Is it Tuesday yet?

We are less than a month away from Mists of Pandaria, and there are only a couple of hours left until the patch hits the live servers. 

omg omg omg.

I'm super excited for all the changed happening, and a little scared/worried. A lot of things are changing in the next 36 hours, and we don't know yet if we're going to like it or not. New talents, new abilities, new glyphs, new rotations. And we have four weeks to get our shit together before we go out in and explore a whole new world.  

I don't know about you, but first thing I do when I log on Tuesday, is check out my achievements, mounts and pets. I'm anxious to know how many achievement points I have total across all my characters. I'd also like to work on having 100 mounts for the red dragonhawk, so then I'll see how many more I need. Same for the pets and the 125/150 achievements.

Then I'll have to work on updating my addons. Tomorrow will be dedicated to making a list of all the addons I use, and see which ones can be updated, removed completely or replaced with better addons. I want to wait to actually log on to see which addons are broken before starting.

Then, once my UI is stable, I will be spec'ing my characters and then running some (many) dungeons. I'm really anxious to test out my mage, hunter and shaman in particular. I will most likely try out all my max level characters throughout the next few weeks, though. Then, hopefully, I will be able to determine which character(s) I will be playing in MoP. All of them will be leveled to 90 eventually, if only for professions, but it might take a while. On my main server, I have 9 max level characters, to which will be added a monk very soon. I only hope all those changes will keep me busy enough that the next four weeks will go by a little more quickly. 

Anyone got any special plans for Tuesday, or the following days?

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.

Favourite Transmog Sets : Death Knight Edition

My Death Knight is one of my favourite alts. She makes farming dungeons a breeze, with her Howling Blast of doom. I also enjoy player dress-up with her, even though she doesn't like it all that much. 

Like a lot of people, I'm fond of the class' starter gear, which can be bought back in Ebon Hold, but I wanted to use some more fancy gear sets for her. I was able to get my hands on one set of each color (blue, red and  green, for all three of the Death Knight's specs.) and even a second blue one. They might not be very original, but I love these sets nonetheless.

Blood

This set is, by far, my favourite. It is the DK's tier 12 set. I got it while I was raiding in Firelands, what feels like a lifetime ago. The boots drops in Firelands or can be crafted, and the belt can be bought for gold at honored reputation with the Avengers of Hyjal. Although the boots are Bind on Equip, so you might be able to grab them on the Auction House. Here, I am using two heroic Obsidium Cleaver.

Even though I don't have a blood spec at the moment, I do like to sport this set when I dps. I use the Hellscream's Reach Tabard (which can be bought with 40 Tol Barad Commendations when you reach honored reputation with the faction) simply because I think the colors match really well together.

Unholy

This one is my latest "acquisition". I had most of the pieces since my time in Firelands. Having six bosses on heroic mode on farm for a while, I was able to upgrade most of my gear to heroic versions of the previous set, except for the chest. I thought I had deleted it by accident, but no, I just never got the token off Alysrazor. So I went to the Auction House to find something to match this color. The Adamantite Breastplate looked perfect, but was a bit too expensive for my taste, so I farmed the ore and the primals myself, and had my blacksmith craft it. 

For the belt, I used the Acherus Knight's Girdle, which is invisible. It saved me the trouble of finding one that matched, as there are no existing belt for this particular set. The heroic version of the boots does exist however, and drops off Beth'tilac. Unlike the normal version, the heroic ones are not Bind on Equip. 

Her two-hander mace, which can't be seen well on the above picture, is the Pit Lord's Destroyer. 

Frost

This set is the first set I ever "created" for my DK. It is mostly the DK's tier 11 set, with Pauldrons of the Great Ettin (which are a warrior tier shoulders lookalike, I believe), Belt of the Ferocious Wolf, and Woe Breeder's Boots. It was the first set my DK used, and I like the feel of it. I use the Frostwolf  Battle Tabard with, because I love the colors. I want to eventually get the tier shoulders, since they would fit a lot better, but I lack the motivation to go back in Bastion of Twilight to try to get it.

Frost 2.0

Last but not least is gear from Dragon Soul, tier 13. I didn't like this set all that much at first, but it grew on me. Here I am using mostly pieces from the normal version, except for the belt and gloves, which are from the Raid Finder, and the boots were bought with Valor Points. Her weapons here are two Hand of Morchok.

There are a couple other plate sets I love, but I use them on my paladin. 

But that is for another post.

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.

Nothing exciting here

I don't have much to talk about lately, mostly because I don't do anything particularly exciting. I've been running Karazhan to try and finish my mage's tier 4 set, with no luck so far. I managed to bug the mount boss, so that was stupid. I will be going back this week, and hopefully not fuck it up again. I've also been leveling a priest, to play with Mad's rogue. We'll be starting Outlands soon, which I always find fun. Healing Outlands dungeons is something I enjoy a lot. Except for Ramps. Because that's all you get for what feels like forever. 

the Priest and her own little
Personal World Destroyer.

And of course, I've been doing some more bank/bags/guildbank cleaning, and selling stuff on the Auction House. I have way more stuff than I thought, and I'm making some profit out of it. I still haven't touched the "transmog" part of the guildbank (two tabs), as I want to make sure Mad and I don't need any piece before I start selling it all away. 

I want to be as ready as possible for the new expansion, but that is hard to do, since I also want to remain as spoiler free as possible. I'm sitting on a nice amount of gold, and I got some nice starter kit for my future monk, stashed away on a toon I will delete afterwards (enough gold to learn professions and buy all bank slots with some extra, eleven bags, agility and intellect leather heirlooms, lots of different kinds of cloth for a nice first aid boost, a skinning knife for her skinning profession, a fishing pole, some lures, and some transmog gear. I haven't decided on her second profession yet.) Apart from farming stuff for gold and hunting transmog items, I'm pretty much done with the stuff I wanted to get done before the end of Cataclysm. Now we play the waiting game.

In other news, yesterday, it was announced that Star Wars : the Old Republic will have a free to play option starting in November, and that really makes me happy. I really enjoyed playing Swtor for a couple months, but it wasn't WoW, and I ended up not even logging on for weeks at a time, so I didn't feel like paying for a game I wasn't even playing. So this news really is awesome to me. Of course, we'll get limited access to a bunch of stuff, like the dungeons and PvP stuff, but that's fine. We also won't be able to raid, as that is reserved for people who pay their 15 bucks a month. I guess to the people who are already playing and paying, it's not such a good thing. I feel for them, but it will allow me to play a game I love. I really enjoyed the leveling experience. The class stories are really fun, and I kinda miss it. I don't even want to raid, or do the dungeons, or PvP. I'd even be happy just playing it as a single player game, without access to the auction house or group quests or anything like that whatsoever. It really is a great game. Just not enough to justify paying 15 bucks a month, in my opinion. Your mileage may vary. 

Two months of torture

So we're getting MoP in exactly two months. Since it's coming in the middle of the Brewfest, I'm guessing the holiday boss will not be dropping the new gear. Which sucks really, but hey, there's always next years. Unless of course Blizz postpones Brewfest to a later date, which I don't think they will do. I've been disappointed in the past to see holiday boss still drop level 80 shit when the cap was 85. Can't remember which one it was, though. But, we might get lucky with Hallow's End, which comes a little more than three weeks after launch. Who knows? Brewfest and Hallow's end are my favourite in-game holidays, so I'm excited for it, no matter what kind of gear their holiday boss drop.

I'm done with most of my bucket list, except for Loremaster stuff which I kinda knew I wouldn't even touch. It was more of a "I hope I can get motivated enough to actually do it if I put it on my bucket list" kinda thing. Like I thought that I'd go "I said I'd do it, so I have no choice!" But no. I'm more lazy than proud, apparently. So there, I didn't do "everything" from my original bucket list, and I'm fine with it. The bucket list in itself has changed quite a lot over the weeks, but I think I'll make a post just for that in the upcoming weeks.

Now's the time to finish the couple things I have left, like level archaeology on the druid, level fishing on the warrior that just now came out of retiring, and maybe get some more gear for the freshly 85 lock. I will also be farming a bit or even run a couple dailies to make some extra cash. I'm quite happy with the gold I have now, but a little more can't hurt. I'm sure Mad will be asking for gold once he sees something he can't afford. XD

So now that we have a date, I can make plans. I can have Mad take a day (or two) off at work so we can play as much as we want when the game is released. Superfluous stuff like eating and sleeping will have to be taken care of in between leveling sessions, and I want to try and figure out how to do that in a "healthy" way while keeping the game time to a maximum.

When WotLK was released, we woke up early and went to the store to get the game. Then we installed it. Then we played for an hour or two before we had to leave. Me for shcool, Mad for work. It sucked. I thought about the game all day. (I have no idea how I passed my exams that semester.) When Cata launched, we had bought the digital copy a couple days before and I think we had downloaded some of it already. (Maybe?) Mad went to bed at like 7 the night before, so he could wake up at launch time (3 a.m. for us) and play until it was time for work. Lucky for us, there was a huuuuge snowstorm that night. So in the morning, it was like "Boss, I can't come in, I'm snowed in!" Which totally worked. We played for a couple more hours, then took a nap, ordered some take-out when we woke up and played, played, played. It was fun, but it was also very lucky.

This time around, I want to make sure everything goes smoothly. We will most likely buy the digital copy before the launch day, and download as much of it as we possibly can. (If such a thing is possible. I can't remember.) I think we will also try and get to bed early and wake up at launch time, so that we can get started right away. When we get tired, we can take a nap, but I'm pretty sure we can get at least a level or two before such a thing happens. As for the food, there will most likely be ordering some chicken or something, as we probably won't feel like cooking a meal when we can be leveling! Maybe we can stop long enough to put a pizza in the oven, but not much more than that.

I also have to figure out in which order I want to level my characters. It depends on a couple things. Whether or not we get a way to make our alts fly right away in Pandaria or not (kinda like the book we could buy in WotLK.), and which professions I want to work on first. I know I've already said in a previous post that I'd level them in this order, but I didn't really think it through. It's more or less the order in which I prefer my characters rather than an actual optimized plan. But whatever plans I make - about anything - will probably change. I might decide to level my paladin to farm ores, and then I'll feel like playing my warrior instead and I'll just play it, ruining the plan. But making plans is fun, and it's the only thing I have left to do while waiting.

Oh, now I'm all excited. And I gotta wait two months. This is torture.

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.

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.

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.