Day 17 - Borean Tundra continued, & 77

Wicked quested like some kind of mad-gnome tonight. She finished the night:

• Level 77
• Cold Winter Flying - bought at the rip off price of 1000g.
  
• Lake Wintergrasp battle actually fought - "Hey Wicked, I hear there's lots of ore at Lake Wintergrasp." "Oh sure bud, just take the portal next to the other BG portals it puts you at a flight point." Woops - turns out if the battle is in progress it portals you there instead. We were on D, something that appealed to me greatly. I killed several 80s and yeah, died several times. Thing is though, we won.
  
• Exalted with the Valiance people.

Wicked L77 Gnome Death Knight Points: 670 <Necromonger> Unholy/Hybrid DPS/Tank 12/0/56 HKills: 160 HP 15468 Armor: 10007 Def: 380.00 Power: 2042 Hit: 90 Crit% 15.02 Parry% 9.59 Avg item level: 147 68% Blues 31% Greens

Day 15 - Herbalism 450

Ok, so my quest buddy should be back tomorrow, which will be great because I'm dying to level again. I finally buckled down and flew around Zangar Marsh until I'd picked enough herbs to get my Herbalism to 400, then I went back to the Borean Tundra - and especially the lack there - and collected herbs until I reached 450.

Now, barring the need for special boosted skills, there should not be anything I can't skin or pick.

Wicked L76 Gnome Death Knight Points: 630 <Necromonger> Unholy/Hybrid DPS/Tank 11/0/56 HKills: 134 HP 14441 Armor: 10003 Def: 380.00 Power: 1978 Hit: 90 Crit% 15.85 Parry% 10.11 Avg item level: 147 Herbalism: 450 Skinning: 450 68% Blues 31% Greens

Day 10: Grizzly Hills

Wicked's still level 73, but she'll hit 74 shortly after logging in. It's not nearly as easy to make a level per day on weekdays, since I work for a living. Also, whether it's the zone or the fact that more retards have reached level 77, there seems to be an increase in the number of people flying around ganking.

My questing buddy is going out of town for Thanksgiving so I'll be at a bit of a loss as to how to spend my time. I'll want to level up as much as possible, but I don't want to get out of sync with them on quests. I suppose I can try to grind XP and live in instances. Or maybe I'll work on my professions.

Wicked L73 Gnome Death Knight <Necromonger> Unholy/Hybrid DPS/Tank 7/0/56 HKills: 110 HP 11135 Armor: 8642 Def: 365.00 Power: 1675 Hit: 21 Crit% 11.29 Parry% 8.97 Avg item level: 135 50% Blues 50% Greens

Day 9 aftermath - so glad I wasn't in the beta

I'm so glad I wasn't in the beta. It's the end of day 9, and Wicked isn't 72. No. She's 73. She has also earned the achievement Veteran of the Wrathgate. Dragonblight - specifically the area around Wintergarde - is my favorite zone so far, and the quest line leading to and through Veteran of the Wrathgate is epic on a scale that brings to mind the Battle for Helms Deep in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

After that was done, we started on Grizzly Hills which is very pretty and reminds me of California.

Mithrandyr and a level 80 pal of his killed us along with the NPC's at Amberpine Lodge. Later on we caught Mith all by himself and exacted revenge. It felt really good.

Later on, Eugerox attempted to gank my buddy over some ore. We killed him instead.

At some point, having passed her pilot training at level 70, she went ahead and bought her Winged Seed of the Ebon Blade. She hasn't flown it yet, no reason to. At level 77 she'll take her cold weather flying test and after that, it's on.

Without further ado, here's what Wicked's been up to lately -

Met a sea goddess

Finally got a chance to use the alternate radar mode on the SexyMap addon.

Drove a tank equipped with it's own sabotage gnome!

Found where they moved Naxxramus to:

Found a new (to her) place in Dalaran - the Violet something or other. She didn't like it there much, especially after she ran back.

Bolvar Fordragon - I might not have clicked that had I known.

After what happened at the Wrathgate however, it was most definitely on.

We went to the Undercity, and we were all out of bubblegum.

You don't do what this thing did. OH YEAH? Not and survive.

 

Then King Wrynn seemed to want some revenge, and to me it looked like Thrall died in the fight, but I can't be sure because suddenly we were back in Stormwind.

After all that it was off to Grizzly Hills, like I said.

 

Ending stats for the night:

Wicked L73 Gnome Death Knight <Necromonger> Unholy/Hybrid DPS/Tank 7/0/56 HKills: 109 HP 9815 Armor: 8378 Def: 364.00 Power: 1614 Hit: 61 Crit% 13.76 Parry% 8.75 Avg item level: 132 50% Blues 50% Greens

Day 7 conclusion

Ding! 70. Tons of quests completed at record pace. Tomorrow I plan on finishing Howling Fjord and hitting level 71, and I'm all out of bubble gum.

The new spec works great!

Day 6 conclusion: Wicked 1, Howling Fjord 0

Tonight for the first time (outside of dungeons or the odd "If we group we won't have to compete for X" situation) Wicked wasn't alone. She was joined by two friends of mine, a shadow priest and a holy paladin.

I actually got online a little before them and did one or two quests solo. Tip: If you need to level up a weapon (or unarmed, I guess) skill, I can't think of a much easier place to do it than at the gate to Valgarde, where the mobs spawn constantly. You can back up and they'll lose interest pretty fast too.

Once they got online and arrived, we immediately began burning through the quests at a high rate of speed. I learned a few things along the way:

1. In Nifflevar, you can go into the spirit world via the item you got from a previous quest in order to skip mobs/horde while getting to and from the various harpoon quests.
   
2. If one or two of you fall out of your mechanical suits, and one guy doesn't, you all still get credit for reading the data crystals.
   
3. If at first you can't figure out what you're doing, look down - I got surprised when controlling my falcon, didn't expect to see the bar change. There needs to be a ding noise or a stone grating noise or something when your action bar changes. I'm not exactly playing with the mouse and looking at the bar all the time. On a side note, they should really let you get that controllable falcon as a non-combat-or-at-least-it-won't-fight-for-you-pet, that would have felt incredibly epic.

I managed to kill myself one time - one of them died jumping too far down the cliff, or at least hurt themselves really badly. I was looking for them and thought they'd found the path down, so I wind up running right off the cliff... and dying right at their feet. I then typed "HEY I FOUND YOU". Fortunately they can both resurrect so that made it much less painful.

We concluded the night at Westguard Keep, doing the daily and setting our hearthstones there. I went and got my training.

Wicked L69 Gnome Death Knight <Necromonger> Unholy/DPS 5/0/55 HKills: 94 HP 7639 Armor: 6095 Power: 1223 Hit: 16 Crit: 10.71 Avg item level: 96

The plan for tonight is to pick up at Westguard keep, but who knows maybe we'll hit Utgarde Keep while we're at it. At some point I'd like to also go back and visit the Borean Tundra since there's plenty of easy XP to be had there as well.

Tanking Mana Tombs

Tanked Mana Tombs last night at level 65. It was not only fun but a great learning experience. Had a great group for it - I was the only Death Knight there! In addition to me we had a Warlock, and Shadow Priest, and Holy Priest, and a Retribution Paladin. Some were my level (65) a few were lower than that.

So far, Tanking as a Death Knight means that I put on Frost Presence and then make sure I hold aggro while trying to use as many healing strikes as I can manage. Her build is something I made up as I went along, not sure what she'll end up with but there are already a ton of options. Hopefully soon we'll be able to see what shakes out as the best.

Through the entire thing she only died once, and was able to help kill the last few mobs as a ghoul, and even then the group didn't wipe - ever. She also had far and away the most DPS because of all of her AOE skills. Still, it was very valuable to me as I had to learn to stop spamming things randomly and start spamming them on purpose.

I went on to do several more quests in the Auchindoun area, soloing several meant for two or three people. She got several upgrades. Here's her gear list at the moment:

Wicked L66 Gnome Death Knight Unholy/DPS 2/0/55 HKills: 75 HP 6529 Armor: 5427 Power: 970 Hit: 16 Crit: 11.69 Avg item level: 84

Head: Greathelm of the Scourge Champion Quest Plate Plaguelands: The Scarlet Enclave/An End To All Things... 70
Neck: Pendant of Battle-Lust Drop Miscellaneous The Blood Furnace/The Maker 88
Shoulders: Blood-soaked Saronite Plated Spaulders Quest Plate Plaguelands: The Scarlet Enclave/Scarlet Armies Approach... 70
Chest: Fel Iron Breastplate Crafted Plate Fel Iron Breastplate/Blacksmithing 102
Waist: Reaver Girdle Drop Plate Dun Morogh/Omar's Magic (Tapped) Chest 102
Legs: Consortium Plated Legguards Quest Plate Terokkar Forest/Undercutting the Competition 97Feet: Flesh Beast's Metal Greaves 97
Wrists: Nexus-Bracers of Vigor Drop Plate Mana-Tombs/Nexus-Prince Shaffar 97
Hands: Bloodbane's Gauntlets of Command Quest Plate Plaguelands: The Scarlet Enclave/The Path Of The Righteous Crusader 70
Ring1: Keleseth's Signet Ring Quest Miscellaneous Plaguelands: The Scarlet Enclave/How To Win Friends And Influence Enemies 70
Ring2: Valanar's Signet Ring Quest Miscellaneous Plaguelands: The Scarlet Enclave/If Chaos Drives, Let Suffering Hold The Reins 70
Trinket1: Signet of the Dark Brotherhood Quest Miscellaneous Plaguelands: The Scarlet Enclave/A Sort Of Homecoming 70
Trinket2: Soul Harvester's Charm Quest Miscellaneous Plaguelands: The Scarlet Enclave/The Gift That Keeps On Giving 70
Back: Dark Cloak of the Marsh Quest Cloth Zangarmarsh/Lost in Action 94
Mainhand: Dragonbone Greatsword Quest Two-Handed Swords Terokkar Forest/Evil Draws Near 102
Ammo: Sigil of the Dark Rider Quest Sigils Plaguelands: The Scarlet Enclave/Into the Realm of Shadows 70