The One Where I’m Getting My Groove Back

Back when MoP was new and everyone was busy farming their asses off and raising lots of vegetables and cooking lots of things … I was concentrating on making money. I farmed vegetables and immediately sold them on the AH instead of stockpiling them or leveling my cooking. As soon as I unlocked the Songbell seeds, I began planting them for Motes of Harmony and quit vegetables all together. The reason being I could use the motes to make extra Living Steels. Which I then sold for money. I like money. I always want more of it. Strangely, I never really have a lot of in-game money due to not actually playing on a serious daily basis and not having enough high level alts to help support my own crafting. Which means I never really made a huge amount of money off of Living Steel because I had to buy Ghost Iron Bars to make Trillium to then make the Living Steel. While there was a profit margin there, it wasn’t a very large one. Especially considering I only used my daily Living Steel transmute an average of 4 days a week. Or some weeks not at all. But I digress; I never stockpiled vegetables or leveled my cooking. That’s the main point here.

Guess what happened when I decided last week I wanted to become Master of all the Ways? I totally had to buy ridiculous amounts of vegetables and meats. I also had to spend lots of hours fishing so I could bundle them into groceries and trade them in for IronPaw Tokens to buy Soy Sauce and all the veggies and meats that were not available on the AH. I was able to grab some stacks of ingredients from the guild bank and I’m very grateful for that and hopefully payed generously enough to compensate for them, but I still had to come up with a lot of the ingredients myself. My in-game money averages around 15,000 gold (seriously, i have GOT to be better at doing dailies and running dungeons) and while I did accomplish what I wanted to accomplish by the time Saturday afternoon had rolled around, my 15k had dwindled down to around 6k. I feel so broke. But it was worth it to get those achievements and finally have that all finished up.

Now I just need to learn to be more dedicated to spending my time in game wisely. I get so easily distracted. I do seem to be heading the right direction though as I made myself buckle down and finish up my Klaxxi reputation by doing those dailies very regularly over the past week.

Maybe the fact that I’m really, REALLY, loving my Death Knight and now have her at level 86 and questing in the Valley of the Four Winds will inspire me to do dailies more consistently. She kicks some serious ass even though I’m merely facerolling my keyboard. I think dailies with her will go much quicker. Plus, she’s now mining ghost iron ore so she can help Elfi transmute living steel without having to pay for mats. It’s actually a little concerning to me that I seem to take down mobs in the Valley faster with my lvl 86 DK than I do with Elfi who has an ilvl of 480. I guess the real test will be if I ever brave up enough to take Morrissa into dungeons. Because I’m playing her by facerolling my keyboard, I’ve been hesitant to do any grouping. I’m such a sensitive little thing sometimes. I don’t want any big, bad internet strangers mocking me. But aside from all that, she seriously kicks ass.

Quick Update

I’m alive. I’m still playing WoW way too much. Just been concentrating on getting my mining alt up to Panda land so I can gather my own Ghost Iron Ore for Elfi to use in her transmute. I finally made it to the Jade Forest last night. Too bad I can’t fly or else I’d just stop here. Lol.

I’ve also been working some voluntary overtime and I’ve had a touch of the blues coupled with exhaustion. As a result, things have been quiet here but I’m quite certain I’ll be back to blathering about all my normal nonsense in no time.

Since I’m currently a tad bit emo, this seems like a good post to include the picture of my Blood Elf I took when she got smashed up against a giant mushroom in Zangarmarsh and the camera didn’t know what to do. It reminds me of a typical profile picture from an emo teenager.

The One Where I Wonder What’s Wrong With Me

This is nothing new, I wonder this all the time. But it’s back on my mind thanks to the news that patch 5.2 will be released in a couple of weeks and I am not prepared for it. Again. As usual. I would love to figure out why I stay so behind. I spend A LOT of hours logged into this game over the course of a week and still I’ve never capped Valor, don’t remember to tend my farm every day, have yet to step foot in LFR, only run an average of 2 heroics a week, still don’t have my Cloud Serpent mount, etc. etc. The list goes on and on.

I can’t blame it on transmogging because I only have 1 (recently completed) transmog outfit for 1 character. I can’t blame it on pet battles because I only have 1 team formed and they are at level 15ish. As far as dailies go, I hit exalted with the Tillers and got everyone to be my best friend very early on but since then the only other rep I’ve completed is Golden Lotus. I haven’t even started several of them. And this is my main, Elfindale, I’m talking about. I have a level 90 on the Horde side who’s accomplished nothing more than opening up all the farm plots. And no, I don’t tend my farm every day on that toon either, thanks for asking.

What the fuck do I do with my time in-game? It’s something I’ve been asking myself for the past 5 years. There is something about WoW that causes me to develop situational ADD, I swear (does not affect me when I do heroics or actual raiding). I log in with no sense of “first this, then this, then this” and I find myself mousing over other players in the area because I like what they’re wearing or to see the name of the mount they’re riding. Then I check my mail. Then I stare at Accountant for 5 minutes and wonder why I don’t make more gold than I do (psst.. it’s because I don’t do enough dailies or heroics or anything at all really).

Then I fuck around with all the stupid shit I carry in my bags that I have no use for but cannot bring myself to delete because OMG THE NOVELTY OF THIS THING (I’m looking at you, Ancient Amber). Then I go to the bank and organize it and look at all the stupid shit I have in there which I have no use for. I stand there several minutes and contemplate deleting things. Then I realize I should be doing something, so I head out to the Shrine’s patio and survey the vast land of opportunity before me. Then I pull up my bags again and wonder if I should store some of the useless crap in the bank with the other useless crap (volatile orbs, landsharks, ugh). I’m also chatting with the guild and/or real ID friends during all of this, which likely slows me down a hair but I will never stop doing. In fact, I would love to have more real ID friends for chatting. Battletag Elfi#1350. Hit me up.

Now where was I? Oh that’s right, standing around not accomplishing anything. I tab out to catch up on Twitter. Tab back in. Remember I wanted to look up how to get that cool object/mount/gear/pet, tab back out to google it. Read every comment on WoWhead just because they’re there. Tab back in. Catch up on guild chat. Scroll through last few minutes of general and trade for God knows what reason. Oh hey, I should fly out to the farm. Take flightpath, tab out to catch up on Twitter. Jump into a Twitter conversation and get ignored (off-subject, but it happens to me a lot). Tab back into game & forget why I flew to this spot. Hearth to Shrine. Immediately remember I was going to farm. /facepalm. Take flight path back. Decide I should gather some herbs while I’m in the area. Spend the next 30 minutes alternating between gathering herbs and tabbing back out to see if I’m actually going to get a reply on Twitter. Spoiler alert: I usually don’t.

Tab back into game, decide I’m tired of gathering herbs. Hearth back to Shrine. DAMMIT I WAS GOING TO FARM. Maybe I should actually run a heroic or do something useful. Queue for heroic, fly to farm. Decide I would be better off working on my DK alt because I really want her to be at 90 before patch 5.2 drops. Switch to DK alt without ever taking care of my farm. Quest on DK alt for a few minutes then decide to head to Stormwind to see if I can make money playing the AH. Stare at AH for 20 minutes and realize I don’t have enough starting capital to do much playing on the AH. Head back out to quest. Decide I should have looked for cool transmog stuff for my DK because everyone needs to be transmogged at level 70, right? Hearth back to Stormwind and look at AH some more. Reprimand myself for not leveling faster, head back out for questing.

By this time, I haven’t eaten dinner, haven’t done any exercising, need to get ready for work and once again, accomplished nothing. I mean, obviously I’m exaggerating this a bit (no, not really) and not every day is quite this ridiculous (but close). I’m seriously considering actually writing out a daily action plan. Something along the lines of:
1. login to Elfindale, immediately queue for heroic
2. while waiting on queue, immediately fly to farm and ACTUALLY TEND FARM
3. if still waiting on heroic queue, do Klaxxi dailies (I’m close to exalted with them, amazingly)
4. While flying to Dread Wastes, pick herbs
5. After heroic, login to Krisstalys (lvl 90 Horde) and tend farm
6. Login to Morrissa (DK alt I want to get to 90) and queue for random dungeon
7. while waiting for dungeon, complete quests

It seems silly that I would need to write down such simple things and I often wonder if I would even actually follow the plan if I did ever write it up. It’s not like I’m incapable of intelligent thought, I should be able to just do these things because I know they need to be done. Which is why I swear WoW triggers some sort of attention deficit for me. I just don’t seem to be able to resist getting distracted by all the shiny things.

I am curious if any others out there find they have a similar issue OR if any of you have some advice on how you manage to do more in 2 hours a night than I do in 4 hours a night. I’m not even kidding, I want to know. Because I’m really disappointed that I probably won’t have my DK to 90 before the patch and that a new raid will once again come out before I ever see the current raid. I need to figure out how to play more efficiently. Sometimes I wonder if it’s because both of my level 90 toons are Balance druids and as such, they are not exactly lean, mean killing machines. I’ve always sworn I hate melee and have no interest in bear or cat but since I’ve been working on my death knight so much recently, I’m starting to change my opinion about melee a bit. Maybe I should consider a bear off-spec for Elfi so that dailies and other general things would go quicker. I often wonder if the fact that everything – including killing vermin on my farm – takes so damn long and is so painful sort of subconsciously keeps me from running out there and doing what I need to do. Of course, I’m not in the best gear thanks to my lack of gathering Valor and my absence from heroics and LFR. And there’s a terrible cycle to be stuck in… without gear I suck, because I suck I don’t do the things that could get me gear. Awesome.

What do you guys do to maximize your efficiency in game? How many people think druids suck? What advice can you guys give me on overcoming this problem?

The One Where I May Finally Be Getting The Hang Of Pet Battling

I never played Pokemon. Not because I was never interested, exactly, but because I turned 26 the year Pokemon came into existence. I did however have nephews who played all the Game Boy games and watched the cartoons and collected the cards, so I had a basic understanding of it. Now that I’ve dabbled in Pet Battles in WoW, I really wish I had played Pokemon back in the day because I’m beginning to really enjoy this type of little mini-game. Maybe I should pick up a game or two for my Nintendo DS. Yes, maybe I will.

Anyway, point is, it’s been a learning process more so for me than most of you young whippersnappers who grew up with the game. There’s a lot of strategy involved that I’m just now beginning to figure out. I have had many noob moments. Like back in December when I randomly chose to battle and my opponent was a rare I didn’t have. I immediately whipped out my Terrible Turnip because I knew from reading about it on Twitter that the turnip would only take the pet down to 1 health and then you can capture it. What I didn’t realize (because I never had really bothered to pay attention to attack types) is that only weakening blow will leave the pet at 1 health. I went in mashing buttons and killed that rare pretty quickly. Ugh.

Other moronic things I have done as I have slowly started gathering pets is start a battle with 1 or 2 of mine dead and the other at less than half health. That rarely works out, I gotta tell you. I’ve gotten excited about finding something with a slow spawn rate and immediately starting a battle before realizing my pets are level 8 and I’m battling a level 16. That NEVER works out. I’ve camped a slow spawning pet that was 2 levels higher than me and was thrilled the first one I saw was a rare quality and I managed to capture it … only to die on the second pet and not get to keep my captured pet. Which I didn’t realize until I frantically looked through my pet journal and couldn’t find it. Yep, I’ve done a lot of things wrong.

But I’m learning. I’m asking questions on Twitter and reading pet battle blog posts. I’m finally paying attention to what my pets attacks actually do. I’m starting to get the hang of it and the better I get at it, the more addicted I’m becoming. With all of this in mind, I do realize that choosing pets for my team based on how cute they are may not be the best idea. So I’m posting my team here for you guys to make suggestions on what I may want to do differently. Please feel free to look me up on the WoW armory as Elfindale, night elf druid on Moonrunner, and check out what pets I own and let me know your opinion on if i should change up my team or if it’s okay the way it is for now. I welcome all the advice I can get because I’m preparing to really start working on battling and leveling my team up.

The One Where I Shouldn’t Be So Damn Impressed With Myself

I talk a lot of big talk and make a lot of big plans around here about how I want to stay current with game content and see all the raids and do all the things. In reality, I’ve only completed 3 different heroics and am nowhere near being raid ready. Just to clarify, I’m not trying to be someone who constantly makes empty promises to myself; it’s just that my eyes are bigger than my stomach. Wait, wut? You know what I mean. So imagine my surprise when I found myself raiding (if you can call what I did raiding) with my guild last night.

Here’s how it all started. I had been logged into the game basically all day just working on alts and trying to figure out how to best replenish my recently diminished gold piles. My plan was to log out right before 8:00pm, fix myself some food, and settle in to watch the season premiere of The Biggest Loser. Partially because I need the inspiration, partially because I have a girl crush on Jillian Michaels. About 10 minutes before that happened, my gm whispered me to see if I would be interested in filling a spot for them because a guildie had something come up unexpectedly. I’m not going to lie, I laughed. I told him he really did not want me in his raid because I haven’t been doing the dailies or running the heroics I need to do to upgrade myself. I think the last heroic I ran was over a month ago and I managed a whopping 15k dps. Yeah, that’s embarrassing. In my defense, I only have 4% haste and my cast times are fucking LOOOOONG. That’s not a very good defense is it? Clearly there is more wrong with me than just my haste, but that’s a whole nother can of worms.

Back to the current story, I told him he’d be better off pugging as on top of my shitty, non-existent dps I also had never stepped one foot into the place and hadn’t yet studied any of the fights. I would be going in blind. Shudder. But it was now just a couple of minutes before 8 and they just weren’t finding anyone who could help them out so he asked me again if I would like to join them. I told him it would be absolutely horrifyingly embarrassing for both me and the guild but I am one of those people who will always do anything I can to help the team. Even if my help is going to amount to nothing more than being a warm body.

Which is exactly what happened, dps wise. I brought them no help at all. And just like I predicted, I was completely embarrassed about my dps. I mean, it seriously barely even registered on Recount, I swear. I can’t give you my overall dps number because after we got to Elegon the guildie who had not been there earlier had finally gotten online and I stepped out so he could join them and save them from me. And I can’t give you my dps number up until that point because the first time I glanced down and looked at it, I died. Of embarrassment. Then I puked. From nervous shame. Then I died again of more embarrassment. BUT. When it was all said and done, if you just ignore dps altogether, (please. ignore it.) I was actually pretty damn happy with my raid awareness and the fact that I really had no issue with standing in poop or falling off platforms or running away from the group when necessary. Obviously I would never say I was 100% on raid awareness, but for being such a nervous noob and just getting some quick, basic instructions before each pull I really think I did a good job. Of course, there may be 9 other people who don’t have that opinion, but no one ever yelled at me to move out of shit or run away or shoot the other guy or anything. I had even recently reconfigured my UI to make sure my battlerez, tranquility and innervate were situated in a prominent position on very large, easy to see buttons and that totally paid off because I got asked to pop both tranquility and my battlerez and I was able to do so instantly. Which is very unlike the past 5 years when I was always worried more about my UI being pretty and symmetrical. Also, even though it really didn’t help much, I had dropped all my money in the AH last Friday on a 30k trinket upgrade and finally buying gems and enchants for my shitty gear that needs to be replaced.

So when it was all said and done, I was starving and dying of thirst due to not knowing I was going to be raiding and getting stuck in my chair without a chance to grab any food or water. My keyboard and my shirt were covered in puke and I had missed every minute of the show I had been anxiously waiting to see for over a week. Thankfully it’s on Hulu+ so that’s no big deal. But even with all that misery and my being seriously (completely seriously) upset that my dps was so fucking ridiculous, I came away from the whole experience happy as fuck. Clearly I will be working on improving my dps, but I am no longer afraid of dipping my toes in LFR (yes, I know they will laugh at me and kick me from group if I try it before the dps improves). I’m just totally stoked about how I’m finally getting all of my other shit together and once I get my numbers up I will rule this kingdom and slay all the dragons.

Maybe.

It’s 2013 And It’s All About Me Now

Happy New Year, everyone! Welcome to 2013. I am not normally someone who makes a big deal about a new year rolling around because all of those resolutions and promises people make on January 1st are usually things that could have / should have been worked on any old random day instead of waiting until you have a new calendar to mark up. But this year I am in the spirit and I am stoked to make 2013 a great year. I certainly wouldn’t say 2012 was bad, but it was definitely typical. I ended the year having the same personal issues I’ve always had, the same unfulfilled desires I’ve always had, and the same opinion of me I’ve always had. But recent events, or at least my perception of recent events, has caused me to spend a lot of time reflecting on the deep, inner workings of myself over the holidays. I knew I wouldn’t like what I saw, which is why it’s something I’ve avoided for decades now, but I was way overdue for a closer look. And I’ve certainly emerged with new motivations and goals as well as the desire and willingness to become a better me.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to bog this place down with my journey towards personal discovery and reinvention. I did have to mention it here though because World of Warcraft is a big part of my life and the things I need to change and the emotions I struggle with are both impacted by the game and have an impact on my time in game. Because of this, it stands to reason that things like determining what I want from an activity and learning to focus on accomplishing goals will apply to both my gaming life and my non-gaming life. The purpose of this post is to try and get the process started and begin figuring out what I want from WoW in 2013.

I have always considered myself an adaptable person because when I am around people I enjoy, I will enjoy doing whatever it is they are interested in doing. Does that make sense? It’s kind of hard to explain. I suppose it can be best explained with an example. Like when I go visit my friend Lisa, she’s a huge fan of shows like Judge Judy and Dr. Phil so almost every time I’m at her house, we’re watching episodes of those shows that she’s dvr’d. Now while I’m there I’m totally fine with it; we’re having a good visit and I don’t hate Judge Judy. We trash talk the defendants and laugh at how mean Judge Judy can be. It’s a good time because I enjoy being with Lisa. But I’ve never watched a single minute of Judge Judy outside of visiting Lisa because it’s not something I’m interested in just for the sake of watching. Hopefully that clears it up a bit. But honestly, most people aren’t like that. When Lisa comes over to my house and I have Duck Dynasty playing, she doesn’t sit down and enjoy Duck Dynasty with me; she asks if there’s any Judge Judy to watch. Now before everyone tries to tell me Lisa is a terrible friend, let me just say no she’s not. She is not doing it to be rude, she’s doing it because she doesn’t like Duck Dynasty and I’ve led her to believe I do like Judge Judy. So she believes if we switch to Judge Judy we’ll both be happy.

I’m getting a little carried away and this is becoming wordier than I intended. Basically what I’m trying to say is I’ve spent almost my entire life being fine with whatever anyone wants to do as long as I get to spend time with them. I’m now realizing that’s a disservice to both them and me. It sort of makes it seem like our friendship is built around a falsehood, though Judge Judy has nothing to do with WHY we’re friends at all. And what it has done for me is made me boring. Vanilla. A blank canvas. Someone who doesn’t actually have my own likes, dislikes and opinions. And the few I do have I generally don’t walk around displaying because I might offend someone and unfortunately, I am the type of person who believes I need everyone to like me. You can see how this is one of the big flaws within myself I need to fix. I promise you (and me) this – I will and I am.

Not surprisingly, this type of behavior spills over into WoW and it’s something I need to fix in all aspects of my life. It affects what I do (or mostly don’t do) in-game and it even affects this blog because I typically censor myself here so as not to accidentally upset anyone. Well fuck that. I’m done censoring myself. Yep, I dropped an f-bomb. I realize that’s a pretty mild offense, but it’s a good starting place. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Guess what, people? I fucking curse like a sailor sometimes. Because I’m an adult, I know where and when it’s inappropriate, but this blog is my space and my mother will never read it. So starting today, you’ll likely see some cursing. I’m pretty bad ass like that. Lol.

So what do I want from WoW? That’s a damn good question. Every time new content comes out I get all excited and start talking about how I want to keep up with content and do raiding and max all the things. Unfortunately, it never happens. I’ve been playing for 5 years now and the only thing I have really accomplished is getting Loremaster before Cata dropped and getting the Holiday meta-achievement way earlier than a lot of people did. Neither one of those are that impressive, though a lot of people do seem to struggle with the holiday pvp requirements and SOMEHOW I had no trouble doing those the first time around. Now I’m at a point where shit needs to get real. I have had a lot of fun over the past 5 years, but I’ve also had a lot of quiet, personal heartbreak and dissatisfaction due to not getting things accomplished. I’ve spent the last several years still mourning the death of my first ever guild. Not being able to let go of that has certainly been hampering things. When that guild split, I had no idea what to do. I wanted to follow some people to the new guild, but I waffled due to a combination of loyalty, not wanting to hurt anyone’s feelings and not being sure I was even wanted in the new guild since I wasn’t included in the original decision to split. So I stayed with the old guild and spent months enjoying chatting with a few of the people who stayed, intensely missing the people that left and doing not much more than standing in Stormwind feeling sorry for myself. I finally decided to move to the new guild and I don’t regret that decision, but by the time I got over there it was filled with a lot of people I didn’t know and who didn’t know me and they were months ahead of me in gear and content. I never really worked as hard as I could have to fit in there and I never really made a place for myself on their team. Then that guild split and I left it too.

I transferred servers, I rolled alts on various servers, I played SWTOR almost exclusively for 6 or 7 months. I have missed out on a lot of things in Azeroth I had hoped to experience. Now it’s time for me to take control of the game and make it be what I want it to be. Don’t misunderstand, I have had a lot of fun here. I have some great friends and Elfindale is in a guild with 2 of my longest known WoW friends as well as a whole group of awesome people. But just like before, I don’t seem to fit in. I’m casual, they’re not. I prefer constant rolling guild chat, they’re a very quiet bunch. I enjoy dungeons and heroics more when I can run with people I know, they don’t seem to ever do group runs. I have to put some serious thought into what I want to do with Elfi. My other level 90 toon is in a very tiny Horde guild with another couple of great friends. We’ve been having a blast doing old content for pets and mounts as well as silly things like 5 manning Ulduar 25 to get achievements. But I am not doing dailies, gaining rep to get better gear, learning Heroics or becoming prepared to run LFR. Just like my Alliance guild, I enjoy my time there. But I’m wondering how much of my time in both of these guilds are similar to my story earlier about watching Judge Judy with Lisa.

Part of me is afraid if I’m not actively spending time in these guilds, with these friends, our friendship will fade. I realize that’s part paranoia and is very telling of my self esteem issues. Part of me can see it may already be happening regardless of what toon I spend my time logged in with. So the time has come for me to really sit down and analyze what I want from the game. I will likely not stop derping around in old content laughing my ass off in Vent with my Horde guild, but outside of that do I want to get my Horde toon geared up and start working on dailies and rep? Or do I want to just leave her for derping and start putting serious work into Elfi? If I do decide to become more focused on advancing Elfi what exactly are my goals with her? Do I stay in the guild I’m in and just run heroics and LFR by myself or do I think about finding a guild that’s more in line with my casual, social style and be able to do things with a group? Do I want to level both toons up and have more options?

I don’t have the answers to these questions today, but I am determined to get it straightened out. It will go hand in hand with all of the other self-improvement I need to do and will be doing over the course of this year. I’m excited to finally be ready to work on being me. I am looking forward to seeing what 2013 has to offer, both in-game and out of game. If any of you have been in this type of position or have any special insights or advice you would like to share, I would love to see it. And I promise that if you offer up an opinion, I won’t simply adopt it as my own.

IntPiPoMo 2012: Day 5 – Even When They’re Pissed, They’re Cute

I think we can all agree that one of the best things about Mists of Pandaria are the freaking yaks. Seriously, is there anything more adorable? Like a lot of people, I quickly became enamored with yaks so when I spotted a little family of them grazing near the mountains I rode over to get a close look and possibly tickle them under their adorable little chins while making baby goo goo noises at them. Unfortunately, mom and dad here were not impressed with me being too near their baby. But even though they were staring me down, I made baby goo goo noises anyway.

The One Where … Hold On, Time To Circle The Heartland

As I’ve mentioned before, one of the things I want to do differently this expansion is try and stay as current as (casually) possible with content. This means actually memorizing dungeons and heroics by repeatedly running them and even getting a look at raids when I get the chance. Since I leveled to 90 fairly quickly and started doing the Golden Lotus dailies pretty steadily the first several days afterwards, you’d think I’d be well on my way to making some progress towards this goal. You would be wrong. Instead, I spend hours a day like this:

Why? Because about 2 weeks ago, after doing my Golden Lotus dailies and planting my 4 crops, I was flying around gathering herbs to sell and discovered Dark Soil. My life has not been the same since. Hello, my name is Elfi and I am addicted to Dark Soil. I don’t know what it is about these random, EVIL piles of dirt that allowed them to dig their way right into the mostly tiny spot of OCD I possess, but they arrived there quickly and entrenched themselves firmly. I simply cannot NOT look for them. Some nights I find several dozen, some nights I only find a few. Some nights I stay up cashing in my bad luck; some nights I call it a draw. Okay, you can ignore that last sentence. I was just having some FUN.

Yes, they are useful in helping me increase my friendships with some of the Tiller members so it’s not like it’s a total waste of time to search for Dark Soil. If you find one and manage to loot it before another player finds it and loots it (I was so excited the first night I found 2 or 3 spawns in a matter of minutes, I paused next to one and whispered one of my friends to share the news of my good fortune. The 10 seconds it took me to type the sentence was just enough time for another player to land beside my dirt pile and grab the loot for himself. Sad face.) then you get a gift which you can present to one of the Tiller members to gain friendship with them. There are achievements for gaining Best Friend status with any one member and an achievement for gaining Best Friend status with all 10 members. Once you become Best Friends, there are rewards to be had. For an excellent guide to the Tillers Farming in general, as well as more information about gaining friendships with these 10 members, their locations, and subsequent rewards, I recommend using the Tillers Farming guide from El’s Extreme Anglin’. The stuff related to Dark Soil gifts is located a little over halfway down the page under the header Tillers Friendship. I’m nearly to Good Friend with 5 of them just from giving them the gifts I have been finding. Once I get those 5 convinced to be my Best Friend, I will start giving gifts to the other five.

My concern is, once I have all 10 members convinced that I’m their Best Friend will I be able to give up looking for Dark Soil? The gifts you loot are soulbound, so they cannot be traded or sold. And if I don’t need to turn them in to anyone any longer then there’s no point in getting them. But there is something so satisfying to me about finding these stupid dirt piles. I can’t explain it. They don’t appear on your mini-map (though a gathering add-on will continue to show you where you have found one before so you can see the general areas to search), they don’t sparkle or make themselves noticeable in any way. They just randomly appear; under buildings, next to rocks, in the shadow of giant carrots. I guess it’s the thrill of the hunt. I imagine it’s probably the same sort of way hunters feel about deer season. You have to be alert, carefully scanning your surroundings, watching other hunters in the area to make sure you find the elusive prey before they do. Strike quickly (druid flight-form looting ftw), get your loot and move on in search of the next one. It’s a game within a game within a game to me. I love it. I hate that I love it. I am sort of hoping after all 10 members are at Best Friend status some sort of phasing takes place so I no longer even see Dark Soil spawn. Then maybe I’ll get back to the business of seeing all the content.

For reference, here’s a picture of the evil: