The WotLK profession thread - Page 93

Kumar · 11/19/08, 10:20 AM

Originally Posted by Darian_TruBlade

Herb prices are somewhat insane. Last night I hit 400 Alchemy and was eager to do my first bit of research. Having only just finished my tour of the Fjord I didn't have the Adder's Tongue or Talandra's Rose necessary, so I figured I'd just spend the 50g or whatever it would take to get the mats I needed. Then I saw the 350g+ price tags for full stacks.

Depending on the server's population it's likely it'll be a month or so before the materials markets stabilize. In the meantime if you don't want to be the victim of price gouging you'll have to collect your own mats.

Its the same for enchanting mats. Infinite Dust is going for 10g per on my server. I have to now buy recipes using shards, at 4 shards per recipe, I much rather train them for 20g each. I don't like that I have to turn in shards to buy recipes to level my enchanting. This maybe would have been fine for high-end 450 enchanting recipes.

At the same time, I have found LW Leather to be reasonable, but I don't like Blizzard's implementation of extreme reliance on Skinning for LWs now. But I have been able to make some gold as LW by selling Nerubian Leg Armor and the Inscription 32 slot bag. But I will soon hit the level where I have to turn in Arctic Fur, which is frustrating as instead of using the mats to level I am turning them in.

Grayson Carlyle · 11/19/08, 12:52 PM

I spent the first half hour of my time last night going in a circle around a single cluster of Cobalt in Zul'Drak. Every time I cleared a node, another one in the cluster would instantly respawn. I got tired of it eventually and went to quest, but I also found this to be true of every Cobalt cluster I came upon in Zul'Drak. It was pretty insane at one spot with 5 of us miners just sitting on the 9 or node spawns and rolling in ore. I'm not sure if it's a bug, or if it's a temporary measure to help the other professions along, but it took very little effort to get a couple hundred ore.
The couple Saronite clusters in Zul'drak on the Storm Peaks edge were not instantly respawning though.

Kirth · 11/19/08, 2:02 PM

I've noticed this as well, the fast re-spawn of ore nodes. I can do a 20 minute circle of Icecrown and have 100+ saronite, and a few titanium as well. I hope it isn't just temporary.

Migzankpoofa · 11/19/08, 4:40 PM

I know Drums of Battle, Restoration, and War do not work at level 80...but I notice that Panic and Speed don't mention such restriction...do they affect level 80 characters?

cutfang · 11/19/08, 7:22 PM

Originally Posted by Kirth

I've noticed this as well, the fast re-spawn of ore nodes. I can do a 20 minute circle of Icecrown and have 100+ saronite, and a few titanium as well. I hope it isn't just temporary.

Just to confirm herbs are also spawning at a fantastic rate in places such as Scholazar Basin and Zul'drak. Its hard to imagine AH prices staying high with that in place.

timski · 11/19/08, 7:46 PM

On Cooking, Inscription, and several other professions that are insanely hard to level to 450 (because they use recipes that "go grey" at 450): You don't need more than about 425 skill. There's nothing at 450, other than a Feat of Strength for the first person, so really no reason to try and get there.

We must assume that future content patches will significantly add to professions. Hopefully a change from TBC, when everything trained to 375 "out of the box", and then (with a few exceptions) remained the same for almost 2 years. It might even allow professions to remain relevant when new content is added to other parts of the game.

Originally Posted by Grayson Carlyle

...Every time I cleared a node, another one in the cluster would instantly respawn...

There's a theory that node respawning has become a bit more complex than "about an hour for a node to respawn, up to a maximum number of nodes visible in each local group" (one zone will likely have several groups, which can make this very hard to study) - and now factors in for the number of people in a zone (or part thereof), similar to mob spawning. Not that I fully understand mob spawning. The other theory is that all the reliable evidence was gathered on near-empty servers (since those are the only environments that can be controlled), and the minimum time to respawn has always been weighted by a factor for population or the amount of gathering activity.

Originally Posted by Jagiya

I was fishing in the waters outside Violet Hold and I fished up a Rusty Prison Key. ... However, when I approach the box, I can't interact with it whatsoever.

At first we thought there was a hidden level restriction (I only ever tested it at level 80). But the common view now is that this container was broken by a last-minute "fix".

Jagiya · 11/19/08, 9:41 PM

Thank you so much for clarifying. I was beginning to think I was broken! Hope they "fix" it again soon.

As for the node spawns, I don't have any practical logic to add to the discussion; but based on recent posts, I had presumed that Mining/Herbalism nodes now followed the same rule as Fishing nodes; whereby a new one is immediately spawned each time one is depleted.

The best example I can give of this is the pools of "flotsam."
At any given point in time, there can only be "X" number of fishing nodes in a zone. The type of node is determined (randomly?) upon spawn. When I was farming The Scavenger - Achievement - World of Warcraft, it became swiftly clear that all I needed to do was farm any two nodes repeatedly as they caused eachother to respawn until one of them spawned flotsam, rather than tracking up and down the coast.

A few nights ago, my friend and I were farming Saronite in Sholazar, and we were able to stick to a very rigid cycle, guaranteeing that each node would follow the aforementioned description as we returned to mine it again.

timski · 11/19/08, 10:12 PM

This is the original analysis of fish pool spawning. That's 2-3 years old now. Even then it was apparent that the respawn timer was lower for certain pools: You could (probably still can) stand in Mirkfallon Lake (Stonetalon) and see new pools continually reappear. There was also a thread (probably on these forums) where someone posted a map showing how herb nodes grouped into sets. I suspect parts of the gold farming "community" had a reasonable idea how spawning worked much earlier.

On the WotLK beta server there was a build where only one fish node had been implemented in Sholazar Basin. I timed that to around 10 minutes (with a variation of something like 8-13 minutes). Gummo (better known as the Pacificist), who has probably fished more pools in Zangarmarsh than anyone else, commented that Serpent Lake in Zangarmarsh had used a short timer on live realms. My gut feeling had always been about an hour in Outland, but the only place I seriously tested that was with Highland Mixed Schools, which I know were tweaked around patch 2.1/2.2.

Overall, there is a tangible move away from nodes being hard to find, and rare nodes being harder still, to the game simply rewarding the act of moving from place to place. The days of camping that rare Black Lotus spawn in Winterspring are a distant memory. Or nightmare, if you prefer.

Pyros · 11/20/08, 12:49 AM

Well, while I very much appreciate the fast spawning of nodes, I think it'll pretty much ruin miner's income once botters get there. I'm gonna take a very simple example. There's about 4-5nodes which are on a 5min respawn INSIDE the sons of hodir village. If you've done the questline up to that part, they're neutral to you. It takes 20mins of reading a faq to make a script that will automine those nodes, with absolutely no chance of being killed(but by pvpers). There's actually plenty of "safe" nodes all over the place too. In BC, even with flying mounts, you'd often have to kill one mob roaming around a node which aggroed you while mining. In WoTLK, it's pretty simple to just stay at one spot with 0mobs and mine as the veins repop.

It might be because they're on fast respawn due to launch and stuff, but currently mining is definitely a bit on the too easy side. Fine with me however, stacks of saronite going for 75g each, I can mine like 10stack in one hour, will pay for my titansteel so I don't wait on the cd. But I find the change to be questionnable, especially since other professions didn't seem to get really any better(skinning?).

Namoya · 11/20/08, 2:47 AM

Originally Posted by typobox

I tested it every level up to 77. 77 is a requirement, not just the quest level.

Just a little correction since i was scared myself of that comment. You can definately get the JC Daily at 74 at least (not sure if maybe even earlier). I didnt bothered myself to go to Dalaran before but this morning i went with my level 74 Character there et voila i got the JC Daily!

Alezio · 11/20/08, 3:41 AM

Originally Posted by Namoya

Just a little correction since i was scared myself of that comment. You can definately get the JC Daily at 74 at least (not sure if maybe even earlier). I didnt bothered myself to go to Dalaran before but this morning i went with my level 74 Character there et voila i got the JC Daily!

I managed to begin both the cooking and jewelcrafting dailies at level 71

Rivkah · 11/20/08, 3:45 AM

Originally Posted by Namoya

Just a little correction since i was scared myself of that comment. You can definately get the JC Daily at 74 at least (not sure if maybe even earlier). I didnt bothered myself to go to Dalaran before but this morning i went with my level 74 Character there et voila i got the JC Daily!

They were talking about the damaged necklace quest not the JC daily. I can do the JC daily just fine at level 70 but can't do the damaged necklace.

Rayeth · 11/21/08, 5:02 PM

Originally Posted by Pyros

It might be because they're on fast respawn due to launch and stuff, but currently mining is definitely a bit on the too easy side. Fine with me however, stacks of saronite going for 75g each, I can mine like 10stack in one hour, will pay for my titansteel so I don't wait on the cd. But I find the change to be questionnable, especially since other professions didn't seem to get really any better(skinning?).

Is this possibly a ploy to pull down the price of ore overall? Every miner I have talked to seems to have the ore coming out of their ears, so I can't imagine the prices staying like this for very long. It was always my impression that ore was the most expensive of the gathered materials (cloth, herbs, ore). Cloth being (usually) dirt cheap, herbs ranging from cheap to medium, and ore usually staying medium to expensive.

Was this kind of fast respawning observed in the beta?

Sydane · 11/21/08, 5:09 PM

It seems unlikely the spawn rates are actually unusual, though they are probably higher than we are accustomed to. It is well documented that server and zone population impacts spawn rates. Considering that the majority of the players are in the Northrend zones (on the continent and not in BGs or on bank alts in the old world), as well as there being a very limited number of people actually in a position to gather or prioritizing gathering in the higher zones. So the number of players online is higher, and virtually all of them are in Northrend, thus increasing the overall spawn rates.

You also have a situation where the individuals gathering from them are getting a higher percentage than they would if the level balance was normal, because not as many people are in the high zones, and those that are there aren't emphasizing gathering. I suspect people will notice that as the number of people competing for the nodes increases, the number they get as individuals goes down. Basically, enjoy it while you can.

That said, it would be nice if they have boosted spawn rates overall and they stay high, because the game has never managed to keep up reasonably with the amount of demand.

Elendril · 11/21/08, 6:53 PM

Early TBC had higher spawn rates at throne of elements, which lead to much higher availability for primals while people were leveling professions - the spawn rate was eventually toned down. I actually think having higher availability of profession materials early in an expansion is good for the game, since so many people want them then, and wouldn't be entirely surprised if there were faster spawn rates for resource nodes initially.