I was going to run battlegrounds until I realized I hadn’t died. Ironically, when I started running battlegrounds, I completely forgot that Inner Fire wasn’t maintained after death, so, I probably ran a few battlegrounds without Inner Fire up. Never having died, it was up from the time I got the spell.

My first battleground, I had exactly 1000 hit points, and, topped the healing charts, earned Warsong Gulch Victory, Warsong Gulch Perfection, First Honorable Kill and a number of discoveries. I’ve since farmed quite a bit more gear and am generally around 1350 hit points self-buffed in Battlegrounds.

Of course, running instances with the Tabards brings a decent amount of rep per run – sometimes close to 3000 rep, so, it doesn’t take too many runs to get to exalted, and, while leveling cooking, several of the recipes are 2-3 gold – with a 10 gold cap, that means buying a few, running some instances or selling some loot from your bags to bring in a little cash.

Once you get cooking near 300, you need fish from Outlands and some cooking recipes from Terrokar Forest. You also need a recipe from Zangarmarsh near the Cenarion Village. The run started rather well – I took the flight path to Duskwood and ran through Deadwind Pass. I don’t ever remember spiders falling down, but, as I was mounted, I would aggro them but they never caught me. While in Swamp of Sorrows, I opened the flight path, then, it was time for the run through Blasted Lands.

I almost made it to the base, using Hand of Protection and Holy Shocking myself and using Word of Glory, but, one mistimed heal and I died. I rezzed close enough to open the flight path and then made the trek to the Dark Portal. Along the way, I aggroed one of the Hyena’s which aggroed a bird, and a boar… and I was bounced along until I died again. Getting to the portal resulted in one more death from the mobs walking around the rim of the crater. Level 20 has a very large aggro range, and, it is about to get worse.

Once I ran through the portal, I thought, finally, once I open up the flight path I can fly to Honor Hold… nope. You don’t know any flight paths connected to this one. Repair my armor, look at the path through Hellfire and run.

I mounted up and ran through and made it to the giant elite before dying using Hand of Protection after getting hit and dismounted. After watching the guard patterns, I realized that they don’t patrol back and forth, but, walk towards him and disappear, so, I waited for the next group to pass, mounted up and met the next patrol coming up and died. After this, it was pretty smooth sailing to Honor Hold, aggroing mobs I couldn’t even see, but, even on a 60% mount, I was able to outrun them. I opened up the flight path and set my sights on Zangarmarsh.

Of course, we have another flight path in Western Hellfire which I opened, but, made the mistake of aggroing a boar on the way, missed the road cutoff and didn’t want to doubleback and get dismounted. In retrospect, I should have as I aggroed more birds than I’ve ever seen. If there were that many birds when I quested, getting those feathers would have been easy. Opening the flight path, I resumed by trek back down the road, and followed the path through the ravagers. I almost made it into Zangarmarsh, but, died close enough that I could rez within the safety of the village. I talked with Juno Dufrain and bought the recipe for Blackened Sporefish.

A quick trip over to the Alliance base, and, up to the Harbor to get the other flight path. Realizing after getting there that I don’t have the rep with the Kuranai to get the one recipe. No problem, it is safer to fish here for fish as you can find a few spots where you don’t aggro nearby mobs. In 30 minutes I’ve gathered enough fish and have 320 cooking and ready for the next recipe. This time, the trek takes me to Shattrath to the bar to learn another recipe. I’ve got enough fish to easily hit 350, but, I’ve run into a snag.

I now need to go to Terrokar forest so I can cook the Golden Fishsticks to get me to 365. This is where it gets tough. In order to get to 375, you need to fish the Highland pools – which, require a flying mount – or do they?

After some thought, and looking around, I find that there appears to be a spot where I could be death gripped up to a plateau, and then again to the lake just outside the Alliance Stronghold. Voila, three Highland Fishing schools. I end up spending a few days up there waiting for pools to respawn and while waiting, run Wailing Caverns. While waiting for the others to turn in the quests, I decide to cook some of the lobster to hit 375 cooking. A little reading and I find that even if I could catch Mr. Pinchy, I wouldn’t be able to use it.

However, I did get the Ambassador Title and Master Cook.

First Aid doesn’t appear to be capped at 100, and, with the Gnome Racial, I am able to attain a skill level of 115 – allowing me the ability to make the Large Copper Bomb and the Standard Scope.

The concept?

Create a level 19 twink that is competitive with other funded/created twinks. One of my first twinks was a rogue and I know that class reasonably well. My first twink didn’t have the great leg enchant and had no weapon enchants, and still chalked up over 8000 kills – and I sought out the other twinks. Gear doesn’t always guarantee a win – as many of my opponents realized.

The first thing we need to figure out is how to make 10 gold when you can’t trade. Through Instances and questing you can earn about 5 gold prior to level 19, but, that’s not enough. If you sell leather/herbs and make the Linen Bags to vendor, you can grind through and earn 5 gold through that. Make sure when you hit the 10 gold cap that you keep some items in your inventory so that when you turn off experience, you can sell some items to get some cash so that the next flight path you need to take doesn’t turn into a long walk.

Briefly:

* Pick up Skinning and Herbalism
* Sell all herbs/leather, keep all linen for tailoring
* Drop Herbalism and learn Tailoring
* 260 cloth required to start making Linen Bags – Linen Bags are the most cost effective use for Linen taking 6 cloth to earn 2 silver.
* Bags sell for 2 silver to the vendor, but, farming the linen at 18-19 doesn’t give experience (if level 18, you need level 11-12 mobs, if level 19, you can farm off level 13 mobs without getting experience)
* Since you need 10 gold at level 19, don’t train first aid, if you don’t need a quest reward, take the highest cash value award and vendor it.

When you’re getting close, set your hearthstone to Stormwind or Orgrimmar so that you don’t need to use a flight path. Or, if you are in an instance or battleground, leave when you hit 19, spend the 10 gold to turn off experience.

Hopefully you have 9 silver worth of items in your backpack so that you can buy a tabard for one of your home cities. Once you hit revered with each city, you can buy a single 16 slot bag. Since you need to do quite a bit of gathering, gearing up by running a few instances and earning the rep is well worth it. If you really want to, you could get the tabard early on and instance from 15-19, but, once you start instancing, you earn quite a bit of money very quickly.

Now the work begins

Before you drop tailoring, see if there is any shirt you would like to create to personalize your toon.

Next, see if there are any Jewelcrafting recipes you want. Since you’re stuck at level 19, you only need to get Jewelcrafting up to 70 as a maximum which isn’t too time consuming. Follow any of the leveling guides to get you to the level you need, and, keep the greens to Disenchant later. Keep any blue items you get while instancing. If you want to make a bunch of Stone Statues, you can use them after you drop Jewelcrafting. Also, consider prospecting some of your Copper before dropping it so that you have a decent supply of Malachite and Tigerseye. If you’re making the Tiger Googles, you need two Tigerseye. If you get the Mechanical Squirrel Box, you need two Malachite.

Drop Jewelcrafting and pick up Enchanting. Disenchant all of your unneeded items and when you get items in the instances, greed them rather than disenchant as you don’t get the skillup from disenchanting ‘loot’.

Without the PVP trinkets or PVP Weapons, here’s what I ended up with:

Item List

* [Flying Tiger Goggles]
* [Malachite Pendant]
* [Serpent's Shoulders]
* [Glowing Lizardscale Cloak] (+10 Armor Enchant)
* [Armor of the Fang] (+15 Health Enchant)
* [Blue Linen Shirt]
* [Black Wolf Bracers] (+1 Stamina Enchant)
* [Tail Spike] (+1 Weapon Damage Enchant)
* [Tail Spike] (+1 Weapon Damage Enchant)
* [House Wrynn Crossbow] (+2 Weapon Damage Scope, Gnome)
* [Gloves of the Fang]
* [Vigorous Belt] (of the Bandit)
* [Leggings of the Fang]
* [Footpads of the Fang]
* [Simple Pearl Ring]
* [Bravo Company Signet]

The Result

Aside from the 40+ minute queue times, I was able to easily take out a few other twinks. I’m sure there are times when a lot more 19 twinks are playing, so, its just a matter of finding that and queueing up then.

Total time played was under 40 hours to get everything except the honor gear, and, while I don’t have the BoA gear and enchants that the other twinks have, he is able to hold his own.

Blind Hunter drops:

[Batwing Mantle]
[Stygian Bone Amulet]
[Nightstalker Bow]

Farming Blind Hunter is an exercise in patience as he only shows up about once in every 6 instance resets. As a 70 Death Knight, here’s the path I use to determine if he’s there. The macro I click at the end contains:

/tar Blind Hunter

The following movie shows how I check to see if Blind Hunter is there prior to clearing the instance to bring the twink in.

razorfen_kraul_blind-hunter

We quickly realized that a support character needed to be created to help finance the twinks and do initial gear runs so we started leveling separate characters to help through portions of quests. After trying that and seeing the slow progress, we decided to make a death knight on Cho’gall, pack him full of items that we couldn’t find on Boulderfist and use those items to get our twinks geared up prior to 3.0.8.

Leveling a death knight from 55 to 68 took about 32 hours and he earned about 900 gold in quest rewards and vendoring the unused quest items. No trade skills were leveled, just all out madness to get to 68 as quickly as possible as we figured that was the level needed to handle escorting a twink in the Borean Tundra to level mining. A lot of the engineering items were made for our twinks and items that we couldn’t find on Boulderfist that we felt would be useful were shipped over. A good buy on the Staff of the Shade, a few Acrobatic staves, crafted items, a few librams, Golden Spellthread, some enchanting materials, a LOT of ore and some netherweave bags to give the twinks some room for loot during the runs. Another 1500 gold was added to bring the total to 2400 gold.

Rerolling to a new realm without a sponsor is not easy. Having an alt standing by to make swiftness potions or free action potions, or to craft an engineering trinket or move a few gold over to buy materials for some crafted items is replaced with having to find someone on the trade channels that can do that particular enchant, or make that somewhat rare crafted item. The shortage of a money making alt is quickly noticed when you have to decide to buy a wool bag or a linen bag and are debating spending the 1 gold to buy another bank slot.

All of this was a consideration when we debated waiting for 3.0.8, or transferring a character over. Here’s the bank screenshot prior to the move. The bank/bag mod is TBag. It is a little annoying to get used to at first, but, once you understand it, it makes quite a bit of sense.

Rumors of multiple days to transfer an account rang through my head along with the fear of lost items or money during the transfer. At 2:00 am on Dec 31, 2008, I submitted the information for the paid transfer, paid the $25 and held my breath. At 9:00 am on Dec 31, 2008, I checked the account transaction page and it said the transfer was complete. Upon logging into World of Warcraft, my death knight was missing from Cho’gall and was present on Boulderfist.

My Zombie was gone, my local macros were gone, but, the bank and backpack contents arrived intact.

Time to farm RFK, Gnomer and SM Lib/Armory for Lockwho.

While I didn’t top the damage or healing charts, I healed where it was necessary, DPSed where I could, and returned two flags by chasing them down when they slipped past midfield. I love my frost shock glyph that extends the length of the shock by two seconds. By the time frost shock is about to expire on my target, the cooldown on Frost shock is ready to be reapplied. With liberal use of purge, even pallies are easy enough to slow and take down.

Note the ‘fan’ comment in the lower left.

Thank you Bankerr — it was great to run with you as well.

One day, Flagcarrier picked up the flag and walked backwards across the entire field as we took out people trying to get our flag and return their flag. We won the game 3-0.

There are some rather rare boss drops that would have been nice to have based on things I learned about playing a Shaman after finishing. Before twinking, I should have played the class a bit more to learn how my playstyle would be affected by certain choices. While it is difficult to learn that prior to making a twink, I am not unhappy with my build or gear set, but, I think there are a few places I could have made a few improvements.

ItemRack has events which I have not gotten to work exactly as I wanted. The common twinking idea for a Horde Shaman which has the ability to get two BC Enchantable weapons is to get a non-BC mace with spell damage and put Mighty Intellect on that — +22 intellect from an enchanter with Thorium Brotherhood Rep. When your mana pool is drained below where that +22 boosted you, you switch to your weapon with spellsurge. Immediately after it procs, you switch to Skullbreaker with +81 heals (or, +40 spelldamage after 3.0.2′s patch). At 25% mana, you switch to a weapon enchanted with Mighty Spirit — +22 from that Thorium Brotherhood Enchanter and equip your shield with +9 spirit on it.

I’ve still not gotten weapon swaps to work in ItemRack the way I want, and, I usually run with axe and shield rather than swapping to my 2H Corpsemaker for fighting clothies. I farmed Thermaplug’s Left Arm, but, from what I read, you want Corpsemaker so that every swing has a chance to proc Crusader. While Bleeding Crescent is nice (Rogues hate getting hit with that bleed because they cannot vanish), I think I would have changed my itemization slightly. I do have my FC set that maximizes HP and Armor and sacrifices a little mana/healing, but, it has kept me alive through 3 rogues trying to beat me down while a hunter took them out one by one.

Ghost Wolf form is incredibly nice – I’ve not used my rocket boots more than once or twice running through the tun to catch up with someone. I found that if I am auto-running, and stop/start immediately outside the building, I can switch to ghost wolf right at the building edge rather than waiting on the server to detect that I am not in the building.

I did create a utility Shammy — and I am able to do what is necessary and I believe the games I have played in, I have contributed enough that we win more often than we lose and with a little coordination, we dominate. Since playing my Shammy, I have seen more 5 caps than I have ever seen when playing my rogue. Many of the WSG games are <20 minutes with a 3-0 or 3-1 score.

While I don't have the room to get any more drops without considerable effort, I think I am going to leave my gear set where it is and shuffle an enchant or two while I work through itemrack and learn a little more about the playstyle. 1000 kills really doesn't give you as much skill as you would think. Even though I have Insignia of the Horde, if I've dropped the right totem, about the only class I need it for are mages.

Early on when I was probably 20 AB tokens into it, a priest from another realm asked what spec I was, and I told her hybrid. She then said, well, it isn't working -- and I said, why do you say that? She told me that she out DPSed and out Healed me. At which point I said, but, we never lost the one node I was defending solo did we? With my armor and mana and hit points, I can take an incredible beating and call out for help which makes me a great solo defender. With Ghost Wolf I can respond quickly to any node and dps or heal and keep people off the flag for quite a bit of time.

While I enjoyed my rogue, my Shaman has surpassed my rogue in terms of fun. I will sometimes grab the flag in WSG, or will run alongside the FC and run interference, or, do my job to slow the EFC until reinforcements arrive. My rogue just couldn't get there fast enough to do that even with swiftness potions, rocket boots, sprint, etc. When I would run D, if they got past the gy or far enough down the tunnel, I couldn't catch them. With my shammy, I can run out gy, ghost wolf over to them and catch them midfield.

I'll enjoy playing my Shaman for quite some time.

Shaman Twink guide.

Riddle me this:

Zargan’s Armory

Shaman:
* 27 runs for Torturing Poker, have not obtained Deadman’s hand after 8 runs.
* 24 instance resets, 5 runs for Whisperwind Headdress

Druid:
* 15 instance resets, 3 runs for Whisperwind Headdress
* 22 runs for Deadman’s Hand

Rogue:
* 1 run for Deadman’s Hand, 2 runs for Torturing Poker, 1 run for Naga’s Heartpiercer

Rogue:
* 12 runs for Naga’s Heartpiercer, 13 runs for Deadman’s Hand, 6 runs for Torturing Poker, 1 run for Thornspike

Farming SM as a Beast Mastery Hunter isn’t too bad. To minimize experience gains, we don’t do a full clear. Since we were doing these runs prior to 29, we didn’t have to do the master loot/corpse solution, resulting in most runs giving 300-600 exp. If you are farming items, do it early on. Do all of your discovery for any required quests as early as possible as well. One quest chain gave over 9100 exp in discovery experience.

To farm Scarlet Monastery Library as a non-AOE farmer, the tactic I use is to clear the first hall and let the twink enter the instance at that point. I then clear out the two humans to the left in the Cloister. Kill the guy across the hall, the two in the middle, the roaming pat, the person on the left, the two on the right. There’s a pat in the next hallway which I kill, the two in the middle, then, make that right turn, kill the one at the podium, the two in the center of the hallway and another pat. Kill the two healers before Doan’s room and you’re ready. I put my pet on passive, hit Doan with a shot and run to the beginning of the instance staying close to the walls and away from the other mobs. As you enter the Cloister (with the hound masters), stop in that corner and make sure he hits you once. You want to do this to either clear anyone following — the twink won’t get experience if they are standing right inside the instance, and, to make sure you don’t drag a houndmaster or two down the hall as Doan will run straight through the Cloister to get to you. Pull him down the hallway, drop a trap, put my pet on aggressive and kill Doan. Once Doan dies, there are two pats that spawn right at the entrance. To keep minimal experience, you can command your pet to kill them which will result in 0 exp to the twink, or, dps them slowly enough to allow the twink to exit before they die. Without rest xp, each run results in about 600 exp for the twink. Since you can get into SM at level 20, you have plenty of time to farm Torturing Poker and Deadman’s hand before you get to a point where you need to worry about experience. To make waiting easier, do one full clear to allow the twink to get the Scarlet Key which allows them to camp in the SM Armory door safe from the mobs outside.

I generally do not loot mobs when doing these runs and they take about 5-7 minutes each time.

To farm for the Torturing Poker in SM Graveyard, this one is more a test of patience than anything else. There are 2 mobs in the hallway and you can pull Interrogator Vishas with one mob. Kill him, loot him, and pray. It is one of the more frustrating drops in the game because it takes less than two minutes to get to him and you will run into the instance reset limit very quickly.

The Whisperwind Headdress was an interesting one to farm. The quick way to do it with any class is to have the main go in, and clear the two mobs and the pat, clear to the left and stand right in front of the vine bridge and type /target earth in the chat area. If Earthcaller Halmgar is targeted, you need to go back near the entrance, and clear a path to the rare. Earthcaller Halmgar showed up about once in every four resets for me. Once you have the spawn, clear the first open room completely, your twink will aggro everything there. Clear the hallway, pass the two guards, clear the path, avoid Overlord Ramtusk unless you want the Tusken Helm. Clear the next mobs, get to the bridge, and, if you are a 70, you can have your twink come into that open room. With some Line of Sight manipulation around those pillars, you can pull Earthcaller and only 1 mob, drag them back to the open room and kill. Since the minimum level requirement is 15, some early planning can save a lot of hassle with the master loot/twink corpse run.

If you are after Thornspike, its a matter of clearing that lefthand path after the first hallway and killing Aggem Thorncurse. It has a very high drop rate and I’ve gotten it on every attempt.

If you are Horde, make sure you clear all the way through to Charlga Razorflank and kill him to get the ‘Small Scroll’ which allows you to start ‘An Unholy Alliance’. If you can use a mace, it is one of the few BC enchantable items you can get for the 29 bracket.

To run Gnomeregan, make sure you have the workshop key which drops off the Electrocutioner 6000. Take the twink in the back way which is a short clear to the Crowd Pummeler 9-60. Take the elevator down, clear the few mobs there, follow the path to the left and clear through to Mekgineer Thermaplug.

The Naga Heartpiercer drops in Blackrock Depths. This instance provides a bit of challenge as the twink will aggro quite a few mobs that patrol. Its a quick run to the turtle room, clearing out the Nagas on the path to the room. Clearing out the two Nagas on the beach will allow your twink to come into the room. Lady Sarevess does get separated from her guard, so, its possible to pull just her. Line of sight her around the wall to pull her into the room. She does a chain lightning which will hit your twink, so, be prepared for that.

All in all, farming the Instance Drops can be quite frustrating and requires quite a bit of patience. After the 20th run and 4 one hour delays between farming runs, having your main camped in an area that is someone inconvenient to do anything but wait, it gets frustrating. But, that first battleground you run where Deadman’s Hand procs is well worth it.

On Cho’gall, there are people that don’t have guildmates to run this for them and they charge 10G a run whether the item drops or not. Farming for Deadman’s hand used to run 100G or more on our realm until people started having to pay for runs, whether the item was received or not. Twinking can be quite expensive, but, in the end, it would be great to see the look on your rival’s face when be gets frozen in place after hitting you.