We’re going to be dungeon-leveling, so the first and foremost goal was hitting level 15. But our hunter was late, so me and Truffles starting playing the “Make Lurky dance” game.

We waited. Nothing.

Truffles tried to dance with him, maybe he gets the hint.

Nothing.

She tried intimidation.

It didn’t look impressed.

We both tried to dance… how can you not love two sexy cows?

Didn’t work.

We gave up, got our tardy hunter and went our merry way, slaughtering the fauna of the Barrens and wondering what the hell were the developers thinking when they created the damn quests. Luckily, we’re three terror machines so the only problem we had was boredom and trying to keep track of what everyone needed. (Seriously, did they really have to ask us to bring 3 pieces of each mob on the map?)

(Of course, when Lucky finally decided to dance, I missed the screenshot.)

After the most boring walk in history, escorting a slow-ass elf to Ratchet, we hit 15 and went headfirst into RFC. Taragaman was vanquished and there was much rejoicing. We even convinced a pug to pose for our kill shot.

(Click for bigger version)

A couple of dungeon runs and a handful of quests do wonders, so before long we were hitting more milestones.

Sadly, it was getting late for our little cows, so we just posed for the camera, waved and went to sleep.

P.S. This is what happens when someone a 10-year old* rolls a tauren.

Truffles has a /moo macro. I think she tried to moo bosses to death a few times.
*We could try explaining to people that we’re not actually 10, but they wouldn’t believe us.

P.P.S. My convincing worked, so from now on the boyfriend is in charge with making our boss kills pretty. He refused to play with us, so at least he can make himself useful outside the game.

My new baby is Avilion, a blood elf warlock who managed to hit level 2 (whoa) this morning before work. I wanted to roll a healer, but I’ve already have one of each class at various levels… and my other warlock was abandoned at 20, so I figured one more try can’t hurt.

I most likely won’t have time to play in the next few weeks (work crits me for 10k), but yay, sounds like fun. And I have the say the name is BRILLIANT. Especially considering my main’s guild name is also a single abstract noun… and so was my previous guild’s…

My first brilliant idea was to write about general stuff for new players, but that’s been done already and I don’t think I have anything particularly interesting to say. I died a lot in my low levels, so I’m probably not the best example.

Then I wanted to write about acronyms… but it was pointed out to me that it’s been done, and much better than I could ever manage. See wowwiki and this WoW forums thread for a long, long list.

So I settled for a specific topic of the starter experience: money. Unless you’ve got a friend to help you out, you’ll soon realize that money is important, especially when you don’t have it.

Making money from drops/quest rewards
A few basics about item quality or color:
- grey items (poor quality) are mostly useless and can/should be sold to vendors. If you’re low-level (under level 10, let’s say), equip any grey item that’s better than what you’re currently wearing.
- white (common quality) items are either used in professions or can be worn/equipped at low levels. If you’re low level, use white items, they’ll generally be better than greys. Don’t buy white items from armor vendors, they’re not worth it.
- green items (uncommon quality) are usually useful for something; green armor has stats, for example. You’ll find them as mob drops or quest rewards.
- blue items (rare quality) are better than greens and they’re generally your best option gear-wise until you get high in level.
- purple items (epic quality) are rare and very good; most of them drop in level 60, 70 or 80 heroics and raids, and a select few are world drops (they can drop from any mob, anywhere).

You can read all about it in way, way more detail here.

Anyway, we’re not talking about gear, we’re talking about money. The golden rule is: Never throw anything away. Ever. Seriously. Sell everything you get, even grey items, every spider leg and bear bone.

In order to do that… you need to use golden rule 2: Get bigger bags.

Sadly, this won’t be very easy as a low-level, because even the cheapest vendor-sold bags have a quite steep price. I would suggest to gather the cloth that drops (linen, wool, silk etc) then find a tailor to craft bags for you. They won’t be very big to start with, but any addition to the 16-slot backpack is good. Also check quests: some of them reward bags – Digging Through the Ooze for example.

Tips:
* If your bags fill up, go back to a vendor and sell everything before you continue with your quest.
* If you’re one of us lazies, use an addon to automatically sell all your grey items. I have Reagent Restocker which (in addition to restocking reagents, obviously) makes it easy to get rid of all the junk in my bags.

* Before entering a dungeon, make sure your bags are as empty as possible.
* Whenever you change a piece of gear, sell the one that’s being replaced, don’t destroy it.

Making money on the Auction House
The Auction House or AH is, like the name says, a virtual marketplace where players buy and sell items they have or they need. There are many, many sites dedicated to playing the AH, but my advice stays basic: search for your item on the AH; if someone else is selling the same thing, post yours a little bit cheaper. If no one is… deciding how much to ask can be tricky. I sell low-level armor (up to level 30-40) for 1-2.5 gold or just wait until someone posts the same items, then undercut him.

Things you can easily sell and make a nice profit:
* Cloth – sells almost instantly regardless of type; depending on your server economy, a stack (=20 pieces) of Linen Cloth will go from 50 silver to 1 gold, with other types of cloth selling even better. Cloth drops from all humanoids in the game.

* Bind on Equip drops – up to a level (40 or so), green armor sells very well on the AH. People buy it to disenchant it or for their alts. Blue armor sells well (a couple of dozen gold), but might take more time until someone buys it. If you get one of the rare low-level epics, you’ll be rich, they sell for hundred(s) of gold.
* Cooking materials – this is more vague, but some types of meat sell pretty well. You won’t make a big profit, but if you have time check the AH for the prices on the cooking mats you have and try to sell them.

Making money from professions
If all you’re interested in is making money as fast as possible, get skinning/herbalism or skinning/mining (but not herbalism/mining, as you can’t track both types of nodes at the same time on the minimap). To track nodes/herbs, click on the magnifier icon to the left of the minimap and select the corresponding tracking type.

If you want to get professions that directly benefit your character, pick a different combination, but matching them up the right way can save you money. The way to go is pairing up a crafting profession with a gathering profession that provides the materials needed for crafting. Good choices are: a. skinning and leatherworking; b. mining and blacksmithing, jewelcrafting or engineering; c. herbalism and alchemy or inscription; d. tailoring and enchanting (you can disenchant the gear you make).

Things you can sell on the AH:
* Leather – sells instantly and for good prices. You can get it by skinning mobs or (not as common) from drops. Hides, however, don’t sell very well.
* Herbs – sell instantly and for good prices. You get them from, obviously, herbalism.
* Ores – sell instantly and for good prices. From mining, obviously. Make sure to also check the price of smelted ore – more often than not, bars sell better than ores.
* Low-level crafted green armor – probably any item you craft before reaching 150 skill in your professions will sell on the AH. Rings and necklaces are popular because they don’t drop from quests or bosses in the beginner levels, but robes, cloaks, shoes and everything in between will also sell.

* Enchanting materials – the low-level ones don’t sell that well, but at some point in the game (around level 40) disenchanting greens and selling the mats becomes more profitable than selling the items themselves on the AH. Enchanting materials don’t have a listing cost, while green items do, and it gets quite high. My theory is that if listing the green item costs more than 1 gold, it’s not worth it.

* Vanity items – this works better on RP realms, but even on PvE/PvP realms people want to dress up their bank alts. Winter clothes, tuxedos, dresses, the Indiana Jones hat… they will all sell for a fair price.

I’m sure there’s many, many more ways of making money, but the ones I’ve listed don’t require a lot of time or effort. My baby cow’s already got 60 gold she made by herself, and the effort was minimal. These strategies won’t help you buy a vendor mammoth at level 40, but even selling just one stack of linen cloth can ensure you’ll afford to train all your abilities for a few levels.

P.S. If you’ve got anything to add, don’t be shy! My x-realmed baby priest needs to make money for her epic flying :)

The background
Two or so years ago, my then-friend, current boyfriend gave me WoW Vanilla and told me to try it out. The sales pitch? “It’s like Yahoo Messenger with characters.” I gave in and installed it.

My first character

The first months sucked. I didn’t know anything, I was utterly lost and I hated the game. I was too scared to join a group, I only talked to the two people I knew in real life and who were helping me level, I was basically playing an RPG not an MMO. However, I slowly started to like it… and at level 47 I joined my boyfriend’s guild. I spent a month not saying one word in guild chat – they were raiders and I was a total noob; I’m ok with being dumb, but I don’t like strangers knowing it, so I kept to myself.

Level 70 hit, and after the high of getting my first max-level char I got to an all-time low: now what? I had only the vaguest idea about gear, no clue about enchants and gems, never thought of finding a blog for advice, and my DPS was horrible (not that I had Recount or anything). Then a kind soul stepped in, dragged me to Shattrath, hunted down enchanters and jewelcrafters and got me all set up. He was a tank and not known for being very friendly, but without him I’d have been absolutely dead. Despite being bad at a class that was already bad, my guild let me raid, boosted my ass in Kara, taught me what raiding was about – and I had a blast in the process.

Naked party before a SSC run

We raided T5 for a few good months… then drama ensued. I came home from vacation to half a guild gone and no chance of getting my Hand of Ad’al (I’m still bitter about that). After that split the guild wasn’t the same, but I stuck it out because most of the people were nice – some I could call friends. Slowly but surely, people started leaving; the management of the guild changed; I was an officer for a short time and I had the ugliest arguments in /o; it got to the point where I got angry even seeing certain people log in, so I left. A few social guilds later, I got back to raiding in the guild I’m in today… ironically (or fittingly?) created by a member of my first guild during one of the splits.

Despite all the drama, I never left the game and never considered a server change. It’s just pixels, but there’s real people behind those pixels, and too many of them are on my beloved Alonsus.

The now
One of the reasons I’ve always loved the internet was people. You can have good friends from your hometown and be perfectly happy, but I discovered that having friends with a different view on life is much more interesting. There’s the downside of not being able to go out with them every day… but I love being given reasons to travel.

So the best part of WoW, for me, is being part of an international guild (and server). I couldn’t imagine playing on a same-nationality server. My guildies and WoW friends come from England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Switzerland, Spain, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, South Africa, Denmark, Russia, Belgium, Korea, Portugal, Finland, Lithuania, Estonia, Romania, Germany, Ukraine – almost every country in Europe and some beyond.

I’m the tree on the right

For a lover of travel and different cultures this is a small paradise, especially when I can find someone who allows me to pick their brain about cultural difference and languages. I love my Vent with a dozen different accents, I love listening to the Scottish guy when he – rarely – speaks, I practice my British English and I can actually understand most of it now, I spoke Spanish with the rare Madrid girl who rolled on our server, I got used to hearing Romanian accents, I had raid leaders from at least 5 different countries. I learned 2 sentences in Welsh which I promptly forgot, I learned that “hello” in Lithuanian sounds very dirty in Romanian, I learned to swear in Finnish, I replaced my “fucking” with “bloody” (but I still hate “mate” or – ew – “m8″ with a passion), I learned where some countries were on the map.

And I met the people behind the screen – a day in London, running after the Eurostar on the way back, a week in the Netherlands and Belgium, a couple of hours in the mall down the street, and a long weekend in Ireland the coming April. Everyone was nice, everyone had social skills, I drank lots of international beer and had a blast.

My friends probably don’t want their faces all over the internet, so here’s me and a random kitty from Amsterdam

I lost touch with some people, I kept in touch with others. The friend in Netherlands calls me while getting drunk with one of our Russian ex-guildies; I call a friend to Ireland to tell her my net is down and I can’t raid, we rant online about games and boyfriends and clothes and jobs; the friend in Portugal spends 2 hours with me while I’m trying to fix my computer; I bitch at the Korean living in London about PuGs, guilds and real life. Sometimes I see my boyfriend in Dalaran more than in real life, because a log on screen takes 1 minute and getting to his place takes 45. We can make WoW jokes about real things and laugh our asses off – we raid the fridge or quest to the supermarket or learn new cooking recipes, he says the stupid “grats” joke to the microwave and I ignore it for the tenth time.

Boosting my boyfriend’s newly dinged shaman. Draenei power!

Even the bad is useful. I learned that adults can act like children, and that teens can be very mature. The biggest asses I met in-game was in their late 20s, some of the best raid leaders I had weren’t even 20 yet. I saw people quitting guilds over stupid reasons, arguments about purple pixels and people forgetting some might have real lives. Lessons in human nature, let’s call them. Pugging taught me patience, expecting the worst and enjoying pleasant surprises and fun with total strangers.

The future
It’s easy to say that World of Warcraft or the internet, in general, kills social interaction. Wrong. They only kill social interaction if you let them. I would argue that WoW is actually a great way of meeting new people. Why would it be any different than getting to know someone through your local knitting club or through a penpal network?

So thank you to all my WoW friends – for drunken nights on Vent, for first kills, for boosting my alts, for traveling, for showing and telling me about your countries, for stealthing in front when you know I’ll follow and ninja pull on my healer, for knowing that I lose focus and need to be smacked across the head, for helping me with professions, gear, specs, glyphs and weird achievements, for analyzing grammar and vocabulary in dozens of different languages, for supermarket mammoths, for endless summons when I get lost and for letting me bitch at the world. See you tonight in game.

I went a-pugging again. I ran SM Cathedral over and over and over (boring, but lots of XP and flowers to pick). Most groups were fine, except for when I ran into a bunch of idiots on my realm. I don’t care to remember the details, but it ended with me leaving and an exchange of whispers and ignores.

Uldaman, on the other hand, was suprisingly easy. I was dreading it a bit, since it’s a dungeon I haven’t run very much on any char, and I manage to get lost even with maps. To my surprise, I got a group of nice, talkative people, who knew the way, didn’t mind the occasional wipes (they even said “It happens, don’t worry”… but they didn’t know we wiped because I was taking screenshots instead of healing, oops) and made the whole experience very enjoyable.

Bouncy tank!

Things seem to have changed since the last alts I leveled in LFG – there’s way more characters with BoA and most players seem to know what they’re doing. I can only be happy about that.

Totally slacking

In the end, all was well. We had…
- the ding…

- …the dual-spec…

- …and the tiger. A white tiger this time, not the dirty pink one in the screenie.

I had a moment of panic at level 39-40, because my only choices were SM Cathedral (/yawn), Uldaman (not hoping I’ll get as lucky the second time) and Maraudon (I’m not touching that place with a long pole), but now I got ZF in the Dungeon Finder, so yay!

Next up, Khrista learn to shadow and hopefully gets to level 50. On my brand new computer I built myself and almost broke but which should be working in a few days OMGPRETTYPIXELS.

I stayed away from the dark side for the longest time. So far, my highest horde is a level 21 paladin abandoned on some server I don’t even remember the name of. And yet, yesterday I spent an afternoon giggling at my cute cow and her two companions, and had an absolute blast.

The trouble with me and horde is… aesthetics. Belfs are hot, but they can’t be any of the classes that interest me. Undead seemed ok, until I rolled one and hated her walk. My troll lasted 3 levels before I decided I can’t play something that hideous, and I haven’t even touched orcs. And then… I saw a couple of drawings of tauren and they suddenly looked very cute. Shaman was one of the classes I hadn’t tried, and my boyfriend’s fresh 80 elemental is pumping out crazy DPS. And since Blizzard gave us cross-faction heirloom mailing and my druid’s spellpower chest was just gathering dust in my bank… Muffin was born.

I wasn’t exactly expecting to play her more than a few hours; my horde alts tend to have that fate. And then there was a herd – my friend Laura and Barry rolled their own taurens, Truffles and Baloon, so now we’re a happy group of hunter, future bear/kitty and future elemental/resto. Leveling is srs bsns, so we already have a guild (Moodles!), big bags, lots of BoA and a burning desire to pwn RFC and DM. I even invested in a new heirloom weapon, because hey, my abandoned alts have emblems they’re not using.

We’re proud level 10s and so far our exploits have included:
* dancing in the happy fields.

* lazying around while bugging friends for charter signatures and deciding which set of BoA gear to use.

* enjoying the view (Mulgore is PRETTY! I never knew!) while yelling “aaaa a level 6!!” (Mulgore has wolves that want to nom level 1 cows on their way to the mailbox).

* obliterating every mob in sight (mobs not pictured because they were dead/about to be dead).

* made friends with an Alliance raid who eventually killed Cairne and left us unable to turn in quests (oops).

The first day was a success, with me getting my earth totem, Truffles getting her bear form and Baloon his first pet, so we look forward to the future!

P.S. Yes, /moo as a cow is hilarious.
P.P.S. Yes, we are very excited. This is what we were doing while at work today:
Jen: i want to go home and moo
Laura: me too!!

So I woke up, got angry, got back home and entertained myself with some good ol’ questing and pugging and my tartlette chocolat.

I tend to get sidetracked by alts easily, so I’ve been focusing on Khrista. Jen doesn’t need anything outside of raids and the daily heroic, Shiny is on a break since the guild doesn’t seem to need alt tanks, and farming heroics for holy gear is not very exciting… so baby priest time it is. I’m a bit masochistic, but I like the dungeon pugging (and my friends keep talking about raids and heroics in our channel, so I want to do that faster!).

I’m so pretty admirers are showering me with roses

First off, Love is in the Air dailies are pure gold (and by “gold” I mean “XP”) for lowbies. they’re short, they’re fast and even the ones that require more work can be sorted easily with money (if I don’t feel like questing, I just buy the bracelets). So I shared some chocolates with the world, killed a couple of baddies for Crushing the Crown, did a couple of quests until 30 Lovely Charms, and then I went out to meet some new idiots err friends in PuGs.

In love with some random guy or girl who happened to give me some chocolates. I’m so easy.

I came, I saw, I kicked ass even if I’m holy

After a week of SM Graveyard, I had a major surprise when I found myself in Razorfen Downs, and a second major surprise when I realized I’d never been there before. Makes sense, since my highest horde is level 21 and I never bothered with dungeon achievements on my Allies… but I thought I’d at least set foot in there with a guildie or something.

Look at me and my yellow balls of holiness!

After the initial surprise, I remembered RFD being mentioned as one of the confusing dungeons for Alliance, alongside Wailing Caverns, and I started worrying… but I had a group who knew the place and I just had to follow them around. Result: fun! It’s been a long while since I discovered a new place, and the company was pleasant. Thank you, random guys on the Rampage battlegroup.

RFD was an one-time-only thing, afterwards it was SM all over again (Library this time). Things are going better than when I was leveling my druid and it’s easy to see who’s more likely to know what they’re doing: orange gear = good.

Ok, I cheated, my DK was closer to Scarlet Monastery.

Well, up to a point. I join a group – me healing, a mage and a ret paladin in full heirlooms, a druid tank and a hunter. We pull, a BoE caster staff drops, everyone needs, the druid wins it, is happy and equips it right away. Equips it instead of his +agi fist weapon and +intellect offhand, that is. I inspect and find the usual “super-hybrid” druid you’ll find so often in the low level instances – if it’s leather, it’s his, stats be damned. I make a mental note that he might be harder to heal and we move on. Then druid starts tanking in cat form. The paladin has Righteous Fury and he either doesn’t understand English or doesn’t care. Me and mage start bitching in /say about someone with full BoA being so clueless. I tell druid he’s not getting any heals until he goes back to bear form… so he goes ahead in cat while me and mage hide behind a corner. At some point, the paladin leaves, still with Righteous Fury and still without saying a word. The druid finally gets the point, switches to bear and gets heals. We eventually wipe at some point because druid couldn’t hold aggro, then the group disintegrates.

I wave farewell to the mage and wish him happy pugging. It won’t be, but we can at least try to look on the bright side of WoW.

Well, I’m thinking of dusting off my feathers and going critchicken for the fight, because so far I suck at healing it. When we started our 10-man tries last night, strategy was pretty fuzzy to me, but the other dragon healer had already done it and the RL explained in detail, so everything sounded just fine. Keep HoTs up on the boss, go in portals and get stacks, collect loot.

Hah. As if.

First off, of course Valithria doesn’t show up on Grid. However, thanks to Keeva’s awesome guide, I was prepared. Or at least semi-prepared – I didn’t know we were going to do Valithria that night, but I have Quartz so I just enabled the appropriate module. Now I could see my HoTs, but healing a boss portrait instead of my nice green rectangles was still annoying – not to mention that the portals made me lose my target. Another macro, another try, lots of frustration over refreshing HoTs (did I ever mention I hate stacking Lifebloom?), anyway I was starting to get the hang of it.

Except not. I was flying around and hitting green clouds… but apparently I wasn’t, because my stacks were still pitiful. I still don’t understand what animation I should see, because my tree sure looked like she was hitting things… I could probably get 4-5 stacks tops in a portal. Come out, frantically try to target the dragon again, mess up my rotation and Nourish too soon… then miss the next portals. Or get the portals, but lose the stacks before I got in. Or just after I got in. The other healer had 30 stacks or more; the most I managed was 8 (and it was by accident).

[This should be a picture of me in the portal. However, I was too busy failing to hit the clouds, so I didn't have time to take a screenshot. Use your imagination.]

Now, it’s not like I wasn’t expecting it. Playing in 3D on 2D screen is hard, and this kind of fight has always been weird to me. I can’t see if I’m above, below or on the same level with the clouds/dragons/orbs of death! To make things worse, it was already midnight, on a Thursday evening, and I was tired even before I started raiding.

To make a long story short, we manage to wipe at 99% a few minutes before the raid end time. We pushed on (even though it was 1 a.m.) with the other dragon healer doing all the work. I was told to stay out of the portals if I didn’t need mana, because I was getting her clouds – erm, I seriously doubt my 2-3 measly stacks were getting in the way – and help with raid/tank healing (our raid healer was a very nice but undegeared shaman who was struggling).

Our best attempt after that 99% was a 90%, by which point (1.30 a.m. already) I wanted to strangle someone. Probably myself. With 2 dragon healers with proper stacks, it would’ve been a breeze. So I’m sitting out tonight, partly due to tiredness/work, partly because I’m sure that any other healer with half a brain can probably manage the bloody stacks better.

My only hope is that we go to Valithria on Sunday evening for our 25-man. Getting proper sleep before the raid might help.

Ok, I’ve admitted it. I love Trade, and raid General chat, and people spamming shit in Local Defense. I don’t know why; after all, most of the time it’s just mindless spam, QQ or calling other people noobs. And it gets worse: I like getting involved. You know the dude telling the other people to STFU and trying to be funny? Yes, that’s me.

In my defense, I also contribute useful info. I actually answer people’s questions with legitimate info. I report spammers, even though I doubt anything happens to them. I don’t go as far as joining the Anal or Dirge spam. Still…

I have to sit on my fingers not to join the raid General chat. Ok, so it’s no more than “Guild X sucks” or “Hai guild Y!”, but then I see names I know! Or I think of a really witty comeback! Then I have to remind myself that we’re mid-boss fight and I’m supposed to look at Grid and not the chat, dammit. (I got in trouble for that with raid leaders more than once.)

I’m sure there’s an explanation for this. Until I learn it, I’ll call it the need to socialize. And my superhero complex. The world needs me to set idiots straight! Really.

To solve this, I decided that my pally tank should be holy offspec. Said and done, I grabbed some crafted gear, healed a couple of dungeons and heroics, even managed to get a decent collection of purples in the end. However, queuing as tank/healer means that 99% of runs I end up tanking, so my holy experience is limited.

When I changed my offspec, the friend I was leveling with told me I’ll enjoy holy so much I’ll never go back to my druid. She couldn’t have been more wrong. The longer I heal on my paladin, the more I love my druid. No, she’s not that good at tank healing, but I can run! And throw HoTs all over the place! And even a quick Nourish! Swiftmend myself while running instead of counting on the other healers!

This was never more obvious than last night. After a not-very-successful ICC25 plagued with lag and drama, we decided to get an alt run going to ICC10 for the weekly. Lots of tanks, not enough healers, so I reluctantly volunteered to do it. The final setup consisted of two good tanks, an assortment of decent to good DPS, a good healer (tree) and two mediocre ones (tree and my paladin). It didn’t bode well when I saw the second tree’s gear – no T9, some blues, decent for heroics but not much else. My gear’s in pretty much the same shape (ilvl 219 mostly), and ungemmed/unchanted to boot (it was too late to do anything about it).

Healing was hell. Oh, she’s amazing at tank healing, I won’t get those crits on my druid in a million years. I can’t run out of mana with Divine Plea. Beacon of Light is an amazing invention. …Until Marrowgar starts throwing blue flames at me and I need to move or die. Move or die. Never finish a cast. My Grid setup works fine for a druid, but it’s very well suited for a paladin. My healing technique isn’t well suited for a paladin either.

In short, I sucked. We didn’t down the boss. I shouldn’t have set foot in ICC with my gear and my experience. But I’m not giving up! Paladin Schmaladin and WoW.com have been helpful, and I’ve got a holy pally in the guild to bug. I bought a ilvl 245 helm after the raid (it’s even got a meta socket, unlike my former crappy blue) and I’ll invest all future emblems in holy gear. I’ll look for some Grid addons that display what I want to see. I still want to heal, so I’ll at least give it a decent shot before I give up.