Monday 25 January 2016

WoD pet levelling circuit

This is the circuit I take when levelling pets on the Draenor and Pandaria trainers. It is intended to take a maximum of 1 hour, to match the length of the pet food buffs, and because 1 hour is a nice, fixed time commitment. It is possible even with mistakes or lucky crits requiring restarts, to complete the circuit within an hour. It doesn't include the western Pandaria trainers (Burning, Flowing, Zusshi and Shu), which I have found to either be less reliable or take longer, but of course you can go on to them if you wish.

That makes 13 trainers per day. On a normal week, this will raise a level 1 pet to 14, and a level 14 pet to 20. On a bonus week, this will raise a level 1 pet to 19, and anything 14 and above to 25. So, it is possible to level a pet in 2 dailies, 1 to 14 at any time, and 14 to 25 in a bonus week. I have done this at times, but generally your pet levels are all over the place, so I just get them close to 25 (say 21 and above) and finish them off with battle stones. Some prerequisites:

  • Safari Hat and 1 of each pet food - you easily get enough Pet Charms to buy them every day.
  • Hearth set to Shrine in Pandaria.
  • Admiral's Compass (could also use Vivianne follower).
  • Spirit Lodge with portals to SMV and Spires.
  • Rematch addon with teams saved.

Starting off at the Horde garrison (sorry Alliance, but easily adapted):

  • Fly to Gargra (use pet food buffs here prior to battle).
  • Fly on to Cymre.
  • Garrison hearth.
  • Portal to SMV, do Ashlei and portal back.
  • Portal to spires, fly to Vesharr.
  • Fly to Taralune.
  • Admiral's Compass to Shipyard, Fly to Tarr.
  • Hearth.

This can be done in 20 minutes so if you are short on time you can stop here.

Then just fly around the Pandaria trainers as indicated by the red arrow. If you have the Path of the Jade Serpent CM portal, you could start there instead and follow the blue arrow, avoiding the longest flight segment.

There are plenty of guides as to how to level off these trainers so I haven't gone into that detail here but feel free to ask, or offer improvements below.

Sunday 24 January 2016

Alpha avoidance

It's hard to keep a good balance when it comes to being informed about the alpha. I don't want to be completely out of the loop, as that can result in uninformed decisions you later regret, but I also don't want to spoil the game for the playing once it arrives. It's hard because that's all people are talking about - perfectly understandable, but I've already read or seen a couple of things I wish I hadn't. If I need to choose between one of two extremes on Legion alpha/beta, I'm starting to lean towards crawling under a rock for a while. I've got other things to focus on without getting caught up in all the speculation and worry that accompanies an alpha, and that will allow me to enjoy exploring the game live, even if that makes me a slow leveller.

I'm glad to say that I've now got all of the Draenor rare spawn mounts - completed over 4 weeks with Poundfist obviously taking the longest. I also got the Ashes of A'lar from Tempest Keep (43 kills in WoD, unsure beforehand as I wasn't tracking. Estimate 120 total). The guild has been doing Highmaul and BRF achievement and mythic runs, whilst raiding Mythic HFC 2 hours a week, getting the first 3 down. I've been doing a lot of Ashran again, finishing the 2000 bloody coins achievement, and I started doing nemesis a second time (this time on my main) to help out others and have been sucked into completing it again.
But what I've been doing more than anything is levelling pets. This has seen me go from 238th to 72nd on wowprogress pet score, although it doesn't update reliably so I've started using warcraftpets.com instead. I've still a lot to go, but after seeing how effective it is to level during pet bonus week, I'm doing the bare minimum until that comes around again (17th Feb) so I don't burn out. I'll post a follow up explaining my circuit.

It's also a good time to be levelling alts. Not that I really need more alts or that I'm enjoying the levelling process, both topics I should write about. But I took a self-RAF during the sale so I'm taking advantage of it. There's always reasons cropping up to have alts on the opposite faction/another server/another account.