Archaeologist and Class Snobbery

So I spent most of my time in WoW this weekend leveling my archaeology up from the 200s to the 600s. Still a bit more to go to reach 700. I was spoiled up until 600...because I could pretty much let my pet take care of any mobs that hit me (since they did little to no damage to me). When I hit around 575, I hearthed back to my garrison and headed out into Draenor, where the mobs are all my level now. So I can't let my pet take out the mobs for me anymore LOL! Now I'm getting why people are bitching about the lack of flying in Draenor making archaeology a pain in the ass. Still not really missing flying, though. Truthfully, I find it sort of a pain in the ass to keep getting on and off a mount to get from one survey spot to another in a dig site. Even in Eastern Kingdoms, Outlands, and Northrend I wasn't mounting and dismounting when I was surveying.

My friend Wes has been playing the starter edition and I'd decided to level another hunter from the draenei starting zone - hence the "class snobbery" in the post title. It's not so much snobbery as just class preference. I love playing a hunter, and I play it well. My new guild has dungeon leveling groups, and I've joined one that starts on April 1. Wes rolled a shaman and we were sitting at Level 7. So Sunday afternoon I realized that April 1 is this Wednesday (no idea why I thought it was next Sunday!!!), and I need to get my toon to Level 15 before then! Yikes! I haven't leveled a toon since I got back, so I didn't really realize how much they'd nerfed it, and especially with heirlooms, it didn't take me long to get her to Level 15. Now I just have to pick up some gear from the auction house since we won't be using heirlooms in the dungeon group.

I can't wait to start the dungeon group. I have a new headset coming from Amazon which is supposed to be delivered on Wednesday, so hopefully I'll have that in time so I can talk to the other members in Mumble while we're in the dungeon(s).

Anyway, so that was my weekend (in WoW anyway). IRL we got more snow on Saturday, and it's snowing again today (Monday). I've had enough. It's almost April ffs. I'm ready for spring!

Freefallin'

Last night's garrison campaign was in Shattrath City in Talador (that is the new zone, which takes place in the past, which means that the new Shattrath in the WoD expac is actually Shattrath before the old Shattrath in Outlands...how's that for confusing?).

Anyway, so I took the flightpath over to Shattrath City in Talador and hopped on my raptor mount and headed over to the elevator to get down to the ground where the campaign was...ran straight onto the elevator platform just as it headed down and dove to my death. Spectacular. Just like I once did in Shattrath in the old content years ago LOL!

I applied to that other guild I talked about in a previous post. I'll be talking to one of the GM's tonight. Can't wait! They have events and things, leveling groups, lots of fun stuff.

Yay!

Yesterday was "reset" day. I guess it's something to look forward to on Tuesdays! See, at work, Tuesday is my worst day of the week because I have meetings all afternoon (being the secretary, I get to sit in a roomful of doctors going on and on and on about things that I barely understand and take minutes on it all. Not fun). So I look forward to going home after work and hitting up old raids and dungeons on my quest for MORE STUFF!!!

I find myself doing the two in Uldum first, hoping for some dragon mounts. So after I did those (no mounts, but I did score a couple of battle pets), I headed to Karazahn and...

I also had put in "adoption requests" over at the Azeroth Adoption Agency and those came through too! AAA is a Horde guild on the Bladefist realm that takes donations of battle pets and "adopts" them out to people who want them. Basically, you create a Level 1 toon on their server, request membership to their guild (via their web site), then you can donate pets to them or request pets from their guild bank tabs. I got the Anubisath Idol, Pandaren Air Spirit (that was the only one I was missing!), and Egbert. Woo! I had donated a bunch too - 2 or 3 of each of the Zandalari dino pets, a stitched pup, and I think a doom bloom. So it was a pretty even trade for me:)

I also did the last three dungeons for the Classic Dungeonmaster achievement (King of Dire Maul, Lower Blackrock Spire, and Scholomance). So it was a good night!

Talked to one of my guildies last night about how dead the guild is. The whole reason I'd joined was because the WoW forum post said the guild would be becoming more active. So far, it's just two or three people ever on at one time, usually me and the person I was talking to last night. He brought up the deadness of the guild first, so I told him about another guild I've been watching that has planned events, etc., but that their recruitment is currently closed. He said to keep him posted and maybe we'd guild hop LOL! It's nice playing solo, but it would also be nice to have some friends to play with. I still haven't done much leveling on my Horde toon on my friends' server, but...well, someday LOL! When I run out of things to do on my Alliance toons maybe...

I've gone a little crazy with the pet battles LOL! I have 27 pets at Level 25 now. Check it out! And I'm only JUST starting to comprehend the "breed" thing and realizing that two of the same exact pet can have completely different stats and a completely different set of abilities! AND that they have genders...because Blizzard mentioned the possibility of eventually adding a breeding aspect to the game. Ha. Pokemon takes over WoW? Now that I've got the hang of pet battles, it's pretty easy to level them up.

Oh! And I almost forgot! I didn't realize that two more netherwing drakes had been added, so I headed over to Silvermoon Valley (the old one) and bought them and BOOM!

Anyway, so that's my update for now. Back to the grind (work!); lunch is over:(

Go away, snow!

More pet battling last night. I have 10 pets at Level 25 now. I was severely lacking in variety when I went to start doing the Cataclysm pet battle quests. So I figured out what I needed (magic and mechanical mainly, though I should level a humanoid pet too), so hopefully tonight I can knock out those quests and head to the next area. Still loving it LOL! I thought I'd hate it, but it's pretty fun trying to figure out strategies to defeat other pets. It's also fun capturing new ones too, which is where some of my Level 25 pets have come from. 

Oh, and here's a picture of my red primal raptor mount, along with a cameo by Skittles:) Unless I'm doing my apexis dailies, Skittles is running around WoW with me. 

I've tried using him for the apexis dailies, but I've found Junior (spirit beast Loque'nahak) is better for his buffs. Skittles works well for the <100 mobs, but for Level 100 mobs, especially elites, the spirit beasts are definitely a boost.

With my garrison and most of my buildings at Level 3, I love logging in and seeing my favorite battle pets running around all over the place from the menagerie LOL! Same with the stables - seeing a random assortment of my favorite mounts is pretty awesome:) I wish Blizzard would hurry up and release the damn mystic runesaber mount in the shop that they announced with the 6.1 patch:( I wants a purple kitty mount!!!!!!! I check the shop every day, but still nothing. And no word from Blizz on when it's coming out! C'mon, Blizzard, TAKE MY FUCKING MONEY ALREADY!

Not really a great shot of my stable, but you can see some of my mounts there - the vitreous stone drake, my green proto drake, my armored brown bear, the meadowstomper, and the very back end of my enchanted fey dragon. Haha, sometimes I run around and /pet them;) Yes, I'm a dork; but I'm a lovable dork. 

Come spring, we'll see what happens. Right now, there are six-foot snow drifts outside and it's been damn cold out, so here in New England, we are essentially in hibernation mode. When I come home from work, the last thing I want to do is head back out in the cold:(

Meantime, in "real life," my favorite hamburger/ice cream stand opens tomorrow night. In protest against Mother Nature, we're going. And dammit, I'm having a burger and a damn ice cream. With jimmies on top. Snow or no snow!

What the....?

I've been on the WoW forums a lot lately, mostly when I'm on lunch at work, and there are a LOT of posts about people quitting because there's no flying in Draenor. On the one hand, people complain that there's nothing to do in the WoD expac. On the other hand, they complain that because they can't fly in Draenor, they just sit in their garrisons and do nothing because they don't feel like using a ground mount to get where they want to go. So I'm confused. Is there no content? Or is there content...but they just don't want to be bothered to do it because - QQ - they'd have to take a flight path to get to it? I see words like "tedious" being used...and a lot of whining about how LONG it takes to get anywhere on a ground mount...then in the next sentence they're saying there's nothing to do (tedious or not?) and that Draenor is WAY too small (but a flight path "takes too long!"). I wish people would make up their damn minds.

I am actually having a blast. The latest patch came with a stone to boost one battle pet to Level 25. That was a lifesaver, especially for someone who didn't play Pandaland and missed the whole battle pet craze. It was maddening because our garrisons come with a ready-made pet menagerie building that was "locked" until you defeated three Level 25 pets. You want to talk about tedium? Considering I had no clue how to go about leveling pets up to 25 without flying all over the place, boosting one to Level 25 (I chose Chuck the crocodile) made it at least bearable. Using him, I was able to take a couple of other pets, stick them in a fight for one round, then put him in to win and level the other two up pretty easily. Once I realized that captured pets retained the level they were caught at, well it became a bit easier. So right now, I've got...I think (since the Armory is down)...seven or eight Level 25 pets. Once I hit the teens with them, I head to Pet Battle Level 20+ zones to get them the rest of the way. Along the way, I capture all the blue (epic) pets I can. And I continue the quests from Audrey Burnhep in Stormwind. Tonight I'll defeat the last of the Battle Masters in Northrend.

Other than that, I'm doing the garrison missions and invasions, continuing Yrel's quests. She is by far my favorite WoW character now (well, other than my own toons:) In last week's quest, she became the newest Exarch. But the battle pet leveling has been a hoot and has given me an opportunity to visit a lot of the places I loved when I was leveling my toons when I first started playing. Haha, I also have been soloing some of the old dungeons and raids - like Karazahn and the Wymrest instances (got the black drake). I did finally get my red primal raptor mount, so I've got all of those now (red, black, green, and the bone-white one!). Woo! The red one, same EXACT coloring of my devilsaur Skittles, is my favorite and has actually got me running around Azeroth and Draenor with Skittles again:)

I've sorta left my shaman sitting in the Tanaan Jungle with Khadgar because I don't feel like going through all those WoD starter quests again right now. Maybe this weekend! I have a couple of more pet families I need to level up, so that I'll have one of each at least, and that's the sort of brainless fun I am in the mood for right now:)