The Other Side of Altitis

For many years now, I’ve had multiple toons that I played here and there, but Cataclysm was the first time I made a concerted effort to get several of them to max level. Gurdrid was the first, followed shortly by Shoryl, then by Kerridwen. Later on, I finished leveling Briege, and near the end of the expansion I got Oquae and Sveala up to 85. All of them set to head into Pandaria.

My primary goal was professions. I wanted to try and capitalize on early opportunities to make money with the things that would be in short supply, but that raiders would need. The problem, however, is that much of the stuff I was hoping to be able to make money on was locked behind not one, but generally two reputations. Jewelcrafting, alchemy and inscription were the rare exceptions, and so I was able to earn a bit with that – in fact alchemy and inscription are still paying off.

But with 4 90s  at this time, I find myself struggling with what I want to accomplish in game. Part of that is because one thing I really want is the Jeweled Onyx Panther. I can make it now, but it’s a lot of gold. What’s the best way to get gold? Well, on my server, it’s a little bit of Living Steel and as many Royal Satchels as I can manage to make.  And so, I am running 3 full 16-plot farms. That means that if I’m diligent toward that goal, I would do the following every day:

Oquae – Farm motes of harmony to speed production of Imperial Silk. Use cooldown. Make bags whenever possible.

Gurdrid – Farm ore – smelt all trillium for Sveala, send all ghost iron (and extra trillium of one color) to Shoryl

Breige – Farm cloth if needed, or ore if cloth is not needed. Do Thunder Island Dailies. Do the Troves of the Thunder King Scenario weekly.

Shoryl – Prospect ore from Gurdrid/Breige. Cut and vendor green gems, AH extra blue gems. 

Sveala – Use Living Steel Cooldown, AH Greater shoulder enchants and Living Steel.

It doesn’t really seem all that bad, does it? But, if I’ve only got 45 minutes to an hour to play in the evening, well, that’s about all I can do.

I’ve barely been able to pet battle, touch the Isle of Giants, or actually learn the LFR raids. I barely did the new content that came with the most recent patch. I certainly don’t get around to doing the weekly collection of items for Vol’jin.

But what would I do if I wasn’t trying to make 72,000 gold for one mount? Well, I have a low-level priest I want to work on. I have a death knight to get to 85. I’m waiting for the new server structure to see if there might be a guild merger in our future. And I will probably be spending a bunch of time working out which race/class combinations are needed for the rest of the Classy guild achievements, then leveling them. I haven’t even gone through the Pandaren starting area, much less tried to go both Horde and Alliance to see how that differs.

So many things to do, and sometimes, that’s paralyzing in itself.

As These Things Go

It’s been a quite a while since I blogged, and then only briefly to apologize because exciting life events had been taking much of my time. During that time, my WoW life has consisted of a little bit of farming, the weekly guild runs, and some puttering about. Nothing post-worthy, so I didn’t post.

A quick stop in Stormwind to take a picture with their early mentor

I am now a happily married woman, and since I promised someone I’d actually post about it, here’s the short and sweet. My dearest and I were married by a friend of my sister’s in a lovely park near our home. The weather couldn’t have been more perfect – the high for the day was about 80 degrees Fahrenheit, and we had vivid blue skies and coloring-book style clouds floating past. The humidity was also quite low for the day.
In attendance were our two witnesses, my sister and father, and a few additional friends. After the ceremony, we went to one of our favorite restaurant/bars, and had a happy hour with a group of primarily co-workers. We ordered a whole chocolate cake from the restaurant’s renowned bakery, and had it not been for Sona’s Man of Honor, we would have had exactly one slice left at the end of the evening. Since we had to work on the 2nd, we made an early night of it.

But, back to WoW…

Shoryl and Sonaira finally made it to level 90. Shoryl immediately set off to join the Order of the Cloud Serpents – unsurprising given her father’s stables. Her aim, though, was not the cloud serpents themselves. It was a certain magic that they have for bringing gems to life.
Between her natural tendency for diplomacy, a letter of recommendation from Briege, her guild’s overall reputable nature, and a few lucky finds of Onyx dragon eggs, it took a matter of days for her to convince the quartermaster to give her the scrolls from which she could learn the secrets she desired. While Jackoby had been quite kind – pleased, even – to make the basic mounts for her, she was looking forward to making the penultimate Jeweled Onyx Panther herself.

Spoiled for Choice

Now that I have 4 level 90 toons, though, I am discovering a new difficulty to the World of Choices that is the current expansion. I’m going to talk about that in another post, though.
The guild runs on Wednesday night continue to be a high point in our activity – right now we’re working on the two raiding with leashes achievements. We hit one or two raids each week, and cycle through. A couple of the pets have already been obtained by all of us, while others we haven’t even seen drop yet. We’re adding in the raids from vanilla and BC that don’t include pets for the purposes of switching it up a bit, as well.
I’m getting back ‘round to LFR raiding as well and I’m debating whether I’m going to try to actually complete the Legendary quest line. It’s hard to consider it because I’ve never been able to understand PvP, but there are achievements, mounts, and pets to be had inPvP as well, so it’s probably a worthwhile endeavor to get into anyhow.
I also decided to make another attempt at leveling a horde character, and to this end, I’ve found myself a spot in a certain well-known guild. Shoryl the Tauren has crossed the level 20 threshold, and is making slow but steady progress – mostly on weekend mornings when the late-night Frostwolves are awake. (a 15-hour time difference from the server to my real time zone is pretty wild.)

Sometimes Lists Are Scary

I’m a bit of a list maker. I like to know what I need or want to do. This has become a bit more of a habit since I have started to have a bad memory for these things. Getting older sucks.  But sometimes… lists, they are scary. Sometimes having it all written down makes it hard to see what to do next. Sometimes it’s too much.

Case in point. I just made a list of everything I would do in WoW every day if I had no other responsibilities.  It looks like this:

Sveala

• Inscription Research x2
• Living Steel Cooldown

Gurdrid

• Farm

Oquae

• Silk Cooldown
• DE collected greens

Shoryl

• JC Research
• Argent Tournament Dailies

Breige

• Magnificence Cooldown
• Klaxxi Dailies
• August Celestial Dailies
• Farm
• Scenario
• Instance
• LFR
• Farm Leather as needed

Mavgren

• Auctions

Kerridwen

• Farm Herbs/Ore as needed for cooldowns

Muirri

• Quest

And none of that includes Wednesday night Guild Randomness, or Thursday night Dwarven Dungeon Crawls.   To be fair, I raid on most Tuesdays and frequently on weekends, and I can usually get more than one in on those days. Since Blizz has not implemented bonus Valor for raids at this point, it doesn’t matter so much when I do them at all.  For Scenarios and Dungeons, though, getting bonus Valor definitely has its advantages.  So if I could, I’d do at least one of those each day.

But a whole lot of those things, you say, take only a few minutes. (And really, all those profession things – most people don’t have all those professions). And that’s very true, the list in and of itself isn’t that bad. But the length of the list is what is daunting.

And here’s another thing that intrigues me. How many other games that people play do they make lists for? Really, playing a game is about fun.  So, to make myself feel better about my list, which looks a vaguely like work, I thought I’d talk a little bit about why I do these things:

Inscription and JC Research: I don’t like paying for my glyphs and gems off the AH. Auction House purchases can keep you in the poor house, and I have things I’d like to purchase with my gold, like mounts! Also, the random process adds something to it: What will I learn today?

Silk and Magnificence Cooldowns: I find it fascinating to learn what I’ll discover, and also whether I get  a silkworm.  The items from the patterns have also been selling well.

Living Steel Cooldown: This is mostly for money, or, at the moment, for guildies. It’s also fun to see if I’m going to proc a second bar, though I have terrible luck with that when I’m trying to make it to do something with.

Farms: Gurdrid is currently farming motes, but will go back to farming for rep when she’s done making a couple of pieces of gear. Breige is strictly farming for rep right now.  I find farming amusing and relaxing to do, so as an added method of getting things I want, it’s quite worthwhile.

Argent Tournament Dailies: This is literally a means to an end for me. I want the mounts from the Argent Tournament – some for the mounts themselves, but mostly because they’re an easy way for me to get to the next mount achievement, and the KITE!

The rest of Breige’s activities: Breige doesn’t strictly have to do the dailies. She could head over to the Isle of Thunder and jump in there. She’s got good enough gear to get into the next raid I haven’t seen yet, and really, the point of the gear is to get to the next raid for me, not the gear itself. But, I want the achievements that go with the dailies, so I’m doing the dailies.

Scenarios and dungeons are another thing that are a mix between fun and profit. I like doing them, and bonus valor and rep are always a plus. So I try to get them in on days that I want to do group content. I will always opt to do these with guildies first, given the choice. (And will often do many scenarios in a row with guildies, but only one or two with strangers)

Raiding is something I’ve missed for a long time. I haven’t raided since vanilla, and I wasn’t going to raid on a tank, so Gurdrid was out of the question.  I decided on Breige to try and see if I’d like playing her because of Bear’s comments about his hunter, mostly. And I’m finding that I like ranged DPS more than I ever expected.  Even more surprising is that having a pet doesn’t completely suck all the time.  I have no idea whether I’m a good  hunter or not, but I try, and I try to get better. And I like doing it.

Farming Leather, Ore, and Herbs as needed: This is really a support clause. If I want to do other things, I need these resources, and it’s generally cheaper to farm than it is to buy. So I opt for farming, mostly.

Auctions: I think this goes without saying. You make more money selling things on the AH than vendoring them, so Auctions it is.

Muirri: My little monk is closing in on 85 quickly. The monk playstyle isn’t one I would want to use as a main, but I am enjoying it. She’ll likely become my bank toon and hang out in Stormwind doing fishing and cooking dailies once she reaches 85 and nets the guild their achievement.   But I almost always have one toon I’m actively questing on, for when endgame gets boring. It’s a great breakup of activities.

The nice thing that this list does, though, is reminds me why I do what I do. Why is important, particularly for the things that I don’t like doing in and of themselves (mostly, that’s the Argent Tournament dailies.)

 

 

Not Dead… Just Busy

Really, I promise, I’m not dead. I actually even waited until today to post (as opposed to yesterday, which seemed a bad day for that particular title.)

Mounts

I’m up to 136 mounts owned, having collected the Netherwing Drakes. I’ve puttered around with more Argent Tournament, but haven’t gotten to 100 seals yet. Like most things, I tend to go for the most expensive item first, then the lesser items because it makes me feel like it goes faster the longer I do it.

Muirri

Muirri is level 80. I did a headlong run last weekend to finish off that milestone, and headed her right over to Mt Hyjal after completing her level quest. That was the hardest one thus far. I didn’t play for long, though, so she’s sitting carefully on her two hour buff.  I play her mostly on weekends.

Scenarios and LFR

Breige went on a scenario spree! I love scenarios. Short queue times, relatively relaxed environment. The bad apples seem to be few and far between, there, which pleases me. I picked up a few pieces of gear over a couple of evenings of scenarios, the first of which occurred because we had three on for a Wednesday night guild night.

This evening, Breige also ventured into LFR Mogu’Shan Vaults. My first LFR experience. Unfortunately, I got tossed into an already-started group, so missed out on the Stone Guard the first pass through. A second pass put me in at the start,  so I was able to pick them up to finish the front half. I also picked up two pieces of gear. Not wanting to reforge and then potentially have to do it again later, I just waited to put on the new gear, and hopped into the back half of MSV.

Sadly, that didn’t go nearly as well as the front half. I got locked out of the Spirit Kings, though my pet didn’t, so I diligently pushed pet skill buttons while I stood outside the swirling mists. And.. I got pants! Yay, no more PvP Pants! On Elegon I fell the first time the floor disappeared. How embarrassing. But I wasn’t the only one. Other people complained about lag. I can’t claim that was my problem, I wasn’t trying to move, having not realized how the mechanic works. I didn’t use an extra roll on Elegon because I already have slightly better shoulders.  I lived through Will, though. And got my Helm, but not my Bow. So we’ll see if I’m going to be in the bow or no bow school.

I certainly can’t complain about my first week through, though. 4 pieces of gear. 469 ilvl once I switched into the new gear. And, of course, Valor. But not enough of the really good reps to get something awesome. I did pick up the Operation: Shieldwall ring, though, which put me over the edge to 471, so if I really wanted to, I can now do Heart of Fear. I may do that this weekend if we end up having some time. Not sure, though.

Of course, now I have the pants for her planned mog. I guess that means I need to go bug Kael for a certain chestpiece, and figure out how to solo Chess so I can get the bow I plan to use.

Guild Stuff

Since we’ve been doing more as a guild, my guildies have been on more, which meant an evening of running scenarios, as I said, with Jackoby and Yawondergirl, as well as another evening with Phinkbunny. When Phink and I were running, we picked up Danea for a couple, which was fun!   Also, while I was out of town (in Texas, which tried to kill me – not the people, the state) Jack, Yaw and Phink were all on on a Saturday for several hours running Scenaturday, and giving the guild the Scenario Roundup Achievement, and Scenaturday for themselves.

Coincidentally, we’re also now at 89/100 guild challenges. See, this is what it means to be a Tiny guild. We’re level 25, sure. But getting 3 people into a Scenario is easier than getting three of us into an instance!  Also, we have a mere 785 Acheivement points. Why? Because cooking, fishing, and killing critters are the only count-related things we’ve really finished. See, most of us would rather be questing in some capacity than farming. And 100,000 ore is a whole lot, even if every single guild member has an active toon who mines.

 

Reflecting on a full day of WoW

I took the day off of work today to play WoW.  Now, let’s not get hasty in our thoughts that I might be addicted (I might be, but that’s not what’s at play here.)  You see, I took a vacation day, which I planned a few months ago, because Sona is a Wheel of Time fan. And she is currently gasping about something in the last book of a 14 book series.  She took the day off to enjoy this monumental work of fiction all in one day. Yes, she reads that fast. To keep our vacation time in sync, we tend to take these days together. So, since she wanted to read her book, I planned a day of WoW.

The Plan Was an Unmitigated Success

I had one goal for today. Breige was about 15% into level 89 when I got up this morning. I wanted to get her to 90. Nothing else was on my plate. Just get Breige to 90. She did that at about 3:45.

I knew what the next step of my plan for Breige was, but I wasn’t really prepared to implement it.  Next up was getting her i-level up to 425 435. Tyledres was on, and I asked her if she would like to do some heroics when I got my item level sorted out. She thought that was a grand plan, and I went about trying to do so. I was struggling. I didn’t want to just grab PvP gear. I wanted to do it right.  While I was thinking I only needed to get to 425, I went and picked up some 408 gear to replace my 399 gear. And I went ahead and grabbed the PvP gloves, giving me 426. That’s when I realized I had failed my reading check. So I needed 9 more points. Perusal of the guild bank yielded a Long-Ranged Trillium Rifle and a Ghost Iron Dragonling.

Frustrated, I went to the Auction House and saw the Quick Strike Cloak, realized I could buy the pattern, but hadn’t yet, and made it myself. Still not enough, so back to the AH I went, looking for rings and necks, this time thinking I’d find something I could make on Shoryl. Sure enough, I came away with the knowledge to make some 450 items there. Still shy, I broke down and made the PvP pants, and that pushed me a couple of points over.

Gems and enchants followed – the best I could come up with from my toons, which meant I didn’t have *every* item enchanted that I should have, but I wasn’t running completely empty.

My First Mists Heroics

Then Tyledres and I headed into heroics. Three heroics down, with a noob moment or two on my part (though now I need to remember to turn growl back on on Sionnach before I start doing dailies).  I saw the Pulled Grenade Pin drop in the Gate of the Setting Sun, but the rogue won that. I did, however, come away with a couple of quest upgrades and a couple of drops, so I’m quite happy.

Gate of the Setting Sun was interesting. Tyledres accidentally started the first boss fight while the healer, the gnome (mage?) and I were still outside the room.  While the fight was really long with just a rogue and the tank inside, I could tell we had a good group. When he did Sabotage to one of the three of us outside the room, we would space ourselves so that only one of us took damage, and then the healer healed us back up to full. I suspect some of the success there was I got hit with Sabotage probably eight times in the fight.  The healer keeping all three of us alive meant that those inside didn’t have to worry as much about that damage.  After that everything went smoothly, though (as is typical for me) I died to junk on the ground trying to keep up with the group.

Our healer stuck around for the next dungeon, which turned out to be Scarlet Halls. We had a wipe on our first attempt on Armsmaster Harlan. I died to the first whirlwind, which probably contributed, what with dirt naps causiong a 100% reduction in DPS. I picked up an upgrade via quest reward here.

The final dungeon we did was Siege of Niuzau Temple.  This one was by far the trickiest for me. I died a couple of times, and had to follow other people’s examples to figure out what I was supposed to do on General Pa’valak. When we were finished, I hadn’t realized that I’d not finished the quest Somewhere Inside. So Tyledres and I tromped around the area to find the imprisoned Shado-Pan, which included a bit of killing things. Who needs a healer anyway? (Well, for trash… I sure do on bosses!)  Niuzau was definitely the richest for me, with two upgrades from the bosses and one from a quest.

After I turned in the quest, we sat around and showed off our rarer mounts, and I grabbed a quick screenshot of the two of us on our Winterspring Frostsabers.

Nice Kitty

Achievements

I (obviously) picked up the achievements for completing all three dungeons, but I also picked up a couple more, which were exciting. We got Bomberman in Gate of the Setting Sun; and in Siege of Niuzau Temple, we picked up both Where’s My Air Support and Return to Sender. Those tell me that we just had awesome groups for those runs.  Personally, I also picked up Looking For More; Cataclysmically Superior and Superior. Not bad for a toon who never really got much dungeon love.

Also Coming Back – LBDs!

I’ll be going back to running the Laid Back Dungeons on Wednesdays starting tomorrow!  As we have done in the past, we’ll pick something fun that has a little bit of use for at least one person. It may even be Pandaria Heroics or Scenarios if that’s what the group is interested in. We’ll start at 6:00 Central Time with whomever happens to be on, no need to be there for the whole thing, you can pick up or drop whenever you’d like. We won’t run past 8:30, so I can do silly things like get the dishes done.

Intention and Reality

Before Mists came out, I laid out a plan for what I thought I wanted to do. I knew that this plan was what I “thought” I wanted to do, even though I’m sure I spoke in concretes. I based my thoughts on nearly 8 years of experience and, I’ll admit it, some regrets.

The first thing I wanted to do, though, was make sure that Shoryl and Sonaira got as much play time as Sonaira wanted (with the exception of when Gurdrid hit level 89. That last level is always a drive for me. It’s just too exciting!)  Neither Sona nor I expected that we’d spend the entire first day of the expansion on Sona and Shoryl. We both thought Sona would want to do something other than sit in her computer chair and play WoW all day. It’s just the way she’s wired. We both accept that; and we make appropriate accomodations for it. (After all, I have two paladins)   I think I’ve continued to cover that. We’ve learned that Sona and Shoryl are going to RP their way through Pandaria.

To that end, as best as I could, I have remained unspoiled. I didn’t read quests much on Gurdrid. I ignored the comments the NPCs made in my chat window.  I couldn’t miss the themes, but I could skip the details, and I did.

Second on my list was to get Gurdrid to 90 as fast as I could; and get her into heroics. My theory was that if I could get into heroics quickly, I could learn them while people still had patience, and have a chance at having some confidence tanking them. Well, when I finally got a f ull set of Pandaria tanking gear, I queued for a normal (at around level 86); and I had a mediocre-to-poor experience. So, not so much with people having patience. I haven’t set foot in a dungeon since. The asshattery outside in the world has made me think it’s just not worth it to do anything with strangers.

After that,  I was going to work on getting my other toons leveled, so that I could have a complete set of professions at max level and start cashing in.  That hasn’t worked out quite as planned, either. Breige and Kerridwen are trundling along out in the Jade Forest, skinning, herbing and mining – with the fruits of Kerridwen’s labor going to Sveala, and Breige working on her own leatherworking. But they’re sort of held back by me not wanting to spoil Shoryl and Sonaira’s trip. So they are only questing as far as Sona and Shoryl.  Since they’ve got professions that require killing things and/or that give them experience on their own, they are doing some grinding. But grinding is a slow way to level.

Instead of my best-intended plans, what I’m doing is pretty straight-forward:

Shoryl comes out to play when we have a chunk of time for Sona and Shoryl (we had about an hour one day, and got three quests done because we wanted to thoroughly explore Tian Monestary). They did finish Jade Forest last night, and have moved on to the Valley of Four Winds. They’re really really sorry, and hopefully Yu’lon understands why we came back, and killing Mogu is a little bit of atonement.

Gurdrid is hanging out doing dailies. She’ll happily tank for anyone on her friends list (Shoryl#1300 is my battletag), but going it all alone is not going to happen for a while at least. Her order of business has been: Tillers, Order of the Cloud Serpent, Anglers. She’ll look at the others soon, but for now, she’s enjoying these. She just made it to exalted with the Tillers, but she has no best friends yet.

Pet Battles! I didn’t really expect to want to do these; but, you know, I had to try them out. Sometime in the first day I took a look at them and got hooked. I started out trying to find rares of each pet, and now I’m content to only find rares of the interesting ones. (Last night I picked up my rare Tiny Twister just before bed. I think I shall name him Andrew.) I have my first level 10 pet; and I’m finding that pet battling goes nicely with archaeology – even though I frequently can’t fight where I dig. It keeps me flying myself around.  I still find pet battling a diversion from regular WoW activities, rather than an activity to sit down and pursue. But eventually, I’ll need a Minfernal or various other hard to acquire pets for the achievements, and I’ll spend more time on it.  But until then, I’m just going to blithely wander about fighting where I want to, and hunting rares only for the cutest of pets.

And on a final note, since it’s Wednesday, I do plan to do LBDs tonight. I’m one achievement away from my Red protodrake, so a trip into Violet Hold will definitely happen – but then we’ll either look at other protodrake achievements for other people; or we’ll head into Cata dungeons to see what we can start getting there.

Stopping to Smell the Apple Blossoms

This past weekend, Gurdrid finished her headlong run to 90. It was as enjoyable as were the high points of her headlong run to 85. It took me around 12 days to do.   Clearly, she did not spend a whole lot of time smelling apple blossoms, though she did quite a bit of removing the iron problem from the farmland in the Valley of Four Winds. I’m sure the farmers are quite pleased by that, though the iron does seem to crop up again and again, just like the particularly bad weeds.

At launch, however, I wasn’t on Gurdrid. I was on Shoryl. And by her side was her dearest Sonaira. We went through the trouble that was figuring out the stupidity of not being able to see to aim to destroy boats, and in each little hamlet of safety we came to, we stopped. We talked to everyone. We explored every nook and cranny. We probably drank quite a lot of beer with the locals.  We looked out across the land over the bridges, from the verandas of buildings, from atop cliffs.

We did some more of that yesterday. We might have gotten a grand total of 10 quests done in our hour or so of play. But that’s because we stopped and looked at art in the arboretum, and played with baby cloud serpents, and visited the mining community of Green…someplace; who seem to have an infestation of tricksters. I’m sure at some point they’ll ask us to help with that problem, but maybe they don’t yet trust these very skinny (though very strong) women, who still ride on the roads and aren’t as boisterous as those who came before.

We made it up to Tian Monestary, but are currently sort of lost. I’m sure we’ll sort it out. In the meantime we’ve visited several trainers, and discovered a lovely inn that has a bath!  Can you believe it? We had to go to an entirely new continent to be able to clean up in something other than a lake on the outskirts of town?

Shoryl is totally retiring here.  Seriously.

 

Kerridwen has been leveling via a combination of mining, herbalism and archaeology. She got the Spear of Xuen as her second or third artifact; which  significantly changed her chances against the beasties she’s run across in the Jade Forest. She also heard about the Tillers from Gurdrid, and headed right over there to start up her farm. She happens to be quite the cook, and is enjoying learning all the nifty things from the various masters in the market there; as well as saving up to feed people!

Only Hours To Go

In six hours, a new land will be discovered.

Let’s take a look at what I got done in preparation for Mists (Here’s a look at my initial plan):

Oquae

Level 85 – check. Professions maxed – more or less. Tailoring is at 501 and enchanting is at 499, so I call that good.  Mog set… Check.  Oh, wait, you want to see that, don’t you? While my original plan was to go with lower level gear, none of it looked properly vicious enough for a Fury warrior with a wild bent. So this is what I came up with instead:

Deadly Gladiator’s Plate Helm, Valonforth’s Tarnished Pauldrons, Dragonstorm Breastplate,  Daunting Handguards, Titanium Links of Lore, Dragon Brood Legguards, Tempered Saronite Boots, and a pair of Runeblade of Baron Rivendare. (which is how a non-DK can have those blades).

Additionally, Oquae has her 25 dailies prepared for her 10-15% head start towards 86.   I am satisfied with where she sits.

Sveala

Sveala also made level 85, though she quested most of the last 5 levels. I got plenty of dungeoning in on Sruith and in the Laid Back Dungeons and Raids, so I wasn’t as keen on finishing her up via dungeons. On the other hand, her second spec really made leveling fairly easy. Her Scribe’s skills have gotten nearly all the way to mastering the craft, at 508, and I did convert alchemy to her from Kerridwen. That’s maxed, but I wasn’t able to pick up my mastery thanks to 5.0 dropping before I was able to. The required items for the transmute mastery are not available in game yet. Feh.

She also got a fairly simple mog set. I wanted something that encompassed both of her specs, since it’s a fair bit of shared gear:

 

The Wavemender’s Mantle, Breastplate of the Fifth Hunter, Patterned Bronze Bracers (because they hide well), Handgrips of the Savage Emissary, Belt of Ten Storms, Infection Resistant Legguards, Sealing Heartstaff. I didn’t pick boots out for her because they wouldn’t really show under the kilt, and no helm because I adore the way her hair goes with this outfit. Neither of my Draenai sport capes because I hate the way they bend across the tail. That’s some serious starch they use!

Sveala only has a few quests lined up for turnin, but that’s okay. She’s not one of my front-runners to get out there and get going. She’ll continue to work with quill and ink for quite some time; and get out to heal as various teams need her.  I’m pretty happy with Sveala’s position.

Shoryl

Her Engineering has been at 525 for quite some time now, and she has once again been idling her time in Stormwind. She was quite happy when Gurdrid decided to share some of her rarer mounts and pets with her.

Shoryl’s got a new mog design planned, thanks to the Mogolympics.   Shoryl doesn’t have any quests set by, but she and Sonaira have noted that things are changing around the lakes in Stormwind, and plan to go find out what’s so interesting.

Kerridwen

Kerridwen’s been switched over to dual gathering, though her flight form isn’t quite as advantageous as it was pre-5.0. That’s ok. The instant cast to get back into flight form is still a boon.  She can’t wear the Biker set I put together, since she’s (a) not an engineer, and (b) not a rogue; so she doesn’t get to play dress up just yet.   Her quest log is also full up, preparing her for launch like a champ.

Gurdrid

Gurdrid has had her bags emptied, and three sets designed. I’ve been plucking away at completing those sets, and is farther than the others at any individual set, but none are completed. I won’t be mogging her until she reaches endgame anyway, as she will be the first out of the gate.

I decided not to preload her with quests, in part so that she could daily moving into Mists, but also because I want to experience the new content with her – so I’m not in that much of a hurry to make it to 90.

Breige

Breige has been selling everything my other toons could send her way. Bags from Oquae; ore and gems from Gurdrid, cut gems from Shoryl, Glyphs from Sveala, and even herbs from Kerridwen. All in the name of putting away a little nest egg. It’s not much, but I topped 50k, which is the most money I’ve ever had in game in my life.   Her quest log is full, and once she’s made it to level 86, she will be skinning her way to 90, with a few dailies thrown in. She’s probably also going to do a bit of pet hunting. It seems right up her alley.

Taoiseach

My only 85 Horde toon will be waiting until Sonaira and Shoryl have made some progress in Mists. With Ardrhian by her side, they will see what they can do for Silvermoon City (we are not pleased with Garrosh’s sloppy methods).

Sruith and her Dwarven Friends

These guys will be continuing on starting up again next week. I’m planning to be asleep when we would be dungeoning, so they get to have a rest.

Margueryn and Nemain

My current pair of leveling toons will keep on keeping on when Pandaria is too busy.

The As-Yet-Unnamed Monk

She shall be a dwarf. (I know, you’re surprised) and she shall have a good Irish, Scottish, or Welsh name.  Because I don’t want a human male monk named Asim.

 

 

Computers and Chairs

This is just a brief update on how things are going around here. The blog has been quiet the last week due to the lack of the computer with all the pictures for my planned posts on it.

That being said, my beloved computer is currently on the bench at the repair shop getting diagnostics done. It’s a sad state when I live in the headquarters city of one of the largest US computer dealers, and there’s a full week’s wait at the “little” places just to get diagnostics done. Yep, that’s how much we trust the big place to do it right…   So, tomorrow I will be doing one of three things, hopefully early enough in the day to be raiding on my own computer tomorrow night:  1. happily working away on a functioning computer because of an easy repair I felt I could do myself (this means bad fan, or bad memory being the culprit); 2. grumpily playing on Sona’s computer as we let the computer guys do more work on my PC; or 3. Trying desperately to get WoW up and running on a new PC.

As I mentioned before, While getting a new PC is always fun, getting it after a week of annoyed waiting (I’m sure I’ve been awful to live with) and two days before a major patch is not nearly as much fun.

Update: The PC was back in action for JD’s laid back raid last night. And I just need to mention that even at level 85 with level 60 content, sometimes you need to listen to your raid leader and/or main tank. I was personally a bit fed up with the 10+ minutes of taking down the puppy packs because people wouldn’t follow directions.  Especially when I warned folks beforehand.

I’m sure you’re all wondering what this has to do with chairs? Well, I’ve been waiting over a month for my replacement recliner to get here. It comes on Monday, and I’m exstatic. The thing about this chair is that it’s the only chair in the house that fully supports my back. Since I have significant back problems, this is hugely important… and I broke my old one a month ago; after a frantic 8+ hours of shopping for a replacement, Sona and I found one… but at the price of having to have it done up custom, which they said would take 8 weeks for delivery. It’s coming in at the beginning of week 7; only a few days shy of the target date.

These two things coming together, along with the Mists pre-patch on Tuesday have me pretty excited for the future, which is making me impatient this evening.

So, I spent some time leveling Sveala. She’s now level 81, so there’s a good chance she’ll make it to 85 before Mists goes live.  Her inscription is at 503, which is where she needs to be to start using Mists mats, as well.  The next stage, for times when I don’t feel like leveling my sixth toon to 85, is to work on getting alchemy up on Sveala, so I can switch Kerridwen over to mining (and herbalism) It just makes too much sense to have a druid as a dual gatherer.

As far as blogging goes – as soon as we know what’s going on with the PC, we’ll know more about what I’m going to need to do to get going with the blog. For now, I’m hoping that starting on Monday or Tuesday, I will be catching up with the Mogolympics posts I haven’t yet made.

Of Lists and Schedules

I’m a list maker. Sometimes I make them in my head, sometimes I build fancy spreadsheets, and sometimes you get to see them as they come forth from my brain.  My lists are sometimes lists of dates, like the updated Laid Back Dungeons page, which now has August’s “schedule” on it. Really, it’s more of a list, with some dates that will be adjusted based on how many runs we get through each week.  After all, I initially expected 2-3 dungeons, not 3-4, which is what we’ve been managing.

But I have other lists, too.  There’s my bucket list, which is now nearly finished. Gurdrid has completed our Tol Barad goals, setting herself up to smoothly leap into Mists. While I’ll be working on Glory of the Hero for her via the Laid Back Dungeons, her only other goals involve transmogrification. We’ll get to that in a moment.  Oquae will be making a trip to the Darkmoon Faire, along with everyone else, to complete the profession dailies. I’m holding off on that with Sveala until the end of the week, because she’s level 74 now, and will actually benefit as soon as she rolls over to 75, and can get into working on her scribbling again.

Then there’s Gurdrid’s mog list. She has three sets all designed, which she wants to get completed. They are her sword, axe and mace sets – in green, blue and red respectively. I’m teasingly calling her the RGB tank.  List-wise, she needs to visit a total of 8 raids and 7 dungeons to complete all of the sets.  I’ve posted her green set, for which she already has the sword.

You’ll see her blue set after the after the mog olympics, as I used it as a part of the competition. There’s a story there, but I’ll be waiting for the post.  Surprisingly, that one’s the most complete, with Axe, Shield and belt already acquired.

The red set was just finalized this morning, and I’ll be posting it sometime later this week, in all likelihood. This set is to replace the Dark Iron set you’ve been seeing her in.  That one is the most likely going to be the last set I complete, mostly because it uses more Cataclysm pieces than any of the others.

With Gurdrid’s outfits completed, there are other toons clamoring for gear. Two more toons have Mogolympic fever, wanting sets I designed either for their class or on them (and therefore class appropriate)! Oquae is getting noisy about wanting her spikey set; and Shoryl is defying all expectations and requesting an update. She expects to be getting a bit dirty when the Mists part, and the Lawbringer set requires just too much polishing. She thinks something more gold and less silver is in order.  Sveala has kept quiet, but she’s probably waiting until she has the clout to bring it up. I’m not mentioning to her that Sruith has a set already designedI (by Cymre), and I’ll be designing for my Monk as soon as Mogit has a live update, so that I can use quest rewards as desired.