Category Archives: just plain crafty

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The most helpful advice

In the Facebook GW2 group there are a lot of newbies who transition in from WoW. Not surprising. It’s exactly what I did.
I think this is the most helpful response I’ve ever offered.

Hello to whole community. New player here, been playing World of Warcraft for years and came up to give Guild Wars a chance, I like it a lot, just don’t get it how to get gear, is it same as WoW, trough dungeons and PvE, or? Also would appreciate if you give me a YouTube link or channel who explains game for newbies. Thanks!

I did the same thing. You’re smart to ask now. I didn’t. I didn’t have a clue and got to level 80 and to the end of PoF and was naked by the time I offed Balthazar. I was so stressed/unhappy/frustrated I deleted my character. Dumb. Really dumb.

Your very best option is to craft armor for yourself. People will tell you to just struggle through with whatever drops or buy matching stats on the TP but that’s truly not your best option. Your goal isn’t to get to 80 as fast as you can, it’s to understand your class by the time you get to 80. The shock of trying to manage the level 80 content if you’re clueless is truly painful. Plus you’re going to need max level crafting to get the most out of the game so you might as well work through it as you go.

Figure out which stat set works best for the build you’re running and make it. Crafting, with the Guild Hall boost (you do know you can get free specific boosts from the bartender in the guild tavern?) for crafting will help speed along your progress. Collect mats from the guild hall daily. (If you can, get into a guild that has four guild halls that are all farmable daily.) Get into a full home instance every day (park outside a home instance and catch a full home instance offer) and farm it for mats.

You can learn all crafts on the same character and that’s the best way to manage. When you switch between crafts it costs 50 silver. You don’t lose any progress. You can switch as often as you need to. In the beginning you will only need three or four (armor, 1 or 2 weapon crafts, jeweler). As you build your stable of characters you’ll need all the crafts.

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Nifty stuff

I’m working to learn healing and running a lot of dungeons as a result.  It’s amazing the number of people who don’t know about Findle’s Loot-a-Rang, but the dungeons are run so fast there’s no time to type a “hey, look at this” message.  Even with the macro half the time no one sees the message in chat but hey, I can try.

Since I’m doing the macro thing on other stuff I thought I’d create one linking the loot-a-rang and a “hey look!”.  Did you know you can use a macro to link an item in chat?  You don’t even need an addon.  Pretty nifty stuff here . . .

And this is what I ended up with, all properly linked.  It’s exactly the number of characters allowed in a macro.

/run SendChatMessage(” [Findle’s Loot-A-Rang]  makes looting a simple pause and cast. Available at AH”,IsInGroup(2) and “instance_chat” or IsInRaid() and “raid” or IsInGroup()  and “party” or “say”)

This blurts the message with a single click regardless of where I am and is exactly the number of characters allowed by the macro utility.  If you want to add more characters than this you’ll need a macro addon that has an extend feature.  I use Macro Toolkit though it wasn’t necessary for the above macro.

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The value of organization

Adibags - Moema

Adibags – Moema

One of the addons I use and pretty much can’t do without is AdiBags, an addon that replaces the Blizzard bag interface.

One of the many things to like about AdiBags is how new things are handled. They are put in “recent” at the top of the bag.  Clicking the “new” button moves them into their assigned section. Want to find what dropped off the boss you just killed?  It’s right there at the top!

Categorized by effect

Categorized by effect – Aileas

More importantly, I like that I can categorize my bag contents in a way that works for me.  Rather than have all food in the food category I have grouped items with like effects together.  If the food provides a buff it works like a flask.  Food that gives a temporary boost to health and/or mana acts as a potion (though I tend to leave low level or common food drops in their original category so I can find and sell them quickly).  I can categorize something as junk (things that drop that I never use) which makes it easy to find and sell when I’m clearing my bags.  I can move entire categories between bank and bag with a single click.  I can send a single type of thing (non-soulbound armor and weapons, herbs, ore) to a mail recipient with a single click.

All my devices are in one category as they’re a persistent gadget that does a short term job (Findle’s Loot-a-rang, Bitsi’s Bobbing Berg, Sassy Imp).  I might move my jewelcrafter’s kit over to devices though it isn’t really a device.  It does fit there . . . sort of.

What looks like the engineer-crafted shield in consumable instead of potion is one of the naval yard ship buffs.  Because it’s in consumable instead of potion I know it’s the ship thingy even if it looks like something else.

Armor is unopened tokens.  Other is . . . . well . . . other.  It doesn’t really fit into any other category.  I should move the trunk gotten from the naval mission over to consumable as it is gone once opened.

I like this organization.  I can see instantly what to sell, what to auction, what to send to other toons for their professions, what I can equip (sorted by armor type which is in options).  If I need a certain potion effect on my bars for a specific boss it’s easy to find. And the organizational changes I make for one toon is carried over to all.  Sweet!

Adibags helps me quickly and efficiently organize.  I like that.

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Let there be loot!

The Draenor expansion’s absolute best thing is Findle’s Loot-a-rang. Did you kill something that’s surrounded by things you can’t or don’t want to kill? Send the loot-a-rang in to fetch the goodies. Did something you kill end up halfway down the hill with no way to loot it? Yup, you get your loot.

Hands down, without question, this little device made by engineers is a true treasure, worth the slot it takes up in your bag. Not only will it loot everything within killing range, it is usable by level 1 players.