Herb Changes in Cataclysm

I mentioned in my tweets today that I found some herb changes in the Beta. I've been keeping an eye on the situation for a few weeks now and it looks like things are finally sorted out. Near as I can tell, Plaguebloom has been removed. I was unable to locate any spawns in the vanilla zones. The recipes that used it are now using Sorrowmoss. Just this week I located sorrowmoss in the Swamp of Sorrows. Here's an image I made of the new versions of these recipes:


Another herb appears to be retired as well: Wintersbite. The snowy areas of Alterac Mountains now have "Frozen Herb" which contains a variety of low-end herbs (mageroyal, bruiseweed, etc). I found a second new herb in Badlands (sorry for sneaking in Blizz!) called Dragon's Teeth. Here's a pic I made of it and the sorrowmoss:



You can see here that sorrowmoss is using the old plaguebloom icon and dragon's teeth is using the old wintersbite icon. I'm sure this will be changed in a future patch, but for now it's pretty solid evidence of the switch. Check out this other image I made of the old wintersbite recipes:



All the old recipes that previously had wintersbite are now showing dragon's teeth as a reagent. I'm not completely certain why these changes were made, but I have a theory. Wintersbite and Plaguebloom both have names that allude to a particular location. Dragon's teeth is more generic and arguably can be used in a variety of zones, independent of the climate. On the other hand, sorrowmoss kind of has to hang in the Swamp of Sorrows, so I'm not sure the problem has been solved there. It might have been better to give that a generic name as well... such as slimey-moss or murkmoss or dungmoss. Maybe not dungmoss, heh.

Anyway, that's all I've got for now in the beta. There's really nothing new for professions, but I am diligently checking each day in case something happens :) Feel free to leave a Comment if you'd like me to investigate something while I'm there!
Posted by Kaliope at Wednesday, August 18, 2010
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10 comments:

  1. Interesting stuff! I'll certainly be keeping a close eye on your beta adventures to get a better idea of what to expect from professions in Cataclysm. Keep up the great blog!
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  2. I'd imagine that they're slowly replacing all the old world herbs that used to be in what will now be the high level classic zones. Who wants to plow through an 83-84 zone harvesting level 15 herbs?
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  3. From what I'm seeing, that's not the kind of revamp they're doing. The Plaguelands have been turned into mid-level zones and the herb/ore spawns have already been converted to the standard 30-40 types. The classic 50-60 zones are still the same, with the same 50-60 herbs (dreamfoil, silversage, etc). I'm not seeing drastic changes in herbs/ore/leather, just these two minor modifications. I've leveled two of the three gathering skills now and they're largely unchanged. The only part that's different is what zone something spawns in, based on the new levels instead of the old.

    On the other hand, most of the 80+ zones are completely new land areas, only Mt. Hyjal was recycled. So far, all the 80+ zones have new types of herbs and ore. To my knowledge there was/is no scenario where you would find level 15 herbs in a level 80+ zone.
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  4. When you find a few nodes, could you look on some site like wowhead to see if there was a node for the old herb there? I'm wondering if all of the old node maps will likely be useful.

    It would also be interesting to see if someone entering the beta with plaguebloom would see it change into sorrowmoss. It might even use the same ID number.
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  5. Easy answer: no. I don't think the old node maps (aka Gatherer) will be of much use. Even in zones where herbs are basically the same, such as Westfall, the maps themselves have been redesigned. As such, it's pretty hard to find the same little dot on an old map vs a new one. Given the newer maps, it's likely that some data will be wrong even if the mod still works.

    Not that I'm saying they changed all the spawns, I'm not convinced they did. Liferoot still spawns near water, Wild Steelbloom still spawns on hillsides. It's just that with the maps displaying differing landmarks, it's harder to pinpoint a spot on the new map and directly correlate it to the same exact spot on an old map.

    Based on a quick peek in Westfall, I think some of the nodes are the same and some are different. I'm not certain what percentage may have changed. But I think there are enough changes in zones overall to justify rebuilding any node maps you may be relying on, if accuracy is important to you.

    And yes, I brought Plaguebloom with me after I realized it wasn't in the Plaguelands any longer. It is now sorrowmoss. For the moment they are using the same item ID in the Wowhead database.
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  6. Interesting. Any observations of how this changes Milling? I'm guessing the old tiers still apply.
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  7. I guess Plaguemoss is now gone as the reason for it existing - the plague upon the land of the Lich Kings' scourge has ended and so the unnatural herb has died as well.
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  8. I like your thinking Anon, that's a very poetic way of looking at it :)

    As for the changes in milling, there's no significant change that I can see. I milled a few sample stacks of random herbs and all came out as expected. The Cata herbs mill down to "ashen" pigment. I don't have much of these two particular herbs, but I milled a little bit of sorrowmoss and got the proper pigment for plaguebloom. It looks to me like they are pretty much direct swaps for the old herbs.
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  9. Why can't I see herbs on the map ?
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  10. Anon: If you're not seeing herb spawns on your mini-map, make sure "Find Herbs" is marked on your tracking menu. They recently changed the way this menu works, so you may have to check it and make sure it's set the way you want it.
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