Back to basics

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.

PVP gear

According to The Hunter's Mark, Arena Season 4 gear will be released on June 24 — meaning that the Season 2 gear will be available via honor points, like S1 is right now.

I had planned to get the S1 chest and one other piece of gear with my honor points as soon as Ide hit 70, but I think I will just get the rep-grind gear for now and wait to see whether I can afford some S2 pieces when they come out. Provided, of course, that Ideale hits 70 before the end of June — doubtful, as I've been playing with my alts almost exclusively this week. I haven't had the time or concentration to get deep into Hellfire questing, but the starting zone quests are quick and easy (and I've missed playing my shamans, so that has been a lot of fun!).

The 30 minutes or so I've been spending on Ide each night has been mostly in Alterac Valley, although I did venture once into Eye of the Storm. The battle was over before I even figured out where anyone was. But we won, so yay! I guess. That has been helping her honor, though.

Soloing Shadowfang Keep

I went on Tshaya to check some auctions I'd put up last week and do a gear check — if I'm going to transfer her (and I am, probably to Ravenholdt), I want to make sure her gear isn't incredibly embarassing — and noticed she had on the grey Rawhide Shoulders. Ideale at that level had the Rugged Spaulders from Shadowfang Keep, and since I'd soloed the courtyard on my paladin at 27 to get Verigan's Fist, I knew I could get past Rethilgore as a level 30 hunter.

So I went off, with 8 bottles of nectar and half a quiver of arrows, to down Rethilgore quickly and return to Darkshire.

Only then, I got through Rethilgore and thought, "Well, I still have about 1000 arrows, if I go slow maybe I can make it to Fenrus. My cloak kind of sucks." And so I went slow and made it through Fenrus, and I still had a few hundred arrows, and figured, "What the hell, let's see how far I can get."

Tshaya downed Arugal with 30 arrows to spare. And she also managed to stumble across the rare Deathsworn Captain, and got a VERY nice two-handed sword. And only one wipe on a bad pull — we got mobbed by three haunted servitors and two tormented guards, and died on the last one.

Screenshots to follow — I really, really need to shell out for Photoshop Elements, at least.

But yes, as a level 30 hunter, Shadowfang Keep is entirely soloable. And the spaulders at least are better than what you can get elsewhere at this level. Oh, and for the enchanters? Plenty of green loot drops, and I made out with three large glimmering shards on cloth blues I couldn't use.

And since I skipped the Deadmines on Tshaya — I tried to go in a few times, but kept ending up in awful groups and never made it farther than Sneed — the leather drops were decent upgrades.

Loot bagged:
- Rugged Spaulders
- Haunting Blade
- Fenrus' Hide

Plus a bunch of cloth gear I sharded. This instance would be awesome for a clothie.

And the best part? It was incredibly fun. I'm kind of wondering what Ideale could solo at 62, now.

Ode to level 62

Thank you, 62,
For letting me get rid of those humiliating
Chainmail bikini bottoms
Hooray real pants!

But now I must learn macros
Because my toolbars are so full of huntery goodness
And explosive devices.

(I'm a horrible poet. But at least Ideale doesn't look like an Azerothian hooker anymore! I really need to combine some of my stuff into macros, though, because my screen is massively cluttered and full of woe, and I had to rearrange stuff since I got new Super Hunter Powers. It looks like my Spellbook vomited on my UI.)

EDIT: I'm quite serious about the Azerothian hooker comment. At one point, she actually looked like she was wearing a chainmail bikini and shoulderpads. That was when I finally bought a guild tabard.

One more thing

While I've gotten much better at avoiding the Fel Reaver — I'm halfway to 62 and haven't gotten stomped once this level — stuff like this still makes me happy:

I wish I'd played earlier

My friends tried for over a year to get me to play WoW, and it wasn't until I was out of grad school and laid up sick for a week that I finally gave in and gave it a shot. Now that I've hit 61 with Ideale, though, I really wish I'd played earlier, before the Burning Crusade expansion came out.

Why? Not because I'd be at the level cap by now, although it would have been really awesome to be one of the people going through the Dark Portal for the first time right after BC was released.

I've had Saffron since Ideale was level 37. I tamed her to get stealth and fell in love, and since the highest level cat to tame with her skin was level 41 anyway, I kept her. And even though I never set foot in an inn again except for when I hearthed, I had a hell of a time keeping both my kitties caught up. In fact, I switched to Cinnamon every time I dinged a new level, and by the time I got Saffron caught up, I'd be only a couple hundred XP from dinging the next. And the few times I wanted to keep going instead of finding a stable master or that I had a ton of quests to turn in, it'd take 3-4 levels to catch Saff up.

This is one of the main reasons I have considered releasing Tshaya's owl, Artemis, near the Felwood border and then "finding" her later, and why I have banned myself from any new pets before the late 50s on Kresha or Daj.

So, for the first time since 37, I can keep my kitties in step. And not only that, I can do it with RESTED BONUS. So I'm going out on Hellfire Peninsula and going, "OMG! OMG that boar just gave me over 1K XP! OMG! THIS IS SO COOL."

So yeah, it would have been nice to play before the 20-60 leveling nerf, just so that I could have had a pretty blue XP bar before now.

I have an alt problem

It's bad enough that I now have five (FIVE!) hunters, but in addition to those, I also have a pally, two shamans, a mage, a priest, a warlock, a druid and as of yesterday, two rogues. (This is not counting the priest, rogue and shaman I had on Whisperwind, all in their twenties, before I deleted and rerolled on The Venture Co. and Laughing Skull.)

Most of these alts will never hit 70. I can't seem to get into the druid or the warlock, for example. I keep rolling and deleting warlocks because I always think, "Hey, they have demons, that'd be fun. Oh wait, no, I don't like this." If I kept one and got past the mid-teens, maybe I'd like the class better, but I don't learn.

The highest alts I have are the pally and one of the rogues, both hovering in the high-20s, Alliance-side. I like them both, especially the rogue (I am also a big fan of my mage and my shaman Horde-side, though I can only play Branna for a little at a time before cloth armor makes me growl and switch to Ideale or Kresha.)

So what possessed me to roll another rogue last night, instead of simply leveling my night elf rogue? I love playing Dihas.

Well, I keep talking about how I dislike playing Alliance, but I don't really think that's true. And I keep thinking that maybe I just don't like playing anything but hunters, but I don't think that's true, either. I have been focusing a lot on Ideale, because the class is awesome fun and because I restarted most of my Horde non-hunters, but my little army of alts has an average level of 15 now.

I think the problem is that I just despite Laughing Skull. Sorry, RL friends who wanted me to roll there, but the realm? Is full of rude asshats with the maturity level of a 10-year-old, none of whom can spell. (Really, it's the spelling almost as much as the rudeness. I can ignore the occasional poor speller — I'm not a total snob, and I realize not everyone is an editor in meatspace — but when every single person on the server can only spell correctly when using 1337-speak, it pulls me out of game mode hard.)

You know that one person in the battleground who has crappy gear and keeps dying, but can't help but lecture everyone else on what horrible players they are instead of actually effing playing? Imagine a realm where two-thirds of the population is that guy. Yeah, that's the Alliance side of Laughing Skull.

And while the Horde side seems pretty cool in general, there're also a handful of those six-man death squads of players at level 50ish who think it's awesome to camp on top of the inn at Lakeshore and gank you 87 times.

So ...

LF new realm for one level 30 draenei hunter and one level 27 night elf rogue. We like RP, PVP, particularly of the world variety, and killing things really fast. We're not real fond of instances and have erratic play schedules because Horde is more fun. Any suggestions? If Blizz allowed it and I hadn't filled my 10 slots already (AAAAH ALTS), I'd move them to VeCo, but alas.

(Will also be asking about in the WOW forums, crazy as that might be.)

I will leave my night elf hunter and draenei pally behind to level with my real life friends. They don't play very much, anyway (well, T does, but he's always doing AV or arena with his 70s, so yeah), and now I won't have to worry about keeping my "faves" at an equivalent level.

And in the meantime, I will be stealthing about Horde-side on Magra whenever I feel like I need a hunter break, or maybe playing one of my casters.

At some point, I should really make up bios for my hunters and a couple of selected alts on here (i.e., the ones I actually play).

I am so tempted...

... to actually go find all of my old My Little Ponies and work out a game system. Except I'm lazy, and ten bucks says someone else will do it.

Also, I'm pretty sure my My Little Ponies were given to cousins or grand-cousins or second nephews twice removed or something when my sisters outgrew them. I seem to remember digging out my favorites before it was too late.

...

Of course, that would give me an excuse to eBay.

More instance fun!

That group for the Temple of Atal'Hakkar was such wonderful luck. It really was. I skipped most of the instances before the 40s, and to this day have not finished most of the ones after due to group dynamics (only left early once, but the group fizzled after the first boss in almost all of them). But, as I mentioned before, I got into a fantastic, fun group for ST, and apparently didn't suck too badly because I've been picked up for a couple of PUGs with various group members since.

Yesterday, I got to run Ramparts twice and Blood Furnace once. And Blood Furnace? IS SO FUN. Ramparts are fun too, except for that horrific dragon that wiped us about five times the first time through and left me the only one standing, with about 25 hp, the second time through (our wonderful mage hit the killing blow right as the dragon aggroed on him). For once, Saffron's PVP training actually paid off in a PVE situation; I couldn't keep Cinnamon alive with the fire, but Saffron lasted pretty well through it and even picked up aggro for a few seconds after our tank died.

It helped that we had an awesome tank and healer, though. (I think I lucked out; I have met a small handful of fantastic healers and one of them seems to always be on and up for instances, which means that as long as we can find a tank, we can get a group. And two of them know lots of tanks, so... yay!)

I still don't know that I'll ever be a raider, but I could see myself doing five-mans and heroics for fun, when I get bored with PVP.

I do need to find a decent threat meter, though. Until now, I've been able to judge my threat based on the combat text and haven't had a problem with it. Hitting feign death after I crit a couple of times has worked. But now that I am getting somewhat decent gear (for example, due to not running instances and being too cheap/poor for the AH, I am still rolling in level 36 legs — yeah, I know — but have a nice pair of pants when I hit 62) I've noticed I'm critting a lot more, and have even grabbed aggro from my pets when soloing with those damned Helboars.

I tried Omen, though, and I hate that it sits there taking up screen space even when I'm not using it, and that I can't close it or hide it (like Auctioneer). My screen is cluttered enough, I don't need something else there when I will really only be using it maybe once a week/every couple weeks. I like having my screen as free of clutter as possible when PVPing, and since that's still my main focus ... yeah.

I need to find out how to get on VeCo's world PVP alert system or something, though. I missed three — THREE — awesome events this weekend.

Project Infiltration: Eversong Woods

Hunter: Dayea
Level: 10
Destination: Eversong Woods
Route Taken: I took the same route as to Tirisfal Glades, then ran east through the Bulwark into the Western Plaguelands, ran straight through to the Eastern Plaguelands, then north into the Ghostlands and straight north into Eversong Woods. Note that if you do not have the Burning Crusade expansion, you will not be able to cross from Eastern Plaguelands into the Ghostlands.
Difficulty level: Close to impossible if you try to live-run it; the mobs in the Plaguelands are in the 40s to mid-50s. I watched three spiders come from the very edge of my zoomed-out mini-map to kill me. Gave up when I had died about six times and made it about ten yards. Medium with a ghost run; the graveyard in Eversong Woods is right in the middle of Fairbreeze Village and some level 65 guardians, so you have to corpse-hop out. Alternatively, you could rez at the graveyard outside of Tranquillien and run north, but there are some level 15ish mobs around if you stray from the road and if you run into Knucklerot, you're gonna die. This could be easier on a PVE server, unless they also flag you for PVP when you enter enemy territory. And it's still easier than Fairbreeze Village.

Tip: If you make it all the way to Tirisfal without dying, let the guards at the Bulwark nail you instead of frantically trying to run away, only to suffer horrific death by spider five seconds later.

Tip two: If you have Horde characters, you might know about the Orb of Translocution in the Ruins of Lordaeron. For those who don't ... there's an Orb of Translocution in the Ruins of Lordaeron. (More helpfully, it's up the stairs to the right of the courtyard when you first enter.) However, nice as it would be to be able to orb right into the middle of 8941634 Silvermoon soldiers and then rez at the graveyard, this orb does not work for Alliance characters, probably to prevent quick Silvermoon City leader takedowns. But it is kind of fun to hang out there in shadowmeld and pop out to scare people using the orb (well, before they realize you're only level 10).

Again, this was a really straightforward infiltration. Alliance side definitely has it easier getting to Horde territory. This was the most difficult, and it was still better than the deathboats. (Although it would have been much more difficult than the boats if I'd live-run it.) Tirisfal Glades, Durotar and Mulgore are, frankly, cake, even on a PVP server.

Hopefully I'll have time to do screenshots tonight or tomorrow for these last few.