So one of the things I’ve found fun is, when I have an hour or so (on my own time) is to run my own raids on old lower level instances. For most of the dungeons this is my first time visiting but I usually don’t have to worry about dieing since I’m 80 and they are lower levels. Since I don’t know the maps either I do get lost some but it’s kinda fun exploring.

This past week I’ve had a little time on my hands so I was able to run Gnomeregan and Stratholme. Stratholme was great, since it’s level 56-61 I still had to be on my toes when attacked but groups. Not alot of gear dropped but it was a tense and fun solo battle. Last night I ran Gnomeregan, at times this could get a bit boring because usually everything was a one hit kill, but the drops were crazy last night! I bet I sent 30 greens and a couple blues to my bank alt and had the good luck to get both Schematic: Lil’ Smoky and the Schematic: Pet Bombling. So not only did just selling gear get me around 300G but I learned to create 2 new pets that I can sell and sent some sweet gear to my alts. Oh and I almost forgot I also received another drop that I didn’t know existed, the Manual: Strong Anti-Venom.

What should be my next solo dungeon? Have you ever done this?

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I started my quest at the very bottom of the Eastern Kingdoms and took the next 3 days (only an hour or so a day) to work my way over to Kalimdor and then to the rest of the known world. Being Alliance I did have a small amount of trouble in the Ghost lands but one you get out of the old world and can fly to most your destinations, you’r home free.

Are there any achievements that you’d like to finish before Cataclysm drops? What are they and why?

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The hard part about getting any rep with the Wintersaber Trainers is he will only give you 1 quest, after you grind that quest around 5-6 times, he offers another quest. You then have to grind the 2 quest until you reach the reputation of Honored. Once you reach Honored, he offers one more quest for a long hard grind to Exalted.
Read PVE Rougues daily log of his grind for the long drawn out details of this Rep Grind Grinding Wintersaber Trainers Reputation

As for my grind, I’ve just become Honored and will be starting the 3 quest grind, but for a break I read a post on wow.com on how to obtain the Dartol’s Rod of Transformation, which will transform you into a Furbolg. How better to fight the Winterfall Furbolgs for my mount than to fight them as a Furbolg.

   Leading up to level 63 my GM had showed me some of the places to get rep and be able to grab some of the good gear and weapons, well now at level 67 I still haven’t run into any gear as good as I’ve been wearing, which means sell everything I get, which means some good coin toward that flying mount I’ll probably never see

   Tonight I’ll again start the grind to slowly pull myself to level 68 but it’s a long grind ahead, I can see why some don’t make it through their 60′s.

   I’ve been slowly getting back to WoW though, doing a couple quest a night and I’ve finally hit Level 66, last night. But like the title says, when you’ve been gone a month, guildies pass you by, the noobies you knew are now almost level 70 and your guild is wondering if you’ll ever make it to 70 so you can Raid!

   Last night hitting 66 was just what I needed, level 65 was kicking my butt, it seemed like no matter what I did I coulded get closer to 100% to ding, but finally with my 500K of rested bonus (lol) , killing some beast and doing as many quest as I could without help, I did it. Now it starts all over again at 66, at least I got a couple new skills.

   Speaking of Skills, I spent a couple days studying talents and trying to respec to help with quick killing and leveling. I had been using Hemo, and it worked well, but with so many extra bonuses for SS I switched everything and now creatures are dropping like flies (well easier and faster than they were) But once I start raiding I think I may be going back to Hemo, Since our Guild has one combat Rogue, I think the Hemo would just add alot of DPS to everyone that is banging on the baddie. We’ll see though, it may just be a waste of the other talents you have to spec just to get to Hemo.

   Last night I decided to play with a couple macros, doing some reading, I saw that you can do everything from change gear, use trinkets and use spells. Since I use an addon to change gear, I didn’t need that, but the other things interested me.

   After reading on the WoW Forums and BorkWeb some different examples of what you can do, I jumped right in and started my macro experience. My first try I wanted a macro that would, when I’m in stealth, I would pick pocket my target, activate my 2 trinkets, and then attack with one of my skills. This doesn’t work, OK it worked but I would pick pocket and when I activated my trinkets, I would be unstealthed, which defeats the entire process. Moving on, I decided to break my macros up, one for trinkets, one for stealth pick pocket and attack and one for hack and slash.

   The trinket macro was easy, just use the trinket spot on your character:

/use 13
/use 14

Next I worked on my Pick Pocket, again a very easy macro:

/cast Pick Pocket
/stopcasting
/cast Cheap Shot

Then the hard part, How was I going to make my hack and slash macro, after further reading I saw a command called /castsequence in which you add what ever attacks you want in a row and then each time you mash that button it will do the next attack and better yet if you use the ? icon, it’s suppose to show the next attack you’ll use along with the cooldown timer. Sounded exactly what I wanted.

/startattack
/castsequence reset=target Sinister Strike, Sinister Strike, Sinister Strike, Sinister Strike, Sinister Strike, Eviscerate

Not exactly what I used but close enough. My first problem was I started to test it and as i’m mashing the button I see nothing happening, then I notice I’m completely spamming my guild channel with the entire macro like 10 times. Yes I was called a noob! I had a space in fromt of one of the slashes and it decided I wanted my guild to know what I was trying. Second problem, My icons never changed, so it only showed me my first attack and didn’t change after that, so I was flying blind on cool downs. Final and biggest problem, You don’t always want the exact same attack, for a rogue, you may sometimes miss or not get a CP for an attack, in which then you want to wait or add another attack, it takes the smart out of the attack and really isn’t much fun either.

   I ended deleting the last macro and keeping the first 2, I’m not sure how often I’ll use the trinket one (I always forget the extra help) but the pick pocket/attack macro is nice, one button to do a couple things, I can then take over the attack from there and do what I need to do to bring the beast down.

Past Post on other blogs about Macros

• Writing macros, a series of lessons
• Trinket Macros
• The Zen of Mage Macros

   Just a quick couple notes: When you choose your faction in Shatt, go check where your HearthStone is set to, believe me, it sucks to Hearth home and guards are suddenly trapping you and kicking you out of the city!

   Another note, comes from the WoW forums:

Ok this has annoyed me for god knows how long.

call me a noob, call me what you will, but it is extremely annoying the amount of times I’ve arrived in the inn in shat aldor or scryer and i’m 90% of the time facing the wrong way. always trying to run out of the inn and end up in the inn instead of shat city.

ok i may be petty for saying this but does anyone else get annoyed with this or is it just a case of “get over it dude” and move on =)

Elphie kindly answered:

Stand where you want to be when you hearth in. Talk to the innkeeper and get a new hearthstone.

Your position when you hearth in is based on where you were standing when you get the set hearthstone spell cast on you. Hope that helps!

I’ll be fixing that tonight for myself!

   I’m learning more and more just how important Rep in this game is, not really for progression in the game but for weapons and armor you can’t beat it. The mysterious part of Rep is that some quest you can only get while friendly, but once you hit honored, that quest is gone. By finding the correct quest while you have the correct rep standing can give you that extra 800-1200 rep points you may need down the line. Last night by playing the Rep game, back and forth, partialy completing parts of quest, turning others in at the correct time, I was able to get the [Hardened Stone Shard] which is one kick butt dagger.

   The last couple days have made me rething all the faction turn in quest, instead of selling all the turnins on AH, I may start to see how they can help me in the long run.

   Saturday night I login to find I’m still in the low 61′s (like someone was suppose to be leveling me while I was asleep) Eash quest I was taking in Outlands were taking awhile and I needed to feel some fast XP before the 61 slump hit me. So I decided to clear out my quest log of left overs that are not in Outlands.

   My first stop was Silithus, here I had 2 quest to finish, I figured, I’d blow through them and then head to the rest of my quest log, but that’s not what happened. While walking around Silithus my GM sent me a tell asking why I was there, after explaining everything, he offered to come to Silithus and help me out. So began the next 3 hours of doing just about every quest in the area. Along with a history lesson on how these beast use to be elites and how the boss used to be a large raid and now it’s 2 man (did I get DKP for that? )

   All these quest brought me to 30% till level 62. So on Sunday we spent an hour or so turning in rep for all the city factions (which I hadn’t done), and argent dawn rep points, which took some time just to get friendly with then, since I had all but skipped the pleaguelands when leveling. Ding! 62 finally. Now I should be albe to move a bit quicker through Outlands. I’ve completely cleared my quest log of anything but Outlands quest, cleaned the bags and banks of 40 left over quest items I had, which is nice to have all that space back and now I’m moving on, heading back through the portal a new rogue.

Past Post on other blogs about Silithus

• Deadclasp
• Hellfire at level 55
• Silithus

   When hitting 60, it seems the only thing I could think of is getting my faster mount, At about level 50, I figured it was going to be around 600 Gold so I started saving. I would be at about 700G, buy some gear, food and things off the AH, but always kept my gold around 550+. So the day comes, I ding 60, YES time for my mount, Zone home, Fly to SW and make the run to the trainer. All the while broadcasting in guild chat that I had finally hit 60, I’m getting my mount.

   The trainer and I happen to be friends, she works for someone I’ve done some quest for and my rep helped also, so my total for training and the horse come to 595G, yes! I have 598G, I buy my mount and I’m happily on my way, riding around, faster than light (well faster than my other mount I named Light). Once I get tired of riding around, I figure what’s next, I’m 60!! oh yeah, skill training, I visit the rogue trainer and I guess he’s not really my friend, because for some reason he will not train me… What? Skill Training cost gold? I had totally forgotten, you get so use to just going up, clicking on all the training and not thinking that it’s taking your gold as you train.

   Fine, I’ll sell stuff on AH, go to the bank, pull out a ton of junk that’s been sitting in there.. I’m sure you see where this is going.. What? Gold to sell stuff on AH.. HELP!!! After many many laughs at the noob on Guild chat, a fellow guildie loaned me 100G to help me along.. I felt sooo stupid! (specially after writing about how can 70′s not have gold)It hasn’t taken long to remake that 100g but I may wait another week to repay him, I want to get a nice nest egg set before giving it back (which he said I didn’t have to but I will, even if it just goes in the guild bank). I guess this could be counted as Noobie Example #2 (see Noobie Example #1)