Sunday, November 23, 2008


I'm not a crazy obsessive compulsive type that needs to max out my dagger skills on my warlock to 450 (or whatever the cap is), but as I was running around in Northrend, I'd cringe each time I ran by a Cobalt Node and my mining was hovering around 272. I'm also Herbalism on this lock (mining and herbalism, I'm farmer specced), and was sitting pretty at around 254 herbing for a while. This lock was given to me with 18 enchanting and no secondary trade skill at all (the bot spec, apparently), so it was painful to start out in Silverpine grinding these skills up to the level I had reached. The prospect of going to Tanaris looking for Mithril Ore and Firebloom wasn't exactly high on my list of fun tasks to undertake in the expansion.

But go back I did, and I'm better for it. The stockpile of herbs I had accumulated in my initial push netted me over 1k gold as 3.0.2 went live, and all my ore and rocks sold the day I put them up for sale as well. While everyone is busy leveling Inscription or whatever, the demand for raw mats will always be there, and as someone without epic flying, having two gathering skills has been a boon. This lock has yet to even set foot in either Blade's Edge or Netherstorm, and initially I had planned to go back and burn thru all those quests for 10g a pop one day when I was around level 76, in preparation for the cold weather flying + epic mount I would be needing. Then I realized that those quests only gave 10g a pop because the XP was converted to gold at the level cap. If I were to go back and do them now, they would just give crap XP, and the rewards for grey quests have been nerfed to 75 silver for rewards if you're way over the intended level (according to my guildie... haven't checked it out myself, but he's the resident expert).

What I ended up doing instead is making a macro:

/castsequence Find Minerals, Find Herbs

...and bound it to a spare mouse button. Now I just ride around spamming that button, and stop for any herb or ore I come across. Up to about 3k gold at this point, and only just hit 74 this morning.

Regarding the completionism, though, my cooking is still sitting at 36, and I haven't even picked up fishing. Fishing was one of the original uses for Glider on my (banned) Rogue. The whole act of fishing in WoW offers ...nothing... interesting, but I wanted to do the dailies, as well as fish up motes of water in Nagrand. I actually thought I'd be pulling 3 or 4 motes out of a Pure Water pool, but 1 mote per cast was pretty disappointing. The engineering mote extractor was a way better investment, and I'll probably grind up engineering (again) on my new rogue for the gas clouds I've seen in the Borean Tundra.

Fishing, though? Pretty sure I can happily ride out every expansion WoW will ever offer without casting that bobber in another puddle once.


Tom Phoenix said...

I also never bothered to level the secondary skils much primarily beacuse I always had healing spells available. However, this ended up hurting me in TBC as I was forced to buy Fish sticks for raiding. While there was a period where I tried to level up my fishing and cooking to solve that problem, but I never really found the time to see it through to the end.

Rich said...

Cooking I don't really mind, because it offers a pretty tangible benefit. Hmm, maybe tangible isn't the best word, but it's like: I can go out with the intent to make warp burgers, and know if I kill 20 warp stalkers, I'll end up with enough meat for that night's raid. Also, warp stalkers aren't hard to find.

With Fishing, it's like 'somewhere around Ratchet, I might find a pool of Blackmouth (or maybe not), and the "throw the bobber, then sit there for 60 seconds waiting to click on it again" isn't as fun as "plow thru 20 warp stalkers as fast as you can".

I also tend to just save my meat on a meat alt, and then burn thru levels in cooking in bursts. Sometimes I hit a dry spot, where I need to go farm a specfic bear somewhere for a bit, but it's not as 'omg i want to die' as fishing.

Anonymous said...

I used to think maxing tradeskills for the sake of a complete character was a waste of time, but the word "completionism" was re-defined for me when I saw the guys who are farming Molten Core for exalted faction on multiple alts.

The achievement system has a horrible effect on some people.

Anonymous said...

I have well over 3000 casts since patch 3.0. I was about the 3rd person to 450 fishing on my server. :-( I am a masochist.

Tesh said...

OCD is Blizzard's best friend. It's cheap to take advantage of, and keeps that sweet, sweet subscription money flowing.

Hatch said...

Yeah, I can't stand fishing, but my girlfriend will spend hours doing it. She has like 4 characters at max fishing. I guess she finds it soothing and just watches TV while she does it. It also makes her RICH.

Mining is miserable to finish off in Azeroth. It's easy to level up to about 240, and then those last points to 300 are the closest thing to torture I have ever experienced in a video game.

I originally planned to go pick flowers with my Death Knight to get herbalism up to 300 before I started leveling her in Outlands, but my excitement to level her made that idea evaporate. I will probably go back and do it once I'm at 80 with her, because I'd really like to have an herbalist (my main is a miner and my other alt is a skinner, so that would complete the triad).

Anonymous said...

I find the secondary professions a good way to waste a few minutes when I'm not in the mood to kill ten rats or talk to NPC X.

Fishing takes a bite out of my patience, though. Waiting for the bobber to move just gets to me, I don't know why.