Professions for the Hunter

I’m sitting at home with a chest infection, and the server is down for maintenance, so I thought I would take the time to write you a long article about professions in WOW.  I have recently been trying to get every cooking recipe in game, but I am still 2 short, so that doesn’t make for much of an article.  I am also madly squirreling away herbs in order to power-level inscription when it comes out.   I was going to write you an article on inscription, but it has been done so well by El of El’s extreme anglin, that I thought I would just point you there.  I enjoy the professions in wow (even fishing), so I thought I’d write something about all of them instead.  I’m aiming this at both those new to professions and those looking forward to professions in the expansion.  Of course, I have added in some advice to the hunter on the best professions for our class, and a sneak preview of some of the recipes from Wrath that are of interest to  hunters.  If you are just interesting in the WOTLK stuff, scoot to the bottom for a teaser of some of the recipes.

Professions 101

Professions or trade skills in WOW allow you to gather and produce things that can be used by you and other players.  You can sell the products of your profession on the auction house (ah) or directly to other players, or just make them for yourself and your friends.

There are two types of profession – primary professions and secondary professions.  You can choose up to two primary professions.  In addition, you can also learn all three secondary professions.

Primary professions are usually sub-divided into two sub-types, production professions, where you make things; and gathering professions, where you, err, gather things.

For a good introductory guide and overview of the professions see the WOWWIki website here. 

For a list of all the trainers see here.

The professions are:

1.  Primary Professions

a) Production professions

Alchemy

Blacksmithing

Enchanting

Engineering

Leatherworking

Tailoring

Jewelcrafting (was introduced in the Burning Crusade)

Inscription (new in WOTLK)

b) Gathering Professions

Herbalism

Mining

Skinning

2.  Secondary Professions

Cooking

Fishing

First Aid

 

So which professions are best for a hunter?

First of all, I would recommend that you take all three secondary professions (cooking, fishing, and first aid), regardless of which primary professions you choose.

First aid allows you to make bandages which you can use to heal yourself and can also apply to your pet.  You cannot eat in combat, but can bandage, so if you are hurt, but you pet now has aggro back, you can stop and bandage yourself.

Cooking allows you to make buff food, e.g. food which gives you extra agility.  You can also cook food for your pet.  You pet usually prefers cooked food to raw food.  Cooked food can make you a lot of money on the ah, especially at higher levels, where raid food such as Golden Fish Sticks, which give a healing bonus and Spicy Crawdads, which give +30 stamina, sell really well.

Fishing goes hand-in-hand with cooking.  You can cook the fish you catch, which helps you level cooking.  Some of it gives nice buff food, which can be used or sold.  If you have a pet that eats fish, you have easy access to free food.  Fishing can also make you good money, even at low levels, fishing up oily blackmouths (used by alchemists) and deviate fish.  You can also fish up treasure from pools of wreckage, including money, scrolls, bales of cloth, armor, lock boxes, etc.

With the primary professions there are two routes you can take.  You can either take two gathering professions e.g. skinning and herbalism.  Or you can take a production profession like leatherworking and a gathering profession that supports it, in this case skinning.  Some people at end game choose to swap their gathering profession for a second production profession, and then either buy all the materials from the ah, or use an alt to gather them for them.  I wouldn’t recommend this as you are leveling.

The advantage of taking two gathering professions while leveling, is that they usually take up less time (than a gathering and a production profession), and they make money rather than drain money.  Production professions can end up making you a lot of money, but they often don’t make much money as you are leveling them up.  You might find some items that sell well, but you have to spend a lot of money on recipes, training and materials, and make a lot of items that don’t sell or aren’t useful just to level.  One tip, if you do take up two gathering professions, I suggest you choose mining and skinning, or herbalism and skinning, as mining and herbalism both have a mini-map tracker to show the nodes, and it is hard to keep switching between the two (plus all the things you are tracking as a hunter).  Personally, I prefer herbalism, but that’s just me.

The advantage of taking a production profession and a gathering profession while leveling, is that you can make things that you can use as you go.  Yes, you spend money leveling up, but you save some money you might otherwise have spent on the ah, buying gear.  You can make yourself some nice things, some of which are not available without the profession.  Production professions can also be a lot of fun.

Overall, though, my advice would be take two gathering professions, plus all three secondary professions, while leveling, and then swap to a primary profession if you wish, some time after level 60, when you feel you have enough money to power level.  Unless, that is, you just want to enjoy the fun of producing early on, then go for it, and enjoy :>)

 

OK, so I want to be a producer, which production professions are best for hunters?

If you are heavily into PVP engineering is a good choice.  There are a number of twink items, such as googles for level 19 twinks, only available to engineers, plus bombs, and gadgets that can help you kill enemies or survive for longer.  Engineers also make guns and ammunition.   And of course, if you really must have a flying machine in game, it’s the only way to go.

Tinuviel is an alchemist and herbalist.  Both as useful for all classes, are fairly easy and cheap to level, and can make you a lot of money.  For myself I make Mad Alchemists Potion, a cheap alchemists only rejuvenation potion, Fel Mana Potion (hunters aren’t really affected by the negative side-effects), Elixir of Major Agility, and Elixir of Draenic Wisdom.  Anelf gets a regular supplies of Healing Potion and Super Mana Potion.  While Bluebear fights over the Major Agility, and get Elixir of Fortitude.  There are lower level versions of most of these potions as you level up.  I also make decent money selling flasks.

Another popular hunter choice is leatherworking and skinning.  Hunters wear leather until level 40, and then mail afterwards.  But leatherworkers also make mail at higher levels, so this is the profession for you if you want to make clothes for yourself.  Anelf is a leatherworker, she made me a whole set of Tough Scorpid armor for my early 40s, which has lots of agility on it (yes it also has spirit, and probably isn’t the very best you could get, but we were young and poor with no high level sugar daddy’s to help us out, so this was good easily accessible stuff).  Leatherworkers can specialize into one of three specialist fields when they reach 225 leatherworking (at level 40+).  The field for hunters is usually dragonscale leatherworking (although some survival hunters may choose elemental leatherworking for the leather rogue gear with lots of agility on it).  Harrylime is a dragonscale leatherworker.  The patterns and dragonscales are hard to come by, escpecially as nowadays not many people are raiding Blackrock Mountain or Onyxia’s Lair.  At level 45 Harry was able to make himself some kick-butt BOP trousers that will last him till level 60 (or forever, since he seems content to sit at level 52 for the moment).

Blacksmithing on the other hand is not recommended.  For the amount of investment to level, you would find very little worth using as a hunter.  Blacksmiths make low level mail at lower levels (when you wear leather), and mostly plate armor at higher levels (when you need mail).  You can specialize as an armorsmith later on and make swords or axes, but the profession is mainly aimed at plate wearers, with some enhancement shaman pieces.

Enchanting and tailoring tend to go together.  Usually this is because they are chosen by cloth wearers, but also because tailors make green items early on that can be disenchanted to help level up enchanting.  Neither also need a special gathering profession.  They are OK for a hunter, but not a recommended pair.  Enchanting is useful for everyone, and will be even more useful when the expansion comes out, as inscribers will be ale to make scrolls that enchanters can write their enchants to, so that these can be sold on the ah.   Tailoring is not very useful for a hunter, sure you can make yourself some bags, and the odd cloak, but that’s about it.

Jewelcrafting is a useful profession at high levels when slotted gems are good to have.  However, it is can be expensive and difficult to level under the currently system, especially if you are a completist and want to collect all of the patterns.  Most of the things a jewelcrafter makes can be bought from the ah or from your friendly jewelcrafter.  However, the jewelcrafter can make a number of trinkets that only he or she can use.  Soupdragon, my shaman is a jewelcrafter, although it was useful to have a jewelcrafting alt, I would be hesitant to recommend this as a profession to anyone.

Inscription is the new primary profession being introduced in WOTLK.  It is expected that this will become available in patch 3.0 (the pre-expansion patch), due to hit around mid October.  You will not need to buy the expansion to level from 1-375 Inscription.  Inscribers make glyphs.  Glyphs are new to the game, they enhance a players spells or abilities, and are class specific, e.g.  there are glyphs that decrease the cooldowns on spell such as multi-shot, bestial wrath, and deterrence, and glyphs that increase the damage of spells like steady shot and Hunters Mark.   There will be some incriber-only glyphs, but how good these are compared to those that can be learned by everyone, we don’t know yet. Inscribers can also make shoulder inscriptions for themselves only, vellum to allow enchanters to sell their enchants, scrolls, like scroll of agility, inscriber-only off-hands, and some darkmoon-faire like tarot cards.  They can also make scrolls of recall (20 min cooldown) which summon you to your hearthstone locations (the first rank of this isunpredictable above level 40).  These sound a bit mad; you are trying to go to Dalaran and end up in Gadgetzan arena.  Fun or frustrating?  Later ranks sound more reliable. It sounds like a useful profession for most classes, although it may slightly favor casters at the moment (with the off-hands).  One great thing for hunters that inscribers can make is the certificate of ownership, this allows you to change your hunter pet name.  It is hard to say whether this is a must have profession, or just one where it would be useful to have an alt, guildmate or friend who is an inscriber.  I intend to make Bluebear (my feral druid) my inscriber.  She leveled with two gather professions, so can drop one to make room.  El’s Extreme Anglin has branched out and produced an excellent introduce and resource for inscription – see here.

 

OK, so I went gathering, now I want to swap at 70 to a production profession and power-level, how do I do that?

First, read a power leveling guide on your new profession and start gathering together the materials you will need.  I say do this first, before dropping one of your gathering professions, as you might find you need something you can gather to level your new profession, for instance, if you drop mining for alchemy, you might need to gather some mithril ore before you do, it is used in a couple of potions.

To drop a profession and learn another, open your character window and go to the skills tab.  Click on the profession you wish to unlearn.  At the bottom of the window you will see the profession come up , with a little red button to it’s right.  If you click this you will unlearn the profession.  Make sure you really want to unlearn it.  If you make a mistake, you will have to level it up again from level 1, and will have lost all your recipes and skills.

Now you have a free profession slot, go to the appropriate trainer, and learn you new profession.  

Follow a power-leveling guide for the quickest and most cost-efficient way of leveling up your profession.  I usually use the TenTonHammer power leveling guides, but if someone can recommend better ones, please post a comment.

 

I’m a completist I would like to get every recipe in the game for my profession, any advice?

Seek counseling!  And then if your still set on it, find a rich backer (i.e. a high level alt, not gold seller please).   It is easier to do this for some professions than others.  

Tinuviel now has every cooking recipe in the game (including horde ones), except for two (and Soupdragon has one of those).  The ones I am missing are the delicious chocolate cake, which is a rare drop from the daily cooking quest (which I do most days,  but have not got the drop yet) and the recipe for Dirge’s Kickin Chimaerok Chops, which  is part of the quest chain for opening the gates of Ahn’Qiraj, and requires several old world raids (so I think I might just live without it!)  How do I know I am missing only these two?  Well, because I have a superb little addon called Ackis Recipe List.  This addon scans your recipes, and tells you which ones you don’t have, and also tells you where you can get them from.  To get all of the horde recipes, Tinuviel has a little help from Harrylime.  Harry ran around buying horde only recipes, and doing horde only quests that gave a cooking recipe reward (like dig rat stew) and then transferred them across to the alliance, via the neutral ah.  I also made a bit of money, as I bought a couple of extra recipes and sold them for a small profit on the alliance ah (thereby making some other completists happy).

Tinuviel doesn’t have every alchemy recipe in the game, as some are gained by discovery only.  Meaning, you have a small chance of discovering them while making another potion or transmute.  Soupdragon doesn’t have every jewelcrafting recipe in the game as the higher level ones that are random world drops are horrendously expensive on the ah.  There are lots of them going for around 500G average, on my server.  As she doesn’t raid, she doesn’t see any recipes that might be BOP dropping only in raid instances.

To be a completist you need luck, perseverance and patience.  Plus, for the primary professions you need to be a high level raiding toon, who has the chance to roll on BOP recipes that drop in instances.  You need a lot of money, to buy the expensive world drops from the ah and vendor recipes, and you need to be doing you profession a lot, if it is one like alchemy with a random discovery mechanic.  You also need to grind reputation with different factions for some recipes.

 

You mentioned, Ackis Recipe List, are there any other recommended trade skill addons?

There are few well known ones.  Obviously, Auctioneer almost goes without saying.  If you want to sell your crafted items and buy materials and recipes, this is nearly a must have.

I am several of my guildies use Craftlist2.  This excellent addon, allows you to whisper any alt of the character with a trade skill to find out if that character knows a particular recipe.  Soupdragon is the main jewelcrafter in my guild.  I mainly play Tinuviel, and regular get whispers like /t Tinuviel !craft spell hit.  This brings up a list of all the things each of my alts can craft which involve spell hit.  It will show a Great Dawnstone from Soupdragon – a gem with +8 spell hit, which is probably what they are looking for, plus some tailoring items from Giltine my tailor.  If they had just specified hit, they would have got lots of engineering stuff from Smilla, plus Spicy Talbuk from Tinuviel, a food that gives +10 hit rating.

For gathering professions, you can use an addon which remembers where you found a mining node or herb and shows this on your mini-map.  I use Cartographer-Herbalism for this, but many people use Gatherer.

 

What are the yummy new profession changes and recipes coming up in WOTLK?

I obtained some of this information from wotlkwiki check back for updates here.

Obtaining recipes

One thing worth mentioning, is that they may be changing the mechanic by which you acquire recipes in some cases:

From the Blizzcast #4 (podcast) transcript:

…we’re going to be easing off the [professions recipe] world drops, I’m not sure about getting rid of them entirely but moving on to other systems. One of the system we’re considering as well is – so you have profession dailies for all of your professions, and what those end up being I’m not sure, but then when you do that daily you get a token. Then on this vendor there’s maybe 20 recipes, and they cost maybe 25 tokens each. So you’ll start making decisions on how you want to spend those tokens and that will help differentiate you from everyone else just by your decisions rather than what you happened to have found or bought off the Auction House.

Jewelcrafting Daily Quests were added to Dalaran in Beta Build 8788 see here, rewarding aDalaran Jewelcrafting Token which could be used to purchase a variety of recipes (many of which were already in-game). 

Cooking dailies awarding tokens that can be used to purchase cooking recipes are linked here.  I haven’t found ones for other professions yet.

From the WWI (World Wide Invitational) Dungeons & Raids Panel:

The developers plan to improve recipe drops in dungeons and raids. They are pretty rare right now, as specific plans may only drop off one boss at really low drop rate, and this can be frustrating for players. This doesn’t mean they won’t put unique plans on hard to reach bosses, but they want most plans to be accessible (earlier bosses, easier dungeons, etc). They believe it should not feel like such a grind to get that one rare pattern.

More recipe plans will also be available from Faction vendors. This is something they did a lot of in The Burning Crusade, but not all trade skills were represented.

Broadcasting your tradeskills to others

Also, there will be a similar mechanic in the game to the CraftList2 mentioned above:

The expansion will add the ability to shift-click and link your Professions from the general tab of your Spellbook into Trade/Guild/Etc chat panels.When someone clicks on your link, a panel similar to the Crafting panel will open, showing all of the recipes that the linking player is able to craft, as well as the materials they require.

This will allow other players to browse a crafter’s available patterns much more easily.

 

Buffs to players with certain professionals

One interesting thing is that they are giving traders a passive or active skill dependent upon their profession.  This is particularly focussed on professions like alchemy and gathering professions which previously did not have many BOP advantages to the professional.

Alchemy - Mixology is a new passive bonus gained by alchemists learned from a profession trainer at skill level 50. It increases the stat bonus of elixirs by 25% and the duration by 100% (elixirs last 2 hours). It increases the stat bonus of flasks by 50% and the duration by 100% (flasks last for 4 hours). It has no effect on potions.

(*Alchemy and potion use has also received a nerf - A new Debuff has been added whenever a player drinks any type of potion. In build 8770, the debuff icon is currently gone, but the effect remains.  It is unclear whether this is a bug or not (and whether the effect is also supposed to be gone, or whether the icon is also supposed to be there – if anyone has an update on this, post a comment).  ”Potion Sickness” prevents the player from drinking any other sort of potion until the player gets out of combat.  The Debuff will have an obvious impact on all aspects of the game, especially raid encounters with long boss fights.   It may also have an impact on the profits alchemists make – if people are drinking less potions – they will be buying less potions.)

Blacksmithing – none as yet (although are able to make sockets in their own gloves and bracers.)

Enchanting – none as yet – although are able to sell their enchants and make some epic BOP wands.

Engineering - you can make motorbikes, enough said!

Inscription – shoulder enchants and inscriber only discovered glyphs

Jewelcrafting – gem perfection - This ability allows players to craft “Perfect” versions of uncommon quality gem cuts with slightly better stats. 

Leatherworking - Leatherworkers will be able to craft a number of armor pieces (just helms for now, but possibly more later) which grant buffs on use similar to some current jewelcrafting neckpieces, giving stamina buffs to all party members.

(* although leatherworkers are receiving a lot of love – there was a nerf to drums - 

• Leatherworking drums now give a two minute debuff that does not allow the party members to receive any further drum buffs.
• Drums affect all nearby raid members

This was because high end raiding guilds were all re-speccing as leatherworker to use sets of drums, one after the other, to defend some end game bosses.  It was a good strategy while it was allowable in game.)

Tailoring - Northrend cloth scavenging - Gives a tailor the ability to find additional cloth on northrend humanoids.

Herbalism - Herbalism now gets a new Healing Over Time Spell available only to Herbalists. When this effect is used it is possible to gain Herbalism skill points (up to a certain level of skill) and it causes small flowers to bloom around the player. (See screenshot at right.)

There are Currently 6 ranks so it can be assumed it will first be obtained early in one’s Herbalism career.

• Lifeblood (Rank 1): Heals for 300 over 5 Seconds
• Lifeblood (Rank 2): Heals for 480 over 5 Seconds
• Lifeblood (Rank 3): Heals for 720 over 5 Seconds
• Lifeblood (Rank 4): Heals for 900 over 5 Seconds
• Lifeblood (Rank 5): Heals for 1200 over 5 Seconds
• Lifeblood (Rank 6): Heals for 2000 over 5 Seconds

When you cast this, you get little flowers springing up in the ground around your feet.  I think at level 70 with herbalism 375, Tinuviel has rank 4 of this spell on the test realms.  It’s an instant cast and doesn’t require mana or interfere with any other cooldowns, so its a nice little boost.

Like felblossom in BC, there are also some herbs that only herbalists can use to produce beneficial effects: 

• Fire Leaf: (Requires Level 70 and Herbalism 325) Use: Reduces your armor by 100%, but increases your attack power by 400 for 10 sec. (1 Min Cooldown)
• Fire Seed: (Requires Level 70 and Herbalism 325) Use: Makes you vulnerable to magic, but increases your spell power by 200 for 10 sec. (1 Min Cooldown)

Herbalism will also be used by inscribers, could make it a more lucrative profession, but could also mean there are more herbalists and more competition for herbs.

Mining – Miner’s revenge (unconfirmed) - Hurls your pick axe at the target, inflicted 45 to 55 physical damage, ignoring any armor. (Unconfirmed as possible mining skill) (5 min cooldown, 30 yd range).

Toughness - All your hard work spent mining has made you exceptionally tough, increasing your maximum health by 300 (at 375).  There are 6 ranks.

Skinning - Master of Anatomy - Skinning all those dead animals has broadened your anatomical knowledge, increasing your critical strike rating by 15 (at skinning 375).  There are 6 ranks.

Inscription – for a list of abilities see here.

Jewelcrafting – no specific buff, but new trinkets, for a list of abilities see here.

 

New Recipes

I will just mention a few here,  we don’t know about them all yet, and some could be subject to change.  I have just picked out those that seemed interesting or useful to hunters, I could well have missed some those, this is not an exhaustive list, just a teaser.  I have taken most of these from WOWhead’s WOTLK site – using a filter to look at profession spells about 376.

Engineering

(oh so tempting to switch, but I don’t like mining as much as herbalism, and I reckon I am going to need mana potions more than ever)

Motorbikes! and alliance version

Gun – Mark ‘S’ Boomstick

Scope - heartseeker scope  and Sun scope

Goggles – Truesight Ice blinders

Gnomish Army Knife

Saronite Arrow Maker

Unsafe bullet machine

Alchemy

Elixir of Mighty Agility

Crazy alchemist’s potion

Mighty Alchemists stone (Not a huge upgrade on the epic Assassin’s Alchemists stone, but does not seem to use up another alchemists stone to make it, according to source, could it be that you can equip this and an Assassin’s Alchemists Stone?)

Not many recipes added on wowhead yet – for a fuller list see Crafter’s tome here.

Fishing and cooking

There’s some interesting stuff here.  Lots of new fish and recipes.

For a full list of cooking recipes see Crafter’s tome here.

There are a lot of recipes that add attack power, crit, or haste, but only one I can see that adds agility (my preferred flavoring -Dragonfin Fillet

Spicy mammoth treats – for you pet (stamina and strength, in one snack, yeay)

Feasts for your whole party Gigantic Feast and Small Feast (the size refers to the after-affects not the amount of food)

New uber fishing pole that allows underwater breathing.

See El for everything else fishing here.

Leatherworking

(Anelf’s a leatherworker – yeay for me, at least for the BOE stuff)

Is getting some nice buffs in WOTLK.  

Fur lining – frost resistence

Swiftarrow armor -e.g. hauberk

Giantmaim armor – e.g. legguards

Nerubian Quiver

Dragonscale Ammo Pouch

Trappers Travelling Pack

Mammoth Mining Bag

Pack of endless pockets (inscription bag)

 

Blacksmithing

Get to add a gem slot to there own gloves and bracers

And make belt buckles which add a gem slot to anyones belt

Enchanting

Enchanters at last get to sell their enchants on the ah!

Enchant bracers greater assault

Enchant gloves greater assault

Jewelcrafting

Titanium Impact Band

Titanium Impact Choker

Invigorating Earthsiege Diamond (meta)

Relentless Earthsiege Diamond (meta)

Swift Skyflare Diamond (meta)

Delicate scarlet ruby

Tailoring

Flying carpet mount! and magnificent flying carpet mount!

and speciality specific carpets.

Glacial bag – 22 slot bag

Red Lumberjack Shirt (what?  I like collecting shirt patterns :>)  - if only I could find a rich purple shirt pattern :>( too many dying kodos have had a quicker death from me due to that pattern – before I l realized it was a true world drop, that is)

Inscription

We pretty much covered this above – but this one is worth repeating – certificate of ownership

 

Where will I find trainers to level up my skills when I hit Northrend?

A list of the trainers for each profession can be found by going to wotlkwiki and clicking on the profession icon you are interested in.

 

Useful websites on professions

WOWWiki – overview

WOTLKwiki – professions in the expansion

El’s Extreme Anglin – Fishing uber website

WOWhead – list of all profession recipes with filter

El’s Extreme Anglin – also with inscription

TenTonHammer – reasonable guides and good power leveling guides

Crafter’s Tome – recipes and guides

WOWinsider – latest news when this article was written.

 

I’m done, stick a fork in me and call me a Small Feast.

My own private bank

Tinuviel isn’t very well at the moment, so I’m filling in with another post while she sits next to me coughing.

With the expansion fast approaching, a lot of people are starting to stockpile the mats they think they’ll need in Northrend. (Tin has a whole banker alt dedicated to storing weeds). This got me to wondering what was the most efficient way to run a bank. The options are:

1. Roll a banker alt, give her a load of bags, and use her bank to store stuff.
2. Same as above, but start a guild with her as a guildmaster and open a Guild Bank.

My question - which option is cheaper in terms of gold per bank slot?

So lets look at some numbers …

Rolling a banker alt is free, and you get 28 bank slots in her personal bank. We’ll ignore those 28 slots, because you get them whether you use a private bank or a guild bank. (We’ll also ignore the bag slots she carries around with her). But to extend your banker’s bank, you need to buy bag spaces and buy bags to put in them. Extra bag slots in your bank cost 10s, 1g, 10g, and 4×25g – a total of 7 bag slots in your personal bank, at a total cost of 111g10s.

The cost of bags depends on the size. Wowhead currently lists these mean prices for the most common bags (that’s a mean across servers, so your server average price could be a bit different):

• Runecloth Bag (14-slot) = 4g40s (30g80s for 7)
• Netherweave Bag (16-slot)  = 6g50s (45g5 for 7)
• Imbued Netherweave Bag (18-slot) = 45g (315g for 7)

These give you 98, 112, and 126 extra bank slots respectively. You can see straight away that 16-slot is the sweet spot for bag size. Anything higher than this is a massive jump in cost.

Dividing [the cost of the bags and the bag spaces] by [the number of extra slots the bags provide]  gives you your mean price per additional bank slot. This is:

• 14-slot = 1g45 per slot
• 16-slot = 1g40 per slot
• 18-slot = 3g38 per slot

Now lets look at the Guild Bank option. You can only do this if you’re happy for your banker to not be in the same guild as your main, because they have to create their own guild.

First you need to buy your guild charter. This costs 10s. Then you have to find 9 other people to sign it. You can get this for free if you have friends willing to help. Otherwise, the going rate to bribe someone to sign your charter is about 1g each (so let’s say the guild startup cost is 10g).

Guild bank tabs each have 98 slots, and cost:

• 1st tab = 100g
• 2nd tab = 250g
• 3rd tab = 500g

This gives you a mean cost per bank slot of:

• 1g12s if you buy one slot
• 1g83s if you buy two slots
• 2g92s if you buy three slots

So there you have it. Even if you just want 98 bank slots, rolling a guild for your banker is the cheapest way to do it. And buying more bank tabs is also significantly cheaper than buying bags bigger than 16-slotters. (Of course, you can just roll multiple bankers if you don’t suffer from altitis. That’s not an option for me, because I have too many alts already:-) ).

And – if you have your banker alt outside a guild – having a banking guild is a great way to avoid people waving guild charters in your face whenever you log in .

Blizzard Birthday Campaign

Tin and I were discussing achievements last night (as she was writing her last post). Talking about other achievements Blizzard could introduce, we hit on the idea of birthday presents. Either:

• An in-game present on the anniversary of starting your account, or
• A present for each of your alts on the anniversary of their creation.

By coincidence, Abruzzi made a similar comment on Tin’s Achievements post, so we’re obviously not the only people who think it would be a cool idea. You get a Zhevra for introducing a friend, so I think at least a pet or toy would be appropriate for giving Blizzard $180 a year.

So a call to action:

This blog alone is still too small to exert any great influence on its own, and I’ve not noticed this being mentioned elsewhere, so let’s spread the idea in the blogosphere to see if we can persuade Blizzard to implement this. If you write a blog, post an article about this yourself. If you read blogs or newsgroups, post comments suggesting it.

And tell us what birthday presents you would value?

Tin wants a baby kodo for her birthday. I’d quite like a hamster in a rolling ball .

 

[And thank you again to Abruzzi for being the catalyst].

WOTLK Achievements system overview

Achievements

The achievements system is a new aspect of the game, which records a whole plethora of things you do in game.  It awards points as you accomplish milestones for some of the things it records.  Others are recorded for interest, trivia, or usefulness rather than achievement points.

The achievement system reinforces some aspects of the game which are already encouraged and rewarded like pvp and raid boss kills, but it also rewards some off the beaten track aspect,s such as exploration, collection of rare items, completion of holiday events, etc.  Role-players and others who like to immerse themselves in the world, lore, and trade skills of WOW should like some of the goals the achievements system records.

Many of the achievements measure things that already exist in game, although a couple are new e.g. for fishing there is an achievement to catch a fish in both stormwind and Ogrimmar.

Although I enjoy raiding, I have always enjoyed many of these wider aspects of the game, and like goals like these I can complete solo and over time, so I find the new system pretty appealing.

What hasn’t been announced yet, is what, if anything, the achievement points will be used for.  Hopefully, a lot of points will buy you something nice.  We will have to wait and see.  Certainly, some of the achievements rewards you with titles, tabards and small pets.

 

Summary of the new achievements system:

▪ The System will launch with over 500 Achievements.

▪ New Achievements will be added with each content patch.

▪ Achievements can be viewed upon inspection of another player or through the online Armory.

▪ Achievements can be tracked by shift-clicking the icon in the Achievement UI, similar to the existing Quest tracker.

▪ Every time a new Achievement is earned…

▪ A special sound and animation will occur.

▪ The Achievement will be announced to the player’s guild chat and to everyone in the area. (Screenshot)

▪ Each Achievement earned will give the players a certain amount of Achievement Points.

▪ No information is available on how these Points will be used.

▪ Some Achievements will also give rewards. Examples include:

▪ Vanity pets (e.g. collect 50 vanity pets and receive a pet skunk)

▪ Titles.

▪ Tabards. (Example: Tabard of the Achiever, reward from completing the collect 25 tabards achievement, pictured here.)

▪ Feats of Strength will be a sub-section of the Achievements system.

▪ Feats celebrate accomplishments in old-world Azeroth, some of which are no longer available.

▪ Feats give no Achievement Points.

▪ Feats will be applied retroactively for those who have completed the requirements.

▪ The Achievement System will feature a unique, trackable UI. (See the Images tab for details.)

 

Source: http://wotlkwiki.info/index.php/Achievements (who in turn sourced http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wrath/features/gameplay/achievements.xml )

 

 

MMO Champion Lists all the achievements by category and the achievement points awarded for each:

MMO Champion Achievements List

Edit:  WOWhead now has a browsable list of achievements here

 

There will be achievements in the following categories:

 

Character

These achievements record your stats, divided into the following categories – attributes, e.g. highest total agility; consummables e.g. food eaten; gear e.g. most mounts owned at one time; reputation e.g., total factions at exhalted; and wealth e.g. most expensive auction sold.  Currently, they don’t have any achievement points attached.

Deaths

Records you deaths in arena; battlegrounds and world; and records some of the reasons for death (falling, drowning, fire and lava) and wait for it … “Deaths from Hogger”!  This category also records how many times you have be resurrected by priests, druids, etc.  Currently, they don’t have any achievement points attached.  Somehow I think there are going to be a lot of ‘accidental falls off mountains, or into lava pits’, and Hogger is going to have a fun old time beating players to death, who strangely fail to fight back!

 

Dungeons & Raids

This section is split into 3 sub-sections – classic; burning crusade; and WOTLK.  Achievement points are awarded for an end boss (or sometimes all boss) kills in each dungeon.  Some seem to only count once.  Others seem to be repeatable and possibly farmable achievement points e.g. according to MMO Champions current list 5 points are awarded for Deadmines – Kill Edwin VanCleef; and then there is a separate achievement worth 5 points for Edwin VanCleef kills (Deadmines).  Does this mean if you kill him 10 times you achieve 55 points?  Will report back.

 

Exploration

50 achievement points are given for World Explorer – explore Eastern Kingdoms, Kalimdor, Outland and Northrend.  To gain this you have to have uncovered every area of your map.

25 achievement points are gained for exploring each continent, and 5 for exploring each zone.

There is a title of World Explorer once you have uncovered everything.

Feats of Strength

These are accomplishments that players will find it very difficult to achieve, and almost impossible to do retroactively.  They are worth no points.  They are related to past achievements in Azeroth. e.g. old pvp titles, old rare mounts, or legendary items like the Warglaives of Azzinoth.  Originally this category also had the first player to 80, and first mage to 80, first tauren to 80, etc.  I think they have removed all of these now, as it encourages players to rush through the content, and to resort to work arounds, such as tagging a mob and letting guild mates kill it, rather than actually leveling properly themselves.

General 

This includes items such as collecting vanity pets and tabards and getting a haircut.  These are worth between 5-50 points.

 

 

Kills

Currently, they don’t have any achievement points attached.  Records kills of different types of mobs from critters to bosses, and in arena, bgs, etc.

 

Player vs Player

Records your honorable kill milestones and other pvp achievements e.g. kill 50 enemy players in any of your home cities, or slay the leader of the horde/alliance.  Achievement points are awarded.

 

Professions

Records your profession milestones and other profession related achievements, e.g. bake a delicious chocolate cake (cooking); catch a fish in Orgrimmar and Stormwind (fishing).  Achievement points are awarded.

 

Quests

Records quest milestones and the achievement of specific quests e.g. complete all of the Hemet Nesingwary quests in Stranglethorn, Nagrand and Northrend.  And what about this one – “Tuskarmageddon – mindlessly slaughter 1,000,000 tuskarr.  Reward:  baby seal cub”  count them – 1 million!  Awards achievement points.

 

Reputation

Raising your reputation with different factions, both old and new – e.g. They Love Me In That Tunnel – get exhalted with the Timbermaw Hold and Town Crier get exhalted with all 5 home cities.  Awards achievement points.

Social

From cheers to facepalms; mails to chat lines; friends and guilds.  No achievement points awarded.  But some of this will have a useful side affect – you can inspect the number of guilds a character has been it; the number of items they have deposited and withdrew from guild banks; and the longest time they have spent in a guild.  Very useful for guild recruiters to identify possible bank robbers and guild hoppers.

 

Statistics

Again no achievement points, but some useful reference material.  You recruiting someone for a raid, they assure you they have done kara hundreds of times, and ZA, and SSC, etc.  You inspect them and look at their statistics – nope total 10 player raids completed = 0; total 10 player raided entered = 1.  Not quite the story they are spinning.  Statistics also measure things like number of jumps (one for the elves), max distance fallen without damage (pally for the win?); fastest water speed (druids prove to be the Phelps of WOW?); fastest ground speed, etc.

 

World Events

Recording achievements of the quests and collection of the special items from world events like Brewfest and children’s week.  Awards achievement points.

 

Retroactive?

Most achievements will be retroactive.  However, in the beta they seemed to recognize some of my achievements but not others.  For instance, I was wearing the tabard of the summer skies yet I didn’t get the corresponding achievement that I had killed Lord Ahune.  They have apparently now fixed this one.  It is possible though, that some will remain bugged and will not be recognized after the game goes live, and you will have to repeat them to gain recognition, particularly if you do not have loot from the encounter as proof.  I think they have already said that GMs will not be able to award achievements that have not been correctly awarded (I think they realized they might have a flood of calls).

 

So, what should I do to prepare?

Well you don’t have to do anything.  After all, we don’t know what the rewards are going to be.  However, you could think about collecting mini-pets, if you are intrerested in doing that and getting your skunk pet; completing your exploration of the world; and upping your reputation with different factions.  Afterall, you are not going to want to run around Azeroth doing Timbermaw and other rep grinds, when Wrath hits.  Also, if you want to take part in the world event achievements, you will need take part in Brewfest, and try to get your hands on a Brewfest mount and 200 tokens to buy membership of the brew of the month club.  Similarly, take part in the Hallows End festival and try to gain each of the achieves required for that one too.

As BRK would say, “We haz Kodo!”

Entrigan, Carys, Anelf (with barmaid and beer), and Tinuviel with Kodo - woot!

 

Kodo!

A big thank you to my awesome guildies who have been beating poor Coren Direbrew into a pulp.  We now have 2 kodos and one brewfest goat from him (grats to Keeferblah and Shadowdart), as well as lots of cool trinkets.  Lets hope we get some more mounts before the event finishes.

If you want to know how to get your own Kodo or Brewfest goat, check out Anelf’s post here.

Latest hunter talent and DPS news

I will keep this to posting some news on the latest changes, as well as publishing a post in the near future discussing builds.  For today, there were a couple of recent blue posts, I thought worth noting:

Hunter DPS & Mana regeneration
Frankly, Hunter’s DPS right now is balanced with Aspect of the Viper in mind. If we, say, reduced the amount of time you were in it drastically or the damage penalty we’d have to do something equivalent of reducing Hunter’s total DPS by at least 10-30%. While you guys might not notice it with the pre-mades, the Hunter class is currently king of DPS.

What I do buy is that when you’re soloing, between pulls or not able to attack, you aren’t gaining the regeneration. What we just did is make the regeneration passive and not require you to attack, but basically just regenerate mana. (It would still have the damage penalty though) koraa 09/23/08 (src)

One day later, Koraa posted…

 Upcoming Hunter Changes (src)
I have some good news, and some bad news. First, the bad news. Unfortunately we won’t be able to do the Aspect of the Viper change I discussed yesterday (passive instead of requiring you to attack the target) at this time because of technical limitations and its potential to shake up our current balance goals. However, we will evaluate it as an option for a future patch.

Now, the good news.

- Aimed Shot – This shot will now be instant cast, its damage/effect/cooldown will remain unchanged.
- Scatter shot – This will now be an 11-point Survival talent.
- Readiness – This will now be the 21-point Marksmanship talent.
- Trap Mastery – This will now be the 41-point Survival talent. Granted, not very sexy for a 41-pointer but we’ll do some changes there in a future patch (after WOLK ships).

These changes will be live in an upcoming beta build.

One of the issues testers have been facing is mana efficiency and rejuvenation, particularly, I understand for MM specs.   Hunters were hoping for better news on Aspect of the Viper, and this will disappoint many, and may affect the popularity of different specs.

I am not sure why Trap Mastery being moved up the tree is good news either, currently it allowed someone who was a deep BM or MM hunter to also have improved chain trapping abilities.

But the news about scatter shot is great!  Even the beastmaster himself, BRK, has suggested a 50/21/0 build, which would not allow him to tame his precious exotic pets, in order to get scatter shot.  It will help a lot in pvp, but also in trapping and kiting in instances.

The aimed shot change is an interesting one too, although aim shot itself is also changed and takes 11% of your base mana (this is mana before armor and other buffs are applied), so you are not likely to spam it, but even so this seems like a nice damage boost and a nice boost to pulling.  I admit to almost never using aimed shot in its current form due to the long cooldown.  Edit – as Drotara points out in his excellent review on these changes, this also gives us another shot to use on the move.

The post above was edited by Koraa adding…

 Surefooted is swapping places with T.N.T. (so Surefooted is now in tier 2) 

Another pleasing change imo, although I am trying to figure out a build which would allow me a dps beastmaster build, with the requisite mortal shots from MM, and surefooted and possibly shatter shot from Surv.  

 

The latest set of changes for build 8982 are as follows (source):

 Hunter (8982: Skills | Talents)
Beast Mastery
Separation Anxiety – Removed.
-NEW- Kindred Spirits – Increases your pet’s damage by 4/8/12/16/20% and you and your pet’s movement speed by 2/4/6/8/10% while your pet is active. 

Marksmanship
Kill Shot – Required level changed to 75 for rank 1, and 80 for rank 2.
Scorpid Sting – Chance to hit with melee and ranged attacks changed from 3% down from 5%.
Rapid Recuperation – Now 2 points. Mana and focus cost reduction now 30/60% (OLD – 20/40/60%) 

Survival
Explosive Shot – Damage reduced.
Freezing Arrow – Trap has a chance to break on damage instead of 100% chance to break on damage.
Lock and Load – Now gives you a 100% chance when you trap a target and a 100% chance when you deal periodic damage with your Serpent Sting to cause your next 2 Arcane Shot or Explosive Shot to trigget no cooldown, cost no mana, and consume no ammo.
T.N.T. – No longer increases the critical strike chance of Explosive Trap.
Improved Tracking – Changed from all damage to non-periodic damage. 

Kindred spirits is a stronger talent that separation anxiety, as it is a static buff, not requiring your pet to be a certain distance from you.

Kill shot has been moved from level 71 to level 75 for its first rank.  This is disappointing, but kill shot had lost its appeal a little anyway as they had nerfed its damage down to close to arcane shot.  Perhaps this will allow them to buff it up a little again.

Scorpid Sting was also nerfed.  This is a pity, I used to use it frequently on heavy damage boss fights where the healers were struggling.  But then, Serpent Sting seems to have had quite a lot of love, and there will be more reason to use this again in future.

Survival hunters seem to have received a big dps nerf, especially to explosive shot.  However, some of the testing was showing survival as the highest dps of the three builds over a sustained fight, so perhaps this is a balancing attempt.

The change to freezing arrow is consistent to with the change to freezing traps already in force.

So changes are still coming thick and fast, as they try to balance within classes and between classes.

The latest talent build can be found here.  Some of the changes announced above have not been implemented yet.

This post by Drotara is worth looking at.  It is a slightly older build, but a good attempt to compare the dps of the different talent specs.

Keep watching for a post discussing the builds, but next up will be a post looking at achievements, and more of what you can do to prepare for them.

Tinuviel

WOTLK Dalaran screenshots – a druid butt’s view

I am not going to write spoiler alert all over this, as I know many of you come to this site for the WOTLK screenshots.  To feed you with more spoiler goodness, I took a trip around Dalaran with my level 80 pre-made druid.

As you probably know by now, Dalaran has moved from it’s current position beneath a purple bubble north of Southshore, to Northrend.  It’s Northrend’s answer to Shattrah – the main (and neutral) city on the continent.  You will find banks, battlemasters, vendors, trade skill trainers, inns, and much more.  You won’t find an auction house or class trainers (except for possibly mages).

Dalaran is a floating city, hovering in the air above the Dragonblight/Crystalsong Forest…

Dalaran from the air

It is staggeringly beautiful – a magical city, a cross between Silvermoon, Harry Potter’s Diagon Alley, and images of cities from 1,001 Nights and those inhabited by Ali Baba, Sinbad or Aladdin.

 

Dalaran's turrets

The map, below, shows the zones of Dalaran, proper.

Dalaran Map

My alliance character started off in the Silver Enclave, which is where the alliance battlemasters and portals to the alliance cities were located.  He was prohibited from the Sunreaver’s enclave, and was thrown out when he tried to enter.  This seemed to be horde only.

 

The silver enclave

Currently, there are also portals to the BGs in the beta.  Not sure if this is just for testing, or whether such portals would remain.

The streets of Dalaran, a cat’s eye/butt view..

 

main st

 

Aladdin-like architecture - just need a tailor on a flying carpet

 

the centre of town

 

But everything is not all bright and beautiful – Dalaran has a darker underbelly.  Things lurk in the sewers; fight clubs, shady vendors, taverns for scarred warriors not pretty blood elves.  You can access the sewers either via one of the tunnel entrances or by jumping down a well.

 

Make a wish, close your eyes and jump in

Alternatively, look for the dark tunnels, leading down…

 

'Bluebear dreams of very big mice'

In the sewers (besides giant sewer rats) are, duelling areas…

 

Orc Fight club organizer, "The first rule of fight club is... ooh shiny"

A bank for dwarves and others, who think their gold is safer underground…

 

Underbelly bank

An inn, where men can be, err, men, and tauren can get off their kodos and drink their milk.

 

Underbelly inn

And some shady dealers, who refused to be photographed.  Small pet collectors and Death Knights should seek out Darahir the Regeants and Magical Goods Vendor down here, for 40G he sells the ghostly Skull an original spooky mini-pet.

 

So how do you get to this magical city?  

According to WOW wiki There are several ways to get to Dalaran:

1. Mages can talk to NPCs in Dragonblight and learn to teleport to Dalaran after completing  [73] Attunement to Dalaranavailable at level 71.
2. Mages can learn a portal to Dalaran at 74 from the portal trainer. This allows anyone to get to Dalaran
3. Anyone who is at least level 74 can complete  [74] The Magical Kingdom of Dalaran from any of several members of the Kirin Tor, which will portal them to Dalaran once.
4. Once in Dalaran (via the quest at 74 or via a Mage portal or a Warlock summon),  [74] Learning to Leave and Return: the Magical Way can be obtained (provided you’re at least level 70?) which “attunes” you to Dalaran, and you can return any time via the Teleport to Dalaran Crystal from Crystalsong Forest.
5. Someone already in Dalaran can group-invite you for PvP at the city’s Battlemasters. After you leave the battleground you will spawn in the floating city. However, the inviting player has to be of the same level range for the specific battleground pool as you, or you won’t get the group-invite.

Getting out is easier…

1. You can use the flight path located on Krasus’ Landing
2. You can launch your own flying mount from Krasus’ Landing (you cannot fly elsewhere in the city, if you try and fly over the city, you are warned, and then are dismounted, you float to safety with a parachute)
3. You can use one of the portals to major cities, or the portal to the Caverns of Time (located in The Violet Citadel)
4. You can exit through a sewer pipe – there’s a long drop – so launch out using your flying mount (although someone did say a parachute would open before you hit the ground – I tested this and think I chickened out and pressed my druid flight form just as the parachute was appearing – it left it a bit late)

Brewfest killing frenzy

If you’re an avid blog reader (which I assume you are if you’re reading this ), you’ll already know that its Brewfest time again. The arrival of a Brewfest boss (Coren Direbrew) seemed to take most members of our guild by surprise, but now they know about it (courtesy of our Tinuviel/Anelf/Entrigan/Carys/Neokia expeditionary force), every 65+ in the guild is lining up to kill him. (Poor guy – there’s a constant stream of level 70s running into BRD to kill him – you can’t stop on the chains for fear of being pushed into the lava pit by the crowd behind you ).

Why is Coren so popular (or should I say unpopular, since we all like to kill him so much)?

Unlike Ahune (the Midsummer Fire Festival boss), he’s really easy to kill. And he drops trinkets that are equivalent to the 41xBadge of Justice trinkets – most of which are must-haves for new level 70s trying to purple-up (and which generally last a loooong time before they are replaced). Killing Direbrew is a daily quest, so your group can slaughter him five times a day – much quicker than running Heroic Slave Pens 14 times to get the BoJ trinkets. (Oh yes – and if you already have the equivalent BoJ trinket, you can equip this one as well. They have independent cooldowns).

I can only think that this is another Blizzard trick to quickly gear people up ready for WOTLK. Coren Direbrew is a trinket pinata. (I’m not complaining – suddenly all our guild’s budding raiders have easy gear upgrades).

As well as the trinkets, he also drops the brewfest Kodo and Ram mounts. This is a big disappointment to a lot of people. Last year, the Horde got to win a Ram for completing the simple Brewfest quests. Many were hoping a Kodo would be available to the Alliance through the same mechanism.

Anyway, here’s what you need to do to prepare for killing him. (This is for Alliance – I killed my last Horde alt a couple of weeks ago) …

• Run out of Ironforge to the Brewfest area to the right of the ramp.
• Pick up and immediately complete Welcome to Brewfest!.
• Run to Kharanos and pick up Save Brewfest!.

That’s it for the pre-quests. Now make your way into BRD. As you enter the instance, there are 3 mobs to your right. Kill them and activate the mole machine console they were standing by to port yourself to the inn/bar. Talk to the spy there, and you can now come back every day to grab the Insult Coren Direbrew daily from him. Wowwiki describes the fight nicely (see that last link), so I won’t repeat it here. The good news is that it is embarrassingly easy for a group of level 70s. I was really worried when a level 66 in our guild asked to come along – but it was still a cakewalk. (I’d guess you could do it with two lower level group members at a pinch, as long as the three 70s were of reasonable Kara gear/skill standard). Just keep the spawns off your resto Druid (that’s me ), and you’ll be fine.

Finally, since this is a hunter blog, here’s a link to the Brewfest Hunter trinket – Empty Mug of Direbrew (which is the same as the 41x BoJ Bloodlust Brooch.

And because Hunters are special, he also drops DireBrew’s Shanker (which has the same stats as the Emerald Ripper which drops from Moroes, except it has a slightly slower speed). [Yes - I know that's not a perfect Hunter weapon, but its pretty damn good ].

 

Addendum (9/24/08):

I have to take back what I said about this being a really easy fight. I’ve since tried this again with other groups and had a much harder time of it. I conclude that the thing that made it easy for us in my main group was our Pally tank (well – that and most of the group being in ZA-ready gear). He just mops up the adds, which tend to start running at the healer with a Warrior (non-AoE) tank. Having an AoE tank allowed all the DPSers to put most of their damage onto Direbrew.

The strategy we developed for a Warrior tank is to put a Hunter on add control duty (i.e. killing stuff that tries to hit me). Then the two other DPSers burn down Direbrew until the elite wenches spawn, when one of the DPSers switches to elite killing (with some help from the Hunter). The Warrior also spent a little time targeting some of the non-elite adds to keep a few of them interested in him. This was a little more hectic than with the Pally tanking, but still pretty straightforward.

WOTLK beta Level 80 premades, Dalaran and new mounts

At last!  After a week of patches, server down, server down, server down, Houston we have a problem …. I finally got on to the Beta for a couple of hours straight, and even better got to try out my level 80 premade hunter.

First try was not so good…

 

Where's me pants?

Never mind, just about got to rename my character (Beren – if you know your Tolkien stories you’ll know he was Tinuviel’s love).  Server Down… /sigh Tomorrow is another day, praps I can get some pants and a hair cut, I look like a lawn ornament.  

Yeah, server up and they gave me some pants…

I have pants!

They also gave me a level 80 wolf, 5,000G, a land mount, a flying mount, and a baby penguin (sweet).

Was that a goat and a gryphon? Nope, they gave everyone…

 

Raptors!

And for a flying mount, I got a nifty Nether Ray :>)

But I see a bear!  I want a bear mount!  Well that’s the thing.  Remember that 5,000G – see that crowd ahead?  Look closer…

 

It's a mammoth?!

It is indeed! But the what’s it standing on?  Go closer.

 

It's standing on the answer to one of the most often asked questions in the Beta...

It’s standing on the answer to one of the most often asked questions in the Beta…  Where’s Mei Francis, the Mount Vendor?  The answer is, under the mammoth, and the bear, and the tauren, and the other mammoth.  I managed to target him/her by angling my camera straight down.  Others suggested making a /target Mei Francis macro.  Guy’s so popular he needs to be on a pedestal.  And here’s why.  Here’s what he’s selling:

Reins of Armored Brown Bear 712G 50s

Reins of Wool Mammoth 200 Emblems of Heroism (look like BOJs)

Armored Snowy Gryphon 1900G

Reins of Grand Caravan Mount (3 person mount) 14,249G 99s 98c!

Of course I had to get me a bear!

 

A bear mount, A bear mount! I'm one happy bear lover :>)

But the mount excitement didn’t stop with the furries and the stompies.  Oh no.. for 5G – yes only 5G you got to buy a…

 

Hog! A big stinky, noisy, motorbike! Cool!

Now before you get too excited, I don’t reckon you are going to get to buy motorbikes in Wrath for 5G when it goes live, although I do hope the exotic mount vendor remains.  The prices there seem reasonable, the white gryphon for instance is the same price as the hypogryph over at cenarion expedition.  So fingers crossed!  And get saving the pennies, Tinuviel and Bluebear are definitely going to want to get bear mounts of some description.

FAQ for new hunters – All about pet training and taming and other need to know stuff

A few days ago I met a Warlock in Elywnn forest, who was new to the game of WOW.  She started a conversation with me, as she had never seen anyone fishing before (I was on Bluebear my level 60 feral druid, improving my fishing in the river after a visit to darkmoon faire).  We got chatting, I helped her kill Princess the pig (well, it’s what you do in Elwynn), and invited her to my guild.  The next day she whispers me on a new alt, a hunter (yeah for her!), “How do I change my pet?  I have an owl and he’s rubbish, I want to change him for something else?”  A long conversation ensued (I probably burned her ear off!)  Anyway, I remembered I had written some FAQ on hunter pet taming for my guild website long ago, and never transferred them to this blog.  Here they are now, for Timorry and all new hunters like her.  I have also updated them to include some of the changes coming in WOTLK. 

Hunters are a lot of fun, easy to solo, with lots of toys to play with.  They’re getting lots of new toys in the expansion too.  But starting a hunter can be a bit confusing too, especially the pet issue.   With such big changes coming, its probably even more confusing for someone new; working out what is current, what is old, and what is yet to come.  

When do I get a pet?  How do I tame and train my pet?  What if I want to change pets?  And how is this all going to change in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion?  Find out the answers to these and many other basic questions here.

 

1. When and how do I get the skills to train a pet?

You get the skill to train a pet from a quest from your Hunter Trainer at level 10. The trainer will ask you to go out and train three different animals. For each he gives you a Tame Beast ability specific for that kind of animal. To tame the animal you select it and hit the tame beast icon. You ‘love it up’ – channeling hearts at it – while the animal attacks you. After the channeling is finished, you will have trained the pet. 

 

You hunt with each pet for about 10 mins, then the pet will disappear and you return to the trainer for the next part (if you wish, you can go back sooner and after completing the quest, choose the abandon pet option, by right clicking on the pets picture icon). Having tamed all three pets, the trainer will give you the Tame Pet ability (looks like a green fist), located on your beast mastery tab in your spells and abilities book. VERY IMPORTANT make sure you complete the second part of this quest — your trainer sends you to see someone else — who give you the ability to FEED your pet. You also get the abilities to Call, Dismiss, Revive, and Train pet. (You do not get the ability to Heal your pet until level 12.)

Also visit your Pet Trainer. The Pet Trainer will teach you skills, including Growl, which you can train to your pet. This is not every second level like your Hunter Trainer (its less often – can’t remember how often – so go check them out each time you go to the hunter trainer).

In WOTLK it looks like you will still wait till level 10 to get your first pet, and still have to complete the quest from your hunter trainer.  You will still receive the abilities to tame new pets, call, dismiss, revive and feed your pet at the end of your quest.  However, you will no longer need the train pet ability.  There will also not be pet trainers in the game.  Each pet will come with abilities including growl and cower; bite, claw or smack; and an ability specific to their family (e.g. wolves get furious howl).  

You are now ready to get your first pet!

 

2. What kind of pet should I get?

Visit the excellent Petopia and check out the gallery of pets and the different pet families you can tame, and decide which you like (most of the imagines in this article are courtesy of Petopia – click on the image to go to the site).

Pets are changing drastically in the WOTLK expansion.  These changes will go live when patch 3.0 hits, about a month from now.

At the moment, pets can be sort of divided into 3 categories – offensive (high damage dealers); defensive (high armor); and all rounders.   In WOTLK this will be formalized at three families of pet – Ferocity pets (high damage dealers); tenacity pets (high armor, tanking pets); and cunning pets (kind of all rounders, pets with pvp and other utility skills).

At the moment, some pets in the wild come with some skills when they are tamed, some don’t.  You need to train them with skills, some of which can be learned from your trainers, some from taming other animals in the wild, and then teaching the skills from those animals to your main pet.  WOTLK is simplifying this, all pets come with certain standard skills, growl (which gains aggro), cower (which dumps aggro), and either bite, claw, or smack (which will all do the same thing, extra damage), plus a specific family skill.  You won’t have to train them anything.  What you will have to do later on is assign them talents.  Pets get a talent tree from level 20, the same as you do from level 10.  Whereas you get 3 tree to choose from, pets just get one, but that tree will be different for ferocity, tenacity and cunning pets.  Therefore, when choosing a pet decide whether you want a tank, high damage dealer, or utility pet, and then choose one from those trees.  Once you have done that, look at the specific family skills and choose the one that suits your play style the most.

When you have decided which family you want, look at Petopia and choose the ‘skin’ of the pet you like the look of.  Remember you can tame an animal the same level or below yours, but not one higher than you in level.  Petopia has links to wowhead etc.  So when you have found your chosen pet, you can look up where he is to be found and go off in search of him.

Remember you don’t have to just be restricted to one pet, especially in WOTLK.  Currently, you have 3 stable slots (although you need one for taming animals for new skills, so you can have 2 permanent pets).  In WOTLK you will have 5 stable slots, and no need to save one for training, so you can have 5 permanent pets.

Pets level up with you.  Currently, if you are level 70 and you want a level 19 ghostsaber, he will be level 19 after you have trained him, and you will have to level him up 51 painful levels.  In WOTLK if you tame a low level pet, it will jump to 5 levels below you giving you more choice.  

Also, currently there is a thing called pet loyalty.  It has a scale of 1 through 6 from disloyal to best friend.  A level 1 pet will not hold aggro as well or do as much damage as a level 6 loyalty pet.  Loyalty is being done away with in WOTLK.  This means that if you have a level 8 bear, and you stable him for a couple of level while playing with a cat,   you don’t have to level your bear up to catch up with you.  Instead, you can swap him for a level 10 bear, who is the same level as you, with no penalty for having just trained him, rather than having leveled up with him.  This should allow the leveling hunter to keep more than one pet as they level up.  Previously, this was hard to do, as the pets’ levels would fall below the hunters.  Having more than one pet means you can have a tanking pet, a pvp pet, and a high dps pet if you choose, or you could have 5 different raptors in 5 different colors, if raptors are your thing.

Still confused?  Here are some suggestions.

When you are leveling a tenacity pet (tank) is a good idea, or possibility a cunning pet, which has a nice feature to give mana back to the hunter.  Bears will make good leveling pets.  When running instances or with groups where you do not need your pet to tank, take a high dps pet like a raptor.

Currently…

High damage pets – cats, ravagers and raptors.

High armor, tanking pets - unfortunately the tanking pets suffer from not being able to learn focus skills like claw, movement enhancers like dash, or in some cases like bears having no special skills.  Gorillas probably make best current tanks, bears are popular and perfectly good at most levels.

Good all rounders - boars.  Wolves are popular though have some weakness, but will get improves in WOTLK.

Others worth a look – owls (high damage and screech which is aoe debuff), scorpid (high armor and poison dot good for pvp), wind serpent (high damage)

 

When WOTLK hits

High damage pets – raptors, devilsaurs (need to be level 50s and have 51 points in BM for devilsaur), moths (yes you heard me, moths) (cats may get a look in, depends on how good rake is)

High armor, tanking pets - bears, worms (51 point BM), rhino (51 point BM – but he’s a bit too big imo), crocolisk, gorilla

Others worth a look (I haven’t included those with very situation specific skills) – hyena (high damage and hamstring), wolf (high damage and AP buff for party), bird of prey (utility and disarm – maybe just my subjective view or a beta issue – but bird of prey seems to generate a lot of threat, possibly from disarm?), wasp (high damage, nice debuff).  Lots of pets have pretty nice skills, there is much more choice now than before.

 

3. How do I tame my first pet?

Decide what pet you are going to go out and tame. Find out what he eats (see Petopia) and make sure you have a stack or two of food of that kind in your pack.

You can only train a pet at your level or below. You cannot have any help or interference while doing it (people can now heal you). Sometimes it fails and you have to try again. You can buff yourself up beforehand including getting buffs from other people (I heard that a mage could sheep the pet and then you could train it while sheeped, when it can’t attack you, but I have never tried it so it might be untrue). To start with try an animal a couple of levels below you. 

You can stun the animal first with a concussive shot (or after level 20 start by putting it in a freeze trap) then, having selected the animal, click on your tame beast spell and you will start loving it up while it attacks you.  If you have it, make sure you have Aspect of the Monkey turned on to decrease the damage done to you while you are taming.

Once he is tamed feed him until his happiness icon (the little square to the right of his health bar goes from unhappy, to content, to happy). 

 

4. How do I feed my pet?

To feed him, I find the easiest way is to drag the food stack from my bag and drop it on top of him. But you can also use the feed pet icon. There are also addons ( e.g. Fizzwidget’s Fee-O-Matic) and macros (see my 13 macros post) to make feeding your pet easy.  

If you can’t feed him, it is either because you didn’t finish your pet training quest, or because you are trying to feed him food he doesn’t like.

As your pet gets higher in level, he gets choosy about his food, and only higher level food will make him happy. When you get very high level, you will either need to seriously invest in cooking and fishing abilities (I can’t recommend these highly enough for a hunter) or be buying stuffed quail from vendors all the time.

 

5. Why should I feed my pet and how often should I feed him and what is loyalty?

If you don’t feed your pet he will get unhappy and run away (I’ve seen it happen) or even attack you. I read of a case where a hunter with a level 60 pet, at the highest level of loyalty, abandoned him because it wasn’t fed (he spent hours on the AH and guild chat ignoring said pet).

Also currently, feeding your pet helps to increase his loyalty to you. Pets have loyalty levels from 1-6. They start off at level 1 (disloyal) and progress to level 6 (best friend). At level 6 they have more focus and fight better for you.  In WOTLK there will no longer be a pet loyalty measure, but you will still need to feed your pet to keep him happy.

Your object is to always keep that happiness icon as happy or at least content. At happy your pet is doing 125% damage, at content 100%, at unhappy only 75%.

When you feed your pet a little bone appears next to his picture to show he is eating. Don’t give him any more food until this has disappeared, it will just waste food. If, after this has disappeared he is still not happy, give him another piece of food. 

Only feed your pet when his happiness icon is unhappy or content. Again, feeding him when he is happy just wastes food. Also, give him time to digest before you go into battle. I have read, but not tested out that he gets more happiness from each piece of food if he doesn’t have to eat it while fighting (well wouldn’t you!)

When he has a low loyalty level you will probably need to feed him more – and especially when you first train him.

 

6. How do I improve my pet and teach him new skills?

This section is about how things are now.  Once patch 3.0 hits, in preparation for the expansion, you won’t have to teach your pet new skills.

All pets can learn Growl. This taunts the target, and makes sure the mob attacks the pet and not you. To teach your pet growl click on the Beast Training icon in your spells and abilities book. This looks like a sling shot/catapult and is stupidly located on the general tab not the beast mastery tab. With my first hunter, it took me until Level 20 to realize this and train my pet!

Like you, your pet levels up and gets talent (training) points and higher levels of each ability he can learn. His talent points are based on his loyalty level and his combat level with the formula “Combat Level * (Loyalty level – 1)” This means at the maximum level 70 and level 6 loyalty your pet will have 350 training points.

Check the Beast Training window regularly to see whether you have anything new you can teach him and whether he has enough training points to learn the next level of skill. (Note your pet will never exceed your level, but if you play with him all the time, he should quickly approach you level even if he started off much lower, and then stay about half a level behind you.)

Each pet can have up to four active skills (some can learn more than four so you will need to choose which you want). My cat has growl, prowl, claw and dash.  If you train him on four skills and then want different ones, you will have to take him to a pet trainer and unlearn his talents (the same as you do yourself – although the fee is much cheaper).

You can also spend talent points on improving your pets armor, stamina, resistances, etc. These you will get from your pet trainer, along with new levels of growl, most other skills like dash you will need to get from animals in the wild.

Some wild animals have skills like bite, claw, dash and cower that you will learn when you train them. At level 24 you get the Beast Lore which allows you to select an animal cast beast law on him and see what skills he has that you can learn. Before then, and even afterwards, an excellent resource is: The Good Intention Guild Pet Finder.

The above website list all the skills a pet can learn; what they do; which pets can and can’t learn them; which animal have them; and which animals have each level. 

When I got a lion in my level 20s he didn’t have dash. To get dash, I found out the lowest level animal to have it was a Stranglethorn tiger (32-33). When I was level 32, I put my lion in the stable (see below) and trained a stranglethorn tiger. I hunted with him for 15 mins until I saw that I had learnt a new skill – dash (it comes up in you combat log – you can also check your Beast Training list). I then returned to the stable, stabled the tiger (I could have just abandoned him at this point but he was cute), and took out my lion. He needed to be level 30 and have 15 training points, and be able to learn that skill – he was – so I was able to go to Beast Training and train my lion dash. Now he had dash level 1. Looking on the Good Intentions website (above) I saw that Level 2 dash was learnable at level 40, and the lowest level animal to have it was a Ferelas Longtooth Runner (40-41). When I reached level 40 I repeated the procedure and trained a Longtooth Runner and then upgraded my lion’s Dash skill to level 2. 

To ensure your pet is the best that he can be, you should make sure you do this regularly with each of his four abilities, and form a plan for him, to ensure you are saving enough training points for what you really want. I found I didn’t have enough training points for everything, so I re-specced him, and dropped some of the resistances I had taught him, in order to get better armor and stamina and higher levels of his active skills (note you get refunded your talents points for lower levels of a skill when you learn an upgrade of that skill, but you need enough point in total to learn the upgrade). Not sure whether this was the best strategy or not, but that’s where I decided to focus my effort.

 

So what happens in WOTLK, if I don’t have to train my pet skills anymore?

Your pet will come with certain skills.  All pets will have growl (which increases their threat), cower (which lowers their threat), and a focus dump skill with increases their damage (bite, claw or smack – these are essentially the same in WOTLK it just depends on the family e.g. cats claw, gorillas smack).  Each pet then comes with its only family skill (e.g. bears swipe, wasps sting).  Your will automatically increase in level in these skills as he levels up.  No need to train skills or visit a trainer.  He cannot learn different skills from other animals or a trainer.  What he does now have is a talent tree.  He can learn new skills from his talents.  

You pet will have one talent tree, not 3 as you do.  This tree will be different for cunning, tenacity and ferocity pets.  Your pet will earn his first talent point at level 20, and one more every 4 levels after that.  You choose where to put them, in the same way you do your own talents.

 

8.  How do I use the stable?

There are stable masters in most towns, usually outside the inn or by the hunter trainer (the one in SW is outside the house with the hunter and pet trainers in the dwarf district). In a capital city you can ask a guard for directions.

Currently you get one stable slot and can buy two more. You can therefore have up to three pets at any one time, two in the stable and one out. 

Use the stable if you want to train another pet but don’t want to abandon your original one. Or use if it you are going to be parked in a city for an extended period, not hunting, as it saves feeding your pet.

In WOTLK you can purchase 4 stable slots, in addition to the one you are given, making a total of 5 stable slots in all.

 

9. Should I have just one pet or several, and should I change pets as I level up?

At the moment it is hard to level up with more than one pet, and keep those pets levels current with your own.  The pet you are not playing with falls behind and so you end up with either one or both of your pets being lower level than you are.  It is recommended that you stick with one pet for leveling.  But at level 70 you might want 3 different pets for 3 different situations.  At the moment, I have 2 permanent pets, a level 70 cat (Gwind) and a level 70 wolf (Red), but I actually only really play with Gwind.  I was leveling an owl in the other slot, but since the pet changes for WOTLK have been announced I have abandoned that idea.

In WOTLK it looks as if you can easily keep several pets current with your level, particular if you choose pets, which are common at different levels like cats and bears, and you are not choosy about the skin.

 

10. My pet has disappeared, what should I do?

Don’t panic! Pets disappear for a number of reasons. For example, if you jump and fall, your pet may not jump after you, but will try and run the long way around (bad if you are in an instance or cave as it might pull a hundred mobs in its wake). If the pet gets too far away from you, it will disappear as if it is dismissed. 

First try calling your pet (with your Whistle spell in your spells and abilities book). If that doesn’t work, try using the Revive pet spell in case he has died. If that doesn’t work, think – did you put him in the stable? When did you last feed him? Did you abandon him?

Your pet will only disappear for good, if you haven’t feed him for a long time, or if you choose to abandon him. To abandon a pet, right click on the pet’s picture and choose abandon pet from the options. You will get a warning message, and you have to confirm that this is what you want to do. There is no turning back after you click yes – your pet is gone forever. In contrast, dismiss pet, temporarily dismisses your pet into the ether – you can call him back at any time – he’s just a bit grumpy. (Note, you cannot train a new pet whilst one pet is dismissed, it must either be in the stable or abandoned.)

 

11. How do I control my pet?

Your pet has three settings – aggressive, defensive, and passive. With aggressive it will attack anything that comes within a certain radius of itself. In defensive mode it will only attack things that attack it or you. In passive mode it will not attack or defend itself but will sit there and take the punches, unless you specifically command it to attack. To tell your pet to attack something, select the mob and either press the attack button on the pets bar or press ctrl + 1 (this default key binding can be changed in the key binding menu options)- you can also use a pet attack macro and a pet follow macro (see my macros section). I usually have my pet on defensive mode, unless I am soloing in a low level area with fast re-spawns and just want him to wreak havoc. (Note if your pet kills something without you having struck at least one blow or shot, you will not be able to loot it.) I put him on passive if a lot of control is needed, such as in an instance, where I don’t necessarily want him running at things that are casting at me and then running back once he has killed them, dragging another set of mobs with him.

Learning to use your pet well in instances takes skill and practice, hunters (and locks) can cause wipes if their pets get out of control. My advice for first time instance runs is be careful, keep your pet on a tight leash, on passive, and think about dismissing him before you jump down a level (you can call him back again), so he doesn’t run around drawing mobs. You want to hold off sending him rushing in as you normally would until each mob has been pulled. 

That’s all folks! Hope this was helpful.   Want to know more?  I have one word for you – PETOPIA.   ( For all your pet info, accept no substitute (even this one!).

 Feel free to add your thoughts and any corrections.