I think the accepted theory at the moment is that they'll work like the emotion food cooking recipe books do. That is, they'll have a relatively high chance to drop - especially in instances - if you're of a high enough level to use them.

I know a guildmate of mine recently leveled cooking and got all 4 recipes in a single Naxx clear. We're not talking about grinding a single mob type for hours hoping for a .001% drop chance. Blizz has pretty well steered away from providing recipes in that manner.

Books are now visible on WoWhead PTR. They appear of blue quality, not bind on pickup, and specifically indicate that the recipes are "unique from this book". Stackable to 10.

So, they are fully tradable/sellable, and we probably can expect them to drop for anyone albeit rarely (blue item-rarity?).

I don't see the issue with semi-rare world drops. It allows people to actually try and make gold out of their profession by using the actual crafting instead of endless hours of auctioneer staring and AH tricks.

I don't think it's a good thing for the game if everyone with profession X has all the possible crafts for that profession as is the case right now. There's just no point trying sell enchants at profit, because everyone will know someone that has the enchant. The JC system is somewhat better, because it required at least some effort to get the cuts, but given that 3 out of every 4 cuts are a gem that's crap for pretty much everyone, that failed a bit as well. There's just not enough interesting stuff and after a few weeks of WotLK everyone could do all the good cuts anyway.

The situation we had with Sunfire and Soulfrost wasn't too good either, but surely there's a middle-ground?

This book drop system is exactly the same as the discovery system, except that it adds a middle man to the process, and isn't time limited. The books will probably sell for about what an average recipe would. On my server, 300-500g each most likely, though I'm sure that will vary. It will be great for those out in the world who get a lucky drop, just as the jewelcrafting recipes were in BC. But unless you buy enough of the books to get every single glyph (an outlay of gold you will never make back), you are subject to the same RNG issues as the discovery system. The only difference now is you'll see more people "opt out" of the system as they will have no interest in spending that amount of gold. Thus the idea of a "guild scribe" becomes basically non-existent.

They seem to continue to experiment with different ways of learning recipes for professions. Personally I think the current jewelcrafting method is the best, with the option to buy patterns, or get an item to sell for instant profit, with a few farmable patterns and a few world drop patterns mixed in. Perhaps this double random world drop system for inscription will prove to be popular and we'll see it adapted for other professions as well. It's certainly going to make those first few days after 3.1 interesting as people scramble to get the new glyphs and scribes once again get to play roulette with having something that people might actually want.

World drop JC recipes sell for ~800-1500g on my server (BC JC recipes are selling for a steady 300-600 even now). I expect them to settle out around that price. The first few that show up, though, will likely be posted for a BO of around 6k gold, if I had to venture a guess.

I like some aspects of the JC paradigm, up to and including drops off of specific mob types. However, I have never found completely random world drops compelling.

There are few facets to this, the first of which is a loss of independence. I have one of every profession above 440 because I enjoy being entirely self-reliant. World drop recipes undermine that. It's not any effort or team contribution on my part, but someone else's dumb luck and a lot of my gold.

Second is the cost. The vast majority of JC patterns are effectively free save for a small time investment. Some of these are barely worth mentioning, and others are extremely useful. It is against these that the world drop patterns are naturally compared.

It should be pointed out that you are theoretically spending the worth of Dragon's Eyes on some of the patterns I considered effectively free in the prior point. The critical issue is that this cost is fairly abstract, and for many will not actually feel like a significant expenditure.

Finally, the mechanic doesn't seem to serve any significant purpose. Within a few months many JCs will spend the gold or get the patterns from their guild, and enough of them will post cuts to the auction house to bring the cut fairly close in parity with more common ones (if it's even worth posting). The only notable effects are temporarily inflated profit margins and unnecessary exclusion.

Again, I do like the other aspects of the JC and Inscription paradigms, moreso than Blacksmithing or Enchanting. As it stands being able to make every glyph is a feat demonstrating daily dedication to one's profession. Monetary dedication is much less compelling.

With 3.1 edging ever closer, has anyone seen anything concrete on what to expect from the Alchemist's Cache?

So we know that elixirs and flasks made by elixir masters get doubled procs according to blue posts. If elixirs get doubled procs, is the same thing applied to transmute/pot mastery where you get a chance to get procs of 4, 6, 8, 10 as well?

Flask duration got cut in half. As compensation flask crafting results got doubled, and with that the procs for flasks. There was no change to elixirs, and no change to any transmutes or pots.

I guess it depends on your interpretation of the blue post. You can either conclude that the doubled procs only effects flasks or it can possibly mean elixirs are also affected.

There's no data regarding where they drop or with what frequency. I can certify that you can't research the recipes in the current build.