Sunday, October 18, 2009

Hooray for Hallow's End!

I'm not gonna lie, I was really worried when I hit 12 and couldn't find any new gathering or delivering quests opened up.

Fortunately, Hallow's End came along! Hooray for holiday events with quests that give experience! A bit of trick-or-treating and putting out fires from the Headless Horseman, and whoosh! 13, here I am.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

10 At Last!

Phew, the journey from level 9 to level 10 was a long one. I got most of it through exploring, and by forcing my way into collection quests that I was still too low a level for, but I made it! And, interestingly enough, now I'm already over halfway through 10 due to the new quests that opened up to me!

I sense this will be a trend - struggling to gain xp when I reach the "limit" levels, and then launching ahead when new stuff is opened up.

Whereas normally you pick a starting hub (silverpine forest, ghostlands, the barrens) and blaze through it, skipping quests along the way, I am making multiple circuits. I feel like the most meticulous of scavengers, checking back through the hubs at each level to see if any messenger or gathering quests have opened up to me. However, I do not find it tedious, which is surprising! It's more slow paced and relaxing. I'm in no hurry, afterall.

Meanwhile, I realized that I can't get bear form, because it involves fighting something. DOH! It's okay, though, now that I have target dummies :)

Thursday, October 1, 2009

A New Career

In the beginning, I got both mining and herbalism as professions, as the collecting professions can make a quick buck on the auction house. However, I managed to build up a nest egg pretty quickly, and I can tell that in the future I'm going to need a few more tricks up my sleeve to get by.

Thus, I've abandoned herbalism and picked up engineering. I'm particularly interested in target dummies, as my war stomp sometimes doesn't quite get me the time I need when there's a mob near a gatherable. Plus eventually you get stun bombs, and that telescope will be nice for scoping out an area before forging in (I found myself longing for my shaman's far sight on several gathering occasions).

Plus, I've found in the past that having a gathering profession to fuel another crafting profession makes both tasks far more enjoyable than having both of one kind. It makes it fun to go out and gather, which is a lot of what I'll be doing, so I'd best make it enjoyable!

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Scavenging

The amount of pure gathering quests are few and far between, but they are a life-saver in terms of XP. Unfortunately, the gatherables are usually surrounded by mobs.

My usual strategy is run in, war stomp to stun the enemies, grab my gatherable, and run out. Then I skirt the area looking for another easy pick, and waiting for war stomp to recharge. Occasionally the gather "cast" is fast enough that I can run in and get it with one or two mobs attacking me.

The best times happen when I arrive at the gathering area to find a bunch of corpses. Someone else is in the area, clearing the mobs away, and I have free space to stroll around and gather my goods. Stumbling upon this situation is an absolute delight!

Other times, a high-level character is in the area for whatever reason - mining or herbing low-level things. My strategy for when this happens is to wait for him to pull the mobs he runs through, then dash in and grab my gatherables before the mobs give up the chase and come back. It's a tricky situation!

Oh, sparkly pick-ups. You got me to level 8! What lies beyond?

Monday, September 21, 2009

Vendor Clothes?!

It would seem so far that Eversong Woods is the friendliest place for me in terms of finding gathering and delivery quests. I'd say I'm going to have to scrutinize each place for these kinds of quests, as it's looking like I'll probably make several rounds through the starting zones as I slowly level up.

Meanwhile, I'm doing alright on the money front, but not well enough that I can start buying stuff off the Auction House. This must be the first time in my WoW career where I actually bought armor from a vendor. I was delighted to see that at least my new "set" of gear matches, although it makes me look something like Xena the Warrior Cow.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

More Clarifications

Several people have asked me whether or not I will count it if I'm grouped with people who are killing things while I heal them.

So far, I am unsure. Will and I are going to do a test on another character, and see if a party member killing something will add that mob to your "monsters killed" stat on WoW Armory.

Also, I just sort of have to roll along and see if that will make things too easy or not. I'm crafting the terms of the experiment as I go, which may be cheating a little. Fortunately, this is not science :D

Counting your Coppers

As I suspected, getting money is a huge issue when you can't kill anything! After exploring and doing delivery quests enough to get myself to level 5, I had to sell everything on me to pay for herbalism. I chose it first since it didn't need any other supplies.

A few rounds of herbs sold to the vendors and I had enough copper for fishing and mining - though not enough for a mining pick.

Fishing proved an ample source of vendor trash, but only in the beginning! In the early skill points of fishing, all you catch is debris and tangled lines and sickly fish. Gray and useless, but good-selling items for vendors. When I got high enough level that I started catching usable fish, my income all but disappeared (a usable fish sells to a vendor for only 1 copper, while a gray "sickly fish" sells for 18!)

Fortunately, this got me enough copper to buy my mining pick, so I'm all set for a source of income now. My next plan is to travel about the starting areas, exploring for XP and mining and herbing along the way. I need a bit of a starting capital for auction house fees, and then I should be able to start auctioning my wares and making some monies.

The money situation was interesting, as this is pretty much the first time I've had to do some serious budgeting in WoW (more than just "saving up for my mount"). It was an interesting struggle to overcome. Another way to keep my budget is to not train any offensive spells. Training adds up quick!

I feel that in the future I'm going to be fishing out of a lot of floating debris for stuff to sell.