Rumours Of My Demise

…have been greatly mistaken.  Rumours of my laziness, however, have been right on target.

Post soundtrack: “Still Alive” from Portal

It was nice taking a break from writing and just levelling up my shiny new gnome rogue, but I guess enough is enough, time to get back to it.  So hello again, I’m back and…  well, still lazy.  But I’ve managed to level a character to 80 who isn’t a dwarf, which is something of an accomplishment.

Meet Pringle, mutilate rogue.  Although still under-geared (she’s only been 80 for a couple of days, after all), she’s well up to the task of taking names and kicking errant posteriors.  (Incidentally, I discovered this wonderful collection of rogue levelling tips after Pringle hit 80 – my timing is, as always, superb)

Today she managed to finagle her way into both VoA-10 and VoA-25, and performed to an admirable standard for someone who was (at the time) still wearing 7/8 pieces of crafted blue PvP gear.  In fact she managed 3.2k dps in 25-man, and 3.3k in 10-man.  Sure she was only in 16th place in the meters for the 25-man, but for such low-level gear I’d say she’s right on track to definitely not suck.  (On a side note, it’s the first time I’ve been in there since before Toravon joined the throng in there – that would have to be the most underwhelming boss fight I’ve seen)

I’ve also been doing a few battlegrounds (in between LFD heroics) and a couple of Wintergrasps, and Pringle’s now not only wearing two pieces of T9 (shoulders and gloves) but also has the relentless PvP boots (saving for a PvP cloak next).  It’s proving pleasantly fast to earn badges, and the honor from running random battleground is also not bad (apart from Strand of the Ancients, which I find to be even less fun than I remember WSG ever being – oddly enough, I’ve yet to have WSG come up so far).

I’m undecided about what to do next – continue gearing Pringle up as an intellectual exercise (with no idea of whether there any raids in her future), or move on to levelling my other priest or my shaman.  However, after the length of time I spent with Pringle, it’s a lot more tempting to put together the badges to buy heirloom gear before much levelling is likely to occur.

I’ve also been pleasantly surprised by the lack of drama in the LFD dungeons I’ve run through – no loot drama, and players who are new to a dungeon have been open to explanations of fights and suggestions on how best to get to the end.  But then thanks to the way LFD assembles groups I suspect I’m the notional under-geared nub who’s supposed to get carried by the other, much better equipped and more experienced players.

I’m tempted to start looking for a guild to join, as I’ve been feeling nostalgic about raiding after remembering back to my old Tempest days after writing my previous post about the changes coming to Cataclysm raids, but the difficulty in finding a suitable guild along with the possible (probable?) cost of character transfers if it requires moving server are quite discouraging. 

But I guess at the root of it, I’m just afraid that Tempest was a case of the right group of people at the right time, and isn’t something that is likely to reoccur.  (Hopefully that’s just me being pessimistic)

On the off-chance that one of my readers know of a mature (I’m not looking for drama) yet easy-going guild (ideally professional in their approach to raiding) which is either looking for a disc priest (I’m only average as Shadow, and was pretty dire at holy for the brief period I was an involuntary holy priest in early ICC) or a rogue (currently Mutilate, but raided as combat-swords back in TBC from TK/SSC into early Sunwell) on Dath’Remar-US (where most of my older characters are) or Argent Dawn-US (where I’ve been lately), drop me an email.

For now, though, I’m just taking it easy.  Gearing up is (still) kind of fun, but I can’t help but wonder if somewhere out there is a group of people who need me but just don’t know it yet.

/wave

They See Me Trollin’, They Hatin’.

Time for a change of pace.  After my recent…  failure to perform, I decided to take a couple of weeks off (just doing daily transmutes and making the various cloths on my tailor).  Well, time’s up.  I’ve decided to dust off one of my sadly-non-dwarven horde-side alts while I get back into the swing of things.  (I’m looking at getting returning to Mingle with 3.3, but that could be anything from a week to a month away yet) 

So, meet level 40 Troll Rogue, Dinglemouse the first.  Yes, my first named characters were in fact horde-side.  (There’s also an Undead Mage named Kringlenouse, but he’s only level 29, and a level 47 Undead Rogue named Ringleflouse on another server also gathering dust)

The first thing I did, of course, was to visit the barber.  (I think that’s what happens when you revisit a long-retired toon:  you look at it, and go “What the heck was I thinking - that haircut (or hair colour, or skin colour, or tusks) looks awful!”)  The second, of course, was to go pay for riding training.

After that, of course, I had to go kill turkeys.

I’m not sure where I’ll go next – it’s been a long time since I’ve been out in the field on a non-dwarf, and even longer since I’ve done any horde-side quests.  Perhaps this is the “something new” that’ll let me re-kindle my love for the game – or at least, to get me playing again in preparation for 3.3, and an eventual return to raiding on priest Mingle.

But there’s one thing that’s certain:  there’s still life in this old game – it’s the 5 year anniversary of WoW at the moment, and in just under a month it’ll be my personal 4 year anniversary of starting the game.

Now to find the Undercity flightmaster: there’s exploring to be done!

/wave

I Want Patience And I Want It Now

Like many others, I’ve been following the announcements at Blizzcon about what to expect with both Cataclysm and the much closer Icecrown patch.  All I can say is summed up in the title of this post.

Bearing in mind that what was announced was (in the case of the expansion) very much open to change between now and release (the closest they’ve come to a date has been “targeted for a 2010 release date” (as mentioned here), there’s not really anything they’ve said that I’m not interested in seeing.  Between the class changes (yay, more Dwarves!), leveling in the new old Azeroth, the new profession and Paths of the Titans, guild experience and leveling, and ranked battlegrounds, there' will not only be plenty for level 80s to do when the expansion launches but there will also be a lot of appeal to level new characters from scratch.

But that’s a long way off – and patience was never a strong suit for me.

The Icecrown information looks interesting, though, but the downside for me is having to endure the Coliseum raid for a couple more months – I’m seriously not looking forward to the hard-modes.

Icecrown Citadel – Raid

• The dungeon will have 4 different floors.
• There will be 12 "Epic" boss encounters.
• There will be an epic cinematic for defeating the Lich King.
• Waypoints from Ulduar are being used in this instance.
• Sindragosa, the ultimate Frost Wyrm is one boss in Icecrown.
• The Spire with the frozen throne on top runs through the entire instance.
• At one point you will board an airship with your faction leader, and race the opposing faction to the top of icecrown.
• There are cannons and rocketpacks and catapults to aid you in your battle with the opposing faction.
• The 3rd floor has 3 wings.
• Parts of the platform on the 4th floor with the Lich King will break apart and fall during the encounter.

Icecrown Citadel – Dungeon

• There are three different wings in this dungeon.
• You must progress through the wings linearly.
• An "epic" quest series unlocks the wings.
• 8 bosses in total

On a more personal note, I think I’ll stop with my glyph sales reports after this week’s one; I’ve proven to my satisfaction that not only is Inscription profitable, it’s consistently so.  And to be quite honest, it’s almost turning into bragging, so I think it’s time is done.

For the seven days from 17th August – 23rd August:
Total glyphs sold: 1882
Average price per glyph: 10.37g
Average sales per day: 2787.71g
Total income from the AH: 19,514g

Let’s compare that with my first report:

For the seven days from 21st June – 28th June:
Total glyphs sold: 622
Average price per glyph: 9.74g
Average sales per day: 865.86g
Total income from the AH: 6061g

I have to say, I love being fiscally self-sufficient, and the process has become a lot easier to manage compared to when I first started.  And, if I can do it, there’s little to stop anyone else from doing so.  (Other than the ability to come up with a system, to manage their time effectively, and to pony up with the gold to get stock to start with.)

Moving on, I’m looking at the possibility of un-retiring paladin Bingle from bank-alt services, and getting her to 80.  I’m also looking at the possibility of giving a Death Knight another try.  The biggest issue I’m finding is that I’m running out of character slots – 10 sounds like lots, but if you’re as serious about high-level alts as I am, they disappear pretty quickly.

I currently have 6 level 80s, one 70 bank-alt, and the 35 druid bank-alt – Snowfall, my Blood Elf hunter, has been removed from my roster in order to free up her slot, as the BE aesthetic was just too unappealing to level her any further (that darned matchstick).  That leaves 2 free slots on this server, and while I’ll have the Dwarven shaman and mage to make space for, that’s quite possibly a year off.  For now I’ve rolled my DK (I’m sure I’ll introduce you to Ninglethouse, eventually), and my current plan is to level her to 70, then decide who to take to 80 first between her and Bingle.

But errands await, and I think it’s time to put off making today’s glyphs in order to get some more PvP time on Pringle.  (I’ll probably put together a Rogue’s starter PvP gear post sometime soon)

/wave

Nothing Beats A Vacation

Well, maybe chocolate does, but other than that vacations are great.  Taking a break from 25-man raiding is proving to be very enjoyable, even if it means listening on vent to everyone else raiding (and collecting their epic loots) without me.

I’ve dabbled a little, taking Mingle in for a couple of 10-man Ulduar achievement runs (and picked up a fourth T8 piece for that very nice shadow priest set bonus), but I’ve probably spent more time out of WoW than in it (apart from some extended periods spent fishing and herbing).  Mingle is also sporting a new haircut, to try minimise the really blatant clipping that the priest T8 head has with most hairstyles.  (I find it quite annoying, but I guess it’s the price you pay for being fashionable)

Speaking of herbalism, it’s proving to be surprisingly profitable on Snowfall who has just reached the dizzying heights of level 13; the small assortment of beginning-zone herbs she’s picked and put on the AH (along with some Small Eggs, which are ridiculously profitable) have raised her bank balance to 15g already.  Needless to say, this has clearly demonstrated (to me, at least) that if I ever have the desire to make a clean start on a server, gold won’t be too much of a problem.

Snowfall has finally completed the starting zone quests, and is ready to begin exploring Ghostlands (unless I get distracted again).  It’s quite a change of pace, as the starting zone I usually run is solely the Gnome/Dwarf area.

It’s just unfortunate how…  anorexic the Blood Elf character models are.  The animations are really quite lovely, but the models themselves are personally rather unappealing.  I’m undecided whether to continue leveling her or if I should try rerolling a race that has a bit more substance to it.  (I guess it says something about my aesthetics that I find the dwarves most visually appealing – apart from their really awful dances, of course)

Kringle is facing the possibility of some time spent pet-levelling, and I’m keeping an eye open for a spirit beast (Gondria would be awesome, although it’s me and pretty much every other hunter looking for him).

I’m following with some interest the new addon manager from WoWInterface:  Minion looks interesting, but the early bugs have left me wary of trying it out for now, especially with the large list of addons I run (rough estimate of around 135 or so, between all my characters, including class-specific ones).  But I’ll probably be giving it a try when it’s a little more mature, and the addon-identification bugs have been stomped into submission.

Finally, I’m currently battling an old keyboard, having celebrated a return to drinking coffee by spilling some of my first cup in almost six months on my lovely Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000, leaving it with several unresponsive keys.  I’m now looking at buying a keyboard protector and hoping I don’t have to buy a new keyboard (although fortunately the 4000 isn’t a hard model to find) to protect – with luck it’ll be possible to clean the spill off the traces inside the keyboard, but my initial disassembly and examination has left me uncertain about it.

And on the subject of buying stuff, I was reminded of an young-adult fantasy novel from my youth while browsing the comments of a post on Welcome to Spinksville!  As someone who’s ready prolifically all my life, the thought of revisiting fiction from my past is quite appealing, and in that spirit not only have I ordered a copy of So You Want To Be A Wizard by Diane Duane, but I’m also getting a copy of Next of Kin by Eric Frank Russell from a local speciality bookstore.  (Yay for literacy!)

For now, though, time to get a couple of dailies done before 10-man General Vezax.

/wave

Meet The Family

For those who are curious about the motley crew of my characters, this post is for you both.  (Presented in no particular order, with the possible exception of ‘Chronological’)

First up is Pringlerouse the rogue.  When I finally decided to settle on this server (my highest level character previously was an undead rogue who managed to get all the way up to the dizzying heights of level 46 pre-TBC), I rolled a dwarf rogue to have something more aesthetically pleasing to play that I could use my existing knowledge with.  Needless to say, I was an utter nub when I started playing Pringle.  (Some mean-spirited yet accurate individuals may claim that not much has changed, and who am I to argue?)  After losing his status as my main to Ringle, it was entertaining to refer to him as my bankrogue or my level 70 bank alt.

Kringlelouse the hunter was the next to be created, as I was curious about the rumour that hunters were incredibly easy to level.  70 levels later, I had to agree.  Having just reached 80 on him, I think they’re still easy to level, but it is easier when your pet is the same level as your hunter.  On the subject of pets, all of his pets are called Tanstaafl; it’s a literary reference, and it’s easier than remembering multiple names.  (Note to self: level Kringle’s pets)

Dinglemouse the protection warrior followed, as I was intent on doing my part to relieve the great tank shortage at the time.  After hitting 70, and running Mechanar with guildmates, I realised that a newly leveled (and undergeared) warrior had no chance of tanking for dps classes wearing T6 at the time.  But I kept her around, and she was my second character to reach 80.  She was also my first female dwarf character, in reaction to all the references I heard about how rare they were.

Ringleprouse the rogue was next, as I wanted to play a rogue with all the nifty crafted epics that TBC gave us.  However, Pringle had a lot of enchanting and jewelcrafting recipes that I didn’t want to lose.  The logical decision (for someone with way too much time on his hands) was to level a second rogue.  This I did, and this character was my raider for all of the T5 and T6 content in TBC.  She was also my first to reach 80.

Mingledouse the priest came next, with the idea (at the time, during TBC) to level her as a healer to help out with guildmates needing to do heroics.  However, after Wrath launched, it was suggested that we needed a shadow priest to fill out our 25-man raid group, so I finished bringing her up to 80, geared her up in the best crafted gear I could managed, and the rest as they say is history.

Binglerouse sort of snuck in while I wasn’t looking, basically because a paladin was the single dwarf class I didn’t have at the time.  She was fairly easy to level, but I’ve yet to get around to bringing her to Northrend.  (I’ve no idea what spec I’d make her – she leveled as prot, which felt painfully slow yet was my fastest to reach 70)

Tingleflouse the druid was my solitary, token non-dwarf (it’s hard to get more opposite to a dwarf than a night elf), and was created with the tentative idea of making her my primary gatherer (as flight form works very well with mining and herbalism).  However, I was distracted around the time she hit 30.  She’s still 30, and still sitting in Ashenvale, waiting for me to regain some degree of enthusiasm.  (Maybe when Blizz finally brings out those mythical new druid forms)

Finglethouse the priest was that distraction, mainly due to someone on Vent (who obviously didn’t know me that well) making the comment “You’d have to be insane to level another priest.”  8 days, 17 hours and 19 minutes /played later, my second priest dinged 80.  (She was leveled 100% disc spec, which felt a lot slower and mana hungry than Mingle did leveling as shadow, but she got there)

The last character on the selection screen is someone quite new (and a bit out of character for me, not being a dwarf and all).  Meet Snowfall, the blood elf hunter.  This is something of an experiment to see how easy it is to level a character without the resources that I’ve been able to give my dwarves as they leveled (such as gold and gear), relying solely upon herbalism and enchanting for additional income.  It’s off to a good start; she has over 9G already at level 11.  I’ve no idea how long or how often I’ll play her, or even if she’ll get out of the blood elf starting zones, but she’s something different to do on those many occasions where I’m bored.  (As an aside, Blizz have really improved their animating skills since vanilla WoW – blood elves move beautifully.  It’s a pity they look like anorexic matchsticks.)

I did briefly try leveling a death knight, but the runic power thing just didn’t make any sense to me.  It was tempting to level one to 80 just to say I’d done it, but “bankdk” doesn’t have the same ring to it as “bankrogue”.

And that’s my extended family of characters.  It’s nice to meet you.

/wave

A Noble Compulsion.

Well, Mingle finally has the Noble Gardener achievement under her belt (although I did stay up until after 3am to complete it).  I had to farm a hundred chocolates to buy the Spring Rabbit for the last achievement I required.

I guess that’s the compulsive side of my nature shining through.

My time spent fishing has finally gifted one of my characters (Mingle again – she’s having all the luck) with something new in the reward bag, namely a Strand Crawler.  It’s nifty and all, but I’m still hanging out for a new fishing rod.  And we still have no idea where those fancy fishing bobbers come from, or when they may become available.  Bah.

Raiding has made some more slow progress – we downed the Assembly of Iron last night, and started working on Auriaya whose cats proceeded to shred us repeatedly.  We finished the night with kills of the two Vault of Archavon bosses, which I found surprisingly frustrating due to my desire to be tanking, not just dps.  Unfortunately (for me, in this case) our GM doesn’t do alt runs unless there are very special circumstances*, which there weren’t last night.

Sad to say, I’m finding raiding on my shadow priest is unsatisfying and the desire to change is growing.  Perhaps it’s just the whole “Grass is greener” thing; I might see if I can have a word with an officer about it, anyway, so they’re aware of my dissatisfaction (even if there isn’t much that can be done about it).  I’m not sure if it’s role-burnout or just me being difficult – time will tell, I suspect.

It’s kind of disappointing that our 10-man raids have failed to come together this week – I really want to get Dingle into Ulduar, and see if I’m geared enough to progress in there.

Mingle and Dingle have both completed their second exalted champion grinds with the Tournament, and will be starting on their third today.  Their seals were invested in a Mechanopeep and a Dun Morogh Cub, which have been surreptitiously listed in the neutral auction house for ridiculous sums of gold, with a view to funding Dingle’s chopper fund.  Fingle will be on her third and final day of aspirant status, starting her Ironforge valiant training today (if I don’t get distracted).

Well, dailies await (not least of which is more fishing in Wintergrasp for the fishing daily).

/wave

* – Raiders Alts + Farmed Content = Trauma + Fail.  (If you’ve been in that position, you’ll probably sympathise)

Fishing Makes Everything Better.

Even Lake Wintergrasp yesterday, where I spent almost 100 minutes fishing in a rather contented manner.

That’s what I caught in that time, thanks to one glow worm and four sharpened fish hooks.  And on top of that, from the clams, I scored 9 northsea pearls and a siren’s tear.  All in all, I’d call that a pretty good haul.  It was actually pretty enjoyable (other than being killed twice by horde players who obviously don’t fish); I just put on some good music (first was the self-titled album by Genesis from 1983, and after that was a collection of Crowded House tracks) and kicked back (in a manner of speaking).  All I needed was a floppy hat and a beer.

I’ve now got 5 fishing toons, having brought Pringle back into the fold (it was fun getting him to the central flight path in Sholazar Basin), and Kringle might join in the fun today if I have the time (I checked and found I’d done some fishing on both characters, so it’s not quite the grind of starting from 0).  I also scored a Porcelain Bell from Mingle’s fishing reward yesterday, which has the virtue of vendoring for 100g.  Still no fishing rods (or Sea Turtle), but there’s always tomorrow.

We didn’t have the numbers for either guild 10-man Ulduar last night – the main group didn’t get enough healers, and the secondary group just didn’t get enough sign-ups.  Disappointing.

Fingle has started doing the Tournament dailies, with an eye towards getting a replacement to the BoA mace she’s still wielding at level 80.  Kringle’s still waiting to be levelled.  And re-talented.

I’m also finding my aggregate gold total going up, thanks to multiple characters doing dailies – much more of this and I might find myself getting around to giving one of my characters dual-specs.  It might actually be interesting to do it with Fingle, and see how hard it is to gear up a second shadow-priest (mostly) from scratch, with a backup set of gear for disc.

Lastly, I’ve been reading this fascinating article on WoWInsider that delves into the differences between 10-man and 25-man loot in Wrath, and why the difference may be necessary to keep 25-man raiding viable.  Have a look here if you’re interested.

(Oh, and I might finally be able to remember how to correctly use an apostrophe, thanks to this)

For now?  Addons are updated (again), so it’s time to be endailyfied.

/wave

Perseverance. We Has It.

It took 15 tries, but we finally got Kologarn down last night.  (Personally, I think he died because he felt sorry for us)

I’ve also come across some wonderful daily news – you remember how I thought the cooking and jewelcrafting dailies had been changed to require level 80?  Well, it turns out it was a bug.

The level requirement for the following quests has been appropriately set to level 65: Shipment: Wicked Sun Brooch, Infused Mushroom Meatloaf, Mustard Dogs!, and Cheese for Glowergold.

Kringle and Pringle can go back to earning their keep.  (Hurrah!)

Did anyone ever play the Bejeweled addon for WoW?  I introduced it to my guild while we were progressing through Mount Hyjal and Black Temple, and it was entertaining to get the achievement messages from the most unlikely players while we raided (and sometimes at the most unexpected moments).  Anyway, they (PopCap Games) have released a new one:  Peggle.  (I can’t wait to see my guilds response to this one)

Three more days of Tournament dailies, and both Mingle and Dingle will have their second faction raised to Champion (Stormwind for Mingle, due to her choice to only ride horses, and Gnomeregan for Dingle because an engineer will only ride a Mechanostrider – until you can joust on a chopper).  Incidentally, I’m getting quite good at the mounted combat now – defeating the four champions is almost a one-shot thing.  I’m also able to down the Boneguard Commander for Battle Before The Citadel single-handedly (provided I don’t pick up any scouts when I pull, or while I kite him).

Hopefully I’ll find out if we’re running a second Ulduar 10-man group tonight – signups for it haven’t been very comforting so far, so it’s still up in the air.  On a related note, I took Dingle in for 10-man Vault of Archavon last night, and we managed to one-shot Emalon this time – my performance was a lot better, apart from some hiccups taunting the replacement adds off a paladin who picked them up to kite towards me after we downed each charged one.  No T8 for me, although I did pick up the PvP chest from Archavon (which I can’t see myself using, to be honest).

For now though, ‘tis time to get a-dailying!

/wave

Yawn. No, Really.

I couldn’t get back to sleep (woke up at about 6am, after going to bed at 2am), so I figured I might as well get some dailies out of the way.  And guess what?  The fourth day of Blood Is Thicker in a row.

Ah well, you get that sometimes.  (But it would be nice to get something else for a change – I’ve done the dailies every day since 3.1 went live, and I’ve still only seen two of them)  I’ve started leveling fishing on Fingle as well, which gives me four characters to fish with.  Fortunately you’re able to do the fishing daily in Shattrath in addition to the Dalaran one, so I can keep myself in Sharpened Fish Hooks.

Ulduar-25 went better last night; after defeating the loot piñata that is Flame Leviathan (well, we downed him despite all the raiders who still don’t know how to do that fight – apparently we’re going to be organised when we do it next week), we then downed Razorscale (eventually – it took a few attempts), and I sat out for XT-002 Deconstructor.  We finished with Ignis (barely downing him before we over-ran our scheduled raid times).  Razorscale was generous, and gave me the Collar of the Wyrmhunter, which has allowed me to drop Haunting Call in favour of The Impossible Dream – the new +hit pieces are making it a lot easier to juggle that particular stat.  (The stats on it are nice, but some of these helms make me really glad I can set them to not display on my characters)

I’m hoping to get Dingle into the second guild 10-man group for Ulduar this week, but her comparative lack of gear may put her out of the running – Ulduar is really quite demanding of raiders, in that they need to be pretty solidly geared before it’s worth taking them in.  While she’s geared enough for Naxx25, Ulduar10 may be beyond her – or at least, her lack of gear may make her impossible to keep up.  I’ll have to see what happens come Friday.

For now, though, I’m going to finish the fishing dailies and see if I can get another couple of hours sleep – raiding and sleep deprivation aren’t a very successful combination.

/wave

No raid tonight? What to do?

So far I’m enjoying 3.1.  Ulduar is great, fishing is fun, new dailies are something different to do.  They’ve even added a direct flight route from Dalaran to Sholazar Basin.

I’ve had a play with the new boss in the 10-man Vault of Archavon on Dingle, and I’m sure it’s more fun to dps than it was to tank - I was designated add-tank, and it really was a tough fight for me; keeping aggro on the mobs I had was easy, but a very restricted camera angle made targeting respawned adds something of a challenge.  But we did manage to down the boss, and one of the druid’s in the group became the first in the guild to pick up a piece of T8.

We had another bash at Razorscale last night, and between the hotfixes (increasing the enrage timer to 10 minutes, and making the iron dwarf casters only do their chain lightning when stationary) and our increasing competence, we managed to get the boss down to 9% on our best attempt.  Admittedly we were caught off-guard by the enrage several times, as it’s not in the Deadly Boss Mods timers just yet, but it’s nice to be able to consistently get that far.

Out of curiosity I decided to put the fishing changes to the test, and picked up the fishing daily on Dingle, who was a fishing virgin at the time (with 0 points of fishing skill).  It took about 50 minutes (not including travel time back to Dalaran to train), but she caught the Ghostfish and had leveled to 142 fishing in the process.

The changes to the tailoring mount, the flying carpet, have made it as useful as a traditional mount now (they’ve removed the mount and dismount animations), so it’s been set as Mingle’s default mount – I’ve been waiting for this change, as I loved the look of it but the delay in mounting/dismounting grew very annoying, very quickly.  On a related note, if I can ever save up enough I’d love to get the Chopper for Dingle – what better mount for an engineer, after all?

One change that has disappointed me is that the Dalaran cooking dailies are now only available for level 80 characters; bankrogue Pringle and hunter Kringle will have to finish leveling before they can continue doing them.  (Curiously enough, the jewelcrafting dailies are still available for Pringle, who’s only level 75)

So I guess it’s time to put a little effort into leveling those two – I’ve respecced Kringle (beastmaster again, my favourite spec), and replaced his pet gorilladin with a turtle (now that Thunderstomp, which made the gorilla so useful, has been made available to all Tenacity pets).  I’ll fire up Jame’s Leveling Guide later and see how we do – Kringle is level 74, and is about half-way through Howling Fjord so far.

No more raids until Sunday, so I’ve plenty of time to play with my alts.  Should gain access to the next tier of Tournament quests with Dingle and Mingle today as well, so I’m getting closer to the shiny new mounts.  For now, though?  ‘Tis dailies time!

/wave

Busy, Busy Busy.

I had a pretty full-on afternoon (and evening) last night, and somehow managed to finish Naxxramas, Vault of Archavon and Malygos 10-man raids with Dingle.

Now, for an alt I think that’s pretty good. (At least, it is for my alts, the rest of whom aren’t getting out of Dalaran much) And the group worked pretty well, with quite a few one-shot bosses (including Gothik, who crushed last week’s group). I got to experience the terror of tanking both Kel’Thuzad and Malygos, but our DK tank had the death-of-boredom that is tanking Loatheb all to himself.

Tanking Sapphiron wasn’t that hard (having Dingle defence-capped in her frost-resist gear helped, I suspect), but KT was something of a challenge – originally the DK was tanking KT, but after a couple of wipes I inherited the position and he tanked the adds. It was tricky to fit both HS spam and frost bolt interrupts into the routine, and to move out of the things that appeared on the floor underneath me (at least, to get out of them without moving the boss too much – rotating around the boss slowly seemed to work) but I pulled it off (somehow).

Malygos was something of a shock to the system – in all my (short) time tanking, that’s the first time I’ve been seen my health dropping so drastically, so often and so quickly (no, Gluth doesn’t count). And I have a new respect for our 25-man Main Tank/Raid Leader, for being able to tank and watch for sparks and raid lead.

What I’ve learned from all this is that my tanking, while not as bad as some of the green-clad newly-80 DKs lurking in trade channel, still needs work. I was often rage-capped, and kept letting both my Sunder Armor stacks and battle shouts drop (when I remembered to put a shout up at all).

Fitting Heroic Strike spam into my rotation is tricky, and I’m definitely needing practice getting it all together a bit better. I also need to do a bit more research into the various battle shouts, to get a better idea of which to put up and when to do so. I will probably also have to put together more warnings in Power Auras to help keep track of whether a shout is up or not, although I should probably have a look to see if there are other ways to track them. (I’ll be sure to post my findings on here – if I don’t get sidetracked by new shiny toys and other distractions)

I have an empty ring in Opie that could be very useful for putting up short-duration buffs like battleshouts, but I think this is something I might have to get some advice with – I might see if I can have a word with our Guild Leader (who’s a very skillful prot warrior) and get some tips.

And the run didn’t leave me empty-handed – Dingle has finally picked up some T7, in the shape of shoulders and chest tokens, and Malygos blessed her with a shiny new shield.

Well, dailies are waiting for my participation, so I must get to it. But here’s an image of the fruits of yesterday’s labours.

/wave

Sometimes Your Best Just Isn’t Good Enough

Dingle has had another venture into the depths of Naxx-10, along with experiences with the Vault of Archavon in both 10- and 25-man flavours and the Obsidian Sanctum in 10-man.  While both VoA and OS turned out fairly well, the Naxx run clearly demonstrated that when your group is undergeared it can be a rather unforgiving.

The first part of the Naxx run, on Saturday night, wasn’t too bad – at least, not until we got stopped cold trying to down Grobbulus.  After 6 attempts where we had multiple problems with poison clouds being dropped in the middle of the raid, and some bad timing a couple of attempts with Dingle getting the injection debuff while attempting to pick up and tank the slime adds, we called it a night.  (We did manage to clear the Spider and Plague wings, and downed Patchwerk, so it wasn’t too bad.  Plus I managed to get the 50 Emblems achievement)

Last night we went back with a few less pug members and a few more guildmate alts, and apart from managing to get Razuvious down, failed miserably on the only two other bosses we could attempt after him.  We didn’t have anywhere near enough dps for Gothik (I was tanking the live side, and on our best attempt we only just managed to get down the last adds right before he spawned – the dead side didn’t do as well) or Grobbulus (I switched from tanking the slimes to tanking the boss, and it was an… interesting learning experience). Still, 60G in repairs isn’t that bad for a single emblem, is it?  Right?

However, Dingle needs many more emblems (and yet more loot) to finish gearing up before Ulduar, so I suspect I’ll have to brave the world of pugs again, regardless of whether I’m looking forward to it or not.

Perhaps I’ll get lucky, and get in with some groups who’re capable, competent, and well-geared.  Failing that, I guess I’ll find out if there’s any truth to the saying that suffering builds character - if I have a really well-built character by the time 3.1 goes live, this will be why.

/wave

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.

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…

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.