Boom.

I got there surprisingly quick, too. Less than two hours for a level and a half and some of that time was even spent leveling my cooking. Why cooking? Mostly because I discovered you gain 5 skill points for a single orange recipe and that really itched my "max everything!" scratch. I'm not sure I ever worked on Cooking before either. To be honest, I only stopped leveling it at 200 because the next recipe required me to go fishing and even I have limits! Ah well. Perhaps there are recipes that provide lots of skill ups in Draenor!

I really did enjoy my questing time in Pandaria. The zones weren't as cool from a monster / visual standpoint (it was mostly just normal animals), but the quest lines were really interesting. In fact, the last quest line I was working on involved helping someone start his own brewing company! Yep, craft brewing has even invaded World of Warcraft. The variety of different quests was cool, too. One quest required me to rappel down a cliff to get some special barley. Another was getting revenge on the vermin that were plaguing a farm by ... collecting turnips, painting them the color orange, and then feeding them to the vermin. They were very upset when they took a bite and realized they had eaten turnips! One quest even had me train a variety of moves with an instructor and his class. I'm sure some people think these types of quests are annoying and just want to move on and kill more stuff, but I thought they were novel and fun.

Buying the expansion gives you a single use level 90 boost. You can use it on whatever class you like; if your character is at least level 60, their primary professions will be leveled up to 600 (if they're less than 60, you get nothing!). Now, I don't think that the profession bump to 600 is worth the time spent to level a character from 1 to 60, but I could be wrong. I have three characters that are 60 or above that I could potentially do this with (Death Knight 60, Priest 71, Shaman 70), but I think it makes more sense to do it on a level 1.

So then the question becomes what class do I boost? Druid, Death Knight, Priest, and Shaman are all out for obvious reasons. If I ever make a Monk, I'd like to see the Pandaren starting zone so that's out. I don't have much interest in a Rogue, Warrior, or Hunter (probably because my dad/brother played them). This leaves Paladin, Mage, or Warlock. I think I give a slight edge to the Mage over the Warlock.

Mage would be my first pure DPS class. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Paladin offers the ability to heal, tank, or DPS, similar to the druid. To be honest, I'm not sure what I would be using this class for. I think at first I would most likely only use them for the additional garrison (which I've heard is beneficial) and the professions (I plan on going with Inscription and Gemcrafting). I don't imagine actually playing the class very much until I ran out of things to do on my other classes which might even be never. Any thoughts on which class to boost, even if it's one of the ones I already have?

The march to 90

I'm halfway to level 89 already, and it feels like the levels have been going by pretty quickly. It's been taking just 1-2 hours per level (probably closer to 2 now that my rested experience is gone) which is much quicker than I had expected. For some reason I remember the leveling process taking a lot longer; perhaps that's something they changed in the more recent expansions?

With 90 approaching rapidly, I realized that my tradeskills were lagging behind. Laktose is skinning / leatherworking and while I have been skinning every mob I can, I didn't get enough leather from 80-85 to get my LWing high enough so that I can use the leather I'm currently skinning in Pandaria. I have a similar issue with First Aid - I didn't get enough cloth from Cataclysm to level First Aid up high enough to use the cloth from Pandaria. This leaves me with two options:

1) Buy the necessary leather / cloth from the AH
2) Go back to an earlier zone and farm for the leather / cloth

My initial thought was to just go back and farm for the mats. I need (I'm guessing) about 200-300 leather. This would cost roughly 450-675 gold from the AH. I have about 5,500 gold on Lak and ~4,500 combined on my other characters so I could certainly afford it, but it's not an insignificant amount. If I go farm it though, how long would it take to kill 300 mobs (and that's being optimistic that you get a piece of leather, rather than scraps, from each one)? And, more importantly, how much gold could I make questing in that time?

I think that the answer is that it's probably not worth the time investment to farm the leather myself. I'm making 10-13 gold per quest, and while I don't know that I will complete 50 quests in that time period, we shouldn't ignore the vendor-able drops that I'll be getting or the fact that I'll be getting closer to 90 (farming level 83-85 mobs will be much slower experience wise). If we assume it'd take 4 hours to farm that much leather and 4 hours to get to level 90 ... I'd much rather be level 90.

Weekly Wednesday Fitness Check-in

Let's see, where to begin. My average weight for the last week came out to 178.5, so not quite the half pound I was aiming for; and really, until now I hadn't noticed I was that far away from my goal! I will have to figure out how to adjust my numbers. I've alluded to the fact that logging exercise seems to be a crap shoot, and when I was cutting I went by the mantra of "underestimate on exercise" so I generally didn't log the full amount of time I spent doing non-running activities (e.g. sports, weight lifting, climbing). Running is fairly straightforward in terms of pace and distance, and most calculators seem to agree about the rate of calorie burning. But I always felt like it was a stretch to assume anyone knew how many calories I would burn playing softball (especially because so much time is spent standing around doing nothing!) so I generally erred on the side of caution. However, if I'm not gaining weight at the rate I want to I need to make adjustments and that is the most obvious place to do it. Backing up this idea is that, halfway through week 2 (unfortunately my weeks begin on Saturday which is inopportune for the purpose of this weekly update) my average is is just 178.4. Time to bump up my exercise logging and nom some more food!

For the third week in a row I skipped my long Saturday run. This time was not real-life obligation related, but rather was due to health reasons. I got back from my 6 mile run on Thursday and my hip was killing me. I'm talking 'hurts to walk' kind of painful. Yipes! So, I decided that a week off was likely a good idea. Since I'm not training for anything specific yet, there's no need to try and push myself through an injury. Honestly I'm not sure what caused it. I've never had any pain in my left hip before, so it's not like it's an old injury that I just aggravated somehow. My only thought was that perhaps my gait was slightly different for whatever reason? I suppose it's also possible that I hadn't been stretching enough with the colder weather and somehow that affected it. Either way, hopefully it goes away after this break.

It's very odd going from a purely strength based routine where the most reps for a single set was 5 to one that is aiming for some hypertrophy ... and where I'm doing 8-10 reps. Despite lifting much smaller amounts of weight, it's still really hard! My strength day this week was on Monday and, let me just say, I felt like poop. I had not fully recovered from the weekend but managed to drag myself to the gym anyway. I completed all my lifts, but didn't quite get the # of reps I was hoping for on the last set. I was so tired that night, I fell asleep at 9:30 with the lights on!

Next week I am out of town so I won't be tracking calories or lifting. It will be the first time in about 5 months I haven't done either of those things; I am curious how I will handle it, psychologically.

Pandaria ho!

I decided to check out Pandaria, mostly because I want to get to 90 as quickly as possible so I can check out Garrisons. They sound really interesting.

Mists of Pandaria starts off with an Alliance / Horde conflict that ends up on the island of Pandaria. You're sent in to help take care of the Alliance that landed on the island; the fighting upsets the locals, who dislike warfare. On the Horde side, you're tasked with eradicating the remnants of the Alliance and then ... and then you have to befriend some monkeys. Yea, monkeys.

This is basically where I stopped last night. I made level 86 and was quite tired so I went to bed early. I feel like that alone should give me bonus points!

The basic green quest rewards early on have been better than the epic gear I have from level 80 ... except my gear is enchanted and has gems. So I still have yet to replace anything other than my rings and a trinket, but it's definitely getting closer to happening.

I've heard the expansion has been popular ...

That was Friday night. Fortunately the queue didn't take too long and I was able to get in and play a bit. By the end of my play time on Sunday, I managed to make level 85, theoretically opening up the zones from Mists of Pandaria. I haven't finished any of the zones from Cataclysm yet though, so I'm not sure whether to try and finish up those zones or just move on.

Vashj'ir was the first zone I explored upon returning; this is the underwater zone I talked about previously. The art work for this zone was (is?) incredible. Every time I went to a new area, I'd pause, think how pretty everything looked, and take a screenshot. Getting around this zone is a little tedious though. Even playing on a Druid, having swim travel form available instantly, it's a little slower getting around than the typical zone. It's also a pain trying to find the entrance to the cave your quest givers are sitting in. There was one quest line in particular that I thought was very neat - essentially you end up playing/fighting as a naga!

The second zone I checked out was Deepholm which I think I may have enjoyed more, quest-wise. The artwork was really cool; not so much pretty as it was "oh man the world is going to end." I think there are three main quest lines there to get back three different fragments, and I've finished the first two.

I even got another quest from the Quest Board in Orgrimmar that directs me to a third zone, Uldum. I am torn between trying to finish up the quest lines I have in Vashj'ir and Deepholm, checking out some of the other Cataclysm zones that I haven't seen (Uldum, and I believe there is another one - Tol Barad), and just going to the Mists of Pandaria zones.

It seems likely that I will not be able to finish all the quests or zones from Cataclysm and Pandaria before I hit level 90. Upon hitting 90, I think I would be hard pressed to continue leveling in old content rather than check out the new expansion Warlords of Draenor. So, I think it probably makes the most sense to go to MoP at 85 and check out Uldum / Tol Barad on a different character. MoP will have better gear and better experience, I believe.

What would you suggest doing?

Mobile Banking

Something that I think was in the works when I stopped playing WoW before the release of Cataclysm was the ability to access the Auction House from your phone. Well, 5 years later, it exists!

I downloaded the World of Warcraft Armory app the other day and it's really cool. I have the mobile authenticator on my phone as well, and the Armory app automatically pulls your login code from that app - very easy.

Once you login, you've got a variety of options to choose from:

A lot of these options are pretty straight forward and I haven't tried others out yet. But I have used Browse Items to check out all the glyphs that are available, as well as the Profile page and Auction House.

The profile page actually shows all your gear, your gold, your achievement scores, etc. Tapping on an item even shows the exact details of your weapon in a little popup. Clicking Upgrade shows similar items that would be an upgrade for that item, and View Details tells you the iLvl, what it disenchants into, and how it is obtained.

The Auction House is, well, the Auction House. You can search by a variety of different categories and filter the results just like you can in the normal AH. Tapping on an item brings up an exact description as well as the same View Details ability. For these glyphs, View Details showed who made it, the Item Facts (Item Lvl, Item Cost, and Sells For), as well as the Required Reagents. Tapping on the Reagents allows you to search the AH for those.

All in all, very cool stuff. I'm sure this isn't new to anyone who has been playing for a while, but I'm pretty impressed!

Have you heard that there's an expansion coming for World of Warcraft?

If not, you probably live under a rock. Not only have the commercials for Warlords of Draenor been all over the TV, but Blizzard did a fun publicity stunt in Times Square:

My characters haven't reached Mists of Pandaria (the last expansion) zones yet, let alone WoD zones, so I have no personal experience with the new features. One thing that sounds very impressive and cool though is the new Garrison features. I'm still a little fuzzy on how the whole thing works, but essentially each character you have can have their own Garrison. Garrisons are customizable and provide game play benefits in the form of crafting/gathering bonuses, bodyguards, followers that will complete daily quests for you (I may have misunderstood something for this one), extra chances for gear (raid level!), and a whole bunch of other stuff. I haven't gotten too in depth with research about WoD since I'm still easing my way back in, but I did come across this graphic the other day on Reddit. It breaks down all the different Garrison choices and what bonuses they provide: http://blog.askmrrobot.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Garrisons4.png

It's definitely worth a bookmark, in my opinion!