Posts tagged guide

The Art Of Gold Making: Setting Up Shop

Aug 25th

Posted by Jaedia in Guides For Things

17 comments

Okay guys, so you may have read my last gold post and thought, “That’s great and all, Jae, but, where exactly do you expect us to start? What are the most helpful mods? Any quick tips? What are the best professions to use?” Well, don’t worry, I didn’t intend to leave it there. I was in the same position as those of you who are just starting out at some point, not knowing where to start, and I fully intend to help you get to a point where you are able to make enough income to play comfortably, how much you end up making purely depends on how much time and effort you put into it. You can spend an hour here or there and make enough to cover raiding costs, and then some.

I think it’s best if I start from the beginning. If you’re looking for professions, the best ones will be any that you can use to craft things. That would be: Tailoring, Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, Jewelcrafting, Alchemy, Enchanting, Inscription, Engineering. Gathering professions are a nice bonus if you want them. Personally, I like having them, but they aren’t the best way to make gold strictly speaking. However, I really believe it’s down to personal preference. Every profession has its’ own way to make a bit of gold so choose whichever you prefer and I’ll cover how to use them effectively in a later post.

Bank Alts

The first thing I do, regardless of my level, on any server, is to create a bank alt. I give it a name that I might give a character (rather than Jaedialt, or Wgrtdf) or perhaps recycle an alt I don’t play anymore, run it to the nearest city (or maybe I’ll create a Blood Elf and make my way to Undercity or Orgrimmar. I personally think that Undercity is the best for Horde bank alting, and Ironforge for Alliance), and leave it near the auction house. I make sure it has some gold, buy all of the bank slots, and fill them and every bag slot with either 20 slot or 16 slot bags, depending on how much gold I have and then log out.

This character is there to enable you to mail any useful items you might want to keep or sell to stop your bags from clogging up too much while you’re questing or grinding. You can always return the mail later on if need be. If you have a lot of auctions, you might even consider putting a guild together purely so you can have access to the guild bank to store anything you don’t have space for, you can let your friends join to use the guild tag, or keep it purely for guild bank purposes. My personal guild bank currently has 4 tabs, and I’m considering buying a 5th. The extra space is just too awesome.

Auction Mods

After your space is set up and ready to use, you may want to look into getting a few mods. They aren’t a necessity, of course, but they do make auctioning a lot simpler, and make it a bit easier to contend with the people who seem to sit there doing their auctions all day, and all night.

Personally, I like to use Postal, Auctioneer, QuickAuctions, Market Watcher, Auction Profit, and Skillet on my crafting characters. I only use these mods (except for Postal, which is useful anyway) on my bank alt as it saves memory on the characters that don’t need them.

Very often, I will have a few hundred mails in my mailbox. You’re only able to open 50 every minute, and Postal really helps with that. With its’ ‘Open All’ function, you can leave it to open those 50 mails while you alt tab or read a book for the minute. It has a countdown as well on the mail symbol so if you choose to watch the mailbox, you’re able to see when it’s ready to be refreshed. Emptying the mailbox is possibly the most tedious part of doing your auctions, thanks to Postal, it’s just a tiny bit less tedious.

Auctioneer has many useful features. One of its’ main uses is of course scanning the auction house, if you scan regularly enoughi you will be given an average market price for each item. These average prices are particularly useful when working out how much an item should go for if it’s perhaps too low, or too high, or if there isn’t any of that item up at the time. BeanCounter can be used to search for an item to see your sale history. It can tell you your past sales and buyouts, which you might find useful. This guide will help you to use Auctioneer to check for items selling below the vendor price, and also for items that may be worth buying to resell.

I like to use QuickAuctions3 as well as Auctioneer. Once you’ve set it up, adding different groups and price settings for each of your regular auctions, you can basically use the ‘post’ and ‘cancel’ buttons, and the most work you end up doing is waiting for the mailbox to refresh. The ‘cancel’ button cancels any of the items you’ve added to QA3′s groups which have been undercut, so that you can put them back up as the lowest priced auction. This is particularly great if you’re in the glyph market, but don’t knock it for any others you might dip your toes into. Follow this guide to help you set it up.

AuctionPrice tells you how much gold your current auctions are in total. Of course, if everytime I put up auctions they sold I’d be very very rich ingame, but it’s nice to see roughly how much gold is sitting there, this is purely there for my own curiosity and isn’t really important.

Market Watcher as well is nice to scan for particular items and watch the market trends. I tend to watch for raw materials, mostly uncut gems, cloth, herbs, Frozen Orbs. Anything you might buy a lot of is useful to keep an eye on.

Skillet is basically a change to the default crafting UI. I’m not a huge fan of the way Skillet itself looks, but it’s very useful if you’re crafting a few things. I only really use it on my Inscriptor and my Jewelcrafter, as it allows me to queue up whatever I want to craft, and then make it, which is nice when I’m checking which gems I’m low on, or which glyphs are selling well at that point in time.

Aphroditi’s guide to the auction house, and more auction tips are very decent posts which have been very helpful to me in setting up Auctioneer and Market Watcher, I recommend you take a look.

Starter Cash

We all need to start somewhere, and there are many different ways you can get yourself a bit of starter cash. It all depends on how you’d rather spend your time doing so. If you want to, you can start off by using the vendor and resale options of Auctioneer, but if not, here are a few more options.

Vendor Items

One of the often overlooked methods of gaining a bit of gold, though it’s something people have been doing for years, is to buy vendor items, and resell them on the auction house. A lot of people don’t want to go trekking around looking for everything they need or want, and will pay a little extra to buy them from the auction house instead, saving them a bit of time. My favourite post detailing which vendor items to grab, along with maps for where to find them all, is this one. It is well detailed and easy to follow. People are willing to pay as much as 60g for certain patterns. Take the cooking recipes from the wandering caravan in Desolace, it’s a pain to find, and when you do the recipes are all ‘rare spawn’, only costing a few silver to buy. Don’t forget vendor pets – if you are able to grab pets from the other faction to sell on your faction’s auction house that’s brilliant, if not, don’t worry, same faction pets will sell as wellii.

Questing

Personally, I like to complete quests. You can gain a fair amount of gold from completing your Northrend questsiii, and if you have more than one character at max level and a lot of patience, that’s a few thousand gold you can get, guaranteed. While you do those, you can work on opening up a few daily quests, Sons of Hodir and the Argent Tournament ones especially. If you enjoy, or at least can tolerate, questing for money, 25 daily quests per day will get you a few hundred gold per character, it all depends on how much time and patience you have to spare. Don’t forget the weekly raid and Wintergrasp quests, not only do these give a fair bit of gold, but the emblems and honour they give are useful for gold makers (see below).

Gathering Professions

If you use gathering professions, be sure to pick up any materials you see while you’re flying around, even if you don’t have any crafting professions yet, selling these raw can get you a bit of starter gold, or perhaps you’d prefer to save them to use to level your professions or craft into things that will make a little more gold than the raw materials themselves. If you happen to be a miner, Titansteel bars are still profitable as well.

Random Dungeons and PvP

Another reasonable way to get some starter gold is to do a few random dungeons. The first one you do each day at level 80 will give you 2 Emblem of Frost and 26g, after that they grant 2 Emblem of Triumph and 13g. Remember to check the average price of Dream Shards on your server in order to know which blues are worth disenchanting, and which are worth greeding. A lot of the things you’ll pick up while doing the dungeons can sell, and if you don’t need the gear, you can turn 20 Emblem of Triumph into 20 Emblem of Heroism and then into Cardinal Rubies/Majestic Zircons/King’s Ambers. These you can either sell raw for around 100-130g each, or cut them and sell them for a little more. 10,000 honour can be traded in for gems as well. If you have any spare Stone Keeper’s Shards that you don’t need, make sure you turn them into honour (30 shards = 2,000 honour, and the tokens you get are BoA so you can send any from your alts to your main and vice versa), and of course you can do random battlegrounds too, you’re able to queue from anywhere in Azeroth, so perhaps grind a little while you queue (this also counts for random dungeons).

Grinding

If you really want to, there are plenty of good grinding spots, you just have to find the best ones. I find the Fire and Air Elementals on the Elemental Plateau in Nagrand are brilliant, on my server I could sell Motes of Fire for about 6g each, and Primal Air is still going for about 60g each, it’s useful for a few enchants, Cat’s Swiftness is still the best raiding enchant for a lot of physical classes without Engineering. Check other economy blogs for posts giving tips on the best places to farm.

Selling Professions

Finally, while you’re idling in cities chatting to people, reading blog posts, or whatever you do while you idle, remember to offer your professions in trade. Usually a crafting fee will be about 10g per craft, I stick to this for epic gem cuts, however, certain crafts might get you a bit more, so for some professions you might find it a little better to ask for tips, because some people might tip for a little more than you might be expecting. You will get people tipping 5g, but it seems to be quite rare, and therefore worth trusting in people’s generosity. For example, I have the Blood Draining recipe and I tend to get tips of anywhere between 50-250g for it because it’s fairly rare, or at least difficult to find people who actually respond. I still sometimes get 100g tips for crafting the Death Chill Cloak, for which I’d probably ask for about 15g if I put a fee on it. Just make sure you’re polite, people are less likely to tip if you refuse to pop to Orgrimmar/Ironforge (you can politely say that you’re waiting for somebody in Dalaran), if you’re rude and demanding, chances are they won’t be so generous. If they try to trade you without tipping, gently remind them, sometimes they forget, sometimes they’re just testing their luck, most often they will apologise and give you a little gold for your help.

Stay tuned for whenever I get off my arse to write another one!

Jaedia

  1. every 12 hours is ideal, but whenever you get chance works, you can do a quick scan with the double arrow but if your PC can’t quite take it, the longer scan does the same job, just might need 10 minutes of AFK time [↩]
  2. Stormspire Netherstorm, Shimmering Flats Thousand Needles, Org, Eversong Woods, UC, TB, Darn, SW, Elwynn Forest, Exodar, Dun Morogh, Tournament [↩]
  3. Grizzly Hills, Zul’Drak, Scholazar Basin, Storm Peaks, Icecrown [↩]
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Thorium Brotherhood

Aug 4th

Posted by Jaedia in Guides For Things

5 comments

The Thorium Brotherhood are a guild of elite craftsmen and women who originally resided in Ironforge, but during the War of the Three Hammers sided with the Dark Iron Dwarves. When the Dark Iron Dwarves were enslaved by Ragnaros, the Thorium Brotherhood broke free. Afterwards, they resided in Searing Gorge close to the materials they needed for their branch of crafting, and able to overlook the enslaved Dark Iron Dwarves of the quarry.

These days, it seems that the Thorium Brotherhood is one of the most pointless factions to be exalted with, giving no achievement, although, it’s also probably one of the easiest, and therefore you may find it useful to gain reputation with if you’re aiming for the Exalted.

If you’re looking for the rewards you can receive from Thorium Brotherhood reputation, Lokhtos Darkbargainer, an NPC within Blackrock Depths, sells a few recipes and patterns which are available at various reputation points. Of course, I believe, the main “useful” item you can receive from this reputation is the Blacksmithing plans for the Sulfuron Hammer, which is required to make Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros. You can receive them by completing this quest, which gives 1000 reputation with the Thorium Brotherhood.

Today, I decided that I’d finally throw all of the cores I’ve been collecting during our weekly Molten Core rep clears at some Dwarves and see what happened. In short, I’ve been aiming for 40 exalteds for a while, I’ve just been slacking a little bit. This one gets me upto 39, so that I can get my 40 achievement when I get that last 1000ish rep with the Ashen Verdict! It also satisfies the completionist in me, because yes, I could also have finished off my Consortium rep for the same result.

To finish this one off from 0/3000 neutral, I started by completing every quest at Thorium point. After that was done, I handed in Restoring Fiery Flux Supplies via Iron 30 times to get to friendly. I chose Iron Bars because they were the cheapest on my auction house and I didn’t fancy farming 120 Iron Bars/Kingsblood, do check the prices of Iron Bars/Ore, Kingsblood, and Heavy Leather on your server before making your decision.

From friendly, I needed to hand in 960 Dark Iron Residue. This can be pretty cheap on the auction house so you may want to check there first, if not you can farm that much in a couple of BRD runs, easily. I did 9 Gaining Even More Acceptance hand ins, and Gaining Acceptance hand ins until I hit honoured.

Then the fun begins. Well, it depends on how easily you can get your hands on Fiery Cores and/or Lava Cores. These drop from trash and bosses in Molten Core. Personally, I’ve been collecting them for a fair few weeks but if you haven’t been you could start farming the trash, or check the auction house, I believe on most servers they will sell for around 40g each, more or less, it depends on how much you’re willing to spend and how much time you can put in. From honoured to exalted, you will need 30 cores.

As I had all of the cores (and then some), all I had to do was finish the quests, which also netted me the remaining Incendasaur Scales, and farm 460 Dark Iron Residue, as the auction house didn’t quite have enough, and overall it only took a few hours.

Jaedia

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The Art Of Gold Making: Where To Start

Jul 31st

Posted by Jaedia in Guides For Things

3 comments

A lot of people have asked me how I go about making gold. They aren’t sure where to start, or where to look for these tips and ideas. This is the method of gold making that I have found works well for me, but of course, there are many different ways you can make gold. Everybody needs to start somewhere so, hopefully this is a nice starting point for you if you need it, or perhaps a couple of ideas you hadn’t come across before. Either way I hope this is helpful.

Getting Started

In the beginning, it’s important to know a few things. Quests will give you money and rewards, often, the rewards won’t be worth using, but you can hover over each reward to check which will vendor for the most. If you’re an enchanter, you can also disenchant any green or blue rewards that you don’t need. Greys vendor for more than white items, and are completely useless. Hold onto them to vendor, and make a habit of keeping on top of your bag space whenever you’re near a vendor. White items can be useful, it may be worth checking the auction house or wowhead to see how useful certain white items are. For example, the Giant Eggs that can drop from level 40-60 ish mobs are used for a cooking quest at 250 cooking skill, these can sell for a little bit on the auction house.

Questing

You might like to start by finishing off a few quest areas if you’re high level. The amount of gold you can gather from clearing Icecrown/Storm Peaks, etc. is fairly high, especially when you include quest rewards, drops, and any gatherables if you have a gathering profession.

Daily quests, as well, are a decent way to make gold. You can do 25 daily quests a day, each one will give roughly 13g each, if you completed 25 every day, that gives 325 gold roughly, give or take. Some will give more, some will give less, it’s probably best to try a few and see which ones you can complete fastest for the most profit.

This guide over at Ten Ton Hammer, whilst a little out of date (quests 8 and 9 are no longer available), is a decent guideline. It’s worth noting that the Argent Tournament is a nice little quest hub, especially once you’re able to do the champion and Crusader dailies. Also, random dungeons for the first one you complete at level 80 give 26g, the next few for the rest of the day will give 13g, these are another good way to earn gold.

The Auction House

There are auction houses in every race’s capital city. There isn’t one in Shattrath, and there isn’t one in Dalaran unless you’re a high level Engineer. There are also neutral auction houses in Gadgetzan (Tanaris), Everlook (Winterspring), and Booty Bay (Stranglethorn Vale), all of these are Goblin towns. Neutral auction houses allow you to trade between Horde and Alliance, which you cannot do with the regular auction house. You can use this to trade between your characters, or perhaps pick up a good deal once in a while.

You can sell just about anything on the auction house, and you can watch your server’s markets for what is going to sell the best. Interesting looking items of clothing, for example, will sell much better on RP servers than on non-RP servers. When you’re getting started, you’ll want to focus on just a few items. Use your professions, choose something that will sell, like Belt Buckles, Netherweave Bags, flasks, things that are in high demand, and only undercut by 1 copper, there is no need to undercut by more, after a few hundred auctions it will add up.

Banking

It’s worthwhile having a bank alt, a character purely used to store items, and auction, though not necessary, however, most auctioneers use a bank alt. Usually a discarded alt, or a specifically created character. I’d recommend giving it a name that you might give to a character, or [name]bank, rather than a keyboard mashing name. Though I don’t have any proof that it makes much difference, I’m sure one or two people might avoid buying from somebody whose bank alt looks very likely to be a gold seller. If you can afford to, fill your bag slots and bank slots with 20 slot bags, if not, use whatever you can get your hands on at first and build up.

Another useful venture, once you start storing more items than your bags and bank can hold, is a guild bank. You can buy a charter, get 10 signatures (even if you pay people 5g, give or take, for a signature), and purchase a guild bank tab to use for storing your items. As space becomes more tight, you can buy more tabs as you feel is necessary.

Addons

Finally, you might find it a bit easier to use a few mods. Personally, I use Auctioneer, Market Watch, Postal, and Auction Profit. I only use these on my bank alt, as they’re a lot of memory to keep activated on my other characters as well. Addon Control Panel is great if you use a character that you play as well as your bank alt. This enable you to activate/deactivate mods by simply reloading, saving you from logging out, which I’ve found very useful when joining pugs. When setting up my mods I followed this guide to install the mods, and this guide on how to make good use from them.

I hope I’ve been of some help, go ahead and find some economy blogs for further tips, the Just My 2 Copper forums can be quite good to browse. Find out what works best for you on your server, test different methods, because everybody has slightly different ways of making gold.

Jaedia

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Midsummer

Jun 22nd

Posted by Jaedia in Guides For Things

15 comments

As always, I forgot that Midsummer started the other night. I was logging around different bank alts, doing some auctions to pass the time and noticed a bunch of Blood Elf Commoners – oh! Midsummer! Well, as I’ve decided to make a little collection of festival guides which I plan to update if anything changes when they next roll around, here is my Midsummer guide.

Achievements

  • Ice the Frost Lord – Slay Ahune in the Slave Pens. You don’t need to find a group starting from this festival (2010), you can now find a random pug the same way you can in random dungeon finder, just go to the drop down menu and select ‘The Frost Lord Ahune’ or speak to one of the Earthen Ring Scout Dungeonmasters found around cities. You can still find a group the old way, but you won’t receive your Satchel without using the Dungeon Finder.
  • Torch Juggler – You should only need 10 torches for this. You will gain 5 from one of the quests (see below), and you can buy them for 5 blossoms for a stack of 5 from the Midsummer vendors in cities. To complete the achievement, make sure you’re in Dalaran, keybind the torch, then spam click on the area your character is standing. If you throw them to a place your character isn’t standing then you will lose the torches.
  • Burning Hot Pole Dance – You need the complete Midsummer set (which this year you cannot sell back to the vendor) – shoes, chest, shoulders (see below for prices – the hat is not needed). To complete the achievement, equip the set, click on the pole, of which you can find near the NPC you bought the clothes from/handed in your quest to, and spin.
  • King of the Fire Festival – Complete the quest ‘A Thief’s Reward‘/’A Thief’s Reward‘, obtained from the Festival Tailspinner(Horde) or Festival Loremaster(Alliance). They will require you to steal your enemy’s flames from each capital city. This quest will grant you with the Crown of the Fire Festival.
  • The Fires of Azeroth/The Fires of Azeroth – Honour the flames of Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms, and Outlands as listed below.
  • Desecration of the Alliance/Desecration of the Horde – Desecrate the flames of Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms, and Outlands as listed below.

Quests

Dailies:

Flames

The maps on Wowhead say it better than I can, but here’s a list of all of the flames and their co-ords. Horde and Alliance. Also, remember that Northrend will not count towards the achievement but you will still receive Blossoms for those bonfires.

I don’t know how many of you use or have heard of the TourGuide addon, but I’ve been informed that there is a Midsummer Fire Festival addition to it which makes finding the flames much easier if that interests you at all. If not, here are the co-ords for each bonfire.

Horde Cities:

  • Orgrimmar – (Durotar), Valley of Wisdom – 47,38.
  • Thunder Bluff – (Mulgore), Spirit Rise – 21,26.
  • Undercity – (Tirisfal Glades), Ruins of Lordaeron – 68,9.
  • Silvermoon City –  (Eversong Woods), Court of the Sun – 70,43.

Alliance Cities:

  • Stormwind – (Elwynn Forest), The Canals – 49,72.
  • Ironforge – (Dun Morogh), Hall of Explorers – 64,25.
  • Darnassus – (Teldrassil), Rut’theran Village – 55,91.
  • The Exodar – (Azuremyst Isle), The Crystal Hall – 41,26.

Kalimdor Horde:

  • Winterspring, Everlook – 59,35.
  • Ashenvale, Splintertree Post – 70,69.
  • Durotar, Razor Hill – 52,47.
  • The Barrens, The Crossroads – 52,28.
  • Dustwallow Marsh, Brackenwell Village – 33,30.
  • Thousand Needles, Freewind Post – 41,52.
  • Tanaris, Gadgetzan – 49,27.
  • Silithus, Cenarion Hold – 46,44.
  • Feralas, Camp Mojache – 72,47.
  • Mulgore, Bloodhoof Village – 51,60.
  • Desolace, Shadowprey Village – 26,76.
  • Stonetalon Mountains, Sun Rock Retreat – 50,60.

Kalimdor Alliance:

  • Bloodmyst Isle, Blood Watch – 55,69.
  • Azuremyst Isle, Azure Watch – 44,53.
  • Teldrassil, Dolanaar – 55,60.
  • Darkshore, Auberdine – 37,46.
  • Winterspring, Everlook – 62,35.
  • Ashenvale, Astranaar – 38, 54.
  • Desolace, Nijel’s Point – 65,17.
  • Feralas, Feathermoon Stronghold – 28,44.
  • Silithus, Cenarion Hold – 57,34.
  • Tanaris, Gadgetzan – 52,29.
  • Dustwallow Marsh, Theramore Isle – 62,40.

Eastern Kingdoms Horde:

  • Eversong Woods, North Sanctum – 46,50.
  • Ghostlands, Tranquillien – 46,26.
  • Tirisfal Glades, Brill – 57,52.
  • Silverpine Forest, The Sepulcher – 49,38.
  • Hillsbrad Foothills, Tarren Mill – 58,25.
  • The Hinterlands, Revantusk Village – 76,74.
  • Arathi Highlands, Hammerfall – 74,41.
  • Badlands, Kargath – 4,49.
  • Burning Steppes, Flame Crest – 62,29.
  • Swamp of Sorrows, Stonard – 47,47.
  • Stranglethorn Vale, East of Booty Bay – 32,75.

Eastern Kingdoms Alliance:

  • Western Plaguelands, Chillwind Camp – 43,82.
  • The Hinterlands, Aerie Peak – 14,50.
  • Hillsbrad Foothills, Southshore – 50,46.
  • Arathi Highlands, Refuge Point – 50,44.
  • Wetlands, Menethil Harbor – 13,47.
  • Dun Morogh, Kharanos – 46,46.
  • Loch Modan, Thelsamar – 32,40.
  • Burning Steppes, Morgan’s Vigil – 80,62.
  • Redridge Mountains, Lakeshire – 24,59.
  • Blasted Lands, Nethergarde Keep – 58,17.
  • Duskwood, Darkshire – 74,51.
  • Westfall, Sentinel Hill – 56,54.
  • Elwynn Forest, Goldshire – 43,65.
  • Stranglethorn Vale, East of Booty Bay – 33,73.

Outland Horde:

  • Terrokar Forest, Stonebreaker Hold – 52,43.
  • Nagrand, Garadar – 51,34.
  • Zangarmarsh, Zabra’Jin – 36,52.
  • Blade’s Edge Mountains, Thunderlord Stronghold – 50,59.
  • Netherstorm, Area 52 – 32,68.
  • Hellfire Peninsula, Thrallmar – 55,40.
  • Shadowmoon Valley, Shadowmoon Village – 33,30.

Outland Alliance:

  • Terrokar Forest, Allerian Stronghold – 55,55.
  • Nagrand, Telaar – 50,70.
  • Zangarmarsh, Telredor – 69,52.
  • Blade’s Edge Mountains, Sylvanaar – 42,66.
  • Netherstorm, Area 52 – 31,63.
  • Hellfire Peninsula, Honor Hold – 62,58.
  • Shadowmoon Valley, Wildhammer Stronghold – 40,55.

Northrend Horde:

  • Borean Tundra, Bor’gorok Outpost – 51,12.
  • Scholazar Basin, River’s Heart – 47,62.
  • Dragonblight, Agmar’s Hammer – 39,48.
  • Crystalsong Forest, Sunreaver’s Command – 80,53.
  • The Storm Peaks, K3 – 40,86.
  • Zul’Drak, The Argent Stand – 43,71.
  • Grizzly Hills, Conquest Hold – 19,61.
  • Howling Fjord, Camp Winterhoof – 48,13.

Northrend Alliance:

  • Borean Tundra, Fizzcrank Airstrip – 55,20.
  • Scholazar Basin, River’s Heart – 47,66.
  • Dragonblight, Wintergarde Keep – 75,44.
  • Crystalsong Forest, Windrunner’s Outlook – 78,75.
  • The Storm Peaks, K3 – 42,87.
  • Zul’Drak, The Argent Stand – 41,61.
  • Grizzly Hills, Amberpine Lodge – 34,61.
  • Howling Fjord, Fort Wildervar – 58,16.

Ahune the Frost Lord

Ahune is one of the elemental lords in Neptulon’s service, summoned by the Twilight’s Hammer.

He resides within the Slave Pens, though you now only need to use the Dungeon Finder to find a group and get there. This will also net you a Satchel of Chilled Goods which will contain 2 Emblem of Frost, and a chance for either the Frigid Frostling or Frostscythe of Lord Ahune, which will no longer drop from the boss. When defeated there will be a chest which will contain an item to start a quest which rewards one of two tabards (Summer Skies or Summer Flames) and 20 Burning Blossom.

To activate him, a member of your party must click on the ice stone, which will melt, and then he is summoned. During the first phase you will do reduced damage on him. It is possible for ranged to dps him down a little, this will affect the Frozen Core’s health, though it won’t be much. There are spawned adds which need to be taken care of, and frost spikes which are best to avoid as they throw you into the air and you will take damage. Once this phase is over he is reduced to his weakened state, the Frozen Core, which can be dpsed down in one go, though it’s not necessary. If he isn’t killed in this phase, then it will go back to phase 1.

The items you can loot from the chest are the following:

Midsummer Vendor

The currency for the Midsummer festival is Burning Blossom. You receive these from dailies, tabard quest, other quests, honouring and desecrating flames.

I personally recommend you buy the outfit and 5 juggling torches first in order to complete your achievements.

Jaedia

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The Face Melter: Scaling Factors

Jun 2nd

Posted by Jaedia in Priesty Things

16 comments

I finally decided to take a look at SimulationCraft. I’d taken this long specifically because, okay I’m lying to you, I’d had a look before and I didn’t understand what the heck I was doing with it. Until I came across this guide, which admittedly did take me a while to read through but it’s so utterly simple that I feel a bit silly for waiting so long.

I thought I’d go through with you the basics of how to use this programme. I’m sure there are ways to use it that will tell you so much more, but SimulationCraft isn’t the simplest of programmes as far as I can tell so I’m starting with the basics and I’ll find more guides, tips, and fiddle a bit. If, like me, you’ve never used SimulationCraft before but would like to see your own scaling factors and details to improve yourself rather than base your theory on somebody else’s numbers, then hopefully this will be helpful to you.

The only thing you’ll need to change is in the scaling tab. You will want it to look like the following as a Shadow Priest.

Next, import your armory for analysis. You will have the armory page open up, and a few other options. The only bits you really need to care about are these, to keep it simple. Top left, bottom left, and bottom right.

Once you have imported, your character’s details will appear. At the bottom right, the same place as the import button, you will see this.

While you wait for your profile to load you will be able to see the bar moving. Then you can see the results.

The results page will give you a range of information about your character. Have a look through, it’s very useful. Just a few examples from my own results. With an optimal raid situation, I should be capable of about 9k dps. As with anything, this won’t take into account movement time, taking care of adds, any stuns i.e. the bone spikes on Lord Marrowgar, however, it’s nice to see what you could be doing with full raid buffs on a Patchwerk style fight.

This pie chart tells me which of my abilities should be doing the most damage. If you use a damage meter, probably Recount or Skada, or a parse,i this will show you what you should be doing, which you can compare to what you are doing. If there’s a big difference then this will allow you to play around with things a bit to improve a little.

Further down, there is an ‘action priority list’, which tells you how to prioritise any spells and buffs while in combat. Generally, you will probably know all of this already. Food buffs, flasks, speed potions, Shadowfiend, followed by DoTs, and so on. There are plenty of topics about it on ShadowPriest.com though if you’d like to have a look, it’s there. It isn’t specifically a rotation list, but it does tell you what you should prioritise, i.e. if Shadow Word: Pain falls off, it should be the first thing you refresh.

The part I’m most interested in is the scaling factors. In basic, these tell you how each stat will scale with your gear, spec, glyphs, and so on. Hit will always be ranked as the highest stat because if you don’t have enough it will net you a nice dps loss. However, you also don’t want to have too much, because then it becomes useless. I think most people’s scaling factors will be fairly similar, spell power being the major stat with haste being fairly close to it, crit a little behind, and spirit and intellect at the bottom. Mine interested me, take a look.

As you can see, haste is rated a tiny bit higher than spell power, whereas I expected it to be the other way around. Crit and spirit are ranked fairly close to each other as well, I expected intellect and spirit to be quite low down near enough equal, nowhere near as high as crit. Very interesting.

SimulationCraft works with other classes and specs too, so do take a look at your results if you’re interested.

Posted Edited: Because apparently people get testy over the tiniest of things.

Jaedia

  1. Usually World of Logs, but there are others [↩]
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Children’s Week

May 2nd

Posted by Jaedia in Guides For Things

3 comments

Late last night, I noticed a few achievements pop up in guild when I logged in to fish, I’d completely forgotten it was Children’s Week! I logged out for a little bit and decided to do the achievements today, though it must be said that this has always been one of my favourite festivals because of the pets. This is my guide towards completing the various achievements and quests for Children’s Week, I hope it helps!

Achievements – Meta

List of achievements for the meta.

  • Home Alone – Simply have your orphan out (see under ‘quests’ for where to pick up your orphan, works with any orphan) and use your hearthstone.
  • Bad Example – Eat the following listed sweets while you have your orphan out:
  1. Tigule and Foror’s Strawberry Ice Cream sold by these vendors – I usually get mine from the innkeepers in Nagrand.
  2. Tasty Cupcake is made using cooking – the ingredients are 2 Simple Flour and 1 Northern Egg.
  3. Delicious Chocolate Cake is a rare drop recipe from doing Outland and Northrend cooking dailies and requires these ingredients – you should be able to buy them from the auction house though prices will be high this week.
  4. Lovely Cake Slice, Dalaran Brownie, Dalaran Doughnut, and Red Velvet Cupcake can all be bought from Aimee outside of the North bank in Dalaran.
  • Daily Chores – Complete 5 daily quests while you have your orphan out. I tend to do the Tournament dailies for this, with the orphan out while I hand them in, but any you feel like doing are fine.
  • Aw, Isn’t It Cute? – Receive one of the Children’s Week pets after completing a series of quests (also see ‘quests’).
  • School of Hard Knocks – This achievement can seem a little difficult for non-PvPers. You have to capture a flag in Eye of the Storm, assault a tower in Alterac Valley, assault a flag in Arathi Basin, and return a fallen flag in Warsong Gulch. Cynwise has compiled an excellent guide to completing this achievement, if you’re struggling I recommend you take a look, and always have your orphan by your side.
  • Hail To The King, Baby – Kill King Ymirin in Utgarde Pinnacle, normal mode or heroic mode, while you have your orphan by your side. You should get it out at the beginning of the instance to avoid forgetting at the end.

Not for the meta, this is the only other achievement.

  • Veteran Nanny – This is one of those achievements that takes time to do, 3 years to be exact. To get this one, you need to own all 3 of the pets from the Shattrath orphan quest chain: Peanut, Willy, and Egbert.

Quests

There are several quests which reward you with a choice of a pet in Children’s Week. You speak to the matron in each city (Dalaran, Shattrath, Orgrimmar/Stormwind) who will give you an orphan whistle, you must take this orphan around to where they ask to complete the quests, they give you 3 quests to begin with, followed by one or two others, then sending you back to the orphanage where you receive your pet reward.

Dalaran first – it appears to be bugged at the moment if you did the quest last year, you should be able to pick the quest up to get the second pet, however at the moment you can’t. She stands near the South bank, if you’re able to pick the quest up, you’ll first need to choose which pet you want, the Oracle or the Wolvar.

The Oracle:

  • Meeting a Great One – First go to the giant portal that takes you to Ungoro in Scholazar Basin at co-ords: 39, 81. Once you’ve gone through the portal, go right up the steps and take your orphan to the Etymidian.
  • The Dragon Queen – Dragonblight, the Wyrmrest Temple, top floor, at co-ords: 59, 55.

The Wolvar:

Shattrath next – Head to the Lower City and find Orphan Matron Mercy and pick up a whistle from her. If you are Horde, you will be given a Blood Elf orphan, if you are Alliance, you will be given a Draenei orphan. The end quest will give you a choice of the following.

The Blood Elf:

  • Now, When I Grow Up… – Silvermoon City, Walk of Elders at co-ords: 76, 81.
  • Time to Visit the Caverns – If you can’t take the portal from Shattrath or Dalaran, head to the entrance to Caverns of Time in Tanaris at co-ords: 65, 49. Take Salandria to Zaladormu at co-ords: 60, 54 in the middle. Then buy a Toy Dragon from the Quartermaster at: 63, 57 and give it to her.

The Draenei:

  • The Seat of the Naaru – Exodar, Seat of the Naaru at co-ords: 57, 41.
  • Time to Visit the Caverns – If you can’t take the portal from Shattrath or Dalaran, head to the entrance to Caverns of Time in Tanaris at co-ords: 65, 49. Take Dornaa to Zaladormu at co-ords: 60, 54 in the middle. Then buy a Toy Dragon from the Quartermaster at: 63, 57 and give it to her.

Finally, your faction’s home city. Orgrimmar at 70, 25 in the Valley of Honor for Horde, the matron will give you an Orcish orphan. Stormwind at 56, 54 in Cathedral Square for Alliance, the matron will give you a Human orphan. The end quest will give you a choice of the following.

The Orc:

  • You Scream, I Scream… – There is a link to the vendors above under the ‘Bad Example’ achievement. You simply need some Tigule and Foror’s Strawberry Ice Cream in your bags and hand in the quest.
  • Cairne’s Hoofprint – Thunder Bluff at co-ords: 60, 51.

The Human:

  • You Scream, I Scream… – There is a link to the vendors above under the ‘Bad Example’ achievement. You simply need some Tigule and Foror’s Strawberry Ice Cream in your bags and hand in the quest.
  • Jaina’s Autograph – Dustwallow Marsh, Theramore at co-ords: 66, 49. The very top floor of the large building.

Jaedia

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Hunter Cheat Sheet

Apr 24th

Posted by Jaedia in Hunter Stuff

6 comments

This post has been on the backburner for quite a while now, I figured it’s time I got it out there. I want to use this to give a few tips to other Hunters, whether they’re just starting out, struggling a little, or not. Hopefully this is going to help a few people. You’ll be able to find most of this information on my Hunter Guide pages, but I’ve condensed the information into one post for ease. Disclaimer: I am not claiming to be the best Hunter out there, or that I know everything. This guide is aimed at those who can get something out of it.

Speccing

To start, you’ll want to decide which spec you want to play with. It’s important to note that in high end gear, MM will come out on top.

The 3 specs, according to Elitist Jerks, would be something like this: Beast Mastery, Survival, Marksman.

I’m currently rocking a Marksman spec more like this, because I have quite a lot of hit on my gear. I also like using Trueshot Aura as I’ve often found myself to be the only one in a raid with the 10% attack power increase, if you raid regularly with somebody else who has this buff then you don’t need it in your spec. Focused Aim is an awesome talent which you should use, not only does it give you the chance to grab items with little to no hit, but it reduces the pushback received from damaging attacks for Steady Shot, I remember this being nice on phase 3 Anub’erak. When I can, I will probably drop 1 point in Rapid Recuperation and 1 in Improved Barrage to gain more in Focused Aim. If you’re just starting out and don’t have much ArmorPen, then you’ll want to be using Arcane Shot and as a result, your spec will look more like this one.

Survival is a great spec to start with and can be pretty decent at later gear levels too, although it doesn’t scale as well with ArmorPen as MM does. This is the Survival spec I was using before I specced into MM. If you’re using the 2pc Tier9 bonus, then you can remove 2 points from Resourcefulness, and 1 from Exposed Weakness to max out Improved Stings. If your raid doesn’t need you to take replenishment and you’re using the 2pc Tier9, then you could switch to something more like this, switching Improved Stings for Improved Aspect of the Hawk if you’re not using the 2pc Tier9 bonus.

Beast Mastery is a spec which has come under much scrutiny, however, if you play it right it can be a viable raid spec. In fact, according to Elitist Jerks, at high gear levels, it’s about on par with Survival. I haven’t played as a BM Hunter since the Naxx days, but some people have stuck by the spec quite loyally.

Glyphing

It’s safe to say that Glyph of Serpent Sting is a required glyph for every spec, though the rest depends on your spec, gear, and situation, i.e. are you raiding or heroicing? Glyph of Kill Shot can be a decent glyph for all raiding Hunters too, though this depends how long the boss is alive. If the boss is at 20% health or below for long enough for this glyph to be affective, then it may be a worthwhile glyph, otherwise don’t even bother.

Survival Hunters will be looking at the Glyph of Explosive Shot and Glyph of Steady Shot for their other choices, Steady Shot perhaps being a second choice to Kill Shot.

Beast Mastery Hunters will be looking at Glyph of Steady Shot and Glyph of the Hawk, although Glyph of Bestial Wrath is another choice that could be considered.

Marksman Hunters will be looking at Glyph of Steady Shot, and as a third choice, Glyph of the Hawk, Glyph of Trueshot Aura, or Glyph of Chimera Shot.

Gearing

If you’re just starting out, then take a look at my Pre Raid Gear List. I’ve done my best to list every item available to you before raids, including craftables and Frost Emblem gear, and marking which pieces have hit. To check how much hit you need, have a look at the Hit Calculator.

The ArmorPen cap is 1400, so with a trinket with an ArmorPen proc you will need roughly 700 armor pen from your gear if you’re Marksman. If you’re not, don’t aim for it, but it will be on a lot of your gear anyway, that’s unavoidable. Haste keeps Steady Shot at roughly a 1.5 second cast time, without haste, it’s a 2 second cast time, and 523 haste rating is the soft cap needed to lower Steady Shot down to the 1.5 second cast time. Also remember that there is no crit cap for hunters.

Note from EJ, posted by Echo:

“Haste is considered to be a poor stat for all hunter specs. The only shots affected by haste are autoshot and steady shot, and as MM you take Improved Aspect of the Hawk which means your Steady Shot speed will be capped whenever it procs. Additionally since all the shots affected by haste are adversely affected by movement, the value of haste will be decreased beyond what is predicted by the spreadsheet. Some haste on gear doesn’t hurt but don’t value it highly compared to other stats and never gem it.”

When choosing a ranged weapon, you should look primarily at its dps, and the high end damage. If there isn’t a huge difference, you’ll be looking for a slower weapon, with decent stats for your spec or an awesome proc like the one on Zod’s Repeating Longbow.

When you start thinking about set bonuses, first of all, don’t bother with the 4pc tier9 if you’re Marksman, it’s a bit crap. I don’t really know how good it is for Survival and BM, I assume not very, but have a look for yourself. Do get the 2pc bonus, ideally you’ll be looking at getting the legs and helm, though I’ve known people to go for the shoulders and grab the Helm of the Brooding Dragon instead of the tier helm if they needed a bit of extra hit. The 4pc tier10 is quite nice, but keep the tier9 2pc bonus until you have 4 parts of Sanctified (tier 10 + tokens) and the Leggings of Northern Lights from Lady Deathwhisper preferably. That’s the rule if you’re MM, at least.

Gemming

In trade chat, I have seen new Hunters asking, “What should a Marksman Hunter gem?” And trade replied, “ArmorPen.” The fact is that this isn’t always the case. If you’re just started out, you won’t have good enough gear for ArmorPen gemming to really be all that beneficial, and if you’re using an ArmorPen proc trinket, Grim Toll, Mjolnir Runestone, Scorpion, then you won’t need to gem for ArmorPen anyway, although bear in mind that the Scorpion has terrible uptime because it’s based on your ranged crits, not attacks like the other 2. It cant be decent if you have about 700 on your gear and no trinket to fill the gap to capped. If you’re Survival, don’t even consider gemming ArmorPen.

If gemming Agility, you should use Deadly gems (agi/crit) in yellow sockets with a high agility bonus, 4 or more. Ignore blue slots for the most part, however you should use a Nightmare Tear to activate your Relentless Earthsiege Diamond meta. This Tear should go in a blue socket with a decent bonus, preferably your highest agility bonus, the same as the yellow slots. It doesn’t have to go in a ‘prismatic socket’ (aka, the belt buckle), as I have seen many people do, in fact I’d outright avoid doing that, as I would with a red socket with a decent socket bonus too. This would be a waste.

Another thing I will advise you to avoid is using any gems aside from the ones I have mentioned and perhaps hit if desperate, though preferably agi/hit if you feel you have to. I’ve seen a lot of Hunters gemming for pure haste/crit/stam. Please, please avoid doing this, you will gain dps by gemming agility instead, or ArmorPen if you choose to. My last word, if you’re a Jewelcrafter, only use your Dragon’s Eyes for your main red gem choice (agi/arp/attack power).

Enchanting

Enchanting your gear would be more or less what you expect, if it has agility or attack power it’s probably the best one to use. Of course, there are exceptions of sorts. If you have profession only enchants, such as wrist enchants for Leatherworkers, cloak and glove enchants for Engineers, shoulder enchants for Inscriptors, use them. Boot enchants are often overlooked, so I’ll be very clear: Use run speed on boots unless you’re an Engineer with rocket boots. The best boot enchant is Cat’s Swiftness, but as this is a rare drop TBC enchant it can be expensive and difficult to find an enchanter who can do it. In this case, Tuskarr’s Vitality will be your boot enchant.

Using Cooldowns

It is best to save your trinket cooldowns for Bloodlust (Heroism /sigh), however, it may be best to use haste cooldowns outside of Bloodlust to avoid having too much haste simultaneously. I usually use Rapid Fire at the beginning of the fight, and use Readiness when it is finished and my shots are all on cooldown to reuse it again before Bloodlust is popped. I tend to use a haste potion after the second Rapid Fire, or after Bloodlust. If BM, personally, I’d keep using Bestial Wrath throughout the fight, especially if you’re using the glyph.

Rotations and Macros

See my Rotations & Macros page.

Using Female Dwarf

Everything I’ve said is situational, and I urge you to use this excellent tool, the online dps analyzer, to check that you have made the best choices for you personally. First of all, register your account so that you’re able to save things and come back to them later. Second of all, import your armory settings and fiddle with options such as raid buffs that an armory import would miss, update dps and save your character. Now you’re able to change things such as items, gems, enchants, to see what is better or worse for your specific character, update dps and see how big a gain or loss it would potentially be. Check Rilgon’s post on this, he says it much better than I can.

Jaedia

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Levelling an Elemental Shaman 1-11

Apr 20th

Posted by Jaedia in Altoholism

11 comments

Last night, I had the overwhelming urge to level a Shaman. I get these sometimes, it’s a part of my altoholism. My biggest interest in the class is to try healing, but I’d like to be able to kill things pretty easily too, so I’m going elemental. This way, it’s easier to get the gear to accommodate both playstyles then if I went Enhancement. I found 83 unused Emblem of Triumph and 630 Stone Keeper’s Shards on my Hunter, and a couple of things lying around already. Here is a list of recommended elemental/resto heirlooms for those wondering what they can get, though if you have any cloth or leather heirlooms lying around, you can use those, but these will be better. It is preferred to balance what is affordable to you, but do try to get the pieces with intellect, especially if, like me, you plan to heal. The items bolded would be ideal. I’m personally thinking about using my staff for elemental things, and the mace with a shield (there are no heirloom shields sadly) for healing. One thing that people don’t seem to know, if you send your Shaman the mail heirlooms, yes they will downgrade to leather until you have the capability to wear mail armour.

Shoulder

Chest

Weapon

Trinket

Originally, I was going to get the leather spellpower heirlooms so that I could reuse them on my Druid, but I didn’t fancy wearing something with spirit out of choice when I also had badges and stone keeper’s shards lying around doing nothing. I don’t need the mace until I’m level 15, when I can use the random dungeon tool, so that leaves me with plenty of time to get the last 7 emblems I need for that.

Another thing about heirlooms that people often wonder about is enchants. Whilst they aren’t too important, if you really want to give yourself a little boost, it will need to be a vanilla enchant. TBC and Wrath enchants won’t work, and some enchants like the PvP shoulder enchants won’t work until you reach 70. If you insist, you will be looking for Greater Stats on chest, and Spellpower on weapon, which will work on a 1hander and a 2hander.

If you don’t have the privilege of heirlooms, you may struggle a tiny bit, but that’s ok. Try to find items with intellect, stamina, spellpower, crit, haste and, if healing, mp5, when it comes down to that.

So, the hitty things until dead bit. For the first few levels, you will be pretty much Lightning Bolt spamming. Imbue your weapon with Rockbiter until you get Flametongue, which should be your weapon enchant of choice, and feel free to give the mobs a couple of whacks. At level 4, you will get Earth Shock, this is a nice instant cast spell, especially good if you find the mobs hitting you a lot. I found myself Lightning Bolting until they got close, then casting an Earth Shock and perhaps meleeing the last bit of health off in the level 1-5 bit. At level 6 you get Earthbind Totem which I fell in love with. Lightning Bolt and Earth Shock as usual but when the mobs get close to you, the totem slows your enemies so you can kite them! This gives you a chance to cast a Lightning Bolt without being interrupted so much. Also good if you’re running away from something. At level 8 you get Lightning Shield which is pretty nice to keep up. Level 10, Flame Shock, Flametongue Weapon, and Searing Totem. By the time I’d finished most of my quests and got to do the flame totem quest I was level 11 and feeling pretty damn overpowered.

By the time I reached 10, I wasn’t really having any mana issues so I took Concussion first. Though, if you do find yourself having mana problems, take Convection first. These are the first two talents I’ll be taking so it’s really down to what you feel you need the most first. I think I drank once during the 1-11 grind, and that was only because I felt like it while I alt tabbed. The health and mana regeneration at low levels has been buffed so much that you might find the same.

Jaedia

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Noblegarden

Apr 4th

Posted by Jaedia in Guides For Things

7 comments

Egg hunting.

That’s the key to this festival. Some eggs will turn your character into a pink bunny which somehow manages to poop tiny sparkly coloured eggs. Don’t be alarmed, this is normal. You will need roughly.. 315 eggs. You might as well do the daily as it’s a bit of gold you can pick up while you farm eggs. The other quest gives you a basket, I think you only have to pick this up to get a basket, but the quest reward is permanent and you get a little gold. The basket makes you run at 60% speed for 10 seconds so you should get one, equip it, and keybind it to 1 or whatever you prefer, while you’re running around collecting eggs. This only works during Noblegarden.

You can find eggs in all nooks and crannies of every starting zone. It’ll be the places you go around level 5-12, so, Falconwing Square, Razorthorn Hill, Brill and Bloodhoof Village for Horde. Azure Watch, Goldshire, Dolanaar and Kharanos for Alliance. You’ll want to hover your mouse over corners, bushes, under carts, on top of lamp posts, and strafe around the buildings, and be fast because other people won’t be so civil.

Achievements.

You’ll need to eat 100 chocolates, collected from the eggs you find in low level villages, for Chocoholic. The first achievement you see is Chocolate Lover, to eat 25 chocolates, after that you need to eat 75 more. You can get lucky and find everything you need to buy in the eggs, and you have to discover the clothes in eggs to get those achievements. Once you’ve hunted all of your eggs, that’s the easy part.

You’ll have to travel around each low level village to find your Spring Rabbit, which can drop in the eggs or you can buy it, love for Spring Fling, all you have to do is have your Spring Rabbit near somebody else’s Spring Rabbit in each listed village to get achievement credit.

To complete the Hard Boiled achievement in Ungoro Crater, you’ll need somebody with you to turn you into a bunny using a Blossoming Branch (which can drop in the eggs, be bought, or gained from the daily quest) near the hot springs, and then you just have to wait for one of those tiny sparkly pooped eggs to appear under your butt. You might get lucky and find there are people there already, or you may need to go with a friend. I’ve also heard that it may be possible to get bunnied in Dalaran, or in one of the lowbie villages and then hearth back, take the Caverns of Time portal, and run to Ungoro Crater. This is a longer option and you’ll be best not to afk on the way, and Aspect of the Cheetah/Pack should make you run faster too, but if you struggle it may be worth trying. As long as your bunny self can poop eggs in the Ungoro Hot Springs, you’re good to go.

To hide a Noblegarden Egg in the city listed for Noble Garden, Stormwind for Alliance, and Silvermoon for Horde, you have to buy one from a vendor and take it inside the city and hide it along the edges. Simple. The egg costs 5 chocolates and once placed, you can loot it like any other Brightly Coloured Egg.

Shake Your Bunny Maker cannot be completed by having a friend create level 1 alts of each race, because they have to be of 18th level! Yes, it’s a comment on what you think it is. No underage Bunny Making please. To complete this, you’ll need a bouquet of Spring Flowers and to find a female of each race, Horde and Alliance. You might as well complete your faction in your main cities, and it’s always fun watching the piles of people stalking the other faction’s section of Dalaran, waiting for the Female Dwarf or Orc to hearthstone in.

Desert Rose requires you to wear Spring Robes, which you can get from eggs or buy with chocolates. You have to use the robes in Silithus, Thousand Needles, the Badlands, Tanaris, and Desolace.

You will also need to kiss somebody who is wearing an Elegant Dress while you wear a Tuxedo Pants and Shirt, for Blushing Bride.

A list of everything you can buy, and their prices.

  • Noblegarden Egg – 5 Chocolates
  • Blossoming Branch – 10 Chocolates
  • Spring Flowers – 50 Chocolates
  • Spring Robes – 50 Chocolates
  • White Tuxedo Shirt – 25 Chocolates
  • Black Tuxedo Pants – 25 Chocolates
  • Elegant Dress – 50 Chocolates
  • Spring Circlet – 50 Chocolates
  • Spring Rabbit’s Foot – 100 Chocolates
  • Tome of Polymorph: Rabbit – 100 Chocolates [Mage only]

Other Guides

As usual, Wowhead and WoW.com have their festival guides for you to follow if you feel I’ve missed anything.

There is also another egg hunt going on in the blogosphere, as hosted by Angelya. There are 45 eggs placed around listed blogs, see if you can find mine.

Happy Chocolate Egg Day!

Jaedia

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Lowbie Huntering

Mar 9th

Posted by Jaedia in Hunter Stuff

9 comments

Especially now with the influx of lowbie alting SAN members, I thought a little guide to levelling a hunter might be a help. :)

One to Ten

The first thing you will encounter as a lowbie hunter is the pain of having no pet for 10 levels. You can spend 10 levels meleeing everything to death and perhaps mix in a few corpse runs, but if you watch where you’re going you can effectively kite and still be a ranged hunter. In my opinion, the second option is the most effective though of course it’s not exactly important at that level. Either way, shoot the mob, when it gets close to you run a bit, jump around shoot a little more, keep running, shoot a bit more and so on. You may like to check out Pike’s jump shot video.

Taming Pets

Okay, so usually I will rush through to level 10 so there is no danger of me abandoning the character, I won’t lie, 1 to 10 hunter isn’t the most fun in the world. Once you reach level 10 you won’t immediately be able to tame a pet, first you will have to do a quest. Whichever race you choose, this will be: tame a particular beast, bring it back to me, 3 times, 3 different beasts. At level 10, sadly, you don’t have Freezing Trap, which makes taming a pet 10 times easier. You do get this ability at level 20 though, so remember to use it when taming any pets after that level. At level 10, perhaps pop a health potion if you need to.

When you’ve completed the quest you can choose a pet. My favourite for levelling is a bear. They are excellent tank pets, with not too terrible AoE threat and plenty of armour. Crocolisks are also not too bad for the same reasons. A lot of people go for crabs, which are tanking pets too, though they have a nice ability for PvP. Another decent pet for PvP is the spider, and if you’re looking to abuse the dungeon finder tool a fair bit you might even consider getting yourself a wolf. Though of course, if you want to tame something else, go for it. It won’t be as efficient but at the end of the day, this hunter is your character and you can play it how you want to. For a full list of tameable beasts, their skins, and where to find them, check out Petopia.

Talent Points

Another thing you will be getting at level 10 is talent points. I cannot stress enough that the best spec for levelling is by far Beast Mastery. Survival and Marksman are both fun, decent specs, and honestly you won’t beat them for PvP or instancing, but if you plan to quest, you can’t beat Beast Mastery. It is the fastest levelling spec. This is the spec I would go with for levelling, though of course there are many variations to this. If you would prefer to make some changes to it, or choose another spec entirely, feel free.

Glyphs

At level 15, your first glyph slots open up, giving space for 1 major and 1 minor glyph. Hunter glyphs in my opinion are not brilliant for levelling, a lot are based upon increasing the amount of time something lasts, which is great for mobs which last a long time but that’s not what you want to do. If you have trouble pet your pet a live and find yourself using Mend Pet a lot, I recommend the Glyph of Mending, which is also great for soloing. There is Glyph of the Hawk if you switched the 5 points in Endurance Training for Improved Aspect of the Hawk BUT if you didn’t, it’s useless. Glyph of Bestial Wrath might be worthwhile later on when you get the talent though only if you have a reason to reduce its cooldown. The only other option really is Glyph of Steady Shot, but this relies upon Serpent Sting being up on the target and you won’t get Steady Shout until your 50s. Can you see why my last hunter ended up using Glyph of Aspect of the Viper?

For your minors, I’d suggest taking Glyph of Mend Pet at 15, and Glyph of Feign Death at 50. The last one at 70 is entirely optional.

Spells & Shots

Ideally, you will be avoiding the need to melee. You will get Serpent Sting at level 4, you will need to determine whether or not it is worth the mana. Often it isn’t, but you might like the extra bit of damage. At level 6 you will get Arcane Shot which you will be using whenever it’s off cooldown. You will also get Hunter’s Mark at level 6, this increases your ranged attack power so it might be nice to type /m and create a new macro for your first spell slot:

#showtooltip;
/cast Hunter’s Mark
/petattack

This saves having to click on your pet bar, in fact, for your second spell slot, make another macro:

/petfollow

1. Pet in. 2. Pet out. Concussive Shot at level 8, I feel I need to say this as I have heard of a few people thinking this is necessary, does not need to be used in conjunction with Steady Shot. Yes the tooltip might say the damage is increased if the target is dazed, but shooting a Concussive Shot will lose you more damage than you gain, it is unnecessary mana used. However, it is nice to slow targets who happen to be moving towards you, especially in PvP. Aspect of the Hawk is going to be your primary used aspect (next to Viper which should only be used for manaing up as it reduces your damage dealt by 50%) until you get Aspect of the Dragonhawk in your 70s. Multi Shot is also useful though be careful around large groups of mobs you are trying not to pull and crowd controlled mobs.

It’s A Trap!

Traps are another aspect of the hunter class which seem to scare and confuse people. There are 3 classes of trap: fire, frost, and poison. You can have 1 of each up at the same time, and Explosive Trap can be used for AoE pulls if you wish before you get Volley, which is similar to Blizzard or Rain of Fire. If you decide to spec Survival, it is important to remember that Black Arrow shares a cooldown with Explosive Trap and Immolation Trap.

Basically, Frost Trap and Freezing Trap are both very nice for controlling situations. Slowing people down in PvP, calming down “Oh shit!” moments, and crowd controlling. Immolate Trap and Explosive Trap deal a little extra damage. Snake Trap, well, obviously unleashing an army of snakes unto your foes. They have a chance to proc various poisons such as Mind Numbing, Crippling, which both slow the target (physically or their spellcasting).

Finally

A few notes based on the low level PuGs I have been in. First of all, you want a lot of agility on your gear. Stamina is also an okay stat, and a little intellect I guess won’t hurt.. (though that’s a little better once you get Careful Aim) but please, please, remember that strength, spirit, and spell power are terrible stats for a hunter. If you’re rolling on melee weapons, remember that they are stat sticks, so any ‘on proc’ abilities are going to be useless. Stockpile agility, let the tank do the pulling (and the tanking), and when you get Feign Death it is your friend. Make sure you have at least 4,000 ammo in your bags at all times, this way you shouldn’t run the risk of running out and having to go melee.

As a wise (well, I guess) man once said: “Go forth and pew..”

Jaedia

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