Made my way up over the next mountain range and upon investigating the inside of a cave, accidentally find myself embroiled in a very long and entertaining quest series, most of which has me traipsing along in disguise as a giant blue warrior woman as she proves herself in combat to the village.
As I progress through a martial tournament, I find myself having to do side quests to progress through it. “You may have bested a few challengers—but you have no bear for The Pit of Fangs!” The diversity of the quests continue to mark this as an outstanding expansion. Flaming arrows while riding “bear back”, rescuing tethered drakes and flying away with villagers held fast in my mount’s talons, this arc has had it all. The culmination was the best killtenrats I’ve played to date.
Flying a drake on auto-pilot, circling just below a temple atop the tallest mountain peak, I was tasked with besting ten (of course) other riders in combat. This was accomplished by firing a HARPOON into the other drake, swinging over to the back of my prey, and nuking the hell out of the rider from point blank. After knocking her off the mount, the new drake was mine and time to lather, rinse, and repeat. After besting the last, a harpoon into the temple wall sent me sailing onto the floor before a giant throne, where a servant of the olden titans sat. After skimming through lore-filled diatribe, I’m supposed to do something Pretty Important next, maybe save the world or kill a few frost giants. I’m a little fuzzy on the details.
Knocked out a daily dungeon, hit level 78, and called it a very early night.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Wandering Around
Bound and determined to put Sholozan behind me, I focused on clearing out the Nesingwary hunter quests, as I’d have to complete them at some point for a certain achievement and honestly… Blizzard put serious work into the characters so I wanted to see the ending. I was not disappointed. The arc culminated with a hunt with Nesingwary himself, both of us on his mammoth. I’m steering and he’s riding shotgun…literally. I’m running the mammoth in circles while being attacked by a giant fire-breathing dragon. He’s screaming at the it (and me) while dropping traps and firing his shotgun at the fell beast. Good times! Victory brought a wonderfully scripted dialogue back at the camp as Nesingwary recounted the adventure to his party.
Finished up a handful of other quests and accidentally aligned myself with a faction of gnolls by playing along with them while trying to find a different group to ally with. In doing so, I made my potential allies my enemies and to ‘fix it’, I’m going to have to hunt down an elite lich. Terrific. Blowing off the rest of that misadventure, I flapped around and explored the rest of the zone from the relative safety of my gryphon.
From that point, it was “Eastward, Ho!” as I gradually crossed the continent, taking and finishing minor quests in the Borean Tundra, Dragonblight, and Grizzly Woods made stupidly simple with air travel. My goal was to ‘fill in’ the areas of the map I had not yet explored in those zones and I did so with ease.
Took a brief break when a random dungeon team was available and I found myself in some unpronounceable hellhole populated with golems. The prevailing party opinion was to skip as much of the dungeon as possible and get to the end boss quickly. From what I saw, I was glad we did. We picked up an NPC dwarf along the way and we had to defend him as he worked to disable “automated defense systems” that must have shared an AI with GlaDOS. The place was nightmarish and I had no idea what was going on half the time. Tonight I’m going to read up on that place because I just know I’m going to see it again and I want to be better prepared. Regrettably, the anguish brought no new gear, so the experience only rewarded experience…and gold…delicious gold. With under 400 gold until epic flight, I’m scrabbling for copper coins in the gutter.
Returning to Northrend, I turned my sights northward to the Crystalsong Forest, home to Dalaran, but finding no quest hubs through casual exploration, I continued north into a frozen mountainous region known as the Storm Peaks and was delighted to quickly locate a goblin outpost known as “K3”. Making it my new home, I undertook the various tasks required and notably wound up with several explosively fun doosies.
The first was retrieve some tools from the middle of a field. A minefield, that is. A large number of anti-air cannons precluded subverted the quest by just flying to the tools, so I had to pick my way through the field densely populated with proximity mines. More than once I found myself flying through the air from a mine that was a little too close, but in the end I made it out alive with my prize. I would soon get some of my own back.
Soon armed with improved mines, I got to deploy a minefield of my own and set traps for magnataurs (think buff ugly centaurs) that were more intent on storming a goblin outpost than hassling me. It was pleasantly fulfilling.
Finally, I got the most awesome quest ever and I was deeply saddened to know it wasn’t repeatable. It was so nice I considered never turning it in, just so I could KEEP doing it. The task? Get a bomb with a short fuse from a dispenser. From the time you pick it up, you’ve got less than a minute to get rid of it. The goal? Find a mammoth and strap the bomb to its side. When the mammoth blows, pick up chunks of meat that rain down on the nearby scenery. PETA would not approve.
I can’t wait to see what the rest of the zone holds.
Finished up a handful of other quests and accidentally aligned myself with a faction of gnolls by playing along with them while trying to find a different group to ally with. In doing so, I made my potential allies my enemies and to ‘fix it’, I’m going to have to hunt down an elite lich. Terrific. Blowing off the rest of that misadventure, I flapped around and explored the rest of the zone from the relative safety of my gryphon.
From that point, it was “Eastward, Ho!” as I gradually crossed the continent, taking and finishing minor quests in the Borean Tundra, Dragonblight, and Grizzly Woods made stupidly simple with air travel. My goal was to ‘fill in’ the areas of the map I had not yet explored in those zones and I did so with ease.
Took a brief break when a random dungeon team was available and I found myself in some unpronounceable hellhole populated with golems. The prevailing party opinion was to skip as much of the dungeon as possible and get to the end boss quickly. From what I saw, I was glad we did. We picked up an NPC dwarf along the way and we had to defend him as he worked to disable “automated defense systems” that must have shared an AI with GlaDOS. The place was nightmarish and I had no idea what was going on half the time. Tonight I’m going to read up on that place because I just know I’m going to see it again and I want to be better prepared. Regrettably, the anguish brought no new gear, so the experience only rewarded experience…and gold…delicious gold. With under 400 gold until epic flight, I’m scrabbling for copper coins in the gutter.
Returning to Northrend, I turned my sights northward to the Crystalsong Forest, home to Dalaran, but finding no quest hubs through casual exploration, I continued north into a frozen mountainous region known as the Storm Peaks and was delighted to quickly locate a goblin outpost known as “K3”. Making it my new home, I undertook the various tasks required and notably wound up with several explosively fun doosies.
The first was retrieve some tools from the middle of a field. A minefield, that is. A large number of anti-air cannons precluded subverted the quest by just flying to the tools, so I had to pick my way through the field densely populated with proximity mines. More than once I found myself flying through the air from a mine that was a little too close, but in the end I made it out alive with my prize. I would soon get some of my own back.
Soon armed with improved mines, I got to deploy a minefield of my own and set traps for magnataurs (think buff ugly centaurs) that were more intent on storming a goblin outpost than hassling me. It was pleasantly fulfilling.
Finally, I got the most awesome quest ever and I was deeply saddened to know it wasn’t repeatable. It was so nice I considered never turning it in, just so I could KEEP doing it. The task? Get a bomb with a short fuse from a dispenser. From the time you pick it up, you’ve got less than a minute to get rid of it. The goal? Find a mammoth and strap the bomb to its side. When the mammoth blows, pick up chunks of meat that rain down on the nearby scenery. PETA would not approve.
I can’t wait to see what the rest of the zone holds.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
DPS class, it's a blast, blast, blast
Abbreviated game time due to pulling waaaay too much spousal aggro—and that’s all I’ll say on that. In the meantime…
Began by immediately queuing up for a dungeon, then balked when I saw the average time to enter was hovering around half an hour. Not to be dissuaded, I started working the quests obtained at Camp Nesigwary that were mostly killtenrats, but included a few delightful things such as shaking tree vines to gather fruit, mixing up some booze from said fruit in a rapid random clickfest at a still, and disguising myself as a bush to lure a crocolisk to its doom.
At a second encampment I stumbled across the “Cold Weather Flying” trainer and made a note to book it there as soon as I hit 77.
All total, I was able to get in three dungeons and I’m getting very comfortable with a couple of them. No new gear dropped that would’ve been of any use to me, so I had to content myself with a couple of minor upgrades from quest turn-ins. The random group I got with number two was very synergetic: not the quickest run, but experienced people and we all worked well together. When it finished, we ran through another together—it’s always nice when you can do that with a solid group and avoid 10-30 minutes of ‘down time’. The end of the final dungeon carried me over into the next level (WOO!), so I sadly bade my random party adieu (they all wanted to run through another one) as it was getting late and I had one last thing to do…
Returned to the CWF trainer, plunked down a thousand gold, and flew away into the night on the back of my own gryphon. It was very liberating and I eagerly await exploring the whole of Northrend from above once my leveling quest is complete. Three more to go!
Began by immediately queuing up for a dungeon, then balked when I saw the average time to enter was hovering around half an hour. Not to be dissuaded, I started working the quests obtained at Camp Nesigwary that were mostly killtenrats, but included a few delightful things such as shaking tree vines to gather fruit, mixing up some booze from said fruit in a rapid random clickfest at a still, and disguising myself as a bush to lure a crocolisk to its doom.
At a second encampment I stumbled across the “Cold Weather Flying” trainer and made a note to book it there as soon as I hit 77.
All total, I was able to get in three dungeons and I’m getting very comfortable with a couple of them. No new gear dropped that would’ve been of any use to me, so I had to content myself with a couple of minor upgrades from quest turn-ins. The random group I got with number two was very synergetic: not the quickest run, but experienced people and we all worked well together. When it finished, we ran through another together—it’s always nice when you can do that with a solid group and avoid 10-30 minutes of ‘down time’. The end of the final dungeon carried me over into the next level (WOO!), so I sadly bade my random party adieu (they all wanted to run through another one) as it was getting late and I had one last thing to do…
Returned to the CWF trainer, plunked down a thousand gold, and flew away into the night on the back of my own gryphon. It was very liberating and I eagerly await exploring the whole of Northrend from above once my leveling quest is complete. Three more to go!
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
The Return of the PUG
Finished up as much of Zul’Drak as I could comfortably solo (Ding, 76!), and flapped my way back to the western edge of the continent to explore a new zone: Sholozar Basin. From what little I’ve seen, I already don’t like it. It’s very much like “Stranglethorn Vale: Part Two”, with giant rhinos, tigers, and crocolisks (oh my!). Nesingwary returns with another encampment… the Venture Bay Mining Company (an evil goblin mining corporation) returns… etc.
The quests so far here aren’t interesting and as almost a nod to Aion, this time we get a dose of killsixtyrats. After running a few odd jobs, I decided to park my butt in the encampment and look for a dungeon group. I hadn’t played any of the Lich King ones yet and heard they were “streamlined”. I was ready to see… and was impressed.
All total, I spun the wheel of fortune five times and wound up in three different dungeons: Drak’Tharon, the Violet Hold, and Gundrak. Overall, extremely positive experiences, even if my death counter did tick up slightly. Each time I entered a new dungeon, I told the party it was my first time through and someone was always kind enough to advise me to “Watch out for the black spots on the floor” or “This guy does AoE fears” or “GET THE F**K BACK!”, whichever was appropriate to the encounter.
In doing so, I cleared a few quests out of my log that had been growing stagnant, earned a half-level worth of experience and a few rare blues (2k Gearscore—woo! I’m no longer the least geared in the dungeon!), and had an absolute blast.
The highlight was the finale to Drak’Tharon, wherein a captured troll that was a major quest line in Grizzly Woods was revealed to be working for the Lich King the entire time. I had unwittingly removed “all of the opposition” to Lichy-poo’s expansion, and the Lich King appeared in the (rotted) flesh to reward his servant’s cunning. I politely stepped back. The troll got seriously buffed and after the King had left the building, he bade me seek him out—“Da lich king rewards all dose who follow him, mon.”
The Violet Hold was probably the simplest design and appealing if you like movies about gladiators. One big sealed off circular room with portals that appear periodically to rift in nasties. Every six waves, a boss would enter the arena. After 18 waves and three bosses, victory is attained. Designed to wear groups down, there’s no break in the action and it was a good spot of fun, if somewhat short.
The streamlining mentioned earlier cuts down dungeon size even moreso than the previous expansion. Now, a decently geared team (that doesn’t wipe) can clear a dungeon in about fifteen minutes. The thought of my old City of Heroes team crushing through 4-5 of these in rapid succession makes me smile inwardly.
The quests so far here aren’t interesting and as almost a nod to Aion, this time we get a dose of killsixtyrats. After running a few odd jobs, I decided to park my butt in the encampment and look for a dungeon group. I hadn’t played any of the Lich King ones yet and heard they were “streamlined”. I was ready to see… and was impressed.
All total, I spun the wheel of fortune five times and wound up in three different dungeons: Drak’Tharon, the Violet Hold, and Gundrak. Overall, extremely positive experiences, even if my death counter did tick up slightly. Each time I entered a new dungeon, I told the party it was my first time through and someone was always kind enough to advise me to “Watch out for the black spots on the floor” or “This guy does AoE fears” or “GET THE F**K BACK!”, whichever was appropriate to the encounter.
In doing so, I cleared a few quests out of my log that had been growing stagnant, earned a half-level worth of experience and a few rare blues (2k Gearscore—woo! I’m no longer the least geared in the dungeon!), and had an absolute blast.
The highlight was the finale to Drak’Tharon, wherein a captured troll that was a major quest line in Grizzly Woods was revealed to be working for the Lich King the entire time. I had unwittingly removed “all of the opposition” to Lichy-poo’s expansion, and the Lich King appeared in the (rotted) flesh to reward his servant’s cunning. I politely stepped back. The troll got seriously buffed and after the King had left the building, he bade me seek him out—“Da lich king rewards all dose who follow him, mon.”
The Violet Hold was probably the simplest design and appealing if you like movies about gladiators. One big sealed off circular room with portals that appear periodically to rift in nasties. Every six waves, a boss would enter the arena. After 18 waves and three bosses, victory is attained. Designed to wear groups down, there’s no break in the action and it was a good spot of fun, if somewhat short.
The streamlining mentioned earlier cuts down dungeon size even moreso than the previous expansion. Now, a decently geared team (that doesn’t wipe) can clear a dungeon in about fifteen minutes. The thought of my old City of Heroes team crushing through 4-5 of these in rapid succession makes me smile inwardly.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Subversion
Began by cleaning out every quest I could in Grizzly Woods, leaving me with two of the three I mentioned last time. Capturing the ice troll was ludicrously easy, once I realized I had to take the NPC with me, but “The Getaway” and the “Kill the Big Bad” had left me with a couple of deaths each. (Side note: according to Armory, I’ve died 133 times so far—I note with amusement that total would’ve been a LOT lower if I hadn’t done all of the Capture the Horde Flame quests during the last holiday.) After diligent forum reading, I decided the best way to knock these two out was by subverting the intended way to play. Not –quite- cheating…well, at least not moreso than bringing a gun to a knife fight. This isn’t my “normal” style of gameplay, but by gods… these were non-group quests that were giving me headaches and I wanted them done.
The Getaway still took a few tries to get it right, but it was possible to jump on the back of the prisoner’s horse to start the ride, then hop back off, then ride your own mount and ‘escort’ him that way for 90% of the trip. In doing so, none of the worgen spawn to attack, but you have to jump from your mount to his before you get to the destination. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me feel a little bad, but in the end, I still slept soundly that night.
Killing the Thane was substantially less fiddly and only took two more attempts—and that was only because I managed to fall off a tower and down a cliff. For about the billionth time, Slow Fall saved my life. The Thane stands watch outside the top of a tower, you see, and the trick to beating him was to land on the back of the tower on a small ledge, scootch around to the side and obliterate him with my Blizzard AoE attack. He never raised a hand in defense and another quest was wiped from my list.
By the time I had knocked out the last solo quest I could find, I had earned an achivement for knocking out a hundred quests in the zone (“Fo’ Grizzle, my Shizzle”, or something like that) and was ready to pack up camp and head north. Although the group quests look nifty (Kill Ursoc, the god of bears? Rahr! Yeah, that was one of my “133” right there.), I don’t feel compelled to do them—I can always come back with a few more levels under my belt.
And thus, I made my way to Zul’Drak—a zone I would learn to despise over the course of the weekend. As a general rule of thumb, I dislike playing in areas that are depressingly dreary and that was the main theme there. Most of the area was ruined and overgrown temples or corrupted land with appropriately matching sky and atmosphere. Zul’Drak is a land of undead, spider-things, and trolls… lots of trolls. There’s about a half dozen tiny Alliance ‘safe spots’ with soldiers fighting against the encroachment by the tides of darkness. A couple of these are major quest hubs with flight paths.
The troll’s story is that the evil tribe(s) in a mad quest for power captured their own animal totem-gods, killed or imprisoned them and are using their energy to destroy all who oppose them or just patrol around ten foot areas of space until I get there, whichever comes first.
To Zul’Drak’s credit, I’ve had a great deal of fun with the zone’s super-mega-awesome-thirty-part quest chain, which is Rescue or Avenge the animal spirit gods, which had taken me from the depths of murky pools to the spirit world itself as each spirit, good or evil, has its own agenda and means for dealing with the transgressors.
Over the course of my adventures, I dinged a couple of times (woo! 75!) and am closing in on another level. When the Animal God plotline wraps up, I’ll be off to another zone and will be glad to leave a few challenges in Zul’Drak unanswered.
Right now, a new decision looms. I’ve nearly 4 kilogold in the bank now, from my very aggressive questing and auctionhousing. At 4250, I’ll be able to buy ‘epic’ riding and travel at a much faster clip on land, but if I do so, I won’t have the funds (another 1k gold) when I get the option to buy “cold weather flying” when it becomes available at level 77. My gut instinct is to hold off on the epic riding until I have the flying skill, but we’ll see.
The Getaway still took a few tries to get it right, but it was possible to jump on the back of the prisoner’s horse to start the ride, then hop back off, then ride your own mount and ‘escort’ him that way for 90% of the trip. In doing so, none of the worgen spawn to attack, but you have to jump from your mount to his before you get to the destination. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me feel a little bad, but in the end, I still slept soundly that night.
Killing the Thane was substantially less fiddly and only took two more attempts—and that was only because I managed to fall off a tower and down a cliff. For about the billionth time, Slow Fall saved my life. The Thane stands watch outside the top of a tower, you see, and the trick to beating him was to land on the back of the tower on a small ledge, scootch around to the side and obliterate him with my Blizzard AoE attack. He never raised a hand in defense and another quest was wiped from my list.
By the time I had knocked out the last solo quest I could find, I had earned an achivement for knocking out a hundred quests in the zone (“Fo’ Grizzle, my Shizzle”, or something like that) and was ready to pack up camp and head north. Although the group quests look nifty (Kill Ursoc, the god of bears? Rahr! Yeah, that was one of my “133” right there.), I don’t feel compelled to do them—I can always come back with a few more levels under my belt.
And thus, I made my way to Zul’Drak—a zone I would learn to despise over the course of the weekend. As a general rule of thumb, I dislike playing in areas that are depressingly dreary and that was the main theme there. Most of the area was ruined and overgrown temples or corrupted land with appropriately matching sky and atmosphere. Zul’Drak is a land of undead, spider-things, and trolls… lots of trolls. There’s about a half dozen tiny Alliance ‘safe spots’ with soldiers fighting against the encroachment by the tides of darkness. A couple of these are major quest hubs with flight paths.
The troll’s story is that the evil tribe(s) in a mad quest for power captured their own animal totem-gods, killed or imprisoned them and are using their energy to destroy all who oppose them or just patrol around ten foot areas of space until I get there, whichever comes first.
To Zul’Drak’s credit, I’ve had a great deal of fun with the zone’s super-mega-awesome-thirty-part quest chain, which is Rescue or Avenge the animal spirit gods, which had taken me from the depths of murky pools to the spirit world itself as each spirit, good or evil, has its own agenda and means for dealing with the transgressors.
Over the course of my adventures, I dinged a couple of times (woo! 75!) and am closing in on another level. When the Animal God plotline wraps up, I’ll be off to another zone and will be glad to leave a few challenges in Zul’Drak unanswered.
Right now, a new decision looms. I’ve nearly 4 kilogold in the bank now, from my very aggressive questing and auctionhousing. At 4250, I’ll be able to buy ‘epic’ riding and travel at a much faster clip on land, but if I do so, I won’t have the funds (another 1k gold) when I get the option to buy “cold weather flying” when it becomes available at level 77. My gut instinct is to hold off on the epic riding until I have the flying skill, but we’ll see.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Where wolves?
Returning to Amberpine (not Amberstill, as reported— sigh), I discovered that people were suddenly very open with their problems and concerns. As per personal policy, I accepted every available task despite any consequences to the nearby fauna. Eagles, wolves, stags and bears were on the menu in this neck of the Woods. Leaving town, I spied a knight on horseback who needed ten (of course) orcs killed at a lumber camp just across a small stream. Just one hitch—accepting this quest would flag me for PvP as long as the quest was in my journal. I gamely accepted and went to go check out the lumber camp.
The camp itself was set up like a small field battle, with humans and orc spawning in endless waves. I waded into the thick of it, watchful for enemy players. It was delightful chaos on a small scale and at one point I had to nip behind our ranks to heal. I had slain nine of the orcs and stood in the middle of the field, waiting for the next batch to materialize… when the power went out at my house.
A bit later when I could once again wield Edison’s Legacy, I logged back in and wondered how far I’d have to run to recover my corpse. The answer was, surprisingly, not at all. I returned in the thick of battle, but was (for the moment) alive! I hastily beat a retreat to the edge of the fray, summoned Steve, then iced (pun intended) the last of the orcs I needed. The quest is a ‘daily’ one, so I may do it while I’m in the area—which at this rate will be about a week.
From that point on, I ran what missions I could and wound up with several I will need to revisit. It just wasn’t my night for pulling off the impossible.
The first was to capture an ice troll in a cage and bring it back to some dwarves who apparently are into that sort of thing. I trekked down to where the ice trolls lurked and hid behind a small rock as I tried to figure out the mechanics behind “setting up a cage trap”. After a moment and reading the quest more thoroughly, I smacked my head hard. The trap was apparently held by a NPC up in the camp where I had picked up the quest and I was supposed to escort the guy down to set the trap up and waylay a troll. I opted to do something else instead. In retrospect, this may be the easiest of the tasks that are pending.
The second quest that is sitting is “Kill the Big Bad”, in this iteration a Viking-themed elite that stands atop a tower. He has a throwing arm that deals devastating damage, but I get a dragon to ride that does nice, but nowhere near enough, burst damage. If it were a straight up Dragon vs. Thane fight, I’m sure I’d win, but the problem is the dragon doesn’t soak up all the damage; there is significant bleedthrough and since Strev is a cloth caster, after a couple of return hits he is hurting bad. This one may have to wait a level or two.
Finally, we have what I can only call “The Getaway”, employing a mechanic I rarely see outside of FPSs. After discovering that a good number of what I assumed were people are, in fact, worgen (read: werewolves) in disguise, I bust a guy out of a holding cell who freaks the hell out like a guy in a zombie survival movie: “Were you bitten?! ANSWER ME! WERE YOU BITTEN?!” After he calms down, we steal a fast horse and we begin a mad dash to escape. The horse runs “on rails” and my job is to defend us with ummm… horse powers (gallop for 2 seconds and stomp which is a small PBAoE stun for a couple of seconds) and Molotov cocktails (targeted AoE fire damage). All the while, the horse is swarmed by worgen just pouring out of the woods. If they get hits on the horse, it slows it down, allowing for more worgen to catch up so timing the skills, each of which have cooldowns, is critical…and apparently beyond my means.
Every time I thought we were in the clear, another eight worgen moved to intercept us. I never had time to check the map to see how close I was to our goal—every second was pulse-pounding as the harrowing ride continued. Little by little, the worgen wore us down until the horse was killed and we were swarmed. The number and ferocity prevented me from being able to escape and I died a glorious death under a dozen worgen and a bear that just happened to be wandering by.
Tonight again I ride.
The camp itself was set up like a small field battle, with humans and orc spawning in endless waves. I waded into the thick of it, watchful for enemy players. It was delightful chaos on a small scale and at one point I had to nip behind our ranks to heal. I had slain nine of the orcs and stood in the middle of the field, waiting for the next batch to materialize… when the power went out at my house.
A bit later when I could once again wield Edison’s Legacy, I logged back in and wondered how far I’d have to run to recover my corpse. The answer was, surprisingly, not at all. I returned in the thick of battle, but was (for the moment) alive! I hastily beat a retreat to the edge of the fray, summoned Steve, then iced (pun intended) the last of the orcs I needed. The quest is a ‘daily’ one, so I may do it while I’m in the area—which at this rate will be about a week.
From that point on, I ran what missions I could and wound up with several I will need to revisit. It just wasn’t my night for pulling off the impossible.
The first was to capture an ice troll in a cage and bring it back to some dwarves who apparently are into that sort of thing. I trekked down to where the ice trolls lurked and hid behind a small rock as I tried to figure out the mechanics behind “setting up a cage trap”. After a moment and reading the quest more thoroughly, I smacked my head hard. The trap was apparently held by a NPC up in the camp where I had picked up the quest and I was supposed to escort the guy down to set the trap up and waylay a troll. I opted to do something else instead. In retrospect, this may be the easiest of the tasks that are pending.
The second quest that is sitting is “Kill the Big Bad”, in this iteration a Viking-themed elite that stands atop a tower. He has a throwing arm that deals devastating damage, but I get a dragon to ride that does nice, but nowhere near enough, burst damage. If it were a straight up Dragon vs. Thane fight, I’m sure I’d win, but the problem is the dragon doesn’t soak up all the damage; there is significant bleedthrough and since Strev is a cloth caster, after a couple of return hits he is hurting bad. This one may have to wait a level or two.
Finally, we have what I can only call “The Getaway”, employing a mechanic I rarely see outside of FPSs. After discovering that a good number of what I assumed were people are, in fact, worgen (read: werewolves) in disguise, I bust a guy out of a holding cell who freaks the hell out like a guy in a zombie survival movie: “Were you bitten?! ANSWER ME! WERE YOU BITTEN?!” After he calms down, we steal a fast horse and we begin a mad dash to escape. The horse runs “on rails” and my job is to defend us with ummm… horse powers (gallop for 2 seconds and stomp which is a small PBAoE stun for a couple of seconds) and Molotov cocktails (targeted AoE fire damage). All the while, the horse is swarmed by worgen just pouring out of the woods. If they get hits on the horse, it slows it down, allowing for more worgen to catch up so timing the skills, each of which have cooldowns, is critical…and apparently beyond my means.
Every time I thought we were in the clear, another eight worgen moved to intercept us. I never had time to check the map to see how close I was to our goal—every second was pulse-pounding as the harrowing ride continued. Little by little, the worgen wore us down until the horse was killed and we were swarmed. The number and ferocity prevented me from being able to escape and I died a glorious death under a dozen worgen and a bear that just happened to be wandering by.
Tonight again I ride.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Yo ho ho!
Finished my last quest in Dragonsblight, which was nothing of significance, mounted up on my trusty Swift Yellow Mechastrider and loped east to Grizzly Woods. As I made my way to the nearest outpost, I marveled at the beauty of the forest (by Warcraft standards) and the sheer lack of bears (by anyone’s standards). I was sure they’d turn up eventually. I did manage to find a crapton of wolves and hunters though. After a few minutes of exploring and nearly entering the Horde outpost by mistake, I find Amberstill Ranch, pick up the flight path, and begin badgering the locals. None of them wanted a thing to do with me.
The zone was designed for levels 73-75, but I was under the impression that was the level of the critters and would have no problems finding a few things to do to pit myself against mildly more difficult creatures. Not so. That 73 was a solid wall and quests would not be available for me until I passed it. Nuts.
Having cleared the last couple of zones, I’d have to aim low and hit the other staging zone for Northrend: The Howling Fjords. Designed (in theory) for 68-72, I expected the quests to be breathtakingly less challenging than what I had just faced. Still, a gnome’s gotta do what a gnome’s gotta do and I plowed into the thick of it.
Although by and large the quests met my expectations, the scenery was quite remarkable. One bit that stands out is a large “skybucket” type affair that ferries you down the fjords to a small island populated by the walrus guys I’ve been stealing puppies for. I improved my standing with them by performing some menial tasks and was sent to a pirate encampment on a neighboring island, which turned out to be a large quest hub. I could not have been more pleased with this portion of the zone.
If it was piratey, it was a quest. Board a ghost ship! Shake down people to pay back debts! Plunder loot from a giant after you burn him down with a giant cannon! Retrieve lost treasures! Face down perilous sharks, orcas, and a large seal (they wanted the blubber to make soap to swap the decks). Bribe a serving wench to pour some pirate really strong drink so you can pickpocket his recumbent form! The quests culminated in the assassination of the pirate leader at the bequest of his overly ambitious first mate. I’d need his spyglass as proof of my deeds, as for some reason the pirate wasn’t all that trusting of my word.
The Captain took refuge in a nearby cave and the quest was scaled for a group of three people one level lower than I, so I figured it’d be a good romp. Gamely, I entered the cave and summoned Steve to my side. The captain was alone, so I sent Steve forth and the battle was joined. Making good use of blink and my various slows, I was able to kite my opponent around without taking too much damage, then something surprising happened. When he was just about at 30% health, he decided to make a break for it and slipped and tumbled into a ravine and onto the biggest damn bear I’d ever seen. The bear gulped him down and now my proof was lodged in the ursine’s craw! Standing at the edge of the crevice in the rock, I quickly surveyed the scene. The bear looked significantly more difficult than the captain did and there was precious little room for navigation. This…would be hard.
“Steve! Attack!”, I barked as I cast Slow Fall on myself. Steve merrily wandered off. Terrific. I glided down into the waiting jaws, in time to frost nova the creature, immobilizing it briefly and blink a short distance to relative safety. Steve shows up, having taken some circuitous route and finally begins attacking. The ice shatters and bear chomps at me, inflicting a significant amount of non-cosmetic damage. I encase myself in ice to buy some for Steve to regain aggro control, when from behind the bear a sword slashes into it!
A member of the Horde, a blood elf warrior, had engaged my target and the bear was now totally focused on the new threat. With full guns blazing, the newcomer, Steve, and I made short work of the furry menace and I extracted the spyglass. Huzzah!
After finishing the pirate quests, I checked in with my walrus buddies and found a new quest had unlocked! Apparently the pirates had killed the king of the seals (to make soap to swab their decks, no less!) and now the other seals were leaving, having no reason to stay, the walrus-folk depend on the seals and…and… it was heart-wrenching. Fortunately, I could help restore the seals desire to stay by encouraging them to mate. I cannot make this up.
I was given a net to catch “tastyfish” and using the fish, kite—I mean, lure, one of the seal bulls across a narrow channel to where there were sea cows a-waiting. Once done, little hearts appear over the newfound lovers and I was informed that “I had successfully helped the sea cow find her true love.” Overall, a fun little quest and it’s repeatable daily.
Explored the zone more and found the “start point” for the area, which linked to the western continent by boat. Did enough of the quests there to hit level 73 and called it a night.
Next time: back to the Grizzly Woods!
The zone was designed for levels 73-75, but I was under the impression that was the level of the critters and would have no problems finding a few things to do to pit myself against mildly more difficult creatures. Not so. That 73 was a solid wall and quests would not be available for me until I passed it. Nuts.
Having cleared the last couple of zones, I’d have to aim low and hit the other staging zone for Northrend: The Howling Fjords. Designed (in theory) for 68-72, I expected the quests to be breathtakingly less challenging than what I had just faced. Still, a gnome’s gotta do what a gnome’s gotta do and I plowed into the thick of it.
Although by and large the quests met my expectations, the scenery was quite remarkable. One bit that stands out is a large “skybucket” type affair that ferries you down the fjords to a small island populated by the walrus guys I’ve been stealing puppies for. I improved my standing with them by performing some menial tasks and was sent to a pirate encampment on a neighboring island, which turned out to be a large quest hub. I could not have been more pleased with this portion of the zone.
If it was piratey, it was a quest. Board a ghost ship! Shake down people to pay back debts! Plunder loot from a giant after you burn him down with a giant cannon! Retrieve lost treasures! Face down perilous sharks, orcas, and a large seal (they wanted the blubber to make soap to swap the decks). Bribe a serving wench to pour some pirate really strong drink so you can pickpocket his recumbent form! The quests culminated in the assassination of the pirate leader at the bequest of his overly ambitious first mate. I’d need his spyglass as proof of my deeds, as for some reason the pirate wasn’t all that trusting of my word.
The Captain took refuge in a nearby cave and the quest was scaled for a group of three people one level lower than I, so I figured it’d be a good romp. Gamely, I entered the cave and summoned Steve to my side. The captain was alone, so I sent Steve forth and the battle was joined. Making good use of blink and my various slows, I was able to kite my opponent around without taking too much damage, then something surprising happened. When he was just about at 30% health, he decided to make a break for it and slipped and tumbled into a ravine and onto the biggest damn bear I’d ever seen. The bear gulped him down and now my proof was lodged in the ursine’s craw! Standing at the edge of the crevice in the rock, I quickly surveyed the scene. The bear looked significantly more difficult than the captain did and there was precious little room for navigation. This…would be hard.
“Steve! Attack!”, I barked as I cast Slow Fall on myself. Steve merrily wandered off. Terrific. I glided down into the waiting jaws, in time to frost nova the creature, immobilizing it briefly and blink a short distance to relative safety. Steve shows up, having taken some circuitous route and finally begins attacking. The ice shatters and bear chomps at me, inflicting a significant amount of non-cosmetic damage. I encase myself in ice to buy some for Steve to regain aggro control, when from behind the bear a sword slashes into it!
A member of the Horde, a blood elf warrior, had engaged my target and the bear was now totally focused on the new threat. With full guns blazing, the newcomer, Steve, and I made short work of the furry menace and I extracted the spyglass. Huzzah!
After finishing the pirate quests, I checked in with my walrus buddies and found a new quest had unlocked! Apparently the pirates had killed the king of the seals (to make soap to swab their decks, no less!) and now the other seals were leaving, having no reason to stay, the walrus-folk depend on the seals and…and… it was heart-wrenching. Fortunately, I could help restore the seals desire to stay by encouraging them to mate. I cannot make this up.
I was given a net to catch “tastyfish” and using the fish, kite—I mean, lure, one of the seal bulls across a narrow channel to where there were sea cows a-waiting. Once done, little hearts appear over the newfound lovers and I was informed that “I had successfully helped the sea cow find her true love.” Overall, a fun little quest and it’s repeatable daily.
Explored the zone more and found the “start point” for the area, which linked to the western continent by boat. Did enough of the quests there to hit level 73 and called it a night.
Next time: back to the Grizzly Woods!
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
The Passing of a Dear Friend
Awoke in the center of Wyrmrest temple in the heart of Dragonblight—a haven, of sorts, for “good dragons”. I’d been performing tasks for their faction, notably their queen in human form, and was left with two tasks to go. One was close by and one…far away. One involved killing 31 critters, the other just three. I opted to engage the 31 on the sole basis that they weren’t going to take six minutes to jog to. What a curiously fateful decision.
The mission itself was fun at the beginning: you get to borrow a dragon to ride—think of it as an aerial vehicle with special attacks that replace your own skills. Using said dragon, flap merrily to a pit where ghouls are feverishly exhuming a giant dragon skeleton for their master to animate, kill 30 of them, then kill some giant overseeing the operation and acquire a magic scythe. It seemed simple enough. Flapped around and rained fiery death from above, occasionally landing long enough to devour a ghoul with the dragon’s bite (doing so being the only way to heal it) and shortly I was only left with the giant.
The giant stood atop a horrifically laid out mountain called “Death Coil” that has a circular path leading to the top. I flapped over and lit into the giant. A few blasts of fire and he was down for the count. Immediately, he was replaced by the true master, a necromancer wielding a scythe (aha!). I move in for the kill and my dragon dissolves and I’m left parachuting down to the ground…in combat. I summon Steve and my mouse starts acting a little weird (trouble right clicking—like it’s sticking). Terrific—getting off the mount has screwed up my controls slightly, I thought. I decided to relog when this was done. Meanwhile, I was facing the worst encounter I’d had to date. Being surprised by all of the factors left me unable to defend myself properly and the necromancer burned me down quickly.
Take two. I ran back to my corpse, and re-summoned the dragon to beat the giant (this is necessary), this time landing on the ground before the dragon could disappear and leave me vulnerable again. I get one solid shot on the baddie then he fears Steve and me. While we’re running around like chickens, he’s spamming shadow magic and I fall off the side of the mountain, being unable to control myself. Then I discover he can shoot THROUGH the mountain.
Take three. Ok. He can fear. My new strategy: hang back a little and let Steve tank longer. As expected, the necro feared. As unexpected, his range covered the other side of the mountain and he could fear as soon as the first one wore off. In a panic, I encase myself in ice and Steve nearly defeats him before getting pasted. My ice block wore off then I was chain-feared, fell off the mountain, and was shadow bolted into submission.
Take four. Now mildly irritated, I venture back with a new variation of my plan and decide to let Steve do ALL of the fighting and will summon a replacement if needed. It worked! I got feared, but was able to survive—when I saw his attention was focused on me, I ice-blocked and Steve kept pounding. The ice crumbled and I got feared—but Steve dealt the killing blow as I fell off the ledge. Barely surviving, I dashed up the rocky path to claim my prize, but the body was nowhere to be seen! I searched the top of the mountain and looked to the sides to determine where he could’ve gotten off to—as the giant respawns and one-shots me.
I then had officially enough. My gear was heavily worn and would be a small fortune to repair, I still hadn’t had a chance to fix the mouse for good, and I was seriously annoyed. Then my obstinacy kicked in. I had come so close last time—I’ll try it one more time.
Take five. Giant falls and necro takes the stage. Steve glides into battle and not leaving anything to chance, I ice block almost immediately. When it crumbled, I dashed to the top of the mountain and noted the undead fiend was down by a third. I risked a spell, then cold snapped and back in ice. Steve was then feared, but had plenty of aggro so when I could move again, I burned that bastard to the ground with impunity and frost bolts. Lots of frost bolts.
There on the ground lay the scythe. I moved over to it and clicked to pick it up, but couldn’t. The mouse was screwed up again. GLAH! Why had I not rebooted when I had the chance? Now fearful that each second came closer to having the giant spawn on top of me again I feverishly alt-tabbed and pressed mystical key combinations in a fit to restore mouse control. It worked and I grabbed my prize. I hopped down from the mountain top and recalled back to the temple just as the giant materialized (quest bosses have an insane respawn time to prevent questers queuing for long). I was given a solid chunk of xp as a reward and unintentionally triggered a major plot arc.
With the Scythe of Elune back in the hands of the dragons, the hordes of evil would diminish and I was to report my success to the Alliance camp by the Wrathgate—they guys that had sent me to the Temple to begin with. “Ok, cool. I’ve finished this quest hub and maybe something new has unlocked there.” I return to tell The Guy, who is apparently some military bigwig, and… World of Warcraft went epic on me and my mouse woes were forgotten
My screen blanked and I was treated to an actual movie-style cut scene of what transpired next (YouTube for Warcraft wrathgate movie – it’s worth it!)—the Alliance taking the initiative and storming the Wrathgate, only to meet teeming hordes of undead. The battle is joined by the Horde, who side with the Alliance against a common foe. They make short work of the undead and the Gate opens once more—and out strides Arthas, the Lich King himself! He monologues, kills the orc leader, and is about to kill the Hero, when an army of Forsaken (Scourge? I always confuse the two) appear, enemy to all. Using a chemical barrage, they lay waste to all, undead, orc, and human alike—killing nearly everyone, including the Hero. His dying vision is of flapping things coming. It is the Dragon Court in full omfg-that’s-huge mode. Laying waste to the Forsaken, The Lich King goes “It…isn’t over.” and retreats back into the Wrathgate and it closes behind him.
When control to my character returned, the entire area was STILL ON FIRE, mirroring what I saw in the movie and the dragon queen sat in the middle of it all. Her aura prevented the casting of spells, so I made my way down the long way to her presence and she bade me take the Hero’s shield back to the King in Stormguard.
I did so and the King had Jaina Proudmoore open a portal to an instance resembling the Orc’s capital’s throne room. I followed and there Jaina negotiated a tenuous alliance between the forces. Thrall, Warchief of the Horde, related the Undercity had fallen to the Forsaken and they no longer had control of it. An alliance was forged, but Undercity had to be rescued. Jaina portaled us there and we met up with the King and a number of Alliance soldiers. After a few minutes to prepare and buff up, the King led us on a charge into the sewers of the Undercity.
Just before entering, a spell of GODMODE was cast on us, that had the following effects: +30000 health and mana, +9850 health AND mana healed every second or two and some hellacious bump in damage output. It was needed. Charging into the fray, throngs of elite undead met us every second. I was taking thousands of damage a second and was barely keeping ahead of the damage curve. My blizzards were doing clouds of damage that measured in the tens of thousands with all of the targets in melee range. My computer started paying the price-- I had reduced my graphics to minimum, but I was still getting video lag that was ungodly. Couple that with my mouse freaking the hell out and halfway through I’m forced to crash out of the application.
My mouse woes continue after exiting—and rebooting. It was hardware failure that didn’t respond to cleaning, servicing, multiple resets, and percussive therapy. My mouse, my beautiful, silent mouse lovingly made in China and ordered from Japan was no more. Good night, sweet input device, and may flights of angels carry thee to thy rest.
Fortunately, I had a backup mouse and I hooked it up. I ordered a replacement silent mouse (and keyboard too!) and after a bit, I logged back in and feared what I would find.
I was at the bottom of the heart of the city, surrounded by massively overstatted undead, no helpful NPCs, and without the godmode buff. Oh, hell. Getting out of there took six lives and much of the rest of my armor’s durability—I had forgotten to repair it while briefly in town. Back out of the pit, I abandoned and restarted the quest. The King was once more ready to lead us to victory! I reduced my screen resolution and that took care of the graphical display issues and I was now able to appreciate the sheer wonder of storming the Undercity.
Halfway through the sewers, we were beset upon by a giant worm, who would periodically snatch me up in its jaws digesting me insane amounts of damage before spitting me across the cavern. After several minutes, it was slain and we fought our way down to the Big Bad: Putress (great name). This insane necromantic “scientist” defies description. We battled him as countless dozens of “failed experiments” swarmed each of us. Even with godmode, thrice I had to ice block to keep from dying and the last scraps of my armor were destroyed. I let the King tank and dealt with the zerg rush as well as I could. When at last Putress fell, we heard the cries of cheering orcs in the background and the King…nuts…up.
Trailing along behind him, he storms the throne room and confronts Thrall, intending to wipe him and all his ilk from the universe. After the requisite monologue, he lights into Thrall and I lay down suppressing fire, only to have all of his elite guards focus on me. Jaina will have nothing to do with this treacherous breaking of the accord and teleports us all back home before anyone dies.
Back home, I am awarded commendations from the King for my valor and am tasked with conquering Northrend—FOR THE ALLIANCE!
The mission itself was fun at the beginning: you get to borrow a dragon to ride—think of it as an aerial vehicle with special attacks that replace your own skills. Using said dragon, flap merrily to a pit where ghouls are feverishly exhuming a giant dragon skeleton for their master to animate, kill 30 of them, then kill some giant overseeing the operation and acquire a magic scythe. It seemed simple enough. Flapped around and rained fiery death from above, occasionally landing long enough to devour a ghoul with the dragon’s bite (doing so being the only way to heal it) and shortly I was only left with the giant.
The giant stood atop a horrifically laid out mountain called “Death Coil” that has a circular path leading to the top. I flapped over and lit into the giant. A few blasts of fire and he was down for the count. Immediately, he was replaced by the true master, a necromancer wielding a scythe (aha!). I move in for the kill and my dragon dissolves and I’m left parachuting down to the ground…in combat. I summon Steve and my mouse starts acting a little weird (trouble right clicking—like it’s sticking). Terrific—getting off the mount has screwed up my controls slightly, I thought. I decided to relog when this was done. Meanwhile, I was facing the worst encounter I’d had to date. Being surprised by all of the factors left me unable to defend myself properly and the necromancer burned me down quickly.
Take two. I ran back to my corpse, and re-summoned the dragon to beat the giant (this is necessary), this time landing on the ground before the dragon could disappear and leave me vulnerable again. I get one solid shot on the baddie then he fears Steve and me. While we’re running around like chickens, he’s spamming shadow magic and I fall off the side of the mountain, being unable to control myself. Then I discover he can shoot THROUGH the mountain.
Take three. Ok. He can fear. My new strategy: hang back a little and let Steve tank longer. As expected, the necro feared. As unexpected, his range covered the other side of the mountain and he could fear as soon as the first one wore off. In a panic, I encase myself in ice and Steve nearly defeats him before getting pasted. My ice block wore off then I was chain-feared, fell off the mountain, and was shadow bolted into submission.
Take four. Now mildly irritated, I venture back with a new variation of my plan and decide to let Steve do ALL of the fighting and will summon a replacement if needed. It worked! I got feared, but was able to survive—when I saw his attention was focused on me, I ice-blocked and Steve kept pounding. The ice crumbled and I got feared—but Steve dealt the killing blow as I fell off the ledge. Barely surviving, I dashed up the rocky path to claim my prize, but the body was nowhere to be seen! I searched the top of the mountain and looked to the sides to determine where he could’ve gotten off to—as the giant respawns and one-shots me.
I then had officially enough. My gear was heavily worn and would be a small fortune to repair, I still hadn’t had a chance to fix the mouse for good, and I was seriously annoyed. Then my obstinacy kicked in. I had come so close last time—I’ll try it one more time.
Take five. Giant falls and necro takes the stage. Steve glides into battle and not leaving anything to chance, I ice block almost immediately. When it crumbled, I dashed to the top of the mountain and noted the undead fiend was down by a third. I risked a spell, then cold snapped and back in ice. Steve was then feared, but had plenty of aggro so when I could move again, I burned that bastard to the ground with impunity and frost bolts. Lots of frost bolts.
There on the ground lay the scythe. I moved over to it and clicked to pick it up, but couldn’t. The mouse was screwed up again. GLAH! Why had I not rebooted when I had the chance? Now fearful that each second came closer to having the giant spawn on top of me again I feverishly alt-tabbed and pressed mystical key combinations in a fit to restore mouse control. It worked and I grabbed my prize. I hopped down from the mountain top and recalled back to the temple just as the giant materialized (quest bosses have an insane respawn time to prevent questers queuing for long). I was given a solid chunk of xp as a reward and unintentionally triggered a major plot arc.
With the Scythe of Elune back in the hands of the dragons, the hordes of evil would diminish and I was to report my success to the Alliance camp by the Wrathgate—they guys that had sent me to the Temple to begin with. “Ok, cool. I’ve finished this quest hub and maybe something new has unlocked there.” I return to tell The Guy, who is apparently some military bigwig, and… World of Warcraft went epic on me and my mouse woes were forgotten
My screen blanked and I was treated to an actual movie-style cut scene of what transpired next (YouTube for Warcraft wrathgate movie – it’s worth it!)—the Alliance taking the initiative and storming the Wrathgate, only to meet teeming hordes of undead. The battle is joined by the Horde, who side with the Alliance against a common foe. They make short work of the undead and the Gate opens once more—and out strides Arthas, the Lich King himself! He monologues, kills the orc leader, and is about to kill the Hero, when an army of Forsaken (Scourge? I always confuse the two) appear, enemy to all. Using a chemical barrage, they lay waste to all, undead, orc, and human alike—killing nearly everyone, including the Hero. His dying vision is of flapping things coming. It is the Dragon Court in full omfg-that’s-huge mode. Laying waste to the Forsaken, The Lich King goes “It…isn’t over.” and retreats back into the Wrathgate and it closes behind him.
When control to my character returned, the entire area was STILL ON FIRE, mirroring what I saw in the movie and the dragon queen sat in the middle of it all. Her aura prevented the casting of spells, so I made my way down the long way to her presence and she bade me take the Hero’s shield back to the King in Stormguard.
I did so and the King had Jaina Proudmoore open a portal to an instance resembling the Orc’s capital’s throne room. I followed and there Jaina negotiated a tenuous alliance between the forces. Thrall, Warchief of the Horde, related the Undercity had fallen to the Forsaken and they no longer had control of it. An alliance was forged, but Undercity had to be rescued. Jaina portaled us there and we met up with the King and a number of Alliance soldiers. After a few minutes to prepare and buff up, the King led us on a charge into the sewers of the Undercity.
Just before entering, a spell of GODMODE was cast on us, that had the following effects: +30000 health and mana, +9850 health AND mana healed every second or two and some hellacious bump in damage output. It was needed. Charging into the fray, throngs of elite undead met us every second. I was taking thousands of damage a second and was barely keeping ahead of the damage curve. My blizzards were doing clouds of damage that measured in the tens of thousands with all of the targets in melee range. My computer started paying the price-- I had reduced my graphics to minimum, but I was still getting video lag that was ungodly. Couple that with my mouse freaking the hell out and halfway through I’m forced to crash out of the application.
My mouse woes continue after exiting—and rebooting. It was hardware failure that didn’t respond to cleaning, servicing, multiple resets, and percussive therapy. My mouse, my beautiful, silent mouse lovingly made in China and ordered from Japan was no more. Good night, sweet input device, and may flights of angels carry thee to thy rest.
Fortunately, I had a backup mouse and I hooked it up. I ordered a replacement silent mouse (and keyboard too!) and after a bit, I logged back in and feared what I would find.
I was at the bottom of the heart of the city, surrounded by massively overstatted undead, no helpful NPCs, and without the godmode buff. Oh, hell. Getting out of there took six lives and much of the rest of my armor’s durability—I had forgotten to repair it while briefly in town. Back out of the pit, I abandoned and restarted the quest. The King was once more ready to lead us to victory! I reduced my screen resolution and that took care of the graphical display issues and I was now able to appreciate the sheer wonder of storming the Undercity.
Halfway through the sewers, we were beset upon by a giant worm, who would periodically snatch me up in its jaws digesting me insane amounts of damage before spitting me across the cavern. After several minutes, it was slain and we fought our way down to the Big Bad: Putress (great name). This insane necromantic “scientist” defies description. We battled him as countless dozens of “failed experiments” swarmed each of us. Even with godmode, thrice I had to ice block to keep from dying and the last scraps of my armor were destroyed. I let the King tank and dealt with the zerg rush as well as I could. When at last Putress fell, we heard the cries of cheering orcs in the background and the King…nuts…up.
Trailing along behind him, he storms the throne room and confronts Thrall, intending to wipe him and all his ilk from the universe. After the requisite monologue, he lights into Thrall and I lay down suppressing fire, only to have all of his elite guards focus on me. Jaina will have nothing to do with this treacherous breaking of the accord and teleports us all back home before anyone dies.
Back home, I am awarded commendations from the King for my valor and am tasked with conquering Northrend—FOR THE ALLIANCE!
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Dragonblight
Shorter playtime last night to compensate for the weekend’s excesses, but was still able to hit level 72. I think I’ve nearly finished everything there is to do in Dragonblight, save the group quests which offer no reward worth standing around trying to get a group together to win.
One thing that is actually impressing me with this expansion is the amount of lore that has gone into the game beyond the typical blurb thrown into a quest’s descriptive text, which I often skim as I try to quickly discern the number of rats the quest giver wants me to slay. The developers bit back this time and hard, as there are a number of quests that, as part of the completion sequence, allow/force you to watch cut scenes that show the story behind the events. I rather enjoy these and it adds a much-needed element of depth to the game as a whole.
In the past couple of days, for example, I have summoned visions of the ghost of Arthas, the son of the King, and watched as he orders his men’s ships burned to prevent their retreat. Deep in the depths of Dragonsblight, where the cursed blade Frostmourne once rested, ghosts of the past showed Arthas claiming the blade for himself, sacrificing his own soul and his friend for its power—becoming the first Death Knight. Essentially, the nifty bits from Warcraft III dropped into action sequences.
Otherwise, recovered a lich’s phylactery and helped a squadron of knights beat him down, did a series of quests for an emo black dragon deep within a lava-filled cave full of smoldering animated skeletons and horrors from beyond, and killed a bunch of things because people were willing to give me gold. By far, the most fun I had was guarding the Hourglass of Eternity.
In RTS games, I’m a complete sucker for “Alamo” scenarios where an objective must be defended for a certain time period. This time, I was tasked with placing the hourglass in the center of a very scary area and defending it from interlopers for a set time. To my surprise, the first thing that warps in is a doppelganger of me, who hastily explains he is my future self and he’ll help me defend the artifact. After the first critters warped in to attack, I learned a few things about my future.
Apparently in the future I’m a total dick, have gotten rid of Steve, and prefer hitting things with my staff instead of casting spells. He chided me with comments like “I can’t believe I used to wear that” and the like. For a couple of minutes, dragonkin warped in two to four at a time and tried to dismantle my artifact with force, so I felt obligated to defend in kind. To his credit, future me could really wield a stick and after the last wave of trash was hauled away, an elite dragon landed and I had no problems letting him take the aggro before nuking the hell out of it. With the beast slain, “future me” couldn’t resist getting in one last jibe at me to “replace my equipment!” before returning to the ether. As a side note, I later looked it up and found there’s a follow-up quest you can do much, much later that allows you to go into the past where someone is guarding an Hourglass…
I suppose I should start practicing with my staff now.
One thing that is actually impressing me with this expansion is the amount of lore that has gone into the game beyond the typical blurb thrown into a quest’s descriptive text, which I often skim as I try to quickly discern the number of rats the quest giver wants me to slay. The developers bit back this time and hard, as there are a number of quests that, as part of the completion sequence, allow/force you to watch cut scenes that show the story behind the events. I rather enjoy these and it adds a much-needed element of depth to the game as a whole.
In the past couple of days, for example, I have summoned visions of the ghost of Arthas, the son of the King, and watched as he orders his men’s ships burned to prevent their retreat. Deep in the depths of Dragonsblight, where the cursed blade Frostmourne once rested, ghosts of the past showed Arthas claiming the blade for himself, sacrificing his own soul and his friend for its power—becoming the first Death Knight. Essentially, the nifty bits from Warcraft III dropped into action sequences.
Otherwise, recovered a lich’s phylactery and helped a squadron of knights beat him down, did a series of quests for an emo black dragon deep within a lava-filled cave full of smoldering animated skeletons and horrors from beyond, and killed a bunch of things because people were willing to give me gold. By far, the most fun I had was guarding the Hourglass of Eternity.
In RTS games, I’m a complete sucker for “Alamo” scenarios where an objective must be defended for a certain time period. This time, I was tasked with placing the hourglass in the center of a very scary area and defending it from interlopers for a set time. To my surprise, the first thing that warps in is a doppelganger of me, who hastily explains he is my future self and he’ll help me defend the artifact. After the first critters warped in to attack, I learned a few things about my future.
Apparently in the future I’m a total dick, have gotten rid of Steve, and prefer hitting things with my staff instead of casting spells. He chided me with comments like “I can’t believe I used to wear that” and the like. For a couple of minutes, dragonkin warped in two to four at a time and tried to dismantle my artifact with force, so I felt obligated to defend in kind. To his credit, future me could really wield a stick and after the last wave of trash was hauled away, an elite dragon landed and I had no problems letting him take the aggro before nuking the hell out of it. With the beast slain, “future me” couldn’t resist getting in one last jibe at me to “replace my equipment!” before returning to the ether. As a side note, I later looked it up and found there’s a follow-up quest you can do much, much later that allows you to go into the past where someone is guarding an Hourglass…
I suppose I should start practicing with my staff now.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Gnome, Alaska
I made it my weekend goal to see Dalaran, the fabled floating city that was introduced in the Lich King expansion, but I had a way to go. I had assumed that I needed to be level 70 to access the new content areas, so that was my immediate drive. By the time I finished Netherstorm in its entirety, I was level 68 and considering my options. That’s when it hit me.
I had the coin for cold weather flying and expansions often allow for not-quite-under-cap people to explore new lands… AND the gear rewards would be nicer than anything I could get in the Outlands. I would try for Northrend! Reading briefly on the Internets, I headed to Stormguard and in moments I was on a boat and heading for adventure!
In very short order, I learned a number of things. First, and most importantly, flying was forbidden until level 77; they wanted to make sure people enjoyed their finely-tailored content instead of flapping over it. Second, I learned that the expansion crushes what I thought was a decent video card; in order to play I had to turn down shadows to “lame”. Then I learned that beloved Dalaran couldn’t be accessed until a level 74 quest was started. Finally, I learned Northrend was just the place I could really shine!
Taking stock of my starting zone, the Borean Tundra, I smiled and spoke to the first quest giver I could find. What wonders would this new land behold and what challenges awaited Strev? “Kill ten rats.” Goddamn it. Fortunately, things did improve over time.
The zone starts out on a ship/harbor, and as I went from questing hub to hub, I got a feel for the overall zone as being a collage of disparate styles; a bit of a change of pace for the single-themed classic (and Outlands) zones. From craggy coastline to rolling plains, from icy tundra to a field of lakes, there was much to explore and much more to do. I was right about the rewards—using quest rewards I quickly replaced all of the gear I had been so proud to win in dungeons over the past week and the experience was easily twice what I was getting from Outlands critters. Quest rewards shot up to 5-10 gold per completion and all total, I did 109 quests in Borean before running out of reasonable tasks to perform. Level 70 ticked by quickly (in 7 days, 11 minutes of total play time) and I hit 71…eventually. XP to level has tripled in the past two levels, but it seems to be ticking by quickly, due in no small part to the large number of quick quests.
I then headed east to Dragonblight…or something or another. I swear, I could probably make a Blizzard name generator just by stringing together two arrays of words and have it sound convincing (Darkmount, Vilefen, Duskfall, Snowpool, etc…). The running “theme” for the area seems to be drakes, dragons, and scaled flapping things….and tons of undead.
Some content really stood out as exceptional. Highlights included doing a number of animal preservation tasks for Northrend’s version of PETA to avenge atrocities by Nesigwary (which, of course, I had performed…remind me to tell you of my battle with the Fur Lord), driving tanks (complete with troops deployments), a Choplifter-style mini-game requiring you to airlift peasants fleeing hordes of zombies, and the awesomely repeatable quest of stuffing bags full of wolfman babies (puppies!!!) to carry back to the Tuskarr, a race of walrusmen who probably aren’t going to eat them.
But oh, Dalaran! That level 74 quest? You can undertake it at Level 71 if you’re a mage. It starts a chain that culminates with the learning of a spell that lets you teleport straight to the heart of the city! I checked it out and it was amazingly pretty. I quickly found that while beautiful, it was completely devoid of anything for me to do. It is home to a large number of quests that unlock at 80, I think. So, mild disappointment there for now, but I’m sure to find a love for the place in a month!
I had the coin for cold weather flying and expansions often allow for not-quite-under-cap people to explore new lands… AND the gear rewards would be nicer than anything I could get in the Outlands. I would try for Northrend! Reading briefly on the Internets, I headed to Stormguard and in moments I was on a boat and heading for adventure!
In very short order, I learned a number of things. First, and most importantly, flying was forbidden until level 77; they wanted to make sure people enjoyed their finely-tailored content instead of flapping over it. Second, I learned that the expansion crushes what I thought was a decent video card; in order to play I had to turn down shadows to “lame”. Then I learned that beloved Dalaran couldn’t be accessed until a level 74 quest was started. Finally, I learned Northrend was just the place I could really shine!
Taking stock of my starting zone, the Borean Tundra, I smiled and spoke to the first quest giver I could find. What wonders would this new land behold and what challenges awaited Strev? “Kill ten rats.” Goddamn it. Fortunately, things did improve over time.
The zone starts out on a ship/harbor, and as I went from questing hub to hub, I got a feel for the overall zone as being a collage of disparate styles; a bit of a change of pace for the single-themed classic (and Outlands) zones. From craggy coastline to rolling plains, from icy tundra to a field of lakes, there was much to explore and much more to do. I was right about the rewards—using quest rewards I quickly replaced all of the gear I had been so proud to win in dungeons over the past week and the experience was easily twice what I was getting from Outlands critters. Quest rewards shot up to 5-10 gold per completion and all total, I did 109 quests in Borean before running out of reasonable tasks to perform. Level 70 ticked by quickly (in 7 days, 11 minutes of total play time) and I hit 71…eventually. XP to level has tripled in the past two levels, but it seems to be ticking by quickly, due in no small part to the large number of quick quests.
I then headed east to Dragonblight…or something or another. I swear, I could probably make a Blizzard name generator just by stringing together two arrays of words and have it sound convincing (Darkmount, Vilefen, Duskfall, Snowpool, etc…). The running “theme” for the area seems to be drakes, dragons, and scaled flapping things….and tons of undead.
Some content really stood out as exceptional. Highlights included doing a number of animal preservation tasks for Northrend’s version of PETA to avenge atrocities by Nesigwary (which, of course, I had performed…remind me to tell you of my battle with the Fur Lord), driving tanks (complete with troops deployments), a Choplifter-style mini-game requiring you to airlift peasants fleeing hordes of zombies, and the awesomely repeatable quest of stuffing bags full of wolfman babies (puppies!!!) to carry back to the Tuskarr, a race of walrusmen who probably aren’t going to eat them.
But oh, Dalaran! That level 74 quest? You can undertake it at Level 71 if you’re a mage. It starts a chain that culminates with the learning of a spell that lets you teleport straight to the heart of the city! I checked it out and it was amazingly pretty. I quickly found that while beautiful, it was completely devoid of anything for me to do. It is home to a large number of quests that unlock at 80, I think. So, mild disappointment there for now, but I’m sure to find a love for the place in a month!
Friday, July 16, 2010
Facing the Netherstorm
n a decision I may later regret, I opted to ‘skip’ the entire zone of Blades Edge Mountains on the grounds that mountains, even with a flying mount, annoy the crap out of me. I lazily flew over the ranges of treacherously spiky mountains—the place is really kind of cool to visit, but I didn’t want to quest there. I briefly considered dungeoning, but ultimately decided I was way too intoxicated to be anything other than a pure liability to four random strangers. Instead, I kept flapping towards the wondrous realm of Netherstorm.
According to lore I skimmed through, Netherstorm was once a lush and verdant land before something-something happened (well, I did say I skimmed) and now the whole place is shot to hell. The zone is comprised of about nine large purple islands in floating space, devoid of nearly every form of natural plant life. The exception to this is a number of giant magical force bubbles created by the space-liches that function as giant bio-domes a la Sandy Cheeks. The whole of the land is otherwise crawling with nightmarish creatures seemingly formed of pure mana. It can be a rough place for a mage, with many critters that drain mana at astonishing rates. Add to this a distinct Sci-Fi flavor with the goblin engineers who have set up a city called Area 52 that serves as the main trade hub for the zone and you’ve got a pretty cool, if moderately dangerous, place to hunt.
I landed, took stock of the situation, and set my home to Area 52. After listening to the locals gripe about anything and everything, I began my usual games of killtenrats and Hunt the MacGuffin™. Fearsome spectral boogeymen (and boogeyladies, presumably…I’m an equal opportunity exorcist/murderer) were slain, unobtanium was obtained, a tiny mech was escorted through a city of ghosts, and the plans of Dr. Boom were foiled. The last was the most fun I’ve had in the zone thus far.
Dr. Boom was the goblin equivalent to a supervillain with literally half a million hit points (the average monster has about 6-8k at my level and the worst boss I’ve faced in a dungeon only had about 90k) and spammed dynamite and bombs doing a thousand points a hit. If that weren’t enough, Dr. Boom constantly releases tiny walking bombs that were apparently stolen from Bowser. The questgiver armed me with ten special bombs, so my victory was assured! Cough. Here’s how that went down:
Strev gets into combat range and is nuked into oblivion three seconds later. That could’ve gone better. I reviewed my quest strategy helper and it noted there was a safe spot to stand allowing you to bomb with impunity, so I took my spirit to the spot mentioned and respawned. Three seconds later, I was dead again and pulling up the guide once more and read through more comments to discover they had fixed that in a patch by extending his aggro range. Terrific. After arriving back at the Lair of Boom, I read the rest of the comments and someone had found another spot on top of a barrel that wasn’t fixed. Hoping for the best, I moved over to it and respawned.
I immediately got an “Entering Combat!” splash message, but no splash damage. Doctor Boom was angrily glaring at me, but not attacking. Victory would yet be mine! Each bomb I threw knocked off nearly 90k points of health and I was saddened by knowing I wasn’t going to be able to use the bombs for any other purpose. After a few godnukes, Doctor Bomb’s tyrannous rule was broken!
Returning to camp, I was hailed a minor hero and with half of level 67 under my belt I called it a night.
According to lore I skimmed through, Netherstorm was once a lush and verdant land before something-something happened (well, I did say I skimmed) and now the whole place is shot to hell. The zone is comprised of about nine large purple islands in floating space, devoid of nearly every form of natural plant life. The exception to this is a number of giant magical force bubbles created by the space-liches that function as giant bio-domes a la Sandy Cheeks. The whole of the land is otherwise crawling with nightmarish creatures seemingly formed of pure mana. It can be a rough place for a mage, with many critters that drain mana at astonishing rates. Add to this a distinct Sci-Fi flavor with the goblin engineers who have set up a city called Area 52 that serves as the main trade hub for the zone and you’ve got a pretty cool, if moderately dangerous, place to hunt.
I landed, took stock of the situation, and set my home to Area 52. After listening to the locals gripe about anything and everything, I began my usual games of killtenrats and Hunt the MacGuffin™. Fearsome spectral boogeymen (and boogeyladies, presumably…I’m an equal opportunity exorcist/murderer) were slain, unobtanium was obtained, a tiny mech was escorted through a city of ghosts, and the plans of Dr. Boom were foiled. The last was the most fun I’ve had in the zone thus far.
Dr. Boom was the goblin equivalent to a supervillain with literally half a million hit points (the average monster has about 6-8k at my level and the worst boss I’ve faced in a dungeon only had about 90k) and spammed dynamite and bombs doing a thousand points a hit. If that weren’t enough, Dr. Boom constantly releases tiny walking bombs that were apparently stolen from Bowser. The questgiver armed me with ten special bombs, so my victory was assured! Cough. Here’s how that went down:
Strev gets into combat range and is nuked into oblivion three seconds later. That could’ve gone better. I reviewed my quest strategy helper and it noted there was a safe spot to stand allowing you to bomb with impunity, so I took my spirit to the spot mentioned and respawned. Three seconds later, I was dead again and pulling up the guide once more and read through more comments to discover they had fixed that in a patch by extending his aggro range. Terrific. After arriving back at the Lair of Boom, I read the rest of the comments and someone had found another spot on top of a barrel that wasn’t fixed. Hoping for the best, I moved over to it and respawned.
I immediately got an “Entering Combat!” splash message, but no splash damage. Doctor Boom was angrily glaring at me, but not attacking. Victory would yet be mine! Each bomb I threw knocked off nearly 90k points of health and I was saddened by knowing I wasn’t going to be able to use the bombs for any other purpose. After a few godnukes, Doctor Bomb’s tyrannous rule was broken!
Returning to camp, I was hailed a minor hero and with half of level 67 under my belt I called it a night.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Space Liches
*Bit of a short update as my normal playtime was superseded by Hamlet—the one with Tennant/Stewart. I note I was pleasantly surprised as I went into watching it expecting a taping of a stage performance. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Tennant was brilliant, but at the end I expected him to regenerate into Macbeth or something. (“Horatio! Get me into the TARDIS!”)
Logged on to run a dungeon and “finish” Nagrand and hoped to accomplish both tasks in little time. Found myself in the Mana Tombs with a competent and fast team, which is all you can really hope for. Given that our Hunter’s pet was named “Dungeonwipe”, I was honestly expecting the worst. By the time we had arrived at the final boss, a giant spectral gay guy (well, an effeminate space-lich with impeccable manners and a fruity voice), we had a solid rhythm going and we splattered him without loss of life or limb. The prize was a rare bow that no one needed and I wound up with by luck of the draw. Dungeon rares are, for the most part, bound on pickup to the looting character, so it’s just a few gold from a vendor instead of hundreds on the auction house.
Speaking of gold, I had been looking forward to my next ride upgrade until I read up on it. Apparently I’m going to need to come up with six kilogold to cover training fees for flying an ‘epic’ steed (5k) and “cold weather flying” (1k), the latter being a requirement for aerial transit in the Lich King expansion area. This hurts…a lot. Presently, I’ve only got enough for the cold weather flying and with level 70 fast approaching, I’m going to have to blow it on that. I refuse to travel in two dimensions in an area that allows for three.
Turning my attention back to the matter at hand (must level…to live!), I flitted around and killed elementals in Nagrand to complete several quests for people who REALLY hate elementals, collected supplies for people who REALLY needed supplies, and burned the bodies of slain villagers for people who REALLY should be institutionalized.
Ended the night by hitting level 67 and leaving Nagrand for good.
Logged on to run a dungeon and “finish” Nagrand and hoped to accomplish both tasks in little time. Found myself in the Mana Tombs with a competent and fast team, which is all you can really hope for. Given that our Hunter’s pet was named “Dungeonwipe”, I was honestly expecting the worst. By the time we had arrived at the final boss, a giant spectral gay guy (well, an effeminate space-lich with impeccable manners and a fruity voice), we had a solid rhythm going and we splattered him without loss of life or limb. The prize was a rare bow that no one needed and I wound up with by luck of the draw. Dungeon rares are, for the most part, bound on pickup to the looting character, so it’s just a few gold from a vendor instead of hundreds on the auction house.
Speaking of gold, I had been looking forward to my next ride upgrade until I read up on it. Apparently I’m going to need to come up with six kilogold to cover training fees for flying an ‘epic’ steed (5k) and “cold weather flying” (1k), the latter being a requirement for aerial transit in the Lich King expansion area. This hurts…a lot. Presently, I’ve only got enough for the cold weather flying and with level 70 fast approaching, I’m going to have to blow it on that. I refuse to travel in two dimensions in an area that allows for three.
Turning my attention back to the matter at hand (must level…to live!), I flitted around and killed elementals in Nagrand to complete several quests for people who REALLY hate elementals, collected supplies for people who REALLY needed supplies, and burned the bodies of slain villagers for people who REALLY should be institutionalized.
Ended the night by hitting level 67 and leaving Nagrand for good.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
The 7 People You Meet in PUGs
The 7 People You Meet in PUGs
The Go Guy
Battlecry: “Go! Go! Go! Gogogogogogo!”
Usually an impatient DPS who thinks the tank is taking too long between pulls. Pairs well with Insanotank.
The Insecure Tank
Battlecry: “Is everyone ready? Are you sure? I didn’t hear from the one guy. Let’s do a ready-check.”
Probably spent most of his early life soloing. His presence will sometimes cause The Go Guy to spawn.
The AFKer
Battlecry: *none*
No one knows why he clicked ‘join group’. He hasn’t said anything since he entered the instance—or even moved. Once this might have been an annoying way to leech xp, but now that the party can vote to kick a teammate, it is a wonder they still bother to join.
The Gearsnob
Battlecry: “Vote to kick Healsu. His gearscore is under 3k.”
Remember, kids! It isn’t skill or ability that determines your worth as a teammate: it’s an arbitrary number based on the relative value of your equipment. Probably bungeed out of the womb in full epic gear ready to tank a 25-man raid.
The Brain
Battlecry: “OMFG! YRU tanking as a ret pally!? Bad enuff the mage is wasting Aoe on 2-pulls and the healer is shit. GTFO”
Forming the cerebral core of the team, the Brain is a master tactician who knows exactly what you’re doing wrong and how you should improve his gameplay. Having such advanced knowledge frequently leaves him unable to express himself using full words or proper syntax. The fact he is often found playing a class he sucks at is considered ironic.
The Drinker
Battlecry: “Waitaminute—need to mana up.”
This guy knows it’s bad to go into battle as a caster with little mana. What better way to ensure you don’t run out than by topping yourself off after every fight? It only takes 30 seconds to down a whole bottle of refreshing liquid and he’ll only try to do it 50 times… Mana efficiency is for the weak!
Insanotank
Battlecry: *none* To utter a battlecry would waste precious time!
No challenge is too great for Insanotank! Insanotank will conquer the instance with as few pulls as humanly possible! Insanotank must smash! Insanotank cares not for the mana needs of others!
To be fair, if you can keep up with Insanotank, you’ll pull down xp really quickly, which is good since you won’t have time to loot the bodies as you’re dashing to catch up to the next cloud of mobs.
The Go Guy
Battlecry: “Go! Go! Go! Gogogogogogo!”
Usually an impatient DPS who thinks the tank is taking too long between pulls. Pairs well with Insanotank.
The Insecure Tank
Battlecry: “Is everyone ready? Are you sure? I didn’t hear from the one guy. Let’s do a ready-check.”
Probably spent most of his early life soloing. His presence will sometimes cause The Go Guy to spawn.
The AFKer
Battlecry: *none*
No one knows why he clicked ‘join group’. He hasn’t said anything since he entered the instance—or even moved. Once this might have been an annoying way to leech xp, but now that the party can vote to kick a teammate, it is a wonder they still bother to join.
The Gearsnob
Battlecry: “Vote to kick Healsu. His gearscore is under 3k.”
Remember, kids! It isn’t skill or ability that determines your worth as a teammate: it’s an arbitrary number based on the relative value of your equipment. Probably bungeed out of the womb in full epic gear ready to tank a 25-man raid.
The Brain
Battlecry: “OMFG! YRU tanking as a ret pally!? Bad enuff the mage is wasting Aoe on 2-pulls and the healer is shit. GTFO”
Forming the cerebral core of the team, the Brain is a master tactician who knows exactly what you’re doing wrong and how you should improve his gameplay. Having such advanced knowledge frequently leaves him unable to express himself using full words or proper syntax. The fact he is often found playing a class he sucks at is considered ironic.
The Drinker
Battlecry: “Waitaminute—need to mana up.”
This guy knows it’s bad to go into battle as a caster with little mana. What better way to ensure you don’t run out than by topping yourself off after every fight? It only takes 30 seconds to down a whole bottle of refreshing liquid and he’ll only try to do it 50 times… Mana efficiency is for the weak!
Insanotank
Battlecry: *none* To utter a battlecry would waste precious time!
No challenge is too great for Insanotank! Insanotank will conquer the instance with as few pulls as humanly possible! Insanotank must smash! Insanotank cares not for the mana needs of others!
To be fair, if you can keep up with Insanotank, you’ll pull down xp really quickly, which is good since you won’t have time to loot the bodies as you’re dashing to catch up to the next cloud of mobs.
In Deep Shattarath
Woke up in the middle of Shattarath(sp) City—the central hub for Outlands. Located in Terrokar Forest, it is fairly large and houses everything a swaggering adventurer could possibly need. After shaking down the locals for loose change and taking a small tour of the city, accompanied by some dude’s pet demon, I got a rough handle on things. Blah, blah, blah…lore, lore, lore…. Two factions of blood elves vying for political control or something and pick one to ally with. The Internets said that as a mage, I should probably choose the “Scryers” over the “Aldor”…so I did. Insert your own joke about the collective wisdom of the Internet here.
One thing I note is that the with the exception of Hellfire Peninsula, the zones in Outlands are really quite pretty to look at. They aren’t Aion-lush, but they have more of a polished look to them than the ‘classic’ WoW zones and the high-fantasy elements fit well into the scenes. Terrokar, for example, would be an intersting forest in and of itself, but the eye is quickly caught by scattered colonies of birdfolk (we aren’t allowed to call them ‘birdmen’ anymore) living in very elborate tree villages connected by suspension bridges. Zangramarsh’s theme is “fungus” and the landscape itself is mostly comprised of 15-story mushrooms with glowing monsters abounding. It was “Avatar before Avatar”, in a sense. The zone’s large lakes are being pumped dry by naga manning pumping stations and discovering why is key to the main plot of the area.
Cherry picked quests in both Terrokar and Zangramarsh and ran around for a bit of time ripping parts off nagas and spiders for no reason other than some guy asked me to. To be fair, I probably would’ve culled the spiders anyway—that’s just the way I roll.
Between running the quests and a couple of random dungeons, I reached level 65 and I note the xp to level is increasing dramatically. What was once 250 critters to level is now about 750…or about 48 quests ‘on level’ completed. I’d done all I felt like doing in Zangramarsh, dropped the rest of the quests and sought out a slightly tougher zone and ended in Nagrand. This zone is quite pleasant with sloping grassy hills and scattered trees—good hunting grounds for big game, which was made patently clear with a familiar face: Nesingwary—the hunter from Stranglethorn Vale has set up an encampment with his expedition adding a wonderful flavor to the normal killtenrats quests. After knocking out a few of those, I headed over to the local village to set my new home location and sleep in the inn—only to find I couldn’t: the village was “unfriendly” to me. Terrific.
After figuring out I had to kill a few ogres to bump up my reputation a little, I did so and, in the area has now lit up with quests. I’ll check them out some other time, for now I’m content to be able to sleep under a roof.
One thing I note is that the with the exception of Hellfire Peninsula, the zones in Outlands are really quite pretty to look at. They aren’t Aion-lush, but they have more of a polished look to them than the ‘classic’ WoW zones and the high-fantasy elements fit well into the scenes. Terrokar, for example, would be an intersting forest in and of itself, but the eye is quickly caught by scattered colonies of birdfolk (we aren’t allowed to call them ‘birdmen’ anymore) living in very elborate tree villages connected by suspension bridges. Zangramarsh’s theme is “fungus” and the landscape itself is mostly comprised of 15-story mushrooms with glowing monsters abounding. It was “Avatar before Avatar”, in a sense. The zone’s large lakes are being pumped dry by naga manning pumping stations and discovering why is key to the main plot of the area.
Cherry picked quests in both Terrokar and Zangramarsh and ran around for a bit of time ripping parts off nagas and spiders for no reason other than some guy asked me to. To be fair, I probably would’ve culled the spiders anyway—that’s just the way I roll.
Between running the quests and a couple of random dungeons, I reached level 65 and I note the xp to level is increasing dramatically. What was once 250 critters to level is now about 750…or about 48 quests ‘on level’ completed. I’d done all I felt like doing in Zangramarsh, dropped the rest of the quests and sought out a slightly tougher zone and ended in Nagrand. This zone is quite pleasant with sloping grassy hills and scattered trees—good hunting grounds for big game, which was made patently clear with a familiar face: Nesingwary—the hunter from Stranglethorn Vale has set up an encampment with his expedition adding a wonderful flavor to the normal killtenrats quests. After knocking out a few of those, I headed over to the local village to set my new home location and sleep in the inn—only to find I couldn’t: the village was “unfriendly” to me. Terrific.
After figuring out I had to kill a few ogres to bump up my reputation a little, I did so and, in the area has now lit up with quests. I’ll check them out some other time, for now I’m content to be able to sleep under a roof.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Going Outlandish
Succumbed to my desire to “just do it, already” and ran a few quests in the Eastern Plaguelands to hit 58. As my gnomic gnomad levels, there are certain points that redefine the way I play… 20 for mounts, 50 gave me Steve, and now at 58, I can easily access the Outlands, the areas introduced in the Burning Crusade expansion. The foes and quests there are generally much more rewarding, in terms of both experience and loot.
I strode through the portal in the Blasted Lands and found myself in Hell, proper. “Hellfire Peninsula” is the entrance zone and has been designed to “make it look as badass possible”. The terrain is broken and along with various demons and orcs and such, giant Fel Reavers (super-mecha-demons) stalk the land. To my credit, I only got squished by those twice.
After finishing the introductory quests and telling myself that no matter WHAT any questgiver says, I am not buying a timeshare here, I find a person willing to teach me flying lessons. I took him up on that in and in short order I’m lazily flapping around on the back of my own golden gryphon. It’s a little on the slow side and I usually have to re-summon Steve whenever I get somewhere, but my quality of life has greatly improved now.
Knocked out nearly every quest anyone would give me and levels 59 and 60 ticked by quickly. The final tally for level 1-60? /played said 5 days, 10 hours. I really don’t care how long it takes me to get the last 20 levels. (possible lie!) By the time I hit 61, I had exhausted Hellfire completely, save for a few group quests.
Moseyed over to the Zone Next Door, Zangramarsh, and just settled in for a little marsh-fun and as I’m collecting a few insect wings or killing 10 (marsh) rats, I get a hail from Brian, inviting me on a dungeon adventure.
Dungeoneering will likely get a more detailed post in the future, but for now, know that I’ve avoided all dungeons like the plague in WoW to this point. The reason being, aside from my general disdain of pickup groups, is the length of time they take. For all the time I play, I usually don’t play large blocks of time straight: someone always needs something and I often have to logout at the drop of a hat. That’s usually no problem solo, bigger issue if you’re in the middle of a 4-hour dungeon crawl. I’d heard things were ‘better’ these days—well, now I’d see for myself.
I partied up with Brian (his Death Knight being my level) and he joined the queue finder and almost instantly we were teleported inside a level-appropriate dungeon. Sparing you the utterly cool narrative of what transpired within, I found that they really had made dungeons fun! It took about a half hour to run through to completion and the experience rewards were quite nice indeed as we rolled through the encounters quickly. Now that I had a handle on the mechanics and a little experience with How to Mage in a dungeon (spam Blizzard or frostbolt, repeat as needed. In this game, “crowd control” means AoE the fuck out of something), after Brian dropped off, I tried one on my own (Ding! 62), then another and another.
The dungeons were not all positive experiences, as not all pugs are created equally, but they provided not only a welcome change of pace for me, but a source for delicious rare gear. I made the mistake of acquiring an addon called “Gear Score”, which assigns people a number based on their gear’s level, the enchantments on them, and possibly witchcraft. I used it to compare my relative score to those that I teamed with and found myself…lacking. This isn’t that surprising, given that I’ve been mostly ignoring gear aside from quest upgrades and the rare AH purchase, but it drove home the fact I REALLY needed more rare drops. That meant more dungeons….
By the time I reached level 64, I had replaced much of my gear and now had a score on par with a number of people I was teaming with, but I’ll be turning off this add-on soon: I see the trap clearly and I’m going to avoid it…for now. There’s still some things I need to replace and I’m getting a handle on checking to see what dungeons I should be queueing up for. As time goes on, I’ll be splitting my time between above and below ground expeditions.
Tomorrow: the Seven Types of People You Meet in a PUG (more or less)
I strode through the portal in the Blasted Lands and found myself in Hell, proper. “Hellfire Peninsula” is the entrance zone and has been designed to “make it look as badass possible”. The terrain is broken and along with various demons and orcs and such, giant Fel Reavers (super-mecha-demons) stalk the land. To my credit, I only got squished by those twice.
After finishing the introductory quests and telling myself that no matter WHAT any questgiver says, I am not buying a timeshare here, I find a person willing to teach me flying lessons. I took him up on that in and in short order I’m lazily flapping around on the back of my own golden gryphon. It’s a little on the slow side and I usually have to re-summon Steve whenever I get somewhere, but my quality of life has greatly improved now.
Knocked out nearly every quest anyone would give me and levels 59 and 60 ticked by quickly. The final tally for level 1-60? /played said 5 days, 10 hours. I really don’t care how long it takes me to get the last 20 levels. (possible lie!) By the time I hit 61, I had exhausted Hellfire completely, save for a few group quests.
Moseyed over to the Zone Next Door, Zangramarsh, and just settled in for a little marsh-fun and as I’m collecting a few insect wings or killing 10 (marsh) rats, I get a hail from Brian, inviting me on a dungeon adventure.
Dungeoneering will likely get a more detailed post in the future, but for now, know that I’ve avoided all dungeons like the plague in WoW to this point. The reason being, aside from my general disdain of pickup groups, is the length of time they take. For all the time I play, I usually don’t play large blocks of time straight: someone always needs something and I often have to logout at the drop of a hat. That’s usually no problem solo, bigger issue if you’re in the middle of a 4-hour dungeon crawl. I’d heard things were ‘better’ these days—well, now I’d see for myself.
I partied up with Brian (his Death Knight being my level) and he joined the queue finder and almost instantly we were teleported inside a level-appropriate dungeon. Sparing you the utterly cool narrative of what transpired within, I found that they really had made dungeons fun! It took about a half hour to run through to completion and the experience rewards were quite nice indeed as we rolled through the encounters quickly. Now that I had a handle on the mechanics and a little experience with How to Mage in a dungeon (spam Blizzard or frostbolt, repeat as needed. In this game, “crowd control” means AoE the fuck out of something), after Brian dropped off, I tried one on my own (Ding! 62), then another and another.
The dungeons were not all positive experiences, as not all pugs are created equally, but they provided not only a welcome change of pace for me, but a source for delicious rare gear. I made the mistake of acquiring an addon called “Gear Score”, which assigns people a number based on their gear’s level, the enchantments on them, and possibly witchcraft. I used it to compare my relative score to those that I teamed with and found myself…lacking. This isn’t that surprising, given that I’ve been mostly ignoring gear aside from quest upgrades and the rare AH purchase, but it drove home the fact I REALLY needed more rare drops. That meant more dungeons….
By the time I reached level 64, I had replaced much of my gear and now had a score on par with a number of people I was teaming with, but I’ll be turning off this add-on soon: I see the trap clearly and I’m going to avoid it…for now. There’s still some things I need to replace and I’m getting a handle on checking to see what dungeons I should be queueing up for. As time goes on, I’ll be splitting my time between above and below ground expeditions.
Tomorrow: the Seven Types of People You Meet in a PUG (more or less)
Friday, July 9, 2010
Winterspring
Arrived in Winterspring and immediately found myself with a number of tasks that wanted me to do absolutely anything except fight in Winterspring.
NPC1: “Go to the Plaguelands and deliver this MacGuffin”
Me: “No.”
NPC2: “Go back to Felwood and kill a few—“
Me: “No.”
NPC3: “Grab me a few Plot Coupons from Tanaris?”
Me: “*stab*”
NPC4: “HOLY CRAP! You just killed that guy!”
Me: “Yeah—got anything for me to do?”
NPC4: “Go to—umm... that hill right there and kill 10 yetis?”
Now we were in business. After some hunting around I found a couple more quests to do after exterminating the yetis, mostly dealing with killing more yetis, furbolg (furry humanoids), and avoiding certain death from Frost Giants as I stole crystals from under their noses. All in all, it was not a bad time.
A little back story: I visited Winterspring originally during my Festival runs, but before obtaining the flight path, I had to cross over from the only adjacent zone (Felwood) using a tunnel system heavily populated by a furbolg clan, the Timbermaw. There are two commonly accepted means of doing this: kill all the damn furry things in your path and never go back or take the time to impress them by killing rival furbolg clans and improve your reputation from “Hated” to “Worf on a Good Day” so they wouldn’t attack on sight. I’ve never been one to make enemies arbitrarily, so I opted for the latter. It was starting to pay off in spades.
Each of the furries I killed in Winterspring raised my reputation with the Timbermaw by a sliver and every now and then I’d get a curious trinket that began a quest—which required me to chit chat with a furry in the tunnels. Well, they wouldn’t talk to me unless I was on at least “Neutral” terms, so I knocked out a few furbolg quests that could be viewed by an outsider as “racial purification” and after a short bit was able to turn in a solid chunk of quests taking me to level 57.
I did wind up revisiting Felwood to tidy up a couple of loose ends and it was with slight sadness that I returned to the frozen village. With Winterspring’s quests now nearly dry, I knew my next stop was going to be the Eastern Plaguelands, but first one last fun quest. After acquiring various yeti parts for a local goblin, she revealed her Master Plan to me: a small mechanized Yeti to scare the crap out of a few of her friends. I’d have to carry it around the world (literally), but it was for a good practical joke and was thus worth it. Goblins screaming and running around while being chased by a miniature yeti? Comedy gold.
NPC1: “Go to the Plaguelands and deliver this MacGuffin”
Me: “No.”
NPC2: “Go back to Felwood and kill a few—“
Me: “No.”
NPC3: “Grab me a few Plot Coupons from Tanaris?”
Me: “*stab*”
NPC4: “HOLY CRAP! You just killed that guy!”
Me: “Yeah—got anything for me to do?”
NPC4: “Go to—umm... that hill right there and kill 10 yetis?”
Now we were in business. After some hunting around I found a couple more quests to do after exterminating the yetis, mostly dealing with killing more yetis, furbolg (furry humanoids), and avoiding certain death from Frost Giants as I stole crystals from under their noses. All in all, it was not a bad time.
A little back story: I visited Winterspring originally during my Festival runs, but before obtaining the flight path, I had to cross over from the only adjacent zone (Felwood) using a tunnel system heavily populated by a furbolg clan, the Timbermaw. There are two commonly accepted means of doing this: kill all the damn furry things in your path and never go back or take the time to impress them by killing rival furbolg clans and improve your reputation from “Hated” to “Worf on a Good Day” so they wouldn’t attack on sight. I’ve never been one to make enemies arbitrarily, so I opted for the latter. It was starting to pay off in spades.
Each of the furries I killed in Winterspring raised my reputation with the Timbermaw by a sliver and every now and then I’d get a curious trinket that began a quest—which required me to chit chat with a furry in the tunnels. Well, they wouldn’t talk to me unless I was on at least “Neutral” terms, so I knocked out a few furbolg quests that could be viewed by an outsider as “racial purification” and after a short bit was able to turn in a solid chunk of quests taking me to level 57.
I did wind up revisiting Felwood to tidy up a couple of loose ends and it was with slight sadness that I returned to the frozen village. With Winterspring’s quests now nearly dry, I knew my next stop was going to be the Eastern Plaguelands, but first one last fun quest. After acquiring various yeti parts for a local goblin, she revealed her Master Plan to me: a small mechanized Yeti to scare the crap out of a few of her friends. I’d have to carry it around the world (literally), but it was for a good practical joke and was thus worth it. Goblins screaming and running around while being chased by a miniature yeti? Comedy gold.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Silithus
Ah, Silithus!
If it creeps, crawls, or has an exoskeleton, a stinger, or pincers, it will be found here. Tucked away in the far southwest corner of Kalimdor, it is regarded as one of the hardest regions in the 'basic' game. Outlands, I shall claim you for my own within a week! Muhahaha. Err...sorry.
Again, my persistence at the Summer Fire Festival reaps rewards as I had a flight path to a small outpost near the zone's border. I was greeted by a bevy people with things bugging them (literally). Casting a glance across the landscape, the sky was thick with writhing swarms of insects, adding a distinctly alien feel to the area. Everyone wanted something dead and in vast quantities. That, I could oblige.
Venturing gamely into the deserts surrounding the area, I was immediately struck by how many adversaries there were. Exploring anywhere would mean carving a path through the nightmares of children. Spiders, and scorpions, and sandworms, oh my! After I cleared out the first round of tasks and picked up round two, I found a tiny refuge manned by a dwarf (as opposed to being dwarfed by a man) with a mission: obtain unobtainium (or whatever) from local geysers.
This is apparently a PvP mini-game for the zone. Each faction can bring back MacGuffins one at a time to 'home base' and score a point for their team. Holding a MacGuffin flags you for PvP-combat, slows your move speed, and getting on a mount will cause it to be lost. Lovely. Each turn in grants reputation, a token amount of honor, and a 30 minute 5% damage buff. As I discovered, the first turn in grants all of the above plus a chunk of xp. Still, it's something to do and honestly... there aren't that many players wandering around this zone. The 'goal' is for your team to be the first to 200 turn-ins. Doing so grants your entire side a debatable bonus to reputation earned in the zone. The score stayed at 0-1 for over two hours, so you can see how popular this mini-game is.
Completed all of the quests for the zone, save for a "Kill the +4 Elite Scorpion with Two Bodyguards" group quest, but not without trying and losing violently. Twice. It was vaguely reminiscent of Clash of the Titans (the Harryhausen version, not the PoS they foisted off on us earlier this year) The closest I got was burning (icing?) down one of the bodyguards and getting the Big Bad down to just under half health. I may revisit this one next week just out of spite.
By the time I finished questing, I had leveled (Ding! 56) and was itching to try someplace new. Deep within the Silithus wastes, I discovered Steve and I could handle +5 creatures at great mana costs, so I felt more comfortable taking my happy butt to Winterspring a level earlier than planned. Initially I was reluctant to hunt Winterspring because of fears the bulk of the critters in an ice zone would have high frost resistances, but after a few owlbeasts and yeti were felled it looks as though my fears were unfounded. There's some damage reduction going on, of this I am certain, but not enough to be...prohibitive. Well, yet.
If it creeps, crawls, or has an exoskeleton, a stinger, or pincers, it will be found here. Tucked away in the far southwest corner of Kalimdor, it is regarded as one of the hardest regions in the 'basic' game. Outlands, I shall claim you for my own within a week! Muhahaha. Err...sorry.
Again, my persistence at the Summer Fire Festival reaps rewards as I had a flight path to a small outpost near the zone's border. I was greeted by a bevy people with things bugging them (literally). Casting a glance across the landscape, the sky was thick with writhing swarms of insects, adding a distinctly alien feel to the area. Everyone wanted something dead and in vast quantities. That, I could oblige.
Venturing gamely into the deserts surrounding the area, I was immediately struck by how many adversaries there were. Exploring anywhere would mean carving a path through the nightmares of children. Spiders, and scorpions, and sandworms, oh my! After I cleared out the first round of tasks and picked up round two, I found a tiny refuge manned by a dwarf (as opposed to being dwarfed by a man) with a mission: obtain unobtainium (or whatever) from local geysers.
This is apparently a PvP mini-game for the zone. Each faction can bring back MacGuffins one at a time to 'home base' and score a point for their team. Holding a MacGuffin flags you for PvP-combat, slows your move speed, and getting on a mount will cause it to be lost. Lovely. Each turn in grants reputation, a token amount of honor, and a 30 minute 5% damage buff. As I discovered, the first turn in grants all of the above plus a chunk of xp. Still, it's something to do and honestly... there aren't that many players wandering around this zone. The 'goal' is for your team to be the first to 200 turn-ins. Doing so grants your entire side a debatable bonus to reputation earned in the zone. The score stayed at 0-1 for over two hours, so you can see how popular this mini-game is.
Completed all of the quests for the zone, save for a "Kill the +4 Elite Scorpion with Two Bodyguards" group quest, but not without trying and losing violently. Twice. It was vaguely reminiscent of Clash of the Titans (the Harryhausen version, not the PoS they foisted off on us earlier this year) The closest I got was burning (icing?) down one of the bodyguards and getting the Big Bad down to just under half health. I may revisit this one next week just out of spite.
By the time I finished questing, I had leveled (Ding! 56) and was itching to try someplace new. Deep within the Silithus wastes, I discovered Steve and I could handle +5 creatures at great mana costs, so I felt more comfortable taking my happy butt to Winterspring a level earlier than planned. Initially I was reluctant to hunt Winterspring because of fears the bulk of the critters in an ice zone would have high frost resistances, but after a few owlbeasts and yeti were felled it looks as though my fears were unfounded. There's some damage reduction going on, of this I am certain, but not enough to be...prohibitive. Well, yet.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
The Blasted Lands
Still too tiny for Outlands (the Burning Crusade expansion must wait until level 58), I found myself scanning available zones and decided to venture forth to the Blasted Lands-- home to the Outlands portal, a dragon to avoid, and various denizens of the wastelands. I rather like this area due to one "gimmick" in the design-- periodically giant bolts of lightning will ground, kicking off plumes of smoke. I have no idea if they damage, as I've never been at ground zero when they strike, but it adds atmosphere.
Fortunately, my earlier wanderings had given me a flight path to Nethergard Keep, located in the far north of the region and, curiously, no one really had any quests to give me except a "go visit this guy" quest. This didn't bode well.
After a bit of exploring, I found a pair of quest givers on the way to aforementioned guy and they wanted a lot of miscellaneous body parts from the zone's critter population: boar lungs, vulture gizzards, and the like. Annoyingly enough, the requests overlapped. One quest, for example required 3x, 2y, and 1z while another required 10x and 2y. Given there were about six of these quests, it was going to make keeping quest progress by checking inventory tricky. That's when I noticed the quests were all four levels beneath me.
Ugh. It'd be a slow level, but I didn't feel compelled to venture somewhere else. Quest xp is still a decent reward and I figured by knocking out all of these, I could progress a tidy way to the next milestone on my path to Dalaran.
I tucked the laundry list of assorted viscera into my back pocket and meandered over to the aforementioned "guy", who turned out to be a Tauren, or a spirit of a Tauren, or a leopard. I wasn't really paying attention. His minor task was to annihilate a couple dozen Servants of Insert_Gibberish_Name_Here and free their captive souls. The quest was slightly above my level, so this would be very good xp. Yada, yada and I'm off. This is one time it would've paid to have read the quest description fully.
I explode various animals on my way to the first place Servants roam and find one near a sparkling crystal on the ground. Trusty Steve and I annihilate it quickly, though it doesn't die-- it just looks stunned and is hovering at one hit point, despite receiving hundreds of extra damage every few seconds from Steve. Oh crap. The glowy crystal thing! I had kited it away from its home and feverishly blinked over to the crystal...and I couldn't use it. Perplexed, I tried everything to affect it to no avail. Meanwhile, the dazed expression had worn off and the Servant, still at one health just continued to wail on Steve until my elemental was no more. The Hell?!
I ran away and let the...thing reset. I tried again. Same result. Hrmph.
Finally, I read the quest and figured out I had to knock the living snot out of the Servants while they were practically hugging the crystals, then break the crystal, then do the last point of damage to the Servant. Glah!
After that mess was done with, Steve and I took to patrolling the savage wastes, annihilating everything in our path in the hopes of gathering enough guts to satisfy all of the quests. Six mixed collection quests combined with low drop rates does not make for Happy Fun Time. Still, as I killed I received a few stones which were tradable to a local blood elf for random green (uncommon) magic loot, so it wasn't a total wash.
Finishing up the last of the quests earned my ding and I was ready to leave the zone for good.
Next stop: Silithus!
Fortunately, my earlier wanderings had given me a flight path to Nethergard Keep, located in the far north of the region and, curiously, no one really had any quests to give me except a "go visit this guy" quest. This didn't bode well.
After a bit of exploring, I found a pair of quest givers on the way to aforementioned guy and they wanted a lot of miscellaneous body parts from the zone's critter population: boar lungs, vulture gizzards, and the like. Annoyingly enough, the requests overlapped. One quest, for example required 3x, 2y, and 1z while another required 10x and 2y. Given there were about six of these quests, it was going to make keeping quest progress by checking inventory tricky. That's when I noticed the quests were all four levels beneath me.
Ugh. It'd be a slow level, but I didn't feel compelled to venture somewhere else. Quest xp is still a decent reward and I figured by knocking out all of these, I could progress a tidy way to the next milestone on my path to Dalaran.
I tucked the laundry list of assorted viscera into my back pocket and meandered over to the aforementioned "guy", who turned out to be a Tauren, or a spirit of a Tauren, or a leopard. I wasn't really paying attention. His minor task was to annihilate a couple dozen Servants of Insert_Gibberish_Name_Here and free their captive souls. The quest was slightly above my level, so this would be very good xp. Yada, yada and I'm off. This is one time it would've paid to have read the quest description fully.
I explode various animals on my way to the first place Servants roam and find one near a sparkling crystal on the ground. Trusty Steve and I annihilate it quickly, though it doesn't die-- it just looks stunned and is hovering at one hit point, despite receiving hundreds of extra damage every few seconds from Steve. Oh crap. The glowy crystal thing! I had kited it away from its home and feverishly blinked over to the crystal...and I couldn't use it. Perplexed, I tried everything to affect it to no avail. Meanwhile, the dazed expression had worn off and the Servant, still at one health just continued to wail on Steve until my elemental was no more. The Hell?!
I ran away and let the...thing reset. I tried again. Same result. Hrmph.
Finally, I read the quest and figured out I had to knock the living snot out of the Servants while they were practically hugging the crystals, then break the crystal, then do the last point of damage to the Servant. Glah!
After that mess was done with, Steve and I took to patrolling the savage wastes, annihilating everything in our path in the hopes of gathering enough guts to satisfy all of the quests. Six mixed collection quests combined with low drop rates does not make for Happy Fun Time. Still, as I killed I received a few stones which were tradable to a local blood elf for random green (uncommon) magic loot, so it wasn't a total wash.
Finishing up the last of the quests earned my ding and I was ready to leave the zone for good.
Next stop: Silithus!
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Me, Myself, and Steve
Hooray for a holiday weekend! I was able to get an amount of playtime in that a sane person would consider "unhealthy" and my virtual treasures reflect it!
I began by honoring and extinguishing all of the flames in the various zones I could access, earning considerable experience and trauma in the process. In many cases, it involved quite a bit of running through insanely difficult zones and served as a "preview" of zones that'd be adventuring in the future: the dark forests of Felwood, the plague-ravaged lands of the...err...Plaguelands, the snowy icefields of Winterspring, the Jurassic-themed Un'goro Crater, and Slithis, a land overrun by giant killer insects, among others.
In addition to the experience granted by the fires themselves, I earned a tidy bit from exploration and as my maps filled in, advancement through level 44 went hastily. I snagged the flames from the two remaining Horde capital cities-- the Undead of the Underdark never knew what happened and I escaped with my prize unscathed, but capturing the blood elf flame was a painful walk of attrition, summing up to no less than a dozen deaths in the process. By the time the festival ended, I was able to complete one of the "major accomplishments" and danced happily at a ribbon pole, bedecked in full holiday gear, earning the "burning hot pole dancer" achievement. I'm content knowing I did as much as I could at my level.
A few days previously, I had quit using the "level guides" and instead just kind of went where it felt right, using only the names of the guides as a guideline to hit areas when I was running dry on ideas (example: Tanaris (41-42)).
As the weekend progressed, I rolled like an icy ball of hurt through the zones, watching level after level breeze by in a never-ending game of "just one more quest". At some point I unlocked the achievement of "500 quests completed" and I grinned outwardly with self-satisfaction. (Technically, you're always grinning inwardly). I revisited zones as I turned in quests, did them in batches to strive to be as efficient as possible, and zones that were once unimaginable horrors now became my hunting grounds.
Every second level brought new spells and each level granted me a bit more oomph to my utility as a frost mage. I attained a skill that randomly lets me throw free-to-instant-cast fireballs, my bolts did more damage, my snares lasted longer. But at level 50, everything changed. That level gave me Steve.
Steve is a Water Elemental and he's mine. A mage is not normally a "pet class", that distinction being reserved for the Warlock, but frost bends some of the rules to make up for the fact they are on the low end of the DPS stick. Now... I had a pocket tank/nuker. The water elemental-- in Aion terms-- does damage like a wind pet (hitting maybe 1/3rd of my own DPS), can take damage like a earth elemental, but holds aggro like a toddler. He only lasts less than a minute with a few minutes between castings, but it was enough to seriously jump up my average DPS.
Then, at level 51 in an auction house...I found godhood.
I had come to love a nice Frost Aura glyph that caused my roots to last longer and replacing it was the last thing on my mind-- until I saw it. For the low price of 30 gold, I could possess... The Glyph of Eternal Steve, err...Water! My elemental would not have to be re-summoned. That sick DPS upgrade would last...forever. The only tradeoff is that Steve wouldn't be allowed to root on his own. Oh gosh, how EVER would I survive? /sarcasm As it is, I can root and snare from just about any key on the keyboard (hell, I could probably root something with a /spit emote), and truth be told, I never used Steve's special ability.
From that point on, Steve and I tore apart the landscape and all those who dwelt upon it.
My exploits were not without some Really Interesting Moments, however...
In Un'goro Crater, dinosaurs stalk the earth. I'd been fighting human-sized raptors for a while now in the various zones. Now I was pitted against diametradons and pterodactyls as well. A quest in the zone sent me looking for the remains of an expedition, in a section known as "Terror Run." I quickly learned that it was named that for a damn good reason.
The monsters there were huge-- think dinosaurs the size of well...dinosaurs, with stats that befitted their measure. Even if I had Steve at that point, it would've been tossing a wet snowball into a Volcano of Hurt. I darted this way and that on my mechastrider, trying my best to avoid attracting the attention of several flesheaters and failing miserably at the prospect. The first massive blow popped my ice barrier (a protective field) and left me defenseless. In the distance, I spied the camp. Popping my shield froze the monsters for a second and gave me enough time to close half the distance to my goal. That's when I discovered giant dinosurs run REALLY fast.
I knew now this was a suicide run-- but could I make it in time? The second blow knocked me off my steed and left me "dazed". I used a special racial ability to clear my head and blinked forward 20 yards and recast my ice shield. I was nearly to the camp! I now had three diametradons in hot pursuit-- and with a sickening wrench, my ice shield dropped again. It would be half a minute before I could use it again-- were it not for "cold snap", a truly last ditch spell with an insanely long cooldown that resets the cooldown of all frost-related spells.
Cold Snap! Frost Nova! Ice Barrier! Nearly there!
I hit the camp and began searching for the needed supplies, just as I'm surrounded by 500 virtual tons of anger incarnate. My life lasted about .05 seconds longer than my ice barrier that time, but I was able to collect the supplies in time.
In the muky depth of Felwood, I summoned an ancient spirit of the forest with a magic flute (why not?) and released it from its bonds. It was large, +3 levels to me, and was destined to be A Really Bad Escort Quest. It needed to escape the tainted woods and began a horrifically circuitous lumbering (sorry) route through the densest packs of creatures it could find. Steve and I slaughtered treants by the grove as Skippy the Wood Lord (or whatever his name was) off-tanked. The monsters were a couple of levels above me, but it would be what lay ahead that nearly resulted in a timber tantrum (not sorry).
Skippy the Woodlord turned away from a particularly nasty-looking pack of treants and headed towards a small riverlet, that was positively rife with "toxic elementals"-- greenish-colored Steves that were totally immune to water and ice-based spells. Oh, crap. With three of them on Skippy, his health was depleting, thanks in no small part to stacking poison DOTs they were laying on thickly. Steve was useless and it was down to me. Unfortunately, I bit off more than I could chew and died a horrific poisoned death after felling two of the noxious beasties. I failed the quest by leafing Skippy in a larch. (Ok-- seriously stopping that now)
Fortunately, the graveyard was very close and I was able to resurrect and restart the escort quest before anything had re-spawned. Those five minutes may seem eternally long when waiting for a mob to spawn, but are oh so short when escorting a pine tree through a forest. In time, we came to the stream of woe and crossed it without much trouble. One at a time I can handle well enough. We ended up on a road just outside the forest and Skippy just stood there stupid and mute. After a solid half minute, I wondered if the quest was glitched or if there was something I needed to do. Suddenly, 3-4 of the fel trees appeared and bum rushed us. Trees I could handle! Laying down a rain of blizzardy doom, they literally splinted before the onslaught and Skippy thanked me for the rescue.
By Monday night, I had reached level 54. The /played command told me it had taken 4 days, 19 hours to reach this-- not exactly a world record, but respectably swift. Enough to surprise Brian, I think. Now...where to go next?
I began by honoring and extinguishing all of the flames in the various zones I could access, earning considerable experience and trauma in the process. In many cases, it involved quite a bit of running through insanely difficult zones and served as a "preview" of zones that'd be adventuring in the future: the dark forests of Felwood, the plague-ravaged lands of the...err...Plaguelands, the snowy icefields of Winterspring, the Jurassic-themed Un'goro Crater, and Slithis, a land overrun by giant killer insects, among others.
In addition to the experience granted by the fires themselves, I earned a tidy bit from exploration and as my maps filled in, advancement through level 44 went hastily. I snagged the flames from the two remaining Horde capital cities-- the Undead of the Underdark never knew what happened and I escaped with my prize unscathed, but capturing the blood elf flame was a painful walk of attrition, summing up to no less than a dozen deaths in the process. By the time the festival ended, I was able to complete one of the "major accomplishments" and danced happily at a ribbon pole, bedecked in full holiday gear, earning the "burning hot pole dancer" achievement. I'm content knowing I did as much as I could at my level.
A few days previously, I had quit using the "level guides" and instead just kind of went where it felt right, using only the names of the guides as a guideline to hit areas when I was running dry on ideas (example: Tanaris (41-42)).
As the weekend progressed, I rolled like an icy ball of hurt through the zones, watching level after level breeze by in a never-ending game of "just one more quest". At some point I unlocked the achievement of "500 quests completed" and I grinned outwardly with self-satisfaction. (Technically, you're always grinning inwardly). I revisited zones as I turned in quests, did them in batches to strive to be as efficient as possible, and zones that were once unimaginable horrors now became my hunting grounds.
Every second level brought new spells and each level granted me a bit more oomph to my utility as a frost mage. I attained a skill that randomly lets me throw free-to-instant-cast fireballs, my bolts did more damage, my snares lasted longer. But at level 50, everything changed. That level gave me Steve.
Steve is a Water Elemental and he's mine. A mage is not normally a "pet class", that distinction being reserved for the Warlock, but frost bends some of the rules to make up for the fact they are on the low end of the DPS stick. Now... I had a pocket tank/nuker. The water elemental-- in Aion terms-- does damage like a wind pet (hitting maybe 1/3rd of my own DPS), can take damage like a earth elemental, but holds aggro like a toddler. He only lasts less than a minute with a few minutes between castings, but it was enough to seriously jump up my average DPS.
Then, at level 51 in an auction house...I found godhood.
I had come to love a nice Frost Aura glyph that caused my roots to last longer and replacing it was the last thing on my mind-- until I saw it. For the low price of 30 gold, I could possess... The Glyph of Eternal Steve, err...Water! My elemental would not have to be re-summoned. That sick DPS upgrade would last...forever. The only tradeoff is that Steve wouldn't be allowed to root on his own. Oh gosh, how EVER would I survive? /sarcasm As it is, I can root and snare from just about any key on the keyboard (hell, I could probably root something with a /spit emote), and truth be told, I never used Steve's special ability.
From that point on, Steve and I tore apart the landscape and all those who dwelt upon it.
My exploits were not without some Really Interesting Moments, however...
In Un'goro Crater, dinosaurs stalk the earth. I'd been fighting human-sized raptors for a while now in the various zones. Now I was pitted against diametradons and pterodactyls as well. A quest in the zone sent me looking for the remains of an expedition, in a section known as "Terror Run." I quickly learned that it was named that for a damn good reason.
The monsters there were huge-- think dinosaurs the size of well...dinosaurs, with stats that befitted their measure. Even if I had Steve at that point, it would've been tossing a wet snowball into a Volcano of Hurt. I darted this way and that on my mechastrider, trying my best to avoid attracting the attention of several flesheaters and failing miserably at the prospect. The first massive blow popped my ice barrier (a protective field) and left me defenseless. In the distance, I spied the camp. Popping my shield froze the monsters for a second and gave me enough time to close half the distance to my goal. That's when I discovered giant dinosurs run REALLY fast.
I knew now this was a suicide run-- but could I make it in time? The second blow knocked me off my steed and left me "dazed". I used a special racial ability to clear my head and blinked forward 20 yards and recast my ice shield. I was nearly to the camp! I now had three diametradons in hot pursuit-- and with a sickening wrench, my ice shield dropped again. It would be half a minute before I could use it again-- were it not for "cold snap", a truly last ditch spell with an insanely long cooldown that resets the cooldown of all frost-related spells.
Cold Snap! Frost Nova! Ice Barrier! Nearly there!
I hit the camp and began searching for the needed supplies, just as I'm surrounded by 500 virtual tons of anger incarnate. My life lasted about .05 seconds longer than my ice barrier that time, but I was able to collect the supplies in time.
In the muky depth of Felwood, I summoned an ancient spirit of the forest with a magic flute (why not?) and released it from its bonds. It was large, +3 levels to me, and was destined to be A Really Bad Escort Quest. It needed to escape the tainted woods and began a horrifically circuitous lumbering (sorry) route through the densest packs of creatures it could find. Steve and I slaughtered treants by the grove as Skippy the Wood Lord (or whatever his name was) off-tanked. The monsters were a couple of levels above me, but it would be what lay ahead that nearly resulted in a timber tantrum (not sorry).
Skippy the Woodlord turned away from a particularly nasty-looking pack of treants and headed towards a small riverlet, that was positively rife with "toxic elementals"-- greenish-colored Steves that were totally immune to water and ice-based spells. Oh, crap. With three of them on Skippy, his health was depleting, thanks in no small part to stacking poison DOTs they were laying on thickly. Steve was useless and it was down to me. Unfortunately, I bit off more than I could chew and died a horrific poisoned death after felling two of the noxious beasties. I failed the quest by leafing Skippy in a larch. (Ok-- seriously stopping that now)
Fortunately, the graveyard was very close and I was able to resurrect and restart the escort quest before anything had re-spawned. Those five minutes may seem eternally long when waiting for a mob to spawn, but are oh so short when escorting a pine tree through a forest. In time, we came to the stream of woe and crossed it without much trouble. One at a time I can handle well enough. We ended up on a road just outside the forest and Skippy just stood there stupid and mute. After a solid half minute, I wondered if the quest was glitched or if there was something I needed to do. Suddenly, 3-4 of the fel trees appeared and bum rushed us. Trees I could handle! Laying down a rain of blizzardy doom, they literally splinted before the onslaught and Skippy thanked me for the rescue.
By Monday night, I had reached level 54. The /played command told me it had taken 4 days, 19 hours to reach this-- not exactly a world record, but respectably swift. Enough to surprise Brian, I think. Now...where to go next?
Friday, July 2, 2010
Into the Marsh
Woke up in Theramore and noticed there was a LOT of available quests. I knew these would be a bit under my level, but I figured as long as I was in the neighborhood, I might as well check them out. The xp rewards would be about the same as killing 15-20 monsters and some of them could be done quickly. All of them sent me into Dustwallow Marsh, so I put on my thicker boots and waded into the quagmire.
The enemies were not overly challenging and I was able to quickly plow through various encounters without breaking a sweat. After discovering the secrets of witch hill and slaying the demon that haunted it, gathering some frog’s legs from non-combative tiny amphibians, and culling a tribe of tauren, I discovered a goblin (neutral) encampment in the south side of the zone I'd never known about. As a bonus, it gave another chunk of quests and a flight path!
I had reached level 42, so I teleported back to Ironforge and learned a few new spells then hastily flew back to the goblin village to undertake their missions. None were terribly bad and after completing most of them, I found I had made significant progress to my next level. Took a flight south to Gadgetzan and finished the level by collecting a couple dozen pirate hats from some very fashionable pirates who were overly reluctant to part with them. So, yay: level 43!
Called it a night early so I could watch Futurama.
The enemies were not overly challenging and I was able to quickly plow through various encounters without breaking a sweat. After discovering the secrets of witch hill and slaying the demon that haunted it, gathering some frog’s legs from non-combative tiny amphibians, and culling a tribe of tauren, I discovered a goblin (neutral) encampment in the south side of the zone I'd never known about. As a bonus, it gave another chunk of quests and a flight path!
I had reached level 42, so I teleported back to Ironforge and learned a few new spells then hastily flew back to the goblin village to undertake their missions. None were terribly bad and after completing most of them, I found I had made significant progress to my next level. Took a flight south to Gadgetzan and finished the level by collecting a couple dozen pirate hats from some very fashionable pirates who were overly reluctant to part with them. So, yay: level 43!
Called it a night early so I could watch Futurama.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Gnomewhere to run, gnomewhere to hide...
Still feeling fresh and giddy at level 40, I felt no need to immediately begin leveling again, so I opted to knock out a couple more fires and do a little torch tossing for fun. Then, I decided to do something really stupid: go steal the fire from the heart of the orcish capital city.
Dear sweet, Quetzalcoatl! What began as a quick sojourn into the heart of darkness became a war of attrition as I claimed 50 yards of space with every life spent along my own personal Trail of Tears. I would resurrect 30 yards from my body...apparently the maximum, immediate enter combat mode, 'blink' forward and gain 20 yards...then it was usually getting one-shot in under two seconds and a 3-5 minute run back. After 3 such deaths, I made it inside the city gates. After another 10, the flame was mine! Can't wait to try the Undercity of the Undead! Oh, wait. Yes, I can.
About this time I heard from Jacob: he had just finished every last thing for the summer festival. Yeesh! Forty levels makes a difference, it seems. I offered my congratulations and noted to myself it was time to get back on the level track.
I alternated between Booty Bay and Gadgetzan to complete a few quests that were now attemptable, most of which involved slaughtering nagas, trolls, gorillas, bandits, and trolls. (There was a LOT of trolls.) Along the way at some point, I hit level 41 and finished a third of the way into the next level.
Game time was shortened to get the wife set up with Netflix(tm).
Dear sweet, Quetzalcoatl! What began as a quick sojourn into the heart of darkness became a war of attrition as I claimed 50 yards of space with every life spent along my own personal Trail of Tears. I would resurrect 30 yards from my body...apparently the maximum, immediate enter combat mode, 'blink' forward and gain 20 yards...then it was usually getting one-shot in under two seconds and a 3-5 minute run back. After 3 such deaths, I made it inside the city gates. After another 10, the flame was mine! Can't wait to try the Undercity of the Undead! Oh, wait. Yes, I can.
About this time I heard from Jacob: he had just finished every last thing for the summer festival. Yeesh! Forty levels makes a difference, it seems. I offered my congratulations and noted to myself it was time to get back on the level track.
I alternated between Booty Bay and Gadgetzan to complete a few quests that were now attemptable, most of which involved slaughtering nagas, trolls, gorillas, bandits, and trolls. (There was a LOT of trolls.) Along the way at some point, I hit level 41 and finished a third of the way into the next level.
Game time was shortened to get the wife set up with Netflix(tm).
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