Peter's Blog

• The guild were doing a run to Black Rock Depths for the fun of it, there not being enough folk of sufficient level to do a serious attempt. It was interesting to see it though, the inventiveness of the level design: huge statues, burning lava, dragons flying around. We went through a few fights and didn't do too badly, I managed to tank a couple of times in that I preoccupied elites until the mages got around to killing them (kinda like an automatic sheeping bot). My play was hampered somewhat by having to change/feed baby which is a very effective debuff.
• Early morning and had a laptop trip to draenae land to look at the noob quests to test the water and see if I wanted to grind for rep for an epic elekk. I found the capital city and wandered around in there a bit. It's very pretty but I got lost and couldn't find my way back out so I hearthed home. I just don't have the motivation to run around clicking on every NPC to see if they had a lowbie quest available. By all accounts the rep I would get from draenae noob quests is still nerfed: it would be easier to get an epic sabre from the Night Elfs but another guildie has already gone that route and I want to be different. The epic sabres are very impressive but not funny enough to grind for. I went to the Ram dealer outside Ironforge and looked at the selection of epic rams. They are ok, they have a big comfortable saddle. It's transport, it will get me from A to B. I looked at the epic mechanostriders and they are nicer, they have huge and mean looking exhaust pipes but gnome rep would be the hardest grind of all. Gnomeregan anyone?
• Went to Western Plaguelands to tackle the last cauldron and a couple of other quests. I managed to complete the last cauldron, dying once when I aggroed the Cauldron Lord and a few minions. Once I realised that some of the monsters were doing mana taps I was more careful to clear away the minions before tackling the big guy himself.
• Afternoon and the guild have a trip to Booty Bay for a group photo (that I'll put up here if I get around to it: could do with more illustrations). Useful for me to visit because the Master Blacksmith is there and I can't always be bothered to venture that far. I got the training for dense weightstones to add 8 damage to my maces which is about 6 dps on the one-handed mace. The one hander is now reporting 120dps in the character pane with Seal of the Crusader.
• I was wondering what to do with myself as I was only half way to level 58 and two other guildies were leaving me behind. The guild leader mentioned a long quest chain starting from the Blasted Lands and we did it on a guild raid since two members hadn't done it before. It was a long chain, we were at it for two and a half hours and we didn't finish it then. I don't remember anyone dying but the fighting wasn't very intense, the quest is for low fifties players and there were three high fifties in our group. All this got me to within 10k of level 58 so big thanks to the guild for that.
• Next morning, how to get this last 10k? Decided to head for Azshara to finish off a quest there, find a book in a temple. I found it ok then decided to head for Felwood to finish a quest there. In Felwood I was disgusted to discover I should have gone to the Barrens instead so I just dropped the quest. I got up to level 58 by grinding in Jaedenar (sp?). Level 51's are soft targets now.
• New paladin training is just upgrades to Flash of Light and retribution aura, no nice new abilities AND the training was about 4g a pop
• Still had full bank/inventory problems so, sod it, paid the 25g for another bank slot and put spare ooze covered bag in it. Soon filled it with runecloth: I have a few stacks but a drop in the ocean as far as rep is concerned. Spammed /trade and got a nice rogue to open my collection of three locked boxes for 30s each giving me three greens to auction. There is a rouge in the guild who might have been able to do it but:
  • I don't want to prevail
  • I've only met him in-game once and he was afk.
• Someone asked me to give them a twink run through gnomeregan but I didn't have time. Tempting as there would be a lot of gnome rep to be had. Why do twinks run around with a guild name like 'the twinks' over their heads? Isn't the fact that you are a twink a nice surprise for the people you meet? Wouldn't it be doubly satisfying to kill someone in a twink guild?
• Found a very nice level 58 axe in the auction house, 59dps 3.5 sec two-hander, a 10dps upgrade on the Twig of the World Tree. I thought the twig would last me much longer but anyway, the new axe had good stats and was a green and cost me 15g. My axe skill was 270/285 so didn't really need conscious levelling up, I just have to be more careful for a while.
• Spent afternoon doing some questing in the Eastern Plaguelands. Nothing much to say here, it was no biggie. So dull in fact that ultimately I couldn't resist it and headed for the Dark Portal.

WARNING: Outlands Spoilers from now to the end of time (or till I stop writing about WoW, whichever comes first).

• Still reading? Good. Outlands is very impressive, when you get through dark portal and stop taking screenshots you know things are different. There is a big war going on against demon things and it's like being part of a military operation.
• My first fight was against a level 58 hellboar which was tough, especially when it called for reinforcements. I ended up having to kill four of them. One dropped a green ring that was a nice upgrade to an ageing blue ring I was wearing. Progressing further it seemed these Hellboars have a huge agro radius and it's hard to avoid being attacked and it was taking me so long to kill them protection mode that two or three more would join the fight. Phew. Was examining a strange anomoly on the ground when a huge worm thing popped out and started lobbing fireballs at me. In my desperation to run away I agroed a few more hellboars. Death ensued.
• Found a quest to let some flares off under some towers. I started on the first tower and was still having these big fights, almost every fight I was getting two or three adds. One fight in particular there was only one guy around so I attacked him, then I had two level 60's spawn right next to me, then I got another add.
• About this time a level 60 mage from the guild asked me if I needed any help. We did the quest together. Level 60 mages are so powerful, they kill things in seconds. When I play with her I'm never sure if I should be sword-and-board for a bit of tanking or two-hander in an effort to hit the baddies hard enough to stop them attacking her. In these kind of fights she doesn't really need a tank as she has frosty and sheep spells for crowd control and she didn't get much damage so she didn't need healing. I need to figure out a role for myself in these situations, I don't want to feel like a passenger. We died a couple of times, again because it was too easy to get five or six add's in a fight, it was even awkward to res after a fight (she had a good plan there: jump on a horse and run).
• We completed the quest and my reward was an awesome breastplate with 300 more armour, +healing, +spell and stats aplenty. The rewards in Outlands look very nice but I think I will need them. I slipped this breastplate on and lost the final +stat from my Imperial Plate set but I didn't miss it. I could have got the Imperial Plate Leggings to recoup the set bonus but I still don't think it's worth 12g to get the missing stat back. NB the Imperial Plate Set doesn't include gloves and my gloves still clash and I cannot find any better ones.
• In all I died more times than I can count, the long fights are very demanding and the lowest level monsters here are 58's. By the end of the session I was getting broken armour so on my last death I used the spirit healer. She managed to break ALL my armour so I had to find someone to repair it. While I was running around a hailstorm of big green balls started and having no armour I nearly died from that, I kept getting stunned and couldn't heal. When I did find someone to do repairs the bill was over 5g
• Morning and I complete another quest and the reward is another axe very nearly as good as the one I bought the day before: if only I had known...
• I've started mining fel-iron in outlands, hope it is a good seller. I've taken the master level mining training and that cost 10g but hopefully this is a worthwhile investment.
• My plans now? Frankly, I'm not sure I want to leave outlands much, it's challenging but it makes the old world seem a bit dull. The rewards look good and I'm already half way to level 59: you don't spend much time searching for things to kill here, they come to you.

• Did a very nice quest, had to kill enough guys to get eight demon stones, then use the stones to blow up two portals. Good challenging play and I didn't die I came very close, I had to start running from a monster as my health and mana were very low. First I bubbled and ran, monster chased me for 12 seconds. When the bubble went he was still hitting and did the slowdown thing on me. I used a trinket and broke the slowdown and kept running. I ran all the way back to a place where there were alliance NPCs, hoping the monster would stop or the NPCs would kill it. Eventually it stopped chasing me and I could stop for food/drink. As I watched the monster was fighting another player, a level 60 who did manage to kill it. I kept a low profile as drawing monsters towards other players is a breech of etiquette. What made it worse was when the monster died it did the glowing loot thing so I had to wait for the player to leave before I could grab the loot. Shameful really. I case you are wondering, I couldn't use my sprinting trinket as its slot was occupied by a mana dribbling trinket.
• The reward for this was 10500 XP! Couldn't believe that but I also got some new armour, a headpiece with impressive stats but looks like an old sack.
• Ran another quest, bombing more portals and this was easier and gave an ever better new hat this one having a mana dribble. I now have a choice of two hats with good stats from outlands BUT the best one is a red tiara thing and it looks stupid, especially as my man has long thick black hair, he looks like a butch drag queen. I am guessing that blizzard are saving the cool looking hats for the epic rewards. I haven't vendored the Imperial Plate Helm yet, I'll keep it for posing.
• Morning and yet another bombing quest and the reward here was an impressive set of leggings with even more good stats, including another mana dribble. I now have about four pieces with mana dribbles and while individually each one may be insignificant, they add up to something useful. With devotion aura my total armour is now over 7000. I picked up some more quests and the reward from one of them is a shield with 1000 more armour points!!! I get the distinct feeling that Blizzard made a special effort to ensure that people's initial reactions to the Burning Crusade expansion would be WoW and they succeeded.
• I had time to start out on another quest, to kill 10 guys and their boss. I got to the camp and saw the boss so went for him first. I pulled him with exorcism and hacked away at him for a few minutes. He was a level 63 and quite tough but I got him, no bubbles or dying I killed three of the trash (only level 60's pah) with the two-hander which is still at 280 skill, another ten skill points to go to optimum. BTW the quest reward axe I got, while roughly equivalent to the one I paid 15g for the day before ( ) looks much nicer. Red and shiny. Not Kang nice though.
• I am still loving outlands. I read that there is no auction house here to force people level 58+ to go back to the old world. They need tricks like that. I see now why level 50's are getting hassled for gnomeregan runs in Ironforge, there are few level 70's, most players there are auction alts. I think I'd only go back for paladin training and for guild jaunts. Must remember to set my hearthstone here.

• Completed two quests at the same time, killing orcs and gathering scraps of wood and metal. This wasn't such a big deal, I was mainly picking baddies off one at a time using the two hander although a couple of times I got ads and had to flip to sword and board. This is such a valuble tactic, I am glad that during my levelling I experienced both retribution spec and protection spec (I'm still not sure how good holy spec is for fighting: there's a pally in my guild who seems to be able to self-heal while fighting but I'm not sure if he can do it whenever it suits due to his holy talents, I'll have to ask him). The only notable event was when I was fighting and saw a level 63 elite patrolling. He was coming closer and closer so I manouvered the fight out of his path. This is something I am more careful with in Outlands, being aware what is around me and being ready for adds (my old doom/quake circle straff skills come in useful).
• I think I've had more success with the two-hander than sword and board. Killing individuals quickly geurilla style means I can be in and out in 30 seconds where it might take a minute one-handed which makes it more likely for me to pick up a patrol. In terms of just white damage, the one hander does about 100 a second, the two-hander 500 every four seconds with maybe 250 yellow damage on top of that (these are the typical numbers I see, not crits, burst damage is for gamblers). The two hander is significantly more powerful. I am hoping I will get a much better one hander in a reward real soon but I would still only have seal of crusader and a sharpening/weightstone on it, judged seal is always Seal of Light for healing, nothing that would make it more powerful. I don't bother with sharpening or weightstones on a two-hander, they only add about 2dps out of 120 and I can't be bothered.
• I'm starting to be careful when meeting new mobs to find out how they fight. For example, I was fighting big armour plated guys with pet felhound things and naturally I went for the big guys first. It took me a couple of fights to realise that the felhounds were casting mana taps and gulping half my mana at a time. Attacking the felhounds first and stunning them to stop them casting the mana tap was much more effective as the big armoured guys were simple mele fare. Thinking now with hindsight engaged, I should switch to the combat log when approaching new enemies as that will say what's being thrown at me.
• The rewards from these quests were a very nice shield (2400 armour, mana dribble, stats etc) and enough experience to get to level 59. The quests here give about 10k XP compared to 5700 before so the levelling is much faster. I'm not sure why Blizzard have done this, I thought they wanted us to grind, unless they wanted lots of level 61's running around asap to make the rest of the 60's run out and buy the expansion pack?. The quest rewards are frequently a selection of nice pieces of armour with something for each class. I am grabbing anything that is plate and has a mana dribble as I suspect they are aimed at pallies. With devotion aura and the new shield my armour is now 7700. Nice. Reminds me, need another shield spike.
• I completed another quest, finishing off the servants of the boss monster I killed yesterday. I died once, I attacked a man working on a machine and the machine turned out to be a canon that started firing green blobs at me. I lasted a while but the surprise and the adds took their toll.
• I've made the local inn my hearthing home and am using my alt to do the buying and selling. His job this evening was to send my main a selection of healing and mana pots as these are being used up rapidly.
• Servers are down for maintenance this morning: I wish blizzard would give some warning and not waste my time trying to log on. They have downloaded a patch which loaded quite quickly for a change but doesn't do anything interesting.
• A commenter has asked my opinions on what stats I go for with my items. To be honest, the reason I haven't mentioned this much is because I haven't given it a lot of thought. At the lower levels these things seem to make a negligible difference and there hasn't been a great deal of choice so I haven't worried about it. For example, +25 defence makes 1% difference to your chance of blocking/dodging etc so if an enemy hits you a hundred times you'll dodge etc once more. The main stat I look for has always been +armour, after that I've preferred +strength, +stamina, +defence, +intellect and not worried too much about +agility. Now I'm at the higher levels items typically have +20 of a particular stat and I will need to pay more attention to these matters since a total of +100 is going to be more significant. My number one stat is still armour, I won't look at anything that isn't plate. After that I am grabbing all the mana per five second items (MP5 or what I call mana dribble) quest rewards I am offerred, four items giving 5 mana per 5 seconds means an extra 120 mana in 30 seconds which is the difference between bubbling and not bubbling. I try to be frugal with mana in a fight, I don't blast away with judgement spells, I only judge Seal of Command when the seal is about to time out. I may treat myself to one exorcism per demon and the Hammer of Wrath to finish them off. I use a few Flash of Lights between fights unless my health is really low when I'll holy light real quick in case I get attacked. I haven't been using the bandages so much recently, they are going out of vogue with me.

• Was on a quest for x/y/z kills and meantime looking for some guys book. Came across a hunter doing the same quests. He asked to group and my initial reaction was no (want that XP for myself) but we helped each other in a few fights and ultimately grouped. It is the first time I've played with a hunter, or rather the hunters bird, we would fight together while the hunter hid somewhere. We did ok, we got all the kills and helped each other out. It was the hunter who used thottbot to find the book, not me.
• When we finished the quest we parted but met each other again while getting the followup quest, the reward for which was a choice of necklaces with nice stats. We grouped again and killed a couple of bosses. As we made our exit on our mounts he agroed about three horsemen and was dismounted and got in a big fight. I dismounted and helped his bird and he just ran off, leaving the bird and me to deal with it. I died in the fight (tried bubble and hearth but hearthed too late). I guess this is a legitimate hunter tactic, leave the animal to take the flak while you scarper. Are ALL the other classes easy mode?
• After my corpse run I was heading back to quest turnin and found a group of beasts I am supposed to be culling for a quest. The other guy was nowhere to be seen and had gone quiet. Embarassingly I died in my post-death weakness. I exited the party, skulking away. Embarrasing defeat plucked from the jaws of victory. Up till then we had been doing well. He asked me at one point why I wasn't riding the pally mount so he knew his stuff, although he didn't know what blessing he wanted: I gave him Blessing of Salvation and he was happy (classes that hate mele love BoS).
• Went into a mine to kill 12 guys. No biggie. While in the mine found a boss and killed him too, a level 61 just for the challenge. I beat a warlock to the kill and she had to wait for the respawn. I offerred to help her but she said no which I can respect. Turned the quest in and got the follow up to, you guessed it, go back in and kill the boss. I left this to the next morning. This time someone else (level 66 farmer) beat me to the kill and I had to wait for the respawn. It only took a minute though, it was one of those times when you are fighting a named enemy who's body is already lying in the background. In the evenings Outland is a little congested, there are lots of people about doing the same quests, some ignore you when you're fighting for your life (or worse run through you), some race you to kills, some hastle you to join groups, you get all kinds. If an area is congested I'd rather find a quiet area than race people to kills.
• I did take an early laptop trip to Ironforge to do a clearout auction, selling off excess stock in the bank (still haven't found a bank in outlands: I have maybe six quests left to do in the area I am in, all yellow, no time to go off to the big city). I've decided to sell my runecloth stocks, I've got maybe 10 stacks, enough for 750 rep out of about 26000 needed to impress anyone.
• On to darnassus to finish off the annoying morrowgrain quest, every ten minutes having to plant some seeds and usually getting trash weeds. It turned into a repeatable quest for more weeds and darnassus rep but I abandoned it and vendored the last of my un'goro soil. Darnassus can kiss my arse.
• Life with the G11 keyboard:
  • Still like the feel, looks nice, makes computer look dead swish.
  • Hasn't broken yet
  • Sometimes I fire up WoW, boldly approach tough monster, ready to attack, press a macro button and nothing happens. Have to explicitly launch the profiler application before it will do it's thing (after I've killed the tough monster with 4, 7, 9 etc).
  • Sometimes the prerecorded macros seem a bit sluggish when they play back. Would be nice to try to optimise the delays between the key presses. I think there is an xml file somewhere I can tweek, the profiler doesn't let you edit the macros directly.
  • Sometimes I forget a macro is running and try to, for example, change aura while the seals are still being unleashed.
• Back to another quest in outlands. Kill an orc and get a talisman. Follow on quest? Kill more orcs, get 12 more talismans. As usual with these things I had to kill 30 to 40 orcs to get the 12. I did it all protection mode as I was getting tired of the two-handed style of looking death in the face fights interspersed with mana breaks and corpse runs. After a while the one-handed was boring and I was gathering pairs of level 61's to spice it up. I only stared death in the face a couple of times when I agroed a damn hellboar along with two other guys. Hellboars are just annoying and normally yield nothing more than a chipped tusk but they take valuble time to kill. I played this quest very cautiously, once I got agro I would back up to a place where I wouldn't attract any adds, safe play but boring. There must be a compromise somewhere between safe play and corpse runs. Playing like this I needed few mana breaks or pots and I didn't die so saving on my repair bills. I got a couple of green drops which I vendored for about 2g each. They may have sold to gullible 57's back in the old world who didn't realise how easy this stuff is to get here.
• I might try again to find a compromise between slow safe kills and quick risky kills, either with a slow one-hander and seal of righteousness or fast two-hander and seal of light. Certainly the level 40 days of fighting four or five equal level monsters are past, at the level I am now three is starting to be a stretch: they are tough, they take a long time to die and 16 damage from a shield spike is a pin prick.
• Things are looking good though. Real soon now I should be travelling in style...

• Went on a quest to attack four towers. Wandered about, found a tower and worked my way to the top. On the way were some PvP NPC's level 60's, they weren't too hard to kill protection mode but I got no loot or experience from killing them and they turned my pvp flag on. I got to the top and my torch thing I was supposed to use to set fire to the tower didn't work. I consulted the quest log and observed that I was supposed to be attacking four disk Throwers. These were nearby, they look like large medieval war machines. The quest describes them as north, east, wouth and west but in fact they are roughly in a row. There were enemies all around them but I was able pick them off one at a time in protection mode using my agro radius to pull (an old trick). I only had to kill two or three baddies for each thrower. I got agro a couple of times from adds but as I was already in protection mode this wasn't a problem. How I vaccilate, I'm back in the protection mode part of the cycle.
• Next quest was to take out an ogre boss in a house in a camp. I went into the camp, avoiding agro, into the house and most of the mobs were already dead. I met a tauren who was busy fighting so I ignored him (horde scum). I was assuming that the boss was already dead when I turned round and saw a enemy who was very much alive. I attacked him and as luck would have it he was the boss. He was a level 61 and he took some time to kill. He did some flashy knife waving thing every now and then which seemed to have no effect on me whatsoever (plate armour ftw).
• When I turned this quest in it pushed me over the edge to level 60 so I headed for Ironforge and the ram dealer in Dun Muroch. I picked the white one, his name is snowy. He's not an elekk or a mechanostrider but he'll do. He's fast and I've fitted myself with mithril spurs and the carrot-on-a-stick for optimum speed. He seems very good at eluding monsters. I tried running very close to a level 54 and was dismounted so he's not perfect but he easily outran some bats in EPL.

• I went to the paladin trainer where the were many things on offer for a level 60 but mainly next ranks. There were 'greater blessings' available which may be useful in raiding groups as they bless multiple group members of the same class for 15 minutes at a time.
• I had read that there is a ghostly blacksmith near scholomance that has nice plans available but you have to do some quests from some woman nearby to see him. I went up there and could only find the woman who invites you to raid scholomance itself. I googled and sure enough I am supposed to do scholomance to get a trinket to see the ghostly blacksmith. Forget it. BTW level 50 Sorrow Hill ghouls are now grey (no experience to be had killing them).
• Another pally guildie has 'Linken's Boomerang' which is one of the few ways there is for a pally to get a ranged attack. Deeply envious, this is now my latest project. I've googled it to trace back the long quest chain and I've started off from the wreckage of a boat in un'goro crater. I'm typing this while flying to Everlook, this quest seems to need lots of travel and I'm glad I'll be doing it on an epic mount.
• Was fiddling in the key bindings settings, looking to map the 'flip camera' function for some screenshots and narcissistic posturing when I noticed the key bindings for the action bars. It was very easy to map the # key to mount/unmount, semi-colon to cleanse and all the other odd things I use all the time. The icons on the action bar even show the mapped key, my ram icon has a # in the corner. Very handy.

• Happy Easter
• I followed through on the Linken's Boomerang quest saga. It went roughly like this (as I remember, thottbot for details):
  • Find wrecked boat in un'gogo
  • Find package near boat
  • Take to Linken
  • Visit JD wotsit in crystal cave
  • Fly to see donna wotsit in Winterspring
  • Find some guy in Feralas
  • Get guy some weed to make potion
  • Take potion to donna in Winterspring
  • Go to Gadgetzan
  • Drink potion
  • Talk to ghost guy
  • Go to Felwood to talk to some woman
  • Kill for 12 claws and a tree heart (?)
  • Take back to woman
  • Head for Tanaris
  • Summon water elemental thing and get him to make a magic widget
  • Take widget to JD in un'goro
  • Take widget to Linken
  • Take widget to Fire Plume Ridge and use it to kill level 56 elite fire elemental
  • Take thingy from fire elementals cave to linken
  • Receive a sword to vendor and Linken's Boomeerang
• This lot took me about three hours, most of it in transit. It wasn't very hard although I did get the coords of the guy in Feralas from thott and I installed the Cartographer add-in to use the coords. I already knew Donna in Winterspring from my questing there.
• By far the hardest part was killing the fire elemental on fire plume ridge. When I got there a level 70 was already fighting with it so I helped him kill it. We were both in the elementals cave being thrown around, the elemental had its attention on the 70 so I was able to use my widget to take away it's protection aura. We killed it, I got the thingy from a little box in the cave and took it to Linken. This wasn't enough I was supposed to have killed the thing myself, the level 70 had tagged the kill. Bugger.
• Went back and attempted to solo it. The fire elemental wouldn't let me in the cave, he threw me off the mountain. I think I found my way back to him and managed to get myself in a position outside the cave with my back to the wall so he couldn't throw me down the mountain but I couldn't out-tank it (damn fire resistance) and I died.
• On the corpse run back I got a resurrect invite. The level 70 (shaman if I recall) was still around and we grouped to try it again. The shaman wanted me to tank, I told him my fire resistance was no good so he said 'heal yourself' or something illuminative of that nature. We tried it, the fire thing threw me off the mountain and I plunged to my death (bubble on cooldown).
• Messed around finding my corpse and we tried again. I found my place with my back to the wall and tried tanking. Ultimately I had to bubble and the monster turned it's attention to the level 70. The monster kicked the 70 all down the hill, I couldn't heal him because I couldn't get line of sight. He died but he did get the things health down to about 40%. When the monster headed back for his cave he saw me and attacked. While I had picked up agro from a couple of other fire elementals I was determined to kill this thing. I didn't worry about tanking I just grabbed the two hander and went kamikazi and the thing died just before me. I used the spirit healer, thanked the level 70 and grabbed my boomerang. The level 70 said he had soloed it at level 60 so I'm not sure why he was struggling at level 70.
• I took my new boomerang and tried it out on a nearby Fen thingy. The fen thing attacked me and then I remembered my armour was greatly reduced from using the spirit healer. Argh, run like hell. Dick.
• On my way back to outlands a guildie was looking for a group for Zul'Farak and I fancied having a go. The group consisted of me, a rogue guildie, a druid, another paladin guildie and someone else, I can't remember what. They were all in their forties. We started off well, the rogue would creep up on two or three mobs, sap one, stun another and attack the third (something like that). Once I understood the pattern I would attack the remaining enemy (since nobody was saying what was going on in chat). We hadn't got far when the druid (not a guildie, probably never will be) started begging for money and asking to roll need. We got as far as a boss who spawns elite basilisks and there we wiped a few times. I could not handle three or more basilisks at a time. Admittedly, on the first wipe my inventory was full and I couldn't equip my shield (tip: if you ever invite me on a raid, ALWAYS remind me to check my inventory). The druid then had to leave for an unexplained reason and the group dissolved.
• Back to Outlands. Mopped up a quest involving crust-bursters and got a nice ring for my troubles.
• Morning and decided to tackle a quest to take out three fel canons. This was a challenge, the canon are in a big camp and heavily guarded. I died three times I think, the thing I learned here was that Blessing of protection is no use against fire damage. Still I completed this quest and was happy, it was a challenging quest.
• The follow-on quest was to tackle the next camp, kill a boss, get his key, use it on a portal. I died a few more times on this as the camp was heavily guarded but I did it in the end, the final fight at the portal was epic, add after add, four in total and I only prevailed because my mana pot cooldown expired just in time. I actually managed to get out of the camp alive, I didn't let my guard down for once. It was only here that I realised that I had actually done it, a camp quest, which back in STV I wouldn't even have tried. I did it entirely protection spec, surviving fights with three or four monsters. I cannot understand how a paladin could do it any other way. Incidentally, if there was one cheat I did here it was to scout out the camp in ghost form to find out where the key was supposed to go (or is this a legitimate tactic?).
• I followed a quest to Zangermarch, found a little town and that is where I am berthed now.
• My alt found a nice one-handed mace in the auctions, a green but 47dps, 2.5 second swing. He made a bid and won the auction for 10g. This is my quest for a compromise between slow/safe and quick/risky kills. I've tried it but only on the laptop and that wasn't a good fight, the laptop is no good for fighting in outland. I didn't die, I had to run away from an add but I was lucky because it was a fishy thing so I could run ashore and thumb my nose at it. The mace did kill the level 60 thing and it was reasonably quick with Judgement of Crusader and Seal of Righteousness.
• I was going through my action bar looking for somewhere to put this mace and found the lay-on-hands icon: argh, forgotten all about this, haven't used it for ages. So many things to remember...
• I found out why my fellow guildies haven't progressed from level 60 in nearly a week: to get to level 61 requires 490,000 XP, nearly double what it did to get to 60. I don't doubt that they will do it anytime now.

An impromptu extra issue as I have ten minutes spare to knock one out and it'll save me having to remember all this stuff.

• I was in Zangamarsh and saw a sign to Shattrath City so I decided to follow it. Zangarmarsh itself is a bit like night elf land, fairyish and irritating. There are weird tall plant things walking around. I was tempted to have a go at a level 61 elite but decided it wasn't a rare spawn and wouldn't be worth dying for. Shattrath was only two minutes down the road (on epic mount that is) and was very different to the other citys. I found it very disorientating in its layout, I'm not looking forward to staying there. I found portals back to the old cities and the bank and a flight path on a different route to Honor Hold but no flight back to Honor Hold or an inn where I could hearth to. All the other players were on epics or flying mounts so I was glad to be travelling in some style. I don't think I like Shattrath, Ironforge is still my preferred residence.
• I found one quest there and it was very dull. I had to follow a voidwalker around while he spouted twaddle about the history of the city. I got 5000 XP from it.
• Ultimately I got no new quests in the area and couldn't find a place to hearth so decided to return to Honor Hold and finish the quests there. I hearthed back.
• I had a quest that involved killing Orcs and then killing their ghosts or something. First problem was finding the orcs since the quest gave no compass bearings or other information about where they were apart from the place name. I found some orcs and killed a few but the ghost widget didn't work. I jumped down into the 'path of glory' to see if it was the place and found myself deep in enemy territory. I tried rushing out on snowy but was dismounted and attacked by five or six level 63's. I didn't fight, just died with dignity and used the spirit healer. After paying 4g for repairs I googled for the location of the orcs, then waited patiently for the ten minute debuff to expire.
• Killing the orcs went quite smoothly. I used my new mace and I am very pleased with it: judging Seal of Crusader then using Seal of Righteousness it kills level 61's in about half a minute and leaves me with maybe 75% health left so a flash of light and I'm ready for the next fight, I needed few health/mana breaks. I could do an orc and his ghost in quick succession with few problems. On occasions where I got adds I would switch maces to the fast one-hander and judgement of light/seal of crusader, using the slow one-handed mace was not good with the seal of light but maces can be swapped instantly.
• Linken's boomerang proved to be worth the time spent getting it, I could use it to pull an orc to the do-dah that created the orcs ghosts. However did I do without it?
• On the way to the orc camp I found another easy quest, gathering 30 pieces of a crashed zeppelin. The monsters nearby were only level 58's and my new mace handled them easily. The reward was yet another fine new piece of armour, some leggings with 700 armour points.
• There was a follow-on from this, killing voidwalkers to gather 10 voidwalker essences and again my new mace was great, killing level 61-62 voidwalkers no problems at all. Reward for this was a trinket that seems to do much the same as Blessing of Salvation but it was a choice between this and another trinket that didn't look useful and both had the same vendor value (the auctioneer addon is good when none of the quest rewards are useful and you just want the one that will vendor for the most cash).
• Saw a player getting ganked by a fel reaver, an enormous robot thing that roams around these parts. The player tried some ice cube thing to protect himself but once this melted the big robot just stamped on him. Squish.
• I'm still finding new quests around Honor Hold so haven't finished here yet and that's excluding group quests that are starting to pop up, one of them in the 'ramparts' dungeon.
• My bags are becoming full of a selection of pieces of armour, weapons and trinkets. There isn't vast amounts of vendor trash to fill them so this is only a problem if I go raiding in the old world (lowbieland: no that's cruel).

• The new blacksmithing plans in Outlands have proved irresistable and I have decided to take my blacksmithing off haitus and try to get it up to level 300. After the disillusionment of buying masses of mithril to go through the Mithril Order quests and then finding there was no market for anything I was only using the blacksmithing to make Dense Sharpening Stones and Dense Weight Stones to add to my dps (I like these, I do find them useful). Ultimately blacksmithing in Outlands leads to the ability to make nice epic weapons, although you do have to raid dungeons to get the materials (the materials are bind-on-pickup and drop from end bosses) so I'm not sure if I will ever get to make them or if I would just settle for the epic weapons these bosses drop or the epic weapons I would buy in order to tackle the dungeons. In the meantime it is something I can dabble in as a sideline as long as I accept that it will never be profitable and I make sure I have other ways of generating the cash for a flying mount (see someone landing at a mail box, checking their mail, then taking off again or see a flying mount hovering and you just have to have one).
• To this end I decided to farm thorium. My Blacksmithing was at 269 and by making a few pairs of mithril spurs I squeezed another level out. Mithril spurs were ridiculously cheap in the Auction House so these are sitting in the bank until I upgrade my boots. I bought the plans for Thorium Bracers as these only need 12 thorium bars each along with a handful of blue power crystals from un'goro which I bought in auction to save the hassle of going there, it wasn't very expensive.
• From Honor Hold, the quickest route to somewhere with Thorium was back through the Dark Portal to the Blasted Lands so I went there. I ran around for a while grabbing any small thorium veins I could find (small thorium veins are good for maybe two bars).
• I found an ogre camp in the northwest that I once visited with the guild. There was thorium ore round the back and I found that at level 60 I can pretty much walk straight past the level 45 ogres, they just ignore me. There were two level 54 things among the ogres that did have a go but they were easily dispatched. In the middle of the camp was a large building and when I was there with the guild they told me not to go in so now with only myself to kill with stupid curiosity I went in. There were more level 45 ogres and a level 58 elite. I found I could kill all the 45's one at a time without agroing anything else in the room which was surprising as it wasn't a big place. I found a treasure chest and got a green. Finally I was alone with the big guy so I attacked him. He didn't like this and my health was plummeting fast so I just ran for it.
• Bored with blasted lands I wanted to go somewhere with Rich Thorium Veins, I like these as they are good for five bars each. I flew up to Eastern Plaguelands and tried to combine thorium farming with questing. I didn't find a vast amount of thorium there and I got engrossed in the questing.
• First quest was to kill a big troll in a crypt. This wasn't a big challenge, all the monsters were less than level 55 and these are very easy to kill. In the crypt I found a scroll for another quest to kill some guy and release his soul. I was supposed to search the whole Eastern Plaguelands for him so of course I googled it and he was in a camp up in the north east. I went into this camp and found two annoying types of troll: scouts who, when agroed would run off and rouse more mobs and cannibals who kept turning me into a frog. I had one epic fight when I accidently agroed two cannibals and a scout and the cannibals took turns to turn me into a frog. They also had health drain things and sucked my health for themselves. This fight went on for ages and the frog part is totally annoying as you just cannot control yourself.
• My target was wandering around in the middle of the camp. Since he was undead I could pull him with exorcism so I waited till he was close, with as few monsters nearby as possible, then I zapped him. He came running. Unfortunately the only mob near him was a scout who ran and alerted about five more mobs, including more damned cannibals. I tried running but died.
• Back again I took more time. Using the wonderful Linken's Boomerang I made sure to take out all the (non-undead) scouts and cannibals surgically before attempting the big guy. I finally pulled him with exorcism and he was an easy kill. Got his key and visited his grave for a couple of vendorable goodies. The XP rewards were about 5000, disappointing now I am used to 10k Outlands quests. Hearth back to outlands for a break.
• I made some Thorium Bracers and mailed them to my alt for auction. He put them up for knockdown prices (1g bid, 1g90 buyout) and someone has already bid for all four pairs (I think they are good for disenchanting but my alt is way too low level to do it).
• Honor hold and a quick farming trip on the laptop. Back to Blasted Lands, ran around some more, where else to get thorium, since EPL wasn't very good? Decided on Burning Steppes, a place I hadn't been to much but it was not too far away and high enough level to have lots of thorium. I flew to Lakeshire and ran up to Burning Steppes where I ran around on snowy picking up thorium. Even on the laptop this was straightforward, occasionally I would raise enough agro to be dismounted by two or three mobs but I had the shield and mace equipped all the time so I could fight my way out. Snowy is very useful for farming, I can cover large distances very quickly, a couple of laps of an area are not too boring.
• Another break and back to Honor Hold again. This time I decide to sort out the flight paths from Honor Hold where I am berthed for my questing to Shattrath City where I can use the portals to get to the major cities in the old world. Best thing about this plan is I can go straight to Darnassus and farm in Kalimdor without needing the damn boat. I found out from the internet where the flight paths are, I had to visit two places as in one of them I would have to change birds to complete my journey. The flight paths didn't take long to find, I can't remember the names right now so you'll have to google if you are interested. One of them was in a draenae town along the right side of the road to Zangarmarsh (look for a town) and the other was on top of a giant mushroom in Zangamarsh itself (look for a giant mushroom). Both these towns had masses of quests available but I'd still prefer to finish Honor Hold first.
• Back in Shattrath I used the portal to Darnassus and then flew to my favourite farming place, Winterspring. I ran around here for an hour or so. I got as far as tackling some of the level 60 elite giants down in the south and these were quite easy, needing maybe a stun/heal to keep me going. I didn't spend too much time on the giants, I didn't have a quest, the drops were mediocre and some other guys came along and did the run-past-someone-fighting-and-exploit-the-distraction thing which annoyed me so I left them to it.
• By now I was bored with farming and decided to have the evening off.
• 1:30am more farming. This was a nice session, quite lucrative, found many thorium veins. It was all in Winterspring and in a way I enjoyed it, snowy is fast, finding thorium is satisfying, there were few other people around to annoy me.
• Morning and more farming. This wasn't so successful, others had been up earlier than me. I made about 10 bars in half an hour.
• I now had a lot of thorium. I had mined 60 or so and I bought about 40 in auction but only where I could find real bargains: I don't want to buy my way to level 300, it's a waste of money. Using the thorium and the power crystals I made Thorium Bracers till the plans turned yellow. I've mailed the bracers to the alt and at the time of typing they are still in the mail.
• It's weird now running around the old world like this. On the whole snowy is fast enough to avoid most things and I haven't been killing much (haven't even used up all my rest bonus for over a day) but when I need to I can kill anything that isn't elite quite easily. My new slow one-handed mace can kill most things in 30 seconds (the time for a seal to expire). Even if the seal expires, a judgement of righteousness and a hammer of wrath is usually curtains. Have I mentioned that with devotion aura and the shield my armour is now 8000? On occasions in Winterspring I have been dismounted by three level 59-60 tigers and I can just slug it out with the slow mace, judged seal of light and seal of crusader I don't even need to switch to the fast mace for the extra healing. For these fights I don't really have to try, I don't bother to put a blessing up for example and I can do it comfortably on the laptop in bed. Farming is ok for some relaxation, Outlands is where the challenges are. I'm getting a bit overdue for some embarrasing deaths. These will probably be at times when more people are around to witness them.
• My guildies are pulling away in the levelling stakes. I don't mind, especially if I end up weilding epic's I've made with my own hands: come to think of it blue weapons may suffice, if my green mace is so good, think what a blue would do.

• This should be a pretty short installment since all I've done is farm thorium in Winterspring. This has involved doing circuits of the area looking for rich thorium veins, in fact any kind of mineral veins it's all good stuff. I've spotted the pattern now: the Rich veins are all in monster camps so it's a matter of running into each camp and checking the minimap for ore. The veins can pop up in a few different places in each camp but there is only ever one vein there at a time so once a vein is grabbed from one camp I move on to the next. Small thorium veins are dotted around the countryside but they only give two lumps of ore so are only a minor success. The Rich veins are always good to find, especially when they yield gems: my gem stocks are glinting nicely.
• I did take the time to pick up the quest that involves killing elite giants down the south to get crystals. This went very easily, the giants may be tagged 'elite' but are maybe equivalent to a level 62 or 63. The quest reward was a necklace that is supposed to allow me to gather something from an unspecified type of monster and return these things for a repeat quest. However I was unable to equip the chain. Thinking about it now, I did pick up some odd quest item from an owlbeast so maybe I don't need to wear the chain? My guess is that if I get 1000 of these drops I can impress the timbermaws enough to sell me plans to make something that was once very impressive but is now the equivalent of Outlands vendor trash. Seems a shame to see all these old timesinks that nobody is going to bother with any more (especially not me, he says while farming 300 thorium bars).
• I was trying to take a shortcut around a very steep hill and eventually accepted that I wasn't going to make it and decided to drop. I hit a ledge half way down and it took half my health but then I bubbled and fell the rest of the way. I hit the ground very hard but the bubble did it's job. I still don't like falling, it feels very real to me, it induces the same kind of panic I would imagine I would get if I did fall off a cliff. Anyway, armed with the bubble I think I've found a new death sport minigame. How late dare I bubble?
• There was a pair of players fighting the giants, a level 55 mage and a 60+ paladin. Somehow the paladin managed to die and the mage was looking sad so I offered to res the paladin. The mage was very grateful, kept thanking me. That mage sure missed his buddy but I suppose he was a level 55 surrounded by lvl 60 elites.
• I got enough thorium to get the plans for Imperial Plate Bracers from the rude guy in Gadgetzan and then make six pairs, raising my skill to 283. The bracers use 12 thorium bars which would cost 6g at the cheapest auction house prices but the bracers are selling for 2g as other blacksmiths are also dumping them to level up. I couldn't bring myself to buy loads of thorium, even at a bargain price like 10g a stack. I need over 264 bars (not sure when bracers will turn yellow) so that's either 130g or about another seven hours of farming at 40 bars/hour. It's a good thing I am enjoying the farming, it feels good whenever I spot a rich thorium vein. Also seven hours is only two days play
• Morning and another farming run. In 45 minutes I found 29 lumps of thorium. While doing it I had a good chat with the guild master who happened to be online. I was able to kill three lvl 59-60 tigers I agroed while chatting. Those things are pussycats.
• Incidently, on top of the giant mushroom I found someone who sells books that teach level 375 first aid. I grabbed three for 4g each, read one and flogged the other two on the auction house for 7g each. I'm not sure of the player level requirements for this training but the new bandages need netherweave which only drops in Outlands.

• Lets see how far I can stretch the subject of Thorium Farming in Winterspring. I had to go out for the evening so I missed a big chunk. I had a nocturnal session and at the end of that I was able to create six pairs of Imperial Plate Bracers and bring my blacksmith skill up to 289. I vendored the bracers for 1g05 each: since they were over the magic 1g mark and since the thorium was free I was happy pocketing the 6g36, it means I'm levelling up my blacksmithing and making a profit. The challenge to me with this project is to get my blacksmithing skill to 300 without it costing me anything but time.
• I did one quest that involved helping a nice lady light some torches in owlbeast caves and killing any nasty owlbeasts that were in the way. I have to go to Darnassus to get the quest reward so that can wait. This quest was made easier because a hunter was there grinding on the owlbeasts: I am still enjoying the thorium farming but I couldn't stand grinding owlbeasts in the early hours of the morning.
• By taking the trouble to read the repeatable quest blurb I found out the point of the chain I got from killing the elite giants. If I have this in my inventory I can collect thingies dropped by various beasts. If I collect three thingies I can trade them in for various powerups depending on the type of beast: 30 minute +intellect, 60 seconds +dodge etc. Since I never use these temporary buffs I'm not sure I'll bother and I certainly won't grind owlbeasts for them.
• Spent some time venturing into a yeti cave in the hope there would be something interesting in there, an elite or a treasure chest. All I got was about six thorium for which I had to kill many yeti. It wasn't a good use of my time.
• Despite the Yeti and Owlbeast slaughter my rest bonus marker is off the end of the experience bar so I am lagging far behind in player levelling but right now I care more about levelling my blacksmith skill. With rest bonus I get about 500 XP a kill in Winterspring and I would need 180 kills to get to level 61. At 30 seconds a kill that's six hours. I really need to be questing in Outlands to level up quickly.
• My bags are purpetually full. I have a total of over 200 lumps of dense stone I have collected as a sideproduct of the thorium farming, five stacks in my bags alone, bank full again. Dense stone doesn't auction for much but then again I don't want to vendor it. I could make a big batch of sharpening stones or weight stones and see if these sell. As soon as I get to blacksmithing 300 I plan on using Fel Weightstones and the dense stone will become as useless as rough and coarse stone did before it. AHA! Now I remember the Darkmoon Faire is in town and one of the quests there is for dense grinding stones!
• A 35 minute morning session, another 22 lumps of thorium, another two pairs of Imperial Plate Bracers and blacksmithing skill stands at 291. The Imperial Plate Bracer plans are now yellow meaning I need to make two pairs to go up one skill level. I think this works out as:

  12*4*2 Thorium for eight pairs of Imperial Plate Bracers = 4 skill points
  20 Thorium for the plans for Imperial Plate Boots
  18 * 5 Thorium for five pairs of Imperial Plate Boots = 5 skill points
  Total = 206 Bars and 300 skill points.
  

  n.b. TBC reduced the amount of thorium to make the Imperial Plate set but many of the reference sites online (e.g. WoWWiki) have not been updated. I could make Imperial Plate Helms instead of boots as these need star rubies which I have in stock. Helms may auction better than boots because of the slightly higher material cost and because the helms look quite cool. If I farm 100 more bars then I can buy the thorium for the helms and sell them for about 10g each to cover the cost of making them. Farming 100 bars will take me about 2.5 hours so I may be there by tomorrow.
• What's my alt been up to? Not much, I haven't levelled him at all (can't be bothered) he is simply working the auctions and selling greens for the main. He is purpetually on the lookout for the highly lucrative plans for steel weapon chains and he speculates in blue weapons (the usuals: Wirt's third leg, Mug'o'hurt, Hanzo sword, I think I understand the market and they sell reasonably easily). For example, he grabbed a Hanzo sword in the early hours for 39g and is selling it for 59g. I don't have the patience to run lots and lots of auctions for small profits, I'd rather have a few big auctions going. Sometimes he does a batch of disenchanting, he buys 5g worth of greens, disenchants them and sells them for about 15g. It's easy money but it's tedious buying the weapons/armour and disenchanting them which is why I don't do it more often, I'd rather be riding Snowy.
• Reader/commenter Urban sent me a link to a very comprehensive paladin guide here. I've also put it on the tips page. It makes an interesting point about all the free healing and mana to be gained by having two paladins judge Light and Wisdom on a boss. Paladins have lots of healing tricks that don't make it to the healing meters, leaving the priests to take all the glory