Recently, Blizzard has been supplying us with a lot of information for their plans in Cataclysm. So far we've learned about changes to the stat systems, as well as talent trees. Everything announced so far will be incredibly far reaching, and affect many aspects of the game, including some that have been hanging around since vanilla.

In an effort to keep our loyal readers informed, WoW.com has been doing its best to cover every inch of blue text we find. It came to our attention that we had overlooked one important change when we discussed the effects of stat and system changes in Cataclysm the other week. So, without further ado, this morning I will be explaining how the ability Basic Campfire is affected by the upcoming expansion.

Okay, not really. I'm actually just going to tell you about the ability itself, and how it has changed.

Basic Campfire is an ability that is learned when you first train cooking. With just one rank in cooking you can create a campfire to roast your raw food over, and in the process grant a 4 spirit buff to anyone close by. No materials or regeants are required to create a fire, and you can make one almost anywhere except underwater. (Oddly though, you can create one on top of water if you are buffed with Levitate, Water Walking, or Path of Frost.) The fire will not inflict any damage if you stand in it; though if you have the non-combat pet Plump Turkey, when it is in range of a basic campfire it will be rush toward the open flame, "sensing its destiny," and martyr itself for the sake of your stomach.

Basic Campfire has undergone a few changes over the many years of WoW. After I was informed that the Basic Campfire is one of Garrosh Hellscream's many contenders for the position of the next warchief, I decided to research the ability's roots. Here is a short list of interesting thing I found about Basic Campfire.

• it used to require the tool Flint and Tinder to make. Before Patch 3.0.8, it also required Simple Wood as a regeant.
• Patch 3.0.8 also removed damage dealt to players who got too close to the fire. One comment I found mentioned that players in raids used to start Basic Campfires under afk players as practical jokes.
• Before Patch 3.2.2 Basic Campfire had a cast time of 10 seconds.
• The ability used to be part of a secondary profession, Survival, which was removed before the game went live. The ability involved buffing your party with spirit through the use of campfires and torches. The ability Bright Campfire, was the updated version of Basic Campfire.

Personally, I still miss carrying around a stack of Simple Wood. It felt so... authentic.

So what do you miss about the game that has changed in the past two expansions? What will you miss in Cataclysm?

Tags: basic-campfire, campfire, cataclysm, flint-and-tinder, game-discussion, gamer-discussion, simple-wood, survival, survival-skills, world-of-warcraft-discussion, world-of-warcraft-hot-topics, world-of-warcraft-topics, wow-discussion, wow-hot-topics, wow-issues, wow-topics

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