New Adventures

Fresh after the high of defeating the Lich King, I've reached a bit of a low spot in my time with WoW. Lal and I have decided to leave the only guild we've known for the last three years and search for something new. What that something new is has not been entirely decided yet. It wasn't easy to leave for anyone involved, and I'll miss everyone dearly that is still with Veritas. I still consider them friends, even if we don't share a guild tag. I sincerely hope Veritas goes on to bigger and greater things than they ever have. I plan to stay in touch with the guild leaders and other members without being a nuisance, and in the mean time branch out into new territory for myself.

This blog will continue to be a place for lore posts and raiding stories and other miscellany of the World of Warcraft. I have been lax in those duties for a few months now, but the coming Cataclysm has me excited to write more. Lal and I have returned to the Draenei we started years ago, Bogdan and Nadya, and are now leveling in Outland and having a rather fun time of it. I expect we'll be in Northrend in a week or two and hopefully level 80 before long. After that, we'll be anxiously awaiting the new expansion before leveling any new toons. I have some low level alts that I'll probably re-roll in Cata to experience the revamped zones that are coming.

Finding Dungeons in Azeroth

This seems to be the hottest topic among WoW blogs the last few weeks. It only makes sense. The new Dungeon Finder tool has pretty much changed the whole atmosphere of PuGing and gearing up. I'm pretty sure everyone has used the Dungeon Finder tool in the game by now either for the daily random heroic and two frost emblems, or as a tool to chain run heroics and quickly amass a large pile of triumph emblems. And some of us have even used it as a way to level up low level characters and get some nice rewards along the way to 80.

With Elionene, I usually do the random heroic for the frost emblems, and I usually do it with guild members. Occasionally we'll need to fill one or two spots in the group, and it's almost always been a not unpleasant time. It helps when your wife plays a healer and can pretty much carry a group through any instance, regardless of their gear, or when you have tank friends with a Heroic Block set of armor that pretty much prevents them from ever taking damage. Of course, there was the one PuG tank who ran in and aggroed ten mobs at the beginning of Utgarde Keep and died. Nothing Lal can do about a stupid tank, just the under-geared ones.

So Elio is farming the frost emblems. She picked up the Recovered Scarlet Onslaught Cape last week as her first piece of frost emblem loot which finally replaces her cape from Ulduar. Some might question my choice of getting a cape first in stead of tier pieces or higher item value loot, but I was really tired of having a cape that was two tiers of loot behind. And there are lots of tier equivalent stuff to drop from early Icecrown bosses to hold me over until I get the emblems to by Tier 10 things. I'll get there.

I've run the random heroic and the new Icecrown heroics with both Salthier and Khristin a few times for emblems and for gear drops. I've gotten to heal with my Shaman quite a bit more than I had been, and I'm still enjoying it. I put her in Veritas so that I wouldn't have to make an excuse to want to bring her as a healer to guild runs. Salthier is pretty much exclusively for tanking now, and Khristin for healing, even though they both have off specs. Again, most of the time we're just filling a spot or two with PuG Members.

Lal has been running randoms like crazy. She's got multiple toons she's trying to gear up as well, and she's a little more intent on getting lots of badges than I am. There was a time not too long ago when she would make a face and "ewwww!" noises at the mere mention of a PuG. And now she's doing them daily with random folks from all over the place. She wants the pet, but she also wants the gear, so that's what's driving her. She's had her number of bad pugs too, with some pretty rude people in them. Still, she powers on.

Probably the most interesting time I've had with the Dungeon Finder has been on my Tauren Death Knight. He's only level 72 now, but around level 70 I started doing the random normal daily as a tank. You not only get experience and gold for doing it, but two emblems of triumph to jump start your level 80 set when you get there. Not too shabby. Him being on another server though means I have to go with four strangers, and I'm still learning how to tank. I've had multiple groups fall apart because something happened that someone didn't like. Before I got some defense gear, I made a couple healers mad. But I guess my overall experience has been pleasant, unlike some of the horror stories you hear out there. I guess I've been lucky.

But it's like I've been telling other people, when they opened up PuGs to the battlegroup, and not just the server, you now have an easier time finding groups from the people wanting to run dungeons. You're not only pulling from a larger group of people, you now have a larger pool of idiots and jerks to pull from too. You win some, you lose some, and hopefully you win more than you lose.

For now, I think I enjoy the ease of finding a PuG more than I dislike the chance of getting some rude people in my group. I'm still waiting to see if a couple bad PuGs don't change my mind.

Why do you want to kill the Lich King?

I posed this question to my guild. We're getting close to the release of Patch 3.3, and I'm fairly excited at the chance to go head to head with The Lich King. We've worked hard to become a guild that can role play as well as we raid, with our focus being on 10 person progression since our desire as a guild was not to field the number of members necessary to run 25s. I have been leading our raids since the beginning of Wrath, and when Icecrown does open its gates, we'll be there waiting.

I asked in our forums what your character's personal reason for defeating the Lich King was. As a player, I feel I have some vested interest in this because I've played Warcraft III where I literally played as and watched Arthas seal his fate as he climbed the Frozen Throne. This is a culmination of those events I played through several years ago and I'm eager to see what happens. Will he die? Will he be redeemed? Will the Burning Legion show up again? He was their creation after all. I'm extremely excited to play through the dungeon quests, to see the storyline for so many characters progress, and to deal with the aftermath and how that will affect my own characters, the guild, and the world at large.

Elionene has waged war on the Legion ever since her father died at My. Hyjal. She sees the Lich King as an extension of the Legion and has vowed to remove this threat from the world. She also happens to be in the position of a leader of a small group of adventurers that share her sentiments, though they all have their own reasons. Salthier is concerned with the rifts this war is placing between the Horde and Alliance. It took their combined might to stop Archimonde. Can they succeed against Arthas divided?

I bet there are some good stories out there. Maybe you don't want to kill the Lich King. Maybe you're fine with him. Maybe you want to be him. Maybe you'll do whatever grants you the biggest profit, monetary or otherwise. Maybe you're already bent on future threats, and are willing to leave the Lich King to others.

I've read some rumors about what is supposed to happen with the defeat of Arthas. I'm still looking forward to seeing it first hand. Ulduar was hard to figure in, and sort of a let down at the end. We killed (or did we?) Yogg-Saron, but what effect did that have on the world? He wasn't even out of his prison yet when we got to him, so why was he such a big threat? We didn't have the Alliance or the Horde backing us. We just went along to help out Brann.

Then the Coliseum came with Tirion's grandiose plans to take the winners to Icecrown. Elionene still holds that this is foolishness, but she goes along with it because it is what is expected of her and her friends to reach the gates of Icecrown. And it's also the only way to curry favor with the Silver Covenant, who she aspires to be exalted with. She does what she must.

Now we're closer than ever to Icecrown, and this time, the battles should mean something. But what does it mean for you? Why do you want to kill the Lich King?

Character Updates

I really enjoy the lore of the game, thus all of the lessons posts of late, but I think it's time to get into more of a general writing mood and discuss what's going on with the characters!

Elionene
Elio is still leading raids in the Coliseum and Ulduar. We started working on Ulduar hard modes a couple weeks ago. Couldn't get Flame Leviathan with four towers up, so we back tracked and took him down with two. For some reason we just couldn't pull it together, but it might have been an off night. We then took out XT on hard mode and got the Heartbreaker achievement! By then we didn't have much time left so we took out Ignis for a specific drop for Lal, the off hand item, and it didn't drop. Sigh.

We took a break last weekend while a lot of the officers and a few members gathered in Maryland for the Renaissance Maryland Festival and the second annual guild meet up. We didn't go last year, but we had a blast this year. You can see pictures and the like at my personal blog.

Once back, one of our two guild leaders (the wife of a husband-wife team) decided she needed to take a break and stepped down from officer hood. It's kind of sad because she's poured more into this guild than anyone else by far, and I know it's hard for her since the guild means so much to her. But I also hope that the break has the desired effect of lessening her stress and letting the game be a game again instead of a second job. With her stepping down, the remaining GM has asked the rest of the officers to step up, so we'll have our work cut out for us.

One of the first things I'm doing is revamping our raid schedule, and trying to fit things in that more people can do. Take last night for example. We attempted an Onyxia-25 run. It didn't go so well, and we weren't able to get her down. Aside from the constant disconnection issues (is anyone else experiencing disconnects during the second phase?) we were light on DPS and couldn't get through the adds. But I learned some valuable lessons about the limits of our guild in raiding, and what I'll be planning for future raids.

Salthier
Sal is patiently hanging out in Dalaran, diligently transmuting epic gems for Lal each day. I've been trying to get him a few gear upgrades by running the odd heroic now and then, but the truth is I don't play him all that much. That will change this week as our guild starts up (again) it's second team in Ulduar which Salthier will be leading. And yes, I realize it's all "me" leading these raids, but these are the respective characters I'm doing it with, thus the distinction.

I'm keeping him as a main spec tank because that's what he is to me, even though I think I prefer healing more than tanking. I like tanking, but I don't feel as confident in it, so I tend to gravitate towards things I'm more proficient in. Not that I'm an excellent healer. In fact, the DPS thing is the only thing I'm really confident in, and then only with the hunter so far. Could be that's just what I'm used to.

The one thing that Sal has done is finished What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been. I did this pretty early on in the Brewfest holiday, though I had to work up the tokens to get the outfit to dance in Dalaran. For my year of achievements, I got the Violet Proto-Drake! But Salthier doesn't fly on mounts because he has the still awesome swift flight form. But the kicker is that this mount is 310% speed. Faster than most swift flying mounts, and it in turn has made my flight form speed faster. So win win.

Khristin
The poor shaman has seen almost no play since 3.2 and the new set of daily heroics that reward emblems. I barely have time to run Elio through them, much less my third 80. I killed Coren Direbrew with her a few times to get the nifty level 80 trinkets, but other than that, she sits, and she waits.

Of my various other alts out there, Frelon and Bogdan saw some brief playtime. Maybe more will happen with them in the future.

Lal is running strong as our main raid healer. She's also been focusing on her druid alt that she's leveling, somewhere in the 40s now I think. She's leveling feral and I think she likes it. She also got the world event achievement and the proto drake. Before me too, because she had the outfit from last year! But, I came to the rescue on her alts by racing rams for her so she could get enough tokens on Driya and Yelyena to buy the brew of the year membership. My best run was 40 tokens. I averaged 36 or so.

So that's where we're at! Current goals include starting Heroic Coliseum, and obtaining a key to go fight Algalon. Getting Salthier some decent gear from Ulduar and getting our second raid team up to Coliseum levels. I also have to figure out something more inclusive than a 10 person raid that we can run after meetings on Wednesdays... or not, because I can't stay up so late anymore with the current job. We'll see!

Meet Khristin

It's a little late, but I wanted to get a character post up.

Here is my Shaman alt who I've been leveling using the ultra cool WoW-Pro leveling guide by Jame. Her name is Khristin, and I'm still working on her back story, but the story of how she came to be is sort of interesting. To me at least. See, originally, Lal and I were going to roll Draenei characters and level them together. This was when Salthier and Lal were at level 70 and that was as high as you could go, so we wanted to try and get some alts up. I wanted a healer, so I created Bogdan, a male Draenei Shaman. Lal made Nadyezhda, a female Draenei Mage.

Well we got them to level 13 or so and Lal sort of lost interest. Part of that was because we were raiding Kara at the time and so Lal (the character) needed some attention, and part of that was because I'm not sure if she really took to being a mage or not. Since I didn't want to level without her, Bogdan got shelved for the time being. I was a little disappointed because I was enjoying the Shaman and had even come up with a background for Bogdan which I posted in this blog. But I didn't want to force Lal to play a character she didn't like, so we started playing Lal and Sal some more, and I raided with Elionene quite a bit.

So a little while later, I'm getting the itch to level a healer again, but Bogdan is stuck on Bloodmyst Isle indefinitely. I don't want to level him alone, but I could create a new alt and level him or her alone since she wouldn't be connected to a toon Lal was playing. But I didn't want two Draenei Shaman. And I didn't want to level another healing class. And I've yet to come up with a human concept that I really like. So I came up with a great plan.

I rerolled Bogdan as a male Paladin and leveled him to the same point that I had done on the previous Bogdan. Then left him on Bloodmyst. Then I rolled Khristin, a female Shaman, to be a healer. Why a female? Because for some reason, I can't bring myself to have two characters with the same race and sex. I have two Night Elves, one female, one male, so I wanted to have two Draenei, one female, one male. And doing it this way, I had that.

I got Khristin level to 20 before Wrath started and she got put aside while Elionene and Salthier took the spot light. Now with them both at 80, and raiding becoming less exciting and more "the usual," I decided it was high time I leveled my Shaman Healer. She is currently Level 51 and questing in the Searing Gorge. I'm leveling Elemental for the time being, but I will probably respec to a hybrid Elemental/Restoration build at level 70 for dungeons and questing in Northrend, and then full Restoration when I hit 80.

I'm really enjoying the class and the mechanics. And the guide makes leveling fun since it's effortless to decided what to do next. Now all I have to do is come up with a history for her. I don't want her to be too old, but not young either. Since Draenei are either extremely long lived, or immortal, I'm thinking of placing her birth after they left Argus, but before they landed on the Orc home world, Draenor. And if you're not sure where all this lands in the time line, you can read this post. Conceptually, I imagine her as a young 30 something. Excited by the world of Azeroth, but experienced enough to know a thing or two about the battles and hardships that she is fighting against. Since I don't have any characters that are really into pets or mounts, I figure she would be a good candidate, collecting and cataloging everything she comes across because it's all so interesting for her.

She's currently an Inscriptionist/Herbalist, but since Salthier is now a max leveled herbalist, I'm probably going to drop that from Khristin and pick up something else. Not sure what yet, I have to think about it some more.

Meanwhile, in just the past couple days, Lal decided to try out a Paladin alt that had been serving as a bank alt for her. Turns out she really likes it, so maybe we'll see her getting another character up to higher levels before long.

Of Elves and Horses

It seems I'm finding it hard to write on Tuesdays since I don't have nearly as many interesting things to write about macros and addons as I do other things like lore and character development. It's not that there aren't macros and addons to write about, it's just I don't tend to think they're that exciting. I've got an idea for next week, but if I ever have trouble finding something to write about on a Tuesday maybe I'll substitute a light lore post instead.

In other news, Salthier achieved exalted status with Stormwind this last week, enabling me to get a Swift Brown Steed! This completes my goal of having him as an ambassador to Stormwind. It took a lot, and I mean a LOT, of rune cloth. Between Lal and I, we had about 700 pieces in our alt guild bank, and I bought about another 60 gold worth from the auction hall. I did do some of the quests in the starter areas, but I decided soon after that that I would prefer to spend gold rather than time working on the reputation. It all worked out in the end. Now I might look into getting exalted with all of the major cities to achieve the ambassador title that is coming with the expansion. While milling around Elwynn forest, I picked up a pet cat from the crazy cat lady, just so I could get a picture like this one.

Bogdan and Nadya didn't see much play this last week. I have a cool picture of them meeting the fire elemental on Azuremyst when Bogdan did his fire totem quest. I keep saying every week that I hope we play them more, and that's still true. The more I think about it, the more I really want to level my shaman up before the expansion comes out. I just have to convince Lal to want to play her mage! In a related note, we went to our local gamestop and pre-ordered two copies of Wrath of the Lich King. We're psyched.

Elionene got to go to Zul'aman last night, and we had a blast! We got the first two bosses down and almost made it to the third one before time, repairs, and respawns forced us to call the raid. Next week, Lal will be going, and we plan on taking down boss number 3 as well as hopefully getting one of the timed chests. It's a challenge, but we all really love it! There's talk of doing a two boss only run on Saturday for anyone who wants to go, since it resets every 3 days. I'd love to get in on this, but I'm not sure if we'll have the power to do it, unless everyone from last night wants to go again, but I don't think that's the case.

I'll leave you with this picture of Salthier, dead in Shadow Labyrinth. Before the third boss, Vorpil, is a room with patrolling mobs in the middle and mounds of skeletons on the sides. The skeletons can be pulled and AoE killed. I told my group that we'd be pulling the last two groups of skeletons together instead of seperately. Famous last words as we did kill them, but I bit it.

Salthier and Lal are on the Move

The adventures of Salthier and Lal continued this last week with some major accomplishments. The first and most exciting of which is that Salthier has achieved his Swift Flight Form! I’m an epic item! I can fly fast, and it’s so much fun! Now Lal doesn’t have to wait for me whenever we’re going from one place to the next because we both have our epic flight training and mount/form.

It started with me realizing between the two of us we had worked up enough gold to buy my training. Once we did that, I immediately began the quest chain to get my swift flight form. It was long and I spent nearly all afternoon and a lot of the evening doing it, but I was determined, and with a little help from Lal on the last bird boss, I was able to finish it, and then I just needed to go to Heroic Sethekk Halls and fight Anzu, the Raven god. No big deal. Pumped from getting this far, I enlisted some of the finest fighters in my guild and we tore through the halls with a fury. Before I knew it, I was swooping around Cenarion Refuge in my pretty new bird shape. Woot!

Friday saw Lal and Elionene go into Karazhan and clear 10/11 bosses. We didn’t try for Netherspite, but we had a guild first Nightbane kill! Lal then got the quest chain to summon Nightbane and was able to pick up the first piece for that quest in Heroic Sethekk when we took Salthier to get his flight form. Then on Monday, Elionene and Lal went with some guild mates to heroic Shattered Halls for the daily, and the Trial of the Naaru: Mercy quest. We had a great time, and didn’t have any wipes until we got to Bladefist, who we downed on our third try! We completed all of the quests we went in there for, and now both Lal and Elionene can summon Nightbane. All in all, a very productive weekend.

Add to that, Lal, with the help of others, was able to scrape enough money together to buy the [Pattern: Girdle of Ruination] for her smite set. Several people in the guild also want one made, so she is quite the in demand tailor. I think she likes it.

One last thing to note is that Salthier started his rep grind for Stormwind this weekend. I imagined his character as being sort of an ambassador to Stormwind after the events at Mt. Hyjal, to learn more about the humans, since the Night Elves had been fairly secluded before. My goal is to get him exalted so his mount can be a horse, but I also read that he may be able to get an actual Title in the Lich King expansion so it will really say Ambassador Salthier above his head. I’ll need to get exalted with all of the major city factions for that to happen though. Looks like Sal will be doing quite a bit of cloth turn ins and lower level quests in the starter zones!

Last Week in Kara

Sorry about missing the post yesterday. It was a long day at work, and then I couldn't find a good topic on game mechanics that I really wanted to talk about. Before I knew it, the day was over! I might try and make a double post later in this week. Today however, is character day.

Bogdan and Nadya are now level 10. We don't play them much, but I still enjoy it when we do. We're about ready to leave the initial starting area of Azuremyst Isle and head to Bloodmyst. Hopefully we'll play them just a little tonight and head that direction.

Lal and Elionene, along with the second of our guild's two Karazhan teams, went back into the tower Monday evening, after clearing up to Aran on Thursday, and one shotted Illhoof, played a quick game of chess, and then tried to take down the self proclaimed new Lord of Kara, Prince Malchezaar. Our first attempt saw a couple DPS die quickly to enfeeble plus shadow nova. We still tried though and managed to get him to 17% before the tank, and subsequently the raid, wiped. Our next attempt, everyone was on the ball, and we killed Prince with no deaths whatsoever. It was grand, and we were so pumped we decided to go try and kill a dragon.

Netherspite is a really interesting fight, and only a few, if any of us, had ever done it before. We tried three times before calling it a night, and the last time we really seemed to understand the nuances, but still weren't able to get him below 36%. I'm confident after our next Prince clear, we will give it another go and get the big dragon down. Hopefully at that point someone will have the item to summon Nightbane as well, and then we will have tried every boss in the place. It's one of those things I never thought I'd be taking place in. When I was just playing for an hour or less a day in the early mornings, I never had any hopes of doing a 10 person raid and seeing the great instances that Blizzard has made. Now I'm potentially looking at the opportunity to raid in Gruul and Magtheridan in the near future. How cool is that? Of course, I couldn't have done it without my wonderful wife supporting me and raiding with me. Lal is the best.

Salthier has been focusing on mote farming and Primal Might making and questing with Lal for gear upgrades. He's basically rep farming for enchants and alchemy recipes, and for his own gear. I don't plan to raid with him unless we're in desperate need of a tank, but I might take him to heroics to get a few badges or something.

Looking forward to this week, we're hoping to do quests for the Cenarion Expedition in Blades Edge Mountains, and then run Steamvault for gear and reputation with Lal and Salthier. Bogdan and Nadya need to get a few more levels and figure out where to put those first talent points. If I can find the time, I've got a gnome rogue alt I'm messing around with, and could level him, or I could spend some time leveling my dwarf warrior, Frelon, who currently is my bank alt. Other than Kara, Elionene's only real goals are to get her Honor Hold, Aldor, and Kurenai rep to exalted, the latter two of which I can do solo, so I just need to commit some time to it. Of course with all of these options, time is in short supply. Hopefully I'll be able to accomplish most of it before Wrath of the Lich King comes out!

Thanks for reading, and have a good morning.