Heart Of Gold

I am not a noob by any stretch of the imagination, but I believe that there is nobody who plays this game that knows everything there is to know about WoW. Yet again I am left bewildered by my lack of knowledge, which now I am informed and knowledgeable I will of course share with you.

I have recently levelled up character number 8, a Ret Pally (for levelling purposes). The 3rd of my Plate wearers, and due to the reduction in the amount of XP required to level, means that I only got part of the way into Townlong Steppes. The result is that rings and trinkets and some gear is only iLevel 414 or 429 if I was lucky. My first step when hitting the level cap is to buy the iLevel 458 PvP gear and then start from that point in the quest for more gear.

My Warrior Blacksmith seemed to be a little off the pace in terms of recipes, with no Epic iLevel 478 recipes or the iLevel 458 PvP gear. A quick glance at Crafters Tome revealed that the recipes for the Epic gear resided with the Klaxxi Quartermaster. Originally the rep grind for the main character was bad enough without having to do it again on an Alt. Of course now it only takes 45 minutes to do a handful of Klaxxi quests to get to Honored status. The Klaxxi are a weird bunch who prefer Sapflies to real currency and the Quartermaster likes the unusual Kyparite as payment for his secret recipes. You may have seen them, but if you are like me you would have no idea what it was used for.

Now I was in a position were an item I had not paid any attention to before was now needed to purchase the recipe and then extra was required to craft the end product. The full list can be seen below:

Living Steel Belt Buckle

Ghost Reaver's Breastplate

Ghost Reaver's Gauntlets

Living Steel Gauntlets

Living Steel Breastplate

Gauntlets of Ancient Steel

Breastplate of Ancient Steel

Also there was the Masterwork iLevel 463 Weapons which I did not know existed:

Masterwork Forgewire Axe

Masterwork Ghost Shard

Masterwork Ghost-Forged Blade

Masterwork Phantasmal Hammer

Masterwork Spiritblade Decimator

All the recipes cost 20 Kyparite (12x20 = 240 Kyparite)  + 40 Kyparite for every weapon. 

Suddenly I was looking at 18 stacks of Kyparite for 3 weapons and all the recipes, and this is a resource that I have seldom seen. This was confirmed by the Auction House only having 3 stacks available for sale. 

Further research was needed to discover the spawn points for Kyparite and then a long old fashioned farming expedition across 2 zones was required. 

One of the early problems with crafting in the Mists of Pandaria expansion was the shortage of Spirit of Harmony. This was easily supplemented early on by the Sunsong Ranch, but with the awkward micro management involved in running a farm on multiple characters, means that once the farm is fully functioning, most people actually stop using it. I have bucket loads of Spirit of Harmony but not all on the character that might need it, and for this reason alone the Spirits should be Bind on Account not Soulbound. I have argued on many occasions that the introduction of Bind on Account was a good move by Blizzard, it as not been expanded as much as it should have.

I am only just discovering a part of the game that I should have been aware of 9 months ago, but this is due to the difficulties that have been faced by players with multiple characters. 

One aspect of Blacksmithing that I have not been able to access is the new discovery system. Leatherworking and Tailoring seemed to have got lucky with the drops appearing on the day of the patch, Blacksmiths on the other hand need to kill a boss on the Island of Thunder. Not exactly fair, and even worse considering that I play my Warrior like a total noob. Hunter, Mage, Shaman, Death Knight  would have no problem but I do not get on with Warriors at all.

I read lots of sites about WoW but I am still unsure at what steps I need to do to face the boss Itoka and the game gives no indication of what I should do. I am not asking for easy mode, just some in game guidance would be a start, and sometimes go to WoW Head is not an adequate answer. 

How much outside research should we have to do to play this game?

Route 66

The story has been floating around for several days, and it is still only a twinkle in the developers eye, and for that reason I didn't take too much notice. Yesterday Grimmtooth spoke out about it and I don't think he is best pleased. The subject is the Blacksmithing Levelling Revamp current sat on the 5.2 PTR.

The plan is for budding Blacksmiths to be able to skillup on Ghost Iron, instead of farming or buying all the ore types on the path from 1-85 which I have just done on my Monk. The levelling Blacksmiths are one of the reasons for a fairly bouyant market in ores from copper up to saronite and it provided enough money all the way up to super duper Flight skill  at the princely sum of 5000G after already forking out for Cold Weather flying. Without that market in ores I would have struggled to make that kind of money, without a sugar daddy to bail me out.

The effect on the economy will to reduce the value of all other ores and push up the price of Ghost Iron Ore, and this will attract the attention of the botters and will bring them into Pandaria, and will make Ore more scarce for the average person.

My original stance when they introduced the express cooking skill, was why are they doing this? it is not hard to level cookery. The answers have emerged over time and one of them was a little bit of surprise.

1. Blizzard had a new toy in the shape of the Zen cooking experience. It was introduce for the Panda's as a bit of padding because of their love of eating and drinking. It was part of the all inclusiveness of not preventing people from taking part in new content.
2. The surprise aspect was the poor design from Cataclysm (big surprise). Cooking 450-525 was a disaster with no trainer bought recipes. All skillups were part of the Cooking daily and every 3 or 4 days you could purchase a new recipe. This is fine for an expansion that goes on for 2 years, but if you have a brand new Panda, then this is a considerable hurdle to get over.

My other argument at the time was why should cookery be treated better than other professions? This also proved to be unfounded because cookery is now express service from 1-525 and the slow boat to China from 525 - 600 with the huge investment in the Way of system.

My question is why does Blacksmithing need this assistance now? Is there a shortage of Blacksmiths at max level? and if there is, then maybe this is because the crafting professions have been shafted for so long and people are so fed up of making belt buckles as their only source of income.

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On the subject of Patch 5.2, there as been the announcement of the Valor/Conquest reset. On previous expansion this was no big deal because the Valor Tier gear would drop down to Justice Tier Gear, so there was no real change. This time the Valor points will become worthless Justice points and the previously available items for Valor will just cost less.

This requires action so as not waste precious Valor points. In my case my Hunter got the very sexy trinket from Operation: Shieldwall

This was a leap from an iLevel 427 Green item to this very nice upgrade (No stat inflation there then).

My only other character with any Valor to lose was my Shaman, who unfortunately has no reputation with any faction to allow him to purchase any Valor gear. The result is that I need to move quickly to acquire enough Valor points and accrue enough reputation with Operation: Shieldwall to purchase some iLevel 496 gear.

The only other factor is when the patch drops, and I am guessing that is towards the end of month.