Progress on Allied Race Leveling

So it's been a while since I've done any kind of meaningful update.  Most of what I've been focused on lately has been grinding out medals on Joar so I can get one of the mounts from Arathi / Darkshore stuff.  But besides that, it's really been all about leveling my allied race toons.  I've made quite a bit of progress since my last update:

Nightborne Priest - 86 -> 110
Void Elf Monk - 51 -> 77
Highmountain Tauren Warrior - 37 -> 54
Mag'har Orc Hunter - 23 -> 40
Dark Iron Dwarf Warlock - 20 -> 41
Zandalari Troll Druid - 20 -> 41
Kul Tiran Shaman  41

The total leveling time on my Nightborne Priest was about 2 days and 13 hours, which isn't great, but a substantial chunk of that happened before the current leveling nerfs.

My plan is to really stay focused on these guys until the the next patch releases and I have to go back to grinding for flying.

That's really it, sadly.

Cheers,

Joar

Allied Race Update

So I feel like I need to write something, but then I struggle with what to talk about.  Things have been relatively quiet on the gaming front.  I took a week away with the family for spring break, so there was no gaming at all for that period of time.  With the Darkmoon Faire in town this week, I grabbed those extra 5 points for each of my professions.  At some point I'll need to buckle down and drive the rest of them over the finish line, but for now I'm content with my 5 points a month.

Mostly, I've been working on leveling my allied race toons.  My Nightborne has gotten all the way to 101 and will be starting on the Legion content soon.

My next highest is my Void Elf, who is sitting at level 60 and will be heading to Borean Tundra soon (although I may do another level or two in classic zones first).  You can see where the rest of the group stands on the main page of the blog.

So we're making good progress on all the allied race folks.

The Draenor content went really quickly.  I took the short cut to Gorgrond from Timeless Isle, quickly set up my garrison, then basically went back to Gorgrond.  The quests and bonus objectives there took me all the way from 91 to 101 in a fairly short period of time.

I'm going to see how well it works to stay in the Legion zones until 111 or 112 and will report back next time.

Cheers,

Joar

A Switch To Allied Races

So I've decided to take a break from slamming toons through the 110-120 process, at least until flying is released in another couple of months.  Instead, I'm going to go back on focus on my allied race toons.

I made a fair amount of progress on them before Battle for Azeroth dropped.  Here is where they currently all stand.

Lightforged Draenei - 110
Nightborne Priest - 86
Void Elf Monk - 51
Highmountain Tauren Warrior - 37
Mag'har Orc Hunter - 23
Dark Iron Dwarf Warlock - 20
Zandalari Troll Druid - 20

Oh, and can I just say how much I love the old Zandalari balance druid form.

So you'll notice the lack of Kul Tirans on the list.  Well, about that.  I was chugging happily along assuming that I'd done everything I needed to in order to unlock the Kul Tirans.  I had the Kul Tiras Loremaster achievement, was Exalted with Proudmoore.  So imagine my surprise on patch day when there is no quest to unlock them for me.

Turns out, that while I had achieved Loremaster of Kul Tiras by completed each zone across several different toons, you have to complete the entire thing on a single toon in order to unlock another questline that has to also be completed in order to unlock the Kul Tirans.  I was only short by 4 portions of the Stormsong story line in order to finish it up on my main alliance toon, but now I'm working through the Pride of Kul Tiras quest line, which so far has been pretty decent.

In any case, once I finish up the process of of unlocking the Kul Tirans, my plan is to work on leveling my alliance race toons for a while until flying comes out.

I also did the Mimiron questline and unlocked all the various versions of Hati, which was pretty interesting.  Nice to have him back.

Cheers,

Joar

February Update

So I went through a few weeks where I was diligently hitting the world boss on each max level toon, working through both the Arathi and Darkshore Warfronts on the toons that were able to on each toon in the interest of gearing those toons up, and I made some decent progress over those weeks across all of my max level toons.

I do have trouble figuring out why I'm bothering.  I'm assuming there will be the normal late stage gear pinata at some point in the expansion that will let me quickly catch everyone up with substantially less work. 

I finished up the Battle for Dazar'alor raid on both an Alliance toon and a Horde toon and have caught up on the War Campaign on both sides.  It was a bit disappointing that the final Horde quest in the chain clearly had some serious bug issues.  It's probably only an issue when a lot of people are doing it at the same time, so it's possible they decided they just didn't care.

For any of you that might be getting stuck on that quest, what finally worked for me was hitting /reload as soon as Baine started his second piece of dialog. 

I've also been leveling the rogue.  I wasn't finding subtlety nearly as fun in this expansion as I did in Legion.  I tried Assassination for a while before finally settling on Outlaw.  Since my rogue is also my engineer, I should probably just do more PvP so that I have more marks for recipes later on, but so far I'm just doing the normal leveling thing.

Next up, after the rogue hits max level, will be the druid on the alliance side.  Plan is to level him as feral, but we'll see how that goes.

Cheers,

Joar

Back to Gearing a Bit

So I've been feeling like I need to slow down the breakneck leveling pace, so I've been going back to working on professions a little bit as well as focusing on gearing up some of my characters a little bit more.

I know have everyone geared up enough that they're at least able to do the Arathi Warfront, and it really only seems to take a couple of weeks of that to get to the point of being able to do Darkshore.

I managed to get both Tailoring and Cooking to 150, and all the other professions are at least started so they can cycle through the Darkmoon Faire quests each month.  Enchanting, leatherworking and herbalism are all at 110, so they're the next closest.

I also ran the first LFR wing of the new raid, which I really enjoyed.  Did it both from the alliance and horde side, which was kind of interesting.

I have been making decent progress on the alliance paladin, who is currently sitting at level 116.  I started leveling him as prot, but was finding that mobs were dying much too slowly, so have switched back to ret, at least for now.  After this guy is done, the Horde rogue will be up next.

Cheers,

Joar

A Real Life Pause in Leveling

I've had several very busy real life weeks that have seriously cut into my normal leveling time.  So I've made very little progress since my year-end update.  I did manage to get that 11th toon to 120, and toon #12, my Horde Goblin Warrior, is sitting at 117.  So I guess that's some progress.

I also did the latest phase of the war campaign on both the Horde and the Alliance.  It was something to do, but not particularly inspiring.  At least for me.

I spent a week out of town for work in New York City, which was fun, and a week out of town for work in Miami (in a windowless conference room, yay), but at least had dinner on the beach one evening.  So cheers for fresh air.

In NY, I had some of the most amazing sushi.  I'm not normally one to share pictures of food, but holy crap, you have to see this.

Also, the hotel, which was decorated for Christmas still, was pretty amazing.

In Miami, while I didn't actually get outside hardly at all, the view from my room was pretty cool (although no balcony and the window didn't open at all).

So, that's what's been keeping me from leveling, and blogging.  And work.  Lot's of work.

Looking forward to LFR on the new raid opening next week.  The eldest Joarling tells me the fights are pretty awesome.

Cheers,

Joar

2018 Year In Review

I used to do these year in review posts every year, and just noticed I haven't done one since 2015.  Going back and looking at my calendar, I think it's actually because I was off skiing with the family that past two years, so I suppose that's a reasonable reason to miss it.

But some IRL work stuff has me stuck this year, so at least we'll get a year in review blog post out of it!

2018 has been a pretty productive year from a leveling standpoint.  When last year finished up, I had just finished getting my 26th toon to level 110.  I ended up doing 7 more over the course of the rest of 2018 before Battle for Azeroth came out.  I also managed to finish up all the professions for Legion in 2018 as well since I had put that off longer than I ever had before.

There doesn't seem to be quite as much to do on quite as many toons at end game this time around, so I'm finding that has given me more time for leveling alts in Battle for Azeroth.  I have managed to get 10 different alts to level 120, and the 11th is about half way there.  For comparison purposes, at this same point in Legion, I only had 7 alts done, so we're running pretty far ahead of the normal pace.

I do need to go back and spend some time working through the professions.  I've been collecting a fair amount of materials as I've been leveling.  Just need to go back and knock a few more out.

That's really the update.  Once the current toon (Alliance death knight) is done, it'll be back to the Horde side with my goblin warrior.

Cheers,

Joar

Pre 8.1 Leveling Update and Plans

So I managed to finish toons #8 and #9 since my last blog update.  The mage was fine right up until the last 2 levels or so where the scaling seemed to be get a bit off, my ice shield turned to paper, and the last two levels became a constant corpse run.

Got through it though.  What only kills you a dozen times or so makes you stronger.  I guess.

Also started on the plan of switching between Alliance and Horde, so went back and did my alliance warlock, with War Mode on, just for something completely different.  Only got killed by the Horde twice during the entire 110-120 leveling process.

That's just sad, Hordies.  Sad.

It didn't really seem to speed up the time significantly at all.  I also leveled as Demonology, also just to change things up a bit, and did some battlegrounds since I was in PvP mode.  So the mage was 14 hours and 15 minutes played, and the alliance warlock was 16 hours and 2 minutes. 

Keep in mind, I do a lot of screwing around while leveling so these are intended to be casual times, not leveling speed records.

I'm back to Horde side now and working on the monk.  Not sure I'm liking leveling as Windwalker this time around, so I've been switching back and forth to Brewmaster on and off.  He's sitting at 114 now and just starting on Nazmir, so we'll see how things go as he gets closer to 117/118.

I'm looking forward to checking out the new content in 8.1 once it drops.  I think pretty much all of it should be available to me right away.  I realized as I was looking things over that I didn't have a Dwarf that was exalted with Ironforge or a Blood Elf that was Exalted with Silvermoon, so I've grabbed some tabards and I've been running a few dungeons, both to gear those toons up and to rectify that so I can hopefully grab those heritage armor sets sometime soon after they're available.

My primary alliance character is also pretty close to having all the key alliance reps at Exalted.  So should be able to grab my extra horses soon, along with the Dark Iron Dwarf allied race. So more to come on that!

Cheers!

Joar

Horde Side Reps Are Done, and a Change in Leveling Plans

So I'm fairly close to finishing toon #8.  Courtesy of the anniversary token, the mage has been going extremely quicly.  He's sitting at level 118 and should be done today or tomorrow, depending on how much time I spend on the world boss and on the post-Warfront quests and rares today.

Now that we're 14 years in, that anniversary token is a huge boon to leveling and rep grinding.

I also managed to get all of the reputations to exalted on Horde side earlier this week.

I'm getting pretty close on the alliance side as well, so hoping to knock that out before the next patch hits in a couple of weeks.

I've been thinking about switching up my leveling approach.  With only 3 zones to work through, things are already getting a bit old on the Horde side, and I'm only 7 toons in.  So I may start alternating leveling my Horde toons and alliance toons.

I only saw a small part of the storyline in Tirisgarde and Stormsong on the alliance side when I did the one toon there, so was thinking it would be fun to do more thorough play throughs in those zones.

I also saw that Warsong Battalion had returned to Emerald Dream, but on the alliance side, so it might be fun to turn on War Mode and do some World PvP for a bit as well.

That's it for now!

Cheers! 

Joar

Level 120 #7 Complete

I finished leveling my demon hunter earlier today.  This one was the fastest one yet.  I think part of what drove that was the use of the anniversary xp bonus through a large part of the leveling process.  I was also basically just questing straight through zones rather than bouncing around.

Total time was just slightly over 13 hours, so that still seems to be the consistent standard for a straight leveling approach.

I'm now at the point where I'm not really trying to gear these guys after I get them to 120.  The world quest slog is just too frustrating, and I'm not really looking to have that many characters to run through the Warfront anyway. 

So I'll just wait for the eventual BOA catch up mechanism to hit to gear the rest of these guys up.

I'm either doing the monk or the mage next - haven't quite decided.

Level 120 #5 Complete and #6 Underway

I hit level 120 on the paladin last week.  As seems to be the case with my last few max level toons, there is no way he's going to get to the required item level in time to be able to do the Warfront this time around.  Oh well.

The gearing process is slow, at least the way I'm doing it (which is just looking for WQ upgrades every day), but not particularly time consuming, since it's usually just a matter of doing a WQ or two every day - or maybe the emissary if it looks like it will be an upgrade.  It's definitely not the fastest way to rise your ilvl, but it works for me.

I've now started working in earnest on the druid.  I'm leveling as balance, which I've enjoyed for the last few expansions (I was not a fan of leveling Boomkin in Cataclysm or MOP, but that seems to have changed starting with Warlords)

I was originally planning to do the monk after the druid, but I might change that up a bit.  Haven't decided yet.

Still not particularly close to being Exalted with all the factions.  I'm really not doing anything beside the daily emissary and there doesn't seem to be any great rush.  Should probably get there within the next couple of weeks either way.  I'm mainly interested in whether unlocking the Allied Race at Exalted on Horde side will also unlock it Alliance side. 

I keep hearing yes, but I'm doing the same daily emissary alliance side just in case that turns out not to be true.

That's about it for the updates.  I have a feeling, once I hit exalted on both Horde side and Alliance side, that  my leveling efforts will get a lot more focus.  This is different from Legion where there was all the Class Order Hall stuff and Class Mount stuff to be done across every toon.  There doesn't seem to be a similar issue with BfA.