Ding 60!

With 1 day, 14 hours /played the druids hit 60 while working on the [Defenders of Darrowshire] quest in Eastern Plaguelands.

There’s a lot of room for improvement if a speed run was the goal, but I’m quite happy with the way things turned out. I’m thinking of trying out a pair of hunter’s next, I’ll definately be mixing in a few of the collection quests that lead into high xp quest lines. I haven’t decided yet if I’ll document that pair yet.

I am still in the process of getting the current pages updated to include links.

-Stav

Almost to the end

The druids hit 59 today, so this trip is almost to it’s end. The quest log has been updated accordingly.

-Stav

Two Moonkin walk into a bar, the third one ducks

With the first 40 levels I had been questioning my desire to see this project through. A lot of missing spark was a product of having recently finished leveling my mage and shaman’s so the raw dps from duo balance druids seemed really lackluster by comparison. Hitting 40 was a huge boost to my moral, Moonkin Form loses a little since the crit bonus from the aura doesn’t stack with itself. The biggest bonus for me was the massive bonus to armor. The 400% bonus really helped offset the horrible gear that Stav and Ini were wearing and made them much more survivable for multiple mob pulls.

Income has finally started to make headway as well. Sure, I still have a ton of skills left to learn (feral) but at least I’m no longer stealing gold from my 70’s to keep the Moonkin’s in current DPS spells and water. No way I’ll be getting the gold needed for a 60 mount, but I can start a dent at paying back my self loans.

Played time is hovering around 1 day and 8 hours at level 51 (1 bar shy of 52) so it looks like I’ll be on track of hitting 60 around 2 days played. Definitely not a speed run, but still respectable (as my personal leveling times go) for a test run of RAF leveling with 0 collection quests (Ok, so there was that 1 Blood Shards quest). Already I can see a bunch of places to streamline the process to speed things up and make subsequent runs much more efficient.

One big thing I’m learning is that while there are enough quests to get to 60 without doing collection quests, it may turn out to be more efficient to select a few choice ones for both equipment upgrades, and because certain collection steps and their follup’s are worth more exp in less time than trying to hoof it around the world to find a new patch of non-collection quests.

I’ve got a road trip coming up next week so I’m hoping to get the leveling pages cleaned up a bit. I know I change the tense of certain steps and I would like to incorporate links to one of the WoW database sites.

-Stav

Boomkin!

Sorry for the lack of updates! Leveling page 31-40 is nearly completed, and has been posted. More to come soon.

Day Three: Yay!

I only made it to 28 today, but had a lot more fun than yesterday. The power of the balance druid is starting to take shape. While I am still consuming water like crazy the damage output has reached a respectable level so except for the rare emergency I’ve stopped using shape shifted melee dps.

The 3 x bonus on quested experience is just mind boggling. At one point I think I had 5 or 6 quests to turn in and after turning them in I had jumped ahead 2 levels.

Money is continuing to be a massive problem and it’s beginning to look like I’ll be shuffling some more funds over to the druids to keep them supplied in water, spells and for their upcoming land mount.

Day Two: Argggghhh!

Well day two of the Two Druids at Once experiment has concluded and it’s been quite the learning experience.

First off, I have decided to change the format here. Instead of providing a blow-by-blow report in the daily updates I have added a quest log that provides the overview of what I picked up and the order in which I completed them.

Why was today such a pain? Well the druid is designed as a jack-of-all-trades class. That is a good thing in the long run, but for the level 10 to 20 stretch it really pigeon holes what works well, and sadly the Balance tree is just no where near as effective as the Feral tree at this point. As a pair of balance spec’d druids I quickly discovered that I was playing like a mage with no free water and a smaller mana pool.

In the past when I leveled my now 70 druid I chose the feral route and it worked incredibly well. The problem I found when attempting to utilize bear form to bring some “ok” melee dps into the grind was that trying to keep 2 melee classes in range of mobs that run away at low health is a great way to get in over ones head. In the end I had the best luck with one druid in bear form while the other would heal, wrath and root. When the casting druid would run low on mana I’d switch them around. This helped drastically decrease the amount of time spent drinking.

The over use of store bought drinks leads into the next problem, money! Simply put I couldn’t keep enough incoming to offset new spells and supply the duo with an adequate supply of drinks. In fact, at one point I was so poor after buying a few choice spells I lacked enough to even fly back. Now a solution for those on a server where they don’t have higher level support would be to take up gathering professions and utilize the auction house. Luckily or unluckily for me, I have high level support on my server so it raised the question of whether or not to provide some supplemental income and if it would skew the spirit of my little endeavour.

I gave in!

So after sending 20 gold and 8 Netherweave bags to the druidly duo they were off to complete their trip to level 20.

I am still going to avoid instances and instance related quests for two reasons. First there’s many well written posts concerning high level boosting at dual-boxing.com. Second, the reliability of pick up groups is almost non-existent for sub 60 instances. So the higher level support provided by a bit of gold and bags is all the druids will get, though if they can scape up the gold for materials I will use my own crafters. Now that I think about it, with mounts available at level 30 I may have to give in and supply them with more gold to cover that expense.

The next update will hopefully cover 21 to 30!

-Stav

Day One Point Five: I’m Scared of Heights!

Stav and Ini made a quick spot in Camp Taurajo to pickup the flight path there and also the quest [Journey to the Crossroads]. Next came the boring walk from Camp Taurajo to The Crossroads. Upon arriving at the Crossroads they grabbed the flight path and turned in Journey to the Crossroads and set their hearthstones at the Inn. After sorting through the available quests they settled on [The Forgotten Pools], [ Wharfmaster Dizzywig], [A Bundle of Hides], [Disrupt the Attacks] and [Supplies for the Crossroads]. After a short walk to the flight master to turn in A Bundle of Hides and picking up the follow up, a [Ride to Thunder Bluff] the two druids were off on a ride to Thunder Bluff.

Now it gets boring for a bit.

Land in Thunder Bluff, turn in Ride to Thunder Bluff.

Pickup [Tal the Wind Rider Master], turn it in, pickup [Return to Jahan].

Off to the druid trainer to turn in Heeding the Call and then teleport to Moonglade and turn in [Moonglade].

Do the followup quest, [Great Bear Spirit]. Completing the Great Bear Spirit pushed them to level 11 and after grabbing [Back to Thunder Bluff] I stepped away from the computer as the druids flew from Moonglade to Thunder Bluff where upon arrival they turned in Back to Thunder Bluff, picked up [Body and Heart] and then flew to Camp Taurajo.

Avoiding level 20 lizards was somewhat exciting, and fulfilling the task for Body and Heart meant another flight back to Thunder Bluff. The good news though is the druids are now bear-able and after hearthing back to the Crossroads they turned in Return to Jahan for a nice chunk of xp (3150 to be exact).

Day One: The Druids are Born!

Stavos and Iniria were born today and began their journey in the lush lands of Mulgore. Right from the beginning I realized a flaw in my grand plans, the Tauren starting area is ripe with collection quests.

This could be a problem but I kept my fingers crossed and picked up [A Humble Task] and Stav and Ini began mowing through critters like a cow in a field full of tasty grass. Arriving at Greatmother Hawkwind and completing A Humble Task earned the pair level 2. They picked up the second part of [A Humble Task] and headed back to Chief Hawkwind, again keeping Mulgore free of Plainstriders.

Completing A Humble Task (part 2) dinged level 3 and they picked up [Rites of the Earthmother] and [Break Sharptusk!]. The pair began working their way to turn in Rites of the Earthmother, continuing to keep the plainstride populus in check. Turning in Rites of Earthmother coughed up 750 xp after the refer bonus so it was worth the trip, even if the follow up was a collection quest and would be skipped.

Working towards Sharptusk and through Brambleblade Ravine provided a large chunk of kill experience and the druids hit level 4 before Sharptusk. After collecting Sharptusks Head they headed up the nearby hill to pickup a Dirt-Stained Map which would begin the [Attack on Camp Narache] quest and also reached level 5. At this point the druids hearthstoned and turned in Break Sharptusk! and Attack on Camp Narache, netting them a combined total of 3115 xp and level 6.

With the initial goal of level 6 reached Stav and Ini headed towards Bloodhoof Village, stopping along the way to pickup [A Task Unfinished].

It was disappointing to see that the initial area was so dependent on experience from kills but the entire process for a duo was quick (approximately 21 minutes).  There’s room to improve the speed and efficiency but I’m satisfied with where I am at so far.

The two druids arrived at Bloodhoof Village and turned in A Task Unfinished and set their hearthstone at the Inn. Bloodhoof Village has a large number of quests available, unfortunately a large portion of those require collecting individual drops. So, after investigating all of the options the few non-collection quests were gathered, [Sharing the Land] and [Rite of Vision]. Rite of Vision is immediately turned in for a small, but ultimately no effort reward of 165 xp and [Mazzranche] and [Kyle’s Gone Missing!] are added to the quest log.

From here it was just a matter or running around collecting the group drops needed for Mazzranche, a piece of meat for Kyle’s Gone Missing! (You only need 1 piece for the entire group), and working into the cave for Sharing the Land. During which the druids reached level 7 and after completing their quests returned to Bloodhoof and turned them in for a total of 5625 xp which got them to level 8.

Next up was finding Morin Cloudstalker, who seems to always be the farthest along his route from where I am when I realize I need to find him. Morin provided the quest [The Ravaged Caravan] and heading out to complete that quest was enough to ding the druids to level 9. Picking up the follow up for the Ravaged Caravan sends you back to Morin, who then provides two new quests, [The Venture Co.] and [Supervisor Fizsprocket].

These two quests were a challenge, partially because of the density of mobs in the cave, partially because they liked to run away at low health, and lastly because the speed of leveling has resulted in a deficit of funds so Stav and Ini are lacking a large majority of their spells.

After a rather embarrassing death and subsequent run back the duo managed to collect Fizsprocket’s Clipboard and I decide to let them run into a mass of Venture Company employees and then spirit resurrect them to speed up the return to Bloodhoof Village.

Turning in The Venture Co. and Superivsor Fizsprocket gets them to level 10 and opens up the druid only quest [Heeding the Call]. At this point it was time to head to the Barrens.

Getting Started

This will be a new experience for me as I’ve never blogged before and will be learning as I go.

Now what am I doing? Well I’m going to journal my experience dual-boxing a pair of druids in World of Warcraft (WoW).

Recently WoW added a bonus feature to their Refer a Friend program that causes the referrer and referred to receive a 3x bonus to experience gained from both kills and from quests as long as their grouped together and the content is non-trivial to them.

This blog will follow my Tauren Druids, Stavos, and Iniria on the Sisters of Elune server as they level from 1 to 60, all the while attempting to avoid any quests that require collection of non-group lootable items. Hopefully by the end there will be a completed quest order that could be used by others to help them in their leveling.