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.

Gearing Up Alts - Patiently Avoiding the Grind...Or Not

Battle for Azeroth has introduced an interesting dynamic with Warfronts,  With the new 320 item level cutoff for entering the warfront, there is some time pressure to get fresh 120's geared in time to be able to participate in the Warfront.  I hit 120 on my death knight in the early days of the warfront. 

For most of my 120's, my plan has been to do the weekly world boss, do the Arathi gear quest and otherwise look for world quest upgrades, and the item level seems to steadily creep up.  With the death knight having a limited amount of time and neither the Arathi world boss or gear quests available, I was trying to do it a little bit faster than normal.

I almost got there too.  But not quite.  Grabbing the cloak from the first faction to hit honored helps, but beyond that and the regular check for world quests, I ended up running a few dungeons to try to get myself over the hump.  Those were all generally good experiences, but the loot RNG gods were not kind, so I came up just short, finding myself at 317 when the Warfront ended.

Today, I'll be running all three max level Horde toons through the Arathi world boss and also doing the gear quest there hoping for some nice juicy upgrades.

The paladin finished up his first zone, and has moved on to Zulduzar.  So far the leveling process has been pretty smooth.  Some of the harder "you may need help" elite quests have required help, but that's probably why they say that (although they didn't on the warlock, hunter and death knight)

I also managed to get Pathfinder on Joar, so that piece is done until the next major patch.  I'm also close to having the War Campaign done on my alliance toon as well.

Cheers,

Joar

Level 120 #4 Complete

I managed to hit 120 on the death knight yesterday.  I leveled mostly as frost, although found myself switching to blood for many of the harder elites.  That's probably my biggest frustration with death knight leveling the last few expansions, is that frost doesn't really tend to have as much survivability as I'd like until higher gear levels, but blood just tends to be a lot slower at killing things.

The leveling time for this guy was about an hour and a half longer than it was for the hunter, which is not unexpected.  The death knight came in at right at 15 hours played time, versus 13 hours and 50 minutes for the hunter.

The warfront also unlocked Horde-side yesterday, but I probably won't be able to get the death knight to 320 in time to take any meaningful advantage of it, so it'll mostly be an activity for the hunter.

Next up on the leveling front will be the paladin, which may very well have the same issues as the death knight (ret vs prot).  I tend to be a little more comfortable with ret while leveling though.

I only have Champions left to get to revered before finishing up all of the requirements for this initial stage of pathfinder, and I'm working through a similar path on the alliance side in order to finish up the war campaign there and be in a position to unlock both of the allied races there.

Cheers,

Joar

Level 120 #3 Done and the Warfront Shuffle

I managed to hit 120 on my third toon last Friday morning.  During Legion, it was mid-October before I had my third toon to max level, so this is pretty on pace with that.  This one came in more than 6 1/2 hours faster than the previous Horde toon, so that's probably a good approximation for the time savings if you don't putter around and read all the quest text, etc.

So now I'm working on running all three toons through the daily emissaries.  I want to see the full War Campaign on the alliance toon, and my plan is always to run the emissaries on somewhere around 5 Horde toons.

So far, gearing up via world quests has been working out just fine.  I managed to get world quests weapon rewards on both hunters, and I've had pretty decent lucks with World Bosses.

I probably shouldn't have used the phrase Warfront Shuffle in the title of this post, because it probably gives the impression I'm talking about some kind of gold-making plan.  I'm just referring to the weird weekly back and forth cycle of the Warfront and the different types of awards available at each stage.

I've found the world bosses to be pretty rewarding and a few of the quests to be definitely worth running.  By the time my main got around to doing Warfronts, the gear upgrades from every run weren't necessarily worth doing it too many times.  I think that math may work differently for my alliance hunter once the cycle comes back around.

The regular quest to kill 20X mobs that rewards an equipment cache has also been really worthwhile.

I haven't gotten anything interesting off any of the rares at this point, but I haven't really done any aggressive farming of them either.

Up next in the leveling cycle is my death knight.  I'm going to at least start trying to level him as frost, but I usually end up switching to blood at some point.  We'll see if I can hold out as frost the whole way this time.

Cheers,

Joar

Level 120 #2 done - First Alliance Toon to Max Level

I managed to finish getting my alliance hunter to max level yesterday.  His total played time was 18 hours, which was about 2 1/2 hours faster than my warlock.  Because the alliance zones were all new to me, I was still basically reading all the quest text, so I was surprised it was that much faster.

I played Beast Mastery the entire way.  Interestingly enough, even though it appears to be one of the strongest specs at end game right now, it didn't feel as strong to me while leveling as Marksmanship does. 

The other thing that I realized as I've been working Joar through the various end game content is that I'm really going to want to see the War Campaign alliance side as well, which means I'll be doing the WQ rep grind on this alliance toon as well.  Not really what I planned, but I suppose that's fine.  I'm guessing I'll be mostly through it before I get to that point with the fifth Horde toon anyway.

My Horde hunter is sitting at level 118 and working his way through Nazmir.  That's an interesting zone for me this expansion because it combines some of my favorite questlines with some of my least favorite of the expansion.

One thing that has also become clear is that once the eventual leveling nerfs hit later on, it will very likely be possible to go completely from 110-120 entirely in a single zone.  For me, that will be AWESOME!  because it means I'll be able to rotate the crew among 6 different leveling plans.

Also tried the Warfront on Joar.  It's a fun and interesting thing.  I'm looking forward trying it on the alliance side as soon as the Horde loses it again.  It's at least a good way to get a few decent gear upgrades for new 120's which will be a nice way to get them started and make world quests a little bit easier.

So the plan till this time next week is keep working through emissaries and stuff on the two max level toons, give the first wing of LFR a try and continue to leverage Warfronts as they're live for gear upgrades on new max level toons.  We'll try to get the Horde hunter to 120 and get him in the WQ groove and then start on leveling the death knight.

Still not sure if the plan is going to be Frost or Blood for the DK, but we'll have to see what Frost's survivability feels like.

Cheers,

Joar

Leveling Alliance

I'm now most of the way through two zones as Alliance, having finished Drustvar and being through all but one main storyline segment of Tirisgarde.  Like the Horde-side, I find the alliance zones to be really well done from a content and story-line standpoint.  The entire zone seems to hold together very well in a single coherent narrative that works really well.   I feel like there are a LOT more side quests on the alliance side than there are Horde side, but that is probably just a matter of perception and not actual reality.

My alliance hunter is sitting at 117 and my Horde hunter is at 113.  It'll probably be next week before I finish them both up.

Gearing up and running world quests and emissaries continues to go well for Joar.  I'm not Revered with anyone yet, but there's not really a hurry.  I unlocked another section of the War Campaign that I really enjoyed the story on.  For this particular section, it actually really helped if you had read Christie Golden's book, Before the Storm.  I really don't want to put the work in, but I feel like I should probably run the War Campaign on at least one character alliance side as well.  

I've been doing Island Expeditions to try to unlock the next piece of War Campaign research.  I'm looking forward to all of the Arathi Highland stuff unlocking for Horde next week.  Made a bit more progress on the profession front as well.

Beyond all of that, it's been mostly hanging out at the cash register at the Krusty Krab.

Yes, I'm wearing a Loremaster tabard.  Don't judge me.  I worked a long time for that.

That's a pre-Cataclysm Loremaster tabard...

Cheers,

Joar

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

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

Thoughts on 8.0 and the War of the Thorns

Even though it's already been out for almost a week, I really haven't had much play time on 8.0 and War of the Thorns so far.  I've redone the talents on the 5 characters that I play the most and have done some general world questing on them.  I also have done the War of the Thorns quest line so far on both a Horde toon and an Alliance toons.

So first the overall structure and class thoughts.  For me, my three primary classes are warlock, hunter, death knight, paladin and druid.  All of those still feel fine from a play style to me.  Affliction feels a little wonky, but not as bad as it seemed on the Alpha and Beta.  That being said, I'm still debating switching Joar to Destruction for the start of BfA.  On the alliance side, I've been playing Demonology lock, and that's been a lot of fun.  No clue how it would play in a raid setting, but it's fine for my normal questing stuff.

Death Knight and Paladin don't seem to have changed at all.  My balance druid feels a little different without the ability to drop a giant moon on someone and I seem to be much slower at generating Astral Power, but overall, he still functions fine.

On the story so far, a lot of good stuff has been written about some folks' level of discomfort with what Sylvanas is doing and the new direction of the Horde.  I'll caveat this that I have not read the current Christie Golden intro book, so I don't necessarily know all of the background for the story.  In some ways, it doesn't feel wildly different from the Horde under Garrosh.  Sylvanas has always demonstrated a willingness to take things just a little bit too far and clearly operates with the interests of the Forsaken ahead of those of the Horde as a whole.

One of the pieces that I do like is being back to feeling more like a foot soldier doing my part rather than the Epic Grandmaster Savior of the Universe.   That is a welcome change.

I'm anxious to see the rest of the quest line play out. 

In the meantime, I'm trying to decide if there's any real value in gearing up some of my "further down the list" max level alts - take level 110 #24 for example.  I'm guessing by the time I start leveling them in BfA, that heirlooms for leveling will likely be unlocked, so gearing them up now could turn out to be pointless.  But, it's also something to do that isn't leveling toon #34 or grinding out paragon chests.  So maybe it should just still be a thing.

Cheers! 

Joar

Leveling Plans for Battle for Azeroth

So I'm working on a new leveling order for Battle for Azeroth, this time based purely on how much I enjoy playing the class, rather than trying to get any particular professions on their way to whatever the new cap is.

So here is the list that I have worked out so far:

Warlock
Hunter
DK
Paladin
Druid (these 5 will be the main ones that I focus on for world quests, emissaries, world bosses, LFR, etc)

then..

Monk
Demon Hunter
Mage
Warrior
Rogue
Priest
Shaman

Now the trick is that I will likely start inserting an alliance character or two in the progression after the initial 5 are done, but those will most likely follow the same order.

Those initial five also give me every profession except engineering and inscription, so I think that actually works okay.

Cheers,

Joar

Ding! Level 110 #33. Lightforged Draenei Paladin

So I managed to hit 110 on the first of my allied race toons yesterday.

Blizzard hasn't done a particularly good job of explaining how to complete the quest that pops up to obtain the Heritage Armor set.  There's really no clue given as to how to get to the place that it instructs you to go, and if you try to get there the "normal" way, which requires a fair amount of effort, the NPC that you need isn't there.

So that was a bit frustrating, but a quick bit of research on Wowhead quickly showed the way.  But that really shouldn't be necessary.

In any case, I look cool.

My total played time to 110 was 2 days and 14 hours.  That's a bit longer than it used to take to level to 110 from scratch, but not as bad as I was expecting it might be given how long the slog from 20-60 felt.

Planning to work on the other three allied races next, but haven't decided if I want to push them one at a time, or do them a bit together. 

Cheers,

Joar

Incoming 9 Year Blogoversary!

The 9 year anniversary of starting this blog is this Saturday.  Of course, I'll be at a swim meet all weekend with the Joarlings, so not able to actually post something then.  So I'm doing it now, while maintenance is ongoing.

When I started this blog 9 years ago, the idea, which at time seemed crazy, was to see if I could level a character of each class to max level (which at the time was 80!)  At the point that I started this journey, I only had two max level characters, and one of those was a death knight.  Also at the time, 8 days of /played time was a reasonable amount of time to get to max level (versus 2-3 now).

 It was almost 2 years before I actually hit that goal.  I managed to get every class except for warrior to max level before the Wrath of the Lich King ended, but that still left warrior to complete fully through Cataclysm.  So on May 26, 2011, I actually ended up getting there.

Of course, the next idea that occurred to me thereafter was "wouldn't it be cool to have a toon from each class from EACH FACTION?"  Yeah.  That seems brilliant.  I got a little distracted by both Rift and SWTOR in between, so it was almost a year in between before I started working on a few alliance toons before Mist of Pandaria came out.  I only managed to get 2 alliance characters to max level before the release of Mist of Pandaria, which also added a new class, so raised the total required for each faction from 10 to 11. 

It was August of 2013 before I managed to get all 11 Horde classes to max level in MOP.  I was also delayed a little bit in MOP with leveling my alliance toons because I thought it would be fun to have all 11 toons kill Garrosh in LFR, which is also something that I accomplished over the course of 2013.

I didn't end up getting there before the end of MOP.  Wildstar provided an additional distraction and I also got into pet battling during this time. 

Now Warlords of Draenor.  That was a different story.  Not much distraction during good old WoD.  And a much faster leveling pace!

The first 11 toons went a bit faster in Warlords of Draenor, and I had them all knocked out by July (and that was with grinding out stuff for the legendary ring on 3 different characters).  About 5 years after completing the first goal, I finally got there on the second, having my 23rd max level character, consisting of one of each class of each faction, plus one extra warlock (you can never have too many warlocks) on May 23, 2016.  Almost 5 years to the day after finishing the first 10.

I continued to level through the rest of Draenor and finished that expansion with a total of 26 level 100 toons. 

Through Legion, we added one more class, and I've continued to work on the third set, bringing my total as of today to 32 max level toons.  I expect to finish one more well before Battle for Azeroth launches, and I guess we'll wait and see what leveling opportunities are presented by the pre-expansion launch event to see if I can make any progress on the last 3 on the third server.

As you can imagine, with 32 max level toons, there is a decent amount of preparation needed before the new expansion including cleaning out bags, banks and quest logs.  I'll be putting together a separate blog post in late July / early August laying out my pre-expansion preparation process.

Cheers!

Joar

Time to Buckle Down

So it looks like the pre-expansion patch is going to be hitting in early July, which means it's time to buckle down and see how many additional toons I can get to 110 before that point, and then maybe see if whatever events go with that provide any benefits that might let me get a few more down the road before BfA launches.

I've been making decent progress on the leveling front and a little bit on the paragon farming front.  I got the Dreamweaver paragon mount since my last update, so that leaves me with just three to go - Valarjar, Farondis and one last Army of the Light.  Of course, with Army of the Light emissaries only coming around every 3 weeks lately, the likelihood of that happening any time soon is really low.

So, I'm not sure the Dreamweaver mount is the most warlocky mount I've ever been on.  Seems like more of a Blood Elf mage mount.  Just sayin'  Would probably look pretty good for a Nightborne priest too now that I look at it.  Not shadow of course.

I've been leveling all four of my allied race toons, with 3 of them just making progress until they run out of rested xp, and then going back to working on the main one that I'm focusing on.  I may stop that until the pre-patch comes out and just focus on getting the paladin to 110.  Currently the paladin is sitting at level 81 and working his way through Pandaria and the remaining characters are all sitting around level 35.

Other than cleaning up quest logs and a little bit of bag clean-up, everyone is basically more or less ready to go for Battle for Azeroth anyway.

Cheers, Joar

Leveling and Paragon Farming

So not much going on lately other than leveling and farming for paragon mounts.  I did manage to get one more of the Army of the Light paragon mounts (so one more to go!) and also got the Nightfallen mount, so I'm down to just four still to obtain.  Gotta say, I really like the Nightfallen mount, and it's a good way for all you non-tailors to finally get a flying carpet!

That leaves me with one more Army of the Light, Farondis, Dreamweaver and Valarjar still to go.  We'll see how many I get before Battle for Azeroth.  At that point, I'll probably be too tired from all the battling to worry about farming for mounts.

I've been leveling one of my allied race toons along with a third demon hunter basically at the same time.  The demon hunter is at level 105 and just finished Aszuna.  The lightforged spacegoat paladin is starting on Western Plaguelands and is in the low 40's.  Probably going to have this guy go to Northrend instead of Outland just like the last guy, but then will have the one after that do the Outland route.  The 0-60 portion of the revised leveling doesn't feel quite as good as the 60-90 patch with the redo, but it's still not terrible.

Not much else going on unfortunately.  I'm still playing regularly, and it frightens me a bit that I could potentially enter Battle for Azeroth with 36 or so max level characters.

Cheers,

Joar

Professions Done - Still Working on Toon #31 and Paragon Farming

So with the Darkmoon Faire coming back to town this month, I finally managed to finish all of the professions and get everything maxed to 800.  This is without a doubt the longest it has ever taken me on any expansion.

I'm also still working on leveling.  My human death knight is sitting at level 81 and working his way through the Jade Forest in Pandaria.  Being able to fly in Pandaria while leveling is a nice improvement to the process there.  After the human death knight is done, I'll start working on the various allied races, although  I don't have much hope of getting those done before the next expansion launches.

I've also continued to work on farming paragon chests on 5 different toons in the hopes of getting the last few paragon mounts I need.  The ones I still don't have are Farondis, Dreamweaver, Valarjar and Nightfallen.  Might never happen, but hey,  it's something to do.

I'm about 10 mounts away from the next mount achievement, which I think would give me the green hawk thingy.  There are a few that would be pretty easily attainable:

Vial of the Sands
4 more Pandaria Jewelcrafting mounts
Giant Yak

Those 6 and the 4 paragon mounts would do the trick without having to do any dungeon or raid farming.  One of these days I'll also go back and knock off the 9 argent tournament mounts that I never got.

I've also been working on gearing up a few toons to make the initial leveling process slightly easier.  So right now, everyone has an ilvl of at least 840.  The average across all 30 max level toons is 870, which isn't bad.

That's about it for now.

Cheers,

Joar

Catching Up Professions in Legion

So better late than never, right.  I finally decided that I should probably finish up maxing all the professions before the next expansion hits.  Just always something I've done, really since Cataclysm.  But with Legion, I haven't really been feeling the profession game as much, so it isn't something I've been bothering with.

Going into this little project, I only had a handful done.  Most of the professions on my main - Tailoring, Enchanting, Fishing and Archeology (courtesy of the moose) were all done.  I also managed to get Herbalism on my Hunter, and Skinning on my Druid, then knocked out both Leatherworking and Blacksmithing a couple of months ago (if you're doing the quest chains on those, they end up being pretty easy to finish)

That has left Jewelcrafting, Inscription, Engineering, Alchemy, Mining, Cooking and First Aid.

The first step in all of these has been to hit the Darkmoon Faire each month for that easy 5 points.

Jewelcrafting has really just been a matter of keeping an eye out for the world quests in order to get a few recipes to three stars.  Once those were done, getting it at least to 790 was pretty simple.  Particularly since I've had my paladin rolling world quests with the gem finder shoulder enchant, which has kept him reasonably stocked.

Inscription required getting some Darkmoon Faire tickets and buying up to the three star recipe for the Prophecy Tarot.  Once that was had, it seemed like mass milling Dreamleaf was by far the best bet for knocking out the needed Sallow Pigment.  From there, getting to 800 was easy.  Excess Bloods were used to obtain the Dreamleaf.

On Engineering, this one has been one of the biggest pains because it has required farming up Sightless Eyes in the Dalaran Sewers.  Or in my case, Fishing up Sightless Eyes.  It took a couple of hours, but with a level 3 recipe for Gunpower Charge in hand, after that the process was expensive but quick.

Alchemy has required some questing and dungeons to get the various flask recipes and the Argus recipes have also been helpful.  My Hunter alchemist has the Harvester enchant on his shoulders, so he's been stocking up on herbs while doing world quests, making it fairly easy.

Mining has probably been one of the biggest pains in the butt.  Once you hit a certain level, it seems the only way to get additional skill points is by completing one particular world quest whenever it's up - the stupid giant infernal thing.  That, and Darkmoon Faire each month.  This one seems to have been really poorly thought out.  It's possible that if I was doing more actual mining and gotten some of those to 3 stars, I'd be getting more skill ups from actual mining, but we're trying to be quick about this.

Cooking basically has involved buying a recipe involving Falcosaur Eggs from the Wardens and then either buying those on the auction house or farming them.  Also a pain.  I'd gotten at least part way on the nonsense with Nomi, but I gave that crap up a long time ago.

Finally, First Aid - doing the quests whenever they pop up is probably the easiest way to knock this one out, but of course I haven't been doing that.  If you want a quick catch up approach, there's a Loofa thing you can buy from Wardens that you can make with Falcosaur feathers that will get you to about 760.  From there, you can get a recipe from your trainer for a splint that will get you to about 790 or 795.  From there, either the quests or the Darkmoon Faire will get you the rest of the way.

So that's my quick guide to profession catch ups!

In other updates, toon #29 and #30 made there way to 110.  Toon #30 was a boost from level 60, so it doesn't entirely count.  It did remind me though that if you're going to be boosting a toon from 60, be sure to send anything you've accumulated to your auction house toon before kicking off the boost, because everything in your bags disappears in the process.

Oh, and after finally accumulating 150 Curious Coins, Joar is now the proud owner of:

Cheers!

Joar

Leveling and Scaling in 7.3.5 so far

With all my level 100's now sitting at 110, I've now started moving some lower level toons up.  My first exposure to the new scaling was with my Horde shaman, who was sitting at level 80.  Because of a momentary lapse in judgement, I elected to do the 80-90 path using the Cataclysm zones instead of Pandaria.  (Reminder:  see about getting a CAT scan...possible brain tumor)

So a couple of general observations.

• I don't hit nearly as hard as I used to, and mobs are taking longer to die, at least for this stretch. 
• It was pretty interesting being able to finish entire zones.  The only downside was that doing both Hyjal and Uldum all the way through only took me to 89 1/2, so I had to go back and do a few quests in Deepholm, which seemed odd.
• All the portals to the Cataclysm zones seem to work now whether you've done those zones or not.  Makes getting to Uldum a lot easier, but there's still no easy way back, so make sure you have your Hearthstone set to Orgrimmar / Stormwind before embarking on Uldum.
• With the ability to choose between Outland / Northrend and Cataclysm / Pandaria, I would have liked having an option that would have allowed me to avoid Draenor.  I certainly understand why that wouldn't necessarily work.  But I hate Draenor.  So I'm still sad.
• Most quest gear prior to Draenor basically sells for nothing, which also sucks.  Gold isn't really an issue for me on any server, but for folks where gold is a challenge, that's not going to be a great thing.

I'm continuing to do emissaries on my warlock main just to continue accumulating Curious Coins.  I'm also working on finishing up those last few professions, although not with any intensity.  And my access to materials has dropped off now that I'm not doing emissaries on everyone.

That's about it for the news for now.

Cheers,

Joar

Ding. Level 110 #28 is Done. All the 100's are now 110 (Plus Two Demon Hunters)

So I managed to hit 110 on my Assassination Rogue today, which is the third rogue I've leveled in Legion.  Didn't like it as much as I enjoyed Subtlety, but definitely preferred it to Outlaw.

Since my last blog post, I also managed to get the Guardian druid to 110.  Beyond that, I've not been playing much, or have been focusing on world quests and emissaries on some of my existing max level toons.  But even that has gotten a bit old at this point.

I did manage to get my warlock all the way through Antorus, which unlocked some of the post-raid content.  I found that to be really well done and very enjoyable.  No spoilers though.

So now it's going to be time to focus on my lower level toons, start checking out the zone scaling that was introduced in 7.3.5, and see how many other toons we can get to 110.  At the moment, I've got a shaman sitting at 80, a mage somewhere in the 40's and a third death knight sitting, well, right where death knights start.

So I supposed we'll start working on those.  Everyone else on server number 3 is somewhere in the teens, so a long way to go.

Cheers,

Joar