Two Weeks

Wow. Two weeks without a blog post.

Welcome to the lazy days of summer, I guess.

Aretae has managed to make it all the way to 85, and has been... well, not happily - more like reignedly - farming whiptail in Uldum and cranking out various forms of Darkmoon fair card decks for Aeth. It's a nice, sedate, mind-soothing routine. I'm sure he consoles himself with the thought that he'll eventually get to venture into the Blackrock Depths and murder everything that moves.

I've also embarked on a new adventure (for me, at least). A group of folks here at work play Horde-side on the Scarlet Crusade server. I've always wanted to see what the game looked like to the Horde, so Tuesday I logged in and lo! - Talaesin, the Tauren Shaman was born. An hour of play on Tuesday got him to level 7 with a purse full of 22 silver. Another couple of hours on Wednesday saw him just shy of level 13, with a full compliment of (small) bags, two bank slots, and a purse full of 22 gold. Dual gathering professions and the auction house, boo-yeah!

Yep. 100x increase in wealth overnight. I don't think I can keep that up, but I intend to try.

Leveling in Mulgore was interesting. I like the Tauren. I mean, giant anthropomorphic cows! What's not to like, there? And with Cata, you get the feeling that of all the Horde races, the Tauren and the Trolls are the ones who actually have their heads screwed on straight. Playing a shaman is new for me as well, so I'm getting a three-fer - new race, new class, new quests. Essentially a whole new game with a whole new group of people.

Cool.

I mentioned bags, above. Up through Wrath, bag space was a major pain. First thing I did with any alt was have Aeth buy and mail them a passel of netherweave bags. The alternative was wandering around with only your 16-slot backpack for 20 levels or so until you managed to pry a bag or two out of the cold, dead hands of some random enemy, or some quest giver grudgingly coughed up an 8-slot bag after you saved his life and livelyhood. Given the way bags worked prior to Cata, you'd think they were made of woven gold or something.

Srsly.

By the time I hit level 10 on Talaesin, all my bag slots were filled... without me trying. Sure, they were all 6-slot bags, but that gave me a total of 40 bag slots. More than enough for the questing and gathering I was doing. Two of the bags came from rare mobs that I encountered during the course of my questing, and one just... well, just kind of showed up from somewhere. I looked, and it was there. It was automatically equipped when I looted it because I had an empty bag slot.

It looks like the main purpose of Snagglespear, "Pokey" Thonmantle and other low-level rare mobs is to be a sort of walking, hostile vending machine for small bags. Beat on the squishy pinata and voila! - out comes a bag.

I like it.

Now, though, it's time for Talaesin to venture out into the wild lands outside of Mulgore. I'm looking forward to seeing what's in store for my psycho cow. Pyschow?

We'll see.