Ahhh… 40’s. An “age” when you’ve got a good solid footing under you, you’re strong, you can take the beats for quite a while longer and maybe even survive attacks to fight another opponent before being sent back to the Spirit Healer.

I hit 40 some time in the last week and immediately went to Razor Hill in Durotar to buy my Troll her turquoise-colored raptor mount. Because of my Sargeant rank in the Battlefields, I got a 10 or 20% reduction on the price of both the mount training and the mount itself. Cool! That leaves me a few gold left over for training the new skills that came along with level 40 for hunters.

It’s been a long trek to 40, it feels like. I started just after Christmas and have played this character steadily, daily, since then. I know there are other players who would play a lot longer than 2 months to get their character to level 40, and even play a lot more player hours to get there than I have, but still, it’s a long trek to get to this point where I feel happy, comfortable and powerful.

My adventures in Warsong Gulch are MUCH better now that I’m out of that ghostly 30-39 range which, on my Realm of Zul’jin, seems to be very devoid of battlefield activity, except on the weekend, and even then, only in the evenings.

In fact, one of the first couple WSG’s in the 40-49 range I went into, I came out with 2300 honor points BEFORE counting the honor I’d get for the Honorable Kills I attained during that round. Considering a full week of Battling in the 30-39 range got me a total of 4006 honor points, that recent round was insane.

I’m hoping that I’ll at least have my rank rating move up to be in the upper 50% of Horde Sargeants in Zul’jin this time, because I’ve been hovering in the lowest 25% for the last few weeks, especially as I ventured through my 30’s. I don’t expect a promotion but that would be a nice surprise ;)

Life is getting more fun in the Battlefields in the 40’s I noticed as well. Even though I’m only 40-41, I’m really not getting killed as much as I expected I would. There are more people playing defense, and the offensive groups tend to work together better in our team. I’ve even been noticed and acknowledged by regular Battlefielders of the senior ranks in my range, and I’ve been given party invite privs among an elite list of those given those privs.

Occasionally I’m the raid leader, especially because I have the BGInvite WoW UI Addon that makes the process super-easy. I’ve got it hot-keyed, so when I press F2, invites are all sent out, a ’say’ is said to let folks know to leave their parties if they’re already in one, and the party automatically switches to a raid to allow more than 5 total members. Then when I press F3 after folks have joined the party, everyone is given invite priv’s for new folks joining the battle.

Because I’m a Hunter, I’m generally away from the active fray and am able to invite people as soon as they join the battle without a problem. I can honestly say that when I’m the Raid Leader in the battlegrounds, nobody’s left out of the raid group unless they choose to be.

I STILL haven’t tried AB, but maybe this weekend I’ll get into that. I hear that in the 50-59 range in Zul’jin there’s very little WSG but a lot of AV and AB, so I guess I’d better get used to how the one I can enter, works!

Well, I decided to ditch my Gnome Mage on Sen’jin, and I started an alternate character on Zul’jin.

Actually, I started two alts. The second one shares no friends with either of the other characters… it’s the character I go onto when I want to play, still have the benefit of other characters on the same server, but not be chatted with by my chatty friends when I don’t feel like chatting.

The main benefit, of course, of having your alternate character on the same Realm as the first is that your main character can assist your alternate characters financially when your alt has no cash nor any real ability to generate any in a hurry. Valdesta lent ZenDragon 25g to get started, and Zen has already paid back 20g through my money-making efforts with the new character.

A secondary benefit depends on your choices for your alt’s professions - my ZenDragon character is a Herbalist and Alchemist whereas Valdesta is a Skinning and Leatherworking player. Whenever I get items that the other character could make better use of, I email it to my other character and pick it up from that end to use. I also emailed a few bags over to ZenDragon when they dropped from monsters I killed with Valdesta.

The main reason I created this secondary character was because I wanted to take a stab at running my own guild. I enjoy the guild that Valdesta is in because it’s fun, light-hearted and has neat people who are on regularly, and as a result I didn’t want to create the new guild with Valdesta and leave that wonderful playing environment. ZenDragon and another guy by the character name of IAmBlue started up the Newbie Brigade and currently we have about 25 members.

I try to play both characters for a while every day, but some days I won’t get on to one character or the other, which is actually not a bad thing, because I’ve taken to parking them in Inns and other places they’re resting when I log out, and as a result, Valdesta had bonus exp in killing for quite a while when I had been initially paying attention to ZenDragon.

I’m just getting to a point where I’m feeling some power as a Rogue. I am practicing my lockpicking abilities right now, having advanced to level 16 and training in that skill, and I look forward to being able to open lockboxes whenever I need to.

And so far the guild is small but has regulars who are interacting with one another on the line, without either of the GM’s starting the conversations. I try to party up with guildies as much as possible and I share equipment that Valdesta has made, occasionally as well. Stuff to try to bribe them into staying and inviting their friends ;)

So far so good, tho!

There seems to be a parallel to life here - since my character hit 32, she’s been working diligently at improving her financial state in the game. With the goal of the “mount” at level 40 - the animal I’ll be able to buy and ride around the game (faster) instead of running places on foot (slower) - comes the goal of amassing 100 gold coins so I can pay for the riding skill (20g) and buy the mount itself (80g).

I really should have been writing during this period, writing the discoveries, etc, but… I’ve been working on gathering the money, and not on writing ;)

I’m proud to say that I’m now lvl 38 and I’ve got 107g, so as soon as I hit 40 I’ll be able to get my mount, and I should have extra money left over for training as well.

And hey, I earned all that cash by MYSELF! I didn’t buy any WoW Gold from any of those websites or anything. I worked a lot on leatherworking (I’m at 212 now) and am close to maxing my Skinning skill at 300, and sold a lot of leather items through the Auction House. I found that Dark Leather Tunics and Dark Leather Pants sold reliably and for 60-75s each, so especially while I was getting Leatherworking experience for creating those things, I created a bunch and sold them all.

A second thing I did was run through instances that are low-level compared to me. I went through WC and RFK and picked up a bunch of Uncommon items that sold quickly in the Auction House.

The main source of my cash, however, has come from travelling to other towns and cities around the continents and buying limited-sell recipes and patterns then reselling them for 4-5x their vendor price in the AH.

Every time I logged in - especially in the morning when the player count was nice and low - I would fly around on the wyvern and visit different Horde towns I had flight points for, buy their limited-sell items, then eventually return to Thunder Bluff and put them all into Auctions.

I have a WoW User Interface Addon/mod that helps me determine which of the limited-sell things have a history of selling well in the AH, and from there I’ve learned from experience which patterns and recipes are sought after and which don’t tend to sell as well as hoped.

I’m not going to tell you which patterns and recipes have done well for me, I think I’ve given enough information to introduce significant competition if there’s anyone who lives in the same realm as me!