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?

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!

That patch better be really entertaining

I haven't posted in a while and this bugs me. But I haven't exactly been doing exciting stuff in game in the last week. It's only been farming and questing, doing dailies in TB and farming some more and then fishing, and then some more farming. After reading this post from the Godmother, I took my skinner shaman extraordinaire to Vashj'ir where she skinned her little troll heart out. I had been farming cloth in TB with the potion, but I hadn't done any other kind of farming. It was pretty fun, and I got lots of goodies. It was a real shark carnage.

There's still some stuff I want to get done by next tuesday. I want to farm some more herbs, ores, cloth and leather. I want to get my priest to 85 and max her professions. I want to do dailies on all my characters (there are two left, including the soon to be 85 priest) so I can turn them in first thing when I log online on September 25th. 

But I just can't bring myself to do it.

Real life is being weird lately. Mad and I decided to have a baby, so I stopped taking the pill a couple days ago and my body doesn't seem to like it one bit. I cry for stupid shit, I have sudden and terrible headaches and I'm just really really irritable. So hopefully, this changes soon and I can come back to normal. Because I hate being like this.

So lately everything in game feels like a chore, and I just have no patience for any of it. So I do nothing. I spend my evenings watching Fringe and stressing about the fact that the priest will never be ready on time. But I just don't especially enjoy questing as a shadowpriest, and I can't even queue for dungeons yet. So I gather herbs and ores and level very slowly. I hope the patch will bring back some interest for the game, because I just feel really bored with it right now.

In the meantime, Mad and I plan on playing some Diablo3 together this weekend, because I still haven't tried it and I want to play a game with him. (He gave up on the rogue he was supposed to level with me on my priest -.- ) I was excited for D3 when I first heard of it, but then it came out and I was busy with WoW and just never installed it. I guess now is the best time to do just that.

Many yellow dots, handle it!

Look at all the shiny pretties.

The last week has been pretty productive in many ways. 

My priest is now level 69. Mad and I chain-dungeon'd our way to 68, then went questing in Borean Tundra for a while. Now that we can queue for UK, it's back to the dungeons! I loved the Outlands dungeons, but at 68, all you can get is Sethekk Halls or Old Hillsbrad, so we decided it would be faster to just quest a little. 

I've also picked her professions. I hesitated a lot, thinking I might make her my second tailor, and fourth alchemist, but then I read these posts over at Just my two copper, and decided I didn't need a second tailor, but should definitely consider making a "pure gatherer" character. At first, I didn't want my priest to be a miner and an herbalist, as I prefer my druid for herbalism and my paladin for mining (for flying form and crusader aura respectively), but it just made so much sense to have both professions on one toon, for faster farming, that I did just that. 

Leveling mining and herbalism at the same time is both awesome and overwhelming. It's nice to see all those yellow dots all over the place on your mini-map, but I was always afraid I'd miss some. At some point I decided to just stick to the routes I found on WoW-Professions, and not just follow all the yellow dots in random directions. I've leveled both professions pretty fast, and it's been fun, but now I want to wait for level 70 so I can buy a faster flying and speed up the process of gathering in Outlands and Northrend. Slow mounts are slow.

I've also cleaned out the transmog tabs of the guild bank and was able to reduce it down to one tab. The rest as been sold, disenchanted or is in my bank alt's bags, waiting to be put on the Auction House. With the ores and herbs I've gathered, I've been able to help Mad with his engineering, stockpile enough herbs to level alchemy on my future monk, and put aside enough ores and herbs in the guild bank for future glyph needs, or simply to put on the Auction House once MoP is here. I also have a tab full of various cloths, which will be used to make bags for all the new pandas, and also to be put on the Auction House in a couple weeks. Hopefully, I can make a decent amount of gold out of it.

I want to try and finish everything before September, so that I can have at least three weeks free of any farming or questing before we start all over again with the gathering and questing and grinding in MoP. 

Which leaves me about three weeks to get my priest to 85, max her professions, gather everything needed for various professions (For my monk's and a few of Mad's characters. Because he's such a slacker when it comes to his professions.) and max my warrior's fishing (because I'm also a slacker).

Hopefully by then the patch will be live and we'll have some new things to play with while we wait for the pandas. I'm hoping the patch hits either on the 21st or the 28th, more or less a month before the expansion. After that there will be much messing around with the new talents, figuring out how to spec each of my toons, and explore all the new changes. I expect there will be some last minute stuff to be done, like squeezing in some quick achievements, hunting down a few more pets, grinding for a few more mounts, or updating addons and such. And that's fine.

The world needs more Taurens.

I've been so terribly bad this week. No posts in over a week has never happened before. But then again, I've only been blogging for three months.

I spent some time this week getting the warlock to 80. She's been gathering rested XP ever since and will keep doing so until I feel like I can stomach Hyjal again. The DK is now running Magister's Terrace daily for a chance at the White Cock, as many call it. Not that I find this model particularly appealing, but more mounts is always good. My boyfriend's DK hit 85 this weekend and we are now in "run all the dungeons" mode. We've both got some gear out of it, and will most likely be able to hit the Hour of Twilight heroics soon. 

The mage has started doing some quests in low level zones in order to reach 3000 quests done and get The Seeker title. Yes, I'm that bored. I probably won't go as far as getting the Loremaster, but who knows. My goal right now is to knock out 750 more quests (probably while watching TV shows on my second monitor). That should keep me busy for quite some time. 

Also, I've created a second paladin, which will act as a banker. I've decided to level her to 40 so that she can get both her ground mounts (moar mounts!) for quicker travels from the bank to the auction house. Time is money, as they say.

I'm also thinking about creating an undead priest to do the quests in Tirisfal Glades and Silverpine Forest with. I'm still not sure if that will stick or if I'll change my mind. It's a pretty shaky plan to start with, but I've been wanting a priest on this server for some time now, and I don't see why I shouldn't roll one. At least, it's something to do until the Pandas get here. (Get here faster, dammit.)

I've also decided to level archaeology again, this time on my druid. As I know for a fact I'll want to get all my toons to 90 come MoP, I think it wise to find other means to reach said goal other than by questing. I reckon after I've done the zones on three or four characters, I'll be happy to do some digging and herb picking to break the monotony.

Turtles, sharks and dragons.

I've been waiting forever for the bf to finally have time to sit down and level his dk to 80 (because I'm impatient and leveled my shaman without him for a while), so that we could start the Cataclysm zones together and eventually reach 85. He was level 72 when he started, and painfully made it to 74 the first night. Then he skipped a day, saying that Northrend was boring, and promised to make more levels the next day. Once he reached level 77, yet again painfully, I was way too impatient to wait yet another day. So while he was napping, I logged onto his account and went questing in Sholazar Basin. Less than two hours later, he was level 79. He woke up, logged back onto his account, and gleefully did some random dungeons until he hit 80.

And then we went to Vashj'ir. We had decided to skip Hyjal this time, mostly because I had just done it on the pally and didn't feel like doing it yet again, but more importantly because we had never finished the zone before. Back in december 2010, when Cata had just launched, we did half the zone before quitting, for many reasons. (It's not enough that I often get lost horizontally, in Vashj'ir, you can get lost vertically?!?) So we went there, and were mostly alone the whole time. 

Some sharks try to eat you...

...and some let you surf on their back!

It was a lot of fun to see some new quests, and some of them are pretty fun. I particularly enjoyed riding a shark and eating Nagas. That was fun. We still have about 40 quests to go for the achievement, but there are probably more than 40 quests to do in Vashj'ir at this point.

So now my shaman is level 83, and Mad's dk is 82. We stopped questing when we reached the guild reputation cap. We could have kept going, but Mad really hates questing, and will only do the bare minimum. And since we're after guild rep to buy heirloom leather helms for our future monks, losing potential guild reputation was a big deal. So now we wait for Tuesday. Hopefully, they will both hit 85 before Midsummer Festival begins next Thursday. 

I also worked on my leatherworking and went farming leather in Hyjal, on the dragonkins of Sethrias's Roost. I must be completely batshit crazy but I had fun killing those mini dragons and skinning them. 

Last night was definitely a good night. Can't wait for Tuesday to keep going!

Tuwtle!