WoW Update - 22 Nov 2008: Friends Don't Let Friends Level JC

I'm currently in the beautiful city of Cebu, an hour-and-a-half away from Manila by plane and in many ways the second city of the Philippines. It's a beautiful Saturday morning and I'm anxious to go get breakfast and tan by the pool. I really hate looking like I didn't take a vacation when I've been gone from work a full week. I get ribbed enough for my WoW addiction as it is.

The screenshot above shows my paladin Avierra on the last day of my WoW vacation - and yes, that is indeed the Badlands, in my opinion the best place to find Iron and Mithril.

After a lot of thought and debate I opted to drop Engineering. It was by no means an easy decision to make. But with Rothgarth and Malago both in the Invasion there seemed to me to be no sense in leveling a third Engineer. I considered returning to Blacksmithing, but in the end utility won out and I went with Jewelcrafting.

(Gwen, on Guild chat, said, "I gotta warn you, levelling JC is a PITA." Then Roth said, "Yeah. I don't think I could level another JC." In hindsight, I wish I'd paid more attention.)

So I went out and dinged 77, purchased Cold Weather Flying, and farmed 200 Copper Bars so I'd have a good supply of materials to level quickly. When that was done, I speed-levelled from 1 to 201, where I stopped for lack of easily farmable mats.

I'd like to mention at this point that Rothgarth and Enishii (Biancangel's Death Knight) have been extremely helpful in my switch to JC. I wanted to create the flying mounts just before I dropped Engineering. I figured that even if I couldn't use the mounts, they would still count towards the achievement. Roth provided some of the mats and primals for the epic flyer. Enishii, on the other hand, sent over a lot of ore he'd farmed as his DK is a miner/herbalist.

And that's where my WoW level rush ended - at level 77 with a half-done Jewelcrafter.



And while I normally don't post photographs of people on my WoW blog, this merits an exemption - on the left is my buddy Damasso, also known as Rizal. On the right is Hotohori, who will soon be gracing the shores of Northrend. In the middle is... well, I don't know his toon's name, but he's from Nihilium. It turns out he's a friend of Hotohori's and in town for a holiday. He's taking a break from World of Warcraft but was gracious enough to chill with us as we geeked out about the new expansion. From the way he talks, it's pretty clear that we're playing WoW at completely different levels - I mean, I talk about dailies and the rep grind, while he shares stories about running Arenas in full Sunwell gear. It's crazy.

Anyway, I gotta go. Sun's waiting.