Tuesday, November 17, 2009

The most annoying loot in WoW

Hands on heart, have many of you do regularly trash things that could be sold to a vendor or posted at AH?

I do. All the time.

I'm lucky that there's some magic device in Azeroth which makes the litter you throw out of your bag invisible. If it wasn't for that one, there would be an embarrassing trail of trash appearing behind me. You could follow my wonderings as easily as If I had been Theseus in the labyrinth, tossing out a string not to get lost. In real life I'm just the opposite, almost obsessed not to litter the ground with anything. Not even a chewing gum or a match will be put anywhere but in a bin. But in game - oh my.

Like so many other habits it was founded early, in my childhood back in Don Morogh. Yeah, I grasped that it could be a good idea to vendor grey items and worn out gear at an early stage to get some cash, but most of the time leveling it remained a theory. What is a girl to do when the vendors are few and far between and modern ideas such as butlers and squires never have been heard of? The bag is full, you get a quest reward you want or you need to pick up some requested quest items. I didn't see any other alternative than to toss it out of my bag. And once you've started on trashing, it's so easy to continue. "Hmmm... those pieces of meat are white and not grey and this means that they're "worth" something to other players according to the tutorials. But surely it can't be that much, can it? Nah. Away you go. After all, it's not epics, heh?".

The value of trash
I think it wasn't until I encountered The Stoppable Force in the TBC instances that I realized how much gold I lost by this mindless trashing. 2g, 33s and 70 copper was a considerable subsidiary to my repair bills. And from there on I started to be more careful about it.

In WotLK this carefulness has become even more important. They grey color can be deceiving. Trash the New Age Painting that comes as a reward from the daily fishing quest, and you've just lost 25 g! And the Battered Jungle Hat may look useless and sells to vendor for as little as 43 copper, but check AH and you'll see that the players value its cool looks a great deal more than that.

"Poor Quality Items should be sold to the vendor. Players do not want these items.", says Blizzard at the beginners section of the website. That's not entirely true.

The Most Annoying loot
At the European forum, there's a thread with a discussion about which loot in the game that is the most the annoying. Shiny Fish Scales and Fish Oil have both been suggested. The problem with those is that they're white, hinting that they're worth something to other players and therefore shouldn't be vendored or trashed. And once upon a time they were, as reagents for shamans. But with the introduction of reagent saving glyphs, that demand is gone, as well as the demand for light feathers. If I ever see those items sky rocketing at AH I suspect that there's some shady gold dealer around. Not even the most moronic moron would bother to buy them.

However, in spite of their very limited value, I think neither Fish Oil, nor Shiny Fish Scales qualify for being the most annoying loot, the trash that we hate so much that we destroy it as soon as possible. After all they stack nicely! And so do the clams nowadays, after Blizzards tremendous and never-ceasing efforts to trim the mussel loot mechanism into perfection.

No, the most annoying loot consist of items that no other players want for any reason, that are worth next to nothing if you vendor it and which use an entire precious bag slot per item. After my recent grinding for a Winterspring Frostsaber mount I'm quite certain on the matter of which loot I hate most.

I proudly present it to you: Large Bear Bone! The Most Annoying item in Warcraft!

Not only is it useless as such - the icon for it is so ugly that I get bugged every time I see it. And since they drop from the Shardtooth Bear - which you have to loot to get the meat that you bribe the Frostsaber Trainer with - you can't afford not to loot. Shift-click is the way to go to get the job done quickly, but this means that the bags fill up quickly too. The 100 slots I currently have on my main don't suffice far when you're on a Wintersaber grind, trust me on that. I guess it sums up eventually. Maybe I've lost a fortune on not dragging those smelling skeleton pieces to some stupid junk dealer. So be it.

Some trash is just so annoying that you don't want to carry it a second more than necessary.

24 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just a FYI, Larisa, Large Bear Bones used to be very valuable back in Vanilla Wow =)

Notice that it is a weapon. Now notice, amazingly, that it has no durability! Back in Vanilla, it was the highest-level infinite-durability weapon in the game.

If that wasn't interesting enough already, it gets better! Back when Molten Core was THE place to be, Ragnaros had a really nasty buff on himself....Molten Armor, or some variation of that, the exact name slips me. What it did was have a high probability of DECREASING the durability of your weapon by 1 every time you hit him...

I bet you see where this is going. ow, granted, any decent DPS still wouldn't fight him with a Bear Bone on... but this DID result in all the tanks that knew what they were doing going out to farm themselves Bear Bones for that fight!

See Larisa, even the unseeming Large Bear Bone was once a valuable endgame item in itself. Don't ever look down on it again! =D

Arioch said...

That was quite possibly the most informative comment on a trash item I have ever seen. O.o

But yeah, the bear bones don't stack and are annoying.

Get a Traveler's Tundra Mammoth and never have to drop grays again. =)

Anonymous said...

The troll sweat from Zul'Farrak. Don't know why that stuff bugs me so much, but it does :)

Rich said...

Troll.

Sweat.

Zul'Farak, DIAF.

Rich said...

And zomg, me and anon are on the same page. posted before reading those.

<3

Carra said...

Thanks for the story, anonymous, didn't know that :)

Trash is annoying. I was glad to find a mod that autosells all my grey items each time I visit a shop (automaton I think).

Torchlight and its predecessor Fate have a nice solution to the problem. You get a cute kitten or dog wich has its own small inventory. If you do not want an item you put it in its bag. Then you can send it to a vendor and it will sell its entire inventory. The downside is that you have to fight without your cute kitten for a minute or two.

Kromus said...

Totally understand your viewpoint on the "invisible litter"-- I even made this comic before, remember?
http://dungeonsanddraenei.blogspot.com/2009/10/recycle-possiblities-are-endless.html

bad, carbon-footprint Blizzard.

But yeah, I have to admit Larisa, I, Like you, THROW EVERYTHING. I even throw greens, im so lazy at using the Auction House- I really am.

I'm one of those people who will do every daily under the sun, sell lots of gems and farm lots of primals and get a big bulk of gold, then just live off it like a hibernating bear in the winter.

Rinse repeat. I should really change my mindset considering I've just started grinding winterspring also :)

Anonymous said...

Troll sweat. Hands down.

Larísa said...

@Anonymous: WoW, that was awesome information! I had no idea. I never did MC until lvl 80 tbh. I'm a TBC baby you know...

@Arioch: oh, the thought has never crossed my mind really. They're too huge to be lovable imho. But maybe one of those AT assistants if I just could stand grinding 150 emblems. Honestly doubt I can...

@Anonymous, Ixobelle, Bri: yeah, the sweat is definitely a good candidate. It bugs my mind. Even the icon for it. Why would anyone carry around a bottle of sweat?

@Carra: a pet with bags? Sounds like a very smooth solution!

@Kromus: well, I've never been a fan of doing dailies for gold. Sure; I can do it for some rep I needl, like the Hodir back in those days. But not for plain gold. And I definitely won't grind eternals for gold. Then I'd rather keep doing my daily transmute and make a few spellthreads if I need any more. I guess the fact that I can afford just throwing trash away shows that gold is abundant in the game of today.

BigFire said...

There's a reason why I tried to buy a vendor equipped mount for all of my alts. No more going back to town to sell off vendor trash.

Anonymous said...

You could grind up Engineer and craft Jeeves for yourself.

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=49040

Kylofon said...

I gotta say that the Syndicate Marks are my personal favorite. I lugged them around for months on my alt until I read somewhere that there really is no point. Yeah, I'm that much of a noob.

Tessy said...

Oh the agony of chucking out some item instead of selling it to a vendor! I even vendor sickly fish and such 2 copper-stuff, so ingrained is the habit!

And shiny fish scale or fish oil does still have a value to shamans, my three minor glyphs are the water shield one (gives me yet another charge on the shield), the reincarnation for free-glyph, so I have to chose between either a reagent-free water walking or water breathing glyph, and need to stack up on the other, in case I suddenly desire to breathe water :-)

Dorgol said...

I've been around since release... and even *I* didn't know the Large Bear Bone could be useful. I played a Warlock back then, so I couldn't care less what the melee people wanted.

Unknown said...

That's funny, I too found an accidental use for the Big Bear Bone. I play a hunter and while trashing one, I accidentally discovered that my pet could eat it as food! Still mostly useless, but entertaining nonetheless.

Anonymous said...

Check the tool tip -- the Large Bear Bone sells for nearly 15 silver, which is quite a bit for Azeroth loot.

My vote for most annoying: Troll sweat. It only stacks in 5s (not 10s or 20s), and it drops from about every troll in ZF and The Hinterlands. (Large Bear Bones seem to drop a lot less often.)

Deleting stacks and stacks of Troll Sweat is an occupational hazard of any mageweave farmer.

Quiet Kjun said...

Trash Fish! Ever since they changed the fishing requirement so any level of fishing experience can fish anywhere, you catch trash fish. It doesnt matter if you have your fishing skill maxed, add the Kalu'Ak pole, fishing lure, fishing hat, etc., your still going to catch trash fish. They vendor for a few copper or silver, but they take up a lot of bag space. I wish Blizzard would go back to the skill level fishing requirements and I would never have to deal with another trash fish polluting my bags again.

Anonymous said...

I guess you never played a shaman - they have 3 different reagents and while there is a minor glyph for each of them, there are also other minor glyphs a shaman would prefer using, meaning you either have reagents on you or can't cast e.g. water breathing.

Shadowspawnd said...

The worst part of Large Bear Bone is that it does not stack!!! Get an that automatically deletes items under a certain sell value or specific items. I use on called Karni's Crap Filter. takes a bit of setting up but works great. http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info9441-KarnisCrapFilter.html

Anonymous said...

I've been a trash-lady in MMOs since I started playing UO in 1999. I cannot tell you how much money I made from empty bags (for those who played - remember that all monster corpses would open up into a window and the humanoids would carry backpacks in which their gold and random loot woudl be found), empty bottles and tons of other 'useless' items discarded on the ground around the bank area.

When I came to WoW, that trend didn't let me go. I would go out of my way to hit a vendor. In fact, I became an engineer SPECIFICALLY for the repairbots/mailboxes... I used to tell my friends I was going 'farming for grays'. They'd laugh, but in a lot of cases, I was serious.

Large Bear Bones are great for (bad) joke emotes. Especially by Druids. If you can't imagine how that's possible, I can't explain it. It's dirty and inappropriate. But, I laughed the first time I saw someone do it anyway.

My least favorite trash items? The claws/skins/etc that you get from different animal mobs... that only stack to 5. They make my bag space sad.

Tesh said...

I'll heartily second the pet from Fate/Torchlight. It's an elegant safety valve to the loot management minigame.

As for trash drops that I don't like, well... pretty much anything that doesn't stack. I can live with reagents and critter body parts that stack... as strange as that statement sounds out of context.

Larísa said...

@Big Fire: well, too much gold for my taste. Playing the AH has never been any favorite of mine.

@Bri: from what I've heard about leveling engineering it's not something I consider to do...

@Kylofon: Syndicate Marks? Hm... What's that? I have a vague memory of something in Alterac Mountains, could that be it?

@Tessy: that's a very good habit, stick to it! About the demand for shamans: it certainly isn't big at least, considering the AH prices of those items.

@Dorgol: I'm glad I'm not the only one who didn't know about this! Makes me feel less noobish.

@Storm: eat a bone? Well I guess it makes sense if you have a wolf pet - something to chew on. But can it cure their hunger? Not much meat on them as it looks. I'm skeptic!

@Anonymous: I don't think 15 silver is impressive for an item that doesn't stack at all. And yeah, troll sweat is indeed annoying!

@Quiet Kjun: oh don't talk about it. I hate that trash fish too. I don't fish much, but I do the daily occasionally and it's very annoying. Apart from dailies I mostly fish in Winterspring and as far as I can recall I mostly get useful fish there.

@Anonymous: correct. But as you said there are glyphs. And the price at AH remains very low.

@Shadospawned: I know there are this kind of addons but have never tried them out. Seems to be a lot of work to tune them so they don't delete for instance the 25 g grey colored modern painting.

@Role Craft: I'm afraid that I'm quite clueless when it comes to dirty jokes. I don't get them. And yeah, I hate those claws too. Very annoying. Good habit you've got to keep your bags empty so you can keep any trash as long as it takes you to get to a vendor.

@Tesh: " I can live with reagents and critter body parts that stack". Yeah, for a non wow player it must be pretty incomprehenisble. :)

Tyra said...

A temporary solution(in this instance), is to hold onto ~1 stack of meat. When you go to farm rep, seperate each meat into a 1 pc stack. when you loot, itll stack onto them, and you don't have to worry about junk. Just hold 20 stacks = 20stacks of meat, for a farming session ;)

Unknown said...

If you use FuBar there's an addon called GarbageFu which helps manage your vendor trash. The cheapest stack of trash is displayed on the FuBar and can be dropped with a single click. You can also customize it to classify specific non-gray items as trash.