Posts with tag inscriptions

The latest patch to the Cataclysm beta has finally added in the revamped glyph UI, sporting the newly implemented Prime Glyphs, a selection window and awesome new convenience features. The new interface has a search box for quickly finding glyphs, expanding categories of prime, major and minor glyphs, and it even shows you what glyphs you have not yet learned.

Personally, I think that the new glyph interface is one of the coolest Cataclysm revamps. The old system of glyphs was an awesome first step, but it has been refined and polished in ways we never could have expected. Check out the gallery of shots below to see what the glyph UI looks like while empty, sporting some glyphs and using the search feature.

Each week Arcane Brilliance gathers energy from the nether, spinning it from the bowels of the universe itself, then threads that dark matter together into a tapestry of destruction. This is a fancy way of saying that Arcane Brilliance summons up a column about Mages each Saturday. Then, over the course of a 5 second cast-time, it balls that column up into a giant ball of flame and nukes your face with it.

Patch 3.0.2 hurled a new profession into our little virtual pond, and like Jewelcrafting before it, Inscription has plunged beneath the surface like a cannonball. We'll likely be sorting out the various waves and ripples that splash has created for months to come, but having spent the better part of three weeks with it, we can begin to see some results of the impact. Some of us have dived right in, picking up the profession and leveling it with gusto. Some of us only know that we saw a big splash, and that we are now very wet.

As a Mage, this profession intrigues me more than most. Several of the glyphs for Mages are quite powerful, the Scribe-only shoulder enchants are pretty spectacular, and the off-hand weapons Scribes can create and equip seem like an attractive leveling option going into Wrath. What are the pros and cons of this new profession? Is it worth dropping old standards like Enchanting or Tailoring for? As a Mage, is Inscription worth learning, or am I better off just buying glyphs when I need them?

Though we're still in the early stages of learning about this new tradeskill, we're at a point now where we can start to weigh its costs and benefits. After the break, we'll evaluate Inscription as a profession for Mages, and go over the glyphs available to us both now and after November 13th.

While every class is getting new talents and spells in Wrath, there are three big, brand-new additions to the game: Death Knights, Northrend, and the new profession: Inscription. We've known for a little while that the general gist of Inscription would be to add effects to spells you already have, like a knockback to your fireball - basically enchantments for your skills.

Now that the beta has gone up, we have a few actual examples of inscriptions and what they might need, though so far we still aren't seeing any inscriptions that add to spell effects. Inscriptions evidently require various kinds of ink, which will be made from herbs by a skill called Milling, which destroys five herbs to create ink (very like jewelcrafting's Prospecting). Parchment will also be required to create scrolls, although the items it's made from are not yet implemented. And what could this Mysterious Tarot be? Maybe just a high-level parchment, given that it requires the same reagents, only more of them? There's another skill called Decipher that "allows the deciphering of tomes, books, and scrolls," though what that might mean I"m not entirely sure.

There are two important things to realize from this newly discovered information. First, it shows that Blizzard is hard at work on Wrath of the Lich King, and is already starting to include content in the patch files. We saw this same behavior in patch 2.0 with Jewelcrafting recipes.