Posts with tag Tillers

Earlier today, we mentioned Bashiok's patch 5.2 release date estimate of late February. However, the blog post in which this tentative release date was mentioned contains a lot of great information on preparing for the patch which should not be missed.

Some of the topics covered include:

• How to reach the Isle of the Thunder King and entering the new raid instance.
• Throne of Thunder normal difficulty available in the first week, Heroic difficulty opens the week after
• Throne of Thunder on Raid Finder opens the same week as Heroic raids (Week 2) with a new section each week after that
• 480 item level needed to enter Throne of Thunder on Raid Finder
• All Valor points will be reset and converted down to Justice points
• Current Valor items will have their costs reduced (25-50% reduction)
• Valor item upgrades won't be available in patch 5.2
• Recapping the Legendary meta gem and what will happen to your Sha-Touched weapons
• Ability to champion select reputations for the first Heroic and Scenario queue of the day
• The Tillers can also help your reputation by issuing you work orders from the various factions.
• 5.2 Valor items are tied to raid reputation from boss kills and not dailies (which can be earned via Raid Finder)

If you're still looking for ways to prepare for patch 5.2, our very own Kristin wrote up some excellent points to get yourself ahead of the pack.

Patch 5.2 will bring new dailies, new factions, another raid, and a kitchen sink. It's pretty much a super patch. With so many additions, you may start to feel overwhelmed at the thought of class changes on top of new grinds -- and you know, pets and stuff. Never fear, we're here to help you prepare! Before we get too deep into this, remember that everything we've learned about patch 5.2 is from the PTR. Things can change!

• Farm (or buy) Ghost Iron. Both blacksmithing and engineering will see new unique crafting materials similar to the scribe's Scroll of Wisdom -- Lightning Steel Ingot and Stabilized Lightning Source, respectively. Both require 10 Ghost Iron bars, so snag some Ghost Iron now, and use some of it to transmute into Living Steel. Many new crafted items will require it.
• Get ahead in your Wrathion quests. In 5.2, Wrathion will ask for 40 Trillium Bars in a quest on the way to the legendary meta gems, so start gathering the ore now to get a head start.
• Get your Tillers rep to Exalted and unlock all plots. Although farming may not be appealing to everyone, Tillers rep is one of the easiest to max out. At Exalted, we'll be able to use work orders to gain rep in patch 5.2.

I think I've firmly established that I really love doing quests, and that I'm fine with daily quests as a whole. Sure, some of them may have had their moments of extreme frustration, but by and large the daily quest system in Mists of Pandaria is pretty entertaining. But while it's entertaining to me, and it's fine with some players, there are others who cannot stand the system. They hate daily quests. The sight of a blue exclamation point is a source of constant irritation.

And it doesn't really matter how you wrap up that package, it's still going to be annoying content that players feel they must complete in order to be competitive. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to matter what is tied to the system, or if it offers rewards of value, like Lesser Charms or valor points. Adding the value to the daily quest system doesn't make completing the quests any more compelling, it just makes them another chore that must be completed.

Which is why daily quests need to go away.

This hit my inbox the other day:

What's the most profitable thing to plant in a farm? I'd assume in most cases people plant for their profession or whatever raw material sells for the most. I, however, am a chronic alt-oholic and have every profession maxed and available to me. I don't raid and can't stand dailies, so I only have patterns available that are vendor trained, bought with spirits of harmony, or learned off a cooldown. So what's the start and end of the equation?

-Matt

So what is the most profitable thing to plant on your farm? Matt assumes correctly that the majority of people simply plant what they can use to avoid having to buy off the Auction House. There is plenty of opportunity to improve this, though!

Generally, the least profitable thing to farm is vegetables. This is only true because everyone else already farms them, and they're all you can farm until you get farther into the Tillers reputation grind. The reputation seeds for leather, ore, cloth, or enchanting mats are generally lower yield than simply getting Harmonies and trading those for what you need, and that's generally less than you'd get by planting Enigma Seeds, selling everything you get, and using that gold to buy leather, ore, cloth, or enchanting mats. In short, the most profitable thing to plant is usually Songbell Seeds or Enigma Seeds.

Songbell Seeds

Songbell Seeds provide you with Motes of Harmony, which provide Spirits of Harmony. If you have a profession that requires these to make items valuable to other players or allows you to use them to skip daily cooldowns, then you can figure out exactly how much one of them is worth and do the math.

2012 is nearly over. If you were playing WoW on this date in 2011, you were playing a significantly different game, raiding the ultimate raid of Cataclysm with the Dragon Soul, or... probably not doing much else. One of the biggest changes between then and now is one that's often commented on, namely that there's a much wider variety of content in Mists of Pandaria at the endgame level. Level 90 players can choose to run scenarios, heroic dungeons, use the Looking for Raid tool, engage in pet battles, pursue one of a wide variety of daily quests which allow for the gaining of reputation with various factions, run challenge mode dungeons, or get involved in 10/25 man raiding. One can even step into older raid content with or without a group for the purposes of collecting gear for transmogrification or simply for fun.

I've said before and will say again that quests like Welcome to the Machine demonstrated real mastery on the part of the development team behind Cataclysm. To my mind, the real lesson of the Cataclysm to Mists transition is threefold. Cataclysm was extremely well designed, but the majority of its best content is in those revamped 1 to 60 jones, or to coin a term, is in vertical content, a pillar of content that players ascend. Mists content is horizontal -- while there are several zones to level from 85 to 90 in, the true flowering of the vast majority of Mists content is a plateau, an expanse that blossoms outward. Once you ascend those five levels, you get more to do, not less. However, it must be said that this isn't a trend that Mists invented. Pretty much every innovation in Mists of Pandaria's content delivery is built on the edifice of Cataclysm, which itself built on previous expansions.

Farming isn't just for maximum level characters. In fact, you can start a 4-plot farm up with your 85 toons fairly quickly, which can accelerate the time it takes your main to level cooking with all those vegetables! I'm able to cook 5 batches of feasts -- that's 25 skill points! -- in just 2 harvests with 5 alts working alongside my main.

Your alt will need to run past 85-86 level mobs to get started farming. I'm not sure if you can summon a lower level toon to Pandaria, but Farmer Yoon's quests to start up your farm are level 85 and above, so your toon will need to be at least 85.

First, your alt will have to get to Pandaria through your faction's quest. You'll need to complete the vehicle quest, whether that's shooting Alliance troops from a turret or shooting Horde troops from a helicopter. Then, you should be able to drop to the ground via a rope and continue the rest of the way to Halfhill on mounted foot.

Originally in the Mists of Pandaria beta, all reputation grinds were unlocked at level 90. This left players with a staggering amount of stuff to do, so much that it was immediately overwhelming. There was no clear path of reputation to follow, there wasn't a moment that explained where a player should go first, and why. On live, the Shado-Pan and August Celestials are now locked behind revered reputation with the Golden Lotus. This gives players a slightly clearer path to follow when doing dailies. But even with that change, it's still confusing to players, direction-wise.

If you played in the beta, you have some understanding of reputations at level 90, how to increase them, and how they work. But if you're just now experiencing Pandaria and all it has to offer, you may be wondering where to go, what to do, and most importantly, what's in it for you? If you're dreading the thought of endless daily quests, don't worry -- it's nowhere near as complex as you'd think.

Farming was literally the farthest thing from my mind when I wondered in a recent Breakfast Topic where you've been choosing to set your hearthstone, but boy did all the replies of "Halfhill! Halfhill!" set me straight. My daughter, a confirmed Glitch-aholic, hasn't been active in World of Warcraft for quite some time -- even playing a panda can't tear her away from milking butterflies -- but I know that one glimpse at the temptations of the Tillers, and we'll be renegotiating the list of games she has time to play.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree; I'm a fan of farming, too. What I find so striking, though, is the number of WoW players who are discovering the attractions of this sort of gameplay for the first time via the Tillers. I suppose it's still early enough that many players are simply grinding through the content to grow veggies for cooking or harvest other materials for your professions. And obviously, the minipet and mount fanatics among us are all slaving away for a Terrible Turnip or a Riding Goat. But I suspect there are plenty of players out there like me who are tickled by the whole farming concept. We're one step closer to having our own little WoW homesteads!

Is there something you especially enjoy about farming? Or are you only buckling down in order to grab certain rewards?

---