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!

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!

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!

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!

25 slots is not enough

I read this post today on Lae's blog and for a second, I had a "oh shit!" moment. My hunter's stable is pretty much full at the moment, with twenty-one pets total, which leaves only 4 slots for new ones. I even have a whole page for my pets. But with the pandas are coming a shitload of new skins and brand new types of pet you can tame, with only 25 slots available, and my first thought was : I'm so screwed.

Something had to be done.

I have all nine spirit beasts in my collection, and there is no way in a million years I'm letting any one of them go. I also have a couple rares I'm very fond of, which I will be keeping as well :

Terrorpene

Deth'tilac

Sambas

So that makes 12 pets I absolutely want to keep. Which leaves 13 spots. 8 of those were already occupied, so I went and tried to see if I couldn't get rid of some of them. I came up with the following:

- The wolf that hasn't see the light of day in months (if not years) has to go. 

- Same with the rare blue Fox from Loch Modan. It's on a 90 minutes cooldown, so if I ever change my mind, it wouldn't be too painful to get it again. 

- The bear I used to keep as a pocket tank can also be abandoned. Since in MoP we can turn any pet into a tank, I can use another model for this task. (Arcturis or Terrorpeme comes to mind.)

- The purple-ish cat from Winterspring (the one that matches the Alliance Wintrerspring mount) has to go as well. 

- The Core Hound gets to stay, if only for the ghetto Bloodlust.

- The dragonhawk can stay too, in case we need the +8% spell damage debuff.

- Same for the Devilsaur and his 5% crit buff. Unlike the wolf, I really love my devilsaur. I don't use it a lot because I usually take Loque'Nahak when I play BM, but I love him too much to actually abandon him.

The only pet I'm keeping only for sentimental value is Humar the Pridelord.

Back when my boyfriend Mad still had a hunter, he had only one pet, and it was Humar the Pridelord. Back in BC, he camped this rare for days before he finally got lucky enough to not get it stolen or killed before he could tame it. When Mad deleted his hunter a while back, I went and tamed Humar. I even named him Leonidas, just like Mad had named his. So unless I really have to, I won't be abandoning this pet.

Which leaves me with sixteen pets, and nine available slots for future companions.

Thanks to Petopia, I've been able to determine that when MoP is released, I will need to tame a Quillen, because they will let us resurrect dead players in combat, which could really come in handy. I might get a Water Strider too, for his Water Walking ability, and for his Spell Power buff.

I also want a goat, just because they are so frickin' adorable. 

Image from Petopia

And I must get this cat model, because it just looks too damn cool : 

Image from Petopia

I think it's a rare model, but I don't care. I must have it. At the very least, I will try to get another Siberian Tiger, in a different colour, like the black one perhaps.

If I ever raid as a hunter, I will try and get more pets that offer useful buffs and debuffs, but until then, I will tame rare and/or pretty pets, because that's just what I do.

10 glyphs I'm excited about in Mists of Pandaria

I haven't been on the beta a lot since I got in. (Except to check out the Pandas' starting zone, which is a lot of fun btw.) The reason for that is that I don't wanna be spoiled. I checked stuff like professions, talents and glyphs, but nothing from the new continent, or any quests or anything else. I want to be able to log in the day that MoP launches and just discover it all with my boyfriend. It'd be easy to go and do it all now, but that just means I'll get bored with it faster. Levelling 10+ characters to the level cap does that to you.

But I've seen enough to be really excited for the new content. I wasn't thrilled when I first heard about pandas and I was wondering whether or not that would be the time I finally quit WoW. But the months passed, and I completely changed my mind. I'm still not completely sold to the pandas, and I don't know how I'll enjoy playing a monk, but there's new content coming, which is always good, and can't be worse than Cataclysm - oops, did I just say that? - and I'm just excited to get new dungeons, new raids, new gear and so on. 

I only just today looked at the new glyphs that we're getting in MoP, and a lot of those got me really excited.

Druid Glyphs :

Glyph of the Stag Minor Glyph Classes: Druid Requires Level 25 Item Level 25

Use: Permanently teaches you this glyph. Your Travel Form now appears as a Stag and can be used as a mount by party members.

Even if it's not as fast as a mount, it's still great. Levelling with a non-druid buddy just became a lot more fun.

Glyph of the Orca Minor Glyph Classes: Druid Requires Level 25 Item Level 25

Use: Permanently teaches you this glyph. Your Aquatic Form now appears as an Orca.

I just think Orcas look a lot better than... whatever it is that the aquatic form looks like now.

Glyph of Stars Minor Glyph Classes: Druid Requires Level 29 Item Level 29

Use: Permanently teaches you this glyph. Your Moonkin Form now appears as Astral Form, conferring all the same benefits, but appearing as an astrally enhanced version of your normal humanoid form.

I guess lots of people might love their moonkin form. Me, I hate it. With a passion. So yay for druid transmog!

Hunter Glyphs :

Glyph of Fetch Minor Glyph Classes: Hunter Requires Level 25 Item Level 25

Use: Permanently teaches you this glyph. Teaches you the ability Fetch. Command your pet to retrieve the items on a nearby corpse.

How cool is that? Your pet can fetch loot from corpses that are out of reach, or just too far for your lazy ass to bother and pick it up yourself. The lazy ass in me is happy.

Glyph of Camouflage Major Glyph Classes: Hunter Requires Level 25 Item Level 25

Use: Permanently teaches you this glyph. Your Camouflage ability now provides stealth even while moving, but your movement speed while Camouflage is active is reduced by 50%.

I can haz stealth? On my hunter? Can playing a hunter get any better?

Mage Glyphs :

Glyph of Momentum Minor Glyph Classes: Mage Requires Level 25 Item Level 25

Use: Permanently teaches you this glyph. Your Blink spell teleports you in the direction you are moving instead of the direction you are facing.

When you're swimming, this becomes very useful.

Glyph of Ritual of Refreshment Minor Glyph Classes: Mage Requires Level 25 Item Level 25

Use: Permanently teaches you this glyph. Your Ritual of Refreshment spell no longer requires the assistance of other raid members to complete, but has a 1 min cooldown.

You mean I don't have to pray anymore that the idjits helping me summon my table won't move for no reason and cancel the casting? 

Glyph of Mana Gem Major Glyph Classes: Mage Requires Level 68 Item Level 68

Use: Permanently teaches you this glyph. Your Conjure Mana Gem spell now creates a Brilliant Mana Gem, which holds up to 10 charges.

Oh hello 30-minute-mana-intensive fights. I'm ready for you now.

Paladin Glyphs :

Glyph of Consecration Major Glyph Classes: Paladin Requires Level 25 Item Level 25

Use: Permanently teaches you this glyph. You can now target Consecration anywhere within 25 yards.

Try and pull aggro from me now, suckas.

Glyph of the Righteous Retreat Minor Glyph Classes: Paladin Requires Level 25 Item Level 25

Use: Permanently teaches you this glyph. During Divine Shield, you can invoke your Hearthstone 50% faster.

/bubblehearth

There are other cool glyphs coming with MoP, but those are my favourites so far. Here's hoping they don't get removed before they even go live!

[BETA] And so it begins

I got my invite to the MoP Beta, and I'm really excited and happy. I logged in and created a cutie panda and she looks absolutely adorable. The first hairstyle I had picked caused the character creation to fail. Lol? So I picked another and started my adventures in Pandaland.

There's sooo many people pandas out there! It was litterally a sea of pandas. The quests are hard to do because of all the fluffy, bouncy, chubby pandas stacking up (and even going afk) on items and mobs and quest givers, but that had to be expected. 

Mad didn't get in yet, and when I told him I did, he was more excited than I was. At first I couldn't start the download, as a Blizz Agent (Mad won't give me more details about this, except that it's BAD and that it's WAY TOO LONG TO EXPLAIN) was preventing my computer from connection to the internet or... well, do anything really. I had to turn off my computer then try again. It finally worked, and it started downloading. I logged in when I had about 25% of the data downloaded. I didn't have any framerate issues or anything, despite there being a freakin' panda convention in a tiny virtual space. 

My panda (Luluna on the Lost Isles) is still only level 2, and hasn't left the first quest hub yet.

I don't know if anyone else noticed, but the first quest has a typo. It says "the" twice in a row. I'm not sure if this is a test from Blizz (no one is reporting the typo from the first quest turn in! It's too obvious! GAHH! /shutdown ) or if anyone even took the time to report this, but I won't. 

Because it's a typo in the first quest. Chances are, 500k people reported this before me.

I will be posting screenshots as soon as I figure out where the fuck the beta screenshot folder is.