Veritas Conquers Netherspite

Last night we went to kill Netherspite. And we did! It took us three tries, and on the third one everything just clicked and he was dead in a matter of moments.


It was our guild's first kill, and we had a lot of fun doing it. I was respsonsible for leading it, and I had a lot of fun. We nearly had it on our first try too, but he got healed part way through, and then we had some DPS die, and we ended up dying when he was at 5% and enraged. I got smoosed with a 100,000 point smack from a void zone. Oof!

Our second try was a little off. He kept aggroing random people after his banish phase, so we lost people early on. I decided to just call it after that, so we could quicly release and try again.

Third time's a charm. Everyone was in the right spot at the right time, and Netherspite's health dropped fast. I think he was dead after only two banish phases. As I told my guild, it's really a technical fight, and when you get everything done, it works really well, and he dies quickly. He dropped a nice caster off-hand and a mail healing chest piece. We were all excited. A much better ending than the Gruul run last night.

And as far as Gruul goes, we're trying again tonight. Hopefully he'll cooperate and die, but if he doesn't, we're taking another shot on Thursday. Whew, that's a lot of raiding for our little RP guild. It's not the norm. People just really want that Champion of the Naaru title. I think because of all of this, we're having a little more fun with our guild meeting tomorrow night. The meetings can be fun, but they tend to go long. It's all done in character as we talk about things that we did over the week, and events coming up. Tomorrow we're going to make the meeting really short, and then just hang out and role play in a tavern in Ironforge to let off some stress with all of the recent raiding.

And then soon we'll all be leveling. I keep mentioning that, and maybe it's because I'm excited to go exploring again, and doing quests and preparing for the level 80 scene.

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!

WoW Web Stats

Wow Web Stats has been around for some time now. I'm actually surprised when I mention it to people in my guild or send them a link to a report page, and they are curious how I did it and what addon is needed. Since it seems like it's not as well known as I thought it was, I figured it was a good topic for game mechanics.

Basically WWS is a free service that will take a combat log and parse it, extrapolate the data and spit it back to you in an easy to read format. It does not require an addon, although a combatlog addon can make it easier. More on that in a minute. You will need to sign up for a free account on their site and be able to run the Wow Web Stats client via a Java application. They give easy to understand directions on the web site.

So how does it work? WoW records everything that happens during fights in a combat log. You can have this log recorded to a text file by simply typing /combatlog at any time during the game. This text file will appear in your World of Warcraft file in a subfolder called Logs as wowcombatlog.txt. So when you enter Karazhan (or any instance) just type /combatlog and go about your raid. If you wipe and exit the instance, you will have to type it again when you enter. At the end of the raid, type /combatlog again to turn it off, log out, and go to the Logs folder in your WoW directory. Copy the txt file to the desktop and then go to the WWS website, start their client and upload the txt file. You should see something like this...

That's kind of small, so I don't know if you can read it, but I've used the anonymous report so the names are all different anyway. This chart is for damage done through our Kara raid that went to Aran. By checking the different options you can see damage received, heals, and a host of other statistics. You can see individual results, group results, and also what killed who and when, how long it took to finish, or kill a boss, and a lot of other things. It's a great tool for raid leaders who want to analyze the raid and see what areas they can improve, or it's a lot of fun for people like me who like to play with numbers.

That's WoW Web Stats in a nut shell. You can get an addon such as clsaver which will automatically turn the log on and off when you enter and exit the instance. This is nice, as I often would forget to type /combatlog when I need to. You just have to tell clsaver to log an instance once, and it will remember to do that instance for every future time you run it. Do this by typing /clsaver toggle your first time in the instance.

A couple of things to note. The combat log can be a little finicky at times, probably due to my incompetence. After you upload the log to to WoW Web stats, you should delete the file in your logs folder. If you do not, then the next time you are in an instance, the new log will be added to the end of the old one. This will make the file unreadable for WWS. So the best way to do it is as follows:

Step 1) Run the instance and use /combatlog or an addon to do it automatically.
Step 2) Logout
Step 3) Copy the txt file to the desktop and delete the file in your logs folder.
Step 4) Upload the file from the desktop
Step 5) Check out your awesome DPS or heals or whatever.
Step 6) Log back in and repeat steps 1 through 6 after next instance run.

You can copy the URL of your report and send it to other people to view. You can also make the names anonymous if you want to show people, but don't want to broadcast who in your guild was who, for privacy concerns. You can also set up permissions so that other people can upload reports to your account, such as a guild leader or something.

Thanks for reading, and have a good morning!

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.

Silencing the Shade

Last night, our guild Karazhan team sought to kill Aran for the first time, and we succeeded! Last time we attacked him, he kicked our butts four times before we gave up. This week we downed him on try three, and there was much rejoicing. Now the libraries of Karazhan are open to our exploration, and we couldn't be happier.

Elionene went for DPS, and Lal was the off tank healer. The whole team did very well, completing through Aran in just over four hours. Our quickest time yet. Lal got a ton of spell caster items to add to her Holy DPS set. The Bands of Nefarious Deeds from Maiden have an apt name. She also got the Wicked Witch's Hat since the mage in our group didn' t need it. Elionene got a lot of bages, and a funky head piece. I'm fine with that. We hope to maybe go back for Illhoof, Chess, and Prince this weekend. We'll see if that works out.

Since it's role play day, I wrote a journal entry for Elionene and her point of view on the assault on the Ivory Tower, and the fight with Aran specifically. You can read it at my other blog dedicated for journal entries, here, or by clicking on the link on the right.

I don't consider myself a great writer. I do it because I like to and no other reason. One thing I would like to work on though is more character interaction and development. You'll probably notice the whole story seems expository, and it really is. As I write more, I'll work on making it a little more personable.

Thanks for reading, and have a good morning!