Well, Inscription is now available in the current WotLK build, which is good news for those curious about the profession.

I’m just waiting for character copy to be working again so I can copy my herb banker across, and then I’ll be starting work on Inscription over the weekend. Watch the skies for an Inscription levelling guide.

Note: This post contains spoilers for Wrath of the Lich King.

Some widescreen desktop wallpapers, so you can enjoy the beautiful Northrend vistas even if you’re not in the beta test:

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I know not all of my readers want to be spoiled for Wrath of the Lich King, so I’m going to be posting any spoilery WotLK stuff behind a “read more” jump cut tag, and the first line will warn of spoilers (for those reading from a feed reader).

That’s all, carry on - and good morning to you all!

Note: This post contains spoilers for Wrath of the Lich King.

Dalaran has recently been implemented into the Wrath of the Lich King beta build, and it’s hard to find your way around at first - especially since the in-game maps and minimap aren’t completed yet.

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Following a few questions from Nuetralise of Spirit Is Your Friend in the Blog Azeroth chatroom, I thought it might be useful to add a companion to my Guide to the Shattered Sun Daily Quests. To wit: how best to tackle the quests once they’re all available. (Note that I’m giving the “ongoing” quest names, not the original quest names. Check my full guide for details if you’re having trouble identifying the quests.)

There are plenty of ways to go about the SSO dailies; here’s the rotation I find most efficient. This is purely a suggestion, of course; I find it stops me running back to the same spot over and over. If you’re on a PvP server you’ll need to be careful about this circuit as it does tend to take you far afield; you might want to stick closer to home.

Part 1: The Isle

Batch 1: The bombing runs, The Air Strikes Must Continue (bombing the Dead Scar) and Keeping the Enemy at Bay (bombing the boats and killing blood elves).

Batch 2: Arm the Wards! (killing the Wretched for mana remnants), Further Conversions (killing Sentries and converting them), and start Open For Business (gathering Bloodberries) now - you can finish it off during later batches.

Batch 3: the Dawning Portal; The Battle Must Go On (kill demons and put a banner in the Emissary of Hate) and one node of Know Your Ley Lines at the portal.

Batch 4: the Nagas. Don’t Stop Now… (kill Myrmidons for keys and gather ore from locked chests), Disrupt the Greengill Coast (kill Sirens for orbs and free murloc slaves), and another node of Know Your Ley Lines at the shrine.

Batch 5: the Blood Elves. Crush the Dawnblade (kill Blood Elves) and the final node of Know Your Ley Lines at the bloodcrystal.

Part 2: Outland

In order:

1. Hit Nagrand for The Multiphase Survey.
2. Catch a flightpath to Evergrove and then fly up to Bash’ir’s Landing for Maintaining the Sunwell Portal.
3. Fly east to Manaforge B’naar in Netherstorm for Sunfury Attack Plans.
4. Fly south to Throne of Kil’Jaeden in Hellfire Peninsula (across the Twisting Nether) for Blood for Blood and Blast the Gateway.
5. Fly south-east to Razorthorn Ridge for Rediscovering Your Roots.
6. Fly back to Shattrath, or: if you want to do Ata’mal Armaments, hop on a flightpath to the Scryer or Aldor town in Shadowmoon Valley, and hearth back to Shattrath after you’re finished.

All done! That lot accounts for over 4,000 SSO rep every day; you’ll be Exalted in no time!

Occasionally, people will do and say the darndest things. Things, in fact, that make you go “Hmmm” - or, more likely, things that make you go “WTF were they thinking?!” Here’s one I remember.

The background: pre-TBC, we used a DKP system for raiding, and we introduced a proviso that if you disappeared your DKP pool was ’suppressed’ and unavailable for purchases until you’d been back for a few weeks (although you still earnt DKP for attendance in the meantime). When we introduced this post, we said upfront ‘if this rule has been applied to you and you don’t think it should have been, please talk with an officer to straighten it out’.

This, however, wasn’t good enough for one of our warlocks - who had disappeared for about two months, saying he wasn’t going to raid until The Burning Crusade came out. When we introduced this rule, his response was…

…no, wait for it, this is brilliant…

…to DE all his epics, and delete his character in a fit of pique.

Boy, that sure showed us! We really learnt our lesson! It’s not like it cost him far more than it cost us, not at all.

…

No, we’ve never been able to work out what he thought this would achieve, either. It induces hilarity to this day, though.

(Note that this was before paid name changes or server transfers. His character was, indeed, gone.)

Note: This post contains spoilers for Wrath of the Lich King.

A companion to yesterday’s video tour of Stormwind Harbour and the boat ride to Borean Tundra, today we show you the boat ride from Menethil to Valgarde, the Alliance settlement in the other Northrend starting zone of Howling Fjord.

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Note: This post contains spoilers for Wrath of the Lich King.

Take a look around two new areas of the game with this video! We show you a tour of the new Stormwind Harbor, and the boat ride to Valiance Keep, the Alliance stronghold in the Northrend starting zone of Borean Tundra.

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I’ve just hit 70 with another alt, my night elf priest Siha. She’s currently a Holy DPS spec, running a Surge of Light/Imp Divine Spirit build (32/29/0) which allows her to do reasonable DPS and still contribute good healing if we’re short on healers.

Of course, gearing up an alt at maximum speed is always an interesting challenge; as I worked on my gear wishlists for Siha, I streamlined a mental process I’ve been using for all my high level alts.

Here’s how the process works. At each “phase” of gearing, go through an item database (like WoWhead or WoWDB) and some gear lists for your class, and pick the most desirable items in each slot. Work out what you have to do to get that item, and break it down into component parts if it involves farming a lot of mats, transmute or tailoring cooldowns, and so on. Managing your cooldowns is especially important - there’s nothing worse than farming up all your mats, and then realising you have to wait over a month to get all your cloth transmutes done. So if your gear needs primal mights, or spellcloth, or something similar, then start your transmutes while you’re still levelling.

Phase 0: Set your goals
Do you want this character to be:

• a raiding alt or new main?
• a PvE alt for more relaxed play (ie 5-mans, daily quests, solo play, etc)?
• a PvP bunny?
• a farming powerhouse?

You want to complete this phase well in advance - not only does it tell you what kind of gear you should go for (resilience? Stamina? DPS stats?) it will also help you pick tradeskills, and it will largely dictate how serious you are about gearing up hard. If you’re only levelling a mage for relaxed PvE play, you’re not likely to blow a thousand gold on the mats for a [Belt of Blasting], are you?

Phase 1: Up-front acquisitions
This phase covers gear you can get within a day or two of hitting 70. It includes:

• BoE blues and epics from the Auction House
• Crafted epics you’ve made or had crafted for you
• Honor-bought PvP gear, if you’ve been PvPing while levelling (which most people don’t, at least not in amounts large enough to buy the gear you want)
• Reputation rewards from factions where you’ve already got the rep while levelling (eg the PvP blues you can buy at Honoured from various TBC factions)

Phase 2: Guaranteed acquisitions
This phase covers gear that you know you’ll be able to get; it’ll just take time:

• Badge purchases
• Arena-bought gear
• Honor-bought gear
• Reputation rewards

Phase 3: Long-term plan
This is probably only necessary for characters that will be raiding or instancing heavily; it basically covers best-in-slot gear from raid and instance drops. Of course, many badge purchases and crafted items are awesome and will not be replaced by anything you’re likely to pick up from raiding or instancing, unless you’re in an endgame guild.

Phase 4: Maintenance
The final stage is just to keep an eye on your gear plan for each phase, and don’t be afraid to adjust the plans when something off your Phase 2 wishlist gets superseded by a lucky raid drop from your Phase 3 wishlist.

Note: This post contains spoilers for Wrath of the Lich King.

This post could also be titled “I’m never going to run out of things to do”.

Upon loading into WotLK for the first time - and oh, I was bouncing in my chair! - I set about checking out some of the banner items for Wrath of the Lich King. Unfortunately, Inscription and the barber salons haven’t been implemented into the game yet; the next thing that caught my eye was the new Achievements system.

I’ve long wanted something like this, some way of measuring all the things us explorer-types (and rabid completionists) do for kicks. Star Wars Galaxies had badges; Lord of the Rings Online had titles; WoW had… nothing. Until now.

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