Artwair complains over on the forums that there is cooking required for the What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been achievement (that some of you have done -- grats! -- and others of you are deciding to do in the next year), saying that something as significant as leveling up Cooking all the way shouldn't be required for what is basically an optional achievement. But Kisirani replies with as good an answer as you'll find: the achievement is designed to send you all over the world, including to some professions and abilities that you wouldn't be leveling otherwise. Especially because the achievement is optional, it's not out-of-place to ask for some cooking to happen. And I'll add that cooking is worth leveling anyway -- not only does it get you some nice buffs, let you use up some of the trash collecting in you bags, and hook up your guild or raid with some excellent items, but it's pretty easy to do, especially if you do it with fishing (which is also very useful by itself).

While she's at it, Kisirani also provides a nice tease at Pilgrim's Bounty, which isn't a part of the big meta-achievement anyway, but will have some extra recipes to find and cook, as well as a new Thanksgiving-style celebration (two words: "Turkey shooter"). Can't wait to see it.

Profession bags are a godsend for almost anyone leveling up a profession -- while the loss of bag space in favor of specialty slots can be a problem sometimes at the lower levels, almost all high level characters can definitely make use of at least one profession bag, to hold all of the extra ore, or gems, or leather, or whatever else you're hauling around all the time. But Natalia over on WoW LJ makes an excellent point: just where is our cooking bag? And how about a fishing bag? You might argue that only the gathering professions are meant to have bags (the Blacksmithing bag is actually a Mining bag, so even Engineers can make use of it), but that's not quite true: Engineering does have its own bags, as does Inscription. Cooking and/or Fishing, you'd think, should both have their own profession bags.

Of course, they are both secondary professions, so maybe Blizzard believes that because they're more or less optional, you should be able to carry around all of your food and spices and lures in your regular bags. But cooking especially has gotten pretty complicated lately (there are a few foods that you've got to have in your bags regularly to do the daily quests, especially Chilled Meat), and so a lot of players would definitely find a use for a dedicated bag. First Aid, probably not, but Cooking and Fishing? Definitely.

And if you want to really dream, maybe food could actually get a bonus from being kept in a special "refridgerated" bag -- nothing big, just maybe a few extra points of the bonus stat or a little longer duration when you actually take care of your food rather than just tossing it in with all of the Kobold eyeballs and oily swords and cloth that you're also carrying around. But that would be extra -- for now, just a bigger bag meant for cooking and fishing utensils would be fine, thanks.

Blogger and WoW.com friend Pixelated Executioner has introduced a brand new blog project -- he's working with a few other folks in the community on a new blog called Nourish, dedicated to providing some fun and relatively easy WoW-related recipes for real food. It all originally started over on Twitter, where a few of them decided to come up with some WoW-themed dish names, but eventually it escalated into the idea of an actual set of recipes, with the added bonus of getting some WoW players some real homemade food to eat as well (you can only go so far on Doritos and Mountain Dew, after all).

There's only two recipes so far (both submitted by another friend of ours, Cadistra of WoW, Eh?), but that spice bread does look pretty tasty. If you're a foodie or just have been looking for a way to use something other than the microwave in your kitchen, it seems like a great place to start. And if you need more than the few they've got up so far, don't forget our old Well Fed Buff column -- it's retired now, but we've still got plenty of great WoW-related recipes to try making there as well.

Addon Spotlight takes a look at the little bits of Lua and XML that make our interfaces special. From bar mods to unit frames and beyond, if it goes in your Addons folder, we'll cover it here.

Just a short one today, but an addon that I know will please a small number of very passionate folks out there. It's easy to see what recipes you know: just look at your tradeskill window. But what if you want to see a list of recipes you don't know? Ackis Recipe List. Completists rejoice.

This mod is dedicated to listing all recipes in your tradeskills that you have not yet learned. But it doesn't stop there. It also tells you where to find them, even putting waypoints on your world map and minimap for vendors if you want it to. ARL also supports sophisticated filtering of recipes, so if I want to see all the Death Knight glyphs of skill level less than 400 that drop from mobs (although I don't think there are any), I can do that.

The interface is also pretty nice, given the amount of complexity it contains. There's a button to scan your tradeskills on your tradeskill window, which also allows access to the ARL frame once you've scanned. /arl will bring up more, including in-game documentation, which I especially appreciate - I haven't seen that in many mods before.

Overall, this mod does a great job at what it sets out to do. Highly recommended if you want to see what recipes you don't have. Thanks, Ackis!

Download Ackis Recipe List at WoWInterface

Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.

This week, Insider Trader will be listing the locations and mobs that will drop recipes to help you complete your collection and expand your knowledge to boost sales.

Because this list is meant to be a reference for planning out your next farming expedition, I will not be including "world drops" that can drop from nearly any mob in a given zone or from a specific level of mobs across zones.

Ulduar
There are several epic crafting recipes that will drop in Ulduar. They have a chance to drop from each of the bosses on Heroic mode (25-man), although 10-man groups can also acquire them by downing the bosses on Hard mode.

Currently, there are two Enchanting formulas, six Blacksmithing plans, eight Leatherworking patterns and four Tailoring patterns that fall under this category.

Given Ulduar's close associations with Engineering, many people have been quite vocal about the lack of schematics in the dungeon, although many of the mobs can be harvested for parts and vendor junk.

I was excited to hear the other day that leveling cooking will be a little easier, as more recipes are likely to go grey a little later, but Bornakk has more good news for cooks after patch 3.1. He confirms that new recipes are going in as well, and he can think of two off of the top of his head (so hopefully we'll see even more than that).

That will, as he says, make the Chef de Cuisine achievement that much easier as well -- it'll probably still be a pain, but at least there'll be a few more options to pick up new recipes. And I'm curious to see what the new food does, too: I like cooking the usual stat food as much as the next culinary expert, but I'm almost more interested in the fun stuff like Last Week's Mammoth (what a bummer) and the good old Delicious Chocolate Cake. Those cosmetic items make cooking much more fun than just the usual stat buffs that most food give.

So we'll keep an eye out for new recipes. Completists will have at least two more to grab with the new patch.

I agree with Relmstein: Cooking is awesome. Unlike, say, fishing (which I said on the podcast last week will never really stop being boring, since boring is "working as intended" for that one), cooking has really transitioned over the years. Back in the day, it was kind of a silly way to make new foods to eat, in Burning Crusade it became a pretty solid extra buff to have, and it Wrath it has really become a necessity for anyone looking to make their characters and their raids the best they can be.

Plus, as Relmstein notes, there's added functionality -- the feasts let you lay out an entire meal for your party, and the addition of the Dalaran cooking quests (and the recipe rewards) have turned the daily cooking quests from just a few extra gold and mats per day into a whole currency system on its own. Fooding it up ingame has become a minigame of its own, and with food giving out such diverse (and significant) stat bonuses, not to mention that it often fetches great prices on the AH, there's no reason for your level 80 character to not have worked a little bit on leveling up cooking.

Sold yet? One of the last things I did at level 70 was level up both cooking and fishing using El's Angling's great guide, and though it took me the better part of two weekends in a row, it's paid off many times over since. Cooking has definitely moved from kind of a fun third profession to mess around with to something that will seriously benefit you as a character in quite a few ways.

I see a lot of the Professions are getting a lot of love lately. Cooking, specially, has been particularly awesome in Wrath of the Lich King, with cooks able to prepare feasts for raids that give excellent buffs. Engineering has been fun, too, although I have yet to see the schematic for my Harley Softail Hog. I'm curious about one thing, though... where are my shirts? With all the options to customize characters in the game -- I mean, those barbershops are pretty neat -- how come there aren't any new shirt patterns?

There are over 50 different shirts in the game, 22 of which are tailored. The rest are uncouth styles that are simply too unfashionable for my needs. I've picked up enough Sleeveless T-Shirts in Alterac Valley to clothe an army. It makes me cringe to see Level 70 characters still sporting their original Thug Shirt. Let's get some style, people! There are a good number of shirts to choose from, but frankly, we need Fall fashions for Wrath of the Lich King. I mean, the last great (and saleable) shirt pattern was the Rich Purple Silk Shirt. And that was from vanilla WoW.

Fashion in World of Warcraft has fallen behind. At least, tailor-made ones. Would you believe that there wasn't a single new shirt pattern throughout the whole Burning Crusade? I mean, I know that demons were at our gates and some dude named Illidan was plotting to take over everything we know and love, but come on! Where was my Netherweave shirt? If I'm going to fight a war, I want to fight in style!

[UPDATE: Phooey. So apparently there are new shirt patterns in Wrath. So the joke's actually on me. So you can choose to look like a 90's Eddie Vedder or Dave Matthews on tour. Uh... thanks, Blizzard.]

New schematics are finally in for Engineers in the Wrath Beta, with the exception of the eagerly anticipated and widely speculated upon motorcycle. Despite the glaring absence of The Hog, there are a bunch of neat stuff for Engineers from the basic -- such as the space-saving Hammer Picks and Bladed Pickaxes -- to the cool and complex, such as MOLL-E, a portable mailbox. Check out the gallery for a quick look at the new schematics in Beta and an overview after the jump.

We've already talked about what was said in the latest Blizzcast: mainly profession details and music, as well as a few snippets on dungeons and raids from Kaplan (and some Starcraft II stuff). But there were some interesting pieces of information given away in an image linked on the podcast transcript page that were not discussed in the podcast, in the way of new crafted items. The image is replicated above; click for a bigger version. My favorite is definitely the Magnificent Flying Carpet. Yes, it's a flying mount for tailors, and I am pretty certain that it will be awesome.

Here's everything I found in that image that I don't remember having seen elsewhere:

• Magnificent Flying Carpet: Requires level 70, tailoring (450). Use: Calls forth and dismisses a flying carpet. This is a very fast rug. This mount can only be summoned in Outland and Northrend. Requires artisan riding skill or higher to use.
• Floral Foundations: Encrypted, requires inscription (50). A small collection of rare herbs. [No, I have no idea what this is, aside from something to do with Inscription.]
• Spring Loaded Cloak Expander: requires engineering (425). Use: permanently modifies a cloak so it can be activated by a skilled engineer, causing them to fall slowly for 10 sec. The effect can only be activated every 5 min.

This last item ties in to what Jon LeCraft (WoW's lead profession designer) was saying about engineering having items to give effects to gear, as opposed to replacing gear outright like the Parachute Cloak. Engineered enchants, basically. Overall, I continue to be more and more excited about professions in Wrath.

The calendar says that spring has spring, which means we should be out Bar B Queuing, but the Earth Mother seems to disagree. It has been unseasonably cold and windy in many areas, which gives us plenty of opportunities for hot chili, soup, and stew. This week we indulge in Runn Tum Tuber Surprise.

In game the recipe calls for Runn Tum Tubers and Soothing Spices. The tubers are found in Warpwood Pods in Dire Maul or drop from Pusillin, who also drops this recipe. This dish can be consumed by characters 45 and higher. It restores 1933 health over 27 seconds and increases your Intellect by ten for ten minutes. The real life version is relatively simple to make, and requires considerably less talent than the 275 Cooking skill required for the virtual version.

Well Fed Buff serves up tasty dishes to boost your HP, stats and appetite – with that special WoW twist, of course.

In World of Warcraft Mok'Nathal Shortribs restores 7500 health over 30 seconds. If you spend at least 10 seconds eating you will become affected by a well-fed buff that grants you 20 Stamina and Spirit for 30 min. The real life version bears a striking resemblance to beer braised short ribs and seems to reduce stamina, but maybe that was the Guinness.

As with most tender meats, this recipe is more about patience than precision. Plan on about three and a half hours total for the completion of this dish. Since baking takes up most of the time, it's the perfect time to get a couple of Alterac Valley runs in. Read on for the recipe for this delightful dish.

Here's some news from the PTR hot off the presses via MMO Champion: Shaani the jewelcrafter is now selling epic gems previously only dropped in 25-man dungeons for 15 badges apiece, and all the recipes to cut them for gold at various levels of Shattered Sun Offensive Reputation. So if you don't raid, and don't mind doing 3 or 4 heroic runs for each gem, you'll be able to socket all that new badge gear too. It looks like it was unlocked with the Razorthorn Root daily, so if you want those gems, be sure to get your friends and guildies on doing that daily once it's unlocked on your server come 2.4

While you're there, you can also grab a new daily from Mar'nah the alchemist which will reward a Bloodberry Elixir, which provides +15 to all stats for an 2 hours, but only on the Sunwell Plateau itself (thanks for catching the Sunwell-only restriction, Aikiwoce).

The badgification of epic gear continues apace. What will be interesting to see is if Blizzard is primarily doing this to close the gear gap between casuals and raiders for WoTLK, or if this marks a new loot philosophy that will continue into WoTLK. Will we be able to buy Icecrown Glacier gems for badges as well?

Every Thursday, Well Fed Buff will be serving up the tastiest dishes to boost your HP and stats, just in time for your weekend gaming.

Hands down, the best recipe in all of World of Warcraft is Savory Deviate Delight. I will hear no arguments or opinions on this. I decided to try making it for dinner. I don't know what happened. All of a sudden there was a loud "Yaaarrr!" And my friend turned into a pirate in a puff of smoke. It was absolutely incredible. Your results may vary.

Savory Deviate Delight is always in demand. It can turn players into a Human pirate or a ninja for an hour. It doesn't really benefit the player in anyway, but who wouldn't want to be a pirate or a ninja. The Savory Deviate Delight Recipe randomly drops in the Barrens. The materials for the in-game version are Deviate Fish which can be caught in pools in the Barrens Oases and Mild Spices which can be purchased from cooking and trade vendors. Wowhead lists auction house buyout prices of 36 gold for the recipe and 63 silver for the individual consumables.

The real-life version is somewhat more complicated than the in-game rendition. Read on for my Savory Deviate Delight recipe. Get it while it's hot!