Ironman Challenge with a Rare Twist

After reading the Ancient's posts over at Tome of the Ancient about trying the ridiculous no-death version of the Ironman Challenge I have to say, I was quite intrigued. Recently I have also been seeing topics pop up more and more on the official WoW forums about this challenge and decided enough was enough, no more reading about it, I needed to give this challenge a shot. If you haven't yet heard of the ironman challenge the rules are this:

1) No Heirloom gear
2) Only White or Grey gear is allowed
3) No enhancements to gear
4) No buffs unless its class specific. (No food buffs and buffs from others, but personal buffs of the class are permitted. Shaman totems, Aspect of the Hawk, Mark of the Wild - etc.)
5) No potions/Flasks/Elixirs - unless needed for questing.
6) No Talents or Specialization, No Glyphs (Hunter Pets ARE included in this)
7) No Guilds (Unless its a level 1 guild designed for this challenge)
8) No groups
9) No dungeons/Raids
10) No Battlegrounds or Arenas
11) No professions or secondary skills - except for first aid.
12) No add-ons that assist in leveling/combat.
13) No sending gold or items from other toons. (bank alts for the specific challenger are okay)
14) Lastly, and the most important: If you Die, you delete the toon and start over.

There are no rewards for completing this challenge. No achievements, titles, mounts...nothing. Just a personal sense of accomplishment.

So without further adieu, I'd like to introduce you to Ironsteve~

I chose Ironsteve using random integers at Random.org. I was hoping to roll on alliance side because I am a lot more familiar with the new starting quests, but ultimately I was happy to land a hunter as I have quite a few of them and am familiar with the class. Also, I chose the name steve because for some reason I think it is hilarious.

Now on to my little twist!

It's not really a huge twist, but it's one that I thought would be quite fitting for my blog. Obviously I hunt rares, a lot of them. Well, for the Ironman challenge a fairly large amount of my XP has been and will be coming from hunting down rare spawns! At low levels rares are worth a phenominal amount of XP and most of them respawn fairly quickly (some of them as quickly as 5-10 minutes). Good ol' Fenwick Thatros here in the screenshot below netted me a good three bubbles worth of XP even at four levels below me!

I will also be questing a bit, but all quests I work on will be grey or green for safety sake. The same thing will apply to the rares I will be hunting. Some low level rares are pushovers, but several of them do hit a lot harder than other mobs in the area. For example, Bayne hit pretty damn hard when I was taking him out and I was anywhere lower than level 10. One time I came very close to death when I took him out, I was probably level 8 at that point. Once I was a couple of levels above him though, I could take him out very easily and each time I killed him I gained a good 2-3 bubbles worth of XP. I will be tracking my progress so long as Ironsteve is still alive, and once dead I will remake him in an effort to try again.

This morning I hit level 20 on him and he's still trekking along!

Also, for anyone else interested in destroying some rares for some easy XP while doing the ironman challenge or for anyone else interested in finding super low level rares at all, I will be scouring each zone as I level and mapping all of them out in the near future.

I would also like to note that playing this way for the last few days has been more fun than playing my max level toons for the past year or so. I AM HAVING A BLAST. I would definitely recommend this for anyone who has been playing a while and has become a little bored with the game.

More Ironman Challenge info:
The Official Ironman Challenge Thread (on the official WoW forums)
Current Challengers