Reader Mail: Building a Trade Guild

I received an email recently from a reader who asks how one might run a guild with a focus on professions. At first I kind of blew off this idea as too fringe to work, but after mulling over a bit I thought of some ways it could be done. My initial reaction was that it would have to wait until Cataclysm and all of the incoming guild changes that will presumably make players more loyal to their guilds. Even those who aren't motivated by loyalty and teamwork might be encouraged by the extra goodies that guilds can unlock, so you'll have a higher sticky factor then. Right now there is no reason for players to favor one raid or another aside from raid schedules, so a crafting guild doesn't look strong for current content.

New Tailoring Recipe for 3.3.3

This weekend I was hanging out on the Test Realm (aka checking old recipes for errors) when I happened to stop by the Frozen Orb dude again. Seems they finally got that Tailoring recipe posted on him, so I took a pic for you guys:



Also, I noticed they had fixed the Frost Lotus to cost 1 Frozen Orb instead of 3 gold and change. It looks like the Frost Lotus thing is a done deal, since they didn't remove it from Frozo's inventory. This should be pretty interesting for the flask situation, since Frost Lotus will be less scarce now. I'll be curious to see how this particular change shakes out:



Finally, I got a pic of Frozo for you. This dude is freaky looking! Ok, so it's probably an error of some kind :)


What do you think of this Frozen Orb vendor? I think people who are playing alts will appreciate the help catching up to T9/10 geared toons, but players who depend on the current pricing of related crafted items will be none to pleased to see prices start dropping.

More Goodies from 3.3.3

News keeps rolling in from Patch 3.3.3 and today we get a few interesting tidbits for crafters. First is the awesome Engineering change:

• The Pet Bombling and Lil' Smoky non-combat pets are no longer Bind-on-Pickup.

How cool is that??? I know some Engineers will be miffed because their gizmatronic pets are no longer unique, but I say bring on the cash cow! I'd rather have money-generating goods than a special pet or two. Lately I've been lamenting the loss of injectors and (soon) ammunition. Changing our pets to BoE should make up for some of that, I hope. I'm so glad I farmed Gnomeregan for both recipes when they were added. If you didn't then now is the time to get going!

There are also a couple of changes for Jewelcrafting:

• Icy Prism now requires Frozen Orb, Chalcedony x 1 (Down from 3), Shadow Crystal x 1 (Down from 3), Dark Jade x 1 (Down from 3)
• Intricate Bone Figurine (Daily Quest) - Craft an Intricate Bone Figurine by combining the Proto Dragon Bone with a Sun Crystal and a Dark Jade. (Old - Chalcedony + Dark Jade)

I assume the reason for reducing the cost of Icy Prism is to balance for the higher value of Frozen Orbs, but I don't think dropping the green gem requirement will achieve that for most people. Honestly I save all my green gems for the daily quest, I don't bother to cut them or "prism" them.

I hope we see more crafting goodies as Patch 3.3.3 progresses, I'm certainly looking forward to what we've seen so far.

The Sky is Falling!

Ok, maybe it's not that earth-shattering :) But we got some pretty huge news today didn't we? For those of you who haven't seen the patch notes for 3.3.3, serious changes are on the horizon for crafters. Most major crafting cooldowns are being removed: titansteel/spellweave/ebonweave/moonshroud. For now the cooldown is still active on epic gem transmutes and still being shared with eternal transmutes.

Crafting at the Lunar Festival

Once again the Lunar Festival is dragging us to the far corners of Azeroth in search of ancient cows... or something like that. Let's not forget that the Lunar Festival is also a source of new recipes for Engineers and Tailors. If you haven't gotten these recipes in previous years, now is the time to fill out your collection. There are a whopping 14 recipes for Engineers and 2 recipes for Tailors which can be purchased for those odd little Coins of Ancestry you've been collecting.

It Must Be Done

Back in August, we learned that the proposed new title for Cataclysm professions was to be "Illustrious". I said at the time time that this was lame and I still stand by that. For one, I feel it's a somewhat obscure term that won't be meaningful to some players. My other issue with it stems from my perception that it just isn't terribly awe-inspiring. The definition for illustrious on Dictionary.com is "famous" or "prominent". I'm not convinced that being illustrious would demonstrate the pinnacle of achievement for a tradesman. Surely if we strive for a title that expresses our skills in a chosen field, we'd want something that conveys our mastery and brilliance.

Raid Recipes FTW!

I've been percolating on this idea for awhile now, but I wanted to go ahead and share my experiences. A couple of months ago I bought the recipe for Moonshadow Armguards on the Auction House. Someone had posted it for like 500g (I don't remember exactly what I paid, but it was cheap). I was wearing the 213 badge bracers at the time, so these crafted ones would be a pretty good upgrade for me. At the time I thought that was a worthwhile price for an item I could make myself and get a BiS level piece of gear. For a few weeks I picked up low-priced mats on the AH and set them aside for the bracers. Then I got sucked into a ToC25 run with another guild and scored the Bracers of the Autumn Willow. At first I was excited to get an upgrade, then annoyed. The drop bracers were very similar to the crafted ones and now there was no need for me to make them.