The Last Post

Even though I ceased posting, I kept on playing.  Sort of.  Things went well for a time, then I got distracted.  Then I changed direction.  Then I had an idea which turned out to be a bad one.  And so I stopped.

Henry and Company are in the second last tier of 'old world' content.  Well mostly.  I had a penchant to play current content and rocketed Evotika to cap to experience it.  Then I decided I needed some backup and ploughed on with Gnefario.  Then I felt guilty about that and took them both back to continue as a group with Old World.

I took Evo out on a solo raid tour, starting with Molten Core and working up from there.  I capped out Violet Eye from a few runs of Kara for good measure.  I just kind of did whatever struck my fancy from day to day.

Then I started missing some of the mounts and pets from my original account, and transferred my old main, Eccentrica to the new account and server.  Huge mistake.   All the meta achievements came with her, thus forever tarnishing the new account and making it impossible for the new crew to ever earn the rewards from those Metas, such as the coin from the Dalaran fountain fishing achievement.  I transferred Eccentrica back to the old account, but it didn't change anything except for the fact that a few things I had achieved with Evo now appear in the achievement log of the old account.

So, since time is of absolutely no concern to me, I've decided to start over.  Again.  Well, actually I started a couple of months ago, but I took one hiatus from the game, then another.  Cancelled my subs, took another hiatus, then came back.  I've also decided that there is no need for a separate blog, since my interest in writing about it wanes and waxes.  My previous intention of using Eccentrica Jones for non-gaming related things has come to nothing, and I don't forsee that ever changing, I'm picking up that blog again.

One thing I'm doing differently is that I am not going to delete this place as I did with my previous writing on EJ.  I'll just let it lie here and die a decent death.  Inveniam is dead, long live Eccentrica Jones.

Henryjones and the Fabulous Five

Well, I suppose introductions are long overdue and today's unscheduled maintenance provides a good opportunity to write a blogpost.

I started Inveniam with a checklist of things to do, and a handful of tasks were identified as being cornerstones of this venture.  In order to build a cadre of one of each race/class combo in reasonable time I need a support system.  This involves:

- Guild Perks up to and including Hasty Hearth (guild level 8)

- Heirlooms

- Storage Space

- a Banker

- access to professions

Comparatorium Update 1

I had a grand time yesterday playing the Monk brothers, Hiroad and Loroad.  Turns out Monk is an awfully fun class to play.  You get Stance of the Fierce Tiger to start off with, which give you a 15% buff to movement speed.  Level 3 brings you Tiger Palm which allows you to ignore 30% of your opponents armour, and at Level 5 you get Roll which carries 2 charges and allows you to quickly roll a short distance.  Its regen rate is rather slow, but I will take movement buffs any day of the week, regardless of how long it takes to regen.  In short, Monks are fast, fun, and do lots of damage.  A winner in my book.

Comparatorium

Despite having played WoW for so long, there are lots of things I haven't tried out yet.  There are also lots of things I wonder about.  There exist a multitude of blogs and websites detailing virtually everything one would wish to know about WoW, but there are still holes in the knowledge. 

One of the things I would like to know is exactly what differences exist between Loremaster levelling and normal levelling (then going back and doing Loremaster) in terms of /played and in terms of gold earned.  The xp to gold ratio was nerfed long ago and I've never seen a satisfactory explanation of the new formula.

Since my overriding meta-goal is one of every race/class combo I have lots of room for experimentation.  I can level toons however I fancy, so I've decided to devote Sundays to this little side project.

I want to keep all other things equal so I've chosen two races that have access to precisely the same quests, Human and Dwarf.  I've also settled on the Monk class since I haven't really played a Monk much at all and apparently Windwalker is quick to level.

I present the test subjects:

Hiroad the Swift

Hiroad will level as quickly as possible and then go back to the beginning and work on Loremaster.

Loroad the Pokey

Loroad will Loremaster level, one zone group at a time until he's finished.

Inveniam is currently level 13, so both characters, once guilded, will have the 10% boost to xp gains.  In order to ensure maximum equality both characters will use the heirloom gear I currently have available to them, chest, shoulders and back.  This gives them both a 35% total boost to xp gains. 

Once they reach level 20, both will use the daily monk quest for xp boost.  Since Hiroad is to cap as quickly as possible, he will quest only until rested xp is consumed, then rest in an inn.  Loroad has no such limitation, although once I reach a certain point with him rested xp will be moot since I will outlevel the mobs I am dealing with therefore gaining no kill xp and not consuming rested xp.

Both will be provided with 4 Netherweave Bags and 5g.  Trade materials, recipes and lockboxes will be mailed to my banker.  All other loot will be vendored, with the sole exception of any world drop epics or pets I may be lucky enough to find (fingers crossed).

To avoid unnecessary time expenditure, no professions will be taken.  No daily quests will be done with the exception of the class quest.  No holiday quests will be done.  No dungeons or grouping will occur.  This is just about straight questing. 

I'll play these toons on Sundays only.  Sunday is rather a quiet day round these parts, and it will be nice to have this project to look forward to.  The project will be complete only when the last quest is turned in.  Progress reports will be provided every Monday.  So, away we go!

Cheers,
E

The How and Why

Undertaking a project of this magnitude can be quite overwhelming without an overarching plan of attack.  I've spoken before about the merits of planning and goal setting.  I don't obsessively plot out each detail in advance; that would rob playing the game of any joy and spontaneity.  Instead I rough out my plans leaving lots of room for whim and fancy while still providing myself with a framework that fits my goals and playstyle.

When I started this journey in December I considered how best to accomplish the meta-goal of near-total game completion.  While I want to do it all solo, as much as possible, I also want a reasonable chance of completion within the lifespan of the game, and so I need to streamline things and reduce unneccesary repetition.  Maxing out all the professions while remaining self sufficient requires clustering professions intelligently.  Collecting all the available recipes requires dungeon runs and rep grinds and accomplishing that requires grouping the profs intelligently and careful class selection to keep the grinding to the minimum.

What I ended up with was six characters, two Paladins, one Warlock, one Druid and two Hunters.  The profession groupings are Blacksmithing/Mining, Tailoring/Enchanting, Herbalism/Inscription, Alchemy/Jewelcrafting and Engineering/Leatherworking.  One of the characters is leveling through Archaeology and is my Skinner.  I also have two bank alts to assist in item and material collection, sorting and short term storage.

I am leveling the characters in sync and am Loremaster leveling.  This method allows me to level professions as I go along, allows me to acutally make use of what I craft and keeps material management to a minimum as I only have to be concerned with managing one narrow band of mats at any one time.  It also gives me a reasonable shot at finding world drop recipes.  An added benefit is that I never have to be concerned with gold.  I am earning at a decent tick and my expenses never outstrip my revenues.

I work on one zone grouping at a time.  This makes for slow leveling, but keeps everyone more or less together and maximizes xp gains (I am never that far ahead of a zone's questing level to make it utterly trivial).  To streamline this questing method, I work my way across the map in one direction and back again, choosing my direction so as to finish the old world in Blasted Lands instead of Silithus.  See the new page Zones by Level Group.  I will update this page every week to mark the progress of my toons.

The next series of posts will introduce my main leveling crew.

Well Hello There

You've probably linked here from my main blog Eccentrica Jones.  I've decided to give Inveniam (also known as my Big Fat Meta-Goal) its own site.  This will allow me to post updates on the project, keeping it all neat and tidy while I address other subjects on EJ.

I'll post progress charts of all kinds and some screenies of the crew and other miscellany related to Inveniam.

Thanks for stopping by.

E