Troll feral cat dilemmas!

Last night Aeshna the shiny new troll druid made her way to level 8, questing through the starting zone in Echo Isles, Sen'jin Village and ending up in Razor Hill. I haven't played a troll since I first started playing a year ago, and I found that I thoroughly enjoyed visiting the Echo Isles again. It was funny though to remember how some of the quests were difficult the first time around, but so easy now; I remember going around and around one of the islands looking for Vol'jin so we could kill a naga, this time it was easy peasy.

Finally finished with her work in the Echo Isles, she crossed the bridge to the Durotar mainland...

And the whole big world was laid out before her.

A few more quests and she got her cat form! Hallelujah! She looks pretty sweet! Still, on a trip to Orgrimmar to deliver some meat to the innkeeper or somesuch thing, she couldn't resist checking out the barber shop.

She liked this hair color the best (changed the style too), but wasn't so sure about her feral form.

She tried dark blue next, and the feral form looked like it did with her original blue-green hair color.

Finally, a lighter hair color than she would normally prefer, but feral looked really cool with the red stripes! I think she'll stick with this for the time being.

She spent the rest of her time in Orgrimmar selecting her professions (herbalism and skinning since she wants to make some gold selling mats, and cooking, fishing and first aid of course). Today she'll be back to Razor Hill for questing until she gets to select her feral talent tree at level 10. Then, I think she'll be traveling across the sea to Eastern Kingdoms for questing, as I'm a bit tired of Kalimdor having recently run both Boomhoof and Panthalassa through the early level zones.

As promised, the bucket list

I'm going to restrict this to goals that I have before MoP comes out, so hopefully they will be fairly realistic.

1. Full LFR gear for my enhancement shaman, Wapsi. She's missing 3 tier pieces and 1 No'Kaled, so she still has a ways to go.

2. Ding 85 on my shadow priest Blatella (83) and BM hunter Gallore (81).

3. Ding 85 on my boomkin Boomhoof (48) and elemental shaman Panthalassa (46).

4. Max primary professions on Blatella (herbalism/inscription), Boomhoof (herbalism/enchanting) and Panthalassa (mining/engineering).

5. Max fishing and cooking professions on Blatella, Boomhoof and Panthalassa.

6. Get the "Professor" title for Wapsi (she's Associate now).

7. Get the "Leading the Cavalry" achievement and the Albino Drake for Wapsi (she's at 37/50 mounts now). She will need to grind Horde faction rep for this.

8. Get the "Loremaster of Kalimdor" achievement for Gallore (she has 4 zones left).

9. Get a full set of heirlooms for further leveling- I need the leather agility chest and shoulders, the mail agility chest, and the plate dps shoulders because I accidentally bought the tanking set.

10. This one is a bit iffy: ding 85 on my newly-rolled feral druid Aeshna. This will of course be easier when I complete her heirloom set.

It will be interesting to revisit this list after the expansion comes out, so I can see how much I actually accomplished!

Anti-bucket list

I'm having one of those evening where I don't feel like playing, so I'm reading blogs instead. Bravetank and Lyrestra at Musings of an Altoholic have shared their reverse bucket lists, in which they list the things they will probably NOT do in WoW. I have about a million goals in game, but until now I haven't thought too much about the things I'm likely never to do. I like to think that eventually, I'll at least try everything there is to try, but there still might be a few things that will never hold my interest enough to invest time in them. So after a bit of thought, and inspiration from Bravetank and Lyrestra (I share a lot of "nevers" with both of them), here is my anti-bucket list for WoW:

1. I have never rolled a gnome, dwarf or human. The races just hold no interest for me. Humans especially; I play a human IRL, so why play one in a fantasy game? And gnomes and dwarves are just little humans, IMHO.

2. I have never played PVP arenas or rated battlegrounds. I've done some PVP and it's fun once in awhile, but not enough to make it my focus in-game.

2. I have never raided heroic current content. I like learning how to play well, but the min-max game is a little much for me.

3. I have never done any raids aside from LFR. This is likely because...

4. ...I have never belonged to a guild of people that I actually got to know and enjoy playing with. Yes, I'm one of those people who accepts spam guild invites for the perks. I follow guild chat and participate occasionally, but I never seem to click with anyone. This kind of sucks, but since I really prefer to do my own thing when I play, it probably works out for the best.

5. I have never rolled a tank. I'm no longer so worried about screwing up in dungeons and getting abuse, rather, I could never lead a group because my spatial memory is total crap. I've run every dungeon in game multiple times but I still get lost every time and have to rely on the other players.

6. I have never rolled a warrior successfully. I've tried twice, and deleted them by level 15. They just don't click with me for some reason.

7. I have never leveled an Alliance toon to 85. I've tried, and still intend to, but my Alliance toons tend to get played a lot for a couple of weeks and then they languish for months.

8. That said, I have never understood the draw to rolling Alliance. Half of their races are kind of dull (see #1). Their architecture is bland as all get out- compare Orgrimmar to Stormwind, Thrallmar to Honor Hold, and Warsong Hold to Valiance Keep, for example. The Alliance cities look like prisons, and bore me so much that I have faction changed two toons to Horde after playing through these areas. Horde cities on the other hand are colorful and overall far more visually appealing.

9. I have never done more than a handful of quests in Blade's Edge Mountains or Shadowmoon Valley in Outlands. I really like the Burning Crusade dungeons, and tend to do a lot of my leveling from 60-70 in Dungeon Finder rather than questing.

10. I have never won the Stranglethorn or Northrend fishing derbies. I tried once in Northrend: when the winner was announced while I was fishing my 2nd pool, I figured this might be a lost cause.

So after all of this negativity, my next post should be my actual bucket list. Stay tuned...

NBI challenge: Learning is fun!

I'm a bit late to the game on the Newbie Blogger Initiative weekly challenges over at Tastes Like Battle Chicken, but I figured better late than never! This week's challenge is to do some research into something new to me, and then give a little presentation on what I've learned. I love this challenge because this is pretty much why I play WoW: I love researching a topic, plotting a course of action and then achieving it in game.

Probably the best example of this for me is when I decide to roll a new toon; so this post will be a description of how I get up to speed on a class that is new to me. I am playing a ton of toons right now, but there is one more race and class that I have been itching to try: a troll feral cat druid. This is because:
1. I am interested in learning the feral cat playstyle
2. I don't have any trolls amongst my Horde girls
3. Troll cats and bears look awesome with their dayglo mohawks.

I've been waiting on this until I get the motivation to grind JP on Wapsi for the leather agility shoulder and chest heirlooms, but for the purpose of this post, I'm just going to dive right in. First, I need to actually roll the toon. It's kind of a complicated process as each my other toons contribute something to help with the leveling.

Here's my new troll druid lady, sporting lovely blue-green hair and skin. She kind of reminds me of the large dragonfly I saw at my pond this morning, so I'll call her Aeshna (dragonfly genus name).

Click Enter World and watch the opening movie: trolls don't like Garrosh! Also, what a lovely place to start!

And here's Aeshna, getting her first quest. Time to do the mailbox shuffle.

Wapsi sends an heirloom helm...

Gallore sends an heirloom cape...

Goetia sends bags and cash money...

Checking her mail...

Ugh, that helm!

Don't want to look at that for 85 levels, I want to see her glorious hair!

First quest and Level 2!

And, I like to take advantage of the only time in the game when vendor armor is actually an improvement. This set looks pretty ragged, but there is a nicer red leather set (called Cured Leather Armor) that you can get from vendors at around level 17 (Ahanu in Thunder Bluff, for example). Unfortunately this armor has no stats, so is not available for transmogging.

OK, we're good to go. Now for the research. At this point I am particularly interested in knowing which stats are important for a class, the rotation, and talent trees and glyphs once I get to the appropriate level. Other things (enchants, reforging etc) will wait until I get her to level 85.

Icy Veins has a guide for nearly every class.

Noxxic is also very good.

Elitist Jerks reads a bit like a software manual as it is an exhaustive source of information. I find that it's most useful once a toon hits 85.

After reading these sites, I have a good idea of what my toon's abilities will be and how to use them. Next, I want to know what kind of cool looking gear is out there, and where I might find it. There are many transmogrification guides available, and these are the ones that I use most often:

Icy Veins is usually my first source for information, with images of armor sets as well as individual items, and each annotated with how to acquire the piece.

Wowhead has a searchable database of armor sets.

World of Wardrobes allows you to search items by color, which I especially like because I tend to build transmog sets around a particular color.

Mog My Gear allows you to see what armor sets will look like on each race.

Wow Roleplay Gear has selected armor sets of each material type, as well as news on the Wow Factor transmogrification events (wish they would come to Horde Drak'Thul!)

Finally, Disenchanting Azeroth (home of the Mogfather, who began the AH transmog business) is the place to go for information on weapons for transmogrification.

Doing research is nearly as fun for me as playing the game. Knowledge is power, and I feel a lot less anxious about entering a dungeon for the first time on a new toon if I have some idea of how to gear and play her. In addition, since the visual beauty of WoW is a big draw for me, browsing sites for ideas on transmog outfits is a ton of fun, and super easy since there are so many good resources out there.

Hunter goes to Hyjal

Gallore finished up her Sons of Hodir quests and dinged 80 right as she reached Revered with the faction,  so she left Northrend by mammoth. On her way out, she decided to do a quick check of Skoll's spawn sites and wonder of wonders, there he was! What a cool pet: spirit blue with lightning rolling through his fur!

Still, she wanted one more pet, a corehound. She had her eye on The Kurken, but this would require some dangerous travel to Azuremist Isle, an Alliance zone. Following instructions on Wowhead, she flew across the sea to Rutheran Village, and then hitched a ride to the Exodar. From there it was a quick run up to Stillpine Hold, through some low-level moonkin mobs to the back of the cave, and there he was...an easy tame too, since he's very low level.

Either he or Skoll will likely be her companion (I've named them Behemoth and Boson respectively) through the Cata zones.

Gallore has just started Hyjal, and before leaving Orgrimmar she treated herself to  a new hairdo and a little bit of transmog. She's thinking that blue will look nice with both of her new pets!

Some other thoughts as I've been thoroughly enjoying playing my hunter this week: should I, could I, do Loremaster with her? Of all the toons I have played so far, I enjoy questing on her the most, probably due to the feeling of invincibility with a good pet, the rapidity with which mobs go down, and the fact that nearly all beast mastery hunter abilities are instant cast so there is no waiting through cast times while things beat up on you. I have been interested in trying Loremaster for awhile as I simply enjoy questing and exploring, but recently the draw of acquiring cool transmog items has made me even more excited about the prospect. And then, this post on The Sisterhood of Kia showed up on my feed reader today, and it couldn't have been more timely. Tips for how to actually do Loremaster, yes please! So, if Gallore starts getting tired of running Cata zones, maybe she will make her way to the 4 zones in Kalimdor that she didn't complete while leveling. It sure would be nice to have that title and tabard!

Weekend update

First, thank you for the link to this blog and all of the others at Newbie Blogging Initiative at Jaded Alt!

Only Wapsi and Gallore got any playtime this weekend. Wapsi ran through LFR and received no loot for the 4th week in a row. Frustrated, she wandered the Cataclysm zones and drank and feasted on anything she could get her hands on, for the Drown Your Sorrows and Cataclysmically Delicious achievements.

Gallore did some pet collecting in the old world, taming U'cha in Un'goro Crater (who has been an excellent tanking pet for questing), Ashtail in Loch Modan and her first exotic pet, the Ironhide Devilsaur (also in Un'goro Crater).

After that she was back to Northrend for some questing in Storm Peaks, particularly seeking out the Sons of Hodir questline as it was rumored to be a lot of fun as well as providing some nice weapons for transmoggery.

There was much prancing around as a well-armed ice giantess....

But it was a little hard on her mount!

I am really enjoying playing my hunter again, but have been sticking to questing this weekend as I've gotten a bit tired of the "huntard" comments in dungeons. Yes I make mistakes, but they seem to take on so much more gravity when you're a hunter. An example: in LFR with Wapsi this weekend, people were absolutely vicious in their criticism of a hunter who may or may not have pulled Morchok early, leading to a wipe. You know, other classes have ranged weapons/spells and are capable of pulling from a distance, it doesn't always have to be the hunter. BUT I'm formulating a whole post on that, so I'll leave the topic be for now...

20 days of WoW: my work/gaming space

This is where I spend a lot of my time when I'm at home. In fact, my boyfriend got the word "wow" on Draw Something and drew a picture of me sitting here, hands on WASD and the mouse. I guessed it right away...

Here's the key to the picture above:
1. My Macbook Pro. I am an unapologetic Mac user. I am forced to use Windows machines for various tasks at work and it always ends in a flurry of profanity, they're so clunky and unreliable compared to Macs, in my humble opinion.
2. A notebook, for taking down phone numbers as well as listing transmog gear I am looking for and items needed for achievements.
3. A cute old calendar that I obtained sometime during my childhood from an uncle in New Mexico.
4. My keys with my authenicator
5. I can't live without a second screen, I need the space for multiple open windows, while gaming or otherwise. I run WoW full screen here, and on my laptop screen will have Chrome open so I can browse Twitter or or look up talent trees or gathering profession routes. iTunes is also often open on the laptop so I can listen to podcasts or music.
6. Various jewelry and trinkets. I collect a lot of jewelry from antique stores.
7. Razer Lycosa keyboard and Naga mouse. I absolutely cannot live without the Naga and the thumb keybinds.
8. I'm a terrible person I know. My nicotine delivery system is never far away.
9. This picture was taken in the afternoon, thus the Diet Coke. In the morning it's coffee, in the evening it's club soda. I am never without a beverage.
10. Type O Negative mousepad, an Xmas gift from my boyfriend. I am perhaps the world's biggest Type O fan. Peter Steele's death a couple of years ago shook me for months.

The weather in my locale has been beautiful, and I've been getting away from the computer to enjoy some time outdoors. I like fishing IRL as much as I like it in WoW!