Money Making in MOP, Update #2

Currently at just shy of 110K gold.  Bags continue to sell briskly, and I've cleared out a good portion of the BC and Wrath era crafting materials I collected in the weeks prior to the expansion.  Laenshield has learned the Living Steel transmutation as well, which provides another source of profit (about 1K per day).

Between the transmutation, bags, and selling MoP ore/herbs on the AH, I'm making about 3500 gold per day just as side effect of questing on Aeven.  At this rate, I think I'll be beating 150k gold by the end of October.

Money Making in MOP, Update #1

So.  As of October 8th, I have about 82k total from selling gathered items, herbs/ore, and bags.  That's a 17k increase over 11 days, or about 1500 gold per day.  At this rate, I'm looking at having about 120k in the bank by the end of October - well short of my 200k goal.

Hmm.

Part of the problem is that we've got a major release coming at work, and some things going on at church that have been taking up a lot of time, leaving relatively little for WoW.  So I've really not been playing much, compared to the WotLK and Cataclysm releases.

In game, the reason I've been leveling Aeven so slowly is that the stories are interesting, exploring Pandaria is fun, and I don't feel the need to rush through content to get to max level ASAP. All of that's a good thing.   Last night's few hours of play saw me get distracted and start poking around and exploring rather than questing, and I had a blast.

Still, it cuts into my money-making.  As I progress, though, I'm sure that I'll encounter new and exciting opportunities for parting people from their cash on the AH.

To that end, I've cleared out most of my stockpile of Outland ores, with Fel Iron selling fairly reliably for 100g/stack.  I need to start doing the same with my Outland herbs and enchanting materials.

Keep in mind that my "stockpiles" in this case are a few dozen stacks - I don't have a guild bank for my sole personal use, and I'm not looking to corner the market or anything.  My goal was, and is, just to take advantage of the fact that players will be leveling new characters in the expansion, and provide them some of the materials they'll need to level their professions.

MoP ore and herb prices have been surprisingly stable on Kirin Tor.  Ghost iron ore - the only ore I've been mining to date - has held pretty steady, at about 100-120 g/stack.  Green tea leaves started at about 40g per stack, but as people have leveled out of the starting zones, it's starting to push upwards to 60g per stack or so.

I've also started investing in leveling alchemy (Laenshield), inscription (Aretae), and jewlcrafting (Aetherna) on my alts.  No enchanting yet - I'll do that as part of leveling Aeth, since she's my enchanter now, and I can take advantage of the gear upgrades available through leveling to provide the materials I need for that.

Panda Thoughts

Pandaria is gorgeous - even my wife thinks so.  The style reminds me quite a bit of Northrend, in a good way... the land seems to be much more real, and less cartoony, than some of the old world zones.

Well.... to be honest, the Jade Forest is beautiful.  I'm pushing level 87 on Aeven, and I still haven't gotten out of the first starting zone!  I'm actually looking forward to the other zones, even the ones I visited briefly in the beta.  I can't wait to meet the Grummles, the Klaxxi, the Tillers, and figure out what beasts Hemet Nesingwary wants me to slaughter this time.

I credit Aeven's rapid advance, in part, on the incredible abundance of herb and ore nodes in the zone.  At level 86, she's still getting 15k XP per node.  Last night, just questing for a couple of hours - not even farming - she managed to hit about 50 nodes in an hour.  That's about 750K XP over and above what she got from questing, and roughly the equivalent of completing an additional six quests on top of the ones she'd already done.  Whoa.

The XP gains from the nodes helps make up for the leveling pace that Aeven's at, though.  Leveling on a protection paladin is much, much slower than I'm used to... but man, she is un-freaking-killable.  I've gotten into the habit of trying to collect at least 3-4 mobs at a time, just because fighting a single mob is so slow that it feels painful.  At one point last night, I managed to collect and burn down a group of about 8 mobs at once.  Shield of the Righteous and Word of Glory keep her up, and in the few instances where things start to look a little hairy, there's always Lay On Hands.

So far, I'm having a lot of fun.  The laid back nature and practicality of the Pandaren is absolutely  delightful.  When I completed A Humble Offering and Pei-Zhisays commented on the mushroom offering I collected, "Also, they make a pretty fine stir-fry"... that made me chuckle.  Those Pandaren certainly keep their feet on the ground, as the Dwarves would say!

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Last night, as I waited for the queue to pop for a run through a random HoT, I gave some thought to some changes.

Right now, I've got a couple of stable alts with a nice selection of professions:

• Aetherna - level 85, Jewlcrafting and Mining
• Laenshield - level 85, Tailoring and Enchanting
• Aretae - level 85, Inscription and Herbalism
• Aeven - level 80, Mining and Skinning

Overall, a nice spread of capabilities.  I've got all three gathering professions (Mining, Herbalism, Skinning) represented, plus the major gear enhancement professions (Inscription, Tailoring, Jewlcrafting and Enchanting).  There's a couple of gaps, though...

Aeth is my main.  She's the one that gets all the love, all the randoms, all the effort at advancement.  I honestly don't think this is going to change any time soon.  There's just something about playing a mage that really appeals to me.  On top of that, she's my achievement hound... if I'm doing something in the world, it's almost certainly on Aeth.

In particular, it's annoyed me the number of times I've gotten a bit of random loot in the LFD that's soulbound.  On Aeth, that means I can sell it to a vendor for about 10% of it's real value (should it happen to be disenchanted).  Sometimes there's an enchanter along for a run, so she can get a shard or a crystal instead of a purple that sells for 15g, but that's not certain by a long shot.

So, I'm thinking of dropping Mining on Aeth and picking up Enchanting.  Being able to add some ring enchants would definitely be nice.  Where will she get ores to prospect for gems, though?  Aeven, of course.  So that's one change.

If Aeth has Enchanting, then there's not much point in keeping that profession on Laenshield.  It would be nice to have an alchemist around, though.  I leveled Alchemy on Talesin (my Horde shaman) to max level, and having access to a transmutation alchemist would be nice.  Where will he get the herbs to turn into potions, though?  Aretae, of course!  So that's change number two.

Now, Aeven's skinning skill was a nice little money maker as she was leveling.  I suspect that it will continue to be so for a while.  Still, it would be nice to have something else available.  Blacksmithing?  Leatherworking?  Engineering?  Frankly, each of those has a minor appeal.  However... Aretae's my only leather wearer, and I'm not really interested in gearing him up for PvE (though PvP might be interesting).  Engineering is really tied specifically to the character who has the skill, so unless I'm planning on Aeven being more active than she is now, that leaves blacksmithing as an eventuall profession for her.  Change number three.

So my tentative plans:

• Aeth drops Mining, picks up Enchanting, and levels it to max.
• Laenshield drops Enchanting, picks up Alchemy, and levels it to max.
• Aeven (eventually, possibly) drops skinning, picks up Blacksmithing, and levels it to max.

It'll probably be a bit expensive, but I've got plenty and to spare at this point, so why not?

How in the world did that happen?

Here I am, a month of so after Cataclysm came out. I've pushed Aeth to 85, and started her reputation grinds with Therazane, Wildhammer and Tol Barad Wardens. She's geared enough - barely - to qualify for running heroics, though I've not yet stepped foot in any regular dungeons.

Laenshield has been hanging out in Ironforge, buying uncommon greens for cheap, and turning them into massive stacks of cash. Well, dusts and essences, really - but when a 30g weapon can DE into 3-4 essences worth 30g each, well, that's just a money-making opportunity that can't be passed up. In between times, he's been buying cheap netherweave cloth and making bags. Both the DE and bag business seem to be winding down, though, so I may be taking him out into the wilds of Mount Hyjal soon.

Poor Aeven will have to wait her turn until after Laenshield levels up. I expect that she and Aretae will be the laggards, at least until Aeth has managed to snag all the achievements she can squeeze out of Cata... and Northrend, and Azeroth, for that matter. Lots of new quests in the old world to do, lots of new achievements in the Old World, as well! And not just the ones that have been added in the expansion, either... I'm thinking that wandering through Karazhan solo might actually be possible, now. Maybe not the boss fights, but 100k health and 20-30k dps should make the trash wonderfully grindable!

Oh, and Music Monday. Enjoy! Today it's Clannad, with a live version of "In A Lifetime".

Tanking by Accident

As I've said before, I've been killing Coren Direbrew repeatedly for yummy Emblems of Frost and other assorted goodies. Just like every other level 80 out there.

Last night, I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing, and instead of queuing Aeven up for Direbrew, I instead queued for a random heroic. I didn't realize what I had done until I phased in to the Oculus.

Understand this: at this point in Aeven's career, I'd used her to tank a whopping 0 (that's zero, folks, nil, nada, zilch) Northrend heroics, and a whopping 0 (again, that's zero) Northrend dungeons at all. Aside from Direbrew, I'd not done any tanking at all for months.

But... this was the Oculus. Easy pulls, plus the final fight is on drakes, even, so that's not even like it's a real fight, right? So I buckled down and did my best. Thanks in very large part to a most excellent healer, and good DPS players, I was able to do a decent enough job. It was a sloppy job in places, definitely. Those stinking whelps in the first pulls are annoying as all get out. There were points where I was mashing buttons frantically, though, trying to re-teach my fingers how to handle Aeven's abilities. Oh, and I'm pretty sure I ran the whole thing without any auras up at all. Bleah.

Still, we made it through to Eregos without loosing anyone.

Oddly enough, this was the tough fight - I was on a red drake to start with, and Eregos kicked my red little butt all over the map without much of a thought. We wiped, and on the way back, I mentioned that I was used to healing... and the healer suggested swapping roles, so that he (with his mondo health pool and stats) could tank while I healed.

Bingo! Took a while, but after a few minutes, there was one dead internet dragon, and Aeven had her first Emblems of Triumph and Stone Keeper's Shards. As a side effect, I find that I'm not nearly as worried about tanking heroics as I was when Aeven dinged 80... so I may run a few more with her in the next couple of months, just to get a feel for tanking as we head into Cata.

Brewmaster Aetherna

After three days of Brewfest, Aeth finally earned enough tokens to join the Brew of the Month club... which was all she needed to finish the holiday meta and earn the achievement for Brewmaster.

In the process, she's killed Coren Direbrew something like three dozen times. Man, that's got to sting! On the whole, though, it's been a profitable holiday for her and her kin. Both Aeth and Laen have gotten the Great Brewfest Kodo (Aeth's gotten it twice), and Aeven's picked up a couple of really nice trinkets and a smashing good weapon for a still somewhat-new level 80 tank.

Oh, and I've gotten a second Direbrew's Remote and Bloody Shanker, as well. In fact, out of 7 runs on three different characters, I've seen every possible item drop - sometimes more than once - with the sole exception of the Swift Brewfest Ram. So I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that the drop rates for some of the rare items have been nudged up a bit. Given that you used to be able to do each holiday boss five times (or more) a day, I wouldn't be surprised if the drop rate for special items is now 5x or more what it used to be.

All of which makes me a happy camper. Aside from wanting the Ram - I can't help it, I just think they're so stinking ram-cute - I still need to complete Rotten Hallow and Sinister Calling on Aeth for the Long Strange Trip achievement. She already has a Hallowed Helm, and the Rotten Hallow achievement is no real hardship, so that just leaves obtaining a Sinister Squashling as the last real obstacle on the way to her Violet Proto Drake. Hopefully getting little Squashy will just be a matter of time, instead of the whim of the RNG.

Final note for those who are interested in The Insane: the Shen'dralar reputation grind will see you turning in a bunch of Librams to build your reputation. Each turn in will require some additional components, including two (or four) Large Brilliant Shards.

If you have an enchanter with you, after killing Direbrew, make sure you smash the three kegs in the back of his room to pull Hurley Blackbreath. He's got an excellent chance of dropping a blue that can disenchant into - you guessed it - a Large Brilliant Shard. Same thing goes for Ribbly Screwspigot, who's standing just outside Direbrew's room. If you plan on killing Direbrew a couple of times a day, you should be able to get a stack or two of shards out of it as well. If you're already an enchanter, there's probably easier ways to go about getting your own shards; but if not, this is a nice way to pick up a handful without going too far out of your way.

Summer Doldrums

They've hit, and hit hard. Well, it wouldn't actually be accurate to call them "summer doldrums". More like "summer holy sweet Aunt Fanny, I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off!"

The net effect is to reduce my time in Azeroth, though.

In short fits and spurts, I've managed to get Aeven through the Storm Peaks, which includes (IMHO) some of the best quest lines in WotLK. Given that I've only been managing to play for an hour or so every couple of days, just before bed, I've been avoiding running random dungeons - if I'm going to go into an instance with a band of strangers, I want to (a) have enough time to give folks a good run, and (b) have enough energy to keep alert and not fall asleep in the middle of things.

What's been keeping me from playing this summer, you might ask? Well, three kids. A pending kitchen renovation. Solving some particularly sticky problems at work. Playing a role in the skits our church is putting on for Vacation Bible School this week. Oh, and a lot of work on the capital improvements committee of a non-profit organization I work with.

Sleep? What's that?

Yeah. WoW is fun, but sometimes, that Real Life game just reaches out and grabs all your attention, you know?

Working my way through the Storm Peaks

There's some good questing in there. Although doing some of them (*cough* Thorim *cough*) with regular flying mount painful, to say the least.

In the meantime, a guild mate was good enough to meet me in Dalaran and whomp up some nice shiny new epics for Aeven. So she's now sporting a Tempered Titansteel Helm, Tempered Titansteel Treads, and a Titansteel Shield Wall. She rounded out the ensemble with the classic (yet fashionable) Daunting Legplates and Daunting Handguards. She wanted a Titansteel Bonecrusher too, but it was apparently not meant to be.

So her gearscore is now a whopping 2600 even. Health is 19k, mana is 5.5k, armor is 20K, defense is 492. Probably overpowered for tanking regular dungeons, which is just fine by me! She's going to complete her questing in Northrend to hustle up the cash to train epic flight, and then burn some more leveling engineering before drifting into heroics.

It's the little things

Finishing up the quest chains in Sholazar Basin last night, I was doing The Mosswalker Savior. Searching the bodies of the falling Mosswalker oracles, looking for survivors. The words that some of the dying oracles have for you are saddening, but there's one in particular that always breaks my heart.

You've just killed one of the scourge. When you go to examine his prisoner, it's obvious that the oracle just isn't going to make it. Curled up on himself, dying, he whispers...

"I do something bad? I sorry..."

Comparing Herself to Herself

Some notes on Aeven's recent upgrades. I've taken her to 80, trained her up, and outfitted her with some quest reward items, and that's about it. Until the latest wave of Grown Up Stuff (TM) passes, my play time will be spotty. My plans are to continue questing with Aeven (basically R&R with a little bit of profit on the side) and start running some of the normal Northrend dungeons, as time permits.

In her Retribution spec, with mace & shield (yeah, yeah, I know - she should get herself a two-handed mace):

At level 80, vs. Grandmaster training dummy, in her white gear: Gearscore 0, 604 dps

At level 80, vs. random quest mobs, in her quest reward gear: Gearscore 2000+, 1400+ dps.

Yowza!

A comparison of stats, in white gear (first column) and quest reward gear (second column):

Base Stats

• Strength: 179 673

• Agility: 86 156

• Stamina: 274 796

• Intellect: 104 104

• Spirit: 104 104

Melee

• Damage: 202 - 244 421-536

• Speed: 1.46 1.53

• Power: 1362 2381

• Hit Rating: 0 32

• Crit Chance: 14.24% 18.02

• Expertise: 5 8

Spell

• Bonus Damage: 408 714

• Bonus Healing: 408 714

• Hit Rating: 0 32

• Crit Chance: 13.48% 15.79%

• Haste Rating: 0 30

• Mana Regen: 18 18

Defense

• Armor: 7011 15075

• Defense: 402 423

• Dodge: 5.02% 7.89%

• Parry: 5.32% 6.34%

• Block: 5.08% 5.92%

• Resilience: 0 0

And, finally, a comparison of her gear - a pretty much 50-50 mix of DPS and tanking equipment.

• Ice-Bound Plate Helmet Bronzed Dome Protector
• (no neck item) Neckcharm of the Bloodletter
• Durable Chain Shoulders Brazen Offender's Shoulderplates
• Ice-Bound Plate Chestpiece Muck-Stained Carapace
• Aldor Heavy Belt Rhino-Tail Girdle
• Platemail Leggings Leggings of Forceful Purification
• Ice-Bound Plate Boots Boots of Dominance
• Ice-Bound Plate Bracers Lifegiver's Ward
• Deteriorating Plate Gloves Preservative-Stained Gauntlets
• (no ring) Mildly Tarnished Ring
• (no ring) Signet of the Avenging Heart
• Argent Dawn Commission Horn of Argent Fury
• (no trinket) Thunder Capacitor
• Veteran Cloak Thick Goblin Back Protector
• Dalaran Cudgel Hammer of Quiet Mourning
• Layered Bone Shield Bulwark of the Tormented God
• (no libram) Libram of Righteous Power

I'm a Centarian!

Yep, it's post #100. I've been holding off on posting because I was soooooo close to hitting 80 with Aeven, but Real Life got in the way. It's a very demanding game, RL is. The work dailies, in particular, were pretty hard in the past two weeks. Fortunately, I got a chance to log off, tune out and relax with WoW for long enough to make a difference:

Just in case you can't make out the details in the chat log:

So, that's just a little over 235 hours of play time to go from level 1 to level 80.

Now that she's 80, it's time to gear up and equip some of the stuff I've been collecting over the past few levels. Then farm some crystallized fire for making titansteel, so she can get a friendly blacksmit to whomp her up some decent armor... then continue questing and earning gold for epic flight. The start tanking some normal Northrend dungeons, and then... wow. Just hit 80, and there's suddenly so much to do. Awesome!

But first... I'm going to hop on my tailor and make her some decent bags!

More posts to follow comparing Aeven as a newly-dinged level 80 in white gear (GS 0) with Aeven as a newly-equipped level 80 in quest rewards (GS 2000+) .

Closer... closer...

Not much play time over the weekend - it was a holiday, after all, and prime time for being at the park and in the pool with my girls. Playing WoW is fun, but even teh shinies don't come close to little girl giggles in terms of time/reward.

Still... I logged a few hours here and there, and finally left Zul'Drak behind. If you look at Aeven's achievements, though, you'll notice a distinct lack of The Empire of Zul'Drak. In every other zone, it's possible to get the quest achievements without overgearing or doing group quests. In Zul'Drak? Not so much. I left the zone with 3-4 unfinished quests in my log because each one involved killing an elite. Well, that's not quite true... one required me to farm elites.

Um. Yeah. So, I've got this... thing to do. Over there. Away from here. Where I can do stuff that isn't here. OK?

In other words: Aeven beat feet for Sholazar Basin, which has turned out the be the bonanza of XP, skinning and mining that she was looking for. Within about 30 minutes of hitting the basin, she had leveled up her mining to 450. Another hour or so, and - just flying around and doing quests, mind you - she had collected 4 stacks of borean leather, 2 arctic fur, 4 stacks of saronite ore, and several handfuls of various eternals.

And come to within about 400k of level 80. Woohoo!

The end is in sight. Once she hits 80... mmm. What should I do?

Option one: keep her in white gear and continue questing, until she's managed to pick up Into the Basin, The Summit of Storm Peaks, and Icecrown: The Final Goal. The downside of this would be returning to Zul'Drak to finish off the quests there, but the reward would be getting Loremaster of Northrend in common gear.

Option two: trick Aeven out in the quest rewards she's already accumulated, and continue questing. Complete the achievements for Loremaster, at which point, she'll be geared up enough to start running regular Northrend dungeons. The downside is continued questing, while the upside is getting some better gear while accumulating gold.

Option three: burn some resources, and put her in some crafted epics immediately. Enchant, gem, and prep her gear however is best, and dive into tanking regular Northrend dungeons. On the plus side, I finally get to tank Northrend dungeons! On the minus side, I spend a lot of gold and resources on gathering gear that will quickly be replaced by drops.

Decisions, decision... Oh, and somewhere in there, I want to drop skinning and power-level engineering. After I finish ripping the hides off of everything in the Sholazar Basin, I mean.

One thing for sure: more than blue gear, more than epic weapons, more than any other item... I'm looking forward to finally getting Aeven something other than the Runecloth Bags she's been hauling around for 80 levels now. Bag space! Hallelujah!

I are lebel sebenty an' nine!

Yep. About halfway through Zul'drak, and Aeven is level 79 now. Just 1,670,800 XP or so away from finally hitting 80! I haven't decided what I'll do when I reach that point. I'll definitely keep questing - for the gold, if nothing else - but I'm thinking that I'll gear up and start tanking some normal Northrend dungeons as well.

Speaking of Zul'drak, though... sheesh! Is there any quest in this zone that doesn't have some sort of gimmick? I've ridden giants. I've been disguised multiple times. I've had to control pets multiple times, mostly while disguised. I've been on two - or is it three? - tours. I've had to escort a rotting corpse around to collect troll scalps, feed ghouls, use anesthetic darts on snow leopards and bears. I mean... wow.

What is it with this zone? I'm actually looking forward to Sholazar Basin, where I can just slaughter everything that moves and call it a day.

I See... Active Abilities

One of the things that I've noticed while playing Aeven is that there is a lot more going on with her than I'm used to. Cooldown management is a pretty important part of the class. On top of that, most of her cooldowns are under 10 seconds... which means that at any given point in time, there may be a couple of abilities that she can use, depending on what the situation calls for.

Until recently, my play style with Aeven has been point and click. Yeah, I know. N00b. I'd gotten to the point with my mage and priest that I could handle most of my common abilities via hotkeys, and I wanted to get there with Aeven, as well. The problem is that just keeping track of what ability was available meant that my eyes were generally on my action bar, instead of on the real action. So I'd tend to miss out on those little details that make combat interesting. Things like mobs casting spells, or calling for reinforcements, or smashing Aeven's poor face into the ground. Things like that.

It was annoying enough while playing solo, but the more I thought of tanking with my eyes on the action bar, the more I realized that I was developing a bad habit. Keeping my eyes off the mobs while running solo? That's OK - I can deal with the occasional brown-trousers situation that may raise. Doing the same while trying to tank for some random aggro-happy boomy types? Not so much.

So, I went ahead and got my hands on the add-on that I've heard is pretty much the solution to this problem: Power Auras Classic, hereafter simply referred to as PAC.

And then I ignored it for about a month, because HOLY SWEET AUNT FANNY, HOW MANY CONTROLS CAN YOU CRAM INTO ONE PANE?!?!

Seriously. PAC is amazingly configurable, so it's pretty intimidating right out of the box. Playing around with it a bit, I figured out pretty quickly that:

(a) I had no idea what I was doing

(b) Despite that, I was still able to get PAC to do something, and

(c) While I was doinking around getting it to do something, the mob Aeven was fighting took the opportunity to inflict some minor un-elective surgery on her with a rusty butter knife.

Sigh.

I managed to find a couple of examples of Paladin auras, but nothing that really seemed to suit my play style. I didn't want strobing lights, or fancy-shmancy subtle shifting colors, or anything complicated! I just wanted to be able to keep my eyes on the action, and see what abilities were available for me. So I'd try someone else's PAC settings, get all confused, die a couple of times while I tried to figure it out, then delete it and go back to watching my action bar until I got disgusted enough to fiddle with PAC again.

Last week, I finally got to the point where I said to myself, "OK, self. Buckle down and figure this out. Oh, and self? Stop talking like Mocker, it's weirding self out." The result of that little bit of cognitive dissonance was a couple of PAC auras that did just what I wanted:

There you go. I can keep my eyes on the mob(s), and yet, I've got something telling me exactly which of my most commonly used abilities are currently available. The icons are far enough to the sides that they're not obscuring anything, and close enough that I don't have to change focus to see what's what.

As time goes on, I'm sure I'll add some additional icons/indicators using PAC. Frankly, what I've done here probably the "Hello, World" equivalent for PAC. There's definitely room for improvement and enhancement here. Still... it meets my needs, and it's definitely helped out. Keeping better track of Aeven's cooldowns has let me boost her single-target dps by about 100 - it's gone from 500-600 into the 600-700 range.

I see active abilities. Which means that I see dead mobs, instead of the spirit healer. All in all, I'd say that's a win.

I knew there was a reason to level alchemy!

Aeven is inching her way towards 80. Well, not so much inching as cruising. Rested bonuses and the Fire Festival XP boost really add up, even before you toss in the 20k XP you can get by honoring/desecrating whatever fires you stumble across in Northrend. As a result, Aeven hit level 78 last night, and after a good bit of running around in Zul'drak, is just a hair shy of halfway to 79.

Since she was in Zul'drak, of course, one of the quests she ended up doing was Something for the Pain - where you collect mature water poppy plants so that the Argent Crusade alchemists can create a pain-relieving salve for their soldiers. As is her wont (ha! I got to use "wont" in a sentence!), my wife was watching me play last night as Aeven scrambled through the Drak'Sotra Fields, searching for poppy plants.

"What are you doing now?"

"Oh, I have to collect these plants."

"Why?"

"They're for injured soldiers. To help relieve the pain."

"And the plants will do what for them?"

"Well, they're water poppies..."

"Oh... OH! Yep, that would help. So... you're a drug dealer now?"

And yes, I did LOL.

Dreaming

A while back, I heard an NPR story that discussed what super power people would choose - flight, or invisibility. One comment was that everyone would want to choose invisibility, but because that would be the "sneaky" super power, some people would instead choose flight, because that's more "socially acceptable".

What utter, absolute garbage.

All my life, I've had incredibly vivid dreams of flying. So much so that I can easily recall them, even decades later. I've always woken from these dreams with a sense of joy, followed by loss and disappointment as I realized that it was a dream, and no, I can't actually lift off and swoop through the sky.

I've never once had a dream about being invisible.

All this to say... ding! Level 77... and Aeven can fly in Northrend again:

Northrend Ready

A Busy Day

Monday evening, Aeven became a Veteran of the Wrathgate:

... a more accomplished cook ...

... gained another level of "Quest Hound" ...

... and took another step towards being a professional Explorer.

Oh, and she hit level 76 as well. All in all, a really good night.

Reaching the Wrathgate

Aeven's now halfway to level 76, and partway through the quest chain that leads up to the Wrathgate event. Oooh-RAH!

Questing in Dragonblight has a bit of a schizophrenic feel to it. There are a number of different quest hubs, each with a very different feels. Moa'ki Harbor, Star's Rest, Wintergarde Keep, Wyrmrest Temple, Light's Trust, the Crystal Vice. Each has it's own feel and flavor. If you're like me, and you're bopping around the zone doing whatever quests happen to fall into your path, everything seems a bit chaotic.

There are breadcrumb quests leading you to and fro over the zone, but it's not nearly as cohesive a place as the Borean Tundra or Howling Fjord. In those zones, while there were a bunch of quest hubs, you at least got the feel that they were connected in more ways that "Oh, by the way, so-and-so out at this other place wants you to drop by." There was a sense that something was Going On, and that you - for whatever reason - were in the center of things.

Maybe it has less to do with the zone, and more to do with how I did the zone. Instead of starting at Wintergarde Keep, I started at Star's Rest. Then visited Moa'ki harbor, and worked my way east to Wyrmrest before heading to the Keep. So instead of following the "flow" of the quests, east to west, I went against the current.... and have found myself doubling back, and asking questions like "Why didn't they mention this the last time I was here? Sheesh!"

Once I realize this, I intentionally skipped doing anything with Light's Rest. I plan on completing the Wrathgate chain, and then I'm going to move on into the Crystal Vice area, and from there into Grizzly Hills. I'll save Light's Rest for the time when I'm done with the Hills and ready to move on into Zul'Drak.