Because I’m kind of twitchy about planning for things in advance, I’ve been thinking a lot about how I’m going to tackle the early days of Wrath of the Lich King. I didn’t do too well when TBC was released; I was burnt out on levelling from a last-minute push to get an alt to 60 (she dinged 60 literally 8 hours before TBC went on sale), and health issues made it difficult for me to concentrate or focus properly during the early days of the Burning Crusade. As a result, it took me nearly six weeks to hit 70 on Sailan, my main (although two weeks of that was a hospital stay, to be fair).
Obviously, I don’t wish to repeat that when Wrath of the Lich King is released, and as a guild leader I can’t afford to. So I’m trying to decide how best to meet my goals.
Logically, that would mean playing Sailan and no-one but Sailan until she hits 80, and then starting on the instance-and-rep-grind gearing treadmill until she’s ready to enter Naxx.
However, I also really enjoy crafting, and this is where it gets complicated:
- Sailan is currently a jewelcrafter & alchemist.
- Alchemy is handy, but our guild has a lot of alchemists, and I’m pretty bored with it. Even before the Potion Sickness debuff news, I’d been seriously contemplating dropping Alchemy.
- I’ve been planning on replacing Alchemy with either Blacksmithing (if it has decent craftable epics akin to Tailoring and Leatherworking’s star performers) or Inscription. Unless Blacksmithing is insanely good, it’ll probably be Inscription.
- My mage, Sathandra, is my gatherer (a miner/herbalist with an epic flying mount, hooray!).
So I have two choices. I can try and level Sathandra concurrently with Sailan (probably dualboxing) so I can keep those steady supplies of herbs, ore and gems flowing in. Or, I can sit on my hands while I’m levelling Sailan, keep the tradeskill addiction at bay, and then turn around and level Sathandra as soon as Sailan hits 80 (when I’m not instancing, anyway).
Neither is a great option, and I’ve been going back and forth on this issue for months now. I’m starting to think my best option is to save up a ridiculous amount of gold in advance and just buy Sailan’s tradeskill mats until I can start gathering on Sathandra, but that nearly bankrupted me in TBC!
Decisions, decisions…
I’ll toss out a really wacky option: If you’re definitely going to drop Alchemy… why not drop it right now, and quickly level up mining? When WotLK hits, you can level up mining/JC on Sailan… hit lvl 80, drop mining again for inscription and start levelling Sath’s mining/herbing. You’ll be behind on inscription, but at least your JC will be maxed out fairly quickly :)
Oh, and also – by stockpiling herbs on Sath before WotLK you could hit lvl 80 on Sailan with maxed out JC, drop mining and actually have enough stockpiled herbs to get to 375+ inscription. Not too bad, and hardly any gold spent :)
Phyl – that’s not a bad idea :) I’d need to decide on dropping Alchemy before Wrath day, and clicking that ‘unlearn’ button would be pretty scary, but levelling as mining/JC wouldn’t be a bad combo. As for the stockpiling – I’ve already got a lot of stockpiled pre-TBC herbs with just that in mind. (I do need to work on my Outland herb stocks, though.) Tempting. :)
It may actually be sensible to level two characters concurrently anyway, especially if you’re dual-boxing them. Even if it’s a bit slower, I expect that even some of your dedicated raiders will still be a few levels behind when you hit 80 and start the rep grindage – assuming that the rep grind works the same way as it did in TBC.
not rolling a death knight straight away? i prolly will
With the gathering u’ll prolyl find it be packed and there be so much compeition for nodes ect. Mite work out better lvling sailan quickly then coming back on sathandra and gather once everyone moved on. I did something like that with BC – i played a BE pally for the month or so cause my only toon on Proudmoore was my warrior and they got massive nerfs and i refused to play it, when the nerfs were reverted i went back to it and made a killing on mining and skinning cause there wasnt a crazy amount of competition in hellfire penil ect. And some ppl had finished lvling, or were starting to care about thier proffesions and i was able to make a killing selling everyone on the AH for high prices. Yea everyone got to 70 b4 i did but i didn’t have to compete for nodes. Dunno if that’ll work for u, just throwing it out there.