EQ2: The Ratonga Who Changed Her Spots

Post soundtrack: “7 Days to Change Your Life” by Jamie Cullum

Just an aside: I was going to write a “my first impressions” post about EQ2, but after finally finishing the series of betrayal quests I wanted to put something down in pixels about the experience while it’s still fresh in my mind.  So if you feel this post is skipping over stuff, well, it kind of is.  (I’ll try get the ‘prequel’ finished soon though, to try give this one some more context)

After getting a feel for the game, leveling a cute little Froglok to 20 on another server, I decided to give another species a try.  In keeping with my “trend of falling in love with anthropomorphic animals,” I decided to give a Ratonga a try.  (The fact I had a pet rat as a kid may have something to do with their appeal)

In keeping with my other trend, namely “How hard can I make things for myself?” I decided that not only was I going to play a rat, I was going to switch her to the side of all that is good and wholesome and pure and the like.  And having finished the grind, I think I’m in a good position to say “Ouch.”

First of all, let’s be quite honest about my motives: I’m never comfortable playing an “evil” character in an RPG.  In Fallout 3, I was the epitomy of heroism and all related virtues.  Ditto with Morrowind and Dragon Age.  In WoW I’m almost exclusively Alliance (although my dislike of the the aesthetic of the horde races, especially those awful anorexic blood elves, has some influence).

I was surprisingly comfortable being evil (or at least, evil-lite) as assassin Ringle played through the starting zone of Timorous Deep and reached the Sarnak city of Gorowyn.  The quests, while pretty straight-forward MMO fodder, had some interesting storylines that explored the very turbulent relationship between the Sarnak and the Spirocs, a race of bird-like humanoids who share the island. 

Eventually the plot within which the starter quests are framed has you contemplating whether the Sarnak will commit genocide in order to secure themselves from their opponents, giving you quests where you’re undermining the framework of Spiroc society – killing their food gatherers, and poisoning their un-hatched eggs.

Fortunately (for my peace of mind) you don’t take the final steps, and are summoned to Gorowyn where you speak with high-ranking NPCs who express concern that they do not wish to take such action, and thank you for all you have done on the part of the Sarnak.  (Indeed, you are given quests to meet with Spiroc ambassadors to try broker some manner of peace, but unfortunately they have been so badly brutalised by the conflict that initial efforts turn out to be unsuccessful.  Whether you’re able to do so later I don’t know.)

I was level 21 at this stage; my plan had been to reach 20 and start the betrayal questline to become a nice, friendly rat – the chain is initially available at level 10, but I wanted to spend a little more time being evil.  Anyway, I found I had to change my home city, as Gorowyn doesn’t have a betrayal chain.  So off to Freeport I went.

I’ll just take a moment here to comment on my experiences over the last couple of days, regarding travel between continents:  “Argh! Just Shoot Me Now!” sums it up fairly accurately, I believe.  I think the only thing I didn’t do wrong, was travel somewhere without first picking up the quest that I’d need to turn in when I got there.

I’ve been to the wrong city.  I’ve been to the wrong continent.  I spent so much time running back and forth (sometimes in the right direction, sometimes not) that Ringle’s boots have started earning frequent-flier miles.  And then I discovered that I could use druid circles and wizard towers to fast-travel between continents.  (I was aware of fast-travel via boat by now, but often had trouble finding the in-world item to use to access it)

So, my initial opinion of world travel in the game, especially in regards to new players?  /facepalm

Anyway, back to the betrayal of all my kind stand for.

I switched my citizenship from Gorowyn to Freeport, and I encountered a little piece of flavour/lore that set the scene for the location quite effectively.  Namely, I’d walk past city guards, and they would kick me and knock me off my feet.  Apparently it’s something justified by lore, but it’s really put me off the city in a major way, and made the decision to go through with the betrayal an easy one.  (Seriously, I’m normally a very even-tempered person, but that was really starting to get under my skin)

It was doing this chain where I really encountered the first problem with the online resources for EQ2 – often they weren’t timestamped, and the older resources were sometimes slightly (or in some cases, completely) out of date.  One example was this brief guide: A Ratonga’s guide for Freeport to Kelethin Betrayal

The basic details (such as they were) are accurate, and this was where I learnt about both Druid Circles and Wizard Spires as transport methods.  But the circles and spires are now usable without any need to discover them before you access them from other sites – reach one, and you have access to the entire network (yay!).  Other instances were when I was trying to find quest info for my initial character, doing the New Halas starting zone, and having my searches keep giving me results for quests of the same name that are no longer in the game.

Similar results have come from searching for guides (such as for tradeskills and classes), where mostly unusable information tops the search results.  Unfortunately it’s a case of search-and-verify, when looking for information.

And back, yet again, to Ringle’s blackheartedness.

The initial stage, becoming exiled from Freeport, was fairly straightforward.  After speaking with Ambassador Brutus, I worked through a 5-quest chain in Freeport that left me exiled, and a resident of Haven.

The second stage was the most time-consuming.  Eventually I managed to make my way from Haven, via Thundering Steppes, to Gil McMartin in The Commonlands (which was, amusingly enough) just outside Freeport.  There Ringle started the quests in the Qeynos Faction Timeline.

I decided to work through the bounty hunting quests first, as it was easier to find a single target in a zone than spend an hour looking for multiple unknown locations with a zone the was some of the sabotage quests appeared.  Once I worked out where I was going and how to get there, it was simply a matter of ‘Pick up the quest, run to the wizard spire, port to Antonica, set up waypoint, hit Stealth, and start running.’

The mobs you have to kill are scaled to your level, so they’re (mostly) not too hard – at least, not until #14, but I’ll get to him.  The first five are all in Antonica, although they’re all over the map.  Numbers six through eight are in Nektulos Forest, fortunately not too far from a wizard spire.  Nine and ten are in the Thundering Steppes.  Eleven and twelve were interesting – West and North Freeport respectively.  (I’m soooo glad Ringle has stealth)

Number thirteen was more difficult, as the zone the target is located in (Zek) is level 30-40, and the wizard spire is some distance from his location.  Needless to say, death occurred – Ringle’s.  Fortunately the target is a lot easier to reach when you travel by boat, which I tried next.  Then came number fourteen.  And he wiped the floor with me, and repeatedly.

After the last death, I decided to go back to ‘grinding’ the last few faction that I needed – luckily there’s a very easy, high-faction, quest that’s not too difficult.  After maybe half an hour running Extracting the Defector, Ringle reached ‘amiable’ and then it was off to Qeynos to do the final stages of the chain.

Now, I don’t know whose decision it was to have you start to prove yourself by picking up garbage off the main highway out of Qeynos, but it…  Well, it makes for an interesting start to the process.  The quest-giver describes it as an act of humility, which I guess is accurate.  Then you donate a gold to charity (it’s ok, they give you back a receipt that you can sell for about 85 silver), and it’s on to one last combat mission and ding! citizenship.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I can catch up on Ringle’s crafting – and see if I can pick up some dangling quest starters so she can get into the swing of things as one of these new-fangled hero people.

And maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to work out how to get there.

/wave

LFG Raiding Guild?

Well, that settles that…  Another week where the guild couldn’t field a full 25-man raid, and we’ve finally thrown in the towel as a 25-man progression raiding guild (after the officers relented after their initial decision to retire, and tried for two more months to keep us going).

I haven’t decided what I’m going to do – as a healer, 25-man raiding is just more fun.  10-man, while a good time-filler, doesn’t measure up for challenge or rewards (other than trinkets, in some cases).  Some guild members have considered trying to do 10-man raids, maybe also 10-man hard-mode ToC (which I haven’t been able to do – disc priest healing isn’t good enough), but I don’t really want to do anything less than 25-mans (although that’s possibly my contrary nature shining through).

Unfortunately, after the wonderful experience of this guild I’m not looking forward to starting over with another guild if I want to get back into another 25-man guild.  It not only means leaving behind the collection of weird and wonderful people in this guild, but also hoping I get lucky and the guild I join is a fun group to raid with.

At heart, though, I just feel sad.  With our GM planning on server-transferring in search of 25-man progression (possibly along with other members), it feels to me like we’re also losing the heart of the guild.  Sadly I’m about to hit a financial crisis of my own, so server transferring myself isn’t really likely anytime soon (and would be problematic, with my support network of alts and lack of experience as a healer).

/sigh

More Numbers and an Ex-God

You’d think the flu would end a lot more quickly, but nooooo.  Which isn’t to say I still have the flu, because I’m no longer contagious, but I’m still coughing.  Needless to say, I’m getting rather tired of the whole thing.  (cough)

Raiding with Mingle has progressed, and above me is exhibit A.  Meet the ex-old god, Yogg-Saron.  Of course, that’s the good news.  Now we’re going to be doing hard-modes in an attempt to reach Algalon.  (Sadly, I wasn’t blessed with any loot to commemorate the event, so I had to make do with a fleeting feeling of relief – it’ll be interesting to see how we do next week)  We followed that up with a 6-minute Malygos kill which was quite satisfying.

I’ve spent a bit of time on Dingle as well, running Naxx10 and some Ulduar10.  Naxx was as much of a pushover as you’d expect, but Ulduar was a tad more punishing.  (Just a tip:  The trash before the cat lady Auriaya can’t be 9-manned by alts – we had someone go afk to go to the dairy and buy some cigarettes who didn’t come back for over an hour, and we had to do something with our time.)

Also, PvP.  Yes, Dingle actually did a little, and even picked up a couple of the simpler achievements from it.  (She picked up the end of a fail AV, an AB, a couple of EotS, and the tail end of Wintergrasp)

The Midsummer Fire Festival has been and gone (yes it was very funny, celebrating summer in the middle of the southern hemisphere winter while I was sitting in front of a heater, wrapped up in multiple layers of clothing, sipping a hot cider vinegar and honey drink while recovering from the flu), and I mostly ignored it.  I did a little exploration while honouring/extinguishing fires to get Tingle some flightpoints and a little more xp (she’s currently in Southshore, sitting on level 35), but I didn’t spend much time on it with any other characters.  (My money is on the next in-game event being Northrend Children’s Week, which is apparently being introduced some time after the 3.2 patch goes live.)

Glyphs are continuing to treat me well, not to mention profitably.  I’ve switched from manually price-checking and listing them over to batch-posting, and the time it takes to post them all has more than halved (plus I can be afk while they go up).

Anyway, here’s the (100% batch-posted) numbers for last week:

For the seven days from 29th June – 5th July:
Total glyphs sold: 721
Average price per glyph: 8.88g
Average sales per day: 914.89g
Total income from the AH: 6404.22g

Remember those extra books of glyph master that I assumed I’d be able to resell for a profit?  Well, do you remember the saying about assumptions?  Needless to say, I suspect if I want to sell these anytime soon, I’ll have to eat a small loss on the deal.  On a more profitable note, I’ve sold about half of the decks I made for the Faire; I still have a handful to go, but I expect to have them sold before the faire moves on.

I’ve spent quite a bit of the proceeds already, on Runed Orbs to make a pair of Spiked Deathdealers for Dingle (which was a little cheaper than it would otherwise have been, thanks to Mingle being able to buy four orbs with Emblems of Conquest) and a Scroll of Blood Draining to put on Stoneguard, which dropped from Kologarn.  The crafted plate tanking belt from Ulduar is the next upgrade I have planned, but I’ll have to check if we have a blacksmith in guild who has the recipe.

After the mixed results from my minimal time spent tanking in Ulduar, my respect for Ulduar main-tanks who also lead their raids is substantial.  I had enough trouble keeping track of the things currently pummeling me, without keeping track of everyone else at the same time.  But on the positive side, I’ve managed to get an achievement on Dingle that my ‘official’ raiding character hasn’t managed yet:

Meet Flame Leviathan+2.

/wave

(cough)

One More Goal Down

Mingle is now fully T8 geared, which is…  well…  Actually, it’s not that much of an achievement, as it’s only the Valorous piece and anything over 4 pieces is of negligible value…  But it’s nice to have completed the set.  Well, kind of completed.  Completed enough?

The last item I needed for the set was the shoulders from 10-man Thorim, the Valorous Mantle of Sanctification.  Sure I’d prefer the Conqueror equivalent, but I don’t think we’re going to be downing 25-man Yogg-Saron any time soon.  (It’s not totally beyond the realm of possibility, especially with our talented now raiders, I just don’t think it’ll be happening without a lot of effort and substantial expenditure of time)

Other than this?  Well, it’s just more grind.  10-man progression is slowly coming along, with some success against Yogg-Saron last night.  25-man progression is…  Unexciting, on the whole.  We should be able to get General down tonight and spend time with 25-man Yogg-Saron.  If nothing else, we’ll get some solid experience getting out of the clouds.  And into the clouds.  And avoiding shadow-crashes.

But Fallout 3 is a great distraction.

/wave

Ding 80! (Again)

Kringle has finally reached the hallowed heights of level 80, which leaves Pringle, Bingle, and Tingle to go.  (Having said that, I’m considering replacing Tingle, the underplayed druid in my lineup, with a new character on the Horde side – at least it would be something different to do)

25-man raiding has progressed yet again, with General Vezax falling before us after a single (surprisingly focused) session.  It was actually quite a fun fight from my perspective, and it’s been a long time since I’ve used my wand so much.  However, we were having lots of issues with interrupt-capable players failing to, well, interrupt (even our raid leader, a very capable prot warrior, was having trouble with that for some reason).

With this in mind, I’ve finally purchased dual-spec for Mingle, and have put together two slightly newer shadow specs to play with.  The first one has 3 points in Shadow Affinity (for those painful times I’m called to do AOE, and am paranoid about fatal aggro-pulls), and is closest to the one I’ve been raiding with until now.  The second one is mostly the same, but drops the threat reduction for Silence (and its useless prerequisite, Improved Psychic Scream), for ranged interrupts in a pinch.  Admittedly the silence spec is a bit of a reach, especially with the 45-second cooldown on it, but I’m curious to see if it’s actually useful (especially when we’re having issues as we did last night).

Previous build: link
Shadow Affinity build (13/0/58): link
Silence build (13/0/58): link

It’s actually a little embarrassing to go back and look at my current spec, and to see the holes in it (such as only one point in Improved Shadow Word: Pain)…  Well, hopefully I can learn from it.

Hopefully we can get our act together next week, and reach Yogg-Saron again for more frantic wiping at the end of the first phase.  (Seriously, that transition is insane – which is quite appropriate, considering where you are)

I’m getting Kringle a little more geared up (mostly with crafted epics), after which I’ll either work on leveling Pringle or see about rolling this mythical Horde character I’m considering.  I just wish we had playable goblins.  Or murlocs.

/wave

Sometimes Less Is Enough

I went to start doing my Tournament dailies yesterday, and I realised they’d crossed that invisible line from “just another daily” to “sheesh, is it finished yet?”  Time to cut down, I think.  One character’s round of tournament dailies per day, or something like that.  (I currently have three champions, so you can imagine how much time I could put into it if I was of a mind to)

The two tournament pets I listed on the neutral AH failed to sell, so I reduced the price a little, and put them on the Alliance AH instead for 4000g each.  They sold that night.  Can you say Ka-ching!?

Dingle’s chopper is getting closer to fruition – I’m just girding my loins before transferring painfully large amounts of gold to her, in order to buy the remaining mats she needs to make it.

25-man progression is slow but steady – Thorim threw his hands up in despair and gave us his loot last night.  10-man progression is…  Well, I’m sure it’ll start for the second group any day now.  (It’s getting quite frustrating – we almost had enough people this week, just had some scheduling hiccups and a shortage of healers who weren’t saved to the first group’s run)

Fortunately my week has Star Trek to look forward to; it might alleviate my disappointment over the PvP Children’s Week achievement that I’m refusing to do.

Also stumbled across this thought-provoking item: Players > skill > gear?

Not in a hurry to log on today, so it’s time to watch a movie before logging on to start some dailies.

/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)

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

Time Flies When You’re Having Wipes

Well, after our first week raiding Ulduar, we’ve managed to down Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, and last night we (finally) got down XT-002 Deconstructor.  The night was finished off with Emalon in 25-man Vault of Archavon, to give some people a piece of T8.5.  In 10-man progression we also managed to kill Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, XT-002, Assembly of Iron, Kologarn, Auriaya, Freya, Thorim and Hodir.  A pretty full-on week for everyone involved.

Oh, and we might not have a screenshot of our XT-002 kill, due to an over-zealous engineer mining his body.  Whoops.

I have to say, the adjustment in 25-mans from Naxx to Ulduar is proving pretty painful.  This is especially evident after spending time in Ulduar in both 10-man and 25-man, as demonstrated by the differing progressions listed above.  I’m really hoping we get it together for 25-man a bit more when we start again next week, but I’m a bit ambivalent about it for now.

On a more positive note, today should be the day that Mingle and Dingle become my first champions of the Tournament, which means acquiring squires and starting to collect the Champion badges for fun and profit.  Well, for profit anyway.  (The pets are BoE, and I suspect the AH will be a popular destination for them)

But it’s time to get dailying, and Kringle won’t level himself (unfortunately).

/wave

As Busy As A Dog With Fleas

Between the sudden need to level Kringle and Pringle (Kringle due to cooking dailies requiring lvl80, and Pringle due to cooking dailies and jewelcrafting dailies requiring lvl80), the travel-intensive Tournament (and frequently, fishing) dailies, and the on-going guild exploratory mission into 10-man Ulduar, I’m finding myself with no shortage of things to do in-game.

The addition of a level requirement to the jewelcrafting feels like Blizzard is just keeping it up with the cooking daily change, but it’s pretty effective motivation to keep leveling.

I took Kringle and his shiny new turtletank out for a spin, and was invited to participate in a guild Drak’Tharon Keep alt run – apart from when I accidentally pulled the first group of mobs with my pet (can’t beat a start like that) it went surprisingly smoothly, and Kringle picked up his first gear upgrade, the Helmet of Living Flesh, to replace his T4 helm.  I really need to get used to switching in and out of Aspect of the Viper, though – I’m finding an embarrassing tendency to switch into Viper and forget to switch back.  (Note to self: have a look on WoWInterface)

Both Mingle and Dingle have reached the rank of Valiant in the Tournament, and Ringle completed the first day.  The quests themselves aren’t that bad, but the travel time is a bit annoying and adds up pretty quickly if you have multiple characters trying to work through the dailies.  (Additional travel for the fishing daily doesn’t help)

Mingle also went back into Ulduar for the guild 10-man run, after missing out last night.  When I joined, they had managed to down both Razorscale and the XT-002 Deconstructor.  By the time we called it a night, we’d taken down Kologarn, the Assembly of Iron, Auriaya, Hodir, Thorim and Freya.  Only Ignis (who’s apparently still bugged), General Vezax and Yogg-Saron remain.

The best way to sum it my experience is that you have to plan the trash, and the bosses aren’t friendly towards errors in execution.  Personally, I think Auriaya was the hardest, due to the tricky nature of the pull when you engage her.  Freya and her adds of doom were pretty unpleasant as well (and I failed miserably, dying from pulling aggro on one of the adds, leaving the group to successfully 9-man her down, ressing me as a ghoul a little before she died).

Kologarn was kind of fun, provided you were able to run out from the eye-beams without dying or kiting it over someone else.  The Assembly of Iron was entertaining – stand on the blue stuff on the ground unless it’s covered by green stuff on the ground and watch for when you have to run away.  We also picked up the I Choose You, Stormcaller Brundir achievement – two more to go, for having each of the other bosses killed last.

The trash before Auriaya was pretty brutal – they come in pairs which you have to keep to tank separately, and occasionally one will fire a slow-moving spark to the other which has to be killed before it reaches the other mob to prevent it from giving the mob a tank-killing buff.  Then, after one is dead, the other receives a powerful buff which means you’d better kill it before it flattens the tank.

Auriaya herself isn’t that hard, but her cat adds are rather unpleasant – when they’re together they gain something like 100% extra damage.  They didn’t one-shot the tank, but the tank didn’t last more than a second.  After several mishaps, we sorted out the pull and managed to get her down, gaining The Antechamber of Ulduar.

Next up were the four keepers (who I guess are now the one keeper, Mimiron being the only one remaining).  Thorim was first, and turned out to be a two-group fight.  The first group of players remains in the arena below Thorim (which is where I was), and fights waves of adds until the second group is able to fight through to Thorim and engage him.  Once engaged, he leaped down into the arena (followed by the second group) and it became a simple tank-and-spank.  Simple, but quite satisfying.  I’ll Take You All On was picked up upon completion.

Hodir was next, and was a tricky combination of Keristrasza from The Nexus and Sapphiron from Naxxramas.  You have to keep moving (or finding safe areas to stand) to prevent yourself from being frozen to the floor, and patches on the floor where icicles fall from the ceiling, and find safe places to stand when he casts Flash Freeze.  I failed on this one frequently and comprehensively, but the rest of the group managed to do pretty well.  (I accidentally picked up Staying Buffed All Winter during one attempt, while we were at it)

Freya was the last of the night, and it was pretty rough.  We cleared the trash from the area (which was especially exciting with the groups of lashers), then took down the three elders (the hard mode is where you leave one or more elder up for when you engage Freya, much like Sartharion).

When you start, Freya has 150 stacks of a healing buff which can only be removed by killed the various waves of adds she summons.  The adds I really hated (and frequently were killed by) were the trio of the Storm Lasher, Ancient Water Elemental and Snaplasher; these three have to be killed at about the same time, otherwise they resurrect and pwnage ensues.

We had a quick look at the trash before Mimiron, but decided to call it after we were mercilessly crushed by it.  And that was about 9 hours of raiding completed.  I didn’t pick up any loot, just a bunch of fairly useless Emblems of Valor – the few caster items that dropped weren’t upgrades for my majority of best-in-slot 25-man items.

I’ve got some fishing to do today, as I’m down from 87 to 20 fish feasts from all these attempts.  Hopefully I’ll get an invite to the raid this afternoon, but if not we’re back to the 25-man version tonight (and again tomorrow night).  I’m thinking of respeccing as well, and dropping the points I used to pick up Silence for the Razorscale trash; Shadow Affinity might keep me alive a little bit longer…  (I’m thinking of something like this)

But on the subject of things to do, these dailies won’t wait forever!

/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

Ulduar Hurts

The guild eventually managed to get some time in Ulduar (after the 6-hour delay to the servers coming back up this morning), and Mingle has been in for a little play in both the 10-man and 25-man versions.

We got pounded into the ground.  Repeatedly.  Just like the good old days of Burning Crusade progression raiding.

We only managed to try two bosses (and the trash to two more) in 10-man, and three bosses in 25-man.  I think we’re going to have to up our game substantially before we’ll get much further.

First up this afternoon in 10-man was the Flame Leviathan.  Now, I was quite concerned that this might end up being a disaster right up there with Oculus, but they pulled a hat out of a rabbit with this one.  I was given a turret on one of the siege engines and had a blast, well, blasting things.  It was pretty entertaining.

After a false start where we failed to take down the towers (and were trounced by Leviathan, adds and bombardment by orbital lasers), we cleared the towers and then took the Leviathan down, picking up a couple of level-219 items along with an Emblem of Valor.

The neck was of no interest to me, and after checking the stats on the cloth head, I passed on that as well (it being lower in stats than Mingle’s Helm of Rationality).  We followed that with a few attempts on Razorscale (which ended in mass cases of various death-by-fire), and tried to visit XT-002 Deconstructor but were thwarted by a couple of packs of rather nasty mechanical adds. Before calling it for the afternoon we tried pulling the two giant elementals outside Ignis’s room, but they very quickly pounded us into a fine paste.

Cue end of raid, for us to take a break and lick our wounds (which were mostly psychological, but still fairly debilitating).

This evening lead to the 25-man raid team entering Ulduar for the first time.  After some quick directions about the vehicles, we romped through the pre-Leviathan trash (making sure to kill the towers this time) and one-shot the Leviathan.  Admittedly, we did kind of fail miserably at getting the turrets on Leviathan down (I think we’ll need to organise that a bit better next time round), but that did lead to us completing our first heroic achievement, closely followed by a second achievement for looting our first Emblems of Conquest.

Things didn’t go that well afterwards as we found ourselves failing to perform against Razorscale, and a visit to the XT-002 Deconstructor (who was oddly trash-free in 25-man) proved equally fatal (although far more amusing – the voice for the boss was quite unexpected).

The server was taken down for emergency maintenance a couple of minutes after that, so the raid was called and everyone has limped away to recover.  Still, we have our first heroic Ulduar loot, so I guess we can call this round a draw.

Sadly I didn’t get the caster ring (which was slightly worse than the ring from Kel’Thuzad, but still better than the two Mingle is wearing), but at least it went to a good home.

And I’ve managed to finish my first one of the new fishing dailies on Mingle, and one round of the Tournament dailies on both Mingle and Dingle, so I guess it’s been a productive day all round.  Exhausting, but productive.

And speaking of exhausting…

/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

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.