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!

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.

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!

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.

Love all the wrong things

I've been horde for quite some time now, but when I started playing WoW, my first character was a human mage. I loved being alliance. I loved night elves and draeneis. I loved Stormwind, and Redridge and Westfall and Duskwood. I'm glad Mad made us go horde, because I love my horde toons a lot. But I sometimes miss having actual active alliance characters. So what do I do? Well I start over on a new server, of course!

The last couple of days have been dedicated to creating characters and leveling them. I have no plan at this point, so I just level whatever class I feel like playing. I started with a hunter a couple weeks ago which is now level 61. She's my highest character on the server and that's fine. There's no hurry. No rush. Just quests, dungeons, whatever I feel like doing. I'm also working slowly (feels more like crawling) on professions as I level more characters. I have no 85 toon to farm stuff, so I have to level more to be able to farm ores and herbs on the druid. I'll get there eventually, it's just kinda slow. Which is ok, I suppose.

But it's not all been just good fun. I have two (maybe even three) healers that I plan on leveling solely through the LFD tool, and DEAR GOD WHAT WAS I THINKING?

Some groups are actually pretty decent, but most of the time, there's someone rolling on gear they don't need, or the tank is so squishy that even pouring my whole blue bar into their green bar isn't quite enough to keep them alive. In Gnomeregan, you know a lock or a hunter will jump down without dismissing their pet first, so half the instance will run to us to hug us with their deadly mechanical arms. Good times.

But I'm still enjoying myself. My mage is almost level 36 and the shaman is 33, so I've been in Scarlet Monastery a lot lately, which is good because it's my favourite instance ever. I  remember the first time I went in there, back when I was just a wee little noob mage. I was impressed and fascinated by the Scarlet Crusade. In a "Jesus titty fucking christ those people are insane!" kinda way. Interrogator Vishas is and always will be my favourite NPC in the game. I remember each time he started talking, I would say it with him, which kinda drove Mad nuts, since we were on Ventrilo together.

The voice acting is perfect, as he sound like he's batshit crazy. A nutjob with a razor, on a holy mission. Not scary at all. I think this guy probably is going away in MoP, and it makes me sad. Scarlet Monastery will never be the same without him.

Yes, more achievements. And some fishes too.

The weekend has been pretty busy and productive for my characters! 

The lock reached level 75 last night and finished leveling engineering! Next month's Darkmoon Faire will give her her last five alchemy points, and my paladin's last three blacksmithing points, as I'm too lazy to farm more mats. I've farmed enough in the last couple of weeks that I'd rather wait a whole month to check that off my bucket list rather than farm it myself. Lazy Lyr is lazy.

I also maxxed out fishing and cooking on three characters Saturday night, which was both painful and fun. I fished mats and then cooked them, and it was nice, but the sun had come up when I hit 525 on the last character, and I only then realized what time it was and went to bed. 

Today, the mage got some easy achievements (she hadn't finished Classic Dungeonmaster before tonight, how weird is that?) and then queued for a BG and got her first Arathi Basin victory. I know, it's sad. I did have this achievement on my hunter, but that just shows how much I don't PvP. Despite my mage being my oldest toon, she didn't even have that. Anyway, all those achievements scored her It's Over Nine Thousand which I should be excited about, but I'm not. And I find it sad. It's a big deal for me to reach that threshold, but I wasn't as excited about getting as I thought I would be. Anyway, I'm glad it's done. I wonder how many achievement points I'll have in total once Mists merges all my characters achievements together. Hopefully somewhere close to 10k. *fingers crossed*

I transferred my Death Knight over to the server and haven't done much with her since, except farm stuff, like crocs tails to level cooking, because Howling Blast all the things is amazing to kill mobs quickly. Plus, Death Grip really comes in handy when you're lazy and don't want to run aallll the way over there. I think my DK is as lazy as me.

So the plan for this week is to keep leveling the lock as much as possible while the Midsummer Festival's XP buff is still around. I'll also be hitting the Raid Finder with the hunter for a trinket, and the shaman to get her a new weapon, as she is still rocking a blue axe. After that, I'll be pretty much done with the bucket list, apart from the Loremaster stuff which I probably won't even touch before MoP. Unless I get really bored. Which will most probably happen if Blizz doesn't hurry up already and give us something. Anything really. Just something new to do. Soon. Please?

Until then I guess I'll read, watch TV shows and hope for the pandas to arrive. 

Quick Post : Engineering is the best profession.

The lock hit level 60 today, and was able to start using this beauty. You know you want one.

The plan is to have the lock hit 75 before next month's Darkmoon Faire. 15 more levels to go, and 12 days left. This could actually be doable. Although tomorrow I'm taking a break from the Warlock to work on the shaman with the boyfriend. And then more heroic grinding to gear her up for the raid finder. So much to do! But since we still have no news about MoP's release date, I figure that once I'm done with all the things I want to do, I'll still have some time to take some kind of break from WoW before the "must-level-all-the-characters-to-90" begins.

Until then, I still have a shitload of stuff to do. But still. I'd prefer to know when Mists is coming so I can plan accordingly. And I'm impatient as fuck.

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!

Keeping busy

I spend all my time lately working on my bucket list. So much to do! And it seems like the list is still as big as when I started. So here's what I did in the last couple days :

The mage is finally done with the rep farming (at least for now). She reached exalted reputation with the Keepers of time saturday and finally finished The Burning Crusader. She got some new tabards, for which I'd love to  find some nice transmog outfits to match. Right.

Keepers of time, the Sha'tar and Thrallmar.

The paladin is now level 83, her mining is maxed out and her Blacksmithing is at 517. Not bad at all! Out of the blue last night, when I realized the Faire was coming at midnight, I decided I had to farm all the things and level BS as much as I could. The DMF gives a free 5 points for your professions, and I wanted to use that 5 point for the last part of BS, those last omg-so-close-but-oh-so-much-mats! points, and not the easy turn-bars-into-X-amount-of-other-things part. 

I levelled her fishing to 300 as well, as she got a Bone Fishing Pole from a daily and couldn't use it before level 300. I'm still hoping the Jeweled Fishing Pole will drop for her, as it would fit better than the Bone one.

I also created a baby warlock this week, and finally decided to roll it as a goblin on a whim. I'd been asking myself for days which race it should be, and then I just picked one and ran with it. To get her ready for the Faire, I leveled all her professions to 75...and then kept going. Engineering and Alchemy are maxed at 225 and 240 respectively, as she can't get farther before level 35. I plan on farming the necessary mats soon, before we get the cross-realm zones and all the goodies get taken by people from other servers.

I had planned on levelling her to 15, so she'd be ready to do some dungeons and quests whenever MoP came out, but I wanted to keep doing the cooking and fishing dailies until then, so I levelled her to 20 and bought her mount. Running around Orgrimmar killing boars for their bacon or stealing rice from the trolls really sucks when you're on foot.

The shaman surprised me last night, as she decided she wanted the bear mount from the Darkmoon Faire. I had decided I would only go after the pets, but change of plans I guess! There's no way I'll get it this month though, but I'm confident I can get it in July. So I thought only the lock would need to do her dailies this week, but turns out I have two toons that will be running them! To get the shamy more tickets, I've decided to level her archaeology to 75 so she can do the monthly quest as well. It's only worth 3 tickets a month, but it's better than nothing. It'll save me 6 dailies somewhere!

Levelling Archaeology on a shamy really is no fun when you don't have insta-cast Ghost Wolf. At least on my mage I have blink. But I did get a rare, which is kinda cool even if I wish I had gotten it on the mage. (Sigh) It gave her a title (her first one), Assistant Professor. Doesn't quite fit, but it'll do for now.

It feels like I've done a lot, but the list still goes on! The druid is still running Sethek Halls daily for the Raven Lord, but no luck so far. The pally should be 85 this week, if all goes according to plan. I still need to work on professions a bit, but I need to get the pally and shaman to 85 asap, in part because I want to gear them somewhat before the next expansion (more gear means the mobs die faster!), and because I want to be able to queue for the Midsummer holiday boss in less than three weeks! I love how all those things keep me busy until we get new content, but I swear when I'm done, I won't farm anything for as long as I can.

Perspective

I've been pretty busy in game in the last couple of days. I've been working a lot on my bucket list in order to get as much stuff done as possible. And I've had a lot of fun doing it. 

Back in December when I started playing Swtor, I was very bored with WoW. I didn't feel like levelling new toons, the guild I was in was slowly dying, and I just didn't have anything to do in game anymore. Swtor was great, and for three whole months, it made me happy to discover new places, try out different playstyles and get engrossed in my character's stories.

But then, in the fourth month, when everyone started talking about Mists of Pandaria beta, I started missing WoW. I hadn't logged on in a couple of weeks, and I decided to give it another try. In a matter of minutes, Swtor became inadequate. Insufficient.

So my time in Swtor just made me realize how much I love WoW, and how much stuff I enjoy doing in Azeroth. Ever since I came back, I've been farming, levelling, raiding with the Raid Finder, gearing up my characters, and just having a blast. 

This week, I've farmed cloth in Tol Barad and in Icecrown to make bigger bags for my characters, and for some reason, it didn't bore me to tears. I actually enjoyed it and had a couple sessions of "farm all the cloth!" I also farmed elementals in Wintergrasp to gather mats for my blacksmith. I ran BC dungeons for hours to work on my reputations. Working on professions and achievements is suddenly entertaining, when a couple of months ago, it felt like a chore. I levelled fishing in a couple days, and it seemed to go fast! Admittedly, I was watching Supernatural on my second monitor the whole time. I never tire of looking at Dean.

But I digress.

I've levelled my paladin to a whoopin' level 75, and have tanked a couple of dungeons. I'm glad I can't get Nexus or Utgard Keep anymore as randoms because I'm sick of those. They are the only dungeons you can get for something like four levels. Old Kingdom turned out to be fairly chaotic. Especially the first boss. Many mobs, handle it! I think I'm doing a good job, though. I sometimes pull a bit more than I can chew, but not on purpose, honest. And we always survive. Either I'm decent at tanking, or I always get great healers. Maybe a little bit of both? Ya, that's good for my self-esteem. Drak'tharon Keep was a lot of fun to tank,  even with a dk trying to tank everything, and a healer drooling over the fact that I was a girl tank. Sigh. When I got Violet Hold, I was like "Nice! Never tanked this before!" And then I remembered. And I had a tiny moment of "Oh God what was I thinking?" But it went well. The group was on the second boss when I walked in. Maybe I should consider getting an offspec for my paladin, but I've been prot since level 10, and I'm not a fan of ret. I haven't quested since level 15, either. I kinda like the idea of having only one spec. If I even just buy her dual spec, I know I'm gonna end up healing or some shit like that and I really don't want that to happen.

Finally, my cutie druid got lots and lots of gear from the Raid Finder. If I could get my hands on a trinket and the staff off of Deathwing, I would be thrilled. There was a trinket I desperately wanted for my mage, and it took months before I won the roll. My druid? Got it on her first try. What's this, Blizz? Is this your way of telling me I should play my druid more? Message received. Loud and clear.

Thoughts on professions

One of the reasons I have so many alts, (one of them being that I can't make up my mind about anything, ever) is that I love having all the professions maxed out. 

I absolutely despise having to sit around and wait for someone to craft me something, or having to buy it off the auction house when I can make it myself. Having a lot of free time on my hands, I have the luxury of being able to farm all the things. Not that it's particularly fun, though it sometimes is, but I prefer farming mats over spending money on it.

With the new expansion coming, I had to stop and think about how to organize my professions on the new server. My boyfriend Mad and I have moved a character each already, and since I can't possibly transfer all of my characters over, I've picked two more that will be shipped there as well in the next couple of weeks. How did I pick those? Well based on their professions of course. 

Mage : alchemist / tailor

Hunter : enchanter / jewelcrafter

Druid : scribe /  herbalist

The fact that they are my three favourite characters had something to do with this, as well. 

So in the next few weeks, I have to level mining to 525 so I can start farming ores as soon as possible when MoP is released and level jewecrafting. I also want to level skinning so I can eventually help Mad level leatherworking. Since I've already created two characters on the new server, a paladin and a shaman, I'm thinking maybe I will take mining/blacksmithing on one and skinning/leatherworking on the other.

And if I'm lucky, Mad will take engineering on his rogue and save me the trouble of having to take it myself. 

As for secondary professions, all my characters get maxed out on first aid, cooking and fishing at some point, but as far as archaeology goes, my mage is the only character that will ever max it out. Because I'm an altoholic, but I'm not masochistic. While fishing isn't that much more fun than archaeology, at least I can sit somewhere and never move. 

Plus, I'd be devastated if I got one of the mounts on an alt.