Whups, lots of ground to cover.

Firstly.

I can has 70?!?

YARR!

…

Ok, I can’t ride Netherdrakes yet, obviously. That was a scripted one for a quest… But I can dream, damnit!

I’m currently riding this old mare:

She’s gorgeous, but she can’t fly particularly fast, but to be honest, I’m having to much fun doing -spacebar- PHWOOM! Wings snap out and we lift into the air! to care. I really like the noise when I take off. XD PHWOOM! That screeny was hell to take though, as setting my draw distance to max made me lag hellishly, so much I didn’t even know if it had taken.

Of course, there was lots done between levels 65 and 70, but it can be summed up rather quickly by these screenshots and statements.

Mana Tombs! (With Kaelling.)

Epic battles of DOOM! (With Yuanjia… we died so many times on the pre-req, but damnit, it was worth it for my Eyepatch! My… MAIL eyepatch. That can’t be comfortable.)

Grinding through Netherstorm and Shadowmoon Valley.

I hate those places. Both of them are very much a case of, you aggro one enemy, and next thing you know you’re OOM and out of combat, with 7 or 8 bodies spread out in a wide radius from you, with 30% health left and a dead pet. In Netherstorm, it was damn Ethereals and Demons. In Shadowmoon, I had the problem worst in some old Draenei ruins, where Broken, their Elekks and demons teamed up to beat Ella to death a few million times.

But in the end…

DING!

Bwahaha.

So… 70. Yarr. I’ve started doing Daily quests now, for no reason other than the easy gold to be had. Well, that and Skyguard Rep – I don’t particularly want a Nether Ray, but it’s a set of Dailys that will allow me to get an interesting mount as soon as I get my epic skill (depending on how fast I get the gold, actually ), instead of waiting ages with just a Gryphon to get my Nether Drake.

Of course, the first thing I did now that I am able to fly was fly around Outland, for this achievement:

Now, just need to do that on Azeroth… which will be so much more painful as I won’t be able to just jump over any mountain ranges that get in my way, ehehe.

Of course, what post would be complete without a mention of the most divisive world event in WoW’s history?

ZOMBIES!!!

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH! BRAIIIIIIINS!

OM NOM NOM.

It was a love hate event, really. I liked the idea, and even participated in some attempted raid… back in the 10 minute infection days. After that, I was always too busy to join in, and now… it’s gone! Hah. For the couple of days I was 70 during the infection though, I had to get on my Gryphon ASAP as soon as I arrived in Shat, to avoid maruading players Retch!ing on me, or the zombies that had over-run the Lower City, which was quite fun, admittedly.

But I know many people didn’t like it, as it interfered too much with their boring questing and auctioning. YAWN. Of course, the way I saw the event as is: I can kill zombies any time I want. I can quest or auction anytime I want. I can’t BECOME a zombie anytime I want, and I’d regret it forever afterwards if I totally avoided that aspect of the world event. Anyone who DIDN’T have some fun as a zombie – infecting other players and NPCs, raiding cities… is quite frankly… a bore (or level 10 or lower and didn’t understand what the hell was going on XD). Even if just for 5 mins you joined in the fun, then you experienced that side of the event properly. If you just exploded every time you got infected… well… yawn.

The other aspect of the event that I’ve been able to do is the scourge attacks. I’ve managed to get enough runes for the Hand and Shoulder pieces, as well as a tabard, a banner and a horn… the last two just for fun. I also got the leg piece whilst collecting runes, and was most disappointed to see that it was, in fact, a skirt.

I’m a hunter. The stats are clearly geared towards Hunters. Hunters run in the wilds with animal companions. They need the mobility granted by normal trousers in order to evade enemies. Hunters can not afford to be tripping over skirts. And besides the sort of lore reason for not being a mail skirt, damnit it looks ridiculous. I really hope I replace them in Northrend ASAP. As it stands, I’ve kept my old pair for wearing when not fighting. In case you haven’t realised yet, I get part of my enjoyment from the game from nice looking pets and looking cool myself.

Skirts are not cool. I don’t want to wear it in town. Lmao.

In any case, those items are a nice upgrade to all my other pieces of gear. Probably not as good as high end raid loot, but why would I be doing high end raids?

One final note:

I am so incredibly sick and tired of {Playername Jenkins}. I actually laughed when I first saw the achievement. The fact that everyone and their grandmother has now made it their goal in life to get such a funny (and not totally old and boring by now.) achievement has made it totally stale. My Ambassador title may not be the hardest to get, but I’d certainly rate it harder than Jenkins, purely for grinding Gnome rep, and doesn’t look (in the words of Berrie) “tacky.” Plus, it makes you sound like an important person!

Ok, Ok, second final note: Yes, my UI in the later screenies is “whack” It got Bartender cause I needed more space on screen than the standard UI could provide. However, replacing all the Blizz bars with Bartender bars sort of makes things a bit… ski-wiff. When I can be bothered, I’m gonna slap my survival skills up the right hand side on a blizzard bar (so they don’t have to sit somewhat messily like they are now – opening a bag covers four or so buttons if the bar is on the side.), see how that goes.

I really like bartender, as I can bunch all my bars together at the bottom, making the rest of my screen nice and clean, and I’ve made myself two mini bars – One next to pet bar for my Pet Attack + Hunter’s Mark macro (that I use every other fight.), and my macro to cast Misdirection on my pet (good for tagging multiple enemies.), and a second just above my bag for my mounts. Also, cause I’ve moved the micro-menu, I have FINALLY begun to learn the hotkeys for my quest log and suchlike.

Unfortunately, it seems to have fucked up, and Bar1 suddenly linked itself to my 3-button mount bar. Gyah! The last thing I need is to try and mount up, only to find that I can’t cast Hunter’s Mark without a target! XD

Ok, Ok, Ok, Ok! THIRD final note!

I can has upgrades, yarr?

My graphics card is about six years old. Yup, oooold. It belonged to my dad beforehand, I believe (came from a hand-me-down computer ), and given it can at least run WoW fairly well, it must have been top of the line back then… But I am direly in need of some upgrades.

So, I decided to get myself a shiny new graphics card…

So new graphics card! Oooh, shiny!

I’m pretty good (compared to the technological layperson) at computer jargon, but damn all that crap on the card is confusing. However, it can apparently run Mass Effect, which is a rather pretty (in a sort of repetitive, Prothean Architecture all over the place sort of way) game, which is good enough for me.

But! My motherboard is SO OLD, that it doesn’t fit PCI-E cards, which are all the rage these days.

So new motherboard!

Oooh, shiny! (and expensive!)

But! Any decent graphics card needs more than my measly 230W power supply…

So new power supply! (400w… bare minimun recommended by card, but damnit I’m forking out enough money as it is, so I’ll take my £20 power supply, thankyousoverymuch.)

So that arrived the other day… Now, I really need to read specifications slightly better.

I unplug everything from my old MB, take it out, put the new one in, and begin to hook everything up to that… then I come to the RAM.

It didn’t fit.

Whutwhut? I check my RAM. Yup, DDR. I check the MB. Yup, DDR.

I check closer.

My RAM – DDR1. My MB – DDR2.

Ewps.

Now, I have no idea about the technical differences, but the physical difference?

About 1 millimetre.

So now I’m waiting on some new DDR2 RAM! Though I took the chance to go from 1GB of RAM to 2GB.

Hopefully all this expensive stuff will improve my computer enough to do three key things:

1. Improve WoW performance – The thing that irks me most is my draw distance. It’s so pathetic. I had it nearly at the minimum setting. Even if I can bring it up to the middle or two third of the way up, will be a nice improvement. Also, I can see MEGALAGOFDOOM when Wrath comes out, so anything that could decrease lag on my end would be nice.

2. Run Black and White 2… I’ve had the game lying around for ages, but never been able to run it, eheheh.

3. Run TF2 – Because if I don’t get TF2, my life is forfeit as Frazzle (RL + FFXI friend.) will beat me to death.

Yikes! Loooong post.

With regards to the patch, and all the talent and skill changes that came with it, now that I’ve been on and getting used to it, I really love all the hunter changes.

Firstly, my pets… They don’t need fed! Erethia keeps herself going with her Bloodthirsty Talent, which procs one 20% of her melee hits, restoring 5% health and happiness. Ella has Carrion Feeder, allowing her to eat practically any enemy we defeat, and gain large amounts of health and happiness from that. And finally, Akshiran’s Guard Dog talent means he is content just to growl, granting him 10% happiness. Death of a pet isn’t a huge issue either, as in that case I simply get them to fight the nearest monster – they quickly return to happy, after having growled/bitten/eaten, as required, the opponent.

I do have one issue with the pet changes though… the spellbook bugs. Fortunately, they are easily remedied by putting skills you DON’T want on auto cast on the action bar, but it was frustrating until I actually did so. Having cower on autocast is just not fun for leveling – one steady shot, and BAM, Clefthoof up in your face! And of course, every time, I’d forget for the first few mobs that I had to turn it off, so there was a fair amount of zomgfeigndeathNOW! moments.

With regards to my own skills…

Aspect of the Viper is just… awesome. When I get to around a quarter of my mana, I simply flick that on (sometimes with Rapid Fire – I never really use it otherwise.), get myself back up to about 80% Mana, and Hawk goes back on. I hear tell this is being changed, but is supposed to return about the same amount of mana. Since it seems it’s getting a PvP buff, I can’t complain, though for PvE, I LOVE how it works. I rarely use Rapid Fire, so over the course of 15 seconds I can easily regain a huge portion of mana simply by activating that in addition to this aspect.

Steady Shot… I’m not sure on. I know it’s a brilliant ability, but I’m not sure how much I should be using it. I guess it’s fortunate I’ve been spared having to learn to “weave” it, but even so, given the easy availability of mana due to Viper, I’m not sure if this is something I should just be spamming, or instead using conservatively.

The Hunter glyphs are looking quite snazzy. When all three of my Majors are available, I plan to have Hunter’s Mark (Currently equipped – 20% bonus to the skill is quite nice.), Freezing Trap (30% reduced movement speed for 4 secs after my trap breaks? Tasty! Also got this one.) and Beastial Wrath (20 sec reduction on cooldown… plus what I’ll be getting from Longevity… -Churchill voice- Ohhhhh yess! I haven’t even seen one of these on AH yet – they need 375 skill, I think.) Minor Glyphs I’m not so sure… they aren’t particularly exciting, though they are only minor.

Talent wise, I’ve been able to drop 2 of my points that were in marksmanship, and invest them in Beast Mastery. The two points in question were from Rapid Killing, which while beneficial, I didn’t feel was as good as a constant boost to my AP based on Intellect. It’s actually somewhat of a relief no longer having it, as before, I used to feel sort of pressured to make sure I actually used the buff, which meant charging into fights with low mana when soloing, and when paired with Kazura, running off ahead of her to fight enemies – when I actually got the killing blow, and not her – darned Moonfiarr!

As it stands, by the time I’m 70, I’ll actually have 4 less points in Marksmanship than I would have with the old tree, which gives a few more to put into my main tree, and unlock various goodies there. I’m passing up on the common Spirit Bond (a talent I actually find laughable, from a leveling point of view – admittedly, I don’t know much about it from a level cap point of biew, but come on… 2% of your health every 10 seconds? 20% bonus healing? Whoo! I’m not meant to get hit, Akshiran comes with a tasty +40% as it is, and if I need extra healing for my pet, I have Gift of the Naaru, which has also been considerably buffed.) and Beastial Discipline (As it stands, Go For the Throat is generating more focus than I can easily dump) talents, as they simply don’t seem that useful to me. While some have suggested Invigoration is not terribly useful, as it won’t proc that often, believe me, I see PLENTY of crits from my focus dump skills, and a bit of extra mana when your pet crits is always a nice thing.

The actual Beast Mastery talent itself is going to wait until 76, which is a pet talent point level, and thus I will gain 5 points that level with which to splurge on goodies. I feel sort of backwards, as the vast majority of Hunters I’ve seen since the patch (well, post 60 hunters, obviously.) have had exotic pets, and those few without haven’t been Beast Masters.

However, I love my normal pets far too much to abandon them in favour of an exotic pet, which, to be totally honest, I find pretty ugly overall. Core Hounds are abominations, apart from the Kurken. Devilsaurs aren’t too bad, I must admit – and they have a white skin, which is bonus points for me /grin. Worms? Yeurgh. Silithids? Ugly bugs of doom! Chimeras? Horrible two headed reptile birds. I could go on and on. In fact, the only Exotic pet class I like the look of is the Spirit Beast – and that looks like a more magical version of Erethia!

I have to admit, I’m possibly a bit odd for a male hunter. Not to generalize or anything, but I feel that to a lot of us, we judge our pets based on attributes such as “cool” or “fierce” or “powerful”. An example of such a pet would be a Ravager. Powerful? Yes. Fierce? Most definately? Cool? It’s an alien, what’s not cool about that?

I judge my pets on… well, “beauty” is perhaps the best word to use. My two favourite pets – Erethia and Ella – are what I would describe as gorgeous. Ella in particular is (in the words of one of my non WoWing friends) “classy”. Despite the general ridiculousness of her attempts to stay aloft whilst stationary, she could be called “elegant”, with her creamy white feathers, and long, flowing tail. Erethia is a bit more of the “fierce”, but with a typical feline grace about her, and her sleek, spotted coat.

Akshiran… well, Akshiran is my “guy” pet, as matching the description above. He just looked to cool not to tame! He’s not exactly pretty though. Even so, he is the best looking warp stalker – the other types are some seriously nasty shades of grey and green – Do not want! To be fair to him, his ugliness compared to my other two pet’s can’t be helped – the Tenacity typing is meant to take damage, and in doing so, they are bound to be the biggest, ugliest creatures out there!

Of course, this is just me sort of generalizing. I’m sure plenty of other male hunters tame their pets based on beauty, and I’ve seen many a female hunter with some ugly ass pets. Another thing to take into consideration are the players who aim at all times in the game to be the best – the kind of player that prior to 3.0 you’d see with a Boar or a Ravager that they’d tamed simply for the awesomeness of Boar’s Charge or Gore. While I respect that some players get their enjoyment from this game by being the best, to me, aesthetics are of the greatest importance in my pet.

For leveling, all pets are perfectly viable thanks to the removal of caster stats, and I’d rather take a pet with a someone useless leveling family skill (Ella’s snatch does help against humanoids, but even then, not all humanoids carry – or use, in the case of casters!- weapons.), that looks good, than take something that’s gonna be AOE tanking or reducing armour. (Though, damn, I want a wasp – they are too cool.) In particular, I actually find gorilla’s to be somewhat disturbing. Gorilla’s are relatively close to humans compared to all the other pets, and I’m pretty sure they are actually capable of complex emotion – I recall a story about a Gorilla in a zoo, that had a baby that she rejected, and she then had another ba
by that died, and she mourned it’s passing, so to me, the idea of taming such a beast, even in a game seems quite… wrong.

Whoa, even randomer tangent than usual, there! Ahem, getting back on topic!

Even when I finally DO get Beast Mastery, it’s a talent to enhance my current pets. With those 4 points, I can unlock every one of the final tier skills for my pets, and all the more useful talents, greatly enhancing those pets. At 76 to 79, I won’t be taming any exotic pets – unless I do so for the novelty. Erethia, Ella and Akshiran are my permanent companions, and none of them will be gotten rid of.

However, I understand that beauty is not what end game content requires. End game content requires you to maximize your potential. If the DPS buff for exotics goes through, I will most definitely be taming a couple of exotics if I get involved in raiding. The aforemented Kurken or white Devilsaur would be my choice of Ferocity, and for Tenacity, well, it’d HAVE to be a Rhino, though he’d be for PvP. Ella would be for small scale PvP – WSG and AB. AV would see me busting out the Rhino, battering dozens of players about the place. I’m not well versed in Eye or Strand to have any idea which I’d use there, to be honest.

I’ve yet to test Ellaria out on any battlegrounds, but I got a Glyph of Frost Shock on the cheap, which will increase the duration to 10 seconds… Muwahaha. That should actually be enough to kite someone with Frost —> Flame —> Frost —> repeat. We’ll see how that actually plays out in BGs.

I’ve still yet to actually try Ilthiran and Numinator in actual, factual combat, as I’ve been so busy leveling Faulsey.

Yep, I went for it…

The Ambassador of the Alliance achievement.

The requirements of which are exalted with all 5 Alliance factions.

When the patch hit, I was exalted with 3 – Darnassus and Ironforge, and the Exodar quests in Outland had put me at exalted with them. All that remained was about 11k of SW Rep and about 13k of Gnome rep…

SW was easy. Did all the starting area quests, blah blah blah. Yay, exalted.

Gnomeregan…

I will not speak of the Gnomeregan grind.

It was painful.

VERY painful.

However, in the end, it all paid off, as I am now known as Ambassador Faulsey… AND the entire Alliance is my BITCH. 20% Discounts everywhere, thank you so VERY much! Oh, and I can now ride horses. Shame I don’t want one because they are BO-RING! (In my opinion )

Anyway, character level progress report…

My intention to stay at 60 didn’t last long, as after the patch, I was left with 1 exp to 61.. and when I accidentally discovered someplace, yep, DING! 61! Ah well.

Given the huge drop in EXP, I can’t do as many quests per level as I would have been able to do before. Therefore, I drew myself up a little list (using Wowhead) of which quests rewarded me with decent equipment upgrades. When I finish all the quests that upgrade equipment for a given level, I just do whatever takes my fancy.

For 61, I rounded up a few Honor Hold quests, and moved onto Zangarmarsh and Terrokar Forest until 64. Didn’t take much in the way of screenshots whilst leveling, as nothing too exciting happened…

Except when I returned to Hellfire to do the Blood Furnace with Kaelling (who had ran Ramps with me.)

I was a lot more confident of my abilities this time, and didn’t spend any time worrying about how much I’d suck, hehe. We got through most of the Furnace without any hitches, though the Paladin tank did die a couple of times. Unfortunately, none of the bosses dropped anything of use to me, though the Paladin got something shiny and new

Kazura has also discovered a love of instances – We ran Ramps twice the other night, and she was favoured by Omor the Unscarred, as the first run, he dropped her a very nice staff, and the second run netted her a nice neck piece.

She’s since done Blood Furnace a couple of times, and got herself a nice Kilt (good, scottish bit of clothing there!), and is sitting at 62. We’ve been doing a bit more together in Outland than I had expected post 60, though obviously I have pulled ahead of her significantly, due to being able to play more.

Also, at 63, I tamed myself a Warp Stalker, who I named Akshiran, after agonizing over the name for AGES. I dunno where the name came from really… It has a sort of Arabic feel to it, and the harsh “sh” sound in it fits his reptillian features… that, and he hisses a LOT. What a noisy pet he is! Aside from that little issue, he’s really cool!

I love Warp, it’s loads of fun to watch him suddenly appear behind a target and start biting their ass, eheh.

At 64, I moved onto Nagrand, which I REALLY like. Nagrand is my new Winterspring, though sort of inverted. While I thought Winterspring was chock full of amazing mobs, and looked quite nice itself, I feel Nagrand itself is beautiful, and has a few nice mobs – my favourite of which are the Talbuks, which are absolute beauties.

My current questing aims (apart from my equip upgrade quests) are the Kurenai quests in Nagrand, as I would really like a Talbuk mount.

A COBALT one.

GASP!

Not white?

I know!

The Cobalt Talbuks are stunning though, and I MUST have one! Heheh!

With all the questing I’ve been doing in Nagrand, I’ve just hit level 65, and have mixed feelings about my rate of leveling. I definately want level 70 soon – I want to fly! Also, I want to be 70 for Wrath, though I know 68 would do. On the other hand, if I just rush to 70, I feel like I’ll miss some fun content, and as such, I have been firmly avoiding the free, easy EXP from Hallow’s End.

As a sort of side note; Look at my new equipment in the above screenshots! I actually feel like a whole new character, as for level, upon level, upon level… upon level… I’ve looked almost exactly the same. Well, really, only my shoulders, cape, and head equipment, but given that my back is what I see ALL.THE.TIME., I just didn’t change enough. Illustration time!

47 is effectively the template for all after. Equipment to note are my spikey shoulders and my circlet, and (though difficult to see), red bracers. At 50, I had a new cape. Woo. By 57… I remained almost totally unchanged – only difference being the change in colour on my circlet. At 61, I was STILL the same.

62, however, brought an upgrade to the three key areas – a new helmet (my circlet had been abandoned at 58, but the “shower caps” I had afterwards were hidden for my own sanity, and the change wasn’t much noticed anyway), cape and shoulder piece. And after having looked almost totally the same for about 15 levels, it feels good to have some spiffy new gear.

The only problem with gear now is, having looked at all the rewards from standard quests (not group quests.) is that none of the gear from Blade’s Edge, Shadowmoon Valley, and Netherstorm
really appeals to me. Firstly, there is of course the Shammy gear. I understand that Shammies need mail too, but even on a quick trip through Blade’s Edge at 66, checking all the quest NPCs, out of the quests with immediate (not chain quests.) equip rewards, 3 of the 3 mail pieces were for shammies.

Secondly, a lot of the gear is somewhat inferior to gear from earlier outland areas. While I will happily trade some agility for intellect, given my talent build gives me AP from Intellect anyway, it seems I either have to take a complete hit to any intellect I DO have, or I have to drop stamina in favour of intellect. It’s kinda annoying.

I previously had a bit here about the new patch, but I’ve moved it into a new post, as it sort of went onto a big explanation on pet choices, hehe.

And here’s some reasons why, as they relate to my classes:

General:

Mounts and small pets no longer taking up any space = WIN!
Same deal for BG marks and the like.
Achievements are fun.
Stormwind Harbour looks really snazzy.

Hunter:

Steady shot at level 60 (formerly 62).
Aspect of the Viper at level 20 (formerly 65ish?)
Deterrence … is now 40, I think? (Ok, not that good, but it was formerly a survival talent, and it could come in handy in ZOMGIISGONNADIE! situations.)
Pet overhaul is just awesome.

Ella, my Bird of Prey (Formerly Owl family.) is gonna be a BITCH in PvP, with her Snatch ability disarming for 6 secs, and as such, I am speccing her with PvP in mind.

Erethia, who I mentioned has died a LOT recently, can now bring herself back to life once every 10 minutes… If that isn’t awesome, I don’t know what is.

Shaman:

Wind Shock : Cheap spell interrupt! At level 16!
Shocks in general: Shamanistic Focus now reduces cost of all shocks by 45% – Used to reduce next shock by 60% after a critical hit. So, saving a lot more mana overall now, though I’m no longer the crit-juggernaught!
Water Shield: At level 20 now… Though that makes it hard to pick which shield would be more useful in PVP.

My biggest problem in PVP was running out of Mana – Shocks were expensive! Now, I can see myself lasting a lot longer in fights without having to rest, or dying due to running out of mana to Shock people with.

Druid:

Faerie Fire; Feral : Now a learnable skill at like level 18… awesome!
Revive: Shiny, cooldown-less, reagent-less resurrect!
Nature’s Grasp: Trainable as opposed to talent… and usable in Feral forms!
Survival Instincts (11 point talent in Feral) : 30% extra HP for 20 secs.

Try killing me now, when I can put up natures grasp for free to entangle one enemy, use survival instincts for an HP boost, and dash away from combat!

Paladin:

Seals: Now last 2 minutes… No more rushing to next enemy so I can judge a seal on it!
New Judgements: Judgement of Light, giving a chance to restore HP, and of Wisdom, for Mana… Could come in handy.
Protection Tree could actually be of use in PVP… Though I will probably still spec ret for that.

On downside on Paladin, however, is that Seal of the Crusader is GONE… And it was one of my most used abilities.

Ah well, I’m sure I’ll live.

I’ve yet to try the barbers (on orders from Kazura NOT to go without her ON PAIN OF DEATH ), but for me so far, this patch has been all win.

To Dragonblight’s trade channel, I say this…

Less QQ more pewpew, kthx.

Ahhh, finally, Outland! It took us long enough, but finally, me and Kazura reached level 58, and were able to go through the Dark Portal to Outland.

Group photo (Yuanjia had to be there to see his little protegee though the portal, hehe )

Going through the portal, we were greeted with the sight of a lovely big demon, and his hordes of underlings, constantly assaulting the stalwart defenders on the Stairs of Destiny.

Cool!

Ehehe.

From there, there was the usual flight to Honor Hold, and the introductory, wander around town getting introduced type thing, and then, the proper quests… Quests which granted some insane gear, compared to the woefully inadquate gear I had. Attack Power and Stamina have since been greatly increased with the aid of various shiny bits of gear, and Agility and Crit Rating have seen some nice boosts too! In addition, Kazura now looks the part of a Resto druid; Tasty spellpower gear, with a very druidic look to it, and a nice crystal staff.

After we’d done a few of the quests and upgraded some of our gear, the next stop was a trip to Shattrath, through the ghostly Terrokar Forest.

Even with our very quick dash through the zone to get to the city, I’ve decided I really like the forest… With the mist, it has a very otherwordly feel to it, and the music is very soothing – I really look forward to questing here. Shattrath itself wasn’t particularly exciting, though it didn’t take long for me to have my first lag induced Aldor Lift Death. One thing that did interest me was the little show with the Tauren Chieftains in the tavern, which was a laugh, and something a little different.

Level 59 didn’t take long at all to achieve, with the wealth of new quests and their rewards giving me plenty of EXP quickly. 59, as I’m sure it always is, was a rather uneventful level, so I pressed on with my 172000 (give or take a few thousand?) EXP to level 60, dinged, was rather chuffed with myself, and then had to pick my jaw up from the floor when I saw my EXP TNL was 494000. That’s more than 300k more exp (durr )… Ouch!

Fortunately/unfortunately, the next patch is reducing that by 30%, supposedly, so leveling will be much faster… While that means less time farting about with grinding, it also makes me worry I might miss out on a lot of quests; I really like doing a lot of the outlands quests, simply because they always take me someplace new and exciting… and usually deadly.

Anyway, we all know what level 60 means… Epic Mount!

Mmm, lovely Swift Frostsaber-y goodness! It feels so much faster zipping about on this new mount, even if she isn’t as nice as my old Striped Frostsaber. Given the price of Epic Mounts, I decided to pass on buying an Elekk from the Exodar, as I find them ugly, and I wasn’t paying 85g for one. No way. (Still not exalted with Exodar… hehe.) I might, eventually, purchase the Black PVP Elekk, just to sort of go, well, yes, I am a Draenei, I DO have an Elekk, now leave me alone to ride my tigers!

On the topic of mounts, one thing I still have “squee! ” moments about are the flying mounts in Outland… damn, are they cool! Every time someone swoops past me (I saw someone with the Phoenix mount in Shat! ) on one, I think, whoa, how cool… I want one!

I know this might be shocking, but level 60 also brought my first proper instance. Yup. Level SIXTY. I know, it’s terrible. Whilst leveling, I avoided any quests that took me to instances, because:
A. I am quite anti-social, and don’t like trying to put together groups.
B. I don’t like spending time in dungeons when I can just get quests elsewhere and level faster anyway!

However, the rewards from a quest leading into the Hellfire Ramparts were just too good to pass up, so when I was given an opportunity to join a group, I snapped it up.

Needless to say, I was a bit apprehensive that I might be a “Huntard” – You know, the (apparently) useless majority of hunters, who have no idea about anything beyond solo grinding. However, I think I managed to do fairly well for myself. I only pulled aggro a couple of times, Erethia was kept on a very tight leash – Always passive, told to stay when necessary, and whilst moving, constantly on prowl, and (though we lacked a consistent marking system) I was able to contribute to CC with my freezing traps. Also, when we very nearly wiped I was sort of quasi able to kite a mob using frost traps and concussive shot.

The party consisted of myself, a Shaman, a Warlock, a Rogue and a Warrior (I think fury spec, but tanking admirably). I didn’t get a look at the specs, as I was too busy going “omg, omg, what if I’m really bad, what if I make a bad impression, what if we fail terribly :s ” to remember to do such things, haha. For the most part, the instance went quite well, though we had two little hitches – 3 of us dying towards the beginning, and then almost an entire wipe (yay Feign Death ; later, when we managed to pull an entire platform of enemies.

The first boss, Watchkeeper Gargolmar, dropped some very nice mail legs for me, with tasty bonuses to Stamina, Agility, Intellect and Attack Power, that were a sorely needed upgrade to the level 40 mail legs I had.

The second boss was pretty easy – He spawned a few non-elite Felhounds, which were quickly dealt with by myself or the warlock, and went down pretty easily himself, unfortunately with no drops of use to any of us.

The third (and fourth?) boss(es?) were the most difficult, and the coolest by far. A powerful Fel Orc, on the back of a huge Nether Drake, was
the first opponent, who fought us on foot as his mount circled us. This part of the battle was fairly easy, but when we got his health down low, his mount, Nazan, suddenly landed on the platform to join the party.

This bit of the battle was a lot more hectic, after we downed the orc, the tank had to keep the dragon facing away from us, so that it didn’t turn into “one big BBQ”, and while we did get a bit roasted, we were able to keep him under control, and down him, netting a nice little ring for the Shammy, and the final item for the quest that sent most of us there, which rewarded me with a pair of very nice mail gloves, that FINALLY replaced the -LEATHER!- Marauder’s Handwraps that had been with me for well over 20 levels. Eugh, I feel like such a crap player, but most of the gear I had was serving me well, so I didn’t see any cause to pay for upgrades (Except my bow of course… speaking of which, I’ve not found an upgrade, anywhere – quests, drop, AH- to upgrade from my lackluster level 50 bow…).

Overall, my first proper instance experience was loads of fun. It was my (very late) introduction to instance mechanics, got me some nice gear, and, most importantly, introduced me to some really cool other players. As I’ve said, I’m terribly anti-social on WoW, so my only friends before then had been people I knew IRL and Wraigth.

Today (again, different day from post day, yay drafts.) was just hilarious. I spent most of the day grinding my way slowly through 60, doing all the fun Outland quests, leveling my professions, and my pets! Me and Erethia died Soooo many times – I think it’s safe to say that in levels 57-60, Erethia has died twice as much as she did from level 10-56! Thats a LOT of death, haha!

Given the difference in playtime, me and Kazura have (unfortunately) stopped duoing. It was fun while it lasted, but I was itching the whole time to go faster (not when we were actually playing – we rocketed through levels when we were online), as Kazura’s commitments to work and college obviously mean she doesn’t have a lot of playtime, whereas I, on a long, boring gap year, with only work to fill my time, have a lot of spare time on my hands to play games. Believe me, if I had ANYTHING else to do during the day, I would do it before WoW. Anything! But most of my friends are at college or uni, so, there is little to do, but play lots of WoW.

Anyway, I did help Kazura get to 60 (most of the time was spent outside a party with her though – else I’d have hit 61, and I DO want to do some AV with Kaz before I start going ZOOOOM! through the levels.), for her Epic mount, which, like me, was NOT her native mount… No, today, Kazura spent some time grinding her way to Exalted with Stormwind, to unlock the option of horse mounts! While she was a bit short on gold, a little loan (and I do mean little, maybe 50g max, total.) from me and Wraigth meant she was soon galloping about on a snazzy Swift Brown Horse. I, myself, had been busy grinding rep as well… This time for Ironforge, as I was “only” 15k from Exalted.

I had quite a hard time actually leveling it, as in my push to get exalted with darny before 40, I’d done all of the Wetlands and Loch Modan quests- and STILL found it hard to get exalted… I just dunno how that works. I eventually had to go to Westfall, Darkshire and Redridge to get the rep I needed, but finally, I was exalted with IF… And here are the fruits of our labour!

Ahhh! I must admit though, the epic rams aren’t quite as nice as the standard rams, though they do still look quite spiffy. Of course, my mount is white. I have a thing for white animals… My first mount, was the striped frost sabre. My main pet, Erethia… a snow leopard. My secondary pet, which I fell in love with, Ella… is a snowy owl. My next planned pet? A white warp stalker. My Epic mounts? White. My planned first flying mount? Snowy Gryphon.

I don’t really know why, but I just find the white mounts and pets to be the most aesthetically appealing, so I always end up taking them. One thing I don’t get though is the epic mounts… Why does green go with white? I’m not up on my fashion and matching colours, so I dunno wtf is up with that… I just don’t like green! Bleh! Haha.

With our super speedy epic mounts to hand, me, Kazura, Yuanjia and Wraigth had some fun tonight… Racing!

All speed boosting items were removed, and we lined up outside Honor Hold… The first race was a simple race to where the road meets the Path of Glory and back – Which Yuanjia won, blargh! The second race was much more fun… we decided, totally on a whim, to race to the Stairs of Destiny.

By mount, of course.

A deadly idea, if ever we did propose one, but SO much fun. Yuanjia cheated briefly, tempting his stormsaber with a carrot, but we broke through two lines of elite demons without a scratch.

However, a third set proved to be our downfall… Kazura took aggro, and didn’t last even a second. I soon followed the exact same fate, followed a bit later by Yuanjia… Wraigth, wonder druid that he is, managed to get past those demons, aggro the Pit Commander, take only two hits from him, and survive up to the steps, clearly winning the race, whilst me, Kaz and Yuan were busy rolling on the floor, laughing.

Our return attempt by mount was very slightly less disastrous… While Wraight and Kazura ran straight at the Pit Commander, me and Yuanjia nipped round the sides, and up the road, dodging demons, surviving to make it to Honor Hold, whilst Kazura and Wraigth were splattered beyond recognition. Muwahah!

Once we were all back at honor hold, and having run out of Duel scenarios, we decided to make some hordies… Some Tauren, to be precise.

Ilthiran: Me, Druid (Hm
m, familiar? I had to be druid though, as they are all main druid, so thats just no fun for them ).
Kazura: Soupershammy, Shaman. (No rly?!?)
Yuanjia: Enceladus, Hunter
Wraigth: Bullshnit, Warrior.

Four Tauren… tearing up Red Cloud Mesa, mehehe. Enemies dropped within seconds, and our first few quests only took so long as we had four of them to feed, heh.

We took them to level 4 for now, as it’s mostly just a novelty thing we did to pass some time, but it was a good wee half hour spent doing crazy stuff XD Me and Kazura just could not stop laughing at one of her characters jokes… “I once laughed so hard I milked all over the floor.”, which, given how late it was, had me in tears. I’m not hard to make laugh when tired.

Yes, yes, long post, but too much happens in such short times for me to churn out posts, hehe!

One final note I leave you with… be careful at the edge of the Warp Fields, or you may find yourself on a ledge you cannot get off of, with your hearthstone on cooldown, and a VERY thin spit of land between two sides… and in a desperate attempt to escape, your Frostsaber makes one wrong step and…

Starting with the dangerous depths…

After scanning the lists of loot for instances up to level 29, the only thing I could see that would be a decent enough improvement were the Naga Battle Gloves, dropped by Lady Sarevess in Blackfathom Deeps.

In a reversal of the norm, Kiaara kindly agreed to help me get a pair from her, and after fighting hordes of Murlocs, Naga and those stupid lobster things whose name I can’t remember in the short distance to her room, I was lucky enough to get myself some shiny gloves first try.

Then, in a bid to get some shards for enchanting, we wandered down to the deadmines, Kiaara switching over to Kasouken, her level 23 mage, in the hopes of getting some shinies to use for her. However, after being nearly destroyed by the second (level 20) boss, we decided to give up, as it was unlikely we’d beat the next ones.

In the actual battlefields, my most recent BGs have mostly been successes… I think by now, my win/lose ratio in WSG is around 2:1, which means I now have my WSG trinket (yey +4 stamina, and I guess the penetration will help a bit against anyone who has been Marked ). I’ve only done one AB, and it was insane… I entered the battle after it had been underway for a short while to see…

Which caused me to ask if AB had broken, hehe. I’m assuming we’d had 5 bases at some point, hence the MASSIVE point lead.

I’ve been on a win streak with AB’s recently… For example, tonight (tonight being later than the post date, yay drafts.) I won 4 AB’s in a row – the first two ABs were pretty standard, tug of war, horde in lead, us in lead sort of thing. The last two, the horde fielded the worst teams in the history of ever. Despite the first 5-10 minutes of both matches having them at a 4-5 person advantage over the Alliance, we went on to win both matches.

The first match they got about 500 point lead, then when some reinforcements arrived, we managed to make a push back and win by about 90 points. The second match we pulled ahead pretty early, despite the lack of manpower, and after about 1000 points in, the LM, which I was defending, saw a whole one paladin attack it, so I wasn’t exactly busy. It was actually kind of fun, I stood at the very edge of the ridge, using Far Sight to observe battles going on at the other bases… I felt like some kind of eccentric general, what with my engineering goggles on.

Ah, of course, I picked up Engineering on Ellaria, and it didn’t take long to get to 175. I now have a HUGE supply of Iron Grenades, a few emergency Explosive Sheep, and some old Big Bronze Bombs, which I use if theres a big group of enemies. I am, of course, finding it difficult to hit targets with these, so generally, I centre the target on myself to get anyone meleeing me, which gives me a 3 second respite to drop an earthbind totem, frost shock, and run to somewhere I can heal

I’m beginning to get better at Ellaria, so much so that provided that they enemy doesn’t get the jump on me, I can usually take anything down in a one on one duel, if we both start from full. After easily downing an enemy warrior, I just had to say “Silly Warrior! Shammys are for Rogues!”, since the only class that is guaranteed to get the drop on my almost every time is Rogue.

I have no excuse for this, it just made me lol. Lucky kills, ja?

Me and Kazura have (sort of…) made our way through Felwood (some Winterspring quests sent us down there again), after finishing a number of quests in Jaednar, such as one with this crazy Night Elf lady.

A rather fun quest that Kazura managed to fail (cause she missed some loot, ran back, and BAM, fail, haha ) was escorting a ghostly Ancient through the Irontree Woods, the highlight of which was the Ancient Battle, where Arei took on an Ancient Mob.

The final quest we rounded off in Felwood returned us to Un’Goro, as it was part of the Linken questline, and we were sent to destroy the big, scary fire elemental in the middle of the crater. The battle wasn’t TOO hard, despite his being a level 56 elite, but I totally forgot to heal Erethia for the last half of the battle, so the add that we got afterwards kind of killed her in one hit… Oops.

After that mess of questing, we reached level 55, and set off for Winterspring.

I hate Winterspring.

And I hate whoever was in charge of creature design for the place.

Why?

Because the creatures in Winterspring are almost universally awesome. Until Winterspring, I hadn’t seen anything I felt matched the beauty of Erethia.

On leaving Everlook to start our first quest, I came across a pure white Winterspring Owl, which made me rush back to Everlook, stable Erethia, and run back out to tame her.

I’m now torn between Erethia, my loyal pet of 45 levels, and my newly captured Owl, who is so totally awesome it’s unreal. I named her Ella, as a lack of imagination struck me, but also as a joke, because Wraigth (who first met me on Ellaria) constantly calls me Ella, so I’m sure he’ll appreciate the fact I’ve named my pet that!

As it stands,
Erethia is barely managing to keep up with me in level, so trying to level TWO pets would just be insane. By the time we’d hit 56, Ellaria still had 1/6th of her EXP to go till 55!

However, come the 60′s, leveling is meant to slow right down, so I should have plenty of time to level two pets… If I can, I’ll alternate between the two, for example, if I start a level with Erethia, when she levels to my level, I’ll swap her for Ella, and keep her until she catches up with my NEXT level, when I’ll swap back to Erethia.

Fortunately, after doing some research on Petopia, I’ve found that Ella will be a Cunning pet when they institute the pet changes, which means I can have a change of pace from Erethia’s Ferocity. In addition, I have long planned on taming a Warp Stalker as soon as possible, which rounds out the trio as a Tenacity pet. So come 65ish, I’m going to have three (White, of course… I’ve decided that where possible, all my pets will be white ) pets on the go, one for each tree.

Aside from the owls, other beauties in Winterspring include the cats there; the black and white striped Frostsabers and their snowy white bretheren, and the rare cat Rak’Shiri, who I had the fortune of running into, who was a stunning blue with black stripes… and he also dropped a nice upgrade to my head armour. Another interesting beast again is the Chimaera. While not particularly keen on the Chimaera look as a whole, as they go, the ones in Winterspring are very nice, and if I was to tame one (After obtaining Beast Mastery, naturally.), it’d certainly be one of them. And, while not tamable, there are also the Blue Dragons in the area, which I came across by chance whilst soloing Erethia’s last shred of EXP till 56. The whelps are, as all whelps are, quite cute, and the Drake, Spellmaw, which floats around is stunning… when he’s not eating your face whilst you loot it’s babies!

Anyway, random tangent about aesthetics aside, Winterspring has been good for the level we’ve been here so far, which was mostly spent decimating the Winterfall Furbolgs (and bringing ourselves to Neutral with Timbermaw Hold.)

The winterfall all have a chance at dropping an interesting potion which, in addition to boosting Attack power, also increases your size!

Pretty cool! Also, it’s just so wrong when a night elf female is bigger than a male draenei, haha!

One particular Winterfall Chain, started by a Dwarf Woman at the hotsprings, culminated in an awesome trinket reward – A +50 AP trinket for me, and a Spellpower boosting one for Kazura.

We also sort of wiped out the Wildkin in the area, too, only to be told they were created by Elune to guard sacred sites… Oops. Hehe.

To wrap up our quests for the night, we also flew out to the Eastern Plaguelands, to hand in some quests, which earned us level 57! And, with the way my talents have been going, 57 meant finally unlocking Bestial Wrath! Yes, I could have had it at 40, but the early marksmanship talents are pretty good, so I sprinkled Beastmastery with some MMS, too.

Now, our guild leader told us we should have been leveling in the Plaguelands, but having been out there, I can safely say, no way in hell. The Plaguelands are so incredibly depressing it’s unreal. I really like Winterspring – as you can probably tell. I will give the Plaguelands one thing though – They do have really cool ghostly mounts!

Yaarrr… Really long entry, but wanted to clear up everything else before going to Outland. As it stands, we’re at level 57, and tomorrow night, we should get level 58, and depending on time, either go to Outland that night, or the next. Preparing for Outland has been somewhat frustrating, as I’ve been trying to level Mining to 300… and Thorium veins are few and far between, so it is taking forever. Ah well, it’ll be worth it in the end.

Random opening note: I LOVE trade chat.

Tonight, there was a rogue called Chibbed (which is a Glasgwegian, if not Scots) term for “stabbed”, which is just a brilliant name for a rogue… And then there were the discussions about glasgow kisses and, of course, Buckie! Ah ha ha.

I felt right at home

Anyway, been a while since the last update, and I’ve been busy, busy, busy.

Ilthiran, who has been, and continues to be, heavily neglected, has reached level 31. Unfortunately, Tauren, like the Alliance’s big race, have crap mounts… Kodos. Blergh. However, I’m really not up to grinding Orgrimmar or Darkspear reputation, so it’ll have to do.

I’m actually finding solo druid to be quite easy now. Generally, I fight 2-3 enemies without changing form, after which I shift into caster and cast rewgrowth on myself, and return to cat form. By the time I’m back to the casting regrowth stage, my mana has totally regenerated, so there is practically no downtime. However, I’m terribly anti-social in WoW, so Ilthiran has no friends, thus I tend to neglect him favour of Ellaria and Faulsey, as I generally have friends on at all times when I’m as them.

Ellaria, after what seemed like an age of grinding, both solo and with Kiaara, has reached level 29!


My first few BG’s were utter failfests – I just wasn’t used to Shaman in PvP. Hunter was particularly easy, requiring only that I keep away from my enemies, and Druid meant being able to stealth up and get the drop on enemies. However, on Ellaria, I HAVE to get into close combat, in full view of my opponent – and going one on one with an enemy warrior or rogue usually spells my death in melee. I’m now beginning to get the hang of it – if faced with either of those classes, I tie them down as much as I can with earthbind/frost shock, until I’ve managed to deplete a good portion of their health, then engage them in dirty hand to hand.

I have done few enough BG’s so far that I actually know how many wins I’ve had… So far, it’s sitting at 8 Wins total, out of 19 matches… Which given I am Alliance, is not too bad! WSG has seen far more success, with a 6-5 win/loss ratio, whereas AB is a major failfest, with 2-6 win/loss. 2 of my WSG wins were totally ridiculous… The horde were putting out some VERY poor teams that day, as in those two matches, I captured all three flags. You’d think that after the first two times a Shaman loped unopposed into your base, and made off with your flag, you’d maybe leave one defender, but no. I have to say that I think 2 points in improved ghost wolf were my best investments in any talents, EVER!

I’m actually regretting not having Ellaria properly twinked out, so I may bug Kaz, with her uber 1337 druid stealthing skills, to sneak into some instances and get me some nice drops. I’ll put a bit of research into drops, and we’ll see how it goes.

On the Faulsey front, me and Kazura have suddenly started a huge drive to get ourselves to level 58.

Kaz respecced herself a little bit, to open up access to this…

I lol every time she goes into tree form, knowing full well she thinks it’s ugly. However, it has saved her hide a couple of times now, she we can’t really complain.

Our drive to level has meant that we have practically exhausted the quests in Felwood and Un’goro. We’ve absolutely slaughtered Satyr and Shadow Council fodder in Felwood, and significantly reduced the dinosaur population of Un’Goro. Our next step, when we should be 55, is likely to be Winterspring and/or Sillithus – I’m leaning towards Winterspring, because I’ve had more than enough of deserts by now, thank you so very much, what with Desolace and Tanaris.

I will sort of miss Un’Goro though, as it has provided quite a few laughs… I’m sure anyone who has leveled through Un’Goro would recognize the following screenshot!

Forunately, I lived to tell the tale, thanks to Frost Traps and my awesome cat… who died for me! Kazura wasn’t so lucky when she pulled aggro here though, and managed to die a few times.

At the moment, we are sitting at 54, relatively close EXP wise (Kaz has went from being a full level behind to being about 2 bars ahead of me, heh.), and if we continue leveling at the current rate, we should see outland early next week.

On downtime with nothing else to do, I’ve picked up Mining on Faulsey. I hadn’t picked it up before, due to tracking veins interfering with tracking mobs, but given for my first 200ish levels I’d mostly be in low level areas, I decided to pick it up, along with the gatherer addon (for use when I don’t want to have track minerals up), to give myself a bit more cash.

I wasn’t expecting to go from about 550g to 1K g just in the course of leveling it though. Firstly, Silver sells for an insane amount… the two stacks I collected whilst going through the Tin levels netted me 100g. Mithril, which I have mined a LOT of by now, also usually sells for 30g a stack of bars, which I find rather nice. And finally, in the course of wandering through lowbie areas, which involved climbing up mountains and delving into caves late at night, I found quite a few Rare mobs, a couple of which dropped some rather expensive drops, providing even more of a boost. As it stands, I am more than set for my Epic mount in 6 levels time!

A
nd to finish off on a totally odd topic… NAKED DUELLING!

I lol’d at the crowd we drew.