Pirate101: Getting stuck

I am embarking on a new podcast project with the Taking a Wizard pod (I think I will end up making that its own show rather than tacking it onto the end of Talkin' the Plank) and, because of that, I have been playing Wizard101 in addition to Pirate101.  In Pirate, I'm working on my Witchdoctor and my Swashbuckler (Currently levels 32 and 13 respectively) and I was at the point for a few days where I was stuck: in the time I had allotted to play P101, I didn't have enough time to complete the next phase of either of their stages in the main quest line.  The Swashbuckler was stuck outside the entrance of the cave in Diablo Cut and the Witchdoctor was headed towards Fort Elena, both are instances with 1 hour warnings and I couldn't guarantee more than 30 min of continuous play.

It had gotten to the point where there was almost nothing I could do with the two characters (I'm trying to save most of the sidequests on both for later in the game where they will go faster, to save time).  I didn't want to just grind nautical xp, which would have been the next best option I suppose, but I didn't want to just start up a dungeon, get most of the way through it, then have to log out and lose 30 minutes of progress.

I used the time I did have to get a little more organized.  I went to the shared bank which had become chock-a-block full of ship parts, as I'm saving them for all my alt's travels through the spiral and can't get rid of anything much above raft parts yet (and the best of those I'm saving anyway, in case a new class is introduced!) and also, I put every piece of class specific gear that dropped on any character in there to be used later.  So I sorted through it, got rid of extraneous class gear that I would never need (how many hats can I wear at once between 30 and 35?) and was able to raise a little money on all of my alts and get a ton of space in my bank freed up (I put all the class specific gear into the non-shared bank in each class' bunkhouse).

Then, I got a chunk of time and decided to finally tackle Fort Elena and am now happily moving forward in Tumbleweed, having gotten the Magnificent Seven back together.

Having gone through all that made me a little bit more sympathetic to everyone who was stuck waiting for the Stormzilla quest to be fixed.  Don't get me wrong, I think KI was very quick to listen and adjust this.  I just understand how much it stinks when you can't get past a part of the story for whatever reason and have to find alternate things to do in the mean time.

In closing, look for a new episode of Taking a Wizard later this week.  I think I'll put it on a different schedule than Talkin' the Plank so that I don't have to worry about editing it all on Wednesday night!  More details to follow!