In Search of a Heavy Hide
Spent nearly 2/3 of level 30 killing raptors in Arathi in order to gather the leather for a pair of Barbaric Bracers, a blue albeit mediocre. These would give Maezyn a completly barbaric look worthy of a screenshoot.
She did loops around refuge point killing the level 30-31 raptors quite easily in order to gather more leather and in the hope that a 'Heavy Hide' would drop to make the bracers. Occasionally she would run into level 33-34 spiders or tougher raptors and here I got into the habit of not Serpent Stinging them in order to give me the option of Scattershotting if Beefy lost agro, which he did on these higher level mobs. I could have scorpid stung these to reduce the damage to Beefy but I think the mana is better spent on Mend Pet. Now and then I ran into level 38's which I ran away from with all speed. Fighting one of these is a kiting exercise, there is no way Maezyn could keep agro off her. I didn't try any more kiting and I really should, if only to drag them into refuge point to see the NPCs do something.
She dinged 31 and put the talent point into Improved Stings.
Still needing a Heavy Hide, I went back to Southshore and back to the Yeti cave but there were no yeti there, not even dead ones: another skinner was at work. Decided to warp back to Darkshire and try Stranglethorn. Killed tigers and panthers and the first crocolisk I killed dropped a Heavy Hide. I had all I needed to make the bracers.. except salt to cure the Heavy Hides. There are no tradesmen in northern STV that sell salt so it's another long trip just to make the bracers.
I find that I am enjoying just grinding for experience and leather, quests are not such a priority and farming for the mats to make something nice is a useful motivator. Level 30 seemed to go past very quickly and I only did one quest. The thirties are to me the most tedious levels as the experience demands start to bite and there is a lot of running around to do with no mount (nine levels to go to the Elekk!!!).
Emailing Alts
I've done a couple of things to speed up the process of emailing alts:
- I finally discovered that by adding my alt's names to the friends lists I don't have to type out their full names every time, the names will autocomplete. It doesn't help having three alts with names that start with 'mae' though.
- Installed ct_mailmod. This adds a couple of features, most notably for me the ability to send a few items to an alt in one go. It doesn't work happily with tbags as items moved to the mail slots are still shown in the bag with no indication that they are in transit so one has to be careful when sending eight identical pairs bracers for disenchanting. The mail mod sends each item in a separate mail, slightly sluggishly, but it saves you having to type the target name out each time.
)but I'd probably use the plain mail tab in ct_modmail rather than the multi-slot one.
Peter's Moblog
More good news from Patch 2.3: Soon you'll be able to send up to 12 items in one mail message, and while the send tab is open you can right-click items in your inventory to add them to the message. Blizzard seems determined to wipe out my favorite addons. :>
In addition, the new mail icon near the minimap will also tell you who the most recent message is from -- although that's not as exciting for me since I don't get messages from anyone but my other characters.
Incidentally, the auto-complete for mail also seems to work with guildmates. This is convenient since I just formed a solo guild just for me and all my alts so I'll be ready for guild banks when they come out. Putting together a solo guild was much easier than I expected -- it took me a couple of hours (traveling to the capitals and newbie areas to recruit helpers) and about 8 gold (as signing incentives).