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more beta stuff
Aug. 7th, 2008 12:32 pmStormwind Harbor is big. Big enough that there is actually a gryphon tour of it.
There is a boat to Northrend every three or four minutes or so. The wait isn't long. My first trip to the "frozen north" brought me to the Borean Tundra, more specifically to the Valiance Keep. Valiance Keep is decently sized. and while layouts of certain parts of it are familiar, they are not reusing buildings completely. (I.e. the Inn is not the standard cookie-cutter Inn, and the Keep is easy enough to get around for those familiar with Alliance architecture, but there enough differences, especially in scale, to make it quite different and noticeable.)
There are a number of quests there that have you deal with the attacking Scourge, help out the Tuskarr locals, and so forth. There is a decent chain quest where the last part (which calls for at least 3 people) nets you a rare quality weapon.... which yes, is probably going to better or on par with any epic weapon you may have. (Please note, I had a Night Blade as my mainhand weapon, so my new dagger is about 10 DPS better, but has no proc to reduce armor.) On the other hand, if you've got a raid weapon from one of the later dungeons, it might not be better. (I note at this point that some people in the beta test are indeed hanging on to T5, T6 or equivalent drops until at least level 74 or 75. Those raid drops are not going to go away immediately...)
There are some interesting quest rewards Alliance side (and I can't imagine that there's going to be a horrible disparity in Horde rewards), including a trinket that not only adds to crit rating, but can proc a stackable bonus to crit rating... such that if it maxes out, I can approach around 37% crit rating (even higher once I get Mongoose on my new dagger).
Other things to note: The early gathering components that I've seen are Frostweave cloth, which is used in making Frostweave Bandages (heals 4800 damage over time) and presumably some Tailoring stuff... although nothing is in for Tailoring yet. There is also Cobalt ore to be mined... unfortunately, WotLK continues the trend of 2 ore->1 bar AND Smelting the ore into bars gives no improves to the Mining skill as it starts out grey if you have a Mining skill of 375. (It gets better. I'm told it requires 10 Saronite Ore to make 1 Saronite bar. There's also supposed to be Titanium, Titansteel, Azurite, and Froststeel, but I don't even know if any of that is actually in the game yet.)
Also to note... training First Aid costs 50 gold (minus reputation discounts). I believe training Mining cost the same, but I really didn't notice when I trained it. Cobalt nodes are either quite rare in the smallish part of the Borean Tundra that I have traveled over, or they are being camped like mad. (I suspect a bit of both) and there is, as yet, very little to make with the Cobalt bars.
Engineering wise, there is, I think a sum total of 1 item to create, and that's needed for a quest. In the Engineering worksheet, it's called an Explosive Trigger, but in the quest required for it, it's called a Hair Trigger. (Yay, Blizzard. Way to go.) Now, any Engineer with a skill of 375 (like me) can make it. Unfortunately, one of the things needed to make it requires having a mining skill of 450. (Again, yay Blizzard, way to go. Idiots.)
And yes, repeating from BC, there are mined items (possibly not only mined, but I haven't seen anything that I could the Zappthrottle Mote Extractor on) that combined in groups of 10 to make a "bigger" item. You can (at least) mine Crystallized Water and Crystallized Earth from Cobalt nodes, and 10 of Crystallized {whatever} combine into an Eternal {same whatever}. There are also, I would imagine, going to be Transmutes to convert Eternals into other types, but hey, I don't do Transmutes so that's just theorycrafting at this point.
There are a lot of changes to various abilities and talents, but I'm not really going to go into all of those, because hey, odds are, unless it pertains to Rogues, I'm probably going to get it wrong. (Rogues, on the other hand, get one interesting change... our energy regen is so longer 20 energy/tick. It's pretty much a constant regen that works out the same. So, instead of 0, 20, 40 and so on, it goes 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 (but really fast), so it's possible to get certain abilities chained together a little easier. Also... Vanish no longer requires Flash Powder. I just freed up more inventory space.)
More tomorrow, I promise.
There is a boat to Northrend every three or four minutes or so. The wait isn't long. My first trip to the "frozen north" brought me to the Borean Tundra, more specifically to the Valiance Keep. Valiance Keep is decently sized. and while layouts of certain parts of it are familiar, they are not reusing buildings completely. (I.e. the Inn is not the standard cookie-cutter Inn, and the Keep is easy enough to get around for those familiar with Alliance architecture, but there enough differences, especially in scale, to make it quite different and noticeable.)
There are a number of quests there that have you deal with the attacking Scourge, help out the Tuskarr locals, and so forth. There is a decent chain quest where the last part (which calls for at least 3 people) nets you a rare quality weapon.... which yes, is probably going to better or on par with any epic weapon you may have. (Please note, I had a Night Blade as my mainhand weapon, so my new dagger is about 10 DPS better, but has no proc to reduce armor.) On the other hand, if you've got a raid weapon from one of the later dungeons, it might not be better. (I note at this point that some people in the beta test are indeed hanging on to T5, T6 or equivalent drops until at least level 74 or 75. Those raid drops are not going to go away immediately...)
There are some interesting quest rewards Alliance side (and I can't imagine that there's going to be a horrible disparity in Horde rewards), including a trinket that not only adds to crit rating, but can proc a stackable bonus to crit rating... such that if it maxes out, I can approach around 37% crit rating (even higher once I get Mongoose on my new dagger).
Other things to note: The early gathering components that I've seen are Frostweave cloth, which is used in making Frostweave Bandages (heals 4800 damage over time) and presumably some Tailoring stuff... although nothing is in for Tailoring yet. There is also Cobalt ore to be mined... unfortunately, WotLK continues the trend of 2 ore->1 bar AND Smelting the ore into bars gives no improves to the Mining skill as it starts out grey if you have a Mining skill of 375. (It gets better. I'm told it requires 10 Saronite Ore to make 1 Saronite bar. There's also supposed to be Titanium, Titansteel, Azurite, and Froststeel, but I don't even know if any of that is actually in the game yet.)
Also to note... training First Aid costs 50 gold (minus reputation discounts). I believe training Mining cost the same, but I really didn't notice when I trained it. Cobalt nodes are either quite rare in the smallish part of the Borean Tundra that I have traveled over, or they are being camped like mad. (I suspect a bit of both) and there is, as yet, very little to make with the Cobalt bars.
Engineering wise, there is, I think a sum total of 1 item to create, and that's needed for a quest. In the Engineering worksheet, it's called an Explosive Trigger, but in the quest required for it, it's called a Hair Trigger. (Yay, Blizzard. Way to go.) Now, any Engineer with a skill of 375 (like me) can make it. Unfortunately, one of the things needed to make it requires having a mining skill of 450. (Again, yay Blizzard, way to go. Idiots.)
And yes, repeating from BC, there are mined items (possibly not only mined, but I haven't seen anything that I could the Zappthrottle Mote Extractor on) that combined in groups of 10 to make a "bigger" item. You can (at least) mine Crystallized Water and Crystallized Earth from Cobalt nodes, and 10 of Crystallized {whatever} combine into an Eternal {same whatever}. There are also, I would imagine, going to be Transmutes to convert Eternals into other types, but hey, I don't do Transmutes so that's just theorycrafting at this point.
There are a lot of changes to various abilities and talents, but I'm not really going to go into all of those, because hey, odds are, unless it pertains to Rogues, I'm probably going to get it wrong. (Rogues, on the other hand, get one interesting change... our energy regen is so longer 20 energy/tick. It's pretty much a constant regen that works out the same. So, instead of 0, 20, 40 and so on, it goes 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 (but really fast), so it's possible to get certain abilities chained together a little easier. Also... Vanish no longer requires Flash Powder. I just freed up more inventory space.)
More tomorrow, I promise.