Dings and D'ohs

DING! StoneKold is Level 80 at last, okay so he’s a Deathknight and only had to go 25 levels but hey, big deal, it made me happy. I finally got there yesterday afternoon while my better half was engrossed in Eastenders – The Movie (Sunday omnibus). I had already cleared Sholazar Basin of quests, started my dailies for the Oracles. I then moved up to Icecrown and completed the quests to begin the Ebon Blade grind, finished the Fleshwerks and ended up dinging during the starting quests for the Argent Vanguard. WOOT! And relax!

So, what now? Well as previously intimated I jumped over to my ‘never seen the light of day since pre-WotLK’ Paladin, MacNeilly. He emerged, blinking, out of the Aldor bank in Shattrath, wondering where the hell all the people went! Well I decided to show him; a quick port to Stormwind, a short ride up to the docks (docks, I don’t remember any docks) and on to the first boat to Borean Tundra. I went into the Inn in Valiance Keep, logged on to McRaffles, purchased a book of Cold Weather Flying and promptly posted it to MacNeilly. Back onto MacNeilly, pick up mail, learn and up up and away. Jeez! How slow? Non-epic flying mounts FTL.

Anyway I take him on a little tour of the Tundra, just to get him acclimatised, and seconds later a mining node pops up on my mini-map. Ha-ha, I know I can’t skill-up (forgot to pickup Grandmaster Mining) however, it wouldn’t hurt to dust down my pick and have a go, would it? Wrong! Halfway through mining the node I get jumped by two smugglers in the Abandoned Reach. Not really a problem, wrong again, I start my normal rotation, but half of the damn buttons have disappeared, where did they go? That’s when I realised; I hadn’t used him in such a long time, all of his talent points were sitting unallocated…..D'OH! More by luck than judgement (excuse the pun) I managed, by the skin of my teeth, to kill the smugglers, loot the node and get my sorry ass outta there double-quick (well as quick as you can on a non-epic gryphon)

Back to Valiance Keep, train Grandmaster Mining and Blacksmithing and alt-tab onto Elitest Jerks Pally forum to find a decent levelling build. I decide to go Retribution (used to be Protection) and log back on and assign the points. I then, slowly, flew towards Dalaran, picking up a few mining skill points and doing a better job taking down the odd mob. I eventually made it to Dalaran and made the ‘A Hero’s Welcome’ inn my new home. I then decided to bite-the-bullet and transfer enough cash for him to learn epic flying and purchase a Swift Purple Gryphon. Luckily my AH shenanigans over the past couple of weeks allowed me to cover this without any issues, still, it did make a fair dent in my bank account. Ah well it’s only money, I’m sure being able to mine on a fast flying mount will soon pay for itself.

~McRaffles