The Finer Touches of 3.1
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Heartbourne on Monday, April 27, 2009 - 18 Comments Tags: argent tournament, cooking, leatherworking, patch 3.1, turtle, wintergrasp
Heartbourne on Monday, April 27, 2009 - 18 Comments Tags: argent tournament, cooking, leatherworking, patch 3.1, turtle, wintergrasp 
Patch 3.1 was replete with major changes from small class mechanics to large scale raids. I have found myself appreciating the smaller changes of patch 3.1 as much as the game changing things like dual specs and Ulduar.A change that was very timely for me was the ability to take flight paths over Wintergrasp. Originally you could not fly to your faction's Wintergrasp flight point, only out of it, and thus you could not fly "through" the flight point, making flights from Dalaran to River's Heart a real pain, as you had to fly up through Icecrown and take an 8 minute tour of west Northrend just to access your Oracle or Frenzyheart dailies. Using a flying mount was right out as well, as flying mounts are not permitted in Wintergrasp. Now that you can fly to Wintergrasp, you can fly through it, making it a quick 3 minute trip on the flight path from Dalaran to River's Heart and shortening most trips significantly. I usually just use my flying mount instead of flight paths as I don't want to have to calculate where the nearest flight path is to my destination and epic flying mounts are just as fast. This major change gives me a reason to use flight paths again and saves me a lot of time.
The removal of the requirement of flint and tinder to make a simple campfire is another convenient change. Instead of walking all the way back to the Sunreaver's Sanctuary in Dalaran or to a bonfire in Orgrimmar, I can simply make a fire without having to waste bag spaces on mats. It allows me to get my cooking done easily, and some people use it for the minor spirit buff to boot! Its another huge time saver.
One of the most annoying thing about crossing rivers in WoW was jumping in, getting dismounted, swimming for 3 seconds, getting on the other side, and remounting. Now mounts can swim! They do so at your swim speed (unless you have the illustrious turtle), but not having to remount saves those precious few seconds when crossing rivers or lakes. Thanks Blizzard!
The Argent Tournament was a major change, but giving me dailies I actually want to do in this location tied together a convenient path for effectively doing dailies. From that location in northeast Icecrown, its easy to jump to Storm Peaks for Sons of Hodir dailies or hop over to Sholazar basin for Oracle/Frenzyheart dailies. The "find this sword" daily and the fishing daily also send you to some other convenient locations that make doing dailies like the Kalu'ak ones less out of the way. It really ties together Northrend as a whole by making more locations relevant for dailies instead of a bunch of disjoint regions.
Finally, polishing off those professions should be much easier now. Cooking is theoretically easier to level to 450 with more recipes giving skill-ups longer. Training that required books for fishing, first aid, and cooking now can be done at trainers, and low level fishing has been fleshed out. Stats on lower items have been adjusted, like Leatherworking's Tough Scorpid set which now gives Agility and Stamina instead of Agility and Spirit, and the Turtle Scale set which now gives stamina, intellect, and spell power instead of stamina, intellect and spirit. Materials were tweaked to make low level items easier to make. Its now much more attractive to level professions at low levels.
What are your favorite "non-spotlighted" changes of patch 3.1?
Reader Comments (18)
well you covered just about all of them. I will say that my cooking and fishing where lacking due to not wanting to take the time to do them. Now I understand the advantage they have and instead of being a mooch of my friends I can happly feed myself.
Although it was nice to send a few stacks of food to a friend with a little gold and then have meals returned for my heroics and raids. After dailies I now fish while LFG.
Thanks Blizz for letting me fish anywhere!! Nice post Heart!
30 minute hearth!!!!!
I love how the mini-map in the corner now displays fancy modern artwork instead of the map sometimes. This is a great feature that I ... what? ... That's not a feature? Oh.
I love the instance maps n the map at the flightpath looks fancier as well. the campfire is nice, but annoying since a friend had just sent me the gnome army knife.
Probably one of my favorite features was the new LFG interface. It makes finding certain roles a lot more easier.
I hate the new LFG interface, whenever looking for a group i always forget to swap between Individuals and Groups.. making me take more time to check for a group/players.
*happily - geez, stupid keyboard.
Anyway, there was a small adjustment to the minimap for zoom in/out and colored party members based on class (nice touch blizz).
I also love the maps for instances so you can figure out where the hell you are at and what boss you are on. My addon's are slowly going away.
Also the 30min hearth is sweet and being able to just que for a BG where ever I may be is great!! I can work on my dailies and if it is too busy where I am at I can que for a BG and come back to my dailies.
/fingerscrossed that I don't have any misspellings this round.
I love the 30 min. hearth cooldown, and the swimming mounts. I'm too poor to do the duel spec (and I probably did spell that wrong) so I dont know about that yet.
The fact that Frosty's Collar item has a new icon.
The built in quest-helper like tool tips. Now I KNOW what to kill for quests and such, instead of looking it up on wowhead.com just in case the quest helper addon is bugged.
plus all of the above, great patch blizzard!
Well said, mounts that can swim, is a awesome thing, especially in AB, where u can swim across quickly to whichever base the opposing faction has assaulted. or shouts of "HUGE INC ST" etc.
And the fp to wintergrasp is also fantastic, as is the 30 min HS CD
Minor changes, sometimes make the major difference
Most of the things are nice but I hate the new inscriber books.
I used to do the 2 researches every day but now I have to find a book.
Nasty part is that some only give low level inscriptions.
If you look at AH for the prices of them, 1250 to 1750G is plainly ridiculous for an item that normally was done by some herbs and paper.
Twinks got nerfed with some enchants now requiring a certain level to use. Nethercleft leg armor was very popular for twinks giving 40 stamina and 12 agility. Now the armor requires you to be level 60 before it takes effect. This is one of many examples.
The Change in Nexus, where the rifts are noww linked to the mobs around them, no more ranging the rift before initiating combat with the rest of the mobs.
That always felt like a bug/cheat to me.
I had no idea they change the rifts in the Nexus. I agree about them feeling like a cheat. Most of the time we would just storm in one range would take care of them for a second or two and we all would kill the mobs. I had done the Nexus yesturday and the PUG I was with had a cow about the rifts. I am now grinning to know it was the patch. Anyway long story short the PUG was tring to kill the rifts but the mobs would attack us as soon as you attacked the rift. So of course everyone was upset cause ranged didnt do there job. LOL I find it funny now.
I am not all together happy about the campfire. I feel it is kinda silly you don't need anything to make a fire. Don't get me wrong if is help full but most of this game is in a small way like real life. You have to gather the items to make something. I would really like to know what I am making that fire from.
I, for one, didn't think that being able to do the rift separately was cheating or a bug. I wish Blizzard had included the change in the patch note, though, because I went with a guild group doing regular Nexus a couple days back and we nearly wiped twice because no one had any idea that the pull had been "fixed". (And I say "twice" because we thought the first time had been a glitch.)
[sarcasm] Nice move, Blizzard. [/sarcasm]
I personally love the attention given to the non-combat pets. New art for their icons instead of the old generic stuff!
I love the new vanity pets added. I'm at 74/75 now.
Turtle mount, argent dailies, dual spec, and I like that the glyph interface is now attached to the talent window.