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 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.

Weeks 8 - 14: An update backlog

It's been seven weeks since my last Bucket List update post. Seven. It's a great excuse to abandon the idea entirely but I don't want to stop working on this. So here we go, a massive backlog of updates.
The quick version:

• Morríghan is now 85!
• Shiden is now 77
• Wildlight is now 37
• Nefarna is now 22
• Swiftfeather is now 10
• Sugarstorm is now 10
• Sinuosity is now 10
• Skinning - to 475
• Leatherworking - to 345
• Enchanting - to 289
• Inscription - to 186
• Engineering - to 150

In seven weeks, I've done an abysmally small amount of work towards the List. For the last six of those I've been covering two roles while my employer faffs about and it's sucked all the energy out of me, making me useless once I get home every night. My lovely boyfriend has been really supportive and my cover finally started this week so it can only get better from here.

The biggest relief was hitting 85 on Morríghan, finally! I even ran dungeons with guildies and did enough DPS in frost spec to be a help rather than a hindrance, which was unexpected. Running these confirmed that I am rubbish at melee DPS; I lose sight of my character, muck up which direction to be facing and struggle mentally with not being able to attack until I've run to the next thing. In the long term, I'd like to run enough all-guild dungeons to hit the LFR item level but it's a low priority now. She's 85 with two maxed gathering professions and that's her purpose in the team!

Once that was out the way I moved straight onto Shiden and I am having a blast playing an elemental shaman! It's so much fun and even at 77 has really overshadowed my enjoyment of balance druid DPS. I can't articulate why but it just feels better, more satisfactory. Now is not the time to worry about this though - Mists will change everything up again so I am trying not to feel like I'm betraying Ara by thinking this. I'm hoping to hit 80 this weekend and then build up some rested bonus ready for another Hyjal grind. More Cataclysm zones would have been nice, I'm starting to think.

Wildlight got some levelling love because I wanted to hit 35 in order to train enchanting to the next bracket so that the DMF profession quest wouldn't go to waste! Shadow priesting is good fun but when DoTs are pointless it gets a little samey. Hopefully there'll be more going on at higher levels but ultimately this is the price I pay for wearing full heirlooms and facerolling the content. I've been lucky with enchanting, getting skill points from yellow recipes and making money back on scrolls, so it's not been the worst grind in the world (I'm looking at you, tailoring).

My sniffly warlock only gets levelled when the boy is free because I stupidly agreed that I'd be a levelling buddy for his worgen druid. Foolish. She did hit 22 in the last rush though, and there are 6 other classes to get to 85 before it becomes urgent...and she has a Felsteed. I love Felsteeds!

I've tidied up my low-level alts too, and got them all to level 10 so they could have a talent spec! Swiftfeather is going to level as a Beast Mastery hunter because she's very connected with nature in my mind and it makes sense that she'd choose to work closely with animals she's tamed. Sugarstorm is a delightful gnomish mix of spiky armor and pink pigtails, always accompanied by a little rabbit, so I've gone for Fury just to amuse myself. Sinuosity is an older, jaded night elf who feels at home in the shadows so she's being levelled as Subtlety.

There's still a lot to do, for sure. I want to start updating my progress once a fortnight, so hopefully next time I'll have a shaman at 85 and gearing up!

Weeks 6 & 7: The Fortnight Of Busy Times

Ok, I know, this is the second time I've run two weeks together. Taking over for my boss while she's on maternity leave before cover for my job has been organised means I've had a lot less time for blogging stuff. At nearly two months in to this challenge, I've not got nearly as far as I thought I would have done. There's a blood elf hunter and an undead mage that have a lot to answer for! My desire to make new alts hasn't diminished since I made the bucket list and they've probably stolen about 10 hours between them.

Despite that I've still made some really good progress and I'm so close to another level 85 alt that I can taste it. So to update, in the last couple of weeks:

• Aralosseien broke 8k achievement points!
• Morríghan went from 82 to 84
• Shiden went from 50 to 56
• Wildlight went from 28 to 30
• Swiftfeather went from 6 to 8
• Sugarstorm went from 7 to 8
• Skinning is up from 338 to 357
• Leatherworking is up from 246 to 265

We ran Ulduar as a guild last night when we'd finished clearing Dragon Soul and Ara picked up 260 a/p from that alone! I've never seen further than the first 3 or so bosses and I was blown away by the scale and beauty of that raid instance. It's so refreshing to be in different rooms/environments for different bosses - I really hope that Mists brings us some large-scale epic raid instances along those lines. I didn't manage to pick up any mogging gear (everything that dropped was perfect for my absent paladin, QQ) but I had an absolute whale of a time and I'm only 3 achievements away from Glory of the Ulduar Raider and a Rusted Proto-Drake. Oh, and I picked up my Starcaller title :)
Speaking of proto-drakes, a couple of guildies were kind enough to come along for Abuse the Ooze so I finally picked up my Red-Proto Drake to round off the evening in style.

Morríghan has been running some more normal dungeons and has done the quests for all of them except Throne of Tides - seriously, you can't do the quests without completing the entire zone? - and level 85 is so very close now. Her rested bonus should run right the way up to that so I'll be begging a couple of dungeon boosts and questing the rest of the way through Uldum until I get there. Frost DPS is becoming a lot of fun but I still panic quite a bit in dungeons!

Shiden has got a lot of levelling love in the last fortnight and is really close to level 57 now. Elemental shamaning is SO MUCH FUN. The great thing about levelling post-transmogrification is not missing out on awesome-looking gear and that's making questing for the rewards even more fun than it was. For example, I'd normally sigh when the reward was a helm, shoulders, cloak or chest because I'm using heirlooms I can't replace, but now I can save the good-looking pieces for a reason! I've been trying to level leatherworking as I go but I just don't skin enough leather to do so :( it's a massive problem, really. What's the point of having low-level gear recipes that I can't make for myself? Luckily I should be able to use it for crafting rogue and hunter gear once I've got Shiden to 85 and can farm whatever leathers I would need to max it, but I still get really grumpy about this.

I pushed Wildlight up to 30 so that I could grab my dual-spec and then promptly couldn't decide which one I wanted. I guess if I don't plan on healing anything it doesn't matter yet though. Getting Shadowform was awesome and she feels like a proper shadowpriest now rather than a lowbie priest alt so I think she's about to get some serious playtime in.

Lastly, I was hoping to get all my sub-10 alts up to 10 and choose their specs but it hasn't happened just yet. One more week and they'll all be proper characters, I promise!

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 4: Lunar Lunacy

I've not got a lot of Bucket List progress under my belt this week because I had Lunar Festival to finish up. The good news is that it's done, so only one part of Love is in the Air to go and I'll get my Violet Proto-Drake!

What's changed:

• Morríghan went from 80 to 81, finally!
• Wildlight went from 26 to 28 with a little boosting, also getting Enchanting to 225
• Luíseach finally maxed out Blacksmithing!
• Aralosseien got to 7495 achievement points

I actually finished level 80 by mining ore for raid gear gems. I don't really enjoy questing on Morríghan but she's darn efficient with a sword and it could be a lot worse.

Wildlight is stuck at 225 Enchanting now (until she hits level 35) so I'll probably send Morríghan off to mine some low-level ores and work on Engineering until it's at 225 as well.

The Darkmoon Faire is an absolute lifesaver if you're levelling professions. You can do the profession quests once per month and you get 5 skillups for very little effort. At the higher levels of professions, you're saving a lot of materials to do it this way (it would have taken 60 Elementium Bars otherwise to finish Blacksmithing) so all my professioned alts will be visiting the fair sometime next week.

Not a big week, and finding the five Horde race/class combos I need for Fistful of Love will take up some more time, but hopefully I can crack on with the levelling once that's finished!

Weeks 2 & 3: Slowly But Surely

So...there was no Bucket List update last week. I didn't get much alting time and I didn't feel like working on Loremaster. I was lazy, frankly, but it's my list so I can procrastinate if I want!

This week I'm enjoying having a big list to choose activities from and it's definitely making my in-game time more fun. Don't feel like end-game content for another night? Level one of my lowbies a bit. Don't have the energy to quest? Work on a profession. When all else fails, my flower-picking Death Knight gets sent to uproot those herbs and hack bits of ore out of rocks, mailing countless stacks of materials through the ether and into the hands of my professioning alts who store it in rapidly-overflowing banks for later on.

Before the list those alts were there, in the back of my mind, but didn't seem worth the effort despite the fact that I'd like a stable of level 85 characters covering all professions before Mists hits. Now I have the will to work on them and it's making me happier out of game too - days without a clear purpose really drag my mood downwards.

What I've achieved in the last two weeks:

• Aralosseien now has 7385 a/p
• Shiden hit level 50!
• Wildlight went from level 22 to 26, and got Engineering up from 100 to 135

Getting Shiden, my draenei shaman to 50 is long overdue. She's still wearing a few pieces of leather +int gear so I have my fingers crossed that some questing will replace those as the AH is bereft of level 50-60 +int mail.

Wildlight hit 26 so quickly I barely saw it happening. The OH did boost me through Blackfathom Deeps after a disastrous attempt via LFD but I think that 4 heirlooms and the perks of a level 25 guild are going to zoom me through content at a furious rate. I did toy with the idea of taking them off to see more of the zones but if I'm going to go for Loremaster on Ara I'm happy to save the lore surprises for her.

More importantly, Wildlight made her first pair of goggles - a snazzy pink pair!

I think I might have sparked a goggles addiction.

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.

Cataclysm Bucket List

Cynwise wrote a great post on CFN yesterday - a bucket list of things he wants to do during the rest of the Cataclysm expansion. I'm a bit resistant to January-inspired resolutions as if New Year grants you some mystical power to hold true to your course, but this was less grandiose, more practical and just generally motivating to read. So. There are things I've been wanting to do since I started playing WoW and other goals that are a little younger. Just for fun, here's my Cataclysm/2012 bucket list! (It's been copied to a permanent page for posterity and kept up-to-date there!)

General:

• Level one of each character to 85
• Druid - 85
• Paladin - 85
• Death Knight - 80
• Shaman - 49
• Mage - 25 and 13
• Priest - 22
• Rogue -7
• Hunter - 6
• Warlock - 6
• Warrior - need to roll one
• Level each profession up to 525
• Alchemy - 525
• Tailoring - 525
• Jewelcrafting - 525
• Mining - 525
• Herbalism - 525
• Blacksmithing - 520
• Skinning - 333
• Leatherworking - 241
• Enchanting - 220
• Inscription - 147
• Engineering - 100
• Make one character an actual bank alt with a guild bank to use
• Try healing on all four healing classes (and in both healing priest specs!)

I've wanted one of each character since I opened the character creation screen for the first time. Sure, there are some that don't appeal as much. I'm a ranged girl at heart because melee confuses and scares me (how on earth do you know what's going on in the middle of all that kerfuffle?!) and lots of ranged DPS classes have a healing tree too. There's also a reason I've played enough melee to reach this conclusion - paladins need a ranged dps spec!

Having one of each profession at 525 is partly a completionest tendency shining through and partly my compulsion to needlessly update gear that will be replaced in 3 levels. Plus, engineering sounds like fun. Half of the difficulty will be deciding which professions suit which classes the best for those that aren't already maxed. I might swap some around and start afresh.


Specific character goals (click images to see in giganto size!):

Aralosseien (druid)

• Reach 8k achievement points (7365 right now)
• Complete Loremaster

Luíseach (paladin)

• Finish putting together a 378+ Ret gear set
• Design + collect a mogging outfit for holy spec
• Max Blacksmithing

Morríghan (death knight)

• Level to 85
• Put together a 378+ set of DPS gear

Shiden (shaman)

• Level to 85
• Max leatherworking
• Max skinning
• Put together 378+ sets of Elemental & Resto gear
• Heal each Cataclysm heroic at least once

Lóthwen (mage)

• Level to 85
• Max Inscription
• Design + collect a mogging set
• Get to Honored with guild to finish Classy Night Elves achievement 

Wildlight (priest)

• Level to 85
• Max Enchanting
• Max Engineering
• Design + collect a mogging set
• Heal each Cataclysm heroic at least once

 

Swiftfeather (hunter)

• Level to 85

Sinuosity (rogue)

• Level to 85

Neferne (warlock)

• Reroll (probably rename) as worgen/dwarf
• Level to 85
• Get to Honored with guild to contribute to Classy Worgen/Classy Dwarf achievement

To be rolled!

• Warrior - female gnome - spec Fury, become dual-wielding bundle of death

It looks like a really, really big list. It is! 2012 is a year where I'd like to work more on non-gaming hobbies too, but I'm hopeful that I can get a lot of these goals ticked off before Mists throws me back into the rush of a new expansion.

How about you? What will you try and achieve in-game?