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How to Win the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza

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Last week, I tried my hand at the fishing contest in Stranglethorn (I’m out on Saturday afternoons so I can’t do the Northrend one). I lost to a Tauren fishing in everybody’s pools. This week, I tried again.

I grabbed myself the fish trinket, as I’m pretty happy with my Kal’uak fishing rod and being a fish is awesome, and shortly after I returned to the coast to try and fish me up a rare fish from the pools. Happily, I looted myself a Queenfish, which didn’t grant me another achievement, but it is the one that rewards you with the +5 fishing line ((which is basically a +fishing enchant for your favourite fishing rod)) when you hand it in at Booty Bay and that is the one I was after. Needless to say I came away pretty happy from Stranglethorn today.

Rewards & Winning

To win the contest, you need to fish 40 Speckled Tastyfish which can only be obtained from tastyfish pools which only spawn on the coast of Stranglethorn Vale for a 2 hour period starting at 2pm server time. When you go to hand in your 40 fish, you are given the choice of the following two rewards:

From the Tastyfish pools, there is also a rare chance to fish up one of the following rare fish. The first 3 listed can be handed in for certain rewards, which I’ve also listed.

These are all pretty rare to find but you can fish in the tastyfish pools for the entire 2 hours and they do respawn, so keep trying if you want any of the rare fish. You can also hand in 5 tastyfish (repeatable) for a couple of gold so if you don’t win or get spares do hand them into the Goblin it’s better than nothing.

Preparation

Now, if you want to win the contest, I do have a few tips for you. First of all, you will want to stock up on Water Walking Elixirs (only if you don’t happen to be a Priest, Shaman, or Death Knight who have their own ways to water walk) because it can be very handy sometimes to be in the water when you’re trying to position your character properly. You might also want, though it’s not essential as you will be fishing in pools which only requires 1 fishing skill these days but it’s become a habit for me now, to make sure you have a couple of lures or your Weather Beaten Fishing Hat if you have one, though as I say, it’s not entirely necessary any more. I would also recommend installing Fishing Buddy (which I also linked in my last post as well) which is a very nice mod as it has options to let you double click cast, automatically put a lure on your rod if there isn’t one active, and it can also tells you the timers for the fishing contests and your progress towards your goal so you don’t have to keep checking your bags, plus other options. It’s not a necessity, but it certainly is a nice addition. Do make sure it’s working a little bit before the contest starts as mine wouldn’t do the double click casting when the tournament began today which led to my very speedily moving fishing onto my ‘\‘ keybinding and hatting up. Even so, the timer was still working as you can see in my screenshot.

Location

You’ll want to be tracking fish (very important) and start at the point shown in the image below. If you’re Horde, you’re safe to start a bit closer to the Hardwrench Hideaway but Alliance will definitely want to avoid the Goblin guards. Totally not speaking from experience here.. *grumble*.

And from there, travel up along this coast in the following direction, obviously fishing as you go.

I noticed that there were hardly any people fishing around here, it’s very possible that a lot of people start in the South because of a bug which has since been fixed (even if it hasn’t, you can still see the pools spawn) which leaves the North coast pretty open. I didn’t see another person fishing until I had about 35 fish, and the lack of competition really helps to give you a good head start. The pools also have a pretty good respawn time so it’s well worth fishing around here. You’ll want to start on a piece of coast that you have to yourself for a little bit, ideally. Also, people will fish in your pools. Be prepared for that. That’s it really. The moment you get 40 fish, hearth back to Booty Bay, talk to the Goblin in the middle, make sure you know which reward you want beforehand because sometimes you might only have a split second to hand it in before somebody else does and voila!

If you want any of the rewards for handing in the rare fish, it’s well worth heading back to the coast to keep fishing once you’ve handed in your 40 fish as you can of course only fish in these pools for 2 hours every week, so if you want them, keep fishing and remember to hand in any remaining tastyfish.

Good luck!

Baradin Fox Kit

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I discovered this pet over on Warcraft Pets, I discover pretty much every pet over there really but still, I hadn’t noticed it before. It’s a rare drop from the foxes on the Tol Barad Peninsula, it’s also Bind on Pickup, so if you want it – you’ll have to farm it. You might get lucky and get it after just a couple of kills, it happens, or you might end up tearing your hair out as it seems to have the same drop rate as any of the Whelplings.

I decided the best time to farm was about 10am (or before) until I started getting ganked (I’m not so into PvP, I hear you don’t get flagged on PvE servers on the Peninsula though), which was usually about 11.30am ish. Overall, I think I farmed foxes for about 5 or 6 hours over the space of 3 days, but I’m glad I did because it’s absolutely worth it. It’s very, very small, but I love the fox model, and it’s idle animation is the fox/shaman wolf dance, which is brilliant.

I put together this map to show the patrol path I took and roughly where the foxes spawn. It’s a nice smooth run around really and you don’t miss any mobs. Watch out as well for instantly respawning foxes, that sometimes happens and you don’t want to miss the extra chance of a drop.

Good luck!

Shadow Priest Cheat Sheet

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Updated for 4.0.

This guide basically details how I play, and soon I will stick it on a page so that I can keep it updated. I hope it helps.

Spec

Basically, you want to go for this 9/0/32 build. There are 2 spare points which I’ve put into Mental Agility and Psychic Horror, which I have found to be a very useful talent in heroics. It’s not the best CC in the world by any means, but it’s very nice if the tank’s struggling with a few mobs at once, it can even be glyphed to remove the cooldown by a minute. Feel free to move them around if you can see something more useful to you.

Prime Glyphs

The best three prime glyphs to use at the moment are:

Though, if you’d rather take something else, Glyph of Dispersion can occasionally come in useful if you find yourself needing the extra survivability.

Major Glyphs

The major glyphs are really down to personal opinion. None give any DPS increase, so it’s down to what you’ll find most useful for whatever you’re doing. Personally, I think these are the best 3 at the moment pre-raids:

However, when you start raiding, it might be worth replacing Glyph of Spirit Tap with one of the following, probably Fade or Dispel Magic. It’s situational.

Minor Glyphs

Minors are also down to you as they always have been really. I like to use Glyph of Levitate and Glyph of Fading because it’s always nice to not have to worry about carrying Light Feathers around, and the reduced mana cost on Fade is reasonably nice too if you ever find yourself using it.

Stats

For normal and heroic instances, you don’t need too much hit, just take whatever you get your hands on. For raids, you will need to aim for the hit cap, but you’re pretty safe to be 4-5% under, if you notice too many misses, however, that’s when you need to get a little more hit. If you haven’t picked up enough hit/spirit gear, it will be best to reforge your least useful stat into spirit. Remember that with the Twisted Faith talent, 1 spirit = 1 hit.

The stat priorities, not including hit/spirit (which when capped becomes useless), are: Intellect > Spell Power > Haste > Crit/Mastery. Of course, it will always be best if you run your own armory profile through SimulationCraft (see this post) to work out your stat priorities, but that is generally what you’ll be looking at with Crit being ranked only a tiny, tiny bit higher than Mastery which isn’t as useful to us as it is to other classes/specs.

Gear

I have compiled a couple of gear lists. My gear list for normal levelling gear, which you need to gather a little before you can enter heroics, is here, and this is my pre-raid gear list for heroic and reputation drops primarily. The main thing about gear, as it always has been, is knowing which stats are best for you. Once you know that it’s pretty easy to work out what is and isn’t an upgrade just by looking at the item. If you’d like to easily see how much better an item is, you can always use the Rating Buster mod which lists the stats on the item and how much better/worse it might be than the item you currently have equipped. I’ve found currently that it’s not listing haste, but I’m sure that will be fixed soon.

As for weapons, I would strongly recommend a main hand/offhand combination at the moment. I haven’t seen an enchant specifically for 2handers that we can use on staves, and I have had a thorough look at enchants, so we’ll be using the same enchant on staves as we do on our main hand weapons, and we also now benefit from offhand enchants which give us 100 intellect, so the staff would have to make up for that bonus to be better than a main hand/offhand, which usually it won’t.

I have compiled a BiS pre-raid list, which you’re more than welcome to use, on the Wowhead profiler based on SimulationCraft stat weightings. I didn’t include epic BoEs purely because they’re obviously better than the other items and depend on how much gold you have, how much you’re willing to spend, and whether or not they come up for sale on the auction house or in trade. If you want to do the same easily, when you run your character through SimulationCraft, you will see an option to check gear on Wowhead, click it, it will open up in the program and you can copy and paste the link at the bottom into your browser then go back to your imported log. It’s a very nice option, and if you want to check the list based on the stat weightings they’re using at ShadowPriest.com, you can click here.

Rotation

I think the biggest question for a lot of people is how to properly use Mind Spike. The idea behind Mind Spike is to give Shadow Priests a spell to cast on shorter living mobs – namely, trash in instances or adds on bosses. Using Mind Spike will eat any DoTs on the target but if you’re finding yourself using Mind Spike, you won’t be needing to DoT anyway. It also gives you a buff that stacks upto 3 that increases the crit strike chance of your next Mind Blast, and the Mind Melt talent gives your next Mind Blast a 50% chance to be an instant cast. You shouldn’t be using Mind Spike on targets that live long enough to take a fair bit of damage from a proper rotation.

For longer living mobs and bosses, you’ll want to be doing a full rotation, starting with DoTs, Arcane Torrent if you happen to be a Blood Elf, Mind Flay until you get a shadow orb, then Mind Blast. DoTs no longer suffer from clipping, so make sure you refresh them with a few seconds left or when you get the Empowered Shadows buff (only Vampiric Touch and Devouring Plage, Shadow Word: Pain will be refreshed through Mind Flay). Try to keep up replenishment too as much as you can. You might also notice that Pain and Suffering only has a 60% chance for Mind Flay to refresh the duration of your Shadow Word: Pain now, so do keep an eye on that, I didn’t realise for the first couple of instances.

You should be using Shadow Word: Death in your rotation. Not only is it a nice bursty spell, but it grants mana back from the damage backlash, so make sure you aren’t shielded when you cast it if you need the mana. It’s even better after 25% now that it’s become an execute move – it will do more damage at that point in the fight, and if you have it glyphed, which you should do, you’ll be able to cast 2 in a row before it goes back on cooldown. Do watch out for your own health, though we have a cushion in the form of Pain and Suffering, if there’s a lot of group damage and the healer isn’t able to focus on healing you up, or the fight gives you a massive damage increase, you might end up killing yourself with it – so be smart, but do make good use of it.

Also remember to use Shadowfiend fairly early on in the fight, if the fight won’t last longer than 4 minutes, hold off until a Blood Lust or until you need a bit of mana back, if it will last longer than 4 minutes, use it after you’ve dotted up. Dark Archangel is also very worth using once you get 5 stacks of Evangelism, it increases your damage a little and gives you back 5% of your mana pool. Plus it looks awesome.

You will notice an increase in mana problems this expansion, similar to back in TBC, but if you manage your mana using the methods I mentioned above, you will be absolutely fine, might even finish some 5 man fights on full mana.

Gems

Currently, Ember Shadowspirit Diamond and Chaotic Shadowspirit Diamond seem to be reasonably similar in DPS terms for us, it really depends on what you’re willing to do for meta requirements until Blizzard change the requirements for Chaotic (which they have said they will and hopefully quite soon). If you’re a Jewelcrafter for starters you’ll be best to use the Ember Shadowspirit Diamond because the Brilliant Chimera’s Eyes will more than make up for it. If you aren’t, it has been suggested that Chaotic Shadowspirit Diamond, using more Purified’s than Brilliants or Recklesses, and one Lightning Dream Emerald to get the meta requirement may be slightly better than using an Ember Shadowspirit Diamond, but it’s so close that it might be best (easier/less fiddly) to go with Ember which only requires 2 yellow gems.

As for the other gems, you will still be prioritising pure intellect gems, Brilliant, unless you have a 10 intellect or more socket bonus requiring a red or blue gem. For yellows you’ll want to use Reckless, intellect and haste, and for blues you’ll want to use Purified, intellect and spirit.

Enchants

Consumables

You’re going to want to be using Flask of the Draconic Mind in raids which gives you 300 intellect for an hour.

If you’re looking for an elixir to use instead I’d recommend Elixir of Mighty Speed. There are also battle elixirs to increase your crit, mastery, hit, and spirit.

As for potions, Volcanic Potion is phenomenal.

Severed Sagefish Head is the 90 intellect food, to make it you need Deepsea Sagefish which can only be fished from open water. I’ve found the best place to be in Twilight Highlands, though Uldum isn’t bad either. Pickled Guppy only gives 60 intellect, but the fish required, Highland Guppy, can be fished from pools inland in Twilight Highlands, so it may be worth getting a few of those for heroics. If those don’t really appeal to you, you could try Fortune Cookies which give you a random buff based on your stats, I personally don’t like this kind of food for raiding, I’d rather know that I’m getting the right buff, but they might be useful to you perhaps.

Levelling Cloth Gear List 80-85

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I wanted to know what I can get for my Shadow Priest from which instances while I’m levelling 80-85, so that I know where to go if I’m queuing and such. Here’s the list if you’re interested. Should imagine you can gather a nice healing set using this list too, or if you’re one of those other cloth classes – figured I might as well add healer trinkets for the healy type Priests and swords for the Mages and Warlocks while I’m listing all the cloth.

Listing all normal mode gear from 80-85 in the new Cataclysm instances, call it a ‘pre-heroics gear list for cloth wearers’ if you will. I’ve not added every craftable, or every reputation reward, or every quest reward, just the items of note for levelling between levels 78-84. I will also update this post as and when I notice any differences.

This post at Wowjuju tells you where each entrance is, it’s worth a look, especially now that you have to discover the entrances.

*  = Has Hit
~ = Has Spirit

Armour

Head

~Aurelian Mitre – Lady Naz’jar, 78, Throne of the Tides
*Helm of the Typhonic Beast – Setesh, 83, Halls of Origination
Crown of Enfeebled Bodies – Erudax, 83, Grim Batol
Spiritmend Cowl – BoE, Crafted, 83, Tailoring 485
*Helm of Temperance – Reputation, 83, Earthen Ring Honored
*Mercury-Coated Hood – BoE, Reputation, 84, Earthen Ring Honored

Shoulder

~Krystel Mantle – Ascendant Lord Obsidius, 78, Blackrock Caverns
*Skeletalized Shoulderpads – BoE, 81, Silken/Sturdy Treasure Chest, Deepholm
~Spiritmend Shoulders – BoE, Crafted, 82, Tailoring
Mantle of Master Cho – Siamat, Lord of South Wind, 83, Lost City of the Tol’vir
Blight-Lifter’s Mantle – Quest, The Source of Their Power (requires 83), Lost City of the Tol’vir
~Woundsealer Spaulders – BoE, 83, Silken Treasure Chest, Uldum

Chest

*Inquisition Robes – Rom’ogg Bonecrusher, 78, Blackrock Caverns
Deepmist Robes – Quest, Sins of the Sea Witch (requires 80), Throne of the Tides
*Deepsilk Robe – BoE Crafted, 81, Tailoring
~Robes of Broken Dreams – BoE, 81, Silken/Sturdy Treasure Chest, Deepholm
~Anraphet’s Regalia – Anraphet, 83, Halls of Origination
Robes of Rampant Growth – Ammunae, 83, Halls of Origination
*Robes of Whispering Sands – BoE, 83, unknown source

Wrist

~Falling Snow Bracers – BoE, 80, unknown source
~Tangled Web Bindings – BoE, 80, unknown source
*True Archaeologist’s Bracers – Quest, Doing it the Hard Way (requires 83), Halls of Origination
~Crimsonborne Bracers – Drahga Shadowburner, 83, Grim Batol
*Sand Silk Wristband – Lockmaw, 83, Lost City of the Tol’vir

Hands

Vonica’s Gauntlets – BoE, 80, unknown source
~Dolomite Adorned Gloves – Corborus, 81, The Stonecore
Deathsilk Gloves – BoE, Crafted, 81, Tailoring
*Bone Fever Gloves – (Horde) Reputation, 83, Dragonmaw Clan Honored
*Gloves of Aetherial Rumors – (Alliance) Reputation, 83, Wildhammer Clan Honored

Waist

Band of the One Hundred and One – Quest, Followers and Leaders (requires 82), The Stonecore
*Stratosphere Belt – Grand Vizier Ertan, 81, The Vortex Pinnacle
~Evelyn’s Belt – Siamat, Lord of South Wind, 83, Lost City of the Tol’vir

Legs

~Leggings of Iridescent Clouds – Asaad, 81, The Vortex Pinnacle
Gartic’s Resplendent Leggings – BoE, 82, unknown source
Legwraps of Astral Rain – Isiset, 83, Halls of Origination
~Curse-Tainted Leggings – BoE, 83, Trash, Grim Batol

Feet

*Slippers of the Twilight Prophet – High Priestess Azil, 81, The Stonecore
~Medic’s Bloodstained Sandals – BoE, 82, unknown source
~Hekatic Slippers – Rajh, 83, Halls of Origination
*Sandals of the Courier – Quest, Kill the Courier (requires 84), Grim Batol

Back

Periwinkle Cloak – Lady Naz’jar, 78, Throne of the Tides
~Beauty’s Cootie-Ridden Blankie – Quest, Do My Eyes Deceive Me? (requires 80), Blackrock Caverns
Rippling Azure Cloak – BoE, 80, unknown source
*Shadow of Perfect Bliss – Asaad, 81, The Vortex Pinnacle
Vertigo Cloak – BoE, 81, unknown source
~Solar Wind Cloak – Rajh, 83, Halls of Origination
~Azureborne Cloak – Drahga Shadowburner, 83, Grim Batol
~Cloak of the Dryads – Reputation, 83, Guardians of Hyjal Honored
~Thousand Bandage Drape – BoE, Reputation, 84, Guardians of Hyjal Honored

Weapons

Two-Handed

*Cerith Spire Staff – Commander Ulthok, 78, Throne of the Tides
Sealing Heartstaff – BoE, 80, unknown source
~Soul Releaser – Earthrager Ptah, 83, Halls of Origination
Staff of Siphoned Essences – Erudax, 83, Grim Batol
Staff of Solemn Secrecy – BoE, 84, Silken Treasure Chest, Uldum

Main Hand

~Torturer’s Mercy – (mace) Rom’ogg Bonecrusher, 78, Blackrock Caverns
Biting Wind – (dagger) Grand Vizier Ertan, 81, The Vortex Pinnacle
~Scepter of Power – (mace) Setesh, 83, Halls of Origination
Blade of the Burning Sun – (sword) Rajh, 83, Halls of Origination
*Modgud’s Blade – (dagger) General Umbriss, 83, Grim Batol

Off-hand

*Beauty’s Favorite Bone – Beauty, 78, Blackrock Caverns
~Prophet’s Scepter – High Priestess Azil, 81, The Stonecore
~Lord Rottington’s Pressed Wisp Book – BoE, Crafted, 81, Inscription
Book of Blood – BoE, Crafted, 81, Inscription
Book of Origination – BoE, 83, Trash, Halls of Origination
*Petrified Camel Haunch – BoE, 83, Silken Treasure Chest, Uldum

Wands

*Corla’s Baton – Corla, Herald of Twilight, 78, Blackrock Caverns
~Torchlight Wand – BoE, 81, Silken/Sturdy Treasure Chest, Deepholm
Wand of Dark Worship – BoE, 81, Trash, The Stonecore
~Wand of Untainted Power – Forgemaster Throngus, 83, Grim Batol
*Cyu’s Ornate Wand – BoE, 83, unknown source

Jewellery & Trinkets

Neck

~Quicksilver Amulet – Karsh Steelbender, 78, Blackrock Caverns
~Acanthia’s Lost Pendant – BoE, 78, Trash, Blackrock Caverns
~Sea Witch Charm – Quest, Rescue the Earthspeaker! (requires 80), Throne of the Tides
~Amulet of Tender Breath – Altairus, 81, The Vortex Pinnacle
*Token of Gratitude – Quest, Vengeance for Orsis (requires 82), The Vortex Pinnacle
~Soulsurge Necklace – BoE, 82, Silken/Sturdy Treasure Chest, Deepholm
Tauntka’s Necklace – High Prophet Barim, 83, Lost City of the Tol’vir
*Charm of the Muse – BoE, 83, Trash, Halls of Origination
~Pendant of Elemental Balance – Reputation, 83, Earthen Ring Honored
Kuang’s Locket of Secrets – BoE, 84, unknown source

Finger

~Kibble – Beauty, 78, Blackrock Caverns
*Anthia’s Ring – Mindbender Ghur’sha, 78, Throne of the Tides
~Ring of the Great Whale – BoE, 78, Trash, Throne of the Tides
Finkle’s Twinkle – Quest, Do My Eyes Deceive Me? (requires 80), Blackrock Caverns
Rose Quartz Band – Slabhide, 81, The Stonecore
~Ring of Frozen Rain – Asaad, 81, The Vortex Pinnacle
~Caliph’s Band – Quest, Vengeance for Orsis (requires 82), The Vortex Pinnacle
~High Priestess’ Signet – Quest, Followers and Leaders (requires 82), The Stonecore
~Band of Life Energy – Ammunae, 83, Halls of Origination
*Band of Rays – Rajh, 83, Halls of Origination
Abandoned Dark Iron Ring – BoE, 83, Trash, Grim Batol
~Heartbinder Ring – BoE, 83, Silken Treasure Chest, Uldum
~Ammunae’s Blessing – Reputation, 83, Ramkahen Honored
Diamant’s Ring of Temperance – Reputation, 83, Therazane Revered
Spirit Creeper Ring – General Husam, 83, Lost City of the Tol’vir
~Veneficial Band – Lockmaw, 83, Lost City of the Tol’vir

Trinket

Witching Hourglass – Ascendant Lord Obsidius, 78, Blackrock Caverns
Bottled Lightning – BoE, 80, Silken/Sturdy Treasure Chest, Deepholm
Elementium Dragonling – BoE, Crafted, 80, Engineering
~Lady La-La’s Singing Shell – BoE, 80, unknown source
~Unquenchable Flame – (healing) BoE, 80, Silken/Sturdy Treasure Chest, Deepholm
Tendrils of Burrowing Dark – Ozruk, 81, The Stonecore
Tear of Blood – (healing) High Priestess Azil, 81, The Stonecore
~Rainsong – (healing) BoE, 81, Trash, The Vortex Pinnacle
*Anhuur’s Hymnal – Temple Guardian Anhuur, 83, Halls of Origination
Blood of Isiset – (healing) Isiset, 83, Halls of Origination
Corrupted Egg Shell – (healing) Erudax, 83, Grim Batol
Gale of Shadows – Erudax, 83, Grim Batol
~Electospark Heartstarter – BoE, 83, unknown source
Sorrowsong – Siamat, Lord of South Wind, 83, Lost City of the Tol’vir

Plants vs. Zombies

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I was going to write my 20 Days of Warcraft (which I’ll try and get back to later if I have time), and I was also going to squee a lot about all of the things that appeared yesterday: The Orgrimmer changes, the sight of the Barrens from the air, the new pets, my new favourite NPC the Psylosopher (which I can neither spell nor say), and so on.. but I started doing a quest yesterday evening. The first couple were easy enough but later on it gets quite difficult. There’s a brilliant comment on WoWhead that really helped me but I think a blog post would be helpful too.

You'll want to have something like this, perhaps a few more spitters and rocks.

Start by putting down 3 Sunflowers. These give you the sunpower you need to put stuff down. When you have 3 of these, you’ll want to start blocking off the approaching zombies. The rocks you see above only cost 15 sunpower and them them busy for a little bit while you gather more sunpower to put down spitters to kill them off.

Next, you will want to work on building your defenses. To do so, you’re going to need a lot of sunflowers, at least 2 rows. Inbetween putting down spitters and a row of freezyas, perhaps with the odd rock thingy thrown in to hold them back. Once you have enough down, you have to build your sunpower to use the pumpkin bombs to defeat the larger mobs or heavy groups of zombies.

If you get overwhelmed, the green trucks to the left of the sunflowers will zoom forward, if mobs get that far, and clear everything in its path – including any sunflowers you might put down before it goes. It is only useable once and if mobs breach that part of the field again, they will enter the house “eating your brains”, so do watch out, it’s best to not have to use those.

It’s a difficult quest, but very fun, and as far as I can work out, you can do it from about level 20ish, after that the money rewards scale with level. I got 30g for the final quest at level 80, and of course:

The Art Of Gold Making: Setting Up Shop

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Okay guys, so you may have read my last gold post and thought, “That’s great and all, Jae, but, where exactly do you expect us to start? What are the most helpful mods? Any quick tips? What are the best professions to use?” Well, don’t worry, I didn’t intend to leave it there. I was in the same position as those of you who are just starting out at some point, not knowing where to start, and I fully intend to help you get to a point where you are able to make enough income to play comfortably, how much you end up making purely depends on how much time and effort you put into it. You can spend an hour here or there and make enough to cover raiding costs, and then some.

I think it’s best if I start from the beginning. If you’re looking for professions, the best ones will be any that you can use to craft things. That would be: Tailoring, Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, Jewelcrafting, Alchemy, Enchanting, Inscription, Engineering. Gathering professions are a nice bonus if you want them. Personally, I like having them, but they aren’t the best way to make gold strictly speaking. However, I really believe it’s down to personal preference. Every profession has its’ own way to make a bit of gold so choose whichever you prefer and I’ll cover how to use them effectively in a later post.

Bank Alts

The first thing I do, regardless of my level, on any server, is to create a bank alt. I give it a name that I might give a character (rather than Jaedialt, or Wgrtdf) or perhaps recycle an alt I don’t play anymore, run it to the nearest city (or maybe I’ll create a Blood Elf and make my way to Undercity or Orgrimmar. I personally think that Undercity is the best for Horde bank alting, and Ironforge for Alliance), and leave it near the auction house. I make sure it has some gold, buy all of the bank slots, and fill them and every bag slot with either 20 slot or 16 slot bags, depending on how much gold I have and then log out.

This character is there to enable you to mail any useful items you might want to keep or sell to stop your bags from clogging up too much while you’re questing or grinding. You can always return the mail later on if need be. If you have a lot of auctions, you might even consider putting a guild together purely so you can have access to the guild bank to store anything you don’t have space for, you can let your friends join to use the guild tag, or keep it purely for guild bank purposes. My personal guild bank currently has 4 tabs, and I’m considering buying a 5th. The extra space is just too awesome.

Auction Mods

After your space is set up and ready to use, you may want to look into getting a few mods. They aren’t a necessity, of course, but they do make auctioning a lot simpler, and make it a bit easier to contend with the people who seem to sit there doing their auctions all day, and all night.

Personally, I like to use Postal, Auctioneer, QuickAuctions, Market Watcher, Auction Profit, and Skillet on my crafting characters. I only use these mods (except for Postal, which is useful anyway) on my bank alt as it saves memory on the characters that don’t need them.

Very often, I will have a few hundred mails in my mailbox. You’re only able to open 50 every minute, and Postal really helps with that. With its’ ‘Open All’ function, you can leave it to open those 50 mails while you alt tab or read a book for the minute. It has a countdown as well on the mail symbol so if you choose to watch the mailbox, you’re able to see when it’s ready to be refreshed. Emptying the mailbox is possibly the most tedious part of doing your auctions, thanks to Postal, it’s just a tiny bit less tedious.

Auctioneer has many useful features. One of its’ main uses is of course scanning the auction house, if you scan regularly enough ((every 12 hours is ideal, but whenever you get chance works, you can do a quick scan with the double arrow but if your PC can’t quite take it, the longer scan does the same job, just might need 10 minutes of AFK time)) you will be given an average market price for each item. These average prices are particularly useful when working out how much an item should go for if it’s perhaps too low, or too high, or if there isn’t any of that item up at the time. BeanCounter can be used to search for an item to see your sale history. It can tell you your past sales and buyouts, which you might find useful. This guide will help you to use Auctioneer to check for items selling below the vendor price, and also for items that may be worth buying to resell.

I like to use QuickAuctions3 as well as Auctioneer. Once you’ve set it up, adding different groups and price settings for each of your regular auctions, you can basically use the ‘post’ and ‘cancel’ buttons, and the most work you end up doing is waiting for the mailbox to refresh. The ‘cancel’ button cancels any of the items you’ve added to QA3′s groups which have been undercut, so that you can put them back up as the lowest priced auction. This is particularly great if you’re in the glyph market, but don’t knock it for any others you might dip your toes into. Follow this guide to help you set it up.

AuctionPrice tells you how much gold your current auctions are in total. Of course, if everytime I put up auctions they sold I’d be very very rich ingame, but it’s nice to see roughly how much gold is sitting there, this is purely there for my own curiosity and isn’t really important.

Market Watcher as well is nice to scan for particular items and watch the market trends. I tend to watch for raw materials, mostly uncut gems, cloth, herbs, Frozen Orbs. Anything you might buy a lot of is useful to keep an eye on.

Skillet is basically a change to the default crafting UI. I’m not a huge fan of the way Skillet itself looks, but it’s very useful if you’re crafting a few things. I only really use it on my Inscriptor and my Jewelcrafter, as it allows me to queue up whatever I want to craft, and then make it, which is nice when I’m checking which gems I’m low on, or which glyphs are selling well at that point in time.

Aphroditi’s guide to the auction house, and more auction tips are very decent posts which have been very helpful to me in setting up Auctioneer and Market Watcher, I recommend you take a look.

Starter Cash

We all need to start somewhere, and there are many different ways you can get yourself a bit of starter cash. It all depends on how you’d rather spend your time doing so. If you want to, you can start off by using the vendor and resale options of Auctioneer, but if not, here are a few more options.

Vendor Items

One of the often overlooked methods of gaining a bit of gold, though it’s something people have been doing for years, is to buy vendor items, and resell them on the auction house. A lot of people don’t want to go trekking around looking for everything they need or want, and will pay a little extra to buy them from the auction house instead, saving them a bit of time. My favourite post detailing which vendor items to grab, along with maps for where to find them all, is this one. It is well detailed and easy to follow. People are willing to pay as much as 60g for certain patterns. Take the cooking recipes from the wandering caravan in Desolace, it’s a pain to find, and when you do the recipes are all ‘rare spawn’, only costing a few silver to buy. Don’t forget vendor pets – if you are able to grab pets from the other faction to sell on your faction’s auction house that’s brilliant, if not, don’t worry, same faction pets will sell as well ((Stormspire Netherstorm, Shimmering Flats Thousand Needles, Org, Eversong Woods, UC, TB, Darn, SW, Elwynn Forest, Exodar, Dun Morogh, Tournament)).

Questing

Personally, I like to complete quests. You can gain a fair amount of gold from completing your Northrend quests ((Grizzly Hills, Zul’Drak, Scholazar Basin, Storm Peaks, Icecrown)), and if you have more than one character at max level and a lot of patience, that’s a few thousand gold you can get, guaranteed. While you do those, you can work on opening up a few daily quests, Sons of Hodir and the Argent Tournament ones especially. If you enjoy, or at least can tolerate, questing for money, 25 daily quests per day will get you a few hundred gold per character, it all depends on how much time and patience you have to spare. Don’t forget the weekly raid and Wintergrasp quests, not only do these give a fair bit of gold, but the emblems and honour they give are useful for gold makers (see below).

Gathering Professions

If you use gathering professions, be sure to pick up any materials you see while you’re flying around, even if you don’t have any crafting professions yet, selling these raw can get you a bit of starter gold, or perhaps you’d prefer to save them to use to level your professions or craft into things that will make a little more gold than the raw materials themselves. If you happen to be a miner, Titansteel bars are still profitable as well.

Random Dungeons and PvP

Another reasonable way to get some starter gold is to do a few random dungeons. The first one you do each day at level 80 will give you 2 Emblem of Frost and 26g, after that they grant 2 Emblem of Triumph and 13g. Remember to check the average price of Dream Shards on your server in order to know which blues are worth disenchanting, and which are worth greeding. A lot of the things you’ll pick up while doing the dungeons can sell, and if you don’t need the gear, you can turn 20 Emblem of Triumph into 20 Emblem of Heroism and then into Cardinal Rubies/Majestic Zircons/King’s Ambers. These you can either sell raw for around 100-130g each, or cut them and sell them for a little more. 10,000 honour can be traded in for gems as well. If you have any spare Stone Keeper’s Shards that you don’t need, make sure you turn them into honour (30 shards = 2,000 honour, and the tokens you get are BoA so you can send any from your alts to your main and vice versa), and of course you can do random battlegrounds too, you’re able to queue from anywhere in Azeroth, so perhaps grind a little while you queue (this also counts for random dungeons).

Grinding

If you really want to, there are plenty of good grinding spots, you just have to find the best ones. I find the Fire and Air Elementals on the Elemental Plateau in Nagrand are brilliant, on my server I could sell Motes of Fire for about 6g each, and Primal Air is still going for about 60g each, it’s useful for a few enchants, Cat’s Swiftness is still the best raiding enchant for a lot of physical classes without Engineering. Check other economy blogs for posts giving tips on the best places to farm.

Selling Professions

Finally, while you’re idling in cities chatting to people, reading blog posts, or whatever you do while you idle, remember to offer your professions in trade. Usually a crafting fee will be about 10g per craft, I stick to this for epic gem cuts, however, certain crafts might get you a bit more, so for some professions you might find it a little better to ask for tips, because some people might tip for a little more than you might be expecting. You will get people tipping 5g, but it seems to be quite rare, and therefore worth trusting in people’s generosity. For example, I have the Blood Draining recipe and I tend to get tips of anywhere between 50-250g for it because it’s fairly rare, or at least difficult to find people who actually respond. I still sometimes get 100g tips for crafting the Death Chill Cloak, for which I’d probably ask for about 15g if I put a fee on it. Just make sure you’re polite, people are less likely to tip if you refuse to pop to Orgrimmar/Ironforge (you can politely say that you’re waiting for somebody in Dalaran), if you’re rude and demanding, chances are they won’t be so generous. If they try to trade you without tipping, gently remind them, sometimes they forget, sometimes they’re just testing their luck, most often they will apologise and give you a little gold for your help.

Stay tuned for whenever I get off my arse to write another one!

Thorium Brotherhood

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The Thorium Brotherhood are a guild of elite craftsmen and women who originally resided in Ironforge, but during the War of the Three Hammers sided with the Dark Iron Dwarves. When the Dark Iron Dwarves were enslaved by Ragnaros, the Thorium Brotherhood broke free. Afterwards, they resided in Searing Gorge close to the materials they needed for their branch of crafting, and able to overlook the enslaved Dark Iron Dwarves of the quarry.

These days, it seems that the Thorium Brotherhood is one of the most pointless factions to be exalted with, giving no achievement, although, it’s also probably one of the easiest, and therefore you may find it useful to gain reputation with if you’re aiming for the Exalted.

If you’re looking for the rewards you can receive from Thorium Brotherhood reputation, Lokhtos Darkbargainer, an NPC within Blackrock Depths, sells a few recipes and patterns which are available at various reputation points. Of course, I believe, the main “useful” item you can receive from this reputation is the Blacksmithing plans for the Sulfuron Hammer, which is required to make Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros. You can receive them by completing this quest, which gives 1000 reputation with the Thorium Brotherhood.

Today, I decided that I’d finally throw all of the cores I’ve been collecting during our weekly Molten Core rep clears at some Dwarves and see what happened. In short, I’ve been aiming for 40 exalteds for a while, I’ve just been slacking a little bit. This one gets me upto 39, so that I can get my 40 achievement when I get that last 1000ish rep with the Ashen Verdict! It also satisfies the completionist in me, because yes, I could also have finished off my Consortium rep for the same result.

To finish this one off from 0/3000 neutral, I started by completing every quest at Thorium point. After that was done, I handed in Restoring Fiery Flux Supplies via Iron 30 times to get to friendly. I chose Iron Bars because they were the cheapest on my auction house and I didn’t fancy farming 120 Iron Bars/Kingsblood, do check the prices of Iron Bars/Ore, Kingsblood, and Heavy Leather on your server before making your decision.

From friendly, I needed to hand in 960 Dark Iron Residue. This can be pretty cheap on the auction house so you may want to check there first, if not you can farm that much in a couple of BRD runs, easily. I did 9 Gaining Even More Acceptance hand ins, and Gaining Acceptance hand ins until I hit honoured.

Then the fun begins. Well, it depends on how easily you can get your hands on Fiery Cores and/or Lava Cores. These drop from trash and bosses in Molten Core. Personally, I’ve been collecting them for a fair few weeks but if you haven’t been you could start farming the trash, or check the auction house, I believe on most servers they will sell for around 40g each, more or less, it depends on how much you’re willing to spend and how much time you can put in. From honoured to exalted, you will need 30 cores.

As I had all of the cores (and then some), all I had to do was finish the quests, which also netted me the remaining Incendasaur Scales, and farm 460 Dark Iron Residue, as the auction house didn’t quite have enough, and overall it only took a few hours.

The Art Of Gold Making: Where To Start

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A lot of people have asked me how I go about making gold. They aren’t sure where to start, or where to look for these tips and ideas. This is the method of gold making that I have found works well for me, but of course, there are many different ways you can make gold. Everybody needs to start somewhere so, hopefully this is a nice starting point for you if you need it, or perhaps a couple of ideas you hadn’t come across before. Either way I hope this is helpful.

Getting Started

In the beginning, it’s important to know a few things. Quests will give you money and rewards, often, the rewards won’t be worth using, but you can hover over each reward to check which will vendor for the most. If you’re an enchanter, you can also disenchant any green or blue rewards that you don’t need. Greys vendor for more than white items, and are completely useless. Hold onto them to vendor, and make a habit of keeping on top of your bag space whenever you’re near a vendor. White items can be useful, it may be worth checking the auction house or wowhead to see how useful certain white items are. For example, the Giant Eggs that can drop from level 40-60 ish mobs are used for a cooking quest at 250 cooking skill, these can sell for a little bit on the auction house.

Questing

You might like to start by finishing off a few quest areas if you’re high level. The amount of gold you can gather from clearing Icecrown/Storm Peaks, etc. is fairly high, especially when you include quest rewards, drops, and any gatherables if you have a gathering profession.

Daily quests, as well, are a decent way to make gold. You can do 25 daily quests a day, each one will give roughly 13g each, if you completed 25 every day, that gives 325 gold roughly, give or take. Some will give more, some will give less, it’s probably best to try a few and see which ones you can complete fastest for the most profit.

This guide over at Ten Ton Hammer, whilst a little out of date (quests 8 and 9 are no longer available), is a decent guideline. It’s worth noting that the Argent Tournament is a nice little quest hub, especially once you’re able to do the champion and Crusader dailies. Also, random dungeons for the first one you complete at level 80 give 26g, the next few for the rest of the day will give 13g, these are another good way to earn gold.

The Auction House

There are auction houses in every race’s capital city. There isn’t one in Shattrath, and there isn’t one in Dalaran unless you’re a high level Engineer. There are also neutral auction houses in Gadgetzan (Tanaris), Everlook (Winterspring), and Booty Bay (Stranglethorn Vale), all of these are Goblin towns. Neutral auction houses allow you to trade between Horde and Alliance, which you cannot do with the regular auction house. You can use this to trade between your characters, or perhaps pick up a good deal once in a while.

You can sell just about anything on the auction house, and you can watch your server’s markets for what is going to sell the best. Interesting looking items of clothing, for example, will sell much better on RP servers than on non-RP servers. When you’re getting started, you’ll want to focus on just a few items. Use your professions, choose something that will sell, like Belt Buckles, Netherweave Bags, flasks, things that are in high demand, and only undercut by 1 copper, there is no need to undercut by more, after a few hundred auctions it will add up.

Banking

It’s worthwhile having a bank alt, a character purely used to store items, and auction, though not necessary, however, most auctioneers use a bank alt. Usually a discarded alt, or a specifically created character. I’d recommend giving it a name that you might give to a character, or [name]bank, rather than a keyboard mashing name. Though I don’t have any proof that it makes much difference, I’m sure one or two people might avoid buying from somebody whose bank alt looks very likely to be a gold seller. If you can afford to, fill your bag slots and bank slots with 20 slot bags, if not, use whatever you can get your hands on at first and build up.

Another useful venture, once you start storing more items than your bags and bank can hold, is a guild bank. You can buy a charter, get 10 signatures (even if you pay people 5g, give or take, for a signature), and purchase a guild bank tab to use for storing your items. As space becomes more tight, you can buy more tabs as you feel is necessary.

Addons

Finally, you might find it a bit easier to use a few mods. Personally, I use Auctioneer, Market Watch, Postal, and Auction Profit. I only use these on my bank alt, as they’re a lot of memory to keep activated on my other characters as well. Addon Control Panel is great if you use a character that you play as well as your bank alt. This enable you to activate/deactivate mods by simply reloading, saving you from logging out, which I’ve found very useful when joining pugs. When setting up my mods I followed this guide to install the mods, and this guide on how to make good use from them.

I hope I’ve been of some help, go ahead and find some economy blogs for further tips, the Just My 2 Copper forums can be quite good to browse. Find out what works best for you on your server, test different methods, because everybody has slightly different ways of making gold.

Midsummer

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As always, I forgot that Midsummer started the other night. I was logging around different bank alts, doing some auctions to pass the time and noticed a bunch of Blood Elf Commoners – oh! Midsummer! Well, as I’ve decided to make a little collection of festival guides which I plan to update if anything changes when they next roll around, here is my Midsummer guide.

Achievements

  • Ice the Frost Lord – Slay Ahune in the Slave Pens. You don’t need to find a group starting from this festival (2010), you can now find a random pug the same way you can in random dungeon finder, just go to the drop down menu and select ‘The Frost Lord Ahune’ or speak to one of the Earthen Ring Scout Dungeonmasters found around cities. You can still find a group the old way, but you won’t receive your Satchel without using the Dungeon Finder.
  • Torch Juggler – You should only need 10 torches for this. You will gain 5 from one of the quests (see below), and you can buy them for 5 blossoms for a stack of 5 from the Midsummer vendors in cities. To complete the achievement, make sure you’re in Dalaran, keybind the torch, then spam click on the area your character is standing. If you throw them to a place your character isn’t standing then you will lose the torches.
  • Burning Hot Pole Dance – You need the complete Midsummer set (which this year you cannot sell back to the vendor) – shoes, chest, shoulders (see below for prices – the hat is not needed). To complete the achievement, equip the set, click on the pole, of which you can find near the NPC you bought the clothes from/handed in your quest to, and spin.
  • King of the Fire Festival – Complete the quest ‘A Thief’s Reward‘/’A Thief’s Reward‘, obtained from the Festival Tailspinner(Horde) or Festival Loremaster(Alliance). They will require you to steal your enemy’s flames from each capital city. This quest will grant you with the Crown of the Fire Festival.
  • The Fires of Azeroth/The Fires of Azeroth – Honour the flames of Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms, and Outlands as listed below.
  • Desecration of the Alliance/Desecration of the Horde – Desecrate the flames of Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms, and Outlands as listed below.

Quests

Dailies:

Flames

The maps on Wowhead say it better than I can, but here’s a list of all of the flames and their co-ords. Horde and Alliance. Also, remember that Northrend will not count towards the achievement but you will still receive Blossoms for those bonfires.

I don’t know how many of you use or have heard of the TourGuide addon, but I’ve been informed that there is a Midsummer Fire Festival addition to it which makes finding the flames much easier if that interests you at all. If not, here are the co-ords for each bonfire.

Horde Cities:

  • Orgrimmar – (Durotar), Valley of Wisdom – 47,38.
  • Thunder Bluff – (Mulgore), Spirit Rise – 21,26.
  • Undercity – (Tirisfal Glades), Ruins of Lordaeron – 68,9.
  • Silvermoon City –  (Eversong Woods), Court of the Sun – 70,43.

Alliance Cities:

  • Stormwind – (Elwynn Forest), The Canals – 49,72.
  • Ironforge – (Dun Morogh), Hall of Explorers – 64,25.
  • Darnassus – (Teldrassil), Rut’theran Village – 55,91.
  • The Exodar – (Azuremyst Isle), The Crystal Hall – 41,26.

Kalimdor Horde:

  • Winterspring, Everlook – 59,35.
  • Ashenvale, Splintertree Post – 70,69.
  • Durotar, Razor Hill – 52,47.
  • The Barrens, The Crossroads – 52,28.
  • Dustwallow Marsh, Brackenwell Village – 33,30.
  • Thousand Needles, Freewind Post – 41,52.
  • Tanaris, Gadgetzan – 49,27.
  • Silithus, Cenarion Hold – 46,44.
  • Feralas, Camp Mojache – 72,47.
  • Mulgore, Bloodhoof Village – 51,60.
  • Desolace, Shadowprey Village – 26,76.
  • Stonetalon Mountains, Sun Rock Retreat – 50,60.

Kalimdor Alliance:

  • Bloodmyst Isle, Blood Watch – 55,69.
  • Azuremyst Isle, Azure Watch – 44,53.
  • Teldrassil, Dolanaar – 55,60.
  • Darkshore, Auberdine – 37,46.
  • Winterspring, Everlook – 62,35.
  • Ashenvale, Astranaar – 38, 54.
  • Desolace, Nijel’s Point – 65,17.
  • Feralas, Feathermoon Stronghold – 28,44.
  • Silithus, Cenarion Hold – 57,34.
  • Tanaris, Gadgetzan – 52,29.
  • Dustwallow Marsh, Theramore Isle – 62,40.

Eastern Kingdoms Horde:

  • Eversong Woods, North Sanctum – 46,50.
  • Ghostlands, Tranquillien – 46,26.
  • Tirisfal Glades, Brill – 57,52.
  • Silverpine Forest, The Sepulcher – 49,38.
  • Hillsbrad Foothills, Tarren Mill – 58,25.
  • The Hinterlands, Revantusk Village – 76,74.
  • Arathi Highlands, Hammerfall – 74,41.
  • Badlands, Kargath – 4,49.
  • Burning Steppes, Flame Crest – 62,29.
  • Swamp of Sorrows, Stonard – 47,47.
  • Stranglethorn Vale, East of Booty Bay – 32,75.

Eastern Kingdoms Alliance:

  • Western Plaguelands, Chillwind Camp – 43,82.
  • The Hinterlands, Aerie Peak – 14,50.
  • Hillsbrad Foothills, Southshore – 50,46.
  • Arathi Highlands, Refuge Point – 50,44.
  • Wetlands, Menethil Harbor – 13,47.
  • Dun Morogh, Kharanos – 46,46.
  • Loch Modan, Thelsamar – 32,40.
  • Burning Steppes, Morgan’s Vigil – 80,62.
  • Redridge Mountains, Lakeshire – 24,59.
  • Blasted Lands, Nethergarde Keep – 58,17.
  • Duskwood, Darkshire – 74,51.
  • Westfall, Sentinel Hill – 56,54.
  • Elwynn Forest, Goldshire – 43,65.
  • Stranglethorn Vale, East of Booty Bay – 33,73.

Outland Horde:

  • Terrokar Forest, Stonebreaker Hold – 52,43.
  • Nagrand, Garadar – 51,34.
  • Zangarmarsh, Zabra’Jin – 36,52.
  • Blade’s Edge Mountains, Thunderlord Stronghold – 50,59.
  • Netherstorm, Area 52 – 32,68.
  • Hellfire Peninsula, Thrallmar – 55,40.
  • Shadowmoon Valley, Shadowmoon Village – 33,30.

Outland Alliance:

  • Terrokar Forest, Allerian Stronghold – 55,55.
  • Nagrand, Telaar – 50,70.
  • Zangarmarsh, Telredor – 69,52.
  • Blade’s Edge Mountains, Sylvanaar – 42,66.
  • Netherstorm, Area 52 – 31,63.
  • Hellfire Peninsula, Honor Hold – 62,58.
  • Shadowmoon Valley, Wildhammer Stronghold – 40,55.

Northrend Horde:

  • Borean Tundra, Bor’gorok Outpost – 51,12.
  • Scholazar Basin, River’s Heart – 47,62.
  • Dragonblight, Agmar’s Hammer – 39,48.
  • Crystalsong Forest, Sunreaver’s Command – 80,53.
  • The Storm Peaks, K3 – 40,86.
  • Zul’Drak, The Argent Stand – 43,71.
  • Grizzly Hills, Conquest Hold – 19,61.
  • Howling Fjord, Camp Winterhoof – 48,13.

Northrend Alliance:

  • Borean Tundra, Fizzcrank Airstrip – 55,20.
  • Scholazar Basin, River’s Heart – 47,66.
  • Dragonblight, Wintergarde Keep – 75,44.
  • Crystalsong Forest, Windrunner’s Outlook – 78,75.
  • The Storm Peaks, K3 – 42,87.
  • Zul’Drak, The Argent Stand – 41,61.
  • Grizzly Hills, Amberpine Lodge – 34,61.
  • Howling Fjord, Fort Wildervar – 58,16.

Ahune the Frost Lord

Ahune is one of the elemental lords in Neptulon’s service, summoned by the Twilight’s Hammer.

He resides within the Slave Pens, though you now only need to use the Dungeon Finder to find a group and get there. This will also net you a Satchel of Chilled Goods which will contain 2 Emblem of Frost, and a chance for either the Frigid Frostling or Frostscythe of Lord Ahune, which will no longer drop from the boss. When defeated there will be a chest which will contain an item to start a quest which rewards one of two tabards (Summer Skies or Summer Flames) and 20 Burning Blossom.

To activate him, a member of your party must click on the ice stone, which will melt, and then he is summoned. During the first phase you will do reduced damage on him. It is possible for ranged to dps him down a little, this will affect the Frozen Core’s health, though it won’t be much. There are spawned adds which need to be taken care of, and frost spikes which are best to avoid as they throw you into the air and you will take damage. Once this phase is over he is reduced to his weakened state, the Frozen Core, which can be dpsed down in one go, though it’s not necessary. If he isn’t killed in this phase, then it will go back to phase 1.

The items you can loot from the chest are the following:

Midsummer Vendor

The currency for the Midsummer festival is Burning Blossom. You receive these from dailies, tabard quest, other quests, honouring and desecrating flames.

I personally recommend you buy the outfit and 5 juggling torches first in order to complete your achievements.

The Face Melter: Scaling Factors

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I finally decided to take a look at SimulationCraft. I’d taken this long specifically because, okay I’m lying to you, I’d had a look before and I didn’t understand what the heck I was doing with it. Until I came across this guide, which admittedly did take me a while to read through but it’s so utterly simple that I feel a bit silly for waiting so long.

I thought I’d go through with you the basics of how to use this programme. I’m sure there are ways to use it that will tell you so much more, but SimulationCraft isn’t the simplest of programmes as far as I can tell so I’m starting with the basics and I’ll find more guides, tips, and fiddle a bit. If, like me, you’ve never used SimulationCraft before but would like to see your own scaling factors and details to improve yourself rather than base your theory on somebody else’s numbers, then hopefully this will be helpful to you.

The only thing you’ll need to change is in the scaling tab. You will want it to look like the following as a Shadow Priest.

Next, import your armory for analysis. You will have the armory page open up, and a few other options. The only bits you really need to care about are these, to keep it simple. Top left, bottom left, and bottom right.

Once you have imported, your character’s details will appear. At the bottom right, the same place as the import button, you will see this.

While you wait for your profile to load you will be able to see the bar moving. Then you can see the results.

The results page will give you a range of information about your character. Have a look through, it’s very useful. Just a few examples from my own results. With an optimal raid situation, I should be capable of about 9k dps. As with anything, this won’t take into account movement time, taking care of adds, any stuns i.e. the bone spikes on Lord Marrowgar, however, it’s nice to see what you could be doing with full raid buffs on a Patchwerk style fight.

This pie chart tells me which of my abilities should be doing the most damage. If you use a damage meter, probably Recount or Skada, or a parse, ((Usually World of Logs, but there are others)) this will show you what you should be doing, which you can compare to what you are doing. If there’s a big difference then this will allow you to play around with things a bit to improve a little.

Further down, there is an ‘action priority list’, which tells you how to prioritise any spells and buffs while in combat. Generally, you will probably know all of this already. Food buffs, flasks, speed potions, Shadowfiend, followed by DoTs, and so on. There are plenty of topics about it on ShadowPriest.com though if you’d like to have a look, it’s there. It isn’t specifically a rotation list, but it does tell you what you should prioritise, i.e. if Shadow Word: Pain falls off, it should be the first thing you refresh.

The part I’m most interested in is the scaling factors. In basic, these tell you how each stat will scale with your gear, spec, glyphs, and so on. Hit will always be ranked as the highest stat because if you don’t have enough it will net you a nice dps loss. However, you also don’t want to have too much, because then it becomes useless. I think most people’s scaling factors will be fairly similar, spell power being the major stat with haste being fairly close to it, crit a little behind, and spirit and intellect at the bottom. Mine interested me, take a look.

As you can see, haste is rated a tiny bit higher than spell power, whereas I expected it to be the other way around. Crit and spirit are ranked fairly close to each other as well, I expected intellect and spirit to be quite low down near enough equal, nowhere near as high as crit. Very interesting.

SimulationCraft works with other classes and specs too, so do take a look at your results if you’re interested.

Posted Edited: Because apparently people get testy over the tiniest of things.