Leveling My Pacifist: Levels 1-14 (Herbalism+Mining)

     If you've been following me on Twitter, you might have heard a while back that I started the ridiculously daunting task of rolling a purely Pacifist toon. I first heard about these from an article back in Cata, and it always sounded like something that was really the essence of the game; creating personal RP-related xp-grinding goals and achievements and seeing if you can follow through. Long story short, Pacifist toons level all the way from 1-90 without killing a single mob, so that's purely from mining, herbalism, exploration, delivery quests, and Oh yes Archaeology. On the gold making side of things, I currently have on toon with mining and another with herbalism, and logging back and forth when I could do both on the same toon is getting really old, so it's time to roll a full time gathering druid; might as well cross off somethin from my WoW bucket list while I'm at it, right?

500 gold to the first commenter who gets the joke.

      What really surprised me about this whole journey so far is that, even at level 14, this character has taken on a life of her own. While, yah, it has been very slow, mining your way to cap...as you might expect. But think about it, back on our first toons, before we knew how to play, leveling felt slow, and it took us (or at least me) a couple hours of playing just to level once. Now with full set of BoAs people can go from level 1-20 in thirty minutes if they really push it. THAT USED TO TAKE THREE DAYS! Thing is, now, people then complain about how easy this is to do. With this Pacifist character, and when you actually give in to the time commitment, it brings back "the good old days" of slow and steady leveling. I'm currently at 21 hours played (probably 5 of those spent tabbed out in Stormwind) and I feel connected to this druid in a way that I definitely do not to my powerleveled 41 mage.

     Alright, down to brass tacks. You wanna join in on the fun? Here's what I recommend. First off, commit to not killing anything. Take any abilities that have any chance of doing damage off your bars. My bars consist of Rejuv, Nourish, Shapeshift, Prowl, and Shadowmeld. I recommend having autoattack somewhere but just not keybound, so that if you're accidentally attacking something, you can click your autoattack off before you accidently kill something and ruin the whole experiment. But all that's the boring stuff, right? You wanna know how to level. Ok? Ok.

Levels 1-4: 
     Honestly, this bit was pretty simple, once I figured it out. I started out thinking "Alright, I got a Pacifist! I'm gonna Mine my way to 90! Wooo! Not gonna kill anything!" Went to go learn the profession of mining and the trainer said "18 copper, please." While that's a pitiful amount, I was doing this character independantly, and going full RP with it, otherwise what's the point? So I went to go do a quest. The quest said kill 5 spiders. No thank you. I went to do another. Collect a windchime from the Furblog chieftain's corpse. Dammit. So here's the deal, intro quests have you killing piddly stuff. However, there is a ton of land to explore that will grant you 15%-20% xp per section. So, go spend an hour running around all the different starting zones in (Alliance bias here) Elwynn Forest, Dun Morough,Teldrassil, and Azurmyst Isle. For bonus points, do the lvl 10+ zones like Bloodmyst Isle and Westfall. Pick up any quests that you can, and if they're not too far out of your way, go ahead and complete em. Use your judgement on this.

Ugh, let me take my "Ding" screenshot in peace, Mr Mrglglrl

Levels 4-10:
     For this section, I stayed in Elwynn Forest, did all the quests in and around Goldshire, and just mined and herbed my heart out. Honestly, I can't imagine doing this with any race other than a night elf because Shadowmeld is amazing. Also, being able to throw a heal on and run away is fantastic when that is on cooldown. With rested XP and it takes roughly 50 nodes to level (opting not to use BoAs for this toon) so it goes pretty quick and even gray nodes give the same XP, at least at these levels. If you like to keep the rested XP buff up, you can gather until rested falls off, hearth to stormwind, log off for the day, and let rested accumulate, and then continue the next day - slow and steady for this playstyle never hurts.
     What surprised me about this is that after a while, it wasn't just mining. The fact that I couldn't kill the mobs added an interesting element to the mix. It was similar to the horror games where you don't have a gun and only have a flashlight, so you have to start thinking and planning more ahead of time. I dunno, maybe other Pacifists can chime in here but it was more than just a mining route. You have to think about where you're gonna go and play a game of Splinter Cell with the mobs aggro radius. I reccomend it.

Levels 10-12:
     Did a little experimentation at level 10. Went over to Westfall to try and see if I got more XP from higher level nodes since I was capped out on my professions, and there would be higher XP quests over there. Turns out, the nodes give the same XP and the aggro radius from the mobs is so much larger that you waste a lot of time running back from the graveyard. Sure, there is a little bit of XP from a quest here and there, But I think the best course of action is not to move on to the next area until you outlevel it by 2-4 levels so that all of the quests in the zone are available and you can safely run around. Back to Elwynn forest.

The Singing Sunflower is optional. Actually, I'm about to kill it.

Levels 12-14:
     Ran back to Goldshire. Farmed up a bunch more. Yada yada. Also, it's worth noting that even though these are basic lvl 1 herbs and this toon is walking from node to node, this toon has earned over 1,000g so far and has 3,000g worth of goods on the AH.

Conclusion and Future Techniques
     If anything is ever too hard, or I stop gaining experience, I can just unlearn mining and herbalism and start over again. A really interesting thing about this character that I absolutely love is that, unlike my warrior or any other character that I play where it's "kill-kill-kill as fast as I can" there is this Buddhist, Zen-like quality where you sit back and accept the grind. It will take time, so you do it, and it ends up not actually taking as long as you think when you accept it. Then once you do, it actually starts to be more fun than the the alternative because it makes you think and strategize. Funny. Worthwhile mindset to carry over into goldmaking as well.


Thanks for reading my little WoW blog! You can find me on Twitter Here, and on YouTube Here. I strongly suggest you download the TradeSkillMaster addon and the TheUndermineJournal GE addon. My brief setup guide is here, feel free to email or tweet any questions. And remember that the key to making gold in WoW is just to

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