Diplomacy Has Its Place

Exalted with Timbermaw?  You know what that means…  Meet Dinglemouse the Diplomat.

Yay! for the WoWWiki Timbermaw Hold reputation guide, which made it quite a bit easier.  (Just a tip: If you want to work on it yourself, it’s a lot easier when you’re not doing at the same time as anyone else – I had to slow down the speed I was killing them in order to avoid getting delayed while waiting for respawns)

It’s actually been quite a fun few days.  My assorted decks have almost all sold (I’ve still got a single Berserker card to liquidate), and I was able to get a second pair of Spiked Deathdealers crafted.  That was sold, and I used the proceeds to get a pair of Indestructible Plate Girdles crafted, one for Dingle and the second to sell.

I’m currently waiting for it to sell, with a view to getting another item or two crafted for resale – sadly, patience is essential when trying to sell items at this kind of price, even when there’s no competition.  I’m also dabbling in the Eternal Belt Buckle and leg armor markets, and picking up cheap Runed Orbs as the opportunity presents itself.

If there’s one thing I’ve not experienced anywhere near enough, it’s the pleasure of tanking for a capable (and well-geared) group of players – this occurred last night, when I managed to finagle my way into the hard-mode Ulduar 10-man run that was idling last night.  They weren’t working on hard modes though, other than plans for hard-mode Mimiron – the main tank wasn’t able to get online at the planned time, so there was a couple of hours to play with, and they had Thorim, Freya, Razorscale and Ignis to play with.

Needless to say, I felt a tad overwhelmed (as this was my first time tanking these bosses), but apart from a nub mistake on Freya trash (where I used thunderclap next to some CC’d mobs, causing a wipe) I think I performed competently enough.  I was the Arena tank for Thorim, and we finished without a wipe (and in good time).  Freya wasn’t quite as smooth, but we downed her despite some co-ordination issues with the 3-add group where we kept killing one too soon, and had to deal with the trio self-rezzing while we were dealing with the exploding swarm of lashers that came next.

Thorim dropped the T8 shoulder token, but I passed on it for the other tank (who tanks the 25-mans, and needed it to get the awesome 4-piece bonus).  I was rewarded for my generosity with the T8 glove token from Freya, which has given me my first piece of T8, the Valorous Siegebreaker Handguards.  (The fact that it co-ordinates with my awesome new boots and belt is something I’m quite happy with – sure, the better stats are nice, but there’s still something to be said for aesthetics)

I’m still doing the fishing dailies on all my characters who can reach Dalaran, but the appeal is slowing fading – probably because of the lack of interesting rewards.  I think I’ve got a Porcelain Bell once in the last four days, and worthless glass the rest of the time.  (Mingle really needs that skull fishing rod – the one from the Walrus-men is quite lacking, especially for a shadow priest.  And whatever became of those fishing bobber models?)

Mingle only has four days remaining of Argent Tournament dailies before she’s an exalted champion with all the Alliance factions; she’s currently working on Gnomeregan.  It’s a pity that the limited appeal of jousting runs out so quickly – only Dingle has completed the grind so far, and the new dailies with 3.2 are quickly approaching, with the extra dailies that are only available when you’ve completed the existing Tournament quests.

But now it’s time for dailies (and regular AH checks – Yay, the belt just sold!)

/wave (of a profitable nature)

Farming Rep Used To Take Longer

Yet another Dingle achievement post; I’m sure you’re surprised.

I’ve been doing a little farming of reputations, with an eye to completing The Diplomat achievement – I think “Dinglemouse the Diplomat” has a nice ring to it, don’t you? 

As I mentioned previously, farming Kurenai to exalted took a couple of sessions of grinding, but otherwise wasn’t too rough.  Farming Sporeggar, however, had me scratching my head for a little while.  The two methods that I was used to (farming Fertile Spores or farming Bloodscale Naga) aren’t the quickest of things.  The breakthrough came while I browsed the WoWWiki page about the faction, and made a little mental adjustment that made it easy.

The adjustment is, “I’m playing a well geared tank – how hard can normal Underbog be to farm?”  As it turns out, it’s not hard at all.  I mean, it’s seriously easy.  (And kind of fun, to boot)  You see, as someone who previously raided on a rogue (which is to say, is used to being squishy) and currently raids on a priest (which is to say, is squishy), I’m more used to avoiding the kind of stand-up fights where a tank really shines – hopefully next time it won’t take me as long to come to my senses, and play the strength of the class.

On my first time through I cautiously cleared my way through to several of the groups of humanoids after Hungarfen, and stopped there to head back out to reset – it wasn’t necessary to finish the instance, as all I needed were around a couple of hundred Sanguine Hibiscus, after all, and they’re easily farmed in the area up to the first Naga pair.  (It’s quite possible I could have cleared the instance, but the humanoid section in the middle would have been an unnecessary time-sink)

I think I was getting around 30 hibiscus per run, and a bit of vendor trash (plus a couple of greens, and a blue from Hungarfen each time), and I was taking it very leisurely (about 20-30 minutes per run – I’m not really one to rush things when I don’t need to); after six runs (and a clearing my bags once) I was able to head back the Sporeggar and ding exalted.

Last on the list is Timbermaw Hold, and I’m relying (once again) upon advice from WoWWiki.  This is another old-school grind, and pretty slow going (especially when someone else is farming the mobs as well), but I’m making progress.  (If you’re planning on farming this one yourself, the WoWWiki guide is a must-read)

Gear also continued to drop – some helpful guildies went to normal Halls of Lightning with me, and I was blessed with the Seal of the Pantheon on my very first run, much to my chagrin.  (One of the others in the raid had to make several runs on his tank in order to pick it up)

A little exploring also saw the Explore Northrend achievement completed (with the new tabard to go with it, which took Dingle to ten), and the Explore Outland achievement fell not long afterwards.

Sunday saw the guild finishing clearing most of the Wrath content for the week (Kel’Thuzad and Malygos were saved for Monday night), and venturing back into Outland for something to do.  Dingle tagged along as Vashj fell first in SSC, followed by Kael in Tempest Keep, and we finished the night with Illidan in Black Temple.  (I kind of miss the fact that they used to be hard – and in the case of the Vashj fight, lots of fun!)

For now, though, the desire for something new to do is becoming uncomfortable in it’s intensity – the lack of level-80 content has become glaringly obvious and many of my guildmates have expressed sentiments similar to my own, in that Blizzard had better not disappoint with Ulduar.

My gold’s on 3.1 going live tomorrow.  Probably because I don’t want to be re-running the same old raids for yet another blasted week.

Time for dailies!

/wave

Passing Time With Achievements

With time dragging between raids on my main, I’ve been working on a couple of achievements on Dingle.  For all the uselessness of achievements (which is to say, the only thing you get for completing an achievement is a completed achievement), they do provide a very convenient series of goals one can complete.

First was completing Ambassador of the Alliance by completing the rep grind with Exodar and Gnomeregan Exiles.  I’ve found that the easiest way in which to do this is simply by going back and completing all the starting zone quests; in this case, I went back and completed the Exodar ones, and dinged exalted with both factions before the zone was cleared.  (It helps that any reputation gain with a single alliance faction also gives an additional 25% of the reputation gained to all of the four other factions – for example, 1000 Exodar reputation gained awards an extra 250 reputation with Stormwind, Ironforge, Darnassus and Gnomeregan Exiles)

I also completed Did Somebody Order a Knuckle Sandwich? and Master of Arms by grinding the captive and exhausted vrykul (and farming more Relics of Ulduar for whichever alt on whom I’m next going to be grinding towards exalted with Sons of Hodir).  I have to admit, it took surprisingly longer than the same grind did on Mingle – caster melee is so much lower in damage that grinding on lower level mobs is much more effective.  With Mingle, I was able combine weapon skill leveling along with reputation grinding, and leveled her Mace, Dagger and Unarmed skills to 400 while (once again) completing the Exodar starting zone quests.

With the much higher melee dps that Dingle was putting out, I was doing so much damage (despite using very low level, low damage weapons, which is a big help when leveling weapon skills) that the low level mobs just died too fast.  When I took her back to Stormpeaks, the Vrykul mobs had enough health that I was getting more than one hit per mob, which made the process more useful.  (Just pay attention to the durability of your weapons, and don’t end up grinding uselessly for an hour before you notice that your weapon was red.  Much like my face, upon realising how much time I’d wasted with that oversight.)

I also came across another useful blog recently, this time about UIs and addons.  You’d be well advised to check out No Stock UI.  It’s where I was told about Multishot, which is responsible for the shiny achievement image linked in this post.  I suspect I’m going to be drowning in screenshots in future, but I’ll just have to grin and bear it.

Well, time to publish this post, and get onto today’s dailies.

/wave

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…