Can't.. Stop.. Killing
Went to Eastern Plaguelands to progress my only quest chain that didn't need a group. I had to visit some hamlet and find a 'Symbol of Honor'. I arrived at the place and there were a couple of ruined huts but the area was full of two kinds of annoying enemies: Lady Singer Ghosts with fear spells and Eyeless something ghosts that would appear from nowhere, sometimes three at a time. I should be careful what I write in this blog as when I say things like the plague bats fear spells weren't a problem, the game always bites me the next day. Just about every fight with the Singers had either Rakky of Mae being feared, normally Rakky was feared and the Singer would attack Mae. I still didn't use Beastial Wrath for fear immunity as it seemed a waste of a good cooldown for just a one-on-one fight.
I ground these things for a while, annoying as it was, going in and out of the huts looking for this symbol of hope. After a few laps and clearances I gave up and thotted for it. The Symbol of Hope is a flag at the bottom of a pond next to the huts! You only need to kill a couple of level 57 pussycat water elementals to get it!
On my way back to turn the quest in I passed a camp with some plain ghouls, levels 57-60. I couldn't resist and started killing the ghouls. Before I knew it I had wiped out two camp fulls and I had to tear myself away to turn the quest in before bedtime. Killing the ghouls was easy and each kill gave maybe three runecloth, a scourgestone and some cash. By the end of the session Mae had ten stacks of runecloth and fifty invaders and minions scourgestones. I didn't expect the hunter to make this kind of grinding fun and it's a nice surprise.
I turned the quest in and got 6800 XP, nice. The follow up sent me to Caer Darrow, just outside Scholomance and gave me another 6800 XP. Next step in the quest chain is inside Scholomance itself. Dare I go in?
Bag Administration
Running around with ten stacks of runecloth in my bags made me decide to reorganise. Bit the bullet and splurged 25g on another bank slot (typical herbalist, bank is stuffed full of herbs). Filled it with a 16 slot bag and filled said bag with runecloth and herbs so bank is still full.
This left Mae with enough inventory space to try a new concept: using a quiver instead of a bag! Losing 16 general purpose slots and equipping a 12 slot quiver she got as a quest reward in Duskwood, many moons ago. The quiver increases firing speed by 11% and put Mae's raw ranged dps at 139 (compared to Pooks 120 something) with Rakky at about 100. These days Mae doesn't have bag fulls of fish and various meats, she sticks with roasted quail for the pet and mushrooms for herself (since they drop all over the place in EPL she has a stack).
I only need the runecloth now for bandages. Already made a stack of runecloth bandages, first aid skill is in the 290's but only use them rarely.
Unfinished Business
Decided to start on Kalimdor: Winterspring for Chief Winterfall, Tanaris and Un'goro to progress the Linken's Boomerang series, finishing in Silithus, ready for the next session.
I reached the Winterfall Camp and nobody was around so spent a while.. you may guess.. grinding. Did a few laps of the camp killing the Winterfall. Mae has rest bonus but was cruising at 65000 XP per hour which is good since you need 480000 XP to get from 60 to 61. There is one good thing about these big XP requirements: the rest bonus lasts longer. With all this grinding she still hasn't used up her rest bonus. I was hoping that the increased dps from the quiver would mean she didn't need to arcane shot and serpent sting in every fight and hence wouldn't need a mana break every ten minutes but TBH I couldn't really tell the difference the quiver made so may well go back to a normal 16 slot bag. The natural progression of using up ammo and replacing it with loot is irresistable.
Tackled Chief Winterfall and his two chronies. Tried splitting them with a freezing trap and failed miserably: iced the wrong guy and didn't manage to reset them by feigning death: should have put pet on passive! Doh. Anyway, I did do one thing right: I set the inital freezing trap, then waited for the cooldown so I would have another ready. In the fight I took out the Shaman Healer first, then froze the Ursa a second time (chain trap!) while blasting the Chief Himself (elite 59) with everything. By the time I had just the Ursa to finish off I was out of mana but it didn't matter by then. Job done. This and a silly follow up quest in Felwood netted about another 13000 XP.
Stopped in Tanaris to tackle Aquamentus for a few thousand XP, then un'goro to turn in the next stages of the Linken's Boomerang quest for a few thousand more. I'm not going to bother with the final elite in this series as I don't think Mae could solo it except with amazing kiting skills that neither she nor I posess thus far. I think if I tried it the result would be the fire elemental booting the pet off the mountain and Mae struggling to lose agro. I couldn't stand seeing one of my babies booted off a mountain.
Went on to Silithus and examined the plethora of quests available. They fall into four categories:
- Soloable: there were eight of these! Woo hoo, something to do.
- Group Quests: a couple of these to skip
- AQ25/AQ40 quests with epic rewards: amazing to think that at one time Mae could have been doing 25 or 40 man (make that person) raids. Zippo chance these days.
- Rep grinding quests... pass.
I'm still not half way to 61: just grinding would take me five or six more hours of play. I could definitely do it faster in Hellfire as the mob kills and quest rewards give more XP but I'm saving that up for later 
UPDATE: would my grinding time be better spent on the Hellfire Orcs? Probably.
Making Money
I haven't been mentioning money-making much recently. The main earner right now is Arcanite Rods: Mae bought ten arcane crystals for 10g (sheesh, don't people know what they are worth?), Pook can mine ten thorium in as many minutes, enough for three rods. Threes days of transmuting and a rod goes on auction house for 35g bid, 50g buyout. Income from this is maybe 10g a day. Don't make too many arcanite rods as they don't always sell but since Pook doesn't have to buy three arcanite at 7g a bar to make the rods I can undercut heavily and still make good money. Could also make money thorium farming as it seems to be going for 20g a stack but I'm a bit bored with that so don't do it often, only when I need it myself.
When Mae gets back to Outlands she can start making serious cash (flying mount!). She will be herbing like crazy and the quest rewards are more lucrative. Heck, even the vendor trash is worth gold.
Mae is now a 375 Herbalist which is good considering she has only spent a few hours in Outlands and has picked maybe three flowers there.
Peter's Moblog
Tip: You should be able to pick up Elixir of Camoflogue and Primal Might recipe for ALch in your home faction city at one of the Vendors at the trainer. I know when i did get both those i did it in Silvermoon. Will cost you alot less to do so at about 6-8g each. Primal requires lvl 350 to learn, but you can pick it up way before then.
If you do alot of herbalism like i do in Outland you will high level herbs crawling out your ears and stacked up in your bank. All worth allot of gold. I think sometime back it was causing me serious bag and bank problems. I still have the problem. Can always make a new alt and let him or her just bank the herbs till when you can sell or use them.
Anyway in money all over the ground in Outland and trash always worth lots of gold too. The other day when grinding the Bog lords in Zangarmarsh i killed so many of them and skinned them, i was collecting tons of motes of life. Enough for 16 stacks of 10. I easily converted them to Primal Life for 16 stack and each was worth at least 20-30g each. So lots of gold there and for a Herbalist too. You'll do well i'm sure.