You are currently browsing the monthly archive for March 2008.
Finally! Finally! And, for a third time, finally managed to complete Magister’s Terrace on normal difficulty. Two chaotic attemps that stand as a testament to the dangers of PUGs fell apart either at or just before Kael’Thas due to in-party bickering and, yep, I’m going to say it, boys that overdose on testosterone and seem to think they’re Chuck Norris. Note to self, if I’m in a group again and one of the party members says “Make your own way to the instance, faggots!”, I’m going to leave straight away and save myself the inevitable repair bills.
Words of the day are “crowd” and “control”, written over and over again. I can’t think of another instance where the trash mob pulls have been more difficult and draining than the bosses. Between them lies a veritable endurance course of trapping, sapping and stunning to keep the number of mobs active at any one time to a minimum.
I felt slightly bad that I was the first to die during the Kael encounter, having survived pretty well for about 25 seconds of the zero gravity effect, ducking, diving, dodging and weaving around the energy balls only to be pranged from underneath while cornered against the back wall. Oops. These things happen though, at least we can learn from them, eh? And let’s face it, I did do pretty well at getting the phoenix out of harm’s way so it could have been a lot worse. I have to believe this. I might have been let off a little for bringing class-specific packed lunches for all party members at the start. Yeah, I’m nice like that, the group is searching for a tank, I’m going to do a bit of fishing and withdraw some extra snacks from the guild bank because no-one else is taking them.
I was, however, left with the excruciating experience of helplessly having to watch the rest of my party carrying on, two others dying and the remaining members dangerously low on health by the time Kael was about to pop his clogs. When he finally died, that was my chance to breathe out. No real gear of any use to any of the party members (two rogues, shaman healer, warrior tank) dropped throughout the whole instance but I could tell the appearance of Phoenix Hatchling dropping at the bitter end had everyone going for the need icon. Guess who won? Yay, the career low-roller! Behold:
This one won’t be joining the growing collection of companions in the bank for some time, that much I know. Now what to call her?
MgT, as it’s finally becoming known on our server (MT is and always will be Mana Tombs, thankfully people are beginning to realise this), wasn’t made any easier by the fact that we’re only within a week of the new patch and there’s still people that don’t have a working version of Omen, the only threat meters I had to go by was my own. Add to that the fact that damage meters are still outdated so I can’t see how effective I’m being with the only possible consolation being that everyone else in the party probably can’t see how ineffective I’m being. I suppose.
Awards have to be handed out for the prettiness of the instance, you have to hand it to the blood elves, they know a thing or two about how to make places look palatial, must be all that time they save by not eating, although the environmental challenge of tight corridors, trees and fancy bits abounds resulting in a higher element of Stuff In My View Syndrome than any other instance I’ve seen. The only other thing I would add is: Mmmm! Cut-scenes. More of them in Lich King please!
So, yeah, woo! Frantic and panicky fun for all the family! I look forward to being able to do a few guild runs before I even dare stepping foot in the heroic difficulty.
For a little while over the weekend there, as happens every so often, I got sick of being killed by completely underhand methods by Horde players (and, Horde people, I’m not even going to begin to suggest that Alliance don’t do this too). In a sense it could be considered bad form to complain about being killed when on a PvP server – it happens, you just have to deal with it – but there’s ways and means, people!
Is any fight ever truly fair in WoW? Certain classes have advantages over other classes, gear becomes an important factor when a hardened raider with numerous runs of Gruul’s Lair under her belt comes face-to-face with a fresh level 70, all excited and full of vigour at the new world of opportunity laid out before them, it’s always going to be pretty hard to see the top of the food chain. These are part of the PvP realm life, they’re never going to stop and any amount of protesting here isn’t going to help at all.
Regardless of level, gear, skill or latency however, I have noticed that the kills where the opposing player knows for a fact contain little to no chance of retaliation rank probably the highest in frequency, as if landing at a neutral town flightmaster with <AFK> above your head actually stands for A Free Kill, and don’t even get me started at the people who I swear earn hundreds of honour points per day just by hanging around a meeting stone.
General kills while going about my day are acceptable, whether I win or lose although it’s more lose than win. Maybe the psychology from the other players is one of “Hey, we’re sharing this area and I can’t guarantee that you’re not going to kill me so, to stop that from happening, I’m going to kill you first”. It’s the great lesson that Bush and Blair gave us. Strike first and clumsily answer any questions about morality or legality in a press conference later, maybe. Yeah, right on.
And so, every now and then, I go a little psycho and do exactly that which I hate happening to me, but to be honest it never lasts. I attacked and neatly kited a warrior to death in Nagrand, scooping up a keen 20 honour points for my minimal troubles. Almost the same situation with a shaman but came off a little less successful. Yeah, I’m not that great at PvP, but the feeling I get from being ambushed and being the one left alive is far greater than the same result coming from my first move, and to make the first move and still lose well… That’s just disheartening. To look at it in a positive light, at least these kills are giving me the chance to sharpen up my skills, get better and win a few. Here is the possible core of my problem, while levelling I saw invitations to duel as an annoyance rather than basic training.
That said, this morning I saw a level 62 blood elf priest frantically running away from an elite naga in Zangarmarsh. He was at about 5% health and, as has happened to me, I could have finished it so easily. There would have been honour in the kill as far as the game is concerned (granted, not much, but see how it all stacks up) what about my own sense of honour? Would it make me feel better about myself in any way? Would I strut away with that inflated self-worth and the swagger of the “Hey! Check me out, I’m imba!”? Nope. Instead, after he’d healed himself to full health I waved at him and, in the rudimentary way of communicating though simple emotes, pointed to the mob he was attempting to kill and let him take the first shot, then helped him with the kill. He thanked me, I curtsied, went on my merry way and, care-bear that I am, felt pretty good about it.
And you know what? With the little pinch of “R” I put in with my “P” it’s all part of my heavily-self-based character. Anj doesn’t like the war we’re in so much but it’s n unfortunate necessity, all this petty squabbling between the two factions is wasted energy when we both share a common enemy outside of each other. Yeah, she’s Azeroth’s Martin Luther-King. She has a dream! She’s been to the mountain-top!
A little note of thanks, while I’m on the subject, to the forsaken player last week who, when I beat him to the Skyguard Prisoner in Skettis, rather than killing me during a solo fight with three mobs, helped clear the way. He didn’t even get too mad when clicking on him to pass on a /thanks accidentally right-clicked and fired an autoshot before I had chance to hurriedly stab the escape key about twenty times to stop it before dispensing a /sorry and then the /thanks. Another memorable Horde care-bear was back in the early 60’s, having accepted an escort quest in Firewing Point that I was way out of my depth for, helped clear a path to the exit, hearthed and I never saw him again.
It don’t harm to be nice every once in a while, but I still need to work on those PvP skills because nice equals okay, doormat equals nope.
(photograph by swanksalot and shared under a Creative Commons license).
Yes, it finally arrived and it’s madness, madness I tell you! But what does it mean? Well, for one thing it means that the once-every-thirty-damn-seconds “Whn iz pach 2.4 comeing out?” questions in city chat have been thoroughly nerfed, yay! Also, the Sunwell Isle, the honour changes, the daily quests, the combat log, the… the…
To be honest I’ve barely scratched the surface of the new stuff. I had a brief look at the new island but not for long, as populated as it is entirely expected to be on Day One, and my computer being of the type that gets nervous twitches in Shattrath City, it’s not what you might call a trouble-free experience. Not as bad as I expected though. I had other things on my mind…
Well, first there was the job of resorting all the addons. WoWMatrix updated them all fine, no problems there, although Parrot (my scrolling combat text “of awesomeness” mod) is doing nothing towards displaying the actual combat damage done, and DamageMeters is similarly lackadaisical in its operation which must have something to do with the reworked combat log stuff. I don’t know. I don’t work for Blizzard. Omen, on the other hand, has gone somewhere entirely WEIRD and SCARY! The highly irritating on-screen messages and border flashing when I passed 90% of kitty’s threat were easily disabled before but now, nope. You can disable all warnings but I’m still going to get crap on my screen telling me things I should already know because, being a hunter, keeping an eye on a threat meter is something I’ve become quite accustomed to. Try it, mages. If you have a threat meter, whatever it is, try looking at it once in a while. Thanks. Omen2, you get no milk and cookies until you sort out the mess you’ve made of your otherwise excellent mod.
I like the new notes area for the guild bank, even though I expected a small window to the side of the tab that’s being viewed rather than a wide, bank-sized expanse of space that you can only type something like 500 characters into. I still used it to whole-heartedly tell off every single member of my guild for being the ultimate tight-wad in using the carefully gathered funds for their own repairs without putting anything in themselves.
I don’t like the channel filtering. In a nutshell, to keep myself able to track a guild conversation anywhere, even a city where the nutters reside, I created a new chat window just for guild talk and placed it above the regular chat window. This still works fine, but it seems that every single time I log on (!) I have to open the main chat window options to enable and the disable guild and officer chat just to stop the same text appearing pointlessly in two separate windows. Not happy.
And that’s… the patch. As far as I’ve seen. The day was also filled with doing some alt-work as Girlpants (me) and Bupu (Powdor), two draenei girls hungry for blood and justice, a shaman and priest respectively. Also made a few changes to Anj’s gear set-up, like swapping the Beast Lord Leggings for the PvP pants (for the extra stamina and crit-rate which had been dipping too low, as well as coordinating better with the PvP boots I’m still wearing, and all without even breaking the Beast Lord set(4) bonus, yay!) and spending crazy money on fitting a Stabalised Eternium Scope onto my recently-acquired Lohn’goron, Bow of the Torn-heart which may or may not be a drop in DPS but I’ve wanted to go back to a trusty bow for ages and it is such a beautiful bow.
It is a bee-yootiful bow! I love it and I want to keep it! Daddy! Can I keep it?!
(pretty patch photograph by sheeshoo and is shared under a Creative Commons license)
Everything you need to prove that I have now completed half the game:
Yes, the wars are ongoing but for now, with the last fish needed to get the skill point being yanked from the water just seconds after the lure ran out (I cast the line while the lure was active, it still counts!), at least the crafts are done.
Okay, look, I neglected to crop put the riding skill. You didn’t see that. Nothing is there. Nothing.
Before the new patch comes out and the number of daily quests doable per day is increased by fifteen, I’m forced to ask myself; do I have the time for more daily quests? Seriously? Okay, I still have the regular quests to go through and will not stop until I’ve done them all (I’m level 70, there’s money to be made and experiences to have, so “boo” to the people that say questing gets boring at the level cap), but here’s my daily quest run-down so far which, mostly, takes place at 2am when the “day” “begins”.
Cooking: Whatever it is, it’s usually pretty easy. Unless I’m sent to Netherstorm to collect mana berries in which case it’s so ludicrously easy it almost feels cruel. To be honest I’m still holding out for the recipe for Kibler’s Bits which hasn’t turned up yet. Kitty loves them so much. Nevertheless, 7g, not a problem.
Skyguard; Skettis: Bombing the eggs is pretty easy and fun, provided I don’t get knocked off my mount by those annoying Kaliri birds. The cooking quest Revenge Is Tasty! goes well here, making the very idea of attracting negative Kaliri attention a more productive act (with the slight downside of eating into my carried stock of delicious, agility-boosting Warp Burgers). Thanks to Cartographer, I have the three spawn points of the prisoner for the daily escort quest marked on the map so it’s just a matter of doing the bombing while flying between these points and hoping that, while doing the escort, that I don’t get killed by a brave, brave Horde player while also dealing with three Skettis minions. Outside that, 20g, in the bag. Thanks!
Ogri’la: Now comes the problematic bit. The Relic’s Emanation requires me to grab an opened envelope (thanks to bills, also seemingly a daily quest, I’m never short of them) and a pen and write down all the sequences after the first four so that I don’t get horribly confused. Memory is a tricky area. Trivial things that happened over ten years ago, not a problem, what I had for breakfast half an hour after eating it, slightly more of a problem. Oh god, I’m senile. The increased speed buff does come in handy later though. Banish More Demons isn’t much of a problem except for that damning moment when a demon falls, dead, to the ground just a split-second after the portal times out. Lovely! The cooking quest for Super Hot Stew cooking quest can be paired up with this one too.
Skyguard; Blade’s Edge: Wrangle More Aether Rays is pretty dull and something that is done as quick as possible just to get it out of the way, and made more annoying by the fact that it’s hard to see what’s going on when there’s a number of aethers tethered behind you. Grr. Bomb Them Again! on the other hand is… a hell of a lot more fun than it used to be. Having spent a couple of weeks following the Thottbot advice of getting to the cannon-stacks on foot, mounting, bombing and then quickly dismounting, this quest had the same level of enjoyment as the Aether debacle. It was slow and painful. However, having started using the 15% speed increase buff (mentioned earlier, remember) to bob and weave, climb and dive through the flak to bomb the stacks while trying to stay mounted and it’s probably the most fun quest in the game. My current record for stack bombed without being shot down is six, although the fun is trying to beat that record. Ha! It’s almost a game in itself!
On top of it all, having the various members of the Skyguard paying me lovely compliments like “Hey, it’s our flying ace Anj!” when I walk past them is so sweet. I love those guys. “I heard Anj isn’t a nugget anymore!” is something that I’m assuming is a Top Gun reference, why! They all are! But I’m not sure. A nugget? Was I ever a nugget? I never felt like a nugget. Nugget?
Then there’s the PvP daily, only if it isn’t Warsong Gulch, and the daily dungeons that can be done if I manage to get myself in a good group, and that’s a day packed full of daily quests. There’s fishing quests a-coming, more on the new island, and others besides! Hay-ulp! How do I find the time? I have a life you know! Ha ha! Okay, that was a joke. No I don’t.
(newspaper bundle pic by Jgregor and shared under a Creative Commons license)
With our main guild tank back from his week of snowboarding (something about tanks and extreme sports), we finally managed to get one of our healers through Shadow Labs with, wait for it, no problems at all! Ah well, okay, there was a small wipe going into the second room but we’ve passed that area with no problems so many times it counts as a typo rather than an outright spelling mistake, to use a somewhat askew metaphor.
And for the first time I’ve seen, the Sonic Spear dropped from Murmur. Now I’ve been pretty happy with my PvP polearm and had given up on the idea of getting it replaced on account of the “Oh, what? Shadow Labs again?” factor but it came up, the other hunter in the group swears by his dual-wield and, you know what? I’m gonna go right ahead and click need on this one. It’s time for a change of look. Aside from anything else, the PvP polearm is enchanted for +35 agility which you get right from the box with the Spear! Stick another +35 on that and oh! There’s going to be tears.
Ever since getting my first two-hand sword from the Sunken Temple back at level 50 (embarrassingly this one, certainly not what anyone might call an ideal sword for a hunter), I’ve grown to love the fleeting, one-swing damage that a quick Wing Clip/Raptor Strike macro gives on the way to getting back in range, and if a +15 strength sword can lead me down the path of kitey righteousness rather than getting bogged down in albeit fast, stabby melee while at the same time looking a million times more cool then it can’t be that bad, can it? Unfortunately for polearms though, they don’t start looking impressive until level 70 as far as I’ve seen. Prior to that, all you have is basically a dagger with an extra-long handle, which is no good for anyone. Okay, maybe someone, but not me. I crave fanciness!
And so the enchant shopping list starts again, as does the rule of the “If possible, buy in bulk”. 27g rising to 35g for the cheapest eight Large Prismatic Shards in the list? OR buy ten for 255g? Which seems the most sensible? Same kind of saving for the Greater Planar Essences and the twenty handfuls of Arcane Dust were kindly provided by my tailor warlock. She goes through loads of that stuff.
I swear I am never going to see that epic flying mount. Money comes in. Money goes out. Easy come, easy go. Ah well. Life goes on.
The very last of Anj’s green items has finally been replaced! Obviously an occasion as momentous as this requires a more or less instant replace-and-vendor move, thereby removing my ability to even remember what it was, and The Armory has already uncharacteristically updated to reflect the change. Suffice to say it was a pretty good necklace (and, with pretty good, I mean that it just managed to out-stat the Choker Of Bloodied Feathers back in the day, hence it being around my neck in the first place), but nevertheless a regular quest reward and, even-lesser the never, was green.
Taking the heroic Slave Pens’ Quagmirran and giving him the slap he so righteously deserved resulted in a giddy-epic Adamantite Chain of the Unbroken falling out of his pocket. So that’s where he was hiding it! A slight drop in agility, but a much-needed boost to my recently-diminished critical strike chance and I’m dancing. A lucky greed roll also got me detailed instructions on how to cut a Balanced Nightseye gem and, given the amount of money I’ve paid for these in the past, any jewel-crafter seeing it on the auction house is going to have to expect to part with some heavy money for it. I am sure that jewellers can use their spare masses of gold as a thrown weapon, I’m never going to get an epic flying mount and yet you can spot anyone good with jewels by the brand new iPod they’re carrying.
Also acquired today for Anj’s ever more powerful raid outfit were honour points spent on PvP bracers to bolster up her stamina, enchanted and socketed for a total of +40 attack power, a mini +7 agility for gloves, and mats gathered and posted to Powdor for a Knothide Armor Kit for boots. Well, they are still PvP boots, if I’m going to spend money enchanting them with anything it’ll be something more suitable for the battlegrounds or, who knows, maybe one day, even arena (gusp!).
Now to set my sights on Warp Splinter. He’s going to hate me. The normal difficulty still owes, yes owes, me a Beast Lord Cuirass which I don’t really need because I have the set bonuses tied up in the four pieces I wear already but, hey, I want to complete the set! We can do nothing if not coordinate, dammit. Meanwhile the heroic version of him is hiding some natty epic Beast Lord-matching boots from me and he should think again before being mean about those as well.
Maybe I should let him know that I know his mum and he should play fair or I’m going to tell…
(photograph is by blugrn and shared under a Creative Commons license)
For the first time in ages, I’ve put a little time into shifting Caitlin, my cute-as-a-button gnome rogue, up a few levels, from 49 to 51. And, it has to be said, I’m not really that good at it. I can’t do stun-locking, have troubles dealing with more than one mob at a time and, to be honest, am only pressing on because she does engineering and I want to be able to craft those lovely boxes of Adamantite Stingers for Anj without having to constantly bug a guild engineer. Oh yeah, and I want to have at least one character with one of the engineering flying mounts because they look cool and funny.
During that time, part of the XP gain was from doing Zul’Farrak with a regular group (not even boosted, no sir) and these things are hard for non-tank melee classes when I’m having to spend my time chasing mobs around with crazy tanks that can’t keep them rooted in one spot. Spell-casting and ranged is no problem, wherever the mob moves, there shall be the location of my next arrow or spell. It doesn’t help that her diminuntive size makes it easy to lose her in a group of mobs as well.
Having said that, getting to 50 was cause for celebration in itself, since she’s had a natty eyepatch in her bag for ages now and I was overjoyed to see how well it goes with the guild tabard. I was expecting a basic, black eye patch but the red is so much better. Yay!
Now comes the 50-60 grind which, I’ve decided, has to be amongst the most boring. There’s no reason why it should be, with Un’Goro Crater, Felwood, Winterspring, Burning Steppes and Azshara there’s no shortage of choices for places to do quests but, eesh, you know, it’s only eight levels away from being able to go to Outland. I get the feeling like that last week at a job after handing the notice. You know it’s going to end, but you know it’s going to feel like more than a week to get there. Kind of.
The Transmute Mastery finally did its job, producing two Primal Mights for the price of one and finally allowing me to craft my shiny Alchemist’s Stone, and with a little extra pride in for once having the patience to craft it from all my own gathered materials rather than going mad and hitting the auction house. Go me, it’s my birthday, go me, it’s my birthday.
I also found out this: Cooked food sells on the auction house! I’ve sold so much food to vendors that I don’t need because it sells for slightly more cooked than raw, but I’ve been missing a trick there.
It’s been quite a recent discovery for me, this Alchemist’s Stone. A pretty happy one too, having been quite jealous of a leatherworking friend’s access to fancy drums, it was looking like alchemy not only had crafted results that often sell for less than the ingredients required to make them, but also had nothing special as a reward for students of the discipline. A 375-maxed skill level or not, I was seriously toying with the idea of throwing in the towel. Okay, semi-seriously, that kind of “should I?” without actually going ahead and wasting all that work. I still enjoy turning up to instancs with free potions for other members when I can (my cooking skill also fulfils this) so, money aside, I like the kindness element.
So anyway, a chance visit to a reputation vendor revealed it to me and, straight away, I knew had had to reserve my cooldowns from that day forth until it was created and placed safely in one of my trinket slots. The Fel Lotus I already have in the bank, obviously the Philosopher’s Stone stays about my person, leaving just an Earthstorm Diamond, Skyfire Diamond and five Primal Mights to get and, weee! A tastylicious +15 to all stats even before a druid comes anywhere near me! Snoopy dance!
My bank character has been a source of bag space for any and all green gems that I come across, so the Earthstorm Diamond was transmuted pretty much straight away. Then I thought, hey, I’m planning on taking up the transmutes mastery anyway, wouldn’t it be wiser to buy the extra Primal Mights I need to complete that quest and surely, surely, it will be a shorter road between me and the me that has this epic trinket? Yes, I did just call you Shirley.
So that’s what I did. And, so far, one Skyfire Diamond and two Primal Mights have failed to yield anything more than the expected results. I’m not happy. A guild member who chose to specialise in potions got four mana potions from the mats of one on his first go, and they’re not subjected to a 23hour cooldown between goes.
It’s imbalanced is what it is! And not in the good way!
(picture is from Carla216 and is shared under a Creative Commons license)
Following on from this post (almost exactly a month ago!), I have, in all honesty, lost count of the number of times I have run through Botanica only to be disappointed with Warp Splinter’s meanness in sharing the Beast Lord Cuirass that I know he has. But one run through Shattered Halls today, lo and behold:
I should think so too, it’s a very stressful instance! Thankfully the extra hunter in the group disconnected a couple of mobs in and so all competition was off! Huttah! Just need to get them all enchanted up with agility now, since my Crit Chance has taken a beating from changing out of my PvP armour. Okay, it’s just a drop of around 3% but I was all comfortable with 25%. It was a nice, round number.
Update of recent happenings: Having scouted around Eastern Plaguelands to stock up on Dreamfoil, I decided to take Anj for a ride up to the Ghostlands, primarily to get the flight-path from Zul’Aman. Our guild is nowhere near ZA stage yet but, you know, while I’m in the area. But then OUTRAGE occurred! I could have, if I so wished, flown from Zul’Aman back to Stormwind! Or indeed any other Eastern Kingdoms flight path that I knew of! Great for Alliance (which it is) but I had thought that the depressing lack of flight options for Blood Elves in that area were probably due to the fact that there’s a loading screen betwixt Eastern Plaguelands and Ghostlands but, no! Alliance can go where they like, Horde have to take a massive detour. Quite glad I’m mainly Alliance and just a tourist Horde but then, having said that, I still like to think I’m all about the fairness.
While I was up there, my mind whooshed back to the days of questing in the area with Tori and reminded myself of that group of vain Blood Elves that gave me a quest to go and kill a camp of night elves. Well, let’s see how much they like a visit from an epic-geared, level 70 night elf then. They didn’t too much. After that, there was a party to crash in Eversong Woods, and the chance to feel all evil while multi-shotting sections of the party while the remaining revellers drank, laughed, chatted amongst each other and didn’t even so much as bat an eyelid!
On the Horde side, a skull-level Alliance warrior in raid-looking gear spent about two hours hanging around Nesingwary Jr’s camp killing everyone that came close and generally being a total pain. I got my own back, in a way, when searching for Bhag’thera and found a same-level Alliance warlock had only just, by a split second, beaten me to him. Well, the trouble I had getting there and thoughts of mucking about with waiting for respawns, I was left with no option but to kill the warlock and then “bag” the panther for myself, quickly accepting an invite from another blood elf with the same quest while doing it. Evil cackle. Normally, killing the opposing faction while they’re in the middle of a fight with something else is on my “lame kills” list and wouldn’t do it, but I was all cross from the Nesingwary troubles so, morally, I win. Almost.
On a side note, interestingly, the Firefox spell-checker suggests “Hemingway” as an alternative to “Nesingwary”. How very thoughtful of them to help with the cultural references.
Tori is level 38 now, money for the mount is made and safe in the hands of the bank character, there’s only the small problem of one and a half bars of Darkspear Troll reputation to go. I saw the Violet Raptor mount and it so-o-o-o must be mine.
