Leveling Inscription: Preparation

Edit: This information is out of date. Please visit my inscription leveling guide for updated information

Thanks to Siha at bananashoulders.com, we’ve got a tentative leveling guide for inscription.  I say tentative, as blizzard makes changes every beta that affect how people are leveling inscription.  If you’re interested in leveling inscription, I suggest you take a look at this guide.  

As of beta build 8982, you’ll need over 1000 Herbs to level inscription.  Here’s the list from Siha’s Guide:

• 150x Earthroot, Peacebloom, or Silverleaf
• 60x Briarthorn, Bruiseweed, Mageroyal, Stranglekelp, or Swiftthistle
• 150x Grave Moss, Kingsblood, Liferoot, or Wild Steelbloom
• 140x Fadeleaf, Goldthorn, Khadgar’s Whisker, or Wintersbite
• 210x Arthas’ Tears, Blindweed, Firebloom, Ghost Mushroom, Gromsblood, Purple Lotus, or Sungrass
• 350x Dreamfoil, Golden Sansam, Icecap, Mountain Silversage, Plaguebloom
• 360x Any Outland herbs

So, how do you prepare for inscription?  Well, you gather herbs, 1210!  1210 herbs take up at least 61 slots, but they can be stored on a low level alt.  However, if you want to drop a little over 100g, you can invest in some serious storage space, and make a personal guild for that alt, with 1 guild bank tab.  If you don’t have a bank alt with a guild bank, I suggest you get one.  Assuming that you don’t put any other money into the alt, you would have 142 slots (98 bank tab + 16 backpack + 28 bank)

Let’s see how close I am to being prepared.  As of 9/30/08, here are the contents of my Herb tab on my bank alt:

How close am I to being able to level?  Let’s compare what I have to what I need:

Need  150/Have 264- Earthroot (58) , Peacebloom (88), Silverleaf (128)

Need 60/Have 334- Briarthorn (100), Bruiseweed (80), Mageroyal (75), Stranglekelp (39), Swiftthistle (40)

Need  150/Have 240 - Grave Moss (20), Kingsblood (120), Liferoot (60), Wild Steelbloom (40)

Need  140/Have 209 - Fadeleaf (55), Goldthorn (68), Khadgar’s Whisker (73), Wintersbite (13)

Need  210/Have 264- Arthas’ Tears (7), Blindweed (20), Firebloom (70), Ghost Mushroom (0), Gromsblood (51), Purple Lotus (36), or Sungrass (80)

Need  350/Have 193- Dreamfoil (40), Golden Sansam (71), Icecap (14), Mountain Silversage (53), Plaguebloom (15)

Need  360/Have 167- Outland Herbs (167)

As you can see, I need more high level Azerothian herbs, as well as more Outland Herbs.  My warlock, soon to be an inscriber is in level 57, so she’s likely to farm the rest of the Azerothian Herbs leveing from now to Zangarmarsh.  In addition, my main, Samueltempus, is an herbalist and has an epic flyer,  so a few hours of farming here and there will fill in the gaps.  I also have many extra low level herbs, and I’ll use those to make some extra gold on the Auction House. 

If you’re planning to level inscription, and you want to farm the mats yourself, get to the farming.  It’s taken me about a month to get this far, and although I did it while leveling a toon, it still takes a considerable amount of time.  We should be expecting the 3.0.2 patch sometime soon, so your time to get ahead is coming to an end.

- Sam

Warlock Progress

Well, I didn’t quite make it to my goal; I still need 95% of a level to reach 58. I spent a good deal of time doing things that weren’t leveling my warlock, and some of the time I spent leveling wasn’t very efficient. As per my previous post, Sunken temple is a waste of time if you’ve passed level 50. I will say that having a guildie tag along on her mage yesterday helped me gain 2.25 levels yesterday without losing my mind questing around Jadenar in the Felwood. Seriously, you have to head into the Shadow Hold 4 separate times for different quests, and it will be a fifth when I’m working on my epic mount.

Did you realize the warlock quest to go into Sunken Temple is a level 55 quest? Without help from a friend, the earliest you should do this quest is level 51. As I’ve already said, experience wise, it’s faster to level skipping Sunken Temple if you can’t get it in before you reach level 51. I can’t see why anyone would justify the time for this quest, when you’ll be replacing any one of the three items you can get from doing this quest in Hellfire Peninsula.

Real life obligations will prevent me from reaching 58 today, but I will reach it tomorrow. Hellfire should be completed sometime this weekend, and I’ll start working on the beta. Be sure to check back here a lot next week for Beta updates, as I will be posting about them frequently.

- Sam

The Temple of Atal’Hakkar

I am not reccomending this as an instance to get experience from anymore.  If you’re higher than 50 before you find a group for this, you will spend 2 hours clearing the instance, completing 5 quests, and you will not level.  I was at 33% to 53 yesterday when I went, and ended the night at 97% after turning in the quests.  The gear here is nice, but for experience, it’s a waste of time past 50.  I’m hoping to still reach 58 this weekend, but it’s going to be a bigger grind now…

-Sam

Guild Composition

As we approach the expansion, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to my guild, and what I’d like it to be in the expansion.  I’ve seen a trend recently of raiding server wide slowing down, which, I have to admit, was pretty much expected.  Also, people have been leaving their guilds, particularly members of extremely large guilds, and I see this as an opportunity:

I can rebuild my guild, Bucklers of Swash, from the ground up.

The guild still has a core of reliable players, and they aren’t going anywhere, but with the expansion, we will have an opportunity to be better than we were in Burning Crusade.  We should be up and raiding within a month of the launch of the expansion, and because of that, we won’t be as behind the other guilds on the server.

However, this opportunity comes with responsibility.  How, and more importantly who you recruit plays a significant role in both the survival of your guild and the content you can hope to master.  If you have any intention of being at all serious with your recruiting, you have to plan the how and who.

Enchants Pt 2- Enchanting on a Budget

This post is part two of a series, read part one here.

Getting gear properly gemmed and enchanting can cost a fortune in time and gold, and you should do that on epic gear that you’ll be using to raid or PvP.  But what about those pieces of gear that you might replace easily?  What about the pieces of green and blue gear that you have when you startraiding?  Is there a way to increase your performance without breaking the bank, or spending days farming?

These are all good questions that you might ask yourself when looking at a piece of gear.  In this post, I’ll show you how to enhance your gear with a little time and effort.  If you want to maximize your gear, well, let’s just say that post is coming soon.

***The examples I’m about to give will be out of date in a month or so, but the principles will still be sound.

You have 10 items that currently can be enchanted if you’re not an Enchanter, 12 if you are:  Head, Back, Shoulders, Chest, Bracers, Hands, Legs, Boots, Weapon(s), Ranged Weapon, Rings (Enchanter Only)

For this post’s purposes, we’re going to use a hunter as an example.  Here are some cheap enchants you can get that will up your survivability or damage:

Head – Knothide Armor Kit (+8 Stamina)

Back – Greater Agility (+12 agility)

Shoulders – Honored Aldor (+24 Attack Power) or Scryer (+13 Crit Rating) Inscription

Chest – Knothide Armor Kit (+8 Stamina)

Bracers – Assault (+24 Attack Power)

Legs – Clefthide Armor Kit (+ 30 Stamina and 10 Agility)

Hands – Assault (+26 Attack Power)

Feet – Knothide Armor Kit (+8 Stamina)

2H Weapon – Savagery (+70 Attack Power)

Ranged Weapon – Adamantite Scope (+10 Weapon DPS)

 

Combined Stat Increases:  +54 Stamina, 22 Agility, 144 Attack Power, 10 Weapon DPS (Aldor)

As a hunter, this would roughly be an increase of 50-100 DPS and at least 540 Health.

Total Required Mats

Leatherworking- 18 Knothide Leather, 4 Heavy Knothide Leather, 8 Thick Clefthoof Leather

All of these mats can be farmed as (or with) a skinner in Nagrand.  Estimated time: 30-45 Minutes

Enchanting – 52 Arcane Dust, 4 Large Prismatic Shards

If you are not an enchanter, either use 4 stocked Large Prismatic Shards or shatter 2 Void Crystals from instances/raids.  Buy the Arcane Dust (or the Large Prismatic Shards if you don’t have them).  Estimated time: 5 minutes

Mining- 8 Adamantite Bars, 2 Golden Draenite

Mine them yourself if you can, if not ask a friend to mine them, or buy them on the Auction House.  If you or a friend don’t have the gems stocked, check the Auction House Estimated time – 20 minutes

Primals – 1 Primal Air, 4 Primal Earth

Kill the Air Elementals in Nagrand while you’re farming leather.  If that doesn’t get you a primal, keep killing them, it won’t take long.  Primal Earth is easy to come by; miners have tons of it, and it’s very cheap on the Auction House.  Estimated Time: 0-15 minutes (on top of farming leather)

Other- 2 Arcane Tomes or 2 Fel Armaments

If you’ve already turned some in and you have 2 of the item that you get in exchange you’re set.  Otherwise, farm them off mobs, or buy them on the Auction House.  Estimated time: 0 – 30 minutes.

It is feasable to farm most of these mats easily, especially if you have a Leatherworker and Miner at your disposal (My hunter is both).  Assuming you can farm everything but the Arcane Dust, you can easily get these enchants done for around 50 gold, with a few hours work. 

-  Sam

Weekend Warlock and Other Updates

On Friday my warlock was sitting at level 43, 0% experience earned.  As of this morning, she’s in level 48 with 70% already earned.  That’s 5.7 levels in about 2 days.  That might not sound too terribly impressive, but in that time, I also Main Tanked a Karazhan, downed the BRD Brewfest Boss at least 20 times (the kodo dropped one of those times, no we didn’t win it, or you would have already heard about it), and dropped my personal arena rating just enough to not be able to get my Brutal Gladiator’s Pants on my Rogue.  When you add in real life commitments, like celebrating my wife’s birthday, and the watching of some football, 5.7 levels sounds pretty good.

The warlock is sitting at just under 4 days played, and 15 days ago, I hit level 30.  Here’s some of the things that I was doing this weekend to level efficiently:

1.)  I ran Uldaman on level. 

The tank was my paladin friend, one of the dps was another altaholic friend on his elemental shaman.  The other two were forgettable pugs, a.k.a, the healer was shadow and wanted to dps, and the warrior was a tank with inferior gear to the paladin.  Anyway, we needed the priest to heal, and with the paladin tank holding 5-7 mobs at a time, we cleared the whole instance in about an hour and 15 minutes.  For those of you who don’t know Uldaman, that’s ridiculously fast for an on level group, for those of you who do, we cleared the final trogg room in 1 pull, and no one died.

2.)  I finished the high level quests in Badlands. 

These quests deal with the dragons and welps in the east side of the zone.  These quests give great experience, so even though they’re out of the way, they’re quite worth it.

3.)  I ran Zul’Farrak on level. 

See, even though I didn’t turn down that run through last week, I did in fact run it on level, just like I said I would.  This group was better than the Uldaman group, but due to the nature of the healers in the instance, the grab five mobs and AOE it down didn’t work as well.  This was probably good for me, as I had to actually play my toon the way I’ll need to later.  No notable gear, but boatloads of experience, and I finished all of the quests, even the ones that I had to go out of the way to get.

4.)  I finished all of the quests in Tanaris, and finished most of the quests in the Hinterlands. 

Why did I finish Tanaris first?  Because the questlines for Saving Sharpbeak, and The Ancient Egg, and Violet Tragan all start in Tanaris and continue in the Hinterlands.  After finishing the Hinterlands, I’ll head back to Tanaris, turn everything in and head to Un’Goro.

I’m currently preping for Sunken Temple, and I’m still on target to make it to Outland sometime this weekend.  Once I’m there, I’ll spend a little more time with the beta, and crank out my leveling specs for the rogue, paladin, and hunter.  Also, I’ve finished the draft for my 2nd enchanting post, look for that tomorrow…

- Sam

Bank Alts & Guild Banks

Before the introduction of guild banks in patch 2.3, people used individual bank alts, or mules, to keep all of their extra stuff that didn’t fit in their character’s bags or bank.  It wasn’t uncommon for officers and guild leaders to have mules that held guild mats.  Then came the 2.3 Patch.  Now there was a better way to store mats for a guild, and restrict access so that everyone could see it, but not everyone could directly access it.

What I’m about to discuss is by no means innovative, but I feel that if people see the potential of the following information, they’ll use it:

Make a guild for your bank alt, and use its guild bank!

The setup isn’t difficult, and the benefits outweigh the relatively small start up fees.  If you don’t have a bank alt already, roll a new character, and make your way to the nearest major city.  Grab a guild charter and have people sign it (might take a bribe if you can’t find enough guildies to help).  Create the guild, and remove the other people from the roster.  To set up your guild bank, go to the bank, click on the bank vault, and purchase a bank tab.  Your first tab will run you 100g.

Why spend this amount of money?  Well, the more alts you have, the more mats you’ll likely have and/or need.  Let’s take a look at all of the space I have on my bank alt, Shortsword, and what I’m using that space for.

I have several projects in the works at the moment, and I need a ton of space to store the mats.  My mage is a Tailor / Enchanter, and even though she’s currently stuck at level 24 waiting to be leveled, I’ve been saving the mats for when she does.  I have a level 30 Shaman that I level exclusively with my wife’s shaman, and he’s a Miner / Jewelcrafter.  My Warlock is an Herbalist, and will be an Inscriber when 3.0.2 comes out.  I also have 3 70’s with storage problems all their own.  Shortsword solves my storage issue, by offering 4 places to store items:  his bank, his bags, and 2 guild bank tabs.

Shortsword’s bank is holding the most important 300-375 tailoring material, Netherweave Cloth for my mage:

Is 53 stacks of netherweave going to guarantee that I hit 375 instantly?  No, but it’s going to put a massive dent in that leveling process.  Accumulating this much netherweave didn’t really take that long either.  I just sent the cloth to Shortsword from my 70’s if I already had 20 bandages on them.

As for Shortsword’s bags, they’re not as organized.  The only project I am currently using them for is the storage of high level greens to disenchant when I start leveling my mage again.  Also in the bags are quest items from the few quests I’ve done on Shortsword, my extra leather, some items that haven’t been sorted into other places yet, and 2 pieces of the Blackened Defias set for a twink I keep saying I’ll make one of these days. 

 

The first tab of my guild bank is general storage of mats and patterns.  These include primals, ore, bars, gems, enchanting mats, and food.  If you look closely, you’ll see some reputation items in there as well.  Basically, instead of storing these items on the toon that found them, I put them all in a centralized location, and that way, I always know what I have, without having to check the bags and bank of every other character I have.  I apologize for the mess; this tab could use a little spring cleaning and organization.

 

Now for a project I’m currently working on, that’s relatively well organized.  This second bank tab cost me 250g.  My warlock, now in level 44, is going to be an inscriber in the expansion.  To be a successful inscriber, you’re going to need a ton of herbs.  Her Herbalism is just over 250, so I’ve got a majority of the Azeroth Herbs already, and I think sometime next weekend, I’ll be in outland grabbing those.  Again, inscribing is going to need a ridiculous amount of herbs, so I need a place to store a ridiculous amount of herbs.

The herbs you see here won’t be nearly enough to level inscribing.  After completing my epic mount quests some time in the next few weeks, I’ll have to travel back and farm even more herbs to make sure that I have more than enough to level Inscription.  If I get too many, then I’ll just make a ton of money on the AH selling lower level herbs to people that are too lazy to farm themselves, or for some reason didn’t take herbalism as their second profession.  My goal is to have enough herbs to hit 375 Inscription the first day the 3.0.2 patch comes out, and park myself in Ironforge selling Inscription related things.

I hope for those of you without personal guild banks, this was useful information.  If you need any other motivation to create one, the 1400 gold wasn’t sent from my other toons, it was made by selling all of the excess stuff I’d be accumulating.  I didn’t realize how many mats I had until I put them in the same place.  I mean, honestly, what was I going to do with 30 primal mana, and 40 primal earth?

- Sam

Steady Progress

Due to the earlier than expected Wrath release, and the receipt of a beta key, I’ve slimmed down my leveling goals a bit.  While it would be nice to get my lock and my mage to 70 before the expansion, I’m going to stop the mage at 30 (300 tailoring and enchanting).  My main goal is to get the lock to 70, and I’m making steady progress on that goal.

I started Badlands at level 40 and now my warlock needs 20% to reach level 44, so I’m really ahead of the game.  I did all of the Uldaman quests, and all but 2 of the questlines in Badlands.  Just doing those quests got me 2 whole levels of experience (none of which was rested).   I’ve normally started questing in Tannaris and Hinterlands at this point, but I’m going to get a group for Uldaman first.

If you’re of the mathematical sort, you’re aware that 40+2 does not equal 43.8.  I got the other 1.8 levels yesterday when a friend of mine was running Zul’farrak for her two other accounts (yes, with the 3x experience from recruit a friend).  She invited two of us along to fill out her party.  So I basically soaked up some free experience, while completing 4 of the Zul’farrak quests, and looked forward to running it for real later. 

Yes, I know I taked previously about the merits of doing instances on level, and I’ll continue to do them that way.  I’ll still end up running Zul’Farrak on level at least one time before I leave Tannaris.  But, if a friend wants me to fill out a group, I’m down for the free experience.

Speaking of running instances on level, we had the opportunity to run Scarlet Monestary (Library, Armory, and Cathedral) this weekend.  The group makeup was: 2 Warlocks, 1 Protadin, 1 Shaman healer, and 1 Dps Warrior.  Imagine clearing an instance on level, with a paladin tank.  He would grab 6 mobs, and we would AOE them all down.  Rinse and repeat.  Quick, efficient and painless.  No gear for the effort, but a level and a half of experience.  It was wicked fun.

How does the leveling look for the next few weeks?  Well, I won’t really have any time to play for a few days, but I’m sure that I’ll hit 50 sometime this weekend.  That would put me in Outland sometime next weekend, or worst case scenario, the following week.  I will probably cool down the leveling once I hit 60, taking advantage of some more rest experience, while I enjoy the Beta some more.

Oh yeah, my hunter now has a Vengeful Axe.  That is all.

- Sam

WotLK Beta – Stormwind

I really like some of the changes happening in Stormwind.  The city hasn’t really changed since I started playing.  Among the new additions to the city is Stormwind Harbor, a route to northrend,  which puts all other harbors in the game to shame:

  

That view may not be impressive, but think for a minute about how Menethil or Theramore looks when you get off the boat.  How much eye candy is there when you jump ship at Ratchet or Booty Bay?  I think you’ll agree that getting off the boat in Stormwind looks much cooler:

 

These all pale in comparison to my final discovery in Stormwind.  If you’ve ever wondered why it took the king of stormwind 4 years to make it home, I think the answer is pretty clear now. 

Is this not the biggest throne you’ve ever seen?  If I was bringing that back from my “vacation,” it would take me years too!  I think the next largest throne in the game is the throne in Blackrock Depths:

And yes, sitting at the bottom of that throne is a level 57 Samueltempus.

- Sam

Wrath Release Announced

November 13, 2008

That’s less than 2 months away!  I’ve got so much to get done by then.  I really want to test out the beta, but if I’m going to come close to finishing my goals, my time in beta is going to be minimal at best.  My top prority at the moment is to get my Lock to level 65 (currently level 40) so that she can train inscribing to 450.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m ecstatic that the expansion is coming out.  I just know it’s going to be a lot harder to get all of my pre-wrath goals done, and test the beta too.

- Sam