It's been a couple of weeks since my last post and quite a lot to catch up with. The big thing was, of course, the Halloween event.
The big things to do include smacking the Headless Horseman around daily, put out a few fires, get zapped by a few costume wands, and go hog wild visiting candy buckets in nearly every inn on Azeroth and the Outlands to trick or treat.
By the end of the third or fourth day, I'd managed to get all of the achievements necessary to get the "Hallowed" title and spent the rest of the event fruitlessly trying to collect 20 unique flimsy masks. I ended with only 14 of them, but not for want of trying. If nothing else it leaves something to try for next year, eh? Still, I managed to get a nifty new mount from the experience, so I've no complaints whatsoever.
It wasn't all trick or treats, though. The "other" tiny thing was to earn the Loremaster of Outlands achievement, which required 568 quests spread out over each Outlands zone. It was hell. I should have realized based on my experiences in Northrend that there would be barely enough quests in each zone to earn that zone's achievement and in some cases I spent hours hunting down isolated NPCs for "just one more" quest.
In many cases I was exceptionally grateful that I was doing these at 80th level. I lost count of the number of quests of "Group size: 5" that were required. Most were handled easily, but every now and then I'd get a quest that smacked my arrogant butt back into place. Of particular note was a guy in a crystal prison down in Shadowmoon that summoned about 4-5 waves of elite critters, ending with some particularly vicious guy who reflected spells. I didn't notice it until I ate a 30k arcane blast. Yeah. Oops.
The second nasty thing was the repair bill. Since the 4.0 patch went into effect, cloth wearers get to pay what plate wearers have been paying all along. I have a newfound respect and sympathy for warriors. A single "meh-- I'll just rez here and suck up the 25% equipment damage" moment cost somewhere in the vicinity of 50g. Le ouch.
A curious side effect of my Outlandish pursuits was earning serious chunks of reputation for factions I'll never pursue. Well, I say never now, but I guess it's only a matter of time before I start thinking "You know what would be great? Getting all of those reputation achievements."
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Monday, October 18, 2010
Professionally Speaking
Over the weekend, I decided it was past time that I knocked out a few achievements, so Strev worked diligently at upping his First Aid and Cooking to Grandmaster status, earning a few rewards in the process. This was not without its challenges. Money had been running particularly tight since most of his gold got blown on a very nice set of pants earlier in the week and cloth was running at a particularly ruinous price in the AH, so I went forth to farm wool.
Wowhead noted a particularly nice place to farm wool is the Stormwind Stockades. This suited me just fine, since I was all of 30 seconds from it. After a couple of runs through I had more than enough to carry me past the ‘wool hurdle’ and into silk, which was pleasantly cheap. The rest of it all was pretty much a straightforward shop, craft, and train your way to victory.
Cooking’s greatest challenges come in the achievements: prepare a few dozen different recipes you can only buy with ‘Awards’ you receive from doing the daily Dalaran quest, buy a hat for 100 of the same awards, and so forth and so on. The thing is you can only earn two awards a day so it will take months to do them all. I also discovered a bug where in the latest patch you can’t get the achievement for earning your first cooking award. I opened a trouble ticket on it, but haven’t heard anything in a couple of days yet (not surprising with the weekend and other patch woes). I also discovered while trying for a cooking achievement that placing a feast (or mage table, or soulwell) in a BG will result in most people getting locked up and disconnected. Lovely.
As Strev was dangerously close to honor cap, I blew a couple thousand honor on a pvp-mount, a black mechanostrider. Stupidly overpriced, but pretty snazzy.
With the changes to the raid lockouts, Fidelis grouped up our brave 25-man band to storm the ICC with the understanding that the ‘leftover bosses’ would get mopped up by 10-man crews over the weekend. Everyone was fine with this and we once again bravely stormed the citadel. All I can say is ‘wow’. There’s a 30% damage boost in ICC presently for reasons I don’t question and we utterly steamrolled the first few bosses. Strev’s criticals were hitting for over 60k damage and recount says that overall I was hitting in the 12.3k+ DPS range. The guild’s raid pages brought these figures a little closer to earth, but I was inordinately pleased that my little glass cannon was firing well. Heck, Marrowgar never even got through the second “BONESTORM!” before he was exploded. It was going to be a good night.
We mobbed through the battles, frequently without losing a single person. I now –totally- understand the Festergut battle and he was brought down with a minute left on the enrage timer. Either he or his brother dropped some very nice pants…comparable with the ones I had just spent thousands on. Just one person rolled on it and got a ‘26’. For the rest of the evening I wondered if I had spent all of that gold for naught. Later to satiate my curiosity, I rolled just to see. I got a 21 and felt much better.
At long last, I faced my arch-nemesis: Professor Putricide. I had vowed my revenge weeks ago. We prepared, reviewed strategy, and attacked! The professor ran around, summoning his deadly oozes, and eventually started chucking vials of death as the floor became more and more impassable from a thick green glowing death soup. We got him down to about 3% then wiped from the sheer volume of crap on the floor. Undaunted, we identified where we went wrong and tried again. SUCCESS! The good Professor was no more and we all spammed the guild channel with news of our victory over ICC-Plagueworks (25-Man).
The following encounter was too new to too many of us and sadly, we were unable to vanquish The Blood Council. It looks fairly nifty with 3 “Princes” from the old heroics that take turns being damageable while horrible things happen all around. Good times!
Also spent a bit of time working on reputation. It started off innocently enough. I’d been running randoms with guildies as they tested their builds and one was looking to increase her Lower City faction for an achievement. She suggested a BC heroic: Arakkoa Halls (it’s filled with birdmen and flappy things), so I dutifully moseyed over and helped her summon the rest of the team. To my horror, it wouldn’t let me in the front door: I needed a key to enter the heroic version of the dungeon and the key could only be purchased at an ‘honored’ reputation or better. I had –just- gotten friendly with the Lower City, so I knew that wasn’t going to happen. Thankfully, the gang decided to run through the ‘regular’ version twice to help me with reputation and we ended with me halfway to the point.
Later I ran the dungeon solo once and finished up some quests in the area to reach the goal. With key purchased, I tried soloing the level 70 heroic. It was rough. Stupidly rough. In the end, I took two deaths from hard hitting guards, had to invisibility past one boss, but was able to take out the big bad at the end. Yay!
Finally, I reached Exalted with Stormwind by doing EVERY quest in Goldshire, most of the ones in Redridge, and a number of the ones in Stormwind itself. Next stop…Darnassus?
Wowhead noted a particularly nice place to farm wool is the Stormwind Stockades. This suited me just fine, since I was all of 30 seconds from it. After a couple of runs through I had more than enough to carry me past the ‘wool hurdle’ and into silk, which was pleasantly cheap. The rest of it all was pretty much a straightforward shop, craft, and train your way to victory.
Cooking’s greatest challenges come in the achievements: prepare a few dozen different recipes you can only buy with ‘Awards’ you receive from doing the daily Dalaran quest, buy a hat for 100 of the same awards, and so forth and so on. The thing is you can only earn two awards a day so it will take months to do them all. I also discovered a bug where in the latest patch you can’t get the achievement for earning your first cooking award. I opened a trouble ticket on it, but haven’t heard anything in a couple of days yet (not surprising with the weekend and other patch woes). I also discovered while trying for a cooking achievement that placing a feast (or mage table, or soulwell) in a BG will result in most people getting locked up and disconnected. Lovely.
As Strev was dangerously close to honor cap, I blew a couple thousand honor on a pvp-mount, a black mechanostrider. Stupidly overpriced, but pretty snazzy.
With the changes to the raid lockouts, Fidelis grouped up our brave 25-man band to storm the ICC with the understanding that the ‘leftover bosses’ would get mopped up by 10-man crews over the weekend. Everyone was fine with this and we once again bravely stormed the citadel. All I can say is ‘wow’. There’s a 30% damage boost in ICC presently for reasons I don’t question and we utterly steamrolled the first few bosses. Strev’s criticals were hitting for over 60k damage and recount says that overall I was hitting in the 12.3k+ DPS range. The guild’s raid pages brought these figures a little closer to earth, but I was inordinately pleased that my little glass cannon was firing well. Heck, Marrowgar never even got through the second “BONESTORM!” before he was exploded. It was going to be a good night.
We mobbed through the battles, frequently without losing a single person. I now –totally- understand the Festergut battle and he was brought down with a minute left on the enrage timer. Either he or his brother dropped some very nice pants…comparable with the ones I had just spent thousands on. Just one person rolled on it and got a ‘26’. For the rest of the evening I wondered if I had spent all of that gold for naught. Later to satiate my curiosity, I rolled just to see. I got a 21 and felt much better.
At long last, I faced my arch-nemesis: Professor Putricide. I had vowed my revenge weeks ago. We prepared, reviewed strategy, and attacked! The professor ran around, summoning his deadly oozes, and eventually started chucking vials of death as the floor became more and more impassable from a thick green glowing death soup. We got him down to about 3% then wiped from the sheer volume of crap on the floor. Undaunted, we identified where we went wrong and tried again. SUCCESS! The good Professor was no more and we all spammed the guild channel with news of our victory over ICC-Plagueworks (25-Man).
The following encounter was too new to too many of us and sadly, we were unable to vanquish The Blood Council. It looks fairly nifty with 3 “Princes” from the old heroics that take turns being damageable while horrible things happen all around. Good times!
Also spent a bit of time working on reputation. It started off innocently enough. I’d been running randoms with guildies as they tested their builds and one was looking to increase her Lower City faction for an achievement. She suggested a BC heroic: Arakkoa Halls (it’s filled with birdmen and flappy things), so I dutifully moseyed over and helped her summon the rest of the team. To my horror, it wouldn’t let me in the front door: I needed a key to enter the heroic version of the dungeon and the key could only be purchased at an ‘honored’ reputation or better. I had –just- gotten friendly with the Lower City, so I knew that wasn’t going to happen. Thankfully, the gang decided to run through the ‘regular’ version twice to help me with reputation and we ended with me halfway to the point.
Later I ran the dungeon solo once and finished up some quests in the area to reach the goal. With key purchased, I tried soloing the level 70 heroic. It was rough. Stupidly rough. In the end, I took two deaths from hard hitting guards, had to invisibility past one boss, but was able to take out the big bad at the end. Yay!
Finally, I reached Exalted with Stormwind by doing EVERY quest in Goldshire, most of the ones in Redridge, and a number of the ones in Stormwind itself. Next stop…Darnassus?
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Power Overwhelming!
I’ve now spent the last couple of days testing out the changes in 4.0.1 and I’ve got to say… I like most of them. The interfaces are cleaner, the talent trees are greatly improved and streamlined, and for some unknown reason arcane mages can now melt faces by looking at people funny. I’ll break it down by character:
Strev:
After the first rounds of tests against some particularly offensive practice dummies (they must have been public enemy #1: everyone in Ironforge was attacking them!), I became convinced there was some massive bug or there’s going to be a serious beating with a nerf bat soon. The damage output I was seeing was close to double what it was a couple of days ago. More than once I reached >40k crits
For the curious, I’m running a 31/2/3 spec that probably isn’t ‘optimal’, but looked like fun. The cross talents increase critical chance and damage multiplier. Adding those to a new talent that increases damage by 20% for burst, mana gems that provide a significant trinket-like DPS buff, the Mastery skill that increases DPS%, and the Arcane damage boost tied into the blue bar that can get up to another 12% damage added… the build has a lot of synergy.
I took Strev for test drives through WG and WSG for the pvp experience and wow. With an additional 9.5k health and 8k mana and the fact that resiliance gear no longer does squat against critical hits, Strev was routinely hitting other players in excess of 12k a shot with some shots still hitting above 20k each. After taking so much abuse on the field for the past couple of months, it felt nice getting my own back. I may have to try an actual pvp build at some point.
Later, Strev went dungeon diving with a number of guild parties who were also testing. We were sad to see that guild experience and reputation weren’t affected, but I now have a better grasp of how many “justice points” we’d earn during a typical random: about 80. Bears no longer get an AoE taunt and Paladin’s consecration is now on a 30 second cooldown, so they are having a little harder time with aggro control in groups. If my mage experience is “typical”, mages are now generating about double the threat from the sheer DPS output. This led to a LOT of “I’m winning on aggro!” moments, coupled by the baddie dying from the next 20k point hit.
Anyth:
Anyth switched over to Beast Mastery for this go. Since the cost for a dual spec dropped by 90%, I went ahead and picked it up. Once I’ve got a handle on things, I’ll test her with Marksman. So far, I’m fairly unimpressed. She can throw traps now, which is fun, but losing almost all of her AoE abilities was a pretty big hit. Not having to carry ammo is a perk, but it wasn’t that cumbersome to deal with in the first place. I’ll reserve my final judgement until I see how she does teamed up with Zyrial and Pals next week.
Cyandra:
Didn’t do too much with Cyandra other than learn spells, pick new protection talents, and complain bitterly about the new consecration cooldown. Bear in mind, I’ve been leveling her primarily through AoE trash pulls. I’m not eager to see how this change in dynamics plays out, but will bite that bullet over the weekend.
Strev:
After the first rounds of tests against some particularly offensive practice dummies (they must have been public enemy #1: everyone in Ironforge was attacking them!), I became convinced there was some massive bug or there’s going to be a serious beating with a nerf bat soon. The damage output I was seeing was close to double what it was a couple of days ago. More than once I reached >40k crits
For the curious, I’m running a 31/2/3 spec that probably isn’t ‘optimal’, but looked like fun. The cross talents increase critical chance and damage multiplier. Adding those to a new talent that increases damage by 20% for burst, mana gems that provide a significant trinket-like DPS buff, the Mastery skill that increases DPS%, and the Arcane damage boost tied into the blue bar that can get up to another 12% damage added… the build has a lot of synergy.
I took Strev for test drives through WG and WSG for the pvp experience and wow. With an additional 9.5k health and 8k mana and the fact that resiliance gear no longer does squat against critical hits, Strev was routinely hitting other players in excess of 12k a shot with some shots still hitting above 20k each. After taking so much abuse on the field for the past couple of months, it felt nice getting my own back. I may have to try an actual pvp build at some point.
Later, Strev went dungeon diving with a number of guild parties who were also testing. We were sad to see that guild experience and reputation weren’t affected, but I now have a better grasp of how many “justice points” we’d earn during a typical random: about 80. Bears no longer get an AoE taunt and Paladin’s consecration is now on a 30 second cooldown, so they are having a little harder time with aggro control in groups. If my mage experience is “typical”, mages are now generating about double the threat from the sheer DPS output. This led to a LOT of “I’m winning on aggro!” moments, coupled by the baddie dying from the next 20k point hit.
Anyth:
Anyth switched over to Beast Mastery for this go. Since the cost for a dual spec dropped by 90%, I went ahead and picked it up. Once I’ve got a handle on things, I’ll test her with Marksman. So far, I’m fairly unimpressed. She can throw traps now, which is fun, but losing almost all of her AoE abilities was a pretty big hit. Not having to carry ammo is a perk, but it wasn’t that cumbersome to deal with in the first place. I’ll reserve my final judgement until I see how she does teamed up with Zyrial and Pals next week.
Cyandra:
Didn’t do too much with Cyandra other than learn spells, pick new protection talents, and complain bitterly about the new consecration cooldown. Bear in mind, I’ve been leveling her primarily through AoE trash pulls. I’m not eager to see how this change in dynamics plays out, but will bite that bullet over the weekend.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
4.0.1 Cometh
Twas the night before Patch Day and all through Stormwind,
Newbies were crying “When will it begin?”
We told them to STFU and read the patch page,
Which they did and then came back with full on nerd rage.
“My volley! My talents! They nerfed me quite hard!
I’d quit right now, but I’m on a pre-paid time card!”
They cried and they moaned, it just wouldn’t end
While the 80s wondered if emblems would spend.
“Badges and honor, point conversion rates too?
I’m going to lose big and you will all too!”
They split camps down the hoard-or-spend path,
Yet each will light forums with their side’s wrath.
Toons hitting 10 will soon know the freeze
When one talent point will lock in their trees.
The “simplified” combat confused even more,
For how would they now calculate their GearScore?
Everything’s changing to something brand new
Without guides and forums to instruct what to do.
So what to do when nothing’s the same?
Sit down, shut up, and L2P the game.
Newbies were crying “When will it begin?”
We told them to STFU and read the patch page,
Which they did and then came back with full on nerd rage.
“My volley! My talents! They nerfed me quite hard!
I’d quit right now, but I’m on a pre-paid time card!”
They cried and they moaned, it just wouldn’t end
While the 80s wondered if emblems would spend.
“Badges and honor, point conversion rates too?
I’m going to lose big and you will all too!”
They split camps down the hoard-or-spend path,
Yet each will light forums with their side’s wrath.
Toons hitting 10 will soon know the freeze
When one talent point will lock in their trees.
The “simplified” combat confused even more,
For how would they now calculate their GearScore?
Everything’s changing to something brand new
Without guides and forums to instruct what to do.
So what to do when nothing’s the same?
Sit down, shut up, and L2P the game.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Stratholme Alone
I recently retook the infamous Bartle Test, which categorizes gamers based on favorite in-game activities, and Ian totally nailed my personality type as “Explorer (100%), Achiever (60%)”. Regular readers of this blog (both of you) should find this of no surprise.
Continuing my exploration of older dungeons, I journeyed to the Eastern Plaguelands to see what Stratholme had to offer. A nice little city with plenty of lore, it was the site of a major plague outbreak as seen in the Warcraft 3 human campaign and you get to time travel and relive that experience during the Culling of Stratholme “dungeon”. Now I was finally getting to see it “in the now”. My previous experience with this dungeon was thirty seconds of pain months ago when I was trying to find a path to the blood elf starting area and found myself trapped alone in the city with no portal out and everything a dozen levels higher than I. Time to take revenge.
I blew through the thickly guarded city gates and started exploring the city. It looks exactly like what you’d expect in a hopeless city that’s been overrun with undead for years: Detroit. The monsters ranged from ghouls and skeletons to abominations and spider-like crypt-thingies. As I made my way through the city, I occasionally ran afoul of patrols or traps, but nothing that wasn’t overwhelming. It turns out the city itself is divided into two halves: “living” and “undead”, each with a number of bosses.
The western side is a bastion of the Scarlet Crusade and has a castle that must be conquered. It was also where my wandering led first. Once inside the castle, it’s a fairly straightforward path with a few side rooms with extra encounters, bosses, and books to read. That’s the one thing I’ll give the Crusaders: they support literacy. There were very few surprises overall and a nice little boss at the end with a couple of firable cannons for flavor. Presumably the cannons can be used to ward off the waves of additional crusaders that spawn after fighting down the boss, but I found it more expedient to simply blizzard my way to victory.
The eastern side was a bit more complex. The first part included a (presumably fairly elected) undead Magistrar who gave up the Key to the City which opened a backdoor to the “surface” as well as permitted deeper explorations. Once into the streets known as “the Gauntlet”, the undead leader, “Baron Somebody”, yells out he’s going to kill a prisoner in 45 minutes. This sounded like something I should probably care about, so it lent some urgency to my explorations.
A glance at a hastily procured map showed I had to fight my way to The Slaughterhouse, so I made my way through the city clearing the streets as I went. There were a lot more patrols on this side, so it was a bit slower going. One of the buildings looked more heavily guarded than the others and had a “Baroness” at the top of the stairs, so I figured I was on the right track. A few arcane blasts later the doors behind her opened to reveal…a tiny room with a few acolytes. I left them alone and continued on my merry way, annihilating street trash as I went.
By the side of the road I eventually encountered two more similarly guarded buildings and contented myself with nuking the bosses for a few extra blues to disenchant and the occasional auctionable piece of rare or epic gear. The whole place was a bit of a gold mine for that. I simply didn’t have the pack space to loot everything, even disenchanting things as I went. Eventually, I just left dozens of undead lying on the ground, their treasures undisturbed.
Finally I reached the Slaughterhouse—only to find the way blocked by a large, very immobile gate. I looked around for a switch, lever, boss I had missed, or anything, but to no avail. I was out of time (personal, not quest-related), so I’d just have to retry the undead section later in the evening.
An hour or so later I stepped back into Stratholme and began the run again. Unfortunately I had not had to opportunity to offload any of my treasures, so even more unlooted bodies were left by the wayside. As I cleansed the city, I wondered what I had not done. Then it hit me hard. This time when I faced the Baroness, I stepped inside and killed the Acolytes. Sure enough, I was rewarded with a script that said the defenses of the ziggurat were being compromised. Aha! I made my way back through and wiped out the other two dens of boss-defended evil priests to hear the sweet sound of the distant gates tumbling down.
I returned to the Slaughterhouse and it was a small stone building with a sealed door and surrounded by a large courtyard, populated with a couple dozen abominations. I faced them and began the endgame encounters. When all of the abominations were felled, many skeletons poured out of a side gate. When they were dispatched, the building opened and a number of elite undead blizzardbait emerged. When the last died, the Baron himself challenged me to enter and …DIE! I intended to do one of those.
Inside the baron sat upon a horse in the small room, because…I guess that’s just his thing. Smoked him like a salmon and rescued the fair maiden, who seemed content to stand around uselessly until I zoned out.
Next stop…Scholomance maybe?
Continuing my exploration of older dungeons, I journeyed to the Eastern Plaguelands to see what Stratholme had to offer. A nice little city with plenty of lore, it was the site of a major plague outbreak as seen in the Warcraft 3 human campaign and you get to time travel and relive that experience during the Culling of Stratholme “dungeon”. Now I was finally getting to see it “in the now”. My previous experience with this dungeon was thirty seconds of pain months ago when I was trying to find a path to the blood elf starting area and found myself trapped alone in the city with no portal out and everything a dozen levels higher than I. Time to take revenge.
I blew through the thickly guarded city gates and started exploring the city. It looks exactly like what you’d expect in a hopeless city that’s been overrun with undead for years: Detroit. The monsters ranged from ghouls and skeletons to abominations and spider-like crypt-thingies. As I made my way through the city, I occasionally ran afoul of patrols or traps, but nothing that wasn’t overwhelming. It turns out the city itself is divided into two halves: “living” and “undead”, each with a number of bosses.
The western side is a bastion of the Scarlet Crusade and has a castle that must be conquered. It was also where my wandering led first. Once inside the castle, it’s a fairly straightforward path with a few side rooms with extra encounters, bosses, and books to read. That’s the one thing I’ll give the Crusaders: they support literacy. There were very few surprises overall and a nice little boss at the end with a couple of firable cannons for flavor. Presumably the cannons can be used to ward off the waves of additional crusaders that spawn after fighting down the boss, but I found it more expedient to simply blizzard my way to victory.
The eastern side was a bit more complex. The first part included a (presumably fairly elected) undead Magistrar who gave up the Key to the City which opened a backdoor to the “surface” as well as permitted deeper explorations. Once into the streets known as “the Gauntlet”, the undead leader, “Baron Somebody”, yells out he’s going to kill a prisoner in 45 minutes. This sounded like something I should probably care about, so it lent some urgency to my explorations.
A glance at a hastily procured map showed I had to fight my way to The Slaughterhouse, so I made my way through the city clearing the streets as I went. There were a lot more patrols on this side, so it was a bit slower going. One of the buildings looked more heavily guarded than the others and had a “Baroness” at the top of the stairs, so I figured I was on the right track. A few arcane blasts later the doors behind her opened to reveal…a tiny room with a few acolytes. I left them alone and continued on my merry way, annihilating street trash as I went.
By the side of the road I eventually encountered two more similarly guarded buildings and contented myself with nuking the bosses for a few extra blues to disenchant and the occasional auctionable piece of rare or epic gear. The whole place was a bit of a gold mine for that. I simply didn’t have the pack space to loot everything, even disenchanting things as I went. Eventually, I just left dozens of undead lying on the ground, their treasures undisturbed.
Finally I reached the Slaughterhouse—only to find the way blocked by a large, very immobile gate. I looked around for a switch, lever, boss I had missed, or anything, but to no avail. I was out of time (personal, not quest-related), so I’d just have to retry the undead section later in the evening.
An hour or so later I stepped back into Stratholme and began the run again. Unfortunately I had not had to opportunity to offload any of my treasures, so even more unlooted bodies were left by the wayside. As I cleansed the city, I wondered what I had not done. Then it hit me hard. This time when I faced the Baroness, I stepped inside and killed the Acolytes. Sure enough, I was rewarded with a script that said the defenses of the ziggurat were being compromised. Aha! I made my way back through and wiped out the other two dens of boss-defended evil priests to hear the sweet sound of the distant gates tumbling down.
I returned to the Slaughterhouse and it was a small stone building with a sealed door and surrounded by a large courtyard, populated with a couple dozen abominations. I faced them and began the endgame encounters. When all of the abominations were felled, many skeletons poured out of a side gate. When they were dispatched, the building opened and a number of elite undead blizzardbait emerged. When the last died, the Baron himself challenged me to enter and …DIE! I intended to do one of those.
Inside the baron sat upon a horse in the small room, because…I guess that’s just his thing. Smoked him like a salmon and rescued the fair maiden, who seemed content to stand around uselessly until I zoned out.
Next stop…Scholomance maybe?
Monday, October 4, 2010
This and that
With Brewfest finally winding down, I was glad to be able to earn what tokens I could and picked up the pet miniature pink elekk. If all goes according to plan, I’ll even be able to get the glasses on Tuesday. By a happy chance, one of the Corin Direbrew bags gave the ‘Brew-fast’ ram mount. It’s been a good holiday, but I won’t be missing the ram races anytime soon. I honestly have no idea how people do this on multiple characters each day.
The current guild raid schedule horribly conflicts with my personal life, so there isn’t much I can sign up for beyond the Wednesday fun runs when they manifest. Sadness, but these things tend to be temporary. Even still, I managed to get a fair share of raiding done over the weekend, even if it was just with pugs.
I don’t quite have the stomach for ICC pugs, which is a pity since they are pretty much the only place I’ll be getting gear upgrades at this point, but in ‘lesser dungeons’ there’s still achievements to be had and the experiences themselves.
Ran both 10-man and 25-man VoA for the sole purpose of collecting a few more frosties to add to my stockpile. I’m just a handful shy of new robes and I’m eager to finish. The 10-man went flawlessly. The 25-man. not so much. With over two dozen players, the enemies are drastically scaled upwards and there isn’t much room for stupid. People simply have to know their roles.
In VoA, the big thing is that ranged must switch from battling Toravon the Ice Lord to spinning frozen orbs he summons or they will wipe the party. Healers must be able to dance, avoiding orbs while keeping everyone up. Rogues must not run forward before everyone is rezzed, pull the boss back to the raid before fading and dropping the party. To our credit, we did two of those things right. “Wewillkill”, I’m looking at YOU. After the initial debacle and the people who inevitably drop after a single setback have been replaced, we charged forward and did it the right way.
An hour later I joined an Onyxia-25 group after a couple of guildies advertised for more help. I’d wanted to see the fight again with the graphic pumped up. Since we wouldn’t be doing the whelps, I was fairly certain my system could handle it without disconnecting. The group had challenges. The leader, the ironically named ‘Dragonmaster’, may have been the most insecure raid leader I’ve met. With encouraging messages like “If anyone wants to drop out of the raid now, I won’t think any less of you” and no less than five ready checks before pulling the SINGLE boss we have to fight. Still, he was trying his best, so I won’t fault him. It takes a brave man to put together a raid and everyone starts somewhere, right?
As luck would have it, our party included a decent guy from the VoA-25 I’d just run by the name of “Junkmonkey”. He noted “Where have I seen your name before, Wewillkill?” Oh, crap. I called the rogue out on the VoA disaster and he protested that he had lagged horribly into the fight, then dropped to avoid accusations. Others pointed out that dropping instead of explaining didn’t really help his case, but I was curious to see how it would go down. In the end, Wewillkill stuck around and didn’t do anything untoward. I’m happy to say we were massacred legitimately…twice.
It turned out they –were- attempting the “Many Whelps! Handle it!” achieve and that led to much hilarity the first time. In the end we needed “more dots!” and failed what should’ve been an easy run. After eleven minutes, we wiped in phase 2 with Ony still around 40%. I wasn’t torn up about it, aside from the armor repair bill.
Tagged along in an ToC 10-man and I can now say I’ve done that. Previously, I’d only experienced the raid up to the slaying of a demon lord summoned by a rather self-important gnome. This time I got to see it through to the end. Battles included a ‘pvp-style’ team we had to best, a pair of Val’kyr with very curious light/dark attunement mechanics I won’t go into here, and a rather interesting surprise.
After defeating the Val’kyr, the Lich King shows up, monologues a bit, and shatters the floor of the arena, sending us all falling down into a cavern where the reanimated crypt lord, Anub’arak (last seen in Azjol-nerub), awaited. It was a ferocious fight, but we fared better against it than we did the Val’kyr, and were named Champions of the Crusade.
The final little feather was a battle in Warsong Gulch that we completely dominated, earning both “Warsong Gulch Perfection!” (3-0 victory) and “Warsong Expedience” (victory in under 7 minutes). Considering that WSG is probably my second most-hated battleground (behind Arathi Basin), I was tickled as pink as my elekk.
The current guild raid schedule horribly conflicts with my personal life, so there isn’t much I can sign up for beyond the Wednesday fun runs when they manifest. Sadness, but these things tend to be temporary. Even still, I managed to get a fair share of raiding done over the weekend, even if it was just with pugs.
I don’t quite have the stomach for ICC pugs, which is a pity since they are pretty much the only place I’ll be getting gear upgrades at this point, but in ‘lesser dungeons’ there’s still achievements to be had and the experiences themselves.
Ran both 10-man and 25-man VoA for the sole purpose of collecting a few more frosties to add to my stockpile. I’m just a handful shy of new robes and I’m eager to finish. The 10-man went flawlessly. The 25-man. not so much. With over two dozen players, the enemies are drastically scaled upwards and there isn’t much room for stupid. People simply have to know their roles.
In VoA, the big thing is that ranged must switch from battling Toravon the Ice Lord to spinning frozen orbs he summons or they will wipe the party. Healers must be able to dance, avoiding orbs while keeping everyone up. Rogues must not run forward before everyone is rezzed, pull the boss back to the raid before fading and dropping the party. To our credit, we did two of those things right. “Wewillkill”, I’m looking at YOU. After the initial debacle and the people who inevitably drop after a single setback have been replaced, we charged forward and did it the right way.
An hour later I joined an Onyxia-25 group after a couple of guildies advertised for more help. I’d wanted to see the fight again with the graphic pumped up. Since we wouldn’t be doing the whelps, I was fairly certain my system could handle it without disconnecting. The group had challenges. The leader, the ironically named ‘Dragonmaster’, may have been the most insecure raid leader I’ve met. With encouraging messages like “If anyone wants to drop out of the raid now, I won’t think any less of you” and no less than five ready checks before pulling the SINGLE boss we have to fight. Still, he was trying his best, so I won’t fault him. It takes a brave man to put together a raid and everyone starts somewhere, right?
As luck would have it, our party included a decent guy from the VoA-25 I’d just run by the name of “Junkmonkey”. He noted “Where have I seen your name before, Wewillkill?” Oh, crap. I called the rogue out on the VoA disaster and he protested that he had lagged horribly into the fight, then dropped to avoid accusations. Others pointed out that dropping instead of explaining didn’t really help his case, but I was curious to see how it would go down. In the end, Wewillkill stuck around and didn’t do anything untoward. I’m happy to say we were massacred legitimately…twice.
It turned out they –were- attempting the “Many Whelps! Handle it!” achieve and that led to much hilarity the first time. In the end we needed “more dots!” and failed what should’ve been an easy run. After eleven minutes, we wiped in phase 2 with Ony still around 40%. I wasn’t torn up about it, aside from the armor repair bill.
Tagged along in an ToC 10-man and I can now say I’ve done that. Previously, I’d only experienced the raid up to the slaying of a demon lord summoned by a rather self-important gnome. This time I got to see it through to the end. Battles included a ‘pvp-style’ team we had to best, a pair of Val’kyr with very curious light/dark attunement mechanics I won’t go into here, and a rather interesting surprise.
After defeating the Val’kyr, the Lich King shows up, monologues a bit, and shatters the floor of the arena, sending us all falling down into a cavern where the reanimated crypt lord, Anub’arak (last seen in Azjol-nerub), awaited. It was a ferocious fight, but we fared better against it than we did the Val’kyr, and were named Champions of the Crusade.
The final little feather was a battle in Warsong Gulch that we completely dominated, earning both “Warsong Gulch Perfection!” (3-0 victory) and “Warsong Expedience” (victory in under 7 minutes). Considering that WSG is probably my second most-hated battleground (behind Arathi Basin), I was tickled as pink as my elekk.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Dragon's Lair
Running the Brewfest dailies may not have gotten me any closer to server domination, but it did get me a nifty pair of boots to go with my costume. Tonight or tomorrow I should get the cap (I like saving the cheapest thing for last) and that will nail down the last of the Brewfest achievements. I’ll still play along through the end of the holiday for the pet Elekk, but it isn’t a pressing need.
Much later I was chillaxing in Ironforge and waiting for the daily queue, when I get a whisper from a guildie. She’s in an Onyxia 10-man raid group that’s only half full. Would I want in? I glanced at my queue-counter. Fourteen minutes in and a dungeon should pop any second. I was glad she caught me when she did. I dropped queue, replied that I would, and in a minute I was chillaxing in Ironforge and waiting for the raid to fill.
For the uninitiated, the dragon Onyxia was one of the true end-game encounters back in Vanilla. Videos on YouTube abound including a rather famous (in some circles) animated one with a spastic raid leader utterly nutting up throughout the proceedings, which culminates in an epithet-spewing tirade when they wipe. That particular video is the source of the names of two achievements “Many whelps! Handle it!” and “More dots!” and is four minutes of Totally Worth It.
When Lich King came out, the classic raid was yanked, buffed up, and slapped back in as 10/25-man level 80 content. The raid itself is one of the easier ones, which isn’t surprising given that, as a developer, you want the new content to be more challenging and rewarding than the things players have seen for years.
We ventured forth to some remote spot in Kalimdor. (Well, truth be told, a couple of people ventured forth to a remote spot in Kalimdor. My happy butt stayed parked in Ironforge until summoned.) We delved into the dragon’s cave and explored the tunnels within which was, unsurprisingly, guarded by a number of various draconian adversaries. After a remarkably short distance, we stood at the doorway into a large cavern and Onyxia lay sprawled out dozing. Someone commented on how peaceful she looked sleeping.
We had a secondary mission: attain the “Many Whelps! Handle it!” achievement, if at all possible. This cranks the difficulty of the raid to 11. Don’t worry, dear reader. I’ll explain. Phase one of Onyxia is strictly tank and spank. The tank points the mouth of The Very Angry Dragon away from the raid and we wail on it until she hits phase 2. At the beginning of phase 2, she walks around and then takes to the air. When she does, players nears the sides of the cave will spawn up to a hundred dragon whelps. That is not an exaggeration. Around fifty whelps spawn on each side. Meanwhile, Onyxia will start blasting the raid from above, safely out of melee range. The achieve requires spawning more than 50 whelps within ten seconds of Ony taking to the air and then killing her.
The whelps hurt. A lot. They are fairly crunchy, but there’s a crapton of them. From personal experience, I can attest they each do about 1-2k damage per hit against cloth wearers who might be trying to blizzard them to death. Interestingly enough, the main danger the whelps pose isn’t from their teeth, but the sheer volume of them will cause many people to lose connection. This can be mitigated by lowering one’s graphic settings from ultra to ‘catass’, but even still, our first attempt saw two people drop. Given that one was a tank, this boded ill and in seconds we wiped from the Swarm.
We returned a couple of times, but each time the whelp swarm caused party members to disconnect and those that didn’t were quickly nommed to death. After the third time, we decided to play it straight and see how that went. (spoiler: better
The tank engaged and we streamed forward, guns a-blazin’. We entered phase 2 and I was shocked to see whelps—it turned out that Onyxia spawns a number of her own. My guildie friend died horribly, as did one other, but we pressed on. Avoiding fireballs and ‘deep breaths’ (read: horrific gouts of flame), I positioned myself underneath the dragon and blasted as I could at an awkward angle as the tanks scooped up rogue whelps and a couple of elite dragonkin that had spawned. After some time, she landed and phase 3 began.
This time, Onyxia’s normal attacks and wing buffet were supplemented by an area-of-effect fear and lava bursts around the room. It definitely made for an interesting fight. In the end, justice was served by murderous humanoids with sharp pointy things and the dragon lay dead before us and three achievements were attained at once: Onyxia 10-man, More Dots! (kill her in x time), and She Deep Breaths More (kill her without anybody getting nailed by the ‘deep breath’ weapon). This had turned out much better than I had hoped for.
There was a nice assortment of loot, including the dragon’s head (which was won by my guildie) and a 22-slot bag, among other nifties. Per usual, I lost all of the rolls and summoned the obligatory portal to Dalaran. I was then surprised by a trade offer: my guildie gave me the head! She noted that the trinket reward wasn’t needed, so I happily returned to Stormwind carrying my severed prize. The reward ring was actually a little worse than what I currently had, but the souvenir of my adventure earned a spot in my bank vault.
Much later I was chillaxing in Ironforge and waiting for the daily queue, when I get a whisper from a guildie. She’s in an Onyxia 10-man raid group that’s only half full. Would I want in? I glanced at my queue-counter. Fourteen minutes in and a dungeon should pop any second. I was glad she caught me when she did. I dropped queue, replied that I would, and in a minute I was chillaxing in Ironforge and waiting for the raid to fill.
For the uninitiated, the dragon Onyxia was one of the true end-game encounters back in Vanilla. Videos on YouTube abound including a rather famous (in some circles) animated one with a spastic raid leader utterly nutting up throughout the proceedings, which culminates in an epithet-spewing tirade when they wipe. That particular video is the source of the names of two achievements “Many whelps! Handle it!” and “More dots!” and is four minutes of Totally Worth It.
When Lich King came out, the classic raid was yanked, buffed up, and slapped back in as 10/25-man level 80 content. The raid itself is one of the easier ones, which isn’t surprising given that, as a developer, you want the new content to be more challenging and rewarding than the things players have seen for years.
We ventured forth to some remote spot in Kalimdor. (Well, truth be told, a couple of people ventured forth to a remote spot in Kalimdor. My happy butt stayed parked in Ironforge until summoned.) We delved into the dragon’s cave and explored the tunnels within which was, unsurprisingly, guarded by a number of various draconian adversaries. After a remarkably short distance, we stood at the doorway into a large cavern and Onyxia lay sprawled out dozing. Someone commented on how peaceful she looked sleeping.
We had a secondary mission: attain the “Many Whelps! Handle it!” achievement, if at all possible. This cranks the difficulty of the raid to 11. Don’t worry, dear reader. I’ll explain. Phase one of Onyxia is strictly tank and spank. The tank points the mouth of The Very Angry Dragon away from the raid and we wail on it until she hits phase 2. At the beginning of phase 2, she walks around and then takes to the air. When she does, players nears the sides of the cave will spawn up to a hundred dragon whelps. That is not an exaggeration. Around fifty whelps spawn on each side. Meanwhile, Onyxia will start blasting the raid from above, safely out of melee range. The achieve requires spawning more than 50 whelps within ten seconds of Ony taking to the air and then killing her.
The whelps hurt. A lot. They are fairly crunchy, but there’s a crapton of them. From personal experience, I can attest they each do about 1-2k damage per hit against cloth wearers who might be trying to blizzard them to death. Interestingly enough, the main danger the whelps pose isn’t from their teeth, but the sheer volume of them will cause many people to lose connection. This can be mitigated by lowering one’s graphic settings from ultra to ‘catass’, but even still, our first attempt saw two people drop. Given that one was a tank, this boded ill and in seconds we wiped from the Swarm.
We returned a couple of times, but each time the whelp swarm caused party members to disconnect and those that didn’t were quickly nommed to death. After the third time, we decided to play it straight and see how that went. (spoiler: better
The tank engaged and we streamed forward, guns a-blazin’. We entered phase 2 and I was shocked to see whelps—it turned out that Onyxia spawns a number of her own. My guildie friend died horribly, as did one other, but we pressed on. Avoiding fireballs and ‘deep breaths’ (read: horrific gouts of flame), I positioned myself underneath the dragon and blasted as I could at an awkward angle as the tanks scooped up rogue whelps and a couple of elite dragonkin that had spawned. After some time, she landed and phase 3 began.
This time, Onyxia’s normal attacks and wing buffet were supplemented by an area-of-effect fear and lava bursts around the room. It definitely made for an interesting fight. In the end, justice was served by murderous humanoids with sharp pointy things and the dragon lay dead before us and three achievements were attained at once: Onyxia 10-man, More Dots! (kill her in x time), and She Deep Breaths More (kill her without anybody getting nailed by the ‘deep breath’ weapon). This had turned out much better than I had hoped for.
There was a nice assortment of loot, including the dragon’s head (which was won by my guildie) and a 22-slot bag, among other nifties. Per usual, I lost all of the rolls and summoned the obligatory portal to Dalaran. I was then surprised by a trade offer: my guildie gave me the head! She noted that the trinket reward wasn’t needed, so I happily returned to Stormwind carrying my severed prize. The reward ring was actually a little worse than what I currently had, but the souvenir of my adventure earned a spot in my bank vault.
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