Leafshine: Lust for Flower

Once Upon A Leafy

Once upon a time, a very long time ago in fact, I was tagged to do a meme. And I thought "ooh, that looks fun. I must dig out a really old screenie and do that". And promptly forgot all about it.

Once upon a much more recent time, Admiral Bob Llianion got around to fulfilling his tag. And I thought "oooh, blimey, I should have done that". And this time I remembered to dig out my old screenie! And there is young Leafshine, in her 16th season, exploring Westfall, and being awestruck both by the sunset, and by how clean her UI was, back in those 1.x days of WoW. 

So, what were my n00bish moments?

When Dailies are a Grind

I'm getting to the point many of you have been for a long while: the end of Wrath questing. I have the achievement for every zone, bar Northrend, and I'm 102/140 there, at the time of writing. A few solid hours of playtime, and I'm done with the main questlines in Wrath. 

With a couple of hours to spare, I went daily crazy:

And the verdict?

That's something I don't want to do again in a hurry. Doing 25 daily quests is very, very different from doing 25 normal quests. You know how it will pan out. You know how the quest plays out. It's familiar. 

Now, that can be part of the appeal. I'm a big fan of most of the Knights of the Ebon Blade dailies, for instance. Fun, varied, quick and good rep. On the other hand, the Sons of Hodir dailies are a bit of a pain in the arse already, and I'm only half way to Revered. 

I suddenly realise when so many of my guildies are running alts right now: there's only so may dailies you can do in a day. And running an alt, even through quests you've done before, gives you a whole new perspective on them.

So, that's the plan: clear Icecrown, finish up my manifold group quests, grab Heroics wherever I can, do a set number of dailies and devote the rest of the time to an alt.

Sound reasonable?

All Quiet on the Leafy Front

10 days since my last post. Ooops. What's happening in Leafy-land and why is everything so quiet?

Well, for one thing my day job is keeping me hellaciously busy, launching blogs left, right and centre...

Oh, and Mrs Dr Leafy and I are busy house-hunting, which is keeping me away from the iMac at weekends. (And we just celebrated six years of marriage! Yay!)

Oh, and we have a friend staying for a few weeks, which is denying me access to the study most evenings.

So, actually, my WoW time has been pretty light for the last few weeks. I'm steadily working my way through the Icecrown quests (72 of 140 right now, and just hit the first of what many people have warned me will be umpteen group quests), and I've been busy getting gear crafted with the hope of starting raiding in a few weeks when my schedule opens up a bit more.

But for now, well, it's all a bit quiet. And that seems to be guild-wide, right now.

*tumbleweeds*

Busy Evening

So, not only have I dinged 80, but I also managed these two, both unexpectedly:

This happened while I was knocking up some Very Burnt Worg after doing the cooking daily and buying the recipe. And then, on the way back to Zul'Drak:

Uh, is there any point at all to Crystalsong Forest?

Leafy Ding 78

They just keep coming don't they?

Is it flight form making everything faster?

Or is it Glaive the super-pally helping me clear that backlog of group quests?

Leafy Ding 77!

I'm sure I'm not the only person who likes playing with my guildies' minds just a little bit. For instance, last week I was able to time this:

so that just as all my guildies were saying "Gratz" for the achievement, I handed in a second quest to make this happen:

What's in Leafy's Bags?

You like somebody, you trust somebody and then what do they do? They tag you so you have to post your UI and bags, and then everyone can see how much of a n00b you are.

Cheers, Bell. :-)

Right, here we go. Chocks away:

Yes. I'm a n00b. I use pretty much the default interface. I do have HealBot and Omen installed, which will pop up when I'm in a group, but generally I just use the out-of-the-box interface. I can't get into wholesale revamping of the interface now. Sorry. I'm just too used to the default after four years…

As for my bags, well, four normal bags and one enchanting bag. As I'm levelling and disenchanting quest greens a lot of the time, it makes sense space-wise to be carrying an enchant bag. It also means I can be doing enchants for guildies on an impromptu basis, too. I level enchanting faster that way. 

There's the best part of 2 sets of gear in there, too. There's my kitty feral gear, with some swap-out bear gear. And a few spell-casting orientated swap-outs from my normal healing kit. There will be some pots, some cooking mats, and some quest items. And probably a few trinkets or idols I should have got rid of by now.

Actually, my bags are a mess, aren't they?

Retro Raiding and the Calm Casual

Now, when I returned to WoW after the holidays, I didn't actually dive straight into levelling and dinging and achievement-getting and all that dull stuff. No. I did what only my guild were doing that day on our server.

I went to Zul'Aman.

Now, I know that's old hat to most of you, but we're not a hard core guild. We never got beyond 4/6 in that place before Wrath hit, and this was our first real opportunity to go back. I had quests to do, a couple of us were low enough level that we were still getting XP out of the kills (as you can see from the screengrab) and we wanted the achievement. And heck, we wanted to see the content. 

We started with 7 of us (five 80s, a 74 and a 70), and we did the first three bosses easily within the timer. We didn't get the last one in time, 'cos we didn't really know where we were going. :) The another 80 and another 70 joined us and we tore through the last two bosses like wet paper. And it was, dammit, fun. As were the few bosses in Molten Core that we want on to introduce to the business end of our shoes. 

And somewhere in the midst of all this, a little lightbulb went off in my head. I stopped caring that I'd fallen behind my guild. I stopped caring that I was just 74, while they were running around the end game zones, and getting their kit together for Naxxramas. I've got loads of good levelling content to do. I'll get to 80 in a month or two. And I'll get to Naxx eventually. Sure, I won't be in the first Ravens group in there. I won't be in the first group that clears it. But we have more healers now, and the pressure is off me to get levelled and geared to heal them all in the 10 mans.

I can take this at my own pace. And, suddenly, I'm enjoying it all again.