Project Lore

It's been awhile I know. Work here at Project Lore sometimes goes through really long periods where I need to do a lot of stuff in a short period of time. I end up working late a lot and hardly have time to raid let alone blog about the life lessons I have learned from WoW. The long hours and short personal time makes it a real challenge to stay focused on those little goals one sets for themselves. The goals we set everyday like exercising or getting outside in the sun or eating healthy. Of course there are always choices but some seems to go into autopilot when everything else in life gets very hectic. The key to changing the autonomic autopilot method of living life is to set patterns early that are extremely beneficial to yourself, easy to do and can easily be reverted to when other things in your life require more attention. For example, this WoW life lesson is an example of just how you can do this. In the game of WoW, you probably know that there is a secondary profession called Cooking. I'm a big fan of it for two main reasons: 1. You can make your own buff food 2. You can sell your buff food on the AH Being a mage, I can conjure food whenever I want. But the best buff foods takes skill to craft, the skill of someone who's studied hundreds of recipes and made thousands of meals. And the best of the best buff food is always made by yourself. Why? It's cheaper to make, as reliable as the mats you have and takes less time than going to the Auction House or guild bank. And if you do it daily it becomes an autonomic routine that perpetuates itself to the point it would seem unusual not to do it. Y0u eat the food you need, bank the rest or sell the extra on the AH. Simple, easy and affordable... possibly even profitable. In game there are only two recipes that SaintGermain is missing. One will be gotten very soon. The other is for another class of people. And in all my cooking in game, I have saved money, made money and created a routine that is beneficial to me. The same is true for real life. Take a look at how much you spend each day eating out or buying prepared food. When my life gets crazy with work and I forget my cooking routine, I end up spending almost $20 a day for breakfast and lunch. If I stay to my routine of cooking for myself, I spend a fraction of that. Seriously, a fraction. For example, I make sushi. Here in LA it's a huge section of the the culinary cuisine offered around town. An eight (8) piece California roll can cost almost $16 in some of the fancy places. For $35 - 40 dollars, I can make almost ninety (90) pieces of the same California roll. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the savings there. So learn how to cook, in game and in real life. You'll save cash and gold, and have enough food to last for weeks.

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Up until recently, most of my questing was done in pairs. My rogue teamed up with my husband's warrior for a while as we leveled together. And when he out-leveled me, I started questing with his DK. Either way, I essentially had a tank as we took on quests and easily progressed through the game. But over the past few weeks as I ventured through Dragonblight and now in Zul'Drak, Locomomo has gone solo. So now I've got no tank. Combine to that the fact that many areas within this zone have a high concentration of mobs that like to attack you in twos and threes, and I was in a heap of trouble. But it's been a good learning experience; I've adapted my play style a bit, and that alone has been a fun challenge. Being a rogue, I've been able to escape the multiple mobs with Vanish, and when that's on cooldown, a combination of Sprint and Evasion paired with some strategic weaving through mobs so I don't draw more fire. When I have multiple mobs I can handle, Adrenaline Rush and Blade Fury work nicely together. But there's still the problem of the sheer amount of damage I've been taking. I'm running low on Frostweave needed to make bandages, and also need to restock on foods - both for the buffs they give and for their healing properties. What's been saving me there is the Medallion of Heroism trinket I picked up as a quest reward from the Battle for the Undercity. I love the critical strike bonus, but more importantly at this point is the healing capacity. I've been hitting that trinket as soon as it goes off cooldown. As I said, it's been a fun challenge and really reminds me of some of the awesome rogue abilities that I wasn't using as much when leveling in pairs, simply because I didn't need to. As for the healing issue - I look at this as a good reason to go for that Stocking Up achievement! So have any of you found a reason to alter your play styles recently? Do you prefer soloing or questing in pairs? More importantly, anyone have some Frostweave to spare? :)

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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?

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The daily cooking quest varies from day to day. You may have seen Dr. Dorkins recently complete one for Achivementology. However, achievements are not the only benefit of doing a cooking daily quest. One of the greatest draws of the daily cooking quests are the rewards of Northern Spices. All of the best food buffs come from items that are cooked using Northern Spices. And the cooking daily quest is the only way to get them! If you are doing any serious raiding where you are required to have consumables, it can get expensive. Buying potions, elixirs or flasks, and food can really add up quickly - especially if you are progressing through new content and are subject to dying or wiping. A typical cooking daily will get you between 2 and 6 Northern Spices depending on your luck. If you have extras, you can use Dalaran Cooking Awards to buy Northern Spices in stacks of 10. However, for many players this is not enough. Thus, a market is born for Northern Spices for players who either don't bother to do the cooking dailies or who need more than they can get themselves. Depending on your server, you can get different deals on these. The typical range is 2-6g. If you can get 4 spices a day from luck and 10 more from trading in a Dalaran Cooking Award, you are looking at getting a good 40 gold. Even if you aren't raiding, there is a good profit to be made in doing your cooking dailies. Any character of level 65 and up with a cooking skill of 375 can cash in, so start early and cash in. Stock up on Chilled Meats and Rhino Meat to prepare for whatever daily might come your way - Awilo Lon'gomba and Katherine Lee await your service!

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When I started playing WoW years ago, one of the first things I did, without knowing much about the game, was get a fishing pole and started fishing in Elwynn Forest. Within a few casts, I fished up a 15 pound fish that I could hold and slap people with it. It was so funny. I also caught a few fish that I used to level up cooking. I remember thinking that was a cool part of the game, fishing and cooking, and that I'd do that along with all the other stuff there was to do in the game. Later I told a friend about how I liked the fishing aspect of the game and he said he hoped I was a glutton for punishment. What? Well evidently he said that fishing was the most boring thing in the game and that it wasn't worth the time or effort. Well that wasn't a very hopeful thought, but I really didn't care. It was fun to fish and make receipes. There was loads of downtime between instances and raids, and the foods gave me buffs so I kept doing it. Then TBC came out and fishing got really lucrative. I can't tell you how many Furious Crawdads I sold. And now with the WotLK, selling Pygmy Suckerfish has kept me in gold and gear that I hardly do any dailies. The point is that in the game I decided what I liked and I kept doing it because I liked it. I did what I wanted to do and I had fun and made a big profit. Of course I listen to advice from some people about where to fish, how to fish better, and where to get the best recipes, but that all helped me have more fun in the game. Now in RL do you know what I do? I get paid to do this. Write here. And produce and direct Project Lore. Interesting isn't it? I did what I liked, asked people how I could be better, followed my intuition and got probably one of the oddest jobs on this planet. And in RL, it's your game. So do what you want to do. If you want to be a game programmer, do it. If you want to be a florist, do it. If you want to stare at a screen of numbers, betting on the market, then do it. Whatever it is, do it. Please. Ask around and follow your fun. Do it for a career or as a hobby or anywhere in between. Whatever it is, it's your game. Because when you do what you like, it makes the whole game that much more fun.

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It seems like the entire world (of Warcraft) has gone into a bit of a holding pattern lately. Many people (myself included) have stopped raiding, we just heard about the arena points reset, so there is not a whole left for anyone to do other than count the days until November 13^th. While I am very much in the same boat, like hell I'm going to stop playing the game! So I have been trying to find a few activities to keeping me going. In the short term, I have been spending my days grinding the Kodo mount for Brewfest. I have over 200 kills and still have yet to see the thing drop, I'm beginning to suspect the cake is a lie. I imagine I will get it eventually, and if not, Brewfest will ultimately come to an end. Soon I will be looking for other alternatives. I have been trying to stay positive and look at this as a good excuse to catch up on those things I have always been meaning to do. I'm talking about all those projects I have always meant to get around to, but never did because I was busy raiding. Here is my list of things I think I will finally be able take a shot at:

Netherwing - I want to finally grind out the Netherwing Dailies, and get my nether drake. Although I must admit, with all the new mounts on the horizon, my desire here is waning a bit.

Fishing / Cooking - I have played around with the idea of leveling my fishing and cooking. It seems like a good way to make some cash and be able to make all that tasty raid food.  Problem is I hate fishing, so I guess this one is just a matter of how bored I get.

Farming Gold - The last thing I could even thing to do on my main is stockpile gold. Certainly not a bad approach, but I question what is going to happen to the WoW economy, and if this will pay off in the long run.

Alts - I have a Rogue that is closing in on 70 fast, and want to make her a priority. I have a few others sitting in 60 range that I may have time to get up there as well.

New Professions - With the prices on the AH falling through the floor (at least on Executus), this isn't a bad time to powerlevel a new profession on one of my alts, and I've always wanted to try Jewelcrafting. For some it may be a good time to push to 375 on your main.

Roll Horde - I've always wondered how the other half lives.

I'm sure there are lots of other worthy projects that would be worth taking on during this time. So tell me, what are you guys doing?  Have you come up with a productive way to spend your WoW time? Please don't tell me you are still raiding... I may become incredibly jealous.

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