Cooking is a secondary tradeskill that most players should strongly consider learning, and maximizing. The buffs that many of the foods award can be quite helpful, and aside from damage buffs, there are also healing buffs, tank buffs, and food for hunter and warlock pets, among other yummy treats. If you rely on purchasing the foods from the auction house, you'll find your consumables bill soaring upward.

You can also make a profit from cooking, especially regarding pet food. Because many players are stubborn and won't learn any of the secondary skills, you can sell your dishes for a hefty price.

Still, if you don't fall madly in love with cooking, searching high and low for the latest recipe and farming to your favorite tunes, then you might have some trouble and confusion when trying to reach 375. This week, Insider Trader will take an in-depth look at the easiest path to cooking 375, avoiding fishing altogether. Although they go hand-in-hand, they can be done separately, and many cooks do not want to become fishermen.

Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.

To celebrate the kick-off of HKO-Insider, Insider Trader will be doing a bonus column this week! As the closed beta has only just been put in the works, there are understandably few details floating around.

Currently, we have confirmed at least the following professions:

• Mining.
• Gathering fruit from the wild.
• Tailoring.
• Furniture-crafting.
• Farming.
• Cooking.
• House-building.
  

This week we will speculate on what we might see, and compose a wishlist for what we would like to see. Join us on Friday as we resume our normal schedule and delve deeper into the concept of mining as a profession, building on today's overview as well as player feedback.

Cloth is like the gathering profession for everyone. You don't have to pay to pick it up, and there are no skills to level. Because of the sheer number of tailors, the amount of cloth tailoring eats up (not to mention first aid), cloth gathering can be a lucrative pass-time. Failing that, it can provide for your own cloth needs without having to hit the auction house.

This week's Insider Trader will be going in-depth into the world of farming for cloth, and tackling the following issues:

• The best areas to farm the cloth you need.
• How to alleviate some of the boredom.
• Ways to make the most out of your farming stints.

We will also be covering cloth that can be obtained by even level ones, and not just level 70s, as well as information about what it is used for, and who is going to want it.

• Linen cloth. (lvl 1-15)
  
• Wool cloth. (lvl 14-30)
  
• Silk cloth. (lvl 28-40)
  
• Mageweave cloth. (lvl 38-50)
  
• Runecloth. (lvl 50-62)
• Netherweave cloth. (lvl 58-70+)
• Felcloth. (lvl 50-60).

Whether your career hinges on stacks of cloth or you're looking to finance your other exploits, you won't want to miss this week's guide.

World of Warcraft's European site has posted a new page of their FAQ aiming to describe the effects and consequences of third party gold selling, also known as RMT (Real Money Trade or Real Money Transactions). There doesn't seem to be a similar page added to the American site yet, but we've seen enough to know very well that they disapprove as well.

The page mostly focuses on the more underhanded tactics the companies use to get money, such as keyloggers and trojans, or simply stealing the accounts of people who paid for powerleveling, and using them as farming bots, or spamming in high traffic areas on level 1 characters with hard to spell names. It's a good start, and certainly reminds people of the harm that these gold farmers do, and how it can hit close to home.

As a veteran MMORPGer who's watched Johnathan Yantis and Brock Pierce practically invent the industry and most of the dirty tricks it pulls, I'm glad to see Blizzard continue to make a stand against these types of leeches and hope they continue to do so. I'd love to see them explain more fully how the constant amount of kill stealing and spawn and AH camping they do hurts the game. A campaign of information might be just what we need to stop the gold farmers once and for all. Legal measures and community shame (and thus shrinking of their customer base) for a one-two punch? Here's hoping!

Thanks for the heads up, Richard!

My guild-mates have told me more than once, "You shouldn't buy X (or Y, or Z) on the auction house! Farming it yourself is much cheaper!" I don't doubt them at all -- after all, farming something makes it free, doesn't it? But for some classes and specs, going out in the world and farming for items is a slow, slow process. And when the time spent farming is longer than it would take to do dailies to acquire enough gold to buy it on the open market... do you go out and farm, or do you hit the auction house when you need items? And even for classes that have an easy time farming whatever they might need, sometimes you find yourself with limited playtime, but you need one more primal fire to craft your epic thingamajig? Food or potions for tomorrow's raid? The Goblins tell us that time is money, after all. So today I ask you, readers. What do you find to be easier? Farming or buying?

Although this comic is NSFW, it's definitely worth a read. Of course, I like games like Tetris; perhaps that plays a role in my love for WoW. If you've been feeling any extra pressure to grind since the new items and patterns from patch 2.3 arrived, then this comic is for you. Consider it a very quick dose of chuckle therapy.

While you are having a laugh, you might as well peruse the full website. ActionTrip is a gaming website with tons of cheats, videos, and other goodies. Although you likely won't be able to load it at work anyway, I caution you that the rest of the website is also not the best thing to load at the office.

On a related note, if you are seeking some grind guidance, you should head over to Gun Lovin' Dwarf Chick and check out this spiffy guide to farming. It covers issues such as how to get in the right head space, and how to keep yourself from going a little batty and giving up. It also has suggestions on what to farm, where to farm it, and which add-ons will make your experience easier and more pleasurable.

If you are looking to maximize profit and not for your own phat lootz, then I highly recommend learning how to work the auction house. From anticipating what will sell, and at what prices, to adjusting your farming excursions accordingly, Lisa Poisso's guide to working the auction house is a great place to start.

If you have a habit of not looting vendor trash (grey items), or you have yet to be inspired by its gold-making possibilities, then try out our guide to vendor trash and the auction house. Actually, it also contains some great tips for working your greens, whites, blues and purples too. What do you do while you farm? Are you a gold-making whiz, or do you avoid it as much as possible?

A while back, WoW Insider covered a story about selling Arena titles. Blizzard has acknowledged the little loophole in the Arena system which has been used and abused, which led to the implementation of a few changes such as personal ratings and a rating requirement for Arena item purchases. While a lot of teams have openly admitted to selling ratings and titles, a recent post on the Stormscale forums indicated a price tag on the Armored Nether Drake, pegging it at 3,000g. The buyer, a dwarf Paladin named Madawk, admitted that he only wanted the 310% flying mount, and would never wear the Gladiator title. His guildmates quickly jump to his defense, saying that the mount was pretty much the only thing he couldn't farm and compared the cost to the Cenarion War Hippogryph.

What do you guys think? Is the Merciless Nether Drake worth the three grand? Does the buyer make things right by vowing to never display the Gladiator title?

The other day I listed the items that will be used in new recipes after the patch. I did miss a few things, but with your helpful comments, I've updated the original article to be more complete. I'll mention again that it's difficult to make predictions on what will sell the best, but nonetheless I've decided to list some of my thoughts on the subject below.

Although your time to farm before the release of the patch is quickly dwindling, hopefully everyone will be able to spend some quality time over the weekend preparing for next Tuesday. It's always difficult to accurately predict what will be big sellers, especially since the economy on one server may be radically different than another. With this in mind, I've decided to simply provide a list of all the items that will be used in new trade recipes or for obtaining the new reputation rewards.

More mote issues going down on the forums. Hildebrand says the recent changes to Mote of Shadow (in which Blizzard removed them from all demons everywhere to just void-based creatures) have caused the droprate to go too low. Removing them from demons wasn't a bad move, because considering the expansion is based on fighting the Burning Crusade, they're everywhere. But void creatures are pretty rare, and while you can pick up tons of motes just killing the Hellfire Peninsula void crowd, you just don't run across them in normal grinding anymore.

Drysc says that even though the drop rate was lowered, something strange has happened-- the Mote of Shadow prices have generally stayed the same. Either someone had a stockpile, or the demand just isn't there. Of course, prices in the AH on every server are different (one server's trash is another server's treasure, so to speak), but Blizzard doesn't see a problem with Mote of Shadow right now-- if anything, they want them rarer.

I think the center of this argument really lies in how crafters are supposed to come across these items-- is farming supposed to be part of the game? I'm a big fan of the "you should get every craft item you need just by sweeping the landscape while you level," but obviously many more players go above and beyond that, and actually spend hours just farming craft items. Should Blizzard tune the drop rates for the farmers, or for the grinders?

We had an idea like this a while back, but now Sweet from Korgath has come up with an even better one. Make 10 Essences equal one Mote just the way that 10 Motes equal one Primal. Since 2.1, Essences (the random crafting widgets that used to drop in Azeroth) are dropping in Outland, and since most of the recipes that use them are pretty old by now, players don't have much to do with them. Way back, we'd suggested an Alchemy Transmute Essence-to-Mote recipe, but Sweet's idea is better-- why not just make them all the same thing?

Drysc rains on the parade, however, by saying that because Essences drop so much back in old Azeroth, it would be necessary (in his view) to nerf their droprate there. And that in turn, would cause problems for lower level players who couldn't make it to Outland (Drysc assumes that lower level players are still farming Essences the way all 60s used to, but I might disagree with him there). Also, he says, it would increase the amount of Motes and Primals floating around, obviously, and Blizzard doesn't want those to be super easy to come by.

But surely there's some conversion rate they could hit on which would make Essences worth just a little more than worthless at level 70. If too many Essences drop in Azeroth, then make it 15, or 20, or whatever. Better than vendoring stacks of Essences picked up while Mote-farming just because no one will buy them on the AH.

GeneriKB, whose money-making guide from the official Professions forums I read with interest back in the days before I had a single level 60, is back again for a guide for this brave new world (of Warcraft). Unlike his previous three-stage philosophy (two gathering profs to 40, switch to one gathering and one crafting until 60, and then switch to two crafting), the recommend procedure in volume 3 of GeneriKB's "Guide to MoneyMaking" can be summed up on one point:

• Mine

Why? Well, crafting's a lot harder to make money off of now that the good stuff mostly requires a nether, and farming mobs, skinning, and herbing are all not terribly efficient in terms of gold per hour. The reason mining is so efficient is because you get not only ore, but also motes of earth and fire as well as green and the occasional blue gem -- it's the blue gems that really push it over the top. Also, ore is pretty valuable because it feeds three professions -- mining blacksmithing, engineering, and jewelcrafting. Check out the guide for his recommendation on how best to sell each specific type of ore. Genny claims he makes 200g per hour circling Nagrand in mining loops (and fishing the pure water on the elemental plateau), which is certainly better than I've ever managed to make.

Well, there's one thing I've found that makes more, actually: playing the auction house. That is to say, finding an item that's priced under the market rate, buying it all out, and relisting it at market rate or slightly above. This usually yields a very high amount of gold per hour, but you need a certain amount of starting capital, and there is some risk involved (the going rate for your item may not be what you thought it was). Furthermore, I am not an economist, but I suspect that this practice would end up raising the price of various things over time, which may not be a desired effect. But anyway, playing the AH may turn out to be more efficient than mining. What do you think?

This is it. If you want to hold your stuff, ain't nothing better than this. The only thing is, the mats might drive you up a wall first.

Name: Primal Mooncloth Bag
Type: Bag
Abilities:

• It's a whopping 20-slot bag, which is the biggest in the game. There are a few bigger ones out there-- in fact, quite a few. But those are all specialty bags, and this one will hold whatever you want in it.
• If you want to hold stuff-- a lot of stuff-- this is what you need.

How to Get It: And here's the catch (there always is one, isn't there?): even with the mats, it could take you two weeks just to get this thing made. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

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

At one time, possibly for ten or even twenty minutes, Molten Core was an exciting challenge. But now, if I never see the featureless brown walls of that godforsaken cave for the rest of my life, it will be too soon. Most raiding guilds probably aren't at the point where running Karazhan or Gruul's Lair is the tedious chore that weekly MC runs became, but someday all of this shiny new Burning Crusade raid content is going to be old hat too. At that point, it's going to be harder and harder to convince people to go back to it to help alts and newer guild members gear up. One reader dealt with this issue prior to the expansion.

Hey,

Great column. Here's a situation I came upon many times while running with a raiding guild in summer 2006. I'm curious as to how you dealt with it. I spent 4 months in a progress guild . . . and we did a great job for the time that I was there (downed C'thun in June '06 . . . moderate progress in Naxx after). But I came into the guild later than most of the people, and I only got in because of skill. I was one of the rare exceptions that was allowed in the guild of AQ40 hardcore raiders, with cloth blues from DM . . . I was a resto shaman.

As time went on, we would get me the occasional piece of gear from a farm-status instance (I ended up with 5/8 Earthfury, but that's kinda necessary), but for the most part the guild was focused on progress, and we did not do MC or BWL very much anymore. The problem is, when Naxx hit, it got even worse. We were constantly wiping in Naxx, having issues with bosses that we shouldn't've, and I attributed it to the fact that everyone wasn't as geared out as possible. Some people needed pants off Rag, some people needed that one piece from Nef, . . . I was still using Finkle's Lava Dredger!

Well, okay, maybe not buy, but I'm all about trading stories! For example, it's my belief that some of the best World of Warcraft posts never see the light of day. Why? Because they're closeted on guild forums, safe from prying eyes. But you know you all have seen them. These threads take on Legendary Thread status within our respective guilds, and grow into in-jokes over time.

Here's one of my favorite of the recent posts I've seen on my guild's forums that has exploded into a truly silly string of "contest" posts. This original post was made by my Rogue class leader when he was looking for a Blinkstrike to call his very own.

Enter the "Win a Free Pocket Rogue" Sweepstakes!