Posts with tag first aid

Having played a paladin for the majority of my WoW career, first aid has never been anything more than a novelty to me, a way to accumulate a few extra achievement points by wasting some cloth that could probably be put to better use making bags or craftable gear. It has been years since I have used a bandage with the express purpose of actually healing myself from a grievous injury, as opposed to either attempting to clear out some bag space or trying to point out just how useless the things are. After archaeology's introduction, the newfound relevance of fishing thanks to good ol' Nat Pagle and the Anglers, and cooking's dramatic makeover, I think it's about time Blizzard breathed some life back into first aid.

In order to figure out how the blues can go about resurrecting this flat-lined secondary profession, let's examine how they have done the same with the others.

Insider Trader is your weekly inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.

Nothing interrupts a peaceful night of crafting like a lunatic guildmate ranting about learning a coveted new pattern, only to find that it's already green in skill level – nothing, that is, except that sickening feeling in your stomach as you consider what you'll do when your favorite patterns go green. Skilling up a profession can be a rollercoaster ride, if you don't hit the right patterns at the right time. (Of course, all the professions have those infamous "dead zones," when skilling up seems to be based on either unfathomable luck or unfathomable finances – or maybe both. But we'll cover dead zones in another installment.)

Skilling up in a profession can happen when you create an item that's listed in green, yellow or orange in your tradeskill window. Items listed in grey will not give you any skill points for creating them; red listings anywhere means you don't have the required skill level. Just as it does with creatures you fight, pattern color indicates difficulty and skill-up potential. Green items raise your skill occasionally, yellows about half the time and oranges every single time. (The exception to orange skill-ups occurs in skinning, in which successfully skinning an orange creature does not guarantee a skill-up.) As a burgeoning crafter, your goal is to find patterns that are relatively easy to get the materials to make while providing a solid shot at skilling up. While orange patterns offer a guaranteed chance of gaining a skill point, the best bang for the buck is often a yellow pattern.

And that's where things start getting murky ...