Not a very pretty picture. Do you know how long it would take me to fly out there to take another?

With the introduction of the Dungeon Finder in Patch 3.3 Blizzard have segmented some of the lengthy classic dungeons. Maraudon has been split into 3 separate dungeon runs: Purple Crystals (levels 39-49), Orange Crystals (levels 41-51) and Pristine Waters (levels 41-53).

Maraudon has a really odd structure. If you were to travel to the zone portal by foot – it’s underground in Desolace below the Valley of the Spears – you can follow the purple glowing crystals jutting out of the walls towards the Purple Crystals instance portal, or you can follow the orange glowing crystals jutting out of the walls to enter Mauradon via the Orange Crystals instance portal: two separate start points into the same instance.

Both Purple and Orange dungeon runs logically lead onto Pristine Waters. It’s kind of a Y shape – two instance runs leading to one final section.

The Purple Crystal run, containing the lowest level enemies and thus first in the series, will start you in a blue shadowed area called The Wicked Grotto. I hope you’re ready to kill some imps and demons!

The good news? Purple Crystals is a super fast instance run. The bad news? Purple Crystals is a super fast instance run. There’s only one boss to kill in order to receive Blizzard’s little completion box and a pat on the back for a job well done. You’ll probably finish your first run thinking: is that it? Never fear, I’ve included the directions to an extra boss if you’re left wanting more.

The Map

Maraudon Purple Crystals: Map with path and bosses marked

The bosses are:

1. Lord Vyletongue
2. Celebras the Cursed
   Technically Celebras doesn’t really fit into the Purple Crystals run at all. Once you’ve killed Lord Vyletongue, the game will award you for completing the run. However, the next boss you come to in the original Mauradon (pre-segmented) is Celebras, and the poor guy isn’t part of either the Orange Crystals or Pristine Waters segments either. So I’ve tacked him on here. Plus some of your group members might have the quest to kill/talk to him and get his staff.

Still Want More?

As I mentioned above, you’ll probably kill Lord Vyletongue, get your satchel and stand around saying “so… we’re done?” to your other similarly bewildered party members. If you, and rest of your party, want to get more XP returned for the time spent in queue you can keep heading west towards Celebras the Cursed.

If you’ve killed Celebras and still want more, you can head south then east and jump off the edge when you reach the waterfall to begin a Pristine Waters run. Be careful, though. Blizzard defines the appropriate level for Pristine Waters as 41-53 but from experience I wouldn’t try this unless your tank and DPSers are all level 44+. The hydras in the water are about level 46 and you’re going to be in a word of hurt if you’re missing more than hitting.

The bosses in Pristine Waters are level 48 elites.

The Corpse Run

The absolutely worst part of Maraudon is the spirit run back to the instance portal. Avoid wiping at all costs!

If you’re a Warlock, be diligent about keeping your soulstone up on the healer. If you’re a soulstone’d healer, be very careful not to use your soulstone until you’re absolutely sure it’s safe and the area around you is clear of enemy mobs. Shamans with their self-ressurection would be a godsend here, too. Unfortunately none of my runs happened to include a Shaman.

If you have no other option, here’s how to get back:

1. Run north and west from the graveyard up towards the Valley of Spears. On your map there are two huts drawn in, you want to aim for the southern one. Keep an eye out for the summoning stone. Then look up towards the north west and you’ll see a giant gargoyle looking entrance with some closed stone doors – run in.
2. Inside the cavern. Walk half way across the bridge and turn left and jump right off. Follow that tunnel!
3. You’ll get to a wide open room with Purple Crystals marking the left side of the room, Orange Crystals marking the right and an altar/wall decoration thing in the center. Go left, towards the Purple Crystals (if you can’t make out the colours in spirit form, go left).
4. Follow the crystal tunnel. When you get to the bridge, head straight across and continue to follow the path towards the left.
5. Continue through the tunnel until you reach a wide open cavern with bridges in the distance. Turn immediately to your right and you should be able to see the instance portal!

Here’s those instructions in picture form:

Slideshow: Getting to the instance portal. Click and press "play" to see all steps.

Step 2: Entrance

Step 3: Jump!

Step 4: Follow the tunnel

Step 5: Keep following...

Step 6: T intersection - go left!

Step 7: Bridge

Step 8: Follow the path

Step 9: Keep following...

Step 10: The cavern

Step 11: Turn right

Step 12: You made it!

Meet Tristam (the Angel part). Sif my raiding companion would be my boyfriend!

I was inspired by Keeva & Kae’s pet posts and thought I would share a picture of my part angel/part devil cat Tristam.  Every raid night regardless of the temperature (it can seriously be the middle of a hot Australian summer day), he finishes his dinner and then jumps up onto my computer tower and has a sleep while I raid. 

Occasionally I accidently bump into him, much to his annoyance and he gets all cranky because I woke him up.  This is because his paws stick out off the side of the tower (he’s really not a little kitten anymore) so to pay me back he sticks his claws in my leg. Thankfully this hasn’t yet lead to a raid wipe.

Plate is shiny

I’m currently in the process of putting together a list of Bind on Account, aka Heirloom, gear list for a baby Paladin. I’m thinking of leveling a Paladin, not because I have any intention of playing a Paladin at max level but purely for leveling fun.

I’ve been enjoying leveling the Mage using the Dungeon Finder but I’m getting just a bit tired of the lengthy dungeon queues. Time to roll a hybrid.

I’ve been doing some research. I want to make sure I buy the very best BoA items around for my Paladin. Eventually – around level 40 – I expect I’ll need a tanking and healing set. I won’t be queuing dungeons as Damage, so I don’t really intend to put together a high DPS Retribution set. If I go out in the world to complete a few quest, well, I’ll have to just wear my tanking/shield gear. I somehow doubt that there’s much difference between DPS and tanking items at lower levels.

In doing my research I was quite surprised to find a lot of conflicting opinions about the best weapon and best enchants. I think this is mostly because some of the newer weapons (the Maces in particular) were released sometime after Wrath of the Lich King. Anyway, here’s what I consider to be the most suitable items. I’d really love to hear what some more experienced Paladins think.

Both of the weapons are 1 hand weapons which frees up my Offhand item slot for an appropriate Shield. Is it worth purchasing a 2 handed weapon to equip if I need to complete a couple quests on my own?

Tanking set

I was surprised at how poor the trinket choice was for melee DPS and tanking characters. There is no Attack Power trinket. The Inherited Insignia would be somewhat handy to get out of nets and other movement impairing effects (although I think I’m going to be playing a Human, so there’s no need). The Swift Hand of Justice haste trinket is useful for all classes to some degree.

Would I be better off equipping the spell power trinket? Do Paladins benefit from equipping spell power for dps or tanking?

The enchanting options are quite interesting and I imagine the choice comes down to personal taste. Fiery Blaze Enchantment is a great option, I believe, but you need to complete a quest around level 40 to earn it. Until then you can either choose to remain enchant-less or you can choose one of the other options that I’ve listed. Most comments that I’ve found seem to favor Lifestealing over Crusader and then recommend choosing the flat stat gain from Agility or Strength after level 60 (the point at which Lifestealing and Crusader being to diminish in power).

I think I’m going to aim for the Fiery Blaze Enchant just because it’s something that I would never have thought of using. Furthermore, it won’t cost you any gold.

Healing Set

Fortunately for me I have both the Mail spell power shoulders and the spell power mace from when I leveled my Shaman. It may seem like a lot of effort to purchase gear for 2 sets but, to be honest, I have nearly all the items for my healing set already.

Also, if you’re an excellent fisherman the Dread Pirate Ring awarded to the winner of the weekly Kalu’ak Fishing Derby would complement either set. But somehow I doubt I’m going to win this event!

Unfortunately you can't just choose your gear based on looks alone

I think most players, certainly raiders, are used to evaluating gear attributes in terms of how they benefit their own character – their own class or even just what’s best for their own talent spec.

The advice I give to brand new Shadow Priests is very simple: Haste and Spell power are equally as good as each other and the value of Critical Strike Rating is about half that of Spell power or Haste, point for point. And if you’re not sure, choose the item with higher Spell power.

Then, if it’s a (formerly) Holy Priest asking, I tack on this final piece of advice: Never choose one item over an other because it has more Spirit.

Spirit

Just because Shadow Priests don’t value Spirit very highly it doesn’t mean that other cloth wearers, and Blizzard, feel the same way.

Let’s consider all the cloth wearing classes and raiding talent specs and compare what value 1 point of Spirit is worth compared to 1 point of Spell power:

Source: Wowhead’s Stat Weighting, when Spell power = 1.

Spirit was not mentioned/used to find Mage Fire or Frost gear, so I assume that it is irrelevant to these specs. Does anyone raid as Demonology these days?

I should also point out that Shadowpriest.com’s most recent testing for Tier 10 gear has valued Spirit more highly than it has in past Patches and I assume that the value on Wowhead of 0.21 (above) is from Patch 3.2. In Patch 3.3 Spirit has been valued at 0.59 compared to 1 point of Spell power. This is still less than the value of 1 point of Critical Strike Rating, which becomes important further on in the piece.

The Budget

The developers place a completely different value on Spirit – one that sits above class and talent mechanics. A single value that they use to create or budget gear.

What makes a 264 item different from a 251 item? More gear attributes. What makes one 264 item better than another 264 item? Personal preference. We might prefer one item over another item, both with the very same item level, but in Blizzard’s eyes they are equal.

Every single attribute – Stamina, Intellect etc, even empty sockets and magic resistances, is valued and the sum of these values adds up to give you an item of that item level. Compare these two similar items both item level 264:

Two offhands from Icecrown Citadel 25 man. Item level 264.

What value does Blizzard place on each attribute? What is the master value stat weighting list? I’m sure a more practised mathematician than I could figure it out. If x = stamina, y = intellect, z = spell power, a = spirit, b = haste, c = critical strike rating you might read the above items like:

Shadow Silk Spindle: 69x + 69y + 60c + 60b + 106z = ilvl264 offhand
Sundial of the Eternal Dusk: 69x + 69y + 60a + 60b + 106z = ilvl264 offhand

I might not be great at math, but I can see that Blizzard values 1 point of Spirit exactly the same as 1 point of Critical Strike Rating. Look again:

Offhand items, Item level 264, 60 Spirit = 60 Critical Strike Rating

The Sacrifice

Items that we prefer, the ones that become our best in slot, tend to have higher values of our strongest DPS producing attributes. That doesn’t mean we don’t need some of the other stuff to survive, or to have enough Mana to last.

I’m finding that this is most easily seen while I level up Caesandra, my baby Mage. The other night I passed on a belt that dropped in Blackrock Depths. At first glance it was a lovely combination of Stamina, Intellect, Spell power and Critical Strike Rating. But the belt that I’m wearing, and have been wearing for the last 15 levels or so, is still better for me. It has no Stamina, no Intellect. Just a bit or Armor and the rest of the budget spent on pure Spell power.

Technically the BRD belt was a better item overall, and it had a higher item level. If I was questing, I probably would have valued it differently. But I’m leveling inside the sheltered environment of PVE dungeons and I can easily sacrifice survivability stats – it’s up to the tank to take a beating, not me.

In the Burning Crusade I wore incredibly fragile caster pieces – Spellstrike over Battlecast gear, the Frozen Shadoweave set: items that sacrificed Stamina (survivability) in order to load up on DPS stats that rivaled higher tier gear. In preparation for Black Temple, where it was recommended that all players have at least 9000 health in order to survive the first boss, I came up short.

Shadow Priests: But I only want Spell power! Haste!

In Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard have done away with items that are weak on survivability stats in order to hold more DPS stats. All the 213 cloth gear has about the same amount of Stamina and Intellect, all the 232 gear has a bit more, and so forth. You can pretty much ignore it entirely – it’s always there. We’re left to make upgrade decisions based on more interesting dilemmas – what has more power?

We know that Blizzard values 1 point of Spirit exactly the same as 1 point of Critical Strike Rating. Now factor in some Shadow Priest preferences:

• 1 point of Critical Strike is valued to be about 75% as good as 1 point of Spell power (100%) or Haste (100%)
• 1 point of Spirit is valued to be only about 50% as good as 1 point of Spell power (100%) or Haste (100%)

Blizzard values Critical Strike Rating and Spirit as equals, but if given the choice, us Shadow Priests would take Critical Strike Rating over Spirit any day.

Critical Strike Rating is our third priority attribute. Spell Power and Haste are more valuable so we tend to choose items with Haste over items with Critical Strike Rating. What worries me is that, in our quest for more and more Haste, I see many new Shadow Priests with lots of Haste/Spirit items. And seriously deficient in Critical Strike Rating.

Here’s the rub. Items that you have with Spirit on them, even though they might be loaded up on Haste, may be hurting your gear set and overall stats.

If you are wearing two rings:
1. Item level 251: Spellpower/Haste/Spirit
2. Item level 264: Spellpower/Haste

I would consider swapping out the 251 ring for a 264 Spellpower/Crit ring. The item might be considered lower on the Shadowpriest.com Best in Slot ranks (using the Haste>Critical Strike weightings) but it doesn’t mean it’s an inferior item. You can’t wear pure Haste items in every single one of your gear slots. Ok, you can, but the output would be worse than a balance Spellpower/Haste/Crit approach and you probably wouldn’t make the Hit cap. So don’t shy away from great items just because they have Critical Strike Rating on them and no Haste.

If you have 500 Spirit and 850 Critical Strike Rating, wouldn’t you prefer to have 400 Spirit and 950 Critical Strike Rating? You can do that using the same item level gear available to you – remember 1 point of Spirit is the same as 1 point of Critical Strike Rating according to Blizzard.

I know I’d much prefer the extra Critical Strike Rating.

The long and short of it

Every time you choose an item with Spirit, that item budget could have been spent on additional Critical Strike Rating, Haste or Hit. Keep an eye out for items that drop with zero Spirit, but with Hit or Critical Strike Rating. You still need Hit and some Critical Strike Rating in some of your gear slots so don’t discount these items just because they don’t have Haste.

1 Raid Leader, 3 Officers and 20 players who think they could do a better job. And me.

My guild’s 25 man raids are starting to suffer from a case of “too many cooks spoil the broth”. After every single wipe – on bosses we’ve been working on for weeks, or bosses we’ve been working on for just one night – vent explodes with heated debate and suggestions. We stand, all buffed and ready to pull again, while we argue amongst ourselves.

It seems every single raid member knows what our problem is, and their suggestion is guaranteed to bring success, if only we would do what they say!

Obviously many of these suggestions are worthy of consideration. And it’s great that raiders are so invested in the success of our raids. But the players offering suggestions always sound so angry. Even if they start out with a smile in their voice, they rarely end that way if there’s the least bit of disagreement. They’re quick to point the finger and play the blame game. And they always end up sounding like their teeth are clenched behind the microphone. The underlying message is simple “I know this fight better than anyone else here and you’re all so stupid, and so blind that you can’t see what I see”.

When there is an absence of good leadership players will step up and try to lead – that’s true. In our very casual BC guild we mucked along – a group of inexperienced raiders with a raw and inexperienced, but respected, teenager as our Raid Leader. But make no mistake, we treated raid time and decisions more like a democracy than a dictatorship. We got mad when people totally messed up, or seemed unable to handle the most simple, and most important, of responsibilities (this one time, someone decided to assign cube clicking to classes most suitable for the job instead of the players who were most capable – what a nightmare). We talked over the top of one another and tried to modify the strategy and compensate for the, er, less skilled members of the group. But it was done in a pretty positive manner.

The thing is – we have a Raid Leader. A very, very good Raid Leader. He knows more about how our raid is performing than you think. Just because he doesn’t spend the entire wipe recovery time talking on Vent doesn’t mean he’s not totally across the strategy and what was done wrong in the previous attempt.

While you’re arguing about who should be standing where for Phase 3, he’s concerned about a more pressing concern – like getting through Phase 2 without relying on brez.

How did we get to this point? I think it might be a combination of a few things. We have some very long-term raiders who are used to leading their own 10 man raids. And I don’t believe these players trust our raid leader, who took up the position only about 1 month ago. They have 10 man experience on fights that we’ve yet to face in 25s. Perhaps they feel that they have already done it all and know it all.

We also have quite a lot of girls in the raid. Which is awesome, don’t get me wrong. But we’re also all very opinionated… and not afraid to speak our minds on Vent. We can be too talkative.

And finally, two thirds of our raid team are new – having joined the guild after we left Trial of the Crusader. All these new guild members? They’re following the example set by the long-term raiders.

So you know what? I’m not going to be part of the problem – even when I vehemently disagree with a suggestion made on Vent. I’m not going to argue when a healer or a melee DPS tries to tell me what is/isn’t easier for the ranged DPS. I’m going to bite my tongue and save the argument for a quieter time. When I raid I’m only going to talk if I need a specific answer from someone more knowledgeable than I.

What’s my Shackle target?

If I need to tell/notify the raid mid-fight, I’ll announce that over Vent too

Drof has Fear Ward

If I want to be social, I’ll type in chat. If people don’t read it – that’s cool. And if I have a suggestion or think something is faulty with our strategy? I’m going to put my ideas in writing and post them on the guild forums. Maybe only 5 people will ever read it – but if one of those is my Raid Leader that’s all that matters.

Sure, we might spend 3 hours wiping unnecessarily. But it’s unlikely that a single suggestion from me can prevent a night of wiping on progression content.

You’ll find me standing (I think I favor the right front corner, by the way) at the back in my sissy robe ™, casting my spells, playing with glyphs and attempting to drop Mind Blast out of my rotation altogether. I might end up doing the exact same thing over and over again – 50 times I did Professor Putricide pretty much exactly the same – while the raid experiments and wipes around me. And if we need to do another 50 attempts on Blood Queen while we change the bite order, learn not to out-threat the tanks at the start, or a healer decides to snipe my spot, that’s fine.

Just wait a moment while I got put some music on, cast my spells, be patient and show our Raid Leader a bit of respect.

ps. I wrote this post mid-raid. Apologies for being last to answer “yes” to all the ready checks tonight!

Banned for "spamming and trolling"

I found this quite humorous – I have been given a 24 hour ban for trolling! You may now call me Lathere the Forum Troll. If only it were an achievement title you could actually earn in game.

I am responsible for updating the recruitment thread for my guild on the official World of Warcraft Realm Forum (Barthilas) and as usual you get the standard trolls who sit there and add silly comments about how shit your guild is and then the level 1 alts come out to then say how crap the previous poster/troll is and how nice your guild is.

Normally I completely ignore these but feeling ready for a good battle after an awful day at work I decided to try adding a bit of sugar (or spice?) into the mix and thanked the trolls for keeping our thread at the top of the forum homepage for a good 24 hours. All publicity is good publicity, right?

I wished I had written more on this blog post yesterday because then I could have kept some of the original comments and added them in for extra entertainment value. Most of them have already been deleted.

I’m admit the thread had deteriorated into something a bit nasty. One troll left a comment stating that the women in our guild are getting paid gold to “filch” potential recruits from other guilds – a whole new way of poaching. I assume filch means prostituting ourselves out. But I can’t be sure because I’m not really up with the forum lingo I’m afraid.

I will state that prior to my last post I had only written standard /bump messages. But my final reply which must have been seen as a bit naughty because, well I got a slap on the wrist and a 24 hour ban for trolling.

Ban Type: Temporary
Expires: 02/25/2010 09:56:17 AM PST
Ban Reason: Spamming and trolling

Suspended from the World of Warcraft forums for a 24 hour period for trolling the forums.

47. Re: [A] <Vitare> is recruiting for ICC25 02/24/2010 04:23:18 AM PST

I award this thread a 8/10 for drama and excitement.
Again thank you all for keeping the thread on front page of Barthilas forums all day – we picked up some good apps.
Also we’re still recruiting a spriest and ele shammy

Cheers
Lath

I don’t know, I’ve seen a lot worse threads that are still available to be read and the writers seem to have gotten away ban free. I would be curious to know if anyone else has been banned from the official forums and if they felt it was a bit over the top.

The Righteous Orb Stealth Run

Occasionally I’ll get an idea in my head that really ought to count towards the Insane achievement – it’s that ridiculous. This is one of them. My Rogue, Chriara, has currently taken up residence, full-time, at the servant’s entrance to Stratholme. Why?

The Enchanter

While I was going through a phase, tired of wiping in ICC and tired of grinding Emblems of Frost, I started looking for diversions. Things that have been hovering at the bottom of my To Do list.

Items on Cassandri’s To Do List:
1-37 Kill all the bosses/hardmodes in the game that I haven’t done yet!
#38 Learn all the hard-to-find Enchanting recipes
#39 Get Exalted with the Thorium Brotherhood
#40 Getting that goddamn vial out of Lady Vashj!

Inspired by this post (by the way Unholy Weapon and glove scrolls do not sell), I decided to make another effort to grind my way to some profitable old school enchanting recipes. I flew out and bought the Timbermaw recipes which  I ought to have purchased when I actually reached Exalted about a year ago.

Then I headed out to Western Plaguelands (once again) to see if the Spellbinders of the Scarlet Crusade might offer up the Crusader recipe. This would be at least the 10th time I’ve come out here and farming that recipe without success. This time? Dropped on my 3rd kill. Surely this is a sign.

New problem. Righteous Orbs (the tricky part of the materials for Crusader) are currently listed at about 300% Market Value on the Auction House.  If I bought the materials right now, and sold the finished scroll for current Market Value I would be taking a loss. Having failed at unloading my Unholy scrolls, I am a bit hesitant to outlay a lot of gold on a new product.

Solution? Farm them myself right out of Stratholm (the present day, burnt to all hell, level 60 dungeon). Just one problem – Stratholm is certainly not a convenient location to travel to. Unfortunately I can’t port to the Caverns of Time and ask Chromie to just send me to the present day Stratholm city. Getting to Stratholm requires flying from Ironforge and then riding a good distance til you reach the dungeon entrance.

The Herbalist (and the Soft Reset)

A couple of weeks ago I temporarily switched off XP gains for Caesandra so that Lathere’s Warlock could catch up to me while we were running dungeons. I was level 46. In Tanaris. Doing what I spend all my dungeon queue time doing: discovering flight paths and gathering herbs.

I happened to be standing in the ruins just northeast of Gagetzhan, having gathered a couple of Arthas’ Tears nodes, when our queue popped and my character disappeared for 30 minutes or so while we completed Zul’Furrak (who am I kidding? It was probably Mauradon). When I returned to the ruins, two new nodes of Arthas’ Tears had appeared. I collected those too.

Then I remembered I didn’t need to hearth at the end of my play session on the Mage. I wasn’t gaining experience, so I didn’t need to boost my rested experience gains either. I logged off in the ruins.

Sure enough, when I logged in next I collected two new Arthas Tears nodes. I got into the habit of logging in every 30 minutes or so while I was playing other characters just to gather a couple of nodes. I left that spot with over 150 Arthas Tears a week later, still level 46.

The Stealther (er the level 80 Nomad)

So my new plan was to park a suitable character right near Stratholm for a week or so and do a few quick runs of living Stratholm – living meaning the Scarlet Crusade section – for Righteous Orbs. I knew that one of the bosses in Living Strat had a near 100% guarantee to drop a Righteous Orb.

Thus a plan was devised. I would leave my Rogue in Eastern Plaguelands, conveniently near by the Servant’s Entrance to Stratholm and when I had a spare 5 minutes I would do a quick stealth run to Archivist Galford (of the 100% drop rate), kill him, take his loot, stealth back to the Servant’s Entrance, reset and repeat.

I picked my Rogue, Chriara, because she doesn’t need to be anywhere else. I love doing the occasional Baron’s Run with Cassandri, and having Vampiric Embrace as a constant self buff certainly makes it easier than ever, but she’s too busy. When I’m logged in as Cassandri 15 minutes will go by and I’ll need to take her to raid, or to enchant something for someone, or to create Ebonweave or… something.

The Run

I’m still honing my “technique”.

Originally I steathed/sprinted to the Scarlet Bastion and steathed all the way to Archivist Galford for a quick Righteous Orb. The runs were also taking about 5-6 minutes in total – 3 minutes to reach the boss and 3 minutes to return to the servants entrance.

The return trip back to the zone entrance (in order to reset the dungeon) was getting a bit annoying. So I stopped doing them. Now I just log out after killing the boss and after 30 minutes the instance auto resets and the game ports me right back to the start of the Servants Entrance ready for me to log back in and go again.

Unfortunately it took me about 5 kills and zero Orbs before I realised this wasn’t working.

The Mystery

Something triggers Archivist Galford to drop an Orb, and nobody seems to be sure exactly what needs to die in order for him to drop one.

Killing Timmy (the boss before you enter the Scarlet Bastion door) isn’t required. I can get Archivist Galford to drop an Orb without killing Timmy. Killing any of the other bosses in the Bastion isn’t a requirement either. The Cannon Dude, Malor or the final boss, Dathrohan/Balnazzar, have all been alive when I’ve killed Galford and gotten an Orb to drop.

It’s also not tied to the last pack of 4 mobs who stand directly outside Galford’s room. And it’s definitely not tied to killing the two Monks who appear after that group of four is killed.

One commenter at Wowhead believes that you need to kill at certain amount of Scarlet Monastery mobs before it will drop.

To get an orb I clear the yard and the corridor … I am currently testing certain numbers of mobs killed to get an orb … I’m trying all numbers upwards from 20-30 atm.

I don’t think that’s quite right. I believe that it’s tied to either the patrols, certain groups or perhaps it’s even timed.

At the moment I’m killing all the mobs in the Scarlet Bastion (skipping the “yard” at the entrance) including patrols, but excluding side rooms, before killing Galford. It’s taking me about 15 minutes a run for 1-2 Orbs.

By Process of Elimination

I’m determined to cut that down and find out exactly the bare minimum of kills required before getting an Orb out of Archivist Galford.

Will the prices of Righteous Orbs have dropped (or become near worthless) by the time I’ve solved this problem? Probably. But this is a more interesting puzzle than making a bit of gold anyway!

So where to start? I tried to make note of what I was doing in the runs and any strange behavior exhibited by the game itself: an emote or such.

• Killing just the patrols and a few extra mobs that got in the way: no Orb.
• Killing a particular group – the first at the very beginning of the Halls of Light, the second at the end of a stone corridor inside the Hall of the High Command – causes my game to freeze for a second.
• 2 Crimson Gallants appear when you kill the final group at the end of the Hall of Lights – near Malor and they announce “The Hall of Lights has been breeched” or some such thing.
• 2 Crimson Monks appear and try and do a runner when you kill the final group standing to the right of Archivist Galford’s room and they announced “That’s the end of the Line! We must prevail” or some such thing.

Here’s how I’m going about it. I’ve written down the pulls and the number of mobs in each which I’ve killed, then slowly started skipping (stealthing) past groups – crossing out each group/kill as a unnecessary step. So far, 3 runs have worked.

1. Enter the Halls of Light
2. Kill first group (3-4 mobs). Game freezes when last mob dies.
3. Kill patrol (2)
4. Kill mid corridor group (3-4)
5. Kill end corridor group (3-4). 2 Crimson Gallants will appear and block the way.
6. Kill Crimson Gallants (2)
7. Kill group left side of room (3-4)
8. Kill group right side of room (3-4)
9. Kill group (3-4)
10. Enter the Hall of the High Command
11. Kill patrol (2)
12. Kill end stone corridor group (3-4). Game freezes when last mob dies.
13. Kill patrol (2)
14. Kill mid corridor group (3-4)
15. Kill end corridor group (3-4). 2 Crimson Monks will appear.
16. Kill Crimson Monks (2)

Wow. You can already see that so much of the run can be skipped. It’s not tied to how many mobs you’ve killed – I’m down to killing about 10 mobs. It’s also not tied to killing patrols because I intentionally skipped a few to test this theory (it’s actually easier just to kill them then to avoid them).

I’m convinced that something is happening when the game freezes. It does it every time on those two groups – always when the last mob dies – regardless of which order you kill them.

I’m also starting to wonder if perhaps it isn’t a timed thing. I’ve been diligently writing down the kills as I go now for this article – making the runs themselves very slow. Perhaps that has as much to do with my success as does anything else! And one time I stealthed into Archivist Galford’s room and saw him drop down onto the floor before he started to pace around like normal. Strange pathing? Maybe. Or maybe he ran off through the walls to go and get a Righteous Orb for me and I caught him on the way back.

Where did you go Archivist Galford?! Where did you go?

A collection of Herbs, Pigments, Inks and Parchments

What I really want to tell you about is my small business venture into the cutthroat world of glyph selling! But having first discussed the demand for glyphs I think I’d be missing a serious step if I cut straight to sales and ignored the actual crafting bit.

Inscription is all about the production of glyphs. Sure, scribes can make other stuff, but our bread and butter is glyphs. Consider the general steps you take from raw material to finished product:

1. Herbs (gathered using Herbalism)
2. Milling into Inks (using Inscription)
3. Glyphs (using Inscription)

Seems pretty straight forward. But glyphs are one of the few, perhaps the only, finished product from secondary professions that we are quite happy to buy directly from the Auction House instead of shopping around or finding a reputable crafter and pay a service fee.

I believe that there’s just enough steps in the glyph creation process to turn off most non-scribes. It’s confusing at first glance, and to be totally honest, I didn’t understand the milling/ink system before I took up the profession myself. Even when I had friends who were scribes, I would still happily pay outrageous prices on the Auction House for the glyphs that I wanted. 

Lets consider the professions from a customer’s point of view – how I looked at glyphs prior to starting Inscription myself.

I bought most of my glyphs when Inscription was a new profession and prices were dictated by a grossly out-of-wack supply/demand situation. I mean, the entire server wanted glyphs. And the brand new scribes were struggling to level their profession to reach demand and then you reached a point where most of the desirable glyphs had to be discovered – one day at a time. The first scribe to discover that glyph definitely had a monopoly.

I paid anywhere between 50-80 gold per glyph at that time. And didn’t change them again.

Then, nearly a year later, I wanted to try out a different glyph for just one fight. The Glyph of Mind Sear was listed on Auction House for 20g. I asked a guild member, who I knew to be a scribe, if that was a fair price and, if not, would they craft it for me? I decided to buy the raw materials and send them to my guild mate.

Wowhead lists the materials for Glyph of Mind Sear as:

• 1 x Ink of the Sea
• 1 x Resilient Parchment

I clicked through and discovered that Resilient Parchment seemed pretty commonplace and easily purchases for a low, flat fee from vendors in Inscription shops. But how to get Ink of the Sea? Wowhead lists the materials for Ink of the Sea as:

• 2 x Azure Pigment

By now I was getting a bit frustrated – I’d never heard of Azure Pigments either. More research shows that Azure Pigment is “commonly found when milling herbs native to Northrend.” I thought about buying some herbs from the Auction House – but I just wasn’t sure what herbs to buy, and in what quantity, to be guaranteed 2 Azure Pigments: milling produces a random result.

I bought the glyph on Auction House.

Random Procs and Milling

From Herbs milled into Pigments, Pigments scribed to Inks, Inks scribed to a Glyph

It takes a bit of knowledge, clearly more than I had at the time, to break down the production of glyphs in reverse. If you could mill a stack of 5 Icethorn and produce 5 Ink of the Sea I think Inscription would be quite a different profession.

Smart scribes will know the going rate for the commonly farmed herbs. For example, on my server, Lichbloom sells for approximately 25g per stack of 20, Icethorn only sells for about 18g per stack of 20. Herbalists tend to gather both herbs at the same time, from the same zones in Northrend.

Both Icethorn, Lichbloom and Adder’s Tongue mill to produce the exact same rate of pigments (eventually to become inks).

If you had 10 stacks of Lichbloom and wanted to produce Ink for glyphs you’d be better off selling your stacks of Lichbloom as is and buying up cheap stacks of Icethorn or Adder’s Tongue. Of these herbs, always mill the least expensive. And that’s even before we consider milling lower level Northrend herbs like Deadnettle, Talandra’s Rose, Tiger Lily and Goldclover.

In hindsight I can see that milling 5 Icethorn would have been enough to create 1 Glyph of Mind Sear. At its lowest proc rate milling a stack of 5 would return 2 Azure Pigments which is exactly the amount needed to create 1 Ink of the Sea.

The randomness of milling, a skill available to scribes not to herbalists, puts control back in the hands of the scribe.

Other Professions

This can be seen in other professions too. Consider the cost of producing Flask of the Frost Wyrm – which Alchemists can produce in batches of 2.

• 5 Icethorn
• 5 Lichbloom
• 1 Frost Lotus
• 1 Enchanted Vial
  ____________
  68g (for 2 Flasks of the Frost Wrym)
  or
  34g per Flask

So you would be right to think that an Alchemist would add on a small profit margin to cover their time (a crafter’s fee) of say 4-5g before listing the Flask on Auction House. Perhaps they would list the Flask for 38g.

But Flasks don’t work like that on Auction House. They are almost always exactly priced at half the cost of producing 2: there is no crafting fee or Postage & Handling mark ups.

An Elixir specialised Alchemist will occasionally produce 3, 4 or more Flasks for the cost of producing just 2 and that’s where the Alchemist makes a profit. Flasks are priced by Alchemists as though procs didn’t exist. If procs didn’t exist? I imagine that Alchemists would be listing their Flasks, undercutting their competitors and slowly dropping their profit margin from 4-5g per Flask into 40-50 silver.

/cheer for crafting procs!

I know, I know, my portrait on the footer is out of date.

Since Christmas Lathere has spent more time administering the guild than actually playing the game. And the topics she wants to blog about include all the bad stuff that comes with being part of the running of a guild.

When she was drafting her last post she said to me “I feel like about writing about all these things but I don’t feel right about publishing it”.

I’ve heard about people getting fired, or not being hired, because of incriminating Facebook profiles and comments. A friend of a friend of a friend blogged about their everyday life, including stuff happening in their workplace, and was fired over it. Do the same standards of privacy and confidentiality apply to publishing and guilds?

Legally (and bear in mind that I’m no expert) I don’t see how they could. First off, you sign a contract when you become an employee. To a certain extent they own your mind – and any ideas you may have – while you are an employee. If, as an employee, you publish on the internet “I work at XYZ Telecommunications and the reason that our servers went down the other day is because we all went out for a boozy lunch! Even the techies!” you could seriously damage the reputation of your company. Your damage might lead to a loss in customers and revenue.

But a guild isn’t a business. Our employees are our guild members. We have potential employees everywhere. Our competitors are other progression-driven raiding guilds. The closest thing we have to customers are the players on the server we might trade goods with, or players we might bring ask to join a PuG. We are not reliant on our customers to “succeed” as a business. We primarily do not exist to raise gold. We define succeeding as killing bosses and raid progression.

To reach our goal, we need a strong raid team – a strong team of employees.

Yes, our reputation is still very important to us. A guild with a poor reputation will have a much more difficult time recruiting players. Even very successful (progression-wise) guilds with poor reputations will have difficulties recruiting players.

If you’re having difficulty recruiting excellent players (er employees) you end up dropping your standards to recruit good players and end up with a weaker team overall. So our reputation definitely contributes to the success/failure of the raid team.

Somehow Lathere (and I) need to walk a fine line – blogging about our experiences within our guild, without damaging the reputation of our guild. Or, we could just not blog about it at all. Or, we could change our character names, remove the WoW Armory links and completely disassociate ourselves from our characters, server and guild.

The second option seems somewhat extreme. But if we had taken that stance from the day we set up Hots and Dots I think it would have been easily achieved. But we never set out to hide who we are. I like having players whisper me in game and leave a comment, in person so to speak, about an article that we’ve published.

I’m not ashamed to leave my character exposed for all my readers to poke at my gear, gems or achievements. In the same way that I lack respect for players who post on the official forums as their level 1 alt, I would lose respect for bloggers who offer advice with no way for me to establish who they are, where they come from and what they’ve experienced.

I read many bloggers who hide (unintentionally, I think) what server they play on and what their character name is. To be fair, most of them write about personal, very subjective, learning experiences – opinion pieces. And I don’t think it’s necessary to establish credibility for that kind of writing.

But if you expect me to follow your 3.3 Resto Druid Raiding Gear Guide, well, I’d want to know that you actually raid as a Resto Druid! I’d prefer to learn about Resto Shaman healing from someone who is actually, well, an experienced Resto Shaman.

I don’t think anonymity is a valid option for Lathere and I.

So should we only write about the good stuff? We blog about lots of guild achievements – when we master a fight strategy in particular. We share our guild strategies and ideas right here on the blog. I’d like to point out that this is all positive publicity for the guild which often goes unrecognized.

I think it’s lying to only blog about the good stuff. Bad stuff happens in every guild. Is it better to try and keep it private? Perhaps. Some problems and personal conflicts can blow over if you ignore them, or try and solve them in private without the rest of the guild, and the community, reading with a bowl of popcorn at hand.

When I blogged about a little bit of drama that somehow split the guild right down the middle, one 10 man group vs the other, I was extremely vague about the circumstances. I wanted to write about it and I felt that I couldn’t write any other post at the time. But I also felt that if I were to drag all the details and personal conflicts out into the open I might just be making the problem infinitely worse. So I didn’t. It was frustrating to write it like that, but I certainly don’t wish be the catalyst which makes existing drama worse just to satisfy my writer’s muse.

Lathere is in a more difficult situation than I. She is an officer and has to deal with all the complaints, dramas and conflicts that I remain blissfully unaware of 99% of the time. But on the few occasions that I’ve been caught up in guild politics or drama, I find myself shying away from publishing those articles too.

Perhaps I need to set us, Lathere and I, some guidelines. I think it would be wrong to:

1. publish a story which identifies individuals by name and defames them
2. inadvertently publish some new guild policy before telling the guild first
3. take an opinion (we’re bloggers, that’s all we can do) and write about the details of a conflict between two guild members

Other than that, I think nothing else should be off limits.

I believe that our readers are smart enough to recognise that there is good and bad things in Vitare. Good and bad things happen in all guilds.

And when we write about them, it’s because we wonder if you might have experienced the same thing.

Do you have and enforce an Asshat Clause in your guild?

I’m sure you’ve heard of it, and chances are your guild has one:

We don’t care how good a player you are,
if you’re an asshole we’ll boot you.

I have to admit I’m a bit of a softy and take pity on people with poor social skills. I prefer to work around their ineptness by ignoring them as much as humanly possible. For the first time since I started raiding I was tempted to /gkick a raider in the middle of raid even though we were already short a member and really needed him.

What tempted me? This particular player asked Cass in raid chat after having a disagreement (she was standing up for a guildy he was bagging in party chat) if she was an ugly dwarf in real life. The intent was to be cruel, plain and simple and pray on a persons insecurities.

You all know the type of guy this is, the person who’s sitting there in raid chat after a progression wipe raging about the fact that people aren’t focusing and everyone is bad. They of course don’t realise they’re up there with the best of them getting hit by malleable ooze and standing in the green shit.

So back to the incident. My judgment and sense of fair play got the better of me and I instead decided to give them a warning via whisper.  Don’t even ask me to go into the carry on that ensued - having to put up with it the first time was bad enough. He did after prompting apologise, but I believe Cass had him on ignore so it kind of defeated the purpose.

It’s been 24 hours and I’m still regretting just not simply kicking of him.  I believe I would stand up for anyone treated like that, though Cass is my sister so perhaps my judgment is clouded, maybe I’m being too harsh and over reacting.

Or there’s the other side, should I have just got rid of someone who causes trouble and has an ego that is far larger then his play capabilities?

I am interested to know what you guys think and what you would have done in my position. If this incident had occurred in your guild, how would it have been handled by your officers?