Project Tauren Shaman Part 4: Levels 21-30

Long time no update! I really have no excuses other than I haven't been playing much WoW lately, and for the last week and a half I've been recovering from a nasty stomach bug that sucked the life out of me and forced me to live a nauseous existence of lounging on the couch and watching a lot of television and movies, on a diet of ginger ale and soda crackers. This was a crippling process that made me feel so exhausted that I didn't even want to play video games, which is bad! But I'm back and feeling mostly better, and my shaman is now level 30 (as of 11 days ago). Yes, I've been putting off updating my blog. :(

Levels 20 to 30 went pretty smoothly and consisted mostly of doing quests in Ashenvale with a healthy dose of dungeons. Got Razorfen Kraul and Gnomeregan (ugh, hate that place!) out of the way, as well as a couple others. I even managed to top the DPS meters in one of them!


My newly equipped heirloom gear has really sped the leveling process up, and I'm glad I transferred my hunter from another realm to lend them to my shaman.

I decided to drop Mining in favor of Inscription to complement my other primary profession, Herbalism. While I was making some pretty good money selling ore in the auction house, I figured I may as well be leveling a crafting profession while I level, and inscription is far more profitable than alchemy in my opinion. I actually made a couple hundred gold casually selling glyphs and weapon/armor vellums as I worked on skilling up. I did not go out of my way to craft extra stuff just for the sake of getting richer. It's so satisfying to put up a couple dozen auctions at night and wake up the next morning (or a week later if you got really sick and didn't play for a few days) to a mailbox full of gold.


My arsenal of spells and abilities is really starting to get interesting. At level 30 I hit the jackpot! I got the ability to place or remove all of my totems simultaneously (can't remember the ability name), rather than having to place them manually, which is both cool and a time saver. I also learned some great new offensive and utility spells like Windfury Weapon and Astral Recall. Astral Recall is one of the most convenient leveling spells in the game. It basically lets me teleport to a major town to utilize the auction house, bank and trainers, then hearth back to a quest hub and quickly get back to doing quests. Astral Recall will save me tons of time and money that I would've lost using flight paths. Not to leave out the self-ressurrection spell, Reincarnation! Freaking sweet!

Last but not least, I got all my totems now except wind totem. Three down, one to go! Thank goodness. Some of those totem quests are time consuming and have me running around all over the damn place!

Time to grind my way to level 40.

Part Four Summary:

Starting level: 21
Finishing level: 30
Talent spread: 0/21/0 (Enhancement)

Starting money: 340g 80s
Ending money: 666g 27s

Inscription skill: 127
herbalism skill: 174

Spirithorn Armory Link

Project Tauren Shaman Part 3: Levels 14-20

Man oh man! These last few levels have been filled with sheer excitement and entertainment! Not really. Shaman isn't the most exciting class to level but I'm sticking with it. What is exciting, however, is that in the last few levels I got lots of nice gear upgrades, did my first couple dungeons, earned a lot more gold and got my first mount!

Money Spent

Let's get this out of the way. Obviously one of the goals of Project Tauren Shaman is to accumulate as much gold as possible on the journey to 80, and that means not spending any money on frivolous things such as auction house gear and vanity pets. However, I did cough up some money on necessary things such as learning to use one and two handed axes, as well as a couple Netherweave Bags for 14 gold each. Things I deem necessary. Some quest turn-ins found Spirithorn in Ratchet where he invested a few silver in some engineering plans and jewelcrafting designs and turned them into gold, thanks to the auction house. Other than that and leveling up his abilities and professions, no money was spent.

As you'll recall in Project Tauren Part 2, a couple bags dropped off of random mobs. With the aforementioned netherweave bags and another eight slot bag that dropped for me, my bag slots are now full. Eventually I'll pick up two more netherweave bags and should be set in the bags department for a while.

Money Earned

My quests didn't put me in the way of as many mining nodes as I had hoped, but I did get a few stacks which immediately went into the auction house. Same goes for herbs. It doesn't help that I can only track one thing at a time, so I'm sure I'm missing out on quite a few mining nodes and herbs. I got lucky and managed to loot a semi-rare vanity pet, the Leaping Hatchling, which netted me 158 gold in the auction house. Not bad, though if I was more patient I probably could've made more. There were at least eight other people selling them and so everybody was undercutting. I held onto it for a few days but there were never less than 7-8 people selling it. Oh well. I also signed another guild charter for an easy two gold. As of the time of this writing I probably have another 20-30 gold tied up in the auction house so things are going quite good, money wise.



Deadmines / Wailing Caverns

Spirithorn got his first taste of pugging instances as a dpser. First up was Deadmines, which is a fun instance and never really gets old. It was pretty straightforward and we cleared it pretty fast. I did a whopping 20 dps and I have no idea if that's good or bad. I think I was level 16 or 17 with one or two greens and the rest of my gear was lousy. I did get my first Satchel of Helpful Goods, which was exciting.

Wailing Caverns was a different story. A lot of the mobs in there use sleep and fear spells, sending random members of my pug running every which way and pulling other groups, or sitting idle while under the effect of very lenghty sleep spells. Eventually a wipe occured because both myself and the dedicated healer were asleep, leading to the death of the tank. This led to the group disbanding which was a shame, as we were probably ten minutes from clearing this rather lenghty instance. I was frustrated by the sleep and fear spells that had disbanded our group, as well as the fact that a lot of the mobs in Wailing Caverns are immune to nature damage, completely nullifying a lot of my attacks as well as my nature based interrupt, Wind Shear.

Then it occured to me. Tremor Totem! This little gem of a totem doesn't prevent fears or sleeps, but it does dispel them pretty quickly after they happen. I assigned it as my earth totem of choice and requeued, hoping to get Wailing Caverns again. Sure enough I did and about 45 minutes later our group was victorious, partially thanks to my awesome tremor totems. I got my first taste of the satisfying utilitarian aspect of the Shaman class, and it was tasty indeed! I threw the tank an extra heal or two when our lagging healer was too laggy to do so himself, saving the tank from certain death many times, which was extremely gratifying. I was also second on the DPS charts which I was pretty stoked about seeing as how the tank in my earlier deadmines run did more dps than I did. In my defense, said tank was a couple levels higher and in heirloom gear.

Still haven't queued as a healer as all my healing spells are not very mana efficient and have long casting times, but at level 20 I learned Lesser Healing Wave, so I'll give dungeon healing a try soon.

Side Note: As early as level 20, thanks to loot from Satchels of Helpful goods and random dungeon drops, I'm already starting to accumulate a DPS and Healing gear set. Craziness!

Fun New Abilities

First and foremost, thanks to herbalism I finally learned Lifeblood, which has saved my ass more times than I care to admit. Having an instant free heal over time when you're a lowly shaman in garbage gear is invaluable. Now, at level 20, my gear is leaps and bounds better but I'm sure it will come in handy occasionally.

At level 16 I learned Ghost Wolf which sped up my travel times in the way-too-large zone of Barrens, thankfully. It's also cool to run around as a semi-transparent wolf. Neat stuff.

I mentioned earlier that I learned a new healing spell that will make pug healing easier. Combined with the mana-regenerative goodness of Water Shield and that gives me some stuff to work with as I experiment with healing.

I feel like the longer I stick with the Shaman class the more rewarding it's going to be, which is reassuring as the first 20 levels have been pretty dull.

Glyphs

I have room for one major and one minor glyph. Not sure what I'm going to get but I'm open for suggestions. Time to do a little research. More on my glyph choices in the next installment of Project Tauren Shaman! Unless, of course, they are ridiculously expensive. Are there any scribes on Doomhammer that want to hook me up with a couple freebies? :)

Part Three Summary:

Starting level: 13

Finishing level: 20

Talent spread: 0/11/0

Starting money: 92g 93s
Ending money:340g 80s

Mining skill: 66
herbalism skill: 118
cooking skill: 68
first aid skill: 72

Armory Link

Project Tauren Shaman Part 2: Levels 1-13

Just like with any other class, the first dozen or so levels are a repetitive grind of spamming the same couple spells. Mine consisted of placing an earth totem (later earth and fire) and spamming lightning bolt with the occasional earth shock, making sure to have a weapon enhancer applied to my weapon as well as constantly having lightning shield up. I went on a whole bunch of quests, killed a lot of stuff, picked a lot of flowers and mined a lot of copper ore.

Bag space has been a constant thorn in my side. I vowed to vendor all the trash and auction off any white or higher quality items that dropped, so I spent a lot of time running to and from Thunder Bluff to visit the auctioneer and stash stuff in my bank. Luckily, the very second monster I encountered after rolling my shaman dropped a six slot bag, which gave me some much needed bag space right off the bat.

Mailing items to a bank alt for the first few levels became a non-option when I realized that the postage fees were 1+ silver in cost, which is too much money to spend when you're leveling a new toon without any funding from wealthy high level alts. The money is better spent leveling up abilities and training professions.

After finishing up the starting zone and moving into the more open terrain of Mulgore, I actually had enough spare cash to pick up mining and herbalism, along with a mining pick axe. Cooking and first aid were funded a bit later, after I had received some money from successful auctions.

Picking up two gathering professions created a new problem: my already tight bag space was even tighter now that I had rough stones, copper ore, earthroot, peacebloom and silver leaf taking up five more precious slots, as well as the occasional tigerseye and malachite. It didn't help that most of the quests in Mulgore seem to require the toting about of quest related items. I was having no luck with mobs dropping more random bags either, so eventually I coughed up some silver for a vendor purchased eight slot bag. Other than professions and abilites, this was the only thing I purchased from levels 1 to 13. Of course, shortly after I did this I got another six slot drop off a random mob. Typical. I now have a decent amount of bag space until I can get enough gold generated to buy a few netherweave bags.

Side note: If you're a tailor and interested in making money, always having a stockpile of netherweave bags to dump on the AH is very profitable. People like me who level multiple alts consider the netherweave bag the goto bag for expanding carrying capacity and bank space. Better yet make dozens of these and save them for Cataclysm, when EVERYONE will be going crazy leveling alts.

At around level 10 I did a quest for Cairn Bloodhoof in which the reward was a green quality pair of leather pants with +4 agility on them. I was pretty excited about this as they would be my first green quality piece of gear! But as I went to turn in the quest I met an army of high level alliance toons exiting Thunder Bluff, leaving the corpse of poor old Cairn in their wake. I waited and waited for him to respawn but he never did. I logged off and took a break and came back 30 minutes later. Still no luck. So I googled it and learned that faction leaders are on a four hour respawn. You learn something new every day.

While I waited, I decided to undertake the fire totem quest and explore Durotar. Along the way a nice two-handed green quality mace with +2 strength dropped for me, allowing me to ditch my one-hander and shield combo. Once I got Spirithorn's skill in two handed maces up, it was packing quite a wallop in melee combat. The strength of earth totem enhances my melee dps nicely.

My journey through Durotar allowed me to mine a few stacks of copper, which would, in addition to lots of stacks of random herbs, soon allow me to accumulate some pretty respectable low level wealth (nearly 93 gold at level 13!). I also signed a guild charter in Orgrimmar for 2 gold, and will definitely watch trade chat for more opportunities. This is a pathetically easy way to make gold. Along the way, I also picked up a couple quests for Ragefire chasm, but the LFG tool isn't available for me yet. As soon as the LFG tool becomes available I'll head into a dungeon or two and hopefully get some gear to replace my grey quality crap gear.

So far I'm having fun with the shaman class. Having leveled ranged, melee, and healing classes before, I'm finding the shaman to be a unique mix of ranged and melee dps with the added convenience of healing spells. My healing wave ability is up to level three, but I have ranks one and three on my cast bar for big heals as well as a more mana friendly version for small healing bursts between fights. This will come in handy healing pugs too, which you will hear about in part three.

Part Two Summary:

Starting level: 0

Finishing level: 13

Talent spread: 0/4/0

Starting money: 0
Ending money:92g 93s

Mining skill: 38
herbalism skill: 88
cooking skill: 60
first aid skill: 61

Armory Link

Project Tauren Shaman Part One - Overview and Intro

The Primary Goal: Level to 80 with a horde toon before cataclysm comes out. The world is going to change and I've only experienced Azeroth, Outland and Northrend from the eyes of Alliance toons. Now is the time to experience Horde content before the world changes permanently.

The Secondary Goal: To accumulate as much gold as possible on my journey to 80. I will be selling everything profitable in the Auction House, while trying to rely only on quest rewards and random drops for gear. If at all possible I would like to avoid spending money on anything but repairs and training.

The Race Selection: Tauren. What else can I say other than I have always wanted a tauren toon?

The Class Selection: Shaman. Right now (as in pre-cataclysm) taurens can only be hunters, warriors, death knights, druids and shaman. Why did I pick shaman?

The death knight defeats the whole purpose of this experiment so it's obviously eliminated from my choice of class.

While I love my level 80 human fury warrior, and few things in the game would be cooler than having a hulking, geared up and plated out tauren warrior barreling towards my opponents in PvP, I have to pass on leveling another warrior. With no crowd control or self healing abilities until much higher levels it can be a very frustrating grind. I don't want to be bogged down with time consuming corpse runs, nor do I want to waste money and bag space on healing pots. Not to mention repairs get pretty pricey later on, which could sabotage my money-making goals.

Hunter was a very appealing choice as it's my favorite class in the game and I have a lot of experience playing as one, so leveling would be fast and easy. But I want to try something new. Enough said.

Druid is also out. I've tried leveling druids before and I just can't seem to get into it. Though I do have a level 40ish druid somewhere, I rarely play him. Maybe one day I'll get him leveled to 80, but I definitely don't want to do it twice.

So shaman it is, and here's why:

1) Shaman is the only class I've never experienced beyond level 10. I want to experience something refreshing and new.

2) I want the ability to queue for random dungeons as a healer to minimize wait times. Healing myself and others while leveling will be nice as well.

3) It will give me a chance to get some shaman experience under my belt as I plan to roll a goblin shaman come cataclysm. Having some knowledge on how to play the shaman class properly will allow me to focus more on the new quests and content cataclysm will bring.

The professions: As my secondary goal is to make as much money as possible I will be picking two gathering professions, mining and herbalism. Not only will I be able to offload everything I mine and pick to the AH for pure profit, but the mining profession stamina bonus will be nice, and the extra free herbalism self-heal lifeblood comes in handy for conserving mana in dungeons (by not wasting mana healing myself) and keeping my health topped off during soloing. Also, taurens have the racial ability of +15 to herbalism so that could minimize instances where I'm in a new zone and can't pick the herbs there because I'm 15 points below the skill level needed to pick them.

Having one or more crafting professions would be nice, sure, but I don't want to spend the time and money required to level them. I will be leveling first aid and cooking however.

The Leveling Process: I will be leveling with a balanced combination of quests, dungeons and PvP battlegrounds. While dungeons are great for speed leveling, I don't want to rely on them too heavily: low level random dungeon reward money is LOUSY compared to questing and I will miss out on a lot of mining and herbalism nodes (aka money). However, I still plan on doing the occasional dungeons to keep myself decently geared in blue quality gear. I will do the odd PvP battleground when quests and dungeons get old and when I'm in the higher end of my current level bracket.

The Realm: My three criteria for picking a realm to play on were simple: it had ad to be PvE realm I have no existing toons on in the MST timezone, with a nearly balanced Horde/Alliance ratio. A quick look on www.warcraftrealms.com showed that the Doomhammer realm was a good candidate.

The Bank Alt: I'll be rolling a to be announced bank alt to handle the overflowing bags of my tauren, at least until he gets more bag space, as well as managing auction house transactions. Vendoring and auctioning EVERTHING that drops is important for accumulating wealth throughout the leveling process.

The Guild: I'm perfectly fine with leveling to 80 solo. That said, if I end up in a dungeon run with a group of nice people and a guild invite is extended to me, I will consider joining it. Nothing wrong with having a group to do dungeons and group quests with without having to rely on pugs.

The Talent Spec: Enhancement. Based on the little research I've done, leveling as elemental is extremely boring. I'm generally and not a fan of leveling in a healing spec so enhancement it is.

And so, without further ado, I would like to introduce Spirithorn, the level 1 Tauren Shaman!

Stay tuned for Part 2 in which I will progress through the first few levels and chronicle my adventures, experiences and finances!