Going for Realm Firsts

[KysenMurrin]

Hmm. Didn't realise you could stack up the full set of Tol Barad dailies from different days, or I'd've done that...

I really should have put more effort in on beta than I have. Finding that I probably need to completely rethink Valley of the Four Winds, some of the questing there is very inefficient. Gonna skip the whole Chen Stormstout chain, move between the other hubs and rely on Krasarang to get me the rest of the way to to 87. Gonna do another level through of 85-87 Sun/Mon to confirm my route...

[Fenrìr]

Hmm. Didn't realise you could stack up the full set of Tol Barad dailies from different days, or I'd've done that...

I really should have put more effort in on beta than I have. Finding that I probably need to completely rethink Valley of the Four Winds, some of the questing there is very inefficient. Gonna skip the whole Chen Stormstout chain, move between the other hubs and rely on Krasarang to get me the rest of the way to to 87. Gonna do another level through of 85-87 Sun/Mon to confirm my route...

Only problem with TB quests is you've got to hope that your faction controls it when the switch is flipped.





EDIT: I decided to push through today to 90 just to get a feel for the later quests...and I ran out of quests in Townlong Steppes after moving on to each zone once I reached the next level. I feel like I may have to spend a bit more time going through Krasarang even though I completed all the quests in Vot4W and Kun lai Summit.

[econ21]

Only problem with TB quests is you've got to hope that your faction controls it when the switch is flipped.

No, it's fine. They put an NPC in the peninsular that you can turn in the quests to, if the other faction controls TB. He's near the chap with the victory quest, a little further back towards the sea, iirc.

[KysenMurrin]

Yeah, you can turn every quest in at the faction camp.

Re: Moving on as you level, I did every quest in each zone except Nesingwary's camp (didn't even know it was there until I did that bit in Krasarang then spotted the ! on the Vot4W map), and the !s on islands to the south in Krasarang, and I was 89 by the time I finished Kun Lai summit, with the option to skip Townlong entirely if I'd wanted. Don't know if I'd've run out of quests.

I'm unguilded on beta, so no xp bonus.

I'm gonna try a real trial run from 85 today, skipping ahead when it seems right, and keeping track of my xp in each zone. (I think the hard part might indeed be the "kill x mobs" quests in that very first camp when you arrive on launch night, can't really test run that...)


More stuff: I usually use a random mount addon, but I'm removing it and insted using one mount for the grind. This is to avoid things like mammoths preventing me from running through doorways.

I only recently got a Traveller's Tundra Mammoth, I think it might be essential. Sticking that on my bar also. Finding I can't interact with the vendor at all while moving, though, which is disappointing.

[Fenrìr]

Only problem with TB quests is you've got to hope that your faction controls it when the switch is flipped.

No, it's fine. They put an NPC in the peninsular that you can turn in the quests to, if the other faction controls TB. He's near the chap with the victory quest, a little further back towards the sea, iirc.

The more you know...

[Nooska]

fo mount, hordeside I recoomend the good old plain windrider. You can use it in nofly areas (including if you can't fly yet), and its about the smallest mount you can get.
Also remember to keep [Shift]+[v] ready for the ones trying to block you by standing on top of questgivers etc.

(should really get myself a travellers tundra mammoth, the vendor is invaluable while levelling with all the trash you pick up)

[KysenMurrin]

Progress on my test run: Started with only 12 dailies to turn in, now level 86 after 2.5 hours. Certain that I would have saved 20 minutes by having the full 25 dailies, allowing me to leave Jade Forest without going to Tian Monastery. Still seems slow, especially when this is on a much less crowded zone than it will be live.

[stevos]

Just realised that i should make a load of drums/scrolls of fort to give me a little more survivability/dps.

[KysenMurrin]

Ignoring Chen Stormstout and all his slow "fallow me to the next stop" quests means running out of quests around Halfhill in Vot4W. I'm going to cut to Krasarang now and see how that goes.

[Fenrìr]

The rate I'm seeing on Beta, is that I'm going to have to do both Krasarang and Vot4W just to get to 90. I'm probably 3/4 of the way done with the Dread Wastes and only 55% through 89. And I've completed all the quests in Vot4W, Kun Lai and Townlong.

[KysenMurrin]

Are you in a level 6+ guild on beta, for the 10% xp perk? That'll make a difference (none of my own beta toons are guilded).

[Fenrìr]

Ah, no, I am not guilded on beta. Now I'm wondering how much of a difference that is going to make.




EDIT: But I think I'm going to stick to my original plan either way. The guild perk will probably make up this 20% difference I'm at now.

[KysenMurrin]

10% is a lot. Should make a big difference. Depends on if you keep skipping ahead when you ding or if you stick around a bit, though, otherwise it'll only affect the last zone.

Should I pack a bunch of Landslide scrolls and take a few seconds to enchant new weapons?

[Fenrìr]

Eh, I didn't replace my Heroic Gurth until mid lvl 88. Then I got a minor upgrade at around mid 89. If anything, I'm going to put on a weapon chain as there are a few mobs I've ran into that disarm.

[KysenMurrin]

I have double Normal No'Kaled, and I was finding weapons with 100-150 dps advantage by the time I was in Kun Lai. Didn't replace a single item prior to Kun Lai, but replaced almost my entire gear set by the end of it. I only have 4 heroic items.

[Fenrìr]

So I'm a bit under 85% through 89 being unguilded and ran out of quests in Dread Wastes minus the dailies. So I'm hoping the guild perk makes up that difference so long as I stick to my original plan.



Kysen, then ya...I would probably upgrade when you can. I was really hesitate to break my H T13 4p bonus for a while until I found something with 50+ strength on the item to replace what I was losing. I would probably still recommend having a weapon chain on 1 weapon though.






EDIT: For those of you who were guilded for the xp bonus, how was the quest number for moving on to each of the new zones once you lvled?


EDIT2: WTB ability to ride on water like Warlocks and Dks.

[KysenMurrin]

Welp, I'm at 89% of the way to level 87 without a guild, and have run out of quests in Vot4W. If I had guild bonus I'd be either just dinged 87 or very close. Gonna have to go back and do Chen Stormstout some more, without it.

[Fenrìr]

Did you push all the way through JF?

[KysenMurrin]

No, that was having moved directly to Vot4W. With guild bonus, and if I'd done at least Mudmug's hut on the Chen chain, I would've been 87.

In other news, you know how Blizz has added little treasure items all over the map? Some of them have an item that vendors for 100g, some of them contain a little gold on their own... I found one in Kun ai that gave me 258,000 exp. I gather from some blue comment recently that they spawn on a single-player basis rather than randomly and there for everyone, and I think you can only get each treasure once...

[halabar]

I'm wondering if gathering will be of benefit for leveling. Depends on the competition for nodes I guess.

[KysenMurrin]

Kun Lai is proving to be the quickest and easiest levelling so far. Will finish the full zone on this one. (Except for Temple of the White Tiger, which is one combat quest and a couple chat sessions with a lot of running to get there.)

I'm really not doing great on time here - 8 hours in, almost 88. Will have mount speed, flight path speed, and bonus xp on live, plus flasks and potions, but the time its taking just feels bad. Taking breaks on the trial run so I don't burn myself out before the real one, but not sure how familiar I'll be with the final couple of zones in the end.

[Nooska]

Has the "Pandaren Prisoners quest been fixed on the beta (asking those powering through Kun-Lai)

[KysenMurrin]

Not yet. Still no prisoners. Doesn't seem to be a prerequisite for anything, though, so you can complete with out.

[Fenrìr]

No, that was having moved directly to Vot4W. With guild bonus, and if I'd done at least Mudmug's hut on the Chen chain, I would've been 87.

In other news, you know how Blizz has added little treasure items all over the map? Some of them have an item that vendors for 100g, some of them contain a little gold on their own... I found one in Kun ai that gave me 258,000 exp. I gather from some blue comment recently that they spawn on a single-player basis rather than randomly and there for everyone, and I think you can only get each treasure once...

I've found a couple of those as well. Was kind of surprised.

So they're player based and not server based, that's interesting.



EDIT: Also rares give double xp than a quest I noticed.

[KysenMurrin]

Yeah, I found where I read it:
Escapist interview with Ghostcrawler, last page.

The Escapist: Is there something about this expansion that you're excited about but that no one has discovered yet?

Greg Street: The features I'm most excited about are things like challenge mode that have been talked about a lot. I'd say one thing that's flown under the radar a little bit, it's not something I'm super, it's not a huge game changer, but it's a kind of cool thing is we've hidden a lot of, we call them lost treasures around the world, in the new continent and a few achievements to support it. You find these if you look behind a waterfall or fly up on the top of a mountain there might be something cool hidden up there. It could be an actual item you could use or it may just be something you can sell for gold or some kind of toy like that. We really wanted to emphasize exploration because Pandaren is such a beautiful environment.

The Escapist: Are these analogous the chests that used to dot the world?

Greg Street: Yeah, they're similar. Part of the problem with the chests was they would, players could exploit them by constantly camping it, coming back to the chests over and over again. You were constantly finding these chests that say like, two apples in them because another player had come and looted all the good stuff out of it. But the way most of these treasures work is they're per player so once you find it you'll never find that particular treasure again. Then another player can come along and find it.

So yeah, apparently some of them give xp, about double what a quest gives.


All this practice running is getting me thinking differently as I play... I'm using my cooldowns a lot more now than when I started out, and more cavalier about pulling mobs. I can't really AoE on my Shaman, though, which could put me at a disadvantage. Trying to decide what to macro my potions to. I only have about 250.

I've almost died a couple of times - once because a boomkin was mass pulling in the area and I somehow got on the aggro table and had these things I'd not touched all throwing spells at me.


Here's a question somewhere on the pessimistic side: At what point do you give up? If you see someone of your class ding a level ahead of you, is that it? How far ahead is recoverable?