Tag: world of warcraft

UPDATED: Cataclysm Cooking Achievements and Daily Quests

UPDATED 4/29 with the new cooking dailies added with Patch 4.1

Alliance Cooking Dailies in Darnassus

Alliance Cooking Dailies in Ironforge
Quests come from Daryl Riknussun.

Horde Cooking Dailies in The Undercity
Quests come from Eunice Burch.

Horde Cooking Dailies in Thunder Bluff
Quests come from Aska Mistrunner.

  • Corn Mash. Pound 6 bowls of corn kernels into cornmeal.
  • "Magic" Mushrooms. Gather 6 "Magic" Mushrooms from the Pools of Vision.
  • Mulgore Spice Bread. Use Mulgore Spices with Spice Bread to create 5 Fresh Mulgore Spice Bread, or obtain them from someone else.
  • Perfectly Picked Portions. Obtain four "perfect portions" from merchants stalls around Thunder Bluff. You will obtain one each of Succulent Sweet Potatoes, Savory Spices, Fresh-Caught Fish, and Fresh-Hunted Fowl from Thunder Bluff merchant stalls.
  • Pining for Nuts. Obtain 30 Pine Nuts by toasting Mulgore Pine Cones.

Original Post

I've slowly but surely started working on my Cataclysm cooking achievements and cooking quests, thanks to all being activated with patch 4.0.3a. I've already achieved the Let's Do Lunch achievement on my Alliance characters after only a week of dailies.

Achievements: Alliance

  • Let's Do Lunch: Complete each of the Stormwind cooking dailies listed below.
  • The Cataclysmic Gourmet: Cook 15 then 30 of the new recipes.
  • Iron Chef: Learn 200 cooking recipes.

Achievements: Horde

  • Let's Do Lunch: Complete each of the Orgrimmar cooking dailies listed below.
  • The Cataclysmic Gourmet: Cook 15 then 30 of the new recipes.
  • Iron Chef: Learn 200 cooking recipes.

Alliance Cooking Dailies in Stormwind

  •  A Fisherman's Feast. Obtain 5 gigantic catfish, via fishing or stealing barrels of fish from beleagured Stormwind fishermen.
  • Orphans Like Cookies Too. Steal bags of confectioners' Sugar (or buy them from NPCs in the Inns around SW).
  • The King's Cider. Obtain 12 juicy apples that have fallen from the trees around Stormwind. Herbalists have a leg up on this as the locations of fallen apples will show on your mini map like herb nodes do.
  • Feeling Crabby? Collect 10 canal crabs. You'll want to get a warlock's underwater breathing buff or be a druid in seal form to swiftly swim through the canals in search of the crabs.
  • Penny's Pumpkin Pancakes. Obtain 6 Stormwind Pumpkins. Gathered from a pumpkin patch North of Stormwind. The hardest part of this quest is finding the tiny pathway out to the pumpkin patch from the far reaches of the Dwarven District.

Horde Cooking Dailies in Orgirmmar

So far of these, all are pretty fast and easy to complete other than Feeling Crabby, which is likely to flare tempers the same way the Dalaran mushrooms did in the early days of WotLK. 3 completed quests earns you enough Chef's Award tokens to purchase a recipe. Or 2 tokens can be turned in for a Crate of Tasty Meat that can be used to create some of the new recipes.

There are 11 recipes that may be learned with 450 cooking skill; 3 with 475 cooking skill; 11 with 500 cooking skill; 1 with 505 cooking skill; and 2 learned with 525 cooking skill. NOTE: the two 525 recipes will require a spend of 5 tokens instead of the 3 needed for the lower level recipes. Alliance recipes are purchased from Bario Matalli, while Horde recipes are purchased from Shazdar.

What Will Cataclysm Bring for Me?

Like most everyone who plays WoW, I am excited about all the shiny new content and explorations that Cataclysm will bring for us.

But this time around, the expansion also brings up a lot of uncertainty for me. Because I am in a very different place — in game and out — than I was at the last turn-of-the-expansion.

That Was Then

I was secure in the knowledge that although I no longer wanted to druid heal, I would definitely be playing my druid main, as per usual. I was enjoying being a lazy guild member without any responsibilities, and crossing my fingers my casual guild would work out for raiding in the expansion, even if it was just at a slower pace, given our good times in Kara. My hours at work allowed me to have a regular raiding schedule, as I rarely had to stay late unexpectedly. All my characters were on the same server were I’d started out playing WoW, except for the shadow priest horde alt I rarely popped onto, as she was stranded on a friend’s server with nothing to do.

This is Now

Now I have three 80s Alliance-side (Boomkin, Shadow Priest, Mage) with a warlock at 70. Horde-side, on a separate server, I have four 80s (Shadow Priest, Boomkin, Shaman, Mage) with a warlock at 72. Horde-side, I’m an officer in a large guild that completed all of WotLK’s raiding content, including a number of 10-man ICC hard modes. Heck, I even got to kill Algalon! Alliance-side, I’ve found myself a great friendly guild that had been doing some casual raiding, and enjoy the camaraderie and conversation (inclusive of G and on Vent and on Twitter.)

This Monday, I headed back in to work after five glorious weeks of time off. And despite heading in bright and early each day, I am not getting home until 6:30 each night due to the workload. This has meant no raiding anywhere, no NaNoWriMo writing time. And no blog time. In other words: MEH.

So What’s Next?

With Cataclysm only a month away, I’m not sure how things are going to pan out. How much can I get done with only a few short hours to play each night after work? We still need to eat dinner and have outside of game time after all. Even if I concentrate only on my two primary characters at first (Alliance Boomkin and Horde Shadow Priest), I’ll still need to sort out daily quests for the others (cooking/fishing/professions).

Having just taken all this time off, I won’t really get to have a big chunk of time to play until my time off around the holidays, at the end of December. So in all likelihood, I’ll be leveling the slowest I’ve ever leveled. And will have my attention split between two toons I love, instead of being able to focus my energies on just one of them. This will be an adjustment for sure.

Both guilds are planning to kick the raiding tires in Q1 2011. So at least with that I do feel I’ll have time to level up and gear up. Then work in the alts as time allows. But as it stands, I don’t really know yet what my availability will look like as far as raiding goes. Or how I am going to feel about these characters at 85, having not gotten into BETA to try things out for myself.

So like everyone else who didn’t get a sneak peek via BETA, I’ll just have to play it by ear and hope that I do like how things turn out int he end for my ladies. Que sera sera, whatever will be will be. I’m just hoping that somehow I’ll find a way to give both of my favorite toons the attention they deserve.

What to Wear: Frost Emblem Gear for Shadow Priests

Patch 3.3 brought with it a new top-end emblem (Emblem of Frost), and a nice assortment of gear to fill in some lingering holes or help with the never-ending hit-swap dance. Personally, for now, I am hanging on to my badges to see how my luck fares in our ICC 10 runs, and how our progress goes in ICC 25. I'm not at all tempted to purchase my first few pieces of tier gear. Overall, other than the shoulders, it's looking like it's not worth wearing until you have the 4-piece bonus, or have been able to upgrade pieces via the marks that drop off each wing's final boss. So, after giving it a couple more weeks, I'll decide if I want to take the plunge and upgrade my less than 245 iLvl pieces, or wait until I have the 300-something badges for 4 pieces of tier gear.

Tier Set

Non-Tier Gear

  • Volde's Cloak of the Night Sky (50 emblems). If you are not doing 25-man content, and do not have a heroic ToC cloak, this will be your best option for this slot. You will not want to purchase the other badge cloak, Drape of the Violet Tower (50 emblems), as its MP5 is not useful for damage dealing.
  • Meteor Chaser's Raiment (95 emblems). This is your third-best chest, bested only by a heroic chest and the max-upgraded tier chest. The other non-tier badge chest, Ermine Coronation Robes (95 emblems), is itemized a little better for healers.
  • Gloves of False Gestures (60 emblems). If you have all your hit taken care of in other slots, these are considered to be your second best gloves. The other emblem gloves, Gloves of Ambivalence (60 emblems), are better itemized for healers.
  • Circle of Ossus (60 emblems). If you are not doing ICC 25 or heroic ICC 10, this will be your BiS belt.
  • Belt of Omission (60 emblems). If you are looking for hit in this slot, this will be your best option.
  • Maghia's Misguided Quill (60 emblems). If you have been using the Ulduar hit trinket you may want to spend the badges to upgrade to this even larger dose of hit (thus freeing up other slots for non-hit gear.)

If you purchased all 5 of your tier items, you would be looking at an emblem spend of 405.

What to Wear: A Shadow Priest’s Guide to 25-man Icecrown Citadel Gear

As previously noted, I'm not a math geek so I am not going to argue BiS (best in Slot) with the maths here. Rather, I am going to discuss your gearing up opportunities by boss, to help you prep your wish list. If you want to see BiS across all available 10-man and 25-man raids, including ICC hard mode boss drops, shadowpriest.com has an excellent list. With more math than you can shake a stick at.

Words of Caution: As with ToC, you will want to be picking up some haste gear from ICC which means doing the hit-swapping dance, so don't be quick to shard or sell your existing gear when you receive an upgrade. You will likely have to swap gear around for raids to ensure you stay hit capped.

Your boss-by-boss gear guide, after the jump.

Continue reading “What to Wear: A Shadow Priest’s Guide to 25-man Icecrown Citadel Gear”

I Took the Faction Change Plunge and Lived to Tell About it

My Draenie shaman is no more. As I had pretty much decided when they announced faction changes, I took the plunge and faction changed her so she could be a part of my horde pirate family. The hardest part of the endeavor was saying goodbye to the friends I have Alliance-side, accumulated over the past almost four years. I still have my druid on the server, but honestly, I mostly logged on this lady to do Jewelcrafting dailies and say hello to folks. Moving her to the horde cements my transition for them, and for me. I will try to chip away at them over time to get them to come play with us horde-side…this means YOU Milch and Thar and El and Jay!!

The overall process was easy enough, though it took me some extra time due to not being aware that read mail in my box would be an issue. Once it was safely deleted, my faction change went through within a couple of hours, and the server move within minutes after that. And thus, on Saturday morning, I was on a zeppelin to Northrend. I had almost all of the Northrend horde FPs, minus Gundrak and one of the Argent Crusade quest hubs. I retained my achievements for number of quests completed but my running tally halved itself. Good thing I am not pursuing loremaster! The contents of my bags all switched over without incident, except for my mechano hog. A GM ticket and a 24-hour wait were all it took, however, for that to be resolved so my SP could be riding in style.

My alliance characters, with so many years under their belts and a wide assortment of professions across them as well, are more prosperous than my hordies. And I had stashed a variety of cloth items for my not-yet-leveled up alts (who may never be leveled at this point.) So I made sure to consolidate all the goodies on my shaman to bring them with me. An especially fortuitous score was the Tome of Polymorph Turtle, on the AH for 350g. I have probably lost rolls on that thing a half dozen times over the course of my many ZG fishing boss summons.

It’s been 8 months since I played my shaman for more than a few minutes time. Thus it took me a while to get back into the swing of things. For one thing, I hadn’t healed on her since I was on my wee laptop and see I will need to install grid or some unit frames to not lose my mind doing that. I am getting her DPS well sorted, tho somehow she only had healing gear — except for the heroic CoS pants. Her sorry state of gear is due in large part to the fact that she and my druid swapped in and out, boss-by-boss for our tiny 10-man guild’s Naxx runs at the beginning of the year.

But even if I am DPSing ToC primarily in healing gear, and white-knuckle healing through the other heroics, it’s nice to actually have the opportunity to get her out and about and playing again. I’ve really missed playing her. And it’s nice to have my pocket JC available whenever needed. It has been strange for me to only have 1 level cap character for the past 6 months horde-side. Ever since vanilla, I’ve always had a stable of alts to choose from — so i could be a swiss-army knife for whatever activity our friends and guildies were up for. It feels great to have that flexibility again.

My verdict? Well worth the money.

Next up: getting the mage to 80!

P.S. I took the shaman for one last chopper joy ride with her main squeeze right before I transferred:

<3 that Wrenzil.

Friday Five: Five Things to Do to Get Ready for a Faction Change

If you’re like me, and have decided to make the faction jump with one of your characters, you were probably itching to go as soon as the news broke on Wednesday that Faction Changes were now available. But before you hit the “Faction Change link on your account management page, there are a few to do’s to make the experience a better one:

  1. Read the FAQs. Even if you’re not a reading the instructions kind of a person. They link out to conversion tables for gear, achievements, and mounts. This way you’ll be mentally prepared for all the changes ahead and not wndering why you have a bunch of chocobo mounts
  2. Since you read the FAQs, you’ll know you can only bring over 20,000 gold on your level 70-80s. So if you have more than that, you’ll have to convert it into items you can use or sell once your change is complete.
  3. To make the most of #2, CLEAN OUT YOUR BAGS! Delete every easily-replaceable food/drink, thread or other cheap crafting materials, etc. Are you really ever going to use those old clown pants? Are you? Be ruthless in your assessment.
  4. If you plan on a server change after your faction change, determine if your name is avialable. If not, put some thought into alternative names you’d like, and see if they are available. The easiest way to do this is to /friend mycoolname while logged on to that server. What you want to see returned is player not found.
  5. OK your bags and bank have been purged, your name researched, and you’re ready to go. There’s one last thing you should do: document the moment. Take a screenshot of your character in one of your favorite faction-specific places to remember them by.

I’m moving my shaman over this weekend and am really excited. I’ll be saying goodbye to an old friend in doing so, but will actually get to avoid the leveling slog to get to play her. At this point, it’s highly unlikely I’ll make a return to the Alliance, and certainly not on my server home of the past 3.75 years.I’m excited at the new possibilities.

Cheers!

Leveling my Mage 58-68 in the Post-patch 3.2 World

Almostgold_Flying_Hellfire_081509_153709

In two weeks of moderate playing, that also included a significant amount of raiding and Conquest badge farming on my main, my baby mage sped from 58 through the Dark Portal to Outlands, and up to 68 and into Northrend this weekend. This is thanks primarily to the many alt leveling changes that dropped in Patch 3.2.

Despite my long-standing dislike of Hellfire Peninsula, I forced the mage to start there, knowing it would quickly provide her with significant staff, hat, and boot upgrades. I did not need the chestpiece since she is rocking the new badge heirloom chest in addition to the shoulders. Together, these pieces provide a 20% XP increase from both questing and killing monsters. This is on top of any rested increases she had from time-to-time.

As soon as she dinged 60, she purchased her flying mount, now available at Thrallmar. This was the final key component to her zooming through the next 8 levels.

I cherry-picked my way through my favorite quests in Hellfire, Zangermarsh, Terrokar Forest, and Nagrand, hitting all the key quests with gear upgrades. I made sure to stop over in Mok’Nathal for the cooking recipe quests, and in Netherstorm for the cool pink goggles. I fully explored the map in each zone, grabbing the flight paths too. Each uncovered zone netted 1200 or so XP on average; in my final day in Outland as I finished up and got the Outland exploration achievement, I earned a solid 6 bars from exploring alone.

Some reminders for mages in this leveling phase:

  • Be sure to go back to Ashzara any time after 60 to quest for your polymorph pig spell
  • You can learn your Shattrath teleport at 60, then the portal at 65
  • Especially if you have the boost from badge gear, keep up your mage armor at most times; the extra mana regen can keep you going from evocation cooldown to evocation cooldown, instead of having to drink every few pulls

I have not yet started any Northrend questing, but I did go through a few essential ready steps:

  • My 80 sent her the heirloom tome of cold weather flight(costs $1,000 g from the cold weather flying trainer in Dalaran) so she could immediately start flying at 68
  • I flew from Vengeance landing to Moa’ki Harbor, then up to Dalaran, grabbing flight paths as I went
  • Once in Dalaran, I set my hearth there (can train for the teleport at 71)
  • Got started on the cooking dailies

It will be interesting to see if her leveling velocity stays the course now that she is in Northrend, or if it is slowed down by virtue of having more folks out there jockeying for quest mobs, etc.

Ding! My First Post-patch 60 Takes the Plunge…

This past Sunday, my baby mage hit 58 and you know what that means…she heeded the call to trek to Outlands. Only, it’s not quite the same epic journey you might remember it to have been. Rather than flying to Swamp of Sorrows then making the long trek by slow mount to the Dark Portal, she hopped into the convenient Dark Portal portal in Org, and hopped on her epic bony pony and ran through the portal. Once on the other side, she hopped on a gryph, went all the way to Shattrath, and set her hearth there.

It was not your old timer’s first day in Outlands. And to be honest it was sort of a letdown to have that epicness diminished by convenience. However, given that this is the sixth character I’ve taken to Outlands…the epicness, for me, at this point, is somewhat less important than getting it done already.

Thanks to her BoA chest and shoulders with their 10% XP boost a piece, and to my SO for running me through Stratholme so I could complete all my quests, Monday night I dinged 60.

Dinging 60 had been a meh experience on my last alt, an Alliance priest, during BC. It just meant I had another 10 levels to slog through to get to level cap and start raiding with her. This time was different.

The absolute first thing I did was learn my Tome of Plymorph: Rabbit, which had languished in the bank since the Easter Noblegarden week festivities. Then I ported and trained, and had the bank alt send me 700g so I could train flying and buy a wyvern. At which point I spent a solid 30 minutes flying around Hellfire Peninsula, laughing at the Fel Reavers that would not be allowed to sneak up on poor squishy me.

I’ve now also trained her skinning, herbing, and first aid, with only her cooking stalled in place thanks to a complete lack of desire on my part to farm bear meat. I can save that for another day. It matters more that I got my darn Staff of the Twin Worlds so I can stop feeling bad about the staff that shall not be named I was carrying around (hey– all those scarlets in Strat had one too so nyah!.)

It will be interesting to see how the flying (yes, I will be buying the Northrend flying BoA book) and the XP boost items affect my ability to quest my way through the next 20 levels. On the one hand I will miss the incidental trash I used to have to kill through to get to quest objectives, but on the other hand, there shouldn’t be any dying either.

Stay tuned.

Managing Expectations: the Guild Application Process

If I've seen it once I have seen it a few dozen times: person goes through application process, person joins guild, person immediately starts complaining that guild is not meeting all their personal needs. Drama ensues. Person leaves guild with many hard feelings all around.

And it really should never happen if both the applicant and the guild are honest and paying attention in the application process.

What Applicants Should Look for in the Application Process

So you found a guild you like and you are about to app. Before you do, you need to find out answers to the following if you want to be raiding:

  • Are they raiding? If so, what are they raiding? Is this what I want to be raiding?
  • What is the overall average player skill and experience level? Is this a leveling guild or an end game guild? How do I stack up against their top players?
  • Do their raid times coincide with my availability?
  • Do they actually need another player of my class for raids?

If you don't know anyone in the guild well enough to answer these questions for you, you should be able to answer them through a combination of sleuthing on the guild forums and your realm's official forums, plus using Guild Progress. You should also spend some time talking to an officer to ensure your expectations align with theirs.

What Guilds Should Disclose and Ask for in the Application Process

In addition to the applicant having the responsibility for understanding whether or not the guild has the potential to meet their needs, the guild also has some responsibilities in that area. Whenever someone new applies to a guild, the officers (or the recruitment officer) should:

  • Check out the new applicant to see if their application's content matches up with their character's reality. I recently outlined a few of my favorite applicant fact-checking steps and resources.
  • If the applicant states wanting to raid, will they actually be able to do so given their level of experience and gear and your raid roster? Be honest with them up front to avoid hurt feelings later.
  • Review your website and forums on a quarterly basis to ensure you are not sending mixed signals to applicants. If you were visiting for the first time would you be able to tell what the guild's focus is, and what your level of raiding progress and commitment are?
  • Fine tune your application questions to help manage expectations, and follow up publicly on potentially problematic answers.

Despite everyone' best efforts, even with full disclosure on both sides, you can still have a new to 80 player join the guild and start rattling their sabers over wanting guild Naxx runs despite having been told the guild's focus is on Ulduar. But if you have made every effort to be clear and honest during the application process, it does give you a solid place to come from when you remind them that's not going to be a focus for the guild, and politely suggest they might want to work on their reputation and run some heroics and make a good faith effort to start themselves on te gearing up trek.

DISCLAIMER: Guild Progress like all the other fun WoW Web tools relies on armory data that may not be up-to-date. Your mileage may vary.