I like a good laugh.  We all know that there are times during the grind of the time-sink that is playing WoW that frustration sets in.  Despite all the nerfs and buffs to leveling it still takes a while.  So it’s nice that the folks at Blizzard have a good sense of humor in designing certain quests to give you a decent chuckle from time to time.

Actually, a lot of the quests and NPC’s have names that invoke something from pop culture.  These are good for a snicker or two.  There’s Spraggle Frock in Un’Goro, Haris Pilton in Shattrath, and quests like ‘Message in a Battle’ that always make me grin a bit.  But there are two quests in Outlands that really take the cake.

The first one is in Hellfire Peninsula.  Foreman Razzlecraz just outside of Thrallmar has this little chain quest with the task “Shizz Work.”  You’ve helped him get parts for his broken down shredder in the quest “Outland Sucks!”  Which is a little funny to me since by the time Gavin and I were getting to this chain Outland was sucking wind a bit already.

So, once you bring Razzlecraz his shredder bits, he claims that one of his felhound pets ate his key.  In his own words:

I finally got my shredder working but I seem to have lost the keys. I keep a pack of felhounds to protect my camp. They don’t do a very good job and they like to bite me a lot. They also like shiny things. I think this one felhound I have may have eaten my shredder keys. I’ll pay you if you’ll take my felhound on a walk. Kill some hellboars and let him eat. He’ll do his business. When he’s done, see if you can’t find the keys in his “leavings.’

This is a prime example of why you should read the quest text.  Pretty funny so far, but the sheer ickiness of this quest only gets better.  So you go start whacking hellboars nearby.  When you kill one, you blow this whistle and the felhound goes to “work.”  There’s this horrid ’splut’ when the felhound eats the pig, and then a big steamy felhound fart and PLOP!.  Now you’ve got a nice big pile of poo to root through.

What’s worse is that now all quest items sparkle.  Sparkling, fresh felhound mess!  Digging through this juicy treasure chest is no picnic either.  It yields a couple of things you really wouldn’t want to find - like gnawed bones and acidic slime.  You even get the “Stanky” debuff from the adventure (I’m not making this up) which you can see below.

In the second shot you can see that the debuff even occupies the “Dummy” slot, meaning it does nothing, but you might be a little dumb for rooting through demon poop.  The only thing it really does is give you a green “stank” aura.

If you have a mod that shows spell casts on your screen you will also notice that Blizz is very thorough when they do anything.   When the felhound drops his load, the spell he casts to make it happen is called “Create Poodad,”  here’s a pic of this wonderful talent - too bad they don’t give out cards for vanity spells like this at Blizzcon eh?

The next bit of fecal fun comes in Nagrand.  Elementalist Lo’Ap wants you to root through piles of poo to find digested Caracoli beans.  While I was working on this quest I came across a pile of poo that was quite different from the rest - see for yourself:

How did THAT get there?  I don’t see how any of the Talbuks in the area could do the deed up in that bush, but there it was - a curly, sparkling load of Talbuk treasure.  At least we can assume that these piles are not as fresh as the Shizz Work turds, since there is no stanky debuff after sorting through them.

Once you get all the beans you need from the curly-que poo, you get a stack of Nagrand Cherries.  Lo’Ap responds like this:

Please do not wash yourself in the sacred waters of the Throne.

<Elementalist Lo’ap holds a prepared caracoli tablet up.>

You place this under your tongue and allow it ample time to dissolve. Once it has dissolved, you will be able to breathe water as if it were air.

I have to eat these?  He knows where they’ve been!  These guys are just sick.  Actually there is something like this in real life.  If you’ve seen the movie “The Bucket List,” you know that one of the big jokes in the movie is that Jack Nicholson’s character likes a certain kind of coffee called Kopi Luwak.  The reason it is the “rarest beverage on the planet,” is that the people who make it get the coffee beans from the dung of the Asian Palm Civet, a cat sized mammal.  Again - I’m not making this stuff up, people really drink this stuff.  You can see the Wiki for yourself here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak

So in WoW instead of making coffee from our latrine beans, we get some sort of timed release, under the tongue tablet that lets us breath under water - you think it’s from the gas?  Before Blizz made all the quest objects sparkle for us, the Rare Bean quest was actually a little difficult.  One comment at thottbot read something like “so now I have to find these piles of crap that are the exact same color as the background, just what I needed to make my day - a quest to find camo poo.”

I know this wasn’t a big tip that you can use, but it might serve as a nice little reminder that there are a lot of silly and whimsical (ok - sometimes doodie jokes) fun things in WoW.  So take your time and enjoy a laugh or too, even if it means sorting a little poo.  (Sorry, I couldn’t resist)

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11 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Learning your skills

Use it or lose it, maybe you’ve heard you dad or granddad say that. The same thing is true with the skills for your character. Often times it can be hard to be really prepared for the level 70 dungeon runs unless you and every single member of your team is a really polished player.

Heres why. End game content such as Shattered Halls, Steamvaults, and other instances that require level 70 teams are a lot like trying to solo a level 20 elite at level 18 or 19. It’s not that bad if you know how to counterattack, it can certainly be done, but more often than not it’s going to end in you getting killed and having to spend some coin on repairs.

Before you high-level players begin to flame me for being a total noob, keep in mind that you probably didn’t “pwn” your first deadmines run right after the game came out. You learned to play and are probably playing with friends you’ve made out of mutual respect for their skill. But not everyone is that good. Not everyone has high powered guild mates to help them farm dungeon set gear. Most people who play wow are casual gamers. They don’t play more than an hour or two a few times a week, so they might never see the inside of Kara.

I play WoW quite a lot, but I am humble enough to still know I am a totally clueless about some things. Anyone who thinks they know it all is full of it. But one thing that can really help you as your character grows is learning how to effectively use your skills. The way to do that is deceptively simple. This may sound pretty dumb, but you’ve got to use all your skills all the time or you will forget to use them when you should.

Heres the trap. You’re out questing for something on mobs several levels below you. If you’re smart, you are usually questing only on green level quests or with a friend (more on that another time). You are blowing through mobs with ease, so you ease off on using some of your more powerful skills. After a few levels, you get even more skills. Now the problem gets worse. The skills you were ignoring before have become sort of left out of your repertoire of moves. You begin trying out your other new moves and find a favorite or two and stick with them. Everything is going smoothly – you are cruising your way to 70, rushing through instances with your friends, you begin to think you are invincible. Then you hit Shattered Halls.

Now, instead of pulls with 2-3 mobs, they can be pulls of 5or 6. And the mob groups are as well balanced as your party with a tank, a healer, a caster with Aoe, and sometimes they even spawn non elite adds like pets. Were talking wipe city your first time in. Is it because your character is the wrong spec? Maybe, but most characters who have spent the majority of their points, say 40+ in a single tree can play a valuable role in any group. Is it because your gear is terrible? Probably not, if you can’t do the high level runs because your gear is crap, your gear is always going to be crap. More than likely its because you have about 5-10 skills you have never really used consistently so you are not really that good at using them when they would really come in handy.

The way to avoid this is to go all out on every battle. Even when you are killing chickens do it with authority. By using all of your skills all the time, you never forget to use one buff or another, or change skills when you need to. The second part of this is that you really need to spend some time in the battlegrounds. The better you get at pvp, the better you will be in high level instances because you will know how to counter attack, instead of just attack. In order to counter attack well, you have to learn how to neutralize the attack they are using against you and then attack them at their weakest point. This means knowing your strong and weak points and how they stack up against every other class in the game. Sounds hard to do, but its easier than you might think if you will run the battlegrounds fairly regularly.

If you want to get seriously good, you better play the arena matches. No other place in the game will test your use of skills like going up against real people with points on the line. There are many skills that have a very small impact in PVE situations, but in arena matches may be the difference between winning only one match out of ten or being the team that wins 9 of 10. In arenas, it not only makes a difference which skill you use, but when. Arena matches will not only make you use all your weapons, but you will have to have almost perfect timing.

A good example is the time you got completely ganked over and over again by that 46 paladin when your toon was level 50. It shouldn’t be that way. Two level 50s should be a fair match, but 50 vs. 46 – you should be able to wax the floor with them. So why did you lose so badly? They just had more experience using their skills with great timing to counter everything you threw at them. Everything you tried to do seemed to hit a brick wall for a reason. At the same time, they were damaging you and stopping you from damaging them. It all boils down to skills and timing.

So never go easy on those mobs, pour it on, it will keep you in much better shape for that end-game content. Next lesson, how a hunter learned this the hard way.

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I’ve been doing a lot of farming lately. To be honest with you, I’ve never had a need to farm gold before level 50 or so, but lots of you have been asking for farming spots for lower levels.

So, my team and I have rolled some new lowbie toons and we’re scouring Azeroth for some great low-level gold farming spots.

Stay tuned for the results of this - we’re actively seeking out the best places, and I’ll report them to you as we find them.

For you higher level guys, today I’m going to discuss farming the Scarlet Monastery.

Lots of people farm SM, but we wanted to know is it worth it?

We ran a level 60 Mortal Strike warrior, with mostly Valor armor (this is the first dungeon set of armor that you get from places
like Scholomance, Stratholme, and Blackrock Spire.

His weapon was nothing particularly great: the [item]Obsidian Edged Blade[/item] from Molten Core.

In other words, this would be a standard level 60 character that has done some end game stuff, but not a fully decked out toon. This is important for you to know so that you can determine whether you’ll be able to farm the SM instances faster or slower than our test character.

The results below are based on a few rules:

1. ALL blues and greens were VENDORED. Nothing was placed on the auction house.

2. All cloth was made into bandages and then vendored.

3. Repair costs were removed from the total profit .

4. We ran each instance in SM 4 times, and what you see below are the averages.

5. Time shown was the time to kill every mob in the instance, and then any respawns on the way back out.

SM Graveyard:

Avg time to complete: 20 minutes
Total Profit: 6g 34s 51c

Profit per minute: 31s 73c
Profit per hour: 19g 3s 81c

SM Library:

Avg time to complete: 22 minutes
Total Profit: 7g 99s 43c

Profit per minute: 36s 33c
Profit per hour: 21g 79s 80c

SM Armory:

Avg time to complete: 31 minutes
Total Profit: 8g 54s 75c

Profit per minute: 27s 57c
Profit per hour: 16g 54s 20c

SM Cathedral:

Avg time to complete: 37 minutes
Total Profit: 10g 91s 02c

Profit per minute: 29s 49c
Profit per hour: 17g 69s 40c

Now you have some hard data to use during your farming sessions.

What can you do to improve these numbers? I have two suggestions for you.

First, because we did not put anything on the auction house, you would probably double these numbers if you auctioned the greens and blues that dropped for you. Use auctioneer to get the proper price, and rake in the extra gold.

Second, if you don’t want to pay the auction house deposits or you don’t want to risk your greens and blues not selling, pick up enchanting as one of your tradeskills and disenchant all the greens and blues that drop for you. You don’t have to pay deposits at the AH for selling enchanting materials, they are almost always in high demand, and since you can’t auction the Bind on Pickup items you get in these instances, you’ll almost certainly make more profit selling the disenchanted materials on the auction house than you’d get for vendoring the item.

Finally, don’t think that you have to be level 60 to farm SM. The mobs are around level 35, and although they are elite, they are not particularly tough.

Almost any character level 50 or higher should be able to clear out SM solo (although it will take longer that it would with a level 60 character.)

And don’t overlook the possibility of duoing SM with a friend. We were able to clear out SM with a 45 warrior and a 41 Shaman with no problems at all.

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At higher levels, I really like grinding elite dragonkin. There are red ones in the wetlands, and blue ones in Winterspring. These guys drop up to 26 silver each, plus other loot. Note that the black ones in Dustwallow Marsh are no longer elite, nor are
the ones in Swamp of Sorrows.

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If you decide to grind, whether for XP or for money, try to grind humanoids. Humanoids drop money, cloth, food, water, and green and grey items. Other mob types typically drop much less value per kill. So, even if you are grinding for XP, you’ll get much more cash along the way.

Also, now that the 40-45 dragonkin in the game are no longer elite (Swamp of Sorrows and Dustwallow Marsh), I’m including them in my grinding recommendations.

They drop around 3-5 silver each, but they also drop plenty of greens and blues (during a quick 20 minute grind on the ones in Swamp of Sorrows, I got 3 greens and a blue.)

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So what do you do if you’re just not finding enough quests, or if questing just isn’t getting you XP fast enough?

In these cases, I like to double up on grind quests. For example, if you need to kill 12 Slobbering Maniacs to complete your quest, kill 24 instead.

If you need to collect 10 leather bandanas, kill 10 more mobs after getting enough bandanas to complete the quest.

In other words, simply incorporate grinding into your questing, and it’ll go by much faster and will be much less boring.

A small amount of extra kills beyond what is required for your quest, done many times on the way to level 70, will really add up.

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Don’t party up on kill quests. If you need to kill 15 raptors for a quest, and you solo them, you’ll get XP for killing all 15 raptors, plus the quest reward XP.

If you party with one other person, you’ll kill the raptors faster, but you’ll only get approximately half the XP.

The only time you should party up is on a slow spawning unique mob where other people are waiting to kill it (The Kolkar leaders in the Barrens, for example.)

Of course, if you have friends that you play with, don’t forsake them… Just don’t fall into the trap of letting other people leech off your efforts.

On the flip side, DO party up on farming quests (for example, collect 10 linen bandannas from the guys in Goldshire) - you’ll end up having to kill twice as many mobs in order for two people to get all of the needed items, which will cancel out the XP loss from grouping.

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I’ve been getting a ton of emails from you guys! Thank you, and keep them coming! I won’t have a chance to reply to all of them
but whatever you ask for, I’ll try to get into these emails.

By far the most common question I’m being asked is “Where do I grind?”

For example:

“I’m a level 38 gnome mage - where should I grind?”

or

“I’m a level 42 Tauren druid - where should I grind?”

Let me start off by saying I am NOT a fan of grinding, and I avoid it whenever possible. I mean, come on - it’s BORING!

There is no reason to have to grind XP in order to level. You can do it entirely with quests. Remember, many quests are like “Kill 12 somethings” or “Collect 10 something off of some mob”

In other words, grinding is already built right into the quest system (thanks Blizz!)

But, I’m a firm believer in giving you what you want, so over the next couple days, I’ll post some of my best grinding tips.

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