2024

Leveling Up With Timewalking

stargrace December 17, 2024 No Comments

Somehow I found myself activating all 5 Warcraft accounts, and running my own characters through Timewalking dungeons in order to level them up. It went very smooth, and I had a lot of fun. I have a fury warrior who is locked at level 11, wearing a bunch of Timewalking gear + TBC gear + SL gems, and then any 4 other characters. In this case I went with my 70 warrior, 70 hunter, and some low level 10 warlocks. I put 4 of my characters in a group together, and left the experience locked character out. Then I queued for a specific dungeon early in the morning, when I figured no one else would be queuing for it. Chance would have it that 5 minutes later everyone got invited to the same dungeon, and I didn’t have to worry about that experience debuff. If you try to group with someone who has experience disabled, and then queue, you won’t be able to gain experience. There’s a few other ways of working around this issue, but I went with the easiest (for me) method.

After that, it was smooth sailing. I was able to queue for the Timewalking dungeons which give a HUGE amount of experience to all characters. It took approximately 1.5-2 dungeons per level for the characters who were 70+ and the lower level ones gained levels much faster. By the end of the day, I had two more level 80 characters to add to my roster, along with two more 50+ characters. The level 11 will just sit there on the unused account. MUCH faster than doing pet battles, and I also now have the 25% bonus experience on all of my bnet accounts due to having max level characters (it caps at 25%, 5% per level 80). It’s not the most interesting method of leveling up, but once I’ve played through the story one time I just really don’t want to keep doing it over and over.

Next up? We’ll just have to see. Probably more level 80 characters. I only have while the 20th anniversary event is up (I believe it ends January 7th or there abouts) and then the regular timewalking weeks after that. I don’t imagine I’ll keep those extra accounts subscribed for too long – but I do intend to take advantage of it while I can.

As always, happy gaming – no matter where you find yourself.

Gaming

The Construction of Quail Landing

stargrace December 15, 2024 No Comments

Each year around Black Friday Wurm Online has a sale on their subscriptions, and this year it was 30% off, so I picked up a year long subscription for my main (Stargrace) and my priest alt (Stargrazer) – and 6 months for my 2nd priest, Blesse. These days I’ve been working on my mainland deed on the Independence server, Quail Landing. I recently temporarily deeded a section of mountain so that me and Moumix (partner in Wurm Online related crime) could construct a proper highway out of the deed. There was a partially completed 1 lane tunnel running from the Northern Steppes to my deed for years now, and I’ve always wanted a proper highway, but lacked motivation.

The highway is completed now, and includes branches that reach to the East and West as potential expansions. Moumix has started working on the Western branch, which included a whole lot of digging to secure an entrance. Highways are fantastic, especially if you do any treasure hunting, which I tend to do a LOT of. Before, I’d have to make sure the 1 lane road North was clear, or I’d have to take a very roundabout way through the neighbours deed. Highways are public use, so anyone coming through should have a nice clear path now. YAY!

Aside from the highway, construction has been taking place. I’ve only got two buildings left to complete (granted, they are quite large) and then decorating. I’ve started with the simple tasks like completing solid floors, building staircases, and Moumix created all sorts of furniture. I also learned some of the PMK banners I have can be placed on walls, which really adds to the overall look of the deed. It’s a very different aesthetic compared to Quail Cove, Landing is a castle – Cove is a cottage village. Either way, I’m loving things.

What I’m not loving is some player interactions. I disbanded an island deed I had in my care for a number of years but I had never done anything with, so that I could instead deed and work on the tunnel. I left my structures up, in case I changed my mind. Someone else deeded the island (as is their right, there’s a reason deed it or lose it is the wurm motto) but they demanded I take down my structures, and then threatened GM action if I didn’t comply. Had they offered some silver or at least acted less combative, maybe a resolution could have been found, but instead, I’ll just let the buildings naturally decay and I will avoid the player, per their request (even though they were the one who reached out to me). Ah well.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Gaming WoW Gold Making

Making Gold – One Sale at a Time

stargrace December 14, 2024 No Comments

The good thing about making gold is once you know how to go about it, you fall back into those habits pretty easily after taking breaks here and there. Thus it was that I returned to Warcraft and am already making a few million each day, mostly with pet sales. I reached 100 in both leatherworking and jewel crafting professions, and also started leveling up my alchemist / blacksmith character. I now have 3 characters at 80, with another slowly working through pet battles today. She should be able to reach 80 by tomorrow, I figure. Paladin, demon hunter, and monk are the classes who are already there. This will create my stable ‘main’ characters, one of each profession who I play on a semi regular basis.

There’s still so much more to do, but it’s a good solid start. Rumor has it I might even start streaming again as we get closer to the new year. I haven’t come to a solid conclusion about that yet, but it is something I really want to continue to try to do. Each time I try I seem to give up, but who knows if this will be the one time it sticks.

Curious about the gold making statistics from above? They’re from the revamped Tradeskillmaster.com site, previously known as the ledger. I absolutely love the changes they’ve made this year, and I hope other players are taking advantage of it too. I like that I can see all of the gold I’ve made per server, so if some servers are doing better than others, I can focus on them a little bit more and make sure I’m restocking.

I’ll try to be a little more consistent with updates, but no promises. As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Gaming

Timewalking, Gets me Every Time

stargrace December 7, 2024 No Comments

I’ve mentioned before that I don’t have a community in World of Warcraft, I just sort of go along doing my own thing – and it has been that way for years now, since my closest friends all decided to stop playing. I’ve been contemplating transferring to a roleplay server to try to seek out some sort of community, but I’m not sure if that’s the path I want to go.

This week when I logged in, it happened to be timewalking. I love this event, and I quickly took my 80 retribution paladin through 5 of them to get her some upgrades. I’ve only got the one character sitting at 80 so far, though my demon hunter is very close, at 78. After that I’ve got a monk and a priest I’d like to max out, so that would be my 4 ‘main’ characters (one of each profession, basically). I had grand plans of one day getting ALL of my characters to 80, but I’m not sure if I have that dedication any more. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed myself, I haven’t really dedicated myself to WoW for quite some time (in part due to my lack of community as I mentioned above). I’m very excited about player housing coming sometime in the future, and I’d like to be fairly established as ‘back’ before that happens.

For once I probably won’t be focusing on gold making, but instead I’d like to focus on collecting. I’ve already got more gold than I can ever possibly use, and I feel like that portion of the game is ‘solved’ for me. There’s lots of other ‘stuff’ I don’t have completed yet, mounts, pets, transmog, and achievements. There’s never a lack of things to do, it’s just a matter of choosing which one of those things I want to work on.

In any case, it’s nice to be playing. Now I just need to find my ‘home’.

Gaming

Big Updates in Wurm Online

stargrace November 28, 2024 No Comments

The US Thanksgiving holidays are always a lot of fun in Wurm Online, because that’s when they have a huge Black Friday sale, and I end up picking up a year of game time on a character or two. This year they also made some game play and decoration announcements which I am incredibly excited about. First, they’ve finally announced ceilings – no more having to look at the rafters all of the time. Not only that, we will be able to hang things from them! Starting with chandeliers. There’s also a few different types of ceilings as far as graphics go, and wood types also display. I always love it when Wurm does a decoration update. The game has really come a long way in the past 20 years.

Goblin camps have been something that has been on the ‘we’re working on it’ side of things for about 10 years now – so when the announcement came out that they’ll soon be going into beta for testing, well, a lot of skeptical people said they’ll believe it when they see it. Apparently that’s in the works, and I think it will add an interesting aspect of gameplay, especially for people who are looking to gain those 70+ fight skills. There’s also talk of being able to raise some of the more difficult skills like lockpicking, and being able to sneak into the goblin camps at night to pillage from them. I’m very excited about all of this, even though I’m not really big on combat in Wurm (I’ve always felt combat was one of its weaker points).

There’s also a new item for premium players to claim in celebration of Thanksgiving. A cornucopia! You can obtain little food items from it, and I can’t wait to see it (at the time of this post it hasn’t been released yet). In the meantime, I’ve been working away on my deed, building up the main floor of the remaining buildings, and then it will be time to build upwards. Once the structures are completed, it will be time to decorate. I also need 16 braziers crafted and they are INCREDIBLY slow, requiring 50 bricks, 50 mortar, and a gold crafted bowl. Even with my high skills, it’s difficult to attach each piece.

Still, it’s nice to have projects to work on, and I’m enjoying myself as always.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

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