Azeroth on 20 Silver a Day

50/50

2012-02-09T09:16:00.000-08:00

Two major milestone recently.

First... I've managed to crack the 50k gold mark. Well, actually, I hit that goal a while back, but it was total gold across multiple servers. I've since reached 50k gold on one server, which is more of a milestone.

I've got to emphasize that while I've occasionally engaged in some minor gold-making activities - crafting and selling a batch of Mysterious Fortune Cards, or some glyphs, or starting PvP cloth gear, etc. - most of my "gold making" has simply been accomplished as a by-product of playing the game. Waiting for a queue to pop? I'll mine a bit in Uldum... and in a couple of weeks, that ore will hit the AH, or become a stack of Inferno Rubies. Accumulated a couple of stacks of cloth from soloing Northrend dungeons? Ship it off to my tailor and make some Frostweave Bags.

Playing more or less casually, without any focus on gold making, has still allowed me to accumulate over 50k in savings. That's after shelling out tons of cash for pets, mounts, glyphs, rep items, DMF quest items, BoE gear, potions, flasks and... you get the idea.

In other words, there's a reason why I'm telling you "no" when you whisper me begging for gold.

Second milestone? Reached exalted with the DMF, which got Aeth the achievement for 50 Exalted Reputations. It was kind of cool in that I got to exalted by turning in A Treatise on Strategy, which meant that I was able to get three achievements simultaneously: 50 Exalted Reputations, Darkmoon Dungeoneer and Darkmoon Despoiler.

The next week or so will be spent on holiday activities - primarily farming Love Tokens for a Swift Lovebird, though if I have enough tokens left over, I may buy a couple of Truesilver Shafted Arrows to put up on the AH at some point.

Two to the Sixth

2012-02-02T06:51:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I had the chance to download and try out the new 64-bit client for WoW.

For a piece of "unsupported" software, it's rather nice.

Loading screens, particularly the initial loading screen, seems to complete much more quickly for me. Frame rates are generally better, to the point where I was able to do crank up my graphics settings to "Ultra" for the the Benedictus fight in Hour of Twilight.

Overall, very nice. I think I'll be using the 64-bit client for a while longer, maybe see how the frame rate performs in some more chaotic and crowded situations.

One note: the Mac link for "How to tell if you have a 64-bit operating system" are not quite correct. The link takes you to the Mac support page that tells you how to answer the question, "How do I tell if I'm using the 64-bit kernel?" Which isn't what you really want to know. You can run 64-bit applications on a 64-bit processor even if you're currently running the 32-bit kernel.

Instead, what you really want are the instructions that describe "How to tell if your Intel-based Mac has a 32-bit or 64-bit processor." My MacBook Pro is running the 32-bit kernel, but because it has a 64-bit processor, I had no problem running the WoW 64-bit client. I may follow the instructions on the 64-bit kernel page and reboot to use the 64-bit kernel, just to see if there's any additional improvements there; but the WoW 64-bit client runs just fine on my Intel Core 2 Duo system.

Status Report II: The Statusing

2012-01-26T14:34:00.000-08:00

Status so far as Aeth heads for Glory of the Hero:

~~Chaos Theory~~ - Done!
~~Respect Your Elders~~ - Done!
~~Volunteer Work~~ - Done!
Better Off Dred - Possible, but tricky.
Less-Rabi - Possible, but tricky.
~~Abuse the Ooze~~ - Done!
Zombiefest! - Untried.
Experienced Drake Rider - Definitely going to need a group for this.
Ruby Void - Arcane mage Needs Group Badly!
Amber Void - GROOOOOOOOOOOOOOP!

Oh, and From Hell's Heart I Stab at Thee.

The last was more or less a fluke. There was a small (9? 10?) person group that a guild mate put together to try for this, so I jumped in. We did 3-4 attempts, and at one point, managed to get the whale shark down to something like 94% before we all died in a horribly gory frenzy of blood and entrails.

Figuring out we knew what was going on, we jumped back in for another attempt, sure that we knew what was going on, and that we'd nail it this time. I switched to fire spec on Aeth so I could scorch and move and "tank" the shark in a pinch, and we were off!

Two minutes into it, we were making some good progress - it really did look like we knew what we were doing - when my wife comes in, plops down on the bed next to me, and says, "I just got off the phone..."

Now, I'm not the most sensitive, empathic guy in the world. I can be rather dense some times. OK, a lot of the time. In this case, however... everything in her tone, her posture, her words were clear even to me.

"Hey," they all said, "Yeah, you, knucklehead. Put down the laptop. Forget the stupid game. Remember that whole 'love, cherish, honor' thing you promised a couple of decades back? Yeah, this is what you were babbling about. Now get hoppin', bozo!"

Which, in a rare fit of sanity, I did.

I think I saw Aeth become shark chow about 4.2 nano-seconds after I took my hands of the keyboard. Didn't even take the time to say anything in chat. I felt bad, but... a dozen strangers vs. my wife? Sorry, guys. House isn't on fire, but it's a RL emergency just the same.

Turns out that we have a close friend is going through a really, really, really rough spot, in multiple areas. We kind of had an inkling of it, but this evening was the first time said friend had an opportunity to talk to my wife and lean on her shoulder about it... and afterwards, my wife needed to debrief and lean on me in turn.

So, a while later, I hop back on and find myself floating in the briny deep. I scroll back through the chat log to see who it is that I need to apologize to for bailing on them without notice, and... holy cow! They did it! There's the guild announce for the achievement! Wait, what's my name doing there?

Quick check of the achievements tab... and yes, there it is.

They not only downed the whale shark, they managed to do so on the attempt that I had to bail on.

Apparently, they did have it nailed down.

Way to go, guys! Thanks for carrying me :-)

You Learn Something New Every Day

2012-01-20T12:10:00.000-08:00

Huh.

Apparently, there's a bank in Theramore now.

Who knew?

Status Report

2012-01-20T04:34:00.000-08:00

Status so far as Aeth heads for Glory of the Hero:

Chaos Theory - Untried.
~~Respect Your Elders~~ - Done!
~~Volunteer Work~~ - Done!
Better Off Dred - Possible, but tricky.
Less-Rabi - Possible, but tricky.
Abuse the Ooze - Untried.
Zombiefest! - Untried.
Experienced Drake Rider - Untried.
Ruby Void - Untried.
Amber Void - Untried.

The hardest part about last night's efforts were getting past Prince Taldaram. Oy! Possible to solo, but just barely. I ended up popping my Baradin Footman's Tags just before the first Vampric Embrace; then I used an Ice Block to survive the first flame spheres. I just ate the next vampric embrace, but immediately afterwards, I popped Mirror Image so I could use Evocation to regain health. I did my best (Blink & run!) to dodge the second flame sphere summons, and after that, popped all my cooldowns (Arcane Power, Time Warp, Tirande's Favorite Doll, etc.) to burn him down ASAP. Ended up with the Prince down, and Aeth's health at something like 5k. A very close thing.

Going back through WotLK content, I'm surprised at how gimmicky even the 5-man bosses are. Well, not so much surprised, as in intrigued... with a couple of exceptions, their gimmicks aren't trivializable, even for an incredibly overgeared powerhouse like Aeth. Most BC dungeon bosses go down so quickly that their mechanics don't really even come into play, or if they do, they can simply be ignored. I wonder if that was a conscious design decision in Wrath, or if it's something that has just more or less evolved from the design process at Blizzard.

Moving Right Along

2012-01-19T17:44:00.000-08:00

I've spent a couple of evenings earlier this week in Karazhan, working on Aeth's reputation with the Violet Eye.

One run through all the way up to the chess event, followed by another partial run, got me to within about 1k of exalted. Finishing off the quest chain that ends with killing Nightbane on the Master's Terrace let me finish that grind and got Aeth all the way to 999/1000 exalted... which means she now has 49 exalted reputations. Only one more to go!

What to do now, though? Just about the only way Aeth has of grinding out additional reputations is through raids - Molten Core, Ahn'Quiraj, Black Temple, etc. Well, gee - Kara wasn't horribly difficult, honestly. How hard could Black Temple be, really?

Two very quick deaths in the Black Temple in exchange for 36 rep makes it pretty obvious that the answer is something like "pretty freaking hard for a squishy mage". Ouch. Maybe a bit more thought will help divine the answer here...

Bloodsail Buccaneers - killing Blackwater Raiders - 5k+ of them - to get to Exalted, then start in on killing 1600+ Booty Bay Bruisers. Then worry about repairing reputations with the neutral Goblin factions. Ouch.
Darkmoon Faire - monthly quests. Should get to exalted the next time it shows up.
Ravenholdt - farming junkboxes. Need about 800 more to max out at 999/1000 exalted.
Hydraxian Waterlords - Molten Core - vanilla 40-man raid.
Brood of Nozdormu - Ruins of Ahn'Quiraj - vanilla 20-man raid that gives almost no rep.
Brood of Nozdormu - Temple of Ahn'Quiraj - vanilla 40-man raid.
Ashtongue Deathsworn - Black Temple - BC 25-man raid.
Scale of the Sands - Hyjal Summit - BC 25-man raid.
The Ashen Verdict - Icecrown Citadel - WotLK 10-man raid.
Avengers of Hyjal - Firelands - Cata 10-man raid.
PvP Factions - no. Just... no. Holy cow - 3k+ WSG battlegrounds? Augh!

Hmm. When "wait for a couple of weeks" and "farm junkboxes until your fingers bleed" are your two best options... maybe it's time to try and put together some classic raids.

Speaking of which, Aeth got to go along for a normal Dragon Soul raid last night, as we're trying to help out a guild mate who wants to get his Fangs of the Father. It took a bit of effort to get everyone on the same page and down Morchok, but it was actually pretty simple. What can I say? I've got some good guild mates. I'm happy because another weekly DS raid will give me and my erratic schedule a chance to pop in and raid with my guild.

Since I'm willing to wait to grind rep, and raids take time to organize and are kind of catch-as-catch-can for me, I'm obviously going to have some time to work on other things. Like, say... Glory of the Hero?

Yeah, yeah. I know. That's so last expansion. Still, I've only got a handful of achievements I need for this meta, and it was pretty simple to knock out Consumption Junction last night. Which leaves Aeth needing only ten more WotLK heroic dungeon achievements:

Chaos Theory - Looks like it might be tricky, but possible.
Respect Your Elders - Definitely soloable.
Volunteer Work - A "kill them quickly!" achievement? No problem.
Better Off Dred - Potentially soloable... with 4 stacks of AB up, Aeth can probably one/two shot the raptors. The problem will be collecting them quickly enough.
Less-Rabi - Hmmm. Can I kill him in 15 seconds, with one interrupt? Let's see!
Abuse the Ooze - Definitely possible to solo.
Zombiefest! - Definitely possible to solo, but also definitely easier in a group.
Experienced Drake Rider - I need to ride an Emerald and Ruby drake. Huh? Oh, yeah - I've done this about a billion times on Laenshield, not Aeth. Huh.
Ruby Void - Possible? Maybe. Certainly easier with a group.
Amber Void - Possible? Maybe. Certainly easier with a group.

I'll give the easier looking ones a try tonight or tomorrow, and maybe see if I can pick up a partner or two for the ones that would be easier to accomplish in a group. Oh, and maybe unpack my Baradin Footman's Tags and see if that's a help as well.

Onward!

Kill It... Kill It With Fire.

2012-01-18T12:03:00.001-08:00

Who's A Pretty Kitty?

2012-01-17T14:18:00.000-08:00

More to come but... for now, know that while I may hate to admit it, I'm Barbie-ing pretty hard right now.

Why, you may ask?

Well - just take a look at Aeth after her solo run through Karazhan last night...

Why, yes - that's Aeth wearing a classic Masquerade Gown and Gloves of Saintly Blessings. The absolutely cute little shoulders that compliment the gown are a Thistlefur Mantle. The weapon that's slung over her back, glowing with arcane energy, is (indeed!) The Bringer of Death. That fell staff is complimented nicely by the simple curves of Corla's Baton.

Seriously?

I stumbled on this look entirely by accident, but man, I like it. I like the fact that she looks elegant, eldritch, and dangerous all at the same time. Most of all, though?

I'm ab-so-lute-ly ecstatic that I no longer have to deal with a monument the size of a small boat sitting on each of her shoulders.

That, alone, makes transmogrification a win for me.

The fact that Aeth's just plain gorgeous now is a bonus :-)

One Hundred Percent

2012-01-13T10:01:00.000-08:00

Archaeology achievements? 100% complete! And apparently, I now belong in a museum, or something.

With two rares to go, I shifted my emphasis from Kalimdor to Northrend. I figured that since I had found zero Vrykul or Nerubian rares, I'd probably have a better chance of getting one of those projects relatively quickly if I worked in areas I'd not done much in before.

Looks like that was a good guess. Night before last, I solved the Vrykul Drinking Horn for rare #19, and a push last night netted Aeth the Blessing of the Old God for rare #20.

Also, providing evidence that the RNG has a sense of humor, after getting the Blessing for rare #20, I cleared out some Night Elf fragments that I had remaining... and now have Tyrande's Favorite Doll queued up for the next time I want to do some digging.

Once that happens, Aeth may finally get to replace the tree stump she's been dragging around for the past couple of months. The wonderful thing? When she finally gets a better trinket, I can pass this along to Laenshield or even Aeven. Yay for account bound epics!

I may be lying in the gutter...

2012-01-05T06:51:00.000-08:00

... but I'm looking at the stars, right?

If by "stars", you mean "a DK and a warrior and a rogue who collectively managed to kick my sorry butt in dps".

I ran a HoT last night in a semi-pug - myself and three other guildies, plus a random fellow just to keep the LFD tool happy. As it turned out, we managed to pick up someone who used to play on our server and knew a couple of my guild mates, so it was a very pleasant run.

Except for my dps.

I mean, I used to think that 20K dps overall for an iLvl 381 arcane mage was acceptable in a heroic 5-man run.

Possibly even approaching "decent".

I've gotten to the point in a LFD group where I can pretty much expect that I'll be the #1 damage dealer, or #2 if a shaman shows up.

This run, though?

HOLY COW.

The rogue managed 60K dps. Not on one particular boss fight, either. That was 60K dps overall.

I mean... the DK tank was managing about 40K dps.

They're all raid geared, but... wow.

Sheesh. At least I managed to out-damage the healer.

Changes in Latitude, Changes in Attitude

2012-01-03T10:14:00.000-08:00

Happy new year!

I took some time off for Christmas, which meant that there was time to stay up late, sleep in, and play WoW (and finish plowing through George R. R. Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire" books, but that's beside the point).

And playing WoW meant... time to work on archaeology.

Yep.

I really should have titled this post, "How I learned to stop worrying and love the survey tool."

What happened?

Less than two months ago, I was writing about how I thought archaeology was a bust. Stick a fork in it, it's done. There was no joy in it for me, it was too much of a grind, not enough fun.

Yet in the last week, I've managed to level my archaeology to max. Not only that, but I've also managed to get almost every archaeology achievement. The sole exception is It Belongs in a Museum... and I'm only three rare artifacts short of achieving that particular goal.

What... what happened?

Three things.

First: the new Darkmoon Faire.

As y'all know, thanks to the Insane in the Membrane achievement, I'm very much interested in raising my Darkmoon Faire reputation for Aeth. Fortunately, with the release of patch 4.3, that whole process has become much less grindy and gold-intensive, thanks to the new Darkmoon Faire. There are a number of repeatable (once a month) quests at the new Fair, all of which grant Darkmoon reputation upon completion. So there was zero chance that I'd skip any of these quests on Aeth, since doing so would mean wringing out less than the maximum possible amount of reputation every Faire appearance.

As it turns out, several of the new Darkmoon Faire quests are related to professions. You do something like gather scrap metal from around the fair, or cut glass into fake gems, and get a few skill points along with a reputation reward. Yay! What's not to like?

One of those profession quests, of course, is for archaeology.

So. Gritting my teeth, eyes on the prize - my precious Darkmoon Faire rep - I went forth to dig up a handful of fossil fragments for the quest.

Which brings us to the next factor.

Second: archaeology buffs.

It's been a long time since I've attempted to do anything with archaeology. Long enough, in fact, that I missed the fact that the fragment drop rate for archeology had been buffed in patch 4.3. I mean, I knew, intellectually, that it had been buffed - but I had not actually experienced the change, if you know what I mean.

You might not think it, but going from ~12 fragments per dig site to ~20 fragments per dig site makes for a huge difference.

Consider common archaeology items. Most of them take 25-45 fragments to solve (minus any bonus you might get from keystones, scrolls, etc.) Before the fragment rate buff in 4.3, that meant that you had to fully explore 3-4 dig sites for a particular race in order to solve a common archaeology artifact.

Heaven help you if you were looking at a rare artifact that took 150 fragments. That would take somewhere around 13-15 dig sites to complete.

Ugh.

With the increased drop rate on fragments, though? All of a sudden, most common artifacts can generally be solved by fully exploring two dig sites, and in many cases, doing so leaves you with a small buffer of fragments to contribute to your next artifact. Even hideously expensive rare artifacts can be solved by hitting 7-8 dig sites.

Perviously, taking an hour or so to bop around Kalimdor or the Eastern Kingdoms might net you enough fragments to solve a common artifact or two, and perhaps make a small dent in the progress required for a few more. Now, though?

Solution city, man.

Before, archaeology felt like I was running around, accomplishing nothing. Oh, I'd find a few fragments here, a few fragments there, but overall, it felt like I was running in place and getting nowhere.

With the 4.3 buffs, it seemed like I was able to solve an artifact every other dig site or so. Even if I was unlucky enough to get four entirely different types of dig sites on a single continent, I could be pretty sure that after two circuits, I'd be able to solve 3-4 artifacts of different types.

In other words, I went from feeling like I was stagnating to feeling like I was making progress. Because, all of a sudden, I was making progress... or, rather, I could see myself making progress. I'd fly around, hit 3-4 dig sites, look at the archaeology pane and think, "Oh, hey! I can solve this Dwarf artifact. And that Night Elf one, too. Oh, and I'm almost close enough to solve this fossil..."

And then - then! - came the magic thought.

You know the one.

"... maybe just one more dig site."

Bam! Welcome to the skinner box, man.

Third: I was on vacation.

This doesn't mean what you think it means.

I'm not saying that I had umpteen extra hours to devote to archaeology, or that I was doing archaeology more than anything else in WoW.

What I am saying is that my normal blog reading habits were disrupted a bit by vacation.

You see, I normally sit down and read through my blog subscriptions in Google Reader a couple of times a day. On vacation, though, these tend to build up, as I don't usually have the time to dedicate to blog reading, what with everything else in going on.

When you're doing archaeology, though, there's often 3-4 minute interrupts in the flow of the game as you move from one place to another. Do you know what I discovered about all that time on the taxi going from one location to another in pursuit of a new dig site?

Prime blog reading time.

Survey, dig, survey, dig, survey, dig. Fly to the nearest flight master. Grab the taxi to the next dig site. Tab out to Google Reader and read a stack of blog posts. Tab back to WoW and fly to the next dig site.

Lather, rinse, repeat... and two hours later, I've caught up with my blog reading for the day, and racked up something like 400 archaeology fragments and solved a bunch of artifacts.

Woot!

Conclusion: archaeology no longer sucks.

So, there you have it. Archaeology is actually kind of fun now. I still wish I could murder mobs for fragments or clues, but hey - what's there right now has managed to become more interesting than fishing, so I'll take it. Granted, "more interesting than fishing" is a pretty low bar to beat, but at least the profession as a whole seems to be headed in a better direction.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got three more rare artifacts to find...

Grindology

2011-11-16T08:24:00.001-08:00

WoW insider has a breakfast topic up that asks, "How do you feel after spending time with archaeology?"

Me? Frustrated.

The archaeology mini-game is... not a game, and not fun. It's less interesting than fishing. It's less interesting than rep grinds. It's less interesting than farming heavy junk boxes in BRD. I feel I can say all that with some authority, because while I have maxed my fishing skill, and done four dozen rep grinds of one sort or another, and I'm currently farming heavy junk boxes... I've done all of those in preference to leveling up archaeology.

Yes. Going for Insane in the Membrane is more fun than archaeology.

So, all in all, I'd say that archaeology is a bust.

Here's the problem, as I see it - the whole archaeology profession is horked, in that there's no reasonable way to level it as you go. Until you have access to a fast mount - and preferably a flying mount - it's painful. Questing in the Blasted Lands? Oh, look, there's a archaeology dig! Three fragments later, it's gone, and while you'll be in the zone for the next hour or two, there's no more archaeology for you to do, period. Unless you want to head off to another zone entirely, one that offers you no benefit other than happening to have the next closest archaeology zone to exploit.

I mean... come on. My main is a mage with a 310% flying mount. I can zoom around Azeroth and Outland like nobody's business, and it's still amazingly tedious to do archaeology.

So... Blizz, here you go. Recommendations for how to make archaeology less of a soul-destroying grind.

Archaeology Nodes

Just like we have herb and mining nodes, we should have archaeology "nodes". You can even make them small regions on the map to give the idea of "we're digging in this area". Get rid of the survey skill, and just let us track and find mini-archaeology zones that respawn like other nodes.

In many regions, there should be mobs working in the area of the nodes as well. Think of Ulduman. You mean there's absolutely no archaeology to be done there? No elite mobs roaming about that might have a some interesting archaeology fragments that might be interesting to look at? Mobs in Night Elf ruins should have the opportunity to drop Night Elf fragments, mobs in Dwarven excavations should occasionally cough up Drawrven fragments, and so on.

Archaeology Clues

The whole "OK, you solved that, now you're working on X" thing in archaeology is bogus. I want to be able to pick and choose what I'm interested in. Mobs should have world drops added to them that are archaeology "clues". These would be the equivalent of "This item begins a quest" drops... only they would indicate "This item begins an archaeology project". Make some of them BoP, other bind on use, so they could be traded and sold - the archaeology equivalent of crafting patterns or recipes.

One of the possible drops from archaeology nodes should be clues, along with fragments. Higher level nodes would drop higher level clues, and you'd have to have a certain skill to start various projects from clues. There would be archaeology quest givers scattered around the world that can give you access to well-defined "starter" clues at various levels. All those Explorer's League and Reliquary representatives? Yeah, an archaeologist of the appropriate skill should be able to visit them and see something like ", I recently came across this fascinating inscription, but I don't have time to pursue it right now... would you like to make a name for yourself?" type of quests.

Archaeology Quests

Let's face it. We're adventurers. While we might pretend to be former shop keepers who found their destiny out in the wilds, or druids dedicated to preserving the balance of nature, or paladins and priests serving the light... there's really only one thing that we all have in common, and that we all manage to do moderately well.

Kill things and loot the bodies.

Seriously. Give us some archaeology quests! Quests that reward clues and fragments instead of gold and greens. Quests that let us play the part of Harrison Jones, and venture into ancient temples crawling with vicious beasts, deadly traps and bloodthirsty foes. Quests that make us start humming "Da da da daaaaa, dum da daaaaa!" as we mow down waves of minions before driving a stake through the Surprisingly Spry Ancient Evil, all so we can pry that precious fragment of parchment from it's withered claws.

Nodes, clues and quests. Get with it, Blizzard. No need to hurry, though. I've still got something like 1100 heavy junk boxes to farm up. You know, since there's nothing more interesting to do at the moment.

Farming Heavy Junkboxes

2011-11-15T20:27:00.001-08:00

Move. Pick pocket. Move.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

So... what do you do to kill time while you're waiting for 4.3 to show up on the doorstep?

A Month of Nothing

2011-11-01T11:53:00.000-07:00

Well, not really. There's been a lot going on, just... not a lot in WoW. I mean, sure, there's Pandas coming. And a complete talent revamp. Oh, and a bunch of new dungeons in 4.3 and the Darkmoon Fair and Deathwing and new holiday quests and monks and dragons and time travel and...

*Cough*. Ahem.

Ok, yeah, there's actually a lot going on. Just not a lot in game right now, at least for me. The future is certainly looking bright, though.

I did manage to have some of the most fun I've ever had raiding doing 10-man Atramedes with my guild on Kirin Tor. That was a frantic, frenetic, chaotic fight - especially as an arcane mage - and a I loved every single second of it. I think I may end up enjoying the "Looking For Raid" tool... we'll see.

I've been thinking about leveling another 'toon on Scarlet Crusade as well. Maybe. I suspect my wife would roll her eyes at me if I did, and I'm not quite sure I'm willing to risk that. I've also been experiencing some vague "hey, wait - wasn't I working on that achievement?" feelings on Aeth, so I've started banging around Azeroth again, trying to knock out a few things here and there.

Mostly, though, I've got the feeling of killing time. I don't really want to run troll heroics, I'm not particularly interested in leveling Aeven to 85 so I can tank, and dailies are are grind that I really only wanted to do once, on Aeth. I'm biding my time, enjoying dinking around with this, that or the other things, and generally just enjoying myself until teh internet dragon!!111!!eleventy!! shows up.

Quick summary of my reactions to recent news, though:

Holiday updates : Very nice - love my luggage^H^H^H^H^H^H^H creepy crate :-)
4.3 Dungeons : Oh, yeah!
4.3 Raids : Yowza!
Darkmoon Fair : Why, yes, thank you!
Pandas : WOOO-HOO!
Pandaria : Awesome!
Monks : Yeah baby!
Diablo Bonus : Scha-WEET!
Talent Revamp : Nice!

All you Panda haters can take a flying leap. I'm thinking that MoP is going to be a heck of a lot of fun.

Inquiring Minds Want To Know

2011-09-26T04:31:00.000-07:00

Having done the Coren Direbrew event on several characters over the past few days, I've got a serious question.

What's up with bear tanks?

It seems like every bear tank I've had in the past few days has exhibited the characteristics of a kid with ADHD in a store full of teh shinies. While I expect a tank to move a bit, these guys have bounced around the room like a superball.

One bear tank bounced from the front wall, to the center of the room, to the back wall, and then back again. That was the most extreme case, but every other bear seemed to move juuuuuust far enough every 4-5 seconds to take Tal out of melee range, or drag Corn on top of Aeth, or just move because... well, I dunno. They didn't like the view?

Seriously. Is this a change in the tanking style/ability for bears, or have I just encountered a cluster of jittery caffeine addicts?

A Public Service Announcement

2011-09-23T07:17:00.000-07:00

To those who may be interested in doing the Coren Direbrew event this Brewfest, here's a few things you should know.

First off - you can run the event more than once a day. Really! Just use the dungeon finder, and keep queueing for the Coren Direbrew event. In fact, if you just stay in your group after he's killed, there's a pretty good chance that whoever is the group leader will re-queue the entire group for another shot at Coren.

On Aeth last night, I helped kill Coren about 15 times in 15 minutes. We'd queue, enter the instance, start the event, spend 30 seconds or so turning him into a rapidly cooling corpse, and then loot his body.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Poor guy.

The reason for this behavior is that Coren Direbrew is a loot piñata.

You see, the first time a character kills him on any given day, they will receive a soulbound Keg-Shaped Treasure Chest. This chest is a weird Dwarven goodie bag that may contain one of a number of rare and wonderful items.

Every time you kill Coren, though, he will drop a trinket. Absolutely, positively, guar-an-teed. These trinkets follow the usual dungeon finder loot roll rules: need before greed. There's the added factor that the trinkets are unique, so if you already have one, you won't be able to roll on it if it drops again.

Following me so far? Coren Direbrew is easy to kill, and every time you kill him, he will drop one of six trinkets. So it's very, very easy in the space of a short time to see multiple drops of every possible trinket type.

Seriously. During Brefest last year, Aeth saw enough Chromium Coasters that she could have started her own bar supply house.

Now, four of these trinkets are clearly intended for certain roles. There's a caster DPS trinket, a melee DPS trinket, a healer's trinket, and a tanking trinket.

Common courtesy and decorum would indicate that you only roll "need" on these items if (a) you can actually use them, and (b) you will use them (i.e., the trinket is an upgrade for you). If you don't meet these criteria - if you're just interested in vendoring the trinket for cash, or if you're collecting the set or something like that - you should be rolling "greed".

"But you said there were six trinkets," you say. "Pray tell, what of these last two trinkets? What spec are they intended for?"

I'm glad you asked that, as that's the whole point of this PSA.

The last two trinkets are perfectly suitable for any character.

Yes.

Any. Character.

Take a look at the two remaining trinkets - the Bitterer Balebrew Charm and the Bubblier Brightbrew Charm. Do you see what the stats on them are?

Say it with me: "+510 stamina".

Whoo! What character couldn't use a little more stamina? Especially a melee DPS class! Depending on your class and gear, just one of these trinkets could be a 5%-7% increase in your total health. Nice! There's an on-use effect as well that results in a minor healing or DPS buff, depending on which trinket you're using.

So... you're a freshly dinged level 85 character. You've got a green ilvl 320-somthing Useless Trinket Of Uselessness still equipped from that one quest in Uldum (you know, the one that had the cut scene in it). You're looking at starting to run Molten Front and Tol Barad and the Twilight Highland PvP-ish dailies.

Look me in the eye and tell me that this trinket isn't an upgrade for you.

So, yeah. If you can use the trinket, and you will use the trinket, you're entirely justified in rolling "need" on it.

Be warned, though. There are certain unenlightened individuals in the game who may look at these trinkets, see that they're dripping with stamina, and think "Oh, these are special trinkets. For the right type of people."

These individuals will tend to get into a high dudgeon if you actually roll "need" on one of these trinkets. If you do so, and are lucky enough to win said trinket, it is almost inevitable that a moment of silence will descend upon the group. Eyes will turn towards you, and eventually, someone will speak...

"Why," the undead rogue will whine breathlessly, "did you roll need on a tanking trinket?"

At which point you may direct him to this PSA, that he may become enlightened.

His eyes opened, he may come to realize that there are situations when all classes and specs might enjoy a little more stamina. Perhaps he may even be inclined to take the time to examine the tanking model in Cataclysm, wherein stacking stamina is not quite as important to a tank as it was in Wrath. Or he may see that even if you did win the trinket, well, there's nothing preventing him from getting his own with just a modicum of extra effort.

Or, if you are like me, you can just boggle that anyone would be stupid enough to ask an enhancement shaman why they might want more stamina.

It boggles the mind, really.

Brewfest!

2011-09-22T09:53:00.000-07:00

I can't believe that I've been wandering around a bit on Tal, looking at gearing options... only to just realize today that it's Brefest, and I haven't yet killed Coren Direbrew even once.

Bad cow!

Back From Vacation

2011-09-19T06:56:00.000-07:00

... just in time for the latest news about patch 4.3.

Which looks like it's going to be freaking amazing.

Travelling through the Caverns of Time into the future to see what it will look like if Deathwing wins?

Fighting Deathwing on the fly over Azeroth, prying off his plate armor and trying to kill him before he destroys the world?

Incredible.

Here's a thought for ya, Blizzard: the chances of me being able to participate in a server first kill of Deathwing? Zero. The chances of me being able to participate in a world-first kill of Deathwing? Even less than zero.

So... how about giving me a mechanic that lets me contribute, however indirectly?

Imagine this...

The flow of time. It's a nebulous thing, isn't it? We're going into the past, into the future, trying to foil Deathwing and save Azeroth. All of us, together. Bands of heroes from all walks of life, Alliance and Horde together, struggling to save the world.

One timeline at a time.

Give us 5-man people something to contribute, Blizz. Make doing the 5-man dungeons in 4.3 have some effect on the fight with Deathwing.

Something like the opening of the Ahn'Qiraj gates.

Every successful 5-man run of a 5-man COT Deathwing dungeon on heroic mode, say, changes one timeline... and makes the defeat of Deathwing a little more certain. One dungeon might give a slight damage buff. Another might give a slight defensive buff. Put a cap on the upper limit of the buffs (say, 10% or 15%), make them increase very slowly (there's a lot of timelines, after all), and make accepting and using the buffs optional for the Deathwing raids.

Every time I run a 5-man, then? I'm making the defeat of Deathwing slightly more certain. One more timeline brought into alignment with the Way Things Should Be. One more chance for Deathwing to win snuffed out. We still have to defeat him, but it's just slightly more certain, now...

Let me have a hand in saving the world this time, Blizz.

Please?

Eighty Five, Redux

2011-09-08T05:36:00.001-07:00

Pushing through the Twilight Highlands last night, Tal finally hit level 85. If it seems like that took a while - well, it did. Real Life (TM) including kids starting school, some personal affairs and a new car, required enough attention that my playing time over the past few weeks has been limited.

What time I did spend in Azeroth was also spent leveling Tal's first crafting skill. Once he hit level 84, I took one last spin around Uldum to say goodbye to all the mining nodes, then dropped mining as a skill and took up alchemy. That leaves Tal as a pretty self-sufficient herbalist/alchemist.

Leveling alchemy to 525 took about 3 hours over a couple of days, and overall, ended up costing about 3,500 gold - more or less as expected. There were a couple of points during the leveling process where I had to take a break and visit areas to pick my own herbs, because they were either unavailable on the AH or only available in small quantities for grossly inflated prices.

I mean... I had to go out and run around Kalmidor looking for silverleaf. Silverleaf! One of the most basic herbs in the game, and there wasn't a hint of it on the AH - at least, not during the 3-4 days I was checking and trying to build up some stock for leveling alchemy. I found as much peacebloom as I needed (or could even carry) on the AH, but not a hint of silverleaf. Strange. Definitely put a crimp in my initial foray into alchemy, though!

Once I got past that hurdle, I eventually ran into a similar issue with goldthorn. Aside from that, though, I either had the herbs on hand, or readily available from the AH at a reasonable price. At that point, it was just a matter of making sure I had a few hundred crystal vials on hand and easy access to the alchemy trainer.

At the moment, Tal doesn't have any alchemy specialization - I'm considering going for Elixir Master, but we'll see. I'm just happy to be able to craft my own Flask of the Winds now. Having a bunch of +hit and other useful flasks/potions on hand is an extra bonus.

Now starts the task of preparing to run some dungeons. I've reforged Tal's primary gear set for hit and expertise, so he's at least starting to look prepared as an Enhancement shaman. It looks like I'm going to have to go back and redo his primary talent tree a bit as well, to dip further into the Elemental tree and pick up some of the hit- and damage- enhancing talents in the early tiers.

Once that's done, I'm going to have to spend some time looking at his Restoration spec as well - yes, I've been collecting a secondary gear set and the glyphs I would want to use if Tal's even called upon to heal. I'm not sure how well a Wrath-trained discipline priest player will do healing in Cataclysm on a shaman, but hey - I'm willing to give it a shot!

Cookin' Dinner

2011-08-30T05:30:00.000-07:00

Took a short break from leveling Tal last night to work on his cooking.

My last burst of cooking enthusiasm took him up to about 375 skill, where there's a pretty nasty little doldrum in skill increases. Basically, your choice is to either (a) do the Dalaran cooking dailies in order to earn enough Dalran Cooking Awards to get a cooking recipe that uses something other than fish, or (b) spend some time fishing in Northrend.

Going to Dalaran... well, involves going to Dalaran. Every. Day. No thank you! I suppose that with a little bit of foresight, I could have done the cooking dailies there while I was in Northrend, but honestly - I was too busy plowing through content to make that work. I mean... was I in Northrend long enough to do the dailies I would have needed? I'm not even sure of that.

So, I spent some time on the AH in Orgrimmar, looking for the rare posting of Borean Man O'War or Imperial Manta Ray. In the meantime, I did the Cataclysm cooking dailies, which was enough to get me a few points in cooking here and there, along with the Cooking Awards that I'd (eventually) use for higher-level recipes.

Last night, I realized that meant it would be about a week, at best, before I was able to make any more progress on cooking. Since I'm hoping to start running dungeons once Tal hits 85, I wanted to make sure that I could at least whomp up some +hit or +agi food when that time came. So... I took a detour to the Borean Tundra, and Tal, with his massive 7 fishing skill and cheap little kid's fishing pole, went looking for fish.

That's actually not as bad as it sounds. Since fishing from pools now guarantees you a catch of a specific type of fish (as opposed to random junk), it was just a matter of making 2-3 passes along the Borean coast, looking for pools along the way. I ended up fishing enough to get a stack of Man O'War, two stacks of Manta, and a handful of fishing achievements to boot. All in all, it took about an hour.

At that point, I had enough fish in hand to cook up a couple of stacks of food, which pushed Tal's skill up to 415, and the out of the cooking doldrum. A quick trip to a vendor and the trainer in Dalaran gave him the mats and skill to brew up Darkbrew Lager, which took him to ~430. At that point, he was able to learn how to make Blackened Surprise. Since I'd been saving the Toughened Flesh I gathered while questing in Cataclysm zones, I already had a stack of meat that I was able to use to get him up to 450 skill.

As I had been doing the Orgrimmar cooking dailies for a while, I had a nice stash of cooking awards - 12, in fact - that I could use to get the recipes I needed for the final push. Since I was really interested in getting to 450, and didn't much care how I got there, I scoped out the AH and saw which mats would be the cheapest to buy in bulk for purposes of levelign before I bought my recipes.

On my server, it turned out that Snake Eyes, Blood Shrimp and Dragon Flanks were particularly cheap, so I bought a stack or so of each raw material. Total cost, less than 500 gold. A quick trip to the trainer in Orgrimmar, a hastily assembled cooking fire, and Tal ended up with a bunch of Salted Eyes, Hearty Seafood Soup and Grilled Dragon... and cooking skill maxed out at 525. Woot!

To celebrate, Tal blew his last 3 cooking awards on the recipe for Skewered Eel, sprung for a stack of Fathom Eel, and cooked himself up a stack of +90 agi food. Mmmmm mmmm good!

So now he's halfway to level 84, with a bag full of food he can use for +60 mastery, +60 strength, +90 hit or +90 agi, as circumstances warrant. Which kicks the snot out of the +30 haste food he had been choking down. He may not be Ready For Raiding just yet, but he's at least prepared to wander into a regular Cataclysm dungeon and whomp some sense into a death cultist or too.

Onward - through culinary science!

Eighty One

2011-08-24T20:48:00.000-07:00

Made level 81 on Tal after 5 days, 9 hours, 7 minutes, and 12 seconds played.

Total gold earned (most of it from selling materials on the auction house) - in the general region of about 14,500. Both professions (mining and herbalism) are above 500, well before Tal's hit any areas where he'd need to have his skills that high level to gather herbs or ore. Nice!

When Tal dinged 80, his average iLevel was about 161. The first Cataclysm mobs he had to deal with felt like they were somewhere in between a tough Wrath mob and a weak Wrath elite mob. I could take on one fairly easily, two if I was able to plop down totems and blow through cooldowns.

By the time he hit 81, the quest rewards from Mount Hyjal had pushed his average iLevel to 238. The only items of his that I haven't been able to replace with Cataclysm gear are his trinkets and his belt. Quest mobs were still on the somewhat tough side, but with totems down and cooldowns ready, they went down readily enough. Handling 3-4 at a time was a challenge instead of a death sentence.

Attack power? Went from the vicinity of ~1380 to 3153. Yowza.

Off to finish Hyjal now...

Waiting Stinks

2011-08-22T11:12:00.000-07:00

"Let me tell you who I am, on the chance that these scribblings do survive ...

"I am Murgen, Standardbearer of the Black Company, though I bear the shame of having lost that standard in battle. I am keeping these Annals because Croaker is dead, One–Eye won’t, and hardly anyone else can read or write. I will be your guide for however long it takes the Shadowlanders to force our present predicament to its inevitable end..."

Grrr... I wants me A Pitiless Rain, I does. My precious. If you've never read any of Cook's Black Company books, go ahead. Seriously, I'll wait. I spent a good bit of time in Icecrown thinking about the Limper and the Hanged Man, and flinching every time a geist bounded towards me.

Part of me wants to see Suvrin as Captain, part of me wants to see Sleepy again. Since I can't get my favorite mercenary fix, though, I need something else to do. So I want to hit level 80 on Tal tonight. I'm close - just dinged 79 last night, in fact - and I've been managing about a level a night for the past week or so... so it's definitely doable.

In terms of cash flow, I have to say that dual mining/herbalism rocks. I've managed to buy riding skills just short of Master Riding (~5000 gold), a double handlful of glyphs (~2000 gold), enough raw materials to level cooking to ~ 385, and I still have ~4500 gold on hand. Not bad at all. Maybe I'll spring for Master Riding after all.

I'm going to push for 80 in Icecrown - there's still plenty of quests to do in Sholazar Basin and The Sotrm Peaks, but they're all (so far, at least) things I've seen before. I want to see what the assault on ICC looks like from the Horde side before I wave goodbye and head for Hyjal.

Random Thoughts are Random

2011-08-15T11:10:00.000-07:00

It's been a week since I've done the Firelands quests on Aeth. Leveling Tal is so much more fun, really. At least when I play him, 1/4 of what I see (quests, story elements, etc.) is at least somewhat new. As opposed to getting the next 25-30 Marks, which involves doing the same thing I've done for the last 2 weeks straight... ugh.

Hey, Blizz? How about daily quest chains that build on one another and expire? Day 1 - do quests A, B, C. Day 2 - oh, look, now you've got A, B, C, D. Add a new daily quest every day, until you get to a certain point... then you continue to add quests, dropping others. So on day 7, you might have A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I. On day 8, quests A, B, C are "done" - so they drop off, but that's no problem, since there's a new quest giver with quests J, K, L.

Make it a story, man. Extra special bonus points if doing different combinations of dailies unlocks other quests, daily or otherwise. Doing a "gather the herbs" daily 7 times might unlock a "gather additional materials for a potion" questline that in turn unlocks a "deliver the potion" daily quest... but "gather the herbs" might be exclusive with "gather the ores", which unlocks a different questline and different dailies at the end.

tl;dr - Hey, Blizz? Make dailies more interesting, plz? kthxbye!

Tal is 3-4 quests from level 74. Questing in Northrend without heirloom gear and a high-level guild to give me that bonus 50-60% experience? Ouch.

Artisan riding is, indeed, worth it. If you can't manage to scrape up 5K gold by the time you hit the mid-70's, then you've got some serious cash-flow problems. Stop buying those Mysterious Fortune Cards, m'kay?

Leveling cooking, without leveling fishing, apparently runs smack-dab into some sort of doldrums in the 295-300 range. I spent an evening on Tal running around trying to pick up the recipes and mats that I'd need to get his cooking up to BC levels, only to top out at 295/300. Really, Blizz? Sheesh...

For your entertainment: a cow riding a horse!

Took this while Tal was doing Fresh Remounts in Dragonblight. The fact that he didn't move properly with the horse really annoyed my wife. She likes a reasonable level of realism in her anthropomorphic cows.

Also, two dancing spirit wolves:

That's Tal, in the background, dancing with Nelha, a Draeni Shaman. We ended up running through the Obsidian Shire quests in Dragonblight pretty much simultaneously, so we were helping each other out along the way. I'd go down the left side of a hallway, she'd go down the right side, and we'd slaughter anything that got in our way, lending a hand where needed. Run back to the quest giver, lather, rinse, repeat.

Solidarity, my shaman sister! Solidarity!

First Rule of Adventuring

2011-08-08T11:21:00.000-07:00

"Remember to not die."

Halfway there!

2011-08-08T07:24:00.001-07:00

I managed to get Talaesin to level 70 over the weekend. In my mind, that's halfway to level 85 - I've made it through the Old Wolrd and Outland content, which leaves two expansions (Wrath and Cataclysm) to wade through to level 85. Time-wise, I think the split is more like 60-40 or maybe even 70-30, but those early levels come fast, so we'll just say it's halfway and be done with it.

Spent a chunk of change on cold weather flying, which left Tal with about 4,600 gold... not quite enough for artisan riding, but very close. Given the overall usefulness of a 280% speed flying mount for leveling, I'm going to be plunking down the cash for this as soon as I can justify it (that is, as soon as I can ensure I'll have ~1k cash on hand after the purchase). He's currently revered with Orgrimmar, so that should mean having to get to 5500 gold or thereabouts.

I've actually slowed down a bit now that I've hit the Borean Tundra. Leveling through Outland was a "Meh" experience - I've been there, done that, many times over, and there really wasn't anything new for me to see. Getting into the Wrath zones, though, I'm starting to see different story lines. Oh, there's still some overlap - the Tuskarr quests, for example - but there's more than enough that's different as a Horde player that I want to get a feel for the story line.

And I'm enjoying the story line.

The atmosphere and events around Warsong Hold are excellent. The overall feeling is one of having stepped into the midst of a gothic horror story. The Scourge are literally on the doorstep, and they're not just interested in killing the defenders, but converting them. There are fields of wriggling pupae that used to be Tauren and Orcs, strange mists off of the sea hiding the threat of the Kvaldir, and even the local farm animals have been poisoned or converted into scourge minions.

Overall, it's a pretty eerie setting. As a player, you get dumped into the midst of it all, and contribute to... well, not so much winning, but holding back the Scourge. There's a feeling that everything you've accomplished isn't really a victory. You may have managed to stem the tide for now, but off in the distance, you can definitely see that there's a storm brewing.

I ended up the evening at Taunka'le, getting to know my Northrend cow-brethren. Again, while there's some overlap in the quest lines, there are instances where it's interesting to see the story and how it accounts for "Well, yeah, we're going to have the Alliance and the Horde do the same thing here... but the motivations are different."

I'll admit to a little bit of annoyance at this, though not for the reason you'd expect. Game-wise, I see the value in being able to re-use quests and other game assets. Lore-wise... well, you'd think that sooner or later, the Horde and Alliance leaders would realize that there's actually quite a few points of agreement between the two factions. Something like, "Nine out of ten Horde and Alliance heroes agree: undead elemental death cultists are bad for children and other living things." Start a public awareness campaign, or something. Maybe get Abesik Kampfire to do a PR tour. He'd probably go for it; I hear he's campaigning for War Chief anyways. Given what I've seen of Garrosh, he's got my vote already.

Then again, that "we're not so different, really" realization just doesn't seem to happen in Real Life (TM), either. So, hey - kudos to Blizzard for managing to make a world full of wizards, dragons and heroes that's still as messed up as we are. I guess.

A Resounding Response

2011-08-04T10:32:00.000-07:00

Unless you've been living under a rock (and, face it - if you're reading this blow for WoW news, you probably are living under a rock), you've probably heard that Blizzard registered a trademark for the name "Mists of Pandaria". This has, in turn, lead to a whole lot of speculation about whether this is the name of the next major release for the game. If so, it seems to indicate that players will get a chance to learn more about the heretofore elusive panda-like race, the Pandaren.

The community reaction to this has been... mixed, and strongly so. Some people love the idea of the Pandaren. Others take exception to their presence in-game, claiming that they're really nothing more than an April Fool's day joke that's got more legs than most. Overall, it's been a resounding response, both for and against.

What do I think?

It's fine.

Keep in mind, I was not a Warcraft player - so my totality of involvement with the "lore" of WoW is from WoW. I have no experience with the Pandaren, other than the one or two in-game quests and items that seem to reference them. If Blizzard does introduce a Pandaren expansion, I'm going to experience it without a whole lot of preconceived notions.

Very much like the Gilneans, for example. Or the Tuskarr. Or Ramkahen, Or... well, frankly, everything in WoW up to this point. Before I started playing, I had no idea what Night Elves were, how they differed from other elves, or how they were related to Naga. I had no concept of loa-worshiping Trolls who once ruled a massive empire, or anthropomorphic cows who travelled the world, finding interesting examples of life and eating it. I had no idea what a furbolg or a murloc or an arrakoa was, or any of another million little things that make up the World of Warcraft.

What I have read of them makes them seem like an interesting addition to WoW lore. The idea of exploring a new civilization, a new culture, a new part of the world is exciting and intriguing. If it's fun, if it's interesting, if it's entertaining, then really - I don't care where the Pandaren came from. If they started out as a joke and have grown beyond that, great! If they were always intended to be part of the story of the game, fantastic!

Though you'd better not make Pandaren a playable race before the Tuskarr, Blizz. You do that and it's on.

You Are Now Leaving Zangarmarsh

2011-08-03T13:12:00.000-07:00

This is why I don't read quest text as much as I used to. After I got through Stealing Back the Mushrooms, Watcher Leesa'oh told me...

These are perfect! Oh, thank you, shaman!

You've been ever so careful not to disturb the natural order of things, and we've gathered so much information in such a short amount of time!

Did you catch that?

You've been ever so careful not to disturb the natural order of things.

Um.

Yeah.

I take it you didn't notice those few hundred dead critters? The heaping mounds of dead sporebats, marshfangs, marsh walkers, and giant fireflies?

Huh.

You mean you overlooked the the corpses of the fallen bog lords, fungal giants, marsh hydras, and eels that kind of, you know, followed me about the zone?

Odd.

Nothing to say about the scores of frenzies, clackers, feralfen, naga, and the occasional Alliance soldier that turned up dead in my wake, just because they happened to be in the wrong place at the right time?

Interesting.

What about the literal heaps of ore I've managed to rip out of the ground, or the baskets full of herbs that I've managed to exploit... er, I mean, rescue from this pristine wilderness?

Mm-hm.

You've been ever so careful not to disturb the natural order of things.

So... what have we learned here?

As for me, what I've learned from this experience is that the Cenarion Circle are a bunch of bloodthirsty, vindictive, heartless, indiscriminate killers who apparently think that killing something - anything - is one of the best ways to solve ecological problems. Oh, and apparently, they're either in complete denial over this, or they just lie throught their teeth about their motives.

Mind you, they pay well, so please don't look at this as a criticism, per se. More of a general observation, in a "know your employer" sort of way.

And that's the best possibility. Worst case, they're a bunch of clueless bumblers who have all the situational awareness of a dead rock. Given a flashlight and a map, they would very likely get lost while trying to locate their own posterior. The chances of them, and everyone around them, winding up dead in a ditch because they thought it would be a good idea to hand-feed poor starving velociraptors rapidly approaches unity as time goes by.

So, that's why I left Zangarmarsh. I've either been working for heartless amoral killers who - lets be honest - were probably getting ready to dispose of me, now that they've managed to use me to slaughter every creature within sight; or I've been working for some clueless drips who will, 100% guaranteed, ask me to do something incredibly stupid and deadly at any moment.

See ya! I hear Hemet Nesingwary is hanging out in Nagrand. Fun man, Hemet.

And at least he's honest about wanting to kill everything that moves.

Summer Doldrums

2011-07-22T07:44:00.000-07:00

Not posting as much as... well, as ever. It's hot out, man. Between work, family, and just general life, there's not a whole lot of energy left at the end of the day. Given a limited amount of energy, and a choice between playing WoW, and writing about WoW, which one do you think wins out?

Ah-yep.

Tal hit 60 last night in Hellfire Peninsula. After buying expert riding, his flying mount, and paying for his old-world pilot's license, he was still sitting pretty with 2000 gold in the bank.

Not bad at all!

A friend from work who's a new player asked me how I leveled so fast... I told 'em "If it moves, kill it. When it stops moving, loot it." Well, that, and quests. Quests are definitely key.

Word of advice to any new WoW players, or someone starting anew on a new realm: take two gathering professions, and learn to use the auction house. Between what you farm up while leveling, and the cloth and other items you accumulate, you're sitting on a gold mine. Using the AH lets you have the cash flow you need to keep you funded for the glyphs, enchants, potions, training, and all the other cash sinks you're going to encounter as you level.

I use Auctionator to make buying and selling easier. On the buying side, it makes it easy to identify good deals - excellent for leveling a profession, when you want to find the cheapest stack of ore or herbs without having to wade through all the regular AH listings. On the selling side, I generally set my undercut to about 10%, and just post things for whatever Auctionator says, so long as it looks reasonable. I'd rather sell quickly and make a profit than have to take time away from leveling to manage my auctions.

Over at Kirin Tor, I've been using Auctionator to slowly buy up briarthorn and other herbs that Aretae can use to make Rogues Decks for Aetherna. When Tal hits 80 or so, I'll start using it to buy up stocks of low-level herbs so he can drop mining and start leveling alchemy. On Laenson, my Ironforge bank alt, Auctionator lets him easily manage the sale of stacks of "meh, can't use it, sell it" items that all the rest of my KT toons generate.

TL;DR - learn to use the AH, and get Auctionator, 'cause that add-on makes it easy.

In other news, Aeth is slowly working her way through the Firelands dailies. A couple more days, and she should have her 150 marks of the world tree, which will let her unlock the next stage of dailies. Meanwhile Aretae is thinking that maybe, just maybe, traipsing through BRD to gather junk boxes might be more entertaining than picking yet another stack of whiptail in Uldum...

As Collectors Everywhere Rejoice...

2011-07-08T10:43:00.000-07:00

The WoW Armory now includes information on pets and mounts - both those your character has already collected, and those they have yet to collect. Filterable by source (quest, drop, etc.) as well, to make it easier to figure out how you're going to get that last few mounts for your Mountain o' Mounts achievement.

Nice.

34 Hours

2011-07-07T19:47:00.001-07:00

That's how long it's taken Talaesin to get to level 41. That's about 50 minutes per level... probably less, actually, if you exclude time on taxis, time spent AFK or in the auction house, and so on. Including things like alt-tabbing into a browser to write a quick blog post about how quickly you're leveling.

All in all, it's probably more like 40 minutes of playing time per level.

Wheh.

A Different Attitude

2011-07-05T10:59:00.000-07:00

A couple of notes about playing Horde for the first time.

The Goblin NPC emotes? Priceless.

"Security, enforcement, extortion, pool cleaning? We do it all."

I chuckle every time I hear that.

I'm also enjoying the snark from many of the quest givers. Not all of them - the Blood Elves and Tauren quest givers seem downright polite. The Orcs and Goblins, on the other hand?

"Welcome, shaman. We sent word to the War Chief weeks ago that we would need a stalwart and brave hero to assist us in our tasks. I guess we'll just have to make do with you."

Then, after killing about fifteen gajillion Burning Cultists and collecting their gizzards, banishing a demon, and single-handledly routing an Alliance invasion, you'll get something like...

"Oh, you again? I see you managed to keep from impaling yourself on a rusty butter knife."

Snark. It's what's for breakfast, apparently.

Achieving the Impossible

2011-06-29T13:48:00.000-07:00

When I started leveling Tal, I thought for a moment about trying to get him all the way to level 85 without dying. That thought lasted until I got to Orgrimmar, wandered around a bit, and said, "Oh, hey, there's Gammon!"

A stray click later, and my thoughts of making it to 85 without dying were shown to be... somewhat overly ambitious.

Which led me to think, "Oh, wow. Too bad. They should add an achievement for making it to 85 without dying!"

... which, in turn, led me to think, "Hmm. Are there any achievement - aside from feats of strength - that you can lock yourself out of completing?"

An achievement for hitting 85 without dying would meet this criteria. Run into Hogger? Smish! No way possible to get that particular achievement. Another example would be a "run dungeon X at less than level Y". Which would be an interesting indication that you've done something challenging... except that once you hit level Y, that's it - the achievement isn't possible for that character any longer.

After spending a furious 15 seconds thinking about it, I'm pretty sure the answer is "no" - there aren't any regular achievements that you can't complete, eventually, on any character you might want to do them on. Which is pretty darn impressive, if you ask me. If there's a non-FoS achievement in the game, you can get it, period. It might take you forever and a day to level to the point where you can run that dungeon, or fish up Mr. Pinchy, or farm up that last pet, or win enough BGs to get that mount... but that's it. With enough effort and/or assistance, you can acquire any regular achievement in game.

Am I wrong here, though? I know about quite a few of the achievements, and while I'm pretty sure that I've looked them all over at least once or twice, I may have missed something.

Another day, another level. Or two. Maybe three.

2011-06-28T10:51:00.000-07:00

The climb continues. Talaesin is level 25, still with a good chunk of change to his name - though a bunch of that got blown on his first set of glyphs. Even more would have gone for bags, but there were no netherweave bags on the auction house! Thankfully, my guild leader on SC was kind enough to crank out some bolts and whip up some bags Real Quick Now.

It's nice, having friends. As an aside, this is actually the first time that I think I'll be able to thank someone, face-to-face, for something they did in WoW. Nice.

I was truly and honestly amazed that I couldn't find any netherweave bags on the SC Horde AH. Over on Kirin Tor, they're enough of a money making staple for tailors that I was able to make a good bit of change off of them on Laenshield, and I wasn't really even trying to do more than get a small piece of the market. Makes me wonder what other markets might be under-represented on SC. I'll have to see if there's a money-making niche that I can slot Tal into when he gets tired of raking in cash from his gathering professions.

My wife and I are having a siege* of children over tonight for a cookout, so the chances of me getting any significant play time is slim. What time I have will probably be spent on Aetherna, exploring the new Firelands content and dailies. Or... maybe not. Maybe I'll level Tal a bit while waiting for the chaos around the 4.2 changes to settle down a bit.]

* As a friend once pointed out... "A herd of cows, a school of fish, a siege of children."

Step by Step

2011-06-27T08:41:00.000-07:00

Talaesin is level 22 now, with a nice bankroll for that level - 280 gold, IIRC. At this rate, I expect to have more than enough cash to handle dual spec, riding, mounts, and whatever else I may need as part of the game. Current bag set (a bunch of 8-slot bags) are serving him well enough, though I expect to burn some of that gold on a set of netherweave bags sometime Real Soon Now.

Got to kill my first gnomes in Azhara, and it was surprisingly refreshing.

Don't know how I'll handle facing my first Ironforge Dwarf, though. I may just have to see if I can manage to level without touching a hair on their precious little ale-soaked heads.

Myra Tyrngaarde

2011-06-24T07:28:00.000-07:00

Talaesin is level 16 now, with 47 gold on hand. Dual gathering professions FTW! Leveling without heirloom items is surprisingly sedate, especially compared to the blistering pace that Aretae managed.

My overall impression so far (with a sample size of "one") is that the new starting areas are well done, various complaints (leveling speed, expensive bags, etc.) have been addressed fairly effectively, and that the "new player" leveling grind is much less grindy, without being to much less grindy, if you know what I mean. Playing for an hour on a low-level toon and picking up a level or two feels just about right to me.

Eye candy time.

I came across this very awesome fan art of Myra Tyrngaarde, the Ironforge bread vendor. Yeah, I loves me th' Dwarves. Click to embiggen...

Two Weeks

2011-06-23T07:41:00.000-07:00

Wow. Two weeks without a blog post.

Welcome to the lazy days of summer, I guess.

Aretae has managed to make it all the way to 85, and has been... well, not happily - more like reignedly - farming whiptail in Uldum and cranking out various forms of Darkmoon fair card decks for Aeth. It's a nice, sedate, mind-soothing routine. I'm sure he consoles himself with the thought that he'll eventually get to venture into the Blackrock Depths and murder everything that moves.

I've also embarked on a new adventure (for me, at least). A group of folks here at work play Horde-side on the Scarlet Crusade server. I've always wanted to see what the game looked like to the Horde, so Tuesday I logged in and lo! - Talaesin, the Tauren Shaman was born. An hour of play on Tuesday got him to level 7 with a purse full of 22 silver. Another couple of hours on Wednesday saw him just shy of level 13, with a full compliment of (small) bags, two bank slots, and a purse full of 22 gold. Dual gathering professions and the auction house, boo-yeah!

Yep. 100x increase in wealth overnight. I don't think I can keep that up, but I intend to try.

Leveling in Mulgore was interesting. I like the Tauren. I mean, giant anthropomorphic cows! What's not to like, there? And with Cata, you get the feeling that of all the Horde races, the Tauren and the Trolls are the ones who actually have their heads screwed on straight. Playing a shaman is new for me as well, so I'm getting a three-fer - new race, new class, new quests. Essentially a whole new game with a whole new group of people.

Cool.

I mentioned bags, above. Up through Wrath, bag space was a major pain. First thing I did with any alt was have Aeth buy and mail them a passel of netherweave bags. The alternative was wandering around with only your 16-slot backpack for 20 levels or so until you managed to pry a bag or two out of the cold, dead hands of some random enemy, or some quest giver grudgingly coughed up an 8-slot bag after you saved his life and livelyhood. Given the way bags worked prior to Cata, you'd think they were made of woven gold or something.

Srsly.

By the time I hit level 10 on Talaesin, all my bag slots were filled... without me trying. Sure, they were all 6-slot bags, but that gave me a total of 40 bag slots. More than enough for the questing and gathering I was doing. Two of the bags came from rare mobs that I encountered during the course of my questing, and one just... well, just kind of showed up from somewhere. I looked, and it was there. It was automatically equipped when I looted it because I had an empty bag slot.

It looks like the main purpose of Snagglespear, "Pokey" Thonmantle and other low-level rare mobs is to be a sort of walking, hostile vending machine for small bags. Beat on the squishy pinata and voila! - out comes a bag.

I like it.

Now, though, it's time for Talaesin to venture out into the wild lands outside of Mulgore. I'm looking forward to seeing what's in store for my psycho cow. Pyschow?

We'll see.

Pushing towards 85

2011-06-06T06:50:00.001-07:00

I'm working my way through Vash'jir on Aretae, and frankly, I'm surprised that I've come this far.

My original plan was to just level Aretae far enough to farm junk boxes so I could use them to grind out Ravenholdt rep for Aetherna's Insane in the Membrane achievement. Since I didn't have a character with inscription to help with the Darkmoon Faire reputation grind, I figured that I'd go ahead and make him a scribe as well, and so kill two birds with one stone.

So, yeah... get him to level 75, level up Inscription until I could crank out Darkmoon cards of destruction, and that would be it, right?

So. Why do I find myself under the sea, running around and leveling all the way to 82, with level 85 fast approaching?

Honestly?

Being sneaky is fun.

I can't see myself taking Aretae into any PvE content, unless it's as part of a guild run with folks who are willing to put up with my absolute n00bness. I've really got no interest in a combat or assassination spec, so he's going to stay subtlety for a good long while. Given that, I think he's always going to be a lone wolf type (how appropriate!) - but there's a lot for a lone wolf to do at level 85. Like, maybe hang out in Tol Barad and stun-lock healers.

Maybe. Like I said, being sneaky is fun.

Music Monday: "Let me go, boys; let me go, boys; let me go down in the mud where the rivers all run dry..."

Happy dance!

2011-05-24T12:00:00.000-07:00

You can't see me, but I'm totally doing my happy dance right now.

Patch notes for 4.2 - take a look.

They removed the proposed cooldown for spell steal!

"Aetherna does a happy dance."

So, OK, yeah... it's twice as expensive. I can deal with that. Just so long as I can blow a chunk o' mana to (arcanely) reduce Mr. Superbuff to a shivering, almost-naked meatsack that's just a PoM Arcane Blast away from getting a first-hand view of the afterlife, well, I'm happy.

This is not a blog post...

2011-05-24T05:35:00.001-07:00

... this is just a tribute to the best blog post in the world.

Srsly.

I wrote a wonderful, insightful, witty, charming, and amazing post this morning. Unfortunately, the margins at Blogger were apparently not large enough to contain it.

In fact, the sheer amazing awesomicity of my post was apparently just enough to fry Blogger's positronic brain. When I clicked on the "Publish Post" button, Blogger hiccuped, and the post... well, it went off into the ether somewhere. Best guess right now is that it was transmitted in the general direction of 70 Ophiuchi, where the electric UFO aliens of Dimension 10 are using it to determine who will be the next overlord of the Earth.

Which makes me thankful that I didn't mention Hello Kitty.

Nagrand Ho!

2011-05-18T07:07:00.000-07:00

Over the past couple of nights, I've had Aretae questing in Nagrand. This is one of my favorite areas in the game, right up there with the Howling Fjord. The scenery is amazingly beautiful, the Kurenai and Ethereals are fantastic, and the quest lines are interesting.

All of that is really secondary to why I really enjoy the zone, though.

What makes Nagrand a thoroughly enjoyable zone for me are how the quests are arranged.

Alliance side, there are at five quest hubs in the zone - Telaar, the Ethereal outpost, Altrius the Sufferer, the Throne of the Elements and the Nessingwary base camp. There's a small number of breadcrumb quests leading from one hub to another, but for the most part, they're self-contained.

All of which means a freshly dinged level 65 character can pop into Nagrand and make one circuit of the zone to pick up two dozen quests.

At which point, you can simply continue on a second circuit, killing as you go... with a good chance that any mob you down will help you complete one of your quests.

That's just awesome.

One circuit to pick up quests; one circuit to murder anything that moves; repeat to get whatever follow-on quests are available.

By the time you're finished, you'll have picked up a level or two - or close to three, with heirloom experience and rested experience bonuses - and be ready to slog through the Netherstorm or Shdowmoon Valley. Well, when I say "slog", I mean "do just enough quick quests to get to 68 so you can escape Outland and enjoy the Howling Fjord".

Aretae is about 10 bars away from Northrend, and already he can feel the chill in the air.

The Days Are Just Filled

2011-05-16T12:47:00.000-07:00

Look at me. Look away. Look back at me.

You rogue is now level 65.

Well... almost. Seeing as I picked up about 4 1/2 levels in Outland in just about as many hours of play, it looks as if I have another 2-3 evenings worth of 70's disco-style clothing and poop quests before I can hie Aretae off to Northrend and let him experience the 80's synth-pop style clothing and... um. Poop quests.

Nice to know there's some constants in life, eh?

Along the way, I gigged Aetherna out in a full set of Fireweave, with a couple of pieces of purchasable honor gear thrown into the mix. Add an Ebonsteel Belt Buckle and a resilience gem, her PvP ring from the TB run a few weeks, back, and a resilience chest enchant; mix in a few other enchants and she's got 1600+ resilience, a nice... oh, better than 1000% increase over her previous 140 or thereabouts resilience.

I'm not going to say it makes an immense difference - the increase in her survivability is noticeable, though. She's no longer just squishy roadkill on the path of murderous rogues any longer!

More like a small rock or a broken bottle that they sometimes have to swerve around.

Well, OK, maybe she's a bit more survivable than that. At the risk of sounding proud of myself, I'll point out that after gearing up, I took her in to Tol Barad, where the Alliance won for the first time in living memory.

Coincidence?

I think not.

Music Monday: A WoW version of "The Highwayman". A most excellent song, and a very nice set of images to go along with it.

Blogger had a hiccup...

2011-05-13T11:19:00.000-07:00

Apparently, blogger had a hiccup, and a lot of folks lost posts and comments that went up yesterday.

I'm pleased to relate to you that our pro-active "Post Infrequently, 'Cause It's Summer, Almost, Really' policy here at Twenty Silver has resulted in us loosing zero posts and zero comments.

Just part of our overwhelmingly excellent service to you, our readers!

Doing a 180

2011-05-09T06:03:00.000-07:00

Well... to be honest, so far, it's only a 120. It will become a 180 this evening, though.

What? No, no... achievement points. You didn't really think I was going to change an opinion or something, did you?

Pshaw.

Last week, Aeth became a Veteran Nanny, for 50 achievement points. Saturday, she completed her 2500th daily quest, for 60 achievement points. She's one pet short of getting Petting Zoo - another 60 achievement points. Knock off a zone in Kalimdor and there you have it, 180 achievement points.

Now, if I can just snag another 15 mounts somewhere, I can pick up Mountain o' Mounts, for... huh. Only 40 achievement points? Collecting 100 mounts is a whole lot tougher than collecting a 100 pets. Huh. Maybe I'll find something more interesting to do.

Music Monday: a electric guitar version of the opening credits theme from "Game of Thrones". Never read the books, haven't watched the series, but I love the intro.

Distracted

2011-05-02T06:23:00.000-07:00

After running through the Rise of the Zandalari quest chain on Aeth, I found myself a bit distracted. While everyone else has been assaulting Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub, Aeth, Laen, and my other toons have been sitting more or less idle while I took Aretae on a tour of Azeroth.

Last Monday, he was level 35.

As of last night, he's level 60.

Total play time: about 25 hours.

Yowza.

He's got +35% to XP from heirloom items, +10% from guild perks, for a total of +45% experience... and that's before counting in the advantage of rested experience gains.

Heirloom items with decent enchantments means that he can hack through just about any mobs that might get in his way. Last night, in Hellfire Peninsula, as a level 58 rogue, I was able to survive several encounters with 2-3 level 60+ mobs. It wasn't pretty, and at times I ended the fight on the ragged end with only a few hundred health, but it was certainly doable.

While leveling him, it was a real struggle to keep him in level-appropriate zones. He was gaining experience so quickly that I think the only zones he actually completed were the Searing Gorge and Burning Steppes quest lines. Those really only got completed because it was easier to do the final few quests rather than to move on to the next zone. In most cases, as soon as the quests in a zone turned green, I abandoned them and left for the next most difficult zone I could find.

My only complaint through this process is that I wish Blizzard would lower the "required level" for a lot of quests. At one point, I left the Burning Steppes to hit the Swamp of Sorrows, thinking "Well, if I can go through level-appropriate mobs like a hot knife through butter, I obviously need more challenging opponents." Turns out that the Swamp had plenty of XP for a budding herbalist, thank you very much, but aside from that... nada. At level 50, I was just shy of being able to accept any quests in the zone. So I did some herbing, returned to the Steppes to complete the quests there, and then pretty much ignored the Swamp except for a brief stop-over on my way to the Blasted Lands.

Level 58 to 60 were done in Hellfire Peninsula, where - thankfully! - you can still get a decent challenge. The mobs were tough, but not too tough, and plentiful enough that it felt dangerous. I think I used Vanish to extricate myself from sticky situations more often last night than I did during the entirety of the leveling process up to 58. I also found myself routinely using cooldowns that were afterthoughts at best in the Old World content.

Another thing that I found refreshing about Outland is that the quests chains are much, much, much less linear than the new Old World content. The "I know where all the quests are, run around and pick up everything, then circle the map slaughtering everything that moves" strategy still works quite well here.

Which gave me pause. There's a real difference in questing from BC to Wrath to Cata. Personally, I think that I'm leaning towards the idea that Wrath questing (minus the phasing snafus) was the most successful model. We'll see how things work out with the Firelands in 4.2, where it looks like Blizzard is trying to take some of the best questing elements of BC, Wrath and Cata and mix them all together in a (hopefully!) wonderful stew.

I'm thinking about putting together some quest graphs for a few zones, similar to what Cynwise did for battlegrounds - an abstract representation of quests, and how they relate to one another. I suspect that BC zones will show a quest graph like an aromatic ring structure - lots of core quest hubs immediately available, with short chains leading off of them. In Wrath zones, I'd expect something similar, except with the occasional "side chain" from one hub leading off to and opening up another. Cata zones feel like they would end up being a single long chain of linked quests, with short stubs of "side quests' here and there.

I'm interested in seeing how many "join points" there are in quest chains. There are a few that I know of - mostly breadcrumb quests in BC and Wrath, that occur at the end of other quest chains and point you towards another hub. You can get those quests before you get the breadcrumbs, though, so while they're "linked" in a way, the link isn't a strong one. So instead of a linear march through content, you end up with a web of quests, which gives you the ability to pick your way through the content in a way that's suitable to you.

I'm going to have to think on this a bit more. It's an interesting problem - how do you tell a story in a non-linear fashion? Hmm. More to follow, unless, you know, I get distracted again.

Music Monday: "Run Away", by The Hollow, who have an interesting 3 Doors Down sort of sound to them. Bonus points to you if you can explain the relationship between the band and SF/Horror writer F. Paul Wilson...

Initial Reactions to 4.1

2011-04-26T19:19:00.000-07:00

2-second Arcane Blasts? Woooohoooo! I feel like I owe some developer at Blizzard a plate of cookies or something. It's like I found an amazingly awesome Christmas present that got stuck behind the couch. Mmmmmm-mmmmmm-goood!

Panther Cub? D'awwwww! All the poor lil' guy had to gnaw on was some... erm. Well, dead dwarf. Well, really, dead-ish dwarf. As in "not dead yet" dwarf. Ah, well. Circle of life, and all that. We'll make an exception for this little guy because someone heaped cute on him and topped it off with more cute.

Bwemba's quest chain? Cool. Though I could have done without her spirit maneuvering in front of me... every... time... I went to click on something else.

The new panes for titles and the equipment manager in the character screen? Also nice. Being able to see more than a handful of titles at once is great, and the gear management interface seems to be a bit slicker.

New achievements? Check! 2500 Daily Quests, Justly Rewarded, Cataclysmically Delicious, Drown Your Sorrows, plus the new troll dungeon quests.

All in all... thumbs up!

Ding!

2011-04-26T05:50:00.000-07:00

Started off yesterday evening doing some TB dailies on Aetherna, then switched over to Aretae. When last we left him, he was at level 35, having done a mere handful of introductory quests in the Western Plaguelands.

By the end of the evening?

Level 40. Professional expert. Dual talent specialization. Journeyman riding. A bag full of herbs, pigments and inks all lined up to crank out glyphs, scrolls and other inscription goodies.

All in the space of about 3 hours.

Yowza. He's going to be farming Heavy Junkboxes and cranking out Darkmoon Faire cards for Aeth before you know it. They grow up so fast!

Seriously - the XP bonus from guild perks and heirloom items has combined to make Aretae a leveling monster. Another couple of nights, and he'll be ready to start his farming operations in earnest.

Moving to WPL was a definite win, both in terms of experience, and in terms of challenge. I'm starting to get more familiar with his abilities, and my button-mashing has gotten slightly more sophisticated. I've remembered that I have Evasion, for example, and I'm - slowly - learning the art of stun-locking a target. Now that I've dual-spec'd into subtlety, I'm looking forward to playing with his new set of abilities.

All in all, I'm having fun on my murderous, backstabbing wolf-man. Even just getting from place to place with Running Wild is entertaining. Once he's done with his farming and crafting duties, we'll see if that novelty lasts through Outland and Northrend and into the Cataclysm content.

Bourée

2011-04-25T05:39:00.000-07:00

Lots of achievements this weekend, thanks to guild runs of Tempest Keep and 10-man Ulduar. I'm impressed with Ulduar - there's a couple of boss encounters that are trivial in Cataclysm raiding gear, sure. There are others (Freya, for example) that are still more "coordination checks" than "gear checks". No matter how hard you hit, if you don't know the fight and work together, you're not going to succeed.

Dinked around on Aretae for a bit, getting him to level 35... at which point I moved him to the Western Plaguelands. I'm looking forward to doing the EPL quest chains again, this time with a level-appropriate (albeit overpowered-in-enchanted BoA items) character.

Playing a rogue is a different experience. I definitely enjoy the solo play style - sneaking, sneaking, sneaking is fun. I'm thinking about respecing from Combat into Subtlety just because I like the sneaky, more meditative aspect of the class so much. I just can't see how that contributes to team play, though. So I somehow doubt I'll ever take him into a dungeon.

As combat, my twitch reflexes just aren't there, and playing a combat rogue seems to be all twitch reflexes. Maybe I'll have an "ah-ha!" moment and The Ideal Priority Rotation will crystallize in my mind, but for now, I still feel like I'm mashing buttons and watching things die. I'm actually hoping playing in a more level-appropriate area will force me to think a bit more about what I'm doing instead of depending on his BoA Items of L33tne55 to carry me through fights.

Music monday... Ian Anderson, master of the flute, playing a duet with mission commander Cady Coleman. In spaaaaaaace!

I love living in the future.

And Now For Something Completely Different

2011-04-22T12:09:00.000-07:00

RPG inspired perfume oil blends from Black Phoenix Alchemy.

Me? Dwarf.

Rogue.

Lawful.

Yeah, I know. It's me, though.

Ulduar!

2011-04-18T09:43:00.001-07:00

Got pulled into an Ulduar guild run on Saturday evening... yeah, so I'm a bit behind the power curve. Picked up plenty of achievements, including Crazy Cat Lady, which I am sure will amuse my wife to no end. We downed Freya, then my network connection decided to go south for the evening, probably because it got fed up with the near-constant high winds we'd been experiencing all day.

Other than that, it was a pretty quiet weekend. Finished up the questing achievements in the Eastern Kingdoms, which was fun. The storyline in Booty Bay was interesting, and there were some amusing moments in there. With those out of the way, Aeth journeyed to Darkshore, set her hearthstone there, and started plowing through the Kalimdor zones. As I'm almost done with doing Tol Barad dailies, I expect that the various zone quest achievements will get knocked off a bit more quickly now.

Thinking about PvP

2011-04-14T07:18:00.000-07:00

Probably because of my humiliating pwnage by a miserable rogue last night, I've been thinking a bit about working on filling out my starting PvP set for Aeth, and possibly putting one together for Laen.

My goal here isn't to be an arena PvP monster. I just want to get myself to the point where I've got a decent PvP set for Tol Barad and other battlegrounds.

I'll have a more detailed discussion at a later date. For now, some notes...

A list of craftable cloth armor with resilience, but no spirit (ugh!) for Aeth. Looks like what I'll want is a mix of Emberfire and Fireweave items, trying to prioritize haste > crit > mastery.

Looks like there's no craftable weapons for PvP, though there is a craftable off-hand in the form of inscription's Battle Tome. More research needed here, obviously there's got to be something Aeth can use that won't require Arena play. Myabe?

There's a variety of trinkets purchasable with honor. Same for neck items, cloaks and rings as well. Yay! It looks like there's really only one or two items in each category that fit for a spellcaster, though, so this is less of a decision than what armor set to sport.

Gems are easy to come by, but probably won't factor into her initial set, except for a belt buckle and possible PvE gear gemmed for PvP use, if I have trouble filling a particular slot.

There's a variety of consumables (arcanums, inscriptions, enchantments) that are geared towards PvP. As with trinkets and the like, though, there's really only one obvious choice for a spellcaster in each category.

Or, I guess, I could just Ask Mr. Robot.

For now, I think I'll do my own research and thinking on the subject, and then see what Mr. Robot has to say on the matter.

Ah, PvP

2011-04-13T22:13:00.001-07:00

Cape of Stranglethorn, Gurubashi Arena.

Once again, I am reminded of how much - as a mage - I absolutely, positively loathe and despise rogues.

Message... er, Query For You, Sire

2011-04-13T08:35:00.000-07:00

There are days when I dive into WoW whole-heartedly. I've got a mission - leveling an alt, completing quests, running a dungeon, earning points or honor or achievements or something else. I've got a goal, and I'm bent on accomplishing it.

There are other days when I log in and just run around doing fun stuff for the distraction. No goals, no objectives - I just want to kill some pixels, explore, tune out the real world and relax.

It's crunch time at work, so last night (and probably the rest of the week) are going to fall into the second category. I may log in to do dailies and run about a bit, but without any specific goal in mind, other that entertainment and relaxation.

At first glance, it seems kind of odd. "Oh, yeah - that game that I play? Yeah, I'm not doing anything with it now, really. Just kind of having fun instead of..." instead of what? Working?

Well, yeah. There's more than one type of fun, you know.

There's pointless, meandering fun. Going outside to throw the tennis ball for the dog, sitting on the porch watching the cats tussle, getting into a tickle fight with my daughters. All of those are definitely fun. Exploring Azeroth, kiting killer cinderbloom across Tol Barad, visiting the Ironforge air field or the murderous critters above Mulgore... that's the WoW equivalent.

There's focused fun. I've got something I'm going to do, and the enjoyment comes from accomplishing my goal. Writing a blog post, cleaning out the closets, mowing the grass - they're all work, really, but they're also enjoyable. There's a sense of satisfaction in getting something done, even if it's trivial. Most achievements fall into this category, I think - something you have to work at for a bit, but it's the working that makes it enjoyable.

Then there's cooperative fun. Playing a game of basketball, getting together with friends for dinner, doing something with other people... that's a whole different kind of fun. It may be pointless, it may be focused, but the presence of other people makes it a whole different situation. Queuing for a dungeon, jumping in to a BG - those are WoW activities that can either be pointless or focused, depending on your attitude.

Thinking about it, I'm amazed that there's enough in the game that regardless of what my mood is, I can find something, somewhere, in WoW that I can look at and say "Yeah... I'll have fun doing that tonight."

Well. Except for archaeology.

What is it in WoW that - no matter what you do - you just can't get excited over, under any circumstances?

That Must Have Been One Amazing Sandwich

2011-04-12T10:48:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, I commented on how well my LFD pugs have been doing lately. "Wow!" said I. "Things really look pretty decent, you know!"

I should know better... really, I should.

In classic karmic response to my hubris, I ended up in... well, not a fail pug last night, but rather, a quick succession of fail pugs. We zoned in to BWL, and the tank immediately wanted to leave and requeue, but we were on the 15-minute LFD debuff, so we just decided to run it.

First boss went down easily enough, except... everything I touched, I pulled aggro. I mean, everything. The bear tank would charge, start swiping, I'd give him a second or two before I did an /assist and tossed off a plain old arcane blast. Which would immediately put my threat at somewhere between 90% and 110%.

I mean, Aeth can pack a pretty good punch, but come on - from a standing start? Thankfully I didn't pop my trinkets or lead off with an AB + PoM AB or something like that. Still, in the first couple of packs, there were times when I was essentially kiting my own little death cultist around, killing them slowly. Yep. You pull it, you tank it. I'm willing to comply.

So we downed the first boss, then went on to Corla, where things just went to hades in a nice little handbasket. We wiped once, wiped again, and then... on person D/C'd. Oops. Then the healer tells us he has to go because he's making a sandwich.

Making... a... sandwich.

Making... a... sandwich.

MAKING.... A... SANDWICH.

OK, listen. You want to bail? At this point, I can't fault you. You've given it a couple of shots, if you think, "Man, this just isn't happening with this group", well, I can understand that. I can even understand if you wanted to show some empathy, maybe cushion the blow a little bit instead of coming right out and saying "Look, guys, this group just can't handle this boss. See ya."

But... seriously? MAKING A SANDWICH?

Is that, honestly and truly, the best lie you can come up with?

The guy who D/C'd had more tact that that. At least we can imagine that there was some sort of freak storm in his area that blew up suddenly and knocked out his internet connection. We've all been there, right? You know how those things happen. Could have been anything, really.

But you? Naw. You're ditching us because apparently, the painstaking attention required to slap some lunchmeat between two pieces of bread requires your almost complete concentration. I say "almost" because, strangely enough, while you were AFK "making your sandwich", you were also at your keyboard, telling us how sorry you were that you had to focus on this sandwich-related activity.

Urgh.

Requue, pick up a couple of new folks. A slightly undergeared pally healer, a slightly bossy shaman, try for Corla again.

Wipe again.

Tank quits. Other DPS quit.

Healer and I are the only ones left. Requeue.

Group #3. This time, we manage to take down Corla, but the tank starts ragging on the healer for being awful. Seriously, man - he's keeping everyone up. He's not in full purples, and you're running from point A to point B quickly enough that he's struggling to to keep a full mana bar in between fights. Which is probably why he was letting beacon of light fall off, because he needed more time to drink. Maybe, I don't know, you could let him drink and rebuff you before you go plunging into the next pack of mobs?

Fortunately, we had a decent fellow along as a worgen rogue - the two of us let him know he was, in fact, doing a pretty good job. As I mentioned, nobody was dying, so there was no call for telling him "Thankfully the dps made up for your low heals". Sheesh.

We almost passed by Beauty. Most of us wanted to give it a shot, but the tank whined about not wanting to risk a wipe again, because - get this - repairing plate is expensive.

Listen, buddy. You signed up to tank. You know what that means, right?

You volunteered to let the slavering minions of the aspect of death line up and punch you in the face.

And you're going to whine about repair costs? Sheesh. No dain brammage there, I tell ya...

We down beauty with zero difficulty (having a mage, a shaman, and a rogue for three different flavors of CC), go on to the last boss, and down him easily as well. Yay team! Mr. Slightly Undergeared Pally Healer gets a couple of nice gear upgrades, we all get our points form the daily heroic, and - best of all! - Aeth finally hits 999/1000 exalted with Gilneas.

Woohoo! That's 48 exalted reputations!

Hope

2011-04-11T13:43:00.000-07:00

I queued for a random Heroic dungeon on Aeth last night, and got SFK - not my favorite dungeon, by far, though not the worst out there. Buff, pull, and... less than 30 minutes later, we were done.

No wipes.

One death due to distraction IRL.

Most of the blues ended up sharded.

As a whole, the group made use of what CC we had, popped cooldowns and trinkets at the right time, focused fire in the right ways, and generally just managed to do the right thing for the majority of the time in the dungeon.

All in all - a very nice run.

That's not an isolated incident, either. The LFD groups I've been in recently have generally been pretty good. There's still the occasional gem of a group, if by gem you mean "steaming pile of carp", but other than that, I've pretty much been denying Sturgeon his due.

What does this mean? Beats me. Maybe I'm just lucky, and my next half-dozen times in the queue will leave me pulling my hair out. Maybe all the brain-dead l33ter-than-thou players have gone off to farm Tol Barad or play Rift or something else, leaving behind only the rational, cooperative players. Who knows?

Whatever it is, I've been enjoying it lately, and I hope it continues. My random dungeon runs haven't been quiet, by any stretch of the imagination. I like that. The fact that most dungeons still require at least a modicum of communication helps remind you that your fellow players are, well, players. Even when they're not a friendly chatter-fest, there's at least the occasional lol or comment to keep the run from feeling dead.

I'm almost finished grinding out Gileas reputation for Aeth, though. I'll keep running dungeons with her after that to work on getting the next nice piece of valor gear... but I'm thinking that maybe it's time let Laenshield shake the dust off of his boots and give healing some regular dungeons a try...

Greetings and Felicitations

2011-04-05T06:37:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to say "Welcome!" to all the folks visiting from WoW Insider, and give you a taste of what this blog is like.

You can start back at the beginning, where I introduce the original reason for the blog - to document leveling Aeven, the Dwarven Pally, in common gear only.

Eventually, Aeven hit level 80. Since then, the scope of the blog has expanded to encompass the various activities of my other characters as well.

Currently, one of the primary focuses of the blog has been on my main, the Human mage Aetherna, and her insatiable desire to complete the various achievements in the game... including gaining exalted reputation with every possible faction.

I try to post at least three times a week, though that can be spotty when work and family intervene. If there's anything in particular you'd like to ask about, or something you'd like to see me write about, or even if you just want to say hello - please feel free to leave a comment. Particularly if you happen to play on Kirin Tor, my home server. Y'all are good folks, y'are.

If you'd like to know more about me, well, there's a few tidbits here and there. I do try to keep my WoW blogging separate from the rest of my life, but bits and pieces leak through - hopefully not enough to dissuade you from enjoying the stories, rants, and other WoW-related posts.

Once again - welcome! I hope you enjoy your visit, and I hope to see you again as time goes by.

Not So Ascetic

2011-04-05T05:15:00.000-07:00

Following my plan from yesterday, I stripped Aeth down to bare bones in order to see how close I could get to a character that might actually be challenged by Old World content. With no glyphs, no talents, no buffs, and no gear except a Simple Black Dress and Embroidered Boots...

... Aeth ended up just shy of 40k health and just over 20k mana.

The mana really isn't an issue; since spells cost a percentage of base mana now, the actual spell costs scale pretty well. In this configuration, she can manage a couple of Flamestrikes or just short of a dozen Fireballs before running OOM.

Damage seems to be... kind of OK. In a Redridge, she was still one-shotting most mobs with a single Ice Lance. Moving on to Searing Gorge, mobs were still taking 1-2 shots to down - not bad, but not quite the kind of fight I was looking for. If I could downrank spells, that would help, but unfortunately, downranking is a thing of the past. Oh well.

Health is the real issue. Aeth didn't even have 40k health, fully buffed, at the end of Wrath! So essentially, when doing Old World content, even stripped down, I'm still in god mode... incredibly hard to kill and doing a whole lot of damage, even without any buffs.

To make this work, I think I need the opposite of (the original) Martin Fury - I need a shirt made of nerf. I'm thinking of a BoA item that scales your health, mana, and stats by whatever percentage is needed to put you in the level mid-range for your current zone. Call it an "Ascetic's Hair Shirt", let me equip it to scale me to the right power level, and I'd be happy.

For the time being, though, it looks like "Operation: Ascetic" is a failure. Curse you, my expanded health pool!

Continuing Resolution

2011-04-04T05:44:00.000-07:00

I've been continuing to run through Old World zones with Aeth. Completed the quest chains in the Swamp of Sorrows, and started in on Redridge last night. Questing makes for a much nicer "waiting for the LFD queue to pop" activity than archaeology, fishing, or even mining.

Which makes me think.

Aeth is significantly overpowered for even level 60 quests in the old world, which means that I can blow through them rather quickly. While I don't particularly mind this, I find myself wondering if there's some way to make the quests a little bit more challenging, even for someone at level 85.

Here's some thoughts on making questing in the Old World a little more challenging (and, hopefully, more fun)...

Drop The Buffs. When I'm questing in the old world, there's no need to scarf down my daily doses of Pickled Guppy, or make sure that I've got Mage Armor and Arcane Brilliance up. If I pick up a buff from some other source, drop it if I can.

Drop The Gear. Without all her fancy gee-gaws, Aeth will have a whopping 207 intellect and 183 stamina. That should put her at about the same level as a geared-up level 50 mage or so. I'm thinking about picking up a Robe of Apprenticeship or maybe just even a Lovely Purple Dress to run around Azeroth in. Use the equipment manager to swap items in an out, and Aeth can both look stylish while running around the Old World killing murlocs, and be Cataclysm heroic-ready when the LFD pops!

Drop The Glyphs. This is a little more annoying than just not buffing, but by erasing my current set of glyphs, I can loose that little bit of an edge that they give. I've got a second spec (fire) that I only use occasionally on Aeth, so I can repurpose that spec to be my "questing, no glyphs" spec.

Drop The Talents. Along that line, if I'm going to have a "no glyphs" spec, I might as well reset my talent points and... not take any talents. No Netherwind Presence, no Torment the Weak, no Presence of Mind or Improved Arcane Missiles or Missile Barrage or... hmm. You know, maybe I'll take some talents. I'll start with nada, though, and see how tough things are then.

Drop the High-Level Spells. Stick to classic lower-level mage spells - nothing, say, past level 60 or so. Just move them off of my button bars and forget about them.

As I think about this, I'm intrigued. More on "Operation: Ascetic" as it progresses.

And for music monday, a bit of Jethro Tull...

Le Roi est mort!

2011-04-02T07:37:00.000-07:00

Vive le Roi!

Well... Vive le meurtrier du roi, rather.

Aetherna is now The Kingslayer. All it took was a 3 1/2 hour guild run through ICC 10 heroic last night. For fun, for reputation, for achievements, for titles... for Lorderon.

Yes, we had about 3x the stats from gear that we would have had at the end of Wrath. And an extra five levels. And the new set of Cataclysm talents. And the 30% buff from Strength of Wrynn. And... well, I think we may have done the LK on regular, instead of on heroic.

Still. Ten achievements, ICC cleared, the Lich King down - it was fun.

What was strange to me, though, was the fact that we wipe several times in Sindragosa, trying to get that fight down. On the other hand, we managed the LK the first time, thanks to some really good directions before hand. The new raid markers helped immensely, as it made figuring out where to run to/from at various points much simpler.

All in all, a good night, and a fun night. Would it have been much tougher at the end of Wrath, without the ICC buffs? Most certainly. More rewarding, but more work, as well. Waiting a few months and spending an evening defeating the Lich King (instead of months of evenings) was definitely worth it for me.

The Lich King: AAAAA+++. Would kill again.

Really, Vanessa?

2011-04-01T10:11:00.000-07:00

Continuing to run lower-level quests on Aeth last night, I found myself in Westfall. While I alrady knew the "big reveal" that Hope was really Vanessa VanCleef, I thought it was kind of interesting to see the story unfold. I mean, yeah, the opening quest line is pretty ridiculous, as has been pointed out elsewhere by folks much more talented than I. Still, there's some interesting bits in there.

I was enjoying it until I got the the point where Vanessa actually acknowledges my existence. As part of the scripted conversation, she tells you...

And you, Aetherna, I will spare your life. You have done much to help our cause, albeit unwittingly, but the next time we meet it will be as enemies.

Um.

Really? I mean, really?

Lady, I don't care who your daddy was.

In case you missed it, I'm a freakin' level 85 arcane mage.

You didn't even bother to stun me, you ignorant little witch.

I just finished going through Westfall like a hot knife through butter.

In fact, the only reason there's anyone of your thugs left standing at all is because killing them was just too plain tedious.

When I'm done here, I'm going to use the power of my mind to rip a hole in the space-time continuum. Then I'm going to travel to another world, find the biggest, nastiest, most twisted member of the Burning Legion still mobile, and turn him/her/it into a puddle of ectoplasmic goo... just for fun.

You're what? Sixteen?

Seriously, Vanessa. Is that your age, your level, or your I.Q.?

All three, apparently.

It's also the number of milliseconds you'd manage to survive if the developers hadn't revealed you as part of what's essentially a non-interactive cutscene.

I'm going to go run the Deadmines at least once just to kick your scrawny, whiny, self-centered butt and give you the beating you so richly deserve.

"I will spare your life." Pfft. It is on, girl. And you're going down.

In Which I Agree With A Big Bear Butt

2011-03-30T12:52:00.000-07:00

Yeah, you know which big bear butt I'm talking about. Apparently, John's found him some good times, and has concluded that, in fact, "WoW is just so damn awesome!" He's switched his point of view, gone on to a new server, new challenges, and has apparently found his happy place.

Just, you know, playing the game. Who'da thunk it?

I had a similar experience over the last couple of nights. Two, actually.

The first was Monday night, when I logged in to run dailies and wound up in a guild run doing OS for the mount. One thing led to another, and by the end of the evening, I had managed to pick up a bunch of achievements on Aeth. We killed Malygos, which got me The Spellweaver's Downfall, which got me Champion of the Frozen Wastes and A Poke In The Eye as well.

Yep - I had raided on Aeth a bit in Wrath, but I never did Malygos. Going back at level 85 with a handful of Cata epics made it an easier fight, but it was fun to see it. It made me start thinking about whether or not I might be able to manage to finish off the few achievements I need for Glory of the Hero solo...

Then, last night, I logged in to do dailies, and maybe a bit of mining. I didn't want to actually do anything significant, since it was an interrupt-driven sort of evening. I wanted to be able to put the laptop down without worrying that I was abandoning someone in the middle of something.

Mined for a bit, which was... eh. Mining is my "killing time waiting for LFD to pop" activity. Doing it to kill time? Fine. Doing it just to do it? Nah, I don't think so.

So, after a circuit of Uldum, I was thinking about maybe doing some archaeology. That works fine when I've got something else to do as well, particualrly reading and catching up on news online - I can read an article, switch to WoW to survey an area a couple of times, head for the next dig site and switch back to reading. It can make for a pleasant enough evening.

Still, it's not the most entertaining of activities. So when I opened up my map to look at the current dig sites, my eyes wandered over to the Eastern Plaguelands, and I thought, "Oh, yeah - I started doing some quests there. Forget archaeology, I'll just go finish those off and get the quest achievement for the zone."

Two hours and 60+ quests later, like John, I had found my happy place.

Seriously - if you haven't done so, hit EPL and do the quests there. Not because they provide epic lewt, or because the quests are so freaking awesome they'll make your head explode... they're really just the kind of quests that you'd find anywhere else, really. Nicely polished, maybe arranged a little bit better and not quite as railroad-ey as some of the newer cataclysm zones. Pretty average, as a matter of fact.

Except...

The have Fiona.

And Gidwin Goldbraids.

And Tarenar Sunstrike.

The bickering, the conversations, and the character developed around these three NPCs over the course of a couple of hours in EPL is incredible. A Blood Elf and a Dwarf? Fellow paladins? Friends since childhood? Fiona's obvious affection for the two of them, and her concern for others she meets along the way?

Awesome.

Thrall? Jaina? Varian? Pfft.

Pikers.

At the end of Cataclysm, when I'm doing whatever it is I need to do along the quest lines that lead up to assaulting Deathwing... I want Fiona, Gidwin and Tarenar there with me.

All of which, at then end of the evening, reminded me that there's something like another two dozen revamped zones in Cataclysm that I haven't quested through yet. There's undead to lay to rest, murlocs to kill, kids to rescue and heroes to meet.

If any of them are even as remotely engaging and interesting as Fiona and her crew, it's going to be a fun, fun time.

Closing in on the United Nations

2011-03-28T11:52:00.000-07:00

Exalted with the Earthen Ring on Aetherna. That's 47 exalted reputations!

Next up: Gilneas, along with some other work on The Violet Eye. The bosses in Karazhan are challenging as an arcane mage, but doable. The reputation calculator at wowjuju tells me that 5 clears of Kara would be enough to get Aeth to exalted... since I can't manage a full clear solo, figure on maybe another 7-8 solo Kara runs.

Some other reps that remain to be ground (grinded?) are:

Lich King Factions

The Ashen Verdict. Friendly, 3998/6000. Going to have to see about joining some of the ICC runs I've seen advertised in /trade to pick up this reputation.

Burning Crusade Factions

Ashtongue Deathsworn. Friendly, 3263/6000. Black Temple time!
The Scale of the Sands. Neutral, 0/3000. Only available option is the Mount Hyjal raid in CoT.

Classic Factions

Darkmoon Faire. Friendly, 2210/6000. Advancing reputation here is only possible via Darkmoon Deck hand-ins, requiring about 100 of those to hit exalted. Urgh.
Hydraxian Waterlords. Friendly, 2379/6000. I could kill 700 elementals to get to honored, but from there, my only option is to clear Molten Core something like 20 times to reach exalted. Double urgh.
Brood of Nozdormu. Hated, 31861/36000. Whoo. Ahn'Quiraj, over and over and over. There are a number of repeatable quests that give rep here, though, so it's not nearly as daunting as it may seem at first.
Ravenholdt. Honored, 11999/12000. Requires... 255 junk boxes? Huh. Easier than I thought it might be. I may be able to buy up some heavy junkboxes here and make a decent sized dent in the remaining reputation.
Bloodsail Buccaneers. Hated, 10025/36000. Yeah, I think I'll do this one last.

PvP Factions

Silverwing Sentinels. Neutral, 192/3000. Capture the flag in WSG something like a thousand times. No thanks.
Stormpike Guard. Friendly, 1056/6000. Looks like something like 30+ AV battles, which sounds a whole lot more doable.
The League of Arathor. Neutral, 341/3000. Arathi Basin over and over and over and... you get the idea.

So. I know that I can solo Kara on Aeth, at least in part. I'll have to see how well she can handle the ruins of Ahn'Quiraj solo - that may be doable, at least in part. Same for trash in Molten Core, if not the bosses. Ravenholdt may be doable simply by purchasing the repeatable quest turn-in items. After that, I'm looking at finding or organizing runs of ICC, Black Temple, Mount Hyjal, and other raids for reputation.

Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on...

Oh my...

2011-03-24T22:08:00.000-07:00

I just realized that I'm a week past my blog's 1-year anniversary.

One year, 218 posts, who knows how many words.

Yowza!

Here's to another year!

I'm tellin' you, man...

2011-03-24T21:46:00.000-07:00

They're after me.

No, no, listen, this time I mean it, man. They really are after me.

C'mon, man, stop laughing and... do you want me to tell you this or not?

OK.

I was in Tol Barad last night, man, when I saw it.

What? No, I wasn't!

Dude! It's Tol Barad. That's, like, a majorly bad place to even think about something like that. Around those spiders? Baaaaaad trip, man.

I mean, I had a little fairy cake, and I was munchin' on some pickled guppies, and maybe I had a hit or two off of some fungus squeezings, but I swear, that was it, man.

So I'm over by the spiders, and... oh, man, like I said, baaaaaad trip time. I've got these creepy crawlies all over me, and I'm nuking 'em down, and when I'm done... I turn around, and there it is.

Staring at me, man.

I mean, the whole island is crawling with undead. There's like, half a dozen of each kind of ghost, ghoul, and zombie all over the place. Then there's the spiders, and the sharks, and the Horde, and don't even get me started on those nuts in the Keep or down in town.

Do I get one of them? Nooooooooooooooooo.

I turn around, and it's staring at me, man. It's staring at me.

The freakin' cinderbloom is staring at me.

Stop laughing, man, I'm serious!

So I'm looking at it, and then... and then... it leans over and waves it's stems around at me.

And it hits me! There's a freakin' cinderbloom staring at me and whacking me on the ankle!

So, yeah, I'm totally kind of freaked out at this point.

I mean, I'm figuring that I must have gotten too much spider venom on me or something, right? So I head towards the water to kind of, you know, get washed off...

... and the freakin' cinderbloom follows me!

Oh, yeah. You just keep on laughing.

Get it all out of your system, cause I'm telling you, this isn't like the last time, with the talking trees. Or the time before that, with the rock that wanted to be my friend. Or... like any of the other times, man.

This time, I've got proof.

The Perfect Storm... er, I Mean Pull

2011-03-23T14:13:00.000-07:00

They're discussing The Perfect Pull over at Jinxed Thoughts.

While I probably won't return to tanking for a while - I'd like to pick up healing on laenshield again, first - I do eventually want to tank a bit, so this is definitely going on my "read and remember" list.

Mmmmmmmm....

2011-03-22T09:39:00.000-07:00

Via Cynwise: a pointer to the add-on Healers Have To Die:

This addon looks through your combat log to see who’s casting healing spells around you; if it detects that a player has cast a healing spell, it puts a big red cross over their nameplate.

Yes. Yes. YES.

I didn't even make it through the entire sentence before I had this downloaded and installed.

I mean... holy cow! There are PvP add-ons?

I honestly have never, ever thought of looking for a PvP specific add-on. I've got a good 14-15 add-ons for questing, dungeons, raids, the auction house, crafting, and general play... but not once have I ever thought, "Oh, hey. Maybe I should go looking for an add-on to solve this problem I'm having in PvP."

No. I'm not bragging about my l33t skillz. I'm confessing that, with regards to PvP, I think that I've been a particularly dull and uninteresting sort of idiot.

PvP add-ons. Wow. It's like... it's like... just, wow.

Read the whole article - it's an interesting discussion of add-ons and the attitudes towards them, done very well (as Cynwise is wont to do).

Some Farming Notes

2011-03-18T06:18:00.000-07:00

Embersilk cloth:

Level 85 shadow priest, average iLevel of 330
Potion of treasure finding @ 132g each
Farming trogs in Deepholm for 1 hour
7 stacks of embersilk @ 47g/stack
5-6 tiny treasure chests
1 green item
43 grays, including a snazzy Pockmarked Hat

Results:

A net gain of 197g/hour. Counting the green item and the grays, and the extra gold from looting the trogs and the tiny treasure chests, let's be generous and call it 250g/hour.

Elementium ore:

Level 85 arcane mage (like it really matters...)
Farming in Uldum for 2 hours
21 stacks of elementium ore @ 70g/stack
2 stacks of pyrite ore @ 183g/stack
16 volatile earth @ 10g each
13 volatile water @ 10g each
27 volatile fire @ 15g each
7 green gems @ ~ 9g each
1 blue gem @ ~ 20g each

Results:

A net gain of 2614g, or 1307g/hour.

Conclusion:

Farm ore, buy cloth.

Then use your excess gold to buy up a Haunted Memento when someone lists it on the AH for a ridiculously low price.

One Night In Uldum

2011-03-17T13:00:00.000-07:00

To the tune of "One Night In Bangkok"...

[ THE MINER ]

Uldum, Egyptian setting

And the Ramkahen don't know what the Ramkahen are getting

The creme de la creme of Azeroth in a

Crowd of heroes racing out to farm

Time flies -- doesn't seem a minute

Since the nightly Kara runs with the chess room in it

All change -- don't you know that when you

Farm in Cataclysm it's no ordinary venue

It's Hyjal – or Vash'jir – or Deepholm – or – or this place!

[ GUILD ]

One night in Uldum, the minings outta sight

The nodes spawn quick, and the beasts roam free

You'll find tons of elementium laced with pyrite

And maybe some time for archaeology

I just know a rogue's sneaking up on me

[ THE MINER ]

One zone's very like another

When your head's down over your minimap, brother

[ GUILD ]

It's a drag, it's a bore, it's really such a pity

To be farming up ore, instead of running the Lost City

[ THE MINER ]

Whaddya mean? Ya seen one insane, homicidal, crazed cat-man --

[ GUILD ]

Loot, epics, phat and sweet

Dodging pygmies and mining - man, that's not l33t!

[ THE MINER ]

Get ganked! You're talking to a miner

Stacks of ore -- there's nothing finer

I get my nodes above the ridge line, sunshine

[ GUILD ]

One night in Uldum leaves a miner loaded

Not much room left in the bags, you see

It's not like dungeons where you feel rail-roaded

I've left the PuGs and now I'm flying free

I can feel a rogue sneaking up on me

[ THE MINER ]

Auction house is gonna be the witness

To the ultimate test of financial fitness

Death grips from PuG DKs are less fun

Than fishing – or even archaeology

Like I want to play that game – fail PuG –

I don't see you guys making

The kind of gold I'm contemplating

I'd let you watch, I would invite you

But seeing me mine would not excite you

So you better go back to your Halls, your City, your /trade chat --

[ GUILD ]

One night in Uldum, the minings outta sight

The nodes spawn quick, and the beasts roam free

You'll find tons of elementium laced with pyrite

And maybe some time for archaeology

I just know a rogue's sneaking up on me

One night in Uldum leaves a miner loaded

Not much room left in the bags, you see

It's not like dungeons where you feel rail-roaded

I've left the PuGs and now I'm flying free

I can see a death night herbing next to me

Dragha Shadowburner

2011-03-16T11:22:00.000-07:00

I "love" Dragha Shadowburner. Love love love love love.

Seriously.

And by "love", I mean, "hate with the white-hot fury of a thousand suns".

Last night, my PuG wiped on him 3-4 times. In our final attempt, I think I got to spend maybe 10% of my time going pew-pew at the boss. Another 20% of my time was spent trying to frantically get out of Valiona's Devouring Flames, or dodging the pools left behind by her Shredding Swipes.

What is it with those mechanics, by the way? It seemed like it didn't matter how the tank faced her... when the time came for devouring flames, it looked like she'd spin around to some random compass point and let loose. Given that the flames affect everyone in front of her, regardless of actual position, that meant a 50-50 shot of ending up in the flames no matter what.

Ugh.

The rest of the time? Yep.

The adds from the Invocation of Flame.

I swear, we'd kill one fire elemental, just to have another pop up almost immediately. Which shouldn't be a problem, really. They're weak enough that if you slow them, even a single dps can burn them down relatively quickly.

Except that half the time, they spawn on the other side of the room.

Or in the middle of the devouring flames.

Or when you were trying to dodge the twilight realm pools.

If I had to guess, I'd say that some thoughtful, clever - and above all, evil - developer at Blizzard put together an algorithm that determines the exact worst spot to spawn an invocation of flame. Cackling softly to themselves the whole time, no doubt.

Which leaves me in an odd place. You see, with all the required movement, the annoying "kill or die" adds, the twilight realm pools, the sheets of flame covering half the world.... I really hate fighting Dragha.

On the other hand, all that also means that I really like killing him.

C'est la WoW, I guess.

Tips for Jewelcrafting Mages

2011-03-15T18:37:00.000-07:00

When you get "The Latest Fashion!" as the JC daily... pop Mirror Image and use your Stardust No. 2 on your images. Add in yourself, toss some dust on Isabel Jones and her accomplices, and you're more than 3/4 done with the quest without even moving.

Taking it Easy

2011-03-14T08:37:00.000-07:00

Not much activity over the weekend, as my wife and I were spending time in each other's company as part of a marriage conference. While teh phat lewtz are quite nice, they really don't hold a candle to spending a weekend with the love of my life. Hence today's song for Music Monday.

Even despite that, though, what play time I did get allowed me to pick up a couple of new achievements on Aeth. A couple of heroic dungeons (Stonecore, Throne of the Tides), Rotten to the Core, exalted with the Ramkahen, One Hump or Two, and the Straw that Broke The Camel's Back.

Oh, and Lil' Game Hunter and Expert in Archaeology.

So. Um. Actually, quite a bit got done, I guess. Enough to push me to #4 in the guild ranking for achievement points. Not that I pay attention to that or anything, though. Or that I'm gunning for the #3 spot or anything like that.

Not at all!

So close...

2011-03-09T08:37:00.000-08:00

Spent last night doing yet more Tol Barad dailies and mining in Uldum while waiting for the LFD queue to put me in a group.

Ended up running heroic Vortex Pinnacle with a really good group, though my inexperience left me dead very quickly on Asaad. Our healer warned us to "get under the lightning shield" when we saw it, and as a result, I was looking up for something to get under, instead of down at the ground for something to stand in. Once I died, I watched the fight, and the mechanic became painfully obvious. Doh! Next time, for sure.

Wound up the evening in the Eastern Plague Lands, doing repeated runs through Terrorweb Tunnel to AoE critters. Didn't get to the 50k we need for Critter Kill Squad, but close - the guild achievement stands at 49,563 / 50,000 right now. Getting critters in the tunnel was amazingly easy. Run through spamming Arcane Explosion, with a pause midway to refresh mana. Exit the tunnel, turn around, fly to the other end, and then tab out to read a few articles in my RSS feed... 3-4 minutes later, tab back to WoW and do another run through the tunnel. Lather, rinse, repeat, for about 250 critters per run.

Not nearly as non-intteractive as chowing down on Stormchops and sitting in the Ironforge end of the Deeprun Tram, but much more satisfying seeing all those creepy-crawlies explode in little sparks of light. Wheee!

So, one way or another... tonight, we should have our Armadillo Pups :-)

Killing Time

2011-03-08T11:14:00.000-08:00

... and killing penguins. Fierce lil' buggers, they are!

My guild is about 3K critters short of getting on the Critter Kill Squad.

Tonight! Tonight!

Getting in the Mood

2011-03-07T14:17:00.000-08:00

For PvP, of course.

Well, what did you think I meant?

"You can run on for a long time, run on for a long time, run on for a long time..."

Learn more at the WoW Wiki

Reading

2011-03-07T05:53:00.000-08:00

The Wise Man's Fear. If you haven't read The Name of the Wind yet... good gravy, man! What are you waiting, for, a personal invitation?

Fine. I hereby invite you to read these two books.

Now get to it. I'll wait.

And yes, I am such a freaking nerd.

The Loot Must Flow

2011-03-06T11:54:00.001-08:00

So says the Daily Blink!

Random Blogger is Random

2011-03-03T07:11:00.000-08:00

Some random Thursday links and musings.

Manalicious tells us how to Kill It With Fire. Which reminds me that I have fire as my secondary spec on Aeth, and - aside from gleefully burning everything that moved in Winterspring for the Wintersaber rep grind - I really haven't paid much attention to it.

Cramming In Strudel provides us with a guide to the Stormwind cooking and fishing dailies. Unfortunately, given that I've (a) maxed out fishing on Aeth, (b) just bought my last Cataclysm cooking recipe on Aeth, and (c) hit exalted with my guild, I really don't have much of a reason to do these dailies any longer. At least until I decide that having Aeth cook and mail food to Laen and Aeven is a pain, and they can start cooking their own buff food. She's a mage, not a chef, after all!

Well, actually, yes, she is a chef. But magery first, cookery second...

Well, OK. Mining second, cooking third. Zillionaire has a pretty good map of Uldum that shows a good route for mining elementium. I'd have expected Deepholm to be the place to mine, but no - apparently, Uldum is the place to be. I fly a circuit or two in between doing the Ramkahen dailies, and usually manage to pick up 3-4 stacks of elementium ore along with 5-6 pyrite ore. Not bad for a few minutes effort.

You got your chocolate in my peanut butter!

2011-03-02T07:09:00.000-08:00

While I was playing Aeth last night, I ended up in the Twilight Highlands, doing the Wildhammer dailies... not for rep, just because. Love me them Dwarves, I do.

After completing the four Thundermar dailies (minus Beer Run, because frankly, escort quests are annoying), I was headed back to turn in the quests when I see...

"Psst! Aetherna! Over here!"

That was Dillan MacHurley, one of the Wildhammer NPCs, preparing to take on some Dragonmaw.

I didn't need the loot.

I didn't need the food.

I didn't need the ale.

I didn't need the Dragonmaw Insignia.

I didn't need anything, really. No quests to complete, no items to gather. Nothing. Nada.

So of course I helped him - he asked.

The more I think about it, the more I think this is probably one of the neatest little things I've encountered in WoW to date. There are some interesting little quests in WoW. I mean, I liked Old Icefin's quests in Howling Fjord, as I've noted before. I'm with Rades in appreciating the quest that leads to Gerk in Zul'drak.

Having an NPC ask you, out of the blue, to lend a hand in a fight where there's no immediate reward given? No quest to reward you, no reason to participate - that I can see - other than "Oh, well, I'm a friend and protector of the Wildhammers... of course I'll help?"

Odd, and yet, oddly satisfying to encounter a tiny bit of RP in what's otherwise a pretty task-oriented, reward-driven game.

Warlockian Thoughts

2011-03-02T05:47:00.000-08:00

I'd play a warlock if I could name my demons. Running around with an imp named "Httpd" would just tickle my funny bone.

I'm weird that way.

D.U.I.

2011-03-01T05:56:00.000-08:00

That was me last night. DPSing Under the Influence. NyQuil, in this particular case, trying not to move too much because when I did, my head started to pound like... like... well, like something getting pounded on. With a large mallet.

Repeatedly.

In any case, lying in bed with the laptop and playing WoW was more or less what the doctor ordered. (Yeah, I've got a great doctor :-) So when my dailies were done, I jumped into a guild random, and we ended up with Heroic Blackrock Cavern. Yay me! The first time through, I forgot to grab the dungeon quests from the quest giver until the first boss had been downed... so now I finally had a chance to complete them.

I'm going to blame the NyQuil for my death on Rom'ogg, as well as my abysmal performance on Corla and my inability to interrupt the beams properly. Ended up being the safety guy on that fight after 2-3 wipes, which finally worked out. Karsh went down fairly easily, and then I managed to do a decent job keeping one of Beauty's pups locked down with Polymporh, at least. Oh, and I pulled kiting duty on Obsidius, which went pretty well, all things considered.

All in all, it would have been at least a decent run, if it wasn't for that last quest. Remember how I mentioned that I picked up the dungeon quests this run? I didn't realize until Beauty that you could pick up the next boss kill quest in the dungeon itself. In the other cases, I had (purely by chance) ended up back at the entrance, so I got them directly from the quest giver.

So there we are, heading for beauty, and I see a golden "!" hovering over the ground. Run through it, and - whoa! There's the next quest! Nice - now I know how it works! Kill Beauty, exit her cave and head right towards Obsidius, and...

Oh, hey!

There's a big, glowing "!" hovering in the air!

That's the next quest!

Cue Pavlonian repsonse.

I run towards the big, glowing "!" hovering in the air.

The big, glowing "!" that happens to be placed in between two trash packs.

The big, glowing "!" that happens to have been placed - in a fit of sadistic genius by some game designer at Blizzard - right at the point where the aggro radius of those two trash packs overlap.

I'll leave the subsequent events - the dawning realization, the sudden horrible sinking feeling, the mounting shame during the corpse run after the trash wipe - to your imagination. You've all been there, I'm sure. I don't need to explain it, I don't think.

So... just so y'all know. That final, big, glowing "!" in Blackrock Caverns?

Yeah. It's a trap.

I blame the NyQuil.

A Life That's Full

2011-02-28T05:50:00.000-08:00

Didn't get much play time this weekend - there was a lot going on IRL - but what I did manage was pretty revealing.

I ran two new (to me) heroics on Aeth - Blackrock Caverns and Deadmines. The BC run was a bit of a challenge, with multiple wipes. I found myself grateful for (a) The Quick and The Dead, and (b) that there's finally a graveyard in the Deadmines, just outside the instance portal. Oh, and (c) that apparently, all the new dungeons include some way to teleport from the entrance to whatever point you've managed to clear up to already. Yay for convenience helps!

We only had one wipe on the Deadmines run, and of the three DPS, Aeth clocked in at the bottom of the charts with just over 10k dps. Apparently, this was a Good Run (TM). During the course of the two dungeons, Aeth managed to pick up a number of achievements:

That's in addition to the normal and heroic achievements for completing the dungeons.

Here's the thing, though... I went into these runs cold. No, I hadn't read up on the dungeons or the bosses, studied any strats, or watched any videos. What I did do was stay out of the fire, sheep (well, turtle :-) when directed, and - once - pop Time Warp when the tank asked for it, instead of relying on my own judgement.

Overall, it wasn't anywhere near as difficult as I expected. Granted, these were guild randoms - we started off both runs with an excellent tank, and for the Deadmines run, we also had an absolutely top-notch healer along as well. Minus some quick direction on boss mechanics, though, I was surprised that the fights were... well, fairly obvious. Stay out of the fire. Don't let the bad stuff hit you. Pick up the adds. Pay attention, be ready to move, collect phat lewt.

So, I think I'll be jumping into more randoms here and there, as time permits. I'm sure I'll eventually run into a "gogogo" guy again, but for now, at least, it looks like picking up 1-2 guild mates and filling in the res of the group from LFD is a winning strategy.

On other fronts, Aeth finally rescued Pebble for the last time, and so got the achievement Rock Lover - which means she now has an incredibly cute little elemental that can follow her around. Which causes a bit of a quandary, as this weekend is when Aeth's campaign against the foxes of Baradin came to an end when one dropped the almost-unbearably-full-of-squee Fox Kit. Ahh! Which one, which one? Ah, well. As the mood takes me, I suppose... but I have to admit that Pebble is a really, really, really cute lil' guy!

Oh, and for music Monday: here - have some Haggis. I've got kilts on my mind, as a friend is going to get married soon, and her husband will be in traditional Scottish garb. I'm trying to convince my wife that really, if that's the case, then I absolutely should get myself a kilt for the wedding as a show of respect. No luck so far, but there's months to go yet...

The Incongruity of PvP on a PvE Server

2011-02-23T12:36:00.000-08:00

Tol Barad, time T minus 5 minutes: Doing dailies, I find myself in the same areas as Angelic, a troll priest. Running from point A to point B on my own business, it's no problem to toss off an Arcane Barrage or Fire Blast to lend a hand. I do it without even really thinking about it.

Tol Barad, time T plus 5 minutes: Fighting the battle of Tol Barard, I find myself in the same area as Angelic, a troll priest. Running from point A to point B on my own business, it's no problem to stop, slow, spellsteall her buffs, then pop trinkets and hit her smack dab in the face with a couple of buffed arcane blasts. I do it without even really thinking about it.

What a difference 10 minutes makes.

Milestones

2011-02-23T05:28:00.000-08:00

It crept up on me completely unexpectedly... my last post here was #200. Wow.

Another milestone of a sorts happened as I played Aeth last night. The battle for Tol Barad came around while I was finishing the dailies there, so I hopped into the battle, and had an absolute blast. A spell-stealing, slowing, polymorphing blast. I don't know what was up, but I was bouncing around and attacking and defending with glee.

Highlights of the battle? Following a running battle and managing to spell-steal every single buff from a half dozen Horde attackers - that was good. Sneaking up behind a healing shammy and keeping him locked down with polymorph and counterspells - nice!

Absolute best moment, though? Dying at the hands of an orc warrior twice in the same pitched battle for the Warden's Vigil. I managed to catch him alone on the road headed for the scrum, and while I didn't kill him, I whittled him down enough that another player was able to finish him off pretty easily. When he returned to the battle, he singled me out for punishment. Orc warrior vs. human mage? Yeah, not much of a fight there. What made it for me was that he obviously went out of his way - bypassing even the healers, for crying out loud! - to target poor lil' Aeth.

Apparently, I was a threat.

It was glorious.

We lost the battle, but even the losing was an awful lot of fun. Afterwards, I jumped on Aretae and continued working on leveling him in Northern Stranglethorn. Even without any heriloom gear, leveling is quick, and fun. I have to admit that I was not being very rogue-like while hunting the beasts of stranglethorn... I'd pop Running Wild, lope across the landscape until I spotted a target, and then leap and attack.

Watching my wolf-man run down a panther, then leap upon it for the kill? Oh, man. I think I could do that for hours without it getting old.

Oh, wait. I did.

And it was glorious.

Vote to Kick? Why not "Pay to Kick"?

2011-02-19T08:21:00.000-08:00

Some comments about the new LFD vote kick rules over at WoW Insider just made me think that Blizzard really should change the vote kick mechanism to a "pay to kick" mechanic instead.

Something like the following...

The first vote kick in a run is free.

The second vote kick costs 25g per person voting.

If the target of the vote is kicked, they get the gold.

Third vote kick costs 50g per person voting.

Fourth costs 75g per person.

Each boss that you've cleared in the instance raises the cost to vote kick by 25%. Done four bosess, kicked three people and want to kick a fourth? That'll be 150g per person voting going into the pot.

Each wipe reduces the cost by 25%. Wipe four times, and you're back to a zero cost vote kick.

The only thing that keeps me from thinking this is an awesome idea is that you'd potentially get people farming instances, being jerks just to get kicked and get a gold reward.

Work, work, work...

2011-02-17T11:46:00.001-08:00

Ah-yep. Work's been eating up a lot of my time lately.

A lot of time.

Part of the price you pay for working at a startup is, in fact, working at a startup.

In between dealing with virtual memory issues, operating system bugs and other wonderful esoterica, I've only had a little time to escape into Azeroth this week... and while there, I've pretty much only managed to take care of the essentials.

Like snagging Aeth a new pair of pants. That brings her to a total of 4 epics, 9 blues and 5 greens. Item level 342 equipped!

Well, OK. I got to run around and murder undead for an hour or so on Aretae last night. That's hardly even playing, though, really. They all fall down so easily...

Something I did notice, which seemed kind of weird. You're able to use finishing moves like Recuperate after a mob has died. This is apparently intentional, and is really kind of interesting. If I'm only down a few percent on health after finishing a mob, I'll hit Slice and Dice and get an attack speed buff. Otherwise I'll go for a nice HoT from Recuperate. If I'm quick, I can alternate the two, and zip from mob to mob, healing and slicing and healing and slicing and generating nice big purple XP numbers.

Gearing Up

2011-02-15T12:46:00.000-08:00

This weekend, I was having some fun leveling Aretae. He's made it to level 25 now, and leveled his inscription to the point where he was able to make a couple of Mysterious Tarot decks for Aetherna. The obvious goal there is to get him to the point where he can start producing Darkmoon Cards (350 base rep per turn in) instead of the lesser decks (which are only 25 base rep per turn in).

I've also dipped my toes into the LFD tool, with good experiences. Probably because I was running a regular dungeon that I'm more than geared for. It was a nice practice run in a regular, though, to help get me oriented and familiar for heroics.

I also spent a lot of time in Tol Barad, and finally won my first victory there. As a result, though, I've started to develop an absolute loathing of Troll hunters. One that almost, but not quite, matches my loathing of Undead rogues. I did discover that, if I can get the drop on a hunter, I can fill his life full to the brim with pain, so there was some consolation there. Call it a learning experience, in that I learned that (a) I can kill hunters, and (b) I like killing hunters. Well, Troll hunters named IcyFizzyPop or something similar, at least.

Unfortunately, with only one hundred and mumble resilience, my primary use in the battle was to spell steal, frost nova, and otherwise act as a distraction for the few seconds it would take a passing Hordie to turn me into a corpse. Yee-haw. I've been told that I should be shooting for about 2K resilience, so I went ahead and spent some of my hard-earned honor points to pick up a pair of Bloodthirsty Gladiator's Silk Handguards. She's already sporting the Bloodthirsty Gladiator's Cuffs of Prowess, so that gets her a whopping 277 resilience!

Ahem.

I see more battlegrounds in Aeth's future. A full set of Bloodthirsty regalia will get her to 955 resilience; with gems, enchants and a few other tweaks, getting to 1500 shouldn't be too difficult.

Now if I can just find that glyph of hunter slaying...

Storybook Love

2011-02-14T08:24:00.000-08:00

This is for the woman who, 19 years ago, agreed to share my life. I doubt that she ever anticipated that being my wife would someday include lying in bed, making snarky comments about my character's shoulders while watching me defeat internet dragons. There's a thousand other things that have happened in our life together that neither one of us ever anticipated, though, so all things considered, what's a few dorky shoulder pieces and a couple of internet dragons between friends and lovers?

Shari - my princess, my queen, my friend - thank you for your tolerance, your patience, and all our years together. You, my love, are made of win.

The Forge Of Souls

2011-02-11T11:34:00.000-08:00

Normal mode, solo.

Woohoo!

Not all the way, unfortunately. Bronjahm turned out to be able to take quite a bit of punishment. I popped my trinkets, put up Time Warp and Mirror Image, and commenced to blowing through my mana like there was no tomorrow. 30 seconds later, I had him down to about 30% health when my mirror images disappeared and he decided to start melting my face off.

I was completely ignoring the corrupted soul fragments, though. I suppose that if I paid attention to those, I wouldn't have had quite as difficult a time getting him down. I'm thinking that it might be worth it to (a) lay out some cash for some higher-end consumables, and (b) plop down 40 Tol Barad Commendations for a Baradin Footman's Tags. Depending on how survivable the footman is, a combination of Mirror Image followed by a Footman may give Aeth enough time to overpower Bronjahm.

Good news is that the trash packs were tough, but not so tough as to be overpowering. There are a couple of 5- or 6-mob pulls in FoS that were a bit hairy (as in, "finished off the last mob with 1% health"), but a using trinkets on cooldown and all of Aeth's many CC abilities helped keep those fights manageable. If I keep it up, I may be able to get her her own Battered Hilt.

So, making a complete SWAG, it looks like Aeth should be able to solo normal Wrath dungeons up to the Nexus (modulo any "you need at least two people to beat this boss" mechanics like Svala Sorrowgrave). Next up is trying to gauge heroic difficulty... I'm thinking to give Heroic Drak'Theron a try, and see how that works out. Maybe pick up an achievement on the way!

Raising the Bar

2011-02-10T06:49:00.001-08:00

If you haven't heard, in patch 4.0.6, Blizzard changed the requirements for getting "The Exalted" title, and removed it from players that already had the achievement. The new requirement is apparently 50 exalted reputations.

Um. OK?

I'm not going to complain about this, really. I was planning on grinding out 50 exalted reputations (or more!) eventually, so it's not a big deal for me. It just means another couple of months before I get a title I'll never really wear (not so long as Aeth has Matron, at least).

On the other hand... with 4.0.6, we also got the achievement "Just Another Day In Tol Barad" for completing each of the 34 daily quests in Tol Barad. Some of which - I kid you not - I have seen only once, or have even yet to see, even after doing Tol Barad dailies for weeks. I've earned exalted rep with the Wardens twice over by this point, gathered enough commendations to get Aeth the Stump of Time and make good headway towards some of the other reputation items I'd like to get my hands on...

... and none of those quests count, apparently.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Now, that is a bit annoying. Couple that with the fact that you still can't Explore Tol Barad, and I've got to wonder if the folks at Blizzard have handed off TB development to a summer intern or something.

In other news... did my last Black Morass run with Aeth, and got her to exalted with the Keepers of Time, which got her her Burning Crusader achievement. Time to head into some Cata dungeons, I guess!

Or maybe not...

To finish of the evening last night, I ported to Dalaran and caught a taxi to Valgarde in Howling Fjord. A quick flight later, and Aeth was strolling into the normal version of Utgarde Keep solo, just to see what that was like.

About 20 minutes later, she was done. Trash mobs were approximately on par with the weaker non-elite Cataclysm mobs, but hitting for a whole lot less. I was using CC at the start, but quickly realized that was serious overkill. Even without mana shield up, I could down a pack of 4-5 mobs without dropping below 90% health. Of the bosses... Prince Keleseth? Downed without any trouble, even before he could summon any adds. Skarvald and Dalronn? Not an issue. Ingvar? It is to laugh.

Yeah, yeah - it was the entry-level normal dungeon in Wrath. At this point, Aeth seriously outgears the content. Still, it's amazing how easy this was. I'm sure Wrath heroics will be more challenging, but I'm not sure by how much.

Next stop, I think, will be the Pit of Saron on normal mode, to see how tough the high-end Wrath dungeons are. If that's doable, I'll have to give the Wrath heroics a try... maybe see if I can pick up some of the heroic achievements she's missing, like Chaos Theory and Less-Rabi. It would be a real kick to finish off her Glory of the Hero achievement by running solo or duo!

So Close I Can Taste It

2011-02-08T09:03:00.000-08:00

Ended last night with a partial run of regular Old Hillsbrad, leaving Aeth at 20,990/21000 for Keepers of Time rep.

Why? Why else? So I could finish it up tonight, when folks could actually see me get my Burning Crusader achievement.

Sigh. Yeah - I'll admit it. I crave the momentary endorphin high initiated by the approval and admiration of people I've never met IRL.

The Agony of Defeat

2011-02-07T17:55:00.000-08:00

No, nothing so mild as loosing Tol Barad for the 173rd straight time. I wish that were all it was!

No, alas... I'm a Pittsburgh native.

Which meant that last night was both exhilarating and depressing, in just about equal measures... with, unfortunately, depressing edging out for the win. C'est la football! I was really hoping they'd get that "7 Superbowl Win" achievement, but hey, there's always next year.

Yeah, missing the seasonal achievements stinks, doesn't it?

On other fronts, Aeth is back to achievement hounding with a vengeance. She's picked up a bunch more BC era heroic dungeon achievements, and has started to get serious about grinding out her Keepers of Time rep. I've got enough gold to keep me more than happy, enough challenges (achievement-oriented or otherwise) to give me some enjoyable diversions, and enough interesting stuff on the horizon (most of the regular Cata dungeons and heroics) to keep me happy.

Yep - aside from the Halls of Origination, I've really not run any Cata dungeons yet. I'm starting to think that progression content may not be my thing, if the idea of leveling archaeology or getting The Limnologist has more appeal than wiping repeatedly on Baron Ashbury.

Yeah. Baron Ahsbury. Between Stay of Execution and Mend Rotten Flesh, that guy's a nightmare. Not because he requires interrupts - that makes the fight interesting. It's that he has three abilities that he uses that require interrupts, and missing any one of them will pretty much ruin your chances of downing him unless you can make an heroic effort (no pun intended) to recover from the setback. Heaven help you if you miss an interrupt, or mistime an interrupt, or double up on an interrupt and so miss his next "interrupt this or fail" ability.

Hmpfh. We'll see how hard he is after the 4.0.6 patch, once he forgets how to Mend Rotten Flesh.

Oh, and for music monday: this one's for Myrann, Eeler and the rest of my WoW friends who - unlike me - are rejoicing at the outcome of the game yesterday. All in all, folks, if the Steelers had to loose, I have to say I'm happy that they lost to the Packers - they're a fine, fine team, and they deserved the game.

Hopefully, we'll see a rematch next year!

Cynw... er, I mean, Bloodrose on PvP

2011-02-03T10:33:00.000-08:00

A Rose by any other name is still a... murdering little ball of gnomish fury.

Burning Gold

2011-02-03T06:28:00.001-08:00

So, what do you do when you've finished your Cataclysm dailies, look at your bags and realize that you have a few extra thousand gold burning a hole in your pockets?

Well, if you're an achievement hound, you head to Shattrath, of course! There you can spend a measly 1200g to get a Haris Pilton "Gigantique" Bag. Then fly to Zangarmarsh and drop 1600g on the Cenarion War Hippogryph. Two achievements in the space of 5 minutes, and it only cost 2800g. Not a drop in the bucket, but certainly more affordable thanks to the increased flow of gold in Cataclysm.

After that, since I was in Outland, I took Aeth out to solo some heroic BC dungeons. She managed the Old Hillsbrad Foothills, Black Morass, and Blood Furnace last night without much difficulty at all. At the end of it all, she had managed to pick up another three achievements. Woot!

Even better, along the way, she gathered about 7k reputation with the Keepers of Time - bringing her almost halfway to exalted, on track to get two more achievements: The Burning Crusader and one more step towards 45 Exalted Reputations.

Reputations aside, last night reminded me how fun doing older solo content can be. As a level 80 arcane mage at the end of Wrath, doing the high-end BC heroics solo was just a bit beyond my reach. Now, at 85, they're doable - still a bit of a challenge, though, especially for a squishy mage.

It's kind of odd, but the elites in the BC dungeons feel a lot like the non-elite mobs in Cataclysm. Their health is a little lower, and in some cases, their damage is way lower. In others, though - here I'm specifically thinking of the Heroic Blood Furnace - the trash mobs are still a challenge, even with the health and damage increases that Cataclysm has brought to the table. It makes me think that a little bit of dynamic tuning might make the dungeons even more interesting for solo play.

Maybe this weekend I'll head to Northrend and see what it's like trying to solo some of the entry level dungeons there, starting with Utgarde Keep. Or get a guild mate to join with me and forma raid group so I can see what Karazhan looks like, now that I'm level mondo. My gut feeling is that, even with the Cataclysm changes, both UK and Kara will be a significant - and very fun! - challenge.

War Games

2011-02-02T14:44:00.001-08:00

I didn't make it to Tol Barad last night. Didn't make it to my dailies, as a matter of fact. Instead, I got swept up into a guild group, and we did a couple of rated battlegrounds.

We also lost miserably.

When you're talking 10v10, and the other side has 4 healers to your 1, there's a little bit of an imbalance there that's kind of hard to overcome. Meh! Whatever. I got to equip some of my shiny new PvP gear, I got to throw around arcane blasts, polymorphs and circles of frost, and we had fun :-) Next time, we'll kick their scruffy little butts. Really!

Afterwards, we split into two 5-man teams and played War Games, which is - IMHO - probably one of the neatest things I've seen in terms of WoW PvP. Form your team, challenge your opponent, and - oh, hey! You're in a battleground with a bunch of guild mates! No honor to grind, nothing to gain, nothing to loose - just a game of capture the flag. Nice!

I think that's the first time I've ever been on the winning side in Warsaw Gulch, which alone made it a pleasant evening. The lack of pressure was wonderful, as well. It was nice to take a break from the game and... er. Play a game? You know what I mean.

I think there may be more War Games for me in the future. A nice, low-pressure bit of capture the flag with a bunch of friends would be a great way to see how Laen and Aeven perform in PvP.

"Damn hippies."

2011-02-01T13:42:00.000-08:00

"Every one of 'em."

I am really starting to like Ash'gor... and Mig's a close second.

Cywnise is... well, wise

2011-02-01T10:29:00.000-08:00

Or, at the very least, wiser than I am.

If you want to know How To Win Tol Barad, she's got the answers for ya.

I'm consistently impressed by the thought, experience and insight that Cynwise puts into her posts. It's one thing to lay out the battlefield, talk about strong points and the flow of battle, and give people the information they need to know in order to effectively attack or defend.

It's another thing entirely to write an article that makes your readers go, "Crud... I won't be able to try this for another 8 hours! Maybe I can put together a bit of a premade? I mean, there's that PvP gear I crafted and put up on the AH, but I could pull that off and equip a few folks in the guild and... and... I wants it! I WANTS MY PRECIOUS! TOL BARAD WILL BE OURS!"

Ahem.

"Inspiring" is the word I was looking for, I think.

Go. Read. Be encouraged.

Then go kick those arrogant SOBs out of your battleground.

Roguish

2011-01-31T07:58:00.000-08:00

Aeth's grinding out reputations and running dailies. Laen is busy gathering cloth, generating dreamcloth and knitting some epic-level armor pieces. Life in Azeroth - minus the whole "impending doom as Deathwing prepares to destory the world" vibe, obviously - has taken on a slightly domestic feel.

Which is why I spent some time on Aretae, the Worgen rogue, this weekend. My immediate goal is to get him to level 20 so it doesn't feel like I'm crawling everywhere I go. Long term goal, obviously, is to get him to a high enough level to help Aeth get the Insane in the Membrane achievement.

Playing a low-level alt is always interesting. I'm a hero of Azeroth! I've defeated constructs of the Titans, Old Gods, and the forces of the Lich King!

And now I'm collecting corrupted crawler parts in Darkshore. Hence, today's music monday song. See? I have a reason. It's not just that I bumped into it again last week, and have had trouble erasing it from my mind since then. Nooooooo! Not at all. This is a carefully selected song designed to indicate the POV of voluntarily going from a high-level character, on top of the world, to a low-level alt clawing his way up through the ranks. Not at all an attempt to pass on a particularly insidious ear-worm to you all.

Ahem.

Aside form the whole "back to the beginning" thing, playing Aretae is a very different experience for me. Rogues are... frenetic. I feel less like I'm playing a careful, reasoned game, and more like I've walked into an arcade and jumped on one of those button-mashing fighting games.

I mean, I even have combo points and finishing moves!

I'm almost ashamed to admit that my "fighting style" with Aretae is, in fact, button mashing. Since most of the mobs in Darkshore are lower-level than he is, it really doesn't make much of a difference what abilities I use - things die amazingly quickly. I feel like some sort of whirlwind of death and destruction chewing through packs of enemies, leaving broken bodies in a growing wake of death and destruction across the land.

I die pretty often, too... but the whole "engine of controlled fury" thing really is kind of fun. I find myself thinking that maybe doing a battleground or two would be interesting. Just, you know, to see how it feels to be on the other side of a stun lock for a change.

Plugging Away

2011-01-28T10:35:00.000-08:00

Did the daily quests in Tol Barad a couple of days ago, went to turn them in, and... wait, what was that green flash? Exalted with the Wardens already?

Wait, what? Seriously - I had no idea that Aeth was that close to exalted. She immediately turned around and hit up the quartermaster. One hundred and twenty-five Tol Barad commendations - three weeks of dailies - gone with a click, in return for a Stump of Time.

Fair enough deal, I think.

Pair that with her shiny new Lightning Flash Pendant from the Wildhammers - yep, she's hit exalted with them as well - and her average item level is at 335, and heading for 340. Which should make running Cata dungeons a bit more comfortable... which is important, now, because that's the only way she's going to raise her remaining Cata faction reputations.

More to the point, she's three reputations shy of getting her 45 Exalted Reputations achievement. I think the next in line will be the Keepers of Time, since that will net her The Burning Crusader as well. After that... well, it'll be running dungeons, and probably heading back to Outland to try and solo some of the Heroic dungeons.

How is it...

2011-01-26T14:51:00.000-08:00

... that I've somehow managed to miss Manalicious?

Good, solid mage-centered writing, and excellent artwork to boot. That's a plenty cute Wildhammer lady at the link above... sigh.

Yes, I know. I just like Dwarves, OK?

Counting the Cost (Part 3)

2011-01-25T14:50:00.000-08:00

Here's the scenario: you have a character with 450 skill in a profession, and you want to level him/her to 525 skill. What's it going to cost you for the various professions?

In part one, I covered tailoring, blacksmithing and jewlcrafting.

In part two, I looked at engineering, inscription, and alchemy.

Today, we round out the examination with leatherworking and enchanting.

Leatherworking

When skillups aren't assured, assume we need to do twice as many craftings...

2020 savage leather - @ 9g = 18180g
35 eternium thread - @ 2.4g = 84g
42 volatile earth - @15 g = 630g
18 volatile air - @ 38g = 684g
108 volatile water - @ 18g = 1944g
148 volatile fire - @ 25g = 3700g

Total? 25,222g! Blowing the previous leader - inscription - out of the water.

Enchanting

To simplify cost calculations, I just assumed that one greater celestial essence was the same cost as three lesser celestial essences. From what I can see on the AH, this isn't quite true, but the price of 3 LCE is close enough to the price of 1 GCE that it doesn't really matter.

460 hypnotic dust - @ 19g = 8740g
278 lesser celestial essence - @ 20g = 5560g
5 elixir of impossible accuracy - @ 20 g = 100g
6 heavenly shard - @ 75g = 450g
Elementium rod - @ 100g = 100g

Total? 14,950g. A tad bit on the expensive side, but hey - at least it's not leatherworking.

The Final Tally

As a reminder, these numbers are pretty much a SWAG. Yes, they're based on Actual Auction House Prices (TM) for the most part, but they're still going to vary from server to server and from day to day. As a general ranking of "this profession is more expensive to level than another", though, they should be pretty accurate.

The final totals, from least expensive profession to level to most expensive:

Alchemy - 2,993g
Engineering - 7,442g
Blacksmithing - 10,408g
Tailoring - 11,240g
Jewlcrafting - 12,615g
Enchanting - 14,950g
Inscription - 18,276g
Leatherworking - 25,222g

And, finally, some thoughts.

Obviously, if you want to level on the cheap, alchemy/engineering is the way to go. On the other hand, if you're a leatherworker/scribe... man, I feel for you. You're burning through enough gold to get you a Vial of the Sands, just to level your professions!

No worries, though. Once you're finished with the profession leveling gold sink, I'm sure that alchemist/engineer will be delighted to sell you a vial.

Each of these figures includes the cost to get to 525 skill. Once you're there, well, you're on your own. Each profession has it's own method of obtaining additional high-end recipes or patterns for use at 525 skill, and the cost to get a complete set of recipes can range from daunting (Jewlcrafting, where it will take you a month of dailies and fistfuls of gems to get 6-7 JC cuts) to trivial (Enchanting, where coughing up a few thousand gold will get you enough heavenly shards to buy a bunch of high-end enchantments all at once). In general, though, hitting 525 is just the start of your profession-related expenses.

Also not included is the cost of training new recipes on the way to 525. Factor in a few hundred extra gold for that particular expense. I'd expect that the relative cost difference for training has only a minor variation between professions.

I'm surprised at how cheap alchemy is, but in hindsight, I shouldn't have been. With most other professions, as you level up, you're generally creating permanent items that will serve a character for multiple levels. Laenshield is still sporting the cloth items he created early on while leveling his tailoring, for example. When those items do finally outlive their usefulness, they can be sold for a small refund, or disenchanted for a larger profit.

Alchemy, though? Everything you create, just about, is a one-shot item that will last for an hour or two at most. The ephemeral nature of potions, elixirs and flasks means that the items you produce via alchemy will be more in line with the cost of buff foods from cooking than with high-end armor from leatherworking or weapons from blacksmithing.

After alchemy, as you progress through the list of professions, you can see reasons why certain costs are lower or higher than the 12k or so "norm" of Jewlcrafting. Engineering requires materials from multiple gathering professions, and the end result of much engineering crafting is BoP instead of BoE, making it harder to make back money from leveling the profession. My guess is that these two factors are why engineering ends up being the second cheapest profession to level, helping to keep it an attractive alternative to some of the less complex crafting professions.

Enchanting and leatherworking at the high end of the spectrum doesn't surprise me. In the case of enchanting, profession leveling materials are readily available in the form of disenchantable quest rewards... generally speaking, any quest reward will give an enchanter some materials, as they can either disenchant the reward itself, or equip the reward and disenchant whatever item it replaced. So while the overall cost is high (in terms of using materials to level), the actual availability of materials to the enchanter is also high.

Leatherworking is a case similar to enchanting, primarily in that leatherworking is often paired with skinning as a gathering profession. Skinners not only have access to their own defeated beast mobs for purposes of skinning, but also any other random beast corpses that others have defeated. Especially early on in an expansion, there are a lot of skinnable mobs littering the ground in some places. Keeping the material requirements (and so, the cost) of leatherwoking high helps balance the availability of materials a bit.

What to say about inscription, though? Not having a scribe at Cata levels yet, I'm at a loss to explain why the cost of leveling inscription would be so high. It doesn't seem to be a cost vs. availability situation, as with engineering/enchanting/leatherworking. I'll have to talk to some scribes and see if there's another reason why inscription is such a money-sucking hog of a profession.

Predictions for the Future

I'd expect that - eventually - the relative cost of enchanting and leatherworking will be brought in line with the median costs of tailoring/jewlcrafting, at about 12k or so to level. Look for a slight reduction in the amount of materials required for trainable enchants, and a pretty hefty (40% - 50%) reduction in the amount of leather required for trainable leatherworking patterns. Conversely, we might see a small increase (10% - 20%) in the cost of engineering materials to help bring it's overall cost closer to the 10k mark.

Other professions I'd expect to stay more-or-less where they're at right now... though I really don't know about inscription. Blizzard has already tinkered with that profession pretty heavily, so I wouldn't be surprised to see it stay at the high end of the spectrum, at least until it becomes obvious that the cost needs to be decreased in order to encourage more people to pick up the profession. Given the explosion of scribes from the Wrath years, though, I think that day - if it ever comes - won't be here for a while.

Counting the Cost (Part 2)

2011-01-24T13:25:00.000-08:00

Just as a reminder, here's the scenario: you have a character with 450 skill in a profession, and you want to level him/her to 525 skill. What's it going to cost you for the various professions?

In part one, I covered tailoring, blacksmithing and jewlcrafting. Today, I'm going to look at engineering, inscription, and alchemy. As before, I'll be using the profession leveling guides from The Noob School as a guide for what materials are needed to level, and either AH pricing on my server (Kirin Tor) or from wowhead data to determine what those materials will cost ya.

And yes - if you're working on your professions while leveling in Cataclysm, you'll likely be gathering some materials along the way as well, one way or another. As I stated before, though: keep in mind that those materials aren't free. There is zero difference between farming 1000g and spending it on materials, and farming up 1000g worth of materials yourself. Either way, at the end of the day, you've got 1000g less than you could have had, and have opted to have 1000g worth of materials instead.

Engineering

Accounting for up to 2x the number of Heat-Treated Spinning Lures, as warned in the guide.

Assume 3 obsidian bolts per 2 bars.

33 electrified ether - 66 volatile air @ 38g = 2058g
37 obsidian bars - 74 obsidian ore @ 4g = 296g
4 alicite - @ 15g = 60g
242 elementium bar - 484 elementium ore @ 6g = 2904g
92 volatile earth - @ 15g = 1380g
40 embersilk cloth - @ 5g = 200g
10 volatile fire - @ 25g = 250g
6 dream emerald - @ 49g = 294g

Total? 7442g. Cheapest so far! Engineering apparently got a break in this expansion.

Inscription

Assume that inferno ink is purchased from Jessica Sellers in Dalaran, at a cost of 10 blackfallow ink.

905 blackfallow ink - @ 17g = 15385g
80 resilient parchment - @ 0.5g = 40g
15 dust of disappearance - @ 12.5g = 188g
2 scavenged dragon horn - @ 17g = 34 g
156 volatile life - @ 9g = 1404g
18 volatile air - @ 38g = 684g
12 volatile fire - @ 25g = 300g
12 volatile earth - @ 15g = 180g
1 bleached jawbone - @ 40g = 40g
2 deathwing scale fragment - @ 6g = 12g

Total? 18,276g. Ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch. The actual cost will probably be less, given that milling Cata herbs can produce inferno ink, but still... ouch.

Alchemy

59 cinderbloom - @ 5g = 295g
16 stormvine - @ 6g = 96g
51 Azshara's veil - @ 12g - 612g
46 heartblossom - @ 10g = 460g
55 volatile life - @ 9g = 495g
17 twilight jasmine - @ 11g = 187g
23 whiptail - @ 10g = 230g
3 jasper - @ 18g = 54g
3 hessonite - @ 18g = 54g
15 zephyrite - @ 19g = 285g
15 alicite - @ 15g = 225g

Total? 2,993g. Wow.

I had to go back and check my numbers... and, as far as I can tell, I have the quantities correct, here. What I may have wrong is the price of herbs; rather than using AH data from my server, I went with the buyout price listed in wowhead, which may be a little low for your server. Still... you'd have to double the price of herbs to get into the same range as engineering, and triple the cost of herbs to approach the same cost as tailoring and jewelcrafting.

Next up: leatherworking and enchanting, and some concluding thoughts on crafting in Cataclysm.