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If you're the type of player who finds cauldrons useful, then you probably already know about them – and if you have no idea what they're for, you probably have no use for them. But Insider Trader is the Martha Stewart of WoW Insider – we happen to think that any tool that helps other players take responsibility for their vitals is, as Martha would say, a Good Thing. So let's talk about the so-called pot o' pots.
Cauldrons are the alchemical, resistance-pot equivalent of a warlock's soulwell. The alchemist creates a bubbling cauldron that other raid members can click on to receive a major resistance potion from one of the various schools of magic – there are cauldrons for each type of magic except for Holy. Cauldrons can turn out 25 potions over a five-minute duration, a decided improvement over creating, carrying and handing out that many individual pots (and quite a bit cheaper than making even less than half the number of normal major protection pots).
Read more about cauldrons, as well as a handy tip about how to use multiple healthstones (yes, that's more than one at a time), after the jump.
Insider Trader is your weekly inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.
Amid all the hubbub over impending patch 2.3 changes, crafters could conceivably feel a little left out – that is, unless you're a fisher. Fishers (who tend to be a pretty chill crew, anyway) are already contentedly casting their lines with several small but relatively pleasing changes from patch 2.2. Newly announced improvements for patch 2.3 broadened those placid smiles into all-out grins as fishers anticipate a smoother, more user-friendly fishing experience.
Already in place is a fix to the problem introduced in patch 2.1, in which the bobber timing at the end of a cast period was preventing all but the quickest clickers from landing a catch. In the same line of Not Earthshattering But Basically Sweet™ changes, fishing lines now appear as you cast them, saving lots of time when you're waiting on schools. And the tool tip for the Aquadynamic Fish Attractor has been officially changed to indicate its new 10-minute duration, so fishers can quit losing sleep over whether or not the duration was an unintended buff they'd find whisked away some cold morning on the shores of Azshara.
Insider Trader is your weekly inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.
If you're an alchemist, you either love the discovery system – or you despise it and wish to blast it back to the depths of Developers' Hell (that's one of those rock-and-lava zones, right?). Implemented with The Burning Crusade expansion, the discovery system gives alchemists a small (err, very small ... ok, very, very small ... ok, infinitesimally small) chance of discovering a new recipe every time they make a potion, elixir or flask. Players seem split between considering it a creative new mechanic or an annoying contrivance and roadblock, but after several patches and adjustments, the system seems here to stay.
Let's jump right in with your most burning question: Just how small (err, very small ... ok, very, very small ... ok, infinitesimally small) actually are your chances for making a discovery? Pretty darn small. Prior to patch 2.1, the most commonly cited figure floating around was 0.01%. (Discoveries were disabled via hot-fix for a short time just before patch 2.1, reportedly to prevent an exploit in which alchemists who repeatedly tried to create potions with no bag space could make discoveries without actually creating a potion or using potion ingredients.)
In patch 2.1, Blizzard noted that discovery rates were increased "significantly," but nobody seems to have performed (or published) an extensive enough analysis to pinpoint an honest number. One popular guesstimate puts the current discovery rate at 0.1% -- but really, your guess is as good as any. (Cauldron discovery rates are on a different table and run much higher than the general rate. Players report making cauldron discoveries, estimated at about 30%, as frequently as every one to five batches.)
Insider Trader is your weekly inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.
If you missed out on playing a bard in EverQuest, you can still get your drum on in today's World of Warcraft. Beginning with The Burning Crusade expansion, leatherworkers can create and use a handful of charged drums that create short-range AoE spells affecting party members or enemies. While some players rail against their utter uselessness and others rave about their OP-ed-ness (let's add that to the dictionary, shall we?), players who are slaves to eking out that last bit of buffage and leatherworkers who are slaves to eking out those last few skill points turn to banging the drum.
First, a few banging basics: Only leatherworkers can make drums, and only leatherworkers can use them. Druids are at a slight disadvantage here, since drums are similar to potions in that they cannot be used in feral form (although they're fine in Moonkin and Tree of Life forms). Also like potions, drums do not work in arenas. Drums affect all party members within range but do not affect raid members not in the drummer's group.
Insider Trader is your weekly inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.
Is armorsmithing of use to a tank? As with most debates, the answer remains relative to your resources and playing status – whether you're a PvP machine, a casual raider, a five-man specialist, an uber-raider ... Players with limited raiding access and resources will always consider trade skills more valuable than players with access to the leetest of lewts.
But while many players have summarily swept armorsmithing's possibilities under the carpet as they clattered up the gear ladder, others have run thoughtful comparisons and concluded there just may be some merit to smithing your own breastplates. For those of you who don't have the time or energy to dredge through such drearily titled official forum threads as "Sad state of armorsmithing & what's wrong," Insider Trader takes a look at armorsmithing's selection of top-end breastplates.
Every Friday, Insider Trader slips you the inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.
Nerf fishers – kicked back in their comfy Fishing Chairs, they definitely corner the market on chillin' with style. In honor of the upcoming three-day Labor Day weekend, we take a look at the newest way to hang with style (and psst, you don't actually have to be fishing to use this tip). At the other end of the spectrum, for those of you who demand crunchy bits, we've dug up some efficiency tips for hard-working enchanters. So whether you choose to spend Labor Day kicking back on the beaches of Stranglethorn or toiling in town over a hot disenchanting window, read on for Insider Trader's Labor Day special.
First up: the Fishing Chair. Available only via a special loot-coded version of the "Gone Fishin'" card from the WoW trading card set "Through the Dark Portal," this card seems to inspire some remarkable player enthusiasm. To quote wowhead.com's particularly eloquent description: "The Fishing Chair provides the discerning angler with a comfy place to rest his laurels and store his refreshing beverage of choice. The item is usable from the inventory and does not need to be equipped. Using the Fishing Chair opens a nice-looking folding chair with attached umbrella and drink holder. The umbrella's lining is decorated with a pattern of worm-baited hooks, very thoughtfully. The Fishing Chair works the same as a chair in any inn and can be sat in by clicking on it. While seated you can eat, drink or fish."
But it's not just fishers who are putting the Fishing Chair to good use ...
Insider Trader is your weekly inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.
Nothing interrupts a peaceful night of crafting like a lunatic guildmate ranting about learning a coveted new pattern, only to find that it's already green in skill level – nothing, that is, except that sickening feeling in your stomach as you consider what you'll do when your favorite patterns go green. Skilling up a profession can be a rollercoaster ride, if you don't hit the right patterns at the right time. (Of course, all the professions have those infamous "dead zones," when skilling up seems to be based on either unfathomable luck or unfathomable finances – or maybe both. But we'll cover dead zones in another installment.)
Skilling up in a profession can happen when you create an item that's listed in green, yellow or orange in your tradeskill window. Items listed in grey will not give you any skill points for creating them; red listings anywhere means you don't have the required skill level. Just as it does with creatures you fight, pattern color indicates difficulty and skill-up potential. Green items raise your skill occasionally, yellows about half the time and oranges every single time. (The exception to orange skill-ups occurs in skinning, in which successfully skinning an orange creature does not guarantee a skill-up.) As a burgeoning crafter, your goal is to find patterns that are relatively easy to get the materials to make while providing a solid shot at skilling up. While orange patterns offer a guaranteed chance of gaining a skill point, the best bang for the buck is often a yellow pattern.
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.
Now that the furor over patch 2.1 changes to elixirs has died down, most raiders have settled into a routine with their favorite fix of consumables. A few reluctant players are still debating whether pots, flasks and elixirs should be expected for raiding at all, but most have come to accept consumables as part of the raiding experience. Flasking up and "chugging" pots every two minutes is widely accepted as common practice when learning new encounters: healers chug mana pots, tanks chug for armor, DPS casters chug destruction pots, melees chug haste ... Once content is on farm status, most raiders ease off the throttle and drop pot-chugging and routine flasking.
Raid consumables lists used to resemble literary epics. The sheer variety of possibilities and combinations was overwhelming. Players felt whiplashed by the increasing speed of the treadmill and accelerating investments of farming and gold, as growing awareness of these performance-enhancers drove expectations higher at all levels of raiding. Patch 2.1 changed all that, standardizing the types and timers for elixirs and limiting the number of performance-enhancers that could be used at any given time. This simplified the possibilities for frazzled raiders who were lugging bags stuffed with a virtual cornucopia of consumables.
Still, for new raiders, figuring out what to bring and what to use can be a daunting task. A huge proportion of these boosters are player-made items from various professions. Insider Trader is here to help you comb through the possibilities, bringing you an outline of the basic principles of raiding consumables plus links to an exhaustive list of performance-boosters. Read on for the most dope performance-dopers for raiders.
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.
One of the questions you'll generally always come across on the first page or two of the Blizzard profession forums is The Respec Question: How do I respec from X specialty to Y specialty? With drastically varying procedures from profession to profession and scattershot updates and changes from patch to patch, it's hard to know when you've finally come across an accurate, definite answer – yet if you get it wrong, you could be wasting hundreds of gold and hours of skillups. Bindar of Aggramar has compiled a guide covering specialty respecs for all professions. We'll take a look at the basics right here for you.
The first thing you need to know about changing your profession specialty is how to drop your current spec, a spot where a surprising number of players run into a brick wall. Don't get your netherweave in a twist – it's just a technical difficulty, easily remedied. If you speak with the appropriate NPC to unlearn your specialty and select that option only to find that nothing happens, it's almost certainly an add-on conflict. Open the World of Warcraft folder on your computer and find your interface folder. Rename the whole folder with a temporary name, which disables all your add-ons. Then hop back into game and try the dialogue again; you should be back in business. (Don't forget to go back and rename your interface folder to its original name when you're done.)
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.
Ready to become a market force? This week's Insider Trader positions you to fatten your pockets and line your coffers with every trip to the Auction House. No doubt about it, there are loads of AH guides and "rules" with advice on how to buy, how to sell and even how to play the market to resell items for profit. We'll show you where to find the information, mods and ideas you need to start using the Auction House with confidence.
The best guide to the actual mechanics of using the Auction House comes from Blizzard itself. A careful review will give you a firm grasp of the basic parameters for profitable buying or selling. Beyond the basics, what most players want is solid advice on what's worth selling on the AH, how much to charge and how to get the best buys. And that's where we start looking at how to gain the edge over other players ...
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.
LFGear? Insider Trader has tallied up some tidy little tailored items this week for both cloth-wearers and non-clothies alike. Why would you use tailored gear if you're not a cloth wearer? As they say, "Every girl's crazy 'bout a sharp-dressed man ..." The stylish man of means has a shirt and suit for every occasion, and tailoring's where it's at. We've also discovered some nifty little utility pieces for the 70 Who Has It All™. (Oh, and if you're a tailor, these items are definite contenders for Auction House action.)
Also this week, we'll look into mana loom locations. Sorry, we don't have a long list of little-known locations to pass along -- but at least we can confirm the few known locations and perhaps dispel a few questions about where mana looms are not.
For the 70 who has it all While not noteworthy for the most space-pressed or epic-focused of players, these tailored items can be handy conveniences for the PvPer or the level 70 who has it all.
Azure Silk Belt Boosts swim speed by 15% -- useful when farming, PvPing near water, or swimming to Onyxia.
Spider Belt Removes existing Immobilizing effects and makes you immune to Immobilizing effects for 5 seconds; can be helpful in PvP.
Netherweave Net Captures a target up to 25 yards away in a net for 3 seconds. Unreliable and short-duration though it is, can be handy in PvP.
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.
While the world outside WoW contemplates the future of the petroleum industry, casters nurse their own form of oil dependency: mana oils and wizard oils. Heck, if you're an enchanter, you may even be hooked on both! These weapon-buffing beauties boost various combinations of healing, mana regeneration, spell damage and spell critical strike rating ... juicy stuff for casters.
As with many consumables, The Burning Crusade era ushered in an enhanced rung of these weapon-buffing oils. Yes, they're higher level than the older versions ... But as Blizzard is so fond of reminding us, bigger is not always better. Most players seem to prefer the older oils, which offer the stronger oomph of two effects instead of one. However, today's shift away from Old-World components (in this case, the relative difficulty of obtaining Large Brilliant Shards in a post-Burning Crusade economy) stymies many an enchanter seeking to make and market oils, as well as many a consumer seeking an affordable way to buy them.
Insider Trader is your weekly inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.
Open up in there! Rogues aren't the only ones who can open those tricksey chests and doors. This week, Insider Trader looks at two tools for those of us with no cred in roguely lockpicking. We'll also point you rogues toward some compelling reasons to level and use your lockpicking and pickpocketing skills.
You may not have to be a rogue in order to open a locked chest or door, but you do have to be handy with tools. Blacksmiths and engineers are the other locksmiths of Azeroth.
Nothing gets nastier more quickly than squabbles over loot – and when nobody's quite sure how the drops work, things can get really ugly. Under a cloud of seemingly contradictory information from blue posters on the official forums, players who suspected BoP patterns weren't dropping correctly when their groups or raids were using master looting turned out to be right on target. (/gasp!) But never fear ...The fix is confirmed to be live and players are now most assuredly getting the pattern drops they deserve, regardless of loot method.
European GM and Customer Service Forum Representative Issuntril confirmed in May that when a master looter did not have the required profession when a BoP recipe dropped, the pattern would be unlootable. Issuntril also indicated a fix was complete and would be incoming in patch 2.1. Unfortunately, some GMs and Blizzard reps continued to assure players that master loot was currently working with BoP patterns, not realizing there was a problem when the master looter didn't have the profession in question. On top of that, players who didn't read the European forums were still completely in the dark. Craftspeople naturally noticed the lack of drops, raid leaders pointed to assurances that BoP master looting was working fine, and the battle was on. Master looters and master looting alike took some black eyes from irate craftspeople who suspected they were getting gaffed.
The confusion blundered onward when no mention of either the bug or the fix surfaced in the 2.1 patch notes. Nobody seemed to be able to confirm whether or not the problem had been addressed. Issuntril finally laid the issue to rest, confirming that 2.1 had indeed fixed the bug -- although many non-European crafters still haven't gotten the memo. Let's make it official: master looting is once again a safe option for BoP pattern drops, so let your master looters get back to business. Oh -- and good luck winning the drop!
(Edit: Numerous players are reporting that the master looter must distribute the BoP pattern immediately, without clicking off the corpse to do anything else first. If the master looter closes the corpse/loot box, he may not be able to see the pattern again the next time he clicks in. It's not known if this is working as intended.)
Insider Trader is your weekly inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.
Got empty slots sitting wide open on your gear, simply because researching gem possibilities is so infuriatingly time-consuming and confusing? Get ready to get socketing! Our handy consumer's guide to gems will steer you to savvy selections in no time. While jewelcrafting can sound confusing as all get-out, we've rounded up some convenient tools and handy reference lists that simplify the process of figuring how to slot your gear with gems that work for you.
In The Burning Crusade, Blizzard introduced jewelcrafting and the ability to augment items with gems. Many higher-end items feature sockets designed to be slotted with player-cut gems. A jewelcrafter can cut these gems, which grant your gear additional stat and effect bonuses. What color? What cut? What stats? What about meta gems? You need to figure out what's available, what works best for your gear and how to get your hands on what you need. Let's get to work ...
Amid all the hubbub over impending 
If you're an alchemist, you either love the 
Is armorsmithing of use to a tank? As with most debates, the answer remains relative to your resources and playing status – whether you're a PvP machine, a casual raider, a five-man specialist, an uber-raider ... Players with limited raiding access and resources will always consider trade skills more valuable than players with access to the leetest of lewts.
Nerf fishers – kicked back in their comfy Fishing Chairs, they definitely corner the market on chillin' with style. In honor of the upcoming three-day Labor Day weekend, we take a look at the newest way to hang with style (and psst, you don't actually have to be fishing to use this tip). At the other end of the spectrum, for those of you who demand crunchy bits, we've dug up some efficiency tips for hard-working enchanters. So whether you choose to spend Labor Day kicking back on the beaches of Stranglethorn or toiling in town over a hot disenchanting window, read on for Insider Trader's Labor Day special.
Nothing interrupts a peaceful night of crafting like a lunatic guildmate ranting about learning a coveted new pattern, only to find that it's already green in skill level – nothing, that is, except that sickening feeling in your stomach as you consider what you'll do when your favorite patterns go green. Skilling up a profession can be a rollercoaster ride, if you don't hit the right patterns at the right time. (Of course, all the professions have those infamous "dead zones," when skilling up seems to be based on either unfathomable luck or unfathomable finances – or maybe both. But we'll cover dead zones in another installment.)
Now that the furor over 
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Ready to become a market force? This week's Insider Trader positions you to fatten your pockets and line your coffers with every trip to the Auction House. No doubt about it, there are loads of AH guides and "rules" with advice on how to buy, how to sell and even how to play the market to resell items for profit. We'll show you where to find the information, mods and ideas you need to start using the Auction House with confidence.
LFGear? Insider Trader has tallied up some tidy little tailored items this week for both cloth-wearers and non-clothies alike. Why would you use tailored gear if you're not a cloth wearer? As they say, "Every girl's crazy 'bout a sharp-dressed man ..." The stylish man of means has a shirt and suit for every occasion, and tailoring's where it's at. We've also discovered some nifty little utility pieces for the 70 Who Has It All™. (Oh, and if you're a tailor, these items are definite contenders for Auction House action.) 
While the world outside WoW contemplates the future of the petroleum industry, casters nurse their own form of oil dependency: mana oils and wizard oils. Heck, if you're an enchanter, you may even be hooked on both! These weapon-buffing beauties boost various combinations of healing, mana regeneration, spell damage and spell critical strike rating ... juicy stuff for casters. 
Open up in there! Rogues aren't the only ones who can open those tricksey chests and doors. This week, 
Nothing gets nastier more quickly than squabbles over loot – and when nobody's quite sure how the drops work, things can get really ugly. Under a cloud of seemingly contradictory information from blue posters on the official forums, players who suspected BoP patterns weren't dropping correctly when their groups or raids were using master looting turned out to be right on target. (/gasp!) But never fear ...The fix is confirmed to be live and players are now most assuredly getting the pattern drops they deserve, regardless of loot method.
