Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Family Life

I have this strange vision of creating a "family" of toons, where each member sort of compliments the others. Let me know what your ideas are or if you do something similar or different.

Bread Winner
Start off with a dual gatherer. This is the primary income generator for the family. She's your farmer, so a decent solo class is probably a good idea. I like my hunter for this role, especially because my pet can run interference and intercept a mob as it comes at me, without interrupting my progress on picking a herb or mining a node. Get this toon lots of really big bags to allow for the best gathering.

AH Mule
Then there's the toon who stays in a city and works the AH. Any time you've got gathering toons out in the wild, its a good idea to use a mule to save on flying your farmer to major cities all the time. For me, its been beneficial to have this guy be an enchanter, so I can DE any items that just don't seem to sell after 3 or 4 listings. The class of this guy probably doesn't matter too much, especially if you dedicate him to being in the city and not really playing him, other than to get his level high enough to support the enchanting to a sufficient level.

Lockpick
You can either go for a rogue or an engineer to pick locks. Now, if you know and are friends with some rogues, then this is probably less important, but I've got a strange anti-social side that wants to be able to do these things all by myself. So at the current time, I'm thinking of working a rogue. Then again, I've got a paladin alt who's got tailoring as one of his professions. That was a silly whim, where I thought he could make pretty dresses for Amava to wear to formal events. Maybe drop that and hit up engineering. I've never tried eng, so that'll be something new to try.

This is sort of where my experience and expertise drop off. The rest of this post is speculation and somewhat educated guesses.

Potions
Although I barely use potions at all right now, I read lots about end game folks using lots of potions. Sounds like an alchemist is needed here. I have no experience with that, but as I think more and more about it, once I get Amava her epic flying mount, and my need for giant chunk of gold is lower, I might dabble more with some crafting professions.

Bullets
As a hunter who equips a gun, I use lots and lots of ammo. I currently only use the ammo that's available from vendors. At some point, I'm sure I'll have to look into the better ammo that can be crafted (or purchased from a crafter). So if I'm proposing a self-sufficient family of toons, probably need to include somebody to make the ammo. I dont even know if that's engineering or blacksmithing. If it were engineering, that would overlap nicely as a lockpick, and relieve me of rolling a rogue.

Enchanter
I have this dream of building an enchanter who gets some of the sweet sweet +agi enchants that hunters love. However this requires two things, neither of which I am prepared to do at the moment. The first is a ton of gold. Levelling enchanting either requires a personal investment of tons of gold, or lots of advertising like "enchanter looking for work. free with your mats". Enchanting with other people's mats would be more cost effective, but I have very little desire to be that guy peddling my services over the trade channel. The other thing that the cool +agi enchants requires is gaining reputation with various factions to buy the recipes. That would mean this enchanting toon should be one you like playing because you have to grind for that rep. Might work if its a toon you like to farm with, and keep 2 gathering profs while you grind rep. Then once you get the reps you want, dump a ton of gold into power levelling the enchanting. Eh, not really my cup of tea right now, but I do have strange aspirations of someday doing this. Back burner, for sure.

Any other professions that you really think are a nice to have inside your own closed little family of toons?

Also, I have other dreams of building a healer, a tank, and at least one DPS'er. That way, when a party situation calls for a certain role, I can just log into the appropriate toon.

All in all, a nice little family. Plus repeat this for Horde, to experience both sides of the war. And add in a few BG twinks to specialize for some PvP action.

What do you think? Given my burnout just getting one character to 70, what do you think are the odds of me ever doing even 20% of this? Yeah, probably low, but it is fun to day dream about.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Maybe drop that and hit up engineering. I've never tried eng, so that'll be something new to try."

- "You HAD savings, didn't you?" :)

I've had a 300 Eng, a level 43 or so lock which, on a moment of "I haven't played this one for months nor feel like I will" I decided to delete. Yep, gone!

Eng is probably 2nd most expensive skill to level up, right after Enchanting which I semi-leveled on 3 different chars until I finally settled to leveling it "for real" on my main and dropping Herbalism...

I have a bunch of "Family chars" too: a former level 51 rogue now devoted to be AH mule and PickLocker (can even pick some of Outland's boxes, although not Khorium unfortunately...), a lvl 1 Herb bank, and a level 17 or so warrior that is currently performing the job of a Leather bank...

Unknown said...

When I got my Sunfury and Merciless Gladiator Helm on Pel, I dumped engineering and took up herb/alch. I had the Wolfslayer rifle before that and had been a gun hunter for a really long time, so engi made sense as I could make my own ammo.

Now I pick weeds and make mana pots. At any given raid I'm going to have at least a stack of major agility and fel mana pots on me. I can buy arrows from Cenarion Expedition that are really cheap. I've found since I took up alchemy, I save a ton of money. Raid consumables was always my biggest expense.

Anonymous said...

As a 375 eng/miner I find it really useful for a hunter. True, you don't make much money from it. But mining makes my money as well as supplying me with the mats I need. I get bullets with imba dps (and arrows as well after 2.3), I get the sweet headpiece and I can open boxes and doors as well as any rogue. ;) Add this to a current deal I got with my guild where I get pots for bringing repairbots, and you get minimized costs. :)