One of the weirdest changes in Northrend so far is the way First Aid training works, strangely enough. Used to be that once you hit a certain level, you could just go run to the trainer to train up the next wave of bandages (or you could buy a manual from a trainer somewhere), but not so in the expansion: to get Heavy Frostweave Bandages, you have to depend on what seems to be a world drop.

The rules are still a little hazy, and the plans to get it seem to be somewhere between experiment and superstition: we know for sure that you need to have 390 First Aid already to get the book to drop (though you need 400 to actually use it), and we know that it can drop from almost anywhere in the world. But apparently there are a few places where it drops more often: in Zul'Drak, sometimes in Sholazar Basin, and sometimes in dungeons. Other than that, everything else is just rumors -- I haven't gotten the book yet, and I've been 400 since I had enough Frostweave to level up. I heard it was on the AH for around 20g, but of course that varies by realm, and when I checked today, it wasn't on the AH at all. And we've also heard that once you learn it, it won't drop for you again, so there may eventually be an AH market for these -- until all potential sellers actually learn the recipe, that is. And then there's this, which just makes my head spin. We may see another level of Frostweave bandages in a future patch.

Very strange, and strange choice by Blizzard to do it this way in the first place. It also appears that a stack of Heavy Frostweave Bandages sells to vendors for only 5g, so the days of nabbing lower-than-3g stacks of cloth on the AH and selling them to vendors for a profit may be over. Which is fine, because your guild's tailor could probably use it anyway. But I am bummed I haven't see the manual drop yet -- the better my gear gets, the less the non-heavy bandages do for me.

Update: Yes of course they can't be on the AH, because as you can see in the screenshot above, the manual is BoP. Never mind. Thanks, commenters.

If you've been exploring your capital city, you may have noticed something new. Grandmaster's Training Dummies now hang out in the cities, casually waiting for enterprising player characters to come and beat them. (I don't judge their lifestyles, I'm just reporting the facts.) If you're looking at the picture on the right, you're correct in your keen observation -- the clever training dummies even carry the flag of your opposing faction.

The dummies are level 80, obviously in preparation for Wrath's release on November 13th. We were fortunate enough to get them in the content patch, but it does lead to a few questions. What are these masochistic constructions for? What is their purpose? Do they give you anything?

Dr. Boom in Netherstorm was a staple of Hunters', Warlocks' and Mages' theorycrafting. The analysts of the communities would park themselves on a crate, and fire away at the goblin. Using AddOns likes Recount, or combat log parsers like WWS, they'd leverage the information to draw conclusions about which damage rotations and talents yielded the best results.

Target Dummies fulfill the same role, but are a little more universally accessible. (Melee had problems with Dr. Boom, since they could find themselves getting blown up by adds.) They also have benefit of not being out in the field. While safe and protected in your capital city, you can fire away until you feel confident in the data you're seeing.

There's a caveat to the dummies, however. Some spells (like Siphon Life) don't seem to give accurate results. Also, since the dummies aren't the specific bosses you'll be fighting, you're not going to get the exact same numbers as you would against the real thing. They're intended, after all, characters to practice on, not simulate the actual fights.

Edit: As some commenters have pointed out, there are level 70 and 60 dummies to be had also, in the same general area as the level 80 versions.

Karazhan isn't exactly cutting edge content. It's had a few nerfs in its time. That being said, walking into Medivh's home-away-from-evil with a collection of random alts, sightseers, and new-to-raiders can sometimes prove interesting. And by interesting, I mean "repair bill" and "love of all that's Holy, just kill the dang flares!"

Last night was one of those nights. My Guild has spent the last few weeks helping folks prepare for 25-man raiding in Wrath. The gear from Karazhan won't be applicable in the expansion, sure, but the skills and habits you learn now will help you be successful in the future. We had some particularly green folks with us, and while we knew the changes from 3.0.2 would make it easier, we weren't quite aware how easy.

We were breezing along. Who doesn't breeze past Attumen, Maiden, and even Opera? When we hit Curator, we started to really feel the difference. The chap barely made it to his first Evocation. We skipped on past, slapped Aran around, and went up to Prince.

Prince got down two infernals before dying. Confused, I checked the raid's gear. Had our all-in-greens Rogue somehow been replaced with a Warglaive-wielding maniac? Did the new specs really make that much difference?

And then we recalled -- every raid mob in the Burning Crusade got nerfed. So, now, for the next few weeks, we have an odd nirvana in which to help folks learn to raid.

It's probably fair to take bets on how many Beltway Insiders are aware of MMORPGs, or even WoW specifically. (At least one or two can be found in Azeroth, at least.) It's certainly clear, however, that Dr. Roger Smith, a senior game designer for the Army, has some passing familiarity on the idea.

According to Dr. Smith, an MMORPG environment would be a great always-on option to provide training to the troops. Specifically, he says "something like World of Warcraft, but focused on the military training customer." You can even check out his public PDF on work he's already done on this kind of training environment.

The always-on world would provide training scenarios even outside the usual tactical simulation. Your avatars could interact with cultural representations, learning the fine points of behavior while interacting in foreign environments. Want to get your team a dose of decision-making expertise? Set up the environment to run reactions based on criteria you devise. And we definitely know WoW can teach you about a fictional history, maybe Dr. Smith's could help the soldier with some real-world equivalents.

We've all heard about the government exploring virtual worlds before, but we don't often hear that exploration directly connected to WoW. But if 10 million people -- including soldiers -- love us some WoW, maybe there's something in the formula Dr. Smith can use.

WoW Rookie is brought to our readers to help our newest players get acclimated to the game. Make sure you send a note to WoW Insider if you have suggestions for what new players need to know.

Having the right weapon can make a world of difference in a players leveling experience. Last time on WoW Rookie, we looked at the types of weapons that each class can use and where to train the skill for them. Now just because you can use a weapon, doesn't mean you should. This week we'll examine what to look for in a weapon.

It's pretty important to keep your hands full. You have a four weapon slots at the bottom of your character sheet: Main Hand, Off Hand, Ranged, and Ammunition. Two handed weapons take up both the main hand and off hand slots. The off hand may hold a weapon if your class can dual weild, a shield, or an off hand item that either adds to your attributes or looks cool (such as Bouquet of Red Roses or a Dark Iron Tankard.) I recommend something useful when adventuring, though it's fun to see what folks come up with when roaming the city.

WoW Rookie is brought to our readers to help our newest players get acclimated to the game. Make sure you send a note to WoW Insider if you have suggestions for what new players need to know.

One of my favorite things about World of Warcraft is the wide variety of sharp, pointy objects and projectiles at my disposal for beating on my foes (and occasionally my friends). At times I find myself overwhelmed by the number of options for each class, and I've always wanted a handy guide to what I can use and where to get it. Since I couldn't find such a guide, I've decided to create one. Hopefully you will all find it useful also.

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

This is it, folks. This is the final column in my four-part feature about how to take your casual raids to the next level. For parts one, two, and three, click on the purple words with lines under them.

I've noticed in the comments under these features that a few people seem confused about the difference between casual and hardcore raiding. One reader from last week, Ger, put it best:

The point of "casual" is to concentrate on WoW being a fun game more than a chore, but if you want to raid then be prepared to take some dang responsibility and not be a liability to 9 or 24 other people.

That one made me laugh. It's a bit of an exaggeration, yes, but I like that definition. Let's recap what I talked about previously, and follow that up with some more suggestions.

I was just sitting in Ironforge a minute ago trying to peddle my enchants. The members of the guild I'm in were sitting around shooting the breeze about Burning Crusade instances. Somebody remarked on BRK's article earlier today about hunters "once being in demand" in Blackrock Depths, and I chimed in that as a subtlety rogue I've felt a little left-out of some of the Burning Crusade content. It seems from my vantage point that hunters and mages own the vast majority of the Burning Crusade instances because those of us who have to be in physical contact with our targets who don't have the benefit of plate armour are getting the bejeezus beaten out of us in this series of instances.

While I can see the progression that Blizzard has taken, and I can understand the necessity for encounters to increase in difficulty I'm having a really difficult time finding the willpower to flush my carefully crafted rogue build down the toilet that I spent so much time perfecting.

So let's shift gears for a moment to solo instances. Yes, we've talked about them before. I think that with the right implementation though, that we could kill a number of birds with one stone.

How many crappy rogues have you met in-game? Ok, put your hands down. We can substitute any class into that question. There are lots of players with no skills floating around. We've all seen warriors who don't sunder, mages who don't realize they can summon (food and water), and even shamans who don't know what a totem is. Yes, I'm serious, I've seen every one of those.

So here's my idea - with apologies if somebody else already thought of it first. I know Dan brushed gently against it a few months ago. Why not make an Academy style instance where players could go solo, maybe every ten levels, and be taught in "live fire" situations how to use the skills they've acquired in the last ten levels. Loot would have the benefit of being class-specific (or at the very least class-appropriate), and lunchbox letdown would be next to non-existent. The only obvious problem to me, is that the gear would almost have to be Bind on Pickup, and they'd probably want to make it so once you beat the last boss that you couldn't come back until you graduated to the next bracket.

Then everybody would have something to do, nobody would feel completely useless, and best of all it would have a positive impact on the skill level of the players on our realms and in our guilds. What do you think?

The other day I was helping a guildie with their mage as they reached 20. Thus began the long journey to collect teleportation training from around Azeroth. Something he said along the way stuck with me though. He mentioned that he hardly sees people asking for portals to Darnassus now. I thought about it, and would have to agree. I seem to sell as many ports to Darnassus as I sell to the Exodar. The cities are so closely linked, it's fairly easy to hop on a boat and be anywhere on Kalimdor that you need to be.

Why then the great level difference in the training? The portal to Darnassus still remains a spell you can train in at level 50, while the portal to the Exodar is a level 40 spell. This goes for the teleport spells as well, since the level for Darnassus is 30, while all the others are available at level 20. So in essence, all that bouncing around the continent starts ten levels sooner. I imagine that initially the portal to Darnassus was level 50 because it represents a greater magical achievement. You are now transporting a group across the ocean. Does the Exodar require less skill to use? You are still transporting people across the Great Sea. Wouldn't it in fact require more skill, seeing as how we have had a longer history with the Night Elves than we have with the Draenei? I am thinking that the developers might want to take a look at the level requirements for the portals. The initial level requirements seemed to support the lore. The training, as it stands currently, does not.

A possible explanation is that Night Elves shun arcane magic. However, they do accept the portal trainer within their city, so this argument doesn't seem to work for me. If they let that first mage in there to create the portals in the first place, why would it be more difficult for other mages to do so? Is there some sort of other explanation that I'm missing as to why there is such a level discrepancy with both the teleport and the portal spells to Darnassus?

The good people over at Petopia have posted a lot of new info about pets seen on the PTR for 2.1. First, there's been four new pets found so far-- a new Blackwind Warp Chaser, a Ravager from Hellfire Peninsula, the Sky Shadows in Deadwind Pass (that scared the heck out of you even before the expansion was released), and this amazing purple tallstrider called a Dodostrider (that last one has hunters buzzing).

One pet will be made untamable-- apparently there are issues with the Death Ravager that gets spawned in a quest in the lowbie Draenei area, Azuremyst Isle, and so hunters won't be able to tame him any more. Also, Petopia has PTR info on two new trainable pet abilities, Avoidance and Cobra Reflexes. Avoidance has two ranks and reduces the damage done to pets by AoE (this is aimed directly at endgame PvE pet viability), and Cobra Reflexes has one rank and increases attack speed at a cost to damage done.

As usual, all this info is still subject to change. But it's great that Blizzard is getting more and more pets (and pet abilities) in the mix. Here's hoping the trend continues.

Ok, I'll admit it. I'm a slacker.

My resto shaman is definitely my main, and he's very, very helpful-- he can heal like a priest, DPS close to a mage (or at least a well geared moonkin), and he's even got Mana Tide totem and that always useful Earth Shield. But one thing he doesn't have... is a 375 profession.

He's an herb/alch, and therein lies the rub: I can't collect anything. Skinning, I'm great at-- I've gotten multiple toons to 375 skinning, just because it's so easy to take a second after a kill to skin. First aid, I rock, because there's so much cloth around-- my 63 rogue is already at 375. But mining and herbalism, I just can't seem to get done. By the time I level out of a zone, I haven't picked up enough herbs to get my skill up, and eventually I'm leveling near herbs that are red to me. Now I'm leveling a blood elf mage, and she's having the same problem with jewelcrafting-- I'm not finding the mine nodes on my normal journey, and as a result I'm falling behind.

A high end guild would probably have kicked me out by now for not bringing potions to raids (fortunately, my guild is very forgiving). But it is wrong of me to show up to a raid empty-handed just because I've been lazy. So what's the problem here? Am I missing some secret method of collecting as I level up? I do forget to turn on my tracking sometimes, although I know there are addons out there that will help with that. Unfortunately, since I've already hit 70, it looks like I'm just going to have to go back and grind it out, but maybe that's the best way to do it. Did you level your collecting profession while you were leveling or did you do it all in one big run? And what tips do you have for me to keep me from slacking off in the future?

Anyone who's ever ventured into Un'Goro crater has probably had a run-in with these beasts that didn't end well - and perhaps that's why I'm so amused by this attempt to walk one all the way into the Barrens.  While some players are opposed to the disruption caused by kiting dangerous beasts into low level areas, you have to recognize that it takes some amount of patience and skill to pull off this sort of prank.