With 8.2 dropping by this evening, I'm tickled to note I made most of my goals by my own artificial deadline, notably finishing up the Horde War Campaign and all that razzamatazz. Although Strev didn't quite make it to a level 50 Heart of Azeroth, I'm content with 48.5. I even took the time to do some miscellaneous things… like knocking out ALL of the Midsummer Festival bonfires from WotLK to present. Funny thing-- for over a decade my playtime and midsummer simply didn't overlap. So, by hitting all of the fires all of the expansions past Burning Crusades had to offer, I racked up over 500 event currency and finished another 100 points of achievements. Now…what to do with the "fire bucks" ("blazing blossoms?"-- hell if I know)? There's a number of toys that range from 300-500 each and like 3 pets for 350 each. I imagine I was supposed to do this every year, since the fun bucks disappear at the end of the event and like hell I'm juggling torches for 2 weeks.
Turns out all of the pets can be traded on the AH and sell for 10-20k each. This means that I can let some other enterprising person farm the pets for me and I can just buy them with cash later. So, I spent 500 on a book of matches instead. WORTH IT! After a brief "Playing with Matches" progress indicator, you set yourself on fire and run around out of control in horror for 10 seconds or so arms in the air leaving a blazing trail as you go. Absolutely hilarious. It's a 30 minute cooldown, which is good, otherwise I'd be using this constantly. In retrospect, I could insanely run Anyth, Anythe, Onsunshine, and the rest of the Alt Brigade around for the rest of the toys and pets, but that's a serious pain in the butt and I have a feeling 8.2 will be the focus of my efforts for the next couple of weeks.
Keeping up the "things on fire" theme, I finished up Avengers of Hyjal reputation by defeating Ragnaros for the somethingth time. The 25-man mythic takes less than a half hour to run through just futzing around and yields about 2k worth of gold and prizes, so it's been a "when I happen to remember it" thing. It was the last rep I needed for the expansion that launched in 2010 (and I still hate it for ruining hundreds of classic quests).
As I mentioned, historically WoW and I never play in the summer… which has kept me from the Zookeeper achievement since Pandalanda launched in September 2012. The maligned "Pokémon rip-off" that came with Mists of Pandaria came with scads of achievements, not the least of which is a meta achievement for collecting EVERY SINGLE PET in Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor. The funny thing is they made it so some pets are stupidly rare for example, there's the "arctic fox kit" that only spawns in one zone when there's a random active weather event (blizzard), but more annoyingly one pet that only spawns in Winter and one that only spawns in Summer. As in…the actual real world calendar. Since I restarted last fall, I've been waiting for the first day of summer so I can get that damn Qiraji Guardling in Silithus. So the first thing I did when I logged on 6/21 was go Guardling hunting.
This proved slightly more annoying than I thought it would be. Time travelling back to "the time before a giant sword rent the world asunder", I came across the buggers. Unfortunately, my pets were too strong. After the second "whoopsies!", I toned it down to some random midrange pets and tried again. My quarry was of poor quality, but my heart sang jubilant notes as the trap closed. But…where was the fanfare? The achievement? The Zookeeper title? In confusion, I pulled up the achievement to see why it didn't give me credit.
Turns out I was missing a second "one last" creature. One I had completely forgotten about since it had been many years since I actually looked at the full list and had focused only on "the summer pet". "Silithid Hatchling" Ok. Spawns in Silithis-- Yay! I scoured the map. No bugs. Read more. "Only spawns during sandstorms." MOTHER F#$%! The forums told of people who camped for days waiting for a sandstorm. Looks like it's now my turn.
Strev has other things to do. For now, Onsunshine keeps a silent watch from a withered vine overlooking the Noxious Lair in a corner of Silithis. She reports in occasionally, but it's been nothing but clear skies for days.
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