Weekend (18 Nov) - The Clothes Horse

Weekend (18 Nov) - The Clothes Horse

Fist admits that she likes clothes. That passion has been easily fed by Pandaria, which offers a lot of different looks. Half the time she should be questing she is in Org sorting through every wearable item to see how it looks on her. Her questing in the Jade Forest has brought a new ensemble of gear called Deepwoods. Frankly, I think it's horrible looking. Fist would have to agree, but hey, it's a set! She couldn't let it go. She already has a dozen weapons of various sorts. Most of those have unique looks, though, so she feels justified keeping those.

The problem is finding room for everything. Happy choked on the cost, but he already had bought Fist the largest bag available (26 slots) to hold the THREE sets of gear that she carried around with her. She also has two bank slots (totaling 32 slots) for banked gear that is already full and overflowing. Fist almost bought two 22-slot bags on a whim, but at the last minute asked Happy to check prices. They were high. Too high. Plus, Wild can make those bags for even less - if Happy can get a break on the price of bolts of embersilk. So far Fist is holding off, but she wants those bags! Sigh.

Fist is also unhappy with her trinkets. Lao gave her a great, socketed trinket she is dying to use, but she has to get to level 87 first. Her other trinkets don't have much in the way of +agi, and she has made do with one trinket that has 406 mastery. Fist has another 406 crit trinket, but it doesn't seem better than the 167 agi trinket it would replace. Prices for the 512 agi trinkets have climbed and Happy won't release that kind of money to Fist. Happy could see visions of expensive clothing stores dancing in Fist's head.

Once she closed her closet doors, Fist graduated from the Pandaria zone of Jade Forest to the Valley of the Four Winds on Saturday night. The quest gear rose from the i372 older quests, to i384 level quests, and in the Four Winds has starting dropping i399 gear. Since Fist is in mostly i415 gear purchased from the auction House, she isn't keeping much of anything but trinkets from questing. She is certainly getting some interesting trinkets, though. The stats themselves are just ho hum, but it's the extras that get attention. Many of them have an "Equip" ability that summons a pet or has some silly feature put there just for fun. Fist loves them.

Fist's first impression of the Four Winds is that of a huge farm that has been allowed to be run over by varmits of every sort. The quests are clever and interesting, if nonsensical at times. Such as the quest where Fist collects a turnip, a bucket, and a third thing, and delivers them to a farm house by having a cow kick the items down a lane. Fist played "animal control" many times, rooting out various critters who'd gotten into the fields and gardens. I do think the varmits were a bit overdone, though. They are everywhere, larger ones and packs of smaller ones. There is no way to avoid them, so getting to quest areas means killing them in droves, which does slow things down.

Fist ran across an 85 elite varmit in a cave that gave Fist a pretty tough battle. It didn't hit very hard (it's really nasty weapon was a circular spray that Fist could avoid), but it had a ton of health and Fist figured it would be a long fight. Partway through the fight, though, an npc showed up and helped Fist burn it down. At times seems it seems as if the game is rigged against the elite mobs. Fist is still looking to tackle an elite in a fair fight.

Fit started the evening 72% of the way to level 87. When the night ended Fist had DINGED! to level 87. Even better than reaching level 87, Fist finally got to equip and use her Ghost Iron Dragonling trinket that Lao got for her!

Fist has also continued to improve on her leather working skills. Her great need now is savage leather. Lao has provided some, picked up while pvping, I believe, which is much appreciated. Fist has farmed tons of it already, as well. She went to The Pale Roost in Deepholm. There are elite dragons there that are constantly spawning for a quest. Fist doesn't do the quest, she just kills the dragons for the savage leather.

Fist spent a very long time there, mostly by herself. There were two cross-realm players that showed up for awhile. One was a hunter, and Fist passed on skinning his kills at first, figuring he was a leather worker, too. But he didn't skin his kills, so Fist started skinning them. The other player was a mage. We talked a bit while working the dragons. He was after green gear drops he could disenchant for his enchanting profession. Those drops were fairly rare. I don't envy that poor mage leveling enchanting. What a pain. Fist did not interfere with their kills, but kept busy skinning the kills the other two got. Fist made satisfactory progress on her leather working, reaching skill 485. She's going to have to go back to the Pale Roost, though, as she still needs stacks and stacks of savage leather.

Fist did go back to the Pale Roost a third time on Sunday. When she was done with her farming and her leather working, her skill had risen to 546 (600 max). She is now farming for the Pandaria leather called sha-touched leather and exotic leather. Ironically, the leather gear she can craft now is the same i415 gear that she had been buying off the Auction House. At least she should get some of that gold back by selling her crafted items.

Oh, and unfortunately, the screen lockup is back, despite removing nearly every addon. It's very frustrating. For that hour or so on Sunday evening I used the backup computer. So far, no problems there, but I really dislike having to have both computers on all the time, and the backup PC is slower.