Hopping on the Bandwagon

So, I'm sitting here, tabbing back and forth between my browser and a game, watching the queue number decrease soo slowly.  It's Friday morning, and I have about 20 minutes wait before I can magically transform from mundane housewife to Eromee, Sith Sorceress, or Shawndra, Imperial Agent.  The kids are slowly assembling to do their chores, and my phone is acting up so I cannot watch the queue and play Tiny Tower.

Eromee in Hammer Station.

Yesterday a few of my guild mates ran Hammer Station and attempted the next flashpoint available to our level.  Sorry I cannot remember what that one was.  I might if I had been successful.  The lag on my end last night was huge, and healing through lag is a skill I have not yet acquired. That, and I was grumpy because just as I was trying to collect a bio sample, they guys would start fighting, making it so I couldn't gather.  Then, of course, if it was a creature I was gathering from, by the time they were done fighting it was gone.  Gah!

After a few tries at that last flashpoint, I gave up and logged in my little Imperial Agent, Shawndra.  I got her from level 2 to level 5 pretty easily before I called it a night.  She is pretty fun to play so far, and I am enjoying  Hutta, even though I know I will have to say goodbye soon.

What is it with Wookies and broken protocol droids?

Typical Hutt Palace gathering.

Shawndra, clearly unimpressed.

Oh, I'm in!  More later when I figure out this game...

Will He Eat It?

Rowan Trollstalker and her latest sidekick, King Maddie.

In this latest addition to my blog, we look at a new (to me) mechanic in Wizard 101.  Apparently, if you receive clothing or decorations that you do not want, your pet can eat them.  What?  Well, I have Rowan standing by a pretty stocked bank, ready to see what the results are when King Maddie eats something.  In previous trials, I have received gold, and rarely treasure cards or reagents.  In Rowan's bank there are some special items, saved for that special little wizard friend when they reach the right level to wear it.  There might be some things in there from days when her inventory overflowed into her bank as well. So, without further delay, let the smorgasbord begin!

 The robes I chose first were the Alluring Robes, a level 25 bunch of nothing special.  King Maddie ate them!  Look below to see what he left behind.

The spaces with the confused wizard are where a treasure card or reagent would be.  Below that, there is a small amount of gold.  That is what King Maddie felt this meal was worth.  But what is the same item worth in the auction house?  Can't say, because they are a no auction item.  I should have tried to sell them to a vendor first so I would have a basis for comparison, as the wiki on both Wizard 101 Central and wikia don't have a vendor price listed.  Next up, Crusher's Winter Vestment, probably a best in slot level 25 ice wizard's dream.  Will King Maddie eat it?

 You would think something with such delicious stats as this would net at least a treasure card?  Look below to find out.

Worth just about twice what the last bunch of nothing was worth.  Very sad.  Haley Frostheart would have loved that robe.  Oh well, Rowan earned her own way and so will she. Besides, I think it gave Maddie indigestion. Maybe we should try something different.  A hat perhaps?

 The Hat of the Intrepid is another pretty yummy, but not necessarily best in slot hat for a level 25 myth wizard.  I sad yummy because Maddie ate this with gusto.  Might have been the tusks and leather. It was chewier than those flimsy cloth robes.  How much more did he like it?

Money was about what I expected for level and stats, but look, Maddie gave us a treasure card!  A myth shield that large is a nice thing to keep on hand.

I think Maddie wants something with a bit more crunch.  Perhaps a wand?  In this case, we'll be feeding Maddie the Longblade of the Homonculus.

What an oxymoronic wand.  How long could a blade for a midget be?  I hope Maddie doesn't chip a tooth on this one.

450 gold coins.  Well, I guess I cannot expect much. It's not like he goes out questing or playing the auction house when I'm not around. And he is only a teenager!  How about we try something smaller, like an athame?  I got the perfect one right here...

Stiletto of the Steward, a decent balance blade.  Sorry, Shawna, you'll have to get your own.  This one is Sea Dragon Food!

It must have been pretty good food, too.  The level was a bit higher, so the gold was a bit more, and we got a couple of not so common reagents.  Very nice.  Thanks Maddie!  One more piece before we go.  How about an old ring I forgot to vendor?

 I'm pretty sure this was a quest reward.  I'm not going to bother looking it up.  It's been in my bank so long, I'm wondering if it was in the stuff I packed up when Rowan moved to her Massive Fantasy Palace. Whatever, here Maddie, clap for a treat?

Good boy!  What a nice bit of gold for that old ring, and a treasure card that, though low level, is worthwhile. I think you can use that one in a pet food recipe!








I am glad to see that this may be a worthwhile way of disposing of that unwanted unusable vendor trash that clutters up our bags, instead of having to run to Wizard City every time our bags overflow.  I just wish Maddie got something out of it, too.  Like maybe a stat boost. Boots for agility, robes for stamina, hats for intelligence, weapons for power?  Maybe I'm over thinking this.  I'm going to go take care of the rest of my Thanksgiving dinner, now that Maddie has had his.  Happy Turkey Day, everyone!

Favorite Mount

Dog House Systems is having a contest, in which they will pick someone out of the masses who respond with a picture of their character on their favorite mount to receive either a sparkle pony or a winged guardian and a companion pet.  Now, how could anyone pick just one favorite mount?  Delgada has at least tfour.  Here they are in no particular order.

Zhevra from the old Recruit a Friend Program

Cenarion Hippogryph from Outland Cenarion reputation

Ochre Skeletal Warhorse from Brill

Albino Drake from 50 Mount Achievement

If I had to pick just one mount, it would have to be the Cenariion Hippogryph.  So, I will be sending the link to that  in.  What are your favorite mounts?  I'd love to see pictures, even if you don't enter the contest!

I'm Going To Comikaze!

Comikaze is a new convention in Los Angeles, that I can afford and that has a huge amount of interesting panels and celebrity photo opportunities.  I am so excited!  It's this weekend at the Los Angeles Convention Center.  I'm going Saturday, with a great deal a friend found on Groupon.  Even without that deal (which was 15 dollars for 4 tickets and includes 4 raffle tickets in a Stan Lee memorabilia raffle), The tickets are really cheap at 12 dollars a day, or 20 for two days, but you have to buy them online no later than Thursday!

What are you waiting for?  Do I have to drop names?  Alright, Mark Hamill will be there.  Cassandra Peterson will be there. Stan Lee will be there.  Daniel Radcliffe will be there.  For all you Nickolodeon All That fans, they are having a reunion there.  Marina Sirtis will be there.  Erin Gray will be there.  Ernest Borgnine.  Morgan Fairchild. Richard Roundtree.  There are so many more!

There are some great panels scheduled, too.  I am looking forward to a few steampunk panels.  My daughter is looking forward to a screening of Daniel Radcliffe's new movie and the All That reunion panel.  There is another interesting panel with Morgan Fairchild on paleontology.  Jhonen Vasquez, of Invader Zim fame, will have his own panel to discuss whatever it is he wishes to discuss. Richard Hatch will be hosting a Battlestar Galactica panel.  Geek Chic, a newsletter I get in my inbox daily has a panel.  There is a panel that promises to have free food (again, this is one my daughter is interested in), and several animation panels.

Why am I telling you all of this?  Why don't you go over there and read for yourself? Comikaze has something for everyone.  Hope to run into you there!  I'll be wearing the highly inaccurate steampunk costume...

Dusting Off And Airing Out

I'm updating the other pages on the site, putting up new pictures, and writing new descriptions.  I'm brainstorming ideas for posts.  I might even tackle the tags on the left, remove some and condense others.  Sound like fun?  Well, chores have to be done sometimes!

Maybe I'll even lay down a new coat of paint and paper the shelves.  But not until after I change the linens and take out the trash.  New stuff incoming.  Please pardon the mess.

What I've Been Doing - October 2011 Edition

Hi!  It's been a while, hasn't it?  Still hanging around this old dump? Well, I cannot promise that the view will change much here, or that the furniture will get moved any, but I can tell you what has been up.  Pull up a chair!

World of Warcraft has not lost its shine, yet.  I will admit to letting my subscription lapse for a week or more at a time, just because I really don't have time for this time hog of a game.  Still, I have friends and I enjoy tooling around on a new alt or three.  It's the way I am.  I had to delete a few neglected alts that weren't being played to make a new one on Proudmoore to play with one of my guildmates on the Alliance side of things.   Another draenei hunter named Minya joined my full stable of alts.  She is at level 20, and I keep forgetting to get her mount.  Oh well, I am enjoying the story through Westfall and Redridge without it, so what is the rush?

On the Horde side of things, I had transferred Delgada, who I consider my main, to the Eredar server a while back to play with a real life friend.  Well, he never promised to stick around, and Delgada has been all alone in this huge guild for a while.  Back when he was still playing and I had a little time to raid, I had allowed the guild to use KNR's server temporarily, until they found one of their own.  Well, here it is the middle of October, and hubby went shopping for a new Ventrilo server.  We let the other lapse, because a)we were broke and it was coming of our bank account, and 2) noone from that guild had even offered to contribute.  A few from KNR pony up on a regular basis, so when the coffer runs out and I need to add in a month or so, it just evens things out, you know?  I wonder if they have found a new host to leech off of.  If any of you on that server read this, well, there it is.  I cannot support two guilds.  We shrunk our server from a 50 to a 25 and moved it to Typefrag.

Hallow's Eve has started, right on the heels of Brewfest.  Delgada already had the achievements for both, so she entered the queue for Direbrew and got her trinket, then gave up on the holiday.  I don't like where it moved to. It's too far from the town.  But I love the holiday.  Maybe if I am around for Brewfest number 5 (is it that many already?) I'll celebrate with the Dwarves.  They know how to do it right.  As for Hallow's Eve, Delgada has her ring, and now she just queues in hope of getting a firey pony. I have her trick or treating, but the innkeepers won't speak to her, they just point at the big pumpkin full of goodies and go back to standing there doing nothing.  Trick or treating and the new dailies are a must, so that Delgada can get her new pets, the Feline Familiar and the Little Wickerman.  There was also a quest chain to get a Creepy Crate, which Delgada happily did.  This puts her just a little closer to the Littlest Pet Shop achievement.  She really wants that Celestial Dragon.  As for other in game things, I am leveling a few alts, and when I do drag Delgada out, it is for holiday stuff or to mindlessly fly over the face of Azeroth, looking for dig sites.

Wizard 101 has been on a side burner. I did recently, at the request of the game and because I would have anyway if I had known about it, vote for it to win the audience award for an online games award thingy.  Well, they won, and as a result I got a new pet, which as of last night was still in its shell. It's a yellow elf pet with a pedigree of 30.  When I have logged into the game, I have spent my time on my garden, which is full of pink dandelions, with a few king parsley, fickle pickle, bell peppers, snap dragons, baby carrots, and laugh o dils.  Rowan Trollstalker is currently questing in Dragonspyre.  I think she is about halfway through it.  When she has the energy, she likes to run her sea dragon through the hedge maze, but usually her garden takes most of the energy, so the poor dragon sits at teen.

Real life has taken the bulk of my time lately.  My father in law was in town a lot longer than expected, which meant a lot of running around.  He bought me a season pass for Disneyland, with parking, so I have been working toward getting each of my kids there with me, one a month.  So far, I have taken my oldest my youngest, and one of the middle ones, with plans to take two of the others close to their birthdays in November.  I keep telling myself I am going to run away and go just once by myself, but really, who am I kidding?  I barely have time to play my games at home.  What makes me think I can drive an hour away to spend a day on my own?  I think this will happen, just not really soon.  Maybe during Christmas break.

One of my step daughters wanted to audition for a musical, and I drove her there.  Next thing I know, I am being pushed on stage to audition as well.  She got the part of Zaneeta, the mayor's teen daughter, while I got the part of Ethel Toffelmeier, the pianola girl.  Bonus points if you can tell me what musical they are from, without Google's help!  We are waiting impatiently for our next practice session, as our leader said she would email us when we would start up again, after the start date had changed from "omg not the end of this month!" to "phew January sounds lots better".

My eldest daughter is sitting on her nest, and will have her little chick near the end of December.  I have to start finding silly baby shower games and start planning the party really soon.  I'm just having a hard time fitting all that in and trying to make myself a steampunk costume to wear at whatever convention I find myself at.  The only convention I have been to besides my one time at Blizzcon was a school food service convention, and as much fun as that was, the cosplay was limited to a few booth fruits (hehe). There is a new convention happening in November in Los Angeles that I am hoping to get to, just to see what one is like.  It looks to have a lot of neat personalities booked, and the price is right at about 12 bucks presale per day.  Hopefully my costume is ready by then!

Well, as for screenshots, I have been bad and not taken any recently.  So, this post will have no pretty picture at the top :(  If you are looking for pretty pictures, I invite you to go look at The Ancient Gaming Noob's site, as he is having a travel poster contest.  Maybe you can even make one of your own!  Thanks for stopping by.  Try not to let the dust bunnies out when you leave...

Clarabelle's New Ride.

A Thousand Words, Many Times Over.

I have so many cool screen shots I never let out of my folders, and then my computer breaks down and I lose them forever.  So, I have decided to share a few of them with you, whoever is still out there reading. I may make this a regular thing, like once a week, once I settle in and start writing again.  So, here, I took some pictures.  Wanna see?

Aerial View Of Ironforge.

Somewhere Lost In The Sands Of Uldum.

Run Away!

Profile Of The Lifebinder.

Angry Alexstrasza.

Her Good Side?

Ironman

I saw this challenge somewhere in my feed reader, forgive me if I don;t give credit to my original find!  Psynister has it all mapped out in this post on his blog, but the original idea started with Vrykerion in a tweet.  So you don't have to leave this post to go to the info, I'll paste the basic rules here.  You really should go to Psynister's post on it, though, as there are clarifications and comments from others that have decided to try this out. Starting at level 1...

The Rules
1. Use only white/grey items.
2. No spending talent points. No specialization at level 10. (Regular skill training is fine.)
2. No Primary or Secondary Professions other than First Aid.
3. No means of XP boosting (No Recruit-A-Friend, No Guild, and obviously no Heirlooms)
4. No consumable bonuses (food, potions, elixirs, etc) – Rogue Poisons allowed
5. No enchants.
6. No Groups. (Since clarification was requested: That means no dungeons, no Dungeon Finder, no battlegrounds, no anything that puts you in a group and no grouping up with people to quest or anything.)
7. No Death Knights.
8. No Glyphs


Seems I chose the easiest class to do this with, and hunter really is my go to alt class, even if my main is a priest.  I am still thinking about starting up a priest and leveling her this way on a different server, but for now, meet Ferrolina, my undead hunter.

Not feeling the pinch...yet.

I have died a few times to stupid, I will admit.  Ferrolina is too young to have any slowing traps, but Concussive Shot and Scatter Shot are helpful when the mobs get too close, and next session she should have a tank pet that maybe she won't be able to pull off of.  I thought I had been following the rules, but questing in the new Forsaken areas sometimes finds you in a ready made group of npcs, and I think that may have been cheating.  I meant to do it right, I swear!  The plan from here forward is to not do quests like these,  so I will have to check WoWhead to be sure. Of course, there is always the tell tale sign of somebody other than Kitkat following me, but I am not always paying attention closely, distracted forever as I am by the 3 bazillion kids running around this house.


So far, up until today I have not had any group or guild requests. Today, I was hounded by one guild, and asked nicely by two others.  Urtank, no, I do not want to join your guild.  Please, stop spamming guild invitations and whispers, please?  


Other than the nuisance of guild invitation spam, leveling has been much like regular leveling. At 20 I made a trip to Brill and sighed as I looked into her coin purse and found her with only half of the funds for a mount. To make the trip worthwhile, she traveled to the Undercity and bought a few new pieces of equipment.  She then returned to finish out her Silverpine quests and go to the next area.  I love the quest you start with in Hillsbrad, where you hand out quests.  I could do that quest daily, and still laugh. 


I know it isn't much, but hopefully from here on out this will give me some blog fodder.  I leave you with some "baby" pictures of Ferrolina. Later!

Will I ever see Darnell again?

The Dark Lady.

They followed me home, can I keep them?

Another unintended grouping mishap.

Midnight: Silvermoon City

Not many people wandering the streets of Silvermoon at any time of day, especially near midnight.  Still, the Chamber of Commerce tries hard to entertain those who happen to be there on a holiday.  The fireworks spectacular began right on the stroke of midnight, and ended twelve minutes later.  Here you can see a lonely shopkeeper watching part of the finale.

Cerisse Watching Fireworks.

Thank you, warriors, for fighting the fight that keeps us free.  Happy Fourth of July, America!

Moo.

Danger To All Who Pass These Signs!

My time has been pretty much filled with kids who need stuff, parents who need stuff, trips to exotic locations, and family trips to fun places like Knott's Berry Farm and the movies.  So, Lulubelle is all I have really had time for.  Well, her and a few shots at Ahune on Delgada (trip #2 got the Ice Chip), and several hours, afk and not, in  Minecraft.  I thought I would have more time for some end game raiding over the summer, but it looks as if that is a thing of the past for me.  As much as I would love to, and hubby would let me, it just takes too much time.  So, here is Lulubelle, fresh from Outlands in matching (shockingly!) armor, ready to take on Northrend.

Goodbye Nagrand!

Lulubelle has been running around Northrend for a while now, and is just into her 78th level.  I got a fishing bug, and decided she needed to level her secondary skills a little, so today all she did were the  three fishing dailies and one cooking daily. She's been a good little dungeon healer, healing all the regular dungeons she can, and got to run a few with her guild master's alt death knight tank, who helped knock out most of 77 with his fast queues.

At Home In Dalaran.

As for Minecraft, I know someone latched onto that and wants to know what I am up to.  KNR has a server, and I have managed to dig in pretty deep, found a big bit of redstone, a small amount of iron, gold, lapis, and diamond, and enough cobblestone to build skyscrapers. Here are some recent (I opened up the game to grab them just now!) screenshots of my corner of the KNR Minecraft Server.  The other guys are far more talented than I, and have huge greenhouses and above ground pleasure palaces.  I'll settle for my little Barbie Dream Bunker.

Kitchen And Den.

Mining Operation AKA Back Yard.

Chateau Shawndra.

Shawndra's Greenhouse.

That's all I have for now, as I am being whisked away to Sizzler.  More later, hopefully sooner than later!

My First Gaming Computer

http://cgi.ebay.com/Leading-Edge-DC-2011E-Vintage-IBM-PC-Clone-8088-CPU-/370504191483?pt=Desktop_PCs&hash=item5643c54dfb

There she is, in all her glory. A Leading Edge 8088 IBM clone.  All that is missing is the amber monitor.  I had the worst keyboard ever to go with that, too, one that clicked with every keystroke so loudly that I couldn't stay up and do stealth sessions after everyone was in bed.

I put in several hundred or more hours of prime time chat and text gaming into that box, with my shareware dialer (anyone remember Telix?) and a 4800 baud modem a friend of a friend sold me for 20 bucks.  I always got a little thrill when I connected and the ANSI graphics started to slowly scroll into place on my screen.  What if they were new?  Maybe there was a new door game!  I wonder if Drumgirl or Ledzeplin are on tonight? 

I was such a nerd.

Sorry!

I have been gone far too long.  I'm still playing games, just not as seriously.  Delgada got out to finally finish School of Hard Knocks, which resulted in finally finishing What a Long Strange Trip It's Been.  (digging through screenshots) Sorry, didn't even think to catch her on her pretty new violet protodrake. You'll just have to trust me on that one.

I do, however, have pictures of the gal who has stolen me away from playing Delgada.  Meet Lulubelle, seer of An'she.

Bunny Ears?

Alright, so the ears don't quite convey how seriously she takes herself.  Here is a better picture.

Bad Dog!

So now we know who really burnt Stratholme down.  She really isn't as bad as that, though.  Here's another picture.

Consorting with goblins...

Kind of a necessary means to the end of getting the skills to pay bills, though.  Tell me you haven't done something for a goblin at one time or another, go ahead, I'm waiting.  While we wait, here is another picture of the highly photogenic Lulu.

She even heals hunter pets!

She is so very kind!  Right after that, she traveled to Silithus, killed a few large worms and Twilight Cultists, and stepped through the handy portal to the Blasted Lands, to report for duty past the Dark Portal into Outlands first horde installation, Thrallmar.  There may be fewer pictures for a while as she is rather keen on looking her best and the clothes that can be had there are well, outlandish.  See, I made a joke...haha!

Lulu is being leveled from scratch with no heirlooms or big sister characters on a new server to me. She is a discipline priest, which I haven't ever tried before, and I am really enjoying it.  I grabbed dual specializations to have a shadow spec, but haven't needed to use it yet, and doubt I'll even change over save to add points every several levels or so.  She is a tailor and enchanter, leveled well past where she should be thanks to the generosity of her guild mates in Integrity. Her leveling has been easy, as the healer queue is rather short.  A few quests here, a few dungeons there, and she is out of a zone not too long after barely wetting her hooves in the shallow end of it.  She is now in Zangarmarsh, looking forward to hitting Terokkar before the week is up. 

Sorry I have been rather absent.  I am thinking about changing the name of the blog here soon, as when I started it I had no idea there was a large site called the Escapist.  that, and some people, seeing my URL, think it is Escapists Crawl.  No, I'm not crawling like a baby, I am scrawling like a teenager who is late for turning in their homework.  Barely legible, but hopefully good enough for a passing grade.  I'll keep the URL until it expires, which is next year, but I may find another to direct here, or just move over to my other blog that I'm not using yet, Seven Kids - One Bathroom, which is much more like me right now.  Either way, I'll post something here when the change is made.  Thanks for stopping by!

In My Comfy Jeans

Everyone has a pair of comfy jeans.  Mine make me feel like I can do anything.  They make my butt look smaller, go with almost everything in my wardrobe, can be worn with my ugly day off flops or with my nice sandals.  I am usually in my best mood when I'm in them.  If I am not, it's because I put them on a few seconds ago and their magic hasn't taken effect yet.

Anyhow, I have some friends I like to play with, that no matter how little I know about what we're gonna do, help clue me in and make me comfortable and successful.  I smile when I am running instances, raids, or just farming reputation with them, because I don't have to worry how badly I am performing.  They'll tell me, helpfully, what needs to be done, and we all set out to do it.  They're my in game comfy jeans.  I'd rather hang out with them than anyone else.

Delgada got swept into raiding without having finished doing the regular instances, or even the heroics.  She is not in comfy jean territory.  She has something to prove, and that makes my game time with her frustrating when things feel off.  They tell me I am doing fine, but I feel wrong.  There are a couple who have the potential of being part of my comfy crew, giving me helpful hints and advice, but there's still an itchy tag, a seam that is just a little off, and frankly, my butt looks way too big in them.

Carlotta is just 83.  Her friends know she can sorta kite, but fails at crowd control.  She is a beast mastery hunter, running around with several underage pets.  Last night, she took out her devilsaur, who was a sad, neglected level 79.  After running Blackrock Caverns and Throne of the Tides, he caught up with her, and was named BazookaJoe.  See, I can show off my bad pets and quirky shot rotations with my comfy friends, because they just shrug it off, knowing I'll get better.

Back to making my point.  The sad part of comfy jeans is, they wear out.    You can't wear them as much because they have holes, then the holes connect and your jeans are held together by thin threads.  You have to break in a newer pair of jeans to replace the other ones.  Sometimes, you can patch your favorite jeans and make them last longer.  Still, they eventually wear out.  Just like raiding and instance groups, right?  You might be able to patch in some new blood, but the patches wear around the edges and you end up in the same place, trying to wear in a new pair, or patching the same area again.

So, I am breaking in new comfy jeans.  How is everyone else doing out there in this post-Cataclysm world?

No Money? No Problem!

So, it's Spring Break for me, and I am out of cash.  No money for World of Warcraft.  So, it was time to dust off a free game I had installed, update it, and get a second impression.

I think it was summer that I downloaded Runes of Magic.  It is a very pretty game, and my husband tells me it reeks of WoW.  Sure, there are buttons and chat screens and mini maps and character info bars all neatly where WoW puts them, but I don't see much similarity past that.

I started an Elf Mage named Eromee.  I didn't go back to whoever I had started before, because I wanted a fresh opinion of the game.  Character customization was fun, not too hard to mess with, but had the potential to get really sticky, depending on how picky you are about your character's looks. Here is the finished gal, all done up in her around level 20 gear.

Eromee on her Rent-A-Nag, with her pet Spore Guard giving advice.

Every level up to 20, you have a little bag that you can open that gives you mana and health potions and some other useful stuffs.  At 20, I got a one day rental on this wonderful horse.  Otherwise, with no real world money to use, you're wearing out your shoe leather.  If you complete the tutorial at the beginning, you get a rental on a brown horse, and I think that you get that anyhow, but might as well for the extra experience boost!  See that purty robe she's wearing?  She made it herself out of some wood planks and some leaf bundles.  And that freaky looking toadstool guy behind her?  That's her pet.  Got any great suggestions for a name for him (I'm assuming it's male, because he is shirtless and pantsless and isn't hiding behind a leaf or looking embarassed...shameless toadstool boy!)? 

I'm getting ahead of myself.  The elf starting area is an island of its own, and I was pretty nearly 15 when I left it.  I heard rumors of an experience boost this past weekend, so don't expect the same bang for your time invested.  I did finish EVERY quest they had out there, though, and left with some decent clothes and a sexy staff.  Pants and Robes on my own, all the rest were quest rewards and drops.  I took their zeppelin, which somehow managed to look elven and steampunk at the same time, to Varanas, the main city that I seem tied to right now.  Oh, before I left the Elven area, I made sure that if I could craft it, I ran out of items to craft with the resources I gathered there.  This kept me from having to craft or gather for a long long time after leaving the homeland.

After hitting Varanas, there were a few errand quests to do that take you all over town, though none of them seemed to help me find some of the things I needed when I hit gathering and crafting caps.  The quest log is helpful, in that if you click on an NPC name in it, it will path you to them.  Just be careful as you run to stop and gather or kill things, and then restart your hell bent run for that NPC, or you'll die on the way.

Death. There's something I should mention.  When you die (I'm not sure what the beginning level of this is at, if you play you'll find out soon enough) you lose experience and training points, and your experience and training point gain per kill and quest turn in go down to help pay off that debt.  You should always go back and find your grave stone to get some of that debt refunded to you.  It's not such a horrible debt, at least yet, that I haven't been able to repay it within a few minutes.  Still it is a tiny setback you should know about.

Skills you gain as you level, and you use your training points to strengthen your abilities.  I'm sure I am doing it all wrong, so if I become concerned about the right build, I will write down how they are supposed to be leveled.  Right now, I figure I should keep my ordinary skills at max, and probably only max out the skills I like in the mage specific category.  Why?  Because if I grab that second class, I want the ordinary skills maxed and ready, because I won't have all the fancy fun ones available to me if I change primary classes.  Right now, I am only a mage.  I'm pretty sure being a rogue or a warrior type would be a bad choice, as their skills aren't even remotely similar.  Until I figure out, I'll be a one trick gal, and that is fine by me.

The cash shop is full of fun goodies that so far I haven't needed. Helpful things would be a permanent mount (though you can rent them by the day from a stable keeper) and some extra storage space. Daily quests are available from day one that grant you Phirius Coins, which have their own separate tab in the cash shop, and you can buy mount rentals and other maybe things you might want, like transport and home runes, items to reset point and class choices, experience and talent point boosters, housing items (yes, I have a house!  more on that later), and items to upgrade your armor.  Personally, after I get a few housing items and I am set on transport runes, I'm saving up for the one and only costume item in the Phirius Coin section, a pair of Heavenly Black Wings. Why?  Why not?! 

The next category in the shop is rubies.  Rubies are given when you purchase items in the item shop(at least I think this is how it works).   In here you can find backpack expansions, upgrades, and a slightly larger amount of costumes to choose from.  No mounts here, but I figure that either I should cough up the 10 bucks for a regular horse, or just pay for one when I want one, which is pretty cheap, I think. Besides, if I hoard enough gold, I can probably find just about anything I want from the cash shop in the auction house.

Down on Grandpa's Farm There Is A Little White Hen.

I let this sit half written in my browser since Thursday night at 2 am.  I have been so busy figuring out how my Spore Guard pet works, and feeding him, and being an absolute noob trying to follow a higher level person through the Forsaken Abbey dungeon (Oh, what fun is that? I totally forgot to finish a quest in there, too :( ), and dying to bad things I should not have died to, and reading every little thing my pet says, that I totally forgot it was here. Yeah, and I was busy caring for a newborn for my slutty Medieval Sim. Really.  If you believe that, then I have a farm to sell you, full of chickens that might lay a golden egg for you, and cows and goats that refuse to be milked.  More on that later.  It's, again, waaaaay past my bedtime.