Ding!

Ding! Level 80 here I am! Reaching 80 snuck up on me, I barely had time to take the screenshot in the middle of some of the Argent Tournament quests. Speaking of the Argent Tournament, I'm really enjoying these jousting dailies. (The "go kill X Scourge" ones, not quite as much.)

But then, dailies suit my current play-style. The other weekend, I was on a roll of doing some sort of household chore for a while (say between a half an hour and an hour and a half), alternated with doing a couple of quests. I happened to be working on a couple of chains that follow the "pick-up-a-quest-go-to-area-with-mobs-and-return-to-same-NPC-repeat-ad-nauseum" pattern, so breaking it up that way made all of the back and forth a lot less annoying. And I got those chores done!

Since I often play in short spurts in that way, dailies fit in quite nicely. Of course, there isn't much point in doing rep grind dailies for gear this close to the release of Cata, but I'm hoping there's a Crusader title in Naomi's future.

I'm having such fun with the Argent Tournament, maybe an RP story about them is in order... although with the Shattering upon us, perhaps not.

On Appearance

This post is in response to an old Friday Five prompt over at Too Many Anna’s which posed questions about a character’s appearance. I’ve written about my priest, Naomililac. Thanks for the prompt, Anna!

Naomi’s avatar is quite a good representation of her true appearance. She attempts to carry herself regally, as she would wish to be seen by others, but she often lapses into her true, casual, playful nature. Like many young adventurers, she is trim and fit, though her figure is often obscured by the long robes she favors. Her eyes are the palest shade of lilac, sometimes appearing grey in low light. Her light brown hair is usually worn down, and she steals moments throughout the day to run a brush through it and keep it shiny!

Naomi is rather sentimental about her hairbrush, as it was one of the first possessions she acquired in Azeroth. On her way to Ironforge for the first time, she noticed a surprisingly large number of fallen crag boars in Dun Morogh. It struck her that the bristles of their undercoats would make a very fine brush. She collected a small pouch full of them hoping she could find someone to fashion the brush. During her stay in the city, she paid a visit to Pella, a barber, who directed her to her own supplier. He was a gruff dwarven tinker, but he presented her with a superbly made brush in a few days time. The tinker filled the back of the brush with intricate carvings in a dwarven style while leaving the handle smooth and easy to hold. Looking at it never fails to remind her of the grand city of Ironforge and the beginning of her adventures.

On the question of baths and showers, Naomi resolutely prefers to bathe. She does draw the line at taking baths in chilly water - unless it’s summertime. After a rather too cold bath she will always insist on a piping hot cup of goldthorn tea to keep colds at bay.

Naomi doesn’t much care to wear make up or to tote it along on her travels, but she does fuss about keeping her clothes clean. She brushes them down every evening and makes use of laundry maids whenever she stays at an inn where she can hire one.

If she could pick an outfit from an infinite closet, it would be a floor length robe of deep velvet green (to complement her skin) with impractically wide bell sleeves. Her only jewelry would be a silver circlet with a teardrop shaped emerald resting on her forehead and a belt of silver links. She would wear fine black wool tights to keep warm, since clearly one wears one’s favorite imaginable outfit at one’s favorite time of year, and Naomi’s is autumn.

Unrelated screenshot of Naomi sitting by the fire in an inn somewhere in Northrend.

Lesson Learned

Lilac has been leveling along at my snail’s pace, she’s 74 now. And that means that she can finally get to Dal! I bought a port for my pally to get there when she turned 70 or so, but Lilac has been trying to make it on her own. The Dal flight point is exciting because now I have a quick way to get to Shatt to do the cooking daily and hope that the recipes for The Outland Gourmet drop.

I’ve been running a number of randoms for the sake of getting emblems, and today was one of those days when I just couldn’t click with my group. We were in Ahn’kahet: The Old Kingdom, and the DK tank was getting hit for a third to half of his health fairly frequently. Fighting an Eye of Taldaram, I almost lost him because I got myself locked out of holy spells. Okay, that was my mistake, but why do people think saying “come on healer the tank almost died” is helpful (and this definitely isn’t the first time I’ve heard this exact statement)? Wouldn’t “try to dispel Eyes in the Dark so you don’t get locked out” be better? Or maybe they don’t actually know the mechanics either… I have serious problems noticing debuffs on anyone, including myself, that don't show up on Grid, I hope I can configure it to display that one.

With the LFD tool, I’ve certainly gotten myself into instances that I didn’t even know existed, let alone know how the encounters work. I always let my group know when I’m running an instance I’ve never done before, in the hopes that they’ll warn me about these kind of things. Especially school of magic lockouts. I really don’t like those.

Today was my second trip through that instance, and I think I finally learned my lesson. I should really read about instances instead of trying to rely on my group. Got it. Kind of embarrassing it took me so long to realize that.

Hey! My outfit doesn't clash!

I did get this purdy cloak though! Burgundy/brown is becoming my new favorite color, weirdness...

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

Mixing it Up

With the release of Cataclysm somewhere on the horizon, a lot of WoW bloggers have been advocating finding new ways to play. Giving PvP or some RP a shot might help beat the pre-expansion blues, they say. For better or worse, I have a pretty high tolerance for repetition. I can eat the same thing for lunch for years, and I believe Naomiviolet, my pally, gained more than one level in her 70’s from only the Kalu’ak dailies and the Dalaran cooking and fishing dailies. Personality quirks aside, my play-style is also somewhat to blame there – some days my only chance to log in is while I’m eating breakfast before work. I’m not going to get very far exploring new areas or quests in 15 or 20 minutes, but I sure can crank out those dailies for my very own Pengu.

A month or two ago, something got me started reading blogs with an RP bent, it might have been the All the World’s a Stage column over at wow.com. With pen and paper, I wrote a couple of very short fic’s about my priest and found it rather entertaining. Still, I was completely unprepared for the blast I had yesterday writing about her ideal way to spend a hot, hot midsummer day. I’d done some general brainstorming the day before, but I still needed to think about where exactly she would go and just what she’d bring with her.

It was so fun to wander through the night elf lowbie area (not having any night elves, I hadn’t been there before), to swim around looking for just the right spot, and to line up just the right screenshots. I don’t play on a PvP server, so it’s not as if I normally worry about getting ganked constantly. Even so, it was amazingly calming to just play and not be on a quest, or trying to level this or that, or keeping four other people alive in an instance. Of course, I did choose a relaxing locale, but its affect on me-the-player was so unexpected!

I didn’t think I needed a change, but it looks like “they” were right after all.

A Trip to the Lake

(In response to Anna's prompt Friday Five-Hundred: Midsummer Sun. And, hello!)

A sweltering summer day sends Naomi off to pack a picnic basket and head to Lake Al’meth in Teldrassil. Arriving before the strongest heat of the day, she spends the morning swimming in the forest lake and following the flighty wisps as they dash about.

Freshly baked bread, slices of dwarven mild, and some smoked sagefish make the perfect lunch to be had beneath one of the huge trees near the lake. From her shady resting place, Naomi fishes away the afternoon, sipping on a blend of Rumsey’s Rum, wintersbite, and mint – an Azerothian mojito. Since a warm drink just wouldn’t do, she always keeps a small dagger, icy chill enchanted, in the bottom of her picnic basket.

When the sun starts to sink beneath the green and violet leaves of the trees, the priest builds a campfire to roast her freshly caught smallfish. For dessert, she digs out a slice of homemade cherry pie from the picnic basket. Content, she leans back and closes her eyes. When she opens them again, twilight has fallen and she knows that she can stay no longer. The blissful day over, a shadow of melancholy briefly passes over her heart upon reflecting that she spent it in solitude. A whistle brings her sweet elekk, Jingles, back from where he’d been frolicking along the shore. Together they begin the journey home.