I had successfully made my way to Northrend with my rogue, now my sixth character to get into the content of Wrath Classic.  But I was a bit behind on a few of his skill, which meant returning to older content to catch up.

The first was mining.

One of the errors, in my view, of The Burning Crusade was the necessity to have harvesting skills up to 300 before you could use them in Outland… well, except herbalism.  Somehow they saw the light on herbalism, mostly by putting some vanilla era herbs out in Hellfire Peninsula.  But mining… forget about it.  You need 300 mining skill to get fel iron ore, and Chad was sitting at 245.  Not even close.

Fortunately I had done the thorium loop in Winterspring in the past so knew what to do.  I had to pass some rich deposits at first, but soon skilled up enough to get them.  A couple of sessions of that… one can only run in a circle mining for so long… and I had hit the magic number.

Then it was out to Hellfire Peninsula to mine fel iron until I hit 325, then to Zangarmarsh where Adamantite gets thrown into the mix.  I hit 350 quickly enough… my main problem was another person out there flying the same loop for the same reason… and I was on to Borean Tundra because the devs learned their lesson and made cobalt mining require just 350 skill level.

So, problem solved.  Also, Chad’s other harvesting skill was skinning, and that is almost always maxed out… especially after Nagrand and Hemet Nesingwary.

Which brought me to lockpicking.  Having only barely played a rogue in the early days… technically, my first character in the group was a rogue name Blintz, but he was replaced by my paladin when the group caught up to him in levels… lockpicking never really entered into it that much.  I remember doing some leveling up with a bunch of locked boxes that spawned out in Redridge, but I mostly just ignored the skill after that.

And then, at some point, the skill just went away and your lockpicking skill was a function of your level and nobody mentioned it ever again.

But not yet.  Not in Wrath Classic.  There I was still in the era of having to skill that up and I was… way behind in lockpicking.

That picture I took a bit into my efforts.  I was down at 135 when I started.

Where to even go to get that skill leveled up?  Fortunately, when it comes to WoW at least, there is always some site out there that has the answer.

First it was off to Ashenvale to the coast around Blackfathom Deeps where I ran around in a large loop by the naga and the wildlife looking for chests to get to 150.  Then it was off to Angor Fortress in the Badlands for the next segment of training.

I spent a good part of an afternoon there.  The lockboxes upstairs will get you to at least 175, and then you go downstairs and can get past 250.  That is still a lot of locks to pick in a place where I estimate no more than five are active at any moment and you can easily outrun the spawn rate.

I ran that until all the chests were green difficulty before moving on to Searing Gorge, where you have to go into the mines with the Dark Iron dwarves and find their chests to unlock.

That stage also took a while, because chests are scattered about and only a couple seem active at any given moment.  I pushed that until I wasn’t getting skillups because the next suggested location was Blackrock Depths.  So off I went again.

The guide says that there are four locks you can do at the start of the instance.  There are three doors that will give skill ups and then the shadowforge lock that is in one of the first crowded rooms where things can go wrong if you don’t manage your aggro radius.

I pushed Searing Gorge for all it was worth because, while it is easy enough to run in and pick these locks… I did it with no problems and got my skillups… you can only reset an instance 5 times in an hour, so I wanted to get to within 20 skill points of 300… once again, the barried for Outland lockpicking… so I could do it all in one go.

I succeeded in that.  From there it was off to Outland and Zangarmarsh, where there are a bunch of chests along the north of the western side of the swamp.

And then, once those went green in difficulty, it was off to Nagrand and one of the fortresses there that has boxes to pick scattered about.

That was actually where I had to do some work and be careful because, at level 70, I was still in the level range for the mobs around there and couldn’t just one-shot anything that looked at me cross-eyed.

With that I made it to 350.

I also stopped for a minute to slay a few Talbuk so I could get my cooking skill… at 349 in the first screen shot… over the 350 marker so I could start in on recipes in Northrend.

So Chad is all tuned up on lockpicking.  Now it is just the detail of getting him to level 80 at some point before Cataclysm Classic.

I had successfully made my way to Northrend with my rogue, now my sixth character to get into the content of Wrath Classic.  But I was a bit behind on a few of his skill, which meant returning to older content to catch up.

The first was mining.

One of the errors, in my view, of The Burning Crusade was the necessity to have harvesting skills up to 300 before you could use them in Outland… well, except herbalism.  Somehow they saw the light on herbalism, mostly by putting some vanilla era herbs out in Hellfire Peninsula.  But mining… forget about it.  You need 300 mining skill to get fel iron ore, and Chad was sitting at 245.  Not even close.

Fortunately I had done the thorium loop in Winterspring in the past so knew what to do.  I had to pass some rich deposits at first, but soon skilled up enough to get them.  A couple of sessions of that… one can only run in a circle mining for so long… and I had hit the magic number.

Then it was out to Hellfire Peninsula to mine fel iron until I hit 325, then to Zangarmarsh where Adamantite gets thrown into the mix.  I hit 350 quickly enough… my main problem was another person out there flying the same loop for the same reason… and I was on to Borean Tundra because the devs learned their lesson and made cobalt mining require just 350 skill level.

So, problem solved.  Also, Chad’s other harvesting skill was skinning, and that is almost always maxed out… especially after Nagrand and Hemet Nesingwary.

Which brought me to lockpicking.  Having only barely played a rogue in the early days… technically, my first character in the group was a rogue name Blintz, but he was replaced by my paladin when the group caught up to him in levels… lockpicking never really entered into it that much.  I remember doing some leveling up with a bunch of locked boxes that spawned out in Redridge, but I mostly just ignored the skill after that.

And then, at some point, the skill just went away and your lockpicking skill was a function of your level and nobody mentioned it ever again.

But not yet.  Not in Wrath Classic.  There I was still in the era of having to skill that up and I was… way behind in lockpicking.

That picture I took a bit into my efforts.  I was down at 135 when I started.

Where to even go to get that skill leveled up?  Fortunately, when it comes to WoW at least, there is always some site out there that has the answer.

First it was off to Ashenvale to the coast around Blackfathom Deeps where I ran around in a large loop by the naga and the wildlife looking for chests to get to 150.  Then it was off to Angor Fortress in the Badlands for the next segment of training.

I spent a good part of an afternoon there.  The lockboxes upstairs will get you to at least 175, and then you go downstairs and can get past 250.  That is still a lot of locks to pick in a place where I estimate no more than five are active at any moment and you can easily outrun the spawn rate.

I ran that until all the chests were green difficulty before moving on to Searing Gorge, where you have to go into the mines with the Dark Iron dwarves and find their chests to unlock.

That stage also took a while, because chests are scattered about and only a couple seem active at any given moment.  I pushed that until I wasn’t getting skillups because the next suggested location was Blackrock Depths.  So off I went again.

The guide says that there are four locks you can do at the start of the instance.  There are three doors that will give skill ups and then the shadowforge lock that is in one of the first crowded rooms where things can go wrong if you don’t manage your aggro radius.

I pushed Searing Gorge for all it was worth because, while it is easy enough to run in and pick these locks… I did it with no problems and got my skillups… you can only reset an instance 5 times in an hour, so I wanted to get to within 20 skill points of 300… once again, the barried for Outland lockpicking… so I could do it all in one go.

I succeeded in that.  From there it was off to Outland and Zangarmarsh, where there are a bunch of chests along the north of the western side of the swamp.

And then, once those went green in difficulty, it was off to Nagrand and one of the fortresses there that has boxes to pick scattered about.

That was actually where I had to do some work and be careful because, at level 70, I was still in the level range for the mobs around there and couldn’t just one-shot anything that looked at me cross-eyed.

With that I made it to 350.

I also stopped for a minute to slay a few Talbuk so I could get my cooking skill… at 349 in the first screen shot… over the 350 marker so I could start in on recipes in Northrend.

So Chad is all tuned up on lockpicking.  Now it is just the detail of getting him to level 80 at some point before Cataclysm Classic.