WoW: Vanity Thy Name Is…

Post soundtrack: “You’re So Vain” by Carly Simon

I decided to do something about my unguilded state, and the easiest route was a vanity guild for myself.  I purchased the guild bank slots while I was at it, so there’s a lot of space for me to fill with bits and pieces while I wait for Cata.

I’m not planning on making the guild a ‘real’ one (I’ve been a GL before, and it turns out I’m pretty dire at it), but it gives me somewhere to put my alts while I fail to get around to finding a raiding guild for Cata.

Now to go fishing for Mr Pinchy.

/wave

Shared Topic: What’s In A Name?

Post soundtrack: “Who? Where? Why?” by Jesus Jones

I’m usually not motivated enough to take part in the shared topics on Blog Azeroth, but this one caught me at a time when I’m reassessing my naming habits in preparation for adding new characters to my roster, come 4.0.1 and Cataclysm.  (Warning: incoming stream of consciousness!)

I initially touched on my naming habits a looooooong time ago, but for those new here it can all be traced back to a mouse.  I love the name Dinglemouse, a character from Spike Milligan’s book Badjelly the Witch (which I really need to buy a copy of).  When I initially considered using the name for one of my characters, I decided to save it and try a variation first, which was Pringlerouse.  Variations begat variations, and soon I had seven dwarves to play with (although Fingle has since moved servers, leaving me with an open spot in the roster, and there’s still no Snow White to keep them in line).

My current assortment on Dath’Remar, nominally my home server, is Pringlerouse (80 rogue), Kringlelouse (80 hunter), Dinglemouse (80 warrior, and star of my last few blog posts), Ringleprouse (80 rogue), Mingledouse (80 priest), Binglerouse (80 pally), Tingleflouse (35 druid and the only non-dwarf) and Ninglethouse (very disposable 58 DK and AH mule).  On other servers my highest level characters are server transferee Finglethouse, an 80 dwarf priest and Pringle, an 80 gnome rogue on Argent Dawn (home of SAN-US), and Dinglemouse, a 70 troll rogue on Aman’Thul.

While Pringle, Dingle, Mingle and Ringle are pretty much guaranteed to stay around on Dath, I’m looking at re-rolling (and probably renaming) Kringle and Bingle with 4.0.1, and replacing (and definitely renaming) Tingle with a Worgen druid come Cataclysm.  My quandary now is how best to name these new characters -  it’s been hard to come up with names that fitted the system I’d been using yet sounded as good as the original ones (Kringlelouse never really rang true, and Binglerouse sounds more like a gnome), and I’ve been resistant to the idea of breaking tradition (at least, until now).

Incidentally, one little exercise which has helped me firm up the identities behind the names of my characters was a collection of little thumbnail descriptions I did of each of the main characters when I entered the Cataclysm Comic Contest a few weeks back on Disciplinary Action.  (The winners’ prizes were really quite delightful, by the way)

Mingledouse, the pathologically pessimistic priest.
Dinglemouse, the timid tank.
Kringlelouse, the hunter who’s allergic to pets.
Binglerouse, the paladin atheist.
Ringleprouse, the clumsy yet ridiculously lucky rogue.
Pringlerouse, not a serial killer, honest.

Needless to say, while I’m definitely not a roleplayer it was fun to come up with simple hooks upon which I can hang the identities of my characters (even if they are just currently purely cosmetic hooks – although the behind-the-webcomic-scenes post on DA today has left me… a little contemplative of possibilities).

But I digress.  (Like usual)

As I said above, for my dwarves my current system hasn’t really scaled beyond four of the first five, which means it’s as good a time as any to come up with something new (and probably more individual this time round), which means time to hit some online name generators to see what I can find which sounds good (probably my only criteria).

As far as other characters go, well, they’ve pretty much inherited dwarven names out of habit.  My troll desperately needs a unique name of his own, and I’ll have to get creative if I roll some more horde-side characters (including a goblin, of course).  As names are pretty much forever (or until you spend some cold, hard cash), they’re not something I want to come to regret.  Time to cogitate.

After all, the Cataclysm is coming, so what better time to make some sweeping changes.  Not just to how you play, but also to who.

/wave

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

WoW: More D1 Farming

Post soundtrack: “I Know You’re Out There Somewhere” by The Moody Blues

Now I’m busy farming for Dingle’s pieces of D1 (as opposed to planning for it), I’ve come across some useful tips (and things that would have saved me some time, had I thought of them earlier).

First, of course, is WoW Insider, who’ve put together a list of all the Dungeon One pieces for all 9 classes who have a set.  Have a look here.

Scholomance:

Guess who forgot that the place needs a key? You’ll want to make sure you’ve unlocked the quest chain by doing Clear the Way and All Along the Watchtowers, at which stage you can pick up Scholomance (and get ready to go to Gadgetzan and Un’goro Crater).

Kirtonos the Herald?  Well, turns out he needs an item to be summoned, Blood of Innocents.  Quest time again!  You’ll want to talk to Eva Sarkhoff, who stands just outside Scholomance.  After several pages of dialogue, you’re offered the first quest in her chain, Doctor Theolen Krostinov, the Butcher.

In the followup quest, Krastinov’s Bag of Horrors, you’ll be called upon to kill Janice Barov, who’s tricky to find (especially if you don’t know your way around the place, as was the case for me).  Once you’ve completed and turned in this quest you’re given your first Blood, and future kills of the Blood Steward of Kirtonos (an NPC in the library), Doctor Krastinov and Jandice usually drop additional bloods.

To summon Darkmaster Gandling, who drops the Helm, you need to kill the six mini-bosses around his study, along with all the mobs in Instructor Malicia’s room.  This can be tricky for a strictly physical damage class like a warrior, as the Scholomance Occultists have a nasty habit of turning into ghosts who are immune to physical damage when their health reaches around 40%.  This is a good time to be an engineer for the Hand-Mounted Pyro Rocket (Stratholme Holy Water is a useful alternative for a non-engineer).  The best way I found was to use devastate until the occultist reached around 60% health, then Shield Slam (or Revenge, although that can cause problems if you’re specced into Improved Revenge as the damage to a second occultist can cause it to transform) to kill it before it could transform.

Blackrock Spire:

Lost much? (Well, yes actually.)  I was surprised to realise that the dungeons referred to as Lower Blackrock Spire and Upper Blackrock Spire (LBRS and UBRS respectively) are actually two areas of the same instance.  While you’ll likely to learn your way around after some time, expect to get lost a lot.  The Atlas addon is highly recommended in here (and looking for walkthrough videos on youtube is probably a good idea as well).

For warriors I’d recommend working through UBRS first (as two bosses drop D1 pieces) and then clearing out LBRS for the small chance that your Bracers drop (and bear in mind when they say those are a rare drop, they’re not kidding). 

I’ve managed to accumulate seven pieces now, with only the Breastplate eluding me (and let me say now, I really dislike Drakkisath’s conflagration attack).  Time to take a break and upgrade the pieces I have into their D2 equivalents.  Queue “Farming D2” post!

Which leads to the eternal question: how best to accessorise?

/wave

WoW: Boredom And Dungeon 1 Sets

Post soundtrack: “Maniac” by Michael Sembello

In my quest to make my characters look like my characters (as opposed to your average I-pug-for-badges tier-wearer), I discovered a new self-evident truth: when you’re feeling bored and are looking for something to farm, there’s always your class’s Dungeon 1 set.  (Ok, in this instance ‘your class’ doesn’t include death knights as they don’t have any item sets in vanilla or TBC content, but who plays a DK anyway?)

Now that I’ve a comfortable quantity of gold under my belt, the lull between dull, dreary old content and ZOMG exciting new content is subject to a little nagging temptation: “Hey, why don’t you spend some of that gold on your alts, with prices for mats and gear getting so low?”  Needless to say, it wouldn’t take long to turn that comfortable quantity into a very small pile, regardless of low prices.  (Plus with Cata coming Soon™, why spend gold on something soon to be replaced with questing greens?)

The character who’s been tempting me the most has been my warrior tank, Dinglemouse. This is fortunate as she’s not only capable of grinding through old Azeroth content (although pretty much any characters can manage it at level 80 with half-decent gear), but is also an engineer which offers some time-saving abilities when out in the field with Scrapbots to vendor trash (quite inexpensively as well, at a cost of only 2 saronite bars per bot) and Moll-E and Jeeves for extra ways to empty my bags of more valuable items if needed.

First, though, you need to work out where the set pieces drop.  Cue this handy table for the warrior items:

Item	Dropped By	Found In
Helm of Valor	Darkmaster Gandling	Scholomance
Spaulders of Valor	Warchief Rend Blackhand	Upper Blackrock Spire
Breastplate of Valor	General Drakkisath	Upper Blackrock Spire
Bracers of Valor (BoE)	Trash mobs, Quartermaster Zigris	Lower Blackrock Spire
Gauntlets of Valor (BoE)	Ramstein the Gorger	Stratholme
Legplates of Valor	Baron Rivendare	Stratholme
Belt of Valor (BoE)	Trash mobs	Stratholme, Lower Blackrock Spire
Boots of Valor	Kirtonos the Herald	Scholomance

Now, three of these pieces are BoE and can be picked up in the AH (usually for a song).  However, the gauntlets and belt are easy to pick up in Stratholme while farming Rivendare for the legplates, so purchasing them is likely unnecessary.  The bracers on the other hand are worth purchasing if you come across them, as they’re the only item (once you have the belt) that requires running LBRS.

For convenience I started at the north of the continent, running Stratholme until I had the belt and gauntlets – I’m currently waiting for Rivendare to cough up the legplates (although if his mount drops, it might convince me to forgive him).  Next will be Scholomance for the Helm and Boots.  If I haven’t found the bracers by this stage, LBRS will follow on.  And last (but not least) is UBRS for the spaulders and breastplate.

Once I’ve accumulated them all, maybe I’ll look at upgrading them to their Dungeon Set 2 equivalent.  We’ll see how it goes, though.

For now?  Stratholme awaits!

/wave

WoW: The Coming Add-on Cataclysm

Post soundtrack: “Cataclysm” by Blizzard.

There’s nothing like visiting the PTR to convince you it’s time to re-subscribe to WoW. Hence I’ve returned (albeit not especially triumphantly).

So I’ve started tidying up some loose ends on my old main characters on alliance side  and have been trying to get my solitary high-level horde alt (ding 64!) up in level enough to do the new troll quest chain (despite the likelihood that it’s probably going to be just as truncated and as underwhelming an experience as the Gnomes failure to recapture Gnomeregan was).

But my limited time on the PTR reminded me of one important little detail: when Cataclysm strikes and (insert rampant hyperbole here, describing how things changing ruins the game you know and love, while simultaneously bitching about the game you know and love because it’s all the same and nothing changes and… oh, wait), it’s also likely going to be losing a number of the addons we currently know and love.  (Ask yourself how long it’s been since some of the addons you may be using have been updated? My oldest was last updated Jul 2008…)

I transferred an 80 rogue and 80 priest onto the PTR, and while I can play a rogue with the default UI (well, I can solo; raiding would probably be kind of difficult) there’s no way in heck I could even heal a 5-man without Vuhdo. Looking at the collection of addons in my live install, it’s clear I’m going to have a lot of work ahead of me to get ready for Cata, not just in winnowing out those which are now unsupported, but also in searching for the new and improved.

There are three parts to the UI that my UI layout revolves around:

• Action Bars: The default bars are almost the only part of the UI that I leave untouched – not only are they perfectly functional (and guaranteed to work the day after a big patch), but I also like the art used when you’re controlling vehicles.
• Player/Target Frames: While sparse of information and truly awfully positioned (especially for classes with rapidly changing resources to manage, such as rogues, hunters and warriors) they do the job; in the past I’ve usually replaced them with XPerl, which is the best implementation I’ve come across so far of “It Just Works” in terms of unitframe addons. I find unitframes, once more sanely positioned, are best supported by a HUD in the centre of the screen, so important information is located where your attention is focused. (MetaHUD is my current HUD of choice, having dropped DHUD which hasn’t been updated for a while)
• Raid Frames: I rely upon these for my healing, and experience shows I perform best with spells bound to all four mouse buttons (left/right/forward/back) with shift/ctrl/alt modifiers. My addon of choice for this is Vuhdo, which handles both frames and mouse-over healing quite capably (but isn’t currently PTR-ready, although apparently there’s a version for the Beta).

After those, it starts to get cosmetic.  Unlike minimalists, I like having access to more information than the default UI usually reveals (although not necessarily displayed all the time).  A Data Broker bar addon (and assorted modules) is great for this, my current being ChocolateBar.  The minimap gets replaced and moved to the centre-top of the screen, cue Chinchilla. A more detailed buff/debuff display, Elkano’s BuffBars. Replace Blizz’s Floating Combat Text with MikScrollingBattleText.  Replace chat windows with Prat and WIM. Then there’s Auctioneer, of course. And who can forget DeadlyBossMods?

To that you can add convenience addons like Atlas/Atlasloot, Fishing Buddy, Mapster, Opie, Outfitter, Skada, and little things like No Gryphons. And that barely scratches the surface of the various bits and pieces I’ve accumulated – I have 235 folders in my Addons directory, probably representing near on a hundred addons installed.

Methinks ‘tis time to cut back. And hey, what a great opportunity for it!

/wave

The Other Kind of Rock and Roll

Post soundtrack: “I Feel the Earth Move” by Carole King

It’s been an…  interesting week down here.  We had a little 7.1 magnitude earthquake here in sunny Christchurch early last Saturday morning, and things are only just starting to settle down (finally).  Thanks to a combination of timing and a solid building code, there was only one death (a heart attack during the quake) and two serious injuries (a man injured by a collapsing chimney and another man badly cut by glass).

Fortunately the suburb that I live in didn’t suffer any serious damage (both the power and internet remained on for me, as did the water although it was necessary to boil it before use for a few days as a precautionary measure); unfortunately, other areas haven’t been as lucky.  A sizeable number of buildings have been left damaged, especially in the CBD and the east side of the city.  Still, barring a much larger aftershock than the 3-5 ones we’ve been enjoy since the quake, the drama is all over and we’re working on picking up the pieces and getting our lives back in order.  (And we don’t need charity; we’re pretty well supported already)

Personally, I’m still kind of on tenterhooks to some degree; I wasn’t particularly anxious during (and after) the quake itself, but the steady stream of aftershocks are starting to leave me feeling increasingly shaken (both literally and figuratively), especially when they’ve been going on for days as is the case here (apparently as I write this there’s been anywhere between 200 and 400 magnitude 3 or greater aftershocks since the quake a week ago, depending on which expert you ask).

Needless to say, my pc gaming has been pretty sporadic.  I’ve spent more time over the last few days playing tower defense games on my ipod than I have playing much else on the pc.  (And doesn’t the new ipod touch look appealing? I’m seriously considering saving for one, and maybe one of the new shuffles to free up space on my touch for more games if I pick up the cheaper 8gb model.)

Touching on WoW briefly, it was interesting to see the new Gnome and Troll quest chains have finally gone live.  I wonder if that means we’re getting even closer to the Cata launch – anyone care to put money on it being under 3 months away?  Needless to say, the news of something new to do in-game made me consider whether it’s time to re-sub to the game, but after reading of Gnomeageddon’s disappointment I’ve decided to give it another month.  (I’d have to finish levelling a horde-side character to do the troll chain as well)

I very briefly logged into LotRO for the f2p headstart, but haven’t bothered to go past the store after finding that the turbine points I was supposed to have earned haven’t shown up yet.  It turns out that a number of players are in the same situation, and leaves me wondering why they bothered going ahead with a headstart if they couldn’t give players their stipend to spend before the event ended. (The word “bone-headed” comes to mind…)

My time in EQ2E has also dwindled for some reason. I’ve joined a couple of guilds (each character in a different one), but for some reason I just haven’t been able to settle into the group, and my play sessions have been generally dissatisfying. It’s probably more my solitary nature coming to the fore, but it’s still left me irritated (albeit with myself).

On my ipod, on the other hand…  Between Fieldrunners, The Creeps and TowerMadness, my TD itch is being well and truly scratched (and that’s not counting the other 6 TD games I have installed).  I’m kind of ambivalent about the Game Center functionality that Apple added with OS4.1 though; it just looks like an unwieldy version of what you can already get with OpenFeint and Plus+ (and probably a number of other social platforms offer).

Well, it’s getting late so I’m going to cut my post short around here.  I’ll just add that I’m now on twitter (like all the other cool kids), but don’t say much (in much the same way as I am IRL).

Two more links before I go: “Thirteen things I learnt from an earthquake.” and an alternate version of “I Feel The Earth Move” by Loretta Swit and the Muppets.

/wave