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.

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!