While leveling engineering often I had to get stacks of Obsidium Ore. Only thing I really needed at that point of Obsidium Ore only. So I was looking for place where I could get it quick and without having to fight for nodes with other players. Here is one place where lot of players forget. Goto Kelp Forest in Vashj'ir. Yes, one of the two starting places for Cataclysm. Because of underwater terrain and little difficulty in navigation lot of payers do not want to spend lot of time there. So the place i s literally empty most of the time. And since it is starting area, the re-spawn of nodes is little faster as well. I have come up with 2-3 stacks of ore in about 20 minutes lot of time. Oh no, I told my secret. Now where I am going to go to farm ore. Happy farming.

One of the boring and time consuming part of World Of Warcraft game is farming materials for your crafting professions. Everybody has a one main character that they like to take to raids and have best possible stats. And most of best stats come from crafting professions. So if you have two crafting professions then you need others toons that will be material farmers. Then the question comes what class you should make to farm materials. Technically one class is as good as another class because you do not get any special class advantage. But there are two classes that provide a great advantage in my opinion.

Hunter and Death Knights are two classes that work out great for farming materials. Here are reasons.

• The reason is that both classes have a permanent pet. When you are mining and picking up herbs, lot of time you will get attacked my mobs. That means you will have to deal with the mob before you can gather that resource. So if you have a pet with you, then your pet will deal with the mob while you finish gathering. And then you can help your pet to finish off that mob. So there is no time wasted. And if you are fighting with the mob, then there is good change that some other player may come and take that node from you. Not every player is decent like you.

• Both classes have movement increase via the aura or aspect. So if you have multiple nodes close by then you can get to them quickly.

There are other classes like Warlock that have pet. But I will rather choose something that is not so squishy that if hell breaks loose with cluster of mobs that survival may be in question.

Well this just my opinion from my experience. Happy hunting.

With World Of Warcraft - Cataclysm released, people saw some significant changes in professions and material gathering. One of the professions that saw a msjor pinch is Tailoring. Unlike previous versions of WoW, cloth drop is not as frequesnt as it used to be. In earlier versions, I had so much cloth in the bank that I could not figure ot what to do with it. Now you have to pray when you kill a humanoid that it has one piece of EmberSilk on it. And when it drops then you are thinking about if you want use it to make bandage or not. So you already have two professions competing for a rwsource that has become rare.

Anyways here are some of the tips that I think will help you in farming Embersilk in Cataclysm

• Very important that you have Tailoring profession. With this profession there is a chance of additional Embersilk drop. And lot of time, there is cloth on mobs that only tailors can see after others have looted the body.
• If you are leveling other toons that you use mostly for gathering, then have Tailoring profession for it. While you are leveling it, you will collect all the cloth that you can send to your main tailoring toon.
• Do the dailies that involve humaoids. Blizzard has done good job at rate at which mobs spawn in daily areas. So even if you are done with your daily quest and want to farm cloth, go to that area. Tol Barad is excellent place for it. Key to cloth farming is Humanoids.

I hope these few tips help you in farming Embersilk cloth little faster.

Some time back in one of my posts i reviewed Age Of Conan - Rise of Godslayer. Well at that time I was kind of happy that FunComm managed to fix lot of issues with game stability that they had when the game came out the first time. Well, all my impression about the game shattered when I entered North Grasslands. My experience was as painful as dentist trying to pull out the teeth without anesthesia.

The game was totally unusable in North Grassland. I could not take 5 steps without hitting major lag spikes. If it was not spikes then rendering consumed so much of resources on my machine that there were times that I was stand still for more than a minute. I just could not move my character. When I will try to kill a mob, I will hit these stand still moments. When the spike was over, I was dead. Its hard enough to fight with mobs in that area that these lag spikes just added to agony.

Well, if I can't quest in this area then I can't get faction. If I can't get faction, I can't get gear. Well, you can see where you end up with. I don't know what to tell you if its worth playing this game or not.

Of of my biggest grief with Age Of Conan has always been lack of content and quests at higher levels. Once I hit level 70, I was having hard time trying to figure out what what quests I could pick so I could level at faster pace. I was definitely not going to join those mindless DMC grind groups in Kesh. I did most of the quests in Kesh and dragged my self to level 75. Tats when I hit major road blocks. I was out of quests that I could solo. Now I had about 20 group quests for which I needed group. With population on all server so thin it is not easy to find a group for your quests.

So I was talking to one of guild members about it. And he told me most important secret of the game that would allow me to gain one level every two hours and I did not have to fight with a single mob. And on top of that I would collect insignia to earn faction in Khitai when I hit 80. So here is what you are going to do.

Goto Khitai area. Then through great wall go all the way to Paikang area. It is long ride if you are going for the first time. You will have cross about 3 zones. One thing you have to be very careful is that mobs in those areas are level 83 and higher. So if you are heading there around level 76, do not waste your time fighting with them. Try to stick to the roads and avoid any mobs. Once you will reach Paikang, look for poster quests. Get the poster quests. Here is the secret. You want to get the quest titled Wood by the Riverside. The quests on the poster are random. So if you do not get that quest, delete it from your log. And then try again till you get it. Then follow the road to the quest item area. Make sure you stick to the road. Once you get to the river, you will find about 10 places where you can pick the wooden boxes. Collect 12 items and return the quest. Then again pick up poster quest. Trick is to delete the quests till you get that speciifc quest Wood by the Riverside. Keep doing it. And you will gain a level in about 2 hours. And each quest return will give you insignia as well that you can use to earn faction when you hit 80.

As you can see. Fast leveling without fighting with any mob.

If you are trying a new toon in Age Of Conan as a Khitan then you are going to run into few of these quests that make you go through some burial grounds right next to your Gateway To Khitai starting area. There is a guy starting on top of a small plateau that hand you the quest to dig excavation sites for artifacts. Here are few tips that you will help you a lot in that area.

• Do not start on the quest right away. There is another quest that asks you to talk a Yue. Go through that area to get to that woman. She and a guy standing next to her has quests as well that will require you to go through the excavation sites. So if you get all three quests, then you can finish all of them together.
• While going through the area you will run into stallions. Very quickly you will realize that those are elite mobs. You will not be able to take them down unless you have help from friends. The quest log clearly says that you will have to try to avoid them. So do exactly as quest says, avoid them. The easier way is to stay on the small hills in that area and try to stay away from valley like areas where these stallions roam. On top of these small hills you will find your other quests mobs like painstalkers and hyenas. So you will avoid stallions as well as finish the quest of killing these mobs.
• Before you dig any of the excavation sites, make sure that you use /kneel command to finish the task that asks you to kneel at the excavation sites. And around these excavation sites you will run into mini bosses that you need to finish another quest.
• Yue gives you quest that requires you to burn a body. The body is at the base of the hill where she is standing, just go behind her down the hill. There is a mini-boss around that body. So you can kill that mob as part of the quest or avoid that boss and wait for it go away and then burn the body.

Other day I was doing quests in Gateway Of Khitai area. I was handed quest Listen in on Wu-ji's Meeting. The quest is very simple and it says that you need to eves drop on meeting between Wu-ji and another person. I tried it 3-4 times and it kept failing although I was doing everything right. Finally I got it right. The key to the quest completion is:

• Stay hidden till Wu-ji comes and talk to the guy in hut.
• This is most important part. You have to stay very close to them. If you can see the bubbles of conversation on them, you are in good shape. Otherwise even if they don't spot you and you can see the conversation text in chat window, the quest will not complete.

I have been out of MMORPG world for quite some time now. It was two years ago when I last played Age Of Conan. It was frustrating to play that game at the time because of bugs, issues with lag, lack of content and constant crashes. Although game had good graphics some quest lines but it was just frustrating.

Last week I renewed subscription to Age Of Conan and also got Rise Of God Slayer expansion as well. I heard that Funcom did good job in making some major improvements to the game. My first impression was not bad at all. So I created a new Khitan ranger. I had to try new race to see new area. I had to say that so far I only had 2 crashes. The lag is not bad and performance is much better.

Khitai area is fun to play as well. Unlike World Of Warcarft where you are always over powered and can take down 5 mobs that are 2-3 levels aboves you, Khitai area can give you run for the money. If you are not paying attention to what you are doing, you will be overrun by mob that may be at same level as you are.

The expansion is definitely worth trying.

One of the most asked question about XBox Kinect is Do I need to buy new XBox console?. Well, there seems to be some fuzziness about this topic. Let's start with answering very basic question about Kinect.

As I mentioned in my previous post What is XBox Kinect, this is a separate hardware device that you will need to connect to XBox 360. So first answer is that you will need to buy this new XBox Kinect device. So there is going to be a new hardware purchase on your part.

Now the next part of the puzzle. Microsoft site says Kinect works with every Xbox 360®*. The big question mark everybody has in their mind at this time is EVERY XBox 360. Does this mean that it will work with all existing XBox 360 consoles or do I need to buy the new model. The confusion comes from one line on Microsoft site .. Oh, and don’t forget it comes ready for Kinect right out of the box* .. about the latest model of XBox 360 console. Does this mean that older models of XBox 360 consoles are not ready for Kinect. For now, the word is that Kinect works with all XBox 360 consoles. And lets hope that it stays that way.

As I mentioned in earlier post, Kinect is a sensor that recognizes motions and voice pattern changes around it with the help of cameras and microphones in it. Lets start with a simple example of playing Netflix movies on XBox. If you have XBox Kinect attached to your XBox 360 console, you can come into the room and say XBox Play and your movie starts playing or you can say XBox Pause and your movie pauses or you can say XBox Stop and your movie stops. So you can see how XBox Kinect reacts to voice commands. It works on some pre-defined commands that your XBox 360 console can act on. No, you can't say, XBox Clean my room. Well, may be in few years XBox Kinect will help you do that, till then you are stuck with picking up after you.

Now its move on to how XBox Kinect helps in playing games. If you have Nintendo Wii console, then you are very familiar with how movement of Wii controller do all the actions in the game. For example if you are playing Wii Sports, then moving of your arms with Wii controller in your hand, helps you perform actions like bowling, play tennis, play baseball and things like that. XBox Kinect is very much the same prinipal but the difference is that there is no controller. When you want to play Kinect game like Kinect Sprots, you will simply jump in front of Kinect device or sensor, it will recognize you as a player. And then you will perform the game actions like swinging your arms, kicking your feet etc. and Kinect will send the signals to your XBox Console and you are on roll and being next Wimbeldon champion. How does that sound?

Now I do not have to worry about kids having to forget about putting on strap for Wii controller and smashing windows or TV monitors etc. while trying to throw that perfect knuckle ball while playing Wii Sports. No, I have nothing against Wii. I like it. I was just trying to tell what this contoller free expereince could mean to you.

There are advantages to this whole controller free expereince. But there are some downsides to it as well. As I mentioned about voice recognition to control playing of movies. Well we all know power of remote controll in our hands. Now imagine, two siblings in same room watching movies with Kinect attached to XBox console. One wants to pause and other one wants to continue. Well, currently there is no locking mechanism to prevent Kinect from obeying voice commands based on certain person's voice. So the actions based on voice could be a little problem with whole bunch of kids and people in same room. Hopefully by the time XBox Kinect hits the stores, Microsoft will make some improvments and make the expereince more interesting.