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.

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.

This week, Insider Trader offers up two insider tips, one for frustrated fishers and another for level 29 PvPers searching for the strongest possible gear.

Fishing means chilling with some good music, a tall drink and a chat window full of the latest guild gossip -- or at least, it used to. As of patch 2.1, fishers were transported back into twitch-gaming mode if they hoped to snag catches at the end of the fishing timer. It's all about the splash; when you hear a splash while fishing, you've hooked a fish and can click to either loot or "miss" it. It used to be that you could reach the end of the fishing timer with no splash/hook. You could look away from your fishing timer while fishing, as long as you were quick about getting back to the bobber when you heard the splash. If there was no splash, you most likely lost a little time until you noticed you hadn't heard anything and looked back over to re-cast ... But no lost fish. No harm, no foul.

Post-2.1, there's always a splash at the end of the timer. Sounds great, right? Always a splash, always a hook and an opportunity for a catch? Unfortunately, there's now no time for a catch on end-of-timer hooks unless you click the bobber at exactly the same moment as the splash – requiring you to watch that timer like a hawk and click right on time. The bobber vanishes simultaneously with the splash, instead of fading out and giving you time to react to the splash. While it's still possible to catch (or miss) the fish with a perfectly timed click, frustration seems just as common. And the it sure ruins the peaceful, laid-back aspect of fishing.

No word on whether or not the grace period for fishing will be reinstated. For now, if you're dead-set on catching every available fish, bring your game face and prepare to keep your eye glued to the timer bar.

There's one little mostly unseen note in the 2.1 patch notes that has quietly been making players' lives easier for the past few weeks. Hidden way down inside the "User Interface" section, we find this: "Active corpses or objects (ones with loot on them) now can be selected and looted, even if they are underneath another corpse that does not have loot on it."

We've all been in that situation before 2.1, where we were fighting, and had to deal with adds that died in almost exactly the same place, and then had to slowly move your looting cursor over the whole area, looking for that tiny little section in which it went from black and white to color, just so you could look that few silver and bit of trash from it. Nowadays, in these enlightened 2.1 times, we can simply loot at will, and life is good.

Of course, it's not perfect-- I still can't target anything through walls, and that's a known bug. But it is very nice to see that one simple sentence in the patch notes, and know that I never again have to hunt around for a tiny point of contact just to loot a piece of junk.

Patch 2.1 had a few hidden surprises for players. Among them is the increase in difficulty of the Broggok event in Blood Furnace.

For those of you not familiar with this boss fight, here's a quick overview. Big floating-eye poison-dropping tentacle-waving boss guy can't be touched until you take out four waves of Fel Orcs first. With a mix of elites and non-elites in each wave, these orcs were hard, but not crazy hard. After the last one dies, you can face off against Broggok who isn't as difficult as the orcs before him.

The problem with this event is that your group's casters were usually out of mana at the end of the Fel Orc part of the event. Though Broggok isn't crazy tough, he isn't a pushover with zero healing mana available for the fight either. A typical strategy was using some form of crowd control on the last orc in the last wave to allow you group to regen mana before triggering the boss.

But with the last patch, the game has a new twist.

The realms are down this morning for "scheduled maintenance," and in the meantime, here's a list of what's wrong (and hopefully what's being fixed right now). Blizz QA guy Hortus has posted a list of known issues in 2.1, and I've included it in full after the break.

Most of these are pretty inconsequential and/or already known, but a few of them might cause confusion (I had the "grayed out" icon thing happen to me just last night-- the spell looked like it was unavailable, but I could still use it). They all seem easy enough to fix, and so hopefully when the realms go back up today, we won't see them again.

Strangely enough, there's no mention of the Hunter bug/feature at all, so Blizzard still hasn't confirmed that one officially (or maybe hunters liked using it so much they just didn't want to report it). And though Neth has confirmed the Spellthread nerf as a bug, it's not on this list either. I guess we'll have to see what drops this morning-- we could get a small post-2.1 patch, or maybe we'll have to wait for further hotfixes to see any of these bugs squashed.

Patch 2.1 brought many treats to the adventurers of Azeroth, but one of the sweetest is the Epic Druid Flight Form quest. Unlike its predecessor, Flight Form, this ability isn't handed out to every high level shape shifter with the appropriate riding skill.

The quest to fly at epic speed is long and complex. Revered reputation grinding, Heroic instance running, escort quests, exploding foliage and much more await the intrepid druid. Oh, and they have to pay the 5000g riding skill upgrade before they can even start the quest.

When they finish, druids not only get the Swift Flight Form ability, but also a relic that works for any druid spec: Idol of the Raven Goddess - Increases the healing granted by the Tree of Life form aura by 20, adds 9 critical strike rating to the Leader of the Pack aura, and adds 9 spell critical strike rating to the Moonkin form aura.

An excellent walkthrough, Wiki style, can be found here at the Servants of Seagis guild site.

EDIT: Another reward received in the quest chain: Charm of Swift Flight, Trinket, Equip: Increases speed in Flight Form and Swift Flight Form by 10%. Thanks to Felixia from the Uldum Server for the heads up!

The 2.1 patch this week introduced enough new quest lines, top-end raid content, flying mounts, and L70 solo & small group content to qualify as its own game. With a three day weekend looming I didn't even know where to begin. So I scoured the web and found the where to go and what to do to get me started.

THE BLACK TEMPLE: Already planning to strut around Shattrath in your T6 Raid gear? Don't bank that T5 set too quick. The Black Temple attunement quest is ... epic. And it hasn't even been fully discovered so far. What is known is that you will have to slog through a great deal of the Burning Crusade raid content that comes before it: Karazhan, Gruul's Lair, Magtheridon's Lair, Serpentshire Cavern, The Eye and The Battle of Mount Hyjal. And many of those raids require extensive attunement quests of their own. If you are still itching to begin, you can dig in with the Tablets of Baa'ri chain out of Shadowmoon Valley to start grinding that Ashtongue Deathsworn rep.

NETHERDRAKE EPIC FLYING MOUNT: First, don't confuse this with the Swift Nether Drake top Arena teams are awarded with at the end of every season. That one has a speed increase of 310% and has an armored appearance. This is the normal epic nether drake with a speed increase on par with other epic flying mounts: 280%. What's special about this epic flying mount is that it can be obtained through solo and small group quests. No raid required. What is required is a great deal of dedication.

The first steps on your journey is to dig yourself out of Hated reputation with the Netherwing clan and get all the way to Exalted. This is accomplished through solo, 5 man and 3 man daily quests. Head to the south east corner of Shadowmoon Valley and speak to Mordenai in the Netherwing Fields. A complete write up can be found here.

We love Blizzard EU CM Ommra, because he's (or she!) is always the one to keep us up to date on the most recent hotfixes coming out of Blizzard. And there seem to be a few more than usual this week -- because of the patch, perhaps? (No matter how long they're on the PTRs, they're never bug-free!) But if you're wondering what's happened so far this week in the world of hotfixes, here's a list for you:

• Linking a Poison Recipe or Hunter Pet Ability in a chat message will no longer cause a disconnect.
• Seer Olum will no longer despawn as quickly after being rescued from Serpentshrine Cavern.
• Coilfang Ambushers can no longer be charmed.
• The Lurker Below will no longer emerge from the water before all adds are dead.
• Gruul's hateful strike will now target the second highest on the threat list instead of the third highest.
• The gem vendors in Thrallmar and Honor hold are now once again available.
• Al'ar's Meteor ability will now do less damage and its damage will no longer be divided between multiple targets.
• We're working on a hotfix for the problem where Krosh Firehand's Spell Shield is not cast immediately upon entering combat for a Mage to Spell Steal. This was not an intended change and we hope to have it fixed soon.
• The hotfix for the Spell Shield has been deployed. The Spell Shield should be cast in a much more timely manner now.

I particularly like that first one!

Do you guys like the new AutoDismount option built into the interface? There's now an option that you can check or uncheck (in the interface window) that will automatically dismount you from your flying mount whenever you start casting a spell-- and that includes dropping into stealth, shapechanging (for druids-- Hugsy of Thunderhorn tested it for me), and mining and herbing.

I used to use an addon called EZDismount a while back that did exactly this, but I eventually ditched it because it seemed like it kicked me off my mount too much. But since the patch, the AutoDismount seems to be working perfectly-- it saved me tons of clicks farming herbs while flying around (and towing my orphan behind-- what can I say, I'm a multitasker). I don't know if Blizzard has theirs set up differently, because I haven't used the old addon in so long, but so far it just seems to work better.

But I do realize that not everybody likes it, and unfortunately, it seems the checkbox only seems to work for flying mounts-- AutoDismount is set on by default for all ground mounts now. If you want to turn it off for all mounts (so that you get an error message, just like before, when you try to cast a spell while mounted), you can simply type this: /console autoDismount 0. That, we're told by Slouken, the UI blue guy, is all you need to type in once, and it's set off for all mounts. I'd assume to turn it back on, you just type /console autoDismount 1. And there's a few helpful dismount macros in that thread as well-- you can use a hotbutton to select a random mount in your inventory, or use a hotbutton to turn on or off AutoDismount (if, for example, you want to use it in battlegrounds, but not in PvE). Interesting stuff. I'll be autodismounting, I'm sure, but with all that info, it's good to know that you have control over when you get on and off your mounts.

In today's breakfast topic, I noted that I haven't gotten any gold spam in the time I've played since patch 2.1.0 came along. And oh, what a change it is! I was always a good little player, taking the time to report any gold selling spam to a GM, but usually by the time a GM got around to looking at my ticket, I'd have gotten at least five more piece of spam -- and that was if I opened my ticket during off-hours.

So what's the magical change that's stopped spam in its tracks this patch? Obviously, there's the new spam reporting system, which makes reporting anyone an easy task: just right-click on their name and select the "report spam" option. You'll no longer get whispers, see text, or receive mails from that player for the duration of your game session and the incident is automatically forwarded on to a GM. But even if every player were duitifully reporting every spammer, I wouldn't expect such a dramatic change in the level of spam. CM Drysc notes that as of the patch, trial accounts can no longer whisper other players -- at least not without players whispering them first. I don't know about you, but I think this simple step may have been the magic bullet.

We've all had at least a day (our European friends are a bit behind us, but I have no doubt they have also managed to form their opinions) to play with patch 2.1.0 and digest the many changes contained therein. While the Children's Week quests (and the non-combat pets you get from them) are super fun, but what I'm enjoying most is the lack of gold selling spam. At least for me, this near-constant nuisance has completely vanished since the patch came out -- though perhaps I'll have a different opinion tomorrow. So, I ask, what's your favorite aspect of patch 2.1.0?

If you were attempting to play this evening, you may notice your realm vanishing out from under you. That's because Blizzard has been in the process of rolling restarts to fix a serious issue with today's 2.1.0 patch. As of 3:45 PM PST (that's 6:45 PM to you east coasters), restarts began, with an anticipated downtime of 15 minutes for each realm. The problem that caused all this hubbub? The official forums are a bit flakey this evening, but reader SirCasey reports that stacked items taken from mailboxes are vanishing from players inventories -- and I don't know about you, but I can see this resulting in hundreds of gold lost. What to do if you've already lost something? Blizzard poster Hortus says talk to a GM, but makes no promises that they'll be able to restore items.

Update: CM Drysc reports at 6:30 PM PDT (9:30 PM EST) that complications from the earlier fix has prevented some realms from coming back online. However, they're working on bringing the remaining realms back online and plan to have all realms back online by 9:00 PM PDT (12:00 AM EST).

Each week, Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for the hunter class sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary.

Editor's note: We think Damh and Hobbes are trying to be funny. Rogues really don't need to be worried about what happens when they log in tonight. At least we're pretty sure they don't.

10. Rogues haven't just been nerfed, they've been completely eliminated from the game. Pfft. Gone. All Alliance Rogues are now Shaman, all Horde Rogues are now Paladins. Same gear though, so you'd better get to the Auction House quick.

9. Paladins can no longer pull. They can still tank but if they are in a party of two or more, they cannot attack a mob than has an empty threat list. The Blizzard programmers stated in the patch notes, "Until they learn how to pull without getting so much aggro that a hunter cannot peel off a mob to trap, we're not gonna change this."

8. Holy Priests, Holy Paladins and Resto Druids now get a monthly gold allowance sent in the mail. For every hour they play they get 5 gold tribute. "You'd pay them yourself if you could get a Shadow Lab run more than once per week, wouldn't you?" said Nikoli Bransdorf, instance programming intern and Beastmaster hunter.

7. New profession: Sheriff. Start out by putting the beggars in the pokie, move on to finding the level-one gold spammers and putting them in chains, and at 375 you will be able to fix bugged instances and quests with your Ancient Baton of Compliance.

6. The fishing arsenal has been upgraded to include spears, harpoons and an epic Engineering item, the Goblin Infisherator XL. Chunk this daddy into the ocean and a mild seismic explosion tosses enough marine life onto the beach that every Naga in Stranglethorn Vale will call you Master.

Still want to hear the top five? Keep reading.

As announced yesterday, patch 2.1 has gone live this morning. It brings many, many changes; here are some highlights:

• Almost every level 70 epic buffed
• Big Alchemy changes
  
• Black Temple and Mount Hyjal raids
• Druid epic flight form
• New zones: Ogri'la, Skettis, Etherium Prison
• Netherdrakes
• Talent changes for Paladins, Shamans, and Rogues
• Battleground matching system
• Ruins of Lordaeron arena

That's just the big stuff -- there's tons more. For well-organized compendia of 2.1 information, check MMO-Champion or World of Raids. The full patch notes are as usual available at Blizzard's site; if you can't get there, I have them mirrored on our site (in three parts, because the notes are ridiculously long: 1, 2, 3). And if you can't get the patch downloader to work, WoWWiki has a list of patch mirrors.

Most realms were supposed to come back up at 11:00 AM PDT; there was a bit of a delay, although most realms appear to be up now. However, some realms needed extended maintenance, and are expected to come up at 2:00 PM PDT. Those realms are listed after the cut.