A few signs have been pointing me toward leveling alts this past week.
I really wanted some glyphs that drop on the Timeless Isle so I was running my 85 shaman out to the island, intending to follow around guildies while they did their 20 Elites daily and scrounge what I could. When a guildmate saw me out there he said "Oh, are you doing Caterpillars?" Caterpillars? Whachyu talkin bout, Izi?
It turns out that there's a super-efficient grinding method to level from 87-90 (technically can be done before 87 but it's tougher) on Timeless Isle. Here's a video someone made for those interested in seeing how it goes. It's a great spot since you level quickly, it can take a bit of time to repop the caterpillars which is great for semi-afk grinding while doing homework, and you end up with lots of Timeless Coins, meaning you're well on your way to your 476 weapon at the time you hit 90.
I still wasn't convinced to go out there, though. They didn't drop glyphs so what did my shaman care? He only exists to make glyphs!
The next morning I was killing twenty elites with my friend John and he mentioned that he sends the Timeless Cloaks, Rings, Necks, Trinkets, and Cloth pieces to his priest to disenchant. I was shocked to find you could do that! Immediately I thought about my other alt needing leveling, my mage Rixen, aka the original Faid from before I ever dreamed of playing Alliance or rolling a paladin.
And so I was off. Over the course of two or three days I spent several hours sitting around the ghost pandaren village, doing homework and killing caterpillars every five minutes or so. And it worked great!
So now all my "alts I kind of care about" are 90. I still have my bank alt Monk, my 60 twink rogue who will never level, and my hunter I pretend doesn't exist but they're all far below even 60 and will never be played seriously. Oh, my other warrior, I forgot about her. I do need to level Verixi, she'll probably be next to get Double Agent. (Fuck why can't Alliance have goblins? Even better, why can't my guild faction transfer so I could make all my toons male belfs and female goblins?)
Thanks to all the Timeless gear tokens I'd been saving up and the tokens they earned while grinding I was able to get full epic (save one trinket slot) on both of them the moment they hit 90. I don't intend to do anything with them except Tillers Farming but, hey, they'll kill those virmen and birds much more efficiently now!
Gold-making's going decently well. I'm spending it only slightly slower than making it because people are sending me humongous shipments of bulk materials, which is great in the long-run but leads to an unimpressive-looking gain this week. Only around 250k liquid total at the moment but I've got more materials than you can shake a stick at so it should all work out in the end.
(Oh, and I killed Garrosh in Flex with my guild and got the 2H Axe Heirloom, so I'm stoked about that!)
Thanks for the great tip! I'm taking my 88 (been leveling her with pet battles) there now! And if you have any characters on Cenarion Circle, I'm going to be transferring another one of my guilds horde side soon.
ReplyDeleteI have been just leveling pets for 86-90 for a lot of my recent alts. There are a lot of battle pets in Vale to without any hostile mobs. I figured I'm going to level these pets anyways, why not kill 2 birds with one stone. Then again I have tons of the timeless armor tokens from trying to get the bigger bag achievement.
ReplyDeleteTimeless coin weapons are being buffed to 489 (I think) in the next patch.
"The following items sold by Mistweaver Ai on the Timeless Isle have been raised to item level 489 (up from item level 476). This change is retroactive to all items that had been purchased previously.
Cloudscorcher Greatstaff
Contemplation of Shaohao
Daylight Protectorate
Featherdraw Longbow
Hozen Can Opener
Ordon Sacrificial Dagger
Pandaren Peace Offering
Scavenged Pandaren Dagger
Shield of the Eternal Noon
Yak-Herder's Longstaff"
Just tried this out and had a bit of the problem with aggroing all of the caterpillars. I had a bit more luck with the little bulls there. I already have a ton of the Timeless gear stuff, so that's not worth bothering with at the this time for me. Going to hang around there and pet battle moths for awhile :)
ReplyDeleteGreat to see you back :D
ReplyDeleteHow would you go about doing this with a warrior? It seems to be ranged attacks+kite = /
I charged thunder clapped spreading deep wounds to all of them then run for your life rinse repeat
Delete01jaredg 's suggestion is probably what I'll end up doing; my second warrior will actually be the next toon I bring through the area in about a week so I can give more input there but I am under the impression that the melee classes are largely "throw as much AoE and snares as you can then kite" for the caterpillars.
DeleteEvery time I read a post of yours, I learn something new. That's really impressive. Anyway, I'm definitely trying this caterpillar levelling on my mage! I can't bear to quest on it.
ReplyDeleteAny plans to bring back the pod/litecast, or just some other Q&A? In the time you've made back your "small fortune" of 250k out of borrowed capital, I've flipped probably sunk ~30k capital into a 70k return in a bunch of different markets. Would like to ask questions at you.
Glad the posts have been helpful! :D
DeleteI have no intent of bringing back the LiteCast; my intent is to write the blog more as a public journal and less as a resource for others, though if it happens to be helpful to others that's great. So I don't intend to put out a Q&A podcast; though I am possibly going to guest on a few podcasts that have approached me since my return. Still deciding on that situation.
I do recommend the forums at stormspire.net . Those folks are great at giving input on specific questions and when I get a helpful streak I post there as well. :)