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.