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.

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.

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.