Ibbinses hit 70!

[tommyg]

I was a bit more enthusiastic about them hitting 60. I'm guessing it's because the game got so much harder after 60. Before 60, I pretty much steamrolled everything with no problem at all. After 60, there are some seriously difficult encounters in the game. I felt like I was crawling my way to 70 on hands and knees. Part of that was my philosophy of "leave as many quests as possible at 70 because I'll need money" which led me to spend most of levels 68 and 69 running old hillsbrad.

I had a good reason for this, though: three of my characters can use the KoT rep sword and my pally can use the pants for tanking. Well, it worked. I was revered with KoT (without running BM even once) about an hour after hitting 70. Another side effect of this philosophy was that I wasn't really rich when I hit 70. After training, I had about 450g on each character, so I had to make good use of those saved-up quests to buy my flyers. That actually went pretty well. I had enough money to buy all five flyers the day after I hit 70. That was a few days ago, and I'm still not done with Nagrand.

I wouldn't really recommend following the same plan. I was trying out "Starryknight's Endgame Guide", and I don't think it's really worth it. I think I could have easily hit 70 in Nagrand and just saved Blade's Edge for moneymaking. I may change my mind about that if I finish up BEM, Netherstorm, and SMV and still don't have enough cash for my epic flyers.

As we probably all know, the patch came out today, and I decided to go visit my faction quartermasters to pick up some new gear. I ended up getting the hats, shoulders, and robes for my mage and warlock, along with a couple choice pieces for my priest and hunter. I'll pick up some more pieces before I make a stab at Blackheart. I'm not sure how much difference the new gear makes, but they sure do look nice.

The only faction I have left that isn't honored yet is sha'tar, so I started the Arcatraz key quest chain to get some sha'tar rep. I could have just popped into botanica and/or mechanar to get rep, but I figured I might as well get the arc key while I'm at it. At the current rate I'm going, I should have no problem getting honored tomorrow, depending on how much I play.

I finished my first level 70 instance, Mechanar, tonight. Most of it went superbly. Oddly, my biggest struggle was on Capacitus. I knew the fight, the positioning, everything, but putting it all together was difficult, for some reason. It took me a few tries, but eventually he went down. My warlock got a new neckpiece. The gatewatchers were a joke. One thing to note is that if you right-click on the cache of the legion and have auto-loot turned on, you won't get a confirmation box. You'll just get the loot. Fortunately, it wasn't something I would have used in this case. I passed on nethermancer. Maybe I'll give her a shot when I get well-geared, but I just turned 70 two days ago, and I didn't feel like feeding myself more frustration. The trash before pathaleon wasn't too bad. I got through the first two sets ok, but something went wrong on the last sets both times. No big deal, I got through them and trounced pathaleon. It was a messy fight, but no one died and I one-shot him. It's nice to have a final boss that isn't a complete bitch to kill. I'm hoping Botanica will be as smooth. We shall see.

I'll get a pic of my toons on mounts with the new PVP faction gear for you soon. At this point, I've finished every instance in the game with my group between 1 and 69 at appropriate level with the exception of the stockade, stratholme, scholomance, dire maul west, and auchenai crypts. I've also finished Mechanar at 70. If any of you have questions on strategy or what-have-you, I'd be more than happy to discuss them.

Happy hunting!

[Richard5657]

Good read, and grats on getting to 70.

[Biz]

nice work. Always like reading a success story. I think I speak for most of the people who read and didn't reply.

[Zutok]

Congrats... I can't wait for the big 7-0 myself! However, I'm doin' all the quests I can! I figured I'd just farm the heck outta motes, etc. once I ding to 70 for gold (not to mention dailies).

Also, I find it humorous that before 60... doing quest turn-ins usually provided AT LEAST a 5-10% gain in lvl experience. Post 60, and I have to do ten-dozen quests to lvl! :thumbdown:

[Khazrael]

nice work. Always like reading a success story. I think I speak for most of the people who read and didn't reply.

Most definitely.

I can't wait until I can get one of my 5 box teams to that level. I'm really excited to start taking a crack at some of the real instances. So far the only thing I've been able to do is RFC because of a lot of OT at work for the time being.

That should be clearing up soon though as we are reaching the end of a huge project, so I'll have plenty more time to dedicate to leveling. I hope to be making a post like this of my own in the not too distant future.