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.