Jocelyne's Elixir Kick

Jocelyne's Elixir Kick

Jocy, as we all know, is a "boosted" child, skipping her formative years/levels from 27 to an instant 90. There are many advantages in taking that route to adulthood (skipping the leveling process for 63 levels being a major one). There are disadvantages, too.
Jocy had tinkered around with mining and gems for her professions, but she lost what training she had when she was boosted. She wasn't too concerned, since she really hadn't figured out what she wanted to focus on, anyway.

Meanwhile, Happy and Wild were chiding JB, the family alchemist, to get to work on raising her skill level for the new expansion, Warlords of Draenor (WoD). Sure, JB had level 600 skill, but she needed to work on getting to level 700 skill. The problem was that JB was still living in the days of Cataclysm, two expansions behind and stuck at level 85. She would need to climb the five levels to 90 just to begin the process of raising her skill in alchemy, and Wild didn't want to wait for JB to level up.

Jocy decided to volunteer. She was willing to learn both herbalism (so she could collect the herbs needed by alchemy) and alchemy from scratch. Go for it, Wild told her, wondering if Jocy had the will and the stamina to find and collect literally thousands of herbs from all over the worlds of Azeroth, Outland, Northrend, Pandaria, and Draenor.

She had the advantage of being level 93 and having a flying beast to speed the travelling, but there were still some surprises along the way. She started strong with such simple herbs as  peacebloom, silverleaf, mageroyal, and other low end herbs.  Her fingers grew sore and her eyes bleary, but she persisted. The more herbs she collected, the farther afield she had to go to find new ones.

Some were easy picking, but there were many, mostly older, herbs that took time and patience to collect. Goldthorn was so hard to farm Jocy had to beg for help from Happy by buying a few to help her over the hump. Those old herbs can be pricey, too. Many players are too lazy to farm them the old fashioned way. Jocy did her best, but when confronted with the underwater world of Vash'jr she balked at the "old fashioned way." Wild encouraged her to try (he would, since he could simply shapeshift into a fish), but the prospect of deep sea diving in all that heavy armor wasn't much to her liking. Pulling stranglekelp from shallow waters was as close to the deep end of the pool as she wanted to get. Happy relinquished a little more gold to get her past that hurdle.

Jocy also ran into some travelling restrictions by being a boosted girl. For example, the only portal open to the lands of the Cataclysm was Deepholme. The portals to the others, like the Twilight Highlands, had no active portals for Jocy because she had skipped past all the quests required to open them up. Still, she made do. She took advantage of the zeppelins in Org. When there was no other option, she simply hopped on her flying mount and flew to her next destination. That didn't always work out quite like she expected. There was the time Jocy forgot that flying too high would separate her from her mount - it was a long fall, and a long walk on foot to find the spot for a resurrection. At least twice Jocy accidentally sent her mount away while still in the air. That didn't kill her, but the fall was still frustrating and scary.

One of the more complicated journeys was trying to find a way into the Outlands. The huge Portal in the Blasted Lands was the only way Jocy knew of to get there. Going through it (yes, Jocy flew into it to see what would happen) deposited her at Ashran in Draenor. Eventually Jocy learned that a new Outland portal had been added in the Orgrimmer Drag.

Along the way Jocy had fun with a lot of the elite monsters she encountered. One-shotting elites that once spooked the poop out of her family was a fun payback. Her scariest moment, though, oddly enough, was back at that portal in the Blasted Lands. Jocy had been part of the great battle when the portal to Draenor was opened, but she didn't realize that the battles were still ongoing! Jocy was picking flowers in the middle of a battlefield in the Blasted Lands well away from the portal when she noticed she was getting hit by a couple of armored hostiles. Usually, one swing was enough to turn a mob into dead mush. The hits kept coming, though, as they say, and Jocy started to take damage. What the . . .! Jocy finally took a look around and found that she had landed in the midst of an enemy camp full of level 90 elites.

Jocy is level 93, and no pushover. She could take an elite or five and still keeping picking flowers, but the skirmish was attracting others and the danger level started to rise. For the umpteenth time Jocy wished she had a fast get away spell. Without that, at least she could stun a few, and, staggering a bit, finally broke free of the gang of hostiles, but it was an ugly retreat.

It took Jocy three days to raise her alchemy from level 1 - 600. Draenor herbs are very cheap, so she'll likely just buy them to continue her leveling to skill 700. The herbs are so cheap Happy won't even offer them for sale. He just hands Jocy bags full whenever she needs them.

All that effort also got Jocy a small bonus - She went from level 93 + 1% to level 93 + 30%.

On the raiding front there is the hint of a possibility of Meitha Guild attempting a Highmaul raid on the 29th (that's tomorrow from the time of this writing). I assume they will start with Normal mode. Wild isn't ready. Still too rusty, still needing things, still not sure I really want to get back into that. Still, Wild prepares. He's happy he will start getting Draenor level potions and flasks soon from Jocy. He's raised his gear level to i624, and if pressed could steal a few more bags of gold from Happy and buy his way to level i630. Wild has succeeded at the Bronze level in the Proving Grounds, and is going to take his shots at the Silver level. I have addons to install, though far fewer these days. I also need to install Teamspeak. I'd like to listen in to the raid even though Wild won't likely be in it. Wild's biggest drawback is he hasn't even attempted the Looking For Raid (LFR) version of the raid. I just hate doing LFR. The day Wild steps into LFR raiding again is the day Wild gets serious about raiding.