The Long Term

It was probably a disappointment to you, but not a surprise, that 4.0.1 did not launch this week. Or maybe I'm the only one that felt WotLK had outstayed it's welcome around the time it became clear that to gain the most advantage, I had to run ToGC four times a week.

Just the same, the pre-expansion lull has always been a cool place to be. Everything's new at the same time it's old. If your guild is still raiding, you'll be limited to one ICC lockout a week, which may result in more free time for yourself.

I'm rather fond of setting myself a few long term goals in order to fill that free time. This isn't to say that you must play WoW because you can, only that if you choose to, you may find it rewarding to work to something that takes a good deal of time.

A long term goal doesn't have to make sense. A guildie of mine has determined she would like to hold 300k gold before Cataclysm hits, and hinted that she'd like to be gold capped on all her alts. We asked her why, and there really wasn't a better explanation than 'because'. It's more a case of 'why not', rather than 'why'. After all, would you really mind having 300k gold? Probably not, even though nothing you'll ever encounter will require it (not to mention, the only thing that could come close to that in value - Ashes of A'lar - she already has :P).

Really I wasn't in a place to criticize because I was farming Escape from Durnholde for Keepers of Time rep at the time this conversation happened, and that's probably infinitely stupider than working towards 300k gold.



Two weeks ago I managed to finally get every class to 80 before the expansion hit. What I gained from this was a deep understanding of why it's impossible to find raiding mages on my server (somehow they made a staple of every fantasy game so tragically boring that arguing over your tax return with the IRS would be more rewarding).

And now that I've had a chance to breathe and relish my victory over spamming arcane blast, it's time to grab myself a few new goals for the game ahead. I don't really have a timetable for these, but I think they'd be cool to have. But I have ordered them from what I'd most like to 'I'm ok with not getting carpal tunnel'.

- A Long, Strange Trip - for my Alt Army
- Ashes of A'lar - for my main
- Dark Phoenix...and her babyyy - for my main
- Bane of the Fallen King - for my main
- Justicar - for my main
- Insane - for my main
- Loremaster - for my main

All of which I'd like to give their own post when the time comes.

Brewmaster
Today I was going to talk a bit about gaining Long, Strange Trip on multiple alts. Again, I don't really have a reason, other than I don't actually see many people on purple protodrakes, so it's something a bit unique for the alts.

Hitting 80 when I did meant I could immediately set my focus on Brewmaster.

When my main did the event two years ago it required roughly 300-500 tokens to complete, depending on whether or not you wanted to keep the clothing items or the pet when you were done.

In patch 3.3 the title was changed, so it no longer required buying the clothing (or even buying the dozen or so kinds of alcohol to try!). I had no idea this had happened when I brought my alts to the event with five days left, and expected to have to return next year. With the changes, it only requires 202 tokens to get the achievement. 200 for the Brew of the Year Club, and 2 to change your mount into a ram (or presumably kodo, for horde).

Additionally, doing all the one-time quests will net you several tokens. And the daily to defeat the Direbrews drops a quest item on the ground that persists for about 15 minutes, meaning you can do the event on one character, and then log on to the others to reap the rewards.

What this meant was I shoved 7 characters through to Brewmaster in 2-3 days (the other 3 already had it), dependent on whether or not I accidentally clicked something that would dismount me during ram racing, not that that happened or anything >>

It's too late to do Brewfest on your own alts this year, but I assure you it's little more than a speedbump should you try it next year. However, ram racing dailies get really annoying around the 5th time you do them in a single day.

Merrymaker
I had been ignoring holiday events while I leveled them. I'd given up on the idea last year thanks to the most heinous requirement (behind Hard Knocks) - you need 325 cooking skill to finish Winter's Veil. If you're a raider, you should really already have this. But why would you ever do this on an alt?

So now that I'm trying again, I'm starting in on this one early. I decided to repeat my main's example, and leveling cooking alongside fishing. No matter what I do, there's going to be farming, and fishing at least doesn't require you move often to retrieve different animals. There are simple guides available via a google search to do this (like El's Extreme Anglin', the one I've been using - but remember to click responsibly for account security :3).

Fishing does get annoying very fast. My paladin is sitting at about 262 skill at the moment and skillups are coming about every 2-3 minutes. But it has the added benefit of not requiring much attention. A second window open to watch South Park episodes has provided much entertainment. It seems, just fishing in between other things I do, I can probably get one character a week to 325. Can probably cut it down a bit if I fish on weekends as well. I'll let you know in a few weeks how it's working out :3

Screenshots of the week
Appear to have not been uploaded to my file server (d'oh!). I will post them later tonight.

Happy WoWins'!