The things some guys do to pick up girls.

The real summer came to Sweden, finally! I've been seriously distracted by the great weather, and have not been playing as much as I usually do. Still, I'm slowly working on the "Flame Warden"-title with druid+hunter, and I've also seized the opportunity to gain some "free" XP and cash with a few of my alts. While doing that last thing, I noticed something in Desolace:



Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't tauren, you know, Horde? Yet, here we have Mr. Thunder Bluff, Alliance flag up, chatting up draenei ladies.

A couple of nights ago I had my druid run into Orgrimmar to steal their flame, and oh, holy repair bill did she die a lot. Yeah, yeah, I should've taken her equipment off, but she didn't have the bag space, it was late, and I simply wanted to get it done. For some reason a leather-/clothwearing level 71 druid has a hard time living through being hit by 12 level 75 guards - who knew? ;) Only Undercity and Silvermoon left with her - Bunnyhop still hasn't stolen any flames, but since she has both more armor and levels, it should be less painful.

Speaking of painful - I spent a couple of hours on the beach yesterday, and realised afterwards it might be a good idea to buy a new bottle of sunscreen. Blonde scandinavians tend to get overly excited by sunshine, and I'm no different (dark winters FTL). I also like pickled herring, with some akvavit on the side.

You mean, like a dog-cat? That's fantastic!

So, I'm back in business. The computer is working again, after a lot of swearing, and thanking nature for my fairly small hands and long fingers (making stuff like replacing parts in my PC a lot easier, than if I had big giant man hands), and now I'm getting back into reading blogs, and back into the game.

I've spent quite a bit of time ooh-ing and aah-ing over the new skins for cat- and beardruids, and if it wasn't for the whole "tanking as a bear turns me into a nervous wreck"-thing, I'd have my Rahamra moonlight as feral, and run around as a super cool kitty all the time. Maybe I'll be running around as a kitty anyway, as resto... I have to say this, though: Tauren kitties are the winners here. The nelf cat has always been fine, if you ask me - sneaky, panthery, with a nice colour - while the tauren cat has been... Well, you know. Open-mouthed, yellow thing, with horns. Like the really, really ugly cousin of those cool lions in the Barrens. But now, now they're just beautifully sleek and cool. I mean, the black one with a grey mane? How cool is that?



Most of all, I love the new face. Like Allison Robert pointed out over at WoW.com, the new tauren cat looks a lot like a Bull Terrier, and I love it. Even though I haven't played horde past level 25 (yet!), this seems to be a Thunder Bluff-worthy cat, and I can't wait to see what it looks like in motion. The new nelf cat skins look great, too - softer edges, nice colours and all that - but it's just not as cool as the new horde kitty.

Being more of a caster druid, I'm of course waiting for new skins for the moonkin, and the tree, I guess. I haven't used my tree form a whole lot, so I haven't really had a chance to grow sick of it the way many raiders seem to have done. So far, I've considered it quite funky, with the best dance in game <3 The moonkin form, on the other hand... I like the fact that you can see the weapon you have equipped, but since my old druid was a moonkin most of the time, and since Rahamra is using balance for questing, I've spent a lot of time during the past two and a half years staring at a nelf moonkin. Yes, it's a thousand times better than the (old) tauren cat. Yes, it's cute and cuddly. But. It's a fat bear-owl. With horns. I'm not asking for anything huge, but having the colour of the feathers change when I take my girl to the barber shop would be sweet. And I guess that's what it's going to be about, whenever they're ready to release new moonkin and trees.

Well, as much as I love playing a druid, and being able to shift into different forms, I also love playing other classes, where a piece of armor can change their look entirely (which means my priest is still running around Outland in what looks like underwear and Pretty Woman-boots). OK, I'm off to get something to eat, and then I'll be doing some druiding :)

Not yet a tree, but we're getting there!

So, Easter is upon us, and hanging out with the family and such things obviously leads to less posting. Good food, candies and sunny weather - it's all good :)

There has been some druid leveling action, though - level 46 has been reached, and it may be because of the "first character ever"-clumsiness I suffered from with my first druid, but a healthy amount of points in the resto tree seems to make leveling a whole lot smoother. OK, so I've invested a few gold in a fairly nice staff with a decent enchant - 70 extra spell power is a nice boost at this level, and I'm counting on it to last until she gets to Outland - but seriously, I was able to solo this rare elite I found in Swamp of Sorrows, by alternating rooting, nuking, and throwing HoTs on myself, even though he was one level higher than Rahamra at the time!

I'm sure my first druid would've gotten her feathery ass handed to her, had she encountered this mob at level 44.

OK, she does need a respec - I'd rather take the two points from Naturalist, and put them into Master Shapeshifter, but still, as she doesn't yet have her Tree-form, the latter wouldn't be of much use to her anyway. There's at least a tiny chance one might get to benefit from the cast time-reduction on Healing Touch while leveling. But yeah, I'd like to get those "mandatory" points, so I'm looking forward to the promised free respec in the upcoming patch. Every time I've taken a new character to Hellfire Peninsula, I've been shocked by how much harder the mobs seem to hit, and I doubt this time'll be any different, so being able to switch between leaves and feathers (almost) whenever will be yummy. It changes the rules by a huge amount - suddenly one might be able to find quite a few characters with an actual healing- or tanking spec even at lower levels!

Lunch FTW + my little friend

Just finished my lunch, so comfortably full. I've been doing some cleaning up in my Firefox bookmark list, reading up on blogs I haven't visited for a while, and browsing iTunes. The snow we had last week is way gone now, and yay, one can go outside without putting on the whole hat-scarf-mittens-mega moonboots of doom-extravaganza! Jeans, hoodie and sneakers is perfect - my kind of weather.

The state of my new druid:

Half-way through level 28,
half-way through the quests in Ashenvale,
in love with the idea of getting her a mount in less than two levels :) Spotted Frostsaber on the horizon!
A bit of a weird spec, but I refuse to respec her before 3.1, since talents will be reset when said patch arrives. I'm hoping to get her to 40 by then, so that I can kick off the tree/moonkin plan as soon as possible. So, keeping fingers crossed the "dual spec at 40"-thing makes it to the live servers - can't see any reason why it shouldn't, though.

Been poking around a bit on the PTR version of wowhead, and am very much looking forward to getting this cutie! Being the pet collector that I am, I'll be going for all of them, of course (a bit bummed I don't have a high level horde character, so I could really get all of the pets easily), but the thought of a tree druid with a tiny tree companion is almost too good to be true. Moonkin baby companion, that, on the other hand, would be too good to be true.

And finally, I'd love for the Frostsaber mentioned above to sport some nifty exhaust pipes and awesome flamez!

Quick Like a... Well, Cat.

During the last few days I've done some dailies on Bunnyhop, but most of my play time has been spent on my baby druid. She reached level 26 earlier today, and finally got Dash! Even though you may not be feral specced, it's really nice to be able to prowl around every now and then. Thing is, though, that prowling is slow, mind-numbingly slow, and that's when you love the fact that you've reached level 26, and are able to get a speed boost without breaking prowl! It's wonderful for whenever you want to sneak past patrolling mobs.

Prowl and dash were around when I leveled my first druid, but the "new" Shadowmeld wasn't. I found the old one useful too - it was nice to be able to eat/drink while being hidden from nearby mobs, and it was obviously good for pvp - but since my moonkin could be a serious aggro monkey at times, I'm very grateful for the change. It's saved Rahamra's bum more than once, and even though I haven't had the chance to try it out, it must be great for healers/dps in instances and raids, wipe-preventing, even. I do miss being able to snack while hidden, though :D

New Dark Legacy Comic - demonstrates very nicely why I never go into Stormpeaks on the PTR.

I saw a funny thing on my way to 80...

"My" part of Sweden has gotten a fair amount of snow today - hence, haven't set foot outside the door - and most of mid-morning was spent cleaning the house, replacing the ink cartridges in my printer, and a number of other little boring things.

Rahamra, the new druid alt, has reached level 22, and is so far specced 8/0/5 - not raiding material just yet :D - and she's moving along quite fast, partly because I know the spells and the quests, partly because I've run her through both the night elf zone and the draenei zone. And yeah, I've realised I may have to budge a tiny bit when it comes to my "more resto than balance, even before 40!!!"-plan - with the lack of caster leather at lower levels, she's a bit squishy, and I don't think I can (comfortably) get out of investing a bunch of points in extra damage and crit. But, come dual spec, she'll be heavy resto and a viable dps/solo-spec! Probably moonkin, but being a kitty can be fun too... We'll see.

The situation might have been different, had I started her on a fairly new server, where there's usually a bit more healthy activity in lower-level dungeons. The server on which I have my primary characters opened in January 2007, and during the first 6 months or so, people were putting together serious groups to go through Deadmines, Sunken Temple, Scholomance and so on, but two years later the activity there seems to be limited to boosts. And of course, I too like it when I get to higher levels - you can do a lot more, travel more freely, and the chances that you'll run into people who actually know what they're doing seem to increase, the closer to 80 you get - but there are a lot of things along the way that I don't want to miss:

• Duskwood questlines. I love the "haunted" atmosphere in there, and the storylines are good.
• Ashenvale. I like the quests, and "wild forest"-feeling. The same goes for Feralas.
  
• Un'Goro Crater. A lot of people hate this place, but I love it - it's like Nintendo-paradise, quest- and lookwise.
• Gathering materials for, and leveling my professions of choice, without having the main pay for it. (Rahamra is a herbalist/tailor (flying carpet? I'm so in! Also, nice leg enchant for healer/caster.))
• Silly little traditions, like swimming from Theramore to Tanaris instead of taking the Great Lift, or if you're playing a hunter - at level 10 insisting on running to the other end of the map to get a "special" pet, such as a Strigid Hunter if you're horde, or a Springpaw Lynx if you're alliance.
• In general, getting a feel for the character while leveling - I'm not an RP:er, my characters don't really have a well thought out story attached to them, but I tend to bond with them a lot, and I think I'd lose a lot of that if a friend/someone I paid 20 gold would run me through Scarlet Monastery for three levels and gear.
  

I could go on and on, but I think my point is already quite clear: I like leveling. I often complain about it somewhere around the 40s, when it seems like nothing is happening, and you feel like you're never going to catch up with everyone else, but in the end, it's nice putting the pieces together, finding out what works and what doesn't, discovering the advantages - and disadvantages - of different classes and builds.

So, even though leveling is mostly a solo-project on a server like mine, it's nothing I would like to fast-forward through. Well, there are always areas and questlines that bore me to bits (Read: Desolace. What has anyone ever done to deserve it?), but in the end, I'm always glad I've been through it, and hopefully it'll make me a better player.

It's a Girl!

The druid action in my life, and in this blog, has been quite sparse lately, to say the least. My first character - my first main - was my druid. I'm writing it in past tense, since the status of "main character" has gradually drifted over to Ms. Bunnyhop, a certain huntress :) Am I retiring my moonkin? To some extent, yes. I could never delete her, and I'll keep logging on to her to do the Mysterious Egg-thingie, and maybe some seasonal stuff, but when it comes to actually playing her - she's on an official break.

Now, this doesn't mean I'm done with druids - oh no! You see, I have a new alt:

Meet Rahamra. So far, she's put points into the Balance tree, but I see Restoration in her future. The whole dual spec-thing in patch 3.1 is something I'm really looking forward to: Bunnyhop can rock both a BM-soloing spec, and a spec for, you know, playing with others, if and when my schedule allows it. My mage will be even more fun to level if I can switch between her regular frost-spec and something more spectacular, and it will finally be possible to be a tree or a moonkin whenever I want while leveling a druid!

I'm going to try and put most talent points into the resto tree, even before level 40 (and the upcoming patch), but let's face it: Resto isn't the most comfortable solo-questing spec. She'll probably be a moonkin on the side, but I'd really love to give healing another try.

The last time I "healed", I kind of got thrown into the (for me) deep end, when trying to be a raid healer in a semi-pugged Kara-group. I didn't know my heals, I didn't know my gear, I didn't know anything, really, and, most importantly - I hadn't really healed before. The group stuck together for a couple of months, but after it fell apart, I decided that if I'm ever going to try healing again, I'll have to start doing it while leveling.

And that's why I'm not just respeccing my level 80. Might seem a bit crazy, but provided I get Rahamra that far, I might be able to get some of that "LF healer Ramparts"-action I've heard so much about :D

Now, off to get a bit more Exodar-rep, and to see if those sassy draenei have any good druid gear for me :)