I also spent a gold piece to unlearn my warlock's talents, and set her up as a drain tank. I can't say that I'm too excited about following a build closely. It seems like I'm just blindly following a cookie cutter setup rather than try to make my own talent tree build (if this was Guild Wars, I'd compare it to a cookie cutter build from pvxwiki). But I do have to say it's pretty effective.
Last night my warlock was in the Wetlands, and a crocolisk surprised me as my warlock was crossing a bit of water. OK, not a huge deal. But the succubus and the crocolisk did that annoying thing where each tries to get behind the other, and went dancing off into the distance. Right into a group of gnolls, of course. The succubus and my warlock were able to kill the crocolisk, but the gnolls killed the succubus. Then came running for Brynnea. But even with cloth armor, Drain Life was enough to keep Brynnea alive. One healing potion was used, but I didn't have to use the healthstone (to be honest, I forgot it was there). At the end of the fight Brynnea had no mana, but after taking on two gnolls and a crocolisk at about her level, was only down to about 75% life left.
But maybe I'm just a bad player. I mention this because I often see people posting on the forum (the wowhead forum, for the record) that their warlock is getting ten mobs together, casting the DoTs, then standing around doing nothing while they die. Maybe it's exaggeration, maybe they're using "mob" to refer to one foe. To me, the group of four or five gnolls around a campfire is a mob. One of those at my warlock's level is more than enough to make me work for the win. Two of those? My warlock is going to die. Ten of those? I can't even imagine getting those rounded up -- that's half of the Wetlands right there.
I'm not too concerned about my abilities in comparison to another player, I only bring it up because I don't understand what I'm doing that makes the game seem harder than what they're describing. In any case, I'm still enjoying myself, so it's not really a big deal.
I believe I mentioned that I'm using the Necrosis addon. One of the features for that, as I found out last night, is random speech while summoning a minion. I summoned the succubus once after unlearning all of my warlock's skills, then again after she got killed in the Wetlands. The first speech was something like "Fishing? Oh I love to fish. I move my fingers like this, and snap like that. See? This is a fish, I tell you!" This left me with a severe case of "what the HORK?" But the second speech was much shorter, just "Betvina, baby, come here I need your help!" (Betvina is the name of my warlock's succubus, and I really wish I could rename her). This makes me want to dismiss the minions and re-summon them over and over and over. I am highly amused.
Oh, and the succubus... I really wish I could use a minion other than the succubus. The voidwalker annoys me to no end, and he isn't very strong. The imp can't tank. So I'm left with the succubus, and Blizzard made sure to make her... ooof. I don't even have the words. Dressed in next to nothing, trying to sound seductive (but just ending up sounding bad), with idle animations that make me really glad no one's looking over my shoulder while I'm playing. I enjoy having attractive characters, but I'm not looking for "adult content" in my games. It makes me wish I could give the succubus some clothes.
Minor side note, but I need to upload a new avatar. Brynnea isn't even human any more.
For my own amusement I looked up several of my characters. I was disappointed to find that Sarilyn is a pretty common name. I was not at all surprised that Dvalinn is a very common name. But two names that I made up, Avelessa and Aralie... I didn't expect to find those at all. But no, there are multiples. I have only three characters with unique names: Bellarys, Aryndrielle, and Tanoryn. The last two are my Horde characters, both Blood Elves.
Unrelated, but I've also been playing with some add-ons. Did I mention this already? Maybe, but I'm too lazy to go check.
Auctioneer is pretty nice, except that the data isn't always up to date. For instance, if I refresh the data for Weighted Jack O'Lanterns, the average price is a lot higher than what I see in the window. So I think that Auctioneer is keeping track of historical data as well. Which sounds good, but... up to date pricing information is a better plan. If the prices have dropped from a gold apiece to ten silver, Auctioneer still considers the average price to be a lot higher than current price. Meaning that the auctions don't sell, and I waste the deposit.
Auctioneer also has a bad tendency to make the auction house window very slow to respond. I flip to the next page of search results, and... think think think... think think... Oh hey! Auctioneer has scanned X new items, removed Y old items, found Z unchanged items, et cetera. Knock it off, trying to use the AH here. I think that's also the add-on that's making logout take a full minute. And when I first move the mouse over an inventory item, the whole game freezes for thirty seconds -- definitely a problem if I'm moving the mouse over a healing potion (which has happened to me twice now, thankfully didn't die). About the most benefit I'm getting from this is the ability to say "OK, I want to set the price at 10 silver per item, broken up into stacks of no more than 6, and only full stacks posted to the auction house." Pretty easy.
I'm also using Necrosis, which helps manage the soul shards my warlock gets. But Necrosis also does a ton of other stuff that I don't need, it took a bit to figure out how to turn off the extra garbage. Why do I need a spell counter, when there's already one on the normal interface? Why do I need an extra button with several buttons around it to cast all the spells I would normally? But that's sorted out now, at least, so not a huge deal.
My favorite has to be Altoholic, though. I can see the inventory and skills of all of my characters, without logging out. I can see what they know for their professions. I can mouse over a recipe/pattern/schematic and know if my character can learn it or not, or already knows it. Bliss.
I can also use it to look in a character's bank if I'm away from the bank. For instance, I couldn't remember if Dvalinn had a new weapon to use waiting in the bank. I do this occasionally, when Avelessa can craft a weapon with a level requirement one or two levels higher than the other character currently is. But Dvalinn was out in Menethil Harbor, so he could pay for a ride back to Ironforge, use the hearthstone, or... just look in Altoholic. Simplicity is nice.
I've also been using Gatherer, with the database from Wowhead. I have yet to see the benefit to that, really. The directional pointers on the minimap are so cluttered that it's hard to distinguish which way to go. And of course there's no distance indicator unless I mouse over each one, so I've been just doing what I always do... explore the map until I see the yellow dots. It's a little beneficial to have indication of empty nodes. That is, Gatherer saying "sometimes there's a bit of Earthroot here." But other than that, I'm not sold on that one.
That's about it, ran out of words. It's a good thing I'm not trying to make a living as a writer.
I did take advantage of this. I may change another character, I'm not sure. But my human warlock Brynnea suddenly found herself to be a gnome warlock. Brynnea's facial expression was a blank stare, and that was the best human face I could find. And human females in game run like their spines are all one solid piece, connected to hips and shoulders. It drove me batty. Since a class change wasn't an option, the only thing I could do for Brynnea was to make her a gnome. So I did.
While I was at it, I decided to purchase a makeover for Sylenara, my Night Elf warrior. And this one just bugged me due to the character creation screen. For Night Elves in the character creation screen, the lighting is a bluish tint. So determining skin tone is really difficult. It turned out that Sylenara had very pink skin, rather than the pale blue of my other Night Elves. And the pink skin in itself wouldn't look bad, I suppose... but it just made me think that she was really sunburned. I also chose a face for Sylenara that I decided I didn't like. Of course I decided that I didn't like Sylenara's appearance long after investing a whole lot of time and gold into leveling up both her jewel crafting and engineering skill. So I didn't want to remake her, but didn't even know about the real-world money ability to change appearance. I'd visited the in-game barbershop, but that can't correct skin tone or face.
My gnome mage may turn into a Draenei mage, I'm not sure. That's a much harder decision, because I've found that I really don't like playing mages much. But I have heard that they get better once they get a water elemental (but I don't know when that happens). And I do enjoy playing a warlock, which is much the same situation -- cloth armor, spellcasting class and therefore totally dependent on mana. But warlocks have demons to help take the pressure off of the warlock, or in Brynnea's case, do lots of damage even if Brynnea is out of mana. And when I started playing priest, I really thought I wouldn't like it, but got Power Word: Shield and suddenly things got a lot easier and more fun.
I did make a gnome warrior on Uther, named Nyxie (and I was thinking of nixie tubes when I made her, originally planning to be an engineer (but blacksmithing/mining made a lot more sense for a warrior)). I said hi to
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
earnbrand in game, and poof, got invited to his guild. Unfortunately with established characters on Madoran, it's hard to leave all of that behind and re-start with a character on Uther. It's not just about the money my characters have, but lots of time spent to open up map points, level up skills, and so forth. So even though I accepted the guild invite, I'm not sure how often I'll see Earnbrand in game. The whole separate server thing really annoys me sometimes.My characters are slowly progressing -- my lowest level character now on Madoran is my mage, who's stuck at level 20. My hunter is level 27 if I recall correctly, but she may have hit 28. My paladin and rogue are both 28, and it won't be too long before my rogue is level 29. My dwarf warrior played a bit in Duskwood this evening, and... oh yeah, that's something.
He was level 21 when I started, and I had been playing my rogue a bit before that. So when my dwarf saw a level 23 skeleton, he didn't hesitate. When he saw a level 24 skeleton, no worries. That fight was a little tougher. When he saw a level 25 giant spider, off he went. That fight was difficult -- the spider paralyzed him twice, and only by using Lifeblood and potions did he survive. I decided to skip the spiders after that. The skeletons were enough.
But I haven't played my dwarf warrior for a while, so he was rested, getting double experience from the kills. And he was out looking for grave moss, a plant that grows in only a few locations in the world.
Some cautious fights later, and he found that the next foes were the zombie things. Flesh eaters, if I recall correctly. Or rotten undead, or something. The same humanoid model that death knights have as minions. I think. Anyway, it was level 25 or 26, and Dvalinn was level 22 by that point, so... no problem, right? Except when it died, two flesh eating worms appeared and nearly killed my dwarf. Just because I was very confused. "What just happened? Where did those come from?" There was another player nearby, though, and she helped dispatch the critters before she moved on to other areas.
Shortly after that my dwarf was surprised by two level 24 skeletons. That was a close call, and I thought he was in the clear. Just sat down to start munching food (he was at about 40% health and had used a potion in the fight, so those were still on cooldown) and yay spider. The paralyzing kind, of course. Dvalinn died from that fight, but since he was looking for grave moss... yep, you guessed it, he was in a cemetery. So at least the run back to his body was quick.
Oh, and for all that trouble? Not a single grave moss. He found one patch of briarthorn, but I could have picked that up from several easier locations. According to the wowhead database, though, he should have been swimming in grave moss.
Pretty much the last thing I did this evening was to get Dvalinn to Southshore. I've done the run through Arathi Highlands on three other characters, all level 26 or higher when they did the run. Arathi was pretty nerve wracking for them -- dodging large dinosaurs isn't my idea of fun. For Dvalinn, at level 22... yeah, no. I decided to try the other route that I'd read about, swimming up from Menethil Harbor. Got him a potion of water breathing from my alchemist's storage, forgot the potion of swim speed, and headed out. There were a few surprises. Such as "holy weasels, that's a large shark" that I didn't see until Dvalinn was almost on top of it. Thankfully the shark didn't see Dvalinn, because the level 31 elite beastie would make Dvalinn into a quick snack. The drowned reef in Arathi was a pain with the "level ??" naga, until I realized Dvalinn could swim out to deeper waters and avoid the whole thing. Swimming into Southshore itself was the worst, though. Level 31 and 32 naga on the right, level ?? murlocs on the left, and with them swimming around, it made for a very harrowing dash to the safety of town. Still, he did make it just fine.
...and here I am again, blathering on and on, when I should be sleeping.
But to summarize the above: Still playing lots of WoW, still enjoying it, except the separate servers.
"Darkshore is probably my favoritest zone evar! OK, so I can't say I've been to a lot of places yet, but it's gorgeous like the Pacific Northwest, without the discomfort of being cold and wet."
Yay quoting myself.
When I wrote that, I had been to a handful of zones. Teldrassil, Darkshore, Ashenvale. Elwynn Forest, Westfall, Redridge Mountains (and one near-death exploration south from Elwynn into Duskwood (oh hey, cross the river and the level 8 foes suddenly turn into level 19 and 20 foes, eeep)). Dun Morogh, Loch Modan, and a bit of the Wetlands. And Azuremyst and Bloodmyst Isles.
Recently though, I've been playing a warlock, and one of her quests led into the Barrens. I decided to scout it out with my level 26 rogue, since my warlock was just level 20.
I know it's not going to be a zone that appeals to most people, with the lack of vegetation and the dull colors. But I really like it. I like how huge the region is, I like the variety of the critters (more on that in a second) and I like how open it all feels. I like the mountains you can climb to get grand views.
What I didn't like was being an Alliance character in Horde territory. I almost ran into a few high level guards when I was looking at the scenery. And they'd squish my rogue flat with little to no effort.
I should also point out that even stealthed, they guards had a tendency to see my rogue. When I was leaving the Barrens, I wanted to go west to Stonetalon Peak and open up that flight path. A Horde guard tower and lots of "level ??" guards made me pause, but I didn't want to run all the way back through the Barrens and then through half of Ashenvale. So my rogue tried sneaking past the guards. I thought I'd made it, when one of them ran over and attacked my rogue from behind. I nearly wet myself. Thankfully I had just visited the skill trainer in Stormwind, and picked up Vanish (I'm not sure if Shadowmeld would have worked as well, or if Vanish's "improved" stealth is the only option). But the guard stopped, then went back about his normal patrol. My rogue got to Stonetalon Peak without further incident, thankfully.
In any case, I figured that I should try out the Horde side of things. I'd done Alliance questing to level 20 on a whole bunch of characters, and although I didn't expect a huge difference in quests, at least it'd look different. I had already done a fair bit of the low level quests for Blood Elves, but I like the looks of them. So I started a Blood Elf warlock, and then took her to the starting Orc and Troll area.
One of the first quests my warlock picked up was waking up lazy peons. The peons would work a bit, then take a nap, and it was my warlock's job to wake them up. With a smack from a club. This amused me greatly. I also really enjoyed the troll village with the NPCs randomly dancing and the quotes when they talk to you. Just a fun area all around -- even with the typical "go kill 10 boars. OK, now go kill 10 scorpions. OK, now go kill..." quests.
Oh, and the note about critter diversity: It really annoys me when some foes are neutral, and some foes are hostile. For example, in the mid to northern areas of the Barrens, the large walking birds are neutral, and leave you alone if you don't mess with them. In the south, the same birds are hostile. This was almost a fatal mistake for my level 14 warlock -- killing the level 17 dinosaurs was difficult enough, but then one of the birds I'd disregarded came over and joined in. Thankfully, a passing player helped my warlock with that battle. But it means that while traveling I have to check each foe to see if it's hostile or neutral, which is rather irritating.
But I digress.
The point is exploration of different regions. And the Barrens is currently pretty high on my list... when played as a Horde character. The Echo Isles, just off the coast of south eastern Durotar, were gorgeous (even if I did have issues with Too Many Foes surprise). My paladin and rogue also got to Hillsbrad Foothills (after a harrowing run through Arathi Highlands). And that scenery is beautiful, but the foes... bears and spiders and spiders and bears and spiders. And bears. Oh, and here are some Naga that are inexplicably five levels higher than most other things in the zone. Silverpine forest is also very nice, but at the time I was looking for mines, so exploration there was short once I learned that the vast majority of the mines were for copper. My rogue really loves Booty Bay, but sadly the foes outside in Stranglethorn are far too much for her to deal with -- so that region is currently limited to just that city (I have found that I enjoy the mixing of Horde and Alliance characters, even if they can't speak to each other).
So currently, my favorite zone is the Barrens, as long as I'm playing a Horde character. On the Alliance side, I want to say Hillsbrad, but (bears and spiders!) the foes are just not interesting. Which leaves Darkshore as still my favorite zone.
Edit:
Almost forgot.
Foooood!
( Read more... )
After my experience with my gnome mage, I expected the trip from 12 to 20 to be a long, dull grind. I wasn't looking forward to tackling mobs with flimsy cloth armor, or depending on mana-restoring drinks, or... bleh. To my surprise, though, I found that I was having a whole lot of fun.
I invested a dozen gold or so into a soul bag, so the soul shards that my warlock used occasionally didn't clutter up normal inventory. Looking back at it now, I'm not sure it was a necessary investment, but it has been convenient.
With a Greater Magic Wand created by my enchanter, and an imp at her side, my warlock didn't ever run into real problems with mana. The imp does enough damage to make up for any lack on my warlock's part, and the wand does a fair bit of damage as well. There were a few deaths, mostly because I'd attack a mob before the healing potions had become ready again, or because I forgot to create another healthstone... or both. But she's a lot tougher than my mage, easily taking on foes two and three levels higher than she is.
As the subject implies, though, I did get my warlock to level 20 last night. And she got a nice demon horse with the burny hooves and glowy eyes and screaming summons. The horse itself... eh. I'd prefer a ram (baa!). But for the price of a skill, about 30 silver, not only did my warlock learn riding, but also got a mount. Contrast this with the four gold most characters have to pay just to learn to ride, plus another gold to get the mount itself. My paladin learned how to summon a warhorse, but I didn't visit the skill trainer until after I'd picked up an Elekk. I didn't think the skill purchase would teach the riding skill.
My warlock hasn't really used the voidwalker -- I've been enjoying the imp a fair bit. And from what I understand, the voidwalker is more about tanking while the warlock does damage... except that my warlock's skills really don't do a lot of damage, most damage is coming from the imp.
In any case, it's been quite fun.
"For example, Darkshore is flooded and has been completely redesigned with all new quest hubs." (source)
Darkshore is probably my favoritest zone evar! OK, so I can't say I've been to a lot of places yet, but it's gorgeous like the Pacific Northwest, without the discomfort of being cold and wet.
Playing as a gnome is difficult if only because the view is so darn low. I've been having problems with bushes and tall grass obscuring my view, it's rather annoying.
I don't think that the mage class is for me. I've brought Bellarys to level 19 and a half, and I'll continue to level 20. But I'm still not enjoying the profession as much as I enjoy Hunter, Rogue, Warrior, and Paladin. The mana-intense class and horrible horrible armor don't work well for me.
The auction house is considerably easier to manage now that I've dedicated one character to run the auctions. Although it means a lot more mailing items to that character rather than just putting stuff into the auction house, not every character has to log in and find the nearest auction house to see the status of things I'm selling.
Speaking of auctions... people are weird. Yesterday I sold I don't know how many stacks of coarse stone and copper ore and even a few rough stone. I unloaded about twenty stacks of linen cloth (and my warlock still has a full row of bolts of linen cloth in the bank). It's obvious that I could have sold them for higher prices, because the coarse stone and copper ore was being sold almost as soon as I opened the auction.
Oh, and a note to self. Don't buy patterns/plans/schematics for other characters. Particularly not from the auction house. My warrior bought a tailoring pattern for my warlock from the auction house. My tailor is at skill level 150 (and can't go higher until she reaches level 20 (she's level 12 now, ugh)). The pattern is for skill level 225. The pattern is also easily available from the tailoring supplies NPC. My hunter bought some plans for my blacksmith. My blacksmith already knew how to make the piece of armor. Sigh.
Question:
I've gotten a few characters to Menethil Harbor in the Dwarven lands. I then took the ferry over to Theramore with all of them. On one occasion, the ferry arrived and I saw "10/12 Marksmen remaining". And my level 18 or 19 druid got off the boat to find that there was a very large squid boss thing (I want to say Tethys). Attacking things on the dock... I stupidly ran down the dock to the safety of the city and made it to the gryphon master, where I booked a flight out sooner than you can say "yipe!" My hunter was there this afternoon fishing, and the skies darkened and I saw "12/12 Marksmen remaining." I was out at the lighthouse (a short swim from the docks) and decided to hearthstone it out of there.
What was going on? Is my character safe? Or was I just very lucky that the boss didn't squish my druid into a sticky paste?
OK, I lie. Here are more words.
My engineering warrior learned how to make an explosive sheep this evening. Does what it says on the tin -- runs up to an enemy and explodes. This has to be the single most amusing thing I've seen in the game so far.
Sylenara also learned how to make several different types of guns, various parts, and a minor recombobulator, but none of those are anywhere near the idea of an explosive sheep in terms of amusement. Of course no actual sheep are harmed in the process, it's just an automaton based on a bronze frame, some wool... and of course some heavy duty explosives.
Hee! Explosive sheep.
So I'm here to say that she'll be a gnome mage. She will get to level 20, she will get a gnome or dwarven mount (not sure if I have a choice without getting her to Exalted with the dwarves, and if I do I'm not sure which I'll pick). Here's a current picture of Bellarys, wearing mediocre armor that my warlock crafted:
( pic, all cut and stuff like )
I may change her hair a bit, but... not re-rolling.
That is all.
(and my undead warrior avatar has nothing to do with Bellarys, just chose a random WoW avatar)
OK, short question first. The very first thing I did when I first got to a large city (in my case, Darnassus) was to turn off the trade channel. About 99% of it is stuff that's so out of my price range it's not even funny. I thought the general chat was a bit quiet, but then again didn't see many people online. Later, in Stormwind, I saw tons of people but no one was talking at all. So on a whim I turned on the trade channel... and lo and behold, people were chattering like crazy. Sure, still tons of trade items that are way out of my league, but also general chatter. This didn't make any sense to me at all.
This evening, I was running around Ironforge and there was football conversation going on. I had a quest to go to Stormwind, and... hey, football conversation. With many of the same participants.
So the question... does the trade channel span multiple cities?
If so, this would explain a lot (seeing messages like people asking for ports to Exodar when I'm standing in the Exodar, or seeing "3 gold for guild charter signatures, standing at Stormwind bank" when in Stormwind, or people asking in Ironforge for ports from Exodar to Stormwind, etc).
The shorter questions with potentially longer answers:
1. Why did you choose Horde over Alliance? It seems there are a whole lot of Horde players on my friends list.
2. Why does the Horde love heights so much? It's just a game, and I don't care if my character dies, but heights give me the wibblies. The goblin zeppelins were bad enough, but the Blood Elf areas have tons of towers and there's one quest with steps with huge gaps far off the ground... wibbly wibbly! I lost interest in playing my Blood Elf just because I hate heights, and with several quests in high towers and zeppelins for transportation... no thank you.
(the irony is that for the latest quest in question, there was a translocation orb to go up to the tower, but no way down... so I jumped off (and survived, but barely). But I had the wibblies all the way down to the ground)
I've turned off the sounds for emotes because I found them insanely irritating. But I have no idea what's going on here, and no idea on how to look it up. Thoughts?
My Draenei shaman picked herbalism and inscription as her profession pair. And Inscription has proven to be the single most profitable profession I've tried so far. I've been selling stacks of moonglow ink for 10 gold apiece, and even after sending money to other characters and spending a few dozen gold on ridiculously overpriced flowers (none of my herbalists can get Kingsblood or Wild Steelbloom easily, and I've never seen Moss Grave or the other one that my shaman needs for Lion's Ink), my shaman still has 50 gold. Boggles the mind.
I decided to bring her to level 20, though, because that's the requirement for the next level in Inscription. And that was such a chore. I've found that I don't like playing shaman very much, and lots of areas were a real struggle. I've never felt the grind of leveling up quite so much as I did with my shaman.
My warrior Sylenara has been parked in the Exodar for quite some time now. With other characters sending materials, Sylenara has been Engineering and Jewelcrafting and making money. Not as quickly as my shaman, but still pretty substantial considering. And at level ten, she was starting to get close to the same limits in profession. Can't go above 150 in Engineering until you're level 20.
On the plus side, Sylenara can now make Flying Tiger Goggles, which amuses me to no end. And the stone statues from jewelcrafting provide a nice heal, plus explosives from engineering... she's just shy of level 13 now, and it's been a fun trip so far. I also found out two new things about my warrior. One, Jewelcrafting has a skill called Prospecting, which is taking five raw ore and "sifting through to find gems." A quick run around Westfall with my paladin provided two stacks of copper ore, and Sylenara produced several pieces of malachite and tigerseye, both gems being quite useful and I've been depending on random drops and the occasional result from mining. So that's good to know.
Also, the mechanical harvesters in Westfall that are over level 10 can be de-engineered. Sylenara can exploit the corpse (much like Skinning of beasts). But rather than produce mechanical doohickeys, the drops literally double. The first harvest golem gave Sylenara 21 copper, a flask of oil, and a green bow through normal looting. Then de-engineering gave her an additional 21 copper, flask of oil, and an identical green bow. This makes me very happy.
I think Sylenara is a gnome at heart, though. After spending weeks happily engineering in the Exodar, she finally had a quest to go to Ironforge... and she seemed to fit in there better than the Exodar. So once I'm done playing around, she'll be heading back to Ironforge rather than the Exodar. Realistically they're the same in terms of what they offer, but I think I've decided I like Ironforge a whole lot more.
And... I'll stop there before I start rambling on with questions.
I sold two stacks of moonglow ink for 10 gold each. Moonglow ink, if you don't know, is made from milling very common flowers like peacebloom and silverleaf. In about a half hour run around Teldrassil, my druid had several stacks of both (plus some mageroyal and swiftthistle).
Even after prior experience with the auction house, this price astounds me.
Edit for the adding of the stuff:
One of the two buyers split up the stack and is selling the ink in bundles of two bottles each. He (assuming it's a he) paid 50 silver each bottle, is selling them at 80 silver per bottle. I suppose it's profitable, and it doesn't bother me at all that he's doing this (not that I could stop him). But I still wonder about people who buy something when right next to it there's something that's the exact same thing for less.
First, servers are down for maintenance this morning. Which is fine, I have other things to do -- but I'm not seeing Madoran in the list of servers (I sleepily clicked through trying to get on so I could fish while drinking coffee). This makes me a little nervous, and if I lose all of my character progress, even after such a short time playing, I'll be a Sad Panda. But it will all work out, I'm sure. Edit to add: OK, just checked again. I was seeing if the maintenance was done early, but figured I'd look to see if Madoran showed up again. It hadn't, but a whole lot of other servers were missing from the list too, so I don't think it's going to be a "we deleted Madoran, yay" type of issue. end edit
One of the things I'm confused about is the game time elapsing. For a lot of things like buffs, when you log out your character freezes. That is, the timer on things like buffs freezes. But the timer for the hearthstone doesn't freeze, thankfully. The buff timer seems to advance a little bit even if you log out quickly. For instance, my human paladin (before she was deleted) was in Stormwind when an NPC yelled something about the death of a dragon, and my paladin got a "Rallying Cry of the Dragonslayer" or some such that lasted two hours. I would log in, smelt some ore and check mail, then log out. Over the course of a few days, I'm positive that I didn't play that character for more than two hours, and yet the buff still expired. Weird.
Several characters went to the hairdresser this week. My hunter got much longer hair, my Night Elf warrior got much shorter hair (so she's not a clone of my rogue any more and her hairstyle fits her Engineering focus much more anyway (she hasn't stepped foot outside of the Exodar except to change her hairstyle in... weeks?)), and my druid got everything -- different hair style, re-colored, and facial markings changed. But what I was surprised about was the fact that there were several hair styles available at the barber that aren't available at character creation screen. I checked my human and Draenei characters, but it seems the extra hair styles are only for Night Elves. Which isn't a bad thing, Night Elves have a very limited set of hair styles available. But I'm wondering why these hair styles aren't added to the character creation.
Similarly, the prices fluctuate. For my level 20 hunter, changing hair style alone cost over 10 silver. For my level 10 druid, it was much less expensive to do everything (about 6 silver if I recall). And the more you change, the more expensive it gets. I seem to recall a price of a few coppers to change hair color alone on one of my low level characters, but even just that would have been several silver for my level 20 character. My druid now has a hairband, though, and I'm enjoying her new look.
( pic behind the cut )
But wait, there's more!
One of the things I may have mentioned a while ago, but I'm too lazy to go look. When you start fishing, a lot of the time you'll get "junk" items like driftwood and tattered cloth and tangled fishing line. As your character's skill increases, you get fish more often. But I noticed the selling price of the junk, and... bah. Can I stay low level at fishing? Merchant prices: Driftwood, 18 copper. Sickly fish, 18 copper. Tangled fishing line, 18 copper. Tattered cloth, one silver. Price for normal fish like Brilliant Smallfish or Longjaw Mud Something-or-other? One measly copper.
I realize that most people aren't fishing to get rich, but the prices seem very backwards to me. Oh, and while I'm thinking about it: Fishing just to pass the time or to feed Sarilyn's pet crab? Fun and enjoyable even though I would never have thought it to be. Fishing for a quest, like getting Gaffer Jacks or Electropellers? Whoa tedious and dull.
After changing her hair a bit, I decided to play my druid a bit more. I found that she had access to Bear Form, giving her a huge boost in armor rating and damage output, and so she was killing things in Darkshore that were two and three levels higher than she was. At the time, Sybryn still had the Skinning profession, because it made sense for the area (and I didn't have a better idea). I was happy to find that Sybryn can skin things while still in bear form. But the first time I saw the animation... o.o
I'm not sure how many druids are in the audience, but in reality it's just a very mild pawing at the subject with the right forepaw. I had to check to see what was going on, because from the rear view (a.k.a. totally standard WoW view) it looked like the bear was... uh... feeling amorous towards the corpse. I'm wondering how many players see this, or maybe it's just my gutter mind.
Speaking of gutters, yay Brewfest. (oooh, horrible segue) I think I've mentioned that the sound clip of Brewfest is very short and highly repetitive. It's one of those sounds that's going to stick in my head for a while. But when I think back on the sounds of Brewfest, the music is going to be one thing to remember, but the other thing that's been making me smile is the snapping of the ram reins (OK, it sounds like whipping, but let's pretend it's nice and call it rein snapping). Almost every time I've seen someone riding a ram in Ironforge, it's been accompanied by snapping. I was very confused when I saw a dwarf ride by without having to snap the reins at all... oh right, those are regular mounts.
Of course I should also mention that I'm highly amused when a level 80 death knight in huge spiky armor and glowy weapon and an aura of "I will crush you all" is reduced to riding a ram that's exhausted and is plodding along at a snail's pace.
Speaking of riding, what's up with the Night Elves? Their posture is fine, but they ride while sitting on the very forward edge of the saddle. They need to be moved back about a foot to actually be in the saddle. Five year old game with Night Elves from the start, and this is still all wonky?
Speaking of... OK, I give up trying to make decent subject changes. I probably should have given up a while ago.
Anyway, almost every time I see a warlock, their minion is a voidwalker. Ninety percent of the time a warlock over level 10 walks by, voidwalker follows. My warlock just learned how to summon a voidwalker the other day, but she still has Quzham, her imp. So I haven't had a chance to test -- are voidwalkers that much more powerful than imps? Or is it just an ego "look at how scary my minion is" thing?
Also, if I summon Quzham and then lose him by doing things like jumping off a platform and going too far away before he can catch up, when I re-summon an imp it's the same one. If I summon a voidwalker, then re-summon the imp, will he be the same one?
I'm pretty amused by the guild name "And my imaginary friends" especially given the way names are displayed.
I'm starting to realize that I really don't hate Darkshore. In fact, I like the area quite a bit. I remember when I first got there with my hunter, it seemed all dark and gloomy and insanely difficult. I'm left wondering if some day I'll start to like places like Redridge Mountains more. I've been holding off on playing my hunter and rogue and paladin because they're trying to do quests in Redridge, and I'm not enjoying the area at all. Orcs hiding behind rocks next to the road certainly don't help -- I nearly wet myself the first time my rogue was ambushed. My druid, running through Darkshore in cheetah form, was surprised when a rabid thistle bear had the nerve to try to claw at her. "Get out of my way, kid, you bother me." But I remember panic when a level 14 rabid thistle bear attacked my hunter. "OMG I'm gonna die!"
My rogue did explore Loch Modan fully, but I don't enjoy the area even though I don't find it difficult. I have no use for Westfall whatsoever, dull region with dull foes (although the first elementals I've seen in the wild aside from Azuremyst Isle, that was a fun surprise (a.k.a. "run awaaaaay!")). Aralie did get to the Wetlands and ran around there a bit, and that was difficult but enjoyable. It's all odd.
Oh, and on the way to the Wetlands, Aralie had a lot of fun pickpocketing some pesky orcs. Then killing them. There was a gnome mage that was doing the same quest Aralie was (or I presume that, anyway, since he was about the same level and was targeting the same foes) and he asked to group up. And even though I was thankful that he tried speaking before trying to form a group, I declined. I wasn't sure at the time, but later I realized that my rogue does really well with stealth and guile and being cautious. Other players are very often the "let's see how much of the group we can aggro and survive." For instance, there were two orc hunters next to each other. So Aralie stealthily sapped one of them to render hum unconscious for 20 seconds or so, enough to get a big head start on killing the other. Most groups wouldn't be patient enough for that -- stealth takes time. But pickpocketing foes will never get old, I don't think.
I have had a lot of fun playing with other people while doing things, but it's very very rare for me to want to actually form a group. Some people may think it's anti-social, but really I just feel like being in a group is a commitment. And especially with my rogue, who my Shadowmeld and then Stealth her way out of things, I don't want to feel like I'm disappointing other players. Hrmph.
The rest of this entry is just blathering about my druid.
I've been playing my druid a fair bit, brought her from level 10 to level 18 in a pretty short time frame. I really enjoy the druid sanctuary of Moonglade, even if it did take me forever to find a way out the first time. The first time, I used the hearthstone to go back to Darnassus and checked the druid trainer on a whim -- to find that he had a quest to talk to another druid upstairs, who gave Sybryn the Teleport to Moonglade skill. So once in the Moonglade, Sybryn was stuck... she did find on gryphon master south of the lake, but a flight to Auberdine was more than she could afford. She did explore south to what looked like a path out, only to find a "Level ??" enraged owlbear thing that nearly killed her before she could even Shadowmeld.
After careful running away and then running away some more, Sybryn finally found the gryphon master in the north, and found a free flight to R-something village just on the other side of the portal from Darnassus.
Finally at level 16, Sybryn went back to the trainer to pick up new animal forms. There was a quest chain for Aquatic Form, and my alchemist just happened to have some elixirs of water breathing. So Sybryn took those and explored the waters near Darkshore and more water near Westfall. It's funny that getting to the water in Darkshore was simple -- follow the road to the beach, where the only things around are crabs that don't attack you if you don't attack them. Then once in the water, the Threshers made for a pretty difficult time for a level 16 druid (although it would have been a lot worse without the water breathing). In Westfall, the beach was swarming with Murlocs, and the lad was swarming with Defias thugs. Sybryn had to Shadowmeld several times just because she'd get the attention of too many things. Once in the water, though, there was nothing. I suppose it should have been more difficult, but again the elixir of water breathing made it very simple.
The quest was pretty fun, although the directions to the halves of the pendant needed were annoying only because they weren't recorded in the quest log. The first time, I skimmed through and said "OK, sounds good"... then had to go back to Moonglade because I thought the directions would be recorded in the quest log (and then fly back to Rut'Theran (or however it's spelled) and then back to Auberdine, and then run back up to Cliffspring River, ugh annoying). I ended up looking up the locations on wowhead, though, because I couldn't find the first half. Sybryn's water breathing elixir was running out (as in, only had ten minutes left of the 30, but it was close enough to make me start wondering) and the Threshers were giving her a very hard time. I wish I'd done the Westfall half first, though, because that was really easy once in the water. I expected it to be difficult after the trials of Darkshore, if I'd known it was just "swim around until you find it," I would have done that part without looking up quest details.
The whole quest chain gave Sybryn a blue belt, the first blue item I've ever seen. The best I've seen before this is green. So I'm pretty happy -- even though I could have just skipped the whole chain and buy the skill from the trainer.
I've been having a lot of fun with the different animal forms, and most of the time Sybryn isn't in humanoid form. Cheetah to Angry Sea Lion to Bear to Cheetah, whee.
Lots of virtual cookies to anyone who read this all.
But I also have to say that I realized something when getting the companion winged-jackalope-thing from the quests: Minipets in WoW don't take inventory space, yay. I was also pretty surprised at how easy it was to get both a minipet and a souvenir stein. I had a whole lot of fun last night, and my rogue was acting the pirate and having a grand old time. I particularly liked the Synthebrew Goggles, so you could turn off the "drunk" effect at any time. And the pink Elekks only visible while drunk or pseudo-drunk. And the difficulty controlling your character while "drunk", my rogue rode her Nightsaber off the side of the pier on Azuremyst Island (and it was a close call in Auberdine).
My only complaints are that the camera continued to do odd things after wearing the Synthebrew Goggles (it was like my character was slowly falling forward) that lasted until I left the Brewfest area. This happened on characters that didn't drink any alcohol whatsoever. And the sound clip (music, I suppose, but there's talking and cheering and so forth) is fun, but it's pretty short. It didn't take long for me to hear the whole thing several times, and that was just on one character.
Still, those are relatively minor quibbles, I'm having a great time with this.
Edit to add:
Aralie got the miniature pink Elekk this morning, and it is ridiculously cute.
My rogue had a quest in Lakeshire this evening. Decided to take a gryphon back, and took a peek at the prices. Obviously this post won't make much sense to those not familiar with Alliance geography.
But Lakeshire to Stormwind city is one silver, 89 copper. Just south of Stormwind, a trip to Sentinel Hill (from Lakeshire) is only 99 copper. A trip to Darkshire, significantly closer than either of those two places, is two silver, 97 copper.
It costs less to go from Lakeshire to Ironforge than it does to go to Darkshire.
The huh?
The auction house listing annoys the carp out of me. Sometimes it scrolls using the scroll wheel, sometimes the camera starts zooming in and out, with no rhyme or reason. And I really wish I could sort the listings by quantity -- I want to gauge the price of a stack of 20, not sift through the single entries.
My rogue found the schematics to make a mechanical squirrel companion (a.k.a. squirrel minipet) and my engineer had the materials to make seven of them. Engineer got one, Draenei paladin got one, hunter got one, rogue got one. Set up an auction and sold one for five gold, just set up an auction for the other two. But yay whee these entertain me far more than they probably should.
Pirate outfits... I'm amused by them, but... whoa cleavage.
Re-rolled my Draenei priest into a mage, figured I should give it a bit more time with the mage class before writing it off completely (and I've never been a huge fan of support classes, so a priest sounded less appealing than a mage). Went to the human lands to level up a bit, and got a whole lot of stares in Northshire. Although I think it was the pirate outfit more than the Draenei part. Got one player who kept challenging me to a duel, then trying to group with me, over and over. Then he got offended when I told him to bugger off. So I went over to the Dwarven lands, and everything was going pretty well. Until a level 80 death knight came through and killed everything in the area, not even bothering to pick up loot. People annoy me.
I've spent almost as much time with the auction house as I have with actual playing. I need to correct that -- playing is more interesting, really. But my "high level" characters don't like the new areas (Redridge, Ashenvale, Loch Modan) and my low level characters are not leveling up quickly enough.
I wanted to make a gnome character, but the professions are very limited. I don't like warrior as much as paladin (and gnomes can't be paladins). I have a hunter already, as well as a rogue, and both of those are higher levels so I don't need a second. The only other options are mage and warlock, and I have low level characters for both of those. Hrmph.
...and that's about it, any more than this and I'll start rambling again.
p.s. One quick question. I found trainers for additional weapons, so my mage could learn how to use a dagger. Is there any place for low level characters to learn shields, or different armor types? Or are those pretty fixed?
But that's not anything to do with World of WarCraft, and I want to stay on topic regarding my entry subject (as if I've ever concerned myself with staying on topic before this). Anyway, there have been a number of WoW oddities I've noticed over the past few weeks, and I'm wondering if it's just me.
I was switching servers, and noted that Madoran is no longer tagged for "new players". I was wondering how full the currently tagged "new player" server is, so I went to change realms. I took a little long before pressing the OK button, and... wait, the new player server isn't selected any more. I'm sure I clicked on it. After a bit of experimentation, I found that I could click on the new player server (where I have no characters) and after a few seconds it would pop up to Uther, where I had two characters. It didn't continue to change, but I found that very bizarre.
The other oddity is in game. More than once I've been attacked by invisible, untargetable foes. The first time it was a Timberstrider just outside the Exodar. More than once I've been surprised by them, they tend to blend into the scenery well. That and the fact that I played a long time in Darkshore, where they weren't aggressive until you attacked (so I'm not used to being aware of them like I am the more aggressive foes). I heard the "crawk!" of the bird attacking, took damage... and couldn't find it. My character went into "in combat" mode, and the bird continued to attack, but... yep, invisible.
Last night it was a Night-kitty (nightsaber or nightstalker or whatever name they've chosen for that level) near Dolanaar. This time, my character didn't take damage, but the sounds of combat were present, character was "in combat," and even had selected the attacking foe. But even though the cats are melee, so it should certainly be in range of my shaman's lightning bolt, my character complained that the target was too far away.
Also last night, again near the Exodar. I saw two Timberstriders and a Moon-kitty. I took a few steps, and one of the Timberstriders disappeared. I didn't go investigate, but I'd bet a pair of frayed gloves that it would have been the same invisible foe situation.
My sleep schedule may be completely messed up, but... I'm not the only one seeing this type of thing, am I? I had more examples, but can't remember them at the moment.
Less glitchy oddities:
It baffles me that some things stack to 20, some things stack to 10, some to five, and some... higher. It's like they chose arbitrary numbers for these things, and rarely can I make sense of it.
The auctioneers in Darnassus and Stormwind don't greet you when you talk to them, but the ones in the Exodar do. It surprises me almost every time.
The Scroll of Recall made by a character with the Inscription profession works like a hearthstone, but has a 20 minute cooldown rather than 30. The text of the scroll doesn't make it clear that it's tied to the hearthstone, so I was thinking I'd be able to use those to get back to the Exodar, and set the hearthstone to Darnassus, and be able to choose. Only to have to slog back to the Exodar to reset it when the scrolls changed.
Unrelated to oddities, but things that don't really deserve an entry on their own:
The auction house is kind of addictive. I've been sourcing my own materials for the auctions -- that is, mining the copper ore and fishing for oily blackmouth and so forth. But I can easily see someone buying low and selling high and making a huge profit without ever stepping foot outside of town. Last night I sold ten lesser magic essences for 5 gold, but there were other auctions (if I recall correctly) for a single essence for 1 gold apiece. And I've already noted the low-priced stacks of copper bars versus the high-priced stacks of copper bars. I made a bunch of auctions for things that I thought would never sell (stack of coarse stone, anyone?) and it's been amusing to see people buy this stuff -- and baffling to have them pass over my reasonably priced stacks of copper bars or copper ore.
I made a Draenei shaman yesterday and have been amused by the totems and weapon spells and lightning shield. Also, finally figured out what those level 70 elemental creatures on Azuremyst Isle are for.
So far I haven't had much overlap between the professions. For instance, only my leatherworking hunter has much use for light leather and ruined leather scraps, and only my tailor needs linen cloth. With some minor exceptions, like my blacksmith may need one or two pieces of light leather and my engineer may need a piece of linen cloth or two. But my alchemist uses herbs. So does my new shaman, who is playing with inscriptions. So now I have to decide whether I want potions or scrolls more -- so far, potions seem more useful, but I've only just begun with inscriptions. (side note, the random inscription research has a 20 hour cooldown, what's up with that?)
I just found out about the item preview window. I was surprised when my Draenei shaman could finally wear the moonglow vest that my hunter had made, and how different it was from the inventory icon. I guess I should have realized this was the case when the generic shield icon for the Wheel of Lost Hope didn't reflect its actual appearance. But the next time I swapped characters, there was a tip about control-clicking on something to preview it. I then took my rogue around Stormwind and previewed tons of armor, even things like mail that she can't wear. This is a really nifty feature.
My shaman fully explored Tessadril and Azuremyst Isle last night, and I have to say that WoW's approach to cartography is so much better than the Guild Wars approach that it makes me wonder how the GW approach was ever any good. For those not familiar with both games: In Guild Wars, your character reveals a percentage of the map as they travel around. This forces the player to comb each and every zone back and forth, and push the limits of the edges to get the most percentage. There's no way to tell in game where you may still need to explore. in World of WarCraft, to fully explore a zone you just need to hit the highlights. As you explore an area you get "Discovered: [name of discovered area]" on screen, and in the Achievements window you can see what you still need to visit. You can track what you have left, even, so you don't have to keep opening the Achievements. When a zone is considered complete, you get a big flashy "yay!" achievement, and you're done with the area.
The WoW approach isn't a foolproof system, particularly when I had a character trying to explore Bloodmyst Isle, and the only place left was "Hidden Reef" and there was no fog on the map (another thing I like, de-fogging large chunks of the map at once, but I dislike it when you're not triggering the "Discovered" bit and are traveling through foggy map-ville). If the reef is hidden, how am I supposed to find it? Randomly swim around until I happen upon it? I took a quick look through some Google searches and found out where it was, and yay Achievement.
...at this point I'm starting to realize that maybe it's best if I head back to bed for a while. I apologize for the incoherent ramblings.
( snip! )
I won't bore you with my fishing location pictures, but I have several of those as well.
Why am I still awake?
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