Posts with tag tips

So, there you are. You stand near your faction's favorite commerce hub. You're hawking your enchanting skills over the Trade channel, doing your very best to get pick up a few customers in between rapid fire Saurfang jokes and not-so-sly murloc references. Then, finally you see these words: "LF Enchanter for Greater Assault, have mats. Will tip."

You drop the person a quick whisper, group up to make it a little easier to find them, and then enchant their bracers with that sweet, sweet attack power. They thank you and place the tip in a trade window . . . 2 gold. Before you can even blink, the person breaks group, and logs out. It could be worse -- sometimes, you feel like you're lucky to get even 1 gold for your time.

Especially with the Dungeon Finder making gathering enchanting materials easier for everyone, craftsmen are finding themselves struggling to earn cash via the old tipping method. After all, enchanters are no longer the single-flow hub of getting enchanting reagents. And while enchanters are the long-traditional tipped craftsmen, Jewelcrafters, Inscription practitioners, and just about all professions are in the same boat.

How do you get tips? How do you handle the tips? What goes into a tip? Let's take a look behind the jump and start breaking down the ancient art of supplying tips.

When we last talked about this on the podcast, I said we'd basically have to wait and see how it all worked, but now that players have had their hands on the Dungeon Finder out on the live realms for a while, they're learning a few more tricks and tips about how to use it. As Rohan brings up over on the WoW Ladies LJ, it's easy enough to keep a good player once you've found them through the system: as long as none of you drop group once you're done with an instance, you can go back in and run as many as you want. Unfortunately, you can't friend them yet (hopefully that will show up whenever Battle.net functionality does), but the comments on that post point out that if you both sign up for an unpopular instance at the same time, chances are good you'll end up in the same group together (of course, that requires coordination, but maybe you can set up a time out of game).

More tips and tricks for the new system after the break.

Time once again for us to update our WoW tattoo and license plate galleries with submissions from you readers. This time around, we've got a few new updates to the tattoo gallery, including Raevyndra of Rexxar's new arm ink above, these two pieces sent in by Tonya, and Sean J.'s pretty elaborate Horde crest. If tattoos are your thing, there's definitely some cool WoW-related ink to check out in there.

This is the only new license plate addition at the moment, but if you happen to have a WoW-related plate on your car that we haven't seen just yet (or can grab a picture of someone else's -- just stay safe if you happen to be driving at the time), be sure to send us a note on the tipline. Stay tuned for more tats and plates when we see them.

We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.

• Fel Fire is a new warlock blog that just started up recently, and they've already got a good overview of the Auction House up.
• Larisa at the Pink Pigtail Inn is definitely one of those who doesn't think that Mr. T represents her game.
• Pwnwear examines the issue of tank numbers and balance in game design.
• Too successful in Trial of the Grand Crusader? Let Caer Morrighan help you out with a few surefire ways to fail the instance.
• PC Games Hardware nabbed a shiny new Radeon HD 5970 video card, and they ran benchmarks with World of Warcraft, among other games. 76 FPS? Yes please.

Huntsman's Lodge has a terrific set of tips for running Power Auras as a hunter. I'm not running this addon (yet) on my hunter, but apparently it's pretty old news -- our old friend BRK had some ideas on how to use it a while back. But HL goes even farther, and I like a lot of his ideas, like a star that lights up when Dragonhawk isn't turned on -- I'll admit I make that mistake from time to time -- and warnings for "special circumstance" spells like Lock and Load and Kill Shot.

You can mix and match them all to fit your own gameplay as well, so maybe use some from HL's list and throw in one or two from BRK's old setup. And even if you're not a hunter, the addon is helpful for any class that needs a heads up on buffs and debuffs coming their way. We hunters can get all the help we need though -- HL's list is a great resource for using the addon with our class.

It sounds like an infomercial, but actually Righteous Defense has a great post on how a pally (or any class, really -- his advice is for pallies, but it's common sense enough that any tanking class can use the tips) can step up and increase their threat as far as it will go. I always enjoyed tanking when I did it (and now that I'm leveling up a pally, I'll hopefully be bashing heads in and taking damage again soon), and the key to tanking is just awareness: awareness of where the mobs are, who they're targeting, and where they should be. Increasing threat is really a passive kind of upgrade -- as long as you're hitting your spells right, using the glyphs designed to keep you at the top of an aggro list, and specced and hit-capped for the gear and abilities you're using, keeping threat up is pretty simple. It's just the positioning and dealing with surprises that can be hard.

The last point on RD's list is worth repeating for everyone: use your trinkets, as often as possible. Imagine that, in the next patch notes, you saw a spell under your class listing that did what your trinkets did (added a ton of spellpower or increased armor by 500) and went on to say (infomercial style again) "... at a cost of no mana, focus, rage or ." Wouldn't you be spamming that sucker as often as possible? Get your gear straight, use the right abilities, and break out your trinkets whenever you can, and keeping threat should be no problem at all for any given class.

Many whelps! Handle it! Oh wait, you did. In the Wake on Zul'jin (as you can see in the video above) was just one of the many guilds to take down Onyxia since she returned to the game in a more powerful form, and while obviously there wasn't much new to this fight, most guilds give it a thumbs up: it was a little old-school raiding taste in a new-school difficulty level. Not that it's too hard (c'mon, it's Onyxia), but it's nice to see the fight pretty faithfully recreated. Makes you wish for more, doesn't it?

Lots more raid downings, and of course the usual drama and recruitment notices in this week's Guildwatch. If you've got a tip for us about your guild or just one you saw on the forums, please send it along to guildwatch@wow.com, and please do your best to make it look like the ones below -- if you send us five pages on the entire history of your guild, it probably won't show up here. Read on for more.

BlizzCon approaches! Preparing for BlizzCon is your regular source for tips on how best to prepare for Blizzard's gaming extravaganza. These helpful hints are particularly suited for convention rookies. But if you are a con veteran, we'd love to hear your advice and wisdom in the comments as well.

BlizzCon is this week! Here are some last minute tips for making your trip incident-free.

Air Travel

• Is your flight on time? Almost all airports these days have websites that give weather and flight status. Also, you can call your airline to verify everything is ok.
• Get there early. If you are checking luggage, this is particularly true. Check in at least an hour before your flight if you are carrying on all your things. 2 hours is best if you are checking luggage.
  
• Check in online. Most airlines will allow you to check in online and print your boarding pass 24 hours before your flight.
  
• Don't forget your I.D. You absolutely need your I.D. for getting on the plane and getting your BlizzCon badge. Keep it in a safe place on or severely close to your person.
• Pack properly. Overweight and oversized luggage costs extra. This is the link to what you cannot bring on the plane. Also, if you are carrying your toiletries on, don't forget 3-1-1.

BlizzCon approaches! Preparing for BlizzCon is your regular source for tips on how best to prepare for Blizzard's gaming extravaganza. These helpful hints are particularly suited for convention rookies. But if you are a con veteran, we'd love to hear your advice and wisdom in the comments as well.

If you don't travel often, packing can be rather daunting -- particularly with all of the post-9/11 air travel precautions. Because you'll probably be bringing back more than you take, I recommend checking a bag rather than trying to carry everything on the plane. Yes, the baggage claim area adds extra time, but checking your luggage will allow you to bring a larger bag and you'll avoid having to worry about 3-1-1.

Though I have been humbled (and educated) by reading the exploits of a truly expert packer, I used to travel a lot for business and have several tips for the infrequent traveler heading to BlizzCon.

The_rabid_child's lovely tattoos posted on LJ today reminded me that it's about time we updated the WoW.com Tattoo gallery. Below you'll find a whole gallery full of tattoos sent to us by players with various Warcraft art or Alliance or Horde logos permanently embedded in their skin. Good times!

Truthfully, most of the tattoos we get from you all tend to be Horde tattoos, but we're not quite sure why that is. Are Horde-type folks more willing to ink up their bodies, or are they better at taking the pain? We do have a few exceptions -- Mike P. sent us this Lordaeron tattoo above (which in fact does look at little painful) that shows a little Alliance pride. If you've got a tattoo you want us to include here, feel free to send it along, and you just might see it here on the site.

BlizzCon approaches! Preparing for BlizzCon is your regular source for tips on how best to prepare for Blizzard's gaming extravaganza. These helpful hints are particularly suited for convention rookies. But if you are a con veteran, we'd love to hear your advice and wisdom in the comments as well.

Backpack, messenger bag, extra large purse -- whatever you are toting into the Anaheim Convention Center should be filled with a few basic things in order to get the most from BlizzCon. The catch is that it cannot be any bigger than 10"x20" and it cannot contain any of the following:

• Desktop computers, laptops, electronic storage devices (unless you have a press pass)
• Glass bottles, cans, large containers (this limits some of your food options should you choose to carry-in)
• Alcohol (leave your cool flask or teeny airplane booze bottles in your hotel room)
• Weapons and fireworks (Captain Obvious is making giggle noises.)

Join us after the break for what you can and should stuff in your BlizzCon-bag.

I know for sure we've mentioned this on the podcast (in the ever-more-popular Turpster's Tips feature), but I'm not sure we've ever explicitly mentioned it on the site before, and this post from WoW Ladies is a great reminder to do so: next time you're checking out your character screen, try holding Alt as you mouse over the various loots you're wearing. You'll get a little popup with all of the gear in your bags that corresponds to that slot -- a (mostly) undocumented feature that showed up in patch 3.1 along with all of the other UI improvements.

In fact, that's probably why this is just sneaking around now -- there were a lot of nice tweaks back then, and this one slipped through the cracks. Of course, now that the official Equipment Manager is in the game (you have clicked that checkbox in the Interface options to enable it, right?), you might not need to worry about switching your gear manually anyway. But just in case you haven't seen the Alt function on your character screen yet, there you go.

April's dealing with a problem that I've dealt with many times before: bank management. The other day I posted some tips on inventory management, but bank management is a knot that even I can't quite figure out how to untangle. On the one hand, bank space is supposed to be your refuge -- you can only pick things up out in the field as long as you have an empty inventory space for it. But on the other hand, especially on your main, you pick up a lot of things that seem important at the time -- tier gear, your first trinket, that piece you farmed for months until it finally dropped, that Blizzard Bear that you know is account bound, but you just can't bear to give it up. Stuff piles up after a while, and eventually you're carrying stuff around in your backpack that should really be sitting in your bank... and would be if you had room to keep it in there.

The only real tip I have is that you have to be ruthless -- you'll probably never use those trinkets again, that Tier 0 armor won't ever really be needed anymore, and you might as well eat those Delicious Chocolate Cakes that you made for a rainy day. You might as well use those cooking and profession mats you've got sitting around now, because if they aren't worth anything at the moment, they probably won't be worth any more in the future. And yes, I know you've only got so much Noggenfogger left, but you might as well go ahead and drink it on the next fun guild run. It sounds harsh, but in a game that's really about collecting, we all tend to have a packrat side.

And if worst comes to worst, just create yet another bank alt, charter yet another bank guild, and start filling those bags up also. With all of the junk we've got coming through, they'll probably be full to the brim in no time.