You had me at "zug-zug"

Mad and Lyr, ready to kick some ass.

During the holidays, the BF and I enjoy creating new alts and playing them casually. This year, we picked a prot warrior and a resto shaman. Mad wanted to make an Orc warrior, like the one he used to play back in BC. So I decided to create an orc as well, something I've never done before. I must admit I'm starting to grow pretty fond of her. I already have two shamans, but I never get tired of leveling new ones. It's my favourite class to level, and I lost count of all the shamans I rolled throughout my WoW career. This is my first orc one, though.

Since I have no room left on our main server for new characters, I had to create her over on Rexxar, since all my heirlooms are there. (This might be the only useful thing about CRZ's, being able to quest with people from different servers.) Apparently though, when I shipped my heirlooms over, I didn't think I'd roll a resto shamy, because the mail caster items are the only ones I didn't send. Which is why my poor orc lady has to wear leather heirlooms. Oh, the shame.

Please disregard the leather heirloom pants.

After three days of playing on and off, our little duo is now level 43. Mad likes to tank by aggroing huge groups of mobs and keep running to get more like his life depended on it. Fortunately, I'm the one healing him, and most of the times, all I have to do is keep Earth Shield up on him and throw a couple Riptides from time to time. It makes for pretty smooth, quick dungeon runs, and lots of fast xp. It's been a lot of fun, but playing with my boyfriend always is!

Mad and Lyr morphed into gnomes,
being naughty by the Christmas tree.

We wish you a...

Image courtesy of cuddly boyfriend.

Quick Post:The only time I play a male toon, this happens

99% of my characters are female. The only exception is my warrior, which is a male blood elf. Tonight, while trying to finally get him to 90, I was questing in the Dread Wastes. I had to kill a named mob and loot an item from it's corpse. I saw the mob in combat with a player, so I charged in to get credit as well, and then this happened :

Quick Post: Farmer Lyr

5.1 only just went live and already, 5.2 is coming on the PTR in early january. Holy shit, are they on speed or something? Not that I'm complaining or anything. New content is always nice. Weirdly enough though, all I really care about is this:  

• Players that have grown attached to working the land at Sunsong Ranch can now purchase the land from Farmer Yoon. Once the farm is owned by a player, it becomes a rest point like an Inn, where the player can bind and instantly log out. Work orders will pour in to the farm from factions across Pandaria, and completing a work orders will earn a reputation boost with the issuing faction.
• Sunsong Ranch
• Seed bags have been added, that allow planting of crops 4 plots at a time.
• Yoon's Mailbox has been renamed to Sunsong Ranch Mailbox.
• The yield from special crops has been improved to make farming them competitive with gathering these items out in the world.
• Running the Master Plow across underground Virmen will cause them to pop out of the ground at 30% health and stunned.
• Wild Crops will now occur less often.

I suspect it'll cost a shitload to buy the farm, but that's fine. What is gold good for if not to spend it on fun (and relatively useless) stuff like this? To me, it's totally worth it. I log on everyday to fix my five max level character's farms, and some days, that's the only thing I do in game. Enigma and Snakeroot seeds have become my primary source of herbs and ores, so the buff to the yield from special crops really is making me happy. Also, less Wild Crops? Thank you sweet baby Jesus.

Quintessential Quintet

There, I did it! Last week, I finally finished leveling five of my characters to 90. I wanted to get as many toons to max level by the end of the third month into the expansion, which would be the 25th of december, so last week, I started getting busy. The shaman, hunter and mage were already max level, so I only needed two more for the achievement. The druid hit 90 Thursday night, and the Dk followed soon after, Friday night, scoring me the Quintessential Quintet.

The rest of my characters are not too far behind. The warrior is 88, while the paladin, priest and rogue are all at 87, gathering rested xp. The paladin should be a priority, considering I still need to get her to 89 so I can start working on Klaxxi reputation with her and buy the belt buckle recipe. But I suspect the warrior will be next, and then the rogue. The level 70 monk is still parked in Orgrimmar, along with the Bank Alt Warlock, which is still 85. I am in no worry to play the warlock though, as she's way too busy selling stuff on the AH and sorting through all the herbs and ores I've been farming and not using, trying to make it all fit in the guild bank.

There is such a thing as too much farming.

I also want to get my alliance shaman to 90 for the Double Agent achievement, but I still have so many horde character to level, I don't know when I'll get to that. It's a good thing I'm not raiding, or I wouldn't have time for none of that.

Alt love

This has nothing to do with anything,
but look at all those Golden Lotus! LOOKIT!

Out of my eleven horde characters, eight are level 87 or higher, (the other three are 70, 85 and 86) and parked in the Shrine of Two Moons. This is good. I really want to get at least these eleven horde characters to 90, plus possibly two alliance ones, and I figure it will take me a couple months. Which is fine.

In the last week, my druid made it to level 89 just by healing random dungeons, and I must admit I had fun.  I still kinda suck at healing, but I did a fairly good job, and almost never let wipes happen. I did lose a couple dps here and there, and even the tank once, but hey, battle rez is there exactly for that. For a while now, my druid had been balance, but I decided to try resto again. It's a nice change of pace, and even though it's probably slower to just do dungeons, I really needed a break from all the questing.

On the alliance front, I faction-changed a lonely horde shaman I had on a server I never play on. She went from a goblin to a panda and it made me want to play her again. It's weird to see the alliance version of the Pandaria quests, but it's fun to be doing something different. This new panda lady joined Stands in Bad last night for their Old School Monday and we roflstomped through ICC. The only casualty: me. Because I was the only level 85. Heh. It was a lot of fun, and I scored two tier tokens and a killer axe. I think some people got their drakes, too, so it was pretty great. I was glad to be there with them!

Quick Post : Paladin buffs are hard

I've been doing lots of dungeons lately while leveling my alts, and 90% of the time, something like this happens: There is a druid (or a monk) and a pally in the group. The pally gives kings. The druid/monk looks around, with a "what is this I don't even" look on his face. 

Now, in all fairness, I know it doesn't really matter. It's not a raid. We don't need every possible buff. But every bit helps when you have a clueless bunch of noobs new players in the group. More buffs usually means the mobs die a little faster, the healer gets OOM a little slower, and we just might make it out of there all in one piece. Just maybe.

There's only two paladin buffs now for crying out loud. There used to be a lot more of those, and they didn't last half as long as they do now. And you had to buff every single player individually. You guys don't know how easy you have it nowadays.

So for the love of God, please, pallies. Learn to buff.

Quick Post: I can haz serpent

Joining the ranks of the Cloud Serpent riders!

Today the mage did her last daily with the Order of the Cloud Serpent and hit exalted! It only took a couple days, not even a week, since the shaman has already bought the commendation when she reached revered last week. So now, the mage has her Azure Cloud Serpent which replaced her Twilight Drake. It felt weird, too, because she had been using the Twilight Drake since she won it in Obsidian Sanctum back in Wrath. But this dude is totally worth it.

This serpent is not amused.

Quick Post : Suddenly, I am 5 years old

I just went to the Darkmoon Faire to turn my deck into a trinket (item level 470 achieveved!) and I came across this :

How awesome is this?!

We get to ride a carousel! I didn't know until just now how much this was missing from the Faire. And the music is absolutely enchanting. The fact that riding this gives a 10% rep increase for up to one hour is just a bonus. 

And just like that, I want my very own mini-carousel vanity item. Please, Blizz, make it happen!

Scenario Night

Tonight was scenario night for me. When I read about Greater Cache of Treasures being awarded each time you complete a random scenario (and not just once per day), and that they could sometimes contain epic gear, I decided to give it another try. I say another try because the first time I tried scenarios, I didn't like it.  But this time around, I'm enjoying them quite a lot. They're pretty addictive, actually. I managed to get quite a few achievements in a couple hours, and it was a lot of fun. Next Saturday, I think the boyfriend and I will try to knock as many scenarios as possible, both for gear and more achievements. And maybe even a title!

I did score some useless blue items and even epic bracers! That gave my mage an item level of 467, one step closer to being able to queue for the Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring in the Raid Finder. I bought the serpent's deck for her for 8k the other day, which I thought was probably a bargain, considering buying the cards would have been more expensive, and I'm too lazy to farm mats/trade cards. Now I just need the Darkmoon Faire to get here so I can turn it into a nice trinket. With the neck I'll buy off the Klaxxi's next Tuesday, I think I'll be all set!

The Not Golden Hopling

A couple days ago, I read this post over at Big Bear Butt's blog. I always enjoy BBB's posts, but this one particularly intrigued me. I had no idea there were hidden things in the Stormstout Brewery. I guess that means I suck at exploring. That's ok, I'm good at other things. But after reading the post, I absolutely had to go in this particular dungeon and try it out for myself. I had to wait until just now for that to happen. I've been busy, what do you want from me.

As I zoned in the dungeon, I spoke to the lady standing right next to the portal and purchased five Ling-Ting's favourite tea. I waited until the dungeon was done, for all the bosses and trash packs to be cleared, and then I drank the tea and started looking.

I soon found my first of 30 Golden Hopling. It took me about 15-20 minutes to find them all. (Only reason I know is because the debuff granted by the tea only lasts 5 minutes and I had to use at least three teas. Maybe more.) I don't know what that says about me. The last one was cleverly hidden behind Uncle Gao's bar, or whatever that is he's standing behind in the last room. About midway through, it occurred to me that it might have been a good idea to count the Hoplings I found in order to know how much more I needed. Heh.

As soon as I got the achievement, I received some in-game mail!

BoP, of course.

 And I had a new companion pet to add to my collection!

How does searching for "hop" result in
Celestial Dragon and Stinker? /boggles

It's a blue quality humanoid pet, same model as the Feral Vermling, but in a different color. It was a very fun little "mini-game" and I wish Blizz put more of those things in game. Then again, maybe they do and I just don't know about them! This expansion is just full of surprises. 

Fun with the Anglers

This is so much cooler than water walking.

I've always been a big fan of fishing in WoW. Most of my characters have their fishing skill maxed out by the time they reach the level cap. I enjoyed it even back when your casts could miss 20 times in a row if your skill was too low for the zone you were in, and your fish could escape more often than realistically possible. That was also back when you needed to fish between 12 and 20 (if memory serves) to get one lousy skill point. Granted, I enjoyed it less than I do now.

Nowadays, fishing is easy and fun to level. One of the new Pandaria factions, the Anglers, offers three dailies  (from a larger pool of quests) that are quick and easy to complete. Once you do every quests at least once, you are granted an achievement.

The best part is that every daily gives a fishing skill point. If you aren't in a hurry to max out fishing, this seems like the perfect way to get more players to enjoy this profession. Once you are honored with the Anglers, you can buy a companion pet and a fishing pole. At revered, you get access to an even better fishing pole, as well as the raft shown above. For classes that don't have the luxury of a water walking ability, the raft really is an amazing item. Pools that were once out of reach from the shore suddenly become a lot less annoying. And at exalted, you get a nice tabard and a cool mount!

Those are all incentive to work on raising your reputation with this faction, if only to get the mount. Leveling fishing as never been so easy and fun, and I am grateful to Blizz for giving some love to this profession, it really needed it!

Quick Post : Tailoring Surprise

When I went to the Silken Fields to use my Imperial Silk daily cooldown, I was surprised to notice the icon had changed.

Instead of the Imperial Silk icon is now one of a cocoon!

When I opened the cocoon, there was an Imperial Silk in it,
but there was also and Imperial Silkworm! 

As you can see, this companion is NOT bound on pick up. 

I learned it this time, but subsequent Silkworms just might
 find their way to the closest Auction House!

This is a good day for altoholics

When I logged on today after the maintenance, the first thing I did was to visit the Tillers Quartermaster and purchase the commendation.

It costs 40 at exalted.

Then, I went to harvest my twelve songbells of the day.

The (+55.0 bonus) is a nice touch.

Harvesting now grants double the reputation, which is a nice boost, considering twelve times 110 rep equals 1320. which is more than what you get for doing ten Golden Lotus dailies. And that is not counting the dailies.

Yes, this'll do.

Each Tillers daily now grants 770 rep a pop, so with five dailies, it means you can get up to 5170 reputation each day with harvesting and dailies combined! This means that it is possible to go from revered to exalted in about four to five days. And that doesn't take into account the various quests you can get from the farmers as you gain with reputation with them as well, or the "<insert NPC name here>'s vote" quest you do as you gain more reputation with the Tillers faction. My characters benefit from the Mr. Popularity guild perk though, so your mileage may vary.

Of course, to be able to buy the commendation, you need to have at least one character at revered with a Pandaria faction. But it does mean that once you get there at least once with each reputation, doing it again on an alt (or more) will be twice as quick, and the last stretch from revered to exalted will be a lot less painful than ever before. I believe this is a great way to reward players with an altoholic tendency, and a convincing incentive to do dailies on more than one character. The Order of the Cloud Serpent is a great example of this, as you cannot use the mounts on alts once one of your characters reaches exalted with this faction. With this commendation system, it is now a lot easier to get your pretty dragon mounts on multiple characters!

For someone like me, with 10+ characters, this is very good stuff.

Thoughts on Patch 5.1

According to MMO-Champion, the Patch 5.1 is coming live this week (in a couple hours, really) and I wanted to highlight some things I'm excited about. Complete patch notes can be found here. My comments are in red. 

Classes

•  Hunter 
  • Aspect of the Fox has been removed.
  • Steady Shot, Cobra Shot, and Barrage can now always be cast on the move.
  I very rarely ever used Aspect of the Fox because I suck. I usually spam Arcane Shot when I'm moving, so this change is really awesome. 
   Monk (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
• The Tiger Power provided by Tiger Palm now reduces target armor by 30% with a single application and no longer stacks.

Not a big change, but if the buff ever drops, it'll take 2 less GCDs to apply it back.

Pet Battles

• A new item has been introduced that can be used to upgrade the quality of Battle Pets: Battle-stones. I have some uncommon quality pets who are really happy about this. 
  
• Pet Journal
  • Pets can now be filtered by name, type, rarity and level, and filters will remain in place each time the Pet Journal is viewed.
  • It is now possible to search locations in the Pet Journal. For example, searching “Westfall” will display all the Battle Pets that can be found in Westfall.
• Battle Pet tooltips will now display whether a pet is owned, and how many pets of that type are owned.
• Pet Quality is now displayed in battles, and will be visible on portraits, names and tooltips.
• The level of battle pets in a zone can now be seen on the map, and it’s now possible to see the strength of wild pets relative to your team at a glance.

Until now, I needed addons to do most of this. And have Warcraft Pets open on my second monitor. This will save a lot of time and effort!  

Raids, Dungeons and Scenarios

• Raid groups are no longer necessary to enter pre-Mists of Pandara raid dungeons. Enemies in these raids that previously required more than one player to defeat are now more easily dealt with by players battling alone.

Wonder how much easier these raids will be. The fact that we won't need to bother friends or guildies to form a raid just to enter raids is a nice plus.

These are only a portion of all the things that are coming tomorrow, so you should definitely read the complete patch notes. It's nice to be getting a patch so quickly after the new expansion's launch (almost exactly two months later, I think this might be a new record!) bringing so much quality of life improvements. 

I'm a bit worried though that I didn't see anything about reputations in those patch notes. I thought I had read somewhere that with patch 5.1 were coming new items you could buy once you hit revered with a faction that made gaining rep on all your characters easier. Maybe I'm mistaken, or maybe I missed them. Either way, fingers crossed!

Mage's first Panda raid

The mage hit revered with the Tillers today, so she started planting some Songbell Seeds to harvest Motes of Harmony! This is my third character farming Motes, which means I can get more Golden Lotus for transmutes, and that maybe I can start getting some Trilium ore and (re)start using my Living Steel cooldown every day. Not that I really need Living Steel at the moment, but it will come handy at some point to be able to craft Belt Buckles if I ever start raiding again.

Speaking of which, I have taken the mage in Mogu'shan Vaults over the weekend (the Raid Finder version)  and I still don't really enjoy it all that much. The Spirit King is kinda fun, with all the shit there is to dodge, and Will of the Emperor is chaotic enough to keep me on my toes. But the other bosses aren't exactly exciting. To me, anyway. Your mileage may vary. My dps was meh, but some of her gear isn't reforged or properly gemmed/enchanted. I know, this is terrible, and I would never go into an actual raid like this, but like they all say: "It's LFR, no one cares." But I didn't do as bad as I thought, even as frost. I tried to go fire but hated it with a passion. I've never been a big fan of fire, and while I did go fire for the better part of Dragon Soul, I didn't like it. Frost is a lot more fun, even more fun than arcane that I used to love like crazy. I picked Invocation as my last tier's talent point, and I run out of mana so fast, it's not even funny. Since it makes Evocation's cooldown only 10 seconds, it's not all that bad, but I don't like having to stop and use it 4 or 5 times in a raid fight.Then again, Rune of Power probably wouldn't be that much better, since I'd have to recast it everytime I have to move. I remember in Dragon Soul, especially on Madness of Deathwing, I had to use my mana gems and Evocation on cooldown, but it feels even worse now, on every fight. It seems it's just a thing we have to deal with now. Until we get better gear, I suppose.

I do enjoy playing my mage though, and the both groups I got in LFR this weekend were relatively good. In total, we've wiped only once on the last boss, Will of the Emperor, because the tank died early and lots of dps died before we could get him back up. I got some gloves I didn't need, and only got gold for every other boss. I have everything I need to craft an epic robe, but I'm waiting until I run MSV again tomorrow after the reset. I would really hate to craft something and replace it the same day. If it can last me at least a week, it's a bit more worth the mats.

Quick Post : Monk Awesomness

The bf and I used to play our monks together, but he completely lost interest in the class, so I can now level mine on my own. Our monks were level 48 when Mad decided he didn't wanna play his anymore, and now my little panda lady is level 60! I kinda enjoy the playstyle, now that I have most of my abilities. Handling the chi can be a bit tricky, but mobs die so fast, it's hard to tell what it's really supposed to be like.

First thing I did when my monk hit 60 today was to buy my flight license in Orgrimmar. Then, I picked up herbalism and mining and headed for Durotar.

Just as I had hoped, picking flowers and mining ore did not dismount me. (Even using my Hearthstone didn't!) Up until now, my rogue and druid were my dedicated herbalists, while my paladin was my miner. I also had my priest as my gatherer toon, which means she could both mine and herb, but I had absolutely no interest in leveling her aside for her professions. 

So now I have my solution. The monk is officially my new gatherer character!

Edit: It seems though that the Zen Flight is a lot slower than other actual flying mounts. I'll have to check it out further to see what's the deal with this.

I am the worst blogger ever

It's been way too long since I last posted (over three weeks!), and I feel guilty about it. Time to change that!

The month of November hasn't been all that good to me so far, and lots of crap happened, preventing me from enjoying anything or even thinking about blogging. WoW is my constant companion, and I have been playing as much as I normally do, but my state of mind wasn't good at all, which resulted in me saying: "screw this!" each time I tried to sit down and write, or just try to pick a toon to play. I normally have trouble making decisions, but it's been worse these past few weeks. 

I finally sent my warrior over to Rexxar, and now my alliance mage is now all decked out in heirlooms. She made it to 70, and then I didn't feel like playing her. She's in an awesome guild, with awesome people that I really like, and I will play there more regularly once my brains stops being a bitch. Which will be soon, hopefully.

On the Horde front, I finally played my mage long enough for her to hit 90 last weekend, which made me a tiny bit happy. I have been doing dailies on her ever since and am now trying to gear her up for the raid finder. I didn't enjoy Mogu'shan vault all that much on my hunter, but maybe I will enjoy it more once I take my favourite character. By Saturday the mage should be honored with the Golden Lotus and have enough Valor Points to buy a ring from them. She will also be able to get patterns for some gorgeous crafted gear such as the Spelltwister's Grand Robe, which should grant me the last point I need to reach 460 item level. Then I will need to get another 1250 VP to buy the neck off the Klaxxi. After that, I'll need some luck and some Elder Charms of Good Fortune to try and score enough gear to be able to run the Heart of Fear on the Raid Finder. It's the first time in a while that I feel I have a real goal in mind and it feels good. 

A month later

It's been a little more than a month now that the Pandas have arrived. I thought it was time for a little recap of what I've been up to and how my characters are doing.

Death Knight - 86  

After Motes of Harmony to finish maxing Engineering. Also farming raw meats for cooking. Lately, mostly Raw crocolisk meat and Raw crab meat. Does some fishing on the side when there are pools nearby.

Druid - 86 

Pet battles! Doing daily inscription research to get all the glyphs. 8 to go.

Hunter - 90 

Tillers dailies. Enchanting and JC is maxed. Doing daily JC research for gem cuts. Doing some heroics and Raid Finder from time to time, but not focused on any particular end game activities.

Mage - 87 

Dedicated cook. Maxed out all six ways so she can make all available foods for all the family. Also maxed archaeology, but I'm waiting to be able to fly to work on it more. Maxed alchemy and tailoring. Didn't even start her daily cd's like Living Steel or Imperial Silk. Does some fishing on the side when there are pools nearby.

Baby Mage (Alliance) and Monk (Horde) - Both 47

Dungeon Finder. 

Paladin - 87 

Recently maxed Blacksmithing. Needs to hit 89 to start rep with the Klaxxi so she can get the Belt Buckle recipe.

Priest - 85 

Still in Orgrimmar. Occasionally goes to Pandaria to mine and pick flowers.

Rogue - 86 

Currently in Krasarang Wilds to finish Loremaster of Pandaria. Herbing and stabbing people right in the face.

Shaman - 90 

Harvesting Motes of Harmony every day. (The DK secretly hates her.) Does some fishing on the side when there are pools nearby. Skins every corpse she can get her hands on. Working on getting all the farmers to be her best friends.

Warlock - 85 

Bank alt still in Orgrimmar. Has a bunch of old mats in her bags and bank which I'm too lazy to sort and put on the AH.

Warrior - 85

Still in Orgrimmar, looking pretty. Disenchants some greens from time to time, when it's convenient.

So I didn't get all that much done since the game was released. I've been mostly doing Tillers dailies, doing pet battles (and working on pet battle achivements. Gotta have them all!) and slowly leveling multiple characters instead of focusing on one at a time. I've rarely been this slow at getting my characters to max level. At the beginning of Cataclysm, it took me about two weeks to get five or six toons to 85. I'm really slacking off this time around. I'm also thinking about transferring a character over to Rexxar so my poor alliance mage can get some heirlooms, which will slow me down even more in the "get all the toons to 90" process, but that's fine. For the first time in years, I'm not rushing to be ready to raid, and it feels good. I can afford to slack off. I don't miss raiding all that much so far, and my trips in the Raid Finder haven't exactly been exciting. I'm not in love with the Mogu'shan Vaults, but I look forward to trying out other raids as they become available.

What I've been up to

I have a cold, so my thoughts might be just a tad incoherent. So please just bear with me. 

Alright, here goes.

The shaman has been diligently doing her dailies every day ever since she hit 90 over a week ago. Although, she's only been working on two factions so far. She's been working on the Tillers since day 1, and she is now almost exalted with the farmers. She's got 12 spots available, and she's been gathering motes of harmony in  the hopes of someday being able to craft some gear for the hunter and/or rogue. Which brings me to the second faction, the Golden Lotus. You only need to reach honored to buy the leatherworking recipes, which is only a week worth of dailies. I didn't start those dailies until last Sunday though, so by next weekend, I should be done with them. And it's been a bit painful. I love the Tillers and the cooking dailies. I really do. Even when there are no untapped mobs available and that other people steal quest items right from under me. It's still fun. But the Golden Lotus dailies very much feel like a chore. There's just too many people there, being rude, stealing from each other, shoving mobs your way on purpose to make you die. And for a miserable 110 rep per quest. I can't wait to be done with it, and am very happy that I'm not raiding, because I know it would be a lot worse. Then again, maybe I just suck that much at elemental shamy and that's why I have no fun doing those quests. I'm not even doing heroics or scenarios or any of that with her. I do dailies, I mess around at the farm, and then I log on alts.

The hunter has made good progress this week and is now level 89. She should hit 90 in a day or two, as I have almost a full level in rested XP. The dk is almost 86 just by farming motes of harmony for Engineering, as well as raw meats for my cooking needs. My mage is still sitting at 87 in Halfhill, only sometimes bothering to plant some seeds when needed for other characters' needs. I still want to get her to 90 at some point, if only to finish Archaeology and work on the Lorewalkers rep, but I just don't feel like playing her right now. I'm having way too much fun with the hunter finishing up the Pandaria Loremaster. I tamed a goat last night, and she is now my favourite pet of all.

I also bought a yak mount from Uncle Bigpocket in
Kun-Lai Summit. So adorable!

I've also spent way too much time indulging in pet battles. I didn't think I'd like it so much, but it's surprisingly addictive and fun. It took me a while to pick my three favourite pets, but I'm pretty happy with my team.

I'm terribad and haven't named them yet, but I find it hard to pick names. Chuck will remain Chuck, because he already has a name, duh, but the other two, I'm still trying to find the perfect name for them. Once I tried the pet battles, I looked up the achievements related to it, and decided that I must get them all! Yeah, that'll take a while. I've also made a list of all the pets I want to cage, and it's a pretty long list. But they're all so adorable. I don't think I'll ever get them all, or even reach 400 pets for the achievement, but I think I can make it to 250 easily.

I haven't had so much to do in game in ages, and I'm really trying to take it slow to make it last as long as possible. And with all the things I want to get done, making it last a long time won't be a problem!

I used to hate rogues

I have been working on a rogue for quite some time. I haven't rolled many rogues in my WoW career, but most of them got deleted before they could buy their first mount. There was one who made it to 75, as Combat, and I was so bored with her that I deleted her too, despite her fairly high level. 

That's why I was surprised last month when my brain suggested I should roll a rogue again. But why brains, why? I hate rogues, don't I? Well, turns out I don't.  Maybe it's just combat that I didn't enjoy, because this time around, I started out as Sub and went Assass in the mid 50s, and I've had a blast the whole time. 

Although at the beginning of my WoW career, I was a keyboard turner, and stealthing and moving behind the mobs all the time was just beyond my beginner's abilities. That is why I went combat, thinking it would be easier and more fun for me. But I was wrong, and combat just bored me to tears. But that was years ago, and I haven't tried it since all the changes. Maybe I'd enjoy it this time.  I'll have to try it again some time.

The rogue took a break at 60, because MoP was released. I played my shaman, got her to 90, and then, instead of taking another character to 90 right away, I went back to the rogue. It took me about a week to get her from 60 to 85 and she is now in Pandaria, in the Jade Forest. I was worried at first that since she was a fresh 85, her gear wouldn't be good enough and that mobs there would just annihilate her, but the good people of Twitter assured me that it wouldn't be so bad, and some of them reminded me that there were gear vendors to help me out in Pandaria. Oh, right. Totally forgot about those. So I took the airship and started questing. I did die once, because there were three mobs on me and I guess I just suck at buttons. (Speaking of which, I really need to redo her UI. Leveling through dungeons has spoiled me and I didn't need much "oh shit!" buttons, but now I do need them, and I can't find them.) But mostly it was smooth sailing and it's been a lot of fun. She's also picking flowers as she goes, and her alchemy is coming along nicely. I know she will hit 90 someday, I just don't know when. I don't know if the honeymoon will end or if I'll still have as much fun with her in a couple months as I do now, but I look forward to eventually taking her to the Raid Finder. 

But I say that all the time. I often tell myself "oh this class is the best!" and then I stop enjoying it so much and just go back to my mage. I suppose time will tell.

Ding 90!

As of last night, around 3 am, I finally have a max level character. And it's my shaman. Not my mage. And it makes me a little sad. 

I'm super excited to finally be able to join the max level club, to FLY in Pandaria, (damn I never thought I'd miss it this much) and to get started on all the dailies. By the way, what the fuck was Blizz thinking? Sure, there's no cap for dailies now, but we still can only hold 25 quests at a time. With all the "Get Revered with X faction" my frickin' log is always full. Plus, I wanted to keep my breadcrumb quests from all the zones I abandoned halfway through, but no can do. No room for that with a gazillion dailies to do. Hot damn. My head was spinning at the amount of stuff I needed to start working on once I hit 90. I bought my flying licence or whatever, and just FLEW all the things. It felt so damn good. Fuck flight masters, I fly on my own, now. 

But as I tried to figure out what to do next, it hit me. My mage was always my first max level toon. And now it's not. And the reason for that is that my bf Mad wanted to play his warlock, and it didn't make sense to both be playing clothies. Mad loves gear. Like, really. So there was no chance in hell I'd ever be able to ever get my hands on any cloth gear. (It's his only flaw, I swear) He also insisted on me playing a class which could either tank or heal, so we could queue for dungeons faster. I picked my shaman because it was the only class with which I felt like healing, and because Mad had agreed to pay for a race change for her.

The Shaman; Before and After

The panda ladies are too damn adorable, especially when they laugh. I couldn't resist making one and don't regret it one bit. And the truth is, I don't really even feel like playing my mage right now. She's sitting at level 87, and she will stay there for a little while longer. The next character I take to 90 will most likely be my hunter. Then we'll see. I have a rogue in the early seventies who I'm itching to work on. But that will have to wait after I get some dailies done!

So in the end, I'm happy I started with the shaman. It was pretty fun to be honest. I quested as elemental and queue'd for dungeons as heals, and the levels just kept coming. When we could play, because RL is a bitch and we hardly ever could find the time to actually sit down and play together, until this weekend.

But now I really want to figure out which rep I need on which characters, gear and profession wise. I know I won't be raiding anytime soon, so gear isn't a priority. For now, I focus primarily on the Cloud Serpent and the Tillers, but as I get more characters to 90, I'll need to prioritize and plan accordingly.

I never thought I could ever have "too much" to do in WoW. Isn't it awesome?

Zen Professions

In an effort to work a bit on all my professions today, I decided to go do some Archaeology while the boyfriend was sorting out his bank. (What a mess, the guy just keeps everything for transmog! ... Who am I kidding, I do that, too.) After only a couple digs, I saw I had a rare coming up next! A few minutes later, I had the Umbrella of Chi-Ji!

It's absolutely gorgeous, and quite powerful, I reckon. Not that I actually need powerful items all that much (even though it never hurts). None of my characters are over level 87 yet and I don't know when any of them is going to hit 90. I'm happy to work on professions for now. I have tailoring, jewelcrafting, enchanting, mining, skinning and fishing maxed out so far. The rest are slowly getting there, considering ghost iron and herbs are pretty expensive and require a bit of luck (must get to that node first!) to farm in large quantities. But I'll get there! I just need to farm some more and be patient. Speaking of which, the skinner/leatherworker has been quite busy today in Valley of the Four Winds where she skinned all the things. 

Skin all the things, Pandaria style!

She now has enough materials to reach 600 easily. She just needs to pay a visit to the recipe vendors in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, which she can do now that she reached level 87. And I plan on doing just that first thing tomorrow.

I find it hard not to skin all the dead beasts on the ground, especially now that everyone and their mother is out there questing. But I swear I would never get anything done (in and out of WoW) if all I did was follow questers around all day and skin the dead mobs they leave behind. And I thought the Jade Forest was the Skinner Heaven!

Coming back to the surface

Only four slots, for now.

Mists of Pandaria has been live for two days and even though I have been playing for the better part of those two days, I feel like I have done nothing yet.

Monday went by so fast my head was spinning. I had feared time would pass slowly but I've been so busy with Real Life Stuff that I didn't have time to be impatient at all. Although, once I tried to take a nap until 2am (MoP was going live at 3am my time) time started to be a real bitch. I slept a little but woke up at 10pm and just couldn't sleep anymore. I got up, finished tweaking last minute details and watched some shows to pass the time. When 3am came around, it actually caught me by surprise. Inexplicably, when the quest to go see Garrosh popped up, the first word that came out of my mouth were : I'm not ready. I had a small moment of panic, then the excitement took over and I turned in my dailies for what I hoped to be some good XP. I was disappointed to get only 2-3 bars in, but decided that it was better than nothing and went on my way to Orgrimmar to start my adventures. At first, I logged on all my characters, turned in all their dailies, learned the Zen Master rank of all their professions and used some mats I had to get a couple skill points for some professions. Lucky for me, my characters were all in Tol Barad, so I didn't experience all the lag in Orgrimmar. By the time I had cycled through all my characters, it was almost 4, and mostly everyone had already left for Pandaria.

I don't know exactly how long it took me but Tuesday night, when I went to bed at 5am, my mage was level 87. She had done every quests from the Jade Forest, had explored it all, had a lot of fish in her bags, multiple Windwool cloth stacks and a decent amount of Motes of Harmony, which makes me really happy. But it's only one zone! There's still so much to do and that's awesome! 

I had planned on trying to hit at least 89 by Friday in order to be able to do the Brewfest holiday boss, but later changed my mind. I really don't feel like rushing anything right now, and just want to enjoy myself. I have at least six characters that I want to level to 90 in the next couple weeks, so it's really not worth it to burn myself out on the first one. It will take more time, but that's alright. Pandaria is so pretty and so lively, I don't mind one bit the fact that I still have most of it to explore. 

So here are, loosely, my plans for the next couple of days:

• Questing and exploring. I'm leveling my mage alone, without the boyfriend, so I'm taking my time and doing every quest I can get my hands on. I want to try and get the achievements for all the quests in each zone, along with the exploring ones. The boyfriend has no patience for such things, and that is why I'm leveling another characters with him so that we can do things his way. I still have a couple "loner" characters with which I can just stop and smell the flowers/fish/gather raw meats whenever I feel like it.
• Farm farm farm! As in, plant seeds and harvest ripe and plump vegetables and fruits the next day. I've really been enjoying messing around in my farm and harvesting some delicious cooking ingredients. Six of my characters are presently parked in Halfhill, watering, tilling, spraying and waiting for things to grow. Everyday, I gather a little more goodies and stockpile them for future use. 
• Working on professions. Mats are a bit hard to come by right now, and pretty expensive on the auction house, so whatever/whenever I can gather myself, I try to. I try to fish as much as possible while I'm in queue for dungeons, and whenever I need to kill animals for quests, I kill some extra ones just for the raw meat they provide. Herbs and mining nodes are in very high demand and it's not easy to get there before everyone else, but I'm slowly gathering some in order to level my multiple professions.
• Moslty, just have as much fun as possible. I've tried to stick to only one character and failed. My mage is still sitting at 87 in Valley of the Four Winds, and my hunter is almost 86. I took the shaman to the Jade Forest to skin all the things the people doing quests have left behind. Leather heaven is fun, and I want to take advantage of it while I can. And it's okay. Trying to play only one character at a time just doesn't work for me, and doing so only takes the fun out of everything. Being able to switch  from one toon to another as the mood strikes me is something I enjoy, and one of the reasons why I have one character of each class. I'll get to 90. Eventually.
• And the rest. I haven't done the Panda starter area yet, nor have I rolled a monk or tried Pet Battles. But those will have to wait, as there is a lot on my plate at the moment, with all the questing and the exploring. 

I wanted to write about this sooner, but I simply couldn't pry my eyes off the game long enough to do anything else, except sleep. Also, I needed time to let it all sink in. I've been avoiding Twitter and most blogs in order to just appreciate the game at my own pace. Everything is gorgeous, the quests are a lot of fun, there's many new things to do to keep me busy for months and I don't miss Cataclysm one bit!

When you're ready, there's nothing left to do but wait

All I've been thinking about, ever since I saw those posts over at the Godmother's blog, was getting ready for the pandas. I've never done that before, for any other expansions. Back in BC, I managed to get two max level characters by the time WotLK came out, but I didn't have a plan. I wanted to play my mage, and that's what I did. I had almost no gold to my name, because I'd spend it all on professions and pets.

But in WotLK, I leveled a shitload of alts. I gave them professions, and today, I have all of them. On a single server. Which means I can farm for gems, enchants, and everything I need instead of buying it. It makes a huge difference. When Cata was released, I didn't stockpile gold. I didn't farm until my fingers bled. I just waited. And blew all my gold on obsidium ores to level Jewelcrafting when the expansion launched. But this time, I'm pretty much ready. All thanks to the Godmother and her precious advices.

Most of my characters's professions are maxxed, and they have enough mats to gain five skill points from both their primary professions when MoP launches. Except the gathering ones. They all have a nice little nest of gold, plus some more stashed on my banker alt. They all did 21 dailies from Tol Barad plus the cooking and fishing dailies from Orgrimmar, for a total of 23 dailies to be turned-in as soon we can get xp again.

I've cleaned all my character's banks and bags in order to make room for all the new stuff, and dumped everything in the AH, making some decent profit in the process. My personnal guildbank was full to capacity with herbs and ores and leathers and enchanting mats until recently. I had planned on putting it all on the AH next week, in the hopes that some pandas might need it for their professions, but I used most of the ores I had to level engineering on my death knight, and my boyfriend suddenly decided he wanted an enchanter/tailor warlock, so there went most of my cloth and enchanting mats. Which is fine. More professions, the better!

I did have a moment of panic a couple weeks back when I realized that patch 5.0.4 meant cross-realm zones were becoming a reality. No more farming for hours alone in a lowbie zone. Which is a shame, because I really enjoyed that. So I did what I had been putting off for weeks and I finished all the farming I wanted to get done before the patch hit.

I had a lot of fun preparing for the big day, and I feel as ready as I can be to welcome the pandas and explore their world. It's really exhilarating for me to feel so connected, so focused on a precise goal. I used to just let things go, and even though I was excited for previous expansions, this time it feels different. It's even better. I just hope I'm not getting my hopes up, with expectations so high that they can't possibly be met.

I'm anxious to work on my professions again and craft new items, pick new flowers, cook new foods and kill new enemies. There are five days left before the gates open. And it's getting harder and harder to be patient.

Luckily, I still have Tides of War to read before Tuesday.

The Mists of Pandaria Bucket List

In an effort to pass the time until next Tuesday, I've updated my bucket list with new in-game goals. The list is massive, and it's still missing some things I wish to do in the next, well, two years most likely. It's a work in progress.

I want of course to level all my characters on the main server to 90, but I am not necessarily in a hurry to do so. I've picked the order, more or less, in which my main characters will be leveled in the next couple of weeks/months.

First off is my mage. She will be the first to set foot on new territories, and explore Pandaland. Since she does not have any gathering professions, her alchemy will have to wait. Although, as far as I know, cloth is fairly easy to come by, so her tailoring will benefit from this early on. 

The hunter is next in line. I won't be able to work on her jewelcrafting for a while, but since she's an enchanter, she can disenchant gear she doesn't need. I have a list of pets I want to tame for her, and will be working on that as soon as possible.

The herbalist/scribe druid, miner/blacksmith pally and skinner/leatherworker shaman will follow soon after, in order to gather the necessary mats to work on most crafting professions. I will also have a dedicated gatherer character out there (with mining and herbalism) as soon as possible, but it is unclear at this time whether that will be my priest or my rogue.

I have several more characters that will require my attention, but they will have to wait. Oh and I have to fit "start a monk" somewhere in there as well.

In the bucket list there's also titles I want to get, rep I want to gain, professions I want to max and much much more. I feel it is still incomplete, so the page will most likely change throughout the expansion. There's just so much I want to do! It's all so exciting. I suspect the Tillers farm, the pet battles and the rep grinding with various factions will keep me busy for quite some time. And I can't wait!

The final countdown

One short week left before the Pandas arrive. One short week which I suspect will seem to last an eternity.

Until then, the flailing will go on overdrive. On Tuesday I will be running Kara again in the hopes of scoring the belt I've been after for a couple weeks now, the one that matches the Aldor Regalia. Other than that, I'll be naming more pets, learning my last glyphs recipes through the Northrend Inscription Research, leveling the rogue some more, hunting some last minute transmog items, and reading the Tides of War novel in order to try and make sense of the Theramore's Fall Scenario, which I will keep running on a couple characters after I've read the book. 

At first I was very disappointed by the scenario, but I believe that can be explained by too high expectations on my part. I, like many others, was expecting some kind of big event like we've had in the past before new expansions were released. I thought the Theramore's Fall Scenario was going to give some sort of introduction to the new expansion. But that was never the intent it seems. The scenario in itself is fairly entertaining, even though it is quite short. It took me and two other dps about ten minutes to complete it.

We killed alliance people, we set ships aflame, destroyed tanks and released a prisoner from the keep's basement. Who was that prisoner? Why was he captured? Who started the hostilities? Why are we attacking Theramore? I don't know. There were no indication of what was going on, or if there was, I missed it.

Some people on Twitter seemed to think that those of us who didn't read Tides of War had no way of knowing what was going on, which doesn't make sense to me. The game in itself should give us a minimum of information to help us make sense of what we're doing.

My point is, in my opinion, a big event like this deserved more than a 10 minute mini-instance like what we got today. But maybe that is only the tip of the iceberg. Time will tell.

Rant incoming : read at your own risk

Back when I raided, there was a thing that really annoyed the hell outta me.

There was this guy, whenever he got an upgrade, he'd hearthstone to Orgrimmar to gem, enchant and reforge. Talk about wasting time. Then we'd have to summon him back. And run back to wherever we were. At some point, our Raid Leader threw a fit. "We have an hour left to the raid, you can do all that shit later. For now, keep your old piece and get your ass back here." It worked, but the guy was way too grumpy after that.

That was before. Now that we can have access to a mount which provides a portable reforger, I'm worried this will become the norm. Everyone who gets a new item will want to use the mount to reforge. Of course, no one will have to HS back to Org or SW. Now, they can just mount up and reforge. 

But how much time will be wasted on this between pulls, making wipe recoveries last that much longer. Reforging is not like repairing. You don't just click on a button and it's done. Sometimes one piece changes some other pieces' reforging as well. There's always one dude taking his sweet time making the rest of the raid wait. Don't be that guy. Wait for a break, or for the end of the raid.

That said, the Yak really is cool. I don't think I'll buy it simply because I'm too greedy and don't want to spend my whole "fortune" on one mount, but I can't deny it's usefulness. I think it's nice you can reforge in whichever zone you are. If there are no reforgers in Pandaria, then it's awesome to be able to carry one around with you.

Today is a good day

I thought about it for a very long time. Hell, it's been so long, it was two expansions ago! (Yes, Cata is over. IT IS!!)

I finally bought the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth. I always told myself I didn't need it. And I didn't. I was fine without it. There were times while farming when I had to delete stuff in my bags for lack of room. And it didn't really matter.

But I also kept looking at my 99/100 mounts, and thought : Fuck it.

So now, I have my red Dragonhawk. Yay me!

But the best part is that I also have the blue one!

I wish the Horde could use it, too. Because it's gorgeous. But I guess the red will have to do!

Today is a good day.