WoW – Page 72 – A Pixel Nomad

What’s Your Favourite Type of Crafting?

I love crafting. It doesn’t matter what game I play, chances are I’m going to get involved. That doesn’t mean I like every type of crafting though. One of my least favourite crafting methods is the one you find in World of Warcraft, where you click one button to combine, and wait around until everything in your inventory is used up. It feels very hands free, and it’s meant to be that way. The ‘hard’ part involves collecting the resources, usually through combat (if you’re going to collect it yourself) and adventuring.

My absolutely favourite way to craft, was in Vanguard. Crafting was its own sphere, and did not rely on adventuring at all. You could do work orders where you were given the supplies you needed and only had to purchase the vendor sold components, and this was the ideal way to level, saving your hard earned harvests for actual useful items. It was difficult, complicated, and you would take pride in your creations. Through the use of powders and dusts you could customize every piece a bunch of different ways, and of course you could make pieces more rare than others. One of the best things about this system for me personally was that it wasn’t timed, like it is in EQ2. In EQ2 I feel like I have to constantly sit at the craft bench and not step away to answer the phone or go get the door, because my craft will fail. It’s a timed mechanic, and while I enjoy the process of crafting, I dislike being so tied to the desk as I craft. Sometimes I need to step away.

Crafting in WildStar is complex, but I feel it leans too much on the side of RNG rather than skill. I don’t like having to compete with RNG, because I typically (always) lose. ArcheAge crafting matches that of World of Warcraft, where it’s just a finger click to combine items in your inventory, so long as you have the materials available. There is a bit of RNG as you have a chance to “auto upgrade” an item as you craft it, but the system isn’t complex by any means.

So what are your favourite methods of crafting? Would you prefer to buy from crafters and not create your own items? Players who choose to harvest and sell those goods to crafters can make a nice amount of money in a balanced game, spending the money they earn from selling craft components back on crafters for their finished goods. Of course if you’re like me you have to DO ALL THE THINGS and so you’re both a crafter and an adventurer.

100 and Onwards

Weekend chores kept me from doing as much gaming over the weekend as I would have liked, but I still managed to inch my way to level 100 on my main in World of Warcraft. The leveling was incredibly fast, I was expecting it to be much slower. It dragged a bit from 92-95 and then flew the rest of the way. As soon as I reached 100 I went to the proving grounds as you’re unable to queue for some things without first, well, you know. Proving yourself. I thought I would have issues because I wanted to queue for dungeons as a healer but all of the gear I have been getting is for DPS, but I beat the silver healing scenario without too many issues (mana by the end of the 8th wave was pretty low, but no one died) and I’m pretty close to 610 ilevel (I think I’m at 608 right now). I got a 665 ilevel cloak at level 100 that was bind on equip from a random mob in the world, so that really helped.

Of course reaching 100 had other perks too. My garrison can now be fully upgraded, or at least it could if I had the resources. Like everyone else out there I’m still trying to collect enough for my upgrades, which of course doesn’t come easily when I’m constantly shifting my buildings around. My first follower is about to hit 100, and I’m hoping I figure out how you gear them up. Thanks to the salvage yard I have all sorts of tokens to upgrade their gear and weapons to 615, but at this point I don’t even know how to do that.

I’m really enjoying WoD so far, and it seems like Blizzard has a hit on their hands. So many friends have returned and even though I know it’s a temporary thing, it has been a LONG time since I have seen so many of my friends all enjoying themselves in the same game.

Warlords, Dragons, and Sackboys, Oh my!

Like a lot of my friends lately, I have found myself (most often than not) logging into World of Warcraft since Warlords went live. While I typically enjoy new expansion releases, this one in particular has pulled me in with their combination of cinematics, quests, and of course garrisons. Each day I log in to complete any garrison missions that I have left running over night, and pick up all of my work orders. On my main my garrison buildings include:

T2 grand hall
T2 mine
T2 trading post
T1 fishing hut
T1 tailoring emporium
T1 enchanter’s study
T1 stables

I haven’t been in as much a rush to unlock things because I’ve been leveling up, but I do tend to get distracted by the shinies. I’ve picked up quite a few battle pets, worked on archeology (which is where one of my latest pets came from) and of course have been having a blast just wandering through each zone. One of the things that really appeals to me is just how much stuff is out there randomly in the world. Besides the bonus quests you can wander into, I love that there are clickies scattered about randomly. I never know what I’m going to stumble into, and I love that.

Of course it wouldn’t be enough just to have Warlords launch, two other games that are going to be taking my time include the latest Dragon Age, and of course – Little Big Planet 3. I can’t wait to start playing that on my PS4.

I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again, it’s great to be a gamer.

Garrisons and all their Goodies

Alright. I know there are going to be a lot of WoW posts from various sites over the next little while, so for those who are not interested in WoW, I apologize. It is one of the (many) games I tend to play, so you’ll have to handle a few posts here and there! Warlords released, and while there have been issues (server issues, bug issues, etc) for me personally things have been relatively smooth – minus the server issues which were of course expected and I don’t mind them.

When I first heard about garrisons I got all excited thinking these were player housing. They’re not. They’re instances where you get to plop down buildings and sure you get to choose what buildings you plop down, and yes they are incredibly useful – but this is not player housing as I have come to know it. There’s no decorating, no creativity. You’re not naming any of your followers, or doing anything to the zone aside from choosing what building is going where. That being said, it IS highly addictive.

If you’re familiar with the Rift minion system then you already know what to expect from followers in garrisons. You earn NPC through PvE quests and through garrison quests (there are other ways but these are the beginning methods) and they’ll randomly take on a quality. The beginning NPC will start at level 90, you get to level them to 100 through garrison quests. You’ll spend a lot of time at the Mission Specialist in the garrison, choosing which follower is going on which mission for the best odds. Unlike Rift where you’re not given a percentage of success right there on the mission, WoW takes all the guess work out of the equation for you.

You send your little ~~minions~~ followers out, and they come back after a pre-determined length of time. Some times they come back with experience, garrison resources (used for upgrades), a fancy item for you, some gold, etc. You get the picture. They level up, and you work on your garrison. You start with an Inn, Barracks, and if you have a crafting specialty chances are you’ll run into a quest that will reward you with plans for your craft (in my case this was engineering). You’ll play some more and wonder how the heck you get to earn more buildings, and how to upgrade the current ones you have.

Thankfully there are loads of guides on this part of the game. One in particular that I have been using is on Icy-Veins, and it explains that in order to upgrade your town hall to T2 you’ll need to complete the quest Bigger is Better. In order to get that quest, you need to complete a majority of the quests in Twilight Glade (Alliance at least). You’ll also need 200 resources and some gold, so keep that in mind. I’m not quite at the point where I’m ready to upgrade to T2 yet, but I’m slowly getting there and I’m quite excited about it. My warlock just reached level 92, and I’m enjoying the ride more than I’m trying to rush.

I have to admit, it’s also very nice to see so many of my friends playing – I know it probably won’t last, but I’m still very happy.

Simple Weekends

Clocks went back an hour on Sunday morning, and while I had planned on taking advantage of the extra hour to do some gaming, after a very long week all I wanted to do was sleep, and so that’s exactly what I did. 10 hours worth, all be told. It was glorious. Once my day got started, I decided to spend it relaxing and with as little stress as possible. Of course that included a lot of gaming.

While I had killed Garrosh in LFG numerous times, I had never attempted any of the more difficult runs. I queued up for a FLEX raid over the weekend and defeated the normal mode version, which granted me my first heirloom staff, a 556 ilevel beauty that was a significant upgrade over the 510 mace I had been using previously. I also won another weapon, a warforged mace that goes perfect with my healing spec. The raid itself was pretty smooth. As a healer your job is simple, keep people alive and stay out of the purple. With the removal of our instant cast heals, keeping people alive got a LOT harder. Once I had defeated Garrosh on normal I decided it might be neat to try heroic. I queued up once again and was invited before too long. We managed to get him down to 25% but we kept wiping on the final phase when there is mind control going on. Still, it was a good learning experience for me. Dying costs a lot of out of pocket coin, so instead of spending more on wipes I decided to go run older raids with a friend to earn that pocket change back and prepare for WoD.

It was SO MUCH fun. We ran 25 man Ulduar which I had never been to before, along with pretty much all of the raid zones from the Lich King expansion. I earned so many achievements it made my head swim, and I also won two new mounts. I made a fair amount of coin back and I expect that in WoD the amount raid mobs drop may be reduced slightly. It seems like since the stat compression everyone and their dog is running older raids and stockpiling for WoD, which is now only days away.

I’m so excited!