Blizzcon, Day 2: Items & Professions Panel

Those investing time in professions in World of Warcraft can look forward to better created items over the course of the next year, as Blizzard designers explained they hope to give every profession the ability to create some of the “best in slot” items, typically as a crafter-only item.

The aptly named John LeCraft said that before players could experience the approximately 650 new recipes in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion — including the new inscription profession — a number of changes and tweaks would be coming to the current game:

• Alchemists will soon be able to create potions only they can use.
• All crafters will be able to build gear better — and sometimes the best — for leveling up to the level cap.
• New recipes will be added to fill gaps in the current game’s itemization, both those left by accident and those created by Blizzard explicitly to be filled by crafters.

“Engineering is going to get some love,” LeCraft replied to calls from the audience: The portable mailbox schematic may be coming back to engineering, if Blizzard can keep it from being too badly exploited. More engineering schematics that benefit other people will also be added.

He acknowledged that Blizzard had made some mistakes in the past.

“We have some bad transmutes. I don’t know anyone transmuting primal fire to earth,” he said, and was greeted with roars of laughter. Transmutes will be switching from a precisely 24 hour refresh to being available every day when the server clock resets in the early morning.

The developers like the discovery process introduced for several tradeskills, but are going to switch the discoveries to cover non-core recipes. Rather, these rare recipes will be the rare, fun ones.

Vendor camping will soon be coming to an end, when all vendors of a certain type will share the same table of rare goods, meaning more chances to find a rare recipe, but a more random schedule.

“It’s not a lot of fun to camp a vendor,” LeCraft said.

He briefly touched on what the new inscription profession in Wrath of the Lich King might include, although he warned attendees not to hold their breaths for the knockback addition to spells that another developer had hypothesized at a panel on Friday.

Instead, spells and abilities could get additional damage, more critical hits and the like. He compared inscription modifications to abilities to each ability having its own talent point.

Inscribers will also be able to create a new sort of item, but he did not say what.

Before that happens, though, there are a number of changes coming in patches 2.2 and 2.3:

• Daily quests will soon include profession quests, beginning with a cooking one.
• Crafter-only gear (intended to be “best in slot” items) will be added to jewelcrafting and alchemy next.
• Once the crafting endgame, skill-ups from 275 to 300 will be made smoother and easier.
• Zul’Aman will include a new enchantment, Execution, which will require 375 skill and add 840 points of armor penetration to a weapon, which what LeCraft says will be a “visual effect at least as cool as Mongoose.”
• Three epic jewelcrafter-only gem recipes will be added through the reputation system.
• The new Steady Talasite jewelcrafting recipe (350 skill, +4 resilience, +6 stamina) will be available for four Halaa research tokens.
• Random cooking recipes — presumably available through the discovery system — will be available soon, including Storm Chops, a lightning-based upgrade to Dragonsbreath Chili that will have special effects in the rain.

On the itemization front, resilience will soon ameliorate damage over time effects.

All items that add to healing will soon add a great deal of additional spell damage, so that high-end healing gear is more versatile.

There will be a legendary ranged weapon in the raid zone after Zul’Aman. (Probably a 25-man Sunwell zone, based on comments on Friday.)

Enchantments may finally be switched over to a system that can work with the auction house: Scrolls or something else created by enchanters will be the method of improving gear, so that enchanters aren’t stuck in a city, spamming the Trade channel to sell their wares. (Inscription will work off of items, right from the beginning.)

More and better ore nodes will be showing up in dungeons.

The much-maligned Spirit stat will be made interesting in the Wrath of the Lich King, they promise.

And, in response to a completely random question at an items and professions panel, it was revealed that death knights would likely get a special mount, the deathcharger.

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