Sethekk Halls and 67!

After finishing Nagrand with Durn the Hungerer, I was left with Viktor half a box and the four shamans 12 boxes short of level 67. I did all the group quests with these five chars, with the exception of Durn, for which a guildmate gave me a hand, and of course the Ring of Blood, for which another guildmate did the same, tanking out of the party.

While I fully plan to go for shield and 1h mace at 70, I took the Battle Mage-Baton from the Ring of Blood for all five characters. It has just the right stats and is a serious improvement. I can level without the armor provided by a shield.

One thing that I keep an eye on while leveling these characters is rep. Rep with Honor Hold, Cenarion Expedition, Lower City, Caverns of Time and the Sha'tar. Passing through the Hellfire Peninsula and doing the Ramparts boss kill quest, Zangermarsh and locating the lost expedition members in the Slave Pens and the Underbog and doing a couple of quests in Terrokar allowed me to get halfway to my target. That means it left me honored with Honor Hold and the Cenarion Expedition, and on the way to honored with the Lower City.

Looking at the shamans being half a level behind Viktor and them needing more Lower City rep, I parked Viktor and headed to Sethekk halls to get some instance xp. I made a mage table with Alaire, then logged her and grabbed biscuits with the shamans and my tankadin Stephanius. That saw me ready for the dungeon.

The way I went about it was to just tank and dps. My tank is sufficiently geared that no healing is needed in the time until a group of mobs is put down. The only time I healed was at about 30% of the first bosses health. One thing that is very nasty in this place are the mind control totems dropped by the Time Lost Controllers. However, the combination of taking this mob as first target, opening fire on it before it reached the tank and stunning it if still alive when it arrives at the tank did the trick nicely.

I completed Sethekk halls the first time on Monday, taking the last boss in the first go. It also brought me to honored with the Lower City! Then I fell out of bed early today. Too early to head to work, by enough of a margin to clear the dungoen again. That took me to level 67 on the shamans. All shamans had rested XP saved up and were bagging about 1500xp per trash mob kill, adding up very quickly.

I will definitely do some more dungeons for leveling purposes - not just in the Caverns of time for that rep, but also in Mechanar for the Lightning Totem. I have not tried yet, but aparently it is possible to summon people into Mechanar with a warlock, which allows character that do not have a flying mount or are not even 70 to get in there. Considering that I really need that lightning totem drop for all four shamans from the Mechanar Chest and that I plan to PvP with these shamans - making a flying mount totally unnecessary, that is awesome. I have three level 70 warlocks, so with a bit of fiddling I can get my characters into Mechanar and set to go by myself. I can hardly wait. =]

Ghost wolf sideeffects

After killing 2143235213452 wolves, if not more I was able to gather 60 wolf tails. Another moment where you wonder how many WoW critters manager to get around without ears, teeth, tails or other default parts of their anatomy. Talking xp boxes, it took me eight boxes to get all of them. Anyway, level 64 now, and the cloth spellpower quest reward headpiece looks kinda neat with the drenai horns. Neat enough to make me take a screenshot. =]

Reported!

[05/12/08]
17:03[Loórd]: ha i reported you! injoy your ban
17:03[Viktor]: Multiboxing is legit, and fine with Blizzard.
17:03[Loórd]: haha you havre been reported enjoy ban
17:03[Viktor]: sorry for wasting your time and that of the GM
17:03[Loórd]: haha
17:03[Loórd]: haha enjoy ban
17:03[Loórd]: ha!
17:03[Viktor]: seriously, search the customer service forums for multiboxing
17:04[Loórd]: how do u feel? ass

This is a level one alt that a horde rogue named Króul made just to gloat about just reporting me.
Then he logged back to his character and laughed and spat at me.

Unfortunately, I expect that the poor guy will not get any more educated and remain active faithfully as an unwanted and cluesless deputy-GM. ;-]

Who knows, maybe he even did report me and I might have a GM talk to me for the first time about multiboxing.

Anyway, level 63.5 and ticking.

Welcome to Hellfire Peninsula!

After leaving the pack at 56.5, I pushed my quests a bit to 57 and then nuked Stratholme for the remainder to 58. Time to rejoice and enjoy the sudden availability of useful quest rewards multiplying the spellpower on the shaman gear significantly. Instead of using a warlock or my tankadin as before, I now used a shadow specced priest that I had left at level 60 for ages with the shamans. My choice for level 60s to dust off was between a rogue, a mage or this priest. I have Alaire geared and working as waitress mage. Captn is healing, but a shadow priest might be interesting. A rogue, melee when multiboxing just causes headaches. So, Viktor the shadowpriest is the choice.

After milking the quests in eastern Hellfire, the team dinged 60. I hopped over to buy the epic land mounts and riding skill. For the moment, the mounts are as shown here, but I want to get rid of those. I like the idea of going for goats, which would also consume my surplus runecloth for Ironforge reputation, or alternatively could be sorted with spare PvP tokens - but that is a bit down the line.

Time for the daily quest 'hug thy pillow'.

Vrooooom!

Today, I had a bunch of hours available to play, and I decided to really push hard on the shamans. I was annoyed with being stuck in the old lands. I started the day at level 52. I ended it at level 56, with half of the next level sorted. That means that I will hit the magic level 58 tomorrow. Yay!

To do that, I did quests in the Western and Eastern Plaguelands, as well as in Felwood and Winterspring. After leveling a bunch of times to 60 and later to 70, I know the juicy quest chains like the back of my hand - no, I don't study them, I just have good memory - and made good use of that.

A funny incident occurred when I followed up on the satyr chain in Felwood with the escort quest for Arei. After doing the patrol through the area with the ironwood treants, the escort leads up to the road, where an ambush is spawned. On the last two dozen yards to the road, I noticed a tauren druid in his spiffy lion form prance about.

Now, I play sissy PvE mode, so we are both not flagged. Knowing spoilsport behavior, I expected the druid to try to interfere with my escort quest in a critical moment. As expected, the tauren druid turned pvp-enabled a few seconds after the ambush when he attacked the alliance NPC - to kill him and make me fail the quest. This was not a good moral call. It was also a bit stupid, considering that the druid himself was level 55ish, and I had four level 55 shamans as well as a level 70 warlock there. Rest in peace, dear Wixzen, pity you had to leave us. On another note, I am not sure if this poor guy is aware of it, but his character name is just one additional letter away from the German term for 'to jerk off'. Either way, the whole thing just took a few seconds, but it contributed to my entertainment, so I hope the same is true for you.

Cheers, Steph.

Five-oh

Must resist the temptation to loot, must resist the temptation to loot, must...oh, sorry about that. It is absolutely ineffective to give in to the temptation and click all the sparkling piles. While doing the five levels from 45 to 50 in Stratholme's entrance area, I used to loot all the mobs while my tankadin was drinking. Then I realized how much time I was wasting that could be better spent by doing dailies, which net me more than the three truckloads of runecloth, level 55 blue BoE's, tons of greens and one world drop epic would net me. But! the main thing is: Hello level 50! Hello Totem of Wrath. Hello +12% crit and hit for the party. Yay!

Next up, plaguelands quests. I am a bit fed up with this nuking. =]

Cheers, Steph.

Welcome to Stratholme!

As soon as I got my baby shaman pack to level 45, it was time to test how nuking a level 60 instance works. As the pile of glittering corpses attests, it goes quite well. I am too lazy at the moment to work out the formula to see how much the xp per kill are currently reduced due to the level difference being too great. I prefer to just wait and see how the numbers run along.

Nuking a bunch of packs in Stratholme with my my tankadin does result in a significant amount of spam on the screen, as you can see here. I am not sure yet how I will proceed once my shaman pack hits the magic level 58, but I am content to milk this at the moment. We will see.

Cheers, Steph.