 Stockpiling & Musings

2013-02-22T16:11:00.000-08:00

I still have some investigations ongoing from the PTR: JC daily results | LW daily results | continued progression on BS at the Isle of Thunder | EG progession out there as well. In the meantime, we're closing in on the patch deadline and I thought I should put together some information while it's still actionable. I got an email from Desade with his thoughts on stockpiling for 5.2 and I'm going to add my own thoughts as well.

I'm going to rank these in order of priority:

1) Ghost Iron!! If you do nothing else, start collecting/saving/buying ghost iron. There are so many new things going in that involve ghost iron it's not funny. Blacksmiths will need it for their new daily CD as well as the new PVP gear they'll be learning. Engineers will need it for their new component which is used in all three of their new recipes, and Jewelcrafters will need to prospect it for the Serpent's Eye(3) they need to use their daily CD. That's not to mention all the ghost iron bars required for the new "improved" Blacksmith leveling process that uses ghost iron instead of all the old-world metals. I expect this to put heavy demand on ghost iron.

2) Trillium Bars/Living Steel: I expect trillium bars to get residual pressure from the ghost iron squeeze. If ghost iron becomes too expensive, we may see crafters start shopping for trillium bars to make their Living Steel. I expect a spike in Living Steel demand due to increased interest in the current epics (new Raid Finder requirements) and demand from raiders for the 5.2 epics. Living steel is also used in all three of the new Engineering recipes. And apparently trillium bars are required for a 5.2 quest involving the Black Prince (ty Christina!).

3) Exotic Leather & Prismatic Scales: Leatherworkers will need a stack per day for their daily discovery cooldown, in addition to what they might use for crafting gear. The discovery recipes will unlock crafted 458 PVP gear and epic quality items as well. Currently the item level of the new crafted epics is not known. Both of these types of leather will work for the cooldown and both produce the magnificent hide needed to craft items.

4) Windwool Cloth/Imperial Silk: I expect a modest bump in demand for these items as raiders start purchasing 5.2 crafted gear and non-raiders start purchasing 476 gear to get into the higher Raid Finder groups. If your Tailor won't be participating in the new 5.2 content, you may not need to stockpile much if at all.

5) Spirits of Harmony: All crafters should be stockpiling SoH for making raid gear in 5.2. Even if you don't plan to do the Isle of Thunder content, you can still make 476 gear to sell players who need to beef up their item level for the 5.2 raid finder.

Be prepared that once 5.2 drops all of these items will go up in price to some degree. This weekend should be a good time to start purchasing cheap materials so you don't have to pay sky-high prices later. Good Luck and stay tuned!
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5.2 Jewelcrafting Patterns

2013-02-16T14:23:00.000-08:00

Per suggestion from a reader on my last post, I decided to tackle the new Jewelcrafting recipes this weekend. The choice of where to farm for these recipes is somewhat limited because my JC is only level 87. This seemed like a good chance to try some of the early zones and see what kind of luck I might have.

My first stop was in Valley of the Four Winds. I went for the mantid on the western edge of the zone. Based on my fuzzy head-math (aka keeping mental track of kills) I got the recipe for Serpent's Heart in about 14 kills. That's pretty decent considering the level of the mobs. Also, this recipe is still yellow at 600 skill. It might be an interesting addition to the leveling process for those who haven't capped their JC skill yet.

Next I thought I'd hit the Arboretum in Jade Forest, a zone that any 85 alt should be able to handle. I just killed orchard wasps around the area and I got the recipe for Primal Diamond in 20 kills. For me this pretty much confirms the likelihood of a Pandaria "world drop" designation for these items. This recipe is also yellow at 600 skill and may be useful for generating skill ups while leveling.

I went ahead and tried making both recipes to see if there were any weird caveats to them. The primal diamond recipe is not on a cooldown (presumably because it uses SoH) but it does require an anvil. Kind of annoying since we don't rely on anvils for other JC items. The Serpent's Heart recipe is on a daily CD and also requires an anvil. My mystery heart package contained one Primordial Ruby.

I'll keep playing around with the Serpent's Heart and get a better idea of the output. If I see anything interesting I'll post an update. If you have any questions on these two recipes, feel free to share them in the Comments!

UPDATE: Day 2 Serpent's Heart = 1x Vermilion Onyx, Day 3 Serpent's Heart = Imperial Amethyst, Day 4 Serpent's Heart = Imperial Amethyst, Day 5 = Sun's Radiance + Design: Jade Owl!!, Day 6 = Sun's Radiance, Day 7 = Vermilion Onyx, Day 8 = Sun's Radiance, Day 9 = Primal Diamond, Day 10 = Wild Jade, Day 11 = River's Heart, Day 12 = Imperial Amethyst, Day 13 = Vermilion Onyx.
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5.2 Leatherworking Patterns

2013-02-13T18:51:00.002-08:00

I'm still seeing very little information on Wowhead about how you acquire the two new "magnificence" recipes, so I decided to just go out and experiment. The only helpful clue available was that these new recipes are a "smart loot" item, which typically means they drop without a lot of effort. So I decided to take a pretty reasonable location and start killing stuff. Areas that are involved in daily quests seemed like a promising spot, so I went with the spiders in the northeast corner of Dread Wastes.

I probably killed about 15 spiders when the pattern for the Magnificence of Scales dropped. It binds when picked up, which I would expect with a smart loot item. It requires a skill level of 500 so it may even be available to Leatherworkers just getting into Pandaria.

There are actually two different recipes, so I picked a new location for part two of my test. This time I went to the Skyrange area in Valley of the Four Winds. This is where many of the Tiller daily quests take place. Once again I started killing quests beasties and this time got the drop on the fifth mob. From this I would assume that the drop rate is pretty generous and that it's very likely a "world drop". We have no hard data to back this up yet, but I suspect you could farm any mob in Pandaria and get these recipes. Just to be conservative, I'll suggest sticking with level 89-90 mobs. I feel fairly confident that Leatherworkers can get these recipes on patch day if they do a bit of farming.

March 5th Update: After the patch yesterday I killed turtles in Valley of the Four Winds and got the recipe from the first pair of mobs I killed. I feel pretty confident that these recipes are a world drop from any Pandaria mob.

Here are pics I took of both recipes:

Both of these recipes allow you to make a magnificent hide at less than half the mats currently used to create one. These recipes are on a daily cooldown that is shared, so you can only use one of these recipes once per day. You can see from the actual recipe tooltip that making these items also gives you a chance at a discovery pattern.

When I made mine I supposedly learned a new pattern but could not locate it in my spellbook. So clearly there are some kinks to work out. I will add more information on the discovery items as I utilize the daily cooldown. Feel free to leave questions about these new items in the Comments!

UDPATE: My 2nd discovery actually shows up in the recipe book -- check it out:

UPDATE #2: My 3rd discovery is yet another item that is not in my recipe book. You can see from the screenshot here that I don't actually have it:

The one entry on Wowhead suggests that it may be an epic recipe. I sure would love to actually see it!

Update #3: Today's new recipe is Crafted Dreadful Gladiator's Ringmail Gauntlets.
Update #4: Today's new recipe is Quilen Hide Helm, also MIA from the recipe book.
Update #5: Today's new recipe is Crafted Dreadful Gladiator's Wristguards of Alacrity.
Update #6: Today's new recipe is Crafted Dreadful Gladiator's Waistband of Accuracy.
Update #7: Today's new recipe is Crafted Dreadful Gladiator's Chain Spaulders
Update #8: Today's new recipe is Crafted Dreadful Gladiator's Copperskin Tunic
Update #9: Today's new recipe is Crafted Dreadful Gladiator's Sabatons of Alacrity
Update #10: Today's new recipe is Crafted Dreadful Gladiator's Linked Leggings
Update #11: Today's new recipe is Spirit Keeper Footguards
Update #12: Today's new recipe is Crafted Dreadful Gladiator's Chain Gauntlets
Update #13: Todays's new recipe is Crafted Dreadful Gladiator's Kodohide Gloves
Update #14: Today's new recipe is Crafted Dreadful Gladiator's Ringmail Helm
Update #15: Today's new recipe is Crafted Dreadful Gladiator's Chain Leggings
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5.2 PTR Update

2013-02-03T15:58:00.000-08:00

So I blast out all these tweets and no posts go up with details. I know, I'm with you on the frustration. I've been working on the new dailies at the Isle of Thunder, but they moved the quest hub a couple of weeks ago to a boat. You know it's a bad sign when you're on a boat instead of getting an actual town.

They also added an annoying zone counter to the top of the window which showed massive amounts of resources we were collecting. As of two days ago the count was at 35k/38k and nothing had changed with the content. In this new build, the counts are gone, but we are still on the friggin' boat. My zone map tells me that we are now on Stage 4 but I have no idea what this means. Clearly this will be a server-wide event with all players contributing to progress. But I don't know what the stages are or how many stages we need to complete.

At this point my Blacksmith is 4k into Friendly with the Kirin Tor Offensive (you start at Neutral). There are about a dozen daily quests you can do for 250 rep each, but I've only been doing 4-6 each day. Some of the quests are harder than others and there are quests that involve elite mobs. I suspect you will need a buddy or two if you want to get all dailies done.

I have yet to find the new forge or

Jewelcrafting is supposed to have some new recipes as well, but no sign of those either. I visited the trainer this afternoon and there is nothing new there. I also did the daily research to see if the new recipes are gained through discovery, but I learned nothing new from that. I'm not ruling it out at this point, I'll keep working on it.

Isle of the Thunder King Quickie Preview

2013-01-10T14:28:00.003-08:00

Lucky me, I popped onto the PTR today just as they were doing a 10 minute countdown to a server shutdown. Undaunted, I portaled out to the Isle of the Thunder King to see if I could learn anything of value. I arrived to a small camp very much under construction, with half naked dwarves hammering away. Piles of boxes are laying around and a handful of NPCs have daily quests for you. I did not have a chance to do any of these daily quests.

Another thing I noticed is that the NPCs here are from the Kirin Tor and Silver Covenant (I'm going to assume that Horde have a separate hub elsewhere). I'll have to complete some of the dailies to see whether we will indeed be working with Kirin Tor/Silver Covenant rep. The patch notes read that there will be a new Kirin Tor variant for this content, but who knows? There is also an NPC at the camp labeled as a "Silver Covenant Quartermaster". At this time I am unable to interact with him/her.

The official patch notes say that you can choose PVE or PVP for these quests, but my hunter was flagged as soon as she zoned in. I'm not sure exactly how this PVE/PVP thing is supposed to work, but I may learn more as I do the dailies.

As yet, no sign of the great forge! However, I see that the latest patch notes indicate a new recipe for "lightning steel" which also works as a discovery recipe. I can't wait to try that out! There are also a few new Tailoring recipes and a change to Imperial Silk that allows it to unlock discoveries as well. Should be some interesting information to uncover there :)

** UPDATE ** Got back onto the PTR tonight and was able to finish one daily quest. So far there are seven dailies available, most don't seem to be working. The one quest I did complete gave me (prepare yourselves) "5.2 Alliance" rep. So it seems that it will not be an existing faction. Also, the whole zone is PVP flagged and I could not figure out a way to get around that. After getting pounced twice by evil Hordies, I gave up researching for the day.

Feel free to leave any questions you might have about 5.2 professions in the Comments!

OMG Spam

2013-01-10T12:01:00.002-08:00

Sorry to say this folks but the spam comments are INSANE on last month's post. I'm going to lock it just so I can turn the spigot off. I know none of you are actually commenting any longer, this is just a courtesy post. I hope to start putting up new information from the 5.2 PTR sometime in the next week. My bad, I've been a bit distracted teaching myself JavaScript over at CodeAcademy! I'm working on a design for a US History game and I need to build a prototype.

Anyways, ignore this completely unnecessary post and I'll see about getting some real content soon!

** Update ** Just noticed a second post starting to get spammed (from Pilgrim's Bounty) so I'm turning off comments for it as well. Good grief Google - get your act together!

It's beginning to look a lot like... Scantily Clad Elf Season!

2012-12-15T13:31:00.001-08:00

The Feast of Winter's Veil started today and there is plenty of fun stuff to keep you busy, including crafting goodies. Every year one of the things we do at Crafter's Tome is encourage Tailors to get both copies of the Green/Red Winter Clothes. Typically this involves a suicide run into the opposing faction's capital city to purchase from the Smokywood Pastures vendor (the vendors are neutral).

Late last year I got a tip from a reader that there was a Smokywood vendor in a neutral city, eliminating the need for kamikaze shopping. So my first mission today was to verify this vendor and confirm that she had the recipes. The good news is that she's still there this year. The bad news is that she only has one of the two recipes. I'm sorry Horde Tailors, you still have to do the suicide mission if you want the Red outfit :(

But Alliance players can get their hands on the Green recipe quite easily. Simply go to Shattrath City and track down the goblin vendor outside the Aldor bank. She will sell you the Horde version of the Winter Clothes recipe. If you're a completionist or just want the option to have/sell both versions of the outfit, this is the simplest way to take care of it.

On the other hand, there's a certain sense of accomplishment (and bragging rights?) that comes with getting this recipe the hard way. This is just my 2 copper, but the comments we've gotten in previous years on this mission show that players really enjoyed the challenge of doing this and had a lot of fun with it. So if you're open to the idea, I say give the cross-faction adventure a shot. You can always hit Shattrath if you aren't able to pull off the heist.

For those willing to take the plunge, here's my list of tips:

Use the Wondervolt Machine in your home city to disguise yourself before you head out!
Make sure you ride a faction-neutral mount within Horde zones
Pick up some Invisibility Potions or Free Action Potions, just in case things get hairy
Embark on your expedition during off-peak hours to minimize interference
Choose a less populated city such as Thunder Bluff or Exodar
If you die, corpse-rez on top of the vendor to avoid visual detection.

Thank you to reader "Raxx" for sharing this tip with us last year :)

Winter's Veil Prep - Do It Now!

2012-12-06T12:05:00.001-08:00

I don't know how many of you have checked the in-game calendar recently but Winter's Veil is right around the corner. Ok so it's more like 10 days around the corner, but it never hurts to be prepared! Now is the perfect time to start collecting materials for the Winter's Veil frenzy. Whether you plan to craft items to sell or just build up a stash of materials to mark up and flip, odds are you'll get most items pretty cheap right now. What with all the leveling pandas running around, there's bound to be plenty of deals available.

4 bolts of Runecloth + 1 bolt of Woolen Cloth = Winter Clothes

1 bolt of Woolen Cloth + 1 copper bar + 4 Rugged Leather = Winter Boots

Gingerbread Cookie = 1 small egg + 1 Holiday Spices

Egg Nog = 1 small egg + 1 Holiday Spices + 1 Holiday Spirits + 1 Ice Cold Milk

Hot Apple Cider = 1 Holiday Spices + 1 Holiday Spirits + 1 Sparkling Apple Cider

All of the materials in bold must be farmed by players. As a result, you often see newbie zones crawling with high level players, killing all the local fowl. The prices for these items also skyrocket as soon as the event goes active. By planning ahead and purchasing any items you need, you can avoid the worst of the price-gouging (or stockpile goodies and participate in the gouging!). Currently small eggs and bolts of wool cloth are going for around 1 gold apiece on my realm. These prices will shoot up to 5 - 10 - 20 gold or even higher in the first few days of Winter Veil. So I encourage you all to spend a few minutes and pick up these items while the prices are still reasonable :)

If you have any other suggestions of items savvy shoppers should grab before the start of Winter's Veil, be sure to leave a Comment!!

Post Patch Info for Patch 5.1

2012-11-28T00:47:00.000-08:00

I'm throwing out a quick little post to make sure folks know about a few changes in yesterday's patch (5.1).

A commendation has been added for the Tillers. I wasn't sure if the Tillers would be included in the reputation bonus changes, but apparently they were. This should be very helpful for alts still unlocking their farms. I know my hunter went up 6000 rep in one night thanks to this change!
Rep bonuses are applied to the rep you get from harvesting your crops. My girls were getting 110 rep (55 bonus rep) for every crop they collected last night. This means you can get 440/880/1320 rep just for picking plants! Assuming guild perks of course :)
Recipes on vendors are not flagged as "Already Known" so be careful about purchasing vendor recipes based on that status text. I made that mistake right off the bat last night and almost did it a second time while visiting various faction vendors.
Trading a Spirit of Harmony to the SoH vendor will now purchase only 2x Golden Lotus, reduced from 3x Golden Lotus previously.
The patch notes specified that a Spirit of Harmony can be purchased with 600 Conquest Points. I've confirmed that this is the case, you can find the Conquest vendor at the tower just south of the Terrace of Gurthan along the Serpent's Spine (the big wall between zones).
Silkmaster Tsai of the Silken Fields (in Valley of the Four Winds) has become a Tailoring trainer. It's about dang time!
Confirmed nerf of herb/ore spawns in Pandaria!

Some of these items were not in the patch notes, so I decided to share them here. If you've found any other undocumented changes, feel free to add them to the Comments!

Pilgrim's Bounty - Panda Style!

2012-11-19T16:27:00.003-08:00

The last few months of the Azerothian year are so much fun. It feels like there's a new seasonal event every few weeks to break up the daily grind. Yesterday, Pilgrim's Bounty swung into action. Even if you've already done this event and don't need the achievements, you can still benefit from the reputation bonus available through the Spirit of Sharing buff. An extra 10% increase in reputation gains over the next six days could put a nice dent in your faction goals. You can get this buff by visiting any major city and feasting on all five foods until you get a five stack of each food buff. Once you have all food buffs stacked, you'll activate the Spirit of Sharing buff! I would make a point of doing this every time you head out to work on your dailies.
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Armor-Crafting Glory Days

2012-11-12T11:54:00.000-08:00

In my last post we talked about the rep grinds in Mists of Pandaria and how it's creating some problems for players. I see a lot of this as growing pains more than an actual crisis. As the expansion moves forward we'll unlock more content and the frustration will be less of an issue. The best way to deal with the current situation is to prioritize. So I thought I'd talk about that today and share my thoughts.
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On Reputations in Pandaria

2012-11-05T14:09:00.003-08:00

I don't know about you guys, but the changes to reputations in 5.1 have already got me strategizing my current gameplan for dailies. Earlier this week I got my second toon to 90, so I'm employing a bit of a "divide and conquer" scenario. Kaliope had been pushing Golden Lotus to Honored for the nice Leatherworking recipes while Kayree spent her last two levels in Townlong, soaking up Shado-pan rep for Enchanting recipes. I'm still not completely clear on the reason for the Golden Lotus gating to other reps. In the case of Kayree (enchanter/engineer) she has no need for Golden Lotus except to unlock Shado-pan. Kaliope also has no desire to continue doing Golden Lotus now that she has her recipes. But after the arduous grind to Honored, I find myself contemplating a push to Revered purely for the benefit of my other toons. Since Kaliope is already Honored, it should be faster to get her to Revered, which will let me unlock double rep for all the others who need it.
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Portable Refrigerator coming in Patch 5.1

2012-10-26T11:12:00.000-07:00

As you may already know, a new bag is coming in Patch 5.1 that will hold all of the various items associated with Cooking. Today I popped over to the PTR to check it out!

The bag is currently being sold by Nam Ironpaw, the token vendor at Halfhill. He'll give you a Portable Fridge for 10 Ironpaw tokens. This bag Binds when Picked Up, so you can't buy extra ones for your alts. Since Cooking can be started by level 85 toons, you can easily take those toons out there to get their own bag. The bags are not unique, so you could theoretically purchase several on one toon. I'm not sure that's a practical thing to do, but that may depend on how you have your alts set up. Here's a pic of the vendor page with the new bag:

Something to keep in mind is that there are tentative plans to create a Void Storage-esque option for Cooking. If this is implemented, it could reduce the need for massive bag storage. It's up to you to decide how invested to get with the bags vs. waiting for a better storage option.

I'm excited to see this new bag, currently I use the mail system as my pantry :) I'm not sure which toon will get the bag just yet, but hopefully I'll have that figured out by the time 5.1 drops. I have to say I'm pretty tickled to see this item get implemented. We asked for this in Beta and while it would have been nice to have it for launch, I'm glad to see them work it into the first big patch for MoP. Thanks guys!

If you have any other questions regarding profession content on the PTR, leave a Comment and I'll look into it!

Faction Boosts for Alts Coming Soon

2012-10-05T10:22:00.004-07:00

For those of you who missed the news yesterday (and my tweets), Blizzard announced that they are upgrading the faction system to incorporate boosted rates for alts:

Basically, once one of your characters has reached at least Revered reputation with a faction, all other characters on the same Battle.net account will then earn reputation with the same faction at twice the rate. Going one step further, and as an added bonus, your main character who reached Revered will also begin to earn double the reputation as he or she climbs to Exalted.

Here's a simplified break down:

Any single character earns Revered reputation with a faction
All other characters on the Battle.net account begin to earn double reputation for that one same faction
The Revered character earns double reputation as he or she works toward Exalted

Notice that this post does not specify which patch these changes will be applied to. I would like to think it's 5.1 but that may not happen. Knowing how the system is planned to work can at least give us the opportunity to prioritize our characters and decide which alts/factions to work on going into the change.

The main reason I chose to repost this announcement is because faction grinding was one of several contentious topics we discussed over the summer. Plus we've had a month or so to get used to the idea of account-wide features. I'm glad to see that they are expanding the notion of account-wide functionality to incorporate reputation values. To me this seems like a natural progression. Now that we have some new information about where Blizzard wants to take factions, I'm sure you guys will have plenty to say about it =)

Spirit of Harmony Reality Check

2012-10-02T10:11:00.001-07:00

It's been a busy week eh? I know I'm going crazy trying to keep up with all my professions while maintaining a facade of reasonable leveling for my guild mates =)

I want to talk a little bit about Spirits of Harmony because I've been reading all over the place about the angst of collecting them. Folks are sharing AOE farming spots and bemoaning the drop rates. There's a lot of frustration out there and I feel you guys. I know it's rough -- we're lowbies again! We've kind of gotten used to being king of the server with the world at our feet :)

While I applaud the ingenuity of some of the ideas floating around, I think we may be losing sight of the big picture. Once you reach level 90 and fully unlock your Farm, you'll be able to collect 16 motes of harmony in 5-10 minutes of work a day. Right now we're spending hours grinding mobs for worse results. I know, I've been doing it too. Meanwhile, if you're grinding mobs, you're not leveling. The best thing we can do is get ourselves to 90 and start our Farms. Yes it may take a couple of weeks, but the sooner we do it, the sooner we'll reach full production mode.

I've also read from a good number of folks on the Beta forums that motes drop at a higher rate from level 90 content. Doing dailies at that point may be much more lucrative than farming 85-87 mobs. Either way, wouldn't you rather be working on your faction while grinding mobs instead of whatever mobs you're grinding now?

It's hard to be patient, I get that. We want our shinies and we want them now! We want to cash in on the high of an energized player base. But at the end of the day, the difficulty of getting SoH is a good thing. It means every shmoe on the server won't have 50 of the same item you're trying to sell.

Thoughts? Discuss!

Where We Revel in the Awesomeness!

2012-09-27T10:26:00.000-07:00

First I want to say that you guys are OUTSTANDING! I loved hearing about your Realm First achievements and the amazing feats some of you pulled off =) I feel like we went out to the Olympics and a bunch of you came back with Gold Medals. I'm so proud and really happy that the guides were a part of your success.

On top of this, we had some fantastic guild achievements as well. This is really incredible to me because you have a whole group of people working together and coordinating to pull off a really big challenge. Congrats to everyone on their hard work over the last 24 hours!

You guys are a big part of this success. I pushed myself harder this summer than ever before, determined to give you the best possible information. For the first time I leveled professions more than once to catch changes and make tweaks. You asked great questions that got me out there digging for more answers. We debated big issues like the Spirit of Harmony mechanic, faction grinding and the best strategies for Farms. All of these things helped keep me motivated so I was working harder and better. For this I thank you, this is YOUR success and YOUR blog just as much as mine :)

To illustrate this point, here are some stats I pulled off the "Brag" post:

I counted at least 145 Realm First achievements from folks reporting back in the Comments
We had at least 7 guilds report getting "Working As A Better Team"
At least a dozen of you got 3 or more Realm achievements. This is huge!

For those of you who had problems, faced lag or couldn't play Monday night, you were still a part of the story. You asked questions, shared tips and debated strategy with us. All of these things help us figure out a winning plan, so thank you for being a part of this awesome community we've built. You guys are amazing and I'm really proud to be a part of the positive and supportive group of gamers we've built.

Thank you!
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