Fishing the Lurker

These new Achievements really are my cup of tea - what better way to spend the last weeks before Wrath than revisiting all of the old world and do all those dungeons and raids once again so you'll get credit for them.

Tessye, my rogue, my master fisherman and master cook, is of course doing all the achievements related to those professions.

Last night I was flying around in Outland fishing and killing stuff to complete the Outland Angler and the Outland Gourmet achievements, when I saw that there was a nice little mission called the Lurker Above.

Never been raiding with Tessye but so what, these days you don't need an attunement to enter SSC and she is a rogue with Master of Deception and Camouflage, she can sneak past most mobs.

(And by "sneak past", I mean keeping to the side of the gangways, bypassing mobs, cause looking away for a split second and running right into a bog giant will get you spotted and killed, no matter how good a sneaker you are - this I discovered the hard way.)

So, I got a sweet guildie who were exploring the world and thus not unwilling to be in a raid group with me to make just such a group. Enter SSC and stealth up. I thought for sure some on the mobs would be able to see through stealth, but none did - they were all unable to see me! Well, except that bog giant I had that unfortunate close encounter with.

I stealthed along to the gangway support strut that makes a handy ramp down into the water and went down. Sadly, the fishies in the water could see me so I went down for real as well :-(

Since I am such an avid fisherman and do the daily fishing quest, I have a lot of Elixir of Water Walking in my bags, so for next try I popped one of these before I dared venture out over the water. For some reason I did submerge once I left the ramp, and the fishies were onto me pretty fast, so try #2 was a fail as well :-(

Well, not like I was gonna give up that easily! I had engaged all the guild in my tries through gchat and I couldn't just back down now, could I? They even almost started a bet poll on my chances of one-womanning the Lurker if I ever got to his little isle.

So, next try, on the platform closest to the isle, standing just above the water, I drank an Elixir, went into Stealth again and then I popped my Sprint.

But it was still the same, as soon as I went into the water I sank down! Luckily, this time I jumped up asap, managed to get up on the water surface and started sprinting over the water to the isle.

And I got there! Not a single fish attacked me!

Could fish the Lurker up in peace and quiet in the little isle...

Took me a fair few tries before the old cunning fish finally took the bait and came up for me, but I am now a proud accomplisher of The Lurker Above!

And no, I didn't one-woman the old smelly bucket of dead carp, he took one hit at me for 17 k and I went down like a very dead rogue :/

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Professions, professions, professions...

So, tomorrow it will be patch day, and loads of new stuff will be available, among it all a new profession, Inscriptions, and the rest of the professions have been polished up with new fun and/or cool features and recipes.

I know for sure I will get this new profession on one of my girls, but which one? Being the levelling freak that I am, all of my girl are capped in their primary professions, so it is not just a question of ditching any old profession and start levelling the new one.

Tessye, my first, my precious, has been a skinner and leatherworker since day one. Those trainers were the first ones I encountered in Goldshire so I picked that up, not knowing that there was anything else, and it’s been a good choice for a rogue so far and it seems to be a good choice in WotLK too.

Since skinners see a lot of dead animals without their clothes on they can become Masters of Anatomy, by which they will know that exact spot where to out the dagger to wreak maximum havoc on a poor mob of any kind. Good knowledge for a rogue :-)

There will alse be nice gear available to leatherworkers and some bracers and leg patches that are LW only, like different Fur Linings and leg armors.

Joaquime, my druid, is an herbalist and alchemist, transmute master. The herbalists get some extra love with the Lifeblood HoT. Not that she really needs another HoT, being a druid, BUT this one is useable while shapeshifted! This will be very handy when soloing in cat form or tanking in bear. Also, I really don’t want to lose herbalism on her, since picking flowers in epic flight form must be the fastest, simplest way ever of farming herbs.

Alchemists get some sweet loving too. They can already make and use Mad Alchemist’s Potion, which is a really cheap alternative to Super Mana/Healing Potions, and now they will also be able to learn Mixology. Increased effect and twice the duration of every flask and elixir, yes thank you!

Paynne, my little warlock, is a tailor and a miner. Being a clothie, her tailoring will provide her with something new to wear every now and then, which is important for the fashionable warlock. For some reason, tailors will also be able to get more cloth drops than non-tailors.

She already has a cool epic flyer but will probably make herself a flying carpet as well,

Mining is actually a nice boost to a warlock with the Toughness spell, and she is capped and has an epic flyer, which makes farming ores rather fast and not much of a hassle. Daissy, her fellow gnome warrior, is a miner too but she still has a slow-ass copter and mining with that takes forever! (Yeye, I will get her an epic flyer too, but I am not that rich yet!)

I don’t want to drop Daissy’s mining since as a warrior she also benefits from Toughness. She is also an engineer, which needs lots and lots of ores and bars to make her cool fun trinkets and weapons. Now engineers will get a whole lotta new fun recipes, like new goggles, a portable mailbox and the very handy Army Knife. They will also learn how to make a chopper, but like Paynne she already has a cool mount, her pretty pink tiger.

Jools, my priest, is a jewelcrafter and an enchanter and there is no way in hell I’ll drop any of those painfully levelled professions.

The enchanters will get some new enchanter-only ring enchants and also be able to create some soulbound wands with spellpower, crit and some stats on them. The JC's will be able to make some BoP trinkets like the Sapphire Owl and cut some nice BoP gems, so all in all I am happy with keeping those professions for Jools.

Larue, my shaman, is like Joaq an herbalist and alchemist, potion master. The potion mastery is very handy and often procs a few extra free pots. This mastery may be slightly less useful now since the use of pots will probably diminish since the Potion Sickness means you can only use one potion per fight – no more selling a stack of Super Mana Potions for 30 gold, but it's still nice to get some free pots so I don't want to drop her Alchemy.

Again like Joaq, Larue does not really need the herbalism HoT since she can heal herself, and this is one profession that won’t hurt very much to drop on Larue since she’ll get her Alchemy needs satisfied by Joaq’s herbing anyways.

So, one possible free spot out of all 12 professions in total on my six lvl 70 girls...

There is another choice though, my lowbie hunter Cuddling is currently skinning and herbing her way through the 30's and I could drop the skinning for inscriptions. There are a few quests associated with Inscriptions and I might as well get some lvling xp out of them a well.

Ah well, I'll see what happens tomorrow :-)

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Remind me again why I still play on pvp servers

Please. Do that. Tell me why I still have some chars on pvp servers, and please tell me why I still play them on occasion.

I logged in on Tesz the other day. Tesz, my level 36 troll mage that I have on the Laughing Skull (pvp) server. I hadn’t played her for some time and wanted to give my hunter Cuddling some rested bonus, so I popped in to Tesz.

She was in the inn in Tarren Mill. I checked her quest log and she had quite a few quests in the area. I’ve been peeking a little on Jame’s levelling guide and he lists a lot of quests in Hillsbrad, so I had been questing a bit there and was looking forward to doing some more.

She ran out of the inn and died. A ?? stealthed druid oneshotted her. Haha, how hilarious.

Well, the graveyard run is not long in Tarren Mill. I decided Hillsbrad would not be fun to quest in today after all, so after Tesz had ressed she started casting a teleport to Orgrimmar, and then she died again.

After having played on a sweet normal server for some months now my hard-earned reflexes like “when you know gankers are about, find a safe place to ress lest you get ganked again” seems to have been lost.

Yes, it was the same ?? druid again, some sad person with a Challenger title, that had stealthed up and oneshotted her, then he shifted into cheetah and ran away from the guards.

Elapsed time since log-in: About a minute. Number of deaths, gank-related: Two. Amount of affection felt towards pvp servers and gankers in general: Zero.

Third time up I ressed inside the inn and teleported away.

I was close to deleting the char and never look back but I decided to give it a last try, and flew off to Desolace instead, and after having completed a few quests without anyone bothering met here I headed off to Arathi Highlands, where I kept questing for yet a few hours.

In fact, that entire day I saw no Alliance chars at all save that sad druid in Tarren Mill and a lvl 31 warrior in Arathi who snuck away when he saw me and Tesz was just a few hundred xp’s away from 38 when I logged out.

And to remind myself: I play on these servers because I have some friends there, both real life and in-game ones, and although I still quest a lot by myself I don’t want to lose touch with them entirely.

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