Bambi goes ballistic

I saw this a while back when I was passing through on my way to kiss frogs. Bambini was still holding them off when I returned ten minutes later.

Other than funny glitches life’s been quiet on the WoW front. Raiding is still on a go slow as people enjoy the summer, we manage one maybe two nights a week of 25 man raiding.

Nia

Well after discussion with Ryton(the Pallie friend who ‘mentored’ Nia) Nia is going holy to heal him through heroics and the like. Five hours played and she’s jumping into TOC normal to grab any healing gear that drops and the healer doesn’t want. Paladins are complete gannets when it comes to armour  choices, leaving  druids in the dust. Her ret gear is mainly green and from item level 158 to 174. Her healing gear is all purple with an ilevel of 200 (though only 5 pieces so far). That doesn’t mean its itemised properly but its certainly a start.

Apart from running (being carried) in TOC pugs I’ve been levelling her herbalism and alchemy. Hopefully she can make enough money to gem and enchant the gear, and keep Ari in Frost Wyrm flasks.

Gwen

I decided to explore this levelling via PvP with Gwen. The XP isn’t major but if you’ve only 20 minutes to play and running around a zone takes up more time than doing the quests then its  a reasonable way to grab some XP. It’s certainly fun. The XP gain seems to have revitalised the lower level (61 to 70) bracket which I guess is the point. I like jumping into BG’s while levelling but its been pretty dead for a long time now, except for twinks who’s idea of  ‘fair’ is one shotting you so you can only really hope to do anything if you pop in at x9  which given levelling speeds can mean missing it for anther nine levels.

It’s true though DK’s are overpowered, or my PvP skills are a lot better than I thought, which I doubt.

Briar

She hit 32 and is currently resting in Duskshire Inn building up her rested XP (I like blue bars). She’s a herbalist too and really appreciates the HoT that comes with it. Funny thing she’s also the toon I actually remember to use the new shadowmeld on when she gets into trouble.  Ari goes travel form & runs away, Gwen relies on being OP compared to the mobs she’s fighting

Ari

Nearly forgot after more White tickbirds than the AH could sell Ari finally got her proto dragon whelp. That leaves the dark whelping and she has the in-game set.

Exit Stage left

When I log in tomorrow no more  purple pussy cat.  Yes being able to turn into a cat was one of the reasons I rolled a druid, even if I ended up preferring balance. I’m sure the new forms will grow on me but I’m holding out for a revamped Moonkin form before I  do anything as drastic as change my hair colour.

All my  characters are poised waiting to collect their new mounts.

• Calli in Moonglade to claim Travel & Aquatic form from the trainer
• Briarthorn in Darnassus for her first saber
• Gwen* in Honour Hold for her gryphon
• Dax in Valliance Keep for her’s (she never bothered picking it up at 70 as WOTLK was out)
• Ari is in Dalaran to pick up the Cold weather tome for Dax
• Nia is subbing Gwen.

It’s going to cost around 2400 Gold to get them all mounted, given Calli will probably hit level 20 this weekend and need/want a saber straight away.

Good job I’ve two level 80’s to do dailies to make some spending money

*Yes I did say Gwen, I’ve re-rolled my Death Knight, well I had to do something with the heirloom shoulders now Nia doesn’t need them anymore.  Funny thing I tried other  races, but the shining eyes mildly freak me out on everyone but Night elves. I assume because on a Night Elf they look normal.

Better late than never

Yes I know it’s Sunday, part of being at home is I completely lose track of time, throw in the  confusion of Christmas and I only have the vaguest idea when in the week it is.

So lets round up last weeks targets

Level Dax to 80 (aiming high here) I’m not sure what the issue is but I’m feeling very bored with Dax at the moment. I jump on her run around aimlessly for a bit maybe do one or two quests and then log out. Leveling Ari through Northrend was a doddle, also a bit on the boring side but with T6/sunwell gear I  accepted I overpowered areas tuned for fresh 70’s in greens and blues. Only Dax *is* that fresh 70 and its just as easy for her as it was for Ari. Maybe I’ll pop across to Howling Fjord and try the Eastern side of the continent again.

Use the mats she farms to get Ari’s professions up to 450 We’ve not farmed enough mats but we have visited the AH for them. Inscription is at 426 and out of trainer recipes so I need to mill the ink for Northrend Discoveries but the prices for herbs are pretty high still.

LW is lagging at 414, again no easy skill up recipes and I’m finding the whole 5 borean scraps = 1 borean lather, 6 Borean leathers = 1 Heavy Borean Leather annoying when I need between 3 and 4 HBL for each recipe.

Get Gwen’s mining & engineering up to 300 so she can start leveling in Outland I decided to vary this so Gwen is in Outland working towards level 61 and then she’ll pop back to the Hinterlands for some more mining skill ups, she’s currently at 225 so not far to go but endless circuits of Hinterlands was doing my brain in. Especialy as it seemed whatever hour of the day I picked I was following behind some other DK (it always seems to be DK’s) also mining for skill ups. Engineering is at 208 I need more mats to push it further and decide if I want to specialise in goblin or gnomish engineering, or if it’s worth specialisng at all.

Complete the Merrymaker meta achievement on Ari Yay I did it. In the end the hardest bit was getting hold of a hat, or rather a group wanting to do Nexus. I’d read that some 80’s had soloed her on normal so I tried it, and to my shame couldn’t find her and got clobbered by adds. When I did it with a group I realised I’d prowled past her disc a few times thinking she was somewhere else. It’s done now, we found a dark place for Ari to don the costume and eat the mince pie, it’s really not Ari’s “thing” dressing up like a Christmas elf.

Sort out the fishing achievements Ari needs Well this ended up as a post all of it’s own, a sort of mini guide. Ari has completed The Lurker Above, 250 Fish, Outland Angler, The Scavenger, Northrend Angler, Old Crafty (a total of 7 casts with the crocolisk daily) and Old Man Barlowned, since last Friday.  Meh its  4pm server time & I haven’t even logged on yet, so no winning Booty Bay this weekend. Still got a ways to go to complete the achievements but I’m on course.

So what have I been doing, well messing about on alts mainly, not that I’m sure any will survive past the festive season, working on Cooking achievements alongside Fishing. Though as I’m missing the chocolate cake recipe, a rare BOP drop from cooking dailies, I’ve no hope of completing the Meta.

Oops nearly forgot I also achieved Hemet Nessingway: the Collected Quests, backwards as I’ve had the Northrend ones for a while, then I went and finished off the Outland ones before  finally picking up the missing pages for the Azeroth one. I still think not doing that to avoid having the book foisted on the world of Warcraft was the right decision, back in the day, but as theres’s a published copy in the Nagrand camp I clearly failed.

Oh and picking up pets with the help of the Oracles. I’ve had two eggs hatch now (and a third in my bag already) so have a White Tickbird Hatchling and a Cobra Hatchling bringing my small pet total to 48 of the 50 I need to get Stinky.

I’m not setting any new targets this week, the three undone ones will stand but I think it may be a week of messing about rather than focussing.

I say, Ding Dong!

1. Get Ari to 80 over the weekend. Suceeded

Ari dinged 80 at around 6pm on Sunday. The last two levels rather  jumped around zones. I wanted to do Crystal Song, but it turns out there are no quests there, (a couple that go into the zone for gathering mats, but none that count as belonging to the zone). So we explored it for the Achievement and moved on to StormPeaks. Interesting zone. Was gobbling up  quests so a bit of a whirlwind, was doing level 80 quests at 78 so decided to give my mana and level 70 gear a break and went to Zul Drak for an easier time. I’ve done 90 of the 100 quests needed for the achievement, but hit one of those ‘walls’.

I’m not sure I like that you have to complete one quest to open up three more, makes it harder to skip one and come back to it later. Went into Grizzly Hills with about 15% left to 80 and followed the troll quests there. Dinged 80 collecting some mojo for a quest.

As I’m still in 70 epics theres not much point in taking a screenshot, so a couple of shots I took on the journey to 80.

I love this shot, even though I found out in beta that I can ride vehicles in moonkin form I’m usually in night elf form when I accept. This time I cancelled the quest shifted & retook it just for the buzz of seeing my moonkin on a deathcharger. Then I submitted it for Resto4life  Turkey Day screenshot event, given the usually ’static’ nature of my screenshots this one is just poetry in motion.

The other one is closer to my usual quality of “missing the moment” I wanted an ‘up up and away’ type shot  but didn’t quite pull it off. That is me in a zone costume in flight form (yes the costume overrides the form). You’d think the  NPC’s would notice one of their own had suddenly developed the power to swim through the air, but not a one commented on it.

2. Level Gwens engineering and mining to 150 – Partial success

I got mining to 150, need to spend some time on engineering, it’s currently at 102. Of the three gathering professions mining is by far the most annoying. Skinning you get a skill up for each carcus you skin (doesn’t even need to be your own kill). More often than not when leveling skinning I hit the  skill cap without noticing and go on skinning for a while before I realise I need to train the next skill level. Herbalsim is abit more ‘grrr’ as you have to find herbs but each herb earns a skill up usually. Mining, there are less nodes than there are herbs and its only ever the first mine from that node that counts, and I swear they respawn more slowly than herb nodes.

3. Dax will continue to level her herbs and skinning – failed

Didn’t even log on to Dax, I underestimated the time it would take to get Gwen’s skill-up

4. No Alts created – Suceeded

Well there was one created before I wrote  the post on Friday, but I haven’t played on him at all this weekend so I’m counting that as a success, and I only popped onto Briarthorn long enough to get 6 light leathers for Gwen to make her Tiger goggles

5. Get Silver-thread ’set’ for Gwen – Succeeded

Didn’t so much haunt the AH as just  logged on via my banker when switching between Ari & Gwen. Got all the pieces except for the gloves, which I’ll keep an eye out for, mostly less than 1G a piece but I did spend 3G on something, forget which part now. You can just about see she goggles on in that shot

Now Ari is 80 I can focus on rep gains and  getting Achievements, as well as raiding of course, all in the short time I have to play. Ari did the rounds and got the tabards she needs to ‘champion’ various factions (I think she did anyway, need to double check that).

We’re 15k towards exalted with the Tuskarr, Pengu is getting closer, and  I have chosen the Oracles in SB for the chance at 4 pets from mysterious egg, yes the 50 pet achievement is still one I’m after, will need to  grind a few in Azeroth though to make up the total I think.

Armory now has  Achievements listed along with talents and gear, makes it easier to work out what I still need and what I want to do as I can poke around and do the research while at work. Though I don’t trust it 100% I have something like 34 HK’s from 5v5 Arenas yet have never done a 5v5.

Oh yes need to decide on my raiding spec, can’t put it off any longer we’re doing a 25 man Naxx on Wednesday, may be one tonight not sure about that.

Weekend Push

I dinged 78 last night so with two levels to go the push is on

1. to get Ari to 80 over the weekend.
2. I also made a decision on Gwen’s professions engineering and mining. So will put in some time to get them to 150 or higher. Yes I do want a Mekgineer’s Chopper that badly. Though there’s an RP reason too, Gwen is missing an eye, she lost it when she died and for hanging out in towns she’s going to need a patch or goggles of some sort to hide the empty socket. (While I didn’t want to roll an undead I do think Death Knights should have some scar or such from having died and lain about rotting for a bit before being called into the Lich King’s Service but the character screen doesn’t really give a lot of options that way)
3. Dax will continue to level her herbs and skinning, – in fits and starts – passing the fruits of her labour on to Ari so she can level LW and Inscription
4. Alt creating will be kept down to a minimum, maybe as a treat if I make the above goals
5. Get Gwen a cheap Silver-thread outfit for RP. It seems more Death Knightish than dresses or robes. (Stormshroud would work too if it had boots)