Tag Archive for 'alts'

Be Feral with 15 Howling Fjord Quest Rewards

As I wrote below I respecced Yáshimá to feral yesterday. Now I have been feral before and enjoyed playing the spec a lot. There is just one problem. She is an Enchanter. What do Enchanters do with gear they don’t think they’ll need anymore “because I’ll just level her Moonkin for a while?”

So now I am in need of any kind of item to replace items with Spellpower.

Here’s my selected (Alliance) quest + quest reward for the easiest route to have a full feral equipment again within hours of arriving in Northrend. I’ll choose a single quest reward for each slot, I will also try to choose the easiest quests to achieve this. (Basic WoWHead search I am using for this). Many of these quests involve short chains … because most often a reward is only given after doing 2 or 3 things for a person.

Note: There are no idols available as quest rewards in the Fjord.

There are quite a few quest chains involved. Especially if you “lust” for the blue trinkets you will have to complete 2 complete quest hubs. Personally I will probably do all quests in the Fjord a second time (Yashima has already completed them and now Yáshimá will), maybe I will just switch the order of some of the hubs I’ll do a bit now that I know where I can expect which reward.

Most often you can also try a few other ways to obtain loot: do an instance run or two, contact your favorite crafter, scan the AH or hope for world drops that fit you. This is just a list of stuff that you can get without need for lucky rolls or farming mats which should be fine for all you Alts out there.

If you manage to get into a group for a run on Utgarde Keep, there are two quests you should take with you:

Meet the Death Knight

Last night I did one more important thing:

I deleted the Level 19 place holder and created my Death Knight. So here she is posing in front of a certain big dark guy with some big-ass sword in his hand – he was to big to fit the picture.

After logging in to pose, I went to bed. My plan is to to do Death Knight intro sequence this coming week-end and then see if I want to continue playing the class.

I am not ready to disclose the name just yet since I want to do the intro by myself and without guildchat I think – this is of course subject to change :)

From World of Warcraft Character Images

Introducing: Ifirnia

Ifirnia is my level 38 Nightelf Huntress. She is always accompanied by her cat Pünktchen (engl: Dotty) whom she tamed at level 10 in Teldrassil.

I’ve created Ifirnia about two years ago and played her to level 18. We made a few Warsong runs with level 19 toons in the guild – that’s how she came to be a “Private”. Even the lowest PvP rank now is something special.

Then I stopped playing her for a long time. I was never very good with pet classes.

From Screenshots 2008

Every once in a while I would take her out and level a bit when I wanted a bit of quiet “chat-free” playtime. So she came to be level 28 or so.

Then I decided to drop Leatherworking and learn Mining instead – making her a gather character. I took the time to configure my UI for her and get me some hunter mods (right now: Creature Comforts, Nudge and Nomnom, Autobar does the rest). All of a sudden she was a gold maker. The final push to playing her more was when I started reading BRK.

She easily made it to level 36, but then she to returned to unplayed status: Since she spent a lot of time in the AH auctioning off her Ores and Leather, she turned into my bank character for a few months.

Now that my other “named” (= characters in the guild) characters all have reached level 60+ and leveling has become slow for the two remaining non-70s, I wanted another guild character for easy play.

It was a choice between my little Shadow Priestess, the Hunter, the 3rd Druid (the Moonkin!) and the Warlock. I already have a high level caster and several characters that can heal, plus the Priestess is currently my herb stash – so “no” for the Priestess. Moonkin rocks, but two high level Druids is enough for now – “no” for the Druid as well. So that left me with two pet classes. I chose the Hunter because again the Warlock is a caster and Hunter is not. I am also looking forward to the changes coming with 3.x to the Hunters. The Warlock on the other hand is an engineer and I don’t feel like doing another profession right now.

Ifirnia also has some nice stuff in her bank waiting for her: two nice guns and an epic axe. I prefer bows and crossbows to guns. But what can you do? When the Gods of Loot give you stuff, you take it.

So: Welcome Ifirnia to the World of Blogging!

My PvE->PvP Transfer

Yáshimá on her new serverThis is a rant. You’ve been warned.

I was so happy about the news and the first I did was rush to the Account Management and trigger a transfer.

I started with my first character on a PvE server. I was scared of PvP servers. Back then it seemed just too hardcore for me. My first PvP experience was during a 3 month stay in Ultima Online and I did not want to go back there.

World PvP on PvE servers happens. You still get killed sometimes because people kill your questgivers and then you get mad and try to get them back and then you’ll be killed anyway. Or that’s how it was then. Meeting Horde was either meaningless or annoying when they would take away herbs you had fought to get and you couldn’t even send them a complaint. Generally you just could not talk to half the people playing alongside you.

Then the guild broke apart and we re-rolled on a newly opened PvP server because some of my friends wanted to be on a PvP server. I went along and never regretted it. Oh yes I whine about being ganked and I gank back. I hate being camped and I have learned some impressive new swear words just meant for raging about how I hate being killed by another player … but I went back for a month to play my old character after BC and it sucked to be on a PvE server. Really sucked.

I have just leveled a character through 20 levels (40-60). It is rare that I met Horde. I did get killed about once or twice per 2-3 hour session. I whined about it every time and sometimes I relogged. So? I also met a number of “nice” hordies who would help out or simply not kill you and I didn’t kill anyone who didn’t offend me first. World PvP on PvP servers is pretty rare away from some hot-spots like Strangle, Chillwind and Southshore. Instead you sometimes have the opportunity to see that people could kill you, but don’t!

The aggression between the factions is there both on PvE servers and PvP servers. There are other ways to interfere with someone else besides killing them. You can tag all the mobs, steal their herbs and ores from under their nose etc.. You camp quest givers in lowbie areas instead of players. Is that so different? PvP servers are much more honest in that respect. While I hate being ganked at least it is open aggression not the passive aggressive shit that went on on the PvE server. If someone is playing nice on a PvP server you know they really are being nice – until they turn around and kill you when you are down to 10% of your hit points ;) But that’s what PvP servers are for.

The only thing I missed on the PvP server was my old character. Now I was finally able to move her. I had to delete my level 18 Paladin and now I have 3 Druids and no Paladin. I just wanted that character where I could play her again. I wanted to look at the Warden Staff in her inventory and remember how I found it.

We already have a couple who returned from summer hiatus because one of them also wanted to move an old character to join us and was so excited they couldn’t wait anylonger to start playing again. That is how it is for our guild. People want to have their old characters with them and so we are very happy about the change.

I understand that people believe this will lead to increased ganking on PvP servers. But right now I think the fraction of sociopaths, who have so little ties on their current server and would change from a PvE server to a PvP server just to go ganking without the trouble of leveling as PvP, is vastly overestimated.

We have our own (infamous) gankers on PvP servers, we’re used to dealing with this one way or the other. Believe me those PvE care-bear gankers can’t be as bad as the people who inspired threads multiple pages long on the realm forums.

In my opinion most moves will be friends joining friends or people retrieving their old characters. There will of course be moves from raiders to join raiding guilds … and a few gankers. I don’t think those few will make a real difference – and if they are – they are fodder for our own Captain PvPowers!

Silly Dailies

This morning I did the “Gaining the Advantage” daily with Thalya.

It is a bit boring to do it the traditional way and thinking of coming achievements I decided to go hand to hand with the Clefthoofs in Nagrand. Of course it takes a bit longer and yes I am glad she has Manashield and Ice Barrier and I do pull with Frostbolt. But for the rest I am wrangling the Clefthoofs to their death with my tiny gnome. (I know it really is the Molten Armor that is killing them *g*)

So far she has come from 0 to 281.

Oh and I had a blue drop. A nice shield: Shield of the Wayward Footman

I got a lot of blue drops lately and even an epic drop (nice axe for my huntress when she is in her mid-40s)

Enhancement Shaman Questions

Level 55 DingLakshmi has made level 55 today. She still sports her dual Third Legs with Crusader enchants. For leveling she is skilled Enhancement right now. Yes I put every single Talentpoint in there.

So I am wondering wether I am being the most efficient in a fight. Mind you I have never really read up on the class but I did get a little advice from the guild’s other Shamans when I was little.

So here’s what I do.

  • I cast Windfury on both my weapons.
  • If the mob looks hard I drop a Manaspring Totem and I make myself a Lightning shield.
  • If the mob is really hard I also drop Strength of Earth, Grace of Air and probably a Searing Totem
  • If the mob is a caster I drop the Grounding Totem
  • I usually run up to the mob or pull with a frostshock.
  • I use Stormstrike when available and
  • Follow up with Earthshock, of course if it is a caster I use the shock for interrupts. Is this a good idea to use Earthshock after Stormstrike? It says the next two sources of nature damage … and I am not going to use Lightning when in Melee range.
  • When I am low on mana I pop Shamanistic Rage

Some mobs drop really fast and some … don’t. I love casters. I used to hate them with my other characters. Well except the pull still sucks because I have to get close ;)

When I am bored I change the routine to running in circles around a Searing Totem casting only Frostshock until the mob is dead.

Improving my Fighting Routine

So my first question really is: is the above list really the best way to solo my way through the game as enhancement Shaman?

Reducing Downtime

My second question is: when is the best moment to use Shamanistic Rage?

Where do I find better gear

Lastly: are there any must have items coming up through quests or world drops between now and level 70?

I’d love some input or links to gear guides for the leveling Shaman. I know all this for my Druid and my Mage. Despite having reached level 55 I still feel like an awful Shaman noob.

Character Pages

As seen on another blog I have now made a page for each of my “named” characters. My hordes of alts will have to remain unnamed until I decide to make them one of my official and guilded characters.

Here are the three pages:

I’ll try to make these pages a bit more interesting when I have time or play more.

5300 gold

I cracked the 5k mark last night … again. While I have not been playing much, I have been selling a lot of stuff and even doing some AH flippin’.

My original goal was to get Thalya her epic flyer. Now I am not so sure. It’s good to be rich. Much better than spending 5k on a character I leveled for tailoring and having a dps character when Yashima is specced healing.

No mistake, I like my little frosty mage. But that is a lot of gold. I think I’ll go for 10k and then see if I buy anybody another mount ;)

In-game pressure

Just like Leafy I sometimes just quit the daily grind this game seems to become every once in a while. It’s not just dailies that put pressure in the game. One of my main goals is always having the gold to buy what I want. Dailies help with that and somehow they sometimes make me feel pressured to to do them. It mostly ends with me playing another character or not playing at all.

There are very few dailies I really enjoy. I think the pvp daily and the dungeon dailies are good ideas. The collecting daily that just rewards you a bit extra for doing some gathering is a nice one, too. I do the fishing daily because it is quick and I want one of the rewards. I like the randomness of the reward, too and I like fishing. I used to like the bombing runs. Most of the quests get old really fast. Plus all those that require killing something aren’t much fun with Yashima anyway. I wouldn’t notice the resto spec as much if I didn’t have a level 70 mage as well.

But beyond gold these dailies don’t provide advancement (factions are barely that …) unless counting that Thalya’s fishing has gone up and beyond 225 due to some motivation to fish with her because of the quest.

Just today I read an article at Tobold’s about how important fast advancement is to him and his wife. So important they started new alts. I love gaining a new level, new skills, new talents. I really enjoy leveling professions and while taking away some time from the guild to just play at my own pace for a bit I found that I can make money without dailies and have fun leveling.

My little hunter alt had been sitting at level 24 for at least one and a half years. She was broke and her kitty was hungry. So I gave her 20 gold to start with and started playing. At first there was a lot of rested xp. So I got a few levels really fast.

The true fun only started a bit later when I decided I did not need another Leatherworker and spent some time grinding up my mining skill. My inventory was always full and I kept having to sell stuff. Because of my ton of addons reloading the user interface (aka relogging) takes a long time and I decided to auction off my stuff directly from this character as opposed to my usual procedure of sending everything to my Disenchantress.

Next I activated Auctioneer on this character. Since I don’t usually buy a lot on the AH, I just put everything up I have, trusting into the addon’s prices after a few scans. I sold everything. From clam meat to raptor eggs. Bronze bars and green items. Recipe I picked up from vendors and the surplus of fish my kitty wouldn’t eat. I sold all the leather.

At some point along the way I decided I would not keep anything she would find except for cloth for bandages, potions and food. I am usually banking all kinds of stuff for “future use”. Not this time. Everything went up for sale. You will not believe all the stuff people buy on the AH. I sold some of the Christmas outfits for 10 gold each!

I have now leveled her to 31 and she is sitting on 340 gold. This includes about 100 gold from a few lucky AH flips and I still have auctions up for about 100-150 gold.

Thanks to all the people who do dailies and pay outrageous amounts of money for lowbie stuff I can level, have fun and still make quite a bit of money. I love dailies!

Don’t let yourself be pressured to play another game than the one you want. It’s a game! Go have some fun with it :)

RL vs WoW

And as always WoW loses. Which is right as I want it. However there’s not much to write when I am not playing a lot.

When RL gets too much I usually switch to a bit guildless alt playing. I find it close to impossible to only play “a little” when the guild is involved. So much of my online time with guild characters is spend chatting, resolving issues and actually “working” for the guild …

Also playing neglected alts usually has the advantage of fast advancement because of the rest-xp that usually lasts for 2 levels and I get to learn new modes of gameplay. Except for my baby-druid all my alts are the first/highest character of that class …

So I’ve been playing my anonymous little Hunter twink for a bit. Got her from Level 24 to 26 in the last few days. This choice of alt shows I’ve been reading too much BRK. ( Way too much ;) )

She’s fun to play and I even made some macros for her, trying to use the /assist pet macro I saw on WoWInsider the other day.

Of course she’s specced Beastmaster now, she used to be Marksmanship (see link to BRK above for reason for respec at level 26). She is running with her first pet from the Nelf starting area: a pretty dotted kitty. I’ll have to go hunting for new pet skills soon :)