Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Goodbye, Kitty

Last night, rather than rest easily on her laurels, Aetherna ventured out to deal with the greatest problem facing Azeroth. The Horde? It is to laugh. The Scourge? Please. The Lich King? Don't make me come over there and slap you.

Of course, I am talking about Hello Kitty, who is the herald and harbinger of the Old Gods.

Oh, you won't see HER, per se, in the game... but she's there. HER cute little mouthless visage gives it away. Can there be any conclusion other than that SHE is kin to the Faceless Horrors and Faceless Lurkers that we know to the the servants of the Old Ones? Only given eyes, that SHE might serve HER masters better. That cute little twinkle in her corrupt and eldritch orbs? Yeah, that's HER contemplating the reign of terror that is to come.

Rather than deal with the minion, though, Aeth decided to get to the root of the problem, and so found herself deep underground, venturing into the bowels of the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj. There she - along with a dozen other noble souls, wise to the corruption of Hello Kitty - took the battle to the source.

To C'Thun itself.

Pressed hard, this noble band struggled to... ah, hey, who am I kidding. Aside from a bit of confusion when dealing with The Twin Emperors, and one instance of bad positioning in C'Thun's chamber that caused an initial wipe, the Big Bad Eyeball went over like a drunken sailor with an inner ear problem.

Which left Aetherna with (a) a solid glow of satisfaction, and (b) The Temple of Ahn'Quiraj achievement. Oh, plus, you know, saving Azeroth from the depredations of pure evil incarnate. Not to mention the undying gratitude of the Brood of Nozdormu, who now, apparently... hate Aetherna slightly less than they did before she risked life, limb and sanity to confront an Old God?

Holy cow. Impressing those dragons is tough.



Monday, August 30, 2010

Hello, Kitty

No, I'm not playing a druid. Instead, this is about HER.

HER hegemony rapidly approaches. Don't believe this so-called refutation - it's painfully obvious that Hello Kitty is not just some sort of kawaii marketing icon. In fact, HER role as an emissary of the Old Gods themselves becomes clearer every day.

Since Snopes is apparently covering for HER horrible machinations, I can only conclude that the brains of their staff have already been sucked out and replaced with snappy, stylish Hello Kitty tchotchkes. If you look closely into their eyes, you'll see the faint, faint image of HER, their new master. You will recoil from that horror and turn to flee... but, of course, by then it will be too late.

Which is why I worked hard over the weekend to get Chef de Cusine and Grizzled Veteran.

The Recipe Radar addon proved to be a big help with the cooking achievement. It made it very easy to locate the 20 or so recipes I could learn off of trainers in various parts of the old world. When push came to shove, though, I was at 159/160 recipes, with two choices:
  • Grind mobs in The Barrens for hours on end until my fingers bled, my eyes burned from the constant stream of tears, and the RNG finally allowed something to drop the recipie for Savory Deviate Delight, or
  • Hit the neutral auction house and spend 20g or so on a Horde-only recipe.
Since I have the achievement, and am not currently a nervous, twitching, sleep-deprived shell of a man, you can guess which one I went for. After that, Grizzled Veteran was actually a bit of an anticlimax... with no horde hanging around Grizzly Hills anymore, getting these done was just a matter of finding time to bang them out.

So step #324 of the Hello Kitty survival plan is in place. I suggest you get your Chef achievement as quickly as possible. One of the first things that Hello Kitty does when SHE gets hold of your mental facilities is make it impossible to understand exactly why this achievement is so important to resisting HER. I've even heard reports that in partially assimilated future subjects, SHE impedes their visual cortex so that even the idea of @^UB#@S /{^EQQ,/#@ ^UC#@S/ ,^EQ Q}/@-1 S/{/#@ ^UR#.U 1ZJQ Z\^SC .,.+ -^SXQ -^SD is impossible to comprehend. So, don't hesitate - get your Chef achievement and QPJ0 AUTD QT+1@I/ /QIJ@ quickly!

My Old Man

Friday, August 27, 2010

I'm the what now?

Continuing to work on achievements with Aetherna, primarily rep grinds... or, better put, attempted rep grinds. I've discovered that with a little care, she can solo the regular Shattered Halls, though it ends up taking over an hour for something like 1500 rep. Ironically, the bosses are cake; I power up, pop Mirror Image, and then it's relatively simple to burn the boss down while my images keep him occupied for 30 seconds. It's the multiple-mob trash packs that are insanely difficult. I can sheep one, slow another, frost nova a couple more, then BAM! - I've got a fell orc I missed trying to gnaw my face off. Bleah.

I keep hoping that I'll find someone else grinding rep so we can just team up and burn through a couple of dungeons quickly. Run, reset, lather, rinse, repeat. One request, Blizzard: please, please, please update the LFD tool to allow higher-level characters to queue for lower-level dungeons. Match me up with someone my level, or something, but let me queue and forget so I don't have to stay in town spamming trade chat with LFM requests. Oh, yeah - the whole LFG channel? Deader than a doornail. I can't even raise the shade of a cricket in there.

That may make it sound bleak, but really, it's not been too bad. Since I've been hanging out in town anyways, I hit Dalaran and managed to pick up a bunch of fishing achievements. Yep! She's got a nice, shiny Titanium Seal of Dalaran now, the reward from getting The Coin Master achievement... which means she's also gotten A Penny For Your Thoughts, Silver in the City, and There's Gold In That There Fountain. Her last fished up coin was Chromie's Gold Coin, which seems kind of fitting.

She also managed to get Freedom of the Alliance, too, by finally completing the Hellfire Fortifications quest while flying around, mining, and trying to convince someone to come run one of the Citadel instances.

Reputation grind: Keepers of Time and Honor Hold are now both (barely) at Exalted. Woohoo!




Thursday, August 26, 2010

Kickin' it Old School

Last night, one of my guild mates was in Moonglade, looking for someone to come help him with a quest. I was just fishing at the time, so I headed on over.

And stepped into a nightmare.

As I approached Nighthaven, I noticed a lone guard tangling with an elite shade. I was wondering where he came from - did somebody kite it into town? I stopped, and while the guard held aggro, I burned it down. Slowly... it was definitely one tough little monster.

Then I entered Nighthaven... and saw another shade. And wait, over there? Another one! What the... ? I made may way towards the center of town, the shades growing thicker and thicker, until I reached my guildie. Standing beside Remulos, swarmed by shades, with a bear tank helping him chip away at the apparitions.

Then Eranikus showed up.

At which point something clicked, and though I'd never done it myself, I realized he was digging his way through The Scepter of the Shifting Sands questline.

And... it... was... AWESOME.

I sincerely hope there will be something as impressive leading up to, or at the end of, Cataclysm...



Wednesday, August 25, 2010

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

One of the achievements that I've been working towards, off and on, has been Gurubashi Arena Grand Master. When the time is right, I hit Stranglethorn Vale, pop up to the arena, and see if I have a snowball's chance of getting my hands on a trinket. So far, Aeth's managed to loot four, so she's 1/3 of the way to getting her trinket and achievement.

Last night, just before logging off, I noticed it was nearly 12:00 server time... just in time for a trip to the arena! A quick /who in STV told me there were only a couple of level 80 folks Alliance side, which looked promising... then I got to the arena, only to see a Tauren Shaman waiting at the edge of the pit.

Well, OK. This isn't going to be a freebie. Let's take a look at him and see what spec he is...


Yeah. He was rocking about a 5500k gear score... in his PvP gear. Almost 25k honorable kills to his credit. More PvP achievements than I ever even knew existed. And that was before his pally buddy showed up.

I figured that if they were going to take the trinket, well then - I'd make 'em work for it. It would probably be, you know, more like taking out the trash than building a skyscraper, but it's the principle of the thing. So I gave them a /nod, sat down, and we waited for Short John Mithril to do his thing.

A minute or so later, John yelled out his challenge, and headed for the arena floor. I figured I might as well get things over with, and jumped into the arena pit and waited for him. Mr. Cthülhu and his friend jumped in after me, I braced for impact, waiting to see how they would open, and...

... we all just stood there, each of us at the point of a triangle, while Short John wandered down to drop his chest. I put up Presence of Mind, the two Hordies buffed, and we watched each other for a good 15-20 seconds until the chest finally spawned.

Then the gloves came off.

It really was no contest, even with another level 80 Alliance pally showing up. I harried the shaman, interrupted the pally a couple of times, did some damage and took a couple of tries at looting the chest. Died twice, and really, I had the feeling that I wasn't being much more than a nuisance... but I didn't die instantly, so for about 2 minutes I had a wonderful time bouncing around, spell stealing, interrupting, polymorphing and tossing off whatever damage spells I could find time to slip in.

No, I didn't get the trinket - don't know who did. Got some nice PvP practice, though, and honestly, the whole thing would have been a non-event if it wasn't for the prelude to the battle. The fact that we were there to fight for the chest, and that we all waited for the chest before starting to scramble, was... cool. Going into the fight, knowing that my opponents weren't there to gank, that they were there to compete (even if the competition was a sissy mage in pieced together resilience gear), made a huge difference in the fight, and I had an absolute blast.

So for that, Cthülhu of Kirin Tor and your pally friend (who's name I sadly failed to note) - I salute you. Unlike the rogue who tried to gank me (and failed!) when I was leaving the area, you were not only competent, but honorable as well. I'm not going to thank you for beating my sissy mage face in - that would just be wrong - but I appreciate how you managed to do it with style.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Dr. Strangedust: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love PvP

Over the weekend, I headed into a bunch of different battlegrounds to accomplish Dinner Impossible, and present my fellow BG players with a Great Feast... the last task I needed to complete to get Hail to the Chef. Done, and done.

While I could have just presented my feast, bailed, and been done with it, I instead decided to - you know - actually play in the battlegrounds I entered. What a concept. I was thinking back to my attempts to get Aetherna her Matron title, and figured that if I was going to enter a BG, then I was going to play in that BG.

Along the way, I was reminded, multiple times, of the fact that I'm not a 20 year old twitch-gaming guru (not that I ever was, really). Rogue? Death. Shamman? Death. Paladin? Death. Frost mage? Death. I think I even had a ram kill me in AV. Seriously.

I managed a few kills here and there, but overall - with the exception of Eye of the Storm, with which I have some small amount of experience - I think I pretty much flailed around wondering what was going on, trying to remember what I should do and where I should go. All while cursing the fact that I didn't have Ice Block and Every Man For Himself keybound, and generally leaving bits of eviscerated, flaming, frozen, exploded, and life-drained magey bits behind me like some sort of squishy breadcrumbs.

Until I hit Arathi Basin.

I don't know what happened there. Maybe it was the fact that it was a little slower paced, so lack of insane reflexes and a laptop trackpad weren't limiting factors. Maybe it was the room to maneuver, so that I could pick the ground I'd engage on. Maybe it was a good set of teammates. Maybe it was because I was finally able to play the two roles I like most, defense and distraction.

"Oh, no, Mr. Horde guarding the stables saw me! How clumsy and n00bish of me! Why, whatever shall I do? Perhaps I shall lead him on a merry chase... at the conclusion of which I will most likely die! Oh, woe is me! My only consolation is the knowledge that I lured the feckless idiot away from his post, allowing my team to cap the node he was supposed to be protecting."

Highlight of my night. Well, that and hitting a belf pally with an Improved Counterspell when he was trying to pop off a Flash of Light. "Oh, gee. You can't heal? Or bubble? Or do anything, really, except auto-attack for the next 10 seconds? Aww. My heart bleeds. Oh, no wait - that's not my heart, it's yours. Bwa-ha-ha-ha!"

I'm thinking that maybe picking up a few more PvP achievements might be fun. You know, in a flaming ball of exploding pally kind of way :-)

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Hail To The Chief

Yes, Aeth is now exalted with the Consortium, and is in fact their Chief Exalted Officer. Which rocks, because I've always wanted to be a CEO. All it took was about 90 minutes of grinding Zaxxis Insignias in Netherstorm.

She's also managed to become a Hero of the Zandalar Tribe. Small point about that achievement that I've not seen called out elsewhere: you can only get to 20999/21000 with reputation gains from the trash mobs in Zul'Gurub. Getting that last point will require you to turn in a quest, coins, or destroy a bijou. Annoying, but true.

She's also exalted now with the Shattered Sun Offensive. Demonstrating that I have more money than brains, as well, she is also a Magnanimous Benefactor of Anchorite Ayuri, and so is now able to sport the title "Aetherna of the Shattered Sun".

Cool!

These three reputations get her to 29/30 towards 30 Exalted Reputations. Next up, I think, is going to be the Hydraxian Waterlords and the Thorium Brotherhood. Maybe. Well, and the Keepers of Time, if I can ever find someone interested in running the Black Morass with Aeth, that is.


Monday, August 16, 2010

Corporate Politics

A while back, I mentioned that one of the achievements I was particularly interested in was Chief Exalted Officer - getting to exalted reputation with the Consortium. I was more or less resigned to grinding the Mana Tombs for Consortium rep, until this past weekend, when I stumbled onto another path entirely: Zaxxis Insignia.

In Area 52, there's a repeatable quest offered by Nether-Stalker Khay'ji - Another Heap of Ethereals. You turn in 10 Zaxxis Insignia (obtainable from mobs just south of Area 52), and bam! That's 250 reputation with the Consortium... all the way up to exalted.

The Zaxxis mobs respawn very quickly; even with AoE grinding on Aetherna, I only had to wait a few minutes between a full clear of all mobs to allow everything to respawn. So you can pretty effectively farm them more or less continuously. Last night, I managed five full clears of the Zaxxis area in about 30 minutes.

Mowing down the mobs like flies is easy, quick, and the drop rate for the insignia is over 50%. In addition, there's a chance that the mobs will drop an Ethereum Prison Key, which you can use to obtain an Ethereum Prisoner I.D. Tag - which is you can turn in to Commander Ameer as part of the repeatable quest Ethereum Prisoner I.D. Catalogue, for another 250 Consortium rep.

As I said, last night, I farmed Zaxxis for 30 minutes. At the end of that time, I had obtained:
  • 104 Zazxxis Insignia
  • 10 Etherium Prison keys
  • 167 Netherweave
  • 3 BOE greens (ilvl 102-105)
Using the prison keys resulted in 10 prisoner I.D. tags, and 10 ivll 120 BOE greens. After turning in the insignia and prisoner I.D. tags, Aeth's rep with the Consortium had gone from 1869/21000 to 7369/21000.

That's 5,500 rep in 30 minutes. 11k rep per hour of farming. Yowwza!

On other fronts, The Rokk finally wanted some soup, so she was able to pick up Kickin' It Up a Notch. A friend who was interested in the mount from Magister's Terrace led to a couple of runs there, and the resulting normal and heroic achievements for that instance. We picked up a healer for the run, and as a trio of 80's (tank, dps, healer) we were able to burn through the instance pretty easily, even on heroic. Frankly, Kael'thas was kind of a letdown. I don't think we even got to see his phoenix AoE attack before we burned him down.

On the reputation side, she's continuing to run Shattered Sun Offensive dailies (about 3,500 rep per day), and managed some time farming rep and bijous in Zul'Gurub as well. With regards to ZG, the farming is fun - it's challenging, but not impossible, and the main obstacle is just finding someone willing to be in a raid for the minute or two it takes to get Aeth into the instance. Note to self, though: the bat riders don't seem to drop anything. That was annoying.

Current reputation grind progress:
  • Zandalar Tribe : 16172/21000
  • Keepers of Time : 873/12000 (stalled)
  • Shattered Sun Offensive: 14083/12000
  • Consortium: 7369/21000
So, with a little luck, it looks like I should be able to finish banging out Zandalar, SSO and Consortium rep by the end of the week. That will get Aeth to 29 exalted reputations, just one short of the 30 she needs for the 30 Exalted Reputations achievement.

Friday, August 13, 2010

Little by little, inch by inch

The quest for achievements continues. Slowly, in some cases... though recently, that's been less because of reputation grinds, and more because Comcast (or Blizzard, or both) for some reason decides to completely screw up my latencies around midnight. It's hard to run Magister's Terrace solo when you simply freeze in place for 15 seconds after pulling a pack of 5-6 mobs. Wait, wait, wait... explosion and flurry of activity, followed by the "You have died" dialog. Multiple times. Oh, the joy of network play.

Despite the enmity of teh Interwebs, in the past few days, Aetherna has picked up the 1000 Daily Quests Complete achievement. That's largely thanks to doing the Shattered Sun Offensive dailies in Quel'danas. She also managed to fish up the World's Largest Mudfish, otherwise known as the One That Got Away, which was the last BC-era fishing quest she needed to get in order to be Old Man Barlowned.

Rounding out the BC achievements this week, she finally got the recipe for Skullfish Soup from The Rokk's BC-era cooking daily. One skullfish later, she was being hailed as an Outland Gourmet. Now if the Rokk would just ask for some Spiritual Soup, she could be Kickin' It Up A Notch... but noooo, it's been Kaliri Stew now for three days straight. Get some variety in your diet, man!

In between the dailies, rep grinding, and such, Aeth's also managed to finally get her 500 Dungeon & Raid Emblems achievement, and also managed to do A Void Dance in the Violet Hold. Running a random heroic or three in between dailies has served her well, and whetted my appetite for more.

Current reputation grind progress:
  • Zandalar Tribe : 10494/21000 (stalled)
  • Keepers of Time : 873/12000 (stalled)
  • Shattered Sun Offensive: 10388/12000
Doing the SSO dailies (those that I can get to easily, at least) ends up netting about 3500k rep per day. Add in another 1k for an hour or so clearing MT up to Vexallus nets another 1000k rep or so in an hour. No, I haven't made it past Vexxy yet - go back and re-read the first paragraph. I'm going to see if I can't rope some folks into running MT with me tonight, just so I can see what the rest of the instance looks like.

Monday, August 9, 2010

Running Solo : Magister's Terrace

In my last post, I mentioned that Aeth had started to work on her reputation with the Shattered Sun Offensive. The number of daily quests available for this makes it pretty much a "spend the time, get the rep" sort of thing, but there's another way to get SSO reputation:

Run Magister's Terrace. (Normal mode, not heroic... I'm not insane. Yet.)

At this point, I've managed to solo (or two-man) quite a few instances with Aetherna. I figured Magister's Terrace would be another "trash is a pain, but doable, bosses are right out" sort of instance, like some of the other higher-end BC content.

Yowza. I was right on the trash mobs. Pulling a pack of 5-6 required a good use of polymorph, slow, frost nova and mirror image when things got hairy. Required some planning, but aside from that, it was just a matter of CC + making head 'asplode.

The bosses, on the other hand? Wow. Selin Fireheart went down on the first try. Clearing the room for an attempt at Vexallus was interesting, but once I managed that, I got him down to sub-5% on two attempts before doing a bit of reading and realizing that I need to hold off on my cooldowns until he hits his final phase. With a little different strategy, and perhaps a Flask of the Frost Wyrm, I think I can manage to take him out before he completely fries me.

The adds on Priestess Delrissa may be a bit hairy, but at this point, I'm fairly confident that I will eventually be able to make it all the way to Kael'thas. I don't know if I'll be able to take him out without assistance, but I'm certainly going to try.

Progress

Aetherna's achievement hounding progresses nicely. She's now exalted with the Sha'tari Skyguard, and Flying High Over Skettis. She managed to go fishing in Zul'Gurub and managed to hook Gahz'ranka, the Deadliest Catch... though, Gahz being a unique and wonderful creature, she found it within herself to practice catch-and-release. Well, ok, technically it was "catch-and-release-and-run-for-your-life". Still counted for the achievement, though.

While bouncing between Stranglethorn Vale and Terokkar Forest, Aeth was still careful to mind her P's and Q's. She's Got Her Mind On Her Money, after all.

Money isn't all that's on her mind. Current reputation grind progress:
  • Zandalar Tribe : 10494/21000
  • Keepers of Time : 873/12000 (stalled)
  • Shattered Sun Offensive: 1521/6000
While I''m happy to be making progress on some BC reputations, it's really the old world reps I really want to work on now. The factions that I have left there, though, are all mind-numbing grindfests: Wintersaber Trainers, Hydraxian Waterlords, Darkmoon Faire, Thorium Brotherhood, Shen'dralar, Ravenholdt, Steamwheedle. Sheesh. There's a reason why a lot of these factions are associated with the Insane in the Membrane achievement, after all. Looking at a guide for that achievement, it seems like my best bet is to spend some time killing pirates n'at in Tanaris.



Friday, August 6, 2010

"There is great disorder under heaven and the situation is excellent."

Which just about sums up my week IRL. In WoW, on the other hand, there is a moderate and entirely acceptable amount of disorder, and the situation is still excellent.

I've had Aetherna running around the Outlands for the past few days, with a periodic foray toSTV via Stormwind. She's been collecting recipes, doing the BC cooking and fishing dailies, and getting some fishing in. At the end of the week, she's managed to pick up:
She's been a good little boomy mage in grinding out her reputations, too:
Picking up the Skyguard rep has been relaxing. I hit Skettis, run around like a madwoman killing anything that moves, then take a break to fish Highland Mixed Pools in a half-hearted attempt to snag Mr. Pinchy. Each regular Skettis kill gives reputation, and there's a good chance of getting Shadow Dust - which you can turn in for rep and an elixir that let's you see the Time-Lost Skettis, who drop the Time Lost Scrolls you need to summon the next tier of bosses.

After 2-3 circuits, vendoring gray items in between, I generally have a bag full of motes, netherweave cloth, and a bunch of other goodies. Pop down the the Allerian Stronghold, mail off greens to my enchanter, everything else to my bank alt, then head back up to Skettis and do it all over again. Not horribly profitable, but at least I'm making a profit instead of burning money. Reputation-wise, I'm managing to pick up an average of 1k per circuit from daily quests, repeatable quests, kills, and boss kills.

The boss kills also give me the items I need to turn in to get a Time-Lost Offering that can be used to summon and (try!) to kill Terokk. I've unfortunately expended two off the offerings trying to solo Terokk, which just doesn't seem to be a good idea as a cloth-covered sack of protoplasm. Ah, well... live and learn. I'll do Terokk if/when I can get a couple of folks to help out.

This particular rep grind has really been enjoyable for me. There's a couple of different activities to do, so it's not all just grind, grind, grind. On the other hand, it's not all "5 dailies and you're done", either. So there's a good mix of activities. Plus, I can spin off for a while and do some fishing, some mining, run a heroic with some guild mates, or pop over to Shattrath to pick up the fishing and cooking dailies as a break from the routine. All in all, a nice way to wind down in the evening.






One Day In Stranglethorn Vale

As part of of my current achievement hound activities on Aetherna, I found myself down in Stranglethorn Vale, looking at increasing her standing with the Zandalar Tribe. I've been buying bijous and coins off of the auction house whenever they were available, so I had a nice stack to turn in and start building rep. While that's a pretty useful (if slow) way to grind out Zandalar rep, apparently the best way is to run Zul'Gurub repeatedly.

The problem with ZG is that it's a 20-man raid instance. Most of the trash mobs in the instance are soloable by a decently geared level 80, but just getting in to the instance requires that you be in a raid. Yoi! A quick message on general chat in STV, though, and I found someone interested in coming along.

You see, though ZG is an older instance, it still gets farmed. There's folks like me, working on rep. Then there's folks like Bal, who wanted to take down Bloodlord Mandokir and try for the rare (0.1%) Swift Razzashi Raptor drop.

When I found out he was going for the raptor, I told him - "If it drops, it's yours". Don't get me wrong - I like mounts, I've got a passel of 'em, but at the end of the day, they just don't thrill me like some people. So I was happy to get someone alogn to help out with the run, grind out some rep, and if the mount dropped, well, good for him!

When we got to Mandokir, though, he turned out to be just too tough for the two of us. A guildmate was willing to come help out, though, which was just the edge we needed. Along the way back to Mandokir, though, we wiped... disturbed a Voodoo Pile, and Aeth got possessed by the Will of Hakkar, and proceeded to fry everything in sight. Two dead pallies later (why, oh why can't I be that effective in PvP?) she was standing alone amidst the rubble.

Bal and my guildmate laughed about it as they ran back, but it was a bit embarrassing for me. After we downed Mandokir, I learned that (a) apparently, Hakkar has a thing for mages, since I got possessed three more times! and (b) after being possessed, you can still Ice Block and wait out the possession. Nice to know, that.

Yep, we downed Mandokir... and we did, indeed, see the raptor drop. Bal got his mount, and afterwards, I asked him how long he had been trying for it.

"This was my attempt."

Holy sweet Aunt Fanny! One try, one mount!

I'm probably going to be running ZG a few more times. If I see the mount drop again, I'm going to start hiring myself out as a lucky charm for folks trying to farm the raptor. Hey, what can I say - Hakkar likes me.


Monday, August 2, 2010

Unleash the Hounds!

The achievement hounds, that is. I spent some time the other day putting together a list of achievements I'd like to work on for Aetherna:

General

Well Read
I think I have one book on this list. Getting the rest should be fun.
1000 Daily Quests
Only 70 quests short. That's what, 3 days?
Got my Mind on my Money
Only 250G short of the 5000G mark.

Dungeons

Upper Blackrock Spire
Zul'Gurub
Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj
Molten Core
I could have sworn this was a raid instance. Am I nuts?
Blackwing Lair
Temple of Ahn'Qiraj
Leeeeeeeeeeeeeroy!
I'll be honest, I'm kinda ambivalent about this one.
The Blood Furnace
The Slave Pens
Underbog
Mana-Tombs
Auchenai Crypts
Shadow Labyrinth
Opening of the Dark Portal
Almost got this one the other night!
The Shattered Halls
The Mechanar
The Botanica
The Arcatraz
Magister's Terrace

Raids:
Karazhan
Zul'Aman
Gruul's Lair
Magtheridon's Lair
Serpentshrine Cavern
Tempest Keep
The Battle for Mount Hyjal
The Black Temple
Sunwell Plateau

Cooking:
Kickin' It Up a Notch
Started this a while back - just need to get back on that horse.
The Outland Gourmet
At 6 out of 26, she's got a ways to go here.
Dinner Impossible
She's got the Great Feasts already prepped and ready to go!
Chef de Cuisine
At 121 out of 160, this is going to be tough going...
Hail to the Chef
Just need Kickin' It Up a Notch, The Outland Gourmet and Dinner Impossible.

Fishing:
The Scavenger
One That Didn't Get Away
Old Crafty
Old Ironjaw
Deadliest Catch
The Lurker Above
Old Man Barlowned
Outland Angler
Fish Don't Leave Footprints
Yes... I've never learned how to find fish. How pathetic is that?
A Penny For Your Thoughts
Silver in the City

Reputation:
Hero of the Zandalar Tribe
More troll killing?!? Sheesh!
Hydraxian Waterlords
I expect this one to be rather painful.
Brood of Nozdormu
... and this one, I have no idea how to accomplish! Wowhead, here I come!
The Burning Crusader
Cenarion War Hippogryph
Done once I have more gold than common sense, I guess...
Flying High Over Skettis
A Quest a Day Keeps the Ogres at Bay
You're So Offensive
Chief Exalted Officer
Out of all the titles, I think I want this one almost as much as Matron.
Sworn to the Deathsworn
The Scale of the Sands
The Violet Eye

World Events
The Captain's Booty
Just need for the holiday to roll around...
Brewmaster
Och! Just need the Brew of the Month club here.
Hallowed Be Thy Name
Just need Rotten Hallow and Sinister Calling
What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been
Done when I get the Brewmaster and Hallowed Be Thy Name

PvP
Gurubashi Arena Master
Gurubashi Arena Grand Master
Death to the Warchief!
Though I really don't want to kill Thrall...
Bleeding Bloodhoof
... or Cairne.
Downing the Dark Lady
Killed in Quel'Thalas
On the other hand, killing Blood Elves? Yes, please!
For The Alliance!
Freedom of the Alliance
Grizzled Veteran
Wintergrasp Veteran
Wintergrasp Ranger
"I wanna be a Wintergrasp Ranger! I wanna live a life of danger!"
Vehicular Gnomeslaughter
Didn't Stand a Chance
Master of Wintergrasp
Isle of Conquest Victory
Strand of the Ancients Victory
Warsong Gulch Victory
Arathi Basin Victory

Overheard in Ironforge One Day

NPC #1: "Seriously... it's the mother of all scams. I'm telling you, this one's pure gold."

NPC #2: "Nothing's that good."

NPC #1: "Oh, yeah? Look, here comes one of 'em now. Just watch..."

(NPC #1 staightens up and puts on a stern look.)

NPC #1: "Greetings, oh noble Dwarf! How may I be of assistance?"

PC: "Yeah, I was looking for a new head enchantment..."

NPC #1: "Speak no more! Oh noble Paladin, I am sure that you have earned justly deserved fame and accolades from others for your efforts. It is that reputation that has opened the doors to the... um... ORDER of the SAVAGE FANG and, um... RED CLAW."

NPC #2: "Oh, brother..."

NPC #1: (aside) *Shhh!*

PC: "Wait, what?"

NPC #1: "The ORDER of the SAVAGE FANG and RED CLAW."

PC: "Order? Oh, cool! A new faction!"

NPC #1: "Indeed, my friend... but woe! Though your appearance is as one of divine promise, until we of the Order are certain of your commitment and intentions, we cannot..."

PC: "Oh! Yeah, yeah, of course. Just point me in the right direction, would ya?"

(NPC #1 hands a map over to PC, and they both look it over.)

NPC #1: "There... see, over past the mountain? Can't miss it. Large cave complex. Ogres running around like they own the place. Off the buggers repeatedly, rifle through their pockets, and bring back anything unusual you might find."

PC: "Unusual?"

NPC #1: "Yep. You'll know it when you see it, m'kay? It's the key *wink* *wink* to my problems."

PC: "The... OH! Yeah! Sure thing! See you in a week or two!"

(PC wanders off, singing a jaunty little killing tune.)

NPC #2: "Holy cow!"

NPC #1: "See? I told you. Offer 'em a quest, and they're all like 'Wah, wah, I'm level 80, I don't need to do this stuff anymore. Go take a long walk off a short pier, looser.' Tell 'em you're some secret order, though, and they'll run off and dig through fel hound poop for two weeks straight just to get in your good graces. Pick up some cheap crap from NPCs-R-Us to hand out, slap some new labels on it, and they'll even keep coming back for more!"

NPC #2: "That's... man, that's amazing! You really think it'll work?"

NPC #1: "Definitely. He'll find your car keys in no time."

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Everybody loves me, baby!

Well... as far as Aetherna is concerned, at least the Cenarion Expedition does. Which brings her up to a grand total of twenty-five exalted reputations!


I'd have the hippogriff as well, but frankly, I'm not really interested in taking 1600 gold and throwing it off into the swamp just to get a cool mount that I'll probably ride once, then ignore because it's not a 310% ride. Ah, well.

In the course of things, this involved clearing the Steamvault... I did it once with a couple of fine fellows, then went back and did it solo (which was much more difficult, but obviously not impossible.)


After that, it was off to Northrend to spend some time repeatedly sticking a knife into the general vicinity of Glacial Boneguards. Half a dozen undead creepy-crawlies later, Aetherna picked up the last point she needed to reach 400 skill in daggers, which got her the Master of Arms achievement.


Once she got that, it was off to the Caverns of Time, where she got to attempt to escort an (apparently) suicidal Thrall as he escaped from Durnholde. Oh, joy! It took two attempts, but the second time through, Aeth managed to eke out a victory:


Two runs of Durnholde, followed by two incomplete runs of the Black Morass, and Aeth had picked up enough reputation to get her hands on a Key of Time... which let her get her final achievment for the weekend: Keymaster!


I'd forgotten just how much fun doing some of these achievements can be. I've never done Durnholde or Black Morass before. While I wasn't able to finish the Morass, I came pretty close on the last boss; with a little more effort on buffing (say, the right flask, and picking up Fortitude/Kings before heading in to the instance), I think it would be doable.

Next up? Hero of the Zandalar Tribe, maybe. I've got a list of achievements I think I'd like to work on, and now is definitely the time to knock off some of those old-world ones that might be going away in the near future.