Weeks 26-27: Breakthrough!

I did it! I pushed through the lack of motivation, with tremendous success (for me, anyway):

• Wildlight is now 83
• Lóthwen is now 37
• Enchanting is at 491
• Engineering is at 352
• Inscription is at 297

After I asked for ideas last time, Rades suggested the Midsummer bonfires for a big chunk of XP, which I'd resisted doing but knew I should, so on the very last day I pushed right until the festival disappeared and did about half of them. It took me up to 75 and I ran some random dungeons until I hit 76, at which point I decided to go questing in Sholazar Basin.

I'd forgotten how much I like that zone! The quests are varied, the Frenzyheart are hilarious and the Kungaloosh-making quest is fun. I ran random dungeons while I was questing and managed to hit 80 before I knew it! I can't really explain how much of a relief it was to be done with Northrend without having to do Icecrown or Storm Peaks again.

Having a max-level tailor was an absolute boon, as I could craft an entire Deathsilk set to replace my Wrath gear and by 81 I was completely decked out in Cataclysm greens/blues. The AH was kind to me too, and I won some good dungeon drops in my first few runs. Having a lot of crafted gear meant I could hold my own in terms of DPS too and I've not had a single snarky comment (unlike the first Wrath dungeon I did), despite still using the heirloom head and cloak. Mind-controlling adds like the Spiritmenders in Throne of Tides has been good fun too.

Shadow priesting has been really entertaining since I got Mind Sear - AoE, finally! - and I feel like I'm getting the hang of keeping my DoTs up, managing procs and temporary buffs, remembering to use cooldowns and all the jazz. When I hit 83 I could finally put a talent point in Archangel! WINGS.

My DK gatherer has been mining up ore for Engineering and that's at the cobalt stage now, which is great because I have cobalt nodes on Gatherer from back when I was mining up Jewelcrafting/Blacksmithing materials. There's some regret that I didn't have the drive to level it as I levelled the character, because I missed out on using some things that aren't as fun anymore, but that's a lesson learnt. Enchanting has taken care of itself mostly, with the help of my hoarded materials from other characters. I'm onto the Cataclysm mats but I'm not going to buy any because I'll eventually have enough if I'm patient.

My Frigid Frostling stood in the fires of the forge AND DIDN'T MELT. It demands I worship it as a God. This picture has no relevance to this post.

Lóthwen the mage has jumped up quite a few levels now that I didn't need the shoulder, chest and weapon heirlooms on my priest anymore and I didn't have to worry about losing their mog appearances. Playing as a fire mage has been good but I feel like I don't get enough time to do damage in dungeons before things are dead, so yesterday I sorted out an arcane spec for instancing. Hopefully that'll make things quicker and simpler!

Levelling inscription has been fun and simple, and I'm now focusing on getting to level 50 before the next Darkmoon Faire ends, so that my +5 points quest isn't wasted. The level restrictions on each stage of professions make sense but are sometimes a little annoying. I'll have to find the energy to take the DK back to Outland to gather herbs but I have a lot of pigments already from my hoarded herbs so it might be a minimal grind.

I'm hoping that I can hold on to this enthusiasm. Wildlight is so close to 85, and Lóthwen is the last professioned alt I needed to focus on. If I can just push through in the next month and get them both to max level, I can finally start on Loremaster with Ara!

Weeks 22 - 25: Being Lazy

So. I uh...hmm. Let's be honest here, and say that I've been really lazy about levelling, reluctant to start Loremaster, dabbling in other games and painting my nails. It's not been completely static though:

• Wildlight is now 72
• Enchanting is at 416
• Inscription is at 225

Not much to tell, except that the levelling block on Wildlight is still very much in place. I can't think of a way round it, either :( PvP isn't my thing, dungeons are getting boring, quests are getting boring! This is probably an unavoidable side effect of levelling too many characters during Cataclysm. This would be my 4th character from 0-85 during one expansion and there aren't exactly any new zones to go through >.>

Any ideas would be welcome!

Weeks 19 - 21: Mogging Heirlooms and Hellfire Peninsula (again)

Three weeks since the last update, huh? You'd think I was slacking or something but that isn't it at all. I've been...uh...saving the world. Yep. You wouldn't believe what nearly happened and how many marshmallows I had to eat to prevent it.

Quick update:

• Wildlight is now 61
• Enchanting is at 375
• Engineering is at 265
• Inscription is at 201

Wildlight has been getting a lot of time recently as I've been running dungeons with my boyfriend's alt which makes it less tiresome. Shadow is still a fun spec for boss fights but I'm getting pretty bored of Mind Flay followed by more Mind Flay. I have noticed that I'm getting to 3 orbs quicker now so it might be looking up, but I'm still wishing for an AoE attack (and to be honest, slightly concerned that I have might have one but not know about it because it seems like such a massive hole in my toolkit?)

About mid-50s I took Discipline as my second spec and have healed a few dungeons! It's pretty good fun - dropping a shield with a heal attached is a big improvement, and Divine Aegis is great - so I'll try to heal some dungeons every few levels and slowly cement my basic Disc knowledge ready for hitting 85. I made the mistake of never playing as a Resto shaman on Shiden and now I'm too chicken to heal on her without a full guild group :( but that's for another day.

The best thing about levelling my priest was picking up some really nice quest rewards and having a sudden inspiration to mog my entire outfit around them. Sure, it's just what I had in the bank so it's not perfect, but it's making me happy to log on and level her now she's wearing a pretty outfit!

If you're interested, the visible pieces:
Head - Vishas' Hood
Shoulders - Karna's Poncho
Chest - Xakxak's Lab Frock
Hands - Frostweave Gloves
Waist - Dawnspire Cord
Feet - you can't see them on Draenei but you might have to experiment on other races to find a match.

On the professions side of things I finally made the effort to level them a bit. Enchanting is now at the Infinite Dust stage so I'll be collecting materials whilst I'm in the 60-70 bracket before I buy anything extra. I have a fair amount stashed away so hopefully it won't cost me too much! Engineering is on the back burner until I can be bothered to go and mine up lots of Thorium on my gathering alt and Inscription is likewise in need of some herbs. If only I wasn't so lazy! The Darkmoon Faire is on this week though so I've grabbed 5 points in all three professions and saved myself another chunk of materials, so it could be worse.

That's about it for now! I have a few days off this week and I'm hoping to powerlevel Wildlight into Northrend at the very least (dungeons until 62 because I refuse to quest through Hellfire Peninsula again), so we'll see how that goes.

If you have a pre-Mists list, how is it going? Have you met some/all of your goals yet? I'd love to know :)

Head Enchants, Schmead Enchants

Good news, everyone! Ghostcrawler has confirmed that head enchants are coming out of the game for Mists:

"Head enchants are gone.

We decided that putting head enchants on the various faction vendors wasn't working well with our design intent for the factions. There is a lot of max-level quest content in MoP, much of it focused around the reputation with the new factions. I think it's really cool stuff -- worlds away from the old Argent Crusade scourge stone days. :)

In previous expansions, the head enchants on the faction vendors served to force players into that content. You couldn't even choose which reputation to pursue -- you had to pursue the one with your specific head enchant. Our design intent for MoP is to give players options in how to play, and the head enchant design wasn't compatible with that.

Once we decided to no longer offer new head enchants, we made the older ones non-functional or else players would feel like they had to go back to older content or be missing out on power. This way, helmets are just no longer enchantable and you'll have one less required step to get a piece of loot ready to wear.

Shoulder enchants can now be provided by scribes, so those still exist, but they are also not part of the faction reputation system." (Source: Wowhead News | Blue post)

My initial reaction was positive. There would be no more angst because the faction with my head enchant was not the same as the faction with my shiny exalted gear! I had a little think though, settled down a little, and realised it wasn't all rainbows and celebratory cakes.

The trouble for me is that the grind to exalted for that head enchant was content, something to aim for, another thing to achieve. I live for achievements, UI-based or self-imposed. While I'm not losing much with the removal of this grind, it was still content. Couple that with account-wide achievements removing the necessity to grind mounts/titles/achievements on more than one character if you don't want to, and I find myself experiencing a twinge of worry.

I do find it harder to mourn the loss of shoulder enchants obtained via rep grinds - Therazane rep and its forced series of quests to even unlock the tabard mean that only my main has friendly status - and as they will be available from scribes I don't think the change will be felt in the same way, but that's another milestone we don't need to reach anymore. I'd always wished for an Inscription option on top of the Therazane grind, or at least Bind to Account status for the enchants. We've gone straight past that to just removing the rep element altogether.

Ultimately, there are so many new features shipping with Mists that it's been impossible to see how I would run out of content. Pet battles, farming and more have been added. All the usual things will still be in the game. I will simply have to trust that Blizzard have got their balancing right!

Weeks 15-17: Hitting a Levelling Wall

It seems like these updates are the only thing that I have time for at the moment. I want to do a big achievements roundup but honestly, it'll have to wait until I have a few hours to link everything up and give it the effort I want to. Real life crits hard, kids.

Quick update:

• Shiden is now 85!
• Wildlight is now 40
• Lóthwen is now 28
• Skinning - to 525
• Leatherworking - to 521
• Enchanting - to 299
• Inscription - to 196
• Engineering - to 155

Biggest news is that Shiden hit 85, finally! She's great fun to play and I've started running some normal dungeons with guildies to gear her up. I have to say, watching Elemental Overload proc on a Lava Burst and seeing two go shooting off at enemies is an absolute blast. Slightly nervous about trying out a Restoration spec so I'm going to gear up to about ilvl 378, reforge to suit needs and then start with normals while I put theory into practice. If I'm not a great shaman healer that's fine - the list only demands that I try healing everything once!

Skinning hit 525 without any effort whatsoever, but even with the Darkmoon Faire daily this month, leatherworking is stuck a few points below 525. I need to get out there and farm some Savage Leather, or just give in to temptation and buy it...I hope that profession material requirements are lowered at some point in the future because the sheer amount you need to hit each threshold often prevents you from making anything useful as you level. By the time I can make the leatherworking epics I'll likely have picked up better gear from dungeons with a lot less effort.

The problem with that final push to 85 is that it's killed my levelling drive. The next nearest alt is Wildlight at 37, with Lóthwen at 28, and both of them need to hit 85 so that I can max their professions. I can't muster up the energy for another two long, long grinds and have been bumming about getting Outland dungeon reps on Ara. Still, the list is a focus not an obligation and I'm not at the stage where I'm about to level when I don't want to. Fingers crossed that I can fit in the odd level here and there before I lose the habit! [Update: I did 3 levels on the priest tonight, and it was good fun. That might be because I'm at the bar fights and riverboats section of Thousand Needles, though!]

I'm conspicuously tall here.

In other news, I removed engineering as a second profession for Lóthwen because Wildlight already has it and there's no way I'm levelling it twice. Being a hoarder I have tonnes of cloth stashed away and I've decided to make her second profession tailoring. There are a couple of BoP recipes for tailors that are really nice so I want at least one cloth-wearing alt that can make the most of them.

Week 5: Everything Happened At Once

I am not lying when I say the last week has been absolutely full of happenings! I logged on last Tuesday to find an Orc Death Knight and finish Love is in the Air, finally snagging one in Dalaran after a guildie spotted one and summoned me (he was trying to taunt Alliance by staying just inside the Horde area, but I got LoS from a rooftop). That triggered the holiday achievement and then the whole What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been meta achievement! FINALLY. A whole year later and I have my Violet Proto-Drake, free Master Riding and a bit of a break when the holidays roll around again!

That wasn't the end of my day though - we'd scheduled an extra raid night to get Madness down as we were so close...Discombobulated downed Madness (10-man normal) last Tuesday after a lot of hard work from more than the 10 people in the group that evening. Hitting 8/8 normal mode was a fantastic feeling (we one-shotted it yesterday evening too, for a true farm kill). To top it all off, Maw of the Dragonlord dropped - twice! - and I was lucky enough to pick one of those up too. What a week!

After all that excitement it was hard to think about the bucket list but I rolled up my sleeves and this is what I got done:

• Morríghan is level 82
• Nefarna is level 13
• Skinning is now 338
• Leatherworking is now 246
• Inscription is 176
• Engineering is now 140
• Aralosseien has 7815 a/p

My pocket tank and other guildies were kind enough to run me through some normal Cataclysm dungeons, once I'd bought a couple of items to boost my ilvl (because of my heirloom head and cloak). I felt a bit bad cheating my way into them but after I discovered I was keeping up with other at-level DPSers I figured it was fine. Morríghan has gone from ilvl 188 to ilvl 245 in the last week - thanks mostly to crafted Redsteel armor - so she's genuinely qualified for two normals and can pull her weight in the other two. Huzzah! The chunks of exp I'm getting (with rested bonus) for these are far more appealing than questing alone so I'll be running dungeons here and there until I hit 85.

We finished running the worgen through their starting zone so Nefarna is waiting in Darnassus at level 13, soon to be sent to Darkshore. I've run that zone twice already though, and I have two other night elf characters waiting in the wings so I might get her summoned somewhere new like Redridge Mountains and see those quests now they've been revamped. I've gone for Destruction as my spec because I like the idea of raining fiery doom down on my enemies later on (I have no idea if this is efficient for levelling or not)!

The Darkmoon Faire took up a whole evening - ferrying all the professioned alts there to do the monthly quests takes time! With +5 to professions they're silly to miss though.

Finally, Ara got a buttload of a/p this week. We ran through 10-man normal ICC on Friday, as we were lacking some crucial people for a Madness kill. Our fantastic guildies who were raiding back in the day ran us through every achievement they could and we almost got them all! Getting LST and killing Deathwing didn't hurt, either. I'm hoping to write my LST thoughts up at some point soon :)

So, I'm not sure what to work on this week! The dungeon-only resolution for Morríghan puts her out of the running, so it comes down to shaman vs. low-level alts. I might just see what takes my fancy as I go.

What have you been up to this last week in Azeroth?

Week 1: The Very Light Sabre

Armed with good intentions, unbending resolve and invaluable support from you, my lovely readers, we come to the first Bucket List update. Thank you for all the comments and encouragement you left on the original post!

I'll try to keep these posts short and sweet:

• Sugarstorm the gnome warrior rocked my world and got to level 7
• I levelled inscription from 147 to 171
• My rogue became my new bank alt
• I picked up Arcurion Legguards for my paladin offspec
• Neferne the human warlock became Nefarna the worgen warlock and got to level 9

Oh, Sugarstorm, with your pink pigtails and your Very Light Sabre. You've captured my heart. Who knew that the way to enjoy a warrior alt was to roll a non-serious one?

Doing a little bit of inscription was a nice change of pace - it's been a while since I was working on a profession at that level. Instead of buying the materials on the AH I took my flower-picking death knight to Stranglethorn Vale, which is a great zone for herbs that mill into Golden (common) or Burnt (rarer) Pigments.

I left the warlock race decision to my other half by telling him he had no choice but to roll an alt with me and that it was worgen or dwarf. Turns out he hadn't done the worgen starting zone yet, so worgen it was. I enjoyed it a lot more as a pair than I did running through it solo, perhaps because it alleviated the feeling of being stuck there alone. It was satisfying to see his reactions as things fell apart and were flooded during the earthquakes too!

While I'm here though (because this is my blog and I can grump if I want to), something that still bugs me is the way they designed female worgen bodies. If you ignore the head, hands and feet, it looks like a normal human body to me. Is that really the best Blizzard could come up with? In my opinion it's lazy design. They are capable of better - there's a pair of fingers crossed here that female Pandaren don't end up the same way.