Week 12 - Warrior Appreciation

Here we are at the end of the road, at least as far as it goes for appreciating the different classes. Warrior week. Well, no surprise that I expected this to be a struggle!

Meet Brennah, my (yes, you guessed it) female dwarf warrior.

Brennah with "L'il Swan" the Sunborne Val'kyr

This was another character that had done very little in-game besides getting to 110. She had terrible gear and had done no content aside from getting to 110. Actually, that isn't quite true. Last week, The Author gave me a little assist to get her through her class hall quest dungeons so that they wouldn't slow me up this week. Our team called a raid break after last week too, so I had this week free to do as I pleased as far as my gameplay went. I went all in. First I finished off the class hall quests and got the Broken Shore chain finished. I also threw in 20 world quests for the weekly quest to set her up with plenty of resources. Then came the class mount chain and the argus chain.

Warrior class mount

I usually use the Ironforge Ram or Rusted Proto-Drake as mounts for her as they match her transmog nicely, but I thought I'd better pose with the class mount as I'd earned it. I did enjoy that when you are presented with your mount as a warrior, the first thing you do is punch it in the face to show it who is boss! I'm pathetic, I know it.

I don't think I'll ever be able to bring myself to enjoy playing a warrior. They feel squishy and tedious to me even when compared with other melee classes that I already have a bit of an aversion to. However, I soldiered on through it and made another little dwarf happy.

Finishing the warrior's class hall also earned me another treat:

I'm also proud of myself for completing a few other things this week too. I managed to do the feral druid's mage tower challenge and did the weekly 20 world quests thing on 12 different characters to stockpile some resources. Let's say I'm a tad sick of world quests today!

That brings us to the end of the alt appreciation and I need to put some work in to try to get my characters and their bank balance ready for the new expansion. I hope you are all getting prepped too :)

Week 11 - Warlock Appreciation

Our penultimate week of alt appreciation takes us to Warlock Appreciation week and time to introduce to you Camigwen the Gnome Warlock! I have to admit, I did slightly go off Gnomes after the character model upgrade. For me, the new version feels like the features are just stuck on as an after effect...sort of like a Mrs Potato Head toy if you see what I mean.

This will likely surprise anyone that knows me well (especially as we are talking about a DPS character), but of all the characters I still actively play, this is the oldest. She was created on the first day of Classic WoW release and has transferred through servers with me. My priest came along too and priest was the first class I played, but I started with a human priest and only replaced her with my dwarf at the end of Classic WoW (yes, WoW babies, there were no nice race changes back then).

Camigwen on the Warlock Class mount (Affliction version) with Erik the Netherspace Abyssal

I had already completed the class hall and mount quests on my warlock so I contented myself with enjoying the silithus artifact stuff this week. When it comes to the Warlock, I tend to go a bit back and forth on which I enjoy more out of affliction or destruction specs. Both have their pros and cons, and for the most part, I enjoy playing them. I just cannot make myself like demonology though for some reason. It's changed so much over the years and is about to change drastically again, but I still haven't found a way to enjoy it in any of its variants.

http://www.wowhead.com/dressing-room#Rkzs0zJ8z9MMV0zV9m8iwD808iwH87ciwB87kiwJ808ibB87cBzP808MUf87c

For some reason, My warlock is also one of the few characters I seem to dress in transmogs that do not have the helm hidden. I guess that could have a lot to do with how I feel about the current Gnome character models perhaps. Currently, I am using the outfit below as it matches in nicely with one of the artifact appearances but the one on above was my favourite for a very long time.

Prideful Gladiator's Felweave

So, one more week of alt appreciation to go and we end with one of the classes I struggle most with: Warrior!

Week 10 - Shaman Appreciation

I like my shaman.

I love the versatility of the class. There always seems to be a specialised tool for any situation. However, I always seem to get flustered and tired and forget said special tool just when I could have used it. As a healer, they have some really lovely healer cooldowns, but their healing itself can be a little limited compared to some other healers depending on how the raid is arranged. The raids I end up healing for are rarely arranged optimally either!

Pictured here with her Elemental Transmog and Erik the Squirky.

This is Anwen, my dwarf shaman. I have to admit, I really like the outfits I managed to get for this shaman. The elemental outfit is a little how I imagine a Valkyrie to be. It manages to be slightly more revealing, but still covers most of the body. Most of it is the cosmetic mail set from the WoD garrison, but it ties in so well with this version of her artifact appearance too. I usually have her riding along on Tyreal's charger too!

For healing, I chose an outfit that matched nicely with the green snake appearance of her artifact. Green dragonscale armour for the most part with a few newer parts added in. And of course, she had to be accompanied by a snake.

I do like the shaman class mounts, but every shaman seems to live on them on my server and I wanted a little variation. I have collected them though. Actually, I've done most of the things I could think of on my shaman this time around as I've been healing raids for my guild with her. There was very little to do with her this week than just enjoy the ride! I think when Battle for Azeroth is released, this will be one of the dwarves that definitely remains a standard dwarf. I really love these transmogs and they just would not look as good on a Dark Iron Dwarf.

Join me next week on the dark side for Warlock week!

Week 9 - Rogue Appreciation

Rogue week.

Well, the good news was that there was not a lot for me to do with my Rogue as I'd already finished her class hall at least. I'd done the follower quests and started the mount quest chain too. I did stop there though and no Rogue week was going to convince me to complete it. Being forced to do PvP to get the class mount sucks. I did attempt this a few times, but even at silly hours of the morning, there were always people on my server just hanging about waiting to annoy rogues trying to finish the quest. I've seen it happen on both factions though so it's not exclusive to one side or the other. I did get the Silvermoon kill, but after that, I decided I did not want that mount enough to bother with all the crap.

Here's Rhiawen, my Rogue, and yes, you guessed it, she's a Dwarf!

I wish I could hire Dwarven  Bards for my Garrison...

She's pictured here in her usual outfit which is an uncommon set from Classic WoW (Swashbuckler's). Accompanying her, is her usual pet, Erik the Grommloc.

I did do something constructive though (aside from celebrating my birthday this week - all on my own as Mr Wench had to work) and worked on the Argus quest chain to finally put her to work earning me some gold. I'm now waiting for armour token missions, but most of the grunt work is done.

The odd thing is, I love the idea of a rogue class and often play them in other games. I like the whole stealth side of things and the fantasy of the class. Just, in practice, it doesn't actually feel fun to me once I play the class in game. I know a lot of that is due to not enjoying melee classes, but this one had all the promise the others didn't and feels less enjoyable than them to me.

Join me next week for Shaman appreciation!

Week 8 - Priest Appreciation!

My favourite!

Since the EU release of Classic WoW, this has been my favourite class. It was edged out slightly by the Druid in beta, but by the time release came around, the Priest was my firm favourite. I've always been a healer at heart and no other class gives you more than one healing specialisation to choose from. I am guaranteed that each expansion I will find a healing spec that I like with two options to choose from. Over the years, my preferences slip from one to the other dependant on changes made to the class, but I always find a way to enjoy healing with a priest.

Swan in her Holy Transmog set with "L'il Swan" the Sunborne Val'kyr. Note the subtle stick for dealing with unruly raiders.

My main character, Swanhild, had very little to do really. I worked on her fishing for a while, trying to finish the reputations with Margoss and the Fisher Friends, but I didn't get as much WoW time this week as I had family visiting. I did complete the rep grind with Margoss and all but two of the Fisher Friends though. I still have to earn the drowned mana to buy the items from Margoss but the hard work is done there.

Swanhild in her Disc transmog  set with Erik the Singing Sunflower (always my favourite pet)

I love the transmog sets I have for this character. They were carefully designed to look like they were wearing as much metal as possible as it almost feels wrong having a Dwarf in just cloth, even if she is a Priest. I do like the way they turned out though and I love this specific set of shoulder armour with its subtle wings.  I am currently trying to decide whether to allow this character to race change to a Dark Iron Dwarf in BfA. She has always been hugely sympathetic of Moira's storyline and it would fit...but I'm not sure I can bring myself to change the appearance of the character I play the most often. Besides, there will already be several others in my character list that I will switch over. More thinking required.

The Holy version of the Priest class mount

So aside from doing some fishing on Swanhild, what did I do with the rest of the time I had for Priest week? Enter Phoxxie the Goblin! While I do already have 110 Goblin Priest I don't really like the server she is on, and I figured it wouldn't take long to use the 100 boost I had sitting about and level a new one on a different server. I had started this a week or two ago but had only taken her to 105 so far, so I pushed the last 5 levels to finish her off. I still have to finish her class hall stuff and get some gear on her as I mostly levelled through invasions but that's one more at 110 at least.

Phoxxie with Erik the Lurky Murloc

See you all next week for Rogue appreciation (or a little more like Rogue tolerance in my case).

Week 7 - Paladin Appreciation

Paladin week came at an inconvenient time. Currently, most of our guild are offline with holidays, work, or having babies and other huge life-changing things, so there have been very few people about to assist with things and the paladin was one of the characters that had a lot to finish.

Featured here with Erik the Skyfin Juvenile and her usual choice of transmog. Details for the transmog can be found listed here

Meet Brenhild. I had levelled her to 110 and then pretty much abandoned her aside from missions each day. Whilst it is a healing class, for some reason I struggle as much with Paladin healing as I do with Monk healing, but this time I have no idea why. It may just be that I hate the levelling part so much as a melee that I put it off until I just feel that the learning curve has escalated out of all proportion. And of course, each expansion I do that just adds to the difficulty of getting back into it. I think I'll make a concerted effort next expansion to get the paladin working a lot earlier to see if that helps.  As healers, Paladins are pretty powerful and always seem to have a very strong role in each expansion.

The Paladin class mount. Matches nicely with her favourite armour too! I love how shocked Brenhild looks to see it!

So, what did I do this week? Well, the first part of the week was very limited as with no one around in guild and my hatred of PuG groups, I was bottle-necked on progress by the need to do dungeons for the class hall quest chain. In the absence of my minions, The Author stepped in to valiantly assist by dragging my sorry plate-clad backside through the necessary dungeons. Thank you, once again! Once that first bottle-neck had been cleared, I rushed on to complete the class hall. I am very thankful that at this point in the expansion, the mission times and requirements for a lot of the quest stages have been reduced as they no longer slow the process down quite as much. After this, it was time to do the class follower and mount chain along with the Broken Shore chain. I had to hold off with the Argus quest chain as  I still needed to level the new followers that were granted from completing the quest hall and one of the early requirements there is "6 followers at 900 ilvl". As I had to go do the start of the Suramar quest chain in order to be able to purchase an item needed for my mount quest, I thought I'd also treat you to a view of just how silly Dwarves look carrying Nightborne.

This leaves us all set for Priest week! See you there!

Week 6 - Monk Appreciation

As the expansion is nearing a close, it's getting increasingly difficult to find guild members online and finding the will to keep doing things on my alts is difficult. For monk week, I decided to finish off the Argus quest chains so that I had access to as much gold from missions as possible.

My monk, Quenhild, doesn't get played often. While it is a healer class, the healing is just too melee orientated to be comfortable for me. I have to admit, I've barely even looked at the healing style this expansion. I levelled her to 110 to complete the collection, but I barely play her. I find the healing playstyle too cumbersome and definitely not instinctive to me. The DPS spec being a melee one is difficult for me as well (you know how I hate melee classes) and I find it a chore to even do world quests on her.

Quenhild with the monk mount and pet.

I had already completed her class hall and done the quest chains for her class mount but now she pretty much just gets wheeled out once or twice a day to check missions and do some alchemy cooldowns.

For her transmog outfit, I am using one of the PvP sets as I quite like the look of it on a female dwarf. It's the Wild Gladiator's Ironskin Armor. I think the combination of the white and teal look lovely against her red hair, and haven't managed to get bored of it yet!



I'm looking forward to next week (Paladin week). My Paladin needs a lot of catch up work, but I have been meaning to actually heal something with her for months and keep putting it off. Maybe I'll even send her into an LFR...

Week 5 - Mage Appreciation

Apologies for being slightly late this week. Sickness just will not be scheduled, damn it!

So this week was Mage appreciation week. My Mage is actually fairly well-rounded out already. Whilst I don't play her in groups much, she is my main tailor and enchanter so I like to get her levelled early.

Introducing Rhiannon, Dwarf Fire Mage!



I tend to find myself gravitating to fire spec a lot each expansion. Last time we did the alt appreciation, she was still a Pandaren but I finally afforded a race change. It's funny really...I changed so many characters from dwarves to other races for a little diversity, but a few years later, all I wanted to do was get my Dwarves back! Here she is pictured with Erik the cinder pup on the flaming disc that is her class mount. A lot of people seemed unhappy with the class mount saying that it was too similar to the disc mount we'd had before, but I thought the discs suited the class and having a different version for each spec made it work.

There was very little for me to do on this character as she'd already completed her class hall, Argus quest chain and professions but then I remembered that she was still missing one polymorph (polymorph: porcupine). It seemed like a good time to go and farm for it. Now she has all the polymorphs currently available (I am still bitter that the glyph to have polymorph penguin was removed and keep hoping for it to be reintroduced as a baseline polymorph). The porcupine is a little boring really, but I wanted it for completion's sake.

Then, of course, I got sick, and I'm somewhat glad there was little for me to finish off on this character!

I do prefer ranged DPS classes to anything bar a healer, but for some reason, I find it hard to connect with the Mage in groups. I don't enjoy arcane or frost specs much and fire always seems to be ridiculously gear and RNG dependant which makes it unlikely to ever perform well as an underplayed alt character. Still, I like the fantasy of throwing fireballs about and it's nice to do something different some days.

Join me next week for Monk!

Week 4 - Hunter Appreciation

I have a strange relationship with the hunter class. It has always secretly been one of my favourites, but I only really like playing it solo. Me and my pet. It's always been the default choice I go to when I want to do stuff completely on my own without being bothered by people. I've had many hunters over the years. I daresay I probably have about 10 of them dotted about on different servers/factions.

Ellywick with Skitter the spider and the Bloodfang Widow mount. I love the black hat too! (Fine Pilgrim's Hat)

The hunter I play most frequently, however, is Ellywick. She is a Gnome, although at the time of last doing the alt appreciation posts she was a Pandaren. She was a Dwarf before that too.  I have a tendency to try to match mounts, pets and companion pets together with outfits on the hunter for some reason. I'll include some pictures of my favourites, although I won't include the turtle set as I did that last time!

Basil the Fox and the Llothien Prowler mount complete with a dancing fox kit in the background

I do find that when I play my hunter, I often find myself talking to my pet as I play. No, I have no idea why I do that either. I love the survivability and independence of being a hunter while questing. It's great for the days when the ME/CFS is too much and I can't focus well. My comfort characters! Lately, however, I was talked into taking my hunter along to our normal alt raids which turned out to be less traumatic than I'd expected. My guild leader bribed me with helpful macros so that I wouldn't get tired as easily and it worked! He's always helpful like that by trying to make things less tiring for me to be able to play.

My most common companions at the moment. I love the little baby Elderhorn pet as it has lovely idle animations, and yes, the moose is called Chocolate :D

So what did I do this week? Firstly, I sent Ellywick out to pick up a mechanical bunny pet as I've wanted one for ages and kept putting it off as I didn't want to camp for it. I know most Gnome hunters get one for free, but I didn't start as a Gnome! As it turned out, I managed to find Rabbot really quickly and that didn't take anywhere near as long as I had expected. I had already finished my class hall and Argus quest chains and have the class mount, so next I decided to let her farm for the Cross Gazer pet that I'd been putting off (again due to time constraints). This one totally took as long as I expected though. The grind didn't seem as bad on the hunter, which is a good thing. I'll have to remember that next time I have to grind stuff.

The only hunter pet I have that is actually called Erik! I love the braids so much that I had to get matching hair too!

So that's it for me and the hunter this week. See you next week for some Mage appreciation!

Week 3 - Druid Appreciation

My Druid is already fairly well played. Each expansion, she is usually the first alt I pick up to work on after my main character and as such her Class Hall is already completed, she has her class mount form, she's been doing heroic Antorus raids and even has most of her professions rounded out. This is Seara, originally a Night Elf but race changed once Worgen became available as anything had to be better than playing a race I really dislike. I'm not a huge fan of Worgen either though so I am looking forward to having new Alliance Druid options when more Allied races become available.

Her Restoration healer outfit on the left is just the Cruel Gladiator's Dragonhide armour set and she's followed around by Sombrius, her little Blossoming Ancient. The outfit on the right is what she wears while being Balance and not in moonkin form (rare, but it does happen) along with her little moonkin hatchling pet, Yuli. Both of these pets are named after friends that made those specs shine for me.

Worgen Druid mount form

I did do a little work on trying to get some of the skinning ranks that she hasn't acquired yet this week and managed to get the quest chain for [Mother's Skinning Knife] to drop. As there was so little to finish on her this week, I decided to take a short visit to another Druid alt. I'm levelling a Highmountain Tauren as I'd like to have access to the armour in case I decide to play one at some point. I always liked Tauren. I used to play a lot of Tauren before I started raiding, but when the graphical updates for characters came in, I didn't like the way the faces had changed for the Tauren. I found myself no longer liking any of my Tauren characters and no amount of customising seemed to make one that I could be happy with anymore. The Highmountain Tauren though, manage to work for me. Perhaps the tattoos obscure the face and soften it enough to not annoy me? Whatever it is, I am enjoying my little HM Tauren Druid, Wenona.

Wenona, with Erik the baby elderhorn. Her transmog is something I threw together to show off her tattoos while still looking plain and practical. You can find the individual items linked here 

To make things a little different this time, I decided to level her as a bear (or possibly it might have been a subtle influence from one of my raid leaders who happens to be a Guardian Druid). I'm loving the pretty graphics for the new druid forms but the bear definitely seems to level a lot slower than a moonkin. It might just be that I haven't reached a high enough level to get to the good stuff yet, but I seem to be able to pull just as many enemies whilst levelling as a moonkin and kill them faster. I do like the versatility of Druids. I love that they can cover every role in game (even if I don't tend to play every role in game). Druid was the first class I ever played in WoW. My beta character was a Tauren Druid and I never really lost the love of them. I managed to get my baby Druid from mid-20s to mid-40s though, which is quite a heavy amount of levelling in one week for me.

I really love the Highmountain Tauren druid travel form

Week 2 - Demon Hunter Appreciation

Yay! More melee!

My Demon Hunter is named Asterwyn. Regular readers will be aware that I'm really not a fan of elf types and my Demon Hunter is no exception. Illidari and melee? Boy, was I in for an "interesting" week! I really didn't think that aspect through when I neatly assigned myself a class each week in alphabetical order, did I? My Demon Hunter has barely been touched at all really, aside from levelling her quickly to 110. Taking a quick assessment at the start of the week, I found that she still hadn't finished her class hall, only had 4 followers, had done nothing with her professions, didn't have a class mount and hadn't even looked at Argus quests. Hmmm...this looked like it would be a busy week. Definitely time to summon the help of some minions to get me through dungeons for the class hall quests at the very least!

I didn't really have a lot of transmog options that looked functional and yet still showed off the tattoos, but this is what I ended up settling with. It's pretty much just the Legion PvP set Vindicative Gladiator's Felskin Armor. I just couldn't get enthusiastic about customising it. I don't know what it is about Night Elves that I just can't get into, but it wasn't working for me.

I ended up with a lot of housework this week, which drastically reduced my online time. This didn't help with the huge amount of catch up I had for the Demon Hunter. Minion #2 (only ranked in chronological order of when he became my minion) and his lovely partner dutifully carried my sorry Illidari backside through the dungeons required for my class hall. Thank you once again for selflessly giving up your time! I did manage to complete the class hall chain and I got through a lot of the Broken Shore and Argus chain but got bottle-necked at missions and world quests. While I love that a lot of this expansion has been very casual player friendly, all the endless dungeon quests and the questlines that stall waiting out timers really do not help with alt characters. Still, I now have 7 followers for missions (as soon as the class hall upgrade finishes) and the Argus chain is almost completed so that will help with gaining gold. The professions I gave her were for gathering only really (enchanting and herbalism) and I decided to just focus on collecting materials as I went about rather than powering up the skills as I didn't really need them to be higher levels. I still have the class mount to acquire too. I'd hoped to get that finished before the end of the week, but the Broken Shore quest chain needs to be finished before I can get any further there. That will have to wait for another time.

In summary, this week felt very tedious and rushed. Maybe it would have felt less of a chore if it hadn't followed on straight after the Death Knight week, but I can't turn back time! Here's to Druid week!

Testing the Waters

As I have been slacking so horribly on my gold making lately, I decided to make sure to at least put in a little effort each day this week to see where I ended up. I'm mostly stocking profession crafted goods from both current and previous expansions. I have all of the professions covered at least once, but I am lacking many of the Legion recipes as forcing my alts through dungeons has been difficult at best.

OK, so how did I do on the auction house this week?

Well, I didn't seem to make much more gold per day than I had been while slacking off really, but 757,484g in auction house sales for the week isn't anything to be depressed with.

I have still been checking missions on each of my characters each day too and doing any gold missions I can (half of the characters are still not finished with argus missions or class halls though so their gold income from missions is a bit poor) and my total profit for the week is 826,466g after all the expenses and incoming gold from missions and quests is taken into account.

In total?

Show Me The Money!

14,991,389g



Hmmm...actually that doesn't include the 1 million I keep stored on the auction house character as it is on a different account. I totally forgot to include that last time too. So actually it is...

15,991,389g

Week 1 - Death Knight Appreciation

If you read my previous entry on Death Knights, you know how little I enjoy melee classes. That really hasn't changed much in the past few years. I don't enjoy playing with my character so close to the enemy as I feel that I just can't see what is going on. I've never really enjoyed tank or melee classes and after all these years it's highly unlikely to change. Because of this, I find it really uncomfortable to play them in groups. I can handle mucking about with quests on my own but as soon as I have to get other people involved I'm just too self-conscious. I never play them well as I don't enjoy them, and playing them badly makes me like them less and so on in a vicious loop.

My Dwarven maiden Death Knight, Brynwen,  has made it to level 110 though. I have completed her Class Hall quests which were nicely entertaining and even finished the quests for her class mount. I love the way that Legion brought in the Class Hall quests. It gave alt loving players so much more to enjoy rather than having to see just the same quests over and over. I have also completed the quests for all three of her artifacts even though I'm really only playing Frost spec as I wanted the three whelp pets from her Class Hall (yeah the pet addiction hasn't changed either!)

The transmog I use on my Death Knight has changed since I last posted too. While I do still love the original starting armour that the Death Knights get, Brynwen is wearing one of the recolours of the Tempered Saronite Battlegear from quests in Northrend, or at least most of it! I don't have a lot of plate transmog really but I like this one because it is fairly simple in design without being plain. The blue and gold shade ties in nicely with the Frost specialisation that she's been questing in too. Her pet of choice on these adventures is usually the Unborn Val'kyr (named Ellinde after a dear friend that sadly left WoW many years ago now).

As my Death Knight isn't a character I tend to play frequently, I decided to focus on finishing the Argus questline and optimising and equipping her followers so that I can get a little more gold from missions. I also decided to get a little more progress on her professions (Blacksmithing & Mining).

The Death Knight Class Mount (Frost version)

On the whole, I found this week a bit of a struggle. I didn't have a lot of spare time outside of raid commitments, dungeon runs etc and I felt like I was trying to make myself do something that just wasn't comfortable. That being said, my Death Knight does now have all her Argus missions and troops unlocked and has made some progress on her professions, so it certainly wasn't a wasted week.

Next week, Demon Hunter (more melee - yay!). I know I have a lot more to do on her.

Financial Update

There have been a lot of changes in the way that the Warcraft economy works since I absented myself from my blog. We've seen the arrival of missions boards first in garrisons and then order halls which provide a steady income of gold. Upgradeable crafting items have kept the crafting markets really competitive on the auction house for the entirety of an expansion. Tokens to buy gold or game time were introduced. The gold cap per character was raised to 10 million allowing for easier storage of gold and much larger bids on the Black Market Auction House. There were probably many other small changes that have slipped my mind at the moment, but in general, the situation is that it is much easier for players to acquire gold if they are actively trying to do so.

While I have been away from the blog, I have gone through phases of slacking at gold making and actively working on it (depending on my health at the time) as usual and my funds are significantly higher than when I last did a gold post. But let's be fair, it has been two expansions! My main account is still covered by a subscription, but I am running a second account for auction purposes that is paid for with tokens. With the ridiculous price of EU tokens, that isn't a small amount of money.

Over the past expansion, I have also indulged in a few of the silly gold sink items that were introduced in Legion. It won't surprise anyone that has been here before to know that I bought the Celestial Calf to add to the collection of Eriks as soon as it was available. He's not actually called Erik though, as I named him after the guildmate who regularly checked Dalaran for me to let me know when the merchant arrived. I love that the calf regularly casts Starfall as an idle animation, but it's really difficult to actually see any detail on the pet at all. I also caved and bought myself a spider mount. Then I felt bad at spending so much money on myself so I pushed myself to earn more in order to buy a mount for my two wonderful minions that do so much to help keep me sane and feel like a real human being.

So where am I currently?

Show Me The Money!
14,164,923g

For next time I'll finish sorting out my auction alt again and see how well I did while putting some reasonable effort in! 

Alt Appreciation Take Two!

When I was last here, I was working on the idea of taking a closer look and celebration of each class through my alt characters. Life got in the way and I never quite finished. Since then in World of Warcraft, we've had race model updates, new races, and even a new class. Perhaps it is time for me to revisit this!

The original idea was from World of Lae several years ago. The idea is to focus on that class each week. For me it will be introducing you to the character(s) I have for that class (yes, I do have a lot of alts), finding them a nice transmog so they look good in their photo shoot and generally checking where I am in their progress. Join me! There's just about enough time between now and the release of Battle For Azeroth to cover each class so I plan on making sure I do so!

Here's the schedule I'm following:

If blogging isn't your thing, feel free to comment with stuff about your own alts for that class!

Alt Apreciation: Week 7, Priest

I waited a couple of extra days to make this post as I wanted to get a picture of my Priest before and after the patch. Priest has been my main played class since the game was released.

  Most of that time I have played her as a healer although necessity has forced me into Shadow for raiding at some points due to the makeup of the raid team I was part of at the time.

For Mists of Pandaria, I have remained Discipline although I am anticipating that I will be sporting a dual healer spec for Warlords of Draenor. This could prove a challenge for me as I don't think I've played Holy properly since sometime at the beginning of Wrath of the Lich King and much has changed since then.

I love the new character graphics changes. I had worried that I wouldn't like the default face that my main character would convert to and would have to change it at the barber shop, but as it turned out, I quite like it! The reason that Priests are my favourite class are the focus on healing. While other classes can heal and (depending on class balance at the time) can often do it better than a Priest, no class matches it for sheer diversity of heal spells through the two healing specs. I've enjoyed Discipline in particular since it was overhauled to focus more on mitigation than heals as I like the idea of stopping people from being hurt in the first place.

As this is my main class, I was already at max level so I decided to focus on getting the challenge modes to gold before the patch actually arrived. I really don't like the look of the transmogrification armour award that it gives to Priests. It's truly ugly so I won't include a picture of me posing in it!

Alt Appreciation: Weeks 5 & 6, Monk & Paladin

I'm back!
I seem to still be in one piece with another scar to add to the collection (much larger than planned, almost covering the entire of my lower leg). Still waiting to hear if I'm now cancer-free, but I've recovered enough to be back at the computer. I'm getting tired a lot more often than normal so I'm still ending up needing a lot of rest, but hopefully, I'll be back to my usual self by expansion time.

As I missed two weeks of alt appreciation, I'm adding them together in the one post as I managed very little other than tidying up their UIs.

Monk

Cinnamai & Erik the rat

The monk I levelled to 90 is a lovely Pandaren named Cinnamai. I created her to heal with (yes, no surprise there) but I never managed to really get into the feel of the class so she has ended up mostly unused as one of my crafting army. In fact, she has probably been one of the biggest contributors to my gold fund in the past months as her enchanting scrolls sell very well.

Her transmog is a collection of green quality quest rewards from relatively low-level quests (below 60) as I wanted her to look as plain as possible.

Quenhild & Erik the cooking bot

I do actually have another quite high-level Monk on my main server which may seem odd as I never quite managed to find them comfortable to play. I just couldn't decide if I wanted to have a Pandaren or Dwarf Monk so I levelled them both to 80 before deciding on the Pandaren purely because the professions I'd picked up on her were more useful to me at the time. My Dwarven Monk, Quenhild, I think I actually prefer now though and I wish I'd chosen the other way around. She's still there though in case I fancy levelling her up instead!

Paladin

Alasen and...Erik!

My Paladin has a strange place in my heart. I find her tedious to level so every expansion she seems to be the last healer to level up. Then by the time I have her at max level I run out of time to actually do anything useful with her in a group. Maybe Warlords of Draenor will be the expansion this behaviour changes?

Alasen is one of my very few Draenei characters. I quite like the transmog set I planned out for her too. Its rare for me to have skimpy outfits on my characters, but this is a set that very few people seem to use as it's not as revealing as some of the plate bikinis. The colour also matches very nicely with Erik the Li'l Tarecgosa and it's nice to show that pet off occasionally.

Alt Appreciation: Week 4, Mage

I have realised this week, that a lot of the alt characters I pushed to higher levels are actually Pandaren this time around and not as many Dwarf wenches. I must rectify this! The choice hasn't been because I favour the Pandaren models (although playing with the much better range of hairstyles may have side-tracked me) but more to do with the profession combinations I had on a given class at the time. If I look across my entire account I have many characters, certainly several of most classes and many are Horde as well as Alliance. I am however favouring the characters from the same server and faction as my main character for this, and it does seem to be more Pandas than I had realised.

This is Brennah, and as you can probably tell, a Frost Mage. I do much prefer playing Fire Mages but with not much time and lower levels of gear, Fire Mages struggle a lot as their current design leaves them very dependant on getting lucky with numbers. However, switching to playing Frost spec, did give me the challenge of a new Transmogrification set. I really do like my characters to be dressed in plainer outfits rather than the flashing shining tier pieces that many players favour, so I am so glad that its possible to alter the appearance now. Brennah was named for a very wonderful friend of mine that never played WoW. It just made me feel a little closer to her to have a character named after her in my game. She does have a bit of a love of anime though, so I think the choice of Pandaren race, in this case, was apt.

She is pictured above with Erik the Pandaren Water Spirit, one of several water-themed pets that occasionally accompany her, and of course, her Water Elemental (which we know would be called Erik if they let us name it).

She usually uses the Silver Covenant Hippogryph as her mount of choice, although occasionally the Swift Windsteed sneaks in just for a change.

I do find it annoying that when I choose to play my Mage I am constantly interrupted with whispers from people begging for portals. It feels very invasive and always interrupts whatever I am doing, whether I choose to help or not. I think this may be why I don't play my Mage as often anymore. Brennah is also my tailor and one of my enchanters, which comes in very useful for helping out my cloth-wearing main character. She was already level 90 at the start of this week, so I have spent most of the small amount of time I had working on her transmog set and setting up her UI to be ready to use for levelling in the expansion.

Alt Appreciation: Week 3, Hunter

This week turned out to be a terrible one for getting time to play on alts at all. Some recent tests at the hospital not related to M.E. came back with bad results, and my server's instance lockouts were all wiped by Blizzard in an attempt to correct s problem with the server. For me, this was a terrible blow as we had been extending our team's lockout on Garrosh heroic in the hopes of getting him down before the 6.0 patch. My health doesn't allow me to have vast amounts of time for things that require concentration such as raiding so having to go through bosses we haven't worked on in a week or two proved slow work.

Even my sea turtle likes to pose for pictures!

My hunter is named Ellywick, for no specific reason other than I liked the name. At the start of the week, she was at level 87 and I managed to push her to level 89 after a trek through Kun-Lai Summit. She is also a gatherer which is unusual for me (mostly as I don't often have a chance to send characters out just to collect resources), with skinning and herbalism professions.

Something about the Hunter class has always appealed to me. I find myself chatting away to my pet in my head and it almost feels like I am never quite alone in the game. I find hunters are rather easy to play to a level of at least average competence and require little thought to rush about in the world on their own. The pet adds a large margin of survivability that isn't present in some other classes.  That being said, I do feel that it takes at least as much work as other classes to play very well, especially in a group. Because of this, I feel it has had a lot of bad press over the years when people learn enough to solo and quest and then try to take that level of understanding straight into an instance. Personally, I play mine almost exclusively solo as that is the way I get the most fun out of the class.

Ellywick has a bit of a thing about turtles. She has several turtle mounts to choose from (the sea turtle is my favourite but as it is so slow I don't get to use it often), as well as a turtle hunter pet named Kevlar. She has several little turtle companion pets (all called Erik, I know you aren't surprised by now) and her transmogrified set is designed to look like small turtle shells on her shoulders and green scale elsewhere. I do have a bit of a soft spot for this outfit actually!

Alt Appreciation: Week 2, Druid

Its been a tougher week than I anticipated with very little time online, so I managed to devote very little time to my Druid after all.

Let me introduce you to my Worgen Druid, Seara. I always enjoyed playing Restoration and Balance Druids. Most expansions have seen the Druid as my 'go to' alt when I branch away from my main character for an evening. I seemed to lose interest in playing Druid a lot when the mushroom spells were added though as for some reason that I just can't put my finger on, it reduced the level of fun for me.

This being said, my Druid was still one of the first characters I took to 90 this expansion. I find it hard not to smile when I see a Moonkin. There's something about them that is both scary and amusing at the same time.







My Druid did originally start out as a Night Elf but changed races as soon as Worgen were brought into the game as I just don't like playing Night Elves. I have a few Tauren Druids on various servers too but this is the one I think of when I think of Druids.

She is pictured here in her usual transmogrification set which is made up of low-level green items. I know it won't surprise you to see a plain outfit on one of my characters! I do love the hat with this one. It suits the Worgen model very well. Pictured with her is her usual choice of pet, Erik the Moonkin Hatchling. He's just so much fun to dance with. If you've never tried it before, next time you spot that pet, target it and dance with it!

My online time with my Druid this week has been mostly spent on making her UI neater and doing a bit of crafting as time has been so limited. I feel a little bad for neglecting her this week but she usually gets more time than my other alts and as always, my health should come first.