LAGWAR | GAMING'S BEST IN TOP NOTCH MEDIOCRITY

Suga Daddy

Getting a character to max level has its perks for us as players – we get the fastest mounts, the shiniest gear, the biggest bags, and the most powerful spells.  We can craft the best items and get access to fancy cities with portals to take us where we want to go.  Heck, if we’re rich we can even buy a ring to take us to said fancy city.  But not only does max level make it easy on our mains it also makes leveling an alt that much more convenient.  With a level 80 “suga daddy” on a server you don’t need to worry about silly things like bag space, money, or equipment.  Just one quick trip to the mailbox and we can pick up all the bags, heirloom gear, and gold we need to make leveling to 80 comfy – all courtesy of our “suga daddy”.  But remember it wasn’t too long ago that we didn’t have mains.  There existed a time when these creature comforts that our level 80 pimps can afford to us were not available to our alts.  A time where we had to buy or (gasp) find bags.  It was time when we needed professions to make us money to buy our next wave of abilities and gear was obtained through questing and crafting not opening a letter.  Most of us haven’t had to live without the creature comforts of a large bank roll and heirloom gear for some time.  But I recently had the chance to start a fresh character, on a faction I had never played before, on a server where I had no main.  Let me tell you, it’s not too hard to rough it to 70, in fact it was kind of fun.

Could Mark Cuban have 1.5K gold at 30? I ask you this.

No money no problems – OK, so I have never really been a subscriber to the “more money just causes more problems mantra” or at least if it does, it creates way more interesting problems than the ones that I currently have.  But leveling a new character in WoW without the financial backing of a main was actually a lot easier than I thought.  I created a tauren druid – so I legitimately didn’t have to buy anything.  No food for me, no water either after I picked up innervate.  On top of that a feral druid is probably about the least gear dependent class in the game (at least to dps) so there weren’t very many auction house purchases to be made.  Rather I just stuck it out with my quest gear and the little instance gear I managed to get my hands on going 1-70.  Knowing that I could be strapped for cash, I went with two classic money maker professions – skinning and herbing.  All gathering no production for this little druid, yes sir.  As it turns out gathering in Azeroth is actually very lucrative – makes sense right? – no one wants to go all the way back to Azeroth.  My herbs and skins could routinely sell for 20 to 40 gold a stack, and I didn’t even have to go out of my way to collect them.  It was so lucrative in fact that by level 30 I had netted over 1500g.  Yup, pretty cool.  Like a savvy business owner my druid invested all the initial profits into larger bags allowing me to carry more herbs and skins.  By level 40 I was sporting my backpack and four 20 slot bags and an almost fully unlocked bank stuffed with herbalism and skinning bags.  You know those internet ads that run in the margins of the pages, the ones that advertise “single stay-at-home mom makes 300K/year working at home”?  That was how my druid felt.  At level 40 picking up my dual spec talent was a breeze, and by level 60 I had replenished my stocks and easily bought my flight form.

My druid at level 30

So money wasn’t a big deal.  Fine.  But what about experience and gear you ask?  Well, normally we kill both those birds with one giant heirloom gear stone.  Besides giving us basically an eternally in-style epic as we level, heirloom items also give experience bonuses.  Well my poor little druid didn’t have either to depend upon when he started leveling – but as it turned out that really wasn’t a big deal.  As I stated before, I was leveling my druid feral, which made him pretty gear independent especially in regards to weapons (something to do with cats not having opposable thumbs), so basically all you need are the stats.  I was able to hit 70 without gear being a problem.  The only issue I had was that my character, when in Tauren form, looked like a deranged cross between a homeless cat lady and a cross-dresser.  (I still remember the teasing…)  Sure it might have been a little quicker with the heirloom items, but I still made it, and without too much more work.  The whole process went very quickly actually, which brings me to my last point.  You really don’t need to exp bonuses to level quickly.  It’s easy to do with or without the gear.  At first I was concerned that would have to complete almost all the zones to get the exp I needed, especially since I was leveling without rested exp.  Not so.  Unfortunately you still can’t really get around doing the Barrens (I tried) but by the time you are in the late 20’s or early 30’s you can pick and choose the zones you level through.  I hate…hate doing feralas…so I didn’t.  I also skipped Searing gorge and Burning Steppes.  In Outlands I barely touched Blade’s Edge (thank god) and Netherstorm and never stepped foot in Shadowmoon Valley.

So what is the moral of this story?  Basically this – we know Cataclysm is right (sort of) around the corner.  So this is your last chance to level a character from scratch (the real scratch) before everything gets blown up in a fiery mess.  So give it a try, let the inner altoholic in you out, and experience the game one more time before it gets blown up.