WoW Journal - 23-January-2006

After a week of absence and very little play, I relaxed this weekend and played a lot of WoW. For the moment I have three "active" characters: My level 60 warrior Raslebol on Runetotem, my level 45 priest Kyroc on the same server, and my level 31 hunter Waldin on Bronzebeard.

Basically Raslebol is my "main" by default, him having the highest level. What he probably *should* do is trying to get better gear by going on raids with the guild. But unfortunately my guild has a large excess of warriors, and as I am not the worlds most avid raider, I tend to sign up for raids a bit too late. We have a system in which we raid together with other guilds, and the first X people to sign up get a spot, with the remaining spots going to people with classes that are needed, which usually means healers. I would have liked to go to Molten Core with the guild this weekend, but having signed up only on Saturday after I came back from the USA, I was too late for a guaranteed spot, and there were already more than enough warriors, so I didn't get a "needed class" spot either. I can probably forget about raiding under this system, because I can't always say much in advance whether I'll be available on a specific date, thus I'll never get a spot with the warrior.

Which explains why I am leveling my priest. Priest is not the most fun class to solo level. He is efficient enough, but only if he uses one specific strategy, based on being a shadow priest, shielding himself and shooting with a good wand. That works quite well, but is a bit boring. On the positive side, the priest is only my second character who got as high as level 45, so I now manage to find some quests I never did with Raslebol. Finding a group on Runetotem, on the Horde side, is hard, because there are just not that many players below level 60 left. But once I managed to hit level 60 with the priest, and re-specced to holy, I should be useful and needed for my guild.

The last character, the hunter, is for fun. Hunter is a lot more varied than priest in soloing. And in spite of not being a good group class, the fact that I am on a much more younger server, with more low level players, and that I'm on the more populated Alliance side, means that I can often find a group when I want to go to a dungeon or so. This weekend the hunter was doing some quests in the Wetlands, gaining level 31, and using up some of the accumulated rest bonus from my week of low activity.

With the priest I did quests in the Swamp of Sorrows and the Hinterlands. Next stop will be Feralas, as I didn't do the quests there with Raslebol. I'm avoiding all elite quests, as finding a group takes too much time. Dungeons I occasionally visit, but usually in some sort of guild group, often including people of much higher level helping out. That gets the dungeon quests done, but is often not quite as exciting as a group of the correct level.

With Raslebol on the other hand, it is often me who is the high level player helping out lower level guild mates with a dungeon. Yesterday, after having missed MC, I went with two guildies and two other people to the Sunken Temple. That went pretty well, even though our healer was only level 45. I still had the level 50 warrior class quest, which was added recently by a patch, and was able to finish it in the temple. The quest gave me the choice between two pieces of armor, and a trinket. The armor would have been great at level 50, but was worse than what I am wearing now, so I took the trinket. Not a bad choice, the Diamond Flask has a strength buff plus healing effect lasting 1 minute, with a cooldown of only 6 minutes. Still I would have preferred if the level 50 class quest would have already been in the game when I was level 50. I need to check whether the level 50 priest class quest is already implemented.

Other activities of Raslebol this weekend fall under the heading of "farming". I needed Runecloth for the priest, so I farmed Blood Elves in Azshara. I wonder if that is the best spot for Runecloth, I didn't get as many as I would have liked. On the other hand I used Telo's Infobar to count how much money I earned there, and it worked out to 13 gold per hour, not bad. The other farming activity was grouping with my wife's mage character and killing Deadwood Furbolgs to gain Timbermaw faction. Her for being able to pass the tunnel to Winterspring, me for advancing from my current level of "neutral" slowly towards "friendly", at which point I could buy an alchemy recipe from them. In this case I gained double faction points, both Timbermaw faction and the even more important wife faction. :) But farming is something I can only do when I'm tired, because otherwise the mindless repetition gets on my nerves.
- posted by Tobold @ 5:28 PM Permanent Link