I currently have ten alts in the level 10-20 range, eight in the 21-30 range, eight in the 31-40 range, and four strung out across the 41-80 range.
Some of them are from my ongoing “Project Ten” to get a character of every Class to the level cap.
Some are from my completed “Project Twenty” to play a character of every Race at least to level 20. Most of those characters made it several levels past 20, but they’ve since been languishing in neglect.
Many of the lowest level alts exist primarily because I wanted to have a character of a particular class/race/appearance combination.
I also have three level 85s and two sub-level-10 “Time Capsule” Goblins, for a grand total of thirty-five characters.
(Pfft, I can hear you Master Altoholics saying, that’s not even close to the character cap!)
Frequently when I have finished playing with Kamalia and/or Kerisa for the day and gone through my bankers’ routines, I flick through the character selection screen on all of my servers two or three times and then just log off because I can’t decide which of my other toons to play. It doesn’t help that I’ve been artificially, and perhaps unneccesarily, gating myself by wanting certain newer characters to be the first to experience the revamped old world content — and wanting those characters to do it during daytime hours so as to get well-lit screenshots — because it has left most of my higher level characters with nothing I feel like I can do with them.
Although I sometimes feel like I already have too many alts, my fancy has been tickled by Ironyca’s recent catalog of unconventional ways to level and by Vrykerion and Psynister’s Ironman Challenge. In particular, I’m intrigued by the way that many of the conditions of Thriftee’s challenge and the Ironman challenge are similar, but key criteria are inverses.
The Thrifty leveler can’t use trained abilities, but CAN use talented abilities. They will get all of their gear from quest rewards and drops.
The Ironman leveler CAN use trained abilities, but can’t use talented abilities. They will get almost all of their gear from vendors, as they can only use grey/white quality drops.
The Thrifty leveler, therefore, will have decent gear but a limited array of abilities, whereas the Ironman leveler will have poor gear but a wider array of abilities.
I’m flirting with the idea of making twin alts off on a separate server by themselves and taking one down the Thrifty path and the other down the Ironman. I think’d make one alteration to Thriftee’s rules, though, and allow myself to purchase basic riding training at level 20, basic flying at 60, and Northrend and Cataclysm flying at appropriate levels, because I wouldn’t have the guild support for summonses and so forth that Thriftee did. I already have a sparkle pony attached to my account, so I wouldn’t have to buy mounts, just the riding training. Flight paths would still be disallowed.
But what race/class combination to choose, of the ones I don’t yet have on my roster, but would be interested in playing? I’m leaning toward Dwarf Paladin.
That sounds like a fine plan. You can skirt around the Thrifty mount issue by playing a Worgen for free riding at level 20 without a fee, but you’d still miss out on a flying mount either way.
I like dwarves, and I like paladins. Sounds like a winning combination to me.
Good luck!
I’d thought about Worgen for that very reason, but I can’t stand the Running Free animation — it’s one of the reasons I bought the sparkle pony to begin with. In the long run, I’m more interested in having a flying mount for places like Uldum, where Thriftee experienced quite a bit of difficulty getting around, than necessarily in having a ground mount for everywhere else. If I can get flying training at 60 without having to purchase the land speed upgrade at 40, I’ll definitely do it!
I have two characters that I level at the same time, an Ironman and a… just a semi-nerfed hunter, hehe. So far it’s been a lot of fun and I havn’t seen a paladin leveled in an alternative way, so that would be interesting.
Hi Kamaliatalia – Thriftee here
Just found your blog through the pingback on Psynister.
Just a note to say that you don’t have to quest in Uldum, where I found the need for a flying mount was too much. That was a mistake on my part to go there – I should have gone straight to Twilight Highlands instead, but never having quested in the Cata zones before – I didn’t know this at the time. I wasn’t far into the Twilight Highlands when I dinged 85, so any XP I made in Uldum, could easily have been made there instead.
On Mt Hyjal I think there was only one quest that needed a summons, and for all I know I might have been able to skip it. Plus I reckon a worgen would be able to get to that nest, maybe even a female night elf too, as I feel night elf females have superior climbing skills. But def a worgen with it’s extra speed, as I have seen a video showing that it is possible to reach it with a ground mount.
As for the rest of the summonses (I only had 8 in total, all from 80 – 85) I think I could have avoided them all by not going to Uldum, and if I had swam to the mainland from Vashir after finishing the zone. I know its possible to swim to Vashir from the mainland because I had done it several times on Döra. Plus if you die on the swim you end up at the Westfall graveyard – so if you took your gear off first this would be a handy shortcut.
What I am trying to say is that I think I got lazy towards the end, and it was easy to make use of the guild perk available to me – but I am fairly convinced, looking back, that the challenge could be done with no summonses at all.
Obviously, its up to you how you want to tackle any particular challenge, but I thought I should give you the heads up. If I ever did the Thriftee challenge again, I would definitely attempt it without summonses – mainly because I got ripped to bits by certain elements of the wow community for having used them. Sad but true.
Anyway – good luck if you decide to try it! I had fun with it.
Hi, Dora/Thriftee! Thanks for stopping by!
Thanks for the tip re. Uldum and summonses.
I did know that one could fly to/from Vashj’ir and the Westfall coast (I’ve done it), but I’d never tried swimming. I’m glad to know that you can do it without drowning, and that drowning is actually a shortcut if you intend to go back to the mainland
I guess I’ll hold off on buying riding training after all, and only do it if I feel like I’m really, REALLY stuck on something.