Tobold's Blog
Saturday, September 29, 2012
 
Panda-crafting

Some short remarks on crafting in Mists of Pandaria: One really positive thing is that this time Blizzard was extremely generous with harvesting nodes in the new zones. They are so plentiful, especially for the basic stuff you need a lot of, that it doesn't even matter that they aren't shared like in GW2. If you have problems finding Ghost Iron Ore or Green Tea Leaves, you are doing something wrong, they are literally all over the place.

On the downside Mists of Pandaria has two features that makes life harder for crafting alts. One is the Spirits of Harmony, which replace the elemental crafting components from previous expansions. Motes of Harmony to create Spirits of Harmony drop from every mob, but they are bind on pickup, and thus can't be traded. Thus if you want to craft something that needs those, you need to farm lots of mobs. With an estimated drop rate of around 10%, and 10 motes needed per spirit, you only get a Spirit of Harmony for every 100 mobs you kill, and it's not clear whether all mobs even drop them.

The other problem is specific to some crafts, for example tailoring: The better recipes are in a level 90 area which isn't accessible unless you are level 87 to do a quest, or level 90 to fly there. My tailor / inscriber mage isn't making much progress in crafting, because he is stuck in tailoring, and can get only one new inscription recipe per day via Scrolls of Wisdom. My alchemist warrior is doing a lot better, being already at 600 skill. Transmutation mastery rocks early in an expansion! Unfortunately Blizzard really miscalculated with the gem transmutation recipes: They need Golden Lotus, which is far more expensive than the rare gems you can make with them. :(

Comments:
Yes, the Spirit of Harmony thing pretty much kills alt-crafting. The other major problem is the huge reputation grind required to access some recipes. I can manage it on one character, but on two? They should add some way to transfer reputation from one char to another, or, more simply, make recipes BoA, so that I can buy them with my main and then send them to my alts.
The removal of the reputation tabards (get reputation doing instances) was a very bad idea: now I'm forced to run endless and idiotic daily quests instead of doing what I want to do: instances.
 
One upside of Spirit of Harmony is they also replace early expansion Chaos Orbs. So if you want to make high end epic gear, you ONLY have to kill mobs. You don't have to grind any dungeons with less than a guarantee of an orb.
 
I don't see the SoH killing alt crafting. But the crafting system does let actively played crafters (as mains) craft better things. And I think that's probably a good balance.

eg. My alt alchemist can churn out healing/mana potions, flasks, and transmute living steel. My alt enchanter can disenchant and can turn out all the basic enchants that people use before they get raid enchants. My alt jewelcrafter can turn ghost iron into gems and make some basic gear.

I don't think that's broken. I like that alt crafters are still useful but that played ones are a bit better. Plus SoH is bound to become BoE later on.
 
Usually I'd just buy all maths from the AH.

I suppose that they implemented this to prevent that.
 
Basically that was the other thing that made me quit wow early...When I realized that I had to level all my alts to enjoy the crafting..

I can barely level one to 90 without suicide. And now not only I need to level alts for professions, but also I need to play with them and kill mobs for spirit of harmony..no thanks.

Back to GW2 and I also renew my Swtor subscription too.
 
To be fair, professions really are optional in this game. You can do perfectly fine without them.

Heck, I never levelled anything but inscription on my main Death Knight (doing the 0-55 zones for a gathering profession? No!).
 
Well, it's obvious WoW is stretching content via crafting/alt leveling. Put as many quests, reps, BoPs in the way of advancement and rake in the cash.
 
Motes of Harmony will not be a problem for high level characters, if those characters are doing the daily grind for reps. They'll be killing lots of mobs anyway.

Some people may be freaking because the drop rate of MoHs on lvl 85 mobs is quite low. It gets better on higher level mobs.
 
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