Every time I kill a creep I expect a number to pop up or the body to shine as it holds a small treasure. You know that feeling right? Seeing 300exp showing up above the creep´s head when you killed it and the joy, each time you look into the corpse hoping for a shiny new armor or an epic weapon.
When I play games like Diablo, World of Warcraft or Baldurs Gate, this is what keeps me in; the small reward each time I defeat a monster. But there is more to these items then them just being rewards. Has anyone ventured to study them? Has anyone ever wondered what the story behind the Dwarven Fishing Pole is? What does it do to dwarves, how does it convey it´s message about the dwarves and why does it make us smile?
What remains of the fish?
The tooltip to this item alone is so interesting to me, that I do not even know where to start. Apart from the funny relation between the item and its name we can see, that it is a green item. For those of you not familiar with World of Warcraft, green means that the item is uncommon and usually is stronger then a white (common) item. Another important property of green items is, that they can be disenchanted in order to get enchanting materials which serve as raw materials and can be sold to other players that might need them for crafting. This now opens up a whole new dimension of the item, as now the weapon is a potential good. The item itself is bound to the player when picked up, which means, that it cannot be sold to players via the auction house because it is attached to the player that takes it first. The Dwarven Fishing Pole thus cannot be set up for trade in the auction house but if disenchanted the raw materials are exchangeable. The player is given a choice, he can disenchant the item (if he is trained in the craft) or he can use it himself as a weapon. There is a sell price indicated on the bottom of the tooltip, which is the price a non-player character (NPC) vendor would pay (items can always be sold to NPC vendors). So that there are three choices now:
- Keep the Pole
- Disenchant the Pole
- Sell the Pole to a vendor
Breaking down these three choices it will become clear that there are complex choices to be made here, which might all be useful for learning. So, here a brief break down of the three choices and there repercussions:
1. Ya, I like guns and damage so of course I keep the Pole
Now, damage and guns are all good but you probably already have a weapon equipped. Am I right? Now, you need to compare your weapon with the Dwarven Fishing Rod in order to find out which is the more damage efficient weapon. The Pole does 16-31 damage per hit and has a shooting speed of 1.90 which gives it 12.5 Damage per Second (DPS). Basically you compare the 12.5 DPS of the Dwarven Pole to your current weapon and look at what makes more damage. Not that difficult he? This is very basic but don´t forget that more advanced weapons give you addition stat bonuses where you might end up facing a choice similar to:
Do I prefer to have +15 Strength (more damage) and +20 Stamina (more life) but -4 DPS or do I prefer more DPS but not have the attributes (and those of you who play games where these sorts of decisions matter know, that I am still oversimplifying) ?
2. I am a Druid, what am I supposed to do with a Dwarven Gun? I disenchant, of course!
Not a bad choice but now you need to ask yourself if its more efficient to keep the raw materials and skill up your crafting in order to make better equipment or do you make some quick gold and sell it in the auction house? If you are disenchanting, your tooltip might look like this:
Disenchanting the World
The part in the green square is an Addon that shows what an item becomes when it´s disenchanted and it tells you the price of the raw materials that you get. This item here has a chance of 75% of becoming Vision Dust, 20% of becoming Greater Mystic Essence and 5% of becoming Large Glowing Shard. These items have different values as they are more or less easy to receive. If you want to level up your crafting, that allows you to disenchant even better items into more valuable raw materials, you will eventually need these parts yourself. Facing you with the choice to sell or keep the materials now. And then, there might be other players offering there stuff as well so that the prices are low; you could wait and hope for a reduce in offer or a climbing demand so that you can get more money for your materials.
3. Done with this! I sell it do a vendor and take the 9 silver and 22 copper
You like to know what you will get and take the simple road. This is in fact the simple road but it has zero potential beyond having the 9 silver and 22 copper but you have those for sure.
There is much more that could be written, and maybe I will write more, but for now I think this is a good start. I hope I could show you, that playing a game like WoW is an environment where choices need to be made and making money for buying better equipment and lots of other cool stuff in the auction house.
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