WoW: D1 Mission Accomplished

Post soundtrack: “Uam Uam” by Povo

After much trials, tribulations, and many many runs of UBRS, I’ve not only completed Dingle’s D1 set, I’ve also completed the quest chains to upgrade it all to D2.

For the D2 set, WoW Insider helped out again with its mini-guide for the upgrade quest chains.  But there’s several bits and pieces that they didn’t elaborate upon, which took a bit of doing on top of the ridiculous amount of travelling required for the D2 quests.

The first noticeable hurdle was Anthion’s Strange Request, the third quest in the chain to upgrade your leg, feet and shoulder pieces.  This quest has you provide three Dark Iron Bars, 20 Enchanted Leather, three Mooncloth and four Cured Rugged Hides.  The mooncloth was easy to find on the AH, but I had to make the Enchanted Leather and Cured Rugged Hides on my enchanter and leatherworker.  The Dark Iron Bars are a little trickier, as you need to complete The Spectral Chalice in BRD before your miner is able to smelt them from ore.  It was an easy solo for my level 80, and it took longer to procure the 10 truesilver bars than anything else.

Anthion’s Old Friend was the next hiccup, requiring the Crescent Key to get into the Dire Maul library.  Fortunately this is just a minor speed bump, requiring a partial run through Dire Maul East to kill Pussilin for it.

The Three Kings of Flame is another speed bump, with Duke of Cynders being noticeably subject to the RNG.  I stocked up with several sets of the Twilight Cultist gear (and a couple of Abyssal Signets) from the AH to use in the numerous attempts at summoning which you may (or may not) need to get him to appear – he’s a 1-in-4 chance from a Wind Stone, so good luck!

The last hold-up was getting a Flask of Supreme Power to turn-in for Final Preparations. As a vanilla flask, it wasn’t listed on the AH all that frequently, and I ended up taking one of my alchemists into Scholomance to farm Ras Frostwhisper for the recipe.

In the end, the longest hold-up to completing my D2 was actually getting the last item of my D1, the Breastplate of Valor, to drop.  It was only on Dingle’s 19th run that Drakkisath finally relinquished it.  And then it was back to Ironforge to turn in the final quest, and receive the last two pieces of her D2.

Accessorising is still a work in progress, but for now I’m using Dal’Rend’s Sacred Charge and the Draconian Deflector, along with the Knight’s Colors tabard.  The weapon isn’t perfect, but it looks more substantial than the usual one-handed weapons, and the colours of the shield are close enough.

Next?  Well, that’s a good question.  Which is to say, I have no idea just yet.  But with luck 4.0.1 is under a week away, and that’ll mean new toys (or at least, new abilities) to play with.

For now, I guess I’ll go on a road-tour of capitals or something suitably exhibitionist.

/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

Continuing In The Deep End

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

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

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

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

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

Starting In The Deep End

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

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

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

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

For now, though?  Time for dailies.

Making It Onto The Sons of Hodir Christmas Card List

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

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

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

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

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.