Nogamara

WoW goals for April/May

I had looked up something in my old SWTOR posts (apparently I haven’t played in nearly 3 years, wow) and noticed that I wrote about some goals from time to time. Yes, I think I can say I am very much goal oriented (not all of them are useful or other people’s common goals) and I have checklists and other spreadsheets.

Maybe time to post one for WoW again, I thought, just to promptly forget about this draft from early? April.

  • Get Alliance Mage to 80 (last Alliance class missing on main server) – done before the XP event came
  • Get missing Horde classes to 80 (except Evoker, don’t plan to make one and ugh, there’s another priest) – all done and Evoker started, thanks to the XP event
  • Try to grab one event satchel for the missing ones (Druid, DK, Warrior, Hunter, and Priest, Warrior, Rogue, Paladin, also another Rogue, and maybe another set of Paladin, Hunter, Rogue) – haha, one satchel, they’re all 80 now
  • I just noticed I’ve never *really* been happy with any of the Paladins I played (Blood Elf was ok, Dwarf was ok, never clicked with any of the others) – so maybe try to find a race/gender combo I can like? Level another Paladin maybe? Same is true for my Worgen Druid. Can I fix this somehow? The Tauren was ok but a) Horde b) wrong server c) feels a little too bulky now for my taste – I have created several new Paladins – one Earthen, two Tauren.
  • Get to 2500 M+ rating – done
  • Get the last remaining three M+10 dungeon teleports
  • Get AOTC (not sure we will make this until the end of May, probably not, 3 bosses missing) – 7/8 as of May 6th
  • A couple of Shadowlands achievements I’ve been tracking for a while – an actual TODO
  • Maybe, just maybe, gear a 3rd toon in Season 2 – I had underestimated how much semi decent gear drops from the Hallowfall event, after gearing the Shaman to 649 the Demon Hunter is already close to 640 as well

Guess I need more goals for May, unless I dial back on WoW, which probably would be a good idea anyway.

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Raiding Undermine – week 9

Sunday went really well, no wipes on the first six (not even on Bandit), then 5 tries on Mug’Zee, best at 16%.

And then he just died on the third pull on Tuesday, 13ish wipes total, very quick.

Gallywix on the other hand seems to be harder than anticipated, we’ll see how long that will take.

In TWW Season 1 we raided like 17 weeks, killing the penultimate boss only in like week 14 or 15. The last tier of Dragonflight, Amirdrassil, took us 14 weeks, Aberrus took us 12 weeks and Vault of the Incarnates 14 as well.

The Jailer in Season 3 of Shadowlands (Sepulcher) took 22 weeks and Sylvanas in Sanctum also around 20.

And in other news we broke 2500 M+ score this week, which means the Keystone Hero achievement and some transmog options, by timing a couple +10s. I’m just missing 3 of them for the teleport spells now.

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Nearly done with leveling, I guess

I suppose this already counts as “getting it over with”.
It’s Thursday evening and the Blood Elf Priest is 80, and then 4 more are all between 74.0 and 76.25 – Troll Feral Druid, Vulpera Blood DK, Goblin Fury Warrior, Gnome Sub Rogue.

I said I didn’t even want to touch my cadre of BfA Allied Race chars, but if I’m done with this… Maybe a break is in order because with those 4 finished I’d be at 30 (14 Alliance, 16 Horde).

Saturday afternoon and only the Troll Druid had made it to 80, but I also leveled an Earthen Paladin from 10 to 70 with just Exploration XP in 3h (as described in this video, not mine).

And then on Saturday night and Sunday I did level the Gnome Rogue and the Vulpera Blood DK to 80, and the Goblin Warrior is a sliver behind 79. I originally played him with Single-Minded Fury (aka 2 1h weapons) but then I forgot, chose the cookie cutter build and was leveling mostly with 1 2h and 1 1h… and didn’t even notice because of the nice damage, doh.

Anyway, once the Warrior is finished (probably tomorrow), that’s 10 chars from 70 to 80 then in 13 days.

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Leveling speed in MMOs

Redbeard has an interesting post up, partially about leveling speed.

Thinking about what I wrote the last few days, basically pushing tons of alts through TWW content, seemingly with the goal of having them at 80 and never stopping to smell the roses, one would think I’m a big proponent of quick leveling. Maybe I am, but I actually don’t think so.

Every time a new expansion hits, I’m leveling one character and doing most or all side quests in a zone, reading all the quest text, and not really pushing it. What I usually do is reserving a lot of time, so I still reach the level cap not so many days after the launch, but I have invested a lot of hours – so leveling usually took a bit.

OK, sometimes for some reason or other I will take advantage of rested XP and already start leveling a second char while the first is not yet at max level, but I think that’s just something else.

I think the overall reason why I don’t enjoy classic or slow leveling is mostly that I don’t want to fall behind endlessly, as we saw with the Seasons of Discovery – it was kinda fun at first but then when everyone was zooming to max level with these portals I lost interest. Yeah, maybe it’s silly to let your accomplishment and joy be diminished by what others do, but I think there are certain criteria when it annoys me and when it doesn’t. Staying with the expansion launch thing – I know that many, many people will rush to max level and are probably three times as fast as I am, but I have no problem with that because a) I need to wait for my guild to catch up until we can raid anyway and b) it’s only maybe 1d for the quick people and 4d for me. But I wouldn’t for example ignore quests and just grind my way up (even if it was feasible) if that meant I’d be like 10 times slower than normal people leveling. And also apparently I enjoy leveling (as seen by all the alts), but after the nth time I have absolutely nothing against a speed boost, but I wouldn’t want my first character per expansion to cap out in like 6h of play.

Guess I’m just weird, but it really depends on the circumstances. Same in FFXIV – new expansion and I am leveling my first job? Can take weeks, no problem. Catching up many more jobs to max level? Fast please.

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Raiding Undermine – week 8

Sunday was a good run, quick work of the first 5, then a couple of tries on One-Armed Bandit with some nice progress.

On Tuesday we killed One-Armed Bandit on the 21st pull, yay.

On the weekend I managed to finish leveling the Kul Tiran Mage and Blood Elf DH to 80, then on Monday finished the Troll Hunter (that I had only started to work on from 70 on the weekend) and the Orc Shaman, with Tauren Druid and Blood Elf Priest on the todo list, together with the Troll Druid from Remix. Total count of 80s is now 24, all classes at least once, and each class on Alliance done. Plus the Tauren Druid before the Tuesday Raid, so 25…

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Patch 11.1.5 and bonus XP

The bonus XP event in WoW is unusual in a way that you’re constantly getting drops of satchels with gear, but it’s a nice bonus. I didn’t really jot down the numbers of how much increase percentagewise it is (with the XP potions), but it’s fast enough.

After 2 nights (and doing other things), I got my 4 toons to 72, 75, 76, 77 – all from 70 (but not necessarily 0% there).

You do get a basically guaranteed epic level-appropriate weapon and a BoA 30 slot bag in your first satchel, so probably worth taking out even those alts I hadn’t planned on playing for a single quest or until the thing drops. And of those characters I have another 10 or so. Oh well.

That invasion event in Hallowfall though? I hardly read about and people told me it was bugged or not exciting and not useful for our mains, but apparently you can get some 630ish gear for alts. Will look at this later, guess I’ll focus on leveling.

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Raiding Undermine – week 7


So on the Easter weekend we accidentally timed our first +10. I tanked a Cinderbrew +10 and everything went wrong (maybe don’t let someone tank a 10 on their 4th dungeon in the last year) and then I thought we’d do a +9 Rookery, but it was a 10 key, and with me as DPS.. we just did it. Nice. First portal!

And after some bag cleaning on all the alts I dug out my old list and updated which toon has which bags and now I need to go out and grab those easy to get 3 x 34 and 1 x 28 slot bags… many of them.

Oh, and the raid. First 4 in the first hour (3 wipes on Lockenstock), then a Stix rekill on the third pull, then we called it early. One-Armed Bandit will be hard, but we’re finally stopping to do Normal now next week.

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Attack of the Alts

As it’s the Easter weekend, no Sunday raid is planned.

But leading up to the weekend we mixed things up a bit with me tanking M+. Only did one each of +7/8/9 but at least we got the two lower ones in time and the last one wasn’t strictly my fault. We’ll see how this continues. And then I tried healing on the Shaman. Still in meh gear, but it works, in very low keys at least.

Also got the Horde Rogue and Blood Elf Warlock and Alliance Evoker to 80, that’s 20 done and 12 missing, if I count all 70s, but I guess I shouldn’t. Only 5-6 on the two servers I actually play on.

On Wednesday we’re supposed to get an XP buff for a month, so I already prepared a couple more characters that I had a) planned to level next and b) held off this week – Kul Tiran Mage, Tauren Druid, Orc Shaman, and Blood Elf Demon Hunter, so the last remaining Alliance class and 3 of the 4 remaining Horde ones (Priest is last, and Evoker is missing). They were mostly in terrible 350ish gear, but the Shaman in 220 seems to have skipped the whole of DF, I probably leveled her with either Archaeology or the Caverns of Time anniversary event.

And yeah, apparently right now I’m in a bit of a WoW spree, but also many vacation days.

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Raiding Undermine – week 5

Sunday had us do the 3 on normal with the skip, then the first 3 on Heroic, then a couple of wipes on Stix (up to around 15 probably). Tuesday we switched to Lockenstock and wiped 16 times.

One of those weeks I managed to get to 2000 M+ rating, now we’re working on 2500, but slowly.
I’ve also continued leveling chars, Orc Rogue, Blood Elf Warlock, and the Alliance Evoker. With these 3 done I’d be at 20 Level 80s.

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