Addon review – EveryQuest

Today we look at one of the most insanely useful addons for completing The Loremaster achievement – EveryQuest.

This achievement requires you to complete hundreds of quests across Azeroth, Outland, and Northrend. If you’ve been playing your character for a very long time, chances are you’ve completed many of the low-level quests in the game. No doubt you’ve also skipped quests here and there. Loremaster is very unforgiving, requiring you to complete nearly every single quest per zone to achieve it. That’s where EveryQuest comes into play.

You can see in this screenshot how it keeps track of your quests. Items in white are ones you have not yet completed. Items in green are ones you have completed.

However, the really powerful feature of EveryQuest is how it gathers your quest data. In Patch 3.3 Blizzard added the ability for addons to query the server to determine which quests a character had completed. This is where EveryQuest is most powerful. You can install it today, have it query the server, and it will present to you a list of quests that you’ve completed since day 1 of play.

I’m currently grinding my way through Loremaster for the second time. Before I discovered this addon, I would spend hours pouring through Wowhead trying to find an elusive quest I had missed. It was there that I saw a lone post about this addon. I installed it immediately, and had Loremaster completed on my first character within a day.

So what are you waiting for? Go download EveryQuest, and happy questing!

Leveling up Weapon Skills

Weapon Skills are on their way out in Cataclysm, but they are still attached to two achievements – Did Somebody Order a Knuckle Sandwich and Master of Arms. It’s likely they these achievements will be turned into Feats of Strength come the expansion, and you will no longer be able to get them. So now is the time to finish up these two easy, but long, achievements!

Here are some tips to help you get through these achievements more quickly:

• Find a low-level mob that can heal itself to attack. Some suggestions are: Sandfury Witch Doctor, Blood Elf Reclaimer.  Their heals will sustain them so you can keep beating on the same mob for a long period of time.
  
• If you’re fighting a low enough level mob, and/or can heal yourself, I’d suggest removing all your armor first. You will take a decent amount of durability damage, plus having lower stats will prevent the mob you’re attacking from dying.
• There are vendors in Dalaran that sell each type of weapon. If you want to level up a type that you don’t normally use, you can pick up one of these for cheap.

However, if you can easily heal yourself there is a much faster way. I stumbled across this Youtube video that demonstrates one of the easiest ways of leveling up weapon skills. Note that Blizzard likes to nerf methods like this, so it may not last.

Leveling up Fishing the smart way

Lets face it, leveling up fishing from 0-450 is a long, boring chore. That doesn’t mean it has to be a waste of time too. A recent change in Patch 3.3 to the mechanics of fishing allow you to level up in a useful, and profitable way.

Pools/Schools of fish are found in almost any body of water in the game. The trick is that you do not need a high level of skill to successfully fish out of a pool. That’s right, even with your fishing skill at 1, you can hook a fish from any pool.

So all you Level 80’s out there, you can work on your fishing skill while getting fish that are useful for your raid (Fish Feast) or will sell very well on the AH. Here’s the method I suggest:

1. Level up your fishing skill to 100, either by fishing in your home city (Orgrimmar or Stormwind) or the Fountain in Dalaran. You should get to 100 pretty quickly, as it only takes 1-3 casts at lower levels to get a skill-up.
2. Once you reach 100, head out to Outland, and start looking for some pools of fish. I suggest Zangarmarsh, in any of the big lakes, or Terokkar Forest.
3. Fishing from an Outland pool gives you an approximately 4% chance to get a Curious Crate. These crates contain a very valuable item – Weather-Beaten Journal. This book will allow you to track fishing pools on your mini-map, and requires a fishing skill of 100 to learn. This is essential for quick fishing in Northrend.
4. Once you have your Weather-Beaten Journal, head back to Northrend.
5. Enable Fish Tracking in your mini-map.
6. Start fishing from pools! I suggest Borean Tundra for Musselback Sculpin, Sholazar Basin for Nettlefish, Grizzly Hills for Glacial Salmon, and Dragonblight for Dragonfin Angelfish. Each of these fish is useful (the first three are ingredients for Fish Feast) or sells extremely well.
7. Another excellent reason to level up your fishing by only fishing in pools is that you have a chance to fish up a Sea Turtle mount, which gives you the achievement Turtles All The Way Down.

If you have any questions about fishing, I very highly recommend that you head over to El’s Extreme Anglin’. It’s the best fishing guide out there.

Good luck, and happy fishing!

My favorite WoW websites

I enjoy pouring over various WoW websites, looking for new tips, checking out loot, and reading about the latest developments. I wanted to share with everyone some of the sites I frequent:

JustMyTwoCopper – This is my favorite site for gold making tips. The blog is updated frequently, and the author is very knowledgeable. The forums contain much valuable information. If you’re looking to be rich in WoW, this is the place to start.

MMO-Champion – If you want the absolutely latest news, patch notes, spoilers, and info on WoW, MMO-Champion will have it first. I hit this site multiple times per day because they always have the scoop first.

GuildOX – I like to keep up to date on raid progress world-wide, and GuildOX is my favorite site for viewing the latest rankings. They also have an excellent loot ranker, which will help you in deciding on upgrades.

WoWProfessions – If you’re looking to power-level a new profession, this is the place to go. They have very simple to follow guides for power-leveling any profession. I use this site often.

El’s Extreme Anglin – Most people hate fishing, but El certain seems to love it. She’ll walk you through everything you need to know, and have you out-fishing Nat Pagle in no time.

Wow.com – The premier WoW blog. If you’re looking for the latest developments in Azeroth, this is the place to be. They update multiple times per day, and have regular articles for every class.

Have an exceptional WoW-related link? Post a comment and let us know!

Neverending Sand Crawlers

This little spot has been around since the game launched, but it’s unusual how few people know about it. There is a small area in Westfall filled with Sand Crawlers that respawn nearly instantly. These are level 13-14 neutral mobs, which any high level player can 1-shot.

There are 3 reasons to come farm these guys:

1. They drop Clam Meat, Crawler Meat, and Crawler Claw. Each of these are very valuable for use in leveling up cooking. A stack of each will typically sell for about 20g on my server.
2. They have a pretty high drop rate of BoE green items. I’ve had great luck in selling these on the AH, especially weapons. Typically I sell the greens for 2-10g each.
3. Due to the quick respawn rate, this is a great spot for leveling up your weapon skills for the Master of Arms and Did Somebody Order a Knuckle Sandwich? achievements.

From Dalaran, my preferred route to get here is to take the portal to Orgrimmar, and then the portal to Blasted Lands. From there, ride through Swamp of Sorrows -> Deadwind Pass -> Duskwood -> Westfall. Obviously players on the Alliance side can get there quickly from Stormwind.

The spot is just north of Jangolode Mine in the north west corner of the zone, along the coast. Here’s a map to help you find it:

You want to look for these 3 logs:

Your bags will fill up quickly, so make sure to empty them before coming out, or bring along a Traveler’s Tundra Mammoth.

There is one hostile rare mob that runs through this area, so be careful if you’re low level and go AFK.

Frost Lotus Fun

Since Icecrown Citadel hit the live servers in early December, demand for Frost Lotus has been extremely high. This has driven up costs in the AH of both the Frost Lotus, and the resulting flasks. If you’re a raider, things got more expensive.

Luckily, there’s a quick and relatively easy way to farm Frost Lotus, as well as other Northrend herbs. This technique has been going around for awhile, but I first heard about it from JustMyTwoCopper.

Freya’s room in Ulduar contains approximately 30 herb nodes. Most of these are pickable without aggroing any mobs, although some require stealth to get to, and some require a suicide to pick.

Requirements: An Ulduar 10/25 Raid ID saved up to Freya, a Level 80 toon (preferably a Rogue or Druid for their stealth abilities) that is an herbalist.

1. Get a raid together for Ulduar. These days it’s much easier to gather a 10-man group, especially if you can convince your guild to go. Clear the bosses as follows: Flame Leviathan -> XT -> Kologarn -> Auriaya -> 3 elders in Freya’s room. IMPORTANT: Do not kill Freya. She must remain alive.
2. Pick all the herbs in the area
3. Exit the instance for at least 30 minutes to soft reset. This will respawn all the herbs. Note that all the trash mobs will respawn as well. This is where stealth comes in handy. Also note that the 3 Elders do not respawn.
4. Remove all your armor to avoid repair bills.
5. After the soft reset, zone back in, and port to the Conservatory. With stealth, you can pick the majority of the herb nodes. Pay close attention to patrols.
6. If you have any trinkets that can pull aggro (ie: Bitter Balebrew Charm), you can use it to stealth up to a node right next to a pack of mobs, pop the trinket, and pick the herb before you die. I usually only bother doing this for Frost Lotus nodes.
7. On average you will pull 4 Frost Lotus per reset, however I’ve picked as many as 11. You will also get a large amount of Deadnettle, Goldclover, Lichbloom, Adder’s Tongue, Talandra’s Rose, and Eternal Earths. These are excellent for supplying an Inscription alt with mats (see my article on Armor Vellum III).
8. Every week, make sure to extend your Raid ID lockout. This ensures that you can keep the raid ID indefinitely.

In the last few days since the PTR for 3.3.3 was announced, I’ve already seen a 10g drop in Frost Lotus selling prices on my server. Expect them to drop even further once the patch is live. However, profits will remain high from this venture by supplying your guild with enough Frost Lotus to keep them swimming in flasks.

Armor Vellum III

Here’s a quick tip for turning what I call a passive profit. Many professions have a technique like this. Today I’m going to show you how to quickly and easily turn a profit by making Armor Vellum III’s.

Requirements: Access to a Scribe that can make Armor Vellum III.  Cheap Ink of the Sea from your local AH, or large existing stockpile. Exalted Kirin Tor rep for cheaper Parchments.

1) Check the price of a stack of Ink of the Sea on your AH. On my server they typically go for about 60g a stack.

2) Check the price of a stack of Armor Vellum III on your AH. On my server they typically go for about 100g a stack.

3) 20 Ink of the Sea will net you 40 Armor Vellum III’s. Additional costs are 16g for Resilient Parchment. If the price of 40 Armor Vellum III’s on your AH exceeds the cost of 20 Ink of the Sea + 16g for the Parchment, you will turn a proifit by simply buying up the Inks and churning out Vellums.

On my server, I net over 120g each time I do this. Vellum’s sell like hot cakes, and I’ve turned over 4000g worth of profit in a night just doing this.

Welcome to WoW How-To

I’ve been playing World of Warcraft since day one. Over the years I’ve come across many tips and tricks that I now want to share with you. I don’t claim to have discovered all the information I’m going to present in this blog, but I promise that everything I post has been tested first-hand by myself.

A little history first. My World of Warcraft journey started with applying for the open beta. I hadn’t really followed the development of the game before that. A friend of mine, who was a big Warcraft III fan, sent me the link to signup for the beta. We both started off playing Orc Warriors, and had a blast playing in the beta for a few weeks. Naturally we were both hooked, and bought our copies of WoW the first day it was available.

Since that time, I’ve played through a warrior to level 60, raided vanilla end game on a priest, picked up both expansions, and dabbled in end-game raiding in TBC and WoTLK on a paladin, warlock, druid, and finally death knight. I’ve recently tried my hand at earning large amounts of gold, my current high being 50,000g (a small amount compared to some, but a high personal goal).

I pour through the official WoW Forums. I read other websites looking for tips and tricks to enhance my enjoyment of the game. And now, it’s time to give back. I intend to compile all my favorite tips, tricks, gold making methods, and general knowledge of this game.