the Underpowered Death Knight reevaluates her existence

By the time she could finally afford flying training, Kaumalea had been in Hellfire Peninsula for so long that she felt like she’d burned to a crisp.

She could only afford it at all because she’d decided that, being a Taunka, she needed a Vrykul Drinking Horn when she returned to Northrend. Thus, she’d taken up Archaeology. The XP from that is not so much different from finding treasure chests, is it? Her first rare find was the Voodoo Figurine, which sold for a nice sum on the Auction House. Leveling this new skill to Outland competency also brought her from level 65 to level 67. Collecting Coins of Ancestry during the Lunar Festival got her to level 68.

At level 68, Kaumalea could finally wear all of the various items that I’d collected for her to use as RP sets in the event that she ever reached max-level. She could also go “home” to Camp Winterhoof, so I took her there for a photoshoot.

Sundered/Defender’s mail with Azure Shoulderguards, Wound Dressing, Dark Phantom Cape, and The Oathkeeper

Outrunner’s (dark blue) and Sundered/Defender’s (light blue) mail

Imbued plate with Alabaster shoulders and Commander’s belt

Symbolic plate with Circle’s Stalwart Helmet, Talonguard shoulders, and Warlord’s/Warmaul belt

Warleader’s chestpiece & leggings with Symbolic shoulders gloves & boots and Ango’rosh belt

Since then, she’s been campaigning to wear her “pretty clothes” all the time. I spent a certain amount of time and gold to acquire all those items because I wanted to see her wearing them, did I not? So now that she can wear them, I should let her wear them.

Kaumalea picked up Cooking at Winter Veil so as to be able to give Great-Father Winter the treats he desired, so after she trained Archaeology, she also picked up Fishing because it amused me for her to have no primary professions, but all four secondary professions. I haven’t leveled her Cooking and Fishing even enough for her to do the Darkmoon Faire cooking and fishing quests, though.

Kaumalea had only recently started doing Archaeology and was on her way to a digsite in Winterspring when another player recognized her as an Ironman.

As pleasing as that was, I think I am not really very well-suited to the challenge conditions I set for Kaumalea. I keep gradually relaxing her rules. Even though I probably regularly use only half a dozen or so abilities with any of my highest level characters, having constrained myself to use only the five abilities a brand-new Death Knight receives still feels slow and boring. Although I like how she looks in the various blue and red low-level items I collected for her, I’m beginning to chafe against the inability to Transmogrify her gear.

So what now, Kaumalea?

I don’t mind leaving her talentless and glyphless while she continues to level, but I feel that for the sake of my own fun in playing with her, I ought to either expand her allowed ability list or let her wear her “pretty clothes”. I shouldn’t do both, however, because then she wouldn’t really be “underpowered” anymore.

She needs to continue questing in Outland at least until she saves up enough money to afford cold-weather flying. Her Archaeology is not quite to Northrend competency yet, so she needs to dig some more in Kalimdor/Eastern Kingdoms or Outland.

Kaumalea exists as much because I want a blue-and-white Taunka Warrior Ice Princess as anything, so I don’t have any particular desire to play her through the Cataclysm or Mists content. Perhaps I should lock her XP when she reaches level 80 and gear her up as if she were trying for Herald of the Titans (even if I don’t ever find a group with whom to run for that feat of strength)?

Update:

While Crushing the Crown in Terrokar Forest, Kaumalea has been wearing her pink, black, and white plate set and using her restricted five-skill action bar. After the holiday is over, I think I do want to continue leveling her as a pseudo-Ironman. At this point, I think it’s clear that although playing a DK to max-level with just the five starter skills *could* be done, it’s too boring for me. Regular Ironmen don’t have an ability list restriction, so I am going to “unlock” Kaumalea’s action bars to allow her to use any skill she has available, but continue with the “chestpiece & leggings must be wearable by a character of level 10 or under and all other slots must be Common or Poor quality” dresscode.

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let’s hit the road!

Bored of gardening, Ketura returned to Northrend to contend for a bear. Once she’d brought Thorim back to his senses, she went on to improve her reputation with the Horde Expedition by helping out the Taunka. She began by investigating some temporal disturbances in the vicinity of Camp Tunka’lo, and, having just been to Throne of the Four Winds with LBR last night, I found myself wondering if The North Wind had been updated to appear as Nezir (alas, that has not been done — but it should be!). Afterwards, she went to help some of the other Taunka villages.

Having achieved this measure of factional esteem, Ketura could finally accomplish a long-delayed milestone of technical proficiency in her chosen craft. I had enough of the necessary materials already on hand that it didn’t take long to collect the rest of them.

Thanks to the wonders of account-wide mounts, my Alliance chicks can now enjoy the Mekgineer’s Chopper, too!

Now I need to acquire some gnarly biker duds….

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the Bronze Maiden

Having carefully arranged the distribution of specializations among my other twelve Mages, I determined that my Tushui Pandaren must remain un-talented, making her some species of Ironman.

Considering the trials and tribulations of Elford the (Former) Executive, and other Ironman accounts I have read, however, I think that being a true Ironman is a little more challenge than I want. So, like the Underpowered Death Knight, my Tushui Pandaren will use a ruleset inspired by, but not strictly adherent to, the Ironman concept.

As with the Underpowered Death Knight, I will be allowing my Tushui Pandaren to use any health potions that she loots or receives as a quest reward. I treat Lifeblood from Herbalism as a class spell for my Mages; I use it like a potion or Gift of the Naaru for pinch healing. So she has already picked up Herbalism. I’ve heard that there are some tough spots in the leveling curve where the quests don’t go green very quickly, and the XP from picking flowers will help her get through those levels. Likewise, I think that getting XP from Archaeology isn’t much different from getting XP by prioritizing searching for treasure chests, so she will be picking up Archaeology when she reaches level 20.

Koralyra’s “pseudo-Ironman” ruleset, then, is as follows:
*She will not choose a specialization nor spend talent points.
*She may purchase health-only food from Innkeepers, and she may use any health potions that she loots or receives as a quest reward, but she will not purchase health potions or use stat-boosting foods and potions.
*She will not use glyphs, enchants, or gems.
*If she receives any sort of buff upon completing a quest, she will click it off.
*She will not join a guild nor participate in group content with a group (at high levels, however, she may attempt to solo lower level dungeons).
*She is allowed the following three professions: First Aid, Archaeology, and Herbalism.
*She will wear only Poor (grey) or Common (white) quality gear while actively questing.

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the future of farming

BTH asked me the other day if I thought there would have to be a new version of the Tillers in the next expansion. It wasn’t something I’d thought about yet because Mists is still so new. With farming being an extension of the Cooking profession, and the general success of the Tillers faction as one that people generally like, it would almost seem like there would need to be a new farming faction in the next expansion. And if the devs are already thinking about the next expansion, maybe we should be thinking about how we’d like farming to evolve in the next expansion, too.

It would be simplest, perhaps, to just add a new “exotic seeds” vendor to the Halfhill market, to allow existing farms to continue to be useful. But then people would complain about having to go back to Pandaria every day just to tend their gardens.

What I’d like to see for the next iteration of the farming-and-cooking mini-game would be something tied to the original factions & capital cities. I think that would be more easily expandable for further expansions than having to build a new farming hub on every new continent or world that we visit.

For the Horde, there are a couple of reasonable places to put a farming village. One is Tirisfal Glades — there are already farms there, so why not reclaim one of them (perhaps Cold Hearth Manor?) for players to use? Another is Mulgore — if Ahab Wheathoof is “The Old Rancher”, where is his ranch? I bet he’d love to have some young whippersnappers come help him with his farm, and maybe we could even get Kyle to settle down and come home for good!

For the Alliance, Elwynn Forest seems to be a natural choice for a farm. Perhaps Tommy Joe Stonefield and Maybell Maclure have finally succeeded in running off together to start their own farm, and they need us to help them get things going and prove themselves to their angry parents.

The corresponding markets could be extensions of the towns (Brill or Bloodhoof Village, Goldshire). Like Valley of the Four Winds, the dailies for max-level characters could be up in the nearby mountains, requiring a flying mount to access. Upgrading farms for a new expansion would then be fairly simple — add new vendors with new seeds and other materials to the market, either level up the mobs for the dailies or have the dailies be missions to bring back materials from the new zones, and expand the size of the farm by another row of plots. Centralizing the farms to the starting zones might also be a good opportunity to revamp the cooking profession and make it be integrated with farming from the beginning.

Could this work? How do you think the farming mini-game could or should be implemented in the next expansion?

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Farmer Kamalia

For the first couple of weeks, I resisted the notion of bringing the rest of my level 85 characters to Pandaria just to farm. In the last week or two, however, I’ve started to get antsy to get Kamalia’s cooking capped out, so as long as they aren’t doing anything else, my other 85s — at least on my primary server — might as well start their gardens.

And so Kerisa quested through the Jade Forest as far as Dawn’s Blossom, then rode out to Halfhill to make the acquaintance of Farmer Yoon.

Ketura will be next, and then Kregga, in another week or two.

Meanwhile, Kamalia has been steadily gaining favor with the various denizens of Halfhill. Ella became her first Best Friend, shortly followed by Jogu. On Sunday, she won Haohan Mudclaw’s vote.

The Master Plow makes tilling her fully-expanded garden much easier!

I keep feeling like I ought to run it along the diagonal rows that are already there, though, instead of straight across.

After becoming Exalted with the Tillers, Kamalia thought about hiring a farm hand. Only her best friends would do. She considered inviting Ella, but as she thought about the things she’d helped Ella with, she realized that Ella’s new destiny would be cut short if she came to live at Sunsong Ranch. So she invited Jogu instead. The poor fellow was delighted to get away from the crowded market and have the pond at Sunsong Ranch all to himself — and it keeps him nearby for crop consultations, too!

Since she became Revered with the Tillers, Kamalia has been using four of her plots to grow Songbells and the rest for vegetables. With four more plots, she can now grow eight Songbells and continue to stockpile vegetables for leveling her cooking. She’s been planting vegetables kind of haphazardly, based on learning the first two dishes from all the Ways so as to make friends, Farmer Yoon’s requests, any seeds she obtained from each day’s harvest, and, most recently, Jogu’s forecast. I think that now it might be time to focus more intently on capping out one Way of cooking at a time — starting with the Steamer and the Pot for the Spirit and Intellect buff foods that she will need when she finally stops frolicking around and ventures into LFR.

BTH and I have been taking some time, occasionally, to go back and clean up the quest chains that we skipped while we were leveling. Last night, we finished up Kun-Lai Summit, allowing Kamalia to complete the Loremaster of Pandaria achievement.

The Burlap Trail questline will definitely be worth doing with all my alts for the 24-slot Grummlepack bag it awards!

I’ve also finished up a few more Lorewalker stories. I still need to find the last part of the Mantid story, two parts of the Emperor’s Burden, and two parts of The Ballad of Liu Lang. I’m hoping that I’ll find that last Mantid lorescroll when I reach Revered with the Klaxxi and go Waken the last two Paragons. While playing with Kerisa in the Jade Forest, I discovered a piece of the Emperor’s Burden that I’d somehow completely overlooked when I’d been there with Kamalia, so perhaps as I level more alts through Pandaria, I’ll find the last two lorescrolls from that story, too. I might have to look up where to find the last two parts of The Ballad of Liu Lang, though, because I’m not really sure where I’d want to go exploring to find them by myself.

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lounging at the Lazy Turnip

Whoa, whoa, whoa, what IS this about Patch 5.1 so soon? I’m not even half-finished with the out-of-the-box stuff yet!

Another week has come and gone and Kamalia is still not ready for LFR. Although she has tended her garden diligently each morning, the other Tillers dailies — and all the dailies in other places, as well — went undone during the first part of the week while I was busy with alts. BTH and I started our Tauren Monks and, fully kitted out in +XP heirlooms, we are blasting through the levels. We’re gaining about ten levels per session, having reached level 33 in three sittings. We’ve run a couple of dungeons and I’m really enjoying how different the Mistweaver healing style is from all the other classes. Rolling is so much fun! When I returned to my Pandaren Mage after having begun playing my Monk, I found myself wishing that she had Roll instead of Blink. Upon arriving in Orgrimmar and seeing how Garrosh greets the Huojin, I wondered how Varian greets the Tushui. So I have started a second Pandaren Mage to find out. That disrupts my neatly arranged set-up of faction parity and spec distribution among my Mages, so if I decide to keep this character, I’m thinking she’ll be an untalented pseudo-Ironman. And, of course, it was the Darkmoon Faire this week. I worked pretty hard to get the professions of my Monk and my Huojin Pandaren Faire-ready. Then I spent a couple of evenings methodically working through my roster to bring almost all of my characters to the Faire.

Mid-week, BTH asked me to craft a chestpiece for him. I was all set to go get the pattern and do it… and then I realized that the pattern was behind the Golden Lotus: Honored gate and I was still three days of Golden Lotus dailies away from crossing that threshold. Oops. Guess I should have been doing at least those dailies. I should be able to get the pattern today, though.

I re-set Kamalia’s hearth from the Shrine of Two Moons to the Lazy Turnip in Halfhill because she was spending most of her time there anyway. I recently reached Revered with the Tillers and expanded my garden to 12 mounds of soil. It occurred to me the other day why Juicycrunch Carrots sell so briskly — everyone must be trying to butter up Jogu the Drunk so that they can get free crop forecasts. Kamalia herself has been devoting all of her carrot crop to that purpose. I’m wondering if getting a crop forecast is really necessary, though, because it seems that the only reason that I haven’t yet gotten Listen to the Drunk Fish is that Farmer Yoon hasn’t yet asked me to plant some pink turnips for him.

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art post: in cahoots

For Akabeko and Navimie.

The rockets spun completely around and settled on Akabeko.
“T A R G E T – A C Q U I R E D,” the rabbit chirped helpfully.

Wire cutters in hand, Akabeko frantically began snipping connections inside the rabbit, hoping to deactivate it. The rockets began to hum. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” she muttered, snipping away.

Calmly, her friend leaned forward and flicked the switch off.

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a fortunate midsummer

When she went to Shattrath at level 60, mini-Kam was severely disappointed that Old Man Barlo wouldn’t give her any fishing quests, even though her fishing skill was already well into Grand Master (Wrath) levels. By the time she reached level 70 and he would, Marcia Chase would also give her fishing quests. So she kept her hearth in Thunder Bluff until she could go to Dalaran, because the Kalimdor/EK and Dalaran fishing bags have the chance to award the Jeweled Fishing Pole, whereas the Shattrath ones do not. Because she had not gotten her fishing pole yet, she kept her hearth in Dalaran after she reached level 80. Presently, I realized that whereas the Orgrimmar, Thunder Bluff, and Undercity fishing dailies are mutually exclusive, the Old World, Shattrath, and Dalaran fishing dailies are not. So I started doing both the Dalaran and Orgrimmar fishing dailies.

On Monday, mini-Kam dinged 84 from doing the tour of the Midsummer bonfires, and she also got that Jeweled Fishing Pole from her Dalaran fishing bag.

wait, what’s that she’s wearing?

… oh, no — oh no no mini-Kam, no! /facepalm

Then on Tuesday, Kamalia finally won the Timepiece of the Bronze Flight in her LFR run.

And today, mini-Kam became my fifth 85.

Sooo… now what? Well, faffing, most likely. I probably won’t bother with gearing Kamaliya up for LFR; she’ll want to be raid-ready in Mists, but she doesn’t need to be now. Instead of spending the money to gem, enchant, reforge, and Transmogrify multiple items as she moves up through the ilevels, I think I’d rather spend some time herbing and lay in a decent supply of cash to afford such things later. Besides which, Kam2.0 wants to farm Scholomance for the Sawbones Shirt and Bloodmail Legguards, and there’s Outland dungeons to be run for other Transmogrification set items.

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little deuce coupe

Tome and Matty’s Excellent Adventure has been making me wish that I had a more appropriate land mount to take the screenshots with.

My Engineer has made the Flying Machines, but I didn’t get the rep for the Chopper/Mechanohog schematic while she was still puttering around in Northrend. I’d have to farm the Titansteel, too, because I used almost all of the Titansteel I did get to make Jeeves.

Perhaps that’s a project for after mini-Kam gets to 85….

I don’t have the Bilgewater rep to buy the Goblin Trikes, either.

But maybe I should work on getting Kazuliza to level 40 before Mists so that I won’t have to worry about the rep.

And ooooh, what’s this Goblin Mini Hotrod that MMOChampion found in the list of non-Account-wide mounts for Mists? Is that a version of Keys to the Hot Rod that anyone can (probably with a great effort) obtain and use outside of Kezan??? Because it’s on the non-Account-wide mounts list, does that mean it will be able to carry passengers, just like young up-and-coming Goblin excecutives can go rolling with their homies?

Please please pretty please with sugar and a maraschino cherry on top?

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gratuitous post of faffing

I love this term “faffing” that the Godmother uses. It’s so perfectly evocative doing a little bit of this, a little bit of that on a bunch of different characters. I think it’s my new favorite word for how I spend my time in-game!

Lately, I’ve…

…leveled mini-Kam to 70. My goal for the rest of the month of June is to get mini-Kam to 85.

…dinged my Tauren alt guild.

…gotten my Hunter to Exalted with Therazane and done the Zandalari, Elemental Bonds, and opening the Molten Front questlines with her. Now she needs to run some Heroics and rescue her Lashtail Hatchling before Mists comes along!

…found the last Common and Rare-Rare Archaeology artifacts with Kam — now all she has left are the last few Epic-Rares — the Sword What Don’t Exist, the Extinct Turtle Shell, the Staff of Sorcerer-Thane Thaurissan, the Staff of Ammunae, the Scimitar of the Sirocco, and the Scepter of Azj’Aqir.

…leveled an F2P minion Troll Druid to 10 on Lightninghoof, used it to make a raid so Kamalia could go to Karazhan, and scored the T4 glove token off of Curator to finally complete her 4pc T4 Transmogrification set (I’m using the T2/Onyxia hat with it).

…fished to 75 skill to be able to do the Darkmoon Faire fishing quest with eight (8) characters who either had very low Fishing or didn’t have Fishing at all.

…cooked to 75 skill to be able to do the Darkmoon Faire cooking quest with one character who had low Cooking.

…taken two characters who had no second Primary Profession yet and one character whose second Primary Profession needed to be changed and leveled their new second Primary Professions to 75 to do the Darkmoon Faire profession quests.

…done two Primary Profession and the Cooking, Fishing, and First Aid Darkmoon Faire profession dailies with twenty-four (24) characters.

I’m not on Twitter myself, but I noticed on my stats page that Twitter was one of the top sources of referrals on the day that my Well-Dressed Warlock post was getting lots of hits — thanks for the RTs, guys!

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