Beta: It's Mine Time!

Well with the current bugged/broken Judgements making Paladin levelling and tanking about as much fun as trying to tighten a screw with a maggot, I decided to get Ulu's professions in order.

When I first copied Ulu to the test realm, his mining was only at 273, and I needed 375 to begin mining in Northrend.

First stop was the Burning Steppes, where I spent an hour doing circuits and mining all the Thorium and Dark Iron veins I could see to get him close to 300. On the plus side, the zones were practically deserted, so I was free to level at my leisure.

At 299 mining, I got on a bird to the Blasted Lands, figuring I could find the last couple of nodes I needed on the way to the Dark Portal. I was right, and dinged 300 there. For my trouble, Ulu was rewarded with Toughness rank 4.

After that, it was time for the easy part. I did circuits of Hellfire Penninsula and Nagrand on Ulu's epic flier, mining all the Fel Iron and Adamantite nodes I could find. Outland was a little busier than Azeroth with all the levelling Death Knights, but none of them were mining, so Ulu had carte blanche again. It took me maybe an hour and a half from that point to get up to 375 mining and Toughness rank 5, but it was worth it.

I'm quite chuffed with the Toughness buffs. It's nice to have a reason to keep a gathering profession late into the life cycle. The 20 Stamina buff is actually 26 when combined with Ulu's talents and I'm looking forward to getting the level 6 Toughness at 450 Mining...

I went to bed after finishing the grind, but I took a run around this morning and mined my first few Cobalt nodes.

In related news, I've just copied my bank character over to the Beta realm with my stored collection of Ores, stones, gems and Primals. I think tonight I'm going to drop Engineering and powerlevel Blacksmithing.