Darnassus is Impressed
Evening laptop session so more Darnassus rep grinding. Running backwards and forwards around Ashenvale. Finally it happened: ding, green flash, exalted in Darnassus. What? No songs of exaltation, no church bells ringing, no people lining the streets? Is that it? Went to Darnassus and sure enough the Saber vendor is willing to talk business. Have to wait till Mae is 60 tho. Could buy a low level saber to run around on for just under a level but a waste of 9g.
Can't say I'm impressed with the look of the epic sabers: want a snowy white one with black spots to match Tiddles but the only one like that is the standard model 
With a matching tiddles model it would look like I was riding Tiddles! It would be like those guys in Hellfire that jump off their dogs and the dogs attack you.
As it happens I still wasn't out of quests, hadn't finished the Tower of Anthraxx or some other quest that involved wearing a disguise made from Moonstalker pelts. I did manage the Raens Cleansing thing which involved turning into a furbolg. Furbolgs can't fight or mount I wanted to see a furbolg riding a ram Anyway, I could have saved money buying five or ten gold worth of runecloth but at least I didn't have to waste more time. I've learned one thing: the questing in Ashenvale from levels 20-30 looks like it would be an absolute pain without a mount.
Kinda useful to the Guild
Guild Master asked me to make some Shadow Protection pots since they were raiding Zul'Gurub. These turned out to be some of the worst pots to make. They need Shadow Oil and dreamfoil and I didn't have the recipe for Shadow Oil. It was in the auction house but it was a white recipe and therefore available cheaper from a vendor. I thotted it and the recipe comes from a little guy in one of the houses just south of Raven Hill in Darkshire. It's a limited availablility recipe so he only sells one every half hour. Anyway, went there, found the guy and got the recipe.
Shadow Oil is even worse: needs four grave moss and four fadeleaf! Grave moss is rare and expensive, fadeleaf is just expensive but I had a load in stock. The GM sent me some grave moss and I was able to make seven pots. I didn't really look at the tooltip before I made the pots but they only last two minutes! Worst. Pot. Ever.
One good thing: raised my alch to the dizzy heights of 330 so worth visiting the trainer to see what is next. Mae could do with a nice mana pot recipe. My herbalism is now 373! Nearly maxed!
Schoolboy Humour time: Ghoulies (he he he)
(For Americans in the audience, an explanation).
Morning and it feels strange: no need to worry about rep grinding or finding runecloth. Back to the plot, main priority: getting to 60. What to do? Plagelands, Hellfire or Silithus? Settled on Plaguelands for no good reason. Flew to Eastern Plaguelands and went to Corbins Crossing, officially to free darrowshire spirits but really to mindlessly grind ghoulies for pure XP and killing pleasure. I can't explain it, I feel content with pure XP grinding with the hunter, something I very rarely did with the paladin. I find a nice big camp or town where the monsters are not too far apart and do circuits of remorseless killing. Is it a gun thing? Hope not. Anyway I was also trying to use up the 1000 bullets I had left over from UBRS so I could go back to my BIG CROSSBOW. Mae and Tiddles were hitting 300 dps with the 37 dps blue gun. Once the bullets are used up the 44 dps crossbow will be her main weapon.
Ironically the Corbins Crossing guys dropped about four stacks of runecloth I'll sell it to some other mug who wants a saber mount.
Died once. In Corbins Crossing there are some ghost things that suddenly appear out of nowhere and Mae was suddenly attacked by, dunno, didn't count them but too many. Agroed a big bunch. Mae left Tiddles fighting them, gave her one last heal and ran. Couldn't run too far, things all around. Did a feign death to drop the last one and went phew. At about that time the group of things had killed Tiddles and had decided that Mae was next...
An hour or so of killing is enough for anyone so started questing. Went to Undercroft to get some guys head. The big fight here involved taking on four guys so decided on strategy. Laid a freezing trap, sent Big Red Tiddles after the guy who's head I required, targeted a different guy and pulled him onto the trap to take him out for 15 seconds, target main guy and fight on until all dead, finishing with the frosty one. Worked sweetly. If I did it again I would wait after laying the trap so that the cooldown was ready for another trap. Freezing traps are so useful for a bit of crowd control. So nice of Blizz to let hunters lay them during a fight, can't imagine how hard it was before, must have routinely had to lay them before every fight Just In Case.
Picked up quest scroll from floor, as I remembered all this from Pook. I had to kill a guy and free his soul but I knew where he was: in a tricky camp in the north east. Rode there and went into camp. There are two types of baddies to watch out for, the scouts who run for help as soon as you hit them and some others who turn you into a frog. Hit first scout who immediately ran to two others who did the frog thing to both Tiddles and Mae. Terribly messy fight. Tried Beast Within but can't do it in frog form. Anyway, eventually prevailed. It was only later that I remembered that Beast Within makes Tiddles and Mae immune to anything but death, it would probably have protected them from the froggy business so I should have used it earlier in the fight. I tend to save it for emergencies or premeditated stuff, I don't use it routinely.
On to where the target roams about with a load of other scouts and things. Decided to try to pull him out. First pull went pear shaped, agroed a scout and half a dozen others so Mae ran and summoned Tiddles out. Back in, this time did a nice pull on the target and another harmless guy. Quest done.
Mae is just under half way to 60 and should get there tonight at a stretch or tomorrow morning if the insomnia does its thing: and it hasn't failed me for a couple of weeks now, sleeping till 7am is a luxury
In a way it's hard to believe: I'll have two characters in the Sixties! And Mae is already more powerful than Pook.
A Question
A question for Mac users in the audience, and I know that some of you use Macs. Do you play WoW on a Mac because it is a great game or because it is one of the few good games that run on a Mac? I'm not having a go at Macs, I use PC's but only because my head ruled my heart last time I bought one. I'm wondering whether the population of WoW players is now 90% Mac users and all the PC users are off playing Lord of the Rings Online?
Peter's Moblog
I'm a Mac user with 2 Mac's and desktop and laptop. Been a user even before i started playing WoW. I actually got it to use when i played Secondlife because that game is CPU intensive and my Windows did not cut it back then. Got a Mac and it works like a charm.
WoW looks great on my Mac as well as it runs very smoothly also. So even better and don't have the Windows problem. At least i don't. I use a G5 Mac. On a 30" Monitor well WoW does look quite impressive and everyone is actually very big. I like my wide screen also. Much better than Windows.