Soulare is in another Garrison

Because Kamalia’s professions — skinning and leatherworking — are not primarily dependent upon herbs and ore, I wasn’t going to bother with raising her Garrison herb garden and mine past level 1. Her herb garden’s random generation of herbs has produced enough Gorgrond Flytrap to keep both herself and my Tailor well-stocked for their daily profession CDs — though that has been helped by my laxity in keeping my Barn supplied with trapped beasties to provide raw leather. My Alchemist, however, has run through the Frostweed that I’d stockpiled prior to bringing her out to Draenor, and the random generation of Frostweed by Kam’s herb garden does not reliably provide enough to guarantee my Alchemist her daily profession CD. Because it’s likely to be some time before I manage to get my Alchemist leveled up enough to unlock her own herb garden, I decided that I ought to go ahead and upgrade Kam’s herb garden to level 2 and recruit a follower to staff it.

When I recruited for an Herbalist this week, these are the three applicants that Akanja found:

Well, now. I know that Soulare of Andorhal can give you a toy, but I don’t really care much about collecting toys. I know that he’s a reference to some other game or pop-culture something, but I’m not familiar with the thing that is being alluded to, so I don’t need him in my Garrison for that. Being a Human Male, he does not fit into Kamalia’s highly discriminatory policy of hiring only Tauren or women through the Inn.

I chose Bim’ini instead.

Perhaps my Paladin will specifically try to recruit Soulare. If I can figure out how do to it, I’d like to have her get the Argent Crusade banners and guards for her Garrison, so he’d fit in well with her crew.

Read Full Post »

fooling Chester

A couple of months ago, I was excited to learn that there would be a new vendor at the Darkmoon Faire selling RP-quality Gilnean garb. I, along with others, was disappointed to find out that purchasing the new clothing is gender-restricted — female characters can only buy the “Noblewoman’s” clothing, whereas male characters can only buy the “Nobleman’s” clothing.

When I saw the Transmorphic Tincture in the list of potions my Alchemist could learn from her Garrison Profession hut, I wondered if perhaps Chester could be fooled…

female-to-male Transmorphic Tincture

male-to-female Transmorphic Tincture

Yep, Chester can be fooled, alright.

I discovered, alas, that the coloration of the Nobleperson’s clothing is gender-specific.

Nobleman’s Coat & Pantaloons

Noblewoman’s Finery & Skirt

But what if that fancy black coat is what I want a female banker to be able to wear? Argh!

Read Full Post »

in which Kamalia does a great deal of deciding not to bother

Three weeks into Warlords, I’m definitely playing this expansion at the “dirty casual” level. But then, that’s about what I expected I’d have time for.

Kamalia has her Barracks at level 3; her Inn, War Mill, Tannery, Salvage Yard, Fishing Shack, and Lumber Mill at level 2; her Mine, Herb Garden, and Storehouse still at level 1; and she hasn’t bothered to unlock the Menagerie. I plan to upgrade the Fishing Shack, Salvage Yard, Inn, and War Mill to level 3, and when I have 3200 resources stockpiled to fund those upgrades and the cost of building a fully upgraded Barn, I’ll take down the Lumber Mill and put up the Barn. I don’t feel any need to upgrade my buildings still at level 1 to level 2, and I see no benefit to upgrading my Tannery to level 3. Currently, the only building that I get even close to running at its full work order capacity is the Lumber Mill.
Having heard that I’d be able to get racial banners and guards when I got my Barracks to level 3, I’d been thinking that all the Horde banners everywhere in my Garrison would change to racial banners when I recruited racial guards. I was disappointed, then, when I requested Tauren guards and only got Thunder Bluff banners right outside the entrance to my Town Hall. Having Bluffwatchers guarding my Garrison is super cool, though.
I’ve recruited two followers at the Inn — a scavenger and a Massive Strike counter. I rolled blue Tauren for both of them! My poor scavenger has the worst luck, though — he has failed almost all of the scavenging missions I’ve sent him on. Next week, I think I’ll recruit for a Minion Swarms counter, and then after that probably a leatherworker for the Tannery.
I’m working on getting my level 100 followers up to epic. I’m holding off on gearing any of them up to the 615 level until I get most of them up to epic — I want my minions to actually be able to succeed at the higher-level missions before I start getting them!
I’ve been trying to remember to collect enough raw materials each day to do my profession daily CDs, but I haven’t bothered to craft anything because I haven’t gotten enough of the gated material yet. I clean out my mine and herb garden and do the daily Fishing quest. I’m letting the Fishing dailies slowly build up the 100 Enormous catches of each type of fish that I’ll need to upgrade my Fishing Shack to level 3. I think I’ll have to make a designated ocean fishing trip at some point, though, because I’ve not seen Sea Scorpion come up as the Fishing daily. I’ll need Sea Scorpion to level First Aid and make fish feasts (to sell on the AH), too.
Knowing that the various factions have followers for hire — pets and mounts and tabards don’t interest me much anymore, but followers are still the new hotness — and feeling kind of lost because I hadn’t found any in-game guidance on how to gain reputation, I went to Wowhead to investigate. When I discovered that reputation was back to being more or less pure grindfest in this expansion, I decided not to bother. If a future patch brings us some faction rep dailies as a catch-up mechanism for alts, then I’ll pursue faction rep. I rather miss doing faction dailies.
I’ve been trying to do a daily Heroic for the 50 garrison resources. I pick up my Inn dungeon quests, but I’m not bothering to queue for them specifically anymore — except for the day that Millhouse came to town, because I wanted him for a follower! I haven’t done the Apexis dailies at all. I’m getting a slow and steady trickle of Apexis crystals from work orders and the weekly Garrison Campaign chapters, and I’ll get to Khadgar’s 4896 when I get there.
Speaking of the weekly Garrison Campaign quests, I’m really enjoying them! They’re nice little chunks of story and sufficiently challenging to my level of gear and (more importantly) skill. I’m looking forward to when I get the one that will allow me to recruit Choluna as a follower!

Meanwhile, my Balance Druid has gotten about two-thirds of the way through Frostfire Ridge and up to level 92. She has built the Scribe’s Quarters — to match her primary crafting profession — and a Trading Post in her Garrison. The Trading Post has been kind of a bust for her, though — she hasn’t yet seen a work order for ore. She needs her herbs for her Inscription, and Kamalia never has any hides to spare from her Leatherworking.
I’m starting to get itchy to bring my other two Horde alts who aren’t still busily growing Songbells and Windshear Cactus at Sunsong Ranch — my Monk and my Death Knight — out to Draenor to establish their Garrisons, but I want to at least get my Druid all the way through Frostfire Ridge first…

And my Draenei Mage is languishing in Shadowmoon Valley and building up the biggest stash of Garrison resources of any of my characters. When she eventually gets her Garrison to level 2, I plan to build her an Alchemy Lab — her primary crafting profession — and a Tailoring Emporium — not one of her professions, but that and follower missions will probably be the main way she gets gear.

Read Full Post »

sayonara, Nat — see ya on Draenor!

Over my lunch break yesterday, Kamalia hearthed back to Sunsong Ranch for the last time to make a final round of her favorite Pandarian fishing holes. The Garrison hearth was invaluable for allowing me to easily travel back and forth between Pandaria and Draenor while I worked on finishing up this rep grind. With this goal completed, I can now set Kamalia’s Astral Recall to wherever she happens to be on Draenor.

I didn’t manage to finish my Pandarian Archaeology museum — but going back to Pandaria to do that will have to wait until Warlords gets into its late expansion doldrums.

Read Full Post »

eleventh hour

At about the tenth hour — a week and a half or so ago — Kamalia decided that if she wasn’t going to be racing to 100 with Ronada, she might as well get to be Best Friends with Nat Pagle before she went to Draenor. She was still only just barely into Pal level at the time, so even with fishing the Paglefish diligently every day since then, she only just today became Good Friends with Nat.

At the eleventh hour — a few days ago — I decided that I really ought to run all my alts* through the pre-launch event quests for the trinket at the end. I played hard tonight getting them through, since I still had most of them left to do! As a result, I am pretty tired already, and I have school tomorrow, so I won’t be going to Draenor until tomorrow evening.

Meanwhile, BTH finally finished up the single-player content that ESO launched with and decided that he would, in fact, come back to WoW for Warlords, after all. He got himself a 6-month subscription and transferred Ronada over to his guild’s new server. When we play together, it will be Kamalia and his Hunter.

*Except for the Male Tauren Warrior, whose job is to stay home and bank so that his daughters can go adventuring, and Kinevra, whom I have decided is done. If I play up another Alliance character to level 100 besides Kaprikka, it will be my Dwarf Shaman.

Read Full Post »

Liftoff!

This week, I finally had enough gold to buy the three Orbs of Mystery needed to craft the Geosynchronous World Spinner!
Ketura switched her Engineering specialization from Goblin to Gnomish just long enough to build this handsome rocket, then switched it right back.

Of course, now I’m pretty broke. I was able to leave all of my characters with about 1K gold, and my banker with 5K. That’ll do for repairs and minor expenses for awhile, and one or two changes of Transmogrification — but then I’ll need to make some more gold… somehow. :P

Read Full Post »

racing to 90

For the past several weeks, I’ve felt like Kaprikka, Koralyra, and Kinevra have been racing each other to get to 90, and that any one of them could potentially get there first.

Though I’ve drawn them all sprinting, Kaprikka is really the only one who’s sprinting, as she started the furthest behind. The other two have really just been jogging.

Koralyra tends to move in fits and starts; unless there’s a holiday going on, when I feel like doing the Pet Battle circuit, she gets XP, and when I don’t, she doesn’t. She’s currently about three-quarters of the way from 87 to 88.

Kinevra began the expansion at 85, of course, and has been slowly and steadily plugging away at various past-expansion daily hubs. She’s gotten a trickle of XP from running Firelands with the Old Ladies, too. This week, she finally reached level 87 and made a trip to Pandaria to get her Grummlepack. Because she was fully well-rested, that expedition got her about three-quarters of the way to 88.

Kaprikka dinged 80 on April 3rd and got to 85 about a week ago, on the 19th:

She then made a quick trip to Pandaria. After getting to the point where the portal from Paw’don Glade to Stormwind was open, she rode up to Dawn’s Blossom to buy some gear to let her queue for Pandaria dungeons. She’s been diligently fishing in the Dalaran fountain while waiting out her LFD queues. Friday night this week turned out to be a fine night for fishing indeed!

Now she’ll be able to use Bipsi’s Bobbing Berg just as soon as she can buy it! Yesterday, she went back to Pandaria and dinged 87 helping Ken-Ken save Zhu’s Watch. She then went up to Kun-Lai to get her Grummlepack; unlike Kinevra, she was already out of well-rested and only got forty-some-odd percent of the way to 88. Next, she rode down to the Incursion — I was pretty creeped out by suddenly having Lorekeeper Vaeldrin using Mind Vision on my character, versus a Horde character’s encounter with Chezin Dawnchaser at the side of the road — and by the time she reached the Sentinel Basecamp, she’d also dinged 88. Now that she’s pulled into the lead, Kaprikka will most likely be the winner.

Having played through the Dawnchaser storyline first, and multiple times, Sentinel Lyalia’s opinions of the Sunwalkers pain me. Not trusting the Horde is a Sentinel’s business, but the Sunwalkers — and especially the Dawnchasers! — sure don’t seem to me like they’re “the most militant branch of the tauren armies within the horde”! Not when Kor Bloodtusk vehemently complains about their pacifism! Either Lyalia is dreadfully misinformed, or I am — is there something that Sunwalkers, specifically, do somewhere in Kalimdor that I don’t know about yet because I haven’t played through most of those zones as Alliance?

Read Full Post »