division of labour.

Remember Darkmavis? She was my Death Knight-in-waiting while all the tasty new Hunter and Druid things were chomped on after the release of Lich King. Well, after getting through the start area quests and as far as Shattrath City, she had to be deleted. Wha’? Why?!

Firstly, I was largely confused about her abilities for the first three levels, wasn’t really sure what was going on, specced for Frost without really knowing why and the final quests before going to Stormwind had me going “Huh? What exactly just happened there?”. (a very big thanks to the bloody dwarf that kept spamming party invites and duels while I was trying to listen to the damn dialogue, for Elune’s sake go and stick your head in a pig!)

Secondly, the death knight phone book has more names beginning with “Dark” than any Scottish directory’s chunky “Mc” section, and then it only moves onto an even thicker ream of pages for names beginning with “Death”. I tend to get put off by that kind of hideously populist thinking, so it had to change.

Instead, now there’s Grrlpants. She used to be a shaman, you know. It’s a tragic tale.

So, together with Bluesonja The Other Hunter, there’s four profession slots that need filling with a yearning to learn. The shamanic Girlpants did Mining and Jewelcrafting, and continues to do that as a death knight.

Bluesonja was pencilled in for Engineering from the start but there ain’t no way I’m doing Mining twice, as gathering professions go it’s such a pain in the bum I’m begrudgingly doing it again for (I think) the third time only because I need to. Hey, how about Enchanting? That should be a good one to level from square one, disenchanting quest rewards and replaced items as she travels through the world, shouldn’t it? Obviously there’s the slight problem of being perpetually penniless but, really, who needs wealth when you have rich sisters? ;)

So it’s all going very well. Grrlpants is still at 58 but travelling the world mining to feed two professions (up to mithril at the moment) while Sonja got up to level five to able to at least train professions, then quickly to level ten since a chunk of copper bars got her through the first 75 points of Engineering in about five minutes, and then (omg) to twenty to advance her studies further.

A big “WOOT!” to today’s Patch 3.0.8 discovery, no more need to keep tapping at an ore node until it fades, now you get the full yield in the first go! Yay! That actually makes mining a little more bearable.

So now, throughout all my characters, the only profession that isn’t being touched is Blacksmithing. Meh, I don’t need to blacksmith. Maybe one day.

dusted.

Alysha’s enchanting slouches onwards at level 236, and it turns out that soloing instances is tragically disappointing for collecting green items to turn to dust. Deadmines was a great start, but the ones I’ve tried after that, Gnomeregan, Scarlet Monastery and Zul’Farrak, have failed to yield any more than maybe three greens each, I got more than that on my Murloc Genocide mission around Southshore to level Girlpants’ and Winters’ cooking! In fact the only good things to come from instances are the few BoE blues for the shards from the bosses and lots of cloth, praise Elune for tailoring!

So according to Wowhead, White Bandit Masks and Black Mageweave Headbands have impressive enough cloth:dust ratios for me to get the profession closer to 300. Next stop: A kill frenzy around Feralas before a return to Stormwind, bags bulging with Mageweave, and we’ll get cracking. Having seen the prices for levelling mats on the auction house, I’ve been refreshingly thrifty with my progress so far. Always good news. :D

it’s not addiction, it’s commitment.

How far is too far? I mean, when you find yourself using a buff duration as a hair dye timer, is that too far? But I was thinking about proposals for new colours of hair dye: Uncommon Green, Rare Blue, Epic Purple. I think it’s a good idea, I might send it in… To… Some people that do hair dyes. Legendary Orange! :D

After what must be months of thinking “Hmmm, should I?”, I finally coaxed Alysha into forgetting everything she knows about skinning (give her a skinning knife and she doesn’t even know how to hold it properly now, she just drops it. Bless) and take up enchanting. Of course, this wasn’t until I’d decided to give the job of enchanting to li’l level 27 Girlpants and realised how stupid it was to be using Alysha to run low level dungeons for stuff to turn into dust. The bind-on-pickup items were unnecessarily eschewed.

So Girlpants took up the mining again to support her Jewelcrafting (a profession that I’m really enjoying, truth be told, certainly enough to counterbalance the pain that is Mining), bought a load of raw copper and tin ore from the Auction House to get her old skill level back up and then went on to make the materials’ money back from home-made rings and necklaces. Jewelcrafting FTW. Meanwhile, Alysha is at Enchanting 124 and becoming something of a regular face around Deadmines. Seriously, Mr. Smite now yells “We’re under attack! Ge… Oh. It’s you. Should we just lie down then?”. Time to step it up to Gnomeregan, I think.

Caitlin, not having much fun with Subtlety, respecced to Combat and is becoming quite enjoyable again. The regular yardstick of how much health at fight start compared to health at fight finish is nothing to be sniffed at, even being able to do the Chasing A-Me escort quest which I’d pretty much given up on the idea of. Bake me a delicious pie of Blade Flurry and Adrenaline Rush!

Finally, when Anj got the Transmute: Primal Earth to Water recipe from the cute Sporeggar people, it pretty much put an end to looking out for Primal Might requests in the trade channel. Now that she’s discovered how to turn super-cheap Earth into Primal Life as well, anyone wanting anything doing for them can just forget it. Primal Earth can be bought for 2g 50s, Life and Water goes for around 25-30g, I feel pretty cheeky asking for anything more than 10g as tip for a transmute, do the math(s). I have alts that need putting through college! Unless a friend asks, my cooldown is busy, blame Transmutes Mastery if anything. At least that’s started paying for itself. :D

the haps.

I

I’ve been showing Caitlin some loving attention again, taking her up to level 53 (/gasp) and am still a very rubbish rogue. I’ve looked into my solo fighting style, removing my dependence on Slice’n’Dice in favour of more instant damage-dealing abilities even though I’m still cutting it fine if I have to deal with more than one mob. I spent about 150g on an epic dagger that has a chance on hit to send a shadow bolt to the target which, while the proc-rate is impressive, isn’t super great but still a hell of a lot better than what I had. She’s an alt so I’m not sure if I can be bothered doing unboosted instances (not as melee, I’d rather do them as Girlpants in a healer role because I want to give that a go) and yet I’m still wearing a lot of early-40s gear. What’s more, the auction house is being no help at all!

Weird thing is, questing around Un’Goro Crater I can remember levelling Anj there back in the day and constantly being on Gank Lookout but now it’s player-desolate… Makes me wonder exactly what the percentage of level 70 players is on Talnivarr.

II

Even outside a guild, GroupCalendar has its uses for crafting cooldowns. Buckling down and getting to work on the Shadowcloth creation, Alysha now has a fancy 28-slot soul bag! It puts me in mind of the warlock we picked up this one time for Karazhan who was calling everyone a noob and yet still turned up for as raid with no Soul Shards at all. That’s just unprofessional.

III

There’s been other alt-work going on as well, including Girlpants (the level 24 shaman) and inviting people to her guild <Fight Like A Girl>. Boys and girls are welcome to join but the rule is you have to be a female character and people are warned that there’s a good chance they will be referred to as “she”. Boys are instructed to embrace and hug their feminine side, because she’s always there to help and, oh, by the way, feminism ftw. Caitlin and Alysha have moved there to keep the presence up, I’m all about the concept guilds.

Okay, so the running of a raiding guild failed miserably, this one is just for levelling! Ain’t much to organise there except get a bunch of people together and we all help each other out when we can. Piss-up + Brewery springs to mind. Okay, I’ll see how it goes.

IV

Top props to Kestrel’s Aerie for featuring my blog! Love and hugs are sent and, as a free extra, the cotton content of your sock drawer has been blessed remotely. Mwah!

(photograph by ygurvitz and shared under a Creative Commons license)

woo!

Everything you need to prove that I have now completed half the game:

Yes, the wars are ongoing but for now, with the last fish needed to get the skill point being yanked from the water just seconds after the lure ran out (I cast the line while the lure was active, it still counts!), at least the crafts are done.

Okay, look, I neglected to crop put the riding skill. You didn’t see that. Nothing is there. Nothing.

of stones and mastery.

It’s been quite a recent discovery for me, this Alchemist’s Stone. A pretty happy one too, having been quite jealous of a leatherworking friend’s access to fancy drums, it was looking like alchemy not only had crafted results that often sell for less than the ingredients required to make them, but also had nothing special as a reward for students of the discipline. A 375-maxed skill level or not, I was seriously toying with the idea of throwing in the towel. Okay, semi-seriously, that kind of “should I?” without actually going ahead and wasting all that work. I still enjoy turning up to instancs with free potions for other members when I can (my cooking skill also fulfils this) so, money aside, I like the kindness element.

So anyway, a chance visit to a reputation vendor revealed it to me and, straight away, I knew had had to reserve my cooldowns from that day forth until it was created and placed safely in one of my trinket slots. The Fel Lotus I already have in the bank, obviously the Philosopher’s Stone stays about my person, leaving just an Earthstorm Diamond, Skyfire Diamond and five Primal Mights to get and, weee! A tastylicious +15 to all stats even before a druid comes anywhere near me! Snoopy dance!

My bank character has been a source of bag space for any and all green gems that I come across, so the Earthstorm Diamond was transmuted pretty much straight away. Then I thought, hey, I’m planning on taking up the transmutes mastery anyway, wouldn’t it be wiser to buy the extra Primal Mights I need to complete that quest and surely, surely, it will be a shorter road between me and the me that has this epic trinket? Yes, I did just call you Shirley.

So that’s what I did. And, so far, one Skyfire Diamond and two Primal Mights have failed to yield anything more than the expected results. I’m not happy. A guild member who chose to specialise in potions got four mana potions from the mats of one on his first go, and they’re not subjected to a 23hour cooldown between goes.

It’s imbalanced is what it is! And not in the good way!

(picture is from Carla216 and is shared under a Creative Commons license)