Alchemy QuestionFollow

anyone know wat is the difference between the 3 quests, "Master of Elixirs" "Master of Potions", and "Master of Transmutations" seems i can only accept one. what is the difference betweeen the 3 quests is there any kind of pattern u get or something?

i looked here, no reply on whats special about em, i forgot about wowwiki, ill check em now.

edit: its down right now =[

Edited, Feb 5th 2007 7:14pm by irdig

Master of Potions is straight-forward, basically anything like Major Protection Potion or Super Mana Potion you have a chance to get up to 5 from a single set of materials. You can expect, over time, to get maybe 15-20 percent extra yield from your materials. To become a master you must hand in 5 Super Healing Potions, 5 Super Mana Potions and 5 Major Dreamless Sleep Potions as well as get a quest drop from High Botanist Freywinn in the Botanica wing of Tempest Keep. You don't get any unique recipes.


Master of Transmutes works exactly the same way but is limited by the shared cooldown. You might get extrememly lucky and get 5 Primal Might or 5 Skyfire Diamonds from a single set of materials, but you're only going to be doing one transmute every 24 hours unlike potions where you are only limited by the availability of herbs and cost of vials. To become a Master you hand in 4 Primal Might to the NPC, unlike Master of Potions this does not require a flying mount to visit Tempest Keep and is therefore more attractive to alts. Assuming a 20% yield increase you would need to do 20 days of transmuting Primal Might to break even, after that it's all profit. You don't get any unique transmutes.


Master of Elixirs is interesting. The obvious application is for all the various DPS boosters such as Onslaught Elixir, stat-boosters like Elixir of Mastery and the various Defense elixirs, in total there's about 30 different Elixirs in the game. What is less obvious is that Flasks also count as Elixirs. This is very significant as Flasks are high-value items made using relatively rare materials (Black Lotus or Fel Lotus) but unlike high-value transmutes there is no cooldown. Also, the new Flasks in TBC are all discovered - you can't just farm a mob for a drop. This means that if you're the only person (or at least one of a small number) with a Flask recipe and you're a Master of Elixirs then you may get a large number of raid guilds coming to you for flask-making and being willing to pay well for the service. The quest involves doing the Black Morass instance (in the Caverns of Time) and getting 10 Essences of Infinity from Rift Lords and Rift Keepers. Hand them in with 5 Elixirs of Major Defense, 5 Elixirs of Mastery and 5 Elixirs of Major Agility to Lorokeem in Shattrath's Lower City to become a Master. There's no unique elixirs for masters.



It's also important to note that as of right now there is no known way of changing your specialisation. You should treat this as a serious and irreversible decision, it's well worth consulting with other guild members so you don't end up with 5 transmute masters and nobody doing elixirs and potions. Transmute mastery is 'stackable' in a guild or crafting circle due to the cooldown, whereas for Elixirs and Potions you really only need one each if those people can make the key recipes that you need. Any character who has been lucky enough to discover a Flask recipe should seriously consider Elixirs as their mastery, especially if nobody else on server can make it.

Right now from polling my own guild and various friends it seems a lot of people (especially alts) seem to be going for Transmute mastery with an expectation of being able to sell a Transmute every day for a small amount of gold and keep any extra output from mastery procs for themselves. Taking a very simple numbers example, selling Primal Might transmute every 24 hours for 5 gold you would expect to earn 100 gold in fees and 4 extra Primal Might that can be sold for lets say 150g each on the AH. That's 700g minus fees over 20 days, or 35g / day. By comparison, a Master of Potions or Elixirs with a recipe that has a 1g profit margin could buy or gather mats for 30 potions, get a 20% yield increase for 36 potions produced and sell those for equivalent daily profit (36g/day) but with the potential for far more if you can get enough materials and there's enough demand. The work or cash investment up front drops off sharply if you have people coming to you for potions/elixirs and you keep the extras.