Yay! Buggy Midsummer Fire Festival

Resetting the fires has allowed me to get ALL the fires again, so I've gotten most of them twice. Someone even asked in the blizzard forums if re-doing fires is ok, and it is.

Anyway, Reinisch hit 60. He doesn't have enough to train fast riding, but with the 550G discount projected for the next patch, he may stick with ol' blue until the next patch.

Argh! Buggy Midsummer Fire Festival

The quests from last year haven't reset, so (at the moment) I can't revisit all the fires I did last year. This will probably be hotfixed, since people need achievements for the special mount...more later.

OK, it's later. I managed to get all the fires that I didn't do last year (including the new ones in Northrend), and Blizzard will probably make the fires done last year doable again after a hotfix, which should get me about another level in XP. Currently, with Fire Festival quests and a few new ones that opened up, I've gone up about 4 levels.

OK, now it's the next day, and it looks like I can turn in A Thief's Reward every day, at least until they fix it again, because of the Fire Festival quest reset.

Upcoming patch 3.2 and Battleground XP

Patch 3.2, now on the PTR, should finally allow "pacifists" to grind by getting XP for attaining various battleground objectives. No indication how much XP, but Blizzard is probably doing this, at least in part, to help people get to 80 before the next expansion, so it should be non-trivial. I'll see if I can test it out on the PTR, but old BGs are usually empty on the PTR. UPDATE: official word is that it will be somewhat slower than questing or grinding, but that's miles ahead of my options now!

Flag capping has been reduced from 10 seconds to 8 seconds, so I might lose my Glyph of Psychic Scream, which increases the duration from 8 to 10 seconds and adds 8 seconds to the cooldown. I often use it to try and cap a flag, so having it last as long as it takes to cap really helps. But with the shorter cap time, it won't be worth it. (On the other hand, most everyone else already thinks this glyph is worthless).

Of twinks and bots

Leveling without killing things is such a strange way to play that it practically forces me to be a semi-twink; I need to win daily battlegrounds, even if I'm near the bottom of the bracket, so gearing myself up as much as possible makes sense. When I run out of quests, I can mine & fish to raise cash for gear.

I've also "needed" bots for a few quests; Reinisch just did Broodling Essence exactly the same way that Noor did -- by following a hunter bot around Burning Steppes and zapping Broodling Whelps before the hunter kills it. Last easily doable quest for him, too, just got him to level 52 with the followup letter delivery.

Getting out of combat

Level 50, like all multiples of 10, opens up a lot of new quests, some of which I can actually do. The runecloth turn-ins alone got me 40% of the way to level 51.

I managed to do a couple of difficult quests that had items I could only use while out-of-combat -- a bit tricky since I can't kill mobs, and I don't have a race/class ability like Vanish/Feign Death/Divine Intervention/Shadowmeld/mage Invisibility. However, as an engineer, I can use the Gnomish Cloaking Device, which does get me out of combat; well, usually...

The first was Scarlet Diversions, which by the comments on wowhead.com is pretty difficult for a player in his mid-50s, because it has a lot of mobs in one area with melee & ranged attacks, plus medic NPCs that heal everybody.

This quest is in two parts, even though the quest progress only has one completion (which ALSO caused some problems). You need to use Flame in a Bottle to burn the tent, and then plant a Scourge banner so the Scarlet Crusade will blame the Scourge.

I burned the tent the first time by just charging in a using the bottle before dying -- it acts like a spellcast, so it gets pushed back but continues during combat, instead of aborting. I saw the tent burn animation before releasing, but when I got back, then tent was back. I tried a couple more times using a target dummy, but even after doing it, I couldn't plant the Scourge banner because it said I was in combat.

I was ready to give up, but then (going by wowhead comments) I figured I could probably try the banner after I rezzed, if I could figure out how to get close enough without getting into combat. Mind Soothe didn't let me get close enough, so I decided to activate my Goblin Cloaking Device and run into the tent. It worked! I didn't even come out of cloaking when I started using the banner, which almost always happens when you try to do anything while cloaked. An invisibility potion probably would have worked too, since you can start planting the banner while invisible.

The other quest was All Along the Watchtowers, a quest Noor couldn't get to because the Alliance version has a killing prerequisite (the Horde prereq is Scarlet Diversions). Again, using a torch meant I had to be out of combat, and with ghouls outside and a (formerly elite) Skeletal Warlord inside each tower, that was a problem.

After a number of deaths, I hit on this tactic: die inside a tower and rez on the top of the broken steps inside (the warlord can't figure out how to get to me at the top steps, so I can buff up). Go down the steps and cast Shackle Undead on the warlord (until it takes; he's 6-7 levels higher than me). Then go near the door (still on the inside) and hope I go out-of-combat before the shackle fails so I can use the torch.

Eventually, I was able to do all the towers, but it was something of a grind. With some of the Redpath quests, I got to level 51, which means I can now do the AV battleground daily.