Lo-Quality WoW

That was the longest half-level ever. For some reason, it just seemed to take forever to get the xp to finally get to 80 and that’s with the heirloom chest and shoulder pieces. And I still was doing quests in bunches, it just seemed to drag on and on.

As was my plan, my mage was puttering around Icecrown. Mainly doing the ones related to the Ebon Blade group, although I’m not entirely sure why. I also did the ones in and around Ymirhelm, which seemed a lot harder doing it as my mage then it ever did with my hunter or warrior. Although it was fun to just jump the heck off the Skybreaker and free fall. I almost mistimed my slow fall spell, I think I landed with 1 second left on my spell. But it was awfully fun…

Ironically, when I finally did level to 80, netting my Level 80 achievement, it was rather anti-climatic. There’s a sequence of quests where you’re pretty much flying around, traveling to various powerful NPCs to get aid for a dying soldier. Well, while talking to A’dal in Shattrath is when I saw the shiny level up animation. So in all the battles, quests and general running around, I level from talking to a big shiny guy.

Of course, at level 80, as I knew would happen, I had to re-gear. My heirloom stuff got shipped off to my various alts, which meant I needed a minimum upgrade of shoulders and chest pieces. Oh and a staff since my staff was also the heirloom version. Switching to my warrior, who doubles as my tailor, I was able to make a few pieces that upgraded my mage. I also spent quite a bit at the auction house. Fortunately, none of it was for gems since my mage is my jewelcrafter anyway. Granted, it wasn’t the most powerful gems, but enough to get by with.

So, about 600 gold later, I had upgraded my mage’s gear to quite an extent. That’s when I ran into the issue that happens a lot when you go flirting around between alts. I was looking at my bank and saw that I had a pair of shoulder armor, for level 80, sitting there waiting for me. I’m pretty sure it was a drop for my hunter at some point. And this was after spending a few hundred gold on a different pair of shoulders. Neither was entirely better than the other, more of a sideways upgrade, but that was less gold to spend on other stuff. I was kicking myself for hours.

For now, my mage is going into semi-retirement. She’ll mainly be used for jewelcrafting items for myself and the PKTs. I don’t know if I’ll take her into any instances or raids, I’m just having so much trouble adjusting to being soft and squishy in those types of places. I’m just more effective dps as either my warrior or hunter. While getting rep and faction rewards would be nice, I do have my main and all the lower level alts that need attention as well. I know I want at least 6 of my characters to be level 80 before Cataclysm. (No particular reason why, just a number I decided on to give myself a goal.) So this may be the last mage-centric post for a while.