ralphmelton

A couple of weeks ago, I spent 60% of my gold over three days. It ended up making me a lot happier.

I had been sitting at about 10,000 gold, and this had the effect of pushing me into an odd spiral:
- I felt I had enough gold to buy most anything I might want.
- So I wasn't doing many daily quests or otherwise spending a lot of time making money.
- So my income dropped.
- So prices seemed high in terms of current income.
- So I wasn't buying things.

But I had a spending spree that I didn't intend:
- I saw an Emerald Whelpling for sale for 1600g, about 60% of the normal selling price. So I bought that.
- I saw someone advertising a desire to trade their Teldrassil Sproutling (normally 3500g) for a Sen'jin Fetish (available for 2000g in the auction house). So I bought the Sen'jin Fetish and made the trade. (The sproutling is super-cute as it sleeps and does the tree form dance. I am glad to have it.)
- I decided that I'd have more fun playing Roktazza if she had swift flying, so I passed 2500g to her so that she could afford it.

It turns out that this has disengaged me from my previous stall. I'm working harder to earn money, and I'm having more fun because I'm doing more.

There's a lesson to be drawn from this, but it should be drawn very carefully. In particular, real life has a lot more necessary expenses, and doesn't tie my earnings so directly to the things I do, so what pleases me more in WoW may not extend to real life.

Friday was our first foray into Gruul's Lair. We made some progress on the High King Maulgar fight, but not a lot; our major victory for the night was just getting 25 people into an instance together.

I had spent most of the previous week obsessively reading guides to the fight and creating strategies tailored for our guild. It did not help much; those strategies got largely ignored in favor of the advice of some more experienced folks with us. I did get grouchy about this.

I think I was sort of doomed to grouchiness--I had set my expectations too high, and started counting chickens far before any of them were hatched. Oh well.

However, we did record the evening with WoW Web Stats, and sorting through the logs to see what went wrong has restored my enthusiasm. I have *new* plans! What could possibly go wrong?

~//~

Saturday afternoon, Lori and I recruited a guildmate for a 3-man foray into Blackfathom Deeps. Unfortunately, we had to cancel it midway.

~//~

Sunday night, I joined a guildmates pick-up group for non-heroic Mechanar. We were overgeared that we had a lot of room to be sloppy. This was a real relief after being unable to handle the technical challenges of Gruul's Lair.

A particular contributor of sloppiness was the group's hunter. One particular highlight of sloppiness: he pulled Gatekeeper Gyro-kill when the healer was still returning from the graveyard. Fortunately, we handled it.

~//~

Monday night, the Karazhan raid ended up being canceled, so Lori and I did another three-man run to Blackfathom Deeps. Again we were a bit overlevel, but we completed the whole thing with no trouble.

~//~

Tuesday night, we managed to get a 5-man group together to go through Razorfen Kraul. We had two wipes in the whole instance; though Lori was not at fault in either case, she felt horribly guilty about both wipes. (I suspect that Lori may not realize how smooth our runs have been, even with the wipes.)

Razorfen Kraul has been tightened up in level considerably--it's no longer the case that creatures in the trench are too low-level to give XP when you're able to kill the last boss. However, the quest to kill the last boss hasn't been adjusted... so at level 29, that quest is only just available, and it's colored red to indicate it's very difficult--but the boss you're killing is level 27.

I had not realized that there is now a graveyard near Razorfen Kraul. This makes wipes vastly less painful than they once were.

Unfortunately, these two instances make it seem that it's very hard for us to go through a pre-BC instance and get Lori into bed at a good time. Fortunately, we are getting close to level 30, and so we'll be able to spend 10 levels or so with the Scarlet Monastery set of shorter instances.

~//~

Wednesday night, I found myself with the job of putting together a Karazhan team when several scheduled people were unavailable. I wasn't thinking about all the issues of crowd control, and I ended up with a somewhat odd group: no priests, only one hunter providing all of our crowd control, but four shamans.

But we had the best opening night for Karazhan we've had yet, killing all the bosses up through Curator with no wipes. This means that I can euphemize my group selection as "creative" instead of "harebrained".

Lori's aim with her Warcraft character has been to be a healer, because it fits her natural inclination and because I'd said that good healers could be very appreciated.

I believe that the way to become a good healer is to practice as a healer, and the way to practice as a healer is to heal in instances--killing things outside of instances doesn't generate the same sort of healing needs.

So we put together a team for Ragefire Caverns. The team was my level 19 paladin (as tank), Lori's level 14 druid, a level 14 shaman, and a level 22 hunter who was unfamiliar with instancing. I was slightly over the target level for the instance--but I think that was pretty good for Lori's first instance. It meant that my healing needs were a bit easier to manage, but healing still mattered.

The run was very successful, with only one wipe to demonstrate that healing really mattered.

I think that Lori has now had most of the quintessential healing experiences:
- she's run out of mana and had to fret and hope she regained enough mana for another heal in time;
- she's been so focused on the tank that she only noticed that she was taking damage and needed to heal herself at the last minute;
- she's had the tank need to buy a 1-handed weapon before going into the instance (in my defense, I did have a shield; I just hadn't received a 1-handed sword as a quest reward in 10 levels);
- she's had her tank run out of the range of her heals;
- and she's felt guilty for a wipe that wasn't her fault. (Someone else pulled in a second group of 3 while we were already fighting one group of 3. 6 foes at once is at the 'you are not expected to handle this' level.)

She's felt very guilty over letting me get out of healing range, particularly since it occurred during the wipe. I have tried to reassure her that every player has made more dire mistakes, but she is eager to play perfectly. I invite you folks to reassure her by commenting with stories of your own dramatic and entertaining errors.

My general policy with my leatherworker has been to make friends and lower-level alts anything that they want and can use. I enjoy this policy.

But I think it may need some tweaking for my enchanter. There are no level limits for enchantments, so it would be technically possible to put a Crusader enchant on a fishing pole. So where's the line of what's reasonable?
(This hasn't actually come up in play yet; no one has asked me for anything unreasonable. But it's worth thinking about it to moderate my own generous impulses.)

Obvious reasonable territory: I'm certainly willing to do any enchantment for which someone provides the materials. I'm certainly willing to give my experience and time for free to my friends.

But that's not as generous as I am with the leatherworking, where I'll give away all the materials (at least, the materials that I can easily farm). So maybe I want to be more generous than the policy I described above.

Waffle waffle.

With Mazumok, I've been grinding for reputation with the Timbermaw Furbolgs. The recent patch has vastly improved the grinding process (with repeatable quests that you might want to repeat, for example), but it's still pretty boring. And I've realized that Maz is only interested in the patterns he would get access to for completism. It might be nice for, say, bearform druids, but strength doesn't matter so much for a hunter, and the materials are a challenge.

~//~

I have a new character, a troll priest named Rajana. I'll try to keep her as a peer for Bluatala.

We actually have quite a few in that level zone; we should be able to do a run into Ragefire Chasm as soon as Blue gets a convenient time.

One complication of having so many alts: we have a lot of gatherers. I think that in this bracket, we have two miner/engineers, two miner/herbalists (Rajana is one), and a herbalist/alchemist (as well as a tailor/enchanter and a skinner/leatherworker, but those don't complicate things so much).
As a pure gatherer, I waffle a bit about whether I should give the things I gather to my buddies. On the one hand, they have actual use for the items, and I like being generous. On the other hand, collecting for the auction house is the way I'll be making my money. It seems to me at least that I should provide the materials I can gather for items they make for me, but I'm still sorting out what the right balance is.
I'm also considering switching gathering professions, because leatherworking is underrepresented in this group. But I'm not sure which one to drop. Mining is overrepresented with the two engineers. But I'm more interested in mining than in herbalism, because I have another herbalist already, and I'm somewhat interested in the mining experience.

~//~

Amalefica has progressed to a point such that she can sell enchants for at least a small profit. She's close to the point where she'll need to make a run into Uldaman to learn greater skill and new recipes. She has enough materials in the bank that she'll be able to waste 25 enchants while she's down there and learn all the recipes in a single visit.

~//~

Mahotala has been idle since participating in a raid on Omen (a giant devil-dog to be killed as part of the Lunar Festival celebrations). (Killing Omen was a blast, even if I spent an inordinate amount of time dead.) He has so many fireworks that he has little inventory space left over. His alchemy is at 260; he ought to crank it up to 275 so that he can do arcanite transmutes while he's idle.

~//~

I've learned that I'll be getting a 30-inch LCD display at my desk at work. I'm going to have to come in some weekend to play WoW on the ginormous screen.

Entries tagged with warcraft

[WoW] Big Spender

[WoW] Instances aplenty

[WoW] Lori's first instance

WoW: Enchanting for friends

WoW Mundanities

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April 2018

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