Now What?

You’ve done it. You’ve completed everything you needed to do to just eke out the ding to seventy. You’ve trained your skills. You’re done right? You are so far from done that the light from done will take a million years to reach you.

First off, determine if the skills you leveled with are what you want to do in your end-game. Did you level feral and want to be affliction? Did you take on a DPS role when you really want to tank? At least read about what your chosen spec looks like. Do research. Read blogs. Read forums. Learn everything there is to be whatever you yearn to be.

Next, you should check your balance and determine if you can get your flying mount. It should be about 900 gold and can be purchased in Shadowmoon Valley. If you don’t have the cash on hand, it’s time for raising some cash. You should still have at least a whole zone of quests you can still complete. This time around though, the cash will be much better. You can also think about pure farming of things that sell for money. Motes are always good to collect but can be over-farmed. If you have a lucrative trade skill, it might be time to start selling your items on the auction house.

Next (or concurrently) you should start taking a look at the possible gear out there. What drops in instances? What are quest rewards of unfinished quests? What is craftable? What can be purchased? Is it a reputation reward? Is it buyable with badges? Is it a PVP reward? Make this list. You’ll refer to it often. It may even take the form of:

1. This is what will do
2. This is what I want
3. This is what I really want.

Run instances. Let the list above be your guide, but you should at the very least complete each instance (that you haven’t) twice. This will help you learn what to expect in each instance, give you more confidence in your role, and give you a shot at that equipment from your list. Don’t neglect heroic instances. Heroics are hard. And I’m not a fan of the heroic PUG, but I’ve done them. They offer badges for that gear that is only obtainable that way.

Look at your reputation with the various factions. Does the Cenarion Expedition have a cool set of shoulder armor you want? Does Lower City have an awesome trinket? You should start getting that reputation up to the level it needs. Some of this will be dungeon crawls. Some of it may be repeatable quests. Some of it will be normal or daily quests.

Examine your trade skills. Look at what you want to make and what you’ll need to do to get there. Are there rare bind on pickup recipes that drop from specific mobs? Go farm those mobs.

Think about enchants. What pieces of your armor need an enchantment? What enchantment is the best fit for each piece? Do you need glyphs or inscriptions? Continue working on the reputation to get you to the level you need.

If you’re dreaming of raiding Karazhan, start the quest for attunement if you haven’t already. At a minimum you’ll need to run the following dungeons

• Shadow Labyrinth
• Steamvaults
• Arcatraz
• Black Morass (requires Durnhold Keep completed successfully)

Get yourself ready to start running daily quests. Nothing increases your gold faster (okay, probably buying it does. I'm just sayin') and you'll go through a lot of gold.

Have you ignored your Cooking or First Aid or Fishing? First aid is always useful. The secondary skills offer some of the best, most easily renewable buffs in the game. If your other skills can be specialized, research what you need to do to complete that specialization.

Outland at 58? I say no.

So, 58 is the new 60. Nothing momentous happens anymore at 60, except you can get your epic land mount. It used to be back in the day (I feel old every time I type that) getting to 60 was the be-all, end-all. All of a sudden you were serious. People would consider taking you to Stratholme or Scholomance. If you were lucky and attuned, you might get to go to Molten Core. You had made it.

Not so anymore. Now, 58 seems to be the new thing people are striving for. Because at 58 you can go through the Dark Portal and start the long grind to the new level cap - 70. And everyone I see hitting the magic number of 58 dutifully runs, nay dashses, over to Blasted Lands to carry the fight against the Scourge to Draenor.

But not I. And here's why:

1. Sometimes my trade skills aren't at 300. I did not want to walk all over the Outland seeing mineral nodes that I couldn't mine on my hunter. So I spent the extra time running around and doing quests. I did this on my new 60 rogue too (Gratz Bremmie!)
2. I want cash. Waitaminit, I'm not suggesting I'm going to get rich from the straggly 55-60 quests in my log. But the fewer quests I need to do in the Outlands, the more I can save for when I'm 70 and need cash.
3. While you can get a handful of beginning quests when you hit 58, they are going to be hard. And they'll be HARD if you're soloing. Luckily for me, I'm not soloing the rogue up, but I did solo both the warlock and the hunter. I was glad I had the extra two levels of stats and the skills from 60 when I finally tackled Outland.
4. You can't buy your epic land mount until you're 60. If you're flush with cash, you'll be able to buy it before you head to the Outland. It's not a huge deal, but the extra speed can help you avoid some trash. (Yes, I know that once you hit Shattrath you can portal back to anywhere, but even getting to the city at level 58 is either challenging or a very long ride.

There it is, why I eschew the Outland prior to hitting level 60.

Caveat Emptor

I'm fulfilling my blogospheric duty. Kestrel posted this and asked that each of his cadre of elite bloggers (my words) link at least to the topic at hand.

The executive summary is that Blizzard is (too) slow to respond to reports of account hacking. There's a blog post and a Blizzard forum post linked in Kestrel's site. Go there. Follow links. Don't worry, I'll wait until you get back.

Back? Good.

I don't know the details of this incident. There is an incident that I can speak to that happened a couple months ago in my (old) guild. There was this warrior, named, uh...something like Smashy. He hadn't logged on in about 8 or 9 weeks. He's the nephew of other folks in the guild.

Suddenly he logs in out of the blue. Pleasantries are sent out to Smashy. No response. This in itself is not terrible odd, sometimes Smashy just didn't. However, quickly a conversation thread started in the guild channel. "Is that Smashy?" "Why isn't he talking?" "I didn't even know he was even playing."

Tells were sent to his aunt and/or uncle. Calls were made.

Long story short. No. This was not the Smashy we knew and um knew. Smashy contacted Blizzard about the account he'd not paid for in 3 months. To make this long story shorter, it turns out he had been hacked. Blizzard at some point (probably a week or more) locked the account for "suspicious activity." Then Smashy had to send a notarized letter claiming he was who he said he was etc. etc.

It turns out, if he was hacked, that the hacker was not very bright. He didn't sell anything, didn't strip the characters. In fact, instead of funneling money out, he went out and farmed with the characters. When Smashy finally got his account back, he had about 600 more gold. And had the nerve to be upset that the "hacker" had moved his buttons around.

But seriously, this account hacking stuff means ya gotsta be careful. You MUST! And go read and post on the forums. We rely on Blizzard to help us safeguard our inforamtions.

Hope that helped, Kestrel!

P.S. If you name is Kestrel, please send me an email. Contact informations up there in the right hand corner. I have a question for you and can't find your contact info. Maybe I'm just:

1. blind
2. an idiot
3. all of the above
   

Time Capsule

I was wondering the other day just when I can expect to start grinding up to 80. Let me tell you, every time I consider a new alt, I take into account that I’ll eventually go crazy leveling them all up incrementally. Leveling three was bad. Then I added the fourth which went to 70 about 6 months after launch. Now I’m about to begin the 60-70 grind on my fifth guy. I hope I don’t start leveling another!

So I decided I needed a history lesson about how long it’s historically taken. I started playing WoW just before Christmas in 2004. In fact, the software was a Christmas gift as I’d just given up on City of Heroes. I was thinking the other day about all the content changes that have been added over the various patches. Here’s just a quick history lesson

Patch 1.2 – This is where I began playing. This patch added Winterveil and the Maraudon dungeon. I wonder what was in Maraudon’s place in Desolace before the dungeon opened.

Patch 1.3 – Dire Maul is added. I can’t imagine I was close to ready to experience DM when this patch went live.

Patch 1.4 – Implementation of an Honor System. I was playing on a PVP server at the time and remember being very disappointed that the opposing faction wouldn’t lose honor from killing “grey” players.

Patch 1.5 – Battlegrounds added.

Patch 1.6 – Black Wing Lair and the Darkmoon Faire added. Again this wouldn’t have interested me much, not having characters at the right levels.

Patch 1.7 – Zul’Gurub, Arathi Basin and the Fishing Extravaganza added. More stuff that I wasn’t ready for!

Patch 1.8 – World Dragons added and Silithus map updated. I know I had been to Silithus previous to this patch and gotten the flight path. Because it moved on me!

Patch 1.9 – Ahn’Qiraj added.

Patch 1.10 – Tier 0.5 Armor sets added

Patch 1.11 – Naxxramas added

Patch 1.12 – Cross realm battlegrounds and World PVP introduced

Patch 2.0 – New Talents and New Honor System implemented. This is the patch that totally massacred my UI. I was sad.

Patch 2.0.3 – Burning Crusade introduced. Thankfully my UI was fixed by then.

Patch 2.1 – Black Temple goes live. My guild is still in Kara, so no big news for me.

Patch 2.2 – Voice Chat added. *woot* We have a Ventrilo server.

Patch 2.3 – Zul’Aman introduced. Guild Banks go live. Leveling is faster in “old world” content.

I know I took a break sometime around 1.9-1.11. I’m not sure when. I know sometime in there is when Scholomance and Stratholme could no longer be raided. And the cap was set at 10 for Blackrock Spire. We used to raid Scholo and Strat all the time. It was pretty darn easy with 10 folks. But damned near impossible to five-man. I think the only run I did successfully with five-man back in the day was the Baron side of Strat. It was me tanking and 4 squishies. I think mage, warlock, priest and boomkin. Actually, I guess the boomkin isn’t all THAT squishy, but still.

I had begun raiding with my current guild about the time patch 2.3 went live. In fact, I think we were in there either the first night or one night later. I’m beginning to feel like I’m starting to catch up on the patches and being in the right place.

But when you think about the game now, you can see how far we’ve come. When the game shipped, there were two raid instances. Five raids were added prior to Burning Crusade. When BC shipped, there were five raids. Two have been added – with another raid supposedly being added in 2.4.

And where all this really gets me is: I don’t know when the next expansion will come out. I’m betting on the July 2008 – Christmas 2008 time frame. All I know, is I want to know when so I can plan to take a week off from work and level!

Drop a Hook in the Water.

“Ah, Fishing. Yes. Fishing.” That’s a modified /silly from the male dwarf and the closest feeling that I can find in-game to how I (and presumably many others) feel about fishing. Prior to Burning Crusade, fishing was not something I felt I absolutely needed access to. I leveled the fishing on my priest mostly because it was my third character to hit the level cap and I wanted to do something I’d never done before. Hence, I started running up fishing.

Getting myself to 225 was a Sisyphean Task. Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, it did. In fact, I never hit 300 fishing before heading to Outland. By getting my engineer to send me lures, I was able to eke out just enough skill to be able to cast in Zangarmarsh. As soon as I could fish in the waters near Allerian Stronghold, that became my new favorite fishing hole. The call of the darter was too strong.

So, why should anyone learn to fish? Good question.

• Fishing can be at least semi-profitable. Golden Darter was going for at least 1G apiece last time I checked. For a fairly low-risk activity, this is an awesome return.
• Fishing provides a method to get to 300 Cooking. Apparently, something was mis-aligned in a previous fix that (almost) requires fish to cook to reach 300 cooking.
• Fishing can provide nearly free pet food for some pets. Not all pets will eat fish. I know my raptor won’t, but there are pets that do.
• Fishing provides materials for alchemy. Granted these can be purchased on the auction house, but fishing is essentially free.

All of these are great reasons to learn this remarkable secondary skill. But what are the real downfalls of this activity.

• It’s slow and boring
• It’s slow and boring
• It’s slow and boring
• It’s slow and boring

Fishing is not like other skills. There aren’t any orange, yellow, green or grey fish. You can spend your entire fishing career in the sewers of the Undercity or the Stormwind canals. The only thing that choosing a particular pool over another accomplishes is the type of fish you catch. The only way to get skill points is to successfully catch fish. If you aren’t catching fish where you are (“Your fish got away”) try applying some bait. Bait comes in several skill-up values. Shiny Baubles will add 25 (the least) while Aquadynamic Fish Attractors add 100 (the most).

The approximate number of successful catches needed to gain a skill point is determined by the following equation

# successful catches per skill pt = (Fishing Skill – 75)/25

That means that you’ll need to catch over two thousand fish before reaching 375 skill. That’s successful catches. This isn’t counting “Your fish got away.” This is summarized in the following graph:

All this really means is the better you get at fishing, the harder it is to get even better. I suppose that's somewhat like life.

I suppose this post is already getting long, but I did want to address what you can do to increase your fishing. Above I mentioned the lures available. There are various fishing poles scattered about the world. And there's the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza on Sundays. Winning that contest awards you with the best fishing pole in the game with a whopping +35 fishing skill. Other rare fish that spawn during that event can award hat, boots or fishing line that give +5 fishing each.

As much as I"ve disparaged the fine art of fishing, it really is worth it. On at least one of your characters.

Quick Blogroll updats

Not a major post today. I'm making a few updates to my recommended blogs and wanted to share that.

1. BRK moved! No longer at blogspot, and no longer even using blogger, he's made the move to a custom domain and wordpress. Hope you find everything you packed in your hasty move, BRK.
2. Kestrel once said, "You find the best blogs by reading comments in other blogs." I find this to be true and offer up Og's Ledger. It's all about the accounting.
3. Since young master Bremmie was dinging in at 56, I'm finding myself drawn to more roguish content. Adding Doomilias to the blog roll. (Gah. With the number of AC blogs I read, maybe I should have just transferred to Drenden and joined them instead of /gquitting and staying where I was.)
   

I finally have some success

No sidebar image cuz I've got some real images in the body of this post. These are screenshots from over the weekend. These are personal firsts for me. First up Nightbane from Karazhan. Unfortunately I didn't get the healing neck that dropped, having gotten the Ribbon of Sacrifice from the Opera event a few minutes earlier.

And here's Terrestrian Illhoof lying dead on the floor. Not a bit of loot for me here either.
And in breaking news, I realized I'm too dumb to take screenshots of both The Shade of Aran and The Prince laying in pools of their own blood. Maybe I should socket some Intellect Gems in my tee-shirt.

On a more serious note, I really do need to re-socket or something to get my stamina up. My hit points are very low and this led to lots of problems for us on Aran, Illhoof and Nightbane. If anyone has some advice, feel free to post. Here's my armory link so you can see what I've done.

Slash Gee Quit

I've been feeling this coming for a while. I've been pretty disengaged with my (old) guild for several weeks now. In fact, it had gotten to the point where I was playing only my upcoming rogue, Bremmie. I've not done dailies on any of the guys that can for a long time. I've been raiding, but again not with my (old) guild. Really, I was taking up space in both the guild and in the officers corps. It was time.

So Saturday night, I typed those six characters. Of course I typed them about 4 times in a row. Because I have that many alts.

Now, I'm in a different guild that seems to better match what I want out of this game. We'll see.

Baking and Speccing

My good friend Owaru has said to me (and anyone else that would listen) that WoW has become a thinking person's game since the advent of Burning Crusade. What he means by this I think are that there are a number of things that you must consider when making choices about gear, spec, rotations and other things. Thankfully just at the same time we were required to start weighing different things that we were used to looking at, Blizzard handed us another way (through jewelcrafting) to customize our gear choices. We already had enchanting, but now we have two ways.

Today I'm going to look at Building a Mage (a class I don't run, so therefore I may be wrong) and baking bread.

Making a mage	Baking bread
The two main ingredients for making a mage are some increased spell damage (mages are all about DPS you know) and some way to make it run. Mana is the power source used for every mage.	The two main ingredients in bread are some flour and some way to make dough. Water turns particulate into fluid and in this case it will make a dough.
Run your mage with only these two aspects for a while	Bake.
Did you find your mage lacked something? Some staying power or something else?	How did you enjoy the cement slab that you baked? Not very satisfying? Need something more? I think what we’ve made here is a tortilla?
Let’s give the mage some staying power. Basically, playing a mage is a resource utilization problem. You have your mana which must power spells. Your life total is also a resource. If you haven’t spent all your mana, but are dead you’ll never get to spend that mana. “A dead mage does no DPS.:" But do we need as much stamina as spell damage? Probably not. The primary goal of the mage is to stay alive long enough for their massive DPS to have an effect. A little stamina (for a mage) goes a long way.	Let’s give the bread some volume. But we don’t need the same amount of yeast as flour and/or water. We’ll use a little yeast and that’ll go a long way. You see, yeast is actually tiny organisms that give off bubbles as a by product. Those bubbles get caught in the dough and make it more voluminous. Bake.
The mage is getting better. But there are still some things missing. Sure, when the firebolts start flying (and actually connecting) they do massive sustained DPS. Awesome. But we’re missing way too often. Let’s add some spell hit rating.	Well, the bread isn’t as flat as last time but it’s still not quite there. Let’s take the extra step of dissolving the yeast in the water and maybe giving the yeast a little food to work with. We’ll add some sugar (or honey) to feed the yeast. Well fed yeast, produces more bubbles and that’ll give us more lift.
Wow. We’re really getting there. But we’re still missing that something. It must be the big number syndrome from when we land a critical strike. We could make that go up by increasing our spell hit just a bit.	Wow. Really close. But it’s missing that certain something. Let’s add just a pinch of salt. It’ll be so subtle you probably won’t be able to identify it, but if it’s missing you’ll know something is.
So very close. Now, it’s a matter of pushing the buttons and doing things in the right order.	Let’s do things in the right order. Yes, follow the recipe. Do all the right things in the right order. Let your dough rest at the appropriate times.
Congratulations. You did it.	Congratulations. You did it.

Now. If you really want to make some bread, I recommend getting this recipe. It makes good stuff.

Questions I have

From what I've been reading about me and my blog, I'm apparently good at generating lists of things. So, today we have another list of sorts.

There are things in the game that I've accepted just because that's the way it is. But it doesn't mean that I don't wonder about them. Actually, I usually don't wonder about them right away, but instead later it strikes me that something is not quite right. For example:

1. Silverleaf and Peacebloom are well known as "starter herbs." These are the things that all beginning herbalists harvest. But exactly what kinds of herbs are these. Think about it, they grow in Durotar--an almost desert like zone. They also grow in the lush forests surrounding Stormwind. They grow in the rolling temperate hills of Mulgore. They grow in the perpetual wintry mix of Dun Murogh. They even grow in the area of an active starship crash that has mutated much of the life around it. How hardy are these plants? And are there any "real world" plants that show this kind of fortitude?
2. Dun Murogh as mentioned above is in constant winter. Granted it's located in the mountains. But if you've flown from Ironforge to Searing Gorge, the mountains don't look to be that tall. Certainly not tall enough to account for the volcanic zone right next to a permafrost zone. What kind of magical physics is going on here?
3. Just what are the Scarlet Monastery dudes doing in there. Real world monasteries would have the bulk of their residents performing some manual labor or at the very least praying. It seems to me that everyone inside the monastery is just standing around waiting to be killed. Sure, there are books and places to pray. But no one actually seems to be engaged in that. And another thing, during pulls I can clearly see the guys at the end of the hall. I have to assume they can see me and my party as well. And they must see us killing their buddies. So why is it they only object when I try to kill them DIRECTLY? Don't they care at all for their buddies? And this isn't only SM. It's just about any instance.
4. I can fly to from Skettis to Blade's Edge on the back of a nether ray (because they like me just that much). I can practically fly through a dragon doing that and the dragon pays me no mind. However, the moment I get on my own (flying) mount, the dragon takes great offense. What kind of cloaking technology are these Shatari Skyguard using. And when can I get the same kind of tech?
5. Finally, the quest for 225 cooking culminates in Gadgetzan. What kind of master chef lives in a town that doesn't even sell the needed materials for cooking? C'mon guys, give me at least a spice vendor down there!

So, that's it for today. Feel free to attempt to explain my questions or add your own.

Tagged - Part Two

Ratshag tagged me and four others to be named later to answer the five things I've learned from playing WoW.

Here they are in no particular order.

1. Be as prepared as you can. I read. Alot. That's one of the reasons that when we fight a new boss somewhere, I've read the strategy five or six times already. Then I read it again just before the fight. There is nothing like preparation to help you succeed. Whether we're talking WoW or IRL.
2. Hard work pays off. Granted this won't happen for everyone, but I worked VERY hard to get myself ready for Karazhan the first time I ventured in. And I think we managed to take down both Attumen and Moroes that first day. And I got the gloves from Attumen that made me a happy camper. Loot is sometimes the reward for hard work. And my hard work paid off that day.
3. There are bad people in the world. Our first raid leader for Karazhan (see #2 above) turns out to be one of these not nice people. In fact, he wound up leaving the guild and not only taking all the friends he came in with out, but about 1/3 of our other raid-worthy players. I honestly think that his intention was to get into a starting out guild and cherry pick what he needed. I think he had no intention of ever staying in the guild. He was a bad people. And these exist IRL too.
4. If you're too good, you get a reputation. As I said before I read alot. And I work hard at this game. These two things together have given me semi-photographic memory about places in the game. To the point where I remember quests I've not done in a LONG TIME down to the quest name and the quest giver's name. So, I've become the go-to guy to ask obscure questions. It's one of the reasons my Vent Phonetic is "Encyclopedia Bremtanica."
5. The same things don't appeal to everyone. I want raiding and progression. That's the way I test and validate myself. Others don't. They want to PVP, fart around a long time with content, just chat, give (or receive) run throughs, make money. To some degree I enjoy all of those things. But raiding is where my passion is. It's not the same for everyone. There are a good many people in my guild who LOVE to PVP. There are folks who judge how well they're doing on the size of their bankroll. This is all fine. It's just not for me. Much as my obsession with raiding prolly isn't for them.

I'm stopping here. I've fulfilled my duties as tagged by Ratshag. However, since this meme has been around for over a week and has hit many of the places I would want to tag, I'm not going to tag anyone. Except for Pelides. Since he didn't get it before!

Tagged - Part One

Pelides over at Hunter Mayhem started his own meme since he didn't get tagged in the other one that was circulating. His meme is about the five worst wipes. And believe you me, he tagged the right guy!

1. Garr in Molten Core. This is the rock elemental guy that starts with 8 adds. The general strategy is to have 4 warlocks and 5 tanks. MT gets Garr, each of the other tanks gets an add. Each warlock banishes an add. Kill the first 4, kill Garr, kill the 4 banished guys one at a time. Simple. Wipe. We're setting up for the next attempt, raid leader calls for buffs. Suddenly without warning for no apparent reason, my favorite paladin healer, Qerk, takes off at a dead run for the boss and his eight friends. Qerk dies, the other 39 of us die one by one by one. We find out later, Qerk has fallen asleep at the keyboard, finger firmly pressed on the run key!
2. High Priestess Jeklik in Zul'Gurub. Back in the day before Burning Crusade, ZG was where my guild spent a lot of time. We never had the forty people needed for other end-game stuff, so we ended up in ZG a lot. And we wiped a lot. I could likely write up 5 wipes just on this boss alone. But I'll coalesce all these wipes into one. Drawing any attention to yourself (unless you're the MT) in this encounter is a bad thing. The wipes generally started when some thoughtful healer sent me a Renew about half a second after I'd pulled her when I was tanking. I had the aggro of a single gunshot on her. The priest now had more. And died. Then the rest of the raid died.
3. Trash in Mechanar (Heroic). I was healing a heroic Mech before my gear was uber. I had enough healing that I knew I could do it. Sent the paladin tank a bunch of love as we were fighting one of the three robots at the beginning. Rogue took too much damage, sent a flash heal then back to tank. Greater Heal - No discernible change in health. Another one. Still no change in health. Another. Another. Another. Still nothing what gives. Tank dies. We run out. Then I notice that I. Have. The. Wrong. Party. Member. Targetted. At least the rogue had awesomely full health (and I did a TON of overhealing)
4. Ragnaros in Molten Core. We were on about our tenth (felt like the hundredth) attempt on old Rags. We were out of pots, out of bots, out of food. We were spent. And he'd been getting a little lower each time. We had someone hearth and pick up mana and healing pots, some food, a bot, fire resistance pots. Anything we could think of. Chipped gold together and made one last attempt. A mis-timed heal wiped our best tank out just before the sons. By the time we got him battle rez'd it was too late for the raid and way past most bedtimes. Final health of Rags somewhere about 50% greater than the best previous attempt.
5. Zul'Farak runthrough. Bremmie got a run through of ZF from a 70 lock. Apparently, when you target a far scarab with Seed of Corruption, it runs towards you bringing its buddies. Then when it detonates, you have about 9,000 level 40-ish scarabs beating on a lock. And it doesn't last long.

There. Five wipes. Maybe not the worst, but definitely bad. Who should I tag..let's see. First off, the three folks who've started blogging since I have: K, Owaru, Iron(shield|helm), Then two others Pike and Kestrel. I owe a responses to Ratshag from his tag. I was scared to tag him until I have completed that previous tag. But notice the title is part 1.