Turncoat time?

Well Faction change has arrived in the EU and I find myself contemplating taking advantage of  it. I’d really like to see the horde questline running up to Wrathgate but not enough to level from 55 and go through Outland again

Whenever I start a horde character the  vastness of levelling all the way to 80 with no support system overwhelms me and I rarely get beyond the starter areas.  I’ve three potential Alliance characters that can be turned

Arianthorn, forget it no way my druid is becoming a cow. Sorry Tauren’s but its a non starter.

Nia, well she’s 80 and maxed out  herbalism & alchemy so is self sufficent, the only choice there is blood elf, which I can live with, but and its a big but, Ari would have to start buying Flasks of Frost Wyrm again.

Daxtari. Stuck at 73  maxed out with two gathering professions so she can  support herself and struggling to find any interest in doing the  Alliance quests in Northrend.  As a hunter she can be any race but undead (which is fine I don’t like bones sticking through my clothes). I think I fancy a troll, something like this one:

Hidden away at the back of my mind is the thought that I could faction transfer do the Northrend quests as Horde & find out first hand why Garrosh is so disliked, Build up a nice little nest egg on her then transfer to another RP server and use her to support an army of horde alts.  I’m seriously short of character slots. Of course worse case scenario is I faction change and still don’t play her, which means Ari loses her ‘go to’ girl for leather and with Briar only being in her mid 30’s  she’ll have to wait a while for useful  free skins.  Then again I could work out what Ari needs to finish levelling Leatherworking and  grind them on Dax before I transfer.

I’m not going to make a decision this weekend, well I might you never know with me, but really even in their 70’s and in Northrend trolls go barefoot?

What I did on my Holydays

Highlord Tirion Fordring: “Combatants of the Alliance and Horde! You are welcome under the banner of the Argent Crusade. To the south lies our goal
We will march to the Citadel and cut out the heart of the Scourge where it dwells.
But this is no task to be taken lightly. A massive attack with every able-bodied man would end in needless slaughter. Every soldier lost would rise as the enemy.
Azeroth would be left defenceless against the undead threat. Instead, we require a small, concentrated strike force for the attack to succeed.
For that reason, we have created the Argent Tournament. Within these walls, you will be tested. Your skill in combat will be matched against the fiercest dangers Northrend has to offer under the watchful eyes of your leaders.”

Arian:
A strike force of the best? I can try for that, I’ve killed Gods and Titans and Aspects already, and laid more undead to a final rest than I can count.

Arian walks off to present herself to Justicaar Mariel Trueheart Mariel:

Mariel: We have invited you here to test your skill and valor against others who have bravely opposed the Scourge. Many have been our divisions, but the time has come for heroes fighting under all banners to test their blades against one another in preparation for facing our mutual enemy.

Arian: I can bring down the fires of the stars and the moon on their head, or have the stars fall from the very skies themselves if its needed

Mariel: No we want you to take this lance and joust against other possible champions to see who is the best in combat.

Arian: I can call the trees themselves to do my bidding. I can command the winds to blow them off his feet, the roots under the earth to cage their mount, I have at my fingertips natures wrath and you want me to poke someone with a big stick?

Mariel: Yes this is how we’ll test your combat skills

Arian: Let me get this straight those who are best at poking people with a big stick are the ones you’ll choose for this strike force? You don’t care what experience we have or what combat skills we have you’d pick your strike force based on a completely non-lethal game of whack a mole?

Mariel nods

Arian: Aviana give me strength!

***

So as you may have guessed I’m not overly impressed by the whole jousting thing that came with 3.1, it certainly didn’t draw me back into the game.  Uldar has to a certain extent but like so many guilds this time of year we’ve been plagued with Real Life taking priority and struggling to put together  balanced 25 mans.

Not to say I haven’t been busy. You may remember a human mage I rolled way back last September, even with help from friends her squishiness was driving me mental so I rerolled her as a Paladin at the beginning of May. My little Pally leveled all the way to 78 by the end of May, which is when she too reached the Argent Tournament and came to a screehing halt.

Thats the fastest I’ve ever leveled anything in realtime (about 7 days played time I think) certainly the heirloom shoulders helped and a more experienced  paladin friend cheering me on from the sidelines for the first 30 levels.

Seems I was so busy charging ahead I forgot to stop for screenshots. Going from the boots that was taken around the 40 mark.

If I’m honest some of the screeching halt is because I’m feeling guilty about Dax, my hunter, who is still stuck at 72 in the Tundra. It seems right and proper that she should ding 80 before this whippersnapper, but I can’t get back into hunter gameplay at the moment.

I have a plans for a new druid though, one thats going to grow up pure feral, at the moment she’s level 6 and sitting in Dolanaar waiting for Ari to collect enough stoneshards for the heirloom stormshroud shoulders. They’re the same model as the Animist shoulders from Zul’Gurub Ari loved so much at 60.  So I know I can look at them for 74 levels, I may not do anything much with her till 3.2 comes out and leveling is even easier than it was in 3.1. I guess my rogue can borrow the shoulders till then. Or they can both wait, mounts at 20 oh how easy they have it.

Better late than never

Yes I know it’s Sunday, part of being at home is I completely lose track of time, throw in the  confusion of Christmas and I only have the vaguest idea when in the week it is.

So lets round up last weeks targets

Level Dax to 80 (aiming high here) I’m not sure what the issue is but I’m feeling very bored with Dax at the moment. I jump on her run around aimlessly for a bit maybe do one or two quests and then log out. Leveling Ari through Northrend was a doddle, also a bit on the boring side but with T6/sunwell gear I  accepted I overpowered areas tuned for fresh 70’s in greens and blues. Only Dax *is* that fresh 70 and its just as easy for her as it was for Ari. Maybe I’ll pop across to Howling Fjord and try the Eastern side of the continent again.

Use the mats she farms to get Ari’s professions up to 450 We’ve not farmed enough mats but we have visited the AH for them. Inscription is at 426 and out of trainer recipes so I need to mill the ink for Northrend Discoveries but the prices for herbs are pretty high still.

LW is lagging at 414, again no easy skill up recipes and I’m finding the whole 5 borean scraps = 1 borean lather, 6 Borean leathers = 1 Heavy Borean Leather annoying when I need between 3 and 4 HBL for each recipe.

Get Gwen’s mining & engineering up to 300 so she can start leveling in Outland I decided to vary this so Gwen is in Outland working towards level 61 and then she’ll pop back to the Hinterlands for some more mining skill ups, she’s currently at 225 so not far to go but endless circuits of Hinterlands was doing my brain in. Especialy as it seemed whatever hour of the day I picked I was following behind some other DK (it always seems to be DK’s) also mining for skill ups. Engineering is at 208 I need more mats to push it further and decide if I want to specialise in goblin or gnomish engineering, or if it’s worth specialisng at all.

Complete the Merrymaker meta achievement on Ari Yay I did it. In the end the hardest bit was getting hold of a hat, or rather a group wanting to do Nexus. I’d read that some 80’s had soloed her on normal so I tried it, and to my shame couldn’t find her and got clobbered by adds. When I did it with a group I realised I’d prowled past her disc a few times thinking she was somewhere else. It’s done now, we found a dark place for Ari to don the costume and eat the mince pie, it’s really not Ari’s “thing” dressing up like a Christmas elf.

Sort out the fishing achievements Ari needs Well this ended up as a post all of it’s own, a sort of mini guide. Ari has completed The Lurker Above, 250 Fish, Outland Angler, The Scavenger, Northrend Angler, Old Crafty (a total of 7 casts with the crocolisk daily) and Old Man Barlowned, since last Friday.  Meh its  4pm server time & I haven’t even logged on yet, so no winning Booty Bay this weekend. Still got a ways to go to complete the achievements but I’m on course.

So what have I been doing, well messing about on alts mainly, not that I’m sure any will survive past the festive season, working on Cooking achievements alongside Fishing. Though as I’m missing the chocolate cake recipe, a rare BOP drop from cooking dailies, I’ve no hope of completing the Meta.

Oops nearly forgot I also achieved Hemet Nessingway: the Collected Quests, backwards as I’ve had the Northrend ones for a while, then I went and finished off the Outland ones before  finally picking up the missing pages for the Azeroth one. I still think not doing that to avoid having the book foisted on the world of Warcraft was the right decision, back in the day, but as theres’s a published copy in the Nagrand camp I clearly failed.

Oh and picking up pets with the help of the Oracles. I’ve had two eggs hatch now (and a third in my bag already) so have a White Tickbird Hatchling and a Cobra Hatchling bringing my small pet total to 48 of the 50 I need to get Stinky.

I’m not setting any new targets this week, the three undone ones will stand but I think it may be a week of messing about rather than focussing.

And then there were two

Oh yes Daxtari is now 70. I took her to Northrend this evening and leveled her on the starter quests around Valiance Keep in the Borean Tundra.

She picked up enough new gear from the quests that I decide to visit the AH and finish the look off.

Well not the bow that’s an Outland blue I’ve had in the bank waiting for her, it really doesn’t go well with the Northrend look.

I’ve also got Ari to level 74, and she’s now sitting in Dalaran while I run Dax through the Tundra, partly to get rested XP and partly so Dax can gather leather & herbs so Ari can level up her professions. I’d take a screenshot of Ari but she’s still in her  Outland gear.

Dax should level faster as she’s got plenty of rested XP, and the crowds have calmed down a bit.

Oh wait I do have a funny shot of Ari to share. It really needs a caption though

What wisdom is she imparting to her little elekk  I wonder

Big Cats little cats

Doesn’t look like Dax will make it to 70 before I go back to work. Didn’t play WoW much more than I normally would have. She did get to level 68 and left Nagrand for Blades Edge where we bumped into the forest lynxes for the first time.

I thought Cinder was a big cat he’s certainly grown since the level 7 kitten I tamed back in Eversong Woods way back in April. The forest lynx disabused us of that notion though

Another notion I had that Cinder would like me to be disabused of ASAP is that I can save money on a mount by:

or to put it another way, I finally got round to installing wow modelviewer on this PC.