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Trying something new (multi-boxing)
I already started talking about this here (http://natural-order-guild.com/?q=node/1477). But partially for my own sake and in case anyone else in intersted, here's what I'm doing. All of the best informstion I've found is on www.dual-boxing.com. All the other "guides" I've found are pretty worthless.
Step1 - get a few accounts going. Going to start with some trial accounts linked by the recruit a friend thing. Check it out if you know anyone that's going to start the game - at least you get a free month. http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=20588 I just referred myself twice with the same name and email address and it worked fine.
Step 2 - Verify that your hardware can run multiple instances of WoW without bogging down. WoW may not be very resourse intensive, but running 3-5 copies of the game at once will stress your system quite a bit more than one game. For comparison I have a self built system a few years old. Core 2 Duo E6300 (dual core 1.86 GHz), 3GB RAM, Nvidia 9600 GSO Video card, Win XP (32-bit edition so I can't run more that 3GB RAM) and a 28" 1900x1200 monitor. I'm running all my instances of wow on a single computer on a single monitor in windowed mode. There are other ways to do it just as well if not better with multiple PC's or with multiple monitors.
With the setup I have, I'm getting decent FPS out of all 3 windows - but my RAM is totally maxed out. Having at least 4GB would probably be recommended. I still have a lot of ie windows and tabs open and those collectively are taking as much memory as a 4th instance of WoW, so there's some room to optimize things some more. I think the minute "lag spikes" I'm seeing as I mouse over the different windows is because my system doesn't fully maintain all 3 instances of WoW in RAM - one of them is at least partially getting dumped to Virtual Memory (i.e. hard drive). So as I switch screens to turn in quests and so forth, there is about a 1/4 second delay where my machine locks up. But so long as I stay in one screen - and there's no reason not to while questing, the FPS and server lag aren't an issue.
Step 3 - set up keyclone. This is the system I'll be using to control multiple windows from one keyboard without haveing to alt-tab between them or consntly be mousing back and forth. I'm starting with my screen split into 1/4's, but I'm planning on moving to 1 main window and two very small windows as soon as I get the hang of it and I'm confortable that my slaves are doing what I want them to. This does cost a $20 one time fee. I'll let you know if its worth it shortly. There are some other options, including one freebie program. But keyclone seems to be very WoW oriented and has a nice GUI with minimal scripting involved. (Man, did I just say I preferred a GUI to a script control? I guess I'm getting dumb and lazy in my old age). Keyclone does report to be GM approved - there is no built in macro like functionality that could violate the EULA.
http://www.solidice.com/keyclone/tutorial/index.html
http://www.dual-boxing.com/wiki/index.php/KeyClone
http://www.digitek.se/dualboxing/Beginners_Guide_2_Dual-Boxing.pdf
I found that it works very well with a 1900x1200 monitor to set all your main instances for 1600x1200 (or some slightly lessor resolution) normal aspect ratio. Then you can set two smaller windows at 800x600 and push them off to the side.
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-Magechick
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So far so good
I'm only just beginning and I already can't recommend keyclone enough. I never would have thought of priests as OP before! So far with my 2 priests it's like haveing a constant shadow. As soon as I target something and cast the 2nd priest is right there doing the exact same thing. It's like 2x the smites for the price of one :)
Keyclone does take a minute to set up. I'm still only about 1/2 there, but its playable so I figured I'd take it for a spin. Everything I press while on one window is passed to the others instantly (except for keys where you tell it not to - like WASD). On my 2nd priest I have smite macro'd to target and assist the first priest. So I just hit button 2 and both priests target and cast at the same target at the same time. I can already tell this is fun and addicting. I don't have to alt-tab between screens or anything.
The 2nd big feature of Keyclone is a window maximiser and a mouse focus manager. When I mouse from one window to another, the focus changes automatically - with just the smallest bit of lag hickup. This does save some key strokes.
I can tell I'm going to be getting really good at macro's pretty soon. But I have some basic ones set up.
-MageChick
Starting to hit a wall with trial chars
I hadn't realized how severe an impact the restrictions on the 10-day trial accounts would impact me. The biggest issue being that the can't open a trade window. This basically means that the only g they ever get is from quest rewards. In multi-boxing you never loot with your alts. This wouldn't normally be an issue as you can easily divide up the loot when you get to town and sell it. But, uh, yeah - no luck. This essentialy dooms my 2 priest slaves to a life of poverty. So far I can't even train their level 2 spells. This problem became apparent as I passed level 6 and couldn't train the 2nd level of smite.
Now that I'm thinking about it, I may be able to party them with my mage then make a quick trip to stonard to Grom Gol (any place relatively high level that I can get to easily) and have them loot some stuff that my mage kills. If I can get them 1/2 a gold or so that should allow me to continue to level them. Have to try that tomorrow.
Other than that, the experiment is going OK. I pretty much have the basics set up. I ran through all the quests in the undead starting area this afternoon. There's supposed to be some addons and macro's that I can set up to automate some of the more mundane things - sharing quests, auto-accepting invites from your main, repairing automatically, etc. The more things you can automate or marco so that you can control it from your main - the quicker the whole process goes.
If you do the recruit a friend thing, you get bonus exp and the ability to grant a bonus level for every 2 levels you gain - essentially making the whole process abotu 2x as fast as its supposed to be. This works for every char on the account when your partnered with a char from the account that you sponsered - up to level 60 - for the first 90 days. On the dual-boxing website, there's plenty of people that have leveled all 10 char's on their account to level 60 in that time. The standard seems to be that you can make it to 60 in just over 2 days of /played. Of course that's probably assuming that you don't spend your first 2 days playing with macro's, addons, UI mods, and generally trying to get you keyboard control figured out...
But all in all, the experiment is going pretty well - better than I expected. You quickly figure a few things out. 1st off, get the /follow marco figured out - spam it after every fight, every time you loot, and just about every other time after you do anything. Make sure you have one buttoned macro'd across all chars to make them /sit, or anything that makes them stop, when you get radom run-aways (They do occasionally get outside of /follow range before you realize they're running in the opposite direction from the rest of you.
Once you have the basic control down, the next step is to start syncing your attacks. You need to remap a few things. You don't want to hit <T> to attack with your main and discover that your ranged DPS is standing there waving their clubs in tha air. It works well to map similar types of motions to the same keys. So on my priests, <2> makes them /target <main>; /assist; /cast smite - on my main <2> casts judgement.
With just a basic control, and my one offensive ability macro's it's going well. My next step is probably to figure out healing key assignements - at the moment, <3> is just set for all my chars to heal themselves, but I don't think that'll work once I get to the point where I acutally have to heal. For now everythign dies quick enough that it's easier to just keep DPSing, even if someone is chewing on one of the priests.
-MageChick
Still doing anything with
Still doing anything with this?
Finally got into it a bit
Finally got into it a bit more this past weekend. I did mess up my Refer-A-Friend (RAF) sign up though. I had my main refer 2 new accounts (1 I'll keep, and the other I probably won't). I should have had A refer B and then have B refer C. It only really matters in that I can have my main summon on of the two friends, but not both. If I had it the right way I could have set up A to summon B and then B could summon C. Not a real big deal - I just have to log in with Magechick and then she can port the other 2. Then one of them can summon the first alt again. If I did it the right way I could have essentialy set 2 hearthstones at 2 different locations.
I think I have all three up to level 17. I'm kinda hitting a slow part though. I've been ignoring all the quests where you have to collect some number of items - takes 3x as long with 3x chars. That generally isn't a problem, but I've run out of non-collection quests in silverpine and I can't go to ghostlands as I didn't buy the BC package for my 3rd account. I can't pick up any quests in Hillsbrad until 20, so I had to find something else to do for a bit. I ran over to the barrens, but didn't find many good quests there and I ended up doing a lot of running around, and very little killing. In hind sight I probably should have skipped the barrens and gone straight for ashenvale or stonetalon mountains. That's probably where I need to go now anyway.
Running with a paly and 2 priests let you easily roll through mobs - even elites 4 or 5 levels above you drop like flies. But if you aren't killing and you aren't knocking the quests out it seems to drag pretty quick. I probably spent as much time doing 4 or 5 quests in the barrens to get me from 15-17 as I did to go from 0-15. Spending time to log out on one char, log in with Magechick, port the other 2, log out, log back in, summon the original char probably took more time than it would have if I would have just ground out a level or two by randomly killing stuff.
I spend a few weeks in there playing with trial accounts - just making sure I knew how to set it up and that I liked doing it. I think I leveled 1 group of 3 and one group of 4 to 15 or so before I went out and bought new copies of WoW. The set-up does take some time and getting used to. But it's rolling nicely now. I have my main screen and two smaller ones to the side. When I hit F9 everyone changes focus and follows char A - then all the spells are macro'd to target the focus of A. I can hit F10 anytime and the screen for A and B trade places and everyone automatically changes focus to B. F11 does the same thing for char C. All the same macros work and I can just keep spamming and changing leads whenever I may need to.
Instead of "hard coding" every spell macro to /target A, /assist, /cast something - you set up one key (linked to all three accounts) to /focus A. You set this same key to be the key that sets A's screen to be the big view. Then you macro all your spells to /cast [target=focustarget] something and you can spam away while changing leads and targeting with anyone you want to.
I still don't have it set up to automatically accept quests and trades from my main, but there's supposed to be a way to do that too. I spend a few hours playing with it, but its not really that hard to mouse over and hit <accept> when I'm sharing quests or passing items around. I'll just leave it for now. Other than that its about as easy to control 3 as it is to control 1 - but you do end up ignoring a lot of skills and abilities. You pretty much need to have 1 button that you can mash that causes everyone to attack. It works well to put judgement on button 2 for the paly and SW:Pain there for the priests. I took the time to macro the priests DoT and MindFlay to other keys, but I never use them as every mob dies to quick to get into any kind of a real rotation. You also set some weird macro's to buff everyone. F5 makes everyone buffs themselves with something, F6 buffs yourself with something else, F7 buffs the guy to your right, F8 buffs the guy to your left - stuff like that. You end up overbuffing a lot as some things only last 10 min and others last 30, but its not worth it to make everything have its own key - you don't have that many keys either.
I can already see how some people get away without even haveing their slaves visable on a separate screen. You really can control everything from one screen with the right mix of macros, and addons.
-MageChick
Got the auto-flight thing figured out
There's a neat add-on that will allow all of your alts to take the same flight path when get to a flight master. Small thing, but it helps - anything you can do to stay on your main window speeds things up. I still want to figure out the auto-trade thing and the auto-quest share. The "Jamba" is supposed to do it all - but I haven't figured it out yet.
I did log another hour with them this afternoon. Ding'd 20 on all three by running a collection quest in the selpulcher - figured that was quicker than running out to ashenvale. Time to fly back to UC, train up and then knock out Tarren Mill.
-MageChick
Added 3 more levels pretty
Added 3 more levels pretty quick last night. I like Tarren mill so far - most of the quests are go kill x number of things. Those work great for multi-boxing.
Getting above 20 was nice too, as the new spells (consecration) really help. I find that I'm running quests about 4 levels ahead myself. I did 3/4 of a level 28 quest last night when I was just barly 23. I have no problems killing mobs 3-5 levels above me, so long as they don't come more than 2 at a time. Even then the only problem I have is that I run oom to quick to finish them off. But between paly bubbles and the priests healing, I can pretty much take on anything as long as my mana holds out.
My only complaint so far is that I'm constantly pushing the minimum level required to get the quest. It seems like you can't pick up quests more than 5 levels above you. That does lead to more running back and forth than I'd like to do.
Hopefully I'll be able to stay in Tarren Mill for a while longer, but I think I'm already running out of easy quests there - only 2 left in my log at level 23. Letsl hope 24 or 25 unlock some more.
-MageChick
I finished all the quests I
I finished all the quests I had for Tarren Mill/Hillsbrad and dinged 25. I started running into a problem at level 24 when I had to kill a bunch of level 31's. I made a quick run back to UC and bought what I could at the AH. That was the first time I'd geared up by anything other than the quest rewards you get when leveling. After that, the last 2 quests I had there were very easy again. I see there are more quest that I can grab after 26, but I left the zone before I got that far.
I hopped over to Thousand Needles for a while. It was nice to completely skip Ashenvale and Stonetalon Mountains. I'm only a couple of quests into the zone, and getting close to level 30. It looks like I'll quest there until I finish all the level 30 quests I can find easily then fly back to town to train up, grab some mounts and probably gear up some more.
I'm not sure if after that I'll head back to Hillsbrad/Arathi Highlands/Alterac Mountain area, or maybe head down to Stranglethorn.
-MageChick
I ran all the quests in the
I ran all the quests in the Thousand Needles. That got me up to 32 or so. After that I headed back to town and picked up mounts for everyone. Gotta love having mounts at 30. From there I headed back to Tarrin Mills area and noticed that I never did the quests for Shadow Fang Keep. I was afraid that it would be a lot tougher than it was. Obviously my control isn't as good as 3 seperate people - and I'm using both my priests as shadow priests. But even with some really bad pulls, it was a very easy clear. I may have to try some instances closer to my level.
The one serious problem I've encountered is riding the blimps. It takes my PC forever to load a new zone. For instance it probably takes 10 minutes to log in with all 3 chars. But this normally doesn't bug me too much - how often to you need to log in? Riding the blimps is another story though. You go through that same log-in process to load the maps and data for the new continent. That takes my machine say 10 minutes, to do all 3 accounts at the same time. Of course the blimp makes its round trip in 8 minutes. So I hop on the blimp and watch the map tracing the path for an exceptionally long time. Then I see the map stops and shows that I'm flying the opposite direction. But I never get a chance to hop off anywhere. When I noticed this I closed down and logged back in 1 at a time. When I only have to load 1 screen at a time, and not 3 its not too bad - at least workable. Untimately this is RAM and Hard drive issue. Apparently I don't have enough RAM to load all 3 instances compeltely into memory - some gets sent to VM. I may be able to speed things up a hair, by making sure I have a good defrag run. But ultimately I can only fix this by improving the speed of the hard drive (i.e. multiple hard drives) or getting more RAM. Hardware wise I'm capped at 3GB RAM already. Time to upgrade computers again I guess.
-MageChick
Are you running 64bit Vista?
Or 7 Beta? Otherwise your capped at total memory of 4gigs (this include video RAM).
I was originally on XP-32.
I was originally on XP-32. When I tried to upgrade from 2GB to 4GB of RAM I had all kinds of problems. I understand the issues with the CPU only being able to address 4GB of memory (RAM, cache, virtual memory - this shouldn't include video memory though unless you have off-loading it to your CPU. The memory controller in the GPU functions seperatly I believe). When I upgraded to 4GB my machine wouldn't even post. In hind sight I'm not sure what I was thinking, but went back to 2GB and installed Vista-64. Then I went back to 4GB and had the same issue. I did a lot of research and came the conclusion that should have been obvious, that my motherboard didn't support 4GB of RAM. I tried to find a BIOS update, but no luck (I found an update, but it didn't help). I had expected that my machine would only recognize 3.5 of my 4GB, but it won't even post with all 4 sticks (yes I checked the sticks seperately - that's not the problem).
So I'm back to XP-32, and somewhat seriously looking at building a new system. (right after I pay to put up a fence in the backyard, and re-carpet the living room, and buy a new sofa set, and get a new enterainment center and ...)
-MageChick
Unfortuantely mage, while
Unfortuantely mage, while the V-ram controller is seperate from the CPU memory controller, the memory space on the video cards still needs to be addressable by the video drivers inside the OS, thus it does count towards the 4GB limit in a 32-bit OS.
The good news, there is a software patch that extends 32-bit vista to 8 GB. Not sure how it works, but a quick search of the Microsoft KB will turn it up. Not sure if one exists for 32-bit XP tho.
EDIT::
KB Article about memory addressing in a 32 bit OS
More about memory limitations
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778.aspx
You have any comment on the Core i7 stuff, Fiermi? I just got a nice new monitor for my b-day and it looks like I may need to upgrade my video card and well, why not just upgrade everything while I'm at it? =D
Check out the "New PC"
Check out the "New PC" thread we had a week or two ago.
http://natural-order-guild.com/node/1703
We tossed around a few ideas there. It really depends on your budget. I'd say that if you are trying to build the PC (case, power supply, CPU, RAM, HD, DVD, and video card - no monitor keyboard, mouse, speakers) for under $800 or so then I'd look at the AMD solutions. If you are close to $1000 or more then new i7's are nice. Recently the prices for an i7 motherboard and DDR3 RAM have come down to almost the price of the AMD motherboards and DDR2 memory - so there's not a huge savings there anymore. (2 months ago DD3 RAM and motherboards cost twice as much as DDR2 stuff and they didn't perform any better as the latencies were much higher)
Last week ATI release their new 4890, which is bascially an overclocked 4870, but it looks like its performing 15% higher or so. They're all priced at $250 but generally come with a $20 rebate from ATI. If you're an Nvidia fan, they have their 275 coming out this week or next for the same price and very similar performance.
-MageChick
precisely what mage said.
precisely what mage said. Also, looking at price/performance of JUST the CPU's you really have to go for the truly high end AMD's (think the AMD Phenom II Black) to get anything close to the performance of the budget low end i7's and it is only a bit cheaper. the savings does come from the motherboard and RAM. Like Mage said, the mobo/RAm for the i7's is starting to fall fast now.
I posted a kick-ass core i7 build for around $1100 on that other thread, Mage posted a good ~$800 AMD. Take a look and if you have any questions feel free to ask!
I decided to try this out
I have been following what mage has been writing. I probably should read some more on the dual-boxing forums, but decided to jump right in first. I have always been a bit impatient.
So I started out with keyclone. This program is awesome! really makes it all work. I am playing 5 accounts across 2 computers. keyclone has so far worked seamlessly across multiple boxes. The only downside is that keyclone is bound to your CPUIP, so you need to pay the $20 licensing fee for each individual computer you want it on and you need one instance of keyclone on each box, they then talk to each other to pass commands. On a gig-switch local network I see no perceptible lag between when I hit a key and when the chars begin casting, it really works fast enough.
I decided to handicap myself a bit and instead of using all the same chars in my group or 4 of one type and a tank I went for a mixed bag. Warrior, Shaman, Hunter, Mage, Warlock. The mage and warlock seem to hold their own, really easy for this sort of thing so far. The shaman seems to be leveling REALLY slow compared to the others. She casts when they do, gets on the damage meters. For some reason she just seems to either gain less XP or just require more XP, haven't figured it out yet. The warrior is pretty straight forward, and it's from his window that I run everything. Without a taunt he just stands there doing nothing most of the time, yet he is leveling far faster than any of the other chars. Well see how this ends up balancing out.
The hunter I may have to scrap. She is leveling fine so far, but for 1/2 the fight she is doing nothing. She pulls most of the mobs and gets a few auto-shots in, but as soon as the mob gets within the range limit she can do nothing after that. On auto-follow she is just standing to far away to mele. When I take the time to move and turn the mob to bring it in mele range, well, that time is better spent just letting the mage/lock get another spell in and kill it. I'll re-evaluate after I get a pet. I am considering going survival just to try and increase mana-regen for the rest of the casters.
Thanks for sharing Mage, and please, continue to give us reports!
Ouch! I'm having a hard
Ouch! I'm having a hard enough time with 2 classes, not sure how I'd handle 5. Still I'm sure you'll see that you overkill everything so quickly that it's not really necessary to have complete control over them all. The only thing I find that takes time is running back to town to train & gear up. I seem to recall doing that like every level or two when I was leveling my mage. Now I keep putting it off and putting it off for like 5-10 levels if I can get away with it. At level 38, I just replaced the level 1 mace that one of my priests was using. :)
My threesome is going fine, but I have a hard time finding time to play them as often as I'd like. I really like the Paly/shadow priest thing. The holy damage from multiple sources stacks well together. I can also see druids, or shaman being useful. I also really like the AOE tanking of the paly. Let me know how the warrior works out.
So far I've run RFC, SFK and now I'm working on SM. I didn't do RFC until long after I outleveled that place, so I'm not sure I'd count that one. I think I was in my low 20's. After that I did SFK easy enough. I was probably still in my mid-20's then so I was a few levels above where I could do it, but not so much that the gear upgrades weren't useful. I started SM at level 37 and teamed up with 1 shaman in his lower 30's for the first wing. It was pretty much a joke, but it was nice to have some help healing so I could focus on DPS. I just did the 2nd wing solo and it was much slower going. I even died a few times. I can tank and heal well enough, but doing it less 2 DPSers means that the kills take a lot longer. The mobs also have a tendancy of running off mid fight and aggroing the next room. Even then I do OK, until the 2nd pack of mobs grabs the 3rd pack and I eventually run oom. Even then I can stay alive for quite a while, but without mana, I can't really kill anything. Still I'd call this my first real learning experience with tanking. I need to remember to LOS some mobs, and I'm starting to work on learning to turn and move mobs (often times the priests get turned around and then they don't attack anything). I probably need to look at spell rotations for the priests as I think I'm still using some holy spells for DPS and there's probably better shadow spells.
Let me know how 5 works for you. I would have loved to do 5, but my hardware just wouldn't cut it. That and I have a hard enough time justifying $45 a month, $75 seemed like a bridge too far. Still it would be nice to solo level appropriate instances whlie you're going. It looks to be great way to level. If I could run 5 boxes I may have tossed in a mage for the water and ports just for convienence, but obviously it's not really necessary; although it is hard to give it up once you're used to it. I do like being able to copy macro's and key bindings for both of the priests. I suppose for the shaman/mage/warlock, you can macro the same type of spell effect to a key (i.e. button 2 makes your warrior do some attack, then your shaman casts lightning bolt, the mage casts frostbolt and the warlock casts shadowbolt.) having multiple buffs within your party should be nice too.
"button 2 makes your warrior
"button 2 makes your warrior do some attack, then your shaman casts lightning bolt, the mage casts frostbolt and the warlock casts shadowbolt."
This actualy. And usualy it is all that I need. The hunter starts auto-shot, and I have one of those generic hunter macro that rotates power shots in there. So I just charge the mob with the warrior, and that starts the hunter auto-shot. that gives me a few seconds to grab agro on the warrior. The mage/sham/hunter/lock then auto-follow and run up, then on '2' they start casting. All in all it usualy only takes one or two casts to kill anything for the solo quests.
I found the brick-wall of the collection quests. Go get 5 claws and such. Those are annoying. I think i might start skipping them, except they are at least 1/2 the quests out there, and most are chain starters. I suppose in a multi-box the chains aren't all that important, and you seem to outlevel the areas pretty quickly. But I suppose it's ingrained in me by now to just do all the quests. I started in the undead area (even though not a single char is undead) just because it seems to be the best/closest progression from zone to zone.
Just hit 10 tonight with the hunter and warrior and ran into something annoying. With all the different classes the class quests, and the necesity of running around to different places to do them, is a PITA. But got the hunter one done easy enough, and the warrior one I was able to hit up with the group so it died fast.
Haven't updated this in a
Haven't updated this in a while - lets see if I can keep it short.
After hitting 40 a few weeks ago I've had a hard time getting on to play my alts. But I log on last week and redid a lot of their macro's. You pick up a lot of new abilities and spells at 40, so that took a while to re-do. As I was going, I did a lot of thinking about how to optimise cast sequences with the focus on doing some 5-man stuff (with 3 poeple mostly).
So last night I cleared all the wings of SM. The cathedral was a royal pain. I think I wiped 3 times on the trash inside the actual building at the end. Mostly bad pulling - but it really wasn't obvious that hitting a single mob on one side would pull 12 mobs from the other side of the room :( The end boss was a bit tough too - I went all out and downed him easily, but of course then the gal comes out and rez's him - then you're fighting both. Knowing this, the 2nd time was pretty easy.
That got me 42-43, so I trained up and headed to Uldaman. There was a 46 mage there was up for Uldaman, so we 4-manned it. We one-shotted everything - but not without my tank dieing a few times. It was kinda surprising that we could loose the tank and still kill stuff, but it was mostly 2-3 mob pulls, not the 5-6 like SM was. So even when my tank died, it was generally with only 1 mob left and he was probably already DOT'd up nicely, so it was just a matter of keeping everyone healed up until he died. I'd forgotten how big Uldaman was - there's like 6 bosses there! By the time we finished my toons were all 44-45 (although the mage was still 46 - go RAF bonus!) When I turned in all the quests I had and did all the mageweave turn-in quests we were at 45-46. I got trained up again last night, so I should be ready to go again.
Other than a few obvious quests that I stumble into, I may just finish my leveling by running dungeons instead of questing. I have some more quests for Uldaman, so I may go back and 3-man it a second time. I'd like to get another level or two and then I can start on Zul'Farrak and Maraudon. I'll probably need to hit up the AH again too to gear up - haven't done that since level 35 or so.
If anyone else is in that 35-55 range, give me a yell and we can set up some runs for exp sometime. For these low level instances, I've got tanking, healing and DPS already, so it's easy to grab any other char and charge in.
Once I get this group to 60, time to start in on the 2nd trio before my refer-a-friend bonus runs out.
-MageChick
Well, I wasn't paying
Well, I wasn't paying attention and one of my alts had her refer a friend bonus expire. My other one has another week before her's expires. The problem is that I didn't use my RAF bonus levels in before my time expired. She should have like 25 bonus levels that may be wasted. I submitted a ticket to see if a GM can grant them to one of my other random toons.
But before that I did finally clear Zul Farrak. It took me like 3 tries because I kept dying right after I'd kill one of the bosses - the other adds would get me. Then I'd go back to loot the boss or continue the quest and he'd be gone, no body, nothing. Oh well. The exp was good.
I think my triplets are about level 50 now. The one who's bonus exp expired is still 48 or 49, and my tank (who has the bind on account 10% bonus exp shoulders) is at 51. I'm not sure where I'm going next. I've been enjoying leveling by running instances. And it was fun to run some things that I've never done before. Maybe I can finish off my run to 60 with just a few more instances. Mauradon (sp?) is next I think. Anyone in that 50-60 range care to run something sometime? Maybe a new DK?
-MageChick
Ding Ding Ding
The triplets hit 60 last night. Well, two of them did that is. The 3rd one lost her refer-a-friend bonus a week or two ago, so she's only been gaining about 1/3 the exp of the other two these last 2 weeks - she's still at 54.5. (I never bothered to get the BC expansion for the 3rd either - so she was doomed to never see the outlands.)
Because the first one lost her RAF bonus before I used it, I only had enough points to boost one other new toon to 40. I lost about 25 free levels there. I submitted a ticket, but they said they can't (won't) help. @#$!
Not sure what I'll do from here. The plan had been to level 2 or maybe even 3 groups to 60. But now the thought of doing it at 1/3 the speed of my first run isn't sounding appealing. But honestly I did enjoy the run - and I'd like to do it again. When I started, I quested my way up to about 20 and then started running instances. I only did quests in the forsaken starting zone, silverpine forest, the hillsbrad areas, thousand needles, um goro crater and about 1/2 of winterspring. Even in these zones though, I skipped all the collection quests - so I probably only did like 1/2 of the quests in these zones.
I'm actually tempted to transfer my toons over, cancel those accounts and start 2 new ones again - just for the RAF bonus. I think the part I enjoyed the most was 3-manning level appropriate dungeons. Technically, I did it without any healers or any tank - I have every point in Shadow and Retibution. Although I did skip shadowform on the priests so they could continue to heal and my ret paly is using a 1H sword (heirloom) and shield and he skipped all the aggro reducing talents. I never got to the point where I ever needed more than 2 HOTs from the preists and vampiric embrace to get me though a pull. Generally the instance end-bosses were much than the trash.
If I do it again, I may try to do the whole thing by just running instances. Hmm, lets see - I'll bet these along with their associated quests would get me to 60.
Ragefire Chasm 13 - 16 Horde
The Deadmines 15 - 20 AllianceWailing Caverns 15 - 21 Horde
Shadowfang Keep 18 - 25 Horde
Blackfathom Deeps 20 - 27 Contested
The Stockade 24 - 32 AllianceGnomeregan 24 - 33 Alliance
Razorfen Kraul 25 - 30 Horde
Razorfen Downs 33 - 40 Horde
Scarlet Monastery 34 - 45 Horde
Uldaman 39 - 47 Contested
Zul'Farrak 43 - 47 Contested
Maraudon 43 - 49 Contested
Sunken Temple 49 - 55 Contested
Blackrock Depths 55 - 60 Contested
Blackrock Spire 58 - 60 ContestedDire Maul 58 - 60 Contested
Scholomance 58 - 60 Contested
Stratholme 58 - 60 Contested
But I suppose there's no hurry if I'm going to drop accounts and start over. In the meantime I have some alts to play with. I now have a 60 Paly (Ret), a 60 Priest (Shadow), a 54 Priest (Shadow), a 40 Druid (unspec'd) and a 33 Paly (unspec'd). I suppose I should work on twinking the 33 Paly into a 39.
I've already noticed that I don't like combo point/range bar mechanics in the game. I guess I've spent a lifetime of gaming watching HP and Mana. Everything else seems weird. Maybe its something I'd get used to. My thought had been to level a Druid with 2x Shaman next. I wonder if I can tank well enough with an enhancment shaman, and make it an all shammy team?
-MageChick