Last weekend I decided it was finally time to get Kerisa to level 85.
She is my third 85; Kregga very quietly dinged 85 a couple of months ago in tandem with BTH’s Paladin. I did almost all of Kerisa’s 80-85 leveling alone, going through all of Hyjal, about half of Deepholm, just enough of Uldum to get the Ramkahen tabard and flight point, Vashj’ir until I’d opened up Silver Tide Hollow, and all of Twilight Highlands. The difficulty of the questing felt like it was tuned just about right… until I got to the Twilands. Twilight Highlands was much more challenging and frustrating to play through solo than it had been to play through with a partner, especially after I dinged 85. I absolutely COULD NOT pull more than one mob at a time — especially not by accident! — and survive. I probably died at least once, and sometimes more than once, doing each group of quests. Perhaps I have gotten too accustomed to being relatively OP with my lower level characters.
strange, this eagle does not taste like chicken, it tastes like cow! — what is this! I don’t even…!
Kerisa got a lot of help in the form of crafted items and her gear is Heroics-ready, but not quite raid-ready yet. I would like to be able to take her to the ES alt run on Thursday nights, which always seems to be short just one DPS or healer as they are forming up and trying to get started. It’s a great credit to the fun folks in ES that I’m actually wanting to go to a third raid night a week, instead of merely going to one because I felt like it was expected of me, as I did in my previous two guilds. Although loot has never been my primary motivation for raiding, Kerisa does want a pair of those pretty Passive Resistor Spaulders. Still, the thought of the gear grind just to get to the point of being able to raid with her is rather daunting.
Kerisa’s inscription was approaching the cap, courtesy of all the shady Orgrimmar denizens willing to accept her forged documents. Some herbing and milling and relic crafting (including a tattooed eyeball for herself) got her to 525. I’ve been thinking for some time about having Kerisa make Darkmoon cards; the Volcano card would be great for her and the Tsunami card would be wonderful for Kamalia. However, I’d have to spend substantial amounts of time farming the herbs myself because I don’t have the gold balance to just buy them. Furthermore, some of my herb farming will always have to go toward flasks. Of course, I could sell cards of suits I’m not interested in and duplicate cards of the suits I’m collecting, and over time that would build up some gold — but by and large, I’d still be gathering most of the herbs myself. Is making Darkmoon cards really a rabbit hole I want to be jumping down?
Well, I suppose it probably is. I can’t exactly afford to buy the cards themselves. And I did already spend a great deal of time patiently digging, digging, digging to find Tyrande’s Favorite Doll. Herbing, herbing, herbing to make random cards, hoping that the next one will be one I want instead of one I don’t want, isn’t really all that different of a time sink.
Grats!
Working on my Death Knight at the moment. Hopefully she’ll be at least 80 by Sunday.