Alts for One

Zoning In

noreply@blogger.com (Varl) — Thu, 13 May 2010 18:57:00 +0000

spend enough time running random dungeons and you're bound to run across things like tanks accidentally wearing their dps gear, aggressive pets pulling mobs while the group is still buffing, classes forgetting to use one of their signature buffs, etc. it's easy to forget things when you keep switching back and forth between instancing and solo-play. here's a quick mental checklist to run through each time you zone into a new dungeon:

is my pet on passive? (aggressive pets are fine in pvp, but not so much in instances)
is my pet's taunt turned off? (this applies to hunter and warlock pets)
am I in the right spec?
am I wearing the right armor?
am I using the right weapon(s)? (fishing poles and jousting lances make terrible weapons)
am I using the correct aura? (hint: crusader aura is not the correct aura)
do I have all my self-buffs? (e.g., righteous fury, molten armor, inner fire, poisons, etc.)
have I cast all my group buffs? (e.g., mark of the wild, power word: fortitude, soul stone, etc.)
are my macros set up correctly? (e.g., misdirect targets, focus target, etc.)

What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been

noreply@blogger.com (Varl) — Mon, 03 May 2010 00:50:00 +0000

victory is mine! it took me a year and half, but I finally got my [Reins of the Violet Proto-Drake] today. I'd have gotten it a couple holidays back, but I was stymied by the School of Hard Knocks achievement last year. of all the holiday achievements, this one was by far the worst for me. it was such a frustrating experience last year that I actually gave up on it. this year, though, since it was the only thing left standing between me and my purple drake, I decided to suck it up and do it. for those of you in the same boat that I was, here's how to get it done.

while School of Hard Knocks is technically a pvp achievement, the good news is that no actual pvp is required. you don't need resilience gear and you don't need any pvp skill (though they'll both certainly help). all the achievement requires is that you go into the named battlegrounds and complete specific objectives. note that you, personally, have to complete the listed objectives. there's no group credit for any of these. you must be the one to click on the flag (or to carry the flag, in the case of EotS). this is where the bad news comes in. unless you're rolling in a pre-made group, your success or failure is largely dependent on luck and the cooperation of fellow players on both your team and the opposing faction's team. don't expect to complete each objective on the first try; it takes patience and persistence.

Preparation

this is optional, of course, but if you want to have the best go of it here are some things to keep in mind:

if you have pvp gear, wear it. otherwise, wear whatever gear has the most stamina on it. don't worry about dps stats; it's all about staying alive as long as possible.
don't bother with food, scroll or potion buffs. you're probably going to die (a lot) and it's just a waste of consumables. on the other hand, if you've got a [Flask of Stoneblood] laying around, go for it. you can never have too much health.
consider bringing along any sort of speed and/or stealth buffs that you have available... [Invisibility Potion], [Nitro Boost], etc. the faster you can get to your objective, the better your chances of completing it.
take a minute to review your abilities in a pvp context. roots, snares, interrupts, damage resistances, 'oh shit' buttons... every class has 'em, but sometimes we forget about them in our day-to-day pve world.

Capture the flag in Eye of the Storm

call your orphan when you first zone in and every time you rez; no orphan, no achievement credit.

your objective is to run to the center of the map, click on the flag there (it has a 5 second cast time and any damage taken will interrupt the cast) and then hightail it to a base that your faction controls so you can turn it in by standing on the little landing pad between the two banners. note that once you have possession of the flag you cannot use your mount or any ability that makes you completely immune to harm (e.g., pally bubble), but you can use druid travel form, ghost wolf, sprint, intercept/intervene, etc. don't stop to fight; just get to the base and turn in your flag.

the flag spawn point is going to be a blood bath... aoe going off left and right, druids and shaman blasting people off the pathway to their deaths, fear bombs all around and bodies everywhere. you will have to compete with not only players from the other team, but also players on your own team for flag captures. rushing the flag at the start of the battleground is probably not the best strategy (though it works for some). I had better luck by helping to capture two or three bases first and then turning my attention to the flag. this gives you multiple options to run to once you do get the flag and also gives the other faction something to worry about (i.e., losing) other than camping the flag area. when you're waiting for the flag to respawn, put your mouse pointer over the spot where the flag will be and start clicking. the flag goes to whoever clicks the fastest and you can often click on it before you can see it.

Assault a flag in Arathi Basin

call your orphan when you first zone in and every time you rez; no orphan, no achievement credit.

your objective is to run to a flag that your faction does not own and click on it without being interrupted. if I remember right, assaulting a flag has a 5 second cast time. any damage taken will interrupt the cast and you'll have to start over.

this one's probably the easiest of the four. at the start of the battleground, run straight to one of the flags and click on it. speed is your friend here. if you can get to the farm/stables flag right out of the gates, you're done as no opposing players will be close enough to interrupt you. alternatively, you can try going for the mine or lumber mill flags, but there's a good chance that members of the other team will show up in time to ruin your attempt. if you don't have any luck nabbing a flag right at the start, you'll have to do it the old fashioned way and actually assault a base that the other team controls.

Assault a tower in Alterac Valley

call your orphan when you first zone in and every time you rez; no orphan, no achievement credit.

your objective here is to get to any one of the other team's four towers/bunkers, click on the flag there and complete the assault cast (5 seconds). like the others, any damage will interrupt the assault cast. this means you'll need to kill off a few of the defending npcs or they'll turn you into a pin cushion while you try to click on the flag. your best bet is to haul ass to the tower/bunker that's furthest away from your starting point. most players are going to go for the closer towers and will get caught up in the middle. you won't run into many opposing players all the way back at their home base and if you do see any, just run past 'em.

if you manage to click on the flag before anyone else, you're done. however, you still have a chance if someone else beats you to the flag. if an opposing player comes and defends the flag, it becomes captureable by your team again. for this reason, do not attack enemy players on sight; wait to see if they're going to defend the flag first so you can get a chance at capturing it. players on the other faction are doing the same achievement, so it's not unheard of to run into groups of players from both factions trading flag captures in a very civil and non-violent manner. of course, if they're hostile then go to town on 'em. remember that all you have to do is complete the assault cast on the flag. it's not necessary for your faction to actually capture the tower/bunker. once you get your flag cap, get out of there and give someone else a shot at it.

Return a fallen flag in Warsong Gulch

call your orphan when you first zone in and every time you rez; no orphan, no achievement credit.

your objective here is to wait for an enemy player to capture your team's flag, make them drop it somehow (ask nicely or kill them) and then click on the dropped flag to return it to your base. there's no cast time to return a flag, just be the first player to click on it once it's been dropped and you're done.

this one can be either really easy or really hard. if you attempt this during the first couple days of Children's Week, it's likely that you'll run into players on both teams that are working on this achievement. you can help each other out by sending one person into the other team's flag room, picking up their flag and then dropping it (right-click the flag buff icon in the top-right corner of your screen) so the other team can return it. ideally, the other team will send someone over to your flag room to return the favor.

if the other team (or your own team) isn't cooperating, then you'll have to do it the hard way: kill an opposing player while they're running your flag and be the first person to click on the flag when it drops in the field. this can be challenging as there are going to be a lot of other players around the flag carrier and they're all trying to do the same thing as you (some for achievement reasons, others for pvp reasons).

In Conclusion

I had credit for AB from last year, so this time around I just had to do the other three. it took me 2 AV, 1 WSG and about 4 EotS games to get them all done. EotS was by far the worst as there was no hint of cooperation with the opposing faction in any of the games. WSG was the easiest, as both teams traded flag drops until everyone had their achievements done (and then we beat the snot out of each other). AV wasn't too bad once I went with the 'run to the furthest bunker' strategy. only 2 other players came with me and I managed to be the first to the flag after clearing out a few of the npcs. including battleground queue times (during which I did the orphan quests; did you know you can have both the org/stormwind orphan and the shattrath orphan at the same time?), School of Hard Knocks took me a bit over 4 hours to finish up.

so, how did I celebrate? after taking my orphans back to the orphanage and doing a quick victory lap around dalaran on my new ride, I turned off WoW and went outside for a walk in the sunshine :)

Don't Be a Dick

noreply@blogger.com (Varl) — Sat, 01 May 2010 01:43:00 +0000

I don't know why people act this way, but we've all seen it: the guy who pulls before the group is ready or who pulls in extra mobs because the group "isn't moving fast enough". the guy who immediately trash talks another player just because he's not in the highest tier gear. the over-geared dps that make no effort whatsoever to manage their agro and then claim the lesser-geared tank sucks and can't hold agro. the guy who nerd-rages and quits the group mid-run after not getting the loot he wanted. the healer who sees that the tank doesn't have 40k+ health and leaves right after zoning in. the guy who doesn't buff anyone and then gets pissy when people ask for buffs. the guy who rolls Need on all the BOEs that drop and then brags about how much they'll sell for.

why?

have we all forgotten how to play nice with the other kids? have we forgotten common courtesy? have we forgotten that we all started out with weak gear and how long it took to build up to that icc gear set? have we forgotten that gear score doesn't mean crap in terms of how good the player is?

chill out and be nice, people. don't be dicks.

10 Man Raids Go First Class

noreply@blogger.com (Varl) — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 21:53:00 +0000

as befits a major expansion, blizzard's shaking up all sorts of things for Cataclysm. today's big change is that 10 and 25 man raids are going to use the same lockouts and the same loot tables (read the announcement here). in a nut shell, this means that all of those 10-man raiders out there will finally have access to the same gear that 25-man raiders do. this is a big (and awesome) departure from how raid rewards have been portioned out in the past.

historically, for any given raid tier, the best gear was only available from the biggest (and hardest) raids. the idea was to reward the extra effort required to gather and orchestrate larger raid teams. in the early days of WoW raiding there were only large raids. the burning crusade expansion, in addition to reducing the large raid size from 40 to 25 man, introduced 10 man raids and this is where the loot disparity between large and small raids began. the 10 man raids were meant to be more casual friendly and to require less organization and planning then the larger, more hardcore raids. as such, they dropped lower-quality loot. while the fairness of this policy can be (and has been) debated, it's clear that small raiding guilds were relegated to second class in terms of loot and progression options; the only way to play at the top was to run 25s. come cataclysm, that's all going to change.

personally, I think this is a very positive change and I think blizzard's closed the gap between big and small raids in the best way they could. there are still clear advantages to running 25s over 10s (more drops, including emblems and gold), but everything available in 25s will also be available in 10s. I imagine hardcore raiding guilds will continue to run 25s simply because it's more efficient in terms of gearing up. I also expect they'll complain that raiding is being trivialized because 10 man groups will have access to gear levels that were once exclusive to the 25 man crowd (quite a blow to the ol' epeen, that). on the other hand, I think that 10 mans will finally get some long overdue respect and that raiders will no longer have to sacrifice being in a small guild of close friends just to raid at the highest levels.

To enchant or not to enchant

noreply@blogger.com (Varl) — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 22:16:00 +0000

with each alt I level, I make it a point to wear the best gear I can reasonably get my hands on. I'll shop the AH to replace out-of-date gear (if I can find things at reasonable prices), I'll research what I can get from quest rewards and dungeons in my level range and I'll often throw on some cheap enchants and/or gems to make my gear that much better.

this practice of keeping my gear above average is pretty easy and cheap to maintain until I hit northrend. at that point, the leveling pace slows down a bit (meaning you're holding onto gear longer) and the difficulty of dungeons relative to gear and skill levels goes up a (small) notch. there's also some really great gear available from some early quest lines and dungeons that will last for several levels.

this raises the question, then, of how much is worth spending on enchants/gems for level 70-79 gear? enchanting expenses are pretty low in the sub-70 levels as the cheaper enchants are just that: cheap. those enchants don't stretch as far in northrend, however, and the mid-range and high-end enchants and gems can get pricey fast.

is it worth it? on the one hand, slapping a mid/high-end enchant or gem onto an already good piece of gear turns it into a great piece of gear. it has a direct and noticeable impact on your performance and you'll hang onto it for a few levels. on the other hand, you know that once you hit 80 and start running heroics and toc/icc 5-mans you'll be replacing all that gear pretty quickly with new drops and emblem gear (which you'll then have to gem and enchant...).

if you're playing a dps class, it's simply a matter of whether you have the gold to burn or not. your dungeon group is not going to wipe just because you didn't enchant your gear and are doing a few percent less dps. it's not quite so simple if you're playing a tank or healer, however, as the survival of the group rides a lot more on your individual performance. for example, as a tank you have to balance the cost of buying a few stam enchants with the benefit of having a larger health pool for when pulls go bad or the healer is weak. the same holds true as a healer... is it worth buying a few int/sp gems so you can throw out more/bigger heals when a tank is squishy or doesn't hold agro well?

decisions, decisions...

Leveling Prot

noreply@blogger.com (Varl) — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 00:28:00 +0000

some time ago, I rolled a paladin to play exclusively with a friend who was new to the game. I chose to play a tank because I thought that would put me in the best position to keep her alive and, since she wanted to roll a blood elf, a paladin seemed like an excellent choice for me as they also offer some healing ability. we got into the early 60s before we parted ways and I've recently started leveling him again now that my rogue's hit 80.

most folks will tell you that leveling in anything other than a pure dps spec is a slow and painful process, but don't you believe it. leveling as a protection paladin has been nothing but good times for me.

I've solo'd every 3-man group quest I've come across in northrend so far. when I feel like running a dungeon or three, my queue times are nearly instant. when questing, I kill 5-6 mobs at once with no downtime (ironically it takes me longer to kill 1 mob then it does to kill 4, but that's life as a prot pally). I'm durable enough to start a fight, walk away from the keyboard to get myself a drink and still be alive when I get back. despite this character having no heirloom gear, my leveling pace seems to be on par with my rogue who was leveling with +20% xp (probably due to being able to squeeze more dungeons into the same amount of playtime). I am 100% tank (no dps off-spec, no dps gear) and wouldn't level this character any other way.

My god... it's full of stars!

noreply@blogger.com (Varl) — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 17:10:00 +0000

the blizzard store has been selling WoW in-game pets for a few months now, but this week they took a new step forward and began offering mounts for sale as well.

like the good little WoW lemming I am, I (and everyone else in Dalaran, it seems) went and bought one. it's a beautiful mount and the price seems fair considering it will be available to all your existing and future characters (unlike the recruit-a-friend [Swift Zhevra] mount, which can only be given to a single character *cough* lame *cough*). I do have a couple minor nits, though.

first is the sound the steed makes while flying... it's the same sound set used by the nether ray mounts and it just seems weird to me. second, and this applies to all mounts that count as both ground and air mounts (e.g., [The Horseman's Reins]), is that if you mount up in a ground-only area you'll be stuck in ground mode even if you ride into another area where flying is allowed. for example, if you mount your shiny new celestial steed in the center of Dalaran and then ride out to the landing platform, you won't be able to fly off until you dismount and remount. I'm guessing this is a programmatic constraint that the devs just haven't put time into fixing rather than an intentional restriction, but it's pretty annoying regardless.

I'm excited to see what other flavor items blizzard is going to put up for sale. they've said time and again that they won't sell items in the store that have any impact on game mechanics (i.e., no gear), which is a choice that I applaud. that still leaves them with a lot of things they *could* sell, though. I wouldn't be surprised to see items that are currently only available via loot cards from the WoW TCG to start popping up in the store. I can imagine other things, too, like custom hi-resolution tabards or even new emotes and hair styles. I do think it's important for blizzard to maintain a good balance between what's available in the store vs. rewards only available to top-tier raiders or arena masters, though. I'd hate to see items in the store over-shadow very rare rewards like the lich king's mount. can't wait to see what the store 'drops' next :)

Random Acts of Etiquette

noreply@blogger.com (Varl) — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 22:39:00 +0000

like many of you, I've been taking full advantage of the dungeon finder ever since it came out. it's an amazing tool for both leveling and for gearing up once you hit 80. while it's truly awesome how easy and quick it is to get into dungeons now, the dungeon experience itself has changed a bit.

before the days of dungeon finder everyone in your group, strangers and friends alike, was from the same server. when everyone comes from the same place, your reputation matters. your behavior, good or bad, directly impacts your ability to get into groups in the future. with the dungeon finder bringing people together across multiple servers now, that behavorial constraint is no longer in place. as predicted by an oft-referenced (and mildly NSFW) behavorial psychology theory, player behavior has noticeably deteriorated in this new cross-server setting. in simple terms, you can be a complete ass and get away with it because you'll probably never group with the same people twice.

while there isn't much to be done about people with bad personalities (aside from adding them to your ignore list), good behavior sets a positive example for other players who just don't know any better. here's a short (and by no means complete) list of behavior suggestions when running randoms:

say hi! players are in such a hurry to get on to the next dungeon now that they often don't even say hello anymore. WoW is a social game, so say hi; it's polite and quick.
observe the Golden Rule: don't say anything if you don't have anything nice to say. if you have issues with another player's behavior or performance, don't start drama. you can attempt to politely explain what you think they could be doing better (in a whisper, not in party chat), but a lot of people don't take criticism well. just leave the group instead of yelling at each other in party chat.
don't queue as a healer or tank unless you have the spec and gear to do the job. queue times for healers and tanks are short (nearly instant when I'm queuing as a tank), which tempts more and more players to queue in those roles just to beat the line. don't sign up for the role unless you can really do it, otherwise it's unfair to the rest of the group.
don't judge a player by their gear. that warlock in quest blues and greens may just top the dps meters, know the instance inside and out and be an all-around amazing player that happens to be playing an alt. conversely, that paladin with all the shiny t9/t10 gear might be absolutely terrible (because they usually heal instead of dps, it's a friend's account, they're watching cowboy beebop, etc.). you won't know until you see them play, so don't vote-kick someone from the group just because they have a low gear score (the dungeon finder thinks that player has the right gear to be there, after all).
if your class has group buffs, use 'em. and don't be cheap and do single-target buffs or the 10 minute versions either (yes, I'm looking at you mr. paladin). reagents cost peanuts at every level, so suck it up and do buffing right. (special aside for shaman: drop totems, damn you!)
don't go afk. you're wasting the group's time while they wait for you. this is especially true if you're the healer or tank. I recognize that this is not always under your control (phone rings, baby wakes up, etc.), but do your best to be courteous to the rest of the group.
compliment good play. if the healer's great, tell them. if the dps goes above and beyond (pulling mobs off the clothies, always on top of interrupts, etc.), recognize that. everyone likes positive feedback for doing a good job.
thank the group at the end of the run. it was a group effort and you couldn't have done it on your own.

Much Respect for Laptop Gamers

noreply@blogger.com (Varl) — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 22:41:00 +0000

dear gods, have I been spoiled. my home PC recently decided to up and die on me (hardware failure of some sort) and I've been getting my WoW fix on my work laptop for the last couple days. to all you pro healers, chain-pulling tanks and l33t dps out there that play on laptops, my hat's off to you.

my laptop actually runs WoW pretty well (newer macbook pro w/4GB ram), although I now understand the whole 'I hate Dalaran because I always lag' thing. coming from the perspective of running WoW on a fairly beefy PC with a 24" monitor, though, wow... what a difference. it would be one thing if my only experience with WoW was on a laptop, but since I'm used to something a little bigger it's been a challenge to play as well as I'm used to. lower-quality visuals aside, the two challenges I've run into are not enough screen real estate for my addons and not enough keys to map all my abilities to.

I've only installed a subset of the addons that I usually run (just bartender, DBM, recount and omen), but bartender alone takes up a good chunk of my screen and even ends up covering up most of the built-in quest tracker. with omen, recount and the chat window added to that, a lot of screen space gets used up. I don't know how people add raid frames and healing UIs to that and still see what they're doing...

my biggest challenge, by far, has been figuring out how to map all my abilities to keys I can actually use. some of the function keys seem to be wired into Mac OS to do specific things, so I've lost a few keys there. I've also lost use of the number keypad (because there isn't one), which is where I used to map convenience keys like auto-run, mounting and such. most disruptive, though, is not being able to map abilities to extra mouse buttons like I did on my PC.

I like to map abilities I use often but reflexively (rather than as part of a rotation) to mouse buttons; things like taunts, interrupts and stealth, for example. that puts the ability right at my finger tips so I don't have to hunt for it when I need it NOW, but keeps it out of the way when I'm rocking through my standard rotation. tanking with my paladin this weekend made me realize how much I'd come to rely on those mouse buttons; sure I can play without them, but my reactions aren't nearly as fast.

I realize I'm lucky to be getting my fix at all, as a lot of people don't have the luxury of a second computer to use if their gaming rig burns out. I'm very much looking forward to replacing my PC and retiring from laptop play, though ;)

Cataclysm Class Previews

noreply@blogger.com (Varl) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 19:27:00 +0000

I haven't been paying close attention to all the Cataclysm news of late, but one thing I did notice is that blizzard has started previewing class changes they'll be making. here are the previews they've released so far:

Shaman
Warlocks
Priests
Warriors
Death Knights
Rogues
Hunters

nothing here is set in stone, of course, but it's still interesting to get a glimpse of their vision for how they want each class to play in the next expansion. overall, most of the changes to each class look pretty cool. I really like the idea of thinning out the talent trees and replacing all those passive bonus talent point sinks with the mastery system.

there are a few things I'm on the fence about, such as the change to the rune system for Death Knights. I haven't quite wrapped my head around the new system, so I'll have to wait and see how it plays. there are a couple head-scratchers, too, like the new Leap of Faith (aka, 'Life Grip') Priest spell. when a friend first told me about it, I thought for sure they were joking. I say let 'em burn if dps can't move their butts out of the fire! of course, this attitude has a lot to do with why I don't play healers very often...

what has me the most excited so far is the Hunter preview. I played a hunter through most of The Burning Crusade and they still have a special place in my heart, especially beast masters. letting hunters keep more pets and more easily and frequently swap their active pet to adapt to different fights is going to be awesome. I'm kinda neutral on the removal of ammo from the game, although it's certainly a plus in the expenses department. I'm pretty happy with the idea of trading in my mana bar for a focus bar, too; having a resource system more inline with rogues rather than mages feels more appropriate to me.

I'm looking forward to seeing how all the new stuff plays :)

Farming Up Fire and Shadow

noreply@blogger.com (Varl) — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 05:23:00 +0000

I like to be as self-sufficient as I can, so I have alts with nearly every profession maxed out. two profs that I'm still lacking in my stable are leatherworking and inscription. when I started Raz, I made her a leatherworker to fill in one of those gaps. now that she's 80, I've been working on those last few points to 450 so that I can craft [Drums of Forgotten Kings] and [Drums of the Wild]. as anyone who's ground out those last few points can tell you, it takes an awful lot of [Eternal Fire] and [Eternal Shadow] to get there. here are some suggestions for how to get the materials you'll need.

Eternal Shadows are pretty easy to come by. [Crystallized Shadow] falls out of saronite and titanium veins fairly frequently and since everyone and their dog is a miner these days (thanks in large part to blacksmithing and jewelcrafting having the biggest impact on personal dps), you can usually find it cheap on the auction house. like, stacks of 20 eternals for under 200g cheap. if you don't want to buy it and you aren't a miner, you can farm crystallized shadow pretty easily off the Wandering Shadows and Shadow Revenants in Wintergrasp. a few things to note if you plan on farming these mobs:

when the battle for wintergrasp officially starts, all the elementals despawn until the battle's over, so don't plan on farming while the battle's raging

the wandering shadows will sometimes cast Chilling Touch, which can make farming them as a caster less than ideal

it should go without saying, but remember that you are always flagged for pvp when in wintergrasp, so expect to get attacked while you're farming

Eternal Fire is a bit harder to come by. on my server they sell for about 25g a piece, making a full stack cost upwards of 500g. ouch. luckily, for those of us not made of money, there are several farming options. unlike shadow, farming fire via mining is poor choice because [Crystallized Fire] is only found in titanium veins, not in saronite veins. if you're an engineer, you can extract crystallized fire from Steam Clouds with your handy-dandy [Zapthrottle Mote Extractor]; clouds are frequently found in Sholazar Basin and there are also a few scattered around the Borean Tundra. non-engineers will have to farm the old fashioned way - killing stuff :)

you've got four choices when it comes to farming locations; north-western Borean Tundra near Bor'Gorok Outpost, the canyon east of Dun Niffelem in the Storm Peaks, the Frostfloe Deep cave just north of Camp Tunka'lo (also in Storm Peaks) and the small, fiery area on the south-eastern edge of Wintergrasp. I'll tell you now that the cave is where the money is.

Frostfloe Deep is full of Wailing Winds mobs (and nothing else), which have about a 1 in 4 chance to drop crystallized fire. they're packed close together and respawn quickly; by the time you clear to the back of the cave (it's small), respawns should start popping up at the front again. note that these mobs will sometimes charge and stun you, which can be a problem when 2 or 3 of them do it in a row. they don't hit all that hard, but you don't want to be running around with 20% health or they'll kill you while you're stunned. fun fact - if you can get close enough to see it you might notice that they leave footprints in the snow! even more odd is that, judging by their footprints, they only have one foot...

the one major downside to farming in the cave is that you often won't be alone. if it's just one other player, then the respawn rate should keep up with the two of you. when you're competing with three or four other players, thought, it's time to move on to the next best spot, which is the canyon east of Dun Niffelem.

the trick with farming the canyon is that it's a phased area. if you haven't done the quest line to open up The Sons of Hodir daily quests, the canyon will be filled with both Seething Revenants (good) and elite frost giants (bad). you can farm it in this phase, but it'll be slow going as you'll have to dodge the giants. once you open up the sons of hodir dailies and complete Battling the Elements, the canyon will change to a new phase where the elite giants are gone, making farming this area viable.

I find farming the canyon to be a mixed bag. on the one hand, there are a fair number of mobs and they have decent drop and respawn rates. unlike the mobs in Frostfloe Deep, the revenants here can also drop [Relics of Ulduar], making this area more 'efficient' to farm if you're also grinding out sons of hodir rep. the mobs are much more caster/ranged dps friendly then those in cave, since they don't charge and seem to have a slower movement speed then players. on the other hand, the area is often heavily populated by other players who are either farming themselves or doing the Hot and Cold sons of hodir daily, so you may have to fight for mobs. if it's too crowded here, you can try your luck in Borean Tundra.

the elemental battleground next to Bor'Gorok Output in the Borean Tundra is teeming with low-level (70-71) fire and water elementals. they die quickly, but have a lower drop rate and respawn rate then the mobs in the Storm Peaks. I don't farm here much because, as the goblins say, time is money.

last on my farming location list is Wintergrasp. the drop rates here are technically better than anywhere else, especially when your faction owns wintergrasp and you can farm Flame Revenants in addition to the usual Raging Flame elementals. however, there are very few mobs in the area, they don't respawn all that quickly and you will literally have to fight for mobs since it's a heavily farmed spot in a pvp zone. I don't find farming here to be very efficient, time-wise, but your server may be different.

happy farming!

Re-introduction

noreply@blogger.com (Varl) — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 17:02:00 +0000

aaaannnnd I'm back. I felt like it was time to blow off the dust and start writing again. quite a bit has changed since my last post... I've moved to a new server (Proudmoore, US), joined a new guild and leveled a whole new stable of alts to play with.

with that in mind, I thought I'd re-introduce myself. I've been playing WoW since 12/2004; a month after it's original release. in the process of logging an absurd number of in-game hours, I've seen every corner of the world, conquered every dungeon, stormed a few castles, done a lot of quests and played every race, class and roll there is.

I'm not a hardcore raider or an arena master, but I do try to be the best player I can. as a result, I've learned an awful lot about the game and I'll be sharing that here :)

meet Grysh

noreply@blogger.com (Harl) — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 02:33:00 +0000

Grysh is our newest entry into our alt collection. so new, in fact, that she doesn't even show up in the armory, yet (else we'd link her). Grysh is a BE death knight, which we rolled on Elune (pve server where we had our first 60 way back in classic WoW). spoiler alert, we're going to wax poetic about what it's like to start up a death knight. if you don't want to know, stop reading now.

first off, it is an AWESOME experience! blizzard did a really nice job with the death knight starting area.

you start off at level 55 with no talents and 6 abilities. it's a bit of a mystery how the whole rune/runic power system works and we think that's one of the areas where the starting zone failed a bit. a couple quests that helped demonstrate your abilities would have been helpful. anyway, it's a very manageable skill set to open up with.

you start out in green-quality gear (which looks awesome, btw. very similar to Sylvannus' old look before the 3.0.2 patch) and you're standing next to Arthas in a floating necropolis in EPL. yes, *the* Arthas. after chatting with him, you start a series of quests that have you leading the assault to destroy the scarlet crusade. over the course of a very epic quest line, which includes events like using siege weapons and piloting an undead frost dragon to massacre scarlet crusaders from above you gain blue-quality gear and talent points as quest rewards. it took us a few quests before we realized we were gaining talent points as quest rewards; it's a brilliant system.

by the time you finish the starting zone (after an epic battle between the lich king himself and tirion fordring at light's hope chapel) you've hit level 58, are decked out in full blue gear and have all your talent points. after a quick stop at a capital city for your final starting quest, you could walk right into outlands without ever setting foot in the rest of azeroth.

where it really shines, though, is in all the little details that blizzard took care of for you:

you automatically learn all flight points on both continents

you automatically have artisan first aid up to heavy runecloth bandages

you start out with several weapon skills at 270

you leave the starting zone with about 20g in cash from quest rewards and selling off old gear

you start with 4 12 slot bags in addition to your backpack

you leave the starting zone with your mount, which is an epic land mount (even though you're only level 58), which was free

one of the trinkets you get as a quest reward is comparable to the standard pvp trinket that frees you from all roots and snares

every time we thought to ourselves "oh, we're going to have to go train that" it turned out we already knew what we needed to know. the only thing you have to train yourself are professions.

we can't even do justice to the quests in the starting zone. they're just very well done. what really makes it feel special is that the zone actually changes appearance *just for you* based on the quests you've completed. this is what blizzard is calling phasing. it's kind of like an instance, except that anyone that's met a certain set of requirements will see the same thing you do without having to pass through an instance entrance or anything. in the case of the DK starting zone, it changes over time (buildings are destroyed, NPCs change locations, etc.) and those changes are permanent (i.e., they don't revert after 5 minutes for the next guy in line). it's pretty cool and hard to visualize until you experience it yourself. we'll be very interested to see where this gets applied in northrend.

so, for now we're going to focus on Grysh for a bit and let all the hubbub in northrend die down a bit before we go back. we're running around the noob lands leveling up skinning and herbalism (no cash cows on this server, so Grysh will have to fund herself), but we'll be back in outlands soon enough. we can't wait!

feel our wrath!

noreply@blogger.com (Harl) — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 02:15:00 +0000

wrath is here! yay! we managed to score a collector's edition at the store thursday morning and joined the hordes in the borean tundra to see what northrend was all about. our feelings are a bit mixed so far.

the good:

new lands to explore

new mobs to see

getting xp from quests and feeling a real sense of advancement again

the not so good:

way, way too many named mobs that need killing in the early quests which require to you compete not only against the other faction (pvp server, remember) but also against your *own* faction. this is our biggest complaint. standing around for 5-10 minutes and then having to basically kill-steal from everyone else around you to get your quest done.

most of the quest rewards aren't gear upgrades. to be fair, we're wearing mostly purples so that's not a big surprise but to only find 1 item from lvl 70 to lvl 71 that was a clear upgrade was a little disappointing

too crowded! everyone and their dog is in the borean tundra right now and the buildings are tiny, so it's really tough to see what you're doing through the sea of bodies and floating green text

we took Harl over and quested until we hit lvl 71. the new area is awesome, the quests are generally fun and so far it seems like there's less running around (no big fedex-style quests that we can recall) then old-world quests. everything seems pretty easy so far, even killing elite quest mobs, but that's probably because most of us 70s are over-powered due to all the purple we're wearing. people are a bit douchy in their efforts to get their quests completed (kill-stealing, etc.), but that wasn't a huge surprise.

overall we had fun, but once we got to 71 we decided we would wait for a while before going back for more. it's just too crowded to really enjoy the new content. plus, we got a little sick of being on a pvp server (getting fear bombed or nuked while talking to a quest giver gets old after the 6th time). so, we hopped back over to our old pve server, Elune, and rolled a BE death knight. more on that later.

we live!

noreply@blogger.com (Harl) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:23:00 +0000

pardon our absence; we were on vacation in vietnam until last sunday eve, hence the lack of updates recently. vacation is all kinds of awesome. we highly recommend it!

today's topic? patience.

today is maintenance day and, like many maintenance days in the past, it's run overtime because blizzard ran into a snag of some sort. we managed to get on for a bit around 10:30am PST (technically before the maintenance window was scheduled to complete), but then the servers were shutdown about 15 minutes later. boo, but at least we got a few quests done.

we pinged the realm status page a few minutes later to see if the servers were back up... no response. we checked the realm status forum... down. we checked the general forum... request timed out. uh oh, that's going to be bad... sure enough, realms have been down all day. someone at blizzard is having a very bad day, we think.

cruising through the forums (when they worked) made us realize that an awful lot of people have far too much time on their hands and no idea what to do with it. so, here are a few suggestions for things to do (or not) when the servers are down:

don't get your panties in a twist. life exists beyond WoW.

play another game.

read a book.

go outside (ok, so winter's coming and maybe this isn't the best idea...).

talk to your friends... in person.

call your mom.

talk to recruiters all day (we're in the midst of job hunting. yay us.)

don't think you know more about how the game works than the blizzard staff and wax poetic about what they should be doing to fix things.

don't harass the the forum moderators demanding answers, refunds, heads on platters or lollipops; first of all, they're the messengers and not the engineers working on the problem. second of all, it makes you look like a complete ass to berate someone that has no more control over the situation than you do regardless of who they happen to work for.

do understand that wow is a hugely complex piece of software and no one person at blizzard or anywhere else knows how all of it works. applications this size are developed by tens if not hundreds of engineers. it's often a miracle they work at all, let alone work well. we're in the business; we know. there are lots of places for issues to creep in and slip through testing and that's not even accounting for the production environment where the software actually runs, which is managed by yet another group of 10s of people.

don't clutter up the forums whining and moaning about how blizzard has ruined your entire day because you couldn't log into WoW. if your life is that dull, now's a great time to pick up a back-up hobby. you know, just in case the power goes out or something...

do realize that as a customer you have the right to express your displeasure with the service up to and including canceling your subscription. if you're really that upset about 1 day of downtime then make good on all your threats to quit and do it. the WoW community will not miss you.

by all that's unholy, enough with the bitching! WoW has exceptional uptime for a service that doesn't have lives on the line (and even those still have bugs). I'd be willing to bet that the servers are up at least 95% of the time outside of scheduled downtime. facebook and twitter don't even have uptime numbers that good! all you folks complaining have no idea how lucky you are that the servers and the client run as smoothly as they do. instead of ranting about how blizzard has ruined your day due to extended downtime, maybe you should be thankful that you're even able to play the game at all. you could be much, much worse off...

the right stuff

noreply@blogger.com (Harl) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 20:17:00 +0000

we haz it! the best part? the [Headless Horseman's Reins] scale with riding skill, so it automatically becomes an epic flying mount once you buy the Artisan Riding skill. /glee

Hallow's End

noreply@blogger.com (Harl) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 00:50:00 +0000

it's that time of year again; hallow's end. the time where hordes of 70s make a mad dash for the Scarlet Monastery and lay waste to a certain special someone in the graveyard wing... the Headless Horseman. we kinda feel bad for him, but that didn't stop us from beating him down like the loot pinata he is!

it was like christmas for us... our first run we picked up [The Horseman's Blade] (had to leave it in the bank for a while because we were only lvl 67 at the time) and our second run we nabbed the [Hallowed Helm] and the [Ring of Ghoulish Delight]. around about our fifth run we lucked out and won the roll for [The Horseman's Reins] as well as a [Magic Broom]. on our last run, we picked up [The Horseman's Helm] (thanks again, Bell). the ol' Horseman was generous indeed, this year. the only thing we didn't get from him that we wanted was the [Sinister Squashling] pet, but we lucked out and got one in one of our trick or treat bags.

we hit every single candy bucket in azeroth and outlands, did all the hallow's end quests and have completed all the hallow's end achievements available with the exception of The Mask Task, which we've heard is going to be removed (acquire 20 items based on blind luck? ouch...). now if only there were a t-shirt or something...

over achiever

noreply@blogger.com (Harl) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 22:34:00 +0000

patch 3.0.2 introduced the concept of achievements. when we first heard about them we didn't think much of it, but now that they're actually here we find that they're rather addicting. we started small at first (yes, we got this one by accident...), but soon we had to have more and more. after a while we got to the point where we'd do anything for a fix. the gods only know where it will all end...

Ding!

noreply@blogger.com (Harl) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 08:26:00 +0000

Daelan hit 70 monday. he marks our 6th entry in the level 70 club. total played was about 9 days, 6 hours. we mentioned previously that we weren't going to follow our usual power-leveling plan and that we'd be taking time out for other things (crafting, in-game holidays, etc.). despite that, it still felt like we leveled pretty fast. the 60-70 part especially so. makes us wonder if blizz quietly tweaked the xp required per level so more people will be 70 when wrath rolls out...

when we first rolled a warrior, we had a protection spec in mind. swords, shields, heavy armor... that's what a warrior was all about, we thought. everything we read said to level as anything but prot, however. leveling prot was like leveling as a healer: slow and painful. so we went arms for a while (2-handed goodness!) and then fury after that (dual wield betterness!), thinking that we'd let prot wait until we were 70 or nearly so. all that changed with the new talents in patch 3.0.2.

we are happy to report that as of the patch, leveling as prot is no longer painful in any way. it's actually a lot of fun! we changed to a full protection build at 60, when the patch came out, and we have been extremely happy with it. our dps actually went *up* by almost 20% when we changed from our old fury build to our new prot build! now, we're sure our dps isn't anywhere near what a true dps build can churn out with the new talents, but we still mow down mobs nice and fast so we're happy. with our stuns, silences, abilities to break roots (the new human racial is a huge bonus here) and overall durability we do fairly well in pvp (rogues especially hate us) even with so-so gear. questing is cake; even soloing 2-man quests is easy now. tanking, of course, is much smoother. it wasn't too bad for us with just a few points in prot, but with a true prot build our threat ceiling is much, much higher; at level 69 we were holding agro on mobs easily even with another 70 warrior pumping out 1200+ dps. and can we just say how much being able to charge, in any stance, in or out of combat, breaking roots, 5 yards further and 20% more often rocks? it does!

world first!

noreply@blogger.com (Harl) — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 17:06:00 +0000

we were in IF training up (66, woohoo!) and doing some shopping when an urgent call went out in /1 for everyone to come to the military ward. "horde?", we thought? we mounted up and rode over to check it out. the scene we arrived upon was epic. a raid and a half worth of valiant heroes banded together to battle the greatest foe IronForge has ever faced. naturally, we charged right in to do our part. it was a long and hard fight, but in the end the might of the Alliance prevailed and the dreaded Heroic Training Dummy was beaten down. obligatory kill shot below.

world first! you saw it here...

saved!

noreply@blogger.com (Harl) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 18:21:00 +0000

a few hours after we submitted our ticket, we were contacted by a GM:

she got us fixed up (plunked Daelan down outside the gates of IF) and then left us with this:

gotta love GMs that role play /grin

teething woes

noreply@blogger.com (Harl) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 00:37:00 +0000

we're in the software biz, so naturally we expect a few rough edges on patch day. what we are experiencing now is a bit beyond our expectations, though...

so, here's what happened... we hearthed form IF to Shatt and noticed that no one was around. as in, no players, no NPCs, no critters... nothing. Shatt was a ghost town. there was no general chat channel (though we could still whisper people), we couldn't mount... we could run around and use abilities, though. so, we ran out of shatt thinking that maybe a zone change would reset things. got into terrokar forest and things were still borked. so we logged out and logged back in... and here we are.

we tried taking a step, full expecting to fall endlessly to our death, and instead ended up just running in place... without a way to stop. our next thought was to try the auto-unstuck feature (since our hearth is in cooldown), but that didn't seem to do anything. we are so hosed...

/facepalm

noreply@blogger.com (Harl) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 01:24:00 +0000

things not to do while instancing:

- do not show up drunk.

- do not proclaim to the group, loudly and repeatedly, how drunk you are. also, see above.

- do not get out-dps'd by a tank who's 3 levels lower than you (yes mr. 65 warrior, we're looking at you).

- do not turn party chat into a cyber session. if you must cyber, confine it to whispers. bonus points for amusing mis-tells. btw, that "hot" female drae priest is most likely played by a guy...

- do not whirlwind next to the sapped/repentanced mob.

- if the tank tells you not to stand in the green shit, do not stand in the green shit.

- if the tank tells you he's going to corner pull, do not stand in the doorway and swing at every mob that passes you.

- if the pull goes bad, take it like a man and DI the healer. do not bubble and run like the sissy we all know you are.

- if you see a land mine, do not feel compelled to step on it.

the price of progress

noreply@blogger.com (Harl) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 17:37:00 +0000

back when we started Daelan we joked about how we should have named him "Moneypit" due to his taking up two crafting professions instead of the usual crafting & gathering profession combo. we didn't realize just how true that was until we got deeper into blacksmithing. now, we've leveled other profs before - tailoring to 375 twice (mmm... frozen shadoweave!), engineering to 375 once, alchemy and enchanting to 300 (back when that was the cap). it's an expensive process, especially if you don't farm your own materials. none of those experiences prepared us for leveling blacksmithing, however.

horrendously expensive doesn't begin to do blacksmithing justice. we assumed that the costs would be similar to leveling engineering since they use most of the same materials. naturally, we were very wrong. the mithril stage wasn't too bad; only needed a couple hundred bars for that. once we got to thorium we hit a wall, though. to get from 265 to 300 blacksmithing you need on the order of 500 thorium bars. five hundred! a stack of 20 thorium bars averages about 26g on our server (ore is even more expensive). so, for just the thorium alone, that's about 650g to get to 300 blacksmithing; we haven't even started using outlands materials, which is where the really expensive part of the leveling process begins. a good chunk of those bars (150ish) goes to buying blacksmithing plans from the thorium brotherhood. this makes it that much harder to recoup some of your costs as you have fewer crafted items at the end of it to show for your investment.

luckily for us, we have a few 70s in our stable who are miners. we went out and did some thorium farming this past sunday. for 4+ hours we did nothing but run a mining circuit around WPL and EPL. we ended up with 320 bars plus a bunch of odds and ends (gems, arcane crystals, tons of dense stone and a handful of greens from mobs that got in the way). we can't imagine what it must have been like for blacksmiths back in the pre-TBC days when all the mobs were the same level as they were. definitely would slow the process down having to fight your way to every thorium vein... anyway, 320 bars for 4+ hours work (and let's be clear: it was work, not play) seemed a bit tedious so we bought the rest of the thorium we needed to get to 300 blacksmithing off the AH.

next up, getting engineering to 300 (we're at 280-something now).

money. pit.

new (old) content

noreply@blogger.com (Harl) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 22:27:00 +0000

Daelan reached 55 seasons last night, but it was not a pretty process. we found a quest line in the blast lands that we'd never done before. we'd seen it, but back in the day it was a group quest (parts of it, at least) and since we hardly ever travel with a group we'd never bothered to do it. however, since patch 2.3 a lot of former "group" quests are now solo-able content (elites aren't elite anymore, etc.). so, we decided to give it a whirl this time. besides, it fit in nicely with the 2nd stage of our lvl 50 warrior quest (killing mobs in the same area).

so, we go around merrily killing mobs... and get ganked by a warlock (70; in full merciless glad gear, naturally). ok, fair enough. we were close to the road leading to the dark portal and it was an opportunity gank. meh. we rez and get back to killing and a short while later get ganked again. belf hunter this time. we had two mobs on us when she walked up, watched us work the mobs for a bit and then decided that we weren't dying fast enough or something. in goes the pet, we give the hunter a couple of token whacks and we're back having tea with the spirit healer. wonder if there's a frequent dier program we could sign up for... once again, rez and get back to killing (lots of mobs to kill) and we get a visit from a lvl 63 prot warrior. death by devastate spam. curse you cruel world! at this point we're just happy that the blasted lands is a fairly small zone; makes for shorter corpse runs.

we finally wrapped up that quest line only to learn that there's another one right after it (and one after that, too, according to wowhead). so we accepted, 'cause it was new content for us, and that's where the real fun began. back to where we were killing mobs, only now we had to carve a path right through the middle of them and into a cave they've taken up residence in. hmm, this is going to hurt. we make it about 1/2 way into the cave and then get an unlucky 3-pull (one was hiding behind a rock). we almost get things under control when a patrol catches us in the arse, we run out of health potions and we go down. meh, bad luck. run back, rez and clear the rest of the way into the cave and we find our quest mob and 2 guards. switch over to tanking gear and in we go! ... and down we go. quest mob has a 75% armor pierce ability and we picked up an add. ok, crappy start but we can do this. we run back, find a safe spot to rez and try focusing on the guards first this time instead of our quest mob (most of the damage seemed to come from them last time). our plan didn't quite go down the way we'd hoped and we took another visit to dead-ville. run back, rez and ZOMG RESPAWNS ON TOP OF U... dead. crap. we needed a break (and health potions), so we spirit rez and hop over to IF to train (we'd hit 54 earlier). quick stop in the AH for health potions and to look for gear upgrades (why in the name of all that's unholy is plate so gods-forsaken expensive on our server?! 150g for a green, level 50 chest piece?! ugh.) and we're back on the bird to the blasted lands.

we battle our way back into the cave, slice and dice the patrols (yes, we see you mr. I'm-hiding-behind-a-rock-waiting-to-eat-your-face-when-you-turn-around mob) and get to our quest mob; our decomposing skeletons still on the ground as a reminder of our less-then-stellar earlier attempts. tanking gear... check. defensive stance... check. houston, we are go! we go for the guards first and ignore the boss, use a health potion half way through the 2nd guard and then it's just us and ugly. it got hairy towards the end and we were down to 5% life with 1 minute to go on our health potion cooldown, so we popped our intimidating shout/bandage macro and prayed... "oh crap, he's immune to fear! ... but we're still bandaging ourself... ?!" we got a lucky break; ugly decided to try to repeatedly cast mana burn on us instead of ripping our head off and we got a full bandage in. smacked him around a bit more and VICTORY... and that was step one of that quest line. next few steps have us running off to azshara to go swimming or something. we're not sure if it was worth the aggravation and 1.5g repair bill, but it is new content for us and we got a war story out of it.