Pet Battle Addict? Just Maybe!

In my previous post, I explained how Rez has been almost solely responsible for getting me addicted to pet battles! Yes, I'd already had a dabble before but I found the long slow way to level pets kind of boring so had walked away from it. When he talked about the speed leveling post, I just had to give it another try didn't I?

So here's a summary of my game time this last week!

Monday - not shown as a screenshot is the achievement for Zen Pet Hunter which is for capturing 200 pets in battles. I finally managed to finish the speed leveling method and got a level 25 Dragonbone Hatching. It took me ages until I finally realised that I didn't have to keep my pets alive as the trainer was nearby. I'd been playing tactically - swapping them in & out depending on their health so the XP was being spread between all three pets & slowing me down! But in the slow process, I did manage to pick up some rare quality pets of level 22 so I have a fair few high level rares to play with now.

After a random comment from Cold on Twitter, I also realised I didn't have to level specific pets to beat the final Pet Tamer - just use my high level ones & blast her down! I tend to get a bit too focused sometimes & miss the obvious shortcuts!

Tuesday - I decided I only needed a few more pets to capture in various zones across Eastern Kingdoms to finish the Eastern Kingdom Tamer achievement - to capture a pet in every zone. In doing so, I finally hit the magical total of 250 unique pets so I got my Feral Vermling pet too!

Wednesday - I woke up about 40 mins before my alarm went off and as I had so much time & it was so early, I thought I'd try my luck with the seasonal Qiraji Guardling. I'd left my hunter in Uldum the night before so it was just a short flight across to An'Qiraj & there they were! I was surprised to be the only player there too but it worked out well & I got my Guardling really easily - just a grey but I can fix that later! 

What I hadn't realised though is that I only needed to capture a humanoid pet to get my Family Reunion achievement and of course, the Qiraji Guardling is humanoid! It was so early, I was slow & didn't get a screenshot for that achievement though!

Thursday - I set out to complete my Kalimdor Tamer - I only needed to capture a pet in about 5 different zones so that was easy but slow - I used my hearthstone & portals in Stormwind to move across the continent but it was still slow!

Friday - I spent a little while flying around Kalimdor again - I'd forgotten to battle the 5 pet tamers for the quest so that was frustrating but I did it eventually and got my final achievement for this week!

To Do List - So now I have to capture pets in every zone in Outland, Northrend & Pandaria and fight the pet tamers there too. I'll undoubtedly be adding more pets to my collection towards the 400 pets achievement and each unique pet I capture will also count towards the Safari achievements. Each rare I manage to capture will count towards the 50 rares achievement too.

Now that I have a better understanding of the speed leveling process, I might try it again with a fresh set of pets & time myself this time - the claim for a level 25 in one hour seems impossible to me but I'll let you know how that goes!

Also this week, Liopleurodon wrote a great post about Pet Battle PvP 101 - I'm resisting so far but as my stable of level 25 pets increases, I'm sure I'll get sucked in there too!

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Level a Pet to 25 Quickly? Yes Please!

Pet Dragon? Yes please!

Hmmm so I promised myself more WoW time & somehow I managed to spend about 4 hours in game yesterday & lost most of this morning there too! Yesterday was spent sorting out banks and crafting lots of things to sell after I bought a whole bunch of stuff of the Auction House but that's a story for my other blog AH Addict!

Today I popped in to just do my auctions & use my cooldowns on my various alts. I had no intention of really playing anything as I have a long list of stuff I should be doing. But when I logged my Hunter to make my living steel for today, she was over in Deadwind Pass & there was an Arcane Eye pet just in front of me so I just had to try to get it!

I was a guest on EGP about 3 weeks ago but it seems like much longer (sad face here) and Rez is just a wee bit addicted to pet battles. One of the subjects he talked about in that episode is how to level a pet to 25 quickly. By capturing level 16-18 Arcane Eyes with lowish level mechanical team then jumping to Dragonblight with the Arcane Eyes team to get the level 21-22 Condors, you can skip a lot of the in-between leveling. The forum post that explains it in more detail reckons you can do it in an hour but it's taken me much longer just to get 2 uncommon (green) quality Arcane Eyes and just as I was getting fed up & had promised myself just one more, I snagged a rare (blue) quality one too!

So that kind of got me buzzing again but I couldn't be bothered to drag an alt all the way over to Dragonblight. I had my DK over there just 3 days ago but had decided I wasn't going to need her for a while so hearthed her back to Half Hill just yesterday! I decided to try for the Eastern Kingdom Trainers quest - the one where you have to beat 5 trainers? Yeah that one! My Clockwork Robot is level 16 now because it took me so long to get those Arcance Eyes & I have a level 17 rare Arcane Eye and my Mr Grubbs is level 14ish and I thought I could do it. I did manage to get the first 4 done but that nasty dwarf Durin Darkhammer has some horrible tricks up his sleeve!

I've found a helpful bit on Wowhead in the comments though and apparently I need a level 17 magic/aquatic/beast combo so I guess I need to do some more leveling before I can tackle him & his pets! I think I'll focus on getting at least one to level 25 first though - that will let me capture some higher level wild pets & hopefully that will make fighting him easier! Guess I'm off to Dragonblight after all then!

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Still Here, Still Talking!

oh to fly away again!

Last time I posted, I was deep into Neverwinter & enjoying my holiday. Now I've been back a couple of weeks & it honestly feels like I've never been away - work was kind of backed up when I returned & this week I moved desks to start my new position. I've just signed a 12 month contract to cover maternity & sick leave for the Accounts Assistant.

Timing wasn't the best though - the boss lady is on vacation herself this week so I had 2-3 days with her last week & spent most of this week pretty much trying to work out how to do stuff from what they did last time! It's nice to be using my brain again, that's for sure!

As far as Neverwinter goes - I'm still playing although not so much. I was playing my Cleric with Cold of Cold's Gold Factory and as he is on massive overtime at the moment, we've not been able to match up our schedules! So that's left me with WoW again - I actually did a dungeon this week - Heroic Scholomance with my favorite guildie. He was surprised I didn't know my way around until I told him I'd only been through there 1 or 2 times ages & ages ago!

I'd prepared him for my rubbish DPS but he'd made a couple of suggestions before the queue popped & I think it helped because my DPS wasn't anywhere near as bad as I thought it was! After we got out of there, he joined a group for Nalak & dragged me along there too - I got the ilevel 522 legs from the boss loot & got them again on my bonus roll - how frustrating! So now my item level is 467 and I'm running out of excuses to not do LFR!

I also reached exalted with Shado-Pan at last so now I'm doing the August Celestials & Shieldwall Offensive work orders on my Tillers farm. I will get all the reputations eventually - I only need 3 more for the 45 reps achievement & I have 5 Cataclysm factions at revered so I should probably go back & sort those out too!

I also guested on not one but two podcasts this week! On Monday evening, I joined Phatlewts, Goblin Raset, Manthieus & Novitsh for the Happy Hour Roundtable podcast to discuss the upcoming patch 5.4 and some of the PTR notes. It was great fun and nice to hear some non-US accents for a change.

Then this morning, I joined my fellow Brit goldmaker extraordinaire Marcus Ty for episode 7 of his podcast - The Journal of Marcus Ty. When I tell you the skype call was 3 hours long, don't worry, we didn't record the whole time & Marcus is great at editing! It was great fun & I hope you can hear how much we enjoyed putting the show together for you - it's not published yet but if you're feeling curious, I was also a guest on episode 3 so you can hear my crazy Brit accent!

So I have promised myself to get more time in WoW next week - I have pets to collect & battle, gold to make & achievements to work on even if I don't really play any alts! With the Midsummer Festival XP bonus though - now might be a good time to push my 3 level 85/86's towards 90 - at least that will give me more choices of what not to play at end game!

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Neverwinter - My Latest Distraction

It's been over a month since I posted on AH Addict & almost as long for this blog but now you get 2 posts in one day!  I'm away on my travels again so I've hardly been online at all even though I have access on an old PC, it drives me crazy because it's so old & slow & prone to blue screens! My friend has gone back to work after almost a full week off & I thought I'd better get my brain going again!

A few weeks ago, my Twitter feed was alight with talk of a new free to play MMO called Neverwinter. I wouldn't call myself a gamer girl by any means, I don't think playing WoW for 3 years really qualifies me for that. I've never played any other MMO unless you count about 3 hours in Rift on a PC that could barely run it so Neverwinter has been quite an eye opener for me.

For starters, the whole movement thing had me confused, press w & use the mouse to steer? I've been a keyboard mover in WoW for years so that was a bit weird & when I did briefly log into WoW, I struggled to move there - kept moving my mouse & wondering why I wasn't changing direction! lol

What I haven't done in Neverwinter is play the Auction House there - I find the interface very limited & the volume & sheer amount of unknown stuff is daunting. I thought I'd whizz through on one character to get a feel for professions & what loot drops might be like but it turns out, I'm not just slow leveler in WoW, I'm slow in Neverwinter too! It's not too difficult to make Astral Diamonds in Neverwinter though, I'm just being very lazy!

I've been playing a Devoted Cleric (heals/damage/ranged) & a Control Wizard (damage/ranged) - I tried the Guardian Fighter to tank with Cold running a Cleric to heal - thinking we could blast through but I hated the Guardian Fighter! I've also started a Great Weapon Fighter & although she's only level 5-6 right now, so far, I quite like it.

When I get home again though, I have to decide whether to halt my WoW subscription or play properly & put Neverwinter on a back burner. I want to keep my AH Addict blog going & if I can find a nice project to work on, Neverwinter will be an occasional thing but I am enjoying it. I'd definitely recommend giving it a try even if I have no other game experience to compare it too. It's definitely not like WoW though so don't expect a WoW-clone. I'm on the Mindflayer Shard if you want to add me - set up your character there & poke me here or on Twitter & I'll give you my details then :)

I'll probably put a few Neverwinter posts here when I gather my thoughts more, I'm sure there is all sorts of stuff that could be talked about, especially as it's so new there are very few blogs or fansites out there yet!

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