Children's Week 2013

My previous post on this :)


The only revision necessary would be that since most people are hearthed at their respective faction cities in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, since those cities have portals to all the capitols, DON'T set your hearth to Orgrimmar/Stormwind. Also, since you'd probably be starting off there anyway, you might as well stop in Shattrath first, to pick up the Orphan quest there before heading to Org/SW.

That will stream-line your questing a bit, since you wouldn't have to make an extra trip that way. Grrr....I'll just copy/paste, and replace what's needed, though I'm not gonna do the hyperlinks again. :)

Horde
Horde route doing both Orgrimmar and Shatt orphans together.
Shrine of Two Moons/Shattrath to pick up quest/Orgrimmar to pick up quest.

Azshara for riding the rocket/Org/portal in Cleft of Shadows to Dark Portal in Blasted Lands/take a windrider to Zabra'jin in Zangarmarsh to get to Sporeggar for Hch'uu/then fly to the Throne of Elements.
After that, use your Hearth to Vale/Dalaran teleport ring/Gadgetzan teleport to get to Tanaris to visit the Caverns of Time (if you don't have either of those, take the portal in Shatt back to Orgrimmar to get a port from a mage to Dalaran). Hearth to Vale, and use the portal to Silvermoon City to rock out with the Elite Tauren Chieftains. Ride back north to the teleport to UC, then go visit Sylvanas.
Go back to the Mage quarter to the portal to Blasted Lands, go through the Dark Portal, fly to Shattrath, and go turn in your Blood Elf orphan. Take the portal in Shatt to Org, then either get a port or fly to Thunderbluff. Ride east to Red Rocks to honor Cairne Bloodhoof, then take the nearest windrider back to Orgrimmar (for those with flying, you can fly over the mountains to your east to the Hunter's Hill flightpoint). Go get Ice Cream, fly a kite, pick up the sword rack, get your choice of pets.


Alliance
Alliance route doing both Stormwind and Shatt orphans together.
Shrine of Seven Stars/Shattrath to pick up quest/Stormwind to pick up quest.

Fly to Westfall for your Chopper ride, then come back to Stormwind. Fly or get a port to Ironforge to visit King Magni Bronzebeard, then take the portal in the Mystic Ward to Blasted Lands, go through the Dark Portal, complete quest. Take a windrider to Allerian Stronghold in Terrokar Forest, then fly to the middle of Auchindoun. Fly back to Allerian Stronghold, then take a windrider to Telaar in Nagrand. Fly to Aeris Landing (the Consortium guys), and talk to Jheel. After that, use your Hearth to Vale/Dalaran teleport ring/Gadgetzan teleport to get to Tanaris to visit the Caverns of Time. Hearth back to Vale, then portal to Darnassus after Caverns of Time to visit Malfurion Stormrage.
Don't leave the Temple of the Moon, just take the portal there directly to the Exodar, then follow the spiral walkway all the way down to visit O'ros. He gives you a follow-up quest to visit the Farseer in the Exodar. Hearth to Vale, take the portal to Shattrath. Turn in your Draenai Orphan for your pet. Take the portal in Shattrath back to Stormwind, get ice cream, fly a kite, pick up a sword rack, and finally turn in the orphan for your pet.

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(Disclaimer - Be very, VERY careful in picking your orphan in Dalaran. Check through your pets to see if you have either the Curious Wolvar Pup, or the Curious Oracle Hatchling. Don't pick up the whistle for an orphan that you already have, or all you have to look forward to is an awesome 5 (five) gold reward.)

For the Dalaran quests, there's no variance between Horde or Alliance. I usually went through this route. For the Oracle orphan - Dalaran to Grizzlemaw in Grizzly Hills/Bronze Dragonshrine in Dragonblight/then Winterfin Retreat in Borean Tundra. After that, the Oracle Orphan sends you to Shaper's Terrace through Sholazar Basin, then Alexstrasza in Dragonblight.

For the Wolvar Orphan - Dalaran to Grizzlemaw in Grizzly Hills/Bronze Dragonshrine in Dragonblight/then Snowfall Glade in Dragonblight. After that, go back to Alexstrasza in Dragonblight, and THEN go to Sholozar Basin to meet Hemet Nessingwary .

When those quests are done, it's back to Dalaran to fly a kite at the Wonderworks, and you finally get to turn in the orphan. You recieve your pet through the mail in a few moments, so don't worry about not getting it from the Matron.

Pet Battles - Fire Spirit leveling vs. wild pet battles

On my previous post, I had come up with a way to gain levels for pets at a decent rate, while battling Aquatic pets in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms. However, just after I had posted that, I noticed a post by BigBearButt, in which he was talking about battling the Fire Spirit in Townlong Steppes for super-duper fast leveling of pets. I'm always a fan of new information, so I took my level 86 paladin out there to try it (Goblin Glider ftw to fly over to the rock). I did one battle with a level 5 Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling and my Anubisath Idol, and the Dragonling dinged level 12! Woot, new favorite spot for leveling!

However, the next day I told my friend Mysscia about it, and she ran into a string of bad luck, with the first pet Crimson killing off her Anubisath Idol due to misses. She sounded kind of discouraged about it, so I decided to run some tests to see for myself which spot is better for leveling pets, as well as alts.

Townlong Fire Spirit -
With a level 5 Dragonling and a 25 Idol.
Battle-------------------------------------Rounds)

1 - Win, level 12 from 4813 xp. 31 rounds
2 - Idol died to Crimson.
3 - Idol died to Crimson.
4 - Win, level 17 from 5198 xp. 31 rounds
5 - Win, level 20 from 4648 xp. 30 rounds
6 - Win, level 22 from 3988 xp. 31 rounds
7 - Win, level 24 from 3410 xp. 32 rounds
8 - Idol died to Crimson
9 - Win, Level 25 from 1339 xp. 25 rounds

Total = 9 Battles, and probably 7-8 bandages, since you want to be at full health on Anubisath before engaging Crimson. I also got 106,700 xp for my well-rested paladin per WIN, so 106,700 x 6 = 640,200 xp towards leveling. 180 rounds over......oh wait, I'm forgetting something. When my Idol died to Crimson, those were rounds too. Estimate at least 10 per failed battle, so let's say 210 rounds over 9 battles.

Vale of Eternal Blossoms Aquatic Battles -
With a level 5 Shimmershell Snail and a 25 Moth.
Battle-------------------------------------Rounds)
1 - level 7 from 924 xp
2 - level 9 from 1012 xp
3 - level 10 from 990 xp
4 -level 11 from 1045 xp
5 -level 12 from 1045 xp
6 - level 13 from 982 xp
7 - level 14 from 968 xp
8 - level 15 from 949 xp
9 - level 16 from 924 xp
10---------------------894 xp
11- level 17 from 963 xp
12- level 18 from 858 xp
13---------------------817 xp
14- level 19 from 817 xp
15---------------------770 xp
16- level 20 from 847 xp
17---------------------798 xp
19- level 21 from 718 xp
20---------------------743 xp
21- level 22 from 743 xp
22---------------------597 xp
23---------------------597 xp
24- level 23 from 682 xp
25---------------------528 xp
26---------------------528 xp
27---------------------528 xp
28- level 24 from 528 xp
29---------------------454 xp
30---------------------454 xp
31---------------------454 xp
32- Level 25 from 253 xp
Total = 30 + battles for the same result, a level 25 pet. However, each battle usually only took an average of 10 rounds. 32 Battles x 10 rounds each = 320 rounds. Since it takes 180+ rounds (without dying) vs the Fire Spirit, it would require 14 more battles in the Vale for the same result. But wait, there's more!

It's a lot less aggravating to battle those aquatic pets. You really don't even need to bring bandages, since by the time your first moth has been killed off, and you've started using your 2nd moth, your free bandage in the pet journal is ready. You also have a chance for rare Battlestones to drop from these battles (I've had 2 rare Aquatic ones drop back to back), which I'm not sure drop from battles with the Fire Spirit.

Another fun fact, my well-rested level 86 Shaman who was doing these battles got almost the same amount of xp per battle as my paladin did. The xp varied between 101,365 and 106,700, with 101,365 being the norm. So, 101,365 x 32 battles = 3,243,680 xp. Considering you need 15,080,000 to level to 87, that's not a bad chunk of xp.

Pet Battling Dailies

Oh wow, I have a blog! I should use it more often. :)

I haven't had much to talk about lately, just enjoying the game, but after chatting with my friend Mysscia, I remembered that I had been meaning to post a guide to the tamers that you want to battle every day. First of all, you need the addon DailyTamerCheck, as it will simplify your life by telling you what tamers you have defeated each day, and which you still need to do. If you don't want to run a spreadsheet for your alts, this is a big time-saver.

Next, you definitely want the PetBattleTeams addon. This one is so useful, after the last patch when it was the only addon that didn't work, I was so annoyed that I didn't even want to play that day. You're able to setup as many teams as you can dream up, with the skills that you specify, and when you click on that team, you automatically switch your 3 pets in your active team in the pet journal to those pets specified. It also allows you to name your teams, so you don't have to remember what team goes with what tamer.

Alrighty, without further ado, here's a partial list of my recommendations for the Grand Master pet tamers that you can battle each day for those highly desired Rare battlestones, to upgrade your lack-luster common or uncommon pets to elite killing machines.

I try to do these pet battles each day for a few reasons.
1st) Battlestones, of course.
2nd) It also rewards a chunk of xp, equivalent to doing a daily quest. So if you have alts that you aren't doing anything with, you might as well stick them out at the tamers location, so you don't have to fly out there each day.
3rd) This is a good way to get some additional guild xp for your guild, if you're still leveling to 25. It counts as a daily quest, so that's an additional 60k guild xp for each tamer you beat. As a matter of fact, if people want to have easy access to the tamers without tying up their mains, you could actually start level 1 characters on a different realm, have a friend mage-port them to close by where they need to go, then fly them there while grouped using a flying mount that allows a rider. Just be careful while crossing zones, my friend from Daggerspine that is helping me on Darrowmere kept getting disconnected whenever we crossed a zone boundary. Winterspring was especially annoying, as the high mountains meant that the zone changed while I was flying up a 1,0000 foot cliff. Splat!
4th) this is a decent way to get some good xp for your pets to level up, which is why I recommend lower level pets rather than just steam-rolling them with 3 level 25's, as tamers reward more xp for battles than regular pets at that level (though not the fastest way, as I'll explain later).


Starting off in Kalimdor, the Grand Master Trixxy is located in the middle of Winterspring (65,64), and has a load-out of a Dragon, Beast, and Flying pet, all level 19. I'd recommend at least a level 16-17 Humanoid, 16-17 Mechanical, but probably a level 18-19 Dragonkin that does magic damage to fight Blizzy, since he can hit pretty hard. Here's a handy link to explain why.
Flying pets DO 150% more damage to Aquatic pets, and only damage Dragonkin pets by 66% (2/3rd of their normal damage listed).
Flying pets TAKE more damage from Magic attacks, and only take 66% damage from Beast attacks.

In Eastern Kingdoms, Grand Master Lydia Accoste is located directly south-west of Karazhan. This is actually one of the easiest masters to beat, btw. She has a level 19 Elemental, and 2 Undeads, but they're a cake-walk. A level 16 Aquatic, a 16 Critter, and a 17-18 Critter should be sufficient to beat them easily. I've even started to use lower level Aquatics against the Elemental, since he doesn't attack very often.

Ramping up the difficulty, lets head out to Shadowmoon Valley and take on Bloodknight Antari. With level 24 Magic, Elemental, and Dragonkin pets, he's a bit tougher to beat with lower level pets. I'd recommend a level 22-24 team of Dragonkin, Aquatic, and Humanoid pets. Make sure the Dragonkin actually deals Dragonkin damage, as quite a few of them actually do mainly Magic damage. Hmmm, looking over the pet damage chart, I just now came up with using the engineering created Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling against the Magic pet, since he'd be resistant to magic damage, plus have access to the Dragonkin damage spell of Breath. After you kill the magic pet, swap out for your aquatic quickly, as the elemental would destroy your mechanical dragonling quickly. Maybe you could toss up Decoy as you're switching out. Put out that elementals fire with your aquatic pet, then get ready for Netherbite. Since he Soul Wards and Phase Shifts, you're going to want a really fast Humanoid to take him out asap.

Northrend bound, we encounter Major Payne at the Argent Tournament grounds. I gotta say, he really lives up to his name, as his pets are a major pain in the arse. He has a level 25 Beast, Mechanical, and Elemental, and each one can be deadly even to a full 3 level 25's of your own, if not picked carefully. While I haven't been specific on pets on the earlier tamers, here's where I break down what I use, and why. Against Grizzle, I use my level 25 Darkmoon Tonk. If I get Bashed straight off, I quit, then challenge him again until he Rampages on the first round. I immediately use Minefield, then charge up and use Lock-on twice while he's Hibernating, with a final Missile if needed. Grizzle dies, then Beakmaster runs in and immediately takes damage from my Minefield. I use my first turn to toss down another Minefield for Bloom, then try to damage Beakmaster with Missiles as much as I can until my Tonk dies. Once that happens, I use my Shale Hatchling, since 1 Stone Rush and a few Burn's are sufficient to take down Beakmaster. Bloom will then switch in, and take a few hundred damage from the Minefield you had already setup. Use a combo of Stone Rush's and Burns to get him as low as you can, then switch in your last pet, preferably either an Aquatic or Critter pet. I usually use a 20-23 Critter (they don't take much elemental damage), since you'll get a full level of xp from the battle, and it's a good way of getting pets really close to level 25.

Out on the Dam in Uldum, south of Ramhaken, we come to the Cataclysm tamer Obalis. If you're flying a friend out here, port them to Dalaran first, and then take the portal in the Violet Citadel to the Caverns of Time in Tanaris. With a level 25 Beast, Flying, and Critter team, he's not that hard to defeat with the proper line-up. Beast = Mechanical, right? Actually, you don't want to start out with one. Pyth hits hard, and Poison Fang's dot does Elemental damage, which will mess your mechanical up pretty quickly. Instead, use a pet that has Sandstorm, such as Anubisath Idol, Tiny Twister, or Enchanted Broom. Once that's going, it negates much of the potential damage from Poison Fang, so switch in your mechanical pet such as Darkmoon Tonk. Finish off Pyth, then take on Spring. With Sandstorm taking away much of his damage, you can easily finish him off with Lock-on's or Missiles. Clatter runs up after that, and he can be easily killed with a level 20-23 Beast, especially a spider pet with Brittle Webbing, since it damages them when you cast it, and also when Clatter attacks you.

Part 2 coming next, with my strategies on Pandarian Battles.

I'll leave you with my way of leveling up pets lickety-split. In the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, there's 2 areas where teams comprised of mainly Aquatic pets congregate. The lake in front of Mogushan Palace has several pets waiting to battle, right by Master Aki. Also, the pond south of the Golden Pagoda has a lot too. My method is to make a team of a level 5 pet, then 2 level 25 Moths. If you don't have any, Gilded Moths are flying around the zone, so no worries. Once you start the battle, have your low level attack once, then immediately switch out for your Moth. The reasons why I advocate using a Moth is because they're really fast, and have hard hitting Flying abilities like Alpha Strike and Moth Dust. With Cocoon Strike to absorb potential large damage attacks like Pump, you can last several battles without switching to your second Moth. Once both of your Moths have been killed or severely damaged, use your free bandage in the pet battle journal to heal them, and go for more battles. You can get a level per battle for your low level pet up to like level 13, and pretty frequently thereafter.
If you're doing this with a low level toon, you'll get some decent XP. If you're doing it with a level 85+ toon, you'll get about 100k xp per battle, almost comparable with questing. I believe at level 90, you have a chance at getting Lesser Charms, which could be a pleasant change from doing dailies.

MoP Pet Battles Tips & Predictions

Hey all, been a while since I posted, but I figured I'd get this one out while I thought about it.

I've been playing the Beta recently, with one main focus in mind. Pet Battles! As an altoholic collector, the Pokemon themed Pet Battling that will come about in Mists of Pandaria is awesome. Not only is it fun, it's also challenging, forcing you to use strategy to defeat the other team.

Hints & Tips:
Don't worry about those unique pets that other people have. So, you weren't around from Vanilla WoW, and don't have Tyrael's Hilt. You didn't go to a Blizzcon, and don't have a Murky code. Fuggedabowdit.

I ran a little experiment with the Argent Tournament Elwynn Lamb vs. a rare quality Black Lamb that I caught in a pet battle in Elwynn Forest.
After leveling them both to level 6, here's their stats.

As you can see, the Black Lamb has substantially higher DPA (Damage per Attack), Haste, and Health, making it the better choice.

So if you want the best battle pets, you're gonna have to capture them. Don't even bother leveling poor thru uncommon pets though, only put effort into leveling the rares that you catch. But how do you catch rares?

Welllll, until there's an addon created that identifies them as rare when the pet battle begins, the only way to do it is by trial and error while battling. Hover over their portraits to see their DPA/Haste numbers, and look at their health. If those numbers are a lot higher than your pets, or if they have the little chevron showing that they have first hit capability, they're probably a rare. You'll get the hang of judging whether they're rare or not after a while, so don't sweat it. You can also capture one, then on the next battle, open your Mount/Pet tab, to see if the stats on the one you own are substantially lower than the one you're fighting.

If you want to get rares quickly, you can start pet battles, check the pets, and end the battle if you don't see stats you like.

Oooh, also, Aquatic pets are the bomb! Most of them have single target or group heals, which can come in handy for restoring health to your 3 pets without running back to a stable master, or waiting 10 minutes for the ability to come off of cooldown. 1 DPS pet and 2 Aquatic = EZ mode. The frog/toad ability to /Kiss is also pretty sweet, with ramping damage, plus the ability to CC your opponent.

Predictions:
I'm gonna go out on a limb and prognosticate a way to move gold from one server to another, with Blizzard's blessing. All the pets you catch in the wild can't be put in a cage to be sold on the Auction House, which kinda sucks. However.....all those vendor bought pets CAN be. Not exactly news, since they could be put on the AH for years now. Here's the twist though; you buy/obtain a pet on one server, and you're free to transfer it to any other server/faction side you want! Since the pets are shared account-wide, and you'd be able to cage them from any character you have, it makes sense that you could sell it anywhere you choose. No more starting broke on a new server, just sell off a pet and make a chunk of gold!

Another prediction I have is that people will level those vendor bought pets. Why? For someone who is starting to do pet battles, it realllly makes a difference to have a high level pet to be able to swap in. If you're battling a level 10 pet, and have a level 5 and level 25 pet, all the level 5 needs to do is survive 1 round, then swap out for the 25. The level 5 will get a huge chunk of XP, allowing him to level up a lot quicker than by battling pets around his own level. Think of it like getting run through RFC at level 10 by an 85; as long as you don't draw aggro, you get lots of XP for just hanging around.

Anyways, just wanted to share those thoughts for anyone that's interested in pet battles.

20 Days of...WoW Blogging Challenge - Day Five

Day Five - Favourite Item in the Game

I'm a sucker for items that DO something for you. Not for me the vendor trash grey items with humorous text, no sir! They either have to make my character look different, or have some useful function in the game. I'd have to say that the Dalaran teleport rings were/are my favorite item of all time. Wayyyy back in Wrath of the Lich King, they introduced these nifty little rings. Not only were they exceptionally handy for getting to the main hub of activity at that time (Dalaran), they also could be instantly upgraded to almost best-in-slot itemization for your character. All it required was a mere pittance, maybe 10,000 gold or so, to go through the upgrading processes, and you got a great ring with killer stats that allowed you to warp back to Dalaran every 30 minutes. And, since Dalaran had portals to all the capitol cities, the world was open to you. Need to get to Silvermoon City from Thunder Bluff? No worries mate, port to Dalaran, and take the portal to SMC; no need to track down a mage, or spend time on a windrider, then wait for a zeppelin.

The other great benefit of having the ring was the multitude of options it allowed you in setting your hearthstone. Since you had an easy way to get back to a capitol city with an AH, you could be more choosy in setting where you wanted your hearth. You wanted to pick up an easy 200 honor per day in 5 minutes? Set your hearth to Conquest Hold/Amberpine Lodge in Grizzly Hills, and do those 4 PvP quests around Venture Bay, then use your ring to get back. Or maybe you were working on your Netherwing rep out in Shadowmoon Valley, and really didn't enjoy having to spend 5 minutes flying out there everyday. Hey hey, set your hearth at the Sanctum of the Stars, and you could do your dailies and egg hunting, then zip back to Dalaran.

Nowadays, we have our guild cloaks, but even the epic one has a cooldown of 2 hours, which is still a long time. I enjoy my engineering warp items, but the Dalaran ring is always useful.

20 Days of...WoW Blogging Challenge - Day Four

Day Four - My fondest memory


I'm a bit strange when it comes to WoW memories. Unlike Fannon or Saga, I don't raid, so I don't have memories of taking down a particularly vexing boss. I get more of a sense of accomplishment from achievements that I earn solo, since it was ME ME, all ME that did it. One in particular was especially gratifying.

After killing my first rare in Northrend, and earning the first step towards Frostbitten, I started learning about the other rares in Northrend. I was especially intrigued by the Time-Lost Proto Drake in Storm Peaks, since just killing it would give you a bad-ass Drake mount. Unfortunately, it definitely lives up to its name. I would spend an hour at a time flying around SP, or just perched in the intersection point of the TLPD flight paths, but I....just...can't stay AFK in a game. I log in to play, not to do nothing. So, after a while, I gave up on it. I figured, "Hey, I already have the Red/Green/Bronze Drakes, that's enough for me."

I was flying out to Storm Peaks on my rogue Thrillkiller on 10/13/2011 to try to look for Dirkee, since I was knocking out Frostbitten on all toons. All of a sudden, my NPC_scan went off! I figured it was Vyragosa, which would have been great too, since she's on the endangered species list from all the TLPD hunters. But, it was the real deal this time. I quickly hard logged, deleted my creature cache, logged in on Bloodshrike, and headed over to the area where Thrillkiller was. I started scanning for the Drake, hoping and praying that nobody had gotten it in the few minutes I had lost. I finally located it, got its attention, and quickly downed it.

I had been trying to get that mount for at least a year, and finally obtained it. That was a great day! :)

Children's Week 2012 - Early Post

Last year's post. 'Nuff said. :)

Seriously though, that's all I have to go on right now. I'll update if there's anything different, like if they take out that cursed achievement that is the bane of altoholics everywhere....

Edit: All 10 of my toons on Demon Soul did all the Orphan quests possible (Blood and Bull already had both Dalaran orphans), Clockwrkmage on Daggerspine got the SW and Shattrath quests done, and I only got Bloodshrike on Darrowmere through the Dalaran orphan quest.

After hearing about mounts being shared in Mists of Pandaria, which would retro-actively grant the achievements necessary to obtain the mount (I.E. all the meta achievements for What a Long Strange Trip It's Been, which gives you the Violet Proto Drake), I just couldn't stomach trying to do the School of Hard Knocks achievement for toons on Demon Soul, even though it was the only achievement that some of my guys needed to get the Drake.

Since my main achievement hunter already has the Drake, why bother with the stress and headaches of doing it on other toons, when I'll be getting it when MoP launches?

20 Days of...WoW Blogging Challenge - Day Three

Extended maintenance tonight, so it's time for me to get back to the challenge. Nobody SAID it had to be done in 20 calendar days.... :)

First Day Playing WoW (Day 3)

Like I said on Day 1, I had resisted playing WoW. I had heard the horror stories about Evercrack, and how WoW was just as addictive. But, I crumbled, and finally gave the trial a spin. Hmmm, I actually forgot what year I started, I just remember it was October, and The Burning Crusade came out shortly after. Wikipedia says TBC came out in January of 2007, so I started mid October of 2006.

I picked a troll hunter, since I had always favored ranged classes, like the Amazons in Diablo II, and the ability to have a pet that helped you was pure win. After finding out how to adjust the hotkeys to my liking, since WASD controls isn't how I roll, I set off in the training valley. I know I probably hoarded every drop, running back to the vendor to clear out my bag(singular) of trash, since that's how I've always been. The thing I really remember was finding a treasure chest on my way to Razor Hill, and seeing a green texted jewel come out of it. I was excited!! That Kawasaki green had been branded into my brain from Diablo II as relating to sets, and it was always a rush finding them. I think I changed professions from miner to skinner to herbalist to alchemist to leatherworker all in the same day, because I couldn't decide which I wanted to pursue. I finally picked Alchemy, since I figured health potions are always a good thing to have.

In the next few days, my stable of alts started growing exponentially. I figured, why pay someone else for crafting something for me, when I could just have an alt that could cover that profession? And once my 4th toon Bonescourge took up engineering, and I saw the benefit of having AoE attacks with bombs that could hurt multiple monsters at once.....well, shoot, that meant ALL my guys needed to be engineers!

Love is in the Air (and zipping thru portals)

2-12-12

A bit late on this, but I'll link to it next year.
Whew, the Lunar Festival, Darkmoon Fair, and Love is in the Air all happening around the same time makes for a very busy altoholic.

You definitely want to do the 4 Gift for XXX chief daily quests on as many toons as you can, as it allows you to turn 1 bracelet into 5 love tokens. Do all 4 Chief dailies, and 4 bracelets becomes 20 tokens, getting you closer to the 270 tokens needed for the mount, without the headache of grinding it out. Plus, 16 gold at level 85 for each daily adds up to a lotta gold, especially on multiple toons.

The holiday, like most of them, is a lot easier and more rewarding at max level, as you have access to the holiday boss, which always drops more tokens that you need, plus you have a chance at the ultra-rare Big Love Rocket. At 0.16% drop rate, the more toons you do it on, the more you increase your chances. It's also a whole lot easier to do on a max level toon because of the HUGE difference in monsters. On a lower level toon, for example my hunter Bloodshrike on Darrowmere (76), I can kill mobs that are maybe 5-6 levels lower than me. They die easily, but it still takes a bit of time, and I'm only getting a Charm on every 3rd kill (though it seems like more). On Demon Soul, with all my 85's, I have tons of options to annihilate mobs that were designed for level 80 toons, in ilevel 200ish gear. With toons geared in Cataclysm gear, even crappy 318 greens or 371 PvP gear, you cut through whole groups of mobs in seconds, and watch the charms just pour in. It's all about the efficiency of killing, optimal results for the minimum of time spent grinding mobs.

Cold at Cold's Gold Factory had some ideas, which I gleefully seized upon. The Slags in Halls of Lightning normal mode is a brilliant idea. Since they don't drop loot, it doesn't slow me down in my killing frenzy, so I just run around the central pillar. I've done it on my hunter, paladin, and death knight, and racked up 130 charms in about 25 minutes.

Alto at Altosgoldishadvise recommended Rokir in Icecrown. I tried it out, but didn't seem to make many charms.

Over at Power Word: Gold, he suggests the Fractured Front in Deepholm, since you can use a Treasure Potion to get even more reward for your time spent.


Whatever your favorite spot is, you're still going to need to turn in the Bracelets for the Gift to the 4 Chiefs of each Faction.

For Horde, here's my rotation. My guys are all logged in Orgrimmar for the holiday. I log in, grab the Crushing the Crown daily, the Perfume/Chocolate daily, the Gift for the Warchief, and take out 3 or 4 bracelets from my guild bank. I join the Q for the Apothecaries, then go turn in 1 bracelet to Garrosh, tossing out candy/perfume to all the NPC's in the throne room. 2 dailies down already, I take the portal to Uldum for Crushing the Crown.

Once that's done, I either fly straight north to Thunder Bluff to turn one in to Baine, or I just hit my hearthstone. At the beginning of the holiday, I changed my hearth to the Wayfarer's Inn, located just off the Bazaar in Silvermoon City. The reason for this is that the daily for Lor'themar is given at the Bazaar, allowing me to pick it up ON THE WAY, not having to backtrack to it from getting a teleport there. And, once done, I just take the portal behind him to the courtyard of UC, where I pick up the daily for Sylvanas.

Now, here's the difference with having the Darkmoon Fair running at the same time. With the DM Fair, I'd come back up to the central section of UC, talk to the DM mage to instantly port to Mulgore, then fly up to do the daily for Baine. Once done, I'd use my guild teleport cloak to instantly be back in Orgrimmar, turn in Crushing the Crown, then log over to my next toon. Less than 20 minutes total time spent, 30 tokens plus the extra from the holiday bosses, plus 16 gold x6. You'd have to collect 300 Charms for the same result, and at a 33% drop rate, that would be over 900 monsters you'd have to kill. Now that the Fair is over, I usually don't bother with Baine.

For Alliance.....you're screwed, just like during the daily for killing the Greench. :)
I kid, I kid, but it probably adds on a lot of time to try to get to Ironforge, as well as go to Darnassus and the Exodar.

I haven't been doing much on Alliance side this year, since my main Clockwrkmage only got to level 81. I'd imagine you'd log in, join the Q for the apothecaries, grab bracelets out of the bank, toss perfume/candy, get the Crushing the Crown daily, then turn in a bracelet to Varian. Take the portal to Uldum for Crushing the Crown, then hearth to the Inn in Darnassus, pick up the daily for Tyrande, turn it in upstairs at the temple, then hop down and take the portal to the Exodar. Turn in the daily for Prophet Velen, then use your teleport cloak/Dalaran teleport ring to quickly get back to ......Stormwind, to turn in Crushing the Crown. Darkmoon Fair or not, there's no fast way to Ironforge, unless you get a port from a mage. The Alliance Darkmoon mages port you to Goldshire, right by Stormwind.

You could take a flight from a flightmaster, or take the portal in Stormwind to Twilight Highlands, then fly south-west to Ironforge, since you'd only have to cross the Wetlands.

Well, just a few random thoughts about the holiday, hope it helps!

Edit 2/24/2012:
I got 4 of the Wasteling, 2 Roses, and 7 Masks (Buriza got 4 of them). No Rocket mount for me. :(
Buut, I did save up enough tokens for 8 Lovebirds, and 13 pets, both of which will fetch a good price later on.

Guild Level 25 - Finally!

1-23-12

Wraith Flight on Demon Soul finally hit level 25 yesterday, with a big sigh of relief from me. I don't have to pay people anymore!! It's not about the gold, but I felt obligated to log in to see if I owed people money, as I didn't want people to have to wait forever to get paid, like the copycat guild Guild Bonus made them do.

Exactly how much gold did I pay out? Given that I leveled it to level 2 myself, that's 16.58 million gxp subtracted from the grand total of 845.67 million gxp, leaving 829.09 million gxp needed to get from level 2 to level 25. Grand total of contributions from all my toons = 150,107,791 subtracted from 845,670,000 = 695,562,209 guild xp that my guildies were paid for. At 1 gold per 1k guild xp, and allowing for people who didn't hit a payment mark, I probably paid out 695 THOUSAND gold over the past year.

In retrospect, I probably should have just paid someone for their high level guild, like E at the Altchronicles did, who I discovered from a comment on a BigBearButt post.

The difference between owning the guild, as opposed to just being a regular member and contributing, is that I can never ever be /gkicked. I am free to set policies, and I have faith that the Cash Flow perk, as well as the gold rewards for guild challenges, will eventually pay me back for the gold I've spent. I'd definitely have to /kick everyone if I decided to go on a long break, as you can be dethroned by members petitioning GM's if you've been offline for more than a month.

I don't know what it is, I'm just highly self-reliant (loner), probably from the influence of Diablo II, where I would buy items I wanted from players using my carefully hoarded gems (P Rubies ftw!), instead of doing countless Baal runs hoping that the items I wanted would drop. In WoW, I pay people to help the guild, instead of just hoping that they would, or having to run dungeons/BG's ad nauseum to benefit them, even when I didn't want to, so they'd stay in the guild.

Being a GM of a guild has drawbacks, you always have to be offering something, be it gold, dungeon runs, PvP, or raiding. If you offer nothing, people will leave.

20 Days of...WoW Blogging Challenge - Day Two

Why did I start this blog?

I started this blog back in November of '08.....well, not really. Actually, I had a bunch of posts that I had written on my laptop beforehand, and started throwing them up there when I finally got around to making my blog. That's why there's about 50 posts within the first 3 days. The introduction was actually written a year before that. :)

Why do bloggers write? It's usually for a multitude of reasons, not just one. I had been reading BigRedKitty for a while beforehand, and BRK's sheer joie de vivre in playing his hunter was infectious. I've always enjoyed writing, and really like teaching/sharing my knowledge with others. The best way to learn is to teach, as by going over a subject from the ground up, you often learn surprising new things. I had noticed that nobody really talked about the Engineering profession, treating it like a bastard crafting profession, and that annoyed me. Ever since my 4th toon picked up the Engineering profession, I was hooked. I dropped max level herbalism on Bloodshrike to take it up, and haven't looked back. As of right now, 26 of my 30 toons are engineers, with only my priests and my mage Banesidhe not having the engineering skill (Priests have Levitate/Resurrection, Bane had too many hard to find enchanting/tailoring recipes to give up).

So, I started a blog with the intent of perhaps swaying people's opinions towards engineering, through the enthusiasm I showed for it in my posts. That's the reason for the blog title, as well as the picture.

The blog is also my release for stress, such as when my guild bank on Darrowmere got items ninja'd from it. As a Spider Robinson quote says, "Shared pain is lessened; shared joy, increased — thus do we refute entropy." Just typing out my feelings and thoughts is a release in itself, and if people comment, that's a bonus.

20 Days of...WoW Blogging Challenge - Day One

I was blog-crawling the other day, and somehow I ended up at the Dwarven Battle Medic. Looking through his previous posts, I stumbled on the 20 Days of...challenge, originally presented by Saga of Spellbound over a year ago.

The idea seems fun, so I'm gonna try it. Given that my posting has slowed to about once a month, this'll serve as a goad to get the creative juices flowing.

Who am I?
I'd have to say my first toon is Bloodshrike, a Troll Hunter on Demon Soul. I was wooed into playing WoW by a friend at work, after years of resisting. Not because I didn't think I'd like it, quite the opposite. When I play a game, I stay for the long haul. But, after 7 years of playing Diablo II, developing variant builds for classes (Crushplosive archers for all class types), and posting on the forums, it was time for a change. From the first moment I logged in, I was enthralled. The ability to look up, down, around....which happened a lot, often unintentionally, as I had changed the controls to have my mouse used for movement, which I was used to on Diablo II. But once I figured that out, I was off and questing. I avoided the AH at first, but got used to it after a while, and my 4th alt Banesidhe actually funded a lot of my professions, using gold gained from selling enchanting mats to buy mats for engineering/blacksmithing.

Bloodshrike has been my nom de guerre for a while now, ever since reading the Westmark novels by Lloyd Alexander, and feeling curious about the name "Shrike." The blood got tacked on to the front of it, and I've been Bloodshrike while playing Half-life, Halo, Diablo, and now WoW.

Blood is certainly my achievement whore, but I hesitate on calling any of the toons I play my "main." I don't RP, I don't identify strongly with any one toon, I just like playing them all. I've got at least 3 or more (cough, hunters) of each class, and enjoy them equally.

On Leveling

1-18-12

The Grumpy Elf has some very thought-provoking posts up on his blog, A New Leveling Model and Is the Leveling Model Dated in particular caught my eye. I do like a lot of what he's advocating, but I'd like to offer a caveat (well, two actually).

Talents - One of the reasons for gradually unlocking spells and abilities is to let new players get accustomed to them. I don't know about you, but I use more than 4 abilities when playing. Hell, I have more than 20 abilities usually mapped to my left hand, and those are the ones that I consider using regularly, or at least in specific situations that pop up fairly often. Granted, I have an odd setup, using 1-6, Q-T, A-G,Z-B, hitting all of them with my left hand, with a bunch of them having Alt functions macro bound to them. My right hand is used for movement and target selection with the mouse.
Dumping all the spells available to an 85 on a fresh new player would be overwhelming, especially if they used the default WASD setup that Blizzard gives them. "I'm supposed to use ALL of these spells? How am I supposed to hit them if my left hand is stuck hitting those 4 keys??? Bugger this, I'm gonna go play Farmville instead!"

Altoholics - I have 30 toons that I am un-concentrated on leveling, at a veryyy relaxed pace. I would like to offer an extension of the Grumpy Elf's thoughts, in that quests/reputations credit should be account wide if this new model goes through. I've got 8 85's, and have only done the Tol Barad dailies to completion on 6 of them. Since all your toons would be level 85, gear would not be over-powered, so there would no reason for currency that one toon has acquired not to be used by others. For example, the Crocolisk daily in Tol Barad is slightly irritating for me to do, since I want to skin the damn things for Savage Leather. But my priest Burizadokyan(JC/Alch) and warlock Bonescourge (Scribe/Eng) can't do that, and it wouldn't be feasible to log out, and log back in with my skinner. Since my rogue Thrillkiller is my skinner, and has done everything I want to do in Tol Barad, why not allow him to gain Tol Barad Commendations, and let Bone or Bur spend them? You could have an account wide reputation level, but you'd still have to put in the time to do dailies on at least one toon for the currency. You could do the dailies on more than one toon if wanted/needed, but...speaking from experience, that wears you down and burns you out.

Anyways, those are my thoughts. Cheers!

Not Impressed

12/15/11

It's time for the Feast of Winter Veil once again, but with a twist. For long-time players, we're used to the Greench in the Alterac Mountains being a level 40ish elite, and a pushover. Do it once to get the achievement, and don't bother with it again.

This year, however, Blizzard decided to make the Greench into a mini-boss, but, and here's the kicker, not in its own mini-dungeon that you can queue for. Instead, you pick up the daily quest in Org, then take a zeppelin or get a port to Eastern Kingdoms (I'd advise getting one to SMC, since it's really close to the portal to the UC courtyard in the throne room). Once you're over there, go to the Alterac Mountains, where you find a revamped Greench, boss level with over 3.5 million hitpoints. I suppose you could probably solo it, if you use some strategy, but as of right now, there's usually people killing him already, so you can usually just leech off their kills, and get the credit for the daily without firing off a spell. What I'm worried about is if/when people get tired of this extra hassle, and stop going over there, making it a lot harder for altoholics to get this done.

If you're an altoholic, and plan on coming back daily, set your hearth really close to the Alterac mountains (Tarren Mill for Horde), so you can skip a lot of travel time on your alts. Since you have to be level 80 for the daily anyway, you can get a Dalaran Ring, or a teleport cloak to quickly zip you back to....Orgrimmar. Aargh, this would suck if I had high level Alliance toons, since their teleport cloaks and Ring would only bring them quickly to Stormwind, not Ironforge.

Here's what I don't get. I've logged on faithfully for at least 4 years now to get my Winter Veil present from under the tree, which I later received a Feat of Strength for. Feats of Strength are achievements which are damn near impossible to get later on. Like the events that led to the Shattering, with the elemental invasions going on every few hours non-stop, it gives you a sense of history in your character. To have that given out to a player that only started playing a few months ago kinda defeats the purpose, don't ya think?

I guess I'm just annoyed at the multitude of backward changes to the holiday, and the lack of a present that I'd actually WANT (c'mon, a sweater, REALLY?).

Gone Fishin'

12/6/11


The Darkmoon Fair Island is awesome!!! Not just because of the rewards from the vendors, not only for the chance to gain rep with the faction easily, but because of the fishing opportunities. You can literally just fish the Shipwreck Debris pools to farm mats for all professions. Embersilk cloth drops a ton, plus Heavy Savage Leather, Pyrite, Obsidium, and Elementium ore. You even get Cataclysm herbs from them too. And btw, don't bother buying the items needed for the eating/drinking Achievement, you'll get more than plenty from the Sealed Crates. Clicky clicky, check the drop rates....34% chance to get 8-12 Embersilk Cloth per Crate? Yes please!

Hey, if you try your luck at open water fishing, you still might come away a winner. Ghostcrawler promised me a pony is not only an achievement, it's the literal truth. Just steps away from from the petting stables, you come to open water. While you'll mainly catch Oily Blackmouth, Firefin Snapper, and other vanilla fish, you have a verrry slight chance of getting an adorable pet, the Sea Pony.

If you are fishing from the pools of Shipwreck Debris, be aware that they ring the entire island, as well as being located at each of the smaller islands shown on the map. Elixir of Water Walking, Path of Frost (DK), Water Walking (Shaman), will help you make fast circuits of all the pool locations. BTW, the Elixirs of Water Walking will sell extremely well on the AH, at least 20 gold for a 5 stack.


Edit: I got my Pony, and the Menagerie achievement along with it!! I was mistaken, apparently you can get them in the pools of Shipwreck Debris too.

I was Affirmed against my will!

11-10-11



I'm taking a Humanities course for my pre-req's, and as a part of a warm-up for our test, we were supposed to tell a little bit about what we think about creativity/art/imagination and what it means to us. I was starting to share that I possess no imagination whatsoever, when all of a sudden people started speaking up for me. "On the first day of class, we were supposed to make name tags by tearing up pieces of paper, and he made an origami frog." "He's shared some very interesting stuff in class."

I wasn't trolling for compliments, but it was nice to hear. What I wanted to convey was that I don't really have much of what is considered classical "artistic talent." I can't really picture anyone's face in my mind, even people I've known all my life. Also, my stick figures are crooked, and my handwriting is atrocious. No hope for painting for me. :)
While I took piano for 6 years growing up, I had to memorize each piece before playing it, unlike my sisters, who could just look at a hymn, see that it was in the key of B minor, and play it perfectly for church.

However, I do have some talents in writing, and definitely am talented in video games and video game economics. I'm comfortable admitting my shortcomings, instead of trying to mask or cover them up. I'd rather concentrate on what I do have talent for instead.

We also learned there are two definitions for Artists. The narrow sense is that they are professional artists who get paid for what they do. The broader view is that we are all artists, living creatively each day. As long as you put all of yourself into what you're doing, you're creating art.

You can create art by having a beautiful tackle, preparing a tasty meal, or having such a connection to a game that it becomes an extension of your own body. I'm reminded of seeing an arena match between my Rogue partner (Vicious geared) against a Blood DK who was Conquest geared. They were both so familiar with their classes that it went on for 30 minutes before the Blood DK finally won. I'm sure the DK's partner was bored outta his mind, but I was fascinated. Having so many alts means that often I forget some of my classes skills, but seeing someone utilize all of them so effectively is like seeing a master at work.

So get out there and make some art in your life!



P.S. By request, here's a pic of the frog. :)

Glyphing 101

9-20-2011
Originally, this was gonna be called "Scribbling fer fun an profits," done entirely in the style of Ratshag, just for the hell of it.

7-14-2011
Inscriptionist....scripter.....inscriber.....scriber...scrivener....shriner....bugger it, I calls meself a scribbler. The scribblin' perfession be a diffrent beast altogethers, far from the more genteel craftifications of blacksmithies, tailorerers, an them buggers what smush leather together and calls it armor.

And then I discovered he had done it already, in his own inimitable style. So, scratch that, I'll just do in my own way.













That's 6 full 32 slot inscription bags, with an additional 12 slots on the 7th. 6x32=192+12=204 different Northrend inscription research/Books of Glyph Mastery, Techniques, and minor inscription research glyphs.

Now, you've done all your research, learned the techniques, and read the books.....but what you haven't done is actually make gold with your profession. You've tried, but never seem to make a lot of sales. It's confusing, because you always give the customers a great discount, compared to those other scribes who only undercut each other by 1 freakin' copper, just to get their glyphs at the top of the list.

Sit back, while I illuminate the situation.
Ur doeing it wrong!
The thing about glyphs and enchanting scrolls is that they have NO sales price to vendors. Therefore, their posting cost to the Auction House is only 1 silver. 12 hours, 24 hours, 48 hours.....only 1 silver. This allows you to post, then cancel and re-post any time you get undercut by a competitor, at a very minimal cost to you. Compare that to Blacksmithing, where the vendor price of the armor and weapons you make are so high that the deposit cost at the AH, even for 12 hours, is still over 1-2 gold apiece. Contrast that to 4 gold TOTAL for posting 400 glyphs, and you'll start to realize that the margins are higher, and the overhead costs are a lot more lenient than the other crafting professions (not including enchanting).






Like the Industrial Revolutions effects on industry, so too is the effects of addons and macros on crafting and making gold in WoW. Even having a macro that does "/Cast milling /use Stormvine /use Whiptail..../use etc" can save you a lot of time, just by not having to click on each stack that you want to mill, as long as they're in stacks of at least 5. If the macro follows its script, and encounters a stack of less than 5 herbs, it won't allow you to mill, even though there are full stacks of a herb further down the macro list.

But, I digress. The macros will only save you time, the addon(s) will make you money. The two main ones I use are TSM and Auctionator. Edit - I also remember I use Millhelp and Millhelp_Glyphs, which I guess is included in Millhelp. If you look at the first image, you can see it displaying the inks/pigments needed to make the glyph, which is very useful.

TSM (TradeSkillMaster) is probably under-utilized by me, as I only use it for posting and cancelling auctions, not the crafting queues that Mysscia has told me about. But.....for posting and cancelling, it's unrivaled. Set up your groups of items, with posting time, undercut amount, minimum price you'll sell at, and maximum posting amount (for when nobody else is in that market, heh!).

Auctionator is the addon I use for storing my search lists. It searches for what you have specified, then displays them in descending order of price per 1 unit, whether it's a single or full stack. The great part of this is the ability to quickly buy out auctions, without the annoying confirmation that you'd have with the standard Blizzard UI. The drawback is that it doesn't show the bid amount, only the buyout. Also, it doesn't show the time left, which could save you gold if you saw the item only had a short time left. Cancelling and re-posting with Auctionator....I wouldn't. The anonymity of Auctionator doesn't let you know who you're going against in that particular market, which can be verrrry important.

Dealing with Competition
There are a few types of competitors.
1) Power-levelers.
These people are leveling inscription to get to the max level, primarily with trainer taught recipes. If you decide to sell trainer taught glyphs, these are the guys that will mess you up. If you post glyphs in an open market at 250 gold each, these guys will come along and post at 10 gold each, even though the mats cost more than that.
2)"Happy, freinly peoples" - as Gevlon would say.
These people want to supply glyphs at a cost only slightly high than the material cost. They'll sell research/book taught glyphs at a much lower price than you would prefer, and mess up glyphs markets for a long time, as the next guy will post lower than them.
3) The One-percenter.
When I first started posting (manually, took me forever to post a hundred glyphs), I hated the people that would undercut me by 1 copper. "It's not fair, they'd post higher if they could." - is how I felt.
But in actuality, these are the scribes you want to be in competition with. With a 1 copper undercut, it would take 1000 undercuts to drop the market price by 1 gold. With the first 2 types, their drastic undercuts affect the market for a long time, until either a scribe buys all the glyphs to reset the market, or people stop posting, leaving the market empty for the next scribe to post at their preferred price point.

One last thing about 1-percenters. They are the ONLY safe bet to buy out when you want to reset the market. Since they're almost chained to using their set discount with using an addon, they will rarely if never undercut by the huge amounts the other classes of scribes do. And that's why I like TSM, since it shows me the other people in the market. If I have to buy out 3 glyphs at 50 gold each from a percenter, to reset the market up to 300 gold, so be it. But I'll be damned at buying 6 glyphs at 35 gold each from powerleveler who did 1 northrend research on his way up to max level, he'll just post again at the same ridiculous price point. Buyout percenters when it's feasible, undercut the noobs, and you'll gain power over a ton of markets.

Shoot, this is turning into a wall of text, but....
Stalking the Competition
Add everyone you see posting in your glyph markets to your friends list. If they do huge undercuts, add a note to that person like "idiot glypher." One-percenters would be "glypher." If you notice them come on when you're posting, do another posting scan to see if you need to undercut them when they're done. Scribes that are serious competition could also be added to your alts friends list, just so you'd know if you might want to jump back and re-post. This is another reason to favor TSM over Auctionator, since the auctions shown in Auctionator are anonymous.

Supplies and Demand
I'm trying to keep around 6-10 of each of the 204 glyphs, so I don't run out, and cause a hole in my bags. This allows me to quickly post when I get on, then run a cancel scan to clean up the remnants of my last post. It's a lot better to get your stuff to the front of the market, rather than cancelling when you first get on, waiting for the 8-10 minutes for your 400+ glyphs (I usually only post 2 of each glyph) to dribble in at 50 items per one minute mail scan, then posting for the first time that day.


Yup, it's a lot of info, but it can pay off.

1 MILLION DOLLARS!!!! I mean, gold.

8/30/2011


It's been a while since my last post. I just haven't really felt like I had anything noteworthy to talk about. However, this happened.....








So, as to the title of the post, yup, I dinged 1 million gold on 8/18, despite paying out a crapload of gold to my guild members in Wraith Flight (lvl 12). As a matter of fact, I'm at about 1,075,000 gold right now, only a few days later.

In contrast, Warshrike on Daggerspine just dinged level 8, and I've gone from about 230k gold there, down to about 125 k. I'm not as vigilant about posting, usually only once every couple of days with glyphs and enchanting scrolls. Plus, my scribe Doomslinger is only level 60, so I haven't gotten to the Northrend Research recipes.

Psychrometrics on Darrowmere is level 3, at 160k gold. I'm usually burnt out after doing Horde stuff on Demon Soul, so unless the fishing or cooking daily is something I need for their respective achievements, I don't bother.

BTW, there are several members in all three guilds at between 6 to 12 million guild xp. At my ratio of 1 gold per 1k guild xp, that's between 6 to 12 thousand gold that I've paid to each of those members (excluding Mysscia, who has adamantly refused payment).

So, now what? What would YOU do with a million gold? My main Bloodshrike is a 525 alchemist and 525 Archaeologist, and after a mind-melting 40 hours of digging up fragments, he haz the Sandstone Drake recipe. I already made one for myself, and am saving it for my 100th mount, since I'm currently at 98.

Buying weapons/armor? Since my warrior Bullkathos is level 85 with 525 Blacksmithing, why would I pay for weapons when I can make them myself if I stop being a lazy altoholic and actually run dungeons for Chaos Orbs?

I already buy all my non-mage alts the Dalaran Teleport rings when they ding level 80, but since Burizadokyan just got to 80, I only have 3 more alts on Demon Soul to get it for. I don't buy the rings for the achievement, I get them for the ability of traveling back to Dalaran, then to Orgrimmar, while allowing me to set my hearth someplace else.

I could buy them all the Mammoth vendor mount, for the ease of selling and repair when running dungeons back to back. However, the Guild Page is a pretty cheap pet AND vendor at 300 gold, AND you can summon them inside dungeons if needed.

Seriously, I am looking for opinions on what you would do with the gold. Give huge chunks of it away to low levels? Make up contests in your guild with cash prizes? Offer a prize in Trade Chat to the person with the highest total engineering recipes learned for their level range? (I've already done something similar to that when cleaning out AH alts on other servers).

Midsummer Fire Festival 2011

6-22-11

Wowinsider has a great write-up on the achievement, so I'm not gonna add much to it.

All I have to add is that it's wayyyy easier to do the daily torch juggling in Thunder Bluff for Horde, and either Exodar or Ironforge for Alliance. My computer is decent, and I've done the juggling daily at least 100 times, but a tiny bit of lag in Orgrimmar will mess you up big time. Not to mention, Thunder Bluff has a smaller area in which to juggle, so you usually have high arcs, not wimpy 30 degree arcs like in Org. The contrast between the torch shadow and ground is also superior in those cities too, Orgrimmar and Stormwind will have you lose sight of the shadow sometimes.

I figure it's also a good time to contrast my progress (or lack thereof) in a full year, since I had a checkpoint of it last year too.

Then (2010) and Now (2011)

Demon Soul
Bloodshrike - 80 now 85
Bullkathos - 73 now 85
Thrillkiller -68 now 85
Bonescourge - 53 now 73
Banesidhe - 73 now 85
Kukoshakaku - 51 now 66
Clockwrknyt - 58 now 85
Burizadokyan- 41 now 67
Morticide - 34 now 61
Pallormortis -80 now 85

Daggerspine
Clockwrkmage -60 now 74
Preyonyou - 37 now 55
Tsuris - 52 now 64
Aosdanasaoi - 50 now 63
Hangfire - 42 now 60
Panzergishi - 49 now 63
Kishigishi - 50 now 63
Ryoushigishi -52 now 63
Gwiddonyn - 46 now 62
Doomslinger - 39 now 55

Darrowmere
Bloodshrike - 49 now 67
Clockwrkmage -31 now 57
Psilentkill - 37 now 51
Didactylos - 27 now 42
Gavelofpain - 29 now 45
Wartraveler - 28 now 44
Misericorde - 30 now 45
Ghostflame - 25 now 43
Gimmershred - 29 now 43
Annihilus - 26 now 42

Hide yo wife, hide yo kids, they robbin' everybody out here!

Blaaargh.......that's how I feel. I don't check the log on my guild tabs that often, because only the officers (me) and GM (me again) have access to the guild bank. Or so I thought. Apparently, over the past week, 2 members of the guild took advantage of a glitch that must have happened. I know I double and triple-checked access for each rank on the guild tabs before I first started inviting people into the guild, but I just found out that Veteran rank had access to all tabs, and were able to withdraw 2 stacks a day. Dasoidon and Demolisher exploited that to the fullest, taking out whatever they pleased. The gold cost of it all doesn't worry me that much, it's the availability of the quest items that is fucking annoying.

I scanned the AH for a long period of time for deals on some of those items, especially the Arcane Tomes, and for someone to just blatantly take them ALL? There's no excuse for it. You'd only need about 60 of them to go from neutral to exalted, I believe, so they just took them to sell.

I can't explain what happened. I know I AM a forgetful person, so I cope by checking and re-checking things that are important to me. I can't believe I would do something so stupid as to leave one rank with open access. Besides, as I recall, I think you'd have to actively enable that, and I know I didn't do that. All I can think is that they either found out a hack to get in, or there was a glitch in one of the patches that enabled that rank to have guild access.

Demolisher had earned over 1.75 million guild xp, and had been paid 1,750 gold for doing that. Dasoidon had earned 250 k guild xp, and had been paid 250 gold for that. Not only that, but since Dasoidon had invited Demolisher into the guild, another little bonus I offer is that if you recruit someone, and they get 1 million gxp, you get a 500 gold bonus. Dasoidon had been paid that.

I just feel betrayed, and angry. It's like inviting neighborhood kids to your house to do work for you, paying them triple what they would normally get, and then you find out that they stole your coin collection to go buy some Mountain Dew. They have no idea what you went through to get it, what it's even worth, they only know that it will get them a little bit of satisfaction.

UPDATE: I talked to Demolisher in-game about it, and he said he was planning on surprising us by putting epic items back into the guild bank, since he had used the items he got out to level his Blacksmithing. I've never asked for ANYTHING from guild members though. You keep your items, and I keep mine, and everyones's happy.
In retrospect, I see he took out stuff that he could use for his profession, but like Mysscia said, he should have known to ask before taking out the truesilver bars and tons of volatiles. I wish him luck in his next guild, and am sorry that this episode happened.

I GOT MY STUFF BACK!!!















As for Dasoidon, in my mind, there's no excuse for what he did.