I headed back to Storm Peaks in WoW tonight to resume questing, but I had to cut one of the quest chains short because some jerk was killing a quest target over and over again. I’m not sure why they’d do it other than to deny other people the ability to do the quest, since they don’t drop any special loot like they would have back in EQ. I couldn’t even ask them to stop since they were Alliance.

Ah well, I headed to the northwest area and helped out the rock dwarves and Horde camp there, getting a bunch of lore about Ulduar in the process. There was a fight against someone named Valduran that turned out to be difficult for tanks like me since he continually spams spells, and I failed a few times, but finally got it on the fourth try with the right combination of shield bash and spell reflection.

I’m about half-done in Storm Peaks now, and along the way I managed to break the 4000 gold mark and now have four weapon skills at the 400 skill level. Just 1000 more gold to go for my last major expense…

Some network trouble prevented me from getting into WoW until later on tonight, but I managed to squeeze in the usual round of daily quests, and a bit of blacksmithing. I finally got up to 440 skill, with a mix of self-collected and bought saronite, and that let me buy up all the rest of the blacksmithing recipes at the trainer.

Most notably, that lets me start making Titansteel items. Or it would except for one thing: the lack of titanium ore. It’s a very rare spawn that I’ve only found maybe 10 of myself, and at the AH it’s going for 14-15 gold per ore. With 6 bars of titansteel needed for a weapon, that’s 18 bars of titanium, or 36 pieces of titanium ore, at a total of 522 gold. And that’s not counting the also-rare Eternal Fire needed. I at least have enough to make the shield tomorrow, when the cooldown on making another bar of titansteel expires.

But at least it’s still cheaper than directly buying the weapon at the AH; the last titansteel mace I saw was over 1000 gold. I do actually have enough money to just buy them outright, but I’m trying to make them myself partly just for the pride of doing so, and to help save up for an epic mount.

I did a handful of the starting Storm Peaks quests, but haven’t really gotten any nice upgrades yet. There was a rather nifty daily quest involving planting land mines to stop enemies rushing towards you, though.

Today in WoW, I went back and finished up a few quests I’d missed before in Borean Tundra. This included the DEHTA quests, which finally let me get some revenge against Nesingwary’s hunters and involved saving the little animals. Well, the cute ones, anyway.

Along the way I got to Revered with the walrus guys, which let me buy a really nice polearm and dagger. They’re not traditional weapons for a prot warrior, but I like to try to keep all the weapon skills up (two are up to 400 already).

I noticed that saronite was fairly cheap in the auction house, so I bought a bunch and worked on blacksmithing for a while. I’m up to 435 skill now, only 5 points away from being able to make myself titansteel weapons and shields, but those five points are going to be annoying since all of the saronite recipes have gone yellow now.

And then, finally, I finished up most of the remaining quests in Zul’Drak, except for a few group ones. Next up, the Storm Peaks.

With only a few zones left to go in WoW, I kicked off today’s session by exposing the rest of the maps of the remaining areas, finally getting the explorer achievement, title, and tabard. I also got a couple other achievements for the daily quests, but nothing quite as rewarding.

Otherwise, I just spent the day working on quests in Zul’Drak. The only really notable one was part of a long chain where I had to infiltrate and betray the scourge leader in a large floating platform, and the final battle must have taken me six or seven attempts to beat. A few times just because I got confused at the start (the disguise you wear is forced to fade, but I thought it was just random like it usually is and tried to flee), and a few times just due to the sludge he throws at you.

I’m already mostly done Zul’Drak now, and then it’ll be off to the Storm Peaks, where I should finally catch up to quests and rewards around my level. I’ve been vendoring the vast majority of rewards since I’ve alreayd got better in most slots.

I finished off most of the rest of the quests in Dragonblight tonight, which led me sooner than I expected to the Wrathgate event, with a cinematic out of nowhere, a sudden twist of events, and a series of huge fights in a rather unexpected place. To say any more would be spoilerish, and it’s best experienced without any foreknowledge.

And then after that I did a bit more fishing in Dalaran, managing to find the rest of the coins and getting the achievement and coin reward for it. It’s pointless, but I can’t seem to stay away from stuff like that…

And finally, nine months after Wrath of the Lich King was released, I hit level 80. It was rather uneventful, happening in the middle of doing a bunch of level 72-74 quests, but whatever.

I spent tonight mainly working on Dragonblight quests, clearing out the ones available in Agmar’s Hammer and the western refugee camp. I hit Revered with the horde expedition, but it didn’t unlock anything all that great, as I’d already made better items for myself. I’d need to get to Exalted in order to get the nifty shield enhancement blacksmithing recipe.

Though I may have maxed my level, there’s still plenty to do, as there’s still three-and-a-half zones to go and plenty of achievements unearned…

I kicked off WoW tonight with the same dailies I’ve been doing before, but then I headed back to Nagrand for the first time in quite a while. I finished up the Nesingwary quests there, now that I’m way beyond the level needed for the tougher fights, plus a few other miscellaneous quests. Then I went back to Hellfire Peninsula and did the ramparts instance, just to see if I could, and indeed I can. That netted me a couple more achievements for doing the instance and enough quests in the zone.

Getting back to Northrend, I headed to Dragonblight, and picked up all of the quests I could, stopping to do a handful of the easier ones that were along the way anyway and exploring the rest of the map for the achievement. Dragonblight turned out to be lower-level than I thought, so I really should have gone there before Sholazar or Grizzly Hills. Oh well.

And finally I did a bit more fishing in Dalaran, managing to get the remainder of the silver coins and the achievement for that. I still need three more each of the copper and gold ones, though.

Today I finished up in Sholazar Basin, finishing off pretty much every quest I could find and getting the achievement for it (usually I wind up a few short for these zone quest achievements). I sided with the fish-guy Oracles and unlocked their daily quests, with the help of a friend, and it shouldn’t take too long before I can buy the egg from them that can yield some new minipets.

I did a daily cooking quest in Dalaran and realized I could buy the Critter Bites recipe, so I went and did the achievement for charming 10 critters with them, and then the achievement for slaying 15 turkeys, since you can easily do them both in the same place (SE corner of Howling Fjord). And I also spent some time fishing in the fountain in Dalaran for the first time. I’ve actually caught most of the coins already, but with large collection quests like these, the tricky part is always that last coin…

Along the way I hit level 79, so pretty much all of Northrend is open to me at this point (aside from raids). I think I’ll head to either Dragonblight or Zul’Drak next though.

I will have to pop back in to Sholazar on a regular basis though, just to do the daily quests and farm saronite, at least.

WoW tonight was spent doing more quests in Sholazar, for both the fish guys and the Avatar of Freya. Nesingwary, of course, wants me to kill a zillion more animals yet again, but I’ll leave his quests for last.

As part of the Avatar’s quests, I got to control a big giant and beat up hordes of undead in one area of the map, and take on some really tough bosses. It took me multiple tries to kill each one, since each has a special attack that you have to watch out for.

And along the way I picked up a lot more saronite, though it was only enough to make three new pieces of equipment for myself (a shield, bracers, and a mace), though they are fairly nice upgrades.