Did you know that engineer can make rings? Yup.
Patch 1.0.5 commentary
13 years ago
Showing posts with label engineering. Show all posts
Showing posts with label engineering. Show all posts
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Vanity Pets #74 & #75 - Lil' Smoky & Pet Bombling
As an Engineer, one has access to 2 extra vanity pets that other professions can't ever acquire. These pets can be crafted from patterns that come from Gnomeregan. They are Lil' Smoky and Pet Bombling.
Until recently, I believe you needed to be specialized in either Gnomish Engineering or Goblin Engineering to learn either one or the other pet, but not both. Now, this has changed. You don't need any specialization and you can learn both pets at once. Now that's another Engineering perk for you!
How do you acquire the patterns for these pets then? As I mentioned already, they are both found in Gnomeregan and the drop rate is very high which means you can easily get both with a single foray inside the instance.
Schematic: Lil' Smoky has a high chance to drop from 3 types of mobs: Crowd Pummeler 9-60, Arcane Nullifier X-21 and Peacekeeper Security Suit. The first of these is a boss but he didn't drop the schematic for me. I got mine from an Arcane Nullifier. You will find those on the last stretch of corridor towards Mekgineer Thermaplugg's chamber.
Schematic: Pet Bombling has a 100% drop rate from Mekgineer Thermaplugg, the final boss of Gnomeregan. Enough said here. Get to him, kill him and the schematic is yours.
And that's it. One short trip inside Gnomeregan and you've got yourself 2 new pets. Of course, you need to craft them first. The mats aren't very expensive but there's a lot of them and you might need to learn some new patterns, es
pecially if you've power-leveled your engineering.
Here are the two pets in action.
Until recently, I believe you needed to be specialized in either Gnomish Engineering or Goblin Engineering to learn either one or the other pet, but not both. Now, this has changed. You don't need any specialization and you can learn both pets at once. Now that's another Engineering perk for you!
How do you acquire the patterns for these pets then? As I mentioned already, they are both found in Gnomeregan and the drop rate is very high which means you can easily get both with a single foray inside the instance.
Schematic: Lil' Smoky has a high chance to drop from 3 types of mobs: Crowd Pummeler 9-60, Arcane Nullifier X-21 and Peacekeeper Security Suit. The first of these is a boss but he didn't drop the schematic for me. I got mine from an Arcane Nullifier. You will find those on the last stretch of corridor towards Mekgineer Thermaplugg's chamber.
Schematic: Pet Bombling has a 100% drop rate from Mekgineer Thermaplugg, the final boss of Gnomeregan. Enough said here. Get to him, kill him and the schematic is yours.
And that's it. One short trip inside Gnomeregan and you've got yourself 2 new pets. Of course, you need to craft them first. The mats aren't very expensive but there's a lot of them and you might need to learn some new patterns, es
pecially if you've power-leveled your engineering.Here are the two pets in action.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Jeeves
Jeeves is the culmination of all things Engineering, at least at this point in time. Who knows what wonderful gadgets Blizzard will throw our way in future patches and expansions? For now though, Jeeves is the king of uber-cool. As far as I'm concerned.
You see, even though I don't raid (I'm a solo player, y'know), there's nothing I don't enjoy more than solo-ing old instances and in spite of having 3x 20-slot bags and 1x 22-slot bag and entering one of these instances with 3 empty bags, I will always fill them up halfway through the dungeon. I like to do a full clear of these dungeons because some old items fetch a very good price in the Auction House.
Jeeves solves these problems for me. Coupled with MOLL-E, I shouldn't have any more bag-full problems while solo-ing a dungeon. Ever.
It's just that there are a few small problems with obtaining Jeeves. Luckily, all of them can be solved on your own. No raid or even group needed.
The first problem is that Jeeves requires 450 Engineering. 440 is relatively easy to reach but the last 10 points could be hard to grind. In my previous post on Engineering, I explained how I reached 450 skill.
Did you just reach Engineering 450 and thought you could simply go to the trainer and learn the schematic for Jeeves? Think again young Padawan. Jeeves only drops in certain instances but, more importantly, also drops from certain mobs outside of any instance. The easiest way to get his schematic is to head to Storm Peaks around the coordinates 38,42 where your task is to demolish Library Guardians. After killing them, use the Engineer's Salvage skill on them, which is like a gathering skill inside a profession (uber cool, I tell ya). At some point, one of them will drop Jeeves' schematic. If you think you will have to grind forever and a day, don't fret. Mine dropped in less than 24 minutes of killing these guys. Even better, there were a couple of other people in the area killing them and they were non-engineers, so I could just run around and salvage all the bodies they left behind.
Your journey has just started. Looking over the list of mats required to craft Jeeves, you will probably be dismayed. I mean, c'mon...
2x Field Repair Bot 74A
10x Field Repair Bot 110G
20x Scrapbot Construction Kit
8x Titansteel Bar
2x King's Amber
30x Handful of Cobalt Bolts
That's a shitload of mats and components. Not only that, but if you are a fresh Engineer like I am, you will realize that you are missing 3 important schematics for the repair bots. A quick check with your Engineer trainer will reveal that he doesn't teach these schematics. Now you are really in a pickle, aren't you?
Now quite. Once again, it is relatively easy to obtain the patterns for these repair bots. Of course, if you are impatient and/or you have a lot of money to waste, you could always buy them from the Auction House. Me, I preferred to acquire them on my own. This way, the final goal tastes sweeter.
The Scrapbot Construction Kit is easily obtained from a quest that you will most likely stumble upon while grinding the mobs for Jeeves. One of them will drop a SCRAP-E Access Card item that starts a quest. It pays if you already carry the materials needed for this quest. If not, just craft them and return to the place where you were grinding the Library Guardians. Go inside the main building at the top of the stairs where you'll find a bot with the question mark above its head. Hand in the mats and you will be asked to interact with a console which teaches you the pattern for Scrapbot Construction Kit.
Field Repair Bot 110G is also easy to obtain but requires you to make a trip to Outland, Blade's Edge Mountains to be more precise. There, you'll want to grind Gan'Arg Analyzers. One of them will drop the recipe which has a very high drop rate (20% or so). It took me less than 1 minute from the time I started killing them until I got the drop. It was my 2nd or 3rd mob.
Until now it's been easy. Now comes the hard part. Field Repair Bot 74A is a lot harder to obtain. That's because it is found in Blackrock Depths. Deep inside. And that's one of the most convoluted instances in WoW and certainly the longest. It pays if you know the instance but it took me a while to figure it out. It also pays if you already have the Shadowforge Key (which I didn't have). I'm not going to explain in detail how to get to the schematic. Please read the Wowhead instructions that other players have already provided. Those instructions aren't very clear though and I had a hard time finding my way around. I also got lost a few times and I didn't even get to Emperor Thaurissan whom I wanted to kill for the achievement. The Field Repair Bot 74A schematic is next to a boss named Golem Lord Argelmach. It lies on the ground and only engineers can interact with it. Once again, read the Wowhead comments on how to get there. I wouldn't be able to explain it to you at any rate.
Now that you have all the important ingredients, start crafting! At this point, if you don't already possess 8x Titansteel Bars (I already had a bunch of these bars), you'll find that these run you 1000+ Gold on the Auction House. Ouch! Depending on your server's economy, the King's Amber will cost another 200-300 Gold. Double ouch!
If you've finally managed to assemble all these materials, you can finally begin crafting your Jeeves. Notice that I didn't even mention the mats required to craft the 3 types of repair bots. On their own, those are another story but the mats are a lot cheaper than what's required for Jeeves.
Finally, you've crafted Jeeves , the pinnacle of your Engineering career. Good job! From here, you can look down on all the lesser mortals and sneer at them while their bags are overflowing and their gear is falling apart.
Hoping that this account of how to craft Jeeves was useful, here's a screenshot of my Engineer Hunter with his new butler at his side.
You see, even though I don't raid (I'm a solo player, y'know), there's nothing I don't enjoy more than solo-ing old instances and in spite of having 3x 20-slot bags and 1x 22-slot bag and entering one of these instances with 3 empty bags, I will always fill them up halfway through the dungeon. I like to do a full clear of these dungeons because some old items fetch a very good price in the Auction House.
Jeeves solves these problems for me. Coupled with MOLL-E, I shouldn't have any more bag-full problems while solo-ing a dungeon. Ever.
It's just that there are a few small problems with obtaining Jeeves. Luckily, all of them can be solved on your own. No raid or even group needed.
The first problem is that Jeeves requires 450 Engineering. 440 is relatively easy to reach but the last 10 points could be hard to grind. In my previous post on Engineering, I explained how I reached 450 skill.
Did you just reach Engineering 450 and thought you could simply go to the trainer and learn the schematic for Jeeves? Think again young Padawan. Jeeves only drops in certain instances but, more importantly, also drops from certain mobs outside of any instance. The easiest way to get his schematic is to head to Storm Peaks around the coordinates 38,42 where your task is to demolish Library Guardians. After killing them, use the Engineer's Salvage skill on them, which is like a gathering skill inside a profession (uber cool, I tell ya). At some point, one of them will drop Jeeves' schematic. If you think you will have to grind forever and a day, don't fret. Mine dropped in less than 24 minutes of killing these guys. Even better, there were a couple of other people in the area killing them and they were non-engineers, so I could just run around and salvage all the bodies they left behind.
Your journey has just started. Looking over the list of mats required to craft Jeeves, you will probably be dismayed. I mean, c'mon...
2x Field Repair Bot 74A
10x Field Repair Bot 110G
20x Scrapbot Construction Kit
8x Titansteel Bar
2x King's Amber
30x Handful of Cobalt Bolts
That's a shitload of mats and components. Not only that, but if you are a fresh Engineer like I am, you will realize that you are missing 3 important schematics for the repair bots. A quick check with your Engineer trainer will reveal that he doesn't teach these schematics. Now you are really in a pickle, aren't you?
Now quite. Once again, it is relatively easy to obtain the patterns for these repair bots. Of course, if you are impatient and/or you have a lot of money to waste, you could always buy them from the Auction House. Me, I preferred to acquire them on my own. This way, the final goal tastes sweeter.
The Scrapbot Construction Kit is easily obtained from a quest that you will most likely stumble upon while grinding the mobs for Jeeves. One of them will drop a SCRAP-E Access Card item that starts a quest. It pays if you already carry the materials needed for this quest. If not, just craft them and return to the place where you were grinding the Library Guardians. Go inside the main building at the top of the stairs where you'll find a bot with the question mark above its head. Hand in the mats and you will be asked to interact with a console which teaches you the pattern for Scrapbot Construction Kit.
Field Repair Bot 110G is also easy to obtain but requires you to make a trip to Outland, Blade's Edge Mountains to be more precise. There, you'll want to grind Gan'Arg Analyzers. One of them will drop the recipe which has a very high drop rate (20% or so). It took me less than 1 minute from the time I started killing them until I got the drop. It was my 2nd or 3rd mob.
Until now it's been easy. Now comes the hard part. Field Repair Bot 74A is a lot harder to obtain. That's because it is found in Blackrock Depths. Deep inside. And that's one of the most convoluted instances in WoW and certainly the longest. It pays if you know the instance but it took me a while to figure it out. It also pays if you already have the Shadowforge Key (which I didn't have). I'm not going to explain in detail how to get to the schematic. Please read the Wowhead instructions that other players have already provided. Those instructions aren't very clear though and I had a hard time finding my way around. I also got lost a few times and I didn't even get to Emperor Thaurissan whom I wanted to kill for the achievement. The Field Repair Bot 74A schematic is next to a boss named Golem Lord Argelmach. It lies on the ground and only engineers can interact with it. Once again, read the Wowhead comments on how to get there. I wouldn't be able to explain it to you at any rate.
Now that you have all the important ingredients, start crafting! At this point, if you don't already possess 8x Titansteel Bars (I already had a bunch of these bars), you'll find that these run you 1000+ Gold on the Auction House. Ouch! Depending on your server's economy, the King's Amber will cost another 200-300 Gold. Double ouch!
If you've finally managed to assemble all these materials, you can finally begin crafting your Jeeves. Notice that I didn't even mention the mats required to craft the 3 types of repair bots. On their own, those are another story but the mats are a lot cheaper than what's required for Jeeves.
Finally, you've crafted Jeeves , the pinnacle of your Engineering career. Good job! From here, you can look down on all the lesser mortals and sneer at them while their bags are overflowing and their gear is falling apart.
Hoping that this account of how to craft Jeeves was useful, here's a screenshot of my Engineer Hunter with his new butler at his side.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
450 Engineering FTW
Just this Sunday, 2 days ago, I had become convinced to ditch Herbalism on my Hunter and learn Engineering instead. Less than 24 hours later, I had become a full-fledged Engineer of maximum skill (450). And I didn't even grind it for the full 24 hours!! Here's a recount of my journey.
My starting point was this excellent leveling guide. After a quick cost analysis (that you can see in my previous article that I linked above), I came to the conclusion that Engineering was going to be a LOT cheaper than I anticipated. I'd always heard horror stories about Engineering being the most difficult - and costly - profession to level. Well, believe you me, it's not. Far from it in fact, especially in this day and age.
Just as I predicted, my out of pocket costs were around 1500 gold. However, and you need to bear this in mind, I did have about 900 gold worth of materials already, namely everything that comes after Cobalt Bars (a shitload of Saronite and tons of Titanium Bars). There also seems to be a slight error in this guide in that I never needed a single Twilight Opal, much less the 24 that are listed there. Actually there is a single instance where I needed just 2 Twilight Opals and that was for crafting my epic goggles, the Truesight Ice Blinders.
Leveling
One big tip that I would offer for quick and painless leveling (and this applies to any profession) is to have all the mats beforehand. I hadn't really planned on this so I just bought everything from the Auction House while I was leveling. From the guide, I knew how many stacks of X, Y and Z were needed and I bought the cheapest ones I could find.
The one big snag that I hit (and the reason why I didn't go above 400 skill in the first night) was that I couldn't find any more Cobalt Bars to buy on the Auction House. So I had to wait until the next day when I purchased the rest. From there, it was easy.
One thing that I don't enjoy about the leveling process is all the running around like crazy. Get on your alt, scan AH, buy stuff, mail it to main, log off alt, log on main, grab mats, craft stuff, send finished products to alt for auctioning or store, run to/from bank, smelt some ore, etc, etc. Rinse, repeat. Sticking to the guide was great because it made leveling easy.
I did not specialize in either Gnomish or Goblin Engineering. You can level just fine without specializing. I haven't made up my mind yet, though I tend to gravitate towards Gnomish.
I did take their advice and waited until 440 to craft the Truesight Ice Blinders and the Wormhole Generator: Northrend. From 440 to 450 I crafted lots and lots of Gnomish Army Knives because the recipe was still green and I still had shitloads of Saronite Bars. I ended up simply vendoring a lot of these knives because I doubt they would sell quickly on the AH and I didn't have enough storage for them anyway. Now why would I need to make it to 450? One word: Jeeves.
Engineering Perks
At one point during my short WoW Engineering career I realized that there's one more reason why this profession is so cool for me: I'm an engineer in real life too. Not only that, but I'm also a geek and I love gadgets. So there you have it. Besides, there are plenty of devices that an Engineer can create. Here are some of my favorites.
Mote Extractor - really really sweet gadget. Unfortunately, I have yet to find my first dust cloud in Northrend. The only ones I came across were in Outland. However, the yield from a cloud seems to be very good. I got 3 motes each time I farmed it.
Mammoth Cutters - I can finally craft my own cheap ammo with my own mats. I can finally graduate from Frostbite Bullets.
Titanium Toolbox - Huge bag to store all the crap that I collected while leveling my Engineering.
MOLL-E - Portable mailbox with a 2-hour cooldown is very cool. Not as cool as Jeeves but close.
Gnomish Lightning Generator - Awesome trinket. I used it to replace the crappy one that I had. The crit it offers is plenty and the 1-minute lightning bolt is really cool. Mobs go down much faster now.
Wormhole Generator: Northrend - woohoo! Another means to move around Northrend. Too bad about the 4-hour cooldown but hey, it makes life easier.
Truesight Ice Blinders - Really cool head piece. I love the stats on it and it looks rad. I used it to replace my aging Toothslice Helm and after gemming it, it makes for a very good upgrade.
Jeeves - Right after 440 skill, I decided to go and grind for this recipe. Wowhead helped me find where it drops. I was afraid that it would only drop in a raid and I would never have access to it but it is not so. I will dedicate a whole article to this item in fact and explain in more detail how it is obtained. I haven't build my Jeeves yet for reasons which I shall explain but I've learned the recipe and it's only a matter of time before I will craft it.
In addition to all the above, I also find myself rather partial to the Box of Bombs which contains "lots" (between 12 and 20) of Saronite Bombs. Since the explosion radius is quite large, I'll be using these a lot for AoE.
So here I am at the end of a very short journey. I feel proud for becoming an engineer and I look forward to a bright future in my new career.
My starting point was this excellent leveling guide. After a quick cost analysis (that you can see in my previous article that I linked above), I came to the conclusion that Engineering was going to be a LOT cheaper than I anticipated. I'd always heard horror stories about Engineering being the most difficult - and costly - profession to level. Well, believe you me, it's not. Far from it in fact, especially in this day and age.
Just as I predicted, my out of pocket costs were around 1500 gold. However, and you need to bear this in mind, I did have about 900 gold worth of materials already, namely everything that comes after Cobalt Bars (a shitload of Saronite and tons of Titanium Bars). There also seems to be a slight error in this guide in that I never needed a single Twilight Opal, much less the 24 that are listed there. Actually there is a single instance where I needed just 2 Twilight Opals and that was for crafting my epic goggles, the Truesight Ice Blinders.
Leveling
One big tip that I would offer for quick and painless leveling (and this applies to any profession) is to have all the mats beforehand. I hadn't really planned on this so I just bought everything from the Auction House while I was leveling. From the guide, I knew how many stacks of X, Y and Z were needed and I bought the cheapest ones I could find.
The one big snag that I hit (and the reason why I didn't go above 400 skill in the first night) was that I couldn't find any more Cobalt Bars to buy on the Auction House. So I had to wait until the next day when I purchased the rest. From there, it was easy.
One thing that I don't enjoy about the leveling process is all the running around like crazy. Get on your alt, scan AH, buy stuff, mail it to main, log off alt, log on main, grab mats, craft stuff, send finished products to alt for auctioning or store, run to/from bank, smelt some ore, etc, etc. Rinse, repeat. Sticking to the guide was great because it made leveling easy.
I did not specialize in either Gnomish or Goblin Engineering. You can level just fine without specializing. I haven't made up my mind yet, though I tend to gravitate towards Gnomish.
I did take their advice and waited until 440 to craft the Truesight Ice Blinders and the Wormhole Generator: Northrend. From 440 to 450 I crafted lots and lots of Gnomish Army Knives because the recipe was still green and I still had shitloads of Saronite Bars. I ended up simply vendoring a lot of these knives because I doubt they would sell quickly on the AH and I didn't have enough storage for them anyway. Now why would I need to make it to 450? One word: Jeeves.
Engineering Perks
At one point during my short WoW Engineering career I realized that there's one more reason why this profession is so cool for me: I'm an engineer in real life too. Not only that, but I'm also a geek and I love gadgets. So there you have it. Besides, there are plenty of devices that an Engineer can create. Here are some of my favorites.
Mote Extractor - really really sweet gadget. Unfortunately, I have yet to find my first dust cloud in Northrend. The only ones I came across were in Outland. However, the yield from a cloud seems to be very good. I got 3 motes each time I farmed it.
Mammoth Cutters - I can finally craft my own cheap ammo with my own mats. I can finally graduate from Frostbite Bullets.
Titanium Toolbox - Huge bag to store all the crap that I collected while leveling my Engineering.
MOLL-E - Portable mailbox with a 2-hour cooldown is very cool. Not as cool as Jeeves but close.
Gnomish Lightning Generator - Awesome trinket. I used it to replace the crappy one that I had. The crit it offers is plenty and the 1-minute lightning bolt is really cool. Mobs go down much faster now.
Wormhole Generator: Northrend - woohoo! Another means to move around Northrend. Too bad about the 4-hour cooldown but hey, it makes life easier.
Truesight Ice Blinders - Really cool head piece. I love the stats on it and it looks rad. I used it to replace my aging Toothslice Helm and after gemming it, it makes for a very good upgrade.
Jeeves - Right after 440 skill, I decided to go and grind for this recipe. Wowhead helped me find where it drops. I was afraid that it would only drop in a raid and I would never have access to it but it is not so. I will dedicate a whole article to this item in fact and explain in more detail how it is obtained. I haven't build my Jeeves yet for reasons which I shall explain but I've learned the recipe and it's only a matter of time before I will craft it.
In addition to all the above, I also find myself rather partial to the Box of Bombs which contains "lots" (between 12 and 20) of Saronite Bombs. Since the explosion radius is quite large, I'll be using these a lot for AoE.
So here I am at the end of a very short journey. I feel proud for becoming an engineer and I look forward to a bright future in my new career.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Operation Engineering
A while back I was musing in my article LF Crafter that perhaps it is not a good idea to level a profession from scratch since you can easily find a crafter these days and the crafting tips have dropped considerably so it's not worth learning that new profession as a means of making profit.
Well, recently I've got this urge to learn Engineering on my Hunter main. Currently, my Hunter, being my main, has Mining and Herbalism. These 2 gathering skills made me a considerable amount of gold through the ages but all of a sudden I became attracted to the idea of a prestige profession and I started looking at Engineering.
To a solo Dwarf Hunter, Engineering seems to be the ideal profession. Not for making money, of course, but for the gadgets it can produce. I'm in dire need of a good head piece and the Truesight Ice Blinders are very nice. The Mote Extractor should also serve to replace one of my gathering skills successfully. I've always wanted a means to dispose of my stuff that's overflowing my bags while farming an instance and MOLL-E is what the doctor ordered.
Herbalism or Mining? Which of these should I drop for Engineering. The choice is obvious to me: Herbalism has to go. I will miss Lifeblood and the occasional Frost Lotus but hopefully Engineering will compensate with the cool gadgets and the Mote Extractor. Besides, Mining has an excellent synergy with Engineering so it's a keeper.
I found this great Engineering guide and based on it I plugged the mats required for 1-450 into an Excel spreadsheet, together with the prices on my server and to my surprise, the whole thing seems to cost less than 3000 gold, 2600 to be more precise. In my case, it's even cheaper, about 1800 due to the fact that I already have plenty of high-level bars and mats. On the other hand, I could kick myself for selling a ton of lower level mats in the past but I never thought I would learn Engineering.
Here's a screenshot of my cost estimates. Chances are that when I next talk about Engineering, I will already have it close to maximum level.
Well, recently I've got this urge to learn Engineering on my Hunter main. Currently, my Hunter, being my main, has Mining and Herbalism. These 2 gathering skills made me a considerable amount of gold through the ages but all of a sudden I became attracted to the idea of a prestige profession and I started looking at Engineering.
To a solo Dwarf Hunter, Engineering seems to be the ideal profession. Not for making money, of course, but for the gadgets it can produce. I'm in dire need of a good head piece and the Truesight Ice Blinders are very nice. The Mote Extractor should also serve to replace one of my gathering skills successfully. I've always wanted a means to dispose of my stuff that's overflowing my bags while farming an instance and MOLL-E is what the doctor ordered.
Herbalism or Mining? Which of these should I drop for Engineering. The choice is obvious to me: Herbalism has to go. I will miss Lifeblood and the occasional Frost Lotus but hopefully Engineering will compensate with the cool gadgets and the Mote Extractor. Besides, Mining has an excellent synergy with Engineering so it's a keeper.
I found this great Engineering guide and based on it I plugged the mats required for 1-450 into an Excel spreadsheet, together with the prices on my server and to my surprise, the whole thing seems to cost less than 3000 gold, 2600 to be more precise. In my case, it's even cheaper, about 1800 due to the fact that I already have plenty of high-level bars and mats. On the other hand, I could kick myself for selling a ton of lower level mats in the past but I never thought I would learn Engineering.
Here's a screenshot of my cost estimates. Chances are that when I next talk about Engineering, I will already have it close to maximum level.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
