miko2

I've been playing WoW quite a bit lately, so much so that I'm making my neck hurt. I mean, I do sit in front of a computer for 8 hours a day at work before coming home to do the same thing. ^_^

Actually I think my neck hurts because I've been on the phone too much at work. Often I don't actually put the reciever down for more than a few minutes in an hour, at least right now with C on vacation. I should probably get a headset.

But in the meantime... I grouped with

jwyldragon and

skyoxford on the 4th of July. I taugh my main character Jehnna the trade skills of mining and smithing... also baking, fishing, and first aid (those three anyone can learn, but other than that you can only pracitce two other trade skills).

I spent the next couple of days going trade skill crazy. I wandered all over the place looking for ore, collecting it, collecting meat and stuff to cook with, and then running back to town to cook and smith. I think at this point my mining skill is at 100, my blacksmithing skill is at 85 or 90, and my baking is also around 85 or so.

I took some time to plan out what to do with my other two characters (Verdandi, level 10 hunter, and Jaliah, level 13 druid). I wanted to try out some of the other trade skills. I guess I've always been big on trade skills, in Everquest that was eventually most of what I did in the game. I practiced alchemy, tailoring, smithing, baking, and several lesser trade skills... I had all of my tradeskills well above 100, with baking at about 230 (very high for EQ). I even pushed my fishing skill up over 100, and levelled up a gnome enchanter to 30 so I could practice tinkering (which I also got well over 100). I sold all kinds of nifty stuff in the bazaar and was pretty rich when I decided to leave the game... two of my guildmates got all of my money, something like 1,500 platinum I think.

So my plan, after considering my options, was to make the hunter a skinner and leatherworker, and the druid a tailor and a herbalist. The guide I had explained that tailoring doesn't require a second skill. Leatherworking really needs skinning to gather leather, and blacksmithing really requires mining to gather ore, but tailoring, all of your material drops off of stuff you kill. So they reccomend as a second skill something that can make you some money -- herbalism allows you to sell the herbs you collect at the auction house.

So, plan in hand, I logged in my dwarf hunter and started running around the big dwarf city. I found a tailor, and I thought, That's what I'm looking for! and I clicked on him and learned tailoring. And then I realized, it was my druid that I'd meant to learn tailoring with. Disaster!

So I revised my plan, and decided to switch the two. But when I went to train my druid in skinning, the skinning trainer in the elf town wouldn't teach me. The npc is broken, she only operates as a merchant ready to sell you stuff, she won't attempt to teach you anything. This frustrated me to no end, since I couldn't find a skinning teacher anywhere else (I later learned that there was one not that far away outside of town).

Anyway my frustration lasted until the next day, when I got it into my head that I could just click on a new trainer and learn a new trade skill to replace one of the ones I had. There has to be a way to forget a trade skill, right? I mean for people who are stupid like me, there's got to be a way to fix your mistakes. So I took tailoring as my second skill, and then went to learn herbalism, but the herbalist trainer wouldn't train me because I already knew two trade skills.

Eventually after much screaming and cursing the game I gave up and went to my last resort: when all else fails, read the instruction manual. Turns out unlearning a trade skill was easier than I thought, although not very obvious. You just open up your character menu, go to the skills page, click on the skill, and press a little button down below that says "unlearn this skill" when you mouse over it.

Well anyway, I got my two characters sorted out. I tried a little skinning with the hunter, and then I went on a massive herb gathering spree with my druid. Along the way I finished several old quests that I hadn't figured out previously. One of them rewarded me with a much better staff, something I'd been desperate for for a while now. Another quest I was unable to figure out, I'm supposed to find a special named spider but although I was apparently in the right area (according to the guide book) I never could find her. But I gained a level and a half.

I had fun falling off of the world too. The elf starting land is an island with very high walls all around. You can't climb over the hills to get to the outside, except in one place, where there's a very long waterfall. I fell down the fall and died halfway down. This was a bit of a problem, because when I came back as a spirit looking for my body, I fell all the way to the ground below, meaning I was only close enough to my body to revive for about one second as I fell past. Even as a spirit, I couldn't climb back up. I was going to contact a GM, but first I tried their /stuck command, which sent me back to the graveyard where you normally spawn after you die. On my second trip back I was more careful to try and follow the exact path I had initially taken to my death, and this time I landed on the rock outcrop where my body lay. After reviving, I used my magic stone to recall myself to my home point. I was halfway down a massive waterfall and there was no way out except to teleport. ^_^

I'd tried to auction a few things off before, but as a poor newbie I was a bit put off by the fact that my stuff often didn't sell and I'd lose my deposit... so it costs me money for no gain. Anyway I put my herbs up for sale, and two types sold. Tonight I put more up and everything sold within 20 minutes, which tells me that I'm really offering this stuff for sale too cheaply. I can only hope it was bought by an actual alchemist, and not by someone who was just going to turn around and re-auction it for more money.

But my druid Jaliah now has a skill of 75 in herbalism, and a skill of around 60 in tailoring. I can make 6-slot bags, and I made some red and blue linen shirts, and a "simple dress". Woo! Go me!