Features I like(d)

I like some random, inane stuff.  Tiny cute things.  Anything green.  Completely extraneous Easter-egg stuff.  So over the course of WoW there's been a lot of random stuff I've like from each expansion, regardless of whether there were other things that drove me batty (like gated profession stuff and losing both ships on a 92% mission fail).

But this is about stuff I like, so here's some of them:

Fished up bosses.  The first of these (as far as I know) was Gahz'ranka in the original Zul'Gurub.  Unlike later fished up bosses, like the Lurker Below and the Pandaria fishing quest bosses, Gahz'ranka required a process to fish up.  This is also why I was a bit irritated about Nat Pagle forgetting who I was every expansion - he taught me 225-300 fishing skill.  But yeah, I liked that having done what a lot of people hadn't in Vanilla (maxing fishing) was useful for something besides obscure food.

Yes, I still have my Mudskunk Lures.

Long quest chains with both strong emotional payoff and decent equipment rewards.  The Major Windsor escort through Stormwind (and Bolvar's subsequent badassery).  The Cipher of Damnation (Burning Crusade edition).  Alas, Andorhal.  The Battle of Darrowshire.  Drakkuru.  Zul'Drak's troll gods quests.  Terokk's story in Spires of Arak.  When I specifically seek out these zones to quest through again, it means they're doing something right.

Zapthrottle.  So I'm still carrying around my mote extractor.  As an engineer, I loved suddenly having resources that only I could gather.  I may have occasionally frustrated people by being en route to some group thing and getting distracted chasing down balls of gas.  It was worse than ore tracking.

Floating islands in Nagrand.  They're so full of Easter eggs, and they were fun to go hang out on if you had to afk for a bit.

Water with currents.  After how many years of waterfalls and such, Pandaria finally gave us water that would pull us around!  I especially liked the currents off the southern coast of the Dread Wastes.

Phasing that lets us change zones over time.  One of the things I was a bit sad about until phasing went in was that, no matter what we did in WoW, nothing changed.  You go help someone out and as soon as you leave, it all resets.  But in Mount Hyjal, we helped beat back the Twilight's Hammer and start the healing of the fire-scorched areas.  In Pandaria, we contributed to the devastation of some of their pristine areas.  In Deepholm, we repair the World Pillar.  And Gilneas!  Oh, Gilneas.  One of the things that impressed me most in the Cataclysm beta, playing through Gilneas for the first time, was that the moment of the cataclysm itself - so bluntly shown in Kezan as Deathwing disrupts a sports game - you feel it when the devastation hits, and your village begins sinking into the ocean.  It was visceral and amazing.

So, uh, sorry, west coast of North America.  It's going to be devastating when you fall into the Pacific, but it's going to be amazing for your narrative.

Tol Barad.  I liked that some PVP opened up some basically PVE daily quests with mount and pet and gear awards for the related currency.  The zone was interestingly creepy, as well.  I suppose Winterspring was also in this vein, but Tol Barad felt more polished.

The Seahorse in Vashj'ir.  The only thing I didn't like about it was that you could only use it in Vashj'ir.  Going fast underwater was almost better than flying.  It didn't hurt that the place was gorgeous.

The turtle boats in Northrend.  It was slow, but it was a nice thematic touch for the Tuskarr, and when you forgot which zeppelin went where as frequently as I did, it made schlepping over to the other end of Northrend prior to having flying much easier.

Garrison followers.  I love my bird-buddy Ishaal, and a lot of the followers just make me more connected to Draenor in general.  I may hardly leave my garrison, but I do have cool people hanging out with me.  When I'm not making them do random menial tasks.

NPCs that use class-specific skills.  The last boss in Nagrand's Ring of Blood shaman-popping.  Yrel in that Talador cutscene.  Anytime I see NPCs we're interacting with behave the way I'd expect someone of that class to - it's just awesome.  (Seriously, I kinda teared up when Yrel popped wings in that video, because Yes! That is a paladin!)

Rexxar's rat innkeeper.  Because it's cute and adorable.

Pet biscuits.  Because rats bigger than gnomes are awesome.

Argh Profession Gating

I'm a profession junky.  I had all of them maxed at the end of Mists, and four alchemists at 600 (because you can never have enough transmutes).  So garrisons have been both awesome and frustrating in that regard - awesome because it's a new system tied in, but frustrating because you run into gating based on level or resources.

If you don't use ore, your gathering bonus options are limited until later than the mine at 92; you can't unlock the herb garden until 94.  Want more leather?  The barn requires more work for leather than the mine or the herb garden do for their materials.  I haven't started my leatherworker yet, so I'm not sure this is actually going to be a big deal, and now that I know how trapping works, it's not that bad to deal with.  I'm still accidentally killing some things when I try to trap them, and I'm still running into mobs that inexplicably won't set off the trap, but I can go grab seven or eight boars or talbuk or clefthoofs and be good for the day's work orders in fifteen minutes in the right area.  It does seem a bit unfair that you have to tie up a medium building for it, though.

I'm more frustrated by the gating of the intermediary crafting materials than anything else, though.  We've had recipe acquisition gated behind dailies since Wrath, and I hated it for jewelcrafting then, but these are innocuous dailies more along the lines of alchemical and inscription discoveries, so they're not really that bad - you even get to pick which recipe you learn.  But I'm sitting on so much ore on my engineer, and I can't do anything with it.  I've got Blingtron 5k and scopes and pets in my recipe list, but I can't do anything to make them yet.  Delayed gratification sucks, but it also means that there's not going to be any jumping in on the market of selling those pets and scopes any time soon, because I'm saving up to make myself that gun and some goggles.

And that also sucks.  I'm trying to get into Molten Core, but I had bad luck on quest item upgrades at an ilvl that mattered, and so far my dungeon drops have been for slots that I already had 615 pieces in.  My most recent upgrades came from Mr. Pinchy Sr. (who got me into heroics) and 615 shoulders from a garrison mission.  I'll get there, and it won't be horribly slow, but there's no more, "Oh, I'll just drop 5k on mats on the auction house and make myself a piece of gear for that one slot I really need to upgrade."  Having done the silver proving grounds required for heroic dungeons at a 584 ilvl, though, it's a bit frustrating.

But I made my Elekk plushie last night, and my blacksmith has a forge in construction (actually it finished sometime last night), and this weekend I'll probably get all my alts a level 2 garrison so I can have their profession buildings made well before I actually get around to leveling them, so I can stockpile materials for when I do.  Other than herbs, I think I can keep them mostly supplied with raw materials for their cooldowns just from my main.  My death knight might get bumped up in playtime just for herb gathering.  Once I have a follower in the herb garden, that may end up unnecessary, though.

I like the tie-in of hunting down a follower of the affiliated profession and, now that they've got the mission levels fixed, leveling them up to the point they can go to work for you in the profession buildings.  I'm also liking the "cook to learn more cooking," although not so much the five meats/filets to make anything.  The talbuk have been scrawny.

All in all, it's not a bad system; it's just frustrating after several years with only the major pieces requiring delayed gratification for crafting.  Titansteel cooldowns, living steel cooldowns, sure.  Scopes being gated by cooldowns?  Not really sold on that, but it's what we've got.  I've been reluctant to put a scope on my leveling ranged weapons, because who knows when they'll be replaced, and I need those gears for a gun and goggles.


I should have just bought the yak, though.  That 120k I stockpiled before the expansion isn't going to be needed for powerleveling  professions this time around, because there is no more powerleveling professions if you're already at 600.

On the gating flipside, thank God there's a cap on timber stockpiling, because I was starting to somewhat obsessively deforest Nagrand.

5 Favorite Engineering Gadgets

I've been an engineer since I made my second hunter - the first is a leatherworker, and by the time I got to the second I knew I wanted to be able to make my own ammunition.  Ammunition is, of course, gone now, but that's still left me with a wealth of interesting gadgets.

I'm carrying a 36-slot engineering bag around me for all the ones I'm still toting around with me; after whittling down the list, these are my top five favorite:

5.  MOLL-E:  I looked high and low for a screenshot of my MOLL-E in action, but it's one of the more mundane gadgets I carry, so none immediately jumped out at me.  I'm sure it's in a boss-kill shot somewhere; I just haven't found it yet.  My favorite engineering gadgets fall into one of two categories:  Insanely practical (MOLL-E barely beat out the Thermal Anvil for #5) or randomly deadly.  MOLL-E hasn't killed me... yet.

4.  Zapthrottle Mote Extractor:  The mote extractor was the source of much random glee and obsessive zapping in the Burning Crusade:  it lets you suck elemental motes out of random balls of gas in various zones.  Water (originally life) in Zangarmarsh, mana in Netherstorm, air in Nagrand, shadow in Shadowmoon Valley.  And it puts them on your map now.

3.  Dimensional Ripper - Everlook: This is my favorite of the many transport items available to engineering, because one of the possible mishaps sets you on fire.  I was unprepared the first time this happened and quickly burnt to death; after that I learned to pay attention and eat immediately - percentage-based food was especially helpful.

I... actually have a lot of screenshots very similar to this one.

2.  Parachute Cloak (and its descendant, the Flexweave Underlay):  I love parachuting into places.  It's great now that I can do damage while doing so now - for Galakras I volunteer for the tower groups, and do one of the guns, because I can parachute down and hit stuff en route.  Way back when, I would use this as a shortcut into the Un'Goro Crater from Tanaris.

1. Loot-A-Rang:  This is the gadget I want on all my other toons.  Loot-A-Rang, Fetch, it's all good.  I have both on several hunters.  An excellent follow-up to the Booterang.


So, when I was making this list, I decided to thin out the explosives, since they're not really gadgets, per se, but they were quickly bloating the list.  So here's a bonus list of my favorite explosives:

5.  Explosive Sheep:  Sheep, that explode.  This should not be difficult to understand, especially if you're familiar with Worms Armageddon.

4.  Goblin Mortar (and the Mortar: Reloaded):  Because:

This isn't the only screenshot I have in this approximate position.

3.  Seaforium:  If you ever went through Dire Maul on a tribute run and couldn't get the key to drop...  Also allowed you to bypass that annoying slime tunnel in the Shattered Halls.  And open locked chests.  Handy when rogues are on the decline.  (Or when they hadn't leveled lockpicking, aeons ago.)

2.  Global Thermal Sapper Charge:  Just insert cackling here.  I used to use these in Wintergrasp.  I still have a couple, but the cooldown on them puts all your explosives on a five minute cooldown.

1.  Goblin Rocket Launcher:  We used to use this for the first pull in the Botanica, for the stun.  One of my favorite PVP deaths was getting sheeped by a gnome mage (I was on my priest), and then she follows it up by immediately pulling out this rocket launcher.  It was just awesome.

Engineering!!

I'm sure this is prettier over on MMO-Champion somewhere, but I transcribed this straight out of the beta today. I missed the first couple skill level requirements.

Note: Tinkers can be discovered while making other things.

• Authentic Jr. Engineer Goggles (Equip: Makes you appear more gifted and attractive.)
• R19 Threatfinder (Use: Attaches a permanent scope to a bow or gun that increases its ranged hit rating by 88.)
• Volatile Energy Converter (Part)
• Handful of Obsidium Bolts (Part)
• (455) Quickflip Deflection Plates (Tinker: Permanently attaches quickflip deflection plates onto gloves, allowing you to increase your armor by 1500 for 12 sec. Gloves can only be activated once every minute. Attaching teh armor webbing causes the gloves to become soulbound. An Engineering skill of 500 is required to keep the webbing active.)
• (455) Volatile Seaforium Blastpack (Use: Blasts open locked doors and chests that require lockpicking skill of 525 and below.)
• (460) Safety Catch Removal Kit (Use: Removes the safety mechanism from a bow or gun, increasing its ranged haste rating by 88. Using this kit causes the bow or gun to become soulbound.)
• (465) High-Powered Bolt Gun (Tool/Use: Fires several charged bolts at an enemy for 6800 to 10200 damage and briefly interrupts casting. Consumes a Handful of Obsidium Bolts each time it's fired. (2 Min Cooldown))
• (475) De-Weaponized Mechanical Companion (Use: Teaches you how to summon this companion.)
• (475) Personal world Destroyer (Use: Teaches you how to summon this companion.)
• (525) Cardboard Assassin (Permanently attaches a tiny device on your belt, allowing you to create a Cardboard Assassin that enemies will attack. Lasts 15 sec. Can be used once every 5 min. Can only be used on your own belt,a nd doing so will cause it to become soulbound. Requires at least 500 skill in Engineering to use.)
• (525) Deadly Bio-Optic Killshades (BoP, Mail, Head, 1977 Armor, 301 Agility, 512 Stamina, Meta Socket, Cogwheel Socket (2), Socket Bonus 20 Agility, Requires Level 81, Item Level 359, Requires Engineering (525))
• (525) Elementium Dragonling (BoE, Unique-Equipped, Trinket, Blue Socket, Requires level 80, Item Level 333, Requires Engineering (475), Equip: Increases your mastery rating by 212. Use: Activates your Elementium Dragonlin to fight for you for 1 min. (5 Min Cooldown))
• (525) Elementium Toolbox (36 slot engineering bag)
• (525) Finely-Tuned Throat Needler (BoP, Crossbow, 1265-2350 Damage, Speed 2.90, (623.3 dps), 107 Agility, 161 Stamina, Requires Level 85, Item Level 359, Equip: Improves haste rating by 77. Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 63.)
• (525) Gnomish X-Ray Scope (Use: Attaches a permanent scope to a bow or gun that increases its ranged critical strike rating by 88. Attaching this scope to a ranged weapon causes it to become soulbound.)
• (525) Goblin Barbecue (Use: Set out the barbecue to feed your entire raid or party! Restores 64903 health and 45000 mana over 30 sec. If you spend at least 10 seconds eating you will become well fed and gain 60 Stamina and 60 in another useful stat for 1 hour.)
• (525) Grounded Plasma Shield (Tinker: Permanently attaches grounded plasma generators to your belt, allowing you to activate a powerful shield that absorbs 16200 to 19800 damage. Can only be used on your own belt, and doing so will cause it to become soulbound. Requires at least 500 skill in Engineering to use.)
• (525) Heat-Treated Spinning Lure (Requires Fishing (250), Use: When applied to your fishing pole, increases Fishing by 150 for 5 minutes.)
• (525) Invisibility Field (Tinker: Permanently attaches thousands of tiny mirrors to your belt, allowing you to turn invisible while out of combat. Can be activated once every 5 min. Can only be used on your own belt, and doing so will cause it to become soulbound. Requires at least 500 skill in Engineering to use.)
• (525) Kickback 5000 (BoP, Gun, 1221-2269 Damage, Speed 2.80, 623.3 dps, 87 Agility, 161 Stamina, Red socket, Socket bonus 10 Agility, Requires Level 85, Item Level 359, Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 73, Equip: Improves haste rating by 49.)
• (525) Loot-a-Rang (BoU, Requires Engineering (125), Use: Retrieves the loot from a nearby corpse. (10-Sec Cooldown))
• (525) Lure Master Tackle Box (BoE, 36 Slot Tackle Box)
• (525) Overpowered Chicken Splitter (BoP, Bow, 1121-2269 Damage, Speed 2.80, 623.3 dps, 107 Agility, 161 Stamina, Requires Level 85, Item Level 359, Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 77, Equip: Improves haste rating by 63.)
• (525) Spinal Healing Injector (Tinker: Permanently attaches a specialized injector kit to your gloves, allowing you to inject a Mythical Healing Potion directly into your bloodstream for increased effect. Only a skilled engineer can activate the modified gloves. Can only be attached to your own gloves, and doing so causes the gloves to become soulbound.)
• (525) Synapse Springs (Tinker: Permanently attaches synapse springs to a pair of gloves, allowing a skilled engineer to increase their Intellect by 480 for 12 sec. The gloves can only be activated every minute.)
• (525) Tazik Shocker (Tinker: Permanently attaches a tazik shocker to your gloves, allowing a skilled engineer to deal 1049 to 1282 Nature damage to an enemy at long range. The shocker can only be used once every 2 min. Can only be used on the engineer's gloves,a dn doing so will cause them to become soulbound.)
• (525) Volatile Thunderstick (BoP, Gun, 705-1309 Damage, Speed 2.8, 359.7 dps, 62 Agility, 93 Stamina, Requires level 83, Item Level 300, Equip: Increases your mastery rating by 41, Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 41.)
• (525) Z50 Mana Gulper (Tinker: Permanently attaches a specialized grip to your gloves, allowing you to power-drink a Mythical Mana Potion for increased effect. Only a skilled engineer can activate the modified gloves. Can only be used on the engineer's gloves, and doing so will cause them to become soulbound.)

3.1 Patch Notes

The 3.1 PTR is up, although I'm not over there, and I've been hearing conflicting information about what's actually on the PTR so far as changes to Survival, vs. what's in the patch notes. But, I'm a Marksman hunter, so other than academic curiosity, I don't care what they do to the deep Survival talents. :P

From the patch notes:

• Disengage: Cooldown increased by 5 sec.
• Frost Trap: If the target who triggers Frost Trap is immune to its effect, the Frost Trap area effect will no longer be triggered.
• Talents
• Beast Mastery
• Improved Aspect of the Hawk now has a new spell effect.
• Improved Wing Clip: This talent has been removed.
• Marksmanship
• Piercing Shots re-designed: Your critical Aimed, Steady and Chimera Shots cause the target to bleed for 10/20/30% of the damage dealt over 8 sec.
• Ranged Weapon Specialization: Points reduced from 5 to 3, 1/3/5%.
• Wild Quiver: Chance increased to 4/8/12%, up from 4/7/10%. Damage increased from 50% of an auto shot, to 80%.
• Survival
• Hunting Party: This talent has been reduced to 3-points, and now increases your total Agility by an additional 1/2/3%.
• Lock and Load re-designed: You now have a 33/66/100% chance when you trap a target with Freezing Trap, Freezing Arrow or Frost Trap and a 2/4/6% chance when you deal periodic damage with your Immolation Trap or Black Arrow to cause your next 2 Arcane Shot or Explosive Shot spells to trigger no cooldown, cost no mana and consume no ammo. This now has a new spell effect and sound.
• New Talent: Trap Launcher: When activated, your next Trap will be launched instantly at the enemy target. 1 minute cooldown.
• T.N.T. re-designed: Increases the damage done by your Explosive Shot, Explosive Trap and Immolation Trap by 2/4/6%.
• Trap Mastery: This talent has been moved up to tier-2, up from tier-9.
• Wyvern Sting duration increased from 12 sec to 30 sec. PvP duration reduced from 10 sec to 6 sec.
• Pets
• Roar of Sacrifice can be used on the hunter only.
• Stampede (rhino) only affects 1 target, but adds a 25% bleed damage debuff (that does not stack with Mangle etc.) in addition to its knockback.

None of that seems particularly awful; we already got our nerf. The Disengage change is minor, and tweaking the CD back up a little after having it reduced previously isn't huge - especially since one of the undocumented changes is the removal of a minimum range on Kill Shot. You don't have to back up to pick someone off. (Side note: Something about the synergy of raid buffs last night in Naxx had me Kill Shot critting for 10k. We didn't even have a warrior or a druid. 2 prot pallies, 1 frost DK, 3 shamans (one of each flavor), 2 holy priests, a warlock, and me. I don't know what was going on, but it was sweet.)

The Frost Trap change is a small nerf, if I'm reading it correctly; it means that if the person/mob who triggers the trap resists or is immune, the trap just fizzles, instead of them just ignoring the effect.

Improved Aspect of the Hawk apparently looks different now - I'm guessing something along the lines of the cobra animation for one of the deeper BM talents, but we'll see. I'm not sure why the Improved Wing Clip mention fell under the BM notes - that's a Survival thing, and one of the few things I wish I still had from my 2-day Survival experiment.

The Piercing Shots change was announced a while back, and I will be shuffling points (or using dual specs for a raiding spec) to pick it up. The reduction of the points for Ranged Weapon Specialization means I may also pick it up for a raiding spec, but I'll see how many loose points I have to play with. Wild Quiver... meh, still probably won't bother.

The Survival changes mention Black Arrow, so I'm not sure why they didn't list it in the Survival talent section, but hey, at least you get the inkling that Survival hunters will now be able to do Fire, Nature, Arcane, and Shadow damage, on top of physical damage and two traps counting as Frost. If you ever doubted that hunters were casters, we may be the only ones with all five schools now. Woo. o.O

I'm really not familiar enough with Survival to know how good or bad some of the changes are, but it seems like they're trying to bring down the somewhat crazy numbers that Survival started doing after the 3.0.8 changes. Trap Launcher: a cool idea I've seen tossed out on the Hunter and Suggestion forums occasionally, and I'm a little curious how far down the tree it is. It should make Survival's trap dancing a little easier (to synergize with the undocumented tweak to Sniper Training?), but the idea of throwing a snake trap across the field at someone is just awesome.

The Roar of Sacrifice change - I don't have a Cunning pet right now (long story short: I had 3 pets that turned out to be Ferocity when they added talents, and wanted a bear as my Tenacity pet; I initially picked up a sporebat as my 5th, but switched it to a Hyena, theoretically for PVP). But this was the mana regen talent? I'm guessing it wasn't meant to be used on anyone but the hunter, and they're just fixing it. The rhino nerf disappointed my GM (who, post-3.0 warlock changes, has been a hunter full-time o.O), since he had a ball during the Lunar Festival 'defending' Thunder Bluff's elder from Alliance. (No, our guild wasn't subsequently KoS at the Alliance elders, really.)

Changes mentioned on the official forums that didn't get included in the PTR notes: remote stable use, and the ammuniton changes. I kind of wish remote stable use had been a saleable engineering item, but oh well. (It could have had awesome RP possibilities... /e pulls out her Goblin SAT Phone and issues the command: "Release the hounds!" Ahem.) The ammunition changes apparently aren't coming all in one piece - for now they're just increasing the stack size and removing (?) quivers. Hopefully this means that my Mammoth Cutters won't be useless yet, and that when they do eventually change, Engineering ammunition will just become a relic-like item of some sort, which we can still craft. We make some of the better ammunition in the game, and it would be nice if that didn't disappear completely.

Um, yeah, I've mentioned I'm a Goblin Engineer before, right? >.>

Two gear upgrades last week - both unexpected. A belt off Gothikk, and a sword off the Four Horsemen. My 2h sword skill was at 116 when I got it, heh. I mostly dual-wielded up until the Zulian Stone Axe (with an Agility enchant) from Venoxis in Zul'Gurub, and then mostly had two-handers from there on out, other than a brief switch into dual Stellaris with +Int enchants until I got the S3 axe. One of the things I've always understood about playing MM is that you can't neglect your mana pool; at least the gear reflects that now.

Busy weekend!

So, after finishing off what I could of the DK's cooking and inscription, as well as what I had mats to do with my rogue's alchemy and the priest's tailoring and enchanting, I spent pretty much the entire weekend focused on Dusk.

Saturday I spent almost entirely in the Howling Fjord, with a couple side trips to Dragonblight for 'go talk to that person' quests. I did run Utgarde keep with guildies at one point; it looks amazing on the outside, but the inside? About as interesting as Blackrock Depths, without the benefit of the bar. Oh, and there was the incident with Frostblade Peak... I equipped my parachute cloak (I have +12 agi on my current cloak, and I don't want to lose that), but hit it too soon, and landed somewhere I couldn't reach to rez. It had popped me into the Grizzly Hills graveyard, so after spirit rezzing, I ran over the entirety of the Grizzly Hills for the exploration achievement. I got into a couple random groups for things like March of the Giants and Megalith, but mostly ran around solo. Whisper Gorge is also visually amazing.

Sunday I finished off the last 4 quests I needed for the Howling Fjord quest achievement, plus one extra that pushed me to 72. I then transported to Everlook and flew down to Orgrimmar for training. This was strategically planned so I could take the zeppelin up to Borean Tundra. I don't really like Warsong Hold - it's confusing to get around in, and the quarry made finding my way back inside confusing. The seige tank quests are fantastic, though - I was cackling. And Saurfang's rescue was awesome. The mist I initially didn't like, partly because I ran into it by accident, and got sidetracked into a different chain of quests, but it is, overall, pretty neat.

By and large, running around in the gear she is, things feel easy. I haven't upgraded anything yet - I probably could have swapped out the ring and necklace from the Utgarde quests, but ultimately decided not to. The ranged rewards are all still 20 points below the badge crossbow; but I haven't gotten out of the two starting zones yet, except for...

My trip to Sholazar Basin! It was getting late, and I decided to run around the rest of the Borean Tundra for the exploration achievement and the flight paths, and when I got done, I was right by the entrance to Sholazar. And I thought, hey, maybe I'll get the flight path there while I'm so close. I never found a flight path, but... the place was practically deserted. It was just me, my hammer-pick, and enough nodes of saronite to net me 44 ore. I can smelt it, but my engineering isn't to where I can use it yet. I did hit 73 off the quests in Coldarra, though, and I think when I get there, I can use the saronite arrows. It'll be nice, since I'm out of fel iron bolts, and I'd rather not have to buy more.

The only new skill I've picked up is Kill Shot, which has not impressed me. Yeah, it hits hard, but I tend to have to finish off stuff in melee range, and the old-style execute (requiring health below a certain %) means that I've actually managed to use it... twice. Most of the time it lights up as available right about when I've pulled aggro off my pet and the mob has hit melee range. For grinding, I'm not going to hit Disengage just to pop a Kill Shot. Arenas are another matter - that might be a good macro, actually...

Current Wrath to-do list

Right, so after having my DVD-RW drive crashing my system twice, the old DVD-R drive that hadn't worked for... two years? let me install from it, and I finally got into Wrath at about 6:30. A disconnection bug or so later, and I took Duskhawk up to the Howling Fjord to see the engineering, cooking, fishing, mining, and first aid trainers. Once she was all trained up, I parked her in an inn, and rolled my death knight.

Yeah, yeah... this blog is about my hunters. And the death knight by far isn't going to take their place. The mechanics are very different from what I'm used to (I'm still figuring out what of what I can do applies my diseases, and I kept forgetting to spend the talent points as I got them), but my DK is my scribe, and I wanted to get that out of the way. I did, after all, spend a lot of time farming herbs for her to go straight to 300. And, um, probably 300 cooking. After 3 hours, though, the DK was 58 and sitting in Orgrimmar with her cooking at 225 and her scribing at 120, and I wanted to play Dusk some before I had to go to bed.

So I logged back over to Dusk, got a couple of the initial Vengeance Landing quests, did the plague cannister collection, and then went up the elevator. I wandered along the road a while, marveled at the shoveltusks, went down another elevator, wandered up the coast, found myself in an excavation. Going up that elevator took some doing, and I found an Explorers' League camp. Alas, I'm a cow, and they weren't friendly.

But! There was a flock of turkeys by the road there, and remembering the General Achievement list, I quickly got 15 of them in the bag. Their corpses look like roasted turkeys, but alas, you cannot loot or eat them. (I was subsequently swarmed by a flock of angry turkeys. Go-Go Gadget Volley!)

By this time, I had decided to do the exploration achievement for the Howling Fjord and pick up all the flight paths there. So I spent the next forty-five minutes or so picking up every quest and flight path I could find, drooling over the Underwater Breathing on the Tuskars' (sp?) reputation fishing pole, and accidentally getting too close to another Alliance settlement (and getting flagged while mounted... yet again >.<). I found Arctic Clouds from which to extract air and water crystal thingies, as well, and they came in swarms! Well, like, six of them. And then subsequently got ganked by an Alliance mage riding past while I was blissfully extracting motes. (I thought I had aggroed an elemental, maybe, and kept extracting, figuring puppy would pick it up, and then I realized, wait, those are pink-purple arcane bolts... and then I was dead.) Wandering through the wolverine-men like village, I got swarmed by about 8, and took down 5 with Volley and puppy before getting killed. They have nets. >.<

And! I saw a Storm Giant - they're huge.

After I finished off the map, I hearthed back to Vengeance Landing, and I swapped out puppy for Hadrian, since I figure I'm going to want the bear for leveling. I had acquired 10 cobalt ore in my trip, which is a vast improvement from the nothing I managed to mine for the first few days of the Burning Crusade. I even have a whole water eternal, and over half an air one.

That was nothing about my to-do list, though. My to-do list for Duskhawk is entirely: Howling Fjord quests + mining right now. But what I need to squeeze in so I can do that without it nagging me:

• Take the rogue & the priest to Northrend & train professions (probably as soon as I get home)
  
• Finish grinding inscription on the death knight (tonight or tomorrow)
  
• Send leftover herbs to the rogue (right after the previous)
  
• Get old world flight paths for the death knight (maybe Sunday)
  
• Do the 225 Cooking quest on the death knight - Giant Egg (12), Zesty Clam Meat (10), Alterac Swiss (20) (whenever I do the previous)
  
• Auction leftover cooking mats (after cooking is at 300)
  
• Level death knight's Herbalism to 300 (while getting flight paths)
  
• Take death knight to Thrallmar (after finishing Herbalism)
  
• Buy first aid books for death knight (probably before I take the rogue to Northrend)
  
• Send leftover cloth to the priest (after previous)
  

I'll see what points of tailoring, enchanting, and alchemy I can grind with the materials I have on hand. I have a stack and a half of void crystals for ring enchanting, as long as that lasts me, and I'll see what I can do with the Arcanoweave Robes. Alchemy I may need to invest in some Nightmare vine, since I have enough Mana Thistle to do quite a bit of Fel Mana potion crafting. I also have a crapload of Felweed right now. But I really want to spend time on Dusk and her engineering. And... reputation for the mechano-hog. Mmm, hog.