Tobold's Blog
Monday, October 30, 2006
 
BC Journal - 30-October-2006

Another weekend of adventure in the World of Warcraft Burning Crusade beta. I hit level 62, got my jewelcrafting up to 315, and spent a lot of time exploring the Outlands. But I didn't play all that many hours in the beta, because most of Saturday I spent doing Real Life ® stuff, including the first christmas shopping, being a firm believer in starting that early. And Sunday afternoon I spent raiding on the real servers, although our BWL raid was again cancelled, and we ended up doing AQ20. Still, playing in a guild is fun, and makes a good change from exploring the beta, which is fun too, but of a more lonely kind.

Leveling in the Burning Crusade isn't quite as fast as in the original World of Warcraft, but that was only to be expected. From level 60 to 61 I needed 415 kXP, to level 62 473 kXP, and now to 63 I will need 504 kXP. That is a strange series of numbers, the difference between 61 and 62 is bigger than that between 62 and 63. Anyway, leveling up didn't *feel* slow, and I'm not even trying very hard, I have so many other things to do in the beta. I gain most of my experience points just by doing quests, most of the time solo. But this weekend I also did several elite quests in a small group of first 4, then 3 players. There is a series of elite quests involving killing elite giants in Hellfire Peninsula, and the first quest already gives a very nice wand (or other rewards for other classes), with 84 dps and good caster stats. The other quest rewards I currently get are usually about as good as the tier 1 and tier 2 gear I'm wearing, and it is always difficult to decide whether to switch or not. And that is just the green quest reward items. The expansion will level the playing field in equipment after 2 to 4 levels, making all the current raid epics obsolete relatively soon.

After having level 62, and a mining skill sufficient to mine adamantium, the basic ore after fel iron, I started to explore the zones around Hellfire Peninsula. That was enourmous fun. I ended up exploring two zones, Terokkar Forest and Nagrand. The forest is okay, but except for harboring the big neutral city of Shattrath it isn't really special. With Nagrand on the other hand I fell immediately in love, this is probably the most beautiful zone on the whole World of Warcraft. The encroaching demonic threat to this pretty lush landscape is very well done, creating a great atmosphere.

In the middle of Nagrand is the village of Halaa. This village can be either under the control of the Horde or under the control of the Alliance. To capture the village, the side not currently owning it must kill the villages 15 guards. That is insofar fun as you can take control of one of the 4 wyvern flight points around the village. Clicking on the wyvern gives you 10 aerial bombs, and puts you on the predetermined flight path, crossing the village twice. So you can kill the guard by dropping bombs on them, as long as there aren't any defenders destroying the wyvern posts and killing you when you land. Aerial bombardement seems to be one of the fads in Burning Crusade, there were already quests with it in Hellfire Peninsula, but I do like the idea. I would have liked it even more if Halaa hadn't been bugged. Me and two other Horde players tried to take the village with a combination of bombardements and ground combat. We got the guards down to 1 out of possible 15, but the last guard was bugged. First he evaded all attacks, so we couldn't kill him. Then he despawned, but the display still showed 1 out of 15 possible guards, when in reality there wasn't any one left. So as we couldn't do the final kill, we never got the village under control, which was annoying. Blizzard will have to still work on that feature.

Speaking of work left to do, while exploring Terrokar Forest I also crossed the zone border to Shadowmoon Valley, which resulted in me being teleported back into the forest. Shadowmoon Valley isn't currently accessible, presumably due to not being finished yet. The zones of Blades Edge Mountains and Netherstorm are likewise not yet open, not yet finished. You begin to see why Blizzard couldn't have released the expansion next month.

While exploring all these zones, I kept mining all the ores I could find, and thus maxed out my mining at 375. That allowed me to mine khorium, the final rare ore. The other rare Outland ore, eternium, doesn't have its own ore nodes. It is found sometimes when mining any of the other Outland ores, fel iron, adamantium, or khorium. You also have a small chance to find a cuttable gem when mining. The one thing you don't find any more is stones, except for the dense stones in the rich thorium veins that can be found in the Outlands. There doesn't seem to be a stone level after the dense stones.

Jewelcrafting after 300 is slow going. Your chance to find a cuttable gem while mining, or as a mob drop, is very low. Thus you have to prospect fel iron ore to get the cuttable gems, adamantium can only be prospected at 350 skill, and eternium and khorium can't be prospected at all. Prospecting destroys 5 fel iron ore, and either gives you nothing, or one cuttable gem, with an about even chance. So on average you need 10 fel iron ore for one gem. You can then either cut the gem, which is usually a yellow recipe, giving you a skill point half of the time, or use two gems and some metal in an orange recipe for some jewelry. Thus you end up with 20 ores per skill point, which is a lot. So while I was doing this, cutting gems to skill up, I had a nasty surprise: Once cut, the gems don't stack any more. Which means you will have to sell them fast, or use up a lot of storage space. As in the beta people can buy gems from a temporary NPC vendor, I ended up selling the cut gems for 1 gold piece to a vendor, destroying a lot of value in the process. And up to now, with 315 skill, I haven't made a single piece of jewelry good enough for me to wear, although the green +16 int ring with some +healing bonus is coming close. But as so often in tradeskills, I had just found a blue ring in a dungeon which was better.

Glyx just posted in a recent comment here a link to a jewelcrafting guide, which has a shopping list what you need to reach level 300 in jewelcrafting: 240 copper, 120 bronze, 40 iron, 60 mithril, 255 thorium, 110 gold, 30 truesilver, 50 flask of mojo, 10 large fang, 30 malachite/tigerseye, 30 lesser moonstone, 100 shadowgem, 35 jade, 40 citrine, 45 star ruby, 35 aquamarine, 40 large opal, 20 azerothian diamond, and 20 huge emerald. The cost for this will vary widely, depending on whether you are Horde or Alliance, how old your server is, and whether you buy the stuff now or after the expansion, when everybody wants to buy it. And that is just one possible way, I personally went a route which used less shadowgems, but a lot of silver bars. But you can see how the total cost will be several hundred gold, and as high as 1000 gold under the worst circumstances. I will probably end up skilling up jewelcrafting again, just because I already gathered most of the materials for copying them to the beta server. But for people who find themselves with nothing stocked on the day the Burning Crusade comes out, I don't think I would recommend this new tradeskill, it is just too expensive for too little effect.

The good news in that is that if you are bored right now, and worrying how you are going to pay for a flying mount in the expansion, especially if you want the 5000 gold epic one, you might want to do a lot of mining, storing all the metals and gems on some bank mule, and selling them shortly after the expansion comes out, when prices will presumably go up. And of course you could speculate and buy gems now, although that would bind your money for a long time, and if too many people do it, it could backfire. One tip: if you want to hoard metals, you can store the noble metals like silver, gold, and truesilver as bars. But the base metals might be worth more as ores than as bars, even if that takes twice the storage space. Especially thorium ore might be useful to have, as the high-end gems can be prospected from that.
Comments:
There is something that has to be said about the current "wow epic green" lust that is going around.

The Majority of Caster gear lacks that which a priest needs most - Spirit, Sure, theres items with JUST Spirit, and there are blue drops with spirit, but the drops are becoming few and far between (IE: like 8 Hellfire Ramparts Runs, 3 Feral Druid Staffs, Tons of the Shadowrend Swords, etc.)

It seems that the majority of Tier 2/3 and even 1, Will be far more effective at maintaining "class role" functionality for the majority of the 60-70 climb.

Which is the reason i'll be in BWL again soon. <3 spirit.
 
I have a question for you, Tobold. How do you maintain both a warcraft account and a wife simultaneously?

The flippant answer to that is that I have *two* WoW accounts, with my wife playing on the second one.

The more serious answer is hidden in the first paragraph of this blog entry, where I say that for example Saturday I spent shopping together with my wife, and didn't play WoW. I also spent Sunday evening, after the AQ20 raid, watching TV with her. I do my part of the household chores, and I even cook. In short, I'm not a catass. Balance in all things is important.
 
So let me see if I have this straight: New races really only affect players until level 14 or so, Jewelcrafting is basically useless, and rather than create new classes, Blizz decided to cop out and give alliance shamans, and horde palis.....
Correct me if I am wrong Tobold, but my guess is the quests are 95% kill 10 of x and 5 of x as well.
Lame...
 
I scored a Beta Key by getting three toons to lvl 25 on the Speed Comp server...but I haven't used it yet. I've mostly been playing my Alts rather than my 60, and I'm reading everything you (Tobold) are doing, and thinking to myself "Yeah, I could be there, leveling past 60 and exploring Hellfire Peninsula...but when the expansion comes out everything I've done will all be gone."

I'd hate to find an Epic Item for my Hunter, knowing that in just a month or two the Beta Test will end and I'll have to start all over from scratch, but without my "Dwarven Gauss Rifle".
 
Correct me if I am wrong Tobold, but my guess is the quests are 95% kill 10 of x and 5 of x as well.

Correct. Basically people were asking for more of the same, and got it. New zones, new dungeons, new raids, new mobs, and most importantly new loot. You could say that this is the definition of an "expansion", if you want something very different, you need to start another game. An expansion is only ever likely to add similar stuff than what you already have, just more of it, "higher level" (which is just a numbers game), and a couple of things improved and more polished.
 
This is frusterating. Reading through youi're blog you're what i consider a noob. You've hit 60 on characters, but you lack any real experience with the end game. Yet you're in the beta. And big surprise here, now that you're past 60 you're wasting your time on the level 60 content.

I hate blizzard.
 
Oh and it's not like i consider 'noobs' to be stupid, or bad people. You're probably a cool guy, it's just frusterating seeing inexperienced players getting invites over serious players, and i don't feel bad saying that because i'm almost positive you don't have a played time breaking 200+days, who knows, maybe that doesn't merit an invite to test out the new content, if it doesn't though i have no idea what would.
 
Well, I have over 100 days played, and got half way through Blackwing Lair. Of course if you've already vanquished Naxx and played twice as much as me, you might consider me a noob. On the other hand most non-WoW players would have a hard time to understand how I could play the same game for over 2000 hours.

I can understand anyone's frustration for not having received a beta invite. But as I received my invite for writing this blog, I'd claim I earned it. And I don't think I'm "wasting" my time if I'm not rushing to 70. Speed-leveling without even looking at the content BC offers is not a good way to beta test.
 
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