Tuesday, August 28, 2018

First Level 120 Done. Alliance Character Underway

I managed to get my main to 120 a week ago today.  In general, I've found the leveling process in Battle for Azeroth so far to be totally enjoyable.  The stories are engaging and the zones are well thought out.  There are plenty of side quests to add flavor and keep things interesting and also provide the opportunity to mix up the leveling paths a bit.

My total time to 120 for Joar, who is almost always my first toon out of the gate, was 20 hours and 27 minutes.  Note that for my first toon, I'm always reading all the quest text, and exploring and so it is never an attempt at a fast pace to max level.  That being said, this was my fastest time for the first toon leveling since I've been tracking it, which started with Cataclysm.  My previous shortest had actually been Warlords of Draenor which clocked in at 24 hours and 30 minutes.  The longest was actually Cataclysm which I started with my paladin on and took a whopping 35 hours (which may explain why I've never started with the paladin again!)

I've managed to unlock world quests, finish up the Quest and Explorer achievement for both zones and am grinding out daily emissaries to keep unlocking portions of the War Campaign and the remaining Pathfinder achievements.  Gearing up has been relatively slow, just like it always is at the start of an expansion.  I'm geared enough for heroics now, so that should help, although I'm only doing one or two a day.

I wish there were more...or any, really...weapons available from world quests because that would definitely help my gearing process.

For my second toon, I decided to break with tradition and go with one of my alliance toons, so my Night Elf Hunter has started the journey through Drustvar.  I want to maintain some momentum on the Horde side so I think what I'm going to do is finish one zone on the Alliance hunter, then do one on the Horde hunter...etc etc until all three are done.

My plan will continue to be to focus on gearing and world quests on the main 5 Horde toons - warlock hunter, death knight, paladin and druid.

I've also started working on professions on Joar, although not making much progress there.  I've gotten a few points out of the way in both enchanting and tailoring, although I have a long ways to go on both.  It looks like there are a decent number of recipes locked behind reputation, so that'll hold those up a bit.

Cheers,

Joar


Friday, August 10, 2018

Preparing for Battle for Azeroth - Altoholic Edition

So the Joar army is preparing to embark on the Battle for Azeroth next week (didn't we just battle for Azeroth?)  and preparations are under way.  It looks like I will finish up one short on the paragon mount grind, having gotten only 2 of the 3 Army of the Light mounts, but all the rest.  I consider that a raving success!

So here are the steps that I've taken as part of my preparation:


  • Re-sort character screens into planned leveling order (see previous blog post for planned order)
  • Clear quest logs (it feels odd deleting all the Legion profession quests, but I really don't need them)
  • Clean out bags - legendaries to void storage, artifacts to bank, everything else either sell or bank - basically all my Legion cloth I'm selling now but ore and herbs I'm banking for sale later on.  Enchanting mats are getting sold now.
  • Bandages are a thing of the past, so we won't be stocking up on those.  I also usually wait to buy food until the new zones because you can usually get better food in the new areas.
  • Record current /played time for each character to use for tracking time to level 110-120 (this is kind of interesting in that I have some that are as little as 10 hours for new demon hunters that were leveling only, to some that are over 100 days.
  • Record starting current gold level on each server / faction (okay, this is a weird thing that I do where I like to track how much gold I make on each expansion - totally not something that normal people would need to bother with). 
  • The first five toons that I will level are already fully gemmed and enchanted as a matter of normal course.  Everyone else will wait for new enchants and gems.
  • Get everyone to Dalaran.
Once the expansion launches, I'll actually log in to every single toon to get their rested xp building as well so they've got full bars once I start, for everyone but toon #1!

So that's it for preparation.

Legion seems to have been a decent leveling success.  I managed to get 5 more toons all the way from start to max level bringing me to a grand total of 33.  I've continued the practice of the last few expansions of having a core set of 5 toons that ran most of the current content.  And from there, we'll see what Battle for Azeroth brings! 

Cheers!

Joar


Guild Wars 2 and Elder Scrolls Online Updates

I continue to balance my playing time between Elder Scrolls Online and Guild Wars 2.  I finished running my Reaper through the new Guild War...