The WoW Ironman Challenge — Warlock Level 45

Ironsally had planned on posing for you in her new embroidered armor when she hit 45 but after the time she had getting there all she wanted to do was sit down in beautiful downtown Gadgetzan and eat a horse … or a whole pig dammit. At level 43 she was questing in Thousand Needles. She was given a choice to Free Freewind Post or go to Tanaris so wanting a change of scenery she chose Tanaris. Oops, that may have been a little premature.

The mobs were one to two levels above her and strangely not any harder to kill but oh the misses sure hurt.  She frequently had three misses in a row on a level 45 which made her so low on mana that if she got an add she was in big trouble. Being a cocky Warlock she decided to stay and see how it went. She died three times trying to take down Captain Dreadbeard but other than that hasn’t had much trouble.

All she could think about was the new armor available at 45, her last set of store-bought whites. She also upgraded her wand from the Pitchwood Wand to the Blackbone Wand for a tiny dps increase but since the next possible wand upgrade isn’t until level 70 she wanted all the power she could get. There are no gray wands so the level 70 will be her last upgrade.

Her clothing situation is my big concern. If you look up gray cloth drops there are plenty of options all the way to level 82 but they have to drop for you. She hasn’t been very lucky with cloth drops and people don’t sell them very often, especially at the higher levels. In hindsight I see it that it would have been helpful to start her on Fenris. Every time I get a gray cloth drop with a character I go, Yes! … oh no wrong server.

Ironsally actually uses bandages. All my characters trained first aid but none of them ever really used bandages with the exception of the Rogue. Ironsally really loves bandages. When jumped by more than one mob and she’s low on health from Health Funneling her Voidwalker she can regain her health with a bandage while he fights the bad guys. It’s interesting that playing this way is so different than playing a regular Warlock. It’s certainly simplified, only a few spells are practical to use and it’s a dangerous land, she has to pay attention to her surroundings. None of those spoiled heirloom-wearing, talent-pointed, characters on Fenris do, pssht.

I had been checking the AH for gray clothing around her level but I think I will start looking at all levels and buy something if I see it. I just bought her a level 77 Frost-Rimed Cloth Hat how’s that for optimism!

Tol Barad’s Fox Kit

I heard about the Fox Kit pet that drops from Baradin Foxes in Tol Barad Peninsula fairly recently. I didn’t know how rare they were but I thought, hey, I’m there anyway I might as well try for another pet as I’m at 105 of 125 for the achievement Menagerie.

Upon seeing the foxes I was a little reluctant to kill them. They’re, well, cute.  I thought well, at least I can skin them so I managed to justify the wanton killing of cute furry foxes to myself. Pretty easily I’m sad to say. My precious! Oh my precious little fox kit, come to me. Yes, the madness of pet collecting overtook me and turned me into an evil fox-killing Gollum of a cat.

For the last, I’d say month or so every time I do the dailies I kill all the foxes I see. I don’t go out of the way to get every spawn I just kill the ones I see and make a bit off of selling the leather. It pretty much got to the point that I had forgotten why I was killing them.

Yesterday I was down to only 4 more dailies left and thought about skipping Tol Barad but decided to go before I logged and right where she’s standing in front of Wellson Shipyard the fox kit dropped. So, if you’re after it, don’t give up. Just get in that crazed pet collector mode where you go on killing sprees with no memory of why you’re doing what you’re doing and sooner or later it will drop. And Elune be praised, I can now stop killing those foxes.

Player Perception of Class Strength

I’ve been wondering about this for quite some time. It’s a phenomenon I started noticing a few years ago. Players treat my cat form Druid differently than my other characters. I couldn’t think of a more appropriate title, I really don’t think other players perceive the cat as lacking in strength but they sure do have a tendency to try to protect it.

It doesn’t have anything to do with gender, all my characters with one recent exception are female. My Warlock, Shaman, Death Knight, and Hunter never have players jumping into the fray to defend them although some of them could use the help. Yesterday while doing the Firelands dailies I was once again rescued from those evil spiders by a Death Knight. Kitty was in no danger whatsoever and said Death Knight almost bought a ticket to a brief stay in Azerothian heaven because of it. And I know, I know, Death Knights are evil and he was probably trying to steal a kill, nope they were all gray to him as I’d tagged them all on purpose to try to speed up the spider killing. Anyway, a shout out to The Templar Knights. You have a very nice animal loving Death Knight on your roster.

I don’t know, look at her, does she look defenseless or helpless, or is it just because she’s a cat. When my druid was young, leveling through Hillsbrand she made a friend. When I logged in and he was on, he’d usually come to protect her while she quested or ask if she needed help. She really didn’t but this Fury Warrior seemed to like to protect that cat. Maybe being protective comes with the territory when you’re a Warrior.

I’ve done some googling to try to find information about this but I’m doing it wrong because I can’t find anything relating to this cat phenomenon. Any other Druids out there noticed this? Maybe my Shaman should start running around in dangerous areas in Ghost Wolf form to test this, I wonder if WoW players are as protective of canines as they are of cats. Whatever the reason, a collective thank you to all those who have stepped up to defend the cat!

Through Your Interface — Best Screen Shot of the Year

You can sure tell it’s Tuesday. I was whiling away the time putting creepy doll faces in my header. I can’t tell if I like that creepy doll starring at me but I’ll let her stay a while and see. So I decided to do something more productive. Something I’ve been agonizing over for way too long.

SuperCat! Not only can Druids shift into flight form, kitty form, travel form, scary walrussy thing form, bear form, they don’t even need to, SuperCat can fly. I should have tried this in scary walrus form, now that would have been a true best screen shot ever!

I was stumped by Day Seven of World of Saz 15 Days of Screen Shots challenge, your best screen shot of the Year. After reading what Saz said about her difficulty in choosing one I decided to suck it up and be decisive, make a decision good or bad.

So I give you SuperCat, not a great screen shot but one that makes me smile every time I see it. This started happening on and off right after patch 4.2. I kind of wish it would be permanent, I enjoy taking my kitty on a swim though the air!

The WoW Ironman Challenge — Warlock Level 40

Sheesh, Warlocks, she’s such a showoff. And I don’t think it’s all that nice to be showing off considering Ironmary’s, um, situation, well, we won’t go there. We’ll just leave poor Ironmary alone.

Ironsally hit 40 in Dustwallow Marsh. She chose this rather than helping out in Andorhal because she thinks all those Diseased Black Bears, Carrion Vultures and Devouring Oozes are just icky. When doing the quest Hungry as an Ogre! for Jarl she thought she might have to reconsider basing her choice of zone on ickyness since once again those horrible Murlocs almost did her in by ganging up on her. She barely escaped.

Was she in a hurry to get to level 40 to get her Dreadsteed, nope, she was after her brand new Pitchwood Wand. Playing a regular Warlock I honestly don’t remember ever using my wand. I just carried it around for the stats but never found a need to use it. Boy, is that different with Ironsally.

Mana, playing a regular Warlock has never been much of an issue because of Life Tap but Ironsally is usually in dire straits when she runs out of mana and can’t regain it with Life Tap because she’s usually about tapped out of life at that point from being beaten to death. So now that she has to learn mana conservation a wand is essential. She also learned the hard way that many of her spells aren’t practical. I love casting Rain of Fire just because. Well Ironsally learned that there will be no more raining of fire, she did it once and was out of mana but was saved by her trusty wand.

Two mobs is a non-issue with Ironsally, three is doable, at four I usually run for it. With Ironmary one mob could very likely kill her, more than one impossible for me anyway. It sure makes a difference having a bodyguard!

We are definitely killing them slowly, it seems to take forever for these mobs to go down but down they eventually go. Ironsally doesn’t have the problem with mobs her level like Ironmary did but she does have to be patient while waiting for those little suckers to finally die.

From playing her so far I’m getting the impression she’ll be able to go to level 60 without too much trouble but beyond that it might get a lot harder. When checking Wowhead it looks like my last set of white vendor armor will be at 45 and after that she’ll have to rely on getting gray drops and she sure hasn’t been lucky so far on getting cloth drops, everything seems to be leather.

I’m going to remain optimistic though, maybe she’s saving all her drop luck up for all those higher levels. She’s still a lot of fun but my Druid sure loaths Ironsally who’s keeping her from her Fireland dailies.

The WoW Ironman Challenge — Warlock Level 30

Ironsally my Warlock entrant in the The WoW Ironman Challenge has reached level 30. No problems, no worries so far. They’ve had some really close calls when they got jumped by three trolls, um, well, what happened was a fear gone wrong, my bad. Ironmary my original Mage entrant is sitting in Tarren Mill at level 27 refusing to come out. I don’t know what she’s doing, contemplating the meaning of life? If you try to talk to her she just mumbles something that sounds like, “Oh, the horror, the horror, nooooo …”. Personally I think she’s sitting there faking, racking up rested bonus but we’ll see if she ever comes out of it.

Ironsally’s problems have been wardrobe related. With all the gray and white drops she’s had, not one single pair of shoulders have dropped for her. To celebrate level 30 she went into the big city and found Interlaced Cowl on the AH. They wanted 16 Gold!! Did they seriously think someone would pay that! What, well, yes I did pay that but still. But really, isn’t it lovely and warlockish. This morning I did a quick check of the AH and finally got a pair of shoulders for a reasonable 63 silver so now Ironsally has her wardrobe sorted out.

Ironsally is still in Northern Stranglethorn and still has quests left. I want to move on but common sense tells me to complete the green quests while you have them and don’t be an over-confident Warlock. One thing that has started to bother her a little, besides having to vendor blue quest rewards,  is that pulsing talent button on the bottom of the screen. I’m thinking of putting a sticky note over it. Anybody else hear it?

“Click me, I have many wonders to behold inside.”

“Felguard, I have a Felguard in here.”

“Conflagrate, dots, more dots, I have it all, you know you want it!”

Okay, maybe I do know why Ironmary is sitting in Tarren Mill mumbling. She’s trying to resist the voice of talents, muhahaha.

Update: I’m excited! We have another challenger! IMRAITH!’s Sallyogreydy is in the running with a Priest!

The WoW Ironman Challenge — A Late Entry

I think Psynister and Vrykerion may have created a monster (me) with the Ironman Challenge. I have now started an experiment within an experiment, her name is Ironsally. She resides on Zangarmarsh along with her Forsaken cousin.

Playing Ironmary is exactly like having a hangnail and constantly picking at it. It really hurts but you can’t stop doing it. At some point I started wondering, a lot, is this challenge that hard or am I just completely incapable of playing a Mage, really, I want to know. Ironyca’s Elford is doing just fine. No embarrassingly high total of deaths like Ironmary. So I had to know and Ironsally was born.

I planned to roll a Goblin Warlock and then I must have been distracted by phone or something. I was level 10 or so when I realized I’d made a human. Oh well, she’ll have the challenge of having no money cause the rich Irons are Horde on Zangermarsh. No fancy Tuxedo Pants for Ironsally. And I had wanted to do the same quests at around the same level to see if the Warlock had the same problems the Mage did to be fair to, well, me.

I think it’s now pretty evident I’m an incompetent Mage. The ease that Ironsally has been leveling seems to prove it, it’s not the challenge it’s me. Wait, let me check … okay Ironsally has had  six deaths and none of them had anything to do with the constraints of the challenge. First was me not paying attention and running off a cliff to fall to my death. The second occurred when Ironsally was jumped by a few mobs and I stood there trying to decide if I should use a Healthstone or not instead of running. It would have been better to ponder my moral dilemma about Healthstones BEFORE combat but hey, what are you going to do. The next four deaths were on this quest chain and Ironsally had to die four hideous deaths by Elites because her stupid operator didn’t take the time to READ up on how to operate the Bravo Company Field Kit, sheesh. And I’ve since decided (while not in combat) not to use Healthstones or Soulstones.

I’m not giving up on Ironmary, I’m going to continue to level them both but at the rate Ironmary is progressing I started to worry that Blizzard may move on to other things before I even come close to approaching level cap.

Ironsally has had no problems yet related to her lack of gear, stats, or talent points. One thing I did notice is that while playing normally and questing, I’m interested in what the gear rewards are for a quest. Now all I care about is XP, don’t need no stinking gear, just give me XP, and oh, money’s okay.

I really have to say it’s been a long time since leveling was this much fun.

Through Your Interface — Profession of Choice

This is Day Eleven of World of Saz 15 Days of Screen Shots challenge, your favorite profession. Have you ever had one of those days. Yesterday was one of those days. It started when I was doing The Protectors of Hyjal. I didn’t notice that Searris was wandering by when I swiped at a Seething Pyrelord’s spawns. I was soon dead and when flying back to reclaim my body must have lost my sense of direction because I thunked down to the ground, I’d strayed into Ashenvale. I gave up and let the Spirit Healer rez me and logged out for a phone call from real life.

A client had poked around changing things in his website and completely fubared it. It was now just throwing errors instead of selling things, not good. After a quick look I decided to call support at his host and beg them for a rollback to better days. I’m still talking to support 24 hours later and each time it’s a different person so I have to start ALL over. Then the cable went out. No TV no problem. No phone not a big deal. No internet connection, aaarrrrgggghhh!!!

So at 9:09 Eastern Time this morning when cable came back what did I do? Fish. I went to one of my favorite fishing spots and fished. I find it helps with issues in rl and Azerothian ones. I fish here for Deepsea Sagefish which I make into Delicious Sagefish Tail in my quest to single-handedly make 5,0000 Cataclysm recipes for the Broiled Dragon Feast Recipe.  I’m at 1,837 cooked, go team go!

I put on the Otis Taylor-Recapturing The Banjo CD and fished. You know what? I got so relaxed I didn’t even care anymore that my client’s website isn’t selling anything right now. I’m not sure he feels the same. Maybe I should suggest he take up fishing rather than mucking about in his website.

The Ironman Challenge — Level 20

Ha! Hahahaha! Who said, “I felt that if I rolled a Druid or Warlock it might be too easy …” Hands? Oh, ah, it was me? Well in that case I have to say I’m a big nitwit. WoW is hard mode now, really, really, hard. I’m level 20 now and I’m pretty sure an overachieving level 1 could kill me, no problem. The reason I got to level 20 at all is the siren call of the first mount.

Early going was fine. I had some unintended deaths by Duskbats but everything seemed about normal until at level 15 Sylvanas tasked me with the quest Seek and Destroy. Didn’t sound hard, I just had to go beat up level 13 Caretaker Smithers and get his logbook, piece of cake right? Not so much. Dead, dead, dead. That guy was all over me. After an unseemly number of deaths my Mage slunk back to Sylvanas and told her she had some business to take care of and that she’d be right back.

I came back at level 16, I was rockin’ 224 armor,  (now my most important, well, only stat) I’m 3 levels above him what could go wrong. Dead, dead, dead. I was afraid to go back to Sylvanas. I mean you know how she is, patience isn’t her most important virtue. I realized that to complete the challenge I’d have to do an attitude adjustment. I’m not here to curry favor with Sylvanas I’m here to level to 85 by any means necessary, soooo, ROAD TRIP. I’ll shirk my responsibilities and go to the Barrens!

I had the same type of problem with some of the quests from Ratchet. I could not stay alive long enough to kill the object of the quest. I FINALLY completed them all (darn, it’s so hard to sell those quest blues)  and yes, I think I did shot myself in the foot by picking a class that I seem to have absolutely no talent for playing but I wanted a challenge and boy did I get one.

I was surprised to find that not having professions other than First Aid is nice. I was afraid I’d miss them as I fret over them, stopping to make sure they level along with me, making sure I have mats. This is kind of freeing, I have no worries, well, other than the whole dead thing all the time.

Money. I didn’t really think I’d need much. When I read that Vrykerion was going to roll on Zangermarsh I vaguely remembered that somewhere in the murky past I had started a character there with the intent to join in on a It Came from the Blog event. I checked, and yes, and she had gold. Not a lot but I thought it would help with bags and mounts. Little did I know I’d need gobs of money. For what you ask? REPAIRS and paying that angel when I’m tired of slogging back to my body. Hey, I’m an Ironman but a little luxury once in a while can’t hurt, can it? I made the original character on Zangermarsh my banker. A ton of intellect gear has dropped for me just to taunt me so I send it off immediately. I’d just feel unproductive if I didn’t try to make some money along the way.

I’ve become so obsessed with this that, oh the horror, my main has missed two days of the Firelands Dailies. She might miss more. I’m going to keep maging until it kills me. Well, okay, you know what I meant. Until it kills me a 100 bazillion times would probably be more accurate.

/wave, wish you were here, Ironmary!

The WoW Ironman Challenge, I’m In!

A few days ago I checked The Land of Odd to see if he had a new post. I found The WoW Ironman Challenge. I thought it was interesting but I have so many WoW experiments going I thought, no, no more alts for you. So I continued on my way resisting the alt urge. I visited Ironyca Stood in the Fire to check for a new post. Hhmm, what did I find, The Overlooked Heroes of WoW – Unconventional Ways to Level another great post that called to my inner altoholic. Finally I decided to visit Psynister’s Notebook where the brainstorming began and then … I was hooked. I gotta do it.

I felt that if I rolled a Druid or Warlock it might be too easy as those are the classes I have the most experience with. One of my WoW regrets is my bank alt. She’s a Mage who I managed to get to level 53 back in vanilla and then I just gave up. I was an awful Mage, I was either dying or drinking. I later tried again, and that Mage was deleted at around level 30. So I don’t know if I’ve gone and shot myself in the foot before even starting but darnit, I want to level a Mage so here goes!

Ironmary has made it to level 10. I think one of the bigger challenges for me will be to REMEMBER. Remember not to equip that green quest reward, remember to sell the potions that drop, don’t use them! So far this challenge has been so reminiscent of my very first character. She was a huntard who bought vendor armor because she didn’t know any better. Leveling was hard for her until she found a guild and found out about the Auction House. Life in Azeroth was tough.

I like that, I’m paying attention again. I can’t afford to just barrel in totally oblivious of the number of NPCs in the area. I have to take care. I have to carefully scout around because she really has trouble with more than one bad guy unless she’s prepared.

I encountered Ressan the Needler at level 7 and thought it would be a good gauge to see just how squishy she was. She was really squishy, another few bad deaths but there’s no way of knowing whether it’s my lack of skill maging or the constraints of the challenge.

I know it’s early days but I’m really having fun. When leveling a new alt I tend to get nostalgic for the old days, this isn’t like that it’s more like BEING back in the old days but with Sparkly quest items, I love those sparkly quest items.