Brewfest!

I can't believe that I've been wandering around a bit on Tal, looking at gearing options... only to just realize today that it's Brefest, and I haven't yet killed Coren Direbrew even once.

Bad cow!

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!

Cookin' Dinner

Took a short break from leveling Tal last night to work on his cooking.

My last burst of cooking enthusiasm took him up to about 375 skill, where there's a pretty nasty little doldrum in skill increases. Basically, your choice is to either (a) do the Dalaran cooking dailies in order to earn enough Dalran Cooking Awards to get a cooking recipe that uses something other than fish, or (b) spend some time fishing in Northrend.

Going to Dalaran... well, involves going to Dalaran. Every. Day. No thank you! I suppose that with a little bit of foresight, I could have done the cooking dailies there while I was in Northrend, but honestly - I was too busy plowing through content to make that work. I mean... was I in Northrend long enough to do the dailies I would have needed? I'm not even sure of that.

So, I spent some time on the AH in Orgrimmar, looking for the rare posting of Borean Man O'War or Imperial Manta Ray. In the meantime, I did the Cataclysm cooking dailies, which was enough to get me a few points in cooking here and there, along with the Cooking Awards that I'd (eventually) use for higher-level recipes.

Last night, I realized that meant it would be about a week, at best, before I was able to make any more progress on cooking. Since I'm hoping to start running dungeons once Tal hits 85, I wanted to make sure that I could at least whomp up some +hit or +agi food when that time came. So... I took a detour to the Borean Tundra, and Tal, with his massive 7 fishing skill and cheap little kid's fishing pole, went looking for fish.

That's actually not as bad as it sounds. Since fishing from pools now guarantees you a catch of a specific type of fish (as opposed to random junk), it was just a matter of making 2-3 passes along the Borean coast, looking for pools along the way. I ended up fishing enough to get a stack of Man O'War, two stacks of Manta, and a handful of fishing achievements to boot. All in all, it took about an hour.

At that point, I had enough fish in hand to cook up a couple of stacks of food, which pushed Tal's skill up to 415, and the out of the cooking doldrum. A quick trip to a vendor and the trainer in Dalaran gave him the mats and skill to brew up Darkbrew Lager, which took him to ~430. At that point, he was able to learn how to make Blackened Surprise. Since I'd been saving the Toughened Flesh I gathered while questing in Cataclysm zones, I already had a stack of meat that I was able to use to get him up to 450 skill.

As I had been doing the Orgrimmar cooking dailies for a while, I had a nice stash of cooking awards - 12, in fact - that I could use to get the recipes I needed for the final push. Since I was really interested in getting to 450, and didn't much care how I got there, I scoped out the AH and saw which mats would be the cheapest to buy in bulk for purposes of levelign before I bought my recipes.

On my server, it turned out that Snake Eyes, Blood Shrimp and Dragon Flanks were particularly cheap, so I bought a stack or so of each raw material. Total cost, less than 500 gold. A quick trip to the trainer in Orgrimmar, a hastily assembled cooking fire, and Tal ended up with a bunch of Salted Eyes, Hearty Seafood Soup and Grilled Dragon... and cooking skill maxed out at 525. Woot!

To celebrate, Tal blew his last 3 cooking awards on the recipe for Skewered Eel, sprung for a stack of Fathom Eel, and cooked himself up a stack of +90 agi food. Mmmmm mmmm good!

So now he's halfway to level 84, with a bag full of food he can use for +60 mastery, +60 strength, +90 hit or +90 agi, as circumstances warrant. Which kicks the snot out of the +30 haste food he had been choking down. He may not be Ready For Raiding just yet, but he's at least prepared to wander into a regular Cataclysm dungeon and whomp some sense into a death cultist or too.

Onward - through culinary science!

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.

Another day, another level. Or two. Maybe three.

The climb continues. Talaesin is level 25, still with a good chunk of change to his name - though a bunch of that got blown on his first set of glyphs. Even more would have gone for bags, but there were no netherweave bags on the auction house! Thankfully, my guild leader on SC was kind enough to crank out some bolts and whip up some bags Real Quick Now.

It's nice, having friends. As an aside, this is actually the first time that I think I'll be able to thank someone, face-to-face, for something they did in WoW. Nice.

I was truly and honestly amazed that I couldn't find any netherweave bags on the SC Horde AH. Over on Kirin Tor, they're enough of a money making staple for tailors that I was able to make a good bit of change off of them on Laenshield, and I wasn't really even trying to do more than get a small piece of the market. Makes me wonder what other markets might be under-represented on SC. I'll have to see if there's a money-making niche that I can slot Tal into when he gets tired of raking in cash from his gathering professions.

My wife and I are having a siege* of children over tonight for a cookout, so the chances of me getting any significant play time is slim. What time I have will probably be spent on Aetherna, exploring the new Firelands content and dailies. Or... maybe not. Maybe I'll level Tal a bit while waiting for the chaos around the 4.2 changes to settle down a bit.]

* As a friend once pointed out... "A herd of cows, a school of fish, a siege of children."

Step by Step

Talaesin is level 22 now, with a nice bankroll for that level - 280 gold, IIRC. At this rate, I expect to have more than enough cash to handle dual spec, riding, mounts, and whatever else I may need as part of the game. Current bag set (a bunch of 8-slot bags) are serving him well enough, though I expect to burn some of that gold on a set of netherweave bags sometime Real Soon Now.

Got to kill my first gnomes in Azhara, and it was surprisingly refreshing.

Don't know how I'll handle facing my first Ironforge Dwarf, though. I may just have to see if I can manage to level without touching a hair on their precious little ale-soaked heads.

Myra Tyrngaarde

Talaesin is level 16 now, with 47 gold on hand. Dual gathering professions FTW! Leveling without heirloom items is surprisingly sedate, especially compared to the blistering pace that Aretae managed.

My overall impression so far (with a sample size of "one") is that the new starting areas are well done, various complaints (leveling speed, expensive bags, etc.) have been addressed fairly effectively, and that the "new player" leveling grind is much less grindy, without being to much less grindy, if you know what I mean. Playing for an hour on a low-level toon and picking up a level or two feels just about right to me.

Eye candy time.

I came across this very awesome fan art of Myra Tyrngaarde, the Ironforge bread vendor. Yeah, I loves me th' Dwarves. Click to embiggen...

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.