Passing Time While Waiting Impatiently

My playing has slowed down a little lately, which I think in part is due to the pre-patch anticipation starting to make itself known – it’s hard to think of a reason to spend time running heroics now, knowing that if I wait a week or two* I’ll be getting something useful in the shape of Emblems of Conquest instead of just sharding or vendoring everything that drops and stockpiling Heroism badges.

It’s kind of telling that, apart from time spent with glyphs and scheduled 25-man raids, I’m probably spending more time helping a guildmate out with farming heavy junkboxes for Ravenholdt rep (for the achievement, Insane in the Membrane) than anything else.  I’ve been exploring Lower Blackrock Spire, and I have to say, that’s a nightmare of an instance to navigate if you’re used to the almost-linear designs from Burning Crusade and Wrath – still, for all its faults, it’s not as bad as Maraudon.  Anyway, it makes a change to get out and about on Ringle – it’s been too long since I’ve spent much time being rogue-ish.

On a mostly unrelated topic, it’s easy to tell when Darkmoon Faire is coming, as the cost of herbs goes through the roof due to people who hadn’t planned ahead and are frantically trying to get enough inks and eternal lifes to make their cards (as has been happening over the weekend).  Oddly enough, Lichbloom has stayed around the same price (starting at roughly 26g per stack), but Adder’s Tongue and Icethorn have both rocketed up to 30g per stack and higher.  For a change, it’s substantially cheaper to just buy Ink of the Sea instead of buying and milling – sure, I miss the free Snowfall inks, but it’s easier (and cheaper) to start re-stocking those after prices return to more sane levels.

I’ve been letting my dailies slide a little as well – the rewards from fishing are pretty ridiculous when the RNG doesn’t like you, and I’m getting tired of travelling half-way across Northrend to get a handful of useless glass as a reward.  I’m still doing the JC quests with Pringle, though, as the tokens are well worth stocking up on in preparation for the 3.2 landrush.  I’m also trying to get Mingle and Fingle caught-up with the Tournament dailies, but it’s proving to be something of an an uphill battle; as far as irritating grinds go, the tournament is (from my perspective) one of the more tiresome (especially jousting, now I’ve done it as much as I have).

For now, though, it’s time to do dailies and mill herbs and craft glyphs.

/wave

* – My money’s on 3.2 going live this week, with next week being my backup guess.  When do you think we’re getting it?

Nothing Beats A Vacation

Well, maybe chocolate does, but other than that vacations are great.  Taking a break from 25-man raiding is proving to be very enjoyable, even if it means listening on vent to everyone else raiding (and collecting their epic loots) without me.

I’ve dabbled a little, taking Mingle in for a couple of 10-man Ulduar achievement runs (and picked up a fourth T8 piece for that very nice shadow priest set bonus), but I’ve probably spent more time out of WoW than in it (apart from some extended periods spent fishing and herbing).  Mingle is also sporting a new haircut, to try minimise the really blatant clipping that the priest T8 head has with most hairstyles.  (I find it quite annoying, but I guess it’s the price you pay for being fashionable)

Speaking of herbalism, it’s proving to be surprisingly profitable on Snowfall who has just reached the dizzying heights of level 13; the small assortment of beginning-zone herbs she’s picked and put on the AH (along with some Small Eggs, which are ridiculously profitable) have raised her bank balance to 15g already.  Needless to say, this has clearly demonstrated (to me, at least) that if I ever have the desire to make a clean start on a server, gold won’t be too much of a problem.

Snowfall has finally completed the starting zone quests, and is ready to begin exploring Ghostlands (unless I get distracted again).  It’s quite a change of pace, as the starting zone I usually run is solely the Gnome/Dwarf area.

It’s just unfortunate how…  anorexic the Blood Elf character models are.  The animations are really quite lovely, but the models themselves are personally rather unappealing.  I’m undecided whether to continue leveling her or if I should try rerolling a race that has a bit more substance to it.  (I guess it says something about my aesthetics that I find the dwarves most visually appealing – apart from their really awful dances, of course)

Kringle is facing the possibility of some time spent pet-levelling, and I’m keeping an eye open for a spirit beast (Gondria would be awesome, although it’s me and pretty much every other hunter looking for him).

I’m following with some interest the new addon manager from WoWInterface:  Minion looks interesting, but the early bugs have left me wary of trying it out for now, especially with the large list of addons I run (rough estimate of around 135 or so, between all my characters, including class-specific ones).  But I’ll probably be giving it a try when it’s a little more mature, and the addon-identification bugs have been stomped into submission.

Finally, I’m currently battling an old keyboard, having celebrated a return to drinking coffee by spilling some of my first cup in almost six months on my lovely Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000, leaving it with several unresponsive keys.  I’m now looking at buying a keyboard protector and hoping I don’t have to buy a new keyboard (although fortunately the 4000 isn’t a hard model to find) to protect – with luck it’ll be possible to clean the spill off the traces inside the keyboard, but my initial disassembly and examination has left me uncertain about it.

And on the subject of buying stuff, I was reminded of an young-adult fantasy novel from my youth while browsing the comments of a post on Welcome to Spinksville!  As someone who’s ready prolifically all my life, the thought of revisiting fiction from my past is quite appealing, and in that spirit not only have I ordered a copy of So You Want To Be A Wizard by Diane Duane, but I’m also getting a copy of Next of Kin by Eric Frank Russell from a local speciality bookstore.  (Yay for literacy!)

For now, though, time to get a couple of dailies done before 10-man General Vezax.

/wave