Ten things I learned on my way to becoming a chef

When I logged on last night all that stood between me and wrapping up Hail to the Chef was an infused mushroom meatloaf. A quick trip to the sewers, and one Dalaran cooking award later I was dashing off to buy and cook that last recipe to nudge past the finish line (Blackened Worg Steak for those of you playing the home game).

You will all, from this day forward, refer to me only as "Cookie."

While my reasons for wanting this title enough to churn all of those cooking dailies were well-covered in a previous ramble, I did think it was worthwhile to revisit the topic in another way, that is to share some lessons learned about cooking, the people who play this game around me, and perhaps even myself. So without further delay, I present the ten things I learned on my way to becoming a chef.

1. The best places to get the meat you need for the cooking dailies are The rhino herds in the middle of Storm Peaks, obviously for the rhino meat, and the gorillas in eastern Sholazar, who turn out to be chilled meat vending machines. Sadly, I only discovered the prolific rate of return from the apes a week ago - previously I'd been getting by mostly on the odd extra pieces I'd get while farming mammoth meat for buff food or just stashing away anything I'd wind up with in my usual travels. If you're just lazy, chilled meat is fairly cheap, which means it's easy to get, so quit being so lazy.

2. When fishing in Wintergrasp, which is, by the way, the best place for fish feast fixins, I went with the lake overlooking the waterfall into Dragonblight. It's not that the fishing is any better, but rather that if I got jumped by some rude Hordie I could just jump off the falls and use a last-minute parachute to land safely down the cliff side, and was rarely ever pursued after doing so. If you do it right, it's just like an action movie, except that in an action movie, the hero usually doesn't run away screaming "not in the face!"

3. Baby Spicing raid bosses with fiddly hit boxes makes raid leaders mad.

4. Subsequently Baby Spicing your raid leader is probably not the best idea.

5. There's a stove in the Legerdemain Inn. It's easier to get to than the one in the Alliance inn and with fewer people milling about usually a little less laggy. The Legerdemain and the Cheese shop across the street will also almost always have enough wine glasses for the cheese daily, if not in one pass, just stand around a few minutes and get them on the second pass. The bigger question, though, is why that dwarf in the skinning shop wants wine in the first place. He's a dwarf, he should be asking for beer and sausage. I do not trust that dwarf. I suspect he is an elf in disguise. I am waiting for just the right time to yank off his beard and expose the impostor. Real dwarfs do not appreciate being the subject of some elf's alternative lifestyle. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

6. Cooking in a video game is a lot easier to clean up than cooking in real life. Not that I would know, I pretty much only use paper plates so I don't have to clean up after cooking. Not that microwaving hot dogs is really cooking.

7. When you're doing The Rokk's cooking dailies for the BC drop recipes, the Crate of Meat has a better chance to drop Kibbler's Bits and the Chocolate Cake, but the Barrel of Fish has a better chance to drop Stormchops, but the Spicy Hot Talbuk only drops from the meat box and the Broiled Bloodfin and Skullfish Soup only come from the bucket of fish, so just alternating until you have everything you need from one or the other is a good way to go. I got the Spiritual Soup quest almost every day. Given that Shattrath is essentially deserted now I wonder why the little goblin still thinks he needs to cook so much food, and if that ogre will ever manage to chop through that piece of meat he's been hacking at for two years. Either ogre strength is highly exaggerated or he's half-assing his job.

8. You don't need the hat to be a chef. You do probably need a hairnet. Unless you're bald. Tauren need a body stocking. No, not one of THOSE body stockings. That mental image will haunt me for a long time.

9. The stormchops buff and penguin flocks is an experience no one should ever miss - especially when you didn't bother reading what stormchops does before eating it (for the Tastes Like Chicken achievement) and then riding out to an iceberg full of penguins to wrap up the Critter Gitter task. Wondering why I was suddenly going all Emperor Palpatine on all of those little birds, then doing it on purpose for entirely too long after I realized what was going on just made it all the more fun.

10. The nastiest, most cut-throat and unbelievably rude ninja bullsh*t in this game is gathering ground spawns for the Dalaran cooking dailies. People will suckerpunch old ladies to get that mustard plant and the fact that you got there first, are standing right next to the thing in some back corner of town where you wouldn't possibly be for any reason other than to pick up the spawn that you're standing right next to and just taking too long to reach over to your trackpad and find the arrow to click because you use a laptop and don't even own a mouse and are therefore way too slow to do things like pick up groundspawns means that at least once a day some sociopathic little felon will dash in and steal your wine jug, so you have to wait for another one to pop up. Seriously, I complain a lot that the people who play warcraft are the lowest form of human life and that things like trade chat and pugging are gateways to the darkest recesses of human inhumanity, but stealing someones ground spawn, when another will pop up two feet away in like 15 seconds is just low. I hate you people. You may not share my Delicious Chocolate Cake.