"One Month, One Toon" Challenge Update: Day 11

So it's been 11 days since I started my One Month, One Toon Challenge and it's time to report back on how it's going, what I'm learning and what I'm missing. (If you're confused by my Nelf'ish figure above, it was a teleporter malfunction. A horrible, disfiguring malfunction!) Read on past the jump for my experiences so far.


The Good

The things that I have noticed in the last 11 days that I really enjoy are the simplicity of my log in choices. I know which character I'm logging into every day, my hunter. This leads to part two, my gold-making routine is very simple due to my limited professions choices (and my stubborn refusal to ask in trade for help). I've been mostly disenchanting items for profit (mostly failed/overstock mogging items), flipping (or attempting to at least) mogging items and hunting rare spawns to acquire the aforementioned mogging items.

If you've been watching my recent livestreams (twitch.tv/jimyounkin) you will be aware of my daily routine: check auctions, kill rares. This has had the side-effect of allowing me much more time to analyize (and agonize) over the state of mogging sales on my server. Ithas given me a much better handle on what the realities of my server are (bleak).

I don't think I would have gained this kind of insight if I wasn't focusing on this one character who has put so much effort into trying to make mogging work. Another side benefit is that I am becoming a bit famous (and infamous) on my server as "the" person to go to for mogging gear. Hate mailes and hate /w are a near daily occurance now. On the flip side people are "placing orders" with me for items they want so it's not all bad. Ultimately this will serve me well if/when mogging takes off on my server.

A surprising market I've also been playing around in is the enchating materials I have been recieving for the "bad" items I get while searching for mogging items. It's a small income but it's steady and I would not have found it without the Challenge.

I also finally got my hunter's gear fully gemmed and enchanted! (Now you can shush up Josh!) I should probably do an LFR at some point to see what having, you know, gems in my gear can do to my DPS.

The Bad

I miss being able to hop onto my crafting toons and prospect ore, transmute gems, transmute Air and many other things that I had taken for granted having alts with every profession maxed. As an example, last night I found a ton of cheap ore on the AH and a few seconds later (thanks to the Remote Auction House being able to buy multiple stacks with one click) was the proud owner of 7k worth of cheap Obsidium Ore. I'd love to shuffle it, but instead it was mailed off to my JC alt to wait for the Challenge to be over. Lost opportunity there.

I'm really missing having my alts to craft etc. however one surprising thing is that I'm not really missing playing my alts that much. I thought I would but, whether it is that I'm playing my "main" or that I'm not as attached to them as I thought, I'm just not craving playing my alts. Of course it helps that all 10 of my characters are level 85, have maxed profs and have their gear mogged to my liking.

April paid for my second account so that we can level a new set of alts (yes, this was one of the allowed contingencies in my challenge) with full heirlooms and I've been starting to get the itch to start a new level 70 PVE twink hunter on my second account. I can't though, and so that project will have to wait for after the Challenge. That kinda sucks.

One bad thing is I often can't think of what to do. As a few of you noticed on last nights livestream I kinda hit a wall as far as what to do with my one character. If I wasn't in the challenge I could simply switch over to another character and have a whole set of "other things" to be doing. If you aren't raiding or PVPing with and can only play one character you tend to run out of "things to do" rather quickly.

The Ugly

The worst thing about the challenge so far? Hmmmm. There really hasn't been anything that has been so "amigawd shoot me!" about the challenge. I've kind of enjoyed it. I don't feel super constrained and with the last 19 days or so of the challenge I'll continue to press on and see how far down the rabbit hole goes.

When you're doing a physical work out, it is easy to feel good for the first 5 or 10 minutes. Things really tend to get more difficult as the 15 muinute mark starts to creep up on you. I'm defnitely starting to hit that phase of the challenge. That part when you ask yourself "Why in the hell am I doing this to mysef?!".

As I punch through "the wall" in this challenge I hope to continue working on getting back some of the great feelings I had back in TBC, when I only had one character to worry about.

Conclusion

So far so good. Feeling a bit of a pinch. A bit of a burn. The challenge wouldn't be much of a challenge if it weren't at least a bit, oh I don't know, challenging. I think I'm going to devote more time in the next phase of the challenge revisiting my beloved TBC roots.

Perhaps do all of the TBC dungeons with their newly placed NPCs and accept and read all of the quests text and re-learn why we were actually in thise dungeons in the first place. I may even be crazy enough to re-do the entire TBC quest chains or at least find ones I never finished. Those are things I would probably have never done if I wasn't on this challenge.

You?

What do you think about the challenge? Would you ever take the One Month, One Toon Challenge? Are you currently on the Challenge? If so, let us know about it in the comments below.

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