I’m sure many of you are wondering why I haven’t brought you anything about Inscription yet. It’s the most anticipated addition to crafting and I haven’t said a peep. Well, every time I check in with it there are still major flaws. Since I don’t have an unlimited supply of herbs, I’ve held off on using them until I feel comfy that it’s in near-final status. I realize that other folks have been posting leveling guides for Inscription for awhile now, they are wrong. I’ve seen several waves of sweeping changes go through this profession and I personally wouldn’t trust anything that was written more than 30 days ago.
The fact of the matter is that I’ve actually tried to level Inscription twice on the PTR. The first was about 3 weeks ago and I got stuck at 150 because none of the trainers were offering Expert+ levels of Inscription. The recipes were there, but you couldn’t unlock the skill tiers.
Last week they patched a new version up so this past weekend I tried again… and got stuck at 200. This time all the recipes were there, but every glyph over 200 skill was green as soon as I learned it. Sure I could use some of the non-glyph recipes, but they required 2-3x more mats. Or I could just make 2-3x as many glyphs to get one skill point. Believe me, I tried to push through in the hopes that it was a temporary hiccup. I made it to 260 before I gave up, every new wave of glyph recipes continued to be green immediately upon training and I was plowing through my herbs at an alarming rate. I decided that even if I did manage to succeed, I wasn’t learning anything helpful to the rest of you. So I hung up my hat and decided to wait it out. Now you know why there’s been no sneak peek for Inscription :(
Why bring it up now? Well it looks like we’re getting a potential release date for the patch: October 14. That’s only two weeks from now, so I have to think that Inscription is reaching final stages. I checked in on the PTR today and the 260 recipes that were green to me last week are now orange. So it looks very promising that they fixed the bug that was kicking me in the butt. Obviously there can be new bugs, but this close to the finish line I’d like to think they would be minor. Which means I have two things in my favor to argue that now is the time to move forward with Inscription. And if it’s still messed up I’m going to be very pissed because I’ll be using my last character copy (with more herbs in tow) for this 3rd run at the leveling process. Let’s all cross our fingers!!
Kaliope's WoW Crafting Blog 
October 2, 2008 at 5:24 am
It is like you were reading my mind Kaliope :) I came here just yesterday specifically to see if you had any pearls of wisdom about Inscription.
I am on the Beta and created a DK that started herbing and scribing from ground zero. I found that it is not easy to level herbalism at the same time as inscription. As of now, my herbalism (277) has outstripped my Inscription (186) as I can’t mill herbs I can pick until I hit 225 Inscription. I’ll need more herbs that are green or gray to increase my Inscription level.
One of my guildies asked me a question that I had not thought about nor read about. Will there be an Inscription speciality? All the other major professions have a speciality. That is something I’ll be looking for today.
October 2, 2008 at 8:03 am
The are no specialty Enchanters or Jewelcrafters, so I could bet there won’t be any difference in the Scribes out there :D
October 2, 2008 at 10:08 am
Zan: I think there is good testing value in leveling both together and providing feedback to Blizz about the problems you see, since new players will likely be doing exactly that. But I think for the most part Blizz expects people to do at least some extra farming to level their primary craft, so they may not consider your situation a problem. So submit feedback on it and then go ahead and do some farming to boost your herb supply. Right now I’m standing by my original estimate of 3 stacks per herb, I’m using about that much for each level of Inscription (except for the very first type of ink/glyphs).
I would have to agree with Alaz on specializations, there are a HUGE number of glyph recipes, not even including minor ones and/or discoveries. I would be very surprised if they introduced specialties. The only implementation I could see being workable would be the “Gem Perfection” thing with beefier stats for specialization. Another possibility would be personalized glyphs that are enhanced somehow, like the BoP goodies basically. Otherwise I’m not sure I’d want to toss in *more* stuff, there’s already too many recipes for my comfort.
Jewelcrafters also have no specialty and I see them as the most comparable craft. They have a huge number of new items as well with all the flavors of gem cuts, including new combos. When it comes to item enhancement professions, it seems specialization is unlikely to apply. Again, being in the beta you can submit feedback on that and suggest some sort of Inscription perk for the crafter.
October 3, 2008 at 10:39 am
Long-time lurker, first-time poster. Like Kaliope, I have waiting a while before wasting my herbs on trying to powerlevel Inscription. I’m not on the beta, but I’ve been working my way from 1-362 on the PTR this week. Here’s my impressions:
First off, I had almost enough herbs and didn’t run into many hiccups in the early and mid stages. Nothing that a second character copy wouldn’t fix. :) Overall, the leveling was very smooth. Every 5 points, two new Glyphs would unlock from the trainer, starting at orange. When those turn orange after 5 points, two more glyphs unlock. This makes for pretty consistent leveling. When you start out using a new ink, every glyph takes only 1 ink and 1 parchment. About halfway, that changes to 2 inks and 1 parchment per glyph. All in all, the recipe progress is pretty intuitive.
I’ve faced a couple of bumps in leveling so far:
The first one was from 255 to 255, when I just started using Shimmering ink. All glyphs were gray, so I had to use the recipe for Scroll of Spirit V, which costs 5 inks per skill-up. Pretty costly, but doable. At 255 the trainer had some orange glyphs, so it was smooth after that.
Second bump was from 275 to 300. Not really unexpected that reaching 300 is a bit more difficult. I had only two glyphs at that time, and both turned green before 300. I think it’s possible to get to about 285 on at least yellow glyphs. Only then should you start making the uncommon Ink of the Sky and Darkmoon Cards.
The bump I’m currently facing is also the one that worries me most. At 350, you learn the last batch of (pre-Northrend) glyphs from the trainer. Those turn yellow at 355 and green at 360. I haven’t found any other way of reach 375, except to keep grinding at those green recipes. It gets pretty costly, at 2 inks per recipe with only a small chance for a skillup. I hope that this will chance before the patch hits live servers, but I’m not sure. They probably want 375 to be a bit of an achievement.
Some last observations:
The darkmoon cards you can make with uncommon pigments (a somewhat rare loot from milling) are really fun. From low-level herbs, you get a small deck (ace, two, three, four, five), that grants a quest with decent rewards. At higher levels, you can actually craft level 60 and level 70 Darkmoon cards. :)
Minor glyphs aren’t tought be a trainer, but have to be discovered through a recipe. Cost is pretty low (1 Moonglow ink), but it has a 20-hour cooldown. Might take a while to discover all of these recipes…
Overall, I’m pretty impressed by this new profession, and I’m happy that I decided early on that I wanted to learn it. Two banks full of herbs should hopefully see me to 375 on the day that the 3.02 patch is deployed on live servers.
October 3, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Hi Tilla! Thanks for jumping in on the conversation and sharing your PTR experiences :) I haven’t checked this yet on the Beta server, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the 350+ recipes you’re wanting are in Northrend. They’ve eased the 350-375 range for all professions with Lich King recipes, so Inscription may also be in that boat. I’ll see what I can dig up to confirm whether that’s the case.
October 4, 2008 at 5:53 am
Alazasthas: The difference will be like with enchanters :-) Some are able to do the super rare recipes, some do not. As mentioned above, nearly all Minor Glyphs will only be learnable from this new discovery thing (alchemists will get a pendant of this afair, too)
As soon as the queues are free again i will copy my herb alt and try to do tilla’s story on my own :-) Ofc I will post the “story” in my blog exegaria.wordpress.com
have a nice day (:
October 8, 2008 at 9:16 am
im wondering if being an inscriptor is a good idea as shaman as far as i know are the only bop items an inscriptor crafts are the portal rolls and the 450 shoulder inscription… is there anything i didnt see?
October 8, 2008 at 10:00 am
There are more goodies in the 375-450 range for Inscription that haven’t made it to my list yet. Right now I just have glyphs and inks, so that’s not helpful for assessing the perks. The only other BoP items available that you didn’t mention are the off-hand books, but I’m guessing shamans can’t use that. At this time I think the answer to your question is ‘no’, but obviously things can change anytime over the next five weeks.
One thing to keep an eye on is the Darkmoon cards. I haven’t actually messed around with this since PTR Inscription only went up to lvl 70 Darkmoon cards. The cards are not BoP, but it’s my understanding that the decks are Inscription only. If that being the case, if you were interested in Darkmoon trinkets then being an Inscriber would be beneficial.