The Time Came!

I was giggling like a little schoolgirl last night as I finally hit my goal of 5200 Gold for my epic flying and mount. I had done some farming, specifically for ore and crystallized elements. My zapthrottle mote extractor is one of the best inventions ever. I emptied my bank, vowed to stop being such a pack rat, and dumped all my valuables on the AH over the weekend. Just about everything sold and I was a very happy panda.

I got the last mails from the Auction House as I was exploring Outlands for the achievement (which I got) and promptly flew to Shadowmoon Valley to train up and buy my new Green Windrider. He's gorgeous, and so much faster than my old flying mounts that it's absolutely no contest. While I'll no doubt start missing my roflcopter in a few weeks, right now the speed increase more than makes up for it. I started the Netherwing faction grind up to Neutral on Friday evening, so I'll start going to outlands each day to continue that grind. Zoya will be mine!

I'll be able to recoup my gold fairly quickly as well. Faster speed means faster dailies, faster farming, and faster quests. Doing all my dailies used to take hours. Hopefully I can cut that time in half now, especially since I'll be doing some Outlands stuff as well.

And speaking of dailies: I was able to get my cooking and fishing up to Grand Master level this weekend so I'm eligible for the cooking dailies in Dalaran (and theoretically the new Fishing dailies that are coming in 3.1). That opened up a whole slew of new achievements as well. I think the one I never thought I'd get this quickly was "Skills to Pay the Bills." My fishing is up to Northrend standards, but only barely. I'll have to use lots of lures at first until I get it higher or just wait for 3.1 where leveling fishing will be easier than ever. According to the patch notes, you'll be able to fish anywhere,  you just may fish up junk rather than a fish. Still, every catch (even junk) will count towards skill-ups. Regardless, I'm excited. More and more of the "endgame" is open to me as I continue playing, and only good can come from that. ;)

And as a last little note: we're a stone's throw away from raiding as a group. Several guildmates leveled up to 80 last week and this weekend, and we have another about to hit 80. This is awesome just because I've been having a really hard time with the heroic instances. I'm discovering (unfortunately) that my tanking skills are maybe a little sub-par. With more guildies hitting 80, though, I imagine the need to run heroics to gear up will be increased, giving me more opportunities to practice and improve. That said, I ran Halls of Lightning again on regular with one of our new 80s and finally got my coveted Seal. It's about freaking time, I'm telling you. I'll use it mostly to stay uncrittable at this point, but it's nice to have. I'm starting to stack more stamina now... maybe I'll actually see 30k raid buffed which would be nice. Also thanks to that run, I got Revered with the Wyrmrest Accord so I bought the boots and breastplate I've been wanting. Needless to say, I've upgraded. And it's a nice feeling.