Yesterday marked the end of my Recruit a Friend project which I spoke about in this post.
Phew! I'm glad that's over! Now I'm tasked with getting them all to level 90 although I'm in no immediate rush. For the most part I leveled via questing with the odd boost from my lovely boyfriend as the instances combined with the quests inside gave a great amount of xp. Questing though Outland felt incredibly slow. So from 60-70 I stuck to mostly boosts as it could be done in around 5 instances!
Northrend and Cataclysm questing seemed to be really fast. I got my Shaman from 67-83 in about two hours. Keep in mind though that I have leveled around 20 characters to level 80 without RaF so I've got most of the quests down pat.
After all of the leveling came the granting levels and thankfully I had my boyfriend on hand to help out with that too, as tabbing between the two accounts would have been a nightmare! When granting levels the recipient has to click accept for each level. That could have taken me hours.
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| Now What? |
Now it's down to settling into the characters, leveling them to 90 and working on those all important transmogs! I'm currently working on my Monk as she's been sat at 85 for more than a few months and has racked up two levels of rested xp. From there I plan on switching between characters while I use up their xp. That's going to be an odd change for me. Usually when leveling a character I focus on that one and nothing else until they get to max level regardless of whether or not I have rested xp or not.
I'll also be taking a bit of time out to level up some professions, I've not worked out all of them yet and I'm waiting to hear a bit more about profession cool downs coming in WoD but I know I at least want one of each profession regardless of the CD situation so I'll be working on that over the next few days.
While I still have RaF active I'm going to take advantage of it to level up a Priest on another server to level 80. My boyfriend and I have been putting together a group to do Herald of the Titans, which requires you to kill Algalon in Ulduar at level 80 with gear that has the same ilvl obtainable from Ulduar. However being the alcoholic and completionist that I am none of my alt are below 90 or at least 85!
It's going to be a busy few weeks by the looks of things!
I've been quiet around these parts recently, that's due to a couple of things. I've recently started on new medication which my body doesn't seem to be liking. At the moment. Everything is at least five times harder than it should be. I'm extremely tired and I just feel, fuzzy. I'm not really sure how else to describe it.
On a brighter note my new computer arrived today and I'm so excited! I've had this one since Wrath and at the time it was OK but not great however it was paid for by my parents so I was incredibly grateful. This time around I've purchased it myself which has given me more freedom to upgrade everything just that little bit extra because it's my own money. I'm awaiting one more part to arrive and then I'll be able to get it all set up. Squeeee!
A couple of weeks ago Stede from Late night with Stede made a blog post about making the most of doing Recruit a friend with yourself. If you've followed my blog or myself for a little while you'll know that I adore alts. But any time I move my main off of a server any alts that are left behind are effectively no longer played. With Stede's post in mind and Warlords of Dreanor somewhere around the corner and not much else to do in game at the moment. I decided to recruit a friend with myself!
I'll be honest, I'm terrible at maths. Beyond terrible and at the moment I'm struggling for anything to make any sense let alone something I'm mega bad at. If left to my own devices I'd have done my RaF the long way. So I contacted Stede and asked him for some advice pertaining to his method of leveling and granting level's and the amazing soul that he is did the work for me!
I had to colour in the colums in paint with each of my chosen class colours because otherwise I couldn't make any sense of it, that's how foggy everything is at the moment!
With a solid plan in place it was time to start leveling! I'm not using anything fancy just running two clients, one monitor. I have one active character who basically kills everything the other one is on constant follow just for the 300% bonus xp. I just tab between windows to pick up/hand in quests and collect quest items. There are programs out there which help with that allowing you to set up key presses which will do something on both accounts but I'm not entirely sure how those are viewed in terms of the Blizzard ToS so I've stayed away, better safe than sorry!
So far my Shaman and leveling buddy are 63, Warlock is 60, Warrior, DK and Druid part of the plan are done. Just need to start my Mage and Paladin with their respective leveling partners. You might have noticed a few missing from that image. I already have a level 90 Priest (main) and Hunter on the server. Monk is currently 85 and I plan on using the free level 90 for Rogue.
As part of my leveling I've been switching between questing and accepting boosts from friends! Huge thank you to 8Bitzs on Twitter. From Every Last Copper for hauling my ass though a few places!
I had quite a busy week last week two new level 90's joined the fold, taking me to 11! Although probably not the 11 you'd think, Ideally I would like a level 90 of each class but for the moment my Monk is 85, Death Knight is 86 and Rogue is 83 (and will forever remain at that level).
Instead this week I got my second level 90 Mage and Priest. I now have two level 90 Shamans, Mages and Priests. For the Shammy and Mage I have one Alliance and one Horde but both Priests are Alliance, just on different servers!
Both of them leveled though slightly different methods. On my Mage I leveled from 85 to 86 in Jade Forest and then fucked that off in favor of grinding xp on the Timeless Isle as I'd done previously on my Horde Elemental Shaman. With so many level 90's now I'm beyond sick of questing in MoP. Grinding on the Isle was pretty easy as Frost but a little dicey in the beginning with missing so much but it certainly got easier as she leveled up. I leveled via the Spotted Swarmers who come in packs of around 10 and are fairly easy to AoE down, certainly with ranged classes. It was also insanely fast!
I've heard about people doing Monkey runs where you run Stormstout Brewery in a group of five, kill all of the monkeys up until the first boss then run out and reset. There's also an area in Kun'lai Summit called Dooker Dome which has a gathering of mobs pretty close together. People tend to use the tag method and have a level 90 who isn't in their group kill them. I prefer the Timeless Isle method as I don't have to rely on anyone else! I can grind for twenty minutes and then go do something else, tab out, go AFK or stop to go tag a rare without affecting anyone else. At level 87 I was getting 32k xp per kill with rested. Pretty damn nice if you ask me!
My Priest I picked up around 83 after having been abandoned for quite a while so I leveled though instances until 85. I started questing in Jade Forest and when I hit 86 I did Temple of the Jade Serpent and Stormstout Brewery. Since she's on a PvP server I decided against Timeless Isle leveling on her, I can't imagine people taking too kindly to a level 86 free kill wandering around so I opted for pet battles instead. Something I've never done before.
I parked her in a small area in Vale of Eternal Blossoms which has a little spot of land with around 5 pets that respawn really fast. The fights often consist of two Aquatic and one Flying so I used a Flying pet and a Magic pet along with whatever pet I was currently leveling. There is an inn right next to the spot and Aki the Chosen is also a stones throw away! I'd level though pet battles until each new level when new dungeons would pop up in my group finder which I'd do once to complete the quests then return to my battling. At 89 I quested a little in Dread Wastes just to speed things up a little.
What's your preferred method of leveling?
Gather round everybody, it's story time.
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| Stormwind City |
When I started playing WoW I started as Alliance because a friend who already played was Alliance. That was back before all this fangled cross realm, cross faction friends whom you could actually talk to so it made sense for us to be in the same place. The server I started on, Quel'Thalas was recommended for new players and that's why we started there. During Vanilla I pretty much stuck to just one character, my Warrior who was my first level sixty. Only taking a little bit of time off from her to level a Mage and Hunter however only the Hunter reached max level before The Burning Crusade expansion.
During TBC I was well and truly bitten by the Alt bug, I finished off leveling my Mage to the new max level of seventy along with my Warrior, and Hunter. I later leveled a Priest, Druid and Paladin to accompany them, Only the Paladin didn't make it to seventy in time for the next expansion. I remained loyal to the Alliance only straying once to level a Blood Elf Priest because I thought they were super pretty but she never got very far before returning to my "real" characters.
During Wrath of The Lich King I added even more characters to my ranks! A Death Knight, Warlock, Shaman and Rogue. All of them reaching level eighty.
During a bit of a lull after raiding Naxxramus for so long, while waiting for Ulduar to show up some friends and I started leveling Horde characters. It was really fun doing the Horde quests, some of the zones felt completely different. Again, it didn't last long before I started to feel guilty about not spending time with my main and what I continued to refer to as my "real" characters.
About a month after patch 3.2 landed, Call of the Crusade, Blizzard introduced a new fancy micro-transaction. The ability to faction change!
I was all over that shit. My guild had cleared ToC and there wasn't much else happening in game so my boyfriend and I decided to faction change to Horde. It was a pretty easy decision to make. I wouldn't be leaving all of Korla's cool mounts, achievements and vanity items behind as I would if I'd just decided to reroll the character. I also transferred my Druid over as at the time she was my most played alt.
Not long after the faction change however an ex guildy asked my boyfriend and I to faction change back to Alliance. He was starting his own guild and really wanted us to be a part of it. Having not had much luck guild wise as Horde we decided to take him up on it.
At some point during ICC the entire guild transferred to Horde, This time I took my Priest and my Mage across to rejoin my Druid. A few months into Cataclysm however our guild leader had to leave the game and the rest of the raid team began dropping like flies. My boyfriend and I found another guild and began raiding 25's with them along with two real life friends, although I always preferred 10 man raiding.
For one reason or another during the Firelands patch My boyfriend and I decided to move off of the server. By this point it wasn't very lively, there were few options in terms of guilds who were progressing. Two friends we'd gotten close to though the guild also wanted to move server with us but they wanted to change to Alliance. I was completely fine with going back to the Alliance (again!) but the majority wanted to try out a PvP server. We ended up on Sylvanas as they had pretty good raid progression. I went along with it but I regretted it pretty quickly.
When I moved server I only moved my Priest, my main. Throughout Cataclysm I'd gotten my Shaman, Warrior, Hunter, Druid and Mage to 85 along with my Priest. All of which I left behind when I transferred. I also left behind my namesake Soco, a Death knight at level 82 and a Paladin who was 83. I felt pretty bad leaving them behind but once I moved my main away from them they essentially died. I completely stopped logging into that server.
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| Vault of Light |
Once we all moved to Sylvanas we joined a guild and continued to raid. I stayed with the guild until after we'd cleared normal Dragon Soul. I just didn't have it in me to continue on to do Heroic Dragon Soul and my hatred for being on a PvP server grew and I decided to transfer yet again. I actually posted a blog post about it back in May last year Time for a change.
I moved my Priest to Silvermoon which is one of the largest population realms in the EU and almost exclusively Alliance. I bought a second account and with recruit a friend I leveled one of every class apart from Rogue to level 80. I'm unemployed so while I lack in money I have an abundance of time. I just couldn't justify paying to faction change and server transfer all of the 85's I'd left behind on Quel'Thalas. Sadly that server was also short lived, with the release of Mists of Pandaria the server was crazy busy. I hated the queue time to play, I hated the vast amount of people standing on quest npc's, I couldn't play when I wanted to play I'd sometimes have to wait an hour or more.
Blizzard occasionally offer free character transfers off of servers which are over populated. I was given two server choices Chamber of Aspects and Doomhammer. I decided on CoA because Nev from AH Addict played on that server. I also knew the name Korla was available because it belonged to a level 70 Priest of mine where as Doomhammer the name was already taken. I enjoyed Chamber for the first few months and leveled all of my RaF characters from 80 to 90 pretty quickly but something was lacking. I was pretty lonely on the server.
During the summer of last year Blizzard knocked 50% off of the price of some of their services and that included server changing. I took them up on that offer and moved Korla to Emerald Dream where I became much happier!
All of my level 90's on Chamber of Aspects suffered the same fate as those left at 85 of Quel'Thalas. They were again left abandoned, never to see the light of day again. Or were they?
As part of an Alt Appreciation event I've been taking part in I began playing my Horde Shaman on Quel'Thalas during Shaman week. That poor abandoned litle gobbo Shaman back on my original server! I already had a level 90 Alliance Shaman but I wanted to level a Horde to experience the Horde side of Pandaria and for the achievement Double Agent. I haven't stopped playing her since! I tested out the leveling to 90 on The Timeless Isle method (which by the way is amazing!). I've began leveling Soco as well as a Horde Mage I had also left on the server, She's almost 88 now! This however has given me that itch, the itch to transfer my Priest back to Horde to where she belongs! If this is the case I'll also most likely transfer her back to Quel'Thalas to join my other Horde characters.
For the moment though I'm leveling my Horde characters on Quel'Thalas in the hope that eventually the server will get connected with a few others. I wouldn't return to it in it's current state. The auction house is dire which is funny because I hit gold cap on the server back in Cata before all of my moving around. If the server never gets merged with others then I'm not really sure what I'll do or where I'll go, all I know is that Korla makes a really pretty Blood Elf and I'm stoked to see the new models, as much as I love Draenei I prefer being a Blood Elf.
If by some miracle you've actually read this then you're amazeballs and go and help yourself to some cookies! Which faction do you belong to?
