WAR: Early Gathering Guide
MMORPG.com Warhammer Online Correspondent Patrick Buckley writes this guide to the early stages of the gathering professions in Mythic's Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.
Warhammer Online: A new game, a new adventure, a new set of professions to explore and max out. And now, here’s the question that is on everybody’s mind… Where can I go to max out my profession the fastest? The answer to this question: Nowhere. That’s right, in WAR; there is no place to easily max out your profession compared to another one. There are, however, places you can go that seem to be slightly better for leveling. At least it seems so for two out of the six professions.
WAR has a total of six professions at this current time. Scavenging, butcher, and salvaging are the three “gathering” professions while apothecary, magical talisman making, and cultivating are your “production” professions. Yes, cultivating gives you items used in other skills, much like the gathering skills, but to cultivate, you need several items to produce something. I digress.
Like I was stating earlier, there is no specific place where you can power level your gathering profession. Because of this fact, there is no way to power level your production profession without the help of a guild or lots of money. To this fact, we look for places where you can level faster than normal but would definitely not qualify as power leveling compared to other games. For these instances, let’s look at how we are able to gather, as well as where to gather in all three tier one Order starting locations.
How to Gather
Gathering is easy once you put your mind to it. Whether you are a butcher or a scavenger, the dynamic for gathering is the same. After defeating an enemy that has some type of loot, shiny gold particles will glow above the corpse and your cursor will turn into a golden hand. By right clicking while your cursor is a hand, you will now pick up, or view, what item can be retrieved from the corpse. All money is automatically placed on your person while items are listed. If you so choose, you can hold down the shift key while clicking and the item will automatically load into your inventory if there is room. Once the item is retrieved, your cursor will change from a gold hand into a gold wrench (or a gold cleaver for a butcher) and flies will start flying above the corpse. In cases of a scavenger, this will only occur while looking at a humanoid-type corpse while in the case of a butcher, these will only happen to bestial creatures. You can now click. You will notice that a small timer bar will run across the bottom of your screen. Once filled, a small screen will pop up showing what item you were able to forcibly remove from the corpse. In the same way that we were able to auto loot normally, you can auto loot while scavenging/butchering a corpse by holding the shift key down while clicking your mouse. The items that will pop up from doing this will be random, but will normally be consistent with the type of creature they are. Beasts will drop fangs, horns, and claws, while humanoids will drop talisman items, fungi, and random equipment. The greater majority of everything that drops will be a useable item for either one of the production professions.
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Elves Tier 1
The Elves have an easy start off as far as having a good hunting ground for scavenging. Right off the bat, there are Dark Sprites and Dark Elf Infiltrators in the Moonrise Forest prepared to give their items to you. Both of these humanoids are rather easy to kill early in the game. Just make sure that you do not get mobbed, or you may wind up in a world of hurt quick. Dark Sprites will drop a lot of cultivation items. Dark Elf Infiltrators will drop a lot of leeches, which can be used for healing potions when given to an apothecary.
Being an Elf butcher is difficult, yet easy. The difficult part about being a butcher Elf is the fact that most of the beasts on the starting island are of higher levels. Don’t lose faith though. Being a butcher is easy due to the amount of beasts on the Elf starting island. You have bears, wolfs, scorpions, and cold ones to fight with. All of the primary drops from these beasts are aimed towards an apothecary for stat increase potions.
Empire Tier 1
The Empire also has an easy start point. Just past the cannons to the left of the start village is a field with three different types of Chaos in close proximity. Luckily enough for an Empire scavenger, all three of the enemies hand out the same rewards when your skill is used on them. They all drop cultivation items, but mostly apothecary items used for healing potions are dropped. Every once in a while, a talisman item will drop from a Raven Hellmaster.
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Of the three Order races, the Empire butcher can do the most with domestic animals found nearby. Near the wheat farm just west of the chapter one PQ; there will be a farmhouse with several Potbelly Boars. There is also a Bighorn Oxen roaming nearby. These domestic animals will drop both blood and fleas for use in cultivating and healing potions. As far as wild animals go, you will be able to find bats, spiders, and wolves further down the road, but at manageable levels, unlike the Elven beasts.
Dwarfs Tier 1
The Dwarves have a slightly harder spawn point for optimal gathering. You have to make it past the Ironclaw Squigherders in the Barren Reach and down the steps onto the bottom part of the Ancestor’s Gorge. The bottom of the gorge is preferable due to the closeness of merchants just over the bridge, as well as a rapid spawn point. The Goblins and Orcs here will give you lots of cultivating improvement items such as spores and higher level watering cans. Every once in a while, a low level talisman item will be dropped by the Ironclaw Big Uns. Almost no leeches will drop for healing potions.
The Dwarven butcher has by far the easiest setup for leveling. The variety is extremely lacking, but the abundance of Squigs right outside the starting location, as well as the low levels (1) make this a prime area for leveling. One of the major drawbacks is that these Squigs drop only enhancement items for cultivating and apothecary crafts. Seeing how that isn’t really a big concern for leveling, this is still the best, and only place the Dwarven area has to offer.
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So, Which Is It?
The truth is that there is no best place to level a butcher or a scavenger. There are better places, as well as places you can go to find certain items. Like if you wanted larger healing potions, you want to hunt Potbelly Boars, Squigs, Wolves, and Bighorns for all the ingredients needed for a good one. The leveling will just come with the hunting. Good luck!
