It’s The Little Things.

As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been spending a bit of time (and some not small sums of gold – I picked up about 240 Relics on the AH today, to speed up the Sons of Hodir rep grind) gearing up Dingle, my warrior.

Something I noticed in the latest 3.1 patch notes is going to make Dingle a very happy engineer: she can finally get her hands on a Pet Bombling to go with her Lil’ Smoky.

Engineers can now obtain the schematics for Lil' Smoky and the Pet Bombling from certain creatures found in Gnomeregan. Specialized Gnomish or Goblin engineers can obtain both schematics equally. The repeatable quest that used to randomly grant these schematics has been disabled.

As it stands now, only Goblin-specialised engineers can make Pet Bombling, and only Gnome-specialised engineers can make Lil’ Smoky.  Unfortunately although it is possible to change specialisations, it turns out you are unable to pick up the quest that allows you to make the other specialisations’ pet.  (I found this out the hard way during TBC, when I dropped engineering completely in order to change specialisations, which entailed relearning engineering from scratch – a not-inconsiderable expense, as I had 375 engineering at the time)

So this means I’ll once again be delving into the depths of Gnomeregan, when Blizz finally deigns to bless us with 3.1 (and all the accompanying post-patch bugs and server crashes, no doubt), in order to finally learn how to make the pet which has eluded my favourite engineer for so long.

Continuing In The Deep End

After our latest attempt to complete The Immortal in this week’s 25-man Naxx run was defeated by server lag and player disconnections, I was given the chance to sub Dingle in to off-tank for the rest of the night, and it proved to be even more effective in gearing her up than the 10-man run I participated in last week.

Nine bosses later, I’ve not only picked up one each of the best tanking rings and tanking cloaks in game, but also three additional gear upgrades.  And I’ve also been reminded (again) just how good our healers are.

• Pauldrons of Unnatural Death replaced Abomination  Shoulderblades
• Breastplate of Tormented Rage replaced Tempered Saronite Breastplate
• Cloak of the Shadowed Sun replaced Tattered Castle Drape
• Callous-Hearted Gauntlets replaced Daunting Handguards
• And in the biggest upgrade, Sand-Worn Band replaced Stoneguard Band

I’ve also spent a couple of days farming Kurenai rep with Dingle, and the end result was the addition of several Talbuk for my favourite tank to ride around on.  Admittedly, they look better when someone else is riding them – from behind they look like skinny Ironforge rams wearing stilts, but it’s more mounts for her collection (although she only has 16 so far), and one more exalted faction.

In not-related-to-WoW news, I’ve finally been watching the last season of Battlestar Galactica over the last couple of days.  3 more episodes to go, then I can join the masses in complaining about the end of the story.

Starting In The Deep End

I did indeed end up tanking something with Dingle.  We did a guild run of 10-man Naxx.  An achievement run, to do The Dedicated Few, where you have to defeat most of the bosses (apart from the Four Horsemen) with only 8 people.  Talk about trying to fly before you can walk.

All I can say is that our healers are awesome.  And I only occasionally failed (such as a death to a soft-enraged Patchwerk), thanks to an equally awesome main tank (who kept me from looking foolish, especially on the AoE trash pulls).  Of all the bosses, we only have Four Horsemen, Sapphiron and Kel’Thuzad left to clear; we called it after a single attempt at the Horsemen, as we need another couple of people (at least one more healer) for that (and it was ridiculously late, especially by NZ time).

But I managed to get not only two straight upgrades (new shoulders and leggings), but also a couple of items (another pair of shoulders and leggings) towards a DPS set that may possibly get some use when dual-specs go live.  I crafted a set of frost-resist gear as well, for when we go back to Sapphiron, so I’m pretty much set for the rest of the run.

I think I need to start running heroics, though, if I want to get Dingle geared up any further; there’s only so many more Naxx runs left before we get Ulduar to explore, and there’s a few toys I can still pick up from heroics before then.

For now, though?  Time for dailies.

Making It Onto The Sons of Hodir Christmas Card List

I’ve spent the last couple of days getting healer Fingle and rogue Ringle honoured with the Sons of Hodir for the rare shoulder enchants (namely this and this), and warrior Dingle will be next on the list today, provided there are enough Relics of Ulduar in the auction house to get her up to honoured (and provided they’re cheap enough).

It’s actually not that hard to get to honoured – perhaps only three or four days worth of questing and dailies, when you’re starting from scratch in the Storm Peaks. The first stage is completing the quests from K3, the neutral goblin camp at the south of the zone. Then comes the quests that unlock Brunnhildar Village up the mountain to the north. Then (after the truely awesome quest, The Drakkensryd) you get to run a number of quests for Thorim which lead you to the Sons of Hodir, and several more unlockable dailies. All told, Dingle alone made something over 800G from quest rewards and vendoring trash.

Sadly the gold didn’t last very long, as a large proportion of it has been spent gearing people up, with epic crafted belt and shoulders for Ringle, and a shiny new gun for Dingle to replace the old TBC equivalent. Enchants and gems were also applied where necessary (although I still need to make some leg armour for Dingle).

I think next up will be trying to get some heroics happening to continue the process (albeit easy heroics in Dingle’s case – her gear and my inexperience rules out running anything really challenging at this point). And while I’m waiting for that to come together? Well, there’s always the cooking dailies to finish…

Juggling hit for fun and profit.

Another raid night completed (and all the 25-man content finished for the week), and for a change I’ve picked up an upgrade for Mingle.  Now, getting new gear is the easy part; juggling stats to best effect is the tricky bit.

Now Mingle is already very well geared, so upgrades are very far between at this stage; basically 10- and 20-man Malygos drop an item each, and 25-man Kel’Thuzad drops a couple more items.  But winning Leggings of the Wanton Spellcaster gave me enough extra hit that I’ve been able to drop two pieces of +Hit gear and replace them with more effective items.

Old gear: Total 156 Int, 101 Spirit, 73 Crit, 766 Spellpower, 77 Hit, 41 Haste

• Valorous Pants of Faith with Brilliant Spellthread, a Runed Scarlet Ruby and a Potent Monarch Topaz
• Haunting Call with +63 Spellpower
• Surplus Limb

New gear: Total 177 Int, 83 Spirit, 85 Crit, 758 Spellpower, 82 Hit, 66 Haste

• Leggings of the Wanton Spellcaster with Brilliant Spellthread
• The Impossible Dream with +50 Spellpower
• Accursed Spine

Aggregate change: +21 Int, –18 Spirit, +12 Crit, –8 Spellpower, +5 Hit, +25 Haste (And once I get the upgraded weapon enchant, that will turn the Spellpower deficit into a bonus)

But the fun thing was juggling gear to get the best overall bonus.  For Shadow Priests, the best resource for gear comparisons I’ve come across would have to be the “Best Raiding Gear Available” list on shadowpriest.com.  Admittedly it does take some practice to work out how best to interpret the list for you and your gear options, but once you’ve got a grasp of it, it makes things a little easier to work out if gear item A is much better than gear item B.

As far as future upgrades go, that leaves a helm to replace Faerlina’s Madness (which really is pretty average, compared to the items which just haven’t been dropping for me), the trinket from Sarth, the cloak from Sarth with 2 Drakes, the ring from Kel’Thuzad, the healer mace also from Kel’Thuzad, and the chest from 10-man Malygos for its +Hit.

But it’ll be another week until I get to pray to the god of RNG, and hope that items I want will drop, and that I’ll be able to win them.  Oh well, back to my alts until the raids reset…

Too much of a good thing?

One of the things you get used to, when you have multiple alts at (roughly) the same level of progression, is doing dailies multiple times. The one that comes up as regular as clockwork for me would have to be the cooking daily.

Now, I currently have six characters (I won’t refer to OCD if you won’t) who get to do this each day and (apart from the inevitable issues that ensue from trying to do it when Dalaran is crowded) it's actually not that bad. The only down side would have to be trying to decide what to actually use all the Dalaran Cooking Awards for.

With only two useless cosmetic feasts (the Small Feast and Gigantic Feast respectively) providing skill-ups above 425 cooking, the grind to level high-end cooking is currently pretty awful (although patch 3.1 is going to go a long way towards fixing that, at least in theory). I do try to keep at least a full stack each of Great Feasts and Fish Feasts on Mingle for raiding, but that doesn’t require very many spices (and is easily provided by the contents of the Small Spice Bag from the cooking daily reward).

I also tend to keep a stack (divided into four stacks of 25) listed on the AH, which gives bank alt Pringle an extra 140G or so every few days, but the market doesn’t really support any more than that – at least, not without having the price drop unpleasantly.

Fortunately the awards don’t take up bag space, so it’s safe to just let them accumulate (which they’re doing very effectively – they appear to breed so effectively Tribbles would be jealous).

But when it comes down to it, I think I’m just grumbling about nothing – they don’t take much time, don’t take up bag space, and do provide an additional (small) source of income. Just wait until we get the patch 3.1 fishing changes and new dailies, though. Then I’m sure I’ll have something to really complain about.

Or at least, something to compete with the cooking awards for bag space. I can hardly wait.

Who/Where/What?

A good place to start would be “I am Dwarf; Fear me!”

Admittedly it’s an inaccurate place to start – my PvP skills are sadly lacking, and I’m very much PvE-focussed, so there’s not much to fear if you’re not a mob – but it’s a fun place to pretend to be. And in all accuracy, it should be “I am Dwarves. Fear Us.” The picture’s an old favourite, though, from my first experiences as a raider - albeit not the brightest crayon in the box (I mean, a raiding rogue specced combat maces?).

Anyway, back to the questions at hand. Who am I, what am I doing here, where exactly is ‘here’?

First, Who. I’m KiwiRed, your (usually) gracious host. I’m from sunny (well, today it is) Christchurch, in New Zealand. (It’s kind of like Australia, but without the deserts and assorted poisonous wildlife)

I’m a life-long gamer, and first dabbled in the early days of computer gaming with a Sinclair ZX-81 hooked up to a black and white TV. All I’ll say about that (rather stressful) period of my life is that the practice of spending an hour typing in a game from one of the imported computer magazines that featured games you could type in, only to lose it all when you accidentally touched the wobbly 16kb memory expansion module (the machine only had 1KB as default) causing it to reset the computer and wipe all your effort, was character-building. And gave me a head-start when Windows became popular.

A little later I graduated to an Amstrad CPC 464, which was a marvel (to my young eyes). Not only did it possess 64KB of memory, it was also wonderfully free of wobbling ram modules. (I still remember Roland In Time very fondly)

A Commodore 64 followed, at a later date, with much more gaming of all descriptions. It was also my first (very brief) introduction to BBSes at the time, but due to the cost (and lack of speed – 300-baud modems were very much not the fastest of beasts) it wasn’t something I was able to explore to any real extent.

I dabbled a little with various consoles for a while, but before too long, I picked up my first IBM PC-compatible pc. While it doesn’t sound like much now, the 486DX4-100 was pretty grunty (to put not too fine a point on it) at the time. Sure, it was second-hand. And was actually upgraded from a 386. But to a technophile like myself, it was shiny and new, the two most important criterion for a new gadget*.

Many small upgrades later, I’ve gone from my humble 486 to a slightly heftier system which can run pretty much any game you’d care to mention (and the ability to use three monitors is truely blissful).

But I digress. (I’ll probably do it a lot – feel free to call me on it, if I get carried away)

I’ve been playing WoW since Christmas Day of 2005, when I splashed out on a copy as a gift for myself. Many characters came and went before TBC was launched, and the furthest I progressed at the time was an Undead Rogue who peaked at level 47.

I re-rolled a Dwarf Rogue on Dath’remar, and Pringlerouse was born. (Sadly the oldest screenshot I have is from 2007, with 44 days played on him, so no ‘baby photos’ to show off – which might actually be a good thing, considering)

Next up was a hunter, after some curiousity about how easy they would be to level. And Kringlelouse came into being. (And yes, it was very easy.)

Dinglemouse was next, in an effort to do my part about the great Dath’remar tank shortage of the time. Sadly, I never really tanked much after hitting 70, as she was just too under-geared compared to my guildmates – there’s no holding aggro when you’re wearing mostly blues, and the dps are in T5.

After a while, I was curious about what it would be like to play a rogue with the BoP crafted items from Blacksmithing and Leatherworking. Being unwilling to give up the investment I’d made in Pringle (who had maxed out Enchanting and Jewelcrafting), Ringleprouse and quickly leveled her to 70, and she replaced Pringle as my main. (Pringle had only made a couple of tentative ventures into Gruul’s Lair, and retired into much profit as a bank alt.) Ringle was my main for the remainder of TBC, and experienced everything up to Felmyst in pre-3.0 Sunwell.

Mingledouse was next, an experiment to see what it was like to level a priest. (And it was indeed very easy, especially when she was respecced as Shadow). After a false start with the Wrath launch, where I first leveled Ringle to 80 before decided I wanted a change from playing a rogue main, and a second false start when I leveled Dingle to 80 before realising that the guild was already tank-heavy (and I’d not get enough raiding time to make it worth the effort of gearing her up), Mingle was next to 80 and became my Shadow Priest of Inconvenient Doom.

The desire to complete the set (which is to say, a Dwarf of each class – just don’t ask me about Death Knights) led to rolling Binglerouse, my paladin (who is currently retired at 70 in Ironforge.) She was easy and quick to level as Prot, but it felt like it took forever.

The next was Tingleflouse, my druid and token non-Dwarf**. She reached 30 before I heard something that derailed her progress, and led to another dwarf leveling spree.

Finglethouse is last in my character list, another priest. This was due to a guildie making the comment “You’d have to be insane to level another priest.” Some challenges are impossible to resist. She hit 80 a few days ago, leveling as discipline pretty much the entire way. (As an aside, I love the Bind on Account items – they make gearing up leveling characters a lot less expensive)

I’m currently raiding on Mingledouse, and doing pretty well for myself. My guild has cleared everything to date, including Sartharion with 3 drakes up, and we’re now trying to get 6-minute Malygos for Heroic: You Don’t Have An Eternity and The Immortal.

So that’s “Who” and “Where” covered, at least in passing, so it’s time for “What.” My initial plan is to delve into the murky world of addons, with set-up guides, reviews and tips about both established ones and some new or novel ones that I may stumble across. Discussion of various classes may also randomly occur (possibly more priest-centric though, with that being the class I raid with), and the things that trip you (or me) up when you have a number of alts to keep you busy.

For now, though, I think it’s time to hit “Submit” and start deliberating on what my next post will involve. Possibly kittens. Or configuring Chatter.

/wave

*. Some would argue that there is a third criterion, that it should be too expensive. Usually this definition comes from the spouse or parents of the technophile in question.

**. If Dwarves could roll additional classes I would be very very happy.