Trove Crafting

First Winter

One of the things about weight loss that no one really told me is the fact that I would go from being very hot natured, to freezing all of the time.  This is the first winter after losing roughly seventy pounds so far, and I have to say it is a pretty miserable thing.  I am absolutely living in this Carhart black zip up hoodie.  I pretty much wear it over everything, because it keeps me at least somewhat warm.   I keep hoping that eventually my internal body temperature will regulate and I will get used to having less insulation.  It is essentially the same feeling as you have when you have just gotten a long overdue hair cut… but instead of my head being cold it is my entire body.

I am not complaining, the weight loss has had many other tangible benefits.  However as “snowmageddon” barrels down on my area I find myself shivering quite a bit.  We are supposed to get all manner of icy nastiness dumped on us around noon.  I am hoping that either it gets delayed long enough for me to get home tonight, or that it is not nearly as severe as they are expecting.  I am not really looking forward my normally fifteen minute commute turning into an hour and a half as everyone suddenly forgets how to drive.  At least my coffee helps warm me up.

Trove Crafting

 

Released another Trove video yesterday, this time covering the brand new crafting system patch.  I have to say I am impressed with the game so far.  The biggest thing for me was the addition of the ability to craft health potions.  This has enabled me to make some really bad decisions and survive.  I think over the course of the evening last night I much have gone through 30-40.  Each time I saw a bottle plant I made a beeline for it just so I could make some more.  Right now everything tends to drop monster parts, which I am guessing is a generic placeholder material that will eventually be updated to be various specific things.  Currently a Health Potion is 1 bottle from a bottle plant and 1 monster part, which makes them extremely easy to craft.

Similarly they have made bombs extremely costly to craft, and as a result the world is not nearly as marred with bomb holes.  I don’t even make them anymore, because really I don’t find them that useful even in combat with monsters.  In the video I could not figure out for the life of me why I was unable to make bombs… but then upon re-watching it I face-palmed over the fact that I simply could not count.  I want to say I was missing fire flower parts, or something like that.  The crafting system is actually really efficient so far, and I like it overall quite a bit more than I did the Minecraft one..  especially when it comes to bulk crafting.

Acheesements

2013-12-05 06_18_20-Achievements - Community - World of Warcraft

Since today is ending up a bit of a mixed bag update post, I figured I would also talk a bit about what I am doing over in World of Warcraft.  A group of friends and I have been knocking out the various achievements needed for Glory of the Pandaria Hero.  I am within a stones throw now of completing it, but at the same time we are catching up a player that has next to none of them.  What is going to be most time consuming I fear is finishing off Polyformic Acid Science.  Right now I think I have 3 of the 6 kills.  However I just found out that you can go into normal mode, solo the instance, get the vial and then hold onto it to give you double the amount of time to get through all the mobs for the achievement.

Past that I am working on farming Motes of Harmony on my Paladin to make weapon upgrades for my various characters.  That is the glaring flaw I have seen so far with the timeless isle.  You get really nice gear to catch you up, but it lacks anything even remotely similar for weapons.  The weapons you can buy off the timeless isle vendors are only ilvl 476, which are the same as the epic weapons that drop from the early heroic instances.  I feel like what we are missing are the Icecrown 5 mans.  They were a really good way during Wrath of the Lich King to help catch alts up, and the weapons there were viable enough to raid with, at least until you can get something better.  As a result I have several 90s with full timeless gear, but walking around with a 450 blue weapon simply because there is no really effective way to improve that.

I am not looking forward to working through the halfhill farm again, but I am thinking that might be something I just need to bite the bullet and do on my characters that seem to be mote starved.  At least that way you get roughly one spirit of harmony a day guaranteed.  I really wish blizzard would apply a patch and make Spirits bind on account.  On Belgrave for example, I have 5 stacks of them in the bank… because there really is very little you can use them on as an inscriptionist.  However every other crafter is starving for them, and ends up spending them on something the moment they get more.  I hope in general as we go forward into Warlords of Draenor that more things become bind on account.  I feel like the ability to trade items freely between characters can only be a net positive.  The more alts someone rolls, the more time they spend playing the game…  which in generally makes them less likely to unsubscribe and go elsewhere.