Tuesday, August 23, 2011

So You Wanna Play WoW Part 2 - Now That You're Addicted

I was on the fence about writing this article. Yes, WoW is awesome, and I enjoy bringing more people into the fold, but there are umpteen blogs and articles already on the interwebs about this very subject – what’s one more? However, my original post from last week has seen huge traffic, and is already climbing to the top spot for most viewed article, so I decided to follow it up. By now, you’ll have chosen your faction, race, class, and probably even quested a bit. Chances are high you’ve reached a main city, and have read all kinds of nonsense like “LF2M BD need GS 7500+ pst with spec” or other such jibberish. You may have run into a trainer who wants to teach you alchemy, skinning, mining, herbalism, or a plethora of other professions. That’s what I’m here for. Keep reading after the cut for tips on all kinds of things that aren’t questing or leveling related, just in case you get sick of the grind.

Reaching that level cap is a fun goal. It’s a ton of fun. It’s the main reason most people play WoW, because that’s when the real fun of the game begins; gearing up, learning raids, organizing groups of people to bring down the baddest of the bad. But it can be an awfully long, drawn out grind to get there. Professions are a fantastic way to ease that grind, and a whole subset of goals and achievements open up when you choose a couple professions. Any character can have 2 professions, as well as four secondary professions. The main professions are broken into two categories – gathering and crafting. Gathering professions are useful for gathering materials the other professions need, and are a great way to make money. Picking up two gathering professions will let you put all the materials you’ve gathered onto the auction house for 100% profit, but you’ll need to ask other people for help getting some of the better crafted items. Crafting professions take the materials from gathering professions (usually) and build things with them, whether they are armor, weapons, gems, mounts, or many other things. Taking two crafting professions ensures you’ll have access to some of the game’s best items and bonuses, but it will be expensive to level them, since you’ll need to buy all your materials off the auction house. The gathering professions are:

-Herbalism: See those flowers on the ground? Aren’t they pretty? Pick them up and put them in your bags.
-Mining: Use your pickaxe to smash all the minerals you see to bits, collecting the ore in the process.
-Skinning: Step 1 – Kill bad guys. Step 2 – Tear off their flesh. Step 3 – Profit.

On top of these gathering professions, there are eight crafting professions:

-Alchemy: An alchemist will use herbalism to gather herbs from across Azeroth, and create potions and elixirs to help strengthen their allies, as well as themselves.
-Blacksmithing: Blacksmiths use the ores they get from mining to create mail and plate armor, as well as weapons, keys, shield spikes, and belt buckles. They can also socket one-handed weapons, bracers, and gloves with gems, which are found on higher level items.
-Enchanting: Enchanters extract magical dust and essences from uncommon, rare, and epic items to enchant different attributes and bonuses to armor and weapons. Enchanting doesn’t use any gathering professions, but destroys some of those pesky green items you’ll undoubtedly run into in your journeys.
-Engineering: By far the zaniest of the professions, and one of the most fun. Use your mining skill to collect ore to build guns, trinkets, add zappers to your gloves, bombs, motorcycles, helicopters, parachutes, and a ton of other items. Though not as profitable as other professions, it is widely considered one of the most fun.
-Inscription: The newest primary profession, scribes will use herbs they gather to create pigments and ink, which in turn create glyphs for every class. This is a hugely profitable profession, since many glyphs sell at over 100g each, and at higher levels you can create Darkmoon Cards, which can lead to some of the best trinkets in the game.
-Jewelcrafting: Prospect through the ore you’ve collected to find different raw gems, then craft those into gems with many different attribute bonuses which can be socketed on higher level gear. You can also create necklaces and rings, and jewelcrafter-exclusive gems remain some of the most powerful item enhancements in the game.
-Leatherworking: Finally, a use for all those skins you’ve been collecting! Leatherworkers can craft leather and mail armor, different bags, and different cloaks. A very strong profession for a rogue, druid, or hunter, and profitable to sell high level items on the auction house.
-Tailoring: The last of the primary professions, and the second one that doesn’t require a gathering profession (and so pairs quite well with enchanting). Tailors use cloth found on many different mobs in the game, such as Linen, Wool, Silk, and so on, to craft cloth armor, bags, an exclusive Magic Carpet mount, threads, and much more. A great profession for any cloth-wearer.

You can always pick a profession, realize you don’t like it, and unlearn it to train in something else at any time. But be wary – doing this will cause you to completely forget everything about the profession you originally chose! Professions are a ton of fun to level, and often give great bonuses at the end of the game.

In addition to choosing two of the above professions, you may opt into choosing none, some, or all of the four secondary professions. Any character can learn them at any time, and they give strong bonuses to all classes. They are:

-Archaeology: The newest profession, archaeology is not something I’d recommend seriously trying until you are at least level 60 and can fly. It’s fairly complex and I may do a “How To” article on it at a later date, but until you can fly, it’s really not worth picking up. Note: Archaeology is incredibly addicting and gives some of the most fun bonus items in the game, and is definitely worth grabbing once you have a flying mount.
-Cooking: Using different meats found off the many creatures you’re sure to slaughter, you can add strong “Well Fed” buffs to your character to increase strength, agility, intellect, stamina, or other stats.
-First Aid: If you are a class that has no healing spells (i.e. Death Knight, Hunter, Mage, Rogue, Warlock, or Warrior), it may server you well to pick up First Aid. You use the same cloth as a tailor would to create bandages and anti-poisons, which heal you much more quickly than the traditional way of just eating. Still, First Aid is largely outdated and in serious need of an overhaul.
-Fishing: Quite simply, throw your lure into the water, pull out a fish. Pairs very well with cooking, as you can use all the fish you’ve collected to cook and eat.

Honestly, I generally don’t pick up any secondary professions, or at least not until I’m max level and have nothing else to do. They’re all huge time sinks with little to no benefit. The exception is archaeology. I mean, it is still a huge time sink with little to no benefit, but it is fun flying to different sites and digging up treasure. It also has a lot of extra flavour and lore behind it.

That having been said, primary professions are one of the best ways to make money while leveling, and can provide some of the best end-game bonuses around. I highly recommend picking up two as soon as you can, and if you just want cash, pick up two gathering professions (I like herbalism/mining as a combination, but any two of the three will work). Otherwise, try getting one of the Gathering/Crafting pairings above.

Another facet of WoW is the fact that everything has an abbreviation. There’s no way I’ll be able to think of them all here, but I’ll try to list as many as I can so that when somebody says something in trade chat you don’t quite understand, you can just come back here.

LFM - Looking for more, in reference to a dungeon or raid. With the new dungeon finder you don’t see this as often as you used to, but it’s still around.
CC - Crowd control. Any effect that can make an enemy unable to attack is CC. Examples include a mage’s Polymorph, a hunter’s Freezing Trap, a rogue’s Sap, or, one of my favourites and one of the least utilized, a priest’s Mind Control.
GS - Gearscore. Gearscore is an add-on that was created during Wrath of the Lich King, and has been a plague in the world ever since. It calculates a number based on your gear, basically telling anyone very quickly what level of play you’re at. Basically, ignore this until you’ve reached max level.
pst - please send tell. People will usually put this after trying to sell or buy something in trade. It simply means to send a private message, or whisper, to that person if you have the item he is looking for.
spec - Specialization. Simply means what talent tree you are in (for example, a Holy Priest vs. Shadow Priest).
A whole bunch of dungeon abbreviations – there’s a short way to list every dungeon in the game, and I’m not going to list them here, but if you see “LFM *characters*”, those characters are usually just the abbreviation of the dungeon they need more people in.
qq, or QQ – crying or whining. Refers to the fact that Q_Q looks alot like a person with tears coming out of his eyes, and it’s said often to people who can’t deal with a wipe, or a recent change, or something like that. Example:
Player 1 – OMG WTF WHY IS ORE SO DAMN EXPENSIVE!?
Player 2 – qq

I’m sure there are lots I’m missing, but if you see something you don’t know, feel free to ask in the comments! Google is also your friend. Hope this helps you get started! This will probably be my last WoW article for a bit, but I definitely plan to do more in the future. See you in Azeroth!

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