Dearest Lyssith - Paladin Week

Blue Drake - Flying High

It's Paladin Week in Laeleiweyn's Alt Appreciation calendar and as my main is a Paladin, this should be easy right? Well, yes and no - the thing is my Paladin is not only my main, she's my very first ever toon so as of this week, she's four years old and we've done almost everything together. She's my achievement queen, my mount collector, my first love in game and these days, the wayward child I'm almost tempted to give up on!

Albino Drake

It all started so innocently - I chose human as a race and Paladin because of Sparhawk & Kalten - two main characters in David Eddings books, The Elenium & The Tamuli series. I love all the David Eddings books but Sparhawk is a grumpy old man wearing armor & armed with a healthy shield of sarcasm & cynicism and for some strange reason, that has always made me like him more! So once I chose the class & race, I needed a name. I wanted Lessa - the main female character in Anne McCaffreys Dragonriders of Pern series but that wasn't available so after about 20 minutes of thinking, I came up with Lyssith or Lyss as my friends and guildies call me in game.

Brewfest Kodo

I started playing just before Brewfest started and had no idea about any of the holiday events but the following year, I'd learnt a lot more about the game and set out to get as many achievements as I could. One of the very first special mounts I managed to acquire was the Brewfest Kodo. I'm cheating a bit here as I actually got it on my Gnome Rogue first and it was only with the arrival of account wide mounts in Mists that Lyss could finally ride her dinosaur! She did get the Brewfest Ram though so it's not totally cheating!

Leveling during Wrath was fun but kind of slow too - as my first character, I had no heirlooms, very few add-ons and no clue where to quest next or even really how to play well but I managed. As part of the gearing up process back then, grinding dungeons for the various reputations and currency was normal so when I stumbled across the Oracles in Sholozar Basin, it was just another reputation that needed grinding. I was super lucky though and once I'd hatched my first or second Mysterious Egg, I was rewarded with the Green Proto Drake, much to the chagrin of my guild mates!

Green Proto-Drake

I learned to tank and spent many hours in ICC as off-tank for my guild as well as running guildies through dungeons. I started working on Achievements seriously at this time including the Argent Tournament. I never quite finished that though so it's still on my list! Running all those dungeons did have their rewards though - the Blue Proto Drake and the Blue Drake both dropped for me quite early on - apparently in those days, the Gods of RNG liked me & Lyss!

Fast forward a year or so and I was struggling to adapt to the changes wrought on my Class by the Cataclysm - I hated the Holy Power mechanic and I'd lost my guild too. I did find another, by the name of Bloodthirsty Meercats which I joined just for the fantastic name! It was being run by 4 teenage Danish lads but at summers end, they all graduated to higher education and had to give up WoW to concentrate on their studies. By this time, my old guild was almost derelict so I re-joined and my Meercat guildie Ben soon joined me there.

All through that first winter of Cataclysm, I tried, I really tried hard to master the Holy Power mechanic but it just wasn't happening and after a particularly nasty hour in Grim Batol, I pretty much gave up on Lyss. We did grind the Wintersaber Trainers reputation before it changed so this beautiful cat became mine and was my main ground mount for a long while.

Winterspring Frostsaber

After that Grim Batol experience, I retreated mostly back to the Auction House but I did run quite a few dungeons on my other alts. None came close to my Lyss though so for the remainder of Cataclysm, Lyss & I ground our way through reputation after reputation - Sha'tari Skyguard for the Nether Ray mounts, Netherwing for the gorgeous Netherwing Drakes and the Kurenaai for the riding Talbuks - I absolutely love the White War Talbuk! Purple is my favorite colour and he is so regal! Look how proud & tall he stands!

White Riding Talbuk

So that brings us to Mists - a new chance to fire up my Zygors leveling guide, raise alts and explore new lands and that is exactly what Lyss & I did, straight out of the gate. She was the first to open up her farm and reach Exalted with various Pandaren factions but I still struggled with the Holy Power thing - she felt so squishy that doing the Golden Lotus dailies was a real chore. We struggled on though, after all, she owed it to the others in my team to get those Commendations to make their struggles easier and she is proud to be my Achievement Queen. She nags me constantly to keep trying, I have tried to ignore her & promote one of my other alts to Main but I always come back to her in the end.

If you look at my to-do list (on the tab at the top) you'll see a long list of things she wants to do before the next expansion but she has given me permission to get the others leveled too - she knows I need some 'alt time' occasionally. Dearest Lyssith, my demanding first love!

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Random Stuff is Random!

Guess who couldn't think of a topic for today? Well, actually I could but none of them would have made for a whole post so I'm gonna lump them in here all together & be a bit random for a change! This blog tends to be a bit random anyway so it should fit in nicely!

Milestone Interviews - I launched this last week on my other blog - it's kind of aimed at non-blogging goldmakers in the community but if any of my lovely peeps here want to join in, you'll be more than welcome! I've had a few interviews submitted already, the first will be going live tomorrow. I'm pretty excited by this mini-project - now I just have to work out how to get the shy ones to send their interviews in!

Paladin Week - yup - my main is a Paladin so I'll be doing a full Paladin post in the next day or two - she's my Achievement chaser, my first ever alt & still my favorite so I'm trying to work out which bit to write about for that post!

Hearthstone - Blizzard have just announced they are going to do a 'wipe' which basically means that all my progress over the last few weeks will be reset back to fresh meat level. I know I'll have the knowledge to get back to same level again (which isn't that high anyway to be honest) but it kinda feels like a waste of time playing now until after the wipe. That's good news for WoW though - maybe now, I'll log in and actually do something other than Auction House & cooldowns! If you're interested in Hearthstone, my friend Cold is a long time, very experienced Card game player & has written a couple of posts over on his blog. The Starter Mage Deck is the one I started with on his advice and it works really well.

Real Life - work is going great - I really like my boss even if she drives me a little crazy now & then. Got some niggling health stuff to sort out but nothing major and finally, after 18 months on the market, my house has sold! Yup - I'll have some cash out of the sale & the first thing I'm going to do is fly out to see my friend! It does mean I'll miss the Blizzcon London weekend meetup but hey, I need his hugs more!

Monk Week - I kinda got distracted by Hearthstone again last week so I totally missed Monk Week. I do have a monk - she's been level 5 since about 3 days after Mists went live! I was seriously put out when I couldn't send her any heirlooms straightaway so she got shelved until further notice. That was a full year ago now! I did pop in and get her to level 8 this morning but it's Paladin Week now so I guess she'll be sitting around for a while longer. Why Tishamaru? One of my old Etsy friends has a beautiful Siamese cat called Maru & her sister is Tisha - probably the most photogenic pair of cats I've seen in a long while & not only do I have a fondness for Siamese cats - it's vaguely Asian too!

Blogging! - as if I didn't have enough to do, I've been invited to contribute to a new site (along with a few other known bloggers) which I've accepted AND I've started a new one of my own. Once everything is running smoothly on that, I'll tell y'all a bit more about it but I want to polish the edges a bit more first! Oh and in my usual scatterbrained fashion, I have a great idea for another one too! Eeeek!

My Fav Guildie - I did log into WoW last night, intending to do just a little bit of crafting but my Fav Guildie was online & we started chatting (as usual!). He noticed I didn't have my new trinket from the Timeless Isle yet so he dragged me off to go get the Burning Chest across the broken bridge. We hit it lucky and the mobs were almost all dead so I just ran in & got the chest - one Trinket & a Burden of Eternity later & I was a happy bunny! On the way back, we stopped to join in on a Huolon(sp?) kill & he summoned the Tiger rare nearby for me too. He's pretty much been living on the Isle as far as I can tell so it was easy to pick up a couple more Rares to kill for the quest. I'd forgotten how much fun it is to do stuff with other players & once I reforge, gem & enchant, I think I may be pleasantly surprised with my Paladin. Big {{{hugs}}} for Ben - apparently I don't talk about him enough here - do you think this will keep him happy? lol

Okay, time to get back to my alt-hopping ways - got a Paladin post to wrestle with & I need screenshots! Got to discipline myself not to log into Hearthstone though - it is kinda addictive once you get going you know!

Have fun y'all, talk soon xxx

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