Well I keep wanting to write something and post a pic of my characters, but as usual i don't write at home where my pics are, and I don't have pics at work where I usually write my posts.  So pics can wait I guess.

My paladin is now 61, and happily questing in Outland.  I kept him protection, and I love it to no extent.  The new spell that is just awesome is Hammer of the Righteous. Armed with that, and the gear upgrades that you get from some of the first quests in Outland, I can take on 5-7 mobs on a time, and they all dead in seconds.  If mobs are undead or demons - of which there are plenty here - things go down even faster.  So in shorts questing and leveling here for a protection pally is quick, painless and fun.

I've also slowed down and actually read all the quests.  Originally, when I level my lock through Outland I felt it was too quick, and I would rarely read quests completely.  With my pally there is no rush.  I will quests as quickly and efficiently as possible, but I will also take my time to read quest, and perhaps complete some of the quest lines to the end.

Anouther big achievement is getting my Blacksmithing to 300.  That was quite a quest.  The amount of materials you need to squeeze the last 40 levels of Balcksmithing is amazing.  On top of it the fact that ore is now so scarse!  It seems all the newly minted Death Knights are all doing something related to ore - black smithing, engineering or jewelcrafting.  The places where I would usually be able to mine Thorium and Mithril are now swamped with death knights running around and ninjaing your nodes right from under your nose.

Here are some extra tips I've learned in blacksmithing.  When it gets really expencive to make things to get points, make things that are orange.  Because it realy sucks when you make something that is yellow skillup color and it reaquired a bit of mats, and it gives you no points.  So what's the risk there?  Well at some point I was really upset because i crated 8 mithrill pants and got no skill up!  That was about 100 mithril bars!  So from then on I started to make things that were orange, even if they were alot more mats, at least I knew exactly how much it's going to cost me to make things for each point.

Well I've hit level 80 over Christmas.  It was a great achievement.  Now I can begin raiding and doing heroics.  Some of my favorite things to do in WoW, especially with my guild.

First and the most important thing though is gear.  The guild may be ready to do Nax, but I may not be. My philosophy on gear is:

• Get things that are not too valuable, since they will be replaced. Don't overspend on gear that may be replaced on the first drop in that heroic/first raid run.


• Get gemmed and enchanted, but once again don't go overboard, you will replace things.  Go for the cheaper versions for starting gear.


• Get as close to your Hit Cap as possible - with three points into talents into destro and affliction hit talents you need 365 Hit to be hitcapped.  Who cares how much spell power you have if your Dots are not landing where they supposed to and your shadowbolts are flying off to the side.


• Balance your gear.  I don't believe glass cannon locks.  You're mana should be OK to cast a few things, your stamina should give you enough points to life tap occasionally and also to survive a tough fight or pull where healer may be overtaxed.  A lock is not a mage, and thus should not be bust damage then dead (no offense to our mage counterparts I hope).

I've always read in many books that setting goals will drive you to achieve better and faster.  Here is an interesting true story on having a burning goal. -

This happened in wintergrasp.  My first time there.  I'm runnig around exploring when I notice saronite nodes here and there.  Mind you this is the first time i mined saronite.  Even then my mining was in the upper 430's from mining the cobalt.  So i am just running around and my mining is at 442.  Suddenly I run into a Titanium node.   My thoughts - OH MY GOD! I run up to mine it only to find out that I'm too low, need 450 mining.  I panic, then I decide to quickly run around and mine the saronite nodes, I only need 8.

So I'm running around, and getting the saronite.  There is tons of it in that zone.  And guess what, I fin anouther node of Titanium.  OH MY GOD.  So I pray pray noone ( especially some alliance toon) will find it before I get to 450.

Well to make the longs torry short, I did not get the titanium nodes :(.  I got to 450 and right at that moment anouther horde player got to them.  I walked away from there with 450 mning though, and 3 stacks of saronite.

I can't wait for Thursday to be here.  Wrath is coming out and I'm very exited to begin leveling my main in the new zone.  I've had the beta key for quite a while, but I've avoided playing the starter zones with the copy of my main - Moramor.  Instead I've experimented with the Blizzard premade level 80 copies.  So I've purposely missed all the content in the begging of Northrend to enjoy it better when expansion comes out.
For now, I've been doing a bit of raiding with the guild.  We've downed first three bosses in Mt. Hijal, that was fun.  I've also been leveling my druid a bit.  I just enjoy playing with him.  He's also has inscription that I'm leveling along with him.  I've been also trying to get rid of all of my stuff I've been hoarding in my banks.  So far so good.  The only thing I can't to be able to get rid of is the spell cloth.  Nobody wants it.  Primal mooncloth went well, and I'm making the 28 slot soulshard bags from the shadowweave cloth and they are selling as well.

Inscription prices are dropping like the Stock Market.  Now that there are tons of people who do inscription, there are too many glyphs in the market.  The herb prices are still high though since demand for them is now easing up at this point.  If you want to have a good bundle of cash for the Wrath, drop one of your professions and pick up herbalism and just leveling it to max.  All the herbs you gather in the process will make you rich.

As far as my copy of Wrath, i've ordered a collector's edition from Amazon.com.  It should be delivered on the release day.  I hope it is, since I took the next day off, and would have to drive to work to pick it up if it comes late.  Cross my fingers :D.

I've decided to pick up inscription on my druid.  My druid, who's my newest favorite Alt. is the second character I've created when I originally began playing WoW.  He fell out of my favor, and became my main banking and AH toon.  Originally he was herbalist/alchemist.  However, I've droped alchemy and leveled enchanting on him to DE my unneeded greens and do DE arbitrage in AH.

I was playing around with the idea of picking up inscription on my druid, since he had herbalism already.  The other day I was scanning the AH for the glyphs for sale, and after buying a couple, my decision was sealed.  Today I've droped enchanting ( I'll level it back up to a needed level to DE on anouther alt), and began my journey to gather some lower level herbs and level inscription.

The two glyphs I've picked up were:

Glyph of Rake

Glyph of Rejuvenation

Both glyphs are great and pretty useful for my leveling as a druid.  One will help with the runners when I'm in cat form ( most of the time), the other will help me during those times when you're almost dead, and throw a Rejuvenations on yourself before going back into cat/bear form to finish the mob off.

Right now people are making a lot of money with inscription, simply because it's new and market is not yet saturated.  People can charge what ever they want.  Also, the minor glyphs are not trainable, you have to discover them.  They are selling for ridiculous prices right now.  In the future Inscription may not be as profitable as it is right now.  However, at this stage of WoW, i have plenty of ways to make Gold in WoW even without a crafting profession.  So inscription will definitely will be useful in playing and leveling.

I hope that in the later game there will be glyphs that are discovery only or reputation, that will make this profession profitable as well.  So far, back to gathering peace blooms and silverleafs :).

While clearing out the mail boxes on my bank alts, I was thinking to my self - Wow! What a mess. It seems that it never goes away. The more I try to organize it the more it seems to become more disorganized. Then I through back to my room, my office space, my clothes in the closet. Here is the thing, they are all in the same "state".

I've rediscovered Fishing. Now my fishing previously was at about 295, which I got there to get my cooking above 350. Then i kinda stopped fishing. I did not feel like going back to Azeroth to fish, and yet I found fishing in Outland a bit tedious since it would take 8-9 fish to go to the next level. Well the other day I wanted a different experience form WoW, so i logged in as Moramor, went to Cenarion Expedition's outpost in Zangarmarsh, bought some lure and began fishing. I actually found it fun.

After catching about 30 fish in open water, I started to run around and fishing in the pools that are sprinkled all around the water in that area. Well, let me tell you, it was actually fun, and profitable. I was catching trunks from the floating debris pools, including the Golden Darter, which sells very very well in AH in raw form or in the fish sticks, which grant +healing bonus. There is also a fish which is gray in quality, but sells for 6 gold!

Finally, I was also pulling out motes of water. These darn motes which when I was making my frozen set I needed so much. I used to kill tons of Water Elementals for those motes. I could have just fished, and got motes, fishing experience and fish for my troubles. Oh well. I am going to try now to fish the pure water pools to see how many motes I get there. Motes from fish and wreckage pools are uncommon, but still come pretty well.

It seems fishing is not something people level or bother with. Well from my recent experience, I would say that you should level it, and use it to get cools stuff and profit at the same time.

Here is a cool site I found related to fishing in WoW: El's Extreme Anglin' - WoW Fishing Guide

Something terrible is happenning on my server!  There is a shortage of the basic JC cut Gems.  I recently got a new pair of Pants in Kara with Three yellow sockets.  When I ran to the AH to pick up some nice +6 hit yello gems, to my horror there are none.  There are also not too many rare gems in the AH either.  I usually don't look too much at those, since I careful what money I spend.  However, I've noticed there are not many of cut rare gems either.  I've also see tons of uncut undommong gems in AH.

I brought this horrible chain of event to my guild mates.  A few of them laughed and said that they guy who used to be the main Horde Gem cutter on our server quick and went to play Age of Connan!  This is terrible.  Othrer Jewelcrafter have to step up, or we will be gemless :(.

If you are a Jewelrafter on Medivh Horde server, step up and start cutting gems and making money and help us socket our gear!

When it comes to making money while leveling your WoW character, most of the people will advise to take up two gathering professions until you're way into your 40 and I would even advise to keep it into your 60's. I am actually leveling my Draeni Shaman in this manner, and boy do I have tons and tons of gold :D.  But is this a good advice, and is it the best in all cases?

If you chose to start leveling a crafting profession without having another toon to provide you with extra cash you will be a very very poor WoW soul. This I've learned the hard way when I just began my WoW journey. It is possible to enjoy the items you craft while you level, but you will be very tight on money.