Distracted

The holiday weekend is coming up and I have a lot on my mind that seems to be keeping me from playing WoW.

First, I am trying to get a PSX emulator to work so I can play some old games that I recently decided I want to play through again. Mostly the Final Fantasy games, but there are a few others. Those ROM downloads tend to take up a lot of bandwidth, and that means no WoW while they're going.

Surprisingly I don't have any last minute shopping to do. I pretty much finished it this past weekend, so I'm proud of myself for that since it almost never happens.

I also have some other drama going on that I'm not gonna get into, but it's taking up a lot of my thinking power trying to figure out how to go about fixing it, especially when I'm not even sure what the problem is that I'm trying to fix. It's pretty frustrating.

So this will probably be the last post until after the new year since I will be busy not being at work until then.

Happy Holidays everybody!

Cruising through Hellfire and the future

I wouldn't say it's necessarily much easier for my hunter to make it through zones, but it is definitely much faster. I made it to level 63 last night, and I probably still have enough quests left in Hellfire Peninsula to get me at least halfway to 64 before I move on.

Now I need to start planning my next move. Do I go on to Zangarmarsh? Do I just skip that and go to Terokkar?

I think my main goal is questing in Nagrand. With the Nesingwary quests having you kill so many skinnable mobs, it just seems like a no-brainer when I need to supply my druid with some leather to get his leatherworking up.

One bad thing about leveling up so fast is the lack of gold. With it taking fewer quests to get through the levels, that means fewer rewards, and fewer mobs I have to kill, which translates to much less cash than I was used to earning. Both my hunter and my shaman need their epic ground mount riding skill, and this doesn't help the funding. I want to get that for both of them before they head to Northrend.

Actually another problem I will be running soon is my rested XP bonus. I'm getting close to catching up, and then I will have to put my hunter on hold for a while to build it back up. At this point I'm thinking I might not want to switch over to another character that's just starting Outland. I do have a Horde death knight, and the questing would be different, but I think I want a change of scenery more than anything at this point.

So that comes down to choosing between my other Horde characters. My mage is the furthest along, which means he has the most potential for some new stuff that I haven't seen before.

Right now I see some pretty good potential for my Horde characters to make their way through the game in different ways. My mage should finish up Ashenvale, then maybe make his way through Thousand Needles, and hopefully be level 35 at that point, which is when I will send him to STV and the gankfest that I expect to be a part of there.

This means I will have skipped a few areas, in the 25-35 range, and leaves them open for any of my other Hordies to level through. The big ones are Desolace and Arathi Highlands, and there are a few quests to do in the Alterac Mountains that the mage may not need to utilize before moving on to STV.

Looking to the future, it also seems that with how much there is to do in that zone it will be another 10 levels before he leaves, which will mean even more zones in that level range he will be skipping. I'll have to wait and see how it all turns out, but ever since they accelerated leveling I've noticed that you really don't need to do much zone jumping to make it through the levels, you can usually just use one zone to make it through a particular level range.

Overall I think it will do very nicely in making sure I don't have to repeat too many of the same quests on my Horde characters like I used to with my Alliance characters. It will take a little planning on my part, but I don't see myself becoming bored with doing all the same quests but on different characters. They will overlap a little, but not nearly to the extent that we went through in the early days.

It will be interesting to see how this all turns out.

Invincible Pet

I got a chance to play for a while last night, and logged onto my hunter. Remember yesterday how I said I wasn't feeling it? Well forget that, it was great.

First I took out some fel orc blade throwers. Just tossed some fire in there and they burned to the ground. When I went to turn in the quest, they rewarded me with a brand new bow...or so I thought.

I made my way to Expedition Point to help out against the Legion, and they asked me to blow up some portals, and then blow up some more portals, and then they flew me up to a floating island to continue helping.

Did I mention my new bow? Yeah, so I found out the hard way that it actually isn't a bow, it's a crossbow, and I had never used one before so I was missing left and right for a while. See, you can usually tell the type of weapon just by looking at the picture, but this one looked like a bow in the picture, so I equipped it and went on my way.

Luckily for me, my core hound pet apparently can't die. I just sent him in to attack mobs and fired from a distance. Of course most of my shots weren't hitting for a while, so he pretty much took the mobs out by himself, and had no trouble at all.

Then I saw a rare spawn walking around the Legion camp I was attacking. Sure I couldn't hit with most of my shots, but let the pet tank him and keep mend pet up and I should be fine. Well, not only did I take out the rare spawn, but two adds that showed up halfway through the fight, and the pet had no problem staying alive. I also got an achievement for it, which was a great surprise.

I also saw an elite felguard come through one of the portals, and decided I'd see how the pet would hold up against him. Well Feign Death was still on cooldown, but I didn't see any other mobs around. I sent in the pet, just as a mob spawned on top of me, and with no FD to get out of it, I ran, leaving the pet to fend for himself.

Eventually I lost aggro on the mob and made my way back. The pet was still there, and while I had expected him to be dangerously low on health, he was only down to half. I threw a Mend Pet on him and we took out that elite with almost no trouble, it just took a while because I was still missing a lot.

Well after my bombing runs on some portals, they thought I did such a good job that I should go bomb the Abyssal Shelf, where a bunch of Legion forces are posted. I remember the first time I did that quest over a year ago and I had to take two flights to kill everything I was supposed to. This time I was done halfway through and just spent the rest of the time bombing even more stuff.

They decided they could use my help at Honor Point once I got back, so I was flown up there to see what I could do. I basically killed lots of stuff and then shut down their portal. Not too exciting, and then I made my way back to Honor Hold so I could set out on my next quests.

All those will have to wait til later though, because at that point it was time to call it a night, so I will have some more fel orc killing to do, then head over to the haunted garrison to retrieve a book, and I might even make my way into the mine under Honor Hold to clear out the bad guys.

Oh, the hunter also managed to hit level 61, and her crossbow skill is now at 300 so I shouldn't be missing so much anymore. At this pace she'll be at least level 63 before she even leaves Hellfire Peninsula.

I'm not sure how I feel about that, but I guess I can't complain about leveling faster. I'll just have to be picky about which zones she levels in. I know for sure that she'll be going to Nagrand though. I can't pass up all that leather, and being a hunter she kinda has to do the Nesingwary quests there, it's just an unwritten rule.

Busy busy

It's been pretty busy at work this week, and as such I haven't been able to write a post the last couple days. Well fear not, for I have returned, and I bring words for you to read while you act like you're being productive at work.

We left off with me being ready to log on to my hunter and show Hellfire Peninsula just what she can do. Well I haven't managed to get much done since then. I did log in once, and did the first few quests, but that's about all I had the time for.

See, over the past week I had built up a good amount of anime episodes of shows that come out weekly and that I try to watch as they come. This time I was unable to watch them due to time management difficulties, so I had about 4 hours worth of shows to catch up on. Well I decided I should catch up now rather than letting them pile up even more, so most of my free time that I usually use for WoW was spent watching those.

Besides that, I'm not sure where all my time is going, but somehow it's been tough to get any good quality WoW time in.

I think part of it has to do with my hunter. I usually love logging on with her and sending the pet in to tear up mobs while I shoot from a safe distance. It's usually a great change of pace to whatever character I was playing before.

This time though, I just wasn't feeling it. I'm not sure if it was the hunter I couldn't get motivated about or if I just wasn't in the mood, but after doing those first few quests in Hellfire I logged out and it's been two days since I logged in last.

Don't worry though, I'll probably try again tonight and see if I got that spark back. Somehow I think it was the combination of just being really tired and the kitty being very insistent that I pay attention to him instead of the game that really got to me, so assuming I'm in a better mood next time I play, it should go a lot better.

Hell Bent for Leather

I was out of town most of this weekend, but I did get some quality WoW time in last night. According to my goals set last post, I logged into my druid and pushed myself the rest of the way to level 74.

I went back to Borean Tundra and found the quests I had missed my first time there. I had also skipped the last D.E.H.T.A. because I didn't think I could handle an elite, but upon my success in Howling Fjord with elite mobs I decided to give it a try.

It took a couple tries, and that was mainly because the quest item that calls for help didn't work the first few times. In the end I finally got the mammoths to trample him, pretty much cutting his life in half, then I finished him off. Upon turning in the quest I got the achievement for finishing the all the D.E.H.T.A. quest chains in that zone. Not bad.

I also finished off a few quests for the gnomes which required an engineering item, and once that was done I got the Borean Tundra quest achievement. I also hit level 74, and it was time to move on to the next goal. Getting to Dalaran.

Well, all I had to do was talk to a guy in Valiance Keep and he teleported me there. Sort of anticlimactic. I also did the quest that takes you to the other teleporter and back, but other than that I just picked up the flight path and then ported to Stormwind.

Now it was time to get some leatherworking done, but before I could do that I had to get some leather. I tried the AH, but apparently nobody sells Rugged Leather anymore, because there was only one auction for 3 of them going for 4g, and I needed a lot more than 3 to make it to level 300.

At this point I wasn't really sure where to go to farm the leather. I know I needed to find mobs that are level 55-60 and skinnable, but where is the best place for that? At first I considered WPL, but it seems a little sparse for farming. Then I thought maybe Silithus, but bugs don't always drop leather and hides like most beasts do, and I really didn't need that other stuff.

I ended up deciding on Winterspring, and I'm very glad that I did. This place is great for farming leather. Right outside of Everlook is a yeti cave. I remember doing the quests here that end up getting you a mechanical yeti, and they are all level 55-58. Being level 74 I could two- or three-shot each one, and I was getting leather like crazy.

What I ended up doing was actually running through the cave a few times, since most players on the quest just kill the ones outside, and with about 25 yetis in there I was getting a lot of leather. Then when I made my way back out there was usually somebody out there doing some part of the quest chain, so I was scavenge their kills for leather as well. After 3 runs through the cave and some various skinning outside I had more than enough leather to get my leatherworking to 300.

I made enough Wicked Leather Headbands to get my skill to 302 before I ran out, so I actually got a little extra for my farming work. Then I made my way back to Stormwind to grab all the Knothide Leather I had stashed there, and from there to Outland where I found the master leatherworking trainer in Honor Hold and learned the ways of using that Outland leather.

In the end I had enough leather stockpiled to get my skill to 335 before I ran out. It's quite a relief to finally get my professions up to a level where I'm not so far behind my character's level. Sure I'm still stuck using mats that I should have been using 10 levels ago, but at least it isn't mats that I should have been using 20 levels ago.

My next move is to level my hunter through Outland. He's just starting out, but I expect him to go quickly, and since he is also a skinner I'm hoping he can supply my druid with the leather to get him up over the 375 leatherworking mark so he can use all the leather he's been collecting in Northrend. The extra Netherweave Cloth supply to my priest won't hurt her tailoring either.

So it's finally time to take the new white Core Hound out for a test drive, and now I get a chance to see just how much mayhem I can cause in Outland. I'm gonna need to think of a name for him soon though, any suggestions?

Druid break

If you haven't noticed yet, I like to plan out my time on WoW ahead of time. I set goals for myself, and also plan my next course of action once that goal is completed. Then I set new goals along those lines.

Right now I'll probably be switching gears from my druid to my hunter. I haven't played my hunter since she hit level 60, aside from getting her core hound pet, and I really want to see what she can do in Outland.

So the plan is I will get my druid to finish off Howling Fjord and Borean Tundra, and that will hopefully get me to level 74. Then I will go through the quest chain to get to Dalaran before heading back to train my skills and then farming some leather to get his leatherworking up to 300.

After that I will be letting him sit for a while. I know I usually stop playing a character when their rested XP bonus runs out, but at the pace I'm going it probably won't run out before I get to level 80. Not that I don't like Northrend, but I just need to switch it up for a while.

Why the hunter? Well, I haven't even gotten to try out her new pet yet, that's the main reason. I also have a lot of fun playing her and her ability to get through some very tough quests on her own, and while I just went through Outland on my priest, she ended up skipping a few zones, so there is still a lot of stuff to do that won't be repetitive.

Once I start in on my hunter and see how her progress through Outland goes I'll decide how far I want to go with her before switching over to another character. She tends to blow through quests very quickly, and with the new Outland leveling speed I'm not sure just how fast she'll go, but judging by how fast my priest was able to go I'm expecting to go pretty fast.

Well it's Friday, and that's about all I have for you today since I really don't feel like doing any thinking at this point. Have a great weekend!

What the...

Alright, this happened to me last week, but I didn't mention it until now. It's about being ganked by a death knight, and what confused me about the whole thing.

Now I've played through the DK starting area, and I know most of the skills you start out with. I haven't actually chosen a spec yet with mine, but I've done some research and I'm just torn between blood and unholy. On the one hand I would love to be able to control my ghoul, but blood seems much more solo friendly with all the skills that give you back health.

But we're getting off topic, this is about my druid getting ganked by a DK last week and the turn of events I can't explain.

First, I was surprised just after killing a mob, but that's how ganking usually goes, and he already had an unfair advantage. Now most of the time if I know I have no chance of winning I will just stand there, maybe give a /sigh or two and wait for him to kill me. This wasn't one of those times. I had most of my health and didn't feel like going down easily.

So I get grabbed and pulled to him, and immediately I shift to bear since I know my best chance is to outlast. I turned and hit him, multiple times. I got of some Lascerates, a couple Mangles, as well as the normal white damage. I saw that he had some of those blood worms out, so I added in some Swipes as well, but for some reason they weren't hitting them.

I'm not sure exactly what he was doing, but I was dying, and quickly. Then I glance at his health...and it's still almost full. But wait, I know I've done some damage, I saw the numbers come up, and it was a good amount of damage too. Why was his health so high?

He ended up killing me easily and, despite my various attacks on him, he still had all that health. It's like I couldn't even scratch him. I just can't figure it out. Just how much health do those blood worms give back? And why couldn't I hit them with my Swipe? I was just completely baffled, and I still am.

Can anybody tell me what was going on?

I confess I'm really no good at PvP, but I can usually at least put up a decent fight. This guy pretty much said, "You can fight back, but it won't do you any good." It was a little embarassing, and very frustrating.

Hopefully somebody can shed some light on this, but I guess I'll eventually find out when I get some more experience playing as a DK. This really pushes me to level him as blood, since I think that's what spec the guy was. If I could take down a feral bear druid in PvP without losing health then I should have no problem in any PvE content.

More enchanting

I don't know if I just did too much questing this past weekend or what, but suddenly I'm having trouble getting motivated to log on to my druid and finish up Howling Fjord. Instead I decided to do some more enchanting done on my priest last night.

When we left off I was sitting pretty at 300, and with all the mats I built up from disenchanting Outland stuff, I had a good amount to use on those enchants. Not nearly enough to get me to 375, but a good amount.

First up I needed to make a Runed Fel Iron Rod. I actually got a pretty decent price on the rod, and I ended up having to buy most of the rest of that mats as well. I ended up transferring over 100g from my druid to pay for it, but he's made so much money in Northrend that it's not a big deal.

So that got me to 301, and following the guide I found I enchanted up to 320 just using arcane dust. At that point I was almost able to disenchant those greenies I've been getting from my druid from Northrend, which require enchanting to be 325. I did decide to enchant my bracers with Major Intellect, which wasn't on the list, but it was an upgrade.

That didn't get me a level, but with the rest of my supply of Greater Planar Essences I was able to get my enchanting up to 331 before I ran out.

Now I need more materials. My once full enchanting bag that overflowed into one of my other bags is less than half full now, and it seems sort of weird to me now. I'm so used to having to clear out bag space because of all the enchanting mats I have taking up all the space, but now I look at those empty slots and it doesn't feel right.

For now I think I'll take a break on the enchanting for a while. I've already spent a lot of money to get it this far, and I figure since I have a few more characters to send through Outland still I should have plenty of chance to disenchant whatever they find and get the most of the mats I need myself.

I think my next goal is to finish up Howling Fjord on the druid, then go back to Borean Tundra and figure out what I missed there. I was considering just taking the ship back to train my skills after that, but since I hope to be level 74 by that point I think I'll make my way to Dalaran and portal back.

I say I need to be 74 because I plan on getting to Dalaran by going through the quests rather than just have a mage port me there. I think it will be more rewarding, and for my first time there I want to go the route that was created for us if we had to get there on our own without help from others.

Leveling up professions can be sort of relaxing, and I think the past couple days I was at just the point where I needed a little break from the constant questing, but now I'm ready to go back in and continue leveling through Northrend.

Finally over the hump

I didn't level my druid last night like I've been doing for the past week. Nope. After watching the football game (I'm a Panthers fan and actually had to pay attention to this one, so no WoW during it), I decided to go ahead and push my priest's enchanting skill to the 300 mark, no matter what it took.

Luckily I didn't have to spend all the money I had to do it, but I did have to spend a lot. Enchanting mats are expensive, especially the ones that everyone knows you need to level.

I made my way to Moonglade to buy a couple recipes that would make it easier to level. I was already at 290, so I only needed to go 10 levels, but I pretty much had none of the mats I needed to get there.

First up was making a Runed Arcanite Rod. Guess what you need for that? An Arcanite Rod, and those are made by blacksmiths, which I don't have any of, so it's off to the AH. Oh look there's a few on there, the cheapest one costs...75g. Well I'm getting to 300 tonight, so goodbye 75g, hello Arcanite Rod.

Next up is a Golden Pearl, and the only ones selling are a stack of 3 for 6g. I bought them and put the other two up for 6g, maybe I can get away with it. I also had to buy Greater Eternal Essences because for some reason they hate me and everything I disenchant gives me dust, doesn't seem to matter if it's a weapon or armor.

Then I needed lots of Illusion Dust, of which I had 8, so I only had to buy 2 more, sweet. And surprisingly enough I already had the Large Brilliant Shards I needed to complete the recipe.

So I made my new rod, and now I'm at 291 skill. Only 9 more to go. I take a look at my recipes and see that with the mats I have I can still enchant 3 bracers with Greater Stamina, and with no more recipes from this point on needing Dream Dust, why not see what I get out of it.

The recipe was green, so I was expecting maybe one to get me a level, but the first one got me a level. Well that was unexpected, but great! Then try the next one, and get another level! Awesome! My luck has probably run out by now, but I still have one more to try...and it bumps me up to level 294! Maybe that will make up for the 7 times I used it last time I was on and it gave me no levels. Either way, that's 3 less levels I have to buy mats for.

So I need more Illusion Dust, and I just used the last of it on that rod, so now it's back to the AH to buy the cheapest I can find in mass quantities. Surprisingly, it wasn't the stacks of 20 that were cheaper overall, it was the stacks of 5.

So after buying enough to finish the job, I had probably spent more than half the money my priest had on her when I started, but I did make it to 300. From there I made my way to Hellfire Peninsula to find the trainer, but when I got there I got interrupted by the cat and decided to call it quits.

In the end I did make it to 300 enchanting. Did I spend way more gold getting there that I needed to? Probably, but a lot of that was on the Arcanite Rod, which I can't get on my own. So while I could have waited for some random greens to disenchant from my hunter and shaman for the rest, I can always sell them to pay myself back later on too.

I'm so glad my druid only has one crafting profession, although he's almost level 74 and his leatherworking is still below 300, but farming for leather is easy, especially when what you need comes off mobs that are 20 levels below you. Hopefully all the Outland leather he has built up will get him a good chunk of the way to 375 as well.

I think I'll be sending him back to do that once he finishes up Howling Fjord. I need to get his new skills anyway, and with no class trainers in Northrend I guess I have to make my way back at some point.

These professions are so much work, but I find myself needing to do them anyway. One of the drawbacks of being a completionist.

Dumbed down?

I got an interesting comment from Anonymous on my post about druid versatility last week and it deserved some thinking on my part. Here it is:

So although I am happy that you are finding the druid powerful I think you also must look at the severe nerfing to quest level difficulty in the game as well.

This really got me thinking about my experience with questing through Outland and how it compares to what we got with Northrend. The first question we have to ask is, does it seem like Northrend is a little dumbed down compared to what we're used to?

Now being that I'm still level 73, almost 74, I may not be far enough in to make the most accurate assessment, but from what I've seen so far it does seem to be a bit easier than what I was used to. I can solo elites without much trouble, the regular mobs seem to die much faster, and I'm not even in the TBC raid gear that many of you started in.

But here's the thing. While the quests may be easier than we're used to, they also have a lot more variety, and there are more of them in each zone. They really set up many more quest hubs, and a lot of those quests are a lot more fun what anything we did before. I think they wanted to scale back on the grinding aspect of questing and focus more on accomplishing objectives that are both interesting and fun.

I'm finding I have to think a lot more about how to get quests done. It's no longer just finding the right mob and killing enough of them to complete the quest or collect a certain item (well it is, but the ratio is significantly lower).

Now we get to fire cannons at giants from a ghost ship, trick wolves into letting you help them by disguising yourself as one, and scare the crap out of bats so you can collect the guano. It's not as straight forward, and even when you figure out where to go you still have to figure out what exactly you have to do when you get there.

I'm finding it a lot more stimulating, and I really don't run into those quests that are just so boring and monotonous that I have to take a break afterwards just to let my brain come back online.

Back to the point. Are the quests easier? Well if you base this only on how easy the mobs are to kill then I would say yes, but I don't think that's the only factor they look at when they come up with this stuff.

I think we all know that Blizzard wants the fastest way to level to be questing, but also that all those end game junkies want to get to level 80 as fast as they can, so why not make quests that those people are able to blow through quickly so they can level up? They also know that players like me, who just like the experience of solo questing and exploring, are excited about fun quests that are stimulating and don't frustrate us.

I guess what I'm saying is, maybe the quests aren't as difficult as we're used to in the way that it was almost impossible to solo an elite of the same level, but those elites are still difficult and require us to use up our cooldowns to take down, they aren't a cakewalk that we can defeat without some amount of skill.

I think what they took out in mob strength they managed to make up for with quests that appeal to a wider variety of players and won't frustrate the hell out of those of us that choose to solo as much as we can. So while the quest difficulty may be nerfed, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing unless you really like to struggle your way through the levels.

Moved on too early?

I get the feeling like I'm missing something in Borean Tundra. I've pretty much traveled the whole map, but reading this post by Spicytuna I see a quest where you dress up as the opposing faction, and I never did anything like that. I'll have to look into it, but even if I did miss something it will have to wait until I go back there.

Right now I've moved on to Howling Fjord. It's a pretty cool looking zone, and once again the Alliance town is under attack at the gates.

Before heading there I finished up the last few quests I had in Borean Tundra. I like the debuff you get from killing mammoths where the D.E.H.T.A. can tell you killed one and attack you for it. I think a lot of little things like that is what makes WoW great, and I love finding stuff like that. I am glad your rep with them doesn't get lowered when you kill the animals though, becuase it was part of a quest and I didn't want to miss out on that XP.

In the end I still hadn't hit 62, but I was within one bar, which is close enough for me. I hopped on one of the sea turtles and made my way to the fjord, stopping off in Dragonblight for the flight path and to switch turtles on the way.

I'm almost glad they don't let you fly in Northrend until later on. Despite not having the money for the skill, I also wouldn't want to miss out on the exploring by just flying everywhere. A lot of what I enjoy about this game is just how massive it is, and flying around causes you to miss out on a lot of stuff.

I did manage to get another few levels of leatherworking on my druid, and even better was the fact that I could send the stuff I made back to my priest to disenchant and get some mats for herself. The mats she got out of it got her a few levels as well.

One of these days I'm going to farm some leather so my druid can get over that 300 hump, and maybe the mats my priest gets from that will get her over too. Is it sad that I have two characters over 70 with crafting professions under 300? I just need more money I think, that would solve everything.

Saving my own hide

As I continue to play my druid through Northrend I'm remembering how to deal with certain situations, which I had forgotten over time since I had been playing other characters. One of the best things is how versatile he is when faced with various situations where most classes would either die or have to run away.

I think the most helpful is their ability to outlast an elite mob. When you come upon those quests where you have to fight an elite mob, and of course the reward is always better than normal, it's such a drag to have to skip it because you just can't find any help. On a druid things are different, because there's a pretty good chance you can solo it.

There was an elite quest I came across last night that had me kill an elite tauren and his kodo mount. I was actually saving it for later but on my way to do something else I saw him and figured I should try it and see if it's doable. First try I killed him.

Bear form is awesome. All I have to do is Mangle every time it's up, Lacerate the rest of the time to keep it going, and if I get low on health I can pop Frenzied Regeneration or if that's on cooldown I Bash, heal myself, then go back to bear form. For the most part I rarely have to heal more than once, and I'm specced for cat DPS, not tanking.

For normal questing I'm in cat form. It helps me kill things fast, and there is almost no down time. I can usually take out 5 or 6 mobs in a row before having to heal, and since cat form uses no mana I always have some available for a quick heal before getting back to work.

Then I run into those unexpected moments. The times when you've got one mob on you, then another walks up and starts beating on you, and then just when you thought you were finished with them another mob somehow aggros on you and you're already below 25% health.

At that point I have to figure out if that health will last me the rest of the fight or if I need to do something else to save myself. And it doesn't even mean healing either, I can usually just switch to bear form and the extra health and armor does it's job. Last night I had to last through 4 additional mobs and was hovering at about 15% health the whole time. It was awesome when I finally killed them all and realized that I had survived.

I've been hearing lots of talk about big changes coming to druids, most specifically armor from things such as trinkets and rings not being counted in the armor increase from bear form. Well, I might be one of the few that this could actually help. Not really being a tank, I don't have anything other than leather that provides me with armor, and since the change is supposed to compensate for that loss of armor that others will suffer, it should be a benefit to those that don't have the kind of gear it affects.

In the time I played last night I made it to level 71 and am already more than halfway to 72. These zones have so many quests, and I'm just hopping from one quest hub to another and clearing them out. All the money I get from them isn't too bad either, and I think the new gear looks really cool. I'm thinking I'll have this zone done after my next session, and then it's off to Howling Fjord.

I also sent my priest some stuff I picked up from various mobs and she now has new pants and a new wand. I had planned on disenchanting the rest, but her enchanting isn't high enough. Looks like I better get that leveled up before she heads over to Northrend.

Helping out

The more I play in Northrend the more it grows on me. My druid is closing in on the level 71 mark and the way these quests are set up is great, an awesome change from the normal way we've been used to for so long.

First, despite there still being many kill X amount of Y or collect X amount of a certain item, there are many other variations on how to accomplish those quests. On top of that, there are a lot of brand new mechanics used, such as being able to ride wandering beasts, spearing a giant sea creature to drop it's health to a level you can deal with, and lots of others.

Another thing that threw me off at first, but that I now think is a great change is getting away from only having a few central quest hubs per zone and pretty much having to run back there every time you have quests to turn in. Now the quests givers are scattered around, but not in a way where you would miss them entirely if you didn't know where they were.

Much like when you first started out in your starting zone at level 1 and finished those quests, then were sent on your way to the next town via a quest, you are now sent to find various NPCs around the map after completing other quests. Not only that, but the quests have a certain succession to them that minimizes travel time. It was very well thought out.

I'm finding the experience very enjoyable so far, and while there are more players around than I'm typically used to seeing, I don't find it overly crowded. I also haven't been ganked much, and the few times I have didn't interfere too much. It seems Horde is more focused on leveling than picking a fight that could possibly cause them more trouble if that particular player has any friends around.

I'm not really sure how much more I have left to do in Borean Tundra, but after I'm done there I will be heading over to the Howling Fjord to check that out too. I'm excited to see what that place is like.

70 priest and feralization

After a lot of playing over the last couple weeks I finally managed to push my priest the rest of the way to 70. With only 4 bars left to go it didn't take too long, and after turning in those last few finished quests I dropped the rest and made my way back to Stormwind.

While there I learned my new spells and then decided to clear up some inventory space. How did I do this? Well, I put away all the enchanting mats that I will probably never use because they are for low level enchants.

In the process I decided to see about getting my enchanting to 300 so I could use all the mats that I got from disenchanting Outland stuff.This turned out to be harder than I thought it would be. Pretty much all the enchants I had that were orange at my level used Eternal Essences of some sort, and I had none and nothing to disenchant.

I ended up looking up enchanting leveling guides and found an enchant that would help: Enchant Bracer - Greater Stamina. It was yellow to me, but only used 5 Dream Dust, which I had in great excess. I ended up getting my enchanting to 286 before I ran out (which is 18 levels on just that one enchant). Now I'm stuck again, but I'll figure it out later.

On to my druid, who I finally sent over to Northrend. Of course I didn't do my homework and was confused when I went to Stormwind Harbor and found only one boat that would take me there when I thought there would be two. Then I read that to get to Howling Fjord you have to take the boat from Menethil.

I didn't really have a preference, so I just went to Borean Tundra anyway since I'll be going to Howling Fjord after I'm done there.

My first impressions of Northrend? It's very cool. Finally we have some buildings with new layouts. No more of these keeps and inns that all have the exact same floorplans. The variety of quests is nice too. Rewiring harvesters, throwing nets on flying mobs, unlatching a mine cart, uncovering cult members, and that's just to name a few.

Actually when I first got there I still hadn't redistributed my talent points since they were refunded last, and upon fighting my first mob I found I had no Mangle in the '2' position like it's supposed to be. I guess that's as good a time as any to research feral druid talent builds.

I found a pretty good one that seemed to go for all the cat talents, since I'll be leveling mostly as a cat, and after making a few tweaks to it I had my new talent build all set up. It's pretty crazy how fast mobs go down now. My gear is just quest greens and a few blues from Outland, but the damage I put out now is crazy.

After doing the first few quests I got some significant upgrades to my gear and now I'm having no problem taking down multiple mobs in succession with little to no downtime. My crit rate in cat form is over 30%, which is awesome, and I get to see crits pop up all the time now. I'm also noticing a lack of strength on most of the leather items and instead they include agility and +attack power. I assume these are the stats to look for now.

If the rest of Northrend is as interesting as the little that I've seen so far I think I'm going to have a lot of fun making my way through, although it won't go nearly as fast as most of you are probably going.

Big weekend

So how did my holiday weekend go, you might ask? Well even if you didn't ask I'm going to tell you anyway.

First off, Thanksgiving was awesome. Lots of good food and fun with the family. My cousins had their Wii there, and we all had a great time playing. Watching my parents try to figure out how to do the bowling, and then how much fun they had when they finally got the hang of it was awesome.

I also got a lot done in WoW. The gf had to work most of the weekend, and with most of my other friends either out of town or also working, I had a lot of time to myself, and a lot of it was spent trying to push my priest the rest of the way to 70.

I didn't quite make it, but I got close. I did manage to finish up Terokkar (except the group quests), and made my way to Nagrand, but only for the flight path. From there I flew up to Orebar Harborage and ran through the cave to Blade's Edge. Since I was there I decided to do those first quests at Sylvanaar before continuing on to Netherstorm.

I did pretty much all the quests in that first little area, but when it was time to move on to a new quest hub I skipped it and went straight to Netherstorm. By that time I was a few bars into level 68 and figured it would be a good time to make the move.

I'd never been there before, and didn't really know what to expect. It's a really strange zone, and I don't think I was really prepared for it. The thing that surprised me the most were the ecologies.

On my way to turn in some quests I pretty much expected to just see more of the same purple landscape, but then I ran into a glowing hemisphere with plants and wildlife inside, and I could pass right through into it with no trouble at all.

When I finally called it quits last night I had finished almost all the quests given at Area 52 and the southeastern island with the Kirin'Var village. I also managed to do a few of the quests at the first ecology and made my way up to the Stormspire and got the flight path. After all that I was about 4 bars away from level 70, and with lots of quests left to do I should get there in my next play session.

It's been a great experience playing to 70 on a second character, and being able to go through an entirely different zone to get there makes it even better. My usual motto is to stop playing a character immediately when the run out of rest XP bonus, but I'm so close I'm going to have to waive that restriction this time.

The only problem I'm having is that her enchanting skill isn't high enough to disenchant the green items she's getting. I ended up putting all of them in the bank so I can get some mats out of them when I get there.

The big problem is that I've outleveled my enchanting. All the items I get give me the mats for the next tier of enchanting recipes, so I'm going to have to figure out the easiest way to go about getting those mats. I'm hoping the items my hunter and shaman will be getting when they start up again will disenchant into the right mats, but I'm almost certain that's not the case, so I'll probably have to figure something else out.

Hopefully I can push my priest to 70 tonight, then it's time to head over to Northrend on my druid and see what all the fuss is about. I'm hoping the big rush has calmed down by now, and maybe I can quest without too much of a crowd, I'm not holding my breath though.

That was my weekend, how was yours?