Patch 3.1 Preparation (Part VIII)

Posted by admin on 04 11th, 2009

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A few interesting Blue Posts and information that will help us prepare for 3.1. Hotfix: Legplates of Conquest We recently made a change to the sell value and disenchant materials obtained from Legplates of Conquest. The material costs used to create this item were unintentionally low, and we were prompted to make changes to minimize the impact on the game’s economy. ( Source ) Apparently this method of taking raw materials, crafting an item, and disenchanting was just too good that Blizzard had to step in and nerf it. It is also pretty rare to see them address the game’s economy too. Processes like this has been around for a long time now, such as the recent prospecting/jewelery/disenchant method. [Legplatets of Conquest] is simply a BOP blue item, that uses a low amount of materials to craft. A Blacksmith who was also an Enchanter would craft them using about 8g worth of materials, then disenchant the item for a [Dream Shard] worth 15-20g. Reason for Flask Changes Our goal with the change was to allow players greater flexibility when determining how long they plan to raid, as currently we were seeing many players balance time spent raiding around flask duration. We also anticipate that this change will make using flasks in dungeons and battlegrounds a more reasonable decision for players. Though this change will not occur until patch 3.1.0, we wanted to give as much advance notice as possible in case some of you who are stockpiling flasks would prefer to wait to do so until the change is implemented. We realize players who currently have stockpiled a lot of flasks may feel like they will lose money with this change, since their current flasks will only last for half as long once 3.1.0 goes live. To partially remedy this, we are going to allow players to exchange any current Northrend flasks (Flask of the Frost Wyrm, Flask of Stoneblood, Flask of Endless Rage and Flask of Pure Mojo) for two flasks with the shorter duration. Flasks from older content will not be grandfathered in, and going forward, it will only be possible to make the flasks with a one hour duration. ( Source ) Look for falling prices of flasks in 3.1, which as a raider, this is a good change. It allows more flexibility in raid times and will save money. As for the Alchemists, I would recommend trying to make as much money on them now before the patch. Post patch, prices of herbs may go up with the new glyphs and demand for consumable potions/elixirs. In 3.1, your flasks will only last 1 hour but the same amount of materials will create 2 flasks instead of one. Your 2 hour flasks next patch will turn into something like [Mixture of Endless Rage] , which when right-clicked, they will turn into 2 [Flasks of Endless Rage] , which will have a 1 hour duration each. We are still unsure if flasks will be more profitable pre or post patch, but the cost of most raw materials seem to look like they are going to rise. In addition, Ulduar may have a chance to drop flasks, but only 425+ Alchemists can loot them. This design is similar to having flask tokens drop in raid instances back in Burning Crusade. At the moment, no further information is available on if these flasks are only for Alchemists or if they can be traded or sold. You can now sometimes find Alchemist’s Caches from bosses in Ulduar. Only players with an Alchemy skill of 425 or higher can loot these secret caches. Alterac Valley Tokens for “Concerted Efforts” and “For Great Honor” repeatable quests The repeatable quests “Concerted Efforts” (Alliance) and “For Great Honor” (Horde) will require the Alterac Valley token again in 3.1. On the PTR the quest rewards 1241 honor at the moment. ( Source ) If you’re like most of us that PvP, you should have 100 AV marks saved up already. Having them included in the quest may bring back some more AV games as well. Season 5 is coming to an end as early as this Tuesday, so hopefully you have 75,000 honor and 100 of each mark saved up in preparation for the new season soon. 800 pieces of gear in Ulduar! Streamlining the gear was a necessary step. Ulduar has something like 800 pieces of gear, and that is with all of the streamlining. (Sunwell had something like 160.) There is just no way we could offer extra loot for hard modes and unique sets for specs like Holy paladins and Ele shamans if we didn’t homogenize elsewhere. ( Source ) That is a lot of gear dropping in the new raid instance. Expect demand for consumables, enchants, gems, and raid related items to rise. Don’t forget about the offspec, emblem, BOE, and new Arena gear. There will be plenty of new gear for everyone! Arena Season 6: One-week grace period at the end of Season 5 There will be a week between the end of season 5 and the start of season 6 where players will have time to spend points they’ve earned. In other words, you’ll have one week from the day 3.1 hits to spend your points. This confuses me a little – let’s say hypothetically season 5 ends tomorrow – from your wording, season 6 will start the next tuesday. So there’ll basically be a “dead” week for arena when there is no season going on at all? Correct. We’re giving a one-week grace period for players to spend accumulated points from season 5 since we’re wiping them at the start of season 6. ( Source ) So it looks like Season 5 is ending the same day that patch 3.1 is released and Season 6 and its’ new PvP gear will be introduced 1 week after 3.1 hits. Cooking Achievement : Cooking with Style – Obtain a Chef’s Hat. ( Screenshot ) Those of you that have been doing the daily cooking quest for the past few months probably have 100 marks easy. You will now be able to turn 100 [Dalaran Cooking Award] for a BOP Chef’s Hat , a vanity item for the helm slot. This hat does not do anything. Now this sounds like a good idea at first if you are swimming in these marks, especially if you keep doing the daily day after day even after 3.1. However 100 marks equals 1000 [Northern Spices] , which maybe worth a good amount of money on your economy. Just calculate the value of 1000 spices to find out the opportunity cost of that hat. On my economy, spices are worth about 1.5g each, so that hat will cost about 1500g. Which that information, I have chosen to pass on the hat because I can make a good amount of gold selling spices or even better, cooking raid food with it. Maybe after a few months when I have more marks that I know what to do with them, I will consider buying the hat just to have it. [Fish Feast] will no longer be soulbound. This means you can sell them on the auction house or even to guilds that want to use their funds to buy cost effective feasts. However only 430+ cooks can use them. There may be profit potential to selling feasts next patch, but we are just unsure on the demand for them. (Cost of Northern Spices) * 1000 = Price your paying for your Chef’s Hat Fishing Achievement: Turtles All the Way Down – Fish up a Sea Turtle mount from any fishing pool in Northrend. ( Screenshot ) Your local fishermen will be trying to obtain this new mount. This may mean more fish and cooked raid food in the market. As for the people fishing for it, since it is rare, you may fish up plenty of profitable fish to sell or cook for profit. It almost seems like this was intentionally added to fill the economy with raid food and feasts, which will be used for the new Ulduar raid content. They have state before that the new flask changes should fill the auction house with cheaper flasks for players progressing through Ulduar as well. Prices will fall for many consumables, however demand for them will go up. Hopefully this means that all these items will still be profitable. We had mentioned the new fishing daily quests a few weeks ago and how they are the only source of epic gems and require some special Leatherworking gloves to open the lockbox that the are contained in. This was changed on the PTR, most likely due to feedback from the general community. Now the epic gems can now be tradable and the new lockbox no longer require a lockpicking skill of 405, just 400. Now you can buy the new epic gems on the auction house or sell them for profit. We estimate epic gems may equalize at about 100-200g per gem, with other blue quality gems at up to 100g next patch. Another great buff to the fishing profession, these new daily quests are going to be great for profit as we mentioned before now that you can sell your epic gems. Jewelcrafting Added a recipe for Shifting Twilight Opal to the daily jewelcrafting vendor. We were not really sure why [Shifting Twilight Opal] was not added along with Wrath, the alternative on live is a [Perfect Shifting Shadow Crystal] . This green quality cut is not a bad way for the prospect/disenchanters to convert their [Shadow Crystal] ’s into either. Along with this new recipe, [Subtle Scarlet Ruby] along with some blue quality PvP starter gear is also being added to the JC daily vendor. Bug Fixes Le aving a group while in an instance will now port you to the nearest graveyard rather than your Hearthstone location. The good news is that the [Hearthstone] cooldown has been reduced to 30 minutes, down from 1 hour. Although you can queue for Battlegrounds from anywhere in the world now, once you leave the BG, you will return to where you queued from and not a capitol city. These changes makes the [Hearthstone] , Kirin Tor rings , even Mage portals, and Warlock summons much more valuable. We hope that this change doesn’t make going from place to place a pain to do, those Kirin Tor rings now seem like a pretty good idea.

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