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!

The Snark Is Strong In This One

In Pandaria, when you get to the Valley of the Four Winds, one of the quests you can pick up is "Li Li's Day Off".  Li Li is a snarky little Pandaren, the niece of Chen Stormstout, and when Chen runs off to investigate an abandoned brewery, she asks you to help her see the sights in the valley.  As part of the quest, you get Li Li's Wishing Stone, which lets you summon her whenever you get to a sight she wants to see.  You will be tempted to hit a point, summon her, then dismiss her so you can be about your business.

Don't do it.

If she's accompanying you as you perform your other quests, she makes some amusing and truly, deeply snarky comments about the situations and things you encounter.

I liked Li Li when I first encountered her on entering the Valley; as time goes by, I'm just growing more and more fond of her.

Is It Just Me?

Does anyone else amuse themselves by grabbing the "Love Is In The Air" daily quest, running over to  Stormwind's Old Town, and tossing bonbons and perfume at the thugs loitering around outside of "The Five Deadly Venoms"?

Makes me chuckle every time.

Eighty Five, Redux

Pushing through the Twilight Highlands last night, Tal finally hit level 85. If it seems like that took a while - well, it did. Real Life (TM) including kids starting school, some personal affairs and a new car, required enough attention that my playing time over the past few weeks has been limited.

What time I did spend in Azeroth was also spent leveling Tal's first crafting skill. Once he hit level 84, I took one last spin around Uldum to say goodbye to all the mining nodes, then dropped mining as a skill and took up alchemy. That leaves Tal as a pretty self-sufficient herbalist/alchemist.

Leveling alchemy to 525 took about 3 hours over a couple of days, and overall, ended up costing about 3,500 gold - more or less as expected. There were a couple of points during the leveling process where I had to take a break and visit areas to pick my own herbs, because they were either unavailable on the AH or only available in small quantities for grossly inflated prices.

I mean... I had to go out and run around Kalmidor looking for silverleaf. Silverleaf! One of the most basic herbs in the game, and there wasn't a hint of it on the AH - at least, not during the 3-4 days I was checking and trying to build up some stock for leveling alchemy. I found as much peacebloom as I needed (or could even carry) on the AH, but not a hint of silverleaf. Strange. Definitely put a crimp in my initial foray into alchemy, though!

Once I got past that hurdle, I eventually ran into a similar issue with goldthorn. Aside from that, though, I either had the herbs on hand, or readily available from the AH at a reasonable price. At that point, it was just a matter of making sure I had a few hundred crystal vials on hand and easy access to the alchemy trainer.

At the moment, Tal doesn't have any alchemy specialization - I'm considering going for Elixir Master, but we'll see. I'm just happy to be able to craft my own Flask of the Winds now. Having a bunch of +hit and other useful flasks/potions on hand is an extra bonus.

Now starts the task of preparing to run some dungeons. I've reforged Tal's primary gear set for hit and expertise, so he's at least starting to look prepared as an Enhancement shaman. It looks like I'm going to have to go back and redo his primary talent tree a bit as well, to dip further into the Elemental tree and pick up some of the hit- and damage- enhancing talents in the early tiers.

Once that's done, I'm going to have to spend some time looking at his Restoration spec as well - yes, I've been collecting a secondary gear set and the glyphs I would want to use if Tal's even called upon to heal. I'm not sure how well a Wrath-trained discipline priest player will do healing in Cataclysm on a shaman, but hey - I'm willing to give it a shot!

Eighty One

Made level 81 on Tal after 5 days, 9 hours, 7 minutes, and 12 seconds played.

Total gold earned (most of it from selling materials on the auction house) - in the general region of about 14,500. Both professions (mining and herbalism) are above 500, well before Tal's hit any areas where he'd need to have his skills that high level to gather herbs or ore. Nice!

When Tal dinged 80, his average iLevel was about 161. The first Cataclysm mobs he had to deal with felt like they were somewhere in between a tough Wrath mob and a weak Wrath elite mob. I could take on one fairly easily, two if I was able to plop down totems and blow through cooldowns.

By the time he hit 81, the quest rewards from Mount Hyjal had pushed his average iLevel to 238. The only items of his that I haven't been able to replace with Cataclysm gear are his trinkets and his belt. Quest mobs were still on the somewhat tough side, but with totems down and cooldowns ready, they went down readily enough. Handling 3-4 at a time was a challenge instead of a death sentence.

Attack power? Went from the vicinity of ~1380 to 3153. Yowza.

Off to finish Hyjal now...

Waiting Stinks

"Let me tell you who I am, on the chance that these scribblings do survive ...

"I am Murgen, Standardbearer of the Black Company, though I bear the shame of having lost that standard in battle. I am keeping these Annals because Croaker is dead, One–Eye won’t, and hardly anyone else can read or write. I will be your guide for however long it takes the Shadowlanders to force our present predicament to its inevitable end..."

Grrr... I wants me A Pitiless Rain, I does. My precious. If you've never read any of Cook's Black Company books, go ahead. Seriously, I'll wait. I spent a good bit of time in Icecrown thinking about the Limper and the Hanged Man, and flinching every time a geist bounded towards me.

Part of me wants to see Suvrin as Captain, part of me wants to see Sleepy again. Since I can't get my favorite mercenary fix, though, I need something else to do. So I want to hit level 80 on Tal tonight. I'm close - just dinged 79 last night, in fact - and I've been managing about a level a night for the past week or so... so it's definitely doable.

In terms of cash flow, I have to say that dual mining/herbalism rocks. I've managed to buy riding skills just short of Master Riding (~5000 gold), a double handlful of glyphs (~2000 gold), enough raw materials to level cooking to ~ 385, and I still have ~4500 gold on hand. Not bad at all. Maybe I'll spring for Master Riding after all.

I'm going to push for 80 in Icecrown - there's still plenty of quests to do in Sholazar Basin and The Sotrm Peaks, but they're all (so far, at least) things I've seen before. I want to see what the assault on ICC looks like from the Horde side before I wave goodbye and head for Hyjal.

Random Thoughts are Random

It's been a week since I've done the Firelands quests on Aeth. Leveling Tal is so much more fun, really. At least when I play him, 1/4 of what I see (quests, story elements, etc.) is at least somewhat new. As opposed to getting the next 25-30 Marks, which involves doing the same thing I've done for the last 2 weeks straight... ugh.

Hey, Blizz? How about daily quest chains that build on one another and expire? Day 1 - do quests A, B, C. Day 2 - oh, look, now you've got A, B, C, D. Add a new daily quest every day, until you get to a certain point... then you continue to add quests, dropping others. So on day 7, you might have A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I. On day 8, quests A, B, C are "done" - so they drop off, but that's no problem, since there's a new quest giver with quests J, K, L.

Make it a story, man. Extra special bonus points if doing different combinations of dailies unlocks other quests, daily or otherwise. Doing a "gather the herbs" daily 7 times might unlock a "gather additional materials for a potion" questline that in turn unlocks a "deliver the potion" daily quest... but "gather the herbs" might be exclusive with "gather the ores", which unlocks a different questline and different dailies at the end.

tl;dr - Hey, Blizz? Make dailies more interesting, plz? kthxbye!

Tal is 3-4 quests from level 74. Questing in Northrend without heirloom gear and a high-level guild to give me that bonus 50-60% experience? Ouch.

Artisan riding is, indeed, worth it. If you can't manage to scrape up 5K gold by the time you hit the mid-70's, then you've got some serious cash-flow problems. Stop buying those Mysterious Fortune Cards, m'kay?

Leveling cooking, without leveling fishing, apparently runs smack-dab into some sort of doldrums in the 295-300 range. I spent an evening on Tal running around trying to pick up the recipes and mats that I'd need to get his cooking up to BC levels, only to top out at 295/300. Really, Blizz? Sheesh...

For your entertainment: a cow riding a horse!

Took this while Tal was doing Fresh Remounts in Dragonblight. The fact that he didn't move properly with the horse really annoyed my wife. She likes a reasonable level of realism in her anthropomorphic cows.

Also, two dancing spirit wolves:

That's Tal, in the background, dancing with Nelha, a Draeni Shaman. We ended up running through the Obsidian Shire quests in Dragonblight pretty much simultaneously, so we were helping each other out along the way. I'd go down the left side of a hallway, she'd go down the right side, and we'd slaughter anything that got in our way, lending a hand where needed. Run back to the quest giver, lather, rinse, repeat.

Solidarity, my shaman sister! Solidarity!

Halfway there!

I managed to get Talaesin to level 70 over the weekend. In my mind, that's halfway to level 85 - I've made it through the Old Wolrd and Outland content, which leaves two expansions (Wrath and Cataclysm) to wade through to level 85. Time-wise, I think the split is more like 60-40 or maybe even 70-30, but those early levels come fast, so we'll just say it's halfway and be done with it.

Spent a chunk of change on cold weather flying, which left Tal with about 4,600 gold... not quite enough for artisan riding, but very close. Given the overall usefulness of a 280% speed flying mount for leveling, I'm going to be plunking down the cash for this as soon as I can justify it (that is, as soon as I can ensure I'll have ~1k cash on hand after the purchase). He's currently revered with Orgrimmar, so that should mean having to get to 5500 gold or thereabouts.

I've actually slowed down a bit now that I've hit the Borean Tundra. Leveling through Outland was a "Meh" experience - I've been there, done that, many times over, and there really wasn't anything new for me to see. Getting into the Wrath zones, though, I'm starting to see different story lines. Oh, there's still some overlap - the Tuskarr quests, for example - but there's more than enough that's different as a Horde player that I want to get a feel for the story line.

And I'm enjoying the story line.

The atmosphere and events around Warsong Hold are excellent. The overall feeling is one of having stepped into the midst of a gothic horror story. The Scourge are literally on the doorstep, and they're not just interested in killing the defenders, but converting them. There are fields of wriggling pupae that used to be Tauren and Orcs, strange mists off of the sea hiding the threat of the Kvaldir, and even the local farm animals have been poisoned or converted into scourge minions.

Overall, it's a pretty eerie setting. As a player, you get dumped into the midst of it all, and contribute to... well, not so much winning, but holding back the Scourge. There's a feeling that everything you've accomplished isn't really a victory. You may have managed to stem the tide for now, but off in the distance, you can definitely see that there's a storm brewing.

I ended up the evening at Taunka'le, getting to know my Northrend cow-brethren. Again, while there's some overlap in the quest lines, there are instances where it's interesting to see the story and how it accounts for "Well, yeah, we're going to have the Alliance and the Horde do the same thing here... but the motivations are different."

I'll admit to a little bit of annoyance at this, though not for the reason you'd expect. Game-wise, I see the value in being able to re-use quests and other game assets. Lore-wise... well, you'd think that sooner or later, the Horde and Alliance leaders would realize that there's actually quite a few points of agreement between the two factions. Something like, "Nine out of ten Horde and Alliance heroes agree: undead elemental death cultists are bad for children and other living things." Start a public awareness campaign, or something. Maybe get Abesik Kampfire to do a PR tour. He'd probably go for it; I hear he's campaigning for War Chief anyways. Given what I've seen of Garrosh, he's got my vote already.

Then again, that "we're not so different, really" realization just doesn't seem to happen in Real Life (TM), either. So, hey - kudos to Blizzard for managing to make a world full of wizards, dragons and heroes that's still as messed up as we are. I guess.

You Are Now Leaving Zangarmarsh

This is why I don't read quest text as much as I used to. After I got through Stealing Back the Mushrooms, Watcher Leesa'oh told me...

These are perfect! Oh, thank you, shaman!

You've been ever so careful not to disturb the natural order of things, and we've gathered so much information in such a short amount of time!

Did you catch that?

You've been ever so careful not to disturb the natural order of things.

Um.

Yeah.

I take it you didn't notice those few hundred dead critters? The heaping mounds of dead sporebats, marshfangs, marsh walkers, and giant fireflies?

Huh.

You mean you overlooked the the corpses of the fallen bog lords, fungal giants, marsh hydras, and eels that kind of, you know, followed me about the zone?

Odd.

Nothing to say about the scores of frenzies, clackers, feralfen, naga, and the occasional Alliance soldier that turned up dead in my wake, just because they happened to be in the wrong place at the right time?

Interesting.

What about the literal heaps of ore I've managed to rip out of the ground, or the baskets full of herbs that I've managed to exploit... er, I mean, rescue from this pristine wilderness?

Mm-hm.

You've been ever so careful not to disturb the natural order of things.

So... what have we learned here?

As for me, what I've learned from this experience is that the Cenarion Circle are a bunch of bloodthirsty, vindictive, heartless, indiscriminate killers who apparently think that killing something - anything - is one of the best ways to solve ecological problems. Oh, and apparently, they're either in complete denial over this, or they just lie throught their teeth about their motives.

Mind you, they pay well, so please don't look at this as a criticism, per se. More of a general observation, in a "know your employer" sort of way.

And that's the best possibility. Worst case, they're a bunch of clueless bumblers who have all the situational awareness of a dead rock. Given a flashlight and a map, they would very likely get lost while trying to locate their own posterior. The chances of them, and everyone around them, winding up dead in a ditch because they thought it would be a good idea to hand-feed poor starving velociraptors rapidly approaches unity as time goes by.

So, that's why I left Zangarmarsh. I've either been working for heartless amoral killers who - lets be honest - were probably getting ready to dispose of me, now that they've managed to use me to slaughter every creature within sight; or I've been working for some clueless drips who will, 100% guaranteed, ask me to do something incredibly stupid and deadly at any moment.

See ya! I hear Hemet Nesingwary is hanging out in Nagrand. Fun man, Hemet.

And at least he's honest about wanting to kill everything that moves.

Summer Doldrums

Not posting as much as... well, as ever. It's hot out, man. Between work, family, and just general life, there's not a whole lot of energy left at the end of the day. Given a limited amount of energy, and a choice between playing WoW, and writing about WoW, which one do you think wins out?

Ah-yep.

Tal hit 60 last night in Hellfire Peninsula. After buying expert riding, his flying mount, and paying for his old-world pilot's license, he was still sitting pretty with 2000 gold in the bank.

Not bad at all!

A friend from work who's a new player asked me how I leveled so fast... I told 'em "If it moves, kill it. When it stops moving, loot it." Well, that, and quests. Quests are definitely key.

Word of advice to any new WoW players, or someone starting anew on a new realm: take two gathering professions, and learn to use the auction house. Between what you farm up while leveling, and the cloth and other items you accumulate, you're sitting on a gold mine. Using the AH lets you have the cash flow you need to keep you funded for the glyphs, enchants, potions, training, and all the other cash sinks you're going to encounter as you level.

I use Auctionator to make buying and selling easier. On the buying side, it makes it easy to identify good deals - excellent for leveling a profession, when you want to find the cheapest stack of ore or herbs without having to wade through all the regular AH listings. On the selling side, I generally set my undercut to about 10%, and just post things for whatever Auctionator says, so long as it looks reasonable. I'd rather sell quickly and make a profit than have to take time away from leveling to manage my auctions.

Over at Kirin Tor, I've been using Auctionator to slowly buy up briarthorn and other herbs that Aretae can use to make Rogues Decks for Aetherna. When Tal hits 80 or so, I'll start using it to buy up stocks of low-level herbs so he can drop mining and start leveling alchemy. On Laenson, my Ironforge bank alt, Auctionator lets him easily manage the sale of stacks of "meh, can't use it, sell it" items that all the rest of my KT toons generate.

TL;DR - learn to use the AH, and get Auctionator, 'cause that add-on makes it easy.

In other news, Aeth is slowly working her way through the Firelands dailies. A couple more days, and she should have her 150 marks of the world tree, which will let her unlock the next stage of dailies. Meanwhile Aretae is thinking that maybe, just maybe, traipsing through BRD to gather junk boxes might be more entertaining than picking yet another stack of whiptail in Uldum...

34 Hours

That's how long it's taken Talaesin to get to level 41. That's about 50 minutes per level... probably less, actually, if you exclude time on taxis, time spent AFK or in the auction house, and so on. Including things like alt-tabbing into a browser to write a quick blog post about how quickly you're leveling.

All in all, it's probably more like 40 minutes of playing time per level.

Wheh.

A Different Attitude

A couple of notes about playing Horde for the first time.

The Goblin NPC emotes? Priceless.

"Security, enforcement, extortion, pool cleaning? We do it all."

I chuckle every time I hear that.

I'm also enjoying the snark from many of the quest givers. Not all of them - the Blood Elves and Tauren quest givers seem downright polite. The Orcs and Goblins, on the other hand?

"Welcome, shaman. We sent word to the War Chief weeks ago that we would need a stalwart and brave hero to assist us in our tasks. I guess we'll just have to make do with you."

Then, after killing about fifteen gajillion Burning Cultists and collecting their gizzards, banishing a demon, and single-handledly routing an Alliance invasion, you'll get something like...

"Oh, you again? I see you managed to keep from impaling yourself on a rusty butter knife."

Snark. It's what's for breakfast, apparently.

Pushing towards 85

I'm working my way through Vash'jir on Aretae, and frankly, I'm surprised that I've come this far.

My original plan was to just level Aretae far enough to farm junk boxes so I could use them to grind out Ravenholdt rep for Aetherna's Insane in the Membrane achievement. Since I didn't have a character with inscription to help with the Darkmoon Faire reputation grind, I figured that I'd go ahead and make him a scribe as well, and so kill two birds with one stone.

So, yeah... get him to level 75, level up Inscription until I could crank out Darkmoon cards of destruction, and that would be it, right?

So. Why do I find myself under the sea, running around and leveling all the way to 82, with level 85 fast approaching?

Honestly?

Being sneaky is fun.

I can't see myself taking Aretae into any PvE content, unless it's as part of a guild run with folks who are willing to put up with my absolute n00bness. I've really got no interest in a combat or assassination spec, so he's going to stay subtlety for a good long while. Given that, I think he's always going to be a lone wolf type (how appropriate!) - but there's a lot for a lone wolf to do at level 85. Like, maybe hang out in Tol Barad and stun-lock healers.

Maybe. Like I said, being sneaky is fun.

Music Monday: "Let me go, boys; let me go, boys; let me go down in the mud where the rivers all run dry..."

Nagrand Ho!

Over the past couple of nights, I've had Aretae questing in Nagrand. This is one of my favorite areas in the game, right up there with the Howling Fjord. The scenery is amazingly beautiful, the Kurenai and Ethereals are fantastic, and the quest lines are interesting.

All of that is really secondary to why I really enjoy the zone, though.

What makes Nagrand a thoroughly enjoyable zone for me are how the quests are arranged.

Alliance side, there are at five quest hubs in the zone - Telaar, the Ethereal outpost, Altrius the Sufferer, the Throne of the Elements and the Nessingwary base camp. There's a small number of breadcrumb quests leading from one hub to another, but for the most part, they're self-contained.

All of which means a freshly dinged level 65 character can pop into Nagrand and make one circuit of the zone to pick up two dozen quests.

At which point, you can simply continue on a second circuit, killing as you go... with a good chance that any mob you down will help you complete one of your quests.

That's just awesome.

One circuit to pick up quests; one circuit to murder anything that moves; repeat to get whatever follow-on quests are available.

By the time you're finished, you'll have picked up a level or two - or close to three, with heirloom experience and rested experience bonuses - and be ready to slog through the Netherstorm or Shdowmoon Valley. Well, when I say "slog", I mean "do just enough quick quests to get to 68 so you can escape Outland and enjoy the Howling Fjord".

Aretae is about 10 bars away from Northrend, and already he can feel the chill in the air.

Distracted

After running through the Rise of the Zandalari quest chain on Aeth, I found myself a bit distracted. While everyone else has been assaulting Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub, Aeth, Laen, and my other toons have been sitting more or less idle while I took Aretae on a tour of Azeroth.

Last Monday, he was level 35.

As of last night, he's level 60.

Total play time: about 25 hours.

Yowza.

He's got +35% to XP from heirloom items, +10% from guild perks, for a total of +45% experience... and that's before counting in the advantage of rested experience gains.

Heirloom items with decent enchantments means that he can hack through just about any mobs that might get in his way. Last night, in Hellfire Peninsula, as a level 58 rogue, I was able to survive several encounters with 2-3 level 60+ mobs. It wasn't pretty, and at times I ended the fight on the ragged end with only a few hundred health, but it was certainly doable.

While leveling him, it was a real struggle to keep him in level-appropriate zones. He was gaining experience so quickly that I think the only zones he actually completed were the Searing Gorge and Burning Steppes quest lines. Those really only got completed because it was easier to do the final few quests rather than to move on to the next zone. In most cases, as soon as the quests in a zone turned green, I abandoned them and left for the next most difficult zone I could find.

My only complaint through this process is that I wish Blizzard would lower the "required level" for a lot of quests. At one point, I left the Burning Steppes to hit the Swamp of Sorrows, thinking "Well, if I can go through level-appropriate mobs like a hot knife through butter, I obviously need more challenging opponents." Turns out that the Swamp had plenty of XP for a budding herbalist, thank you very much, but aside from that... nada. At level 50, I was just shy of being able to accept any quests in the zone. So I did some herbing, returned to the Steppes to complete the quests there, and then pretty much ignored the Swamp except for a brief stop-over on my way to the Blasted Lands.

Level 58 to 60 were done in Hellfire Peninsula, where - thankfully! - you can still get a decent challenge. The mobs were tough, but not too tough, and plentiful enough that it felt dangerous. I think I used Vanish to extricate myself from sticky situations more often last night than I did during the entirety of the leveling process up to 58. I also found myself routinely using cooldowns that were afterthoughts at best in the Old World content.

Another thing that I found refreshing about Outland is that the quests chains are much, much, much less linear than the new Old World content. The "I know where all the quests are, run around and pick up everything, then circle the map slaughtering everything that moves" strategy still works quite well here.

Which gave me pause. There's a real difference in questing from BC to Wrath to Cata. Personally, I think that I'm leaning towards the idea that Wrath questing (minus the phasing snafus) was the most successful model. We'll see how things work out with the Firelands in 4.2, where it looks like Blizzard is trying to take some of the best questing elements of BC, Wrath and Cata and mix them all together in a (hopefully!) wonderful stew.

I'm thinking about putting together some quest graphs for a few zones, similar to what Cynwise did for battlegrounds - an abstract representation of quests, and how they relate to one another. I suspect that BC zones will show a quest graph like an aromatic ring structure - lots of core quest hubs immediately available, with short chains leading off of them. In Wrath zones, I'd expect something similar, except with the occasional "side chain" from one hub leading off to and opening up another. Cata zones feel like they would end up being a single long chain of linked quests, with short stubs of "side quests' here and there.

I'm interested in seeing how many "join points" there are in quest chains. There are a few that I know of - mostly breadcrumb quests in BC and Wrath, that occur at the end of other quest chains and point you towards another hub. You can get those quests before you get the breadcrumbs, though, so while they're "linked" in a way, the link isn't a strong one. So instead of a linear march through content, you end up with a web of quests, which gives you the ability to pick your way through the content in a way that's suitable to you.

I'm going to have to think on this a bit more. It's an interesting problem - how do you tell a story in a non-linear fashion? Hmm. More to follow, unless, you know, I get distracted again.

Music Monday: "Run Away", by The Hollow, who have an interesting 3 Doors Down sort of sound to them. Bonus points to you if you can explain the relationship between the band and SF/Horror writer F. Paul Wilson...

Ding!

Started off yesterday evening doing some TB dailies on Aetherna, then switched over to Aretae. When last we left him, he was at level 35, having done a mere handful of introductory quests in the Western Plaguelands.

By the end of the evening?

Level 40. Professional expert. Dual talent specialization. Journeyman riding. A bag full of herbs, pigments and inks all lined up to crank out glyphs, scrolls and other inscription goodies.

All in the space of about 3 hours.

Yowza. He's going to be farming Heavy Junkboxes and cranking out Darkmoon Faire cards for Aeth before you know it. They grow up so fast!

Seriously - the XP bonus from guild perks and heirloom items has combined to make Aretae a leveling monster. Another couple of nights, and he'll be ready to start his farming operations in earnest.

Moving to WPL was a definite win, both in terms of experience, and in terms of challenge. I'm starting to get more familiar with his abilities, and my button-mashing has gotten slightly more sophisticated. I've remembered that I have Evasion, for example, and I'm - slowly - learning the art of stun-locking a target. Now that I've dual-spec'd into subtlety, I'm looking forward to playing with his new set of abilities.

All in all, I'm having fun on my murderous, backstabbing wolf-man. Even just getting from place to place with Running Wild is entertaining. Once he's done with his farming and crafting duties, we'll see if that novelty lasts through Outland and Northrend and into the Cataclysm content.

Not So Ascetic

Following my plan from yesterday, I stripped Aeth down to bare bones in order to see how close I could get to a character that might actually be challenged by Old World content. With no glyphs, no talents, no buffs, and no gear except a Simple Black Dress and Embroidered Boots...

... Aeth ended up just shy of 40k health and just over 20k mana.

The mana really isn't an issue; since spells cost a percentage of base mana now, the actual spell costs scale pretty well. In this configuration, she can manage a couple of Flamestrikes or just short of a dozen Fireballs before running OOM.

Damage seems to be... kind of OK. In a Redridge, she was still one-shotting most mobs with a single Ice Lance. Moving on to Searing Gorge, mobs were still taking 1-2 shots to down - not bad, but not quite the kind of fight I was looking for. If I could downrank spells, that would help, but unfortunately, downranking is a thing of the past. Oh well.

Health is the real issue. Aeth didn't even have 40k health, fully buffed, at the end of Wrath! So essentially, when doing Old World content, even stripped down, I'm still in god mode... incredibly hard to kill and doing a whole lot of damage, even without any buffs.

To make this work, I think I need the opposite of (the original) Martin Fury - I need a shirt made of nerf. I'm thinking of a BoA item that scales your health, mana, and stats by whatever percentage is needed to put you in the level mid-range for your current zone. Call it an "Ascetic's Hair Shirt", let me equip it to scale me to the right power level, and I'd be happy.

For the time being, though, it looks like "Operation: Ascetic" is a failure. Curse you, my expanded health pool!

Continuing Resolution

I've been continuing to run through Old World zones with Aeth. Completed the quest chains in the Swamp of Sorrows, and started in on Redridge last night. Questing makes for a much nicer "waiting for the LFD queue to pop" activity than archaeology, fishing, or even mining.

Which makes me think.

Aeth is significantly overpowered for even level 60 quests in the old world, which means that I can blow through them rather quickly. While I don't particularly mind this, I find myself wondering if there's some way to make the quests a little bit more challenging, even for someone at level 85.

Here's some thoughts on making questing in the Old World a little more challenging (and, hopefully, more fun)...

Drop The Buffs. When I'm questing in the old world, there's no need to scarf down my daily doses of Pickled Guppy, or make sure that I've got Mage Armor and Arcane Brilliance up. If I pick up a buff from some other source, drop it if I can.

Drop The Gear. Without all her fancy gee-gaws, Aeth will have a whopping 207 intellect and 183 stamina. That should put her at about the same level as a geared-up level 50 mage or so. I'm thinking about picking up a Robe of Apprenticeship or maybe just even a Lovely Purple Dress to run around Azeroth in. Use the equipment manager to swap items in an out, and Aeth can both look stylish while running around the Old World killing murlocs, and be Cataclysm heroic-ready when the LFD pops!

Drop The Glyphs. This is a little more annoying than just not buffing, but by erasing my current set of glyphs, I can loose that little bit of an edge that they give. I've got a second spec (fire) that I only use occasionally on Aeth, so I can repurpose that spec to be my "questing, no glyphs" spec.

Drop The Talents. Along that line, if I'm going to have a "no glyphs" spec, I might as well reset my talent points and... not take any talents. No Netherwind Presence, no Torment the Weak, no Presence of Mind or Improved Arcane Missiles or Missile Barrage or... hmm. You know, maybe I'll take some talents. I'll start with nada, though, and see how tough things are then.

Drop the High-Level Spells. Stick to classic lower-level mage spells - nothing, say, past level 60 or so. Just move them off of my button bars and forget about them.

As I think about this, I'm intrigued. More on "Operation: Ascetic" as it progresses.

And for music monday, a bit of Jethro Tull...

Really, Vanessa?

Continuing to run lower-level quests on Aeth last night, I found myself in Westfall. While I alrady knew the "big reveal" that Hope was really Vanessa VanCleef, I thought it was kind of interesting to see the story unfold. I mean, yeah, the opening quest line is pretty ridiculous, as has been pointed out elsewhere by folks much more talented than I. Still, there's some interesting bits in there.

I was enjoying it until I got the the point where Vanessa actually acknowledges my existence. As part of the scripted conversation, she tells you...

And you, Aetherna, I will spare your life. You have done much to help our cause, albeit unwittingly, but the next time we meet it will be as enemies.

Um.

Really? I mean, really?

Lady, I don't care who your daddy was.

In case you missed it, I'm a freakin' level 85 arcane mage.

You didn't even bother to stun me, you ignorant little witch.

I just finished going through Westfall like a hot knife through butter.

In fact, the only reason there's anyone of your thugs left standing at all is because killing them was just too plain tedious.

When I'm done here, I'm going to use the power of my mind to rip a hole in the space-time continuum. Then I'm going to travel to another world, find the biggest, nastiest, most twisted member of the Burning Legion still mobile, and turn him/her/it into a puddle of ectoplasmic goo... just for fun.

You're what? Sixteen?

Seriously, Vanessa. Is that your age, your level, or your I.Q.?

All three, apparently.

It's also the number of milliseconds you'd manage to survive if the developers hadn't revealed you as part of what's essentially a non-interactive cutscene.

I'm going to go run the Deadmines at least once just to kick your scrawny, whiny, self-centered butt and give you the beating you so richly deserve.

"I will spare your life." Pfft. It is on, girl. And you're going down.

You got your chocolate in my peanut butter!

While I was playing Aeth last night, I ended up in the Twilight Highlands, doing the Wildhammer dailies... not for rep, just because. Love me them Dwarves, I do.

After completing the four Thundermar dailies (minus Beer Run, because frankly, escort quests are annoying), I was headed back to turn in the quests when I see...

"Psst! Aetherna! Over here!"

That was Dillan MacHurley, one of the Wildhammer NPCs, preparing to take on some Dragonmaw.

I didn't need the loot.

I didn't need the food.

I didn't need the ale.

I didn't need the Dragonmaw Insignia.

I didn't need anything, really. No quests to complete, no items to gather. Nothing. Nada.

So of course I helped him - he asked.

The more I think about it, the more I think this is probably one of the neatest little things I've encountered in WoW to date. There are some interesting little quests in WoW. I mean, I liked Old Icefin's quests in Howling Fjord, as I've noted before. I'm with Rades in appreciating the quest that leads to Gerk in Zul'drak.

Having an NPC ask you, out of the blue, to lend a hand in a fight where there's no immediate reward given? No quest to reward you, no reason to participate - that I can see - other than "Oh, well, I'm a friend and protector of the Wildhammers... of course I'll help?"

Odd, and yet, oddly satisfying to encounter a tiny bit of RP in what's otherwise a pretty task-oriented, reward-driven game.