The Diary of A Simple Man

I've been home more than usual for various reasons, and so got to play a little more than usual. I'm handicapped by having to play with only one hand; the pain is decreasing and I can use a finger or two on my left hand to hit the shift key, but I'm not playing anywhere near as well as usual.

Still, I've made progress. The primary beneficiary is Linkomac, the Draenei hunter. He's up to level 19, and now I'm in the process of trying to scrape up enough money to get him a mount and training at level 20. His skinning/leatherworking is going pretty well, but it's hard to make much money selling leather at this level.

I got him to Ironforge a while back to pick up Gun skill, but his crossbow still does more damage. He has a pet; a Nightstalker (?), a panther who is quite useful. Between him and his pet, they can finish off enemies quite quickly, even ones a couple of levels higher than he is.

I have to say that hunters seem to be an extremely effective class! Linkomac has been levelling far more quickly than any of my other characters. I've heard that the Draenei and Blood Elf starting areas are better-designed for levelling than the starting areas for the original races, so maybe that's a contributing factor.

His biggest problem is lack of inventory space. All of his bags are 8-slot, which really sucks. Unfortunately Domac can't make anything better, and none of my characters can afford anything better.

Haven't played the other characters much. Domac's enchanting skill is over 50, and she made some minor wizard's oil for Omacmage; I hadn't realized that it was five doses per batch. I need to level her up more, so she can make bigger bags and better enchantments.

I got Omacmage across the sea to the elf-country again, and did some fishing on the shore. Got some oily blackmouth and some sealed trunks. As I was fishing, a huge Horde expedition raced across the sea in front of me, somehow solidifying the water momentarily as they passed. They must have seen me, but luckily they ignored me. They wiped out everyone on the docks, I believe, but by the time I got there they were gone.

It's really hard to play WoW with only one hand.

I'm sticking to safe areas and mostly harvesting. No parties. I've still managed to level some of my lower-level characters, though.

Another solo night.

Got Lukemac to 24, but can't afford all my training (and I owe someone a chunk of gold, so I'm not going to pool money from my other characters).

Zeldava's up to level 8. I picked her first profession, inscription, and discovered that herbalism was practically required - so I took that as well. Soon I'll make my first scrolls. Do scrolls and potions which accomplish the same effects stack, I wonder?

Linkomac the hunter is up to level 8 as well. Soon I'll go to the Exodar, I imagine. No specialization picked yet; as a hunter, skinner/leatherworker makes most sense, but Omacblade already has that covered.

A headless horseman is haunting WoW, and Sebastian is absolutely delighted. If you don't play WoW, I won't bore you with the details. Basically, buildings are burning, PCs are trying to extinguish the flames, there are jack-o-lanterns everywhere, as well as candy and apples to bob for. What fun!
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Sebastian designed a new WoW character on Maelstrom last night: a blonde human female warlock we named "Zeldava". He wanted to call her "Zelda", but of course that was taken. So were "Zeldah" and "Zellda".

He was very specific about her looks, particularly her hair, and it turned out that he was making her look like a girl he knows called Ava (he claims he knows two of them, and the Ava he was thinking of isn't the one who sometimes chases him around at school). So we ended up calling her Zeldava. I'll see if I can throw up a picture of her soon.

I played her for a while. The quest to get her first imp was pretty tough; she kept having to fight three enemies simultaneously. Even though my other characters had sent her money and equipment and potions, she kept dying. Finally I took her in when she was close to levelling, and that worked like a charm. She leveled while quite low on hit points and mana, which of course immediately replenished them; that did the trick.

Now she's level five, and doing fairly well.

Oh, I got the penguin pet for converting my account to Battle.net. Each of my characters is getting one. He's kind of a grungy-looking penguin, I must say! Sebastian hasn't seem him yet.

I am, of course, dead tired. Up much too late playing WoW, and when I was just going to bed Sebastian woke up crying, looking for Frisco (his favorite stuffed cat). I helped him find Frisco, but he wouldn't sleep after that. I lay beside him for hours, getting kicked and shoved, and got less than two hours of sleep all night.

Oh, I turned up the heat for the first time of the season; it was 56 degrees upstairs last night, so I cleaned off the radiators and cranked the thermostat up to 64. Much better!

Not much to report. Another solo evening. Someone spoke to me nicely, but it turned out that they were just selling gold.

My auction went off well enough, and I got just under 3 gold.

No leveling, unfortunately. Domac (pal-13) got to 50 in enchanting, but she needs maple seeds to make cloaks. Apparently they're available from merchants, but I haven't found one yet. I took her adventuring; she's doing well, and is making good progress to level 14.

I also got Omacblade, my skinner/leatherworker, to level 10. But he bores me; I've done the human/fighter thing too many times before.

Got Omacmage out of Darkshire (too scary to be in alone) and completed a minor quest or two.

I managed to quit a little earlier than usual. But I still didn't get enough sleep; I'd just fallen asleep when Sebastian called me to come and sleep with him. I did, but he pulled all the blankets off me (he'd had me pile six blankets on him at bedtime) and I froze. We really need to take out the bedroom air conditioners!

Blizzard is requiring everyone to convert their WoW account into a Battle.net account. I thought I already had a Battle.net account (via Diablo and Diablo II), but I had to create a new one anyway.

I'm supposedly going to receive a penguin as an in-game pet (Sebastian was very excited at the news), but I don't know how to get it.

I've been thinking, and I've decided to clean out my characters on the Maelstrom server. I have three Horde characters and seven Alliance characters there, and that doesn't make sense. I should make Maelstrom all Alliance, so I can send myself useful stuff and have my characters support each other.

My highest-level Horde character is 15th level. I noticed that I may be able to transfer him for free to a lower-population server. If so, I'll do it; I'd hate to waste the time I spent playing him. I guess I'll look for a low-population RPG sever.

Sebastian has decided that I should make a human male warlock. I don't know why.

No leveling last night, alas. I went on a one-hour mining junket with Lukemac, though, and picked up a fair amount of tin and 97 coppers. Made a bunch of copper bracers and sent them over to Domac for enchanting.

Her tailoring skill is around 114 now, and I managed to raise her Enchanting skill from 18 to 46. I expect that tonight she'll get to 50 and finally be able to enchant something genuinely useful, a cloak. But she'll be maxed out at that point; she can't increase her skill any further until she gets to level 20. Since she's level 13 right now, she has some adventuring ahead of her!

Also did some adventuring with a friend in Darkshire, and the thing I feared happened: we were deep in a cemetary, surrounded by scary undead, and he had to go AFK for a while. Undead were clawing up out of the ground near us, and I was afraid that the slightest move would bring them down on us.

One did come, but I was able to handle him.

There was also a lower-level paladin in the distance who kept fighting undead and then running away. I helped him out occasionally with a long-distance frostbolt to slow his opponent. I've maxed out the range on a selection of frost spells, so I can shoot them pretty far now. It's useful, particularly when I'm soloing.

The Horde continues to plague Darkshire. A couple of high-level Horde PCs were riding around, randomly attacking throughout Darkshire and Duskwood. A high-level Alliance PC was chasing them. Fortunately the Horde guys didn't attack us.

I played a bit over the weekend. Leveled my top three characters; as I recall, the mage is now 27, the fighter is 23, and the paladin is 13. I've managed to boost the paladin's enchanting skill to 21, which is mildly helpful.

Did some adventuring in Darkshire. I don't like it there - too dark and scary. I don't like horror movies, and Darkshire is too much like haunted-house land. It's better if I'm with someone else, and I was for most of the time. But if he'd disappeared, I might have freaked out a little!

He did leave before I was quite finished turning in a quest, so I went along the border of Darkshire on the Westfall side, and then cut in quickly across the river to turn in the quest.

Whoops, almost forgot! FATAL ERROR. Yup, over the weekend my WoW developed a fatal error syndrome. It crashed within 30 seconds after I began play with ANY character. I removed the Gatherer add-on (leaving Quest Helper installed) and ran a repair. That fixed the problem. Gatherer wasn't that helpful anyway.

This seems pretty trivial in light of this morning's news, but I got Lukemac up to level 22 pretty easily last night. Played solo again. Found my first deposits of silver, two of them, in the Ironband Excavation. The troggs were no problem; I even took out their chief and two of his henchmen simultaneously! I think I criticalled the chief, though, because he went down almost instantly.

I suspect there's a quest for him, in which case I'll have to take him out again. But since there's silver there, I'd be doing it anyway. :D

Blacksmithing and mining skills are advancing nicely.

I need to make some money for the wizard, so he can get training - and then I want to find my way back to Astranaar, so he can pick herbs!

P.S. - almost forgot: I finally found the simple compass for the Humble Beginnings quest. It was in a completely different place from where Quest Helper was indicating. But I haven't gotten any follow-up quests yet.

P.P.S. - I got a 10% off certificate via email from Best Buy. Got a $5 coupon at nearly the same time from their Reward Zone program. So I went downstairs and got a two-month WoW card for $21.99 - saved eight bucks! I thought they were probably out of stock, but they had some in the back.