Ding

Ding 69! Ten Hours to Go…

January 7, 2008 By Gitr 20 Comments

This morning Gitr dinged 69 by completing a quest from Ruaan Weald, deep in the Wyrmcultist cave. Experience Fu is estimating that I have 10 hours of leveling to go to ding 70. Here is my plan for the week to get to 70 in good shape:

Go back to Shadowmoon Valley to complete many of those quests that I’ve neglected by doing Netherstorm instead.
Do frequent LFGs when I do get 2-3 hours to play to get into some instances for XP, rep, and loot.
Play the AH to get enough gold for my flying mount upon the big ding. Time to go get Auctioneer Classic again… Advanced is bugging the heck out of me.
Clear out all of my group/elite quests that are jamming my questlog.
Research the Protection spec I will be using for instances/raiding with Doom’s Assailants on Silvermoon (US-PvE).
Consider re-speccing now and simply instancing my way to 70 in really fine, fun fashion. Who wants to grind/quest anyway?

Gitr Goes Widescreen

January 1, 2008 By Gitr 14 Comments

This Christmas, Gitr broke down and built a brand new system and got gift cards to buy a new LCD monitor. What transpired is nothing short of a gaming revolution. WoW is an all new experience now. If you are playing on an old computer, trust me, I feel you. I was running at 1024×768 resolution with the shortest vision and nearly everything turned off. Entering Ramparts, frame rates dropped to a measly 4fps, which makes both tanking and healing exceedingly difficult.

On Wednesday, the new computer got built with a fresh install of Windows XP on a new SATA drive and got all of the WoW patches loaded for some evening playtime. Here’s the current system build, resulting in 35-72fps (depending on the location and party size) with everything at max and my new 1680×1050 resolution:

2.66MHz Intel Core2 Duo with 1033FSB
ASUS SLI-ready motherboard
2GB 800 DDR2 RAM
160GB Western Digital SATA HD
ASUS Silent nVidia GeForce 8600GT 512MB
Envision 22″ Widescreen LCD with DVI-D cable

I’ll move to SLI, 4GB RAM and additional hard drives when the time comes and then top out with a Core 2 Extreme when the prices match what I just paid for this chip. So… using my wife’s bonus, we got all of this stuff in time for my week off of work (don’t worry, I have money coming in this week to replenish her bonus), got a desk, rearranged the office, and took down all of the Christmas decorations. It’s been quite a week, so it’s time to start posting again. BTW, Ding 68!

Ding 43! What to Kill? What to Kill?

November 6, 2007 By Gitr 6 Comments

Paladr’s quest log was full, and I have very little time nowadays (as evidenced by my last post date) to just play around, so it was time to get organized. I decided to attack the quest log systematically. One night, Phil and I were in the pirate cove in Tanaris to complete 4 quests. Another night, I was in Badlands killing everything 4-6 at a time or chain killing in a non-stop 2 on 1 effort until I dinged. Last night, it was the Elder Mistvale Gorillas in STV, including the waves of attacks to get Mokk’s brain. Solo. I’ve never seen that done, so I decided to see if it could be done. Oh, yeah, I also downed Shy-Rotam with Huntr along with the help of Lance’s Drowurden 70 warrior.

Since I’m still short on time, here is a snapshot of my playing. Feel free to ask questions. How ’bout that for efficiency? Don’t tell unless someone gives a darn.

Ding 40!

October 26, 2007 By Gitr 6 Comments

Paladr hit 40 just before 11:30 tonight. It was a pretty fast run from 60% at about 90 minutes. I knocked out quite a few STV quests in the process. Too many quests in the log make me go nuts and lose focus. I concentrated on staying in mostly high density areas to power grind and combined that with some drop quests like the crystals off the basilisks. It made for a pretty good combination and I flew to Grom’gol for the zeppelin to Undercity.

I hadn’t been to Silvermoon for about 20 levels, so I wasn’t even sure if there was a level 30 paladin quest, so I made sure to go there instead of using any old trainer. I didn’t see any quests from the usual suspects in SM City. Getting that over, I started going down the list of spells to train (actually, I started with wearing Plate Mail) and got to Summon Warhorse! Yes! Just what I’ve been waiting for. The next stop: Auction House.

I checked my bank and mailbox to make sure I didn’t have any plate armor sitting around that I’d forgotten about. My only disappointment of the night, armor-wise, is the lack of mats to craft some Truesilver Gauntlets. Too bad we don’t have a decent AH market on Velen. It’ll get there, but not fast enough for my gloves. I got all stacked up with various plate armor available to newbie 40s, which are insanely overpriced for the good armor because of everyone’s excitement to wear plate at level 40.

All in all I got Paladr’s armor up over 4k and his damage mitigation (yes, I can spell better than the crappy paladin guide up on the forums) rose to 51.48% the last time I looked. I didn’t get a chance to try out my new spells, but riding around the city on my new mount was fun enough for the evening.

Ding 39; Grinding away kill/drop quests

October 23, 2007 By Gitr 5 Comments

Paladr hit 39 last night and frantically tried to level out his Blacksmithing to 300 using the simplest and cheapest methods possible, only to fall short of the next recipe level at the trainer. I think Paladr is at 272 and must need 275 to get the next round in Booty Bay.

I started investigating the specializations and decided to go with Armorsmith and was moderately disappointed to learn that I have to hit level 40 for those recipe quests to become available. I have stored up most of the crafted items used to receive those Ornate Mithril Armor pieces, which I am obviously eager to don at level 40 anyway. I have some nice stuff crafted already, but I can’t wait to see what kind of beating Paladr will take with plate armor.

Ding 38; Herod’s Shoulder + Ardent Custodian

October 19, 2007 By Gitr 7 Comments

After running SM Library and Armory last night, Paladr dinged AOE grinding murlocs in STV this morning. Last night saw the much-drooled about Herod’s Shoulder, which I was the only person emminantly qualified to wear such an awesome piece of armor. At times, we had 7 mobs all over the place, with 5 of them generally hitting me. The mage had no concept of waiting for me to get some damage in before tossing a Fireball or Arcane Missles into the mix. At the beginning, the priest thought that she should be the one to pull, because of her range. “Hello! I have Mana Tap! Watch me pull… you stand back and keep me alive.” We had no combat-related deaths, but the shaman was unable to run out of the Library through the mass of repops. At least it was his idea to just run. 🙂 Here is how my run stacked up as a level 37 tankadin, leaving me one conclusion: I can tank, and I can heal. Those are my roles in-game. Luckily, Huntr just has to do damage, and his build and gear lets him do just that.