Most popular WoW Armory crafter gear

So, let's take a look behind the jump and talk about what the most popular crafter gear is for each profession.

Gems

The most popular gem on the Armory is the Runed Scarlet Ruby. (I'll pause a moment for all your dramatic gasps of shock.) It's almost three times as popular as any other gem cut, presumably because the +19 Spell Power gem is worthwhile to the largest cross-section of characters: any spell caster. (Strength gems only really work out for the three plate-wearing classes, for example, while the rest of the physical types tend to rock raw Attack Power.) A close second to the Runed Scarlet Ruby, according to WoWPopular itself, is the Runed Cardinal Ruby. The epic level pattern is probably slightly less popular because the epic gems are more difficult to come by. There will be proportionally more alts and dusty characters wearing the old blue-quality gem.

The next most popular gems are the Solid cuts of either the Sky Sapphire or the Majestic Zircon. The Sky Sapphire is actually much more popular, but I'm guessing it's for similar reasons as the Scarlet Ruby. It's cheap and easy to get compared to the only slightly better Majestic Zircon. This +Stamina gem probably ranks so high because every tank wants as much Stamina as possible . . . and so do many PvP players. The cross-section makes Stamina a very attractive gem stat. (I guess it'd only be completely useless to those players who never, ever die and are somehow nearly immortal. Note that I'm not advocating Stamina over your usual powergame stats, I'm just saying it's not total slop. Dead rogues do no damage.)

The third most popular gem is the Bold Scarlet Ruby. If you got the materials sitting around, expect its epic counterpart -- the Bold Cardinal Ruby -- to go for similar big bucks.While I pointed above that only three plate classes get the big benefit from Strength. But those three classes are immensely popular. So the sheer raw number of people playing death knights, warriors, and paladins drive the demand for these three gems up through the roof.

Blacksmithing

Blacksmiths get a little lucky in their crafted gear choices, since they get to make everyone's weapon. Healers, DPS, and tanks can all find some good stuff from the blacksmithing trade. Still, I bet you can guess the single most popular blacksmithing item still to this very day, right?

If you guessed the Titansteel Guardian, you win yourself a prize. It can service all the healing classes, as well as providing DPS items for all of their casting DPS specs. It goes both ways, you see. Other than that, the next two popular items for blacksmiths are the Tempered Titansteel Helm and the Spiked Titansteel Helm. I think these two items are so popular because of the relative difficulty of picking up a hat until you have sufficient Emblems of Frost, and folks want the quick headstart on gear. (Get what I did there?) The Spiked hat does have a lot of tasty hit rating, as well, which will make it serviceable to plate DPS classes for a very long time.

All of these items are still good for bootstrapping someone into a raid, and they're relatively quickly and easily made for the cost of their materials. That kind of longevity is going to keep these items relevant, even in the current Icecrown Citadel environment.

Leatherworking and Tailoring

Leatherworking and Tailoring both have the same benefit: they provide relevant enchants to even the very highest tier of gear, so they haven't dropped off in value at all. I already talked about these items a great deal a few weeks ago, and I don't want to rehash that territory. Check out What to sell, what to sell.

Inscription

In a radical change from normal operating procedure, there are a few very clear winners for most popular glyphs on the Armory. According to The Crafter's Tome, the four most popular glyphs on the Armory are Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth, Glyph of Raise Dead, Glyph of Horn of Winter, and Glyph of Levitate. So there we go. If you're a master of Inscription, you have a good target for the four most popular glyphs to list on the Auction House.

Engineering

Engineering only has so many saleable materials, two of which are the obvious Icecrown arrows and bullets. The Armor Plated Combat Shotgun is still amazingly popular on Armory characters, as is the Heartseeker Scope. While hunters don't seem to still be the default character class for new players or farming characters, they're still very popular. These crafted staples of hunter gear are still valuable to folks who aren't rocking raid gear.

Explanations for Popularity

The first and obvious example for why many of these items are still so popular has to do with the nature of alts and alting. While you want your secondary, tertiary, and even quaternary characters to be in viable, feasible gear, you're not going to go hilt-deep in trying to equip them with the very best items. And there are so many hours in the day!

So if you want a fresh-to-80 character to be viable without running a bunch of old instances and raids, crafted gear can still give you a quick jog up. If you list a Destroyer on the Auction House for 900 gold, for example, that's not a lot of cash to someone who just wants to get their brand new death knight viable as fast as possible.

Secondly, it's easy to forget that there are millions of players in WoW. This could be hard to believe for many of us, but there are people who don't like raids or instances. For those folks, these crafted items will be the best gear they'll see in Wrath. While it might be below an Icecrown raider's preferred iLevel, it's all still pretty awesome to someone who'll barely see the inside of 5-man isntances.

The Crafter's Tome and WoWPopular for the data!

PTS Patch 1.2: City Siege Improvements & More Crafting Stuff

Mythic announced City Siege Improvements with patch 1.2 in Warhammer. Seriously? C'mon Mythic, that's a drop on the hot stone named capitol raid endgame. The shift in victory point generation is a step in the right direction, but they really need to fix the empty instance grinding. Now people can only do that for two hours instead of six, but still its a large issue. The server should only open new instances once the existing ones are full and place groups automaticly into existing ones where the group fits on. I know this still leaves issues with eg. a full warband starting a new instance, but still its better to prevent farming then let people chose their own instance. Also the queue system needs to work properly. Reduced time for a contested state means less people will have a chance on invader gear tho, resulting in more raids needed to be able to advance in the other capitol raid content, as you need those superior wards. Let's hope the overall zone domination changes will result in more frequent assaults on the main cities to even this out. I saw one item from the improved purple bags from an Altdorf raid and they sure pimped that stuff. Looking forward to Altdorf raids... I won't rant further on the city sieges, did that before. Let's hope the overall package of changes will result in a fun RvR endgame, but we're not there yet.

I fiddled around with crafting on the PTS more. Still trying to figure out the best way for me to change my main to cultivating, as my Choppa will take a while until rank 40. But i guess once the changes go live I'll do one or two afternoons of grinding materials with butchering on Thulf to stock up and then switch. Those mats then have to last until my alt is high enough to provide stuff cultivating can't. Should be fine. Only problem now is, how to make enough space in my bank or bags? Guess I really have to throw away some BoP greys. :S

Meanwhile i brewed some more potions and while many of the existing pots in my bags have been downgraded it looks like the critical success tiers finally work properly. I crafted some pretty nifty potions. One other thing i realized, and think is good: The materials from the guild vendor will provide less powerful potions then eg. potions brewed with butchered mats. Check the screenshot for a comparison, had to use an extender to create the same result with less duration. The multipliers for potions are pretty straight forward to use. The lvl 1 multiplier (vendor) will give you one extra potion, an uncommon lvl 200 multiplier yields five extra potions. I tried for quite a while yesterday to get my hands on a BoP seed, but had no luck.
From the looks of it those seeds can drop of high level champs/heroes, are lvl 200 BoP and will create the mysterious hybrid potions. Despite what the patch notes said, the plants created are currently not BoP. The potions are quite powerful, but have hefty stability requirements. Here is the first screenshot of such a hybrid potion, courtesy of Djanee.


While being on the PTS i met more readers of my blog, which has been a lot of fun. I appologize if my answers sometimes are delayed, but often i have 2-3 conversations going at the same time, about my blog or the patch 1.2 changes. Today i met two fellow Black Orc players, Neil & Sauce, i want to give a shout-out to. I was really curious if the Black Orc Darkpromise gear had any changes to the models with patch 1.2 and its sad to see, there are no changes. Neil was nice enough to pose in Darkpromise and Invader for me - check out the difference. There are so many nice NPC models, when will those placeholders be changed? Darkpromise on an Orc looks like the stuff my rank three auction house alt wears. Sucks.

On further sidenotes: The overflow system was enhanced, once you make space in your bag the overflow items will automaticly go to your bags, nice. Also the stack buying has finally been fixed. When i bought stacks of mats/containers it worked every time on the PTS.

Missing Warhammer Solo Content

Missing Warhammer Solo Content? I want Mythic to fix RvR and endgame content to have fun with my buddies. You know what? Me too! BUT what is there to do in WAR when you log in during off-hours, when everyone else is busy doing stuff you're not up to right now or groups are full? Is there anything you can do solo that's fun? And I'm talking about a rank 40 character that does not have to level anymore. Sure, you can join the odd scenario solo, but it really depends on your class and some luck how that will turn out. Often it's not much fun to solo join scenarios. In oRvR chances are, you'll run into a warband and get stomped. I know what some say, its a MMO - you should play with others. But sometimes you just want to idle around and do something on your own. What options are there else or should there be?

Crafting
If your crafting skills are not maxed yet, sure you can train these... but crafting in WAR is very, very easy so that won't last long. You can start to hunt for ingredients, but you don't really need to as there are only few consumables you really need. I always run around with stacks of those potions i can use for tanking, but neither is it hard to hunt for them nor is grinding mats that much fun. In WAR there is no real hunt for recipes either, so being busy trying to acquire that odd recipe you're missing is not an option. The pre-launch proclaimed "experimental" side for crafting does not really exist in WAR.
You could try to earn money with your crafting skills, but at the moment crafted things like potions are worth pretty much nothing. Talisman makers can make a few bucks and sure you can sell raw ingredients, but nothing really gives you the "feeling" you created something valuable that is worth selling and showing off proudly at the auction house. Crafting in WAR right now is not a fun experience once you get the hang of it and the "products" are only of limited use. The ingame economy is quite broken compared to other games.

Warhammer Solo Content
Once you hit rank 40 there are not many quests still worth doing. Most likely you'll have solved all existing epic quests with rank 37 or right after. Why not have some loooong and epic rank 40 questline to immerse in? In Age of Conan you had this very long and character defining main quest line you were following all the way up to max. level. Some epic rank 40 questlines with a good story to tell, a few nice rewards along the way and some epic challenges would be great. In AoC there were many instances for that questline you had to enter solo and no one else could help you with. Some of them had good challenges concerning the appearing fights and you had to utilize your character properly to beat them. Talking about those instances, why not have a duo dungeon? I know many play with their girlfriend/wife or best friend. A challenging dungeon for two players could be fun as well. Could be like an epic PQ, maybe 30-40min long, repeatable once a day. And i really don't care if you can only find social clothing in there, just want something unique.

Tome unlocks
Of course there are tome unlocks you can hunt as well. But most are pretty useless when it comes to character development and just fluff. I like fluff, but killing thousands of NPCs (for the unlocks not everyone has) is not that much fun. And once you scouted the existing world there is not so much more to see.

Beside renown, right now there is only so much to do when soloing. Shouldn't there be at least some things to do? I really hope they'll pimp crafting some more. I read in some comment from a dev that they'll have another look at crafting (especially apothecary) again. Let's hope they'll fix the highest tier potions and maybe add some fun (transformation, speed, etc.) potions. IMO it should be possible to advance your characters devlopment solo in some more ways. And if its an epic questline that's highly entertaining, that's fine with me as well. The rewards can also be of a cosmetic nature... new dyes, cool cloaks, trophies, maybe some character customizing stuff you can apply like the CE stuff. Do you log in sometimes to discover everyone else is busy/offline? What do you do? What do you WANT to do?

PTS Patch 1.2: Guild Crafting Materials and High Guild Rank Mounts

Tonight on the EU PTS a larger zone domination test was organized. As part of it, GOA created a guild (highest rank) and people could join it. While i had no time to stick around for the RvR, i managed to sneak into the guild long enough to check out all the guild benefits you can buy from the guild vendor. The first screenshot collage shows you all the mats you can buy from the guild vendor (those need different guild ranks) and in addition some potions you can brew with those mats. The rez potion (cost you 62.44s in mats) is really cool - being a standard bearer i can also rez with the banner, but could prove useful. You also see that the snare potions are not fixed and the resulting potion will always have the same effect. In addition to what you can see on the screenshot you'll be able to buy different seeds (only different in level not in type from what you get at every other vendor) and also different containers and curios for talisman makers.

juicy stuff: New guild rank mounts! Since the test guild "Eternal Destruction" was of the highest rank, not only could we buy the guild rank 25 mounts, but also the new improved mounts (faster & lower dismount chance) you can get at guild rank 37. The mounts you can buy from the guild vendor have three additional colors and the faster ones are slightly armored, but have the same color then the other ones from the guild vendor. While normal mounts have 50% speed increase, the armored ones have a 60% speed. So people don't need to worry that it will make such a difference in RvR. 10% is not that much tho, we had a short race and it was a tad faster, but not very. Here are the pics of all the guild rank Orc boars:

The cost of 150g is really cheap for the better mounts IMO. It's just that guild rank 37 is not that fast to reach. Thirst is at rank 29 currently, still some levels to make. I know not all will ride boars, so here is a screenshot of an armored dark elf mount. I also met Oziriz, a reader of my blog, inside the Viper Pit and could convince him with a few coins to show of the Chosen steeds (1,2,3,4,5). Talking about blog readers, i met quite a few during my adventures on the PTS. If you play and see me standing in IC, say hello... :)

At the start of todays RvR event i was also able to catch Magnus (GOA) for a few words on his Black Orc in full Conqueror gear. He was joining the fray to fight Order in Praag himself. Overall i've to say that the atmosphere on the EU PTS is very relaxed and people are willing to test things out. Hell, I've send a huge chunk of bug reports myself. The more i see from the patch 1.2, the better it looks. While crafting has been easy before in WAR, after the patch it will still be easy, but much better to understand for people and they ironed out some bugs. And finally crafting will be useful, all of the trades. Personally I'll need to switch around my trades a bit (due to the BoP seeds/plants), but that's fine.

Warhammer 1.2 Rare Hybrid Potions

With warhammer patch 1.2 going live on the EU servers today, i spend most of the day organizing stuff and training crafting skills, etc. Thulf is now switched to 200 cultivating. Its not that hard to do. The increased critical failure rate is a tad annoying and additives are rather costly at the vendors, have to keep that in mind when pricing potions i guess. A major part of the day me and others spend on trying to get our hands on as many rare BoP seeds as possible. I created a large screenshot collage with the 12 new hybrid seeds, plants and potions known to me, check them out... some really cool potions there. One thing i noticed: Special moments with the rare seeds don't yield any dye pigments like the patch notes state. Ah well, maybe they'll be added later. I don't have any reports about special seeds dropping from bosses inside the instances or something like that. If you find/see seeds or potions that are missing in my list please poke me.

HAHA... many contacted me today because of the first live event title you can gain: Stuntie Stompa! Thanks guys, i did not miss it and had a gazillion people tell me they had to think of me when they got their title. funny. =)

TIP of the day: Since i wanted to give Irinia data for her Crafting Info Tooltip about the new seeds, i was researching the WAR chatlog. Some time back Mythic disabled the logging to disc and if you want to switch it back on you need to manually edit the UserSettings.xml file and change Logging logAllToDisk="false" to "true".

Warhammer 1.2 Crafting PTS, Mounts and more

The character copy works now on the Warhammer EU PTS. So i was able to transfer Thulf over and check some stuff. To my surprise the model for the Sentinel helmet changed. O.o You can dye the helmet now, but tbh i liked the old helmet better... wtf? It's still not possible to dye Black Orc Sentinel properly on the PTS. The Vomitous Choppa got a new model and looks very cool now. Many of the higher level Choppa weapons got a new (all the same) model as well. The rest of my items looked the same from what i can remember.

I toyed around with Warhammer 1.2 Crafting some on the PTS . Apothecary, Cultivating and Butchering are much better now. I can only assume (did not test the other professions), it's similar with the rest. They fixed a lot and streamlined the process, which makes it much easier for people to understand. Cultivating is finally a useful profession and its rather easy to level now that you don't have to grind for seeds. Basicly you buy lvl 1 seeds from a vendor and use plant reaping (Ctrl-Right-Click) to produce 2-4 seeds from it - this process will also yield resins (stabilizers). Usually Cultivating will yield you 2-3 plants from that seed, a super-critical success will also grant you one plant from the next higher tier plus dye pigments. You then convert that higher lvl plant into seeds and start over from there. It's much faster to train then right now on live. Stimulant ingredients seem to be bugged right now, at least i could not make any use of them during my quick test. Seeds & Plants will stack up to 50 now. yay! It looks like there will be some cool/weird potions you can brew with 1.2, like resurrection potions, increased crafting skill potions, +morale and a few others. From the looks of it all apothecary potions will have proper "rare" tiers. The ingredients to multiply or enhance potions work out of the box. Don't bother to much with crafting before the patch, some eg. existing healing potions were downgraded through the patch.

In the capitol cities you can visit your scavenging/butchering trainer and pick up a quest to convert into the other skill with your same skill level. Crafting mats that are not ingame anymore can either be converted into the same skill level "new" ingredient or will convert into some rotten parts, 20 of those can be converted into Chaos Black Dye. Because of this and the other changes to loot tables, dyes will be much more accessable after the 1.2 patch. I already heard about the first new dye from crafting , liche purple.

With the funds Thulf brought to the PTS i was at least able to buy the new "standard" mounts. To check out the other ones you need guild rank, which does not transfer over. The old boar is the Light Brown Ridin' Boar and the two new ones i post a screenshot below:



My Choppa is rank 10 and still a lot of fun to play, I'll definately stick to my plan and create an alt Choppa. Thulf being a tank will still stay my main, the new changes to the Black Orc are mostly great, the Da'Toughest selfhealing was nerfed rather much tho. I did not play around with the Black Orc much on the PTS, was thinking about maybe checking out Lost Vale on the PTS if i get the peeps. But then again, Darkpromise is still nice to gain on live.

Warhammer Patch 1.2 Highlights

Warhammer Online producer Jeff Hickman has written a terrific overview of the Warhammer v1.2 patch that is scheduled to go live sometime next week on the public test server. Find out what is in store below:

WAAAGH!!!

Man do we have a set of notes for you...we've been talking about them, and
hinting, and finally the first draft of the Public Test Server notes are here
for your enjoyment! As always PTS notes are constantly changing throughout the
testing process.

We'll see you on the PTS next week, there's a lot to test so be sure to bring
your game face...for now relax, read, enjoy, and most of all have fun!

Producer's Note

Well here it is; The Public Test Patch Notes for Game Update 1.2. Many hours
of blood, sweat and tears went into these notes, and it shows. From the sheer
size (over 55 pages!) to the numerous improvements being implemented, it's all
been a labor of love (or was that WAAAGH!).

In the notes below you'll see over 500 bug fixes, 10 plus pages of career
balancing, numerous RvR improvements, UI improvements, continued building on our success with improving performance and server stability and a considerable
review of our dungeon loot itemization.

While these notes are still technically a "work in progress" they represent
the majority of the changes that will be implemented with Game Update 1.2.
Please keep in mind, these notes are for the public test server and can change
periodically throughout the Public Testing Process.

As always, thank you to our Players for their continued support.

Jeff Hickman
Executive Producer
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

Highlights

• New Careers! Unleash the savage fury of the relentless Orc Choppa, or take
  up the doom-laden oath of the unstoppable Dwarf Slayer. These two new
  melee-focused careers relish the thrill of fighting on the front lines and
  laying waste to all foes that come within reach of their mighty blades.
  
• Bitter Rivals join the battle! Introducing the newest live event for
  Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. "Bitter Rivals" focuses on the ancient
  hatred that burns between the Dwarf and greenskin races. Millennia of conflict
  in the Worlds Edge Mountains have honed the enmity that exists between the Orcs and Goblins and the stout Dwarfs to a razor-sharp edge, and when these nemeses meet in battle, it is war without mercy.
  
• Fight for control of the warped Twisting Tower! The battle rages in this new Tier 4 Scenario found deep in the heart of the maddening Chaos Wastes. Here, the warping power of Chaos is at its peak, transforming the very fabric of reality in defiance of all reason. Warriors of Order and Destruction must grapple for control of this ancient citadel, for if the secrets of the Twisting Tower should fall into enemy hands, the tide of battle will surely turn. Like the Reikland Factory, the Twisting Tower will be available for all players for a limited time as a preview to accompany the Bitter Rivals event. Be sure to stake your claim to the Twisting Tower while you can!
  
• Answer the Call to Arms with new Realm vs. Realm gameplay enhancements! Introducing the new Open RvR Rallying Cry system that summons you to key battles for Tiers 1 and 2. The new Zone Control Domination System for Tiers 2 through 4 rewards a realm that truly conquers the battlefield. Also, many improvements to siege weapons ensure that the mighty engines of war are now more lethally effective than ever. See below for additional details.
  
• New treasures await! Across-the-board itemization improvements have been made to the Fortresses, world dungeons, and city dungeons of WAR, including better world drops, quest rewards, Influence rewards, and more!
  
• Crafting System Improvements! We've made many improvements to the game's crafting system, including pairing-off specific gathering skills with specific production skills in order to make crafters more self-sufficient. Also, the leveling curve of trade skills has been improved and fewer components are
  required to create items. Last, but certainly not least, is the addition of new
  craftable items!
  
• Easy Public Quests make their debut in Tiers 2, 3, and 4. Scaled for
  courageous bands of 1 to 3 adventurers, these Public Quests offer a rewarding
  PvE experience without a large commitment of forces. You'll find one Easy Public Quest in each Chapter, so gather a few friends, or venture out alone... if you dare!
  
• Multiple mail attachments! Now you can send several attached items with a single mail message.
  
• Two new secret lairs await! Finding the new hidden lairs is only half the
  battle. Figuring out how to open the door - and surviving the dangers inside -
  is another matter, entirely!

Warhammer crafting system

Many of the systems developed for Warhammer Online focus around the art of war itself. Realm vs. Realm combat, Keeps, sieges ... the bread and butter of the game is combat, adventuring, and excitement. Which is not to say that a few moments of quiet time aren't appropriate even in the harsh world of WAR. The most recent newsletter unveiled a new production video from none other than Mark Jacobs himself, talking all about warhammer crafting.

Mark Jacobs did a very nice little video that came out in the newsletter that covers pretty much all of the stuff I would be talking to you about, so I'm going to try and see whether we can find some other little things to talk about that he just mentioned in broader terms. I think the best way to talk about crafting is first of all to admit that there's gathering, and then there's crafting. There is how you get your stuff, and that's how you turn your stuff into other things. The skills that we're talking about at the moment, we have four gathering and two crafting. The two crafting are Apothecary and Talisman-making, and the four gathering are Butchering, Scavenging, Cultivating and Salvaging. Some of them function like skills you might have seen in other games, like Butchering, and Scavenging is extracting stuff from corpses.


Warhammer Cultivating is a pretty new idea for an MMO. Essentially you start off with something useless and spend some time and attention, nurture with love, and water. Eventually your seeds can grow into something that is much more useful and someone else will want to buy off you and use to make potions. You can, of course, use your own materials. Salvaging is taking something that you have, that maybe you don't want, hitting it with a hammer lots of times so it breaks apart. Then you have some stuff left over. Apothecary is potions lotions and powders, it's essentially our combat consumable creation system. Talisman-making is making stuff that goes into slots, where those slots are on weapons and amour. I don't think Mark touched too much on how those skills basically interact with one another, I've seen a few people asking questions about that.

Just as an example of how resource gathering works. Butchering is where I go out into the wilderness and see a wolf or a boar, and I kill it and some flies start buzzing around it, and I interact with it. Then I get some loot! And the kind of loot you get from Butchering is - mostly - going to help you out with the Warhammer apothecary system. So ingredients you might get to make potions are like guts and blood, and goo and all kinds of disgusting things. Scavenging on the other hand feels basically like the same kind of skill except that you're doing it on predominantly player races. Anything sentient, like Mark said "anything with pockets". When you Scavenge from them you get things that are slightly less disgusting, things like gold teeth, you might get fleas and ticks, that sort of stuff that's stuck to their body. Generally, the stuff you get from Scavenging will help you out in Talisman-making.

There is a bit of crossover, if you do Scavenging there are some things you use in apothecary that aren't available elsewhere, aren't as easily available elsewhere. The same thing with the other two resource skills. Cultivating is growing stuff, and stuff you grow in Warhammer Cultivating generally ties in to apothecary too. Salvaging - that stuff generally ties in to Talisman-making. So we give players a choice, they can have one gathering, one crafting. At very low levels there's enough to just get started at your local crafting vendor. Once you get above that, you need to go and do stuff on your own. With your one gathering skill you can pretty much get just about everything you need, but there are going to be some times where you need to trade with other players.

You only have the option of choosing one gathering and one crafting? You can't do two gatherings?

No. Definitely one and one, Mark replied to someone asking that question on one of the boards today. The primary reason is just that we don't have that many skills at the moment. The other thing we've tried to do with all of these skills is - I'm not a big fan of chasing yellow dots on a radar screen. When I play our game I want to get into a scenario, I want to get into a keep siege and I want to kill people! I don't want to be doing rings around the edge of the zone or looking for yellow dots on my radar to go and interact with not-people. I want to get in to RvR and kill people. So - developing the entire crafting system, which is based on Mark's design, we tried very hard to make sure that if you want to do crafting, it's not going to impact your ability to do RvR. It's not going to soak up time, you're not going to have to go to specific places and do it. If you want to do it, you can just do it. If you've got 10 seconds downtime? Make a potion, or start something growing, while you're waiting for the scenario timer to kick off so you can get in and start killing people. That's been a very important, conscious choice for us. I think we've pretty much hit it on just about everything you do in the game to do with crafting.

So if we're talking about how they feel to use ... Butchering and Scavenging, the way they play out is very reminiscent of World of Warcraft's skinning. Salvaging shares some similarities to WoW's disenchanting, some of the things you can do in Salvaging. Let's say I have my staff, I don't want it any more, or it dropped and I don't use it, and so it's got Wisdom and Intelligence on it. When you go to salvage it, it'll give you the option to choose which one of the bonuses you'd like to extract. Once you've made that choice, the end result, the stuff you get will actually be different depending on your choice. Then, you take one of those things and plug it into your Talisman-making. Let's say you chose intelligence, if you use that as your core ingredient for Talisman-making, you'll make a talisman that boosts intelligence.

Mark in the podcast was emphasizing the exploratory nature of the system, and that's the sort of thing we've been trying to ensure all the way through. We don't want the system to be as simple as in some games, where if you find a recipe or unlock a recipe then it's the same set of four items you need to make it. In our system, there are many different ways to arrive at an end product. The interesting choice we give to the players is to kind of figure out the best way to get the ingredients they need to make that, based on their own play-style.

I've artificially given myself 100 skill at Cultivating, which has opened up three of my four plots already. The first thing you do when you get the cultivate window to open is you stick a seed in a plot. The low-level stuff grows pretty quickly, and you can have multiple things growing at the same time. When you back out, it shows you which state which ones are - all of these are at the beginning stage at the moment. There's an overall time, there's a time per stage. What we can also do is input additives that will reduce the time taken as well.

You can use one additive per stage?

Yes, at specific times. Basically what happens in Cultivating is, you're growing stuff. We'll also fill in some little surprise things in, like you can have criticals and supercriticals, and the chance of those happening can be modified by the additives that you use. If you find a special sort of soil, maybe that makes criticals happen more often, or maybe it makes supercriticals happen more often. We're also trying to do things like hybridization. Essentially most of the seeds you grow give you ingredients that you're going to use to make something. We are reducing the amount of types that you can immediately get, and make them happen as a result of say a supercritical in cultivation. So you might say "oh, let's grow a respiration plant" and then grow ten of them, and one's a supercritical and suddenly it gives you a healing seed. You haven't been able to make healing potions before, and you can't find them anywhere.

You've created the healing seed as a hybridization byproduct of the respiration seeds. Cultivation's also going to be a way that we can put in more weird stuff. You might be growing some particular plants and you might get an insect at the end of one of the products, which you can grind down and use as a pigment, Or, you get a sap or some goo that you can use as an ingredient for something else. Once it's fully grown, at the end you can harvest it. Oh, I got one of those back. I'll try to see if it's in a stack ... I got a failure! There's a common mushroom there, which ultimately will get sold to a vendor.

Some of the seeds can also come from Scavenging, some of them come from just killing particular types of animals. Usually ones that have hair, because thematically, it's stuck in their hair. We have the starter stores mostly as a customer service for our players. Once they get into they game, they can start out and get their first few skill levels in a particular skill, at no risks, the guy in the store will just sell you as many of the skill level 1 stuff as you want. Then when you outlevel that, you're on your own, and you have to go find stuff. So particularly potent or rare seeds, find more PQ bosses, any particularly hard piece of content, as well as regular drops and Scavenging.

So not only do the gathering skills work with the crafting skills, but they also overlap with each other?

Yeah - there's a little bit of overlap all over the place. Like earlier on, when I was saying Scavenging mostly helps you out with Talisman-making; there are edge conditions and all sorts of weirdness that we put in. Hopefully players will find it interesting, particularly like killing someone and finding they had a leech on them. Then you loot the leech and you say "Oh, this can be used to make healing potions, because it's a leech!" Stuff like that. So apothecary is a potion-making system. As a skill level one player I learn this skill from a trainer, and then I go to this guy here and he can give me some stuff. First thing I need to do is put it in a container, and then put in my main ingredient, and then there's a little thing that tells me whether the mixture is stable or not.

So it's completely stable with these new additives. I press 'Brew', and we get a potion out at the end. It's real quick to make something as an Apothecary. Now the really cool thing about the system is we have a main ingredient which goes in that slot, which basically can determine what kind of potion we're making. In this case, you can check on the tooltip and know that this guy always makes intelligence potions. However the problem with the main ingredients is that they're very, very unstable. So as soon as you put them into a container, you are going to have a battle to make sure the overall stability of the concoction is positive. So, to do that, I've just used the three basic ingredients that I know have good stability. Other ingredients can also do other things, like the two basic other types which I'm going to show you today can increase the length of an effect on a potion, and increase the number made. It's a little bit difficult to be designing potions early on. Once you get into the swing of it, and you are starting to find more gatherables and you also have more money, you can buy stuff and you can can trade from players. It enables you to start designing the sort of potions that you want. Mark used a really good example in his podcast where he said "I'm going to make some potions for my guildmates ...

What are we doing tonight?" "Well, we're just going to run a bunch of scenarios. We're going to be doing RvR." In RvR, you don't survive very long, it's just a fact of life. You die every five minutes. It's fun, but you die every five minutes! So, it would be pointless for me to use my ingredients that lengthen the effect. Every time I revive, I take another potion. So, instead I'm going to concentrate on adding extra potency in, or maybe, concentrate on adding ingredients that will make more potions. Conversely if I'm going to solo, if I'm going to try and get a couple of levels tonight, do a couple of quests, maybe join some other people in PQ. I'm not really expecting to die all that often - it's PvE! So, I might concentrate on my ingredients that super-lengthen the length of the effect. Instead of making intelligence by ten, for ten minutes, I might make intelligence for ten, for two hours. In which case, I only need to drink one, and I can save all my ingredients for when we go RvRing and make the short powerful ones.

Is there a similar mechanic on the Talisman-making side? You mentioned breaking down materials based on their item bonuses, but is there any sort of balancing that goes on there?


It's similar, but it's... it's the same system, but there are some differences. For example, for apothecary - apothecary is all about managing your stability, making sure your overall stuff is stable, and we give the players a little bar on the side. For Talisman-making, it's all about making this minor object of power as potent and powerful as they can possibly make it. So there's no real stability involved in that, it's just brute force power. Conceptually it's very similar, you're sticking four things into a container, pressing a button and hopefully awesome pops out the end. The types of things you need to make a talisman is a fragment, which is the thing you get from Magical Salvaging. Presumably as a player you've already made the choice about which bonus you're trying to make. Then you need some gold essence, gold in Warhammer is traditionally the color of hedge-wizardry, talisman, magic, that kind of stuff.

We're going to require you need some gold essence. Gold essence is the thing that is created by apothecary people. We'll allow you to have some really crappy gold essence probably from the store or from some early on PQs. That said, to get the superpowerful talismans, you're going to want to have a friend that's into apothecary. Talismans thematically are kinda like good luck charms. It's funny ... in the Warhammer world, they're not necessarily inherently magical themselves. They're magical because you believe they're magical - which is kind of a weird concept to get your head around initially. The Empire soldiers will nail two brass pennies to the front of their shield as a good luck charm. Are the pennies actually magical? No, they're not, but because they think they are, they become magical. It's like a lot of trust and belief and all kinds of nonsense.

So talismans work a bit like - thematically they're a bit like that. If you believe all this stuff's going to be magical, you can make something cool. So the third things you need, we call them curios, they're things you get from Scavenging. Like you Scavenge some player races, they might have in their pocket a lucky charm - a rabbit's foot pendant or a four-leaf clover. The third ingredient for making a talisman is something that someone considered to inherently have some power to it. Then the fourth thing is another magical type of essence that predominantly occurs as a byproduct of Salvaging. Take all this stuff, squish it together, and if you have the best versions of each one of those four things, you get a really good talisman at the end of it. If not, you get a crappy one.

What kind of support does the Auction House offer for people who want to offer their goods and services from these kind of products? Is there an easy way to run down a potion based on the length of time?

Yes. Our Auction House functions like you think it would. However, we have extra levels of filtering available that you can use to search for. There's not just a pulldown that says "Potions" and it will show you all the potions in the Auction House. You can actually get down to the level of clarity that you would need, given that the crafting systems themselves can create stuff of that level of granularity.

This is obviously a question looking out a bit ... do you guys see adding in more crafting elements as the years go by?

I think we would be foolish not to!

It seems like you're aiming to launch with a very tight, very core element...

We wanted to concentrate on - I don't want to use the word 'consumable', it's not an all-encompassing term - wanted to focus on the things that are the most going to help players out in RvR. Viscerally. Like - drink a potion, and suddenly you become stronger on the battlefield. That's the kind of effect you want to have. One thing about talismans is I'm not sure if it's been mentioned - is while some of them last forever, some of them don't - and that enables us to put better abilities in them because we know they're not going to last. They're not going to stick around for that long. So, with that respect, they're also consumables. We want to give players as much ammunition for augmenting and specializing their characters for RvR.

The choice to not include a weaponsmith or armorsmith is interesting. Was that based on just how the designers wanted to itemize the game, or was it so you didn't have people doing really passive activities in the game?

I think every game I've ever played, I've always been a little bit upset with how blacksmithing / weaponsmithing works, in that they never give me the end results that I really want. A lot of games there'll be the discussion whether crafted stuff should be better than the stuff I get elsewhere. Not necessarily even high-end content, but just my normal, going about my business doing quests kind of thing. I don't remember ever playing a game where I thought that mix was "right". Personally, I'd love to put in a system where you could do crafting and that was the pinnacle of stuff in the game - but there are other aspects to take into account. I'm not sure the main reason why we didn't do it. From my point of view, being in charge of the team that had to do it, we know we have this awesome exploratory system of apothecary and Talisman-making. We have the associated gathering skills, and we just want to knock those out the park first. We'll give you the tools that impact your initial RvR experience the most, early on in your lifetime in the game. After that, we'll see what happens. We're probably going to be around for ten years, it's going to be five or six expansions ... we've got to hold something back!

Warhammer Online Bots, WAR Bots, Warhammer Online Bot

Warhammer Online Bots, WAR Bots, Warhammer Online Bot

So you want to bot in Warhammer online. Well there are some things you need to know. These are going to be the perks and the jerks of the gaming experience while using WAR bots. Keep in mind though the number 1 thing is all Warhammer Online Bots will have a risk to your account and that must be the number 1 thing you should take into consideration. Because if you bot and you are found out there is a very high chance that you will have your account permanently banned from the game so now that you have been forewarned lets talk about just how a Warhammer Online bot can improve your gaming experience.

Well Warhammer Online bots can come in a variety of forms but we will discuss the 3 main types of War Bots and how they can help you in your gaming experience. The first type of War Bots is going to be the one most players crave and that is a Warhammer Online Hunting Bot. With a war hunting bot you can easily kill mobs and loot them in the game. Then you can hit more than likely the max current level in the game of 40 right away. This also can give you an advantage when it comes to having the best things in the game. The form of this will be in the amount of gold you collect killing mobs and all the rare items you can find by killing mobs in the game. If botting isnt your thing you can always go and use Warhammer Online Cheats or otherwise known as Warhammer Online Exploits.

The second major warhammer bot is going to have to be a Warhammer Online PvP bot. Warhammer Online is very big on PvP the game was actually created with the mentality of doing lots of Player killing and large player interacting events. So of course it would make sense that having a bot that could help you kill other players is something lots of players want. With a bot like that you can then go and kill players the fastest way possible. Because human key strokes take time when a bot can instantly look at your character and hit the right keys at the right time giving you an advantage over another player that in the long run will allow you to easily be able to kill. Some players even at times have used Warhammer Online Dupes to help them with botting.

The last type of Warhammer online bot is going to be a War crafting bot. With crafting bots you can then go out and collect lots of resources in the game. Also with crafting bots you can make certain goods instantly in the game. Because with lots of games you have to take large amounts of time to actually go out find the materials. Then take the time of clinking buttons over and over again to make certain items that you can then developed into items that actually have a large amount of in game value. So of course a Warhammer Online Crafting bot will help you gaming experience. Well those are just a few of the War Bots out there keep in mind it’s not the last of them. So enjoy knowing exactly how bots can help you and the risks associated with them.

Warhammer online crafting system

With Warhammer Online releasing on September 18th, many of you may be wondering about the Warhammer crafting system. I was able to do some crafting last weekend during the Preview weekend and would like to share what I have learned.

Warhammer crafting is pretty straight forward. There are two different types of warhammer crafting - harvesting and finished product crafting. There are four types of harvesting crafts. Scavenging is scrounging usable stuff from humanoid type mobs after you have killed them. Butchering is pretty much the same thing as scavenging only from dead animals. Cultivating is farming or growing items to be used to make finished products. Magical salvaging is breaking down items into crafting supplies. There are only two types of finished product crafting at this time. Apothecary is basically potion making and can be pretty handy. You can make healing potions, stat buffs, or cause damage that can really help in RvR. Talisman Making creates adornments to be added to armor and weapons.

I would recommend everyone get a harvesting craft early in the game. Around level 5, you will come across a quest camp with crafting trainers in it. As a beginner Warhammer craft I would recommend Scavenging. It seems there are more humanoids to be killed than animals and even if you don't plan to craft right away or ever, you can scavenge items to sell to a merchant to make money early on. You can even scavenge from other players after you have killed them in RvR. It also makes sense to have your first character scavenge because it doesn't require anything but dead bodies to skill up and you gain items usable in cultivating, apothecary and talisman making.

Finished product crafting is pretty easy and skill ups come fast. There are no recipes in Warhammer crafting so you just open the crafting window, put the items in there and see what happens when you combine them. In Warhammer Apothecary, for instance, you put in a glass vial to hold your potion, you add a basic ingredient like Elvish Parsley (to make a healing potion) and then you have three more slots that you can buy items to enhance the combination, increase the number of potions created or make it more stable (more likely to succeed). This is where your scavenging comes in. If you have scavenged something that says it does something interesting, you can just throw it in to the mix at this point and see what you get from the combine. No recipes to search for or buy.

According to Mythic, Warhammer crafting is not necessary but is meant to enhance RvR. So it's all about being tougher or better at attacking or more resistant to magic, etc. Everything in the game is centered on killing the enemy.