Could You Make it on Your Own?*

Say you're leveling an alt on a server where you already have a high level toon. Does everyone send gold to the lowbie?

When I started my priest, I did have my 80 Naomi (Violet) send her 100 gold to buy some bags and get started leveling enchanting. When Naomi (Lilac) reached 40, some cash for dual speccing came her way. Money well spent, indeed - I'd been leveling as shadow but wanted to heal, and she still switches between specs frequently.

But I never liked sending gold to a lower level character. I want them to make it on their own. I feel differently about crafted items though, and I have no qualms about sending gems in the mail from my jewelcrafter whenever my priest gets a new piece of gear with sockets.

At the moment I'm faced with the dilemma of the cold weather flying book. Certainly Violet (the 80 pally) could buy it for Lilac, but I don't think she will. I didn't actually know about the book until quite recently. To paraphrase a comment (on Wowhead maybe) that really stuck with me: there is a lot of detail in Northrend that Blizz put a good deal of effort into creating. You miss out on some of the scenery by flying precisely to where you need to be to do a quest.

I'm trying to do different quest lines my second time through, and I don't want to miss out. As some replies to the original comment pointed out, you do gain a different appreciation of zones when you see them from the air. Without a doubt I have a better grasp on the geography of some areas of Outland because I flew around them instead of walking. It's easier to see the big picture from a hundred feet up. But I figure I'll have plenty of time to come back and fly around when I get to doing Loremaster of Northrend.

What it boils down to for me is weighing the benefit of the expense against my desire for each toon to be self sufficient. Decent bags and dual speccing had enough of an impact on my enjoyment of the game that I went ahead and sent the gold. But Lilac's on her own for cold weather flying.

*This line from The Calling's Wherever You Will Go has popped into my head whenever I thought about this post!

My Pretties

I must say that one of the reasons I stopped playing my pally was because I just didn’t like the way she looked in her armor. Whew, glad to get that off my chest. I wanted a pretty robe like clothies get to wear. Since I wanted to heal, I rolled a priest instead of going back to my poor, neglected mage. Naomi’s current chest piece, Raiments of Divine Authority, looks so awesome! And it’s pretty good for her stats-wise too. Her staff even matches. Although her previous staff did win on the prettiness factor.

Clashing belt, shoulders, gloves removed for screenshots :)

She’s 68 now, so obviously she won't wear this armor forever. I really hope her next chestpiece is also a robe because right now she has crazy pants on. And by crazy I mean if I have to see them I’m going to solo quest in Shadowform until she gets other pants or a robe that covers them.

While I was taking screenshots of Naomi’s robe, I started noticing the lighting effects like I never had before. It was pretty hard to capture the white on the robe so that it actually looked fairly white. Ironforge was too dark, the night elf areas she happened to be in were too pink/purple. I discovered that I tend to play around in-game twilight, so taking screenshots in outdoor areas was not very helpful. The shots above were taken around noon server time (during my long 4th of July weekend, yay).

On an unrelated note, I really want to go through this door:

Sylvanaar, Blade’s Edge Mountains
Notice the pinky-purple tint to this shot