Friday, September 22, 2006

TeamSpeak tutorial, Part 1:

Ok, we whipped up a .MOV tutorial for you Mac-ies on how to set up TeamSpeak - save the file from this link - you'll hear and see a spiffy (If I do say so myself) little walkthrough on that process.

Eric

Friday, September 08, 2006

Shamelessly self promoting...

HTTP://www.SMASHPVP.com

Please come and register and post stuff and stuff, I guess, if you want....

HTTP://www.SMASHPVP.com

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Librams

Ok, I've figured out the librams, so I'll post that for everyone to see.

Librams are the only way to add anything other than +armor kits to your leg and head items. They WILL replace an armor kit, by the way, not stack.

There are eight librams, which are world drops off of virtually any 50+ mob (so says Thottbot), and each one can be turned in, along with associated mats, to one of two NPCs. When you do so, you get back an "Arcanum", which looks like a Black Diamond, and which functions like a portable enchant - you right click on it, and then on the head or leg item, and it imbues the item with its own specific characteristics.

From Wowwiki:

Libram Effect Turn-in NPC Source
Libram of Constitution +100 health Mathredis Firestar World drop
Libram of Focus +8 to healing & damage spells Lorekeeper Lydros Dire Maul
Libram of Protection +1% dodge Lorekeeper Lydros Dire Maul
Libram of Rapidity +1% haste Lorekeeper Lydros Dire Maul
Libram of Resilience +20 fire resistance Mathredis Firestar World drop
Libram of Rumination +150 mana Mathredis Firestar World drop
Libram of Tenacity +125 armor Mathredis Firestar World drop
Libram of Voracity +8 to any stat Mathredis Firestar World drop

As you can see, some of these are fairly specific, and I'm not sure I'd waste a slot on a twink to put +1% haste (especially since those damn hunters' pets run like the wind), but at least a couple are pretty useful. Yesterday I decided it was time for me to figure this out, so set out to get two Librams of Constitution for Shadowpeeg, judging that an extra 200 hp would make him UNSTOPPABLE!

First, a couple of notes. Mathredis Firestar is in the Burning Steppes, at a cave to the far north of the map (Roughly 65,23 on the map). She's an elf who stands just to the right of another NPC at the cave's entrance. She doesn't have a exclamation point over her head, but if you talk to her with a libram in your bags, she'll give you a quest with the mats she needs. Otherwise, she's just a grumpy npc.

The other NPC, Lorekeeper Lydros, is in the library of Dire Maul, inside of the instance. I've only been into DM once, so I can't tell you more about this one. But, for me, that's irrelevant because I didn't have any real interest in the librams that Lydros deals with.

So, the Libram of Constitution. Here's what it takes to get it done.

The first two are easy. I bought the Libram off the AH for 40g, and also bought the Black Diamond for around 1g. These two items are not soulbound.

The Night Dragon's Breath is a little harder, but I'd done the prep work for it without knowing it - Here's the setup quest, and then here's the repeatable quest - essentially, you have to have Cenarion Plant Salve, and then you find special plants in Felwood. You apply the salve to the plant, which cleanses the plant and allows you to pick it.

There are four types of plants - Night Dragon, Windblossom, Songflower and Whipperroot - and each does something different. My fave is Songflower, because harvesting it gives you a buff for 5% to your crit chance for an hour, which is huge. Sadly, it gives you the buff right there and then, instead of allowing you to choose when to use it. The other three give you an inventory item - berries or roots - which give various temporary buffs. The Night Dragon's Breath is a berry; you typically get 5 per plant, so gettting 4 for this quest means visiting only one plant. Importantly, the berries are soulbound when picked, so whoever picks the berries must be the person who's completing the libram quest, but they don't have to have completed the salve quests - I applied salve to a plant that Viamedia then harvested, as an example.

The last piece, the Lung Juice Cocktail (ewwww) is the result of a quest in Blasted Lands where you have to harvest three Blasted Boar Lungs, two Scorpid Pincer and one Basillisk Brain, then return them to an NPC. The quest is repeatable; however, the cocktail is soulbound, and a player can have only one cocktail in inventory at a time.

So all of this stuff gets gathered, and then returned to Mathendris, whereupon she converts it to a Lesser Arcanum. Via and I went out and did all of the gathering of mats, and I then went and got the two arcanum, flew to SW, and attempted to put them in the mail. Rude awakening #1. Arcanum are considered to be quest items, so can't be mailed. Rude awakening #2. Arcanum cannot be traded through the trade windows - I tried giving them to Flaiginbar to hold for Shadowpeeg. Rude awakening #3 - all of Shadowpeeg's twink gear is soulbound, so I couldn't give it to anyone else to hold, and then let Twinkleheal apply the enchants.

All in all, it was fairly frustrating. Here's what I did to get around it.

First of all, green-tinted goggles are easy to make, so I made a set, sent them to Twink to enchant (before they were soulbound), then returned them to Shadowpeeg. He put replaced his existing set with the new one, and voila, +100hp. I sold the other enchant to Flaiginbar, enchanting his headgear through the "not to be traded" trade slot. I then took that money, and with Viamedia, ran him through getting the arcanum (which is where Hallgrima came in and started totally distracting Via .... ) and hopefully today, I'll have successfully had Via put the other Arcanum on Shadowpeeg's soulbound leg items. At that point, I'll have 1145 hp unbuffed. And I'll be UNSTOPPABLE! bwahaha.

Ok, so what does this mean for SMASH? It means, that at this point, now that Shadow's twinked out, I'm prepared to function as the designated Libram-getter for any of you that want it done. You'll need to buy or otherwise procure the libram you want, and the 30g, and I'll run the various quests to get the soulbound mats. I'll get the arcanum, and then apply the enchant to your item through the trade window.

So, step up. Who wants to really kick Horde rump? Let Twinkleheal or Shadowpeeg know...

Friday, September 01, 2006

Pre-FF SMASH-ing

So, the Idaho-area SMASH folks are going to have their Fantasy Football draft tomorrow at Scott's house in Boise, and we'll also be playing WoW pre- and post-draft, I'd guess. I'll be starting at about 4:30 server time. Join us, and we'll SMASH our foes.

Some things to pass along:

We've got a TeamSpeak server set up now - we may give it a try Saturday to see how it works. Download the free client at http://www.goteamspeak.com/index.php?page=downloads. Yes, there a Mac client.... dunno how well it works. I don't have the IP info handy, but I'll post it when I do.

Make sure you have potions and macros ready - because of the 1.12 patch, there's a new chat channel when you go into WSG, /bg. So the macros now should read something like...

/bg "Our flag is on their second level"

About group queueing - the group MUST be formed before it queues. If you join a group after the queue, then you get left behind. We don't want that.

Defense - It's pointless. Midfield is where to engage, with thrusts forward to capture the flag. If we get into the stalemate where both teams have the flag, we need to pass off the flag to our most twinked toon, and then go as a team to hunt down our flag. Our FC should come with us - we're better protecting them with numbers than stealth or hoping the Horde don't find him - they will.

The transition game - If a FC looks like they're going to cap, the midfield needs to immediately push toward the opponent's base. The crucial piece is to be close to the Flag room when the flags reset, to immediately restart the pickup and run. This is true even when it's our flag that's about to be captured - the transition is where games are won and lost.

Order of kills - Priests, Shammys, Rogues, Hunters. Always. Healers die first no matter what.

See you this weekend!