A beginner's guide to WoW's gathering professions

As soon as your character hits level 5, it's time to pick up a profession -- or two or three! Each character you have can take two primary professions -- herbalism, mining, skinning, alchemy, blacksmithing, enchanting, engineering, leatherworking, tailoring, jewelcrafting, or inscription -- as well as however many secondary professions -- cooking, fishing, first aid, and archaeology -- they want. Primary professions are typically categorized as "gathering" professions -- herbalism, mining, and skinning -- that allow you to collect materials and "crafting" professions -- alchemy, blacksmithing, enchanting, engineering, leather working, tailoring, jewel crafting, and inscription -- that allow you to create items.

When choosing a primary profession, it's good to pick two that work well together: say, a crafting skill that uses the items you collect with a gathering skill. This means herbalism is typically paired with alchemy or inscription; mining is typically paired with blacksmithing, jewelcrafting, or engineering; skinning is usually paired with leatherworking; and enchanting and tailoring can be paired with anything (though often players will pair them together and use goods created by tailoring to level their enchanting). But if you aren't terribly interested in crafting or just want to give your character a leg up with money-making, you could pick up a pair of gathering professions and take whatever you gather while you're leveling to sell wow accounts to crafters on the auction house. As to secondary professions, since you're not limited on the number you can take, you can really grab as many as interest you.

Not sure where to start with all these choices? We'll walk you through it.

Whatever profession you take, you'll start with a skill level of 1, which you increase up to 600 as you level up and use the skill. Apprentice skill (which you can train at level 5) covers skill levels 1-75, journeyman (level 10) covers skill levels up to 150, expert (level 20) covers skill levels up to 225, artisan (level 35) covers skill levels up to 300, master (level 50) covers skill levels up to 375, grand master (level 65) covers skill levels up to 450, illustrious (level 75) covers skill levels up to 525, and zen master (level 80) covers skill levels up to 600. To train in each skill level, you need to buy wow gold be both the right character level and have a certain amount of skill. Further, to harvest higher level materials or craft higher level items, you'll need a higher skill level -- in short, this means you'll probably want to work on advancing your professions while you level up.

But just which professions should you choose? There are good reasons to pick all of them, which can make picking the right profession for your new character a challenge. Today we're going to walk you through WoW's professions, explaining what they do and why you might want to take them. There's a lot of world of warcraft accounts ground to cover, so today we'll start by talking the game's three gathering professions: herbalism, mining, and skinning.

How Long Have You Played WOW

Well, it seems there is some unknown number of "core" players who have been sticking around  since the earliest years, then there is this larger group that comes and goes in waves (often associated with new Raids, but also the try-and-drop types), and then there is the biggest group of subs, those based in China.

The Chinese numbers will continue to drop until the next Expac, simply because NetEase has stopped advertising this expansion (according to their own quarterly report, it seems games have a very limited shelf-life over there).  The "waves" group will continue to decline as Blizzard has  predicted, and the old-timer group will largely stay put.

We do know from Blizzard that the majority of WoW subs are located in China now, so that means a minimum of four million and one Chinese players.  Beyond that, who knows what the actual number distribution is.

Chances are, a site like WI is attracting zero people in China, several hundred old-timers and a smattering of wave players who have discovered this site.

. . . Or people just lied in the survey and this is all a big circle jerk.  Still more engaging than dailies, though!

Since someone else mentioned it, I started playing warcraft with the original game. Then WC2, and the expansion pack, which I beat on buying wow accounts horde side. But the alliance side, I just couldn't make any headway at the beginning of the last mission, which I think was where you actually destroy the portal itself. WC3 felt like a rehash of a better game and I wound up cheating through the last few missions. I don't remember if I even finished Frozen Throne.

For WoW itself, I tried the game either right before or right after Wrath launched and found it way too grindy, with way too little direction on what you were supposed to do. I wound up giving up with a 30ish warlock one because of the annoying boar spleen quests, but also because the friend that was getting me to play wouldn't actually play on a same level fast wow gold character. I came back soon after Cata launched because I wanted something to "do." I also had a coworker that was wanting me to be a paladin healer for his t11 raid group. That guild kind of fell apart, so I never got to pally heal, but my Mage seems okay with that.

RPPM mechanics

It is a complicated discussion, and even more difficult to model "time off target" than time on target. What I've taken from the EJ threads is that it depends on which fights you've got on farm vs which fights you're currently smashing your face against, and what your role in each of them is. If you're sticking on Ji'Kun the entire fight, then I guess haste would probably trump mastery, but if you're on the egg team, the probably mastery is better. If your raid is still fighting Horridon, then haste isn't going to be as useful as mastery. Pretty sure Shadowcraft is really only capable of modeling what you do if you get to stick to a target.

Seconded. I'm 536 ilvl and I still go full mastery. The difference between full haste and full mastery is only ~1% on a patchwerk fight. Part of haste's value is the increase in RPPM mechanics. If you get bad luck, mastery is better. If you get good luck, mastery is better. Haste just makes your luck better over a very long time but you can still get screwed. It's only buying wow gold averaged over many, many fights that haste's effect on RPPM totals up to a DPS increase.

Additionally, if you're target swapping at all or losing uptime for any reason, mastery becomes better (poisons keep ticking harder with mastery and haste doesn't affect DP ticks while you lose more autoattack swings as haste). Almost every fight in ToT involves target swaps.

It's a very small gain to go haste in an optimal situation averaged over a long time. Proc RNG over smaller periods of time (like 4m-10m; a real individual boss fight) and real fight conditions (target swapping, etc.) however favor mastery. It's just not worth it at this point even in cheap wow gold full BiS gear. Maybe next tier the difference will be large enough to warrant going full haste even with real fight conditions if they continue to inflate gear at this rate.

I'm talking a difference of a few percentage points here too, so in the end, you can gear whatever feels best and still be perfectly viable. I prefer mastery for more consistent and RNG-resilient damage while sell world of warcraft accounts others may prefer haste for a slightly faster rotation.

Wrath of the Lich King

In fact, that brief moment we were shown, the duel between Garrosh and Thrall, was another pivotal exchange right on the heels of the first one. Garrosh made another seeming 180 from being pleased at Thrall's revelation, to being incredibly upset with the way Thrall was handling things as Warchief. And frankly, he had every right to be -- what we were shown of Thrall in vanilla WoW was honestly, very little in terms of character advancement. Thrall didn't seem to really be actively doing anything at all for the Horde, other than sending players on a few questionable diplomatic missions. Based on what we saw in vanilla, it was only natural that Garrosh would question Thrall's right to lead -- because we had been shown that Thrall didn't really seem to have a handle on what the Horde wanted or what it should be. Thrall sent Garrosh to Northrend, and it was simultaneously the best and worst decision he could have made. It got Garrosh out of his hair, it gave Garrosh a wow gold for sale chance to prove himself, and ultimately, it gave Garrosh's ego enough of a boost that he felt completely comfortable continuing to question and badger Thrall at every turn. Yet by sending Garrosh to Northrend, Thrall missed an opportunity to demonstrate exactly who and what the Horde were -- Garrosh had to extrapolate his own opinions out of buying wow gold what he witnessed in Northrend. What he pulled from that experience wasn't really the correct image of the Horde at all. And from that, Garrosh took the opportunity to needle the other races of the Horde the moment he came back a hero. Why? Because he was a hero. He was a success. He proved he had what it took in Northrend, and he came back to cheers and accolades. Sure, he was reluctant to take Thrall's place as Warchief come Cataclysm -- but it was because he understood being a military leader and being a political leader were two very different things. Unfortunately, Garrosh didn't grasp the nuances of politics at all -- to the point where he began, where to buy wow gold in his arrogance and bravado, to belittle and push the other Horde races away.

Seems a tad random for Blizzard

This has to be the most well thought out, edited, filmed short movie I've seen made about WoW. Now, how long before Blizzard partners with a film company like Pixar and makes World of Warcraft the movie. Could be a box set for each expansion.

I have loved this video for years! I had it on my MySpace page for years as well lol. Might still be there, for all I know. This is an epic video; good to sell wow accounts or see it is still around. I think this video gets forgotten so quickly is because that wretched noise people are calling "music" ruins it so fast you forget you were watching something cool. I just turn off my sound. Very competent animation, otherwise.

Seems a tad random for Blizzard to discuss this video right now, considering it's a few years old. Having said that, it's still one of the best made machinimas ever. I was actually reminded of this video a few days ago when I was thinking about video animation. To all of you who are complaining, by the way; the music is very fitting with the video. ' it's un-warcrafty'. It's fan made, it doesn't have to be like Warcraft! You can't do any of the things in the video in game, but you only complain about the music being not representative of the actual game?! Didn't care to see where to buy wow gold? a BE wipe out my Alliance troops, and if I had been that Ally rogue, that BE would have been hunted to death. Great Animation and I'm looking forward to seeing much more. Please contact me if there's anything I can do to help for future projects. I think this would be amazing to be apart of.

Maybe another month to finish leveling an alt

You guys should know i love this game and i play this for years and will never quit. But they do expansion after expansion patch after patch they upload thing way to fast. years ago you could enjoy the patches before the new came everything required skill Like pvp and now? what u dont even need arena raiting for better gear u lvl to 90 in like 2 days thats just to cheap wow accounts and sick and you lose all the fun of the game. (Sorry For Not The Best English)

Wonderful, realms have been down for nearly nine hours and you've managed to update your Facebook cover photo. You get a cookie. No...no! I will not resub again. I must quit once and for all. Well, maybe I'll just buy a month to see the content. Maybe another month to finish leveling an alt. Maybe 2 months to max some more profs...but then I swear I will be done! League doesn't even fit under the same category as WoW. Please don't say it's better or buy wow gold and compare the two at all. I think that's rather insulting to MMORPG's.

i agree with that i enjoyed when normal dungeons actually took teamwork nd cc... now its run through everything.. no environment interaction.. used to need help on some quests nd meet new players now its que for fast dongeon sit in city and wait... sooo fking boring. *flails* Gaaah! I'm freakin' out xD Pleeaaseee get the servers workin'! I was like, "Why is it making me choose a realm? Oh...right...Blizz is taking forever."

The thing I really enjoy

The thing I really enjoy about this scenario is that there is absolutely no down time, unless you decide to pause for a moment. The action starts the moment you zone in -- your ship is under attack by the opposing faction, and it's up to you to fend off the attack. The soldiers really don't present a huge problem as far a mobs go, they're relatively easy to beat. The challenge in this particular scenario is avoiding the cannon fire from the other ships as you go along.

See that big red ring that the orc in the screenshot above is standing in? Yeah, that's the big red ring of death. It won't kill you instantly, but it'll knock a good chunk of your health off. And if you get hit by too many of those, you can kiss your life goodbye -- as the orc in the above screenshot figured out. This cannon fire will continue throughout the entirety of the scenario. If you and the rest of your party can avoid getting hit by cannon fire throughout the entire instance, you'll get the achievement Keep Those Bombs Away! from me... -- which sounds pretty easy until you're on the ship and you see exactly how to buy wow gold.

Once you've cleared out the enemy attackers, you're sent to the next ship. Oh, you don't swim, or climb a ladder, or anything remotely like that. You hop into a cannon and get shot over there -- because that's so much more ridiculously entertaining. Please keep in mind that jumping in the water is the last thing you want to buy wow gold. Remember that whale shark from Cataclysm? The one, if you were as obsessive about collecting achievements as I was, you killed for From Hell's Heart I Stab at Thee? Yeah, his son is in the water and won't hesitate to swallow you whole. Just take the cannon. Trust me.

Convert to Raid

Convert to Raid, the podcast for raiders in the World of Warcraft, recently interviewed Blizzard's Lead Encounter Designer Ion Hazzikostas. You can listen to the full interview over on their site, and in the video above, but we've plucked some of the best bits out for your convenience.

Pat started off by asking Ion how he felt the raid tier, Throne of Thunder, had worked out, what he was happy with, what could possibly be improved for future tiers and so on. Ion responded that they were very happy with the tier, the structure and feel of the dungeon, and particularly the progression of the World First race. He spoke about the Lei Shen encounter really delivering on what a heroic end-boss should be, in terms of difficulty and fight construction. However, when Pat asked about learning points, Ion had plenty to say.

He mentioned the difficulty progression on normal mode at the start being a little too quick in ramp-up, particularly between Jin'rokh and Horridon, which was adjusted to smooth the difficulty curve. He also brought up the linear nature of the raid, which Blizzard had heard complaints about from players, where the option to try different bosses rather than the one after the other structure was superior. He mentioned that the underground cavern section could have been a great zone for more variation. Lastly, the Ra-Den encounter didn't quite work out how they'd hoped. The sense of mystery was great, but the tuning was difficult without the usual level of testing. Players beat the fight by bypassing several mechanics, and thanks to the limited attempts, the developers didn't feel it was fair to fundamentally change the fight while limited attempts were still ongoing.

Pat went on to ask about the levels of trash, which has been a contentious topic in LFR particularly, thanks to the lack of drops, but the devs still feel it's very important for pacing, and that the trash becomes far easier and an achievement in itself in time.

Convert to Raid interviews Ion HazzikostasThey then went on to cover Vodka and Exodus' break-up, specifically Killars' facebook post discussing the pressure and the burnout of players thanks to the content pace and structure. Ion felt this wasn't new, even citing the Sunwell grind, when guilds like SK Gaming raided for 20 hours over 2 days to get a world first kill, which, at the time was unprecedented. Ion felt that is was an arms race, based around time, and that it was something tricky indeed to solve. Blizzard had tried some measures, but players always work around them.

Pat then asked who Ion thought was the primary target audience. Raiding, Ion said, was an activity for all players. The devs, though, did feel that they wanted to get more group content going, and that LFR was great, but didn't replace the co-operative social experience that was group raiding. He specifically mentioned the "friends and family" guild, who were previously served by 10-man normals, but maybe lost out on that experience.

They went on to discuss the determination buff, added in patch 5.2, which has worked out really well, and wow gold for sale that the devs were seeing a substantial drop in players leaving LFRs after failed attempts. This helps with LFR in general, shortening queues, lessening the incomplete runs, and generally improving the experience as a whole.

It's a great interview, with lots of other great points, so do check it out, and keep an eye out for other developer interviews over the week.

but is cautious about rest of year

Activision reported "better-than-expected" financial results for the first quarter of 2013 today, but according to CEO Bobby Kotick, the company expects to encounter a more challenging back half of the year.

The publisher brought in net revenues of $1.32 billion during the quarter that ended March 31, a 13 percent improvement over the same period in 2012 and 14.1 percent ahead of the company's projections. Activision also showed a marked year-over-year jump in net income from $384 million to $456 million, a 13.75 percent increase.

Activision's earnings were buoyed by the impressive sales performance of StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm, which was the top-selling Windows PC game in North America and Europe even though it launched with three weeks left in the quarter. In addition, sell diablo 3 account, Skylanders Giants and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 all continued to sell well.

But the long-running MMO World of Warcraft suffered a precipitous drop of 1.3 million subscribers, about 14 percent of its user base, over the course of the quarter. That leaves the game with 8.3 million paying users worldwide — still enough to keep the game in the top spot when it comes to subscription-based massively multiplayer online RPGs. During Activision's first-quarter investor call this afternoon, Kotick said the company expects World of Warcraft subscribers to be lower by the end of 2013.

"While we have had a solid start to the year, we now believe that the risks and uncertainties in the back half of 2013 are more challenging than our earlier view, especially in the holiday quarter," said Kotick in an investor release announcing Activision's first-quarter results. Kotick cited the drop in World of Warcraft users, the poor performance of the Wii U, uncertainty surrounding next-generation consoles and increased competition.

The competition will be stiff. Activision is set to launch a third Skylanders title, Skylanders Swap Force, this fall into a market where Disney Interactive's Disney Infinity — diablo iii account a similar family-friendly title with physical toys — has already been released. And while the next Call of Duty title, Call of Duty: Ghosts, will be released Nov. 5, Activision said earlier this year that it expects poorer sales performance from Ghosts than from Black Ops 2.

At tonight's annual British Academy Games Awards

At tonight's annual British Academy Games Awards, PlayStation exclusive Journey won four of its eight category nominations, including Game Design, Artistic Achievement, cheap runescape accounts Multiplayer and Original Music.

Dishonored beat Journey and The Walking Dead for the Best Game in 2013 category. Notably, The Unfinished Swan won the Game Innovation and Debut Game categories.

The Walking Dead won two of its seven nominations, including Mobile and Handheld, and Story. Far Cry 3 won one of six nominated categories, which was for the Action category.

Valve's Gabe Newell was awarded a BAFTA Fellowship this year. Past BAFTA Fellows include Peter Molyneux, Shigeru Miyamoto, Nolan Bushnell and Will Wright.

The nominees in each category are listed below. The winners are in bold.

Diablo 2 was famous for its talent trees

This pacing works perfectly throughout a number of environments, and while, yes, all you're doing is clicking and popping one of six abilities when needed, it never once gets old. That glimpse of what's ahead never fails to push you forward, that triumph of winning in battle always excites, and that loot, that sweet loot, always falls right into your pack with satisfaction.

Diablo 2 was famous for its talent trees – long lists of class-based abilities into which you could put points – and that idea has spun off into countless other games (including World of Warcraft). But Diablo 3 smartly reduces basic ability choices into just six options, which themselves are unlocked as you level up.

Once fully open, the system is just as complex as the Diablo 2-style talent trees, but the pace of leveling and unlocking makes everything much easier to understand. You have one skill at level 1, at level 2 another one opens up, and as you level up abilities unlock just as quickly as you can learn how to make effective use of them. Later in the game,sell diablo 3 account and get cheap diablo 3 account switching abilities out (which you can do whenever out of combat) becomes paramount: For crowds, you'll switch to AoE, and bosses will have you picking single-target skills. The fact that you can easily and quickly narrow down exactly what you need from thousands of ability and rune combinations speaks to how powerful this new system is.

Blacksmith plan

I found a Blacksmith plan, taught it to my blacksmith, and now its just gone. As in I have checked his crafting lists multiple times (yes i looked at the crafting filter and it is set to ALL) and the item is not found in his list. Could this be because my Blacksmith needs to be trained more? or is it actually supposed to be in the list, and the game just screwed me?
           
This may sound like a silly question but, before I spend a lot of money buying a plan for legendary plans, when you use all the allowed number must you re-buy the plan in order to have the blacksmith craft more of those items? For instance, I bought the plan for arrows it allowed me to use it twice. sell diablo 3 account and  It no longer will allow me to use them even though I have all the required items. Must I re-buy the plan and retrain the blacksmith with the same plan?

Points of Interest of Falador

 Outside the city walls, to the south, the massive farms of Falador provide food for the city and for any adventurers who might wish to spend some time growing their own vegetables.

Falador is divided down the middle, providing the residential district in the eastern half and the commercial district (and the White Knights' Castle) in the west. Should you be a member of the White Knights (by completing the Wanted! quest), you can purchase armour from Sir Vyvin.

If you own a house, the Herald, who lives in the castle, cheap runescape accounts for sale now, can track down your family tree and give you a coat of arms that you can then decorate your house with. He will also paint pictures to hang upon the walls of your home.

Falador has two banks, allowing adventurers to make the most of the city's other amenities. In the city's south-east is an entrance to the Mining Guild, which can be entered at level 60 Mining, and the Artisans Workshop, which provides a variety of interesting Smithing training methods, so long as you provide your own ores.

In the north-east of the city is the Party Room, which is for hardcore partying.

game despite

i like the game despite being targeted it seems by a j-mods mid interpretation on what should or shouldn't be construed as offensive (may b he should read his own rules ) any way why is it it seems ya never get s fair say in sticking up for yourself when no rules are broken ! Jagex message me we can discuss this further unless you admit I'm right by forfeit ! buy rs accounts and sell rs accounts so you can get really money. I love Runscape before when the graphics is limited and I fully Inlove with Runescape now that the graphics upgraded.....And to All the effort of the personel that involved to the very huge Improvement now Runescape is one of the Best Game ever made because of its Unique and very socialised culture. To the management of Runescape. Congrates and more Power! Go Jagex!

jagex why are you letting people rent their own God Wars Dungeon? so stupid, now bandos armadyl and other items are going to crash in price. boost still titan it suck sacks get 2 hitted on minigames and dont deal damage on bosses pre eoc was the sit... oh and drygore nerf..

jagex is killing the game

I remember back before the SoF and Soloman's updates, occasionally we would have weeks where there would be no updates, or having an update postponed.

SoF help pay for bigger and better content, and gives you some (occasionally) cool outfits to boot. What is the issue here? Not one legitimate argument against it since the release.

I don't mind this but jagex is killing the game and oldschool only has about a year of life left.  I thought somewhere deep down the drain in a remote place called two months ago that you wanted to advertise microtransactions solely ingame.  So, if you're lucky enough to land one of these masks, what outfit would you combo it with? I think the green one would go well with the Guthixian Butterfly Outfit we gave out a few months ago.sell runescape accounts and you can get real money.

God Emissaries

We've also got a fantastic update for lore fiends among you this month, where you'll learn more about your favourite RuneScape gods and earn some awesome rewards for pledging your allegiance.
God Emissaries

Following the events of The World Wakes, the RuneScape gods are coming back with a vengeance. Eight new NPCs known as the God Emissaries will be making their voices heard, and they'll be looking for you to join their cause. Each emissary will be speaking in favour of a god, and will give you a full account what their god represents, what the god in question has been up to buy runescape account since the establishment of the edicts, and what you can do to show your support.

You'll be able to join any of the eight factions they represent: if you favour serenity, freedom and a strong, noble outlook, perhaps you'll pick Armadyl. Do you thrive in chaos, continually reforging yourself in the fires of calamity, each time stronger than before? Zamorak's your guy. If you think Guthix was right, and that the gods should mind their own business, then the new Godless faction might be for you!

Whether you're a free player or a RuneScape member, you can align yourself with the faction of their choice, earning a title and a wieldable standard to display your choice. Members can also complete combat, skilling and exploration objectives for their chosen emissary, earning XP, improvements to selling runescape accounts the battle standard such as combat and skilling buffs, and a new helmet with level 60 hybrid combat stats.

"Play Old School"

so drygores are crashing jagex better fix this with buffing them since they are lv 90 weapons, im still keeping my dual mace set.  I haven't played RS for like 8 months or so and I decided to checkout the Runescape website yesterday to see whats new and I see "Play Old School" on the main page and I'm like "hell ya!" Especially when I seen all the players playing on it, but then I read further and its the '07 version. Totally bummed. I thought it was a reintroduction of Runescape Classic. I was totally about to startup my membership again, I still might just for Runescape Classic as I miss playing it, even though few play it or cheap runescape accounts. I wish you would open up Runescape Classic for all members once again and leave it that way.

Still no new quests? I picked the wrong period of time to get membership, by the time a quest actually comes out my mem will run out and it will be awhile before I can renew... FIX Primal 2H in Dung. It's got the same stats as all other 2h weapons and should be the king of the beast!!!! IT takes LVL 113 to get and getting there IS not a simple task.Unless you have noting to do but play all day and night in which case this probably dont matter to you to selling runescape accounts..BUT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD FIX THE ONCE ALLMIGHTY PRIMAL 2H AND GIVE IT BETTER STATS THAN A PRIMAL MAUL THAT CAN BE GOTTEN AT LVL 75 DUNG. OR THERE ABOUT!!