This is the first time I’ve ever taken a ding shot lower than level 60. It’s also the first time level 10 has felt like an accomplishment in any way.

I know there’s good potential for getting trolled here, because this is obviously not difficult. It’s lowbie pet battling. You have like, one ability per pet at these levels, maybe 2. Press button, press button, press button, win. Walk a few dozen yards. Press button. At 13 hours, and with the no guild restriction of Iron Man, it’s bizarrely lonely. I talk to my Battle Tag buds, and have been listening to podcasts (I welcome suggestions for new ones in the comments!), and have been streaming to make it easier, but it’s still awful.

It’s hard to put into words the psychology here. This is more difficult than any race to cap I’ve done… in those cases, I have new things to do, new information to parse, new locations to explore. Race to cap also tended to be more about physical stamina than mental. I typically had competition, which gave me extra drive to keep going. I had strangers randomly sending me tells, either to cheer me on or tell me I sucked and had no life (or asking me to run them through Zul’Farrak, plz & thxu). This exercise is mentally un-stimulating radio silence, and it really, really sucks.

In fact, partway through level 7, I went to Loch Modan just because I needed a change of scenery that bad. Once I got there, something I suspected and hoped wasn’t the case was quickly confirmed.

My XP in Dun Morogh had grown slowly as I leveled, but made up a smaller and smaller percentage of my overall XP to level. At level 7, when I left, I was getting 40 XP per fight in Dun Morogh, which was .88 (repeating of course) percent of a level per fight. As soon as I set foot in Loch Modan and fought a level 5 wild pet, I got 105 XP, 2.3% of a level per fight. The percent per level in Dun Morogh continues to decrease. I’m down to .73% of a level per fight at level 10.

In other words, with those level 1 critters in Dun Morogh, I will never reach a breakpoint. The only way to increase my ratio of battles required per level is to fight higher level pets, which means I have to go to higher level areas in order to get more efficient. However, there is a tipping point between real time efficiency, XP gained per fight, and just how many times I get my face bitten off by a skull level bear.

Even though I gained much more per fight, my downtime was such that Dun Morogh and Loch Modan were roughly equivalent in real-time efficiency, but that efficiency plummets in the Loch when you die. However, I can say pretty conclusively that at this point, battling with higher level pets than the available wild pets, though it gives me a couple XP hit per battle, ends up being way more efficient because I can churn battles more quickly.

Current Level – 10

Current /played – 13 hrs 44 mins

Number of ginvites – 71 (51 since last update)

Number of references to Charlie The Unicorn – 1

sigh.