Tuesday (28 Aug) - Patch 5.04 First Impressions

Tuesday (28 Aug) - Patch 5.04 First Impressions

First off, there are a few things that probably don't come into play until MoP itself, but I am including them here as I continue to learn things.

Happyface aggressively pointed out that there is a new farming material that has the crafters choosing sides. The new mat will affect Happy's work on the Auction House. Whether that's a positive or a negative is still to be determined.

The new mat is called Spirit of Harmony (SoH). SoH is the new "elemental" crafting mat in MoP. Instead of the usual multiple mats (in Cata, it's volatile air, earth, fire, life, and water) we now have just one in MoP. SoH is gathered as a random drop - supposedly, just about anything and everything you can kill drops the stuff. You have to be level 85 for it to drop, however. It is also Bind on Pickup (BOP), meaning that it can't be sold or shared. Only the character that farms it can use it. There is quite a controversy over that, and Blizz has already admitted that they might change that to Bind on Account (BOA) so that the SoHs can be passed to other characters in the account - but it'll be BOP to start with.

What is Blizz's reason for making the mat BOP? They want to FORCE players out of the cities and into the world to farm mats. Seriously, that's their reasoning.

SoHs have a lesser type called Motes of Harmony. It takes ten motes to make one SoH. What are they used for? Here is a list (probably still incomplete) just to give you an idea:

59 recipes at present
Enchanting, Herbalism, Mining and Skinning can't use them at all.
They're needed to bypass daily cloth production (3)
They're needed to bypass daily JC research (3)
They're needed to bypass daily Living steel restrictions (alchemy, 3)
They're needed for all weekly inscription quests (1,4-6)
They're needed for all weapon manufacture (lvl 85: 1-2, lvl 90: 2 or 5)
They're needed for all lvl 90 non-cloth armor
They're needed for either engineering mount (12)
They're needed for the "Blingtron 4000" (4)
They're needed for the "Mist-Piercing Goggles" (2)
They're needed for the JC trinkets (3)
They're needed for making cards in inscription (10)

If you have no use for any of the above, the SoHs can be traded to a vendor for crafting mats and other non-crafting purposes. Whether it will be worth doing is still undetermined.

Now, what hasn't changed is that with MoP, as usual, all of the professions have gotten new mats to make the new MoP goodies. For Happy, the focus as always is on enchanting mats. An old to new cross reference follows:

Infinite Dust -> Spirit Dust
Celestial Essence -> Mysterious Essence
Heavenly Shards -> Ethereal Shards
Maelestrom Crystals -> Sha Crystals

Happy sees no real challenge to continuing to work the AH despite the new SoH mat. The older mats will also still be valuable, maybe even more so than before the expansion, as SoHs can't be used to buy them, and alt leveling will still need the older mats. Happy envisions that MoP will be a profitable endeavor.

Other news - Theremore's Fall (the battle of Theremore scenario) will be launched on 18 Sep. It is open to level 85s for only one week. After that you will have to be level 90 to participate in the scenario. Special feats of strength can be won for level 85s. Scenarios require a group of three.

Big Smile - Now that mounts are account bound, Wild's hard won Raven Lord Anzu mount can be enjoyed by the entire Wild family. Woo hoo!  

Okay, no more lectures, it's 11am and I'm ready to login ...

Delay #1 - The 11am completion of the patch was extended to 1pm. It was nice to see the launcher state that Patch 5.04 was "ready to play."  Not.

Delay #2 - Time extended to 2pm. Closing up shop for the day. I'm sure there will be more interesting things to report tomorrow. The report could be a bit curtailed, though, as I will be at a baseball game tonight and at the Del Mar racetrack on Wednesday. Gotta play them ponies ...