Throw your own egg hunt with Noblegarden Eggs

I've been looking at the Noblegarden items for awhile now, since they first showed up on the PTR. For some reason, it never hit me until I saw it on live realms how cool one item in particular actually is. For five chocolates you can buy your own Noblegarden Egg, which allows you to lay a Brightly Colored Egg. Yes, that's five eggs for one egg of your own, which is a pretty horrible exchange

WoW Guide: Gearing your Mage for PvP

Of all the new stuff patch 3.1 brought us, perhaps this single most significant change was the addition of dual specs. Suddenly everybody and their second cousins can tank (or think they can tank), and every Druid/Paladin/Shaman has a resto/holy spec waiting in the wings. Everybody rolls on everything in every dungeon because they're "gearing up for their second spec"...or third spec...or

WoW Guide: Noblegarden FAQ

Noblegarden 2009 should be going live on the European realms in a few hours and then start popping up on realms elsewhere over the next day. Because so much of the holiday has changed and we've fielded a lot of questions from players about what's going on, we decided to write up a quick FAQ to the new (and vastly improved!) holiday.Help! Where do I go to get started?If you're Alliance, head to

WoW Guide: 2009 Noblegarden Season Guide

It has been my first attempt at Noblegarden since seasonal events were introduced. It took a bit of a learning curve at the beginning, but I might say I have mastered it from knowing nothing of this event. Started yesterday in the evening, and I have completed most of the achievements already. Only two more to be done and claim my seasonal title. One step closer to that Violet Proto-Dragon

China: "WoW" Card Sales Slow

Prepaid online game card distributors report that sales of game cards for Blizzard Entertainment's 3D MMORPG World of Warcraft (WoW) have recently declined, according to DoNews. Beijing-based distributor Junnet Omnimedia has seen WoW card sales fall 25% since April 15, and an unnamed distributor said almost all its competitors have stopped purchasing WoW cards, the report said. According to the

WoW Article: World of Warcraft-avoid addiction

Video games can be a great thing. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of me and my dad playing "Super Mario Bros." on the original Nintendo for hours during the winter months. My brother and I still play "Super Smash Bros." on my N64 when we're both at home.However, video games also have a dark side, a seedy underbelly that can leave even the most jaded of gamers wasted and useless. A side

World of Warcraft Hunter Leveling

Fast leveling, easy to play, a big critter as you companion. These are some of the things that make the World of Warcraft Hunter one of the, if not THE, most popular class in the game. The pet is what defines the Hunter. Almost any class can use a bow or gun, and Warlocks get a certain set of demons to pick from, but Hunters can tame and work with practically any critter in the game. Cats, bears, boars, crabs, Thunderhawks, Bats, Owls, and more, there's a pretty long list of critters to pick from.

While any critter has it's advantages, besides the coolness factor, I'm going to suggest you pick from bears, boars, or cats. Bears can really soak the damage, cats don't soak as well, but they dish it out better, and the boar can take some punishment and has a nifty charge ability. That charge ability has additional uses in certain situations, such as PvP (Player Vs Player.)

When you hit the Hunter trainer always make sure you hit the Pet Trainer as well. Always keep your pet's health, growl (if it has growl,) and armor maxed out. As your pet levels up it will get training points which you can spend on increasing its abilities.

Also, higher level critters have certain other abilities, so you will want to upgrade your pet occasionally. An example is the stealthy cats in Thousand Needles or Stranglethorn Vale. Dismiss your current pet (right click the pet icon and pick "dismiss" from the menu) and tame the new one. You'll also eventually gain any special abilities your new pet has and will be able to train other pets with those abilities.

As far as your stats go you will want to get as much Agility as possible. It's your number one stat, figuring into your damage, your Crit Bonus, and your dodge. It even adds to your armor. Since you won't be engaging in melee combat (or shouldn't be, anyway) you'll have no use for Strength. Spirit is wasted on you.

While Hunters do have a Mana Pool, they don't use it up as fast as a caster (eg: Mage) so while a little Int (to increase your mana pool) is nice, don't sacrifice Agility to get it. Stamina goes directly into Health, so more Stamina is always good, but you don't need as much as a front line fighter (Rogues, for example.) Look for Agility first, then Stamina, maybe some Intelligence, then skip the others.

Some gear comes with special abilities such as "Attack Power" (AP.) This factors directly into your ranged damage so the more AP you can get the better. Other good ones to get are bonuses that add to your "Crit Rating" and/or Hit Rating.

At level 10 you do your pet training quests, train your critter of choice, and for the rest of your career your attack pattern will be much like this: send the pet in, let it grab the target's attention, and then start shooting the target. Hunters are very weak melee fighters, even with their special melee attacks. Those attacks are mainly to hamper the target, allowing you to get back into shooting range. Let your pet handle the melee damage.

Sometimes the target of your attack will ignore your pet and charge you instead. Other players will always do this. If that's the situation then your freezing trap, wing clip, and concussive shots will allow you to get some breathing room. Feign Death works very well against monsters, but it won't work more than once against players.

As far as talents go... well, that's the subject of some interesting debate. My suggestion is to go down the Beast Mastery tree primarily, with come Marksman talents to supplement the BM talents. The idea here is put much of your focus into making your pet into a lean, mean, destruction machine. Everything else is done in order to support that goal.

Lastly, work on your Hot Keys. You'll want to bind your most used abilities to certain keys which you can easily reach while moving about. Try to develop a system where you can do the whole combat without ever having to use the mouse to click a target or activate a power.

For example, you use the WASD keys to move about and look around with the mouse. TAB will target your next opponent. Consider setting the F key to be your main attack, perhaps Arcane Shot. I use T for my auto attack and Shift+T for my pet attack.

If these keys don't work for you that's cool, come up with a better system. The idea is to be able to improve your fighting efficiency by not having to use the mouse for everything.

The Hunter is a very versatile class, able to do quite well in any aspect of the game. There is a lot of variety in pets and talents and many of the combinations one can come up with are quite worthwhile. Don't be afraid to look into some of these variations and what things you may want to change, especially for PvP and Raiding.

Happy Hunting!