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Feature:E3 2008 - Day 3 Wrap-up
News:Mainstream Media Hits - Matt on ABCs PM program
Feature:E3 2008 - Day 2 Wrap-up
Review:Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
News:Too beautiful to ignore..
Review:Monster Jam
News:Big trouble in little China
Feature:E3 2008 - Day 1 Wrap-up
News:E3 2008 ... it begins
News:Final Fantasy XIII announced for the Xbox 360
Update:A History Of Refusal
Interview:Firemint talk about their iPod game The Sims DJ
News:BtVS Sacrificing itself for that pesky hellmouth
News:Rock Band 2 Trailer and sneak peak at Rock Band 2 Drums
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“Dear Mario, I'll be waiting for you at the castle on the night of the Star Festival. There's something I'd like to give you.
Yeah, I'll bet there is. ”
Yeah, I'll bet there is. ”
'Super Mario Galaxy' Reviewby Phil
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feature :: wow pt 2 3
WoW Pt 2 3
Introduction : PART 1 ( Page 1 : Page 2 : Page 3 : Page 4 ) PART 2 ( Page 1 : Page 2 : Page 3 : Page 4 )
Ungoro Crater
I was probably not really ready when I found a nice little pathway that led to "Ungoro Crater" and got all brave.
Ungoro Crater is the Land Time Forgot. Possibly time just looked away briefly because it had something to do at the time and when it looked back it was just was too far gone and it decided not to bother. It's not so much primitive as primeval, with dinosaurs roaming in packs, massive slightly creepy trees, and the whole area a virulent green.
Even among WoW players it's not widely known that the entire Ungoro region is a tribute to Nintendo.
Two of the NPCs are called Larion and Muigi, who wear green and red overalls. There are gorillas in one patch, including one called Dadonga. Gorillas also often drop "Empty Barrel", a clear Donkey Kong reference. Many of the quests are Nintendo references, including one that gives you the quest reward "Linken's Boomerang" .
Ungoro also has another unique feature. Devilsaurs. There are four altogether, and they're massive. Probably the physically largest non-boss in the game, the Devilsaur is a terrible foe. It roams around Ungoro decimating players, and chomping the unwary. The first few times I encountered Devilsaurs I was lucky enough to get away before he saw me. Then one day he snuck up behind me and killed me easily in two blows.
How a creature that big can be that quiet I have no idea.
Switching trades: Leatherworking
Around about level 50 I came to a decision. I had long been a nearly 300 leatherworker (dragonscale), and was finding the skill so remarkably useless either for me or for anyone else, that I decided to give it up. Despite all the time I'd spent learning and training up that skill, all the mats I'd bought, animals I'd skinned, etc, it just wasn't doing it for me anymore. The gear sold like crap on the AH. I was finding, though, that anything I wanted to get made for myself (Enchanted Thorium Leggings ftw) were going to cost me an absolute fortune in materials. That was when I decided it might well be time to take up Mining.
Mining was kind of fun to start at level 50. Pretty much all the gathering professions have their resource pegged around the same sort of area as a players level should be. That meant I had to go back to the very beginning of the game. I found myself running around in level 1 - 10 areas, mining merrily and annhiliating the surrounding wildlife. It was really quite fun. What I didn't like was getting... stuck.
Like everything else, you get skill points for mining. As your skill goes up, the skill points you get from a certain type goes down. The minerals are mined in a successive order of value: copper, tin, silver, iron, gold, mithril, truesilver, thorium, dark iron.
There comes certain points where you don't really get much skill up for mining the stuff you CAN mine. But you can't mine anything higher. These "choke points" are quite frustrating, but you pretty much just have to deal with them.
There's a few complications just to make it fun. Bronze can also be made, with 1 part Tin and 1 part Copper. Steel can be made from Iron, by melding it with coal (logically).
The three "precious" metals (Silver, Gold, Truesilver) actually are random spawns in spots where their partnered "normal" metals spawn. Apparently there's a 1 in 5 chance, but I think it's slightly lower than that. Maybe closer to 1 in 10.
To complicate things just a little further, there are two types of Thorium. Specifically, two different kinds of thorium veins. "Small Thorium Veins" and "Rich Thorium Veins". Small ones give you maybe 1 or if you're lucky 2 thorium ores. Rich thorium veins give you maybe four or 5, but also have a chance to drop an Arcanite Crystal. Arcane Crystals are used by an Alchemist to turn a thorium bar into an Arcanite bar. Arcanite is fiendishly expensive. Dark Iron is strange. Though the ore can be obtained from a fair few veins scattered around Burning Steppes and other areas, it can only actually be smelted into bars at the bottom of an instance called Blackrock Depths.
There's an even higher material called "Elementium" which can only be made through a ridiculous process that costs around 350g PER bar. And you need 10 of them to make the sword they're for.
Unsurprisingly I haven't really done that yet.
I was probably not really ready when I found a nice little pathway that led to "Ungoro Crater" and got all brave.
Ungoro Crater is the Land Time Forgot. Possibly time just looked away briefly because it had something to do at the time and when it looked back it was just was too far gone and it decided not to bother. It's not so much primitive as primeval, with dinosaurs roaming in packs, massive slightly creepy trees, and the whole area a virulent green.
Even among WoW players it's not widely known that the entire Ungoro region is a tribute to Nintendo.
Two of the NPCs are called Larion and Muigi, who wear green and red overalls. There are gorillas in one patch, including one called Dadonga. Gorillas also often drop "Empty Barrel", a clear Donkey Kong reference. Many of the quests are Nintendo references, including one that gives you the quest reward "Linken's Boomerang" .
Ungoro also has another unique feature. Devilsaurs. There are four altogether, and they're massive. Probably the physically largest non-boss in the game, the Devilsaur is a terrible foe. It roams around Ungoro decimating players, and chomping the unwary. The first few times I encountered Devilsaurs I was lucky enough to get away before he saw me. Then one day he snuck up behind me and killed me easily in two blows.
How a creature that big can be that quiet I have no idea.
Switching trades: Leatherworking
Around about level 50 I came to a decision. I had long been a nearly 300 leatherworker (dragonscale), and was finding the skill so remarkably useless either for me or for anyone else, that I decided to give it up. Despite all the time I'd spent learning and training up that skill, all the mats I'd bought, animals I'd skinned, etc, it just wasn't doing it for me anymore. The gear sold like crap on the AH. I was finding, though, that anything I wanted to get made for myself (Enchanted Thorium Leggings ftw) were going to cost me an absolute fortune in materials. That was when I decided it might well be time to take up Mining.
Mining was kind of fun to start at level 50. Pretty much all the gathering professions have their resource pegged around the same sort of area as a players level should be. That meant I had to go back to the very beginning of the game. I found myself running around in level 1 - 10 areas, mining merrily and annhiliating the surrounding wildlife. It was really quite fun. What I didn't like was getting... stuck.
Like everything else, you get skill points for mining. As your skill goes up, the skill points you get from a certain type goes down. The minerals are mined in a successive order of value: copper, tin, silver, iron, gold, mithril, truesilver, thorium, dark iron.
There comes certain points where you don't really get much skill up for mining the stuff you CAN mine. But you can't mine anything higher. These "choke points" are quite frustrating, but you pretty much just have to deal with them.
There's a few complications just to make it fun. Bronze can also be made, with 1 part Tin and 1 part Copper. Steel can be made from Iron, by melding it with coal (logically).
The three "precious" metals (Silver, Gold, Truesilver) actually are random spawns in spots where their partnered "normal" metals spawn. Apparently there's a 1 in 5 chance, but I think it's slightly lower than that. Maybe closer to 1 in 10.
To complicate things just a little further, there are two types of Thorium. Specifically, two different kinds of thorium veins. "Small Thorium Veins" and "Rich Thorium Veins". Small ones give you maybe 1 or if you're lucky 2 thorium ores. Rich thorium veins give you maybe four or 5, but also have a chance to drop an Arcanite Crystal. Arcane Crystals are used by an Alchemist to turn a thorium bar into an Arcanite bar. Arcanite is fiendishly expensive. Dark Iron is strange. Though the ore can be obtained from a fair few veins scattered around Burning Steppes and other areas, it can only actually be smelted into bars at the bottom of an instance called Blackrock Depths.
There's an even higher material called "Elementium" which can only be made through a ridiculous process that costs around 350g PER bar. And you need 10 of them to make the sword they're for.
Unsurprisingly I haven't really done that yet.
