I’ve been back in World of Warcraft for a few weeks now, but for some reason I’m just not feeling my high-level characters. I can’t get the hang of being a priest again, and I don’t actually play my death knight any more (and wasn’t much good when I did play), so I’ve been looking for other things to do while I get the hang of the game again.

At a friend’s suggestion, nearly all of my alts have Herbalism and Skinning as their primary professions, on the theory that if I’m just leveling, there’s no real point in spending time leveling a production profession when I could be making money with the herbs and skins that I run across. So when I started leveling my rogue, true to form, I picked Herbalism and Skinning, planning to mail the materials I gathered to a bank alt each time I headed back to town.

But I noticed something odd when I started gathering herbs – I was getting experience for gathering! I’m sure this was in a patch note that I missed, but I was particularly started to discover it. The fact that I could get XP from herbs (and mining, I assumed, but apparently not skinning) really stuck in my head, and between that and the fact that I play mostly on an RP server, therein was born a project.

Meet Nashoda

Nashoda is a night elf druid and, in-character, a pacifist. She has struck a creature only once (I wasn’t paying enough attention and a boar walked in front of the herb I was trying to collect). She has no kills to her name, and no quests completed. (Well, one quest: I have the Wrath collector’s edition, and picking up the Frosty pet from that has a quest associated with it for some reason.) Instead, she has Herbalism and Mining, and she’s leveled exclusively through gathering professions and exploration.

And as of about an hour ago, she’s level 20.

I chose a night elf druid both for the roleplaying aspects – it’s easier for me to envision a pacifist druid than any other class – and for the gameplay aspects. As a druid, I have access to healing spells (for when creatures attack me while I’m traveling or gathering), travel form, and – in cat form – the ability to stealth; as a night elf, I have an increased chance to dodge and Shadowmeld, which now drops combat if I’m not in a group, and both of those are excellent for dealing with creature attacks. Herbalism gives me Lifebloom, adding to my healing repertoire, and Mining gives me Toughness, another defense mechanism. Nashoda has trained no offensive abilities (except Wrath, which all druids start with) and carries a “walking staff” (for the Stamina/Intellect bonus).

I’ve spent most of my time in Elwynn Forest; Teldrassil doesn’t have any ore, and Elwynn is open enough that it’s easy to make circles around it. At very early levels, I stuck mostly to the mountains around the edges – there are fewer creatures there to avoid, and quite a few earthroot and copper nodes to level on – but as Nashoda’s grown, I’ve moved farther into the forest proper. Part of me feels like I ought to be moving on to other zones, but the way XP from gathering works, peacebloom, silverleaf, and copper ore still offer enough XP per gather, and Elwynn’s nodes are so dense, that it’s actually still more efficient for me to make my rounds around Elwynn Forest. (The extra XP from higher-level herbs and ore is outweighed by the fact that in the zones I can get to, there aren’t as many of them; my XP per hour is still higher from the lower-level herbs and ore.)

The Future

I’m not sure how long I’m going to continue playing Nashoda, but I’d like to see if I can make it to 85 without killing a single creature or completing a single quest. It’ll take a while – right now I’m averaging roughly a level every hour and a half, and if that keeps up I’ll have about five and a half days /played when I hit 85 – but I like the implications. (I may also go for the Explorer achievement, since I’ll be doing a lot of circles around a lot of zones…)

(And if anyone from Blizzard is reading, “the Pacifist” as a title would be a nice Christmas present. ;)

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them in the comments here, to find me on Twitter as @etherjammer, or to find me in-game as Nashoda of Moon Guard-A. :)

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Post tags: Achievements, Druid, Leveling, Nashoda

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Yesterday, leading raid guild Ensidia claimed the world-first normal-mode 25-man kill of the Lich King. Last night, it was revealed that they’d used – knowingly or not – a bug that made one part of the encounter significantly easier. Early this morning, according to a blog post by raid member Muqq, they received 72-hour bans for using the exploit, and the achievements and items they gained from the encounter were stripped from the characters who participated in the kill.

Here’s the thing: It’s not about how easy the exploit is. It’s not even about whether Ensidia knew.

This is, to put it bluntly, almost universally a public relations coup for Blizzard. And Ensidia’s doing exactly what Blizzard wants them to do, whether they’re doing it consciously or not.

Consider:

Blizzard hasn’t publicly announced the ban. They know they don’t have to. They know that Ensidia’s going to rear up and complain about it. The people who care – the people who are gunning for firsts, the people who want to know about the fights ahead of time, the people who might exploit – now know that the top guild in the world isn’t immune from consequences; why should they think they will be?

Consider:

Blizzard says “We know about this bug and we’re fixing it as fast as we can.” hours before Ensidia says “They need to fix this bug!” All Ensidia’s doing is highlighting the fact that Blizzard’s on the job. Ensidia aren’t idiots. They know that an encounter that isn’t tested on the PTR is going to have bugs. There’s an in-game way to report bugs for a reason. In their rush to World First, they found a bug, and instead of being responsible as gamers and testing and reporting the bug, they were responsible to their sponsors and their egos and blew through the encounter anyway, and then downplayed the bug after they’d claimed World First.

Consider:

By saying “pull everybody off Cataclysm and put them on fixing this encounter”, Ensidia is saying two things: “the Lich King encounter is really important and everybody should want it to be right as soon as possible”, and “Cataclysm is huge, and its developers are the best at Blizzard”.

Ensidia isn’t even really taking heat – they just cool their heels for 72 hours and everybody rallies behind them for being underdogs. (Look at the comments here!) And Blizzard gets everything it wants – and all it took was a 72-hour ban. (Hell, I’m tempted to think that they knew about the bug and left it in on purpose.)

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© Noëlle for Duct Tape and a Prayer, 2010. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Achievements, Instances, Oops, Raiding

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(If you look closely, you can see the transformation that got me the achievement!)

And the result:

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Post tags: Achievements, Holiday, Priest

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Fortunately, there are tricks to each.

Torch Juggler

Getting the Torch Juggler is a matter of clicking as fast as you can, in an area where you can avoid having lots of objects rendered on your screen. The best area that I’ve found for this (thanks to an Aetherial Circle guildmate for this tip) is the plaza commemorating Archmage Antonidas just to the northwest of the “Horde” bank, marked with a red star on the map to your right. Stand there, with your back to the bank, and your visual lag should be significantly reduced.

Once you’re in a good position, assign your Juggling Torch to one of your hotkeys (1,2,3…0,-,= in the default interface). It is almost impossible to get this achievement by right-clicking the torch’s icon to activate it. If you absolutely must click the icon instead of using hotkeys, the rest of this section will do you no good. Press the hotkey to activate the juggling torch; a green circle will appear under your cursor. Place the circle directly under your character and prepare to click like the wind. What you need to do is alternate between pressing the hotkey and clicking the mouse (without moving the mouse cursor at all) as fast as you possibly can; ideally you’ll be using one hand on the hotkey and the other on the mouse. The torches do not have a cooldown, and you need to get as many clicks into each second as you can, so speed is absolutely of the essence.

One thing to keep in mind: although you have to catch 40 torches, catching a torch replenishes your stock, so you actually only need about 10 torches to complete the achievement.

Torch Catching

Torch Catching is one quest where it pays to be sneaky. See, the trick to completing this quest with a minimum of effort is that you can catch the torches that other characters throw. Apparently, the quest is set up so that if you click on a torch to toss it, if that torch falls to the ground, your count resets. However, any torch that you catch counts toward the quest – and if you didn’t throw the torch initially, it doesn’t count against you if it lands on the ground after you’ve tossed it.

Let me illustrate: You right-click a torch to toss it, and catch it three times. Then the torch lands on me; I catch your torch and automatically toss it again. The torch hits the ground. Since you were the one who initially threw the torch, your count is reset to 0 when the torch hits the ground. However, my count stays at 1 torch in a row caught. If this happens again – you throw the torch, I catch it and re-toss it, it hits the ground – my count increases to 2 in a row.

You can see where I’m going with this, I think.

If you want to be sneaky about Torch Catching and not have to run around the city chasing torches, simply come to your chosen city when there are bunches of people there, get on your mount (you have a larger surface area, so you’re more likely to catch torches that land near you), stand near the bonfire, and go make a sandwich. Your character will accumulate torches on her own, and you won’t have to lift a finger.

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Post tags: Achievements, Holiday

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Today I finally managed to get my new vanity pet – and just in time, too.

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