50/50

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.

Moving Right Along

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!

That Must Have Been One Amazing Sandwich

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!

Le Roi est mort!

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.

Closing in on the United Nations

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...

So Close I Can Taste It

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

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!

Burning Gold

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.

Plugging Away

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.

Indentured Servitude

Today, Aeth will finally reach exalted with the Wildhammer Clan, which will finally let her get a Lightning Flash Pendant. First epic, yeah!

That still leaves her with a number of Cata factions to continue to grind rep with. Guardians of Hyjal, Ramkahen, Earthen Ring... and Baradin's Wardens.

The Wardens.

The key to the reins of the Drake of the West Wind and the Spectral Steed.

Not to mention the Stump of Time and the Insidious Staff.

Oh, yeah - and the Rustberg Gull.

If you're keeping count, that's a total cost of 625 Tol Barad Commendations.

Assuming that the Horde continues to dominate our server and hold Tol Barad nearly 100% of the time - which seems to be the case right now - Aeth can earn a maximum of 6 commendations a day via the daily quests.

That's 105 days of Tol Barad dailies.

I manage dailies about 5 days a week, so that's 21 weeks worth of dailies. Just over 5 months in Tol Barad.

Yeah, I don't have to do them. I don't need the Drake or the Steed. I probably really don't need the Stump or the Staff, either. I certainly don't need the Gull.

But I wants them... I wants them!

They're my precious.

I'm not saying that I've sold my soul. That would be... silly.

I've apparently just... rented it out for a bit, maybe.

Busy Times

This past weekend was very busy IRL... my wife and I attended a winter retreat with out church's teen group, which resulted in (a) a lot of good memories which unfortunately came with (b) a reminder that I am nowhere near to being a teenager any more. Ooof. Getting old, man. I mean, it couldn't have had anything to do with playing murderball in the snow, right? Exercise is healthy for you!

Since we were essentially incommunicado for a day and a half or so, I did something I usually don't do, and logged in on Friday morning before heading to work. I really didn't want to miss doing my JC and cooking dailies, and once I did them, I realized I was something like 36 rep away from reaching revered with my guild. Since I had managed to get my 40 exalted reputations the night before, I was thinking, OK - let's push this over the edge!

One fishing daily later, and... whoa! Am I the first person in the guild to hit revered? Must have been, because along with Aeth getting to the new level of guild rep, we got the Diplomacy and Ambassadors guild achievements. Woohoo! Very nice. I'm just bummed that nobody else in the guild was on to see it. Ah, well.

In related news, Laen managed to hit level 84 yesterday. Which meant he was able to do the intro quests for the Twilight Highlands, and unlock the vendors there. Vendors who were sooooo grateful that Laen had saved them from horrible death at the hands of the Horde, that they were willing to offer him a massive discount on their merchandise! If by "massive discount on merchandise" you mean "massive indifference, discounting that I just saved your rancid hide and your merchandise from going up in flames".

Gotta love the vendors.

In any case... Laen has access to the high-level enchanting and tailoring recipes now. In the long run, this may not make much of a difference - the cost (in terms of heavenly shards and bolts of embersilk) that these trainers charge is outrageous across the board. I'm pretty sure that you can make the case for tailoring being the most painfully expensive profession to level... well, no. On average, JC is probably the most expensive, given that (on average) it chews through something like a half-dozen green gems a week in exchange for a recipe or two. In terms of a more immediate "Holy cow, where did my money go, and why is this man smiling at me that way?" expensive, though, tailoring is definitely up there.

Even though he's got access to the Twilight Highlands trainers now, I'm going to keep pushing Laen through to 85 and beyond... got to get his reputation up to honored so that the grind to max out enchanting and tailoring count for guild achievements.

Edit: Almost forgot! Music monday... enjoy your Buffett!

Carrot, Meet Stick

Last night I finally managed to get Laenshield's enchanting up to maximum - 525 skill. Boo-yah! He's still only level 82, so he's got a while to go before he can start shelling out Heavenly Shards for the max-level enchanting recipes.

While having a maxed-out enchanter is a nice convenience - especially since you can now put any enchantment on a scroll and mail it to an alt - that's not why I pushed him to 525. Since Aeth hit 525 in JC, with Laen at 525 in Enchanting, that means that I've contributed twice to our guild's "Working as a Team" achieve...

Wait.

Where's the green? The achievement? Here I am, I just hit 525 skill! Does it take a minute to... oh, crud.

Requires that I be honored with the guild?!?

Augh!

Hence, the title of this post.

I knew that I was eventually going to have to level Laenshield to 85, just to get access to the enchanting vendor in the Twilight Highlands. There'd be some questing along the way, sure - got to get that experience somewhere, after all - but no real need to do more than the minimum to get to level 85, right?

Now I'm thinking maybe not.

Aeth is pushing towards revered with the guild, but it's taken a almost two weeks of dailies to get to that point. I can't recall where she was at the end of questing, but the fact that doing 25 dailies gives around 1000+ guild rep kind of indicates that she was somewhat short of revered, even after doing all the new zones.

Laen is currently still only neutral with the guild. He's halfway to 83, and he's still not even friendly yet. For all the adventure he has ahead of him - Deepholm, Uldum, Twilight Highlands - I'm starting to wonder if he'll actually be able to scrape up enough guild rep to get to revered. There's always Vash'jir, of course - but really, I'm skipping it this time around for a reason, y'know? I don't like the idea of being forced back into questing there just to grind out some rep.

All in all, though, it's a pretty moot point. I'm sure someone else in the guild will contribute the enchanting portion of the guild achievement, and I would have leveled his enchanting skill anyways - so no loss, right? So no, I'm not bitter about it.

What I am, though, is dismayed.

When I first leveled Laen, I did so to have a priest so I could see what healing was like. It was a lot of fun, and for a while there at 80, Laen was effectively my main. I did a few things on Aeth, but swapping over to another level 80 for a couple of weeks wasn't that big of a deal.

Now, though... well, I've already seen one example of the fact that Laen, no matter what his level of skills may be, really doesn't count the same as Aeth, at least in some areas. Whenever I work on something that might be related to a guild achievement, at least, I'm going to have to stop and make sure that I'm doing it on the correct character... at least until time and tides bring Laen up to par with Aeth in terms of guild reputation.

After that, too, there's Aeven and Aeristal and Aretae...

Oh boy.

I have to admit, I'm incredibly impressed with Blizzard right now. I mean... think about it. Anybody can deliver a beating. Just pick up a stick and start flailing away with it. Really not much too it, is there?

Now... consider what guild rep means for folks with multiple alts in Cataclysm.

Anyone can just deliver a beating. It takes a special sort of diabolical mindset to generate a situation where 12 million people pick up a stick and start beating themselves.

Quick Update

Managed to get to Exalted with Lower City on Aetherna a couple of days ago.

For Ogri'la, there's somewhere around 12 days of daily quest remaining.

The Sha'tar? A total of 9 runs through Botanica/Arcatraz to reach exalted.

Keepers of Time? A dozen clears of Old Hilsbrad. Bleah.

In the meantime, between grinding out reputation, I've had Aeth running hither and yon in Azeroth and Outland, polishing off quests and quest chains that she's managed to miss on her way to Loremaster. She's done 4,574 quests, according to the Armory, and she's still turning up ones here and there that she hasn't completed yet.

At this point, though, they're mostly raid quests. She's going to have to get together with some folks and do a full clear of Karazhan one day, for example. Mmmm... Violet Eye rep. Only 6 full clears of Kara to get to exalted? Maybe that will be reputation #41, then.

Experience Matters

Apparently, experience does matter. I ran Aetherna through the Shadow Labyrinth early last week, and was incredibly frustrated - she died at least 4-5 times on trash mobs. At one point she managed to end up with a dozen mobs, including a couple of extra-tough Malicious Instructors, all trying to gnaw her face off.

Ouch.

Last night... she breezed right through. There were a couple of tight spots, but mana shield, evocation and invisibility (not to mention mirror image) saved the day. No patches, no in-game changes, no additional buffs. Just having run it once recently was enough to refresh the "Oh, yeah, this pull is a pain... wait a few seconds for mirror image, there we go, now kill!" bits of memory that I needed to have available.

Another 3 runs of Shadow Labyrinth should see Aeth at Exalted with the Lower City, which is wonderful. She hit revered with Ogri'la last night, based on the three dailies she's been doing. I've tried to do the event at Shar'tul's transporter a couple of times, but apparently it's bugged... when you get to phase 2, mobs show as friendly, so you can't actually complete the even and go on to phase 3. Bummer.

And now, for Music Monday... here's a wonderful lady, Karan Casey, singing a very bittersweet song about young men going off to war. She's accompanied by James Taylor, who's voice adds a nice element to the song. I'd say this is more of a "WotLK" theme song, though; I'll have to think about what an appropriate Cataclysm tune would be.

Outland Dungeonmaster

Two down, one to go. Soloed the Botanica and Mechanar with Aeth over the last couple of nights, leaving only the Arcatraz. The final stage of the Mechanar, with the waves of mobs as you progress, was a challenge - but the 4.0.1 mage buffs were more than enough to handle that challenge (with a little care!)

Sale of librams et al. to those folks still working on the Insane title is going well. Demand seems slighter than I had thought, but with the new elemental invasion events, I expect that many people are taking the time to run through the new content while it's available.

Current rep grinds: Ogri'la, the Sha'tar, and Lower City. Plus I really need to give the Keepers of Time some love. Total of about 21 various dungeon clears to get them all to exalted. Completely coincidentally, I've got about 21 days of daily quests (minus the painful Relic Emanations) to get Ogri'la to exalted as well. So it looks like I'm pretty well on track to get my 40 exalted reputations just before the Cataclysm hits, so long as I can do my Ogri'la dailies and solo a dungeon once a day.

Meet... hmm.

Can't call him Binky, now, can I? But he's a beautiful Winterspring Frostsaber, and in keeping with the tradition established by Binky, he's a lovely violet... ish... color. Perfect for my mage, after all - that's the color associated with arcane magic and the Kirin Tor.

Pushing Aeth's Wintersaber Trainer rep to exalted was also enough to get her across the line to 35 Exalted Reputations. Five more, and she'll be able to refer to herself as Aetherna the Exalted.

I'm thinking about doing the Bloodsail grind now - not sure if I can complete it in a month, though. I recall seeing mention from a Blizzcon interview that the Bloodsail rep grind was going to be more difficult in Cataclysm... though it wasn't clear if they meant "Oh, yeah, the guards will now be 5 levels higher" or "Yeah, you're going to have to really work at this one now. Heh-heh-heh."

Hmm. Keepers of Time, Honor Hold, Lower City... those look like the quickest rep grinds for Aeth at the moment. Gah! My Zandalar Tribe rep isn't at 999/1000! Me and my reputation OCD both hope that I can get a few bijous to turn in to even that out... plenty to do, plenty to do. The only question is, with the end of the world coming, what should I do first?

Here, Kitty Kitty...

A weekend's worth of work running around Winterspring, and Aeth is now just past Honored with the Wintersaber Trainers. The grind itself is... obviously not what it once was. She ran for Frostsaber Provisions a half dozen times, which was enough to unlock the next repeatable quest, Winterfall Intrusion. Doing those two quest together takes about 20 minutes or so, and nets 500 reputation (550 for us humans - everybody loves us, baby!)

All that took around 4 hours of play time, give or take a bit. Now that she's at honored, she's opened up the Rampaging Giants repeatable quest as well. Doing all three will probably take a half hour or so, and net 850 (935) rep per circuit. That's a total of about... 35 circuits, or another 17 or 18 hours of grinding.

Yowch. Apparently, the quests used to reward only 50 rep each... which means that the current grind is about 5-6 times easier than it used to be. Thank you, Blizzard.

I'm glad that Blizzard has learned a bit from their previous expereinces. Killing the same mobs over and over for 20 hours isn't really challenging, or fun. Doing the Kalu'ak or Sons of Hodir dailies were, in comparison, at least a little challenging, and a lot more fun. They still required a time investment to complete, but at least you got to do a bunch of different things along the way.

Here's hoping that whatever rep grinds we see in Cataclysm are more interesting and fun than killing chimeras and wondering "Where's the beef?"

Overlooking the obvious

Finally reached 11999/12000 with Ravenholdt on Aetherna - and celebrated by actually going to visit Ravenholdt itself.

Thinking about what her next rep grind can/should be, I took a look at her reputations on the Armory... and there, sitting at the top of her rep list, is Wintersaber Trainers.

Hey, isn't Winterspring going to get revamped in Cataclysm? Uh-oh... By all reports, it looks like this will take about 25-30 hours of grinding to accomplish. Might as well just get 'er done, then.

In the meantime, I realized that there are a couple of daily quests in Outland that I could be doing to work on my Ogri'la rep. I was under the impression that the only quest you could do to raise Ogri'la rep was the incredibly annoying Relic Emanation quest. I completely missed out on the fact that Wrangle More Aether Rays! and Bomb Them Again! give Ogri'la reputation as well. So it looks like about a month or so of running errands for the ogres, and I should be able to get another faction to exalted, plus an achievement - since A Quest a Day Keeps the Ogres at Bay.

Figures

Wikipedia tells me that, depending on what time period you're talking about, a Roman Legion was made up of anywhere between 3200 and 4500 soldiers.

I bring this up because, apparently, that's roughly the number of Syndicate thugs I will need to kill to get Aetherna to revered with Raveholdt. Yeah, at 5 rep per, that's going to take a bit of time. Another hour or so of grinding in Dunholde last night along with another fellow working on The Insane got her to 8023/12000. Just another thousand or so murders and maybe they'll actually respect her a little bit!

All of which is kind of strange, now that I think about it. I've never been to Ravenholdt on any of my characters. Which means that, in a few days, a blood-spattered, glassy eyed mage is going to stumble in to Ravenholdt for the first time, professing her love for them, and bringing with her the record of the 3000+ murders she's performed to demonstrate her devotion. Big toes, I'd guess - for the record, ripping people apart with arcane energy doesn't leave much else to use when you want to ID them.

Getting to Revered with Ravenholdt really should have it's own achievement: "Stalkerific" - or maybe "Who Are You? How Did You Get In My House?"

Where's my "King" title?

1 Samuel 18:7 - "And the women answered [one another] as they played, and said, Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands."

This came to me last night as I was killing Syndicate mobs in the ruins of Durnholde Keep. Turns out that this is a fantastic place to grind mobs for Ravenholdt rep - there's plenty of them, and by the time you've made a circuit of the entire place, the mobs you killed just a few minutes ago have already respawned, so it's just one big circle of reputation. Oh, ok, reputation and bloodshed. Sheesh. Half an hour saw Aetherna scrounge up about 3000 rep, at 5 per kill. That's about 600 mobs - only another 1200 to go to reach the brink of revered.

Anyways, the statistics tab on the Armory tells me that Aetherna has killed 101,129 creatures - and of those, 38,669 were humanoids of one form or another. I mean, she's killed her ten thousands. Srsly. Where's her kingdom, man? Where's her enthusiasts jumping and leaping and singing her praises? Nowhere to be found. Oh, sure, They Love Me In That Tunnel, but that and 25 copper will get you a Refreshing Spring Water, if you know what I mean.

Before killing innocent... um, assassins, Aetherna took a detour into Silithus to kill innocent scorpid. Because apparently, one scorpid in twenty or thereabouts has Glowing Scorpid Blood, which is prized by the Darkmoon Faire for... you know, I really don't know. I'm not sure that I want to know. Especially since all I do know is that the food vendors there seemed really really happy that I showed up with a couple of containers of apparently radioactive arthopod circulatory fluids.

Try the corn dogs, though. They rock.

Reputation tracking:

• Darkmoon Faire - 2060/6000 (Friendly)
• Ravenholdt - 86/6000 (Friendly)