Matt’s taking the day off today. He’s busy storming the gates of hell in Diablo 3. Today’s post is from guest writer, Aunaka of Aunaka Heals.
I’ve gone through 3 new expansion releases and I’ve dealt with each of them a little differently.
During Burning Crusade, I waved to it as I was doing school work and was unable to play till a later time.
For Wrath, I managed to buy it on opening night, but then a certain show was being opened at that time and I was working 70 hour work weeks. I managed to get to that one later than the pack as well.
Then there was Cataclysm, where I was determined to get it right. I digitally pre-ordered the game and managed to take a week off of work with no distractions with buddies to level with me. It went well, and I managed to get to 85 in about 12 hours.
Within a week and half, I was raiding (It’s a bit of a blur). As I got further in, I thought about all the things I would have done to change what I did before the release and now I’m going to share them with you, and be determined to do them myself when Mists is released.
Don’t worry about the money
It’s a new expansion, and what will I need first?
Gold, right?
Wrong.
You’re about to start a new expansion, not a new raid. You’ll have zero need for money in the beginning. That is unless you plan on buying all your profession mats off the Auction House or gear from there as well.
Good luck with that, and also I have a bridge I’d love to sell you in New York.
I heard from a lot of people before Cataclysm dropped that they needed to make as much gold before the expansion so that they would be able to pay for their repair bills and raiding mats once they actually got to raiding. This made a lot of sense to me at the time, because I wasn’t actually thinking about it.
Once the levelling experience got started, I felt a little sheepish.
In Cataclysm, I made around 6,000 gold the first time around just questing. I am more than aware that to some of you that is next to nothing, and sits in pauper status. If you add profit from selling stuff I didn’t need and the gold earned in dungeons, I started my raiding season with roughly 11,000 gold.
Perfect.
That’s not to say that having additional gold isn’t nice. It’s not going to be something I break my back to try and do again. So when Mists gets ready to drop I think I’ll just sit back and prepare for the coming of the Pandas.
Hoard your mats
This is something I wish I’d thought of before Cataclysm dropped.
Stock up on old mats.
For some reason, when a new expansion hits people irrationally run around changing their professions thinking that maybe… just maybe this is the expansion that Inscription will be useful.
So they dump their old professions, which they’ll come back to in 2 months, and start up new ones. Now these Apprentice Scribes/Engineers/Alchemist/Etc. are sitting at their computers with Wowprofessions.com up and are looking at all the materials they will need to get to the top. That’s when it hits them. Laziness.
“What do you mean I have to go pick 300 million peace bloom?”
Yeah, folks that’s right, stock up on those low level mats, pop them on the AH at the beginning of the expansion and watch the gold flood into your mailbox.
Now, I know that this is slightly contradictory to my first point, but if those people hadn’t decided to change professions then we’d still be fine with not stocking up on money. So blame them for partially negating a perfectly good point.
Personally, my Mage is about to get busy with picking herbs and mining ore. If you’re interested, I’m on the Illidan server so if you want to totally screw over my plan you should start farming that server.
No really, go farm over there.
Sleep well
I know that Blizz runs on PST, but I’m on the east coast so my headlines stick with east coast.
Hands down, the worst choice I made with the Cataclysm release was not sleeping. I woke up at 7 am on the day “before” release to go to class and thought to myself:
“Aunaka, you want to start leveling at 3am when it releases so then you should just stay awake. There is no way that’s a bad plan.”
Bad idea.
Around 12:00AM I was sleepy, but I trudged through. 1:00AM, I was vegged out in front of my computer most likely looking at CAD or LFG, halfway falling asleep. Then 2:00AM hit and I got a surge of energy.
See the plan was that my man and I would just stay awake until we were 85 then sleep, I’d made us sandwiches, I got him Mountain Dew and myself Sprite. I had fruit cut up so that we’d have healthy energy, I was Mofo prepared! The adrenaline had kicked in and we were good to go.
Fast forward to 7:00am, I’ve now been awake for 24 hours with no caffeine. I start to get very grumpy, and sluggish. Did I mention that I play on a PvP server? That is pretty evenly Horde and Ally. So I was also getting a little more than frustrated. I ended up making it to 85 by around 3-3:30PM that day and then passed out.
I didn’t touch my toon for the next 36 hours.
I was tired of playing, and generally in a grumpy mood from seeing “You can’t queue for that dungeon since you haven’t walked there and looked at the damn door.”
It was the stupidest thing EVER.
This could have all been side stepped if I had taken a nap. You know what that says to me? I wanted to stay up and do this my way so badly, that I became stupider than a 1 year old that lays his ass down for a damn nap!
My unsolicited advice to you is get home and take a nap before release time, and if you can’t then I suggest waiting till morning to start playing, or come to terms with not getting to max level in one sitting.
For the great Waddle of the Pandas, I will be taking time off of work, and sleeping during the day.
Cause I DO want to level to max in one go.
Aunaka is a level 85 Resto Druid on the US-PvP Server Bleeding Hallow. To get tips, levelling advice, add-ons, and other World of Warcraft adventures, visit her blog, and subscribe to her feed.
Aun, congrats on your guest post! These are great tips, when Cataclysm launched, I made a killing off of all of my Wrath materials I had left over. I’m still rolling around in those gold-stores, actually. Sleep is super important, I leveled to 80 in Wrath in about 4 days playing time, and Cataclysm to 85 in about 10 hours play time, but it was very spread out. Since there is a huge population in beta this go around, I’d also recommend planning out your leveling attack if you can, that way you can get to max level as quickly as possible. Enjoy the story through beta while there’s no pressure to start raiding, or doing other things.
I cant even remember my 80-85… its all a bit blurry i know i didn’t take time off work so it took 2-3 nights of almost no sleep, it will likely get released at 3pm my time and i’m not very good at sleeping on demand especially while the sun is up.
I was pretty gold poor when cata was launched and when getting to 85, there was just nothing to buy that cost anything except profession mats from AH which cost too much for me to consider(i have since leveled every profession so i don’t get caught again), with mop there will be gold sinks(must have the water strider mount/new vendor yak), that being said i’m such a spend-a-holic i will be surprised if i get over 10k stored before mop.
i will certainly try the selling old mats come patch, would you suggest posting everything after prepatch or wait for the level cap raise?
I went to bed at 8ish for a 2am launch time (central time zone). We had a guild 5 man that we pushed until 83 (ie someone had to go to work because he didn’t take time off). At that point, we were able to get into Deepholm (completely skipping the mess that is the first zones on a pvp server with the same starting areas which is pure pvp and no leveling). Although it was really interesting to track the guild honorable kills achievement of the first several days, it was always scrolling up.
I really think the planned five man is a good start. As a beloved healer in a ten man, I can easily get a tank for dedicated 5s (with a dps spot reserved for my hubby).
I also had a bunch of pre-made food for our vacation to Azeroth. Tortilla chips with a spicy corn and cheese dip. Chicken florentine soup. Raw veggies and fruits. Etc.
This sounds nearly exactly like mine and “kurt’s” experience with Cata…..by time we hit 85 I was so grumpy all I wanted to do was sleep! And forget conversation….we were ready to KILL each other we were so grumpy!