Warcraft Diary

[alexxkay]

70! 70, 70, 70! Woo hoo!

Now, for the anticlimax and letdown...

But seriously, getting a flying mount is *extremely* cool, if expensive. Remember how I said that I was worried about the twisted connectivity in the Blade's Edge zone? That ceases to be an issue when you can go right *over* the nasty ridges. There are a bunch of areas that you can *only* get to by flying. Not that I'm really ready for that yet -- I've done some quick flybys, and the sight of L72 Elite mobs is enough to scare me off.

Though that brings up another cool point about flying: the ability to scout, or even just to travel unmolested by wandering mobs. Keep at the proper height, and you can see all the enemies but they can't see you. Not that I should let myself get complacent. Getting knocked off of your mount takes on a whole new meaning when you're high enough for a drop to be fatal...

And yes, flying mounts are expensive. After months of walking around with 4 figures worth of gold in my pocket, I now have 2. Of course, a big part of that is due to investments, as well. I'm in the middle of a bid to corner the Arcane Dust market, which I sunk over 1kG into. You see, I only bought myself the *basic* flying mount. To get the really *fast* one, I need to get my hands on 5kG. And since I remain opposed to buying it outright, that means a lot more time in the Auction House.

Though adventuring is also lucrative. Now that I'm L70, what would normally be quest XP get converted into gold, so most quests are giving at least 10G. Of course, if I relied solely on that it would take 500 quest turn-ins to earn the Epic Flyer. The expansion pack added a lot of content, but not *that* much.

One of the quests I did recently turned out to have a permanent effect on my character's outlook. He can now see ghosts. This appears to be a permanent thing. And the game designers have made the extra effort to add ghosts to lots of areas, at least in the Outlands. I now see Ancient Orc Ancestors wandering by fairly often. On rare occasions, they even speak (cryptically, of course).

I found a couple more places that look like they'll eventually let me build teleporters to them, once I get my Gnomish Engineering skill high enough. Yet another money sink, for after the Epic Mount, I guess. But I *do* so like being able to get places quickly.

One of these places is called Toshley's Station, and is full of Gnomish wackiness and Star Wars puns. One of the first quests is to "Pick up some Power Converters". But they continue to do lots of interesting twists to the standard quest models. Several of the ones here, for example, require you to actually buff your foes and absorb their attacks for a while, in order to gather energies for the Gnomes to study.

I've hit level 70, but the game is far from over. Still on the to-do list: 2.5 entire zones, about a dozen dungeons, and the new PvP instance. And that's just in The Outlands; there's still a ton of dungeons and (formerly) endgame content back on Azeroth that I still haven't experienced. Much of which I might even be able to solo at this point.

---

This market-cornering business is not only risky, it's time-consuming. I spent over an hour in the AH last night. I pulled in about 500 Gold, but I sank most of that back into the Arcane Dust business. Not sure how long I want to keep doing that...

Comments

[rickthefightguy.livejournal.com]

What server is your 70 on?

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

LLane. I have some alts there, too, but Rumpelstilt is the only one I'm actively playing there at the moment.