5.3 Leveling Changes to Mining

"Miners of low skill can now mine mineral deposits in Pandaria for a small amount of usable material. The yield a miner will be able to harvest from each node is determined by skill level."

-- 5.3 Patch Notes

We've already covered the new option to level Herbalism in Pandaria, so I thought I'd run through Mining to see if it works in a similar fashion. I grabbed my premade Mage, trained Mining and bought myself a Mining Pick. Once again I went to Valley of the Four Winds to grab up some of the plentiful ore there.

You can see here that I encountered my first ghost iron deposit and it was orange to me at skill level 1:

I went ahead and gathered from 20 nodes to see what kind of volume to expect. I ended up with 26 ghost iron nuggets, which seemed a bit lower than the herb gathering session. It was close enough to be random, so I'm going to assume they are comparable.

I didn't bother to do a head-to-head this time since I assume the results are similar to our herb gathering test. Once again you can combine 10 ghost iron nuggets into 1 ghost iron ore. And obviously if you mine 20 deposits and you get the equivalent of 2.5 pieces of ore, you're not getting a great return on your time investment.

Instead I tried to visit some of the other nodes types and confirm that they can also be mined. I was not able to find some of the high end nodes on the PTR (not for lack of trying, I visited Kun-Lai twice, Dread Wastes twice and Townlong once) but I did find a few Rich Ghost Iron and some Kyparite. I was able to mine both of those types of deposit and gather appropriate types of fragments from them.

The good news is that this new system works well and should enable players to collect Pandaria nodes even before they reach Pandaria skill levels. If you're questing through Pandaria anyway, this will be a convenient way to pick up skill points at the same time. The downside is that I don't think it's an efficient way to skill up and it's actually quite wasteful of the nodes that are available.

The other major drawback (as one of our readers mentioned on the Herbalism post) is that older materials will be even more scarce on the Auction House for those trying to level other professions. Personally I would still mine the older minerals if I was planning to focus purely on gathering for a given game session. The older ores are going to be much more valuable than "nuggets" of ghost iron, and therefore a more valuable use of your gathering time.

The only reason I could see to collect Pandaria nodes at lower skill levels is when you are questing through an area and just grabbing a few skill points while you're there. Perhaps there are other situations in which this is a reasonable option, if so feel free to discuss your ideas in the Comments section!

5.3 Herbalism Leveling Changes

"Herbalists of low skill can now pick herbs in Pandaria for a small amount of usable material. The yield an herbalist will be able to harvest from each node is determined by skill level." 

-- 5.3 Patch Notes

This (and the accompanying changes to ore collection) is the only change currently scheduled in the next major patch that relates to professions. I wasn't sure how long it would take them to get this implemented, but it's starting to look like a release may happen soon so I thought I'd check into it.

I created a pre-made 90 and dropped one of her professions for Herbalism and grabbed an Herbalist's Spade while I was in town. Then I flew down to Valley of the Four Winds and turned on my herb tracking. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I located an herb on my map and swooped down after it. You can see in this image that my Herbalism skill is only 2 but the Silkweed is showing as orange difficulty:

So even at a skill level of 2 (plus 10 for my spade) I am able to pick the Pandaren herbs. It's important to note that I'm not actually getting Pandaren herbs, what I'm really getting is bits of herb. When you collect these herbs at low level, you receive things such as a Silkweed Stem or a Torn Green Tea Leaf. Ten of these can be combined to make one regular herb, much the way you'd convert motes into spirits. You cannot convert back to fragments, not that I think you would want to. Luckily these shouldn't be bag space hogs, I had a stack of 24 and Wowhead indicates that they will go up to 200 per stack.

I decided to run a head-to-head between herbalism leveling results and max herbalism results. I picked 20 nodes on my leveler and another 20 nodes on my capped Herbalist. Both runs were done in Valley of the Four Winds.

Level 1 Herbalist	28 Herb Fragments	10 Spirits	1 Golden Lotus
Level 600 Herbalist	61 Herbs	10 Spirits	0 Golden Lotus

Of particular interest I think is the fact that bonus materials are dropping at roughly the same rate for beginners and capped players. You can see that I got 10 Life Spirits on my leveling Herbalist and the same number on my 600 Herbalist. I also snagged a Golden Lotus on the leveling toon. I can easily see folks opting to go this route to level up a new toon.

The downside is that these changes don't appear to have rolled out to any other continent. I was hoping I could use this with my wee panda (46) who seems to level past zones before she does much herb/ore picking. But after visiting several older locations (Outland, Tol Barad, Blasted Lands) it's clear that this new system only applies to Pandaria. I would love to see this system expanded to the full range of content but I'm sure that's a bigger task. I still appreciate this new option for 85+ toons who want to switch professions.

UPDATE: I just did a second pass with mining and happened upon a Golden Lotus node. I was able to pick it with a skill of just 20 -- and got an actual Golden Lotus! So it seems that Golden Lotus is not subject to the fragmentation process.

Questions? Comments? Leave 'em if you've got 'em!
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Thunderforged Weapons & the Market

So I posted a question on Twitter and got some interesting responses regarding the sale of Thunderforged weapons. I thought I would toss this out to the larger readership and see what kind of dialog might stir up about this :) I must have Spring Fever, I'm feeling a bit impish!

My hunter Korlyn is also my Blacksmith. She is not in any position to benefit from the new Thunder Forge-crafted weapons we learned in 5.2. Obviously my best course of action is to make and sell them. I could make them for my alts, but I'm not seriously gearing any of them for raiding. I know a lot of folks have been making weapons to use themselves, but even at this point most of us have surely made our first piece. So now is the time to be thinking about the market and how to benefit financially from these recipes.

I actually didn't bother making my first weapon up to the 502 level since I knew I'd be selling my goods. I opted instead to stay with the 476 weapon. My thinking is this: if I sink a month's worth of cooldowns into this thing, I better make serious bank on it. Sadly I don't think there are many people on my realm who will pay that kind of money. So I saved my ingots to unlock a new weapon instead.

I think I guessed right on this. From my casual research on TUJ I'm seeing higher sales for 502 but the best price per ingot from 476. I think the main reason for this is because crafters who take 30 days to make an item are going to be anxious to cash in on that item. Hence, they tend to keep cutting the price until it sells. Crafters who make a 476 item have less at stake and are more willing to stand by their price. I also feel that the 476 are in a better position to move because it's not as big of an investment to the buyer but it's still a strong enough gear upgrade to justify the cost.

Here are the stats I got from TUJ today:

• 502 weapon = average price of 51570g (1719g per ingot used)
• 476 weapon = average price of 30046g (2003g per ingot used)
• 463 weapon = average price of 7798g (1559g per ingot used)

These calculations are based on the "US Alliance Market Price" value given for each weapon. You can see that the 476 weapons are selling for a higher "per ingot" value than the 463 or the 502. It's pretty easy to see it even with these three numbers because the 502 value should be exactly double the 476 value and it is not. If you want the best bang for your buck, it looks like 476 weapons are the way to go.

Thoughts? Criticisms? Leave a Comment below!
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Fun Cooking Recipes

Believe it or not, I am only just now collecting certain Cooking recipes! I know, right? I figured if I'm still working my way through obscure content like this, surely others are as well. So I've put together a guide to help folks who haven't gotten to these "hidden" goodies yet.

There are two recipes available to cooks who've mastered the Way of the Brew (you must also be level 87 or higher). The first item is a recipe for Banana Infused Rum, which is a novelty drink that instantly makes you "completely smashed" for 30 seconds. It also turns you into a Hozen pirate. Unfortunately you are stunned while the effect is active and your screen is quite blurry. Even so, it could be entertaining as a way to pass down time during raids.

Finding the recipe for Banana Rum may be a bit of a challenge. It spawns from a barrel in Nayeli Lagoon, above the cave at the far east side of the southernmost island. This is the same spot where you can find Spriggin (one of the rare Pandaria mobs). There is a large ship jutting out high above the cave, which is where Spriggin and the barrel can be found. All you have to do is fly up and click the barrel:

The brown barrel on the right side is the one you're after. If you fly up here to check and there are only three barrels with no brown one on the right, then the recipe has not spawned yet. Here is another pic with the right-most barrel missing:

Comments on Wowhead seem to indicate that the barrel is set to autoloot, so make sure you have room in your bags for the recipe. I got a stack of five flasks as well, so you may need to have two free bag slots.  I also saw a few folks claiming that this recipe can be looted even without the required Way of the Brew and 87 character level. I have confirmed this with my Mage (above) who currently has a Cooking skill of 372.

The second recipe is called Four Senses Brew and it is found in Kun-Lai Summit. To reach it, you'll need to fly to the very top of Neverest Pinnacle (NE of Winter's Blossom). There's a lore object up there as well as a statue of a Pandaren. You may have to wait for the tablet to spawn, which you can see here:

The brown rectangle in front of the statue is the item you need. When you loot it, the recipe will be inside:

The mats for both of these recipes are quite high. To make the Four Senses Brew you'll need 3 Ironpaw tokens and two stacks (200) of Red Blossom Leeks. That's a heavy commitment to one item, especially something with a rather vague tooltip. Since the materials are worth 500-1000 gold, I decided to go ahead and make it to see if it was truly useful. When crafted, you really get just one of them (I was hoping that was a tooltip error). After you use it, you get a 5 minute buff called Four Senses Brew and your screen looks like this:

It may not be super-obvious, but there is a haze effect on my screen. I flew around the Half Hill area a bit (down to Galleon and back) but didn't notice anything different around me. Commentary on Wowhead does not shed any new light on what this brew might enhance for you. These are still worth grabbing for completion's sake. They also count toward the "Relic Hunter" set of achievements!
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Archaeology Experience Revisited

Confession - I have a Mage that I don't enjoy playing. She's a glass cannon and killing mobs with her drives me nuts. Every other toon I have comes with decent survivability. Druid has kitty (or bear for really hard mobs). Check! Hunter has pets that get the smack down. Check! Warlock has the same pet deal. Check! Warrior has lots of plate gear and impending victory for when things get bad. Check! Mage has a water pet that can't hold aggro + they are squishy and die in 5 hits. Sucks. Unfortunately, she's my Scribe so I can't really ignore her. Which means I am all about other ways to level her up.

And this is how I found myself leveling Archaeology on her even though I had no real intention of doing Archaeology on multiple toons. It became a welcome break between dying and nearly dying. I noticed that I was actually progressing from collecting fragments. So I started doing some testing to update my information for the blog.

At level 85 you need 13 million experience to level up. Archaeology isn't really going to help you get there by itself, but it might eat up a few bubbles for you. Here is a chart of various XP options at 85:

Action	XP Earned
Kill Level 85 mob	20460 rested
Loot 1 Pandaria fragment	15290
Loot 1 "old world" fragment	38170

As you can see the Pandaria numbers are fairly close. And since you can loot 6 finds at each dig site, you'll be getting over 90k XP for a Pandaria dig site. That's not too far off from most Jade Forest quests. If you opt to go back to older content you can get even better XP. Bear in mind that you do not get skill points for solving artifacts from older content if your skill level is too high. Working on older dig sites may only be helpful if you're purely focused on easy XP or you're trying to unlock a particular rare item.

The best time to take advantage of Archaeology is when leveling lowbie alts. I did some additional testing on a couple of my lower toons and the XP is really inviting below level 60. My level 32 monk was getting almost 5% of a level from each find. Basically, you hit 4 dig sites (times 5+ finds per site) and you've completed a level. I zoomed through 8 levels this way. It's really nice if there are places you'd prefer to skip over, you can level off dig sites until you get back into content you enjoy. By contrast picking an herb with my monk only got me 52 XP.

Once you get to level 60 the XP from Archaeology isn't quite as enticing. I tested on my 61 druid and she was getting about 1.5% xp from each find. Not exactly as appealing as 5% with my monk, but nothing to sneeze at either. For leveling in Outland, I was getting 2000 xp per ore node compared with 5100 xp per Archaeology find and 1100 xp per mob kill. Archaeology would likely be the more efficient non-questing choice since finds can be collected 5-6 at a time. If there's a particular Outland zone you really can't stand, you could probably dig your way past it without too much effort. Here's another chart for lower level toons:

Level	XP Earned
32	1756 of 35700 xp
33	1886 of 38400 xp
34	2016 of 41100 xp
35	2114 of 44000 xp
38	2536 of 53000 xp
61	4800 of 317000 xp
62	5100 of 349000 xp

Based on these numbers, it would take about 11 dig sites to complete a level once you're in the 60-70 range. In general Archaeology feels pretty easy to level now. I was getting a skill point for each find, regardless of location. So my 85 warlock working through the Zen tier was getting skill points for dig sites in Duskwood. Again, solving old world artifacts will give you no points beyond 300, but digging still does. Or you can stay in Pandaria and get skill points for digging and solving.

 On a completely different note, pet battles give even better XP! My mage has gone up almost a full level mostly from pet battling. She's getting about 185k xp for each pet battle in Pandaria, which is comparable to completing a Kun-Lai quest. Your mileage may vary based on your pet levels.

Thunder Isle Blacksmithing Quest Update

I'm sad to report that there have been some issues regarding the Blacksmithing quest content on the Thunder Isle. We had a couple of comments yesterday from a reader asking for specifics on the drop rate and faction requirements for quest items. I went out last night to check on my hunter and I couldn't even get into the location where Itoka, the Master of the Forge, is found. There were massive walls near the Beast Pens, making it impossible to get to any of the mobs beyond that part of the island.

I had previously reported on the PTR that you only needed to find him and kill him to get the quest drop once his section of the Isle was unlocked. I also recommended getting your rep up to at least Honored just in case that was part of the requirement. Including myself and a few guildmates I spoke with about this quest, it appears that you may not be able to breeze right out and kill this guy. On the other hand, we've had readers (in the Comments below) indicate they had no trouble doing just that. If you are not able to reach this guy when you first get to Thunder Isle during Stage 4, try completing the new Scenario and running through the daily quest chains.

For me, I could not access Itoka, until I did the scenario for Stage 4 and also ran through the regular daily quests all the way to the Conqueror's Terrace. After turning in those quests, I got two follow-up quests. There may be phasing active on Thunder Isle which would make this area unreachable unless you are on this portion of quest chain. At this point you should be able to find Itoka and take him out. He is a shared mob, so any number of players can participate in the kill and loot the quest item. After he's dead, you will enter the Thunder Forge (door at the north end of his area) and click the book to complete the quest.

You can read my original post here for more details about the fight and the recipes you'll receive from the quest. There is also a map with locations marked for Itoka and the Thunder Forge door.

Blacksmiths should do this quest as soon as possible if you haven't already. The spell to craft a Lightning Steel Ingot is on a one day cooldown, so you'll want to start cranking them as soon as you can. Each time you make the ingot, you'll learn one of the new Crafted Dreadful plate recipes or Haunted Steel 522 epic patterns. Finally, you will learn the upgrade versions of each weapon only when you craft that weapon. Ingots will be required as materials for each version of the weapon. So making ingots is something you'll be doing for a while :)

If you have any questions or relevant information to share with others, please leave a Comment!
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Patch 5.2 Coming Today!

I'm sure you all know that we're getting the latest patch today. For those who may have missed a post here or there, I've put together a quick list of the information we compiled so far:

Blacksmithing: The Thunder Forge Quests (my walk-thru of the process for getting your hands on those new weapon recipes! May not be available until later in the Isle progression).

Stockpiling: Items you may want to hold onto, grab at cheap prices, or charge insane prices for!

Jewelcrafting: New patterns and statistics on gem output.

Leatherworking: New patterns and statics on daily recipe discoveries

Tailors: Use your daily Imperial Silk cooldown to learn new recipes!

Engineers: The new 5.2 plans did not make it into the patch and the status of the new Stabilized Lightning Source is unknown.

Fishing: Visit El's Anglin to read all about the new Fishing goodies. According to El, the biggest patch for Anglers since 3.1.

Archaeology: The Mantid are added as a new race, plus two new BOA weapons and some additional trinkets.

I would like to remind all armor crafters that while the new 458 PVP gear is the majority of the discovery recipes available, 5.2 raid-quality recipes are also in the mix. Even if you don't care about PVP gear, use your daily discovery mechanic to unlock those new raid recipes!!
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5.2 Blacksmithing: The Thunder Forge Quests

Today I finally made progress on accessing the Thunder Forge. I wish I had a firm grasp of the true progression, but the test realm has been forcibly progressed by the developers and I'm not 100% certain of the player requirements. We were in Stage 5 of the unlocking process until today and I don't know if this quest is available sooner than that. From what I've read in comments on Wowhead, this quest chain was not implemented until this past week or so, which is when Stage 5 was already active. I also have no way of knowing whether there are rep requirements for accessing this quest, but I am currently Honored with the Kirin Tor Offensive.

It may well be that Stage 5 is required, that is when I completed the new scenario for the Thunder Forge. I don't know whether you'd be able to reach the Thunder Forge area until after you finish that quest (done via scenario). For now I would hedge your bets and make sure you do every non-daily quest that Jaina offers you.

It's possible that you could just find Itoka (Master of the Forge, blue dot) outside the Thunder Forge and kill him. He drops the Strange Metal Ingot you need to start the quest. You can find him at the marked location on this map:

After you get his item, you enter the Thunder Forge room (red dot) and there will be a book laying by the forge that you can click to complete the quest. Your reward will be a Lightning Steel Ingot and Notes on Lightning Steel. The note contains seven new recipes: one for making a Lightning Steel Ingot and six plans for "Reborn" weapons. The six plans are Drakefist Hammer, Reborn | Fireguard, Reborn | Lionheart Blade, Reborn | Lunar Crescent, Reborn | Planar Edge, Reborn | Thunder, Reborn. Each of these recipes is still orange at 600 skill, even though they are marked as learnable at 500 skill.

I went ahead and learned the Lightning Steel recipe and made one - as suspected it does indeed have a daily cooldown. This will put a pretty effective throttle on the creation of Lightning Steel and limit how many Reborn weapons show up for sale. That's at least 4 days for a rare weapon and 14 days for epic weapons. If the tooltips are to be believed, you'll need to make each rare weapon in order to learn the epic version. Then you'll need to make the epic version to learn the upgraded epic version of that. This seems to model the original path of progression for these recipes where you were able to upgrade each weapon twice to get a more powerful version.

You also learn new recipes when making lightning steel. Today I learned the recipe for the Haunted Steel Greathelm. Apparently the item for this recipe is not yet implemented. I will post additional recipes as I learn them from the daily cooldown. I also plan to run my Engineer through this quest and report back on that process. Feel free to leave questions in the Comments!
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New Solo Scenarios in 5.2 "Treasures of the Thunder King"

This is just a quickie post to share some details about the "Treasures of the Thunder King" scenario that's coming in the 5.2 patch. This is unlike most scenarios where you just kill stuff and collect justice points. In this scenario, you run a gauntlet-style area and avoid bad stuff. At the same time there are treasure chests sprinkled throughout the chamber which you can loot. I picked up a couple of the necessary keys while doing other scenarios/quests, so I thought I'd use one and see what kinds of booty I could collect. 

I only made it through the first room because I was unable to find the key to unlock the second door. But I took notes on the treasure I collected from the first room:

20 Motes of Harmony

4 Elder Charms

1 Shan'ze Stone

10 Justice Points

3 Tattered Parchment

97 gold

Plus another 52 gold from quest turn-ins

This seems like quite a good haul to me for 5 minutes of work. As you get used to this run I'm sure your cash and goodie pile will increase. If you want to learn more about the scenario, you can read about it on Wowpedia. The main reason I wanted to share my information with you guys is because this is a substantial source for motes of harmony as well as rep items. So if you end up with a key from doing dailies, don't be afraid to use it and beef up your stash of SoH for crafting!

5.2 Stockpiling & Musings

I still have some investigations ongoing from the PTR: JC daily results | LW daily results | continued progression on BS at the Isle of Thunder | EG progession out there as well. In the meantime, we're closing in on the patch deadline and I thought I should put together some information while it's still actionable.  I got an email from Desade with his thoughts on stockpiling for 5.2 and I'm going to add my own thoughts as well.

I'm going to rank these in order of priority:

1) Ghost Iron!! If you do nothing else, start collecting/saving/buying ghost iron. There are so many new things going in that involve ghost iron it's not funny. Blacksmiths will need it for their new daily CD as well as the new PVP gear they'll be learning. Engineers will need it for their new component which is used in all three of their new recipes, and Jewelcrafters will need to prospect it for the Serpent's Eye(3) they need to use their daily CD. That's not to mention all the ghost iron bars required for the new "improved" Blacksmith leveling process that uses ghost iron instead of all the old-world metals. I expect this to put heavy demand on ghost iron.

2) Trillium Bars/Living Steel: I expect trillium bars to get residual pressure from the ghost iron squeeze. If ghost iron becomes too expensive, we may see crafters start shopping for trillium bars to make their Living Steel. I expect a spike in Living Steel demand due to increased interest in the current epics (new Raid Finder requirements) and demand from raiders for the 5.2 epics. Living steel is also used in all three of the new Engineering recipes. And apparently trillium bars are required for a 5.2 quest involving the Black Prince (ty Christina!).

3) Exotic Leather & Prismatic Scales: Leatherworkers will need a stack per day for their daily discovery cooldown, in addition to what they might use for crafting gear. The discovery recipes will unlock crafted 458 PVP gear and epic quality items as well. Currently the item level of the new crafted epics is not known. Both of these types of leather will work for the cooldown and both produce the magnificent hide needed to craft items.

4) Windwool Cloth/Imperial Silk: I expect a modest bump in demand for these items as raiders start purchasing 5.2 crafted gear and non-raiders start purchasing 476 gear to get into the higher Raid Finder groups. If your Tailor won't be participating in the new 5.2 content, you may not need to stockpile much if at all.

5) Spirits of Harmony: All crafters should be stockpiling SoH for making raid gear in 5.2. Even if you don't plan to do the Isle of Thunder content, you can still make 476 gear to sell players who need to beef up their item level for the 5.2 raid finder.

Be prepared that once 5.2 drops all of these items will go up in price to some degree. This weekend should be a good time to start purchasing cheap materials so you don't have to pay sky-high prices later. Good Luck and stay tuned!
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