A series of events left me burning a vacation day and what better way to spend the time than by knocking back a couple of beers and just futzing around in Azeroth?
I had started the day fishing away when I heard that you could fish up a giant sewer rat for a pet in the Underbelly of Dalaran, but lost interest after a few hundred casts and accidentally completing a fishing daily I had for ages and had forgotten about. I also knocked out a couple of fishing achievements, mostly by accident. It’ll be a long time before I can fish in Dalaran without catching junk 80% of the time, but I’ll be back for you, rat... someday.
By a happy accident I discovered that “ice block” protects from all falling damage, so I picked up the “fall 65 yards without having to be picked up with a spatula” achievement after jumping off my drake in mid-flight over the Crystal Song forest. Between that, my previous fishing expedition, and probably alcohol, I decided to return an old goal of mine: get the bloody “Explorer” title by uncovering every piece of every map. This is, in a word, daunting, but I had two major advantages. First, I only needed to explore the ‘vanilla’ areas and could ride around through most of them with impunity. Second, I’m probably clinically insane.
Throughout the course of the day I rode hither, thither, and yon and peeked over peaks, delved into dales, and forayed into forests. I earned a couple of explore awards, earning cheers from my guild mates. I earned a couple more and got a few more “Grats!” messages. By the time I had earned seven or eight, the fanfare had subsided remarkably. By the twelfth, it became more of a “Holy crap—you’re still at it?” At long last, I had explored the entirety of the Eastern Kingdoms. Now, off to Kalimdor!
My work was cut out for me there—I had spent most of my time leveling in the Eastern Kingdoms so there was a LOT more exploration needed in Kalimdor. Out of the twenty zones there, I had nineteen to go. Not to be dissuaded, I started in Theramore and worked my way west and around. I was very thankful for all of the flight paths I had acquired so long ago. As zones were cleared, I’d frequently return to Theramore or Darnassus, grab a flight path out to an area I needed and explored through it and a neighboring zone.
Another half-dozen zones got checked off my list and I was rapidly becoming jokingly hated in the guild channel. The only accolades I received were from guildies who had just logged on and didn’t know any better.
A break came when it was time for the guild’s weekly raid run! This week it was Patchwerk, a large abomination found not too deep in Naxxramas (however that is spelled). Patch isn’t a particularly difficult boss, as he serves as a gear check for the dungeon. In layman’s terms—if your group can’t beat this boss, you have no business going any further in this dungeon. He is an insanely hard hitter, but there’s no dancing involved. He is about as straightforward tank and spank as you get. The only ‘gotcha’ is he must be downed in five minutes or he’ll wipe the group.
As usual, we had too many for the 10 man, not enough for the 25 man group, so we did the logical thing. We ran the 25 man with 18 or so people. We entered the dungeon and it reminded me immediately of the old sewer missions from City of Heroes. The rooms were much larger, but it all the ambiance of a sewer complete with rivers of green slime. We clustered together, buffed up for the fights, then began pulling large amounts of “trash”. Trash sweeping was a breeze with the raid burning through armies of abominations and swarms of slimes (it’s alliteration day at Warcraft Wanderings). The only real “gotcha” I discovered as I was proceeding through the first rooms: the rivers of sludge do a ton of damage coupled with a debuff that nearly emptied my mana pool. They were a little too wide to hop over, so I wound up having to drink a couple of times to stay ready to fight. In short order, we faced Patchwerk.
It was a slaughter. He practically melted before us and we earned an achievement (“Make Quick Werk of Him”) by defeating him in under three minutes. As per usual, there was no loot for me, but that was fine. The turn in was 5 frosties, 5 triumphs, and 40ish gold. The raid disbanded and the “big kids” went on to fight the Lich King. Me? I tackled the Vault of Archeon (again, I know I can’t spell) with 24 other like-minded individuals.
Knowing what to expect makes a huge difference in dungeons and raids and the run went incredibly smooth. For the first time, I received epic lewts from a random roll, being one of the lucky 25% or so to get a toy for the effort involved. My reward? Tier 10 PvP bracers that were much nicer than my current ones, at the cost of some +hit. This leaves me in a bit of a bind and what’s going to happen is that I’ll wind up using them solely for PvP fights. This is fine, since I do a fair amount of battlegrounds, but I still need better PvE ones.
Afterwards, I returned to my exploring and knocked out a few more zones before bed. All total, I earned some 32 or so achievements over the course of the day and am left with only six zones before getting the Explorer title.
I know what I’m doing on Sunday now!
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