Tending my Noblegarden

Noblegardener is perhaps the first World Event meta-achievement actually achievable by a casual player–primarily because all the items needed for the meta-achievement are obtainable by gathering chocolates and buying the items from a Noblegarden vendor in the starting zone where you gather eggs.

That makes it sound easier than it actually is, however.   Wowhead’s Noblegarden guide provides a detailed walkthrough of the Achievements involved, and although completing the meta and earning the title is not completely subject to the whim of the RNG gods, it is subject to how much real-life time you can devote to gathering eggs.

At a minimum, you will need 100 chocolates for the Chocoholic achievement, and at a maximum, 365 chocolates in order to eat 100 and use the remaining 265 to buy your necessary items.  That’s a lot of egg-gathering.  And if you only have evenings free to gather eggs, good luck, because that’s when everyone else will be gathering them, too.  I had great luck yesterday morning, but it was a Monday morning–the only Monday morning available during this holiday.

If the RNG gods smile on you and deliver all the items needed as random loot in your eggs, you’re a lucky fella.  Myself, I’ve already looted close to 250 on my Orc DK, and I still haven’t gotten the white tuxedo shirt, the spring flowers, or spring robes.  Yesterday, I ended up doing Chocoholic and then using the remaining candies to buy the items I needed; however, I still came up 25 chocolates short of buying the Spring Robes.

Unfortunately, my playtime is going to be seriously circumscribed this week due to some real life issues.  I think I can still manage it on my one character, but I don’t know if I can complete any of it on any other character.  Thus since I started the Achievement on my DK, it looks like he will be the one getting the Noble title, rather than my Warlock.

I am really going to put some effort into this holiday.  I came very close to the meta for the Lunar festival, but just couldn’t find the time to finish it.  If it happens again, oh well.  At the very least I’ll be over halfway to achieving the meta next year.

Hey Big Spender

I’m going to do it. Tonight, I’m going to spend the gold necessary to finish leveling Enchanting from 440 to 450. Ten points doesn’t sound like much, but it will probably cost me the better part of 1000 to 1500 gold.

Just doing some quick math using Wowecon to gather prices on Enchanting mats, I compared three recipes that will take me to 450: Enchant Boots: Greater Assault; Enchant Boots: Tuskarr’s Vitality; and Enchant Bracers: Superior Spellpower.

Whichever enchant I use, I will have to buy the recipe, so right there is about 120 gold unless I have a few shards in the bank (I’m not sure if I do). Then, comparing mat costs on my server, I get the following breakdown:

Greater assault = approx. 120 g per skill point

Tuskarr’s Vitality = approx. 100 g per skill point

Superior Spellpower = approx. 144 g per skill point

Without a doubt, I’ll go with Vitality and (hopefully) spend only a little more than 1000 gold to get those 10 points. Since I will definitely be putting the enchants on Vellum to sell on the AH, hopefully I can make some of that money back.

I might even make a profit. The price for a Tuskarr’s Vitality scroll varies pretty widely, but on the high end I might make as much 125 gold. That will be a pretty slim profit margin, but considering that at one time I’d have had to eat the loss entirely, or else stood barking in Trade all day, I don’t mind.

So why am I suddenly so intent on leveling my Enchanting to cap? Two reasons, really.

Formula Enchant Weapon: Bladeward

and

Formula Enchant Weapon: Blood Draining

Both are zone drops within Ulduar, and I am going to Ulduar for the first time tonight. If either of these drop, I do not want to be denied the chance to roll on them.

I still recall with some pain being excluded from a roll on an Enchanting recipe because my Enchanting was a few points lower than the 340 required to use it. I think the recipe was Dexterity, because it dropped in one of the Auchindoun instances.

That was in a guild group, and the only other group member who was an Enchanter was the group leader’s wife. I remember he asked me what my Enchanting skill was at, and without realizing where he was going with the question, I told the truth. And his wife’s glee was almost evident through my monitor as she said, “Well that decides it. I get the recipe.”

Up until that point, I didn’t realize that a person’s profession level should matter at all when handing out recipes. But I can tell you that after that, I made sure my Enchanting was maxed as soon as possible. I wasn’t about to give anyone else an excuse to deny me a roll on a recipe.

Even so, I’ve always had terrible luck on rolls. I never won a single Enchanting recipe from Karazhan, for example. Moroes still has my Mongoose recipe.

Fishing for dummies (and other junk)

I’m feeling a bit grousy today. It has poured rain all day; I had to work; and it’s a Monday. On top of that, I’m feeling kind of blah about WoW right now.

So last week we had the patch, which went pretty smoothly overall. Our scheduled raids for the week were canceled, and instead my guild made some impromptu 10 and 25 man Ulduar excursions. I didn’t go. I just didn’t feel like it.

I’ve been playing this game too long to feel much excitement about anything, anymore. Maybe that’s a sign that I need a break, I don’t know. What I did, instead of raiding, was fish. I do love the change to fishing.

You can fish anywhere in the game, now, and you won’t have any more misses, either. Instead, the mechanic has been changed so that until your fishing skill is high enough level for the zone, you catch junk that sells for a couple coppers. Occasionally, you may catch a zone appropriate fish, but mostly you catch junk–old, tattered fabric, knotted fishing line, a piece of drift wood, etc. But you still get a skill up.

What that means is I can skill up the fishing of my alt characters anywhere in the world. That’s huge for me, being someone who actually enjoys and appreciates fishing.

Blame the Ghoul

Eldred has a gas problem, but fortunately, he also has a ghoul to blame.

Patch Day 3.1

This is going to be painful. The realms are going to be down longer than usual, and when they come back up, they will be down sporadically due to heavy traffic. My guild wants to try to do Ulduar tonight, and I am willing to go along, but in my heart I have little faith that it will actually happen.

As for me, I have other reasons to be worried. I’ve been tinkering with 3.1 talent calculators for some time now, and I have not been able to come up with a good Demonology raid spec for my Warlock. Demonology isn’t a strong raid spec anyway, but I like the challenges it presents in that regard, and I want to stay Demo.

The problem is that the cookie cutter specs that SimCraft has suggested don’t include talents that (for me) are essential. I need that point in Mana Feed for solo play. I want Demonic Pact for raid utility. I need those two points in Intensity to reduce interrupts when channeling Rain of Fire or some other Destruction spell.

It’s impossible to put points in those without sacrificing other essential talents, though. Part of the problem is how the Demo tree is constructed. Once you get down to Mana Feed and Master Conjurer, you are forced to put at least one point in Master Conjurer in order to open the next tier of talents. If I could get past Master Conjurer without having to give up a talent point to it, I could almost make things work.

Affliction has a similar problem. How do you take essential solo talents like Fel Concentration while not sacrificing raid DPS? I don’t like pushback! And it seems to me that even in some raid situations, pushback would be a DPS detriment, but the SimCraft specs all remove any points in a pushback-reducing talent.

I have no answers as yet. Right now, I am probably going to sacrifice Demonic Pact and go with this 3/51/17 spec. It gives me most of what I want, but sacrifices raid utility—which is a debatable priority anyway, since the buff it provides can be overwritten by a Shaman’s totem. However, without the Shaman, it’s a powerful buff that should not be underestimated.

I am not liking these choices.

Edit: This is the Affliction spec I’m considering 54/00/17.  I feel like I get more of what I want/need from this, than from Demonology.