Not the first time I've been part of a team taking Murmur down, but it was a fun one. Log in with the intention of doing the cooking daily, and then grinding netherwing rep, but a few seconds after log in, get a whisper to run Shadow Labyrinth. Ok, why not? Run with friends, have some fun, take a stab at a Sonic Spear.
Get in there and discover that the place is cleared and the former group that was trying had wiped on Murmur 5 times so they're calling in for some subs. Eh, could have used that information a few minutes earlier, but still, a chance to play with some friends, even if just for a boss encounter.
I was a tad reluctant, because just for giggles (ok, not for giggles, but rather for a focus frame because I was fiddling with my macros to use my focus target), I installed Perl Classic Unit Frames addon just prior to logging on, so at this point, my screen is filled with these giant unit frames and the frames of everyone's target, and across the top is my target, his target, and his target's target. And to make my life really fun, I've also got a focus frame and the target of my focus in the lower right.
This all happened so quickly, that I didn't have time to figure out how to configure Perl. I have since figured that part out (type "/perl" and play with the gui config widget) and have a much more managable screen to deal with, but at this point in time it was like I was getting into my car that was parked in a snow storm and only took the time to scrape a little tiny hole in the ice to look through before speeding away (not that I would ever advocate driving under these dangerous conditions. Especially not in a high speed dash to the volunteer fire department to respond to an alarm. Nope, not ever. And really especially not in Buffalo where it just NEVER snows. Nope, not ever).
For the Murmur fight, honestly, my vision isn't that important, basically just stand there and DPS pew-pew, only really moving to step forward onto the lip of Murmur's circle and get line of sight to my pet so I could cast Bestial Wrath. The hardest 2 things for me were:
1) My cast bar used to be bottom center of the screen. Now its up in the top left. I'll get used to it with some repetition, but at this point, I had a rough time monitoring my Steady Shot and Aimed Shot progress.
2) I couldn't easily find Murmur's cast bar to know when to recall my pet from the sonic booms. But I figured that I had fed Cringer some Sporeling Snacks, maybe the extra +sta would help him out.
Bam Bam Bam. Murmur goes down with not too much fuss. Drops a nice plate armor and a nice shield, both of which are upgrades for the tank, so there was much rejoicing.
After the w00t's were over, I pop up the damage meter to see how I did. This is the first time I ever ran DM just for a single boss event, and other than a couple of times Murmur silenced me, it was basically a straight forward blast-o-rama with little interruption.
Plus its the first time I'm looking at my numbers since getting my Valanos Longbow.
Plus-plus its the first time I was trying out a pretty much Steady Shot/Auto Shot shot rotation. Up until this point, I've pretty randomly rotated my shots, giving a priority to Arcane Shot whenever it was cooled down, and Multi Shot if there was no CC I might break. Thinking that that might be silly and not very mana-efficient, I figured I'd try out just plain old steady/auto in a pretty much 1:1 ratio, doing my best to not clip shots, even with the new location of my cast bar from Perl's restructuring my screen.
And to add to the changes to my routine (plus-plus-plus), its also the first time I'm running with both claw and bite on autocast. In the past I've only had bite turned on, but was reading yesterday about the benefits of activating both.
DM showed my DPS to be 579. Not sure if this is good or not, specifically whether its good enough for heroics or kara. But the next closest DPS'er was in the high 300's, so I'm thinking that either my numbers are OK, or my party members are NOT-OK. I'm suspecting a little of both.
I think its time for a trip to Dr. Boom and try out some controlled DPS experiments to see how some small changes can impact my overall numbers, without quite getting too deep in theorycrafting.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Monday, December 3, 2007
Master's Key
I now hold in my hand, a shiny, brandspanking new, hot off the presses, copy of the Master's Key which will give me access to Karazhan.
I'm not sure how long it'll be before I set foot in there, but the key is mine.
I definitely enjoyed the attunment process. Other than one glitch which was my own fault, the process was a big enough challenge without being tedious or overwhelming. Plus, the #2 guy in my guild is an awesome helper who already has the key, but has been taking the new 70's through the necessary dungeons. Although nobody's seen him since thursday, so I ran Old Hillsbrad and Black Morass with some non-guild friends.
I mention a glitch in the attunment process. That was when I fought to help Thrall fulfill his destiny, but after I killed the boss dragon (last surviving party member, and after firing the killing blow, a DoT killed me) aparently you're supposed to stay as a corpse and watch a little animation sequence. If you release your spirit before the sequence completes, you don't get credit for the quest. First time through, guess what I did? Yep. So second time through, same exact thing happened, only 2 differences. First was that there was another party member alive with me when the dragon died, and we both died from DoT after the kill. Second difference was that I didn't release, so I got credit.
Old Hillsbrad is just plain fun. And my second run through it, my group was awesome. When we started out, the other hunter went AFK and so 4 of us figured we'd try to get as far as we could without him. Well, 4-man'd it up until the Thrall escort started when we got a 5th to join. Just incredible synergy on the 4-man, bear tank who tanked like I've never seen done before. She was just outstanding, held aggro on everything in sight, except for my turkey who stayed nice and frozen. Healer on top of his game, and a Rogue who delivered huge damage, blowing me off the damage meter.
Then Thrall. I just love this escort. He moves fast, and you've got to be ready. The party leader had been through this a bunch of times on different alts, so he marked the targets really well and we were typically burning down the most important mobs fast.
We went pretty much straight to Black Morass afterwards.
It was my first time in there. Just amazing fight. Definitely the most drawn out fight I've been part of. Good to have a vet with us, because he knew exactly when to instruct each of us to use our beacon companion dragon pet thingie. I was on boss DPS duty, with the other hunter handling the adds. Hardest part for me was knowing when it was OK for me to drink to regain mana. I don't have any potions, so my only resort is to get out of combat and drink. I only did that between the bosses sometimes. The times when I did, it made a HUGE difference with how fast we'd down the mini-boss.
Great teamwork, and outstanding party leader. One wipe (luckily pretty early in the process, so not too bad to repeat), and then main boss goes down, and we get our quests done.
Off to Shattrath for a quick chat with Khadgar, and the key is mine.
Now for the hard part of gearing up and developing my play skills to actually be a solid contributor in kara. I guess its off to BRK and Kestrel and others for some minimum gear requirements and the path(s) to obtaining them.
I'm not sure how long it'll be before I set foot in there, but the key is mine.
I definitely enjoyed the attunment process. Other than one glitch which was my own fault, the process was a big enough challenge without being tedious or overwhelming. Plus, the #2 guy in my guild is an awesome helper who already has the key, but has been taking the new 70's through the necessary dungeons. Although nobody's seen him since thursday, so I ran Old Hillsbrad and Black Morass with some non-guild friends.
I mention a glitch in the attunment process. That was when I fought to help Thrall fulfill his destiny, but after I killed the boss dragon (last surviving party member, and after firing the killing blow, a DoT killed me) aparently you're supposed to stay as a corpse and watch a little animation sequence. If you release your spirit before the sequence completes, you don't get credit for the quest. First time through, guess what I did? Yep. So second time through, same exact thing happened, only 2 differences. First was that there was another party member alive with me when the dragon died, and we both died from DoT after the kill. Second difference was that I didn't release, so I got credit.
Old Hillsbrad is just plain fun. And my second run through it, my group was awesome. When we started out, the other hunter went AFK and so 4 of us figured we'd try to get as far as we could without him. Well, 4-man'd it up until the Thrall escort started when we got a 5th to join. Just incredible synergy on the 4-man, bear tank who tanked like I've never seen done before. She was just outstanding, held aggro on everything in sight, except for my turkey who stayed nice and frozen. Healer on top of his game, and a Rogue who delivered huge damage, blowing me off the damage meter.
Then Thrall. I just love this escort. He moves fast, and you've got to be ready. The party leader had been through this a bunch of times on different alts, so he marked the targets really well and we were typically burning down the most important mobs fast.
We went pretty much straight to Black Morass afterwards.
It was my first time in there. Just amazing fight. Definitely the most drawn out fight I've been part of. Good to have a vet with us, because he knew exactly when to instruct each of us to use our beacon companion dragon pet thingie. I was on boss DPS duty, with the other hunter handling the adds. Hardest part for me was knowing when it was OK for me to drink to regain mana. I don't have any potions, so my only resort is to get out of combat and drink. I only did that between the bosses sometimes. The times when I did, it made a HUGE difference with how fast we'd down the mini-boss.
Great teamwork, and outstanding party leader. One wipe (luckily pretty early in the process, so not too bad to repeat), and then main boss goes down, and we get our quests done.
Off to Shattrath for a quick chat with Khadgar, and the key is mine.
Now for the hard part of gearing up and developing my play skills to actually be a solid contributor in kara. I guess its off to BRK and Kestrel and others for some minimum gear requirements and the path(s) to obtaining them.
Focus
I don't really use the focus target option at all. I see three possible uses for it...
1) Set the turkey to focus. That's the guy I'll be freezing. Then set up a few macros that allow me to send an arcane shot or distracting shot at the focus, while maintaining my target on the DPS mob that we're burning to the ground.
2) Set the Main Tank to focus. This will let me easily Misdirect to my focus. I currently have a Misdirection macro with a hard-coded name in it that I alter at the beginning of each party.
3) Set the Main Assist to focus. This will let me choose my DPS targets easier. My assist macro also has a hardcoded name that I fill in at the beginning of a party for this purpose.
I'm on the fence as to which would be best to go with.
I've never run with a party that uses a different Main Assist than the Main Tank, so for all intents and purposes, both my Misdirection macro and my Assist macro get the same name every time...the main tank's name.
What I really need is an addon that gives me little check boxes next to player unit frames, one for MT and the other for MA. At the start of a party, I'll just click to select the tank and assist, and it'll update my macros for me. That would really help, especially as I run into players that have goofy characters in their names and I can't type them into my macro. If I could do this, then I'll use focus for the turkey. I wonder how hard that would be to write. Perhaps something to consider once I'm Netherwing Exalted and I have a bit more free time.
1) Set the turkey to focus. That's the guy I'll be freezing. Then set up a few macros that allow me to send an arcane shot or distracting shot at the focus, while maintaining my target on the DPS mob that we're burning to the ground.
2) Set the Main Tank to focus. This will let me easily Misdirect to my focus. I currently have a Misdirection macro with a hard-coded name in it that I alter at the beginning of each party.
3) Set the Main Assist to focus. This will let me choose my DPS targets easier. My assist macro also has a hardcoded name that I fill in at the beginning of a party for this purpose.
I'm on the fence as to which would be best to go with.
I've never run with a party that uses a different Main Assist than the Main Tank, so for all intents and purposes, both my Misdirection macro and my Assist macro get the same name every time...the main tank's name.
What I really need is an addon that gives me little check boxes next to player unit frames, one for MT and the other for MA. At the start of a party, I'll just click to select the tank and assist, and it'll update my macros for me. That would really help, especially as I run into players that have goofy characters in their names and I can't type them into my macro. If I could do this, then I'll use focus for the turkey. I wonder how hard that would be to write. Perhaps something to consider once I'm Netherwing Exalted and I have a bit more free time.
Strange Server
I'm not sure if my server is strange or not. Its the only server I've ever lived played on so to me, its all there is.
But it feels strange.
There's three areas that feel strange to me. One of which might actually be strange, the other of which might be normal for any server, and the third, I'm not sure.
The one that's probably normal, but feels strange, is how hard it is to find a group for...well...anything. LFG/LFM almost never turns anything up. The LFG chat channel is mostly filled with low level characters asking for a high level to run them through a low level instance. Any guild I've been in has been pretty disorganized in terms of getting events going, or encouraging any grouping. But I read lots of complaints about LFG/LFM on a variety of servers so this one might be normal.
The next one is the economy and professions and such. I think my server is a bit strange. The AH seems to have no rhyme or reason as to when stuff will sell or not. Take felweed. Sometimes its an awesome staple product, consistently selling at any stack size, using Auctioneer's suggested market price. Then it'll go for a week or so with almost no sales other than single-herb stacks. There's a bunch of herbs that behave like this. I'm assuming that means that there's only a couple of high-level alchemists that do any buying, and when they log in, sales galore, and when they go on vacation, my herbs expire. I'd think that metals would be a bit more stable because they're used by a wider variety of professions, but its only a little.
While on professions, how about enchanters? How do you find enchanters with the formulas you want? I spent the majority of the weekend asking on the trade channel, or by asking guildies and party mates if they knew anybody, for Boots - Dexterity, 2H Weapon - Savagery, Chest - Exceptional Stats, and Cloak - Greater Agility. I found the cloak one in my guild, so that's awesome for future needs. I eventually found a guy who knows the chest one, so I kept his name for future reference.
Does anybody on my server even know Savagery? How do you find these people? I'd work on levelling this stuff up myself, but (A) on an alt, it won't do Amava much good, and at least for the time being, (B) I have no plans to drop either of Amava's professions to replace it with Enchanting. Maybe once I grow a new farmer up to a nice level, but I'd have to think that one over a bunch.
And lastly, the strangeness of guilds. Where does one turn to find guilds that raid? If for no other reason than to view their websites to look for organizational tips that help them. When I look at wowjitsu or some random google searches, I find mabye 5 or 6 guilds with active websites on my server. Does that mean I'm doomed to a low population and therefore low numbers of well-organized guilds? Or is there something I'm missing?
Strange indeed.
But it feels strange.
There's three areas that feel strange to me. One of which might actually be strange, the other of which might be normal for any server, and the third, I'm not sure.
The one that's probably normal, but feels strange, is how hard it is to find a group for...well...anything. LFG/LFM almost never turns anything up. The LFG chat channel is mostly filled with low level characters asking for a high level to run them through a low level instance. Any guild I've been in has been pretty disorganized in terms of getting events going, or encouraging any grouping. But I read lots of complaints about LFG/LFM on a variety of servers so this one might be normal.
The next one is the economy and professions and such. I think my server is a bit strange. The AH seems to have no rhyme or reason as to when stuff will sell or not. Take felweed. Sometimes its an awesome staple product, consistently selling at any stack size, using Auctioneer's suggested market price. Then it'll go for a week or so with almost no sales other than single-herb stacks. There's a bunch of herbs that behave like this. I'm assuming that means that there's only a couple of high-level alchemists that do any buying, and when they log in, sales galore, and when they go on vacation, my herbs expire. I'd think that metals would be a bit more stable because they're used by a wider variety of professions, but its only a little.
While on professions, how about enchanters? How do you find enchanters with the formulas you want? I spent the majority of the weekend asking on the trade channel, or by asking guildies and party mates if they knew anybody, for Boots - Dexterity, 2H Weapon - Savagery, Chest - Exceptional Stats, and Cloak - Greater Agility. I found the cloak one in my guild, so that's awesome for future needs. I eventually found a guy who knows the chest one, so I kept his name for future reference.
Does anybody on my server even know Savagery? How do you find these people? I'd work on levelling this stuff up myself, but (A) on an alt, it won't do Amava much good, and at least for the time being, (B) I have no plans to drop either of Amava's professions to replace it with Enchanting. Maybe once I grow a new farmer up to a nice level, but I'd have to think that one over a bunch.
And lastly, the strangeness of guilds. Where does one turn to find guilds that raid? If for no other reason than to view their websites to look for organizational tips that help them. When I look at wowjitsu or some random google searches, I find mabye 5 or 6 guilds with active websites on my server. Does that mean I'm doomed to a low population and therefore low numbers of well-organized guilds? Or is there something I'm missing?
Strange indeed.
Spending money
This weekend was the first weekend since I bought my epic flight training. As such, I don't have any specific savings goal, and all my income is what I consider "organic". That is, I didn't do anything special to save up for my epic. Many people I know go on gold earning benders to save up for flight training or epic flight training, and once they get it, they go back to whatever their normal patterns are. Keep in mind, although I still feel pretty strongly about the basic land mount at 40, the other mounts, I'm a bit more open to people enjoying the game as they will after that, whether that leaves them rich or poor. For me, making gold has been the pattern all along, so now that the big expense is done, I figured its time to spend.
I already wrote a bit about the crafting that I did. Spent maybe 20 gold on mats for that so far. They're pretty cheep at the entry level, but are going to be big gold sinks in short order. It is really funny spending money on copper bars. Those puppies were my life blood when I first got started mining, and now I'm funding some newbie miners. The circle of life.
My AH mule's bags and bank slots are all filled up, mostly with a growing pile of greenies that won't sell and are too high for me to DE. For fun, I figured I'd form a guild so I could get the vault with its giant number of slots.
I got my charter, and then had no clue what to do to get signatures. So I became one of those pestering fools who bother everybody near the bank/mailbox in Stormwind City, begging for signatures. Because I didn't want to waste too much time, and I got gold out the ying-yang, I offered 2g for a signature. Took about a half hour, mostly just through /say'ing to the people around me, and a few whispers focused at people nearby that were without guild. Only one joker took the 2g and logged off without signing, so a handfull of gold and a little time and I've got my signatures and my new guild is formed.
Then they all quit, or I booted them, and went to buy my bank vault slots. 100g. Meh, that one annoyed me, but oh well, as I said, I was on a spending binge, so the sting wore off pretty quickly. Kind of nice, now the personal bank slots are used for the Pally's own stuff as he levels and does engineering and enchanting. And the guild vault is more used for Amava's junk that's not soulbound.
Then it was time to get rid of those lockboxes. While looking for signatures, I found a guy who was advertising for lockpicking work. I had about 20 lockboxes built up that I had been waiting for skilling up my own rogue to open. Yeah, I still haven't gotten her any lockpicking skill, I don't even know where to train in that or what level is needed to get that started, so I gave this guy my business. Tipped him 15g just for fun, he went crazy with the thanks and such, so I'm assuming that was a big tip. Cool, spread the love.
Then it was time for enchanting. Or at least trying to enchant. I started the weekend out with the plan to get 4 enchants that I needed...2H Weapon - Savagery, Boots - Dexterity, Chest - Exceptional Stats, and Cloak - Greater Agility. I had some of the mats, but needed to buy a bunch, especially the expensive shards. Spent about 400g on the remaining mats. I'll devote another post to writing about my success with finding enchanters.
Then, in a partial friends/partial PUG group for Old Hillsbrad, I saw another hunter with Valanos' Longbow. That's a bunch more DPS than the random greenie gun that I normally use, and I recently got my bow skills up to 350, so why not blow some gold on that. 80g for the bow and 15 or so on a scope and I've made a decent upgrade in my dps and some accessory stats too.
Oh yeah, and moments before I impulsively decided to buy the bow, I bought 30g in Adamantite Shells. The plan was to save them for boss fights. Use the normal vendor ammo for clearing trash and solo farming, but then pop a few stacks of the fancy stuff in the quiver for added DPS on boss fights. Yeah, so now I have about 30g in shells that I don't plan to use until I get a gun better than my new bow.
Then only big expense that I want to make that I didn't make this weekend was Primal Mooncloth Bags or a 24-slot ammo pouch/quiver. I want to get 3 of the bags (and save the fourth for if I ever get to ZA, where supposedly there's a free 20-slot bag). There was 1 bag on AH this weekend, and I was about to buy it, but there's a tailor in my guild who I'd rather give the business to, although it'll take a little bit for him to make the bags.
I already wrote a bit about the crafting that I did. Spent maybe 20 gold on mats for that so far. They're pretty cheep at the entry level, but are going to be big gold sinks in short order. It is really funny spending money on copper bars. Those puppies were my life blood when I first got started mining, and now I'm funding some newbie miners. The circle of life.
My AH mule's bags and bank slots are all filled up, mostly with a growing pile of greenies that won't sell and are too high for me to DE. For fun, I figured I'd form a guild so I could get the vault with its giant number of slots.
I got my charter, and then had no clue what to do to get signatures. So I became one of those pestering fools who bother everybody near the bank/mailbox in Stormwind City, begging for signatures. Because I didn't want to waste too much time, and I got gold out the ying-yang, I offered 2g for a signature. Took about a half hour, mostly just through /say'ing to the people around me, and a few whispers focused at people nearby that were without guild. Only one joker took the 2g and logged off without signing, so a handfull of gold and a little time and I've got my signatures and my new guild is formed.
Then they all quit, or I booted them, and went to buy my bank vault slots. 100g. Meh, that one annoyed me, but oh well, as I said, I was on a spending binge, so the sting wore off pretty quickly. Kind of nice, now the personal bank slots are used for the Pally's own stuff as he levels and does engineering and enchanting. And the guild vault is more used for Amava's junk that's not soulbound.
Then it was time to get rid of those lockboxes. While looking for signatures, I found a guy who was advertising for lockpicking work. I had about 20 lockboxes built up that I had been waiting for skilling up my own rogue to open. Yeah, I still haven't gotten her any lockpicking skill, I don't even know where to train in that or what level is needed to get that started, so I gave this guy my business. Tipped him 15g just for fun, he went crazy with the thanks and such, so I'm assuming that was a big tip. Cool, spread the love.
Then it was time for enchanting. Or at least trying to enchant. I started the weekend out with the plan to get 4 enchants that I needed...2H Weapon - Savagery, Boots - Dexterity, Chest - Exceptional Stats, and Cloak - Greater Agility. I had some of the mats, but needed to buy a bunch, especially the expensive shards. Spent about 400g on the remaining mats. I'll devote another post to writing about my success with finding enchanters.
Then, in a partial friends/partial PUG group for Old Hillsbrad, I saw another hunter with Valanos' Longbow. That's a bunch more DPS than the random greenie gun that I normally use, and I recently got my bow skills up to 350, so why not blow some gold on that. 80g for the bow and 15 or so on a scope and I've made a decent upgrade in my dps and some accessory stats too.
Oh yeah, and moments before I impulsively decided to buy the bow, I bought 30g in Adamantite Shells. The plan was to save them for boss fights. Use the normal vendor ammo for clearing trash and solo farming, but then pop a few stacks of the fancy stuff in the quiver for added DPS on boss fights. Yeah, so now I have about 30g in shells that I don't plan to use until I get a gun better than my new bow.
Then only big expense that I want to make that I didn't make this weekend was Primal Mooncloth Bags or a 24-slot ammo pouch/quiver. I want to get 3 of the bags (and save the fourth for if I ever get to ZA, where supposedly there's a free 20-slot bag). There was 1 bag on AH this weekend, and I was about to buy it, but there's a tailor in my guild who I'd rather give the business to, although it'll take a little bit for him to make the bags.
A nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there
Once the daily routine is completed, if no guildies need help or want to run a dungeon, I've got some time to kill. I fill it with some herb farming on my new fast mount, but that gets mundane.
So why not try out some alts?
I have an ambitious vision of creating my family of toons. Namely, I've already got my DPS player, so I want to grow a tank and a healer. Plus, I want some professions that'll help Amava out, perhaps crafting some jewels for her, or making arrows/bullets, or maybe some potions. And pretty dresses.
My first priority here is to get my Enchanter past his 225 skill cap. I've got a growing number of green items that just won't sell on AH, even at rock bottom prices, and I can't DE them until I get to 275 skill. To do that, I've got to get him from 20 to 35 so I can train artesian. I don't overly enjoy playing pally solo grinding, so this is a bit of a chore. I am a bit excited about getting him to a higher level and turning him into a tank, but at this level, not so much. I think I can commit to playing him whenever his rested XP is full. I got him up to 22 the other day. Also dropped tailoring (he was originally intended to make pretty dresses for Amava, but my priest has taken that duty over) and took up Engineering.
Once the pally's rested XP was burned up, I went on a bender of crafting professions. Got my warrior up to level 8 and became a Blacksmith. Also took the long trip from Stormwind to the Exodar so he could learn Jewelcrafting. Took my Rogue out got her up a couple of levels, and trained in Skinning and Leatherworking. I was going to play my priest through his rested XP also, but got an invite for Old Hillsbrad, so didn't. He's currently a Tailor/Herbalist, but he's gonna drop herbalism and take up Alchemy shortly.
So my reflection on crafting: A nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.
Without the financial backing of Amava with her income from daily quests, mining, and herbalism, crafting would just not be that much fun for me.
BUT, since my little family does have their rich matron, I have to tell you, I'm having lots of fun crafting.
First I started out with my warrior. He was sitting in Stormwind and wanted to get to The Exodar. I figured I'd gear up a little for the trip, so I could survive the orcs in Dun Modr or a random wandering crocolisk in the Wetlands. Crafted some armor (which I then learned I couldn't equip due to low level) and a sword (which I then learned I can't equip due to lack of 2h sword skill). So despite the fact I couldn't equip more than half the stuff I crafted at first, it was pretty fun mapping out all the mats needed to craft orange items.
Then I played engineer for a little while. I havent tried out the explosives yet, but they might add some novelty to solo grinding with my Pally. That plus I learned Seal of Justice at 22, that supposedly cuts down on the mobs running away from me before they die, which is such a pain when compared to playing hunter.
So there you have it, a family of alts, all of whose rested XP is reset and accruing once more.
Even if I can buy better stuff on AH, there's something fun about wearing equipment that I made myself.
So why not try out some alts?
I have an ambitious vision of creating my family of toons. Namely, I've already got my DPS player, so I want to grow a tank and a healer. Plus, I want some professions that'll help Amava out, perhaps crafting some jewels for her, or making arrows/bullets, or maybe some potions. And pretty dresses.
My first priority here is to get my Enchanter past his 225 skill cap. I've got a growing number of green items that just won't sell on AH, even at rock bottom prices, and I can't DE them until I get to 275 skill. To do that, I've got to get him from 20 to 35 so I can train artesian. I don't overly enjoy playing pally solo grinding, so this is a bit of a chore. I am a bit excited about getting him to a higher level and turning him into a tank, but at this level, not so much. I think I can commit to playing him whenever his rested XP is full. I got him up to 22 the other day. Also dropped tailoring (he was originally intended to make pretty dresses for Amava, but my priest has taken that duty over) and took up Engineering.
Once the pally's rested XP was burned up, I went on a bender of crafting professions. Got my warrior up to level 8 and became a Blacksmith. Also took the long trip from Stormwind to the Exodar so he could learn Jewelcrafting. Took my Rogue out got her up a couple of levels, and trained in Skinning and Leatherworking. I was going to play my priest through his rested XP also, but got an invite for Old Hillsbrad, so didn't. He's currently a Tailor/Herbalist, but he's gonna drop herbalism and take up Alchemy shortly.
So my reflection on crafting: A nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.
Without the financial backing of Amava with her income from daily quests, mining, and herbalism, crafting would just not be that much fun for me.
BUT, since my little family does have their rich matron, I have to tell you, I'm having lots of fun crafting.
First I started out with my warrior. He was sitting in Stormwind and wanted to get to The Exodar. I figured I'd gear up a little for the trip, so I could survive the orcs in Dun Modr or a random wandering crocolisk in the Wetlands. Crafted some armor (which I then learned I couldn't equip due to low level) and a sword (which I then learned I can't equip due to lack of 2h sword skill). So despite the fact I couldn't equip more than half the stuff I crafted at first, it was pretty fun mapping out all the mats needed to craft orange items.
Then I played engineer for a little while. I havent tried out the explosives yet, but they might add some novelty to solo grinding with my Pally. That plus I learned Seal of Justice at 22, that supposedly cuts down on the mobs running away from me before they die, which is such a pain when compared to playing hunter.
So there you have it, a family of alts, all of whose rested XP is reset and accruing once more.
Even if I can buy better stuff on AH, there's something fun about wearing equipment that I made myself.
Some post-70 goals, with a side of alts
With Amava at 70, I've got a new focus on play time.
First goal was to get together enough dough for epic flight. Ding.
Other than that, I really haven't had a prioritized list of goals, but rather just an unordered set of things I wanted to progress. Things like getting weapon skills up to max, getting recipes and cooking skill for buff foods and learning good places to farm ingredients, some very unfocused gear improvements with an aim to meeting some theoretical minimum qualifications for a beast master hunter in Karazhan, actually getting the non-theoretical, very concrete minimum qualification for Kara entry (Master's Key), and so on and so forth. Oh yeah, forgot to mention Netherwing rep, once that first goal was completed.
Seems like a lot, and there is much more out there that I have on the back burner.
But the daily routine seems to work out nicely.
When I first log in, I pretty much start out with the cooking daily quest. Serves me 3 purposes...forces me to increase my cooking skill by preparing a few items for the quest...forces me to expand my learned recipe list because so far I've needed a new recipe for each new quest...and provides a little bit of gold. Sure, I can get that much gold in a few minutes of terocone farming, but still icing on the cake.
Once cooking is done, I head over to bomb some eggs in Skettis. Works out really nicely when the cooking quest needs me to throw a chicken wing into some soup. I don't know why but in my mind, I pronounce it like "pih-Skettis" just like how a little kid might mispronounce spaghettis.
Then its off to Netherwing Ledge, farming herbs and minerals along the way. The Netherwing dailies (A) are a tedious pain in my tuckus, (B) provide a nice chunk of gold, (C) glitch like there was no tomorrow. Blizz must have outsourced the programming of this whole area to some strange and unusual development firm, because there's an uncharacteristic number of glitches in the area. (D) arent always tedious because Booterang is funny everytime I do it, (E) are moving along nicely. I'm about 3/4 of the way through Honored. (F) must be such a royal pain for a non-dps class. Every quest involves a pretty bad drop rate from mobs that take a while for me to bring down. (G) Eggs, baby, eggs! What a fun little treat when an egg pops up. I've never enjoyed finding an item in game as much as I like those eggs.
While doing the Not-So-Friendly skies, I started to use the opportunity to advance some weapons skills. I noticed that when I was standing on the little floating island, there's about 1.5 minutes between each transporter showing up. So that gives me plenty of time to burn each guy down. Rather than doing the standard pet=tank,me=ranged-attack thing, I close to melee and advance my polearms skill up. Then that got boring, so I unequipped my pole and started punching the mobs. I think I'll go buy some other weapons just for the sake of killing time and skilling up the different weapon classes.
Since the full set of daily Netherwing quests takes 2 hours or so, I end up leaving the area frequently to help guildies with what ever they've got going on (typically a group quest that only takes a few minutes) or an instance run invite shows up. The latter has also helped me with another goal...and I now have the Master's Key. Got a sweet group together for Old Hillsbrad and helped Thrall fulfill his destiny. Then a run through Black Morass and the totally awesome fight that opens up Medivh to talk to you.
With all this going on, its amazing that I found myself with some time to spare. That's where my promise of a side of alts comes in. But this post is too long already, so the alts will get their own.
First goal was to get together enough dough for epic flight. Ding.
Other than that, I really haven't had a prioritized list of goals, but rather just an unordered set of things I wanted to progress. Things like getting weapon skills up to max, getting recipes and cooking skill for buff foods and learning good places to farm ingredients, some very unfocused gear improvements with an aim to meeting some theoretical minimum qualifications for a beast master hunter in Karazhan, actually getting the non-theoretical, very concrete minimum qualification for Kara entry (Master's Key), and so on and so forth. Oh yeah, forgot to mention Netherwing rep, once that first goal was completed.
Seems like a lot, and there is much more out there that I have on the back burner.
But the daily routine seems to work out nicely.
When I first log in, I pretty much start out with the cooking daily quest. Serves me 3 purposes...forces me to increase my cooking skill by preparing a few items for the quest...forces me to expand my learned recipe list because so far I've needed a new recipe for each new quest...and provides a little bit of gold. Sure, I can get that much gold in a few minutes of terocone farming, but still icing on the cake.
Once cooking is done, I head over to bomb some eggs in Skettis. Works out really nicely when the cooking quest needs me to throw a chicken wing into some soup. I don't know why but in my mind, I pronounce it like "pih-Skettis" just like how a little kid might mispronounce spaghettis.
Then its off to Netherwing Ledge, farming herbs and minerals along the way. The Netherwing dailies (A) are a tedious pain in my tuckus, (B) provide a nice chunk of gold, (C) glitch like there was no tomorrow. Blizz must have outsourced the programming of this whole area to some strange and unusual development firm, because there's an uncharacteristic number of glitches in the area. (D) arent always tedious because Booterang is funny everytime I do it, (E) are moving along nicely. I'm about 3/4 of the way through Honored. (F) must be such a royal pain for a non-dps class. Every quest involves a pretty bad drop rate from mobs that take a while for me to bring down. (G) Eggs, baby, eggs! What a fun little treat when an egg pops up. I've never enjoyed finding an item in game as much as I like those eggs.
While doing the Not-So-Friendly skies, I started to use the opportunity to advance some weapons skills. I noticed that when I was standing on the little floating island, there's about 1.5 minutes between each transporter showing up. So that gives me plenty of time to burn each guy down. Rather than doing the standard pet=tank,me=ranged-attack thing, I close to melee and advance my polearms skill up. Then that got boring, so I unequipped my pole and started punching the mobs. I think I'll go buy some other weapons just for the sake of killing time and skilling up the different weapon classes.
Since the full set of daily Netherwing quests takes 2 hours or so, I end up leaving the area frequently to help guildies with what ever they've got going on (typically a group quest that only takes a few minutes) or an instance run invite shows up. The latter has also helped me with another goal...and I now have the Master's Key. Got a sweet group together for Old Hillsbrad and helped Thrall fulfill his destiny. Then a run through Black Morass and the totally awesome fight that opens up Medivh to talk to you.
With all this going on, its amazing that I found myself with some time to spare. That's where my promise of a side of alts comes in. But this post is too long already, so the alts will get their own.
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