Holidays are fun and exhausting. Fun because we saw a lot of great places (and great beaches!), exhausting because after the first 3 days I fell dead asleep at 10 (and because a loud 3-year old – not mine – can be hell).

Beach. I has it.

However, I did have my laptop with me and I did manage to find a good wifi connection, so my latest project, no. 4 in my quest to get all healers to 80, Aushra the shaman almost hit 60 while I was in Turkey.

This means two things:
1. I’m having fun! I like shammy healing and I think she will be my new main alt when she gets to 80. Also, OMG RaF is the best thing EVER, totally worth buying a second account.

2. Since my priest on Defias is 66, I am basically doing Outland twice, at the same time. This is not fun. I hope Deathwing sits on Auchindoun because the place is a shithole filled with tanks who don’t understand that if I’m being mana drained I need more fucking breaks than usual (yes, even though 2 hours ago they ran with a priest who could heal blind and one handed and was always on 110% mana).

It also seems like I’m a lucky charm. [That, or actually having main spec healers helps.] The guild is struggling through summer holidays and class balance, so with one healer gone things get pretty tough. Raids weren’t very happy while I was gone, but everything seems to be back on track. Class balance is still not ideal and we’re using a lot of offspecs/alts on occasion, but we are 6/12 in ICC heroic and we also managed to do a bunch of frostwyrm achievements. I’m constantly impressed by how well we’re doing considering we almost never get 10 main spec, main char, 100% sure sign ups… last night we ran with 1 offspec healer, 1 alt tank, and 1 guy who can’t follow instructions or do basic things, and we still got 3 or 4 achievements (mostly 1 shots) and a heroic. We might really get those pretty skeletons after all…

Here’s another beach to end with. Yes, you should envy me because I had a great holiday :D

There is one problem with my guild (aside from the “will we get 10 people tonight or not?”). The problem has caused me a lot of sleepless nights in the past week. We’re too bloody chatty.

Soulbound raids (in theory, at least) from 8 to 11 pm server time. I chose those times because 11 ST is midnight for me, which meant an hour earlier than my previous guild, which meant I could go to sleep earlier and not be a zombie at work.

Easier said than done. All my guildies are so nice that I end up spending 2 more hours on Vent after the raid. Or instead of the raid. Or before and after the raid. It gets worse when leveling alts. We’re RAFing and want to get to 60 before I leave on holiday tomorrow, so me and Valli have been spending every free moment on our alts, and on Vent of course. Apparently our bitching at PUGs is entertaining, because we keep getting company, sometimes Vent-only, sometimes for leveling/boosting. And it’s so goddamn fun that I can’t quit.

Two days ago, it was “boost your friends day”, so Valli’s boyfriend grabbed his mage and took us plus a guildie to a leisurely walk in Uldaman. The place is a shithole as usual, but being led like a pack of hyper sheep was much more fun than an actual PuG. (Fact: men really are better at directions.) After 2 hours of picking up quests, turning in quests, waiting for the dead dwarf to come back to life, I actually started to find “That’s what she said” jokes funny. Went to bed at 1.30, braaaainz at work.

Yesterday, it was “raid called early so let’s get to 50 day”. We helped a druid get her quests in ST done (I have such a soft spot for baby trees), which meant a long, LONG dungeon, with a bunch of uncooperative players who didn’t know what to do and didn’t know how to follow instructions. By the time we were done, I realized it was 2 am and us girls and our shammy had been chatting for 3 hours. Went to bed at 2.00, braaainz at work.

They’re mean, evil people and they’re making me lose sleep. But how can I resist it? We really are girls in WoW too, so we do squee over pretty dresses, grumpy boyfriend was laughing his ass off in the background, the crude jokes were flying, I was being bitched at regularly… a perfect day of WoW-life.

Tomorrow I’m leaving for Turkey, hopefully on a good note: we seem to have enough sign-ups, of the appropriate classes, for the raid tonight, so we’re going to try Deathwhisper and finish our Storming the Citadel heroic.

See you on the other side, with more tan!

This week’s BA Shared Topic is simple: starting over in WoW. Pieces wanted to know what class/race/faction we’d choose if we could start at 80 (or level 1 for those who like leveling).

I don’t know if this is sad or not… but I’d still be a resto druid. Still Alliance.

First off, the idea of having a random class at insta-level 80 is bad – which is probably why Blizzard chose 55 for DKs. All classes have a lot of spells; while it is certainly possible to learn how to use them all in one go, it’s by no means easy. I leveled my paladin as prot/ret, and now that I’m going prot/holy on her I’m finding it hard to figure out all the healing spells and when to use them… and this is the class that can only spam HL and FoL, I can’t imagine trying something like a priest straight at level 80. So, if for some reason I’d have to start on a new account, I’d make a level 80 druid and work my way to getting a viable raiding set again. I might change my offspec… but even though I’m not crazy about moonkin, kitty seems insanely difficult, and tanking really isn’t my thing, so I don’t know.

If I had to level something from scratch (which could actually happen, say I got perma-banned for something), it would still be a druid. Out of my 4 level 80s, she’s by far my favorite. Choosing a class is tricky, you see. I got a mage to 80 and realized it’s not as fun (or as easy to play) as it seemed. I got a paladin to 80 and realized I really don’t like tanking that much, even on an easier class. I got my warrior to 80 and played her a lot, then I realized melee is too much running and I really cba. What if I struggled to level a hunter and realized at 80 that I don’t like the play style? Too risky for me, I’ll stay with the familiar… except maybe I’d try leveling kitty, learning all the abilities on the way might be easier, and at least I’d have gear to choose from before level 60.

As for the faction… while I do think my cow is adorable… Jen the night elf is much, much better. I haven’t seen the worgen female models, but I doubt they’re better than a night elf. Just look at her!

This got me thinking. Angelya really had to start over, due to moving from Europe to Australia, but she RAFed with her husband. If I had to start over, but still live in Romania… tough luck, I’d have to level the hard way, without heirlooms or triple XP. Judging by this blue reply and other similar threads, it looks like we have some sort of anti-gambling/pyramid schemes law that prevents Blizzard from allowing RAF in Romania. I can understand why it’s happening, they’re not going to risk their business just to let me level faster, but it still sucks big time. I’ve never been a fast leveler, and this could be gold for me. I could even play with my friend in Austria and our alts would not be stuck at level 7 for eternity… but noo. Thank you, Romanian law.

On the bright side – I don’t have to start over.. I have alts I’m having fun on, even with the slow-as-hell leveling. I’ve got 4 level 80s and they’re different enough to allow me to play all four styles – healer, tank, ranged and melee. Now I just need more time to actually enjoy them all.

(On the very bright side, I have a 1-2 weeks break from job no. 2, so all my home-time is dedicated to WoW, yay!)

Tuesday was a big day for me: deadline day at job no. 2, which means that the book was delivered and I was free as a bird. Or free as a lazer-cow, at least.

The Moodles are mostly a weekend project, but since it was a non-raiding night, we went out in the world to slaughter some more.

I didn’t mention this before, but in the meantime our guild grew. A couple of our main chars’ guildies remembered they had horde-side alts, and it just so happens that they are in our level range. Naturally, this can only mean one thing: guild run!

We queued on LFG, crossed our fingers and got lucky: SFK, not WC! Since our priest was specced Discipline (when you have a Disc priest main, what alt do you roll?), I went lazerspewpew and we started killing puppies. Ok, blood hungry ghost wolves or something.

As an aside, I usually ninja pull. If there’s a bad place to be, I’m there. Now I managed to run ahead of the tank, but I was safe… safe in the perfect spot to see a pink parrot running down the stairs being chased by half the instance. NOT my fault for once, and revenge for all the times Baloon’s main stealthed in front just to see me run into bosses.

The parrot in all its glory, while not pulling whole rooms.

Because we’re pro, we survived without a scratch, while happily playing the angry pugs:
FFS TANK!
OMG NINJA PULL!
healer wtf u doin???
omg guys u suck!!!

I’m actually surprised we managed to kill the mobs, we were laughing so hard.

Archmage Arugal was no more.

Next up: Deadmines! Our little killing squard pressed on, mooing, laughing, going “FFS HEALS” and discussing English slang. We came prepared with BiS gear and proper enchants and gems (heirlooms and +1 stamina on wrists, plus some Malachite in our bags), we’d all read the strats, we were ready.

…or maybe not. Mr. Smite is srs bsns.

We somehow managed not to pull all the pirates on the boat, we didn’t get an epic parrot, but VanCleef ended up staring at the floor in record time. We’re not progression raiders for nothing…

The evening ended on a high note – literally. Thunderbluff is a dangerous place. Turns out that if you’re on the bridge, trying to get to the shaman trainer… you need to be very careful.

It was a long way down and it ended painfully, with a squashed cow and her kodo. The rest of the group was amazingly supportive: they rofled for 10 minutes and gave detailed descriptions of how much fun they were having IRL. Comic relief, that’s me.

The best part? I was 1 bar from level 22 so I didn’t have any spells to train.

[Picture editing by Pat. Click for big version. Jokes too subtle for me, I'm told, but I hope the rest of you get them.]

Computer problems and lack of time have delayed this post for a while, but rest assured: the cows are doing their thing and rocking Azeroth.

We’re going to be dungeon-leveling, so the first and foremost goal was hitting level 15. But our hunter was late, so me and Truffles starting playing the “Make Lurky dance” game.

We waited. Nothing.

Truffles tried to dance with him, maybe he gets the hint.

Nothing.

She tried intimidation.

It didn’t look impressed.

We both tried to dance… how can you not love two sexy cows?

Didn’t work.

We gave up, got our tardy hunter and went our merry way, slaughtering the fauna of the Barrens and wondering what the hell were the developers thinking when they created the damn quests. Luckily, we’re three terror machines so the only problem we had was boredom and trying to keep track of what everyone needed. (Seriously, did they really have to ask us to bring 3 pieces of each mob on the map?)

(Of course, when Lucky finally decided to dance, I missed the screenshot.)

After the most boring walk in history, escorting a slow-ass elf to Ratchet, we hit 15 and went headfirst into RFC. Taragaman was vanquished and there was much rejoicing. We even convinced a pug to pose for our kill shot.

(Click for bigger version)

A couple of dungeon runs and a handful of quests do wonders, so before long we were hitting more milestones.

Sadly, it was getting late for our little cows, so we just posed for the camera, waved and went to sleep.

P.S. This is what happens when someone a 10-year old* rolls a tauren.

Truffles has a /moo macro. I think she tried to moo bosses to death a few times.
*We could try explaining to people that we’re not actually 10, but they wouldn’t believe us.

P.P.S. My convincing worked, so from now on the boyfriend is in charge with making our boss kills pretty. He refused to play with us, so at least he can make himself useful outside the game.

I don’t care much about the Lunar Festival (visited all the elders once, never again!), but Khi had a good idea: we bloggers can act like elders for a few days and bestow our knowledge on the noobs. (I use noob as an endearing term, not as in “OMFG u noob GTFO”).

My first brilliant idea was to write about general stuff for new players, but that’s been done already and I don’t think I have anything particularly interesting to say. I died a lot in my low levels, so I’m probably not the best example.

Then I wanted to write about acronyms… but it was pointed out to me that it’s been done, and much better than I could ever manage. See wowwiki and this WoW forums thread for a long, long list.

So I settled for a specific topic of the starter experience: money. Unless you’ve got a friend to help you out, you’ll soon realize that money is important, especially when you don’t have it.

Making money from drops/quest rewards
A few basics about item quality or color:
- grey items (poor quality) are mostly useless and can/should be sold to vendors. If you’re low-level (under level 10, let’s say), equip any grey item that’s better than what you’re currently wearing.
- white (common quality) items are either used in professions or can be worn/equipped at low levels. If you’re low level, use white items, they’ll generally be better than greys. Don’t buy white items from armor vendors, they’re not worth it.
- green items (uncommon quality) are usually useful for something; green armor has stats, for example. You’ll find them as mob drops or quest rewards.
- blue items (rare quality) are better than greens and they’re generally your best option gear-wise until you get high in level.
- purple items (epic quality) are rare and very good; most of them drop in level 60, 70 or 80 heroics and raids, and a select few are world drops (they can drop from any mob, anywhere).

You can read all about it in way, way more detail here.

Anyway, we’re not talking about gear, we’re talking about money. The golden rule is: Never throw anything away. Ever. Seriously. Sell everything you get, even grey items, every spider leg and bear bone.

In order to do that… you need to use golden rule 2: Get bigger bags.

Sadly, this won’t be very easy as a low-level, because even the cheapest vendor-sold bags have a quite steep price. I would suggest to gather the cloth that drops (linen, wool, silk etc) then find a tailor to craft bags for you. They won’t be very big to start with, but any addition to the 16-slot backpack is good. Also check quests: some of them reward bags – Digging Through the Ooze for example.

Tips:
* If your bags fill up, go back to a vendor and sell everything before you continue with your quest.
* If you’re one of us lazies, use an addon to automatically sell all your grey items. I have Reagent Restocker which (in addition to restocking reagents, obviously) makes it easy to get rid of all the junk in my bags.

* Before entering a dungeon, make sure your bags are as empty as possible.
* Whenever you change a piece of gear, sell the one that’s being replaced, don’t destroy it.

Making money on the Auction House
The Auction House or AH is, like the name says, a virtual marketplace where players buy and sell items they have or they need. There are many, many sites dedicated to playing the AH, but my advice stays basic: search for your item on the AH; if someone else is selling the same thing, post yours a little bit cheaper. If no one is… deciding how much to ask can be tricky. I sell low-level armor (up to level 30-40) for 1-2.5 gold or just wait until someone posts the same items, then undercut him.

Things you can easily sell and make a nice profit:
* Cloth – sells almost instantly regardless of type; depending on your server economy, a stack (=20 pieces) of Linen Cloth will go from 50 silver to 1 gold, with other types of cloth selling even better. Cloth drops from all humanoids in the game.

* Bind on Equip drops – up to a level (40 or so), green armor sells very well on the AH. People buy it to disenchant it or for their alts. Blue armor sells well (a couple of dozen gold), but might take more time until someone buys it. If you get one of the rare low-level epics, you’ll be rich, they sell for hundred(s) of gold.
* Cooking materials – this is more vague, but some types of meat sell pretty well. You won’t make a big profit, but if you have time check the AH for the prices on the cooking mats you have and try to sell them.

Making money from professions
If all you’re interested in is making money as fast as possible, get skinning/herbalism or skinning/mining (but not herbalism/mining, as you can’t track both types of nodes at the same time on the minimap). To track nodes/herbs, click on the magnifier icon to the left of the minimap and select the corresponding tracking type.

If you want to get professions that directly benefit your character, pick a different combination, but matching them up the right way can save you money. The way to go is pairing up a crafting profession with a gathering profession that provides the materials needed for crafting. Good choices are: a. skinning and leatherworking; b. mining and blacksmithing, jewelcrafting or engineering; c. herbalism and alchemy or inscription; d. tailoring and enchanting (you can disenchant the gear you make).

Things you can sell on the AH:
* Leather – sells instantly and for good prices. You can get it by skinning mobs or (not as common) from drops. Hides, however, don’t sell very well.
* Herbs – sell instantly and for good prices. You get them from, obviously, herbalism.
* Ores – sell instantly and for good prices. From mining, obviously. Make sure to also check the price of smelted ore – more often than not, bars sell better than ores.
* Low-level crafted green armor – probably any item you craft before reaching 150 skill in your professions will sell on the AH. Rings and necklaces are popular because they don’t drop from quests or bosses in the beginner levels, but robes, cloaks, shoes and everything in between will also sell.

* Enchanting materials – the low-level ones don’t sell that well, but at some point in the game (around level 40) disenchanting greens and selling the mats becomes more profitable than selling the items themselves on the AH. Enchanting materials don’t have a listing cost, while green items do, and it gets quite high. My theory is that if listing the green item costs more than 1 gold, it’s not worth it.

* Vanity items – this works better on RP realms, but even on PvE/PvP realms people want to dress up their bank alts. Winter clothes, tuxedos, dresses, the Indiana Jones hat… they will all sell for a fair price.

I’m sure there’s many, many more ways of making money, but the ones I’ve listed don’t require a lot of time or effort. My baby cow’s already got 60 gold she made by herself, and the effort was minimal. These strategies won’t help you buy a vendor mammoth at level 40, but even selling just one stack of linen cloth can ensure you’ll afford to train all your abilities for a few levels.

P.S. If you’ve got anything to add, don’t be shy! My x-realmed baby priest needs to make money for her epic flying :)

Cows are not everything I leveled lately. Thanks to Love is in the Air, Khrista got a bunch of free levels (well, I paid good gold for the bracelets, actually). Level 40 was in sight – epic mount, dual spec, all the goodies!

I went a-pugging again. I ran SM Cathedral over and over and over (boring, but lots of XP and flowers to pick). Most groups were fine, except for when I ran into a bunch of idiots on my realm. I don’t care to remember the details, but it ended with me leaving and an exchange of whispers and ignores.

Uldaman, on the other hand, was suprisingly easy. I was dreading it a bit, since it’s a dungeon I haven’t run very much on any char, and I manage to get lost even with maps. To my surprise, I got a group of nice, talkative people, who knew the way, didn’t mind the occasional wipes (they even said “It happens, don’t worry”… but they didn’t know we wiped because I was taking screenshots instead of healing, oops) and made the whole experience very enjoyable.

Bouncy tank!

Things seem to have changed since the last alts I leveled in LFG – there’s way more characters with BoA and most players seem to know what they’re doing. I can only be happy about that.

Totally slacking

In the end, all was well. We had…
- the ding…

- …the dual-spec…

- …and the tiger. A white tiger this time, not the dirty pink one in the screenie.

I had a moment of panic at level 39-40, because my only choices were SM Cathedral (/yawn), Uldaman (not hoping I’ll get as lucky the second time) and Maraudon (I’m not touching that place with a long pole), but now I got ZF in the Dungeon Finder, so yay!

Next up, Khrista learn to shadow and hopefully gets to level 50. On my brand new computer I built myself and almost broke but which should be working in a few days OMGPRETTYPIXELS.

So, I made a cow.

I stayed away from the dark side for the longest time. So far, my highest horde is a level 21 paladin abandoned on some server I don’t even remember the name of. And yet, yesterday I spent an afternoon giggling at my cute cow and her two companions, and had an absolute blast.

The trouble with me and horde is… aesthetics. Belfs are hot, but they can’t be any of the classes that interest me. Undead seemed ok, until I rolled one and hated her walk. My troll lasted 3 levels before I decided I can’t play something that hideous, and I haven’t even touched orcs. And then… I saw a couple of drawings of tauren and they suddenly looked very cute. Shaman was one of the classes I hadn’t tried, and my boyfriend’s fresh 80 elemental is pumping out crazy DPS. And since Blizzard gave us cross-faction heirloom mailing and my druid’s spellpower chest was just gathering dust in my bank… Muffin was born.

I wasn’t exactly expecting to play her more than a few hours; my horde alts tend to have that fate. And then there was a herd – my friend Laura and Barry rolled their own taurens, Truffles and Baloon, so now we’re a happy group of hunter, future bear/kitty and future elemental/resto. Leveling is srs bsns, so we already have a guild (Moodles!), big bags, lots of BoA and a burning desire to pwn RFC and DM. I even invested in a new heirloom weapon, because hey, my abandoned alts have emblems they’re not using.

We’re proud level 10s and so far our exploits have included:
* dancing in the happy fields.

* lazying around while bugging friends for charter signatures and deciding which set of BoA gear to use.

* enjoying the view (Mulgore is PRETTY! I never knew!) while yelling “aaaa a level 6!!” (Mulgore has wolves that want to nom level 1 cows on their way to the mailbox).

* obliterating every mob in sight (mobs not pictured because they were dead/about to be dead).

* made friends with an Alliance raid who eventually killed Cairne and left us unable to turn in quests (oops).

The first day was a success, with me getting my earth totem, Truffles getting her bear form and Baloon his first pet, so we look forward to the future!

P.S. Yes, /moo as a cow is hilarious.
P.P.S. Yes, we are very excited. This is what we were doing while at work today:
Jen: i want to go home and moo
Laura: me too!!

So, after the week from hell at work, I finally had a weekend all for myself*. I sadly spent the good part of Saturday watching my neighbours argue, but the rest was good – mainly because I still had the yummiest cake ever left over from my birthday on Friday.
[*actually written last week]

So I woke up, got angry, got back home and entertained myself with some good ol’ questing and pugging and my tartlette chocolat.

I tend to get sidetracked by alts easily, so I’ve been focusing on Khrista. Jen doesn’t need anything outside of raids and the daily heroic, Shiny is on a break since the guild doesn’t seem to need alt tanks, and farming heroics for holy gear is not very exciting… so baby priest time it is. I’m a bit masochistic, but I like the dungeon pugging (and my friends keep talking about raids and heroics in our channel, so I want to do that faster!).

I’m so pretty admirers are showering me with roses

First off, Love is in the Air dailies are pure gold (and by “gold” I mean “XP”) for lowbies. they’re short, they’re fast and even the ones that require more work can be sorted easily with money (if I don’t feel like questing, I just buy the bracelets). So I shared some chocolates with the world, killed a couple of baddies for Crushing the Crown, did a couple of quests until 30 Lovely Charms, and then I went out to meet some new idiots err friends in PuGs.

In love with some random guy or girl who happened to give me some chocolates. I’m so easy.

I came, I saw, I kicked ass even if I’m holy

After a week of SM Graveyard, I had a major surprise when I found myself in Razorfen Downs, and a second major surprise when I realized I’d never been there before. Makes sense, since my highest horde is level 21 and I never bothered with dungeon achievements on my Allies… but I thought I’d at least set foot in there with a guildie or something.

Look at me and my yellow balls of holiness!

After the initial surprise, I remembered RFD being mentioned as one of the confusing dungeons for Alliance, alongside Wailing Caverns, and I started worrying… but I had a group who knew the place and I just had to follow them around. Result: fun! It’s been a long while since I discovered a new place, and the company was pleasant. Thank you, random guys on the Rampage battlegroup.

RFD was an one-time-only thing, afterwards it was SM all over again (Library this time). Things are going better than when I was leveling my druid and it’s easy to see who’s more likely to know what they’re doing: orange gear = good.

Ok, I cheated, my DK was closer to Scarlet Monastery.

Well, up to a point. I join a group – me healing, a mage and a ret paladin in full heirlooms, a druid tank and a hunter. We pull, a BoE caster staff drops, everyone needs, the druid wins it, is happy and equips it right away. Equips it instead of his +agi fist weapon and +intellect offhand, that is. I inspect and find the usual “super-hybrid” druid you’ll find so often in the low level instances – if it’s leather, it’s his, stats be damned. I make a mental note that he might be harder to heal and we move on. Then druid starts tanking in cat form. The paladin has Righteous Fury and he either doesn’t understand English or doesn’t care. Me and mage start bitching in /say about someone with full BoA being so clueless. I tell druid he’s not getting any heals until he goes back to bear form… so he goes ahead in cat while me and mage hide behind a corner. At some point, the paladin leaves, still with Righteous Fury and still without saying a word. The druid finally gets the point, switches to bear and gets heals. We eventually wipe at some point because druid couldn’t hold aggro, then the group disintegrates.

I wave farewell to the mage and wish him happy pugging. It won’t be, but we can at least try to look on the bright side of WoW.

Although I didn’t have much time for her lately, Khrista is settling in well on her new realm.

First off, I made a bank alt and pimped her up. I don’t care about RP, even though I’m on a RP realm now, but I like WoW fashion so I’ve got a couple of outfits for my level 1 night elf. Right now she’s doing the pirate thing and showing off her boobs in Darnassus, but I’ve also got a Lovely Red Dress for her (turns out they became un-soulbound in some patch…).

On the leveling side, it’s going well. After a few boosts and motorcycle rides around SW to turn in quests (yay for friends!), I headed off on my own and ran some Stocks and Gnomeregan. On my home server, Gnomeregan is among the few places no one will boost. Really, 20g is not near enough for the horror that is Gnomeregan.
(Gno-me-re-gan, OK? If you can’t spell it, just look at the screen, it’s not hard. Anyway…)

Surprinsingly, all the runs went fine. Things seem to have changed since I leveled my druid in low-level dungeons. Right now at least 2 players out of 5 have BoA, most of the rest can at least do their role honorably, some of them are even friendly and I haven’t seen anyone bitch all day. I am thouroughly impressed and I hope the trend will continue into the higher dungeons.

To make it even better, on the last run I got the antenna helm and the Satchel of Helpful Goods decided to actually be helpful and gave me a healing neck.

I’m considering doing a bit of Holy questing… but it looks painfully slow, so I’ll probably stick to my initial plan of only doing dungeons until 80 and dual spec. Oh, and selling low-level cloth is amazingly profitable – a couple of hours of instances gave me enough cloth to make 150+g.

This has been so fun I’m not even sad I missed our ICC alt run!