Warning: Lots of rambling ahead.
I've been getting a bit alt-crazy. I'm concurrently leveling both Kresha and Daj in the Barrens, and no, it's not boring. In fact, the beast-hunting questline? The one with Echeyakee and the thunder lizards and all that? Officially my favorite questline EVER. In fact, I wrote a poem about it.
Not gonna post it, though, because I'm not that mean.
I missed this quest line the first time, since Ideale spent her 20s in the Ghostlands, and I'm pretty new to the game. There are many, many zones I have not fully explored, and several I've never even seen.
I'm also re-leveling a troll shaman and leveling a draenei shaman on Ravenholdt, my realm test alt. The original Daj was my very first Horde character and my very second character ever, and she had been been a level 22 shaman on Whisperwind when I decided to try an RP-PVP realm. She made it to back to level 11 when I decided to try her as a hunter, because I was so in love with the class. Now that my hunter-fervor has died down a tiny bit (oh, I'm still obsessed and loving it), and my OMG ALT FEVER has cooled, I'd like to return to my lightning-shooting roots.
So I have Ahami, a troll shaman, who may or may not be the character I level to 70 after Ideale. And I rolled a draenei shaman (with a mostly-random name and appearance, as she was supposed to just be a test toon), and am really enjoying playing her, too. Plus all of my other alts — I think I have about 12 low-level non-hunters I've been playing with, including a handful I rolled on Moon Guard, an RP-PVE realm that got great reviews on the forums, after Crypto said that there wasn't much difference between PVE and PVP servers. I figured I'd test that on an RP server. *grin* So I re-rolled my troll rogue there — she wasn't even 10 yet, so it was no hardship — re-rolled my test-dwarf hunter from Twisting Nether, and rolled a tauren shaman.
And I am really enjoying thoroughly exploring the starting areas. I've found quests in both Durotar and Mulgore that I didn't know existed, and tested the waters in Dun Morogh for the second time (first time where there were actually yellow exclamation points over people's heads).
And the Barrens, wow. With every other Horde character I leveled before my realm-switch, I leveled in the Barrens to about 20, then run straight into Ashenvale, a.k.a. the zone I can now fight my way through blindfolded because every character I've ever rolled, both Alliance and Horde, has spent 20-30 there except Tshaya. The lone exception was my undead priest, who I leveled in Silverpine and then Ashenvale. With Kresha and Daj, and eventually with Ahami because kodos > raptors/undead horsies/chickens, I have actually finished questlines in the Barrens.
Did you know that I had no idea there were actually quests at Camp Taurajo?
So while I finally hopped back on Ideale last night for the first time since Saturday — and discovered that with steady shot, I can fight for freaking ever without going out of mana, although I really suck at timing it — it was a really, really nice break to head back to "low-stakes" questing in the starting zones.
And I think I really learned from it, too — for example, I finally watched BRK's videos on kiting and tried it. I think it'd be easier with a mouse, but I'm getting the hang of it. I also came up with a pre-10 shot rotation that seems to work, once you have concussive shot: Step 1. stand at extreme range and fire arcane shot; Step 2. concussive shot; Step 3. serpent sting; Step 4. arcane shot again; Step 5. run away until serpent sting takes care of the last 2-3 HP, unless it died at Step 4.
And trying out other classes from the perspective of actually having leveled a character has been a completely different experience than my first time, when I just played everything to 10 and then kept playing what I liked. I can see what might work in later instances, which abilities could be hugely fun, and know where to find info if I have questions.
I should take these little breaks now and then. Especially to play with my shamans (shamani?) and rogues — in my hunter love, I forgot how much fun it is to try and choose the correct totems for each situation, time earth shock perfectly to interrupt a caster, and shoot lighting while cackling madly to myself, and how much fun it is to sneak around picking pockets and sapping other players randomly, just to put the fear of God into them.
Hunters are still my favorite, though, and I'm pretty sure they always will be.
Goals for the next few weeks: Get every member of my doubled-in-size alt army to a level-10 minimum, bank alts excluded; finish writing up Project: Infiltration AND FORMAT THE STUPID SCREEN SHOTS; get Ideale to 70, or at least 68; stop rolling hunter alts ... in fact, no more alts at all, period, until Ideale is 70 and someone else, anyone else, is 40.
2 comments:
A couple of rambling tips on keeping the game fresh with alt armies.
Create a bank alt on each realm where you spend any significant time. Dont just make a random character though, take the time to set up one that you would play in the future. My bank alts on my main realm are nearly level 30 now!
Break up your play in such a way that you don't overdo any one zone. By now I've gone through barrens about 30 times. You are kinda funnelled in to barrens from Troll, Orc and Tauren starting zones... so take a different path and go to silverpine or ghostlands instead.
Be aware that reputation to ones home faction can make a fairly significant difference to the costs of levelling. 10% discount for honored is generally easy to achieve by about level 20. This discount can also make reselling vendor recipes on the AH more affordable, since your buy price is that much less than the other guy's. Another thing to be aware of is the difficulty other races have in gaining rep with silvermoon and exodar factions.
Something else that keeps the game fresh for me is exploration. I'm often taking characters in their teens into places like badlands to pick up the flightpoints. There are also quite a few sites around the edges of the world that no-one visits much. One example for horde: Fly to reventusk village in hinterlands, then walk/swim south for about 10 minutes. There's a small farm to investigate. Be sure to check out the artwork inside, on the northern wall.
Do fun/stupid things, either alone or with guildies. Warlock summons are great for getting lowbie alts into trouble. My guild put on a welcoming committee at the dark portal when I hit 58. They then escorted me and several really low level guildmembers from Thrallmar to Shattrath. A level 30ish char just about aggroes the whole zone in HFP! Much fun and hilarity ensued!
Most zones have vendors hidden away in various places well away from the main towns. In Barrens, there's an armorer guy up north, east of the harpies. There's also a vendor along the western edge of the zone south of the road to stonetalon, though I cant remember what they sell. There are also the questgivers and leatherworking vendors in the cave above Wailing Caverns that's a little tricky to get into. These obscure vendors often have limited run recipes that can earn quite a bit on the AH.
Some quest behaviors are somewhat explotable. Again in barrens, the final quest in the chain of killing centaur leaders involves a pitched battle at the bunker west of Crossroads. Lots of centaurs spawn, and orc/troll defenders as well. The goal is to kill enough centaurs then the elite boss spawns and you kill him for his flag. At around level 17, this is quite a hard fight to solo. However, you can exploit this quest as an exp farming machine by NOT killing the boss, but continually killing centaurs instead. You can even farm centaurs for cloth, so long as you tag them at least once before letting the npc's finish them off. You can extend this to 30 minutes before the boss despawns... at which point you can abandon the quest and restart it.
Great advice. Thank you! I've found myself doing this with my most recent alts. Actually, my hunter twins are the first characters I've ever taken through the Barrens beyond the first couple of quests; I like to do every single one of the 1-10 quests in whatever zone I'm in, which means I'm usually at 12 or 13 when I leave, so the only character I took there before was there for 7 levels, then went on to Ashenvale. So it's still new and fresh for me! :-)
I did notice that I'm getting tired of Ashenvale, though, which is why my Alliance main hit the Wetlands; also, I have, like, six draenei, so my test shaman on Ravenholdt is in Dun Morogh for hr starting quests. I love the draenei quests, but I can only be the savior of the furbolgs so many times before I'm like, "Is this just a way for them to sucker in naive adventurers or what?"
My main problem is that there are zones I love and cannot get enough of — I still go back to Thousand Needles and Winterspring and just hang out — and some I actively dislike. Silverpine Forest is one of these — it was so unpleasant trying to haul my priest through it the first time, I wonder if that made me hate it. Or maybe it's just too gloomy — that's why I hate most of the swampy zones, they're too dark.
I have the bank alt thing down, no worries. And the rep thing — I have this thing for kodos, and once I learned on Ideale that you can't buy them without being exalted, I did massive amounts of research. (Honestly, I think I like the research as much as I like the game itself.)
"Fly to reventusk village in hinterlands, then walk/swim south for about 10 minutes. There's a small farm to investigate. Be sure to check out the artwork inside, on the northern wall."
Oooh, okay.
I'll have to try the centaur quest thing, too — I'm on the second-to-last step with both of my lowbie hunters.
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