I, Craftbot

I snapped and went on a professional rampage this weekend.

It all started with a little email from Blizzard customer support. "Here's your 3 Dalaran Cooking Awards, be careful where you click next time."

Their desire to make the situation right, plus my newly confirmed knowledge of the required toon levels for grand master training in the crafting profs, inspired me.

Only a coconut would max out cooking

All I have to say is....cooking skill 440 is pretty easy to reach, you can practically get here just by doing the cooking daily. Cooking skill 445 is not that much more costly.

To get from 445 to 449, well, not so much. 200. Two Hundred. Northern Spice to gain those four points.

But, Amava, 449 isn't maxed out? I thought the cap is 450?

Well, considering how much meat that last point took, youdda thunk 449 was the ceiling.

Another two hundred spices to get the last point.

I sht you not.

Armed with a six pack of fine micro brew, a revenge of the nerds dvd (panty raid, ftw), and a nice chunk of spare time, I happily dinged 450.

Luckily, those stacks upon stacks of food sell like hot cakes, easily recouping the Northern Spice investment, but I digress.

EDIT: just wait till the servers come up today. Patch 3.0.8 makes it so feasts remain yellow up until 450. You'll need to make maybe 10 or 20 meals, a stark contrast to the 400 I had to make. /slap

There's fish in them thar pools

The majority of the food came from fishing.

Here's where the Achievements / Statistics interface becomes cool.

Start the day ~300 fishies.

End the day in the 800's.

5 points away from maxed out fishing.

NOTE TO J@CK@SS(es) : It is considered rude and impolite to begin fishing in a pool that someone else is already fishing at. Its like walking up to a urinal that's occupied, and unzipping and shouldering your way in and going to town. Do that IRL and you get (A) pee'd on, and (B) punched in the face and fall down, and (C) pee'd on again. /shoo

Time to Craft

It was at this point that the mental insanity clicked in.

Jewelcrafting, Blacksmithing, Inscription, and Alchemy.

All blown through the Outlands levels from 300 to 350.

Well, that's a lie, as I still have a couple points of JC to do. That one kinda sucks, but whatcha gonna do?

All with self-gathered mats.

If I see another Adamantite node, I just might cry.

The Outlands green-quality gems are close to worthless, making JC awful on the bank account (through wasted opportunity cost of selling all that Ore, or rather, spending the same time gathering more valuable ores and selling those)

Outlands Blacksmithing stuff is awesome. Death Knights buy the craftables up like they're going out of style. Plus, disenchant FTW. Sure, could make more money doing more profitable activities (sorry, but reading Greedy Goblin makes you think like this), but all in all, a very decent recovery leveling BS.

Inscription. I think I hate this one. Not sure why, but I'm a sucker and will keep going. I think my dislike comes from the fact that in a 25-person raid with a fully featured raid comp, scrolls are unusable. WTF?

Alchemy. Ah, alchemy. This one rules. My only regret is that I never had a leveled up alchemist during the potion chugging days of TBC. Half a bank tab of Northrend Herbs stored up brought this guy into the 420'ish range. I'm a big fan! Even bigger fan of how well the Northrend potions and elixirs sell.

Stop, Thief!

Along the way, I've accrued half a guild-bank tab of lockboxes of all levels.

Never picked a lock in my career.

Took the Rogue out for a few sessions of picking.

Hint for would-be lock picking power-levelers: Set small goals. I do 25 points at a sitting before switching to something else. Got me close to 250 without killing anybody IRL to break the tedium (much like reading a content-less post like this one).

90% of those lock boxes are now picked and disenchanted.

First Aid

I also made 3 heavy frostweave bandages to keep my questing stack full.

Just wanted to be complete :-)

I Love Raiding

But cancellations are kinda nice.

So is fishing. And beer.

And the single best moment in cinema history...the panty raid.