Friday 30 March 2012

Dungeon Finder Behaviour

So I was in the dungeon finder today, and what has everyone become assholes? Really. Regardless of what level dungeon you are doing, remember that you are playing with real people.

Just seems some of those real people don't give a shit about others. Here's my example:

A healer rolls need on Grace of the Herald for his friend.

[14:03:31][P] [Cubed]: nice one, healer rolling on [Grace of the Herald]
[14:03:38][DG] [Fántálock]: for yebba
[14:03:42][P] [Akenez]: It's called OS babe.
[14:03:43][P] [Cubed]: thats mean
[14:03:50][P] [Cubed]: ms beforeo os
[14:04:01][P] [Akenez]: That's in raid
[14:04:06][P] [Cubed]: doesnt matte
[14:04:06][P] [Akenez]: This is dungeon mate
[14:04:08][P] [Cubed]: its rude
[14:04:24][DG] [Fántálock]: And healer needed for Yebba's ms :P
[14:04:28][DG] [Fántálock]: guess it counts
[14:04:31][P] [Cubed]: well no it doesnt
[14:04:34][P] [Cubed]: its unfair
[14:04:37][DG] [Fántálock]: kk
[14:04:38][P] [Akenez]: Cry me a river.
[14:04:40][P] [Akenez]: Idc.


I don't know, is it just me? I wouldn't act like an ass about it, I wouldn't do it over a class that was meant to have the item. Maybe if it was some scrub warrior who wanted agility I would step in. Or in this case a healer needing over a dps Id step in. I'm too nice to players who deserve it, not these assholes.

What are your thoughts? drop me a comment.

Saturday 24 March 2012

Mists Of Pandaria Insane in the Membrane Guide 5.4


This guide is up to date as of 5.3.0 and will be checked over when relevant patches hit during Mists of Pandaria.

5.2 notes From the patch notes I don't see anything different, its kinda hard for me to tell major changes now that every one of my characters has the title, so if you notice something please inform me.

5.1.0 notes no change, although I will be adding a little info based on Mists of Pandaira Darkmoon Cards in the future. The basic Idea is the same though.

5.0.4 notes As far as I can see in patch 5.0.4 the grind is the same. Where achievement sharing is concerned, all characters on your account will receive your insane title after the achievement is earned. Also as far as I can tell, you will have to earn all parts of the achievement on one character, the progress of achievements does not share between them.


So, I've seen a lot of guides around but none are really that up to date. So I figured I'd make my own.

First off, what is this? Insane in the membrane is an achievement which people farm out to obtain the title "the Insane". It involves obtaining certain reputations which are very time consuming to achieve.

The Reputations we will be grinding will be:


Bloodsail Buccaneers
Ravenholdt
Darkmoon Faire
Booty Bay
Everlook
Gadgetzan
Ratchet


So now you are thinking "wow all these reputations, where should I start?" Don't worry, I have a plan.

First we will start with Bloodsail Buccaneers.

Bloodsail Buccaneers

The target we are aiming for here is Honored. There is no need to go any farther unless you are farming exalted reputations.

A note on this reputation involving Steamwheedle Cartel. Originally you had to be exalted with Steamwheedle and honored with Bloodsail at the same time. More recently some say that this isn't the case, and may have been a bug at a certain point in time. As there hasn't been much response on this subject, to save a load of heart ache I would recommend keeping your Bloodsail reputation at honored during the achievement progress.

Now then, there are two ways we can go about this one. The first will be to find a couple friends, tank and a healer and farm the guards in Booty Bay. Since cataclysm these guards have had a major boost in stats and cannot be killed by conventional weapons.

The second way (which is boring I know) is to farm a single mob in Arathi Highlands. In the Arathi Highlands there is a place which you can see on your map below Stromgarde Keep named Faldir's Cove. In the old days you would have to swim there but now there is a path, and also you can fly now.

The guy we will be killing mostly is Shakes O'Breen, he has an extremely fast respawn rate. The two gnomes in the background of this screenshot will give you slightly more reputation but have a low respawn rate.

Bare in mind that this is probably the easiest part of the grind, and next we will move onto Ravenholdt.

Ravenholdt

The first stage of obtaining exalted with Ravenholdt is to kill Syndicate mobs. These can be found in Arathi Highlands at Northfold Manor and Stromgarde Keep.

For me I found it best to do laps around both areas to allow respawns, as you catch up really quickly. I would start at Stromgarde and go through the bottom level first. After those mobs mount up, fly over the wall to the top level, kill the mobs there, check in the houses. Follow along into the Keep and kill the guys in there. The named npcs don't reward reputation and if a lowbie is questing there I tend to not kill them if I can help it.

After clearing the keep, mount up again and fly over to Northfold Manor. Most of the mobs are in stealth, but can be seen reasonably well by an 85. Go around the farm in a circle and then fly back to Stromgarde, rinse and repeat until you get to 11999/12000 honored.

The next part will involve turning in Heavy Junk Boxes. These have to be Pick Pocketed by a Rogue from mobs usually around the level 50-60 area. The best place to farm these I found was actually in Blackrock Spire. I would stealth in around the first room of UBRS and then head down and pick pocket all of LBRS and on the walk back I could jump down to the ogres and their pockets had respawned. Work my way back up to UBRS again and all those had respawned too. Out of the instance and reset, start again.

If you don't have a rogue, all is not lost, but it will cost you. As I wanted to spend more time grinding my Steamwheedle reputations and less time in BRS I employed the services of a "Dwarf" Rogue (I thought he was a Dwarf, but turns out we are horde and he is Undead). He did a very good service I think 10g per box and I had my reputation up in no time. Its just a case of asking in trade or on the forums really.

You need to have 5 boxes per turn in, and each turn in will reward you with 75 reputation. 82.5 Reputation if you have guild perks. The best way I would recommend to find out how many you need, would be to visit Wowjuju. They have a rep calculator which will tell you how much you need based on perks and racials. All you need to do is insert your name and server and find your reputation, very simple and helpful website.

Now we have that sorted, onto our next reputation.

Darkmoon Faire

Now then, the Darkmoon Faire has become much easier and cheaper to obtain than previously.

Darkmoon Fair will begin on every first Sunday of a month, and end on the next Saturday. So you have a week to do all the daily quests, and profession quests.

The dailys are quite simple really. They reward 250 reputation each, or 275 with perks. A days gain will be 1250 reputation or 1375 with perks. And it will take you roughly 34 days worth of daily gains or 31 with perks. That works out around 5 months.

But 5 months is a long time. Each month you will be given extra quests to do based on what Professions you have, each profession has its own quest which you can obtain at the faire. They are usually quite easy. Also while dungeoning you obtain artifacts which reward a nice amount of reputation. They are as follows:

Mysterious Grimoire
Monstrous Egg
Imbued Crystal
Ornate Weapon
A Treatise on Strategy
Soothsayer's Runes
Adventurer's Journal
Banner of the Fallen
Captured Insignia

All of these can be found on the Auction House, but all drop from somewhere. A guide to farming these has been posted on Wowhead by Perculia which can be found here: Darkmoon Despoiler: A Guide to Farming Darkmoon Artifacts

Now to squeeze in that extra rep. If you aren't fussed about how long it will take, all the above is fine. But if you are really desperate and have no patience at all and a lot of gold doing nothing, then its Darkmoon Cards for you.

Darkmoon cards are collected together to form decks which reward nice trinkets or other things. For an epic deck you will receive 350 rep or 385 with perks, and for a lesser deck you will receive 25 rep or 27.5 with perks.

There are several ways you can go around this. If you have the money to invest I would recommend epic decks, but you will need to find an inscriber. With the epic decks you could possibly make a profit providing people buy your finished trinkets off you. The best way to make these is to buy loads of Cataclysm grade herbs, mill them all up. Turn your Blackfallow ink into Inferno Inks and create loads of Darkmoon Cards of Destruction.

The second way would be to create lesser decks. I found rogues decks to be nice and easy. They require Hunter's Ink to craft, which can be obtained by milling either Bruiseweed, Stranglekelp, Briarthorn, Mageroyal or Swiftthistle.

Epic decks must be turned in at the faire, but lesser decks can be used to summon an NPC from the faire to your location at any time of the month which will allow you to turn them in.

Next on our list...

Steamwheedle Cartel

Instead of listing each goblin faction separate, Its best to do them in one as they tie in with each other.

With this I found the best place was to start in Tanaris. There are two places you can do this in Tanaris, and the best depends on how many people you are with.

If you are alone I recommend the camp behind the Caverns of Time. You can go around it in circles with everything respawning in time for you to get back to each point.

If you have more than two people though, I would reccomend the camp where the fights are going on. This place is ideal to keep you in range of everyone for rep gains. The mobs in the area are on a set respawn, which means there has to be a certain amount of mobs up at one time. So if you are killing everything in sight super fast because there are loads of you at different points of the map, the more respawns you are going to get. I managed to get the last leg of my grind here.

The idea here in Tanaris is to kill until you get your reputation with Gadgetzhan to 11999/12000 Honored.

Once you have reached this, you now need to go to The Barrens. There is a little island here full of mobs which reward Ratchet reputation.

For this part keep watching your Gadgetzhan reputation. The idea here is to get it to exalted while on the island, then return to Tanaris for the rest of the reputation.

The reason here is, each kill for its own faction will stop at a certain point, and you have to max out the reputations with spillover rep. Doing it this way I found to be the least tedious.

Once that's all done, take a step back and congratulate yourself on your new insane title.

Its really simple but the problem is finding the patience to do it.

Websites I recommend in this guide:

Wowjuju Rep Calc
Darkmoon Despoiler: A Guide to Farming Darkmoon Artifacts

Getting my own title was hard work, but I'd like to thank the people who helped me along the way. You will most likely meet people along the way as others are doing the same, be friendly, group up. Good luck everyone.

Stay Frosty
-Professor Clutch... the Insane

Wednesday 21 March 2012

Mists of Pandaria Beta


So its that time again, Blizzard just lifted the NDA on Mop and the beta should be very very soon.

Now... since this NDA was lifted a load of info has surfaced. I'm not usually one to go back on my word... But it actually looks quite good. The screenshots look epic, I like the idea of having my own farm, and I hate Garosh so I'm glad he's going near the end.

One thing I have noticed is a lot of hate towards the Female Panda model, I don't see the problem. The female panda model made me change my mind completely about if a panda was ever going to be created on my account. Male panda can get out... Female panda isn't so bad.

So now really I just need to wait and see if I get chosen to test, I don't have the annual pass as I am unable to stick to it, so I'm going to have to wait and see. I didn't get into Wrath of the Lich King, and I didn't get into Cataclysm. Didn't try for Burning Crusade and wasn't around in original beta, not sure if this is why I don't get chosen but still. Blizzard give me a beta pass please.

Stay Frosty
-Professor Clutch

Tuesday 13 March 2012

Archaeology

So here's what I want to talk about, Archaeology in wow.

In the last 2 or 3 days I decided to start leveling it again. First time was at the start of Cataclysm and now I'm doing so in 4.3.3... Wow... Really this has been buffed so hard.

Let me make a slight comparison here.

Clutch 1 - 525 took maybe a week. Rares on the way from 1 - 525 = 2. Each dig gave 1-3 fragments.

Clutchizie 1 - 525 = 2 days. Rares on the way from 1 - 525 = 10. Each dig gave 5-7 fragments.

Wow that is a clear buff, which makes it quite clear as to why so many more professors are around these days. I'm clearly mad that I'm doing archaeology again, but my Warrior is no longer named Clutch and I can't say Professor Clutch until I fix my Mage.

That's all I have to say really, I need something to rant about at the moment, nothing seems to be bothering me. If anyone has a subject they would like me to talk about please let me know, id be happy to get an opinion on it.

Stay Frosty
-Associate Professor Clutchizie

Thursday 1 March 2012

Rendering Times

So today I have been rendering a still image in Cinema 4d, so far 7 hours and 16 minutes. I'm starting to get frustrated with the epic power of my pc.



Last night I started to render the clip, it took 2 hours to get to the face on that elf and I noticed a problem. So had to stop it and fixed it this morning. Not expecting it to take this long I set it going and figured id spend the evening on wow or something. But no, its still here rendering.

The biggest problem is my PC is getting on to be 5 years old now, and it doesn't like the 2 main things present in this still. 1. Global Illumination 2. A massive Tree.

If I had the money I'd upgrade heavily, but I just don't. I like making these Warcraft scenes for friends in Wow, but as I get better at creating them, my pc gets worse at rendering them. My first scene took 10 minutes, my recent one took 5 hours. This ones 7 hours and still going... Maybe I need a better render engine, but what do I go for? What's faster and better looking for c4d?

If anyone has any suggestions I'd be glad to hear it.

Stay Frosty
-Professor Clutch

Update: 21:42 almost half way, xfire crashed in the night and hugged 50% of the cpu great...
Update2: Finished total time 26 hours 10 minutes 51 seconds
http://clutch26.deviantart.com/art/Camp-Fire-288150614