Peter's Blog

Don't make the same mistake I made, you only need one Burning crusade keys to upgrade any number of accounts in your name.

Sounds good. Thanks.

Peter

You've gone from having two toons to having a weeks' break then to having two accounts playing them AT THE SAME TIME!! The therapy's clearly not worked has it? Looks like an interesting experiment though, trying to manage the two sisters through some trickier fights; I guess some of them will end up looking like something off You've Been Framed.

Added a Draenei Shaman to my army last night (I'm up to seven now, prolly go for all nine classes), good fun planting the totems, blasting away then whacking the mobs if and when they reach me, and the start-up area is more structured than any of the others (the trainers for example have quests that introduce you to the profession rather than just dumping it on you - helpful for new players). Plus Shamans (at least on my server) are few and far between so should be fairly easy to group/raid :)

I think the break was just due to overload and boredom. I am still going to play less, I'm not spending all my spare time focused on levelling as fast as possible.

Running two characters together is just an interesting new twist. I think you are right, when it goes wrong it will go horribly wrong. The overriding principle will be: if either has to die, make it Maezyn as Sissle can resurrect her.

Tempting to make Maez an engineer for the jumper cables...

All I've read about Shamen is that they are a broken class etc. Maybe that's a rumour by people who have never tried.

Aren't totems annoying because they don't move?

Peter

Can you more characters between accounts? I did not know that that was possible. Nice if you can.

Apparently you can. There are some limitations like the last name of the account holder has to be the same to try to thwart the ebayers.

Peter

Not sure if they're broken or not to be honest, I tend to ignore the whining about the classes until I've seen for myself whether they are broken or not (with all the class whining that goes on it's a wonder that anyone plays the game at all - check any of the official class forums, endless complaining).

As for the totems, sure, they don't move but they can be planted fairly quickly and whilst on the move so they don't seem to be that restrictive - at least that's my experience so far, they might become tricky to manage at later levels but that's all part of the game right? And the bottom line for me is levelling each class in a rotation to get a better understanding of how they work, broken or otherwise - keeps the game fresh for me.

I'm fairly close to producing the goblin jumpers XL (trinket rather than bag item) so looking forward to that. They used to occasionally explode (and were destroyed in the process I think) before patch 1.4.something so thankfully that's all in the past.

I agree about the forums, endless moaning, people only go there to say how great their class is in the rival class forums.

I read on thott that the jumpers sometimes explode and you can loot the parts to make another. Or was that the rocket boots? Anyway, I am leaning again towards engineer for Maezyn now, as a regular reader you will be aware of how I vacillate. Feign death/jumper cables is also a classic combination.

I was put off enchanting by the thought of having to disenchant blues: I get so few blues I couldn't bear doing that.

SUDDEN THOUGHT: mustn't feign death near Sissle! If I do the cables had better work!

Peter

From what I've read the cables are more reliable inside instances, still not 100% though, but better than nothing. The XL trinket is even more reliable, got the schematic off the AH for around 15g I think. Don't know if you've seen it but using this is a quick way to level the engineering:

xs4all.nl/~brt/wow/guides/skillupengineering.html

I got it up to 225 for about 100g. The hunter has just dinged 35 so I'll hopefully be hitting 265 (required for the XL's) soon.

To get to the stage were you have multiple blues to disenchant you basically have to run instances with strict loot rules. I remember doing instances last year using the guild rule of one blue per person per instance - anything that wasn't claimed was disenchanted. A bit disheartening seeing the blues go up in smoke but it had to be done.

I picked up jewelcrafting (with mining) for my Shaman, should be interesting to see how that goes. I think there are similarities to engineering in that certain items can only be worn by jewelcrafters of the required level - any advantage is good to me.

I think I'll also pick up alchemy for one of the others - you tried that before right? Is it easy to level?

Maevyn is a herbalist/alchemist and so far I've found alchemy easy to level to 330ish where it is waiting for Maev to gather more ingredients in Outlands. While I have sometimes bought the odd stack of herbs from the auction house I have made enough money from it to pay that back and I only sell stuff sporadically. If you pluck herbs constantly as you level you will have enough resources to level the alchemy up. It is also useful to fish as the Oily Blackmouth and Firefin Snappers are used in alchemy recipes.

The pots typically only need one or two ingredients, much easier than blacksmithing and engineering, and you can make them anywhere as long as you carry a supply of vials. Another reader here, a paladin, has developed the trick of making and drinking a pot while bubbled.

If I make Maez an engineer she can level it as she levels, I've found that to be the cheapest way.

Peter