Eeyan rep plan

Just a quick note as I never planned out Eeyan's level 80 dungeon reps - here are the priroties and why -

Ebon Hold - revered - head enchant
Argent Crusade - honored - cloak
Kirin Tor - revered - pants
Wyrmrest - exalted - wrist
Argent Crusade - exalted - boots

...don't care about Kalu'ak or Warsong Offensive other than to be completionist along with getting the rest to Exalted and Sons of Hodir are already Honored.

I don't really see getting Eeyan into a pug until he at least has the cloak, his gear is simply too horrible.

guild progression

Wowjutsu seems to be dead, it hasn't updated in a few weeks and has no Ulduar, nore messages posted that anything is happening to rectify.

Wowprogress seems more on top of it. They are tracking both achievement rankings and progress by Ulduar encounter.

Deterrence FTW

DraNgNon and I managed to get home from work early tonight. Early enough to make the 7:30 raid. This is good because it's important to make a good impression. And showing up for a raid you signed up for is rather important, on your first day in the new guild.

Anyway, the short version is that Deterrence is a pretty kickass guild. It was their first official 25man run and we pretty much kicked butt.

First to die was Malygos. I'm rather glad we killed him first. It took us four tries to get coordinated enough to kill him. And about 5 people in the raid got the 25man achievement for killing him, including Kuan and Viljo.



After Maly was dead we headed over to Ulduar. The first boss, Flame Leviathan, is so very hectic and confusing. But we were both seige engine gunners so we just pounded away at the boss. It was actually quite strange not to have to worry about moving or anything like that. I just plinked away at the boss. And when I say plinked I mean fired boulders at. :D

Then we killed XT-002 and Kologarn. XT2 took us 2 tries since the tank died right off the bat on our first attempt. But the 2nd attempt went not smoothly, but well. Kologarn was actually pretty easy. It was our guilds first attempt on him on 25man, but we one-shotted it. :D Next raid, on Saturday, will see the harder bosses of Ulduar25 attempted.



So the move to Deterrence was definitely a good one. I'm quite pleased with them so far. It's been fun and I like their attitude about raiding. The officers are so old school: there is no looting allowed at all until everyone is resed. And they are good about making sure that everyone has food/flask and other buffs. I really like that people show up repaired, supplied, and on time.

I still need to talk to Swaye, the mage go-GL, about Viljo's spec and gear. I'm not too worried about it. He seems like a pretty decent guy and I'm sure he will have good pointers for me.

Random Achievements

Over the past week or so Viljo hasn't done a whole lot. He gave the /love to the last few critters he needed for All the squirrels I've loved before and All the squirrels who shared my life. Parrot and Lava crab, respectively.

The other achievement that I tried to get was Sarth +3 drakes. Kuan and Viljo were randomly asked to go to a 10man zerg attempt of Sarth +3. I was actually quite surprised that they thought Viljo's gear good enough for that. The dps reqs are very high. But apparently Hellshot suggested both Kuan and Viljo. I'll have to remember do do something nice for him.

Anyway, Sarth +3 was a wipefest, though we did make decent progress. About half the time we could get Sarth down to about 30% or lower before adds or the warlock pulling aggro wiped us. It was actually pretty impressive. But we were just missing some coordination.

new guild, again...

Kuanchichi and Viljo were accepted into Deterrence this evening.

playing a rogue is like writing perl

A friend of mine said recently that she hated programming in Perl, becuase pretty much any random ASCII string was valid Perl. I replied that someone who actually wrote good Perl would produce organized, readable code...

I was musing on how someone could roll a rogue and pretty much randomly hit the abilities in their hot keys and still do decent damage, and then it occurred to me that I was reminded of my friend's observation on Perl.

So: playing a rogue is like writing Perl. Pretty much any random set of keystrokes will do, but to be good you have to be a bit organized in what you type.

the undead and the taunka

So I am working a lot this weekend. That has interfered with my plans for both real like and Wow, as I really was hoping to have Aurochh to 50, finally, and sell boatloads of scroll with enchants over the 3day weekend.

Ah well, I am instead cleaning the backlog of screenshots that have cluttered up my desktop space. It's served to remind me how damned slow we have been about leveling our alts, OMG!!! But I just realized I've caught some of the weird discrepancy that comes from being a Forsaken dealing with the Northrend natives, the uncorrupted Vyrkul and the Taunka especially, but also the trolls...

They really just do not like the undead. Especially considering that Death Knights add an undead dimension to every race, I really think Blizzard should have spent the extra few person days to fix this sort of quest text...



This shot was from last Christmas. Now obviously from recent entries in this blog, I've been playing Eeyan more, lately, so I've been seeing it more lately, and haven't thought to take screencaps of it. But I do know that with the Blood Elves in Outland, they did actually bother to take the time to spell out different quest text, and I bet they did with the Dranei too. They should have done it for Forsaken in Northrend too.

80! redux

Eeyan and Teltanara hit 80 Thursday night doing quests out of the Grommarsh Crash Site. Telt hit it first, but I saw Eeyan had several quest turn ins to go. The quests were about 20K xp each, so when he had 3 turnins and about 49K xp to go, I thought I had it nailed.

I got to the last quest, which was talk to the shaman at the quest hub about Brann Bronzebeard's communicator and trying to speak to a dwarf, and lined everything up to get like a spiffy screenshot. And - fizzle. The quest was only worth 2200 xp!!! Bah.

The shaman sent us to go kill air eles. I glanced at the map to see that right next to it was a blank spot! I thought, o wow, I can fly over there and hit 80 on discovery and get this great screenshot of Eeyan hitting 80 in the air.

So we flew over there. Eeyan hit 80 in the air. Unfortunately, he also hit the side of a mountain. The screenshot... it's his translucent left foot. I hardly ever throw them out, but I'd throw this one out, if it weren't for the ding.



why do I always wreck the screenshots when it's something exciting

Halls of Lightning

Wednesday night two days ago Eeyan and Teltanara were far enough along the Sons of Hodir/Thorim quest chain to need a Halls of Lightning run. So I popped us into a LFG and tried to find a tank and 2 more dps. While we waited for the group to form up we did the first few Argent Tournament quests.

Eventually we got together a group that, in addition to Eeyan and Telt, had an 80 pally tank, a 77 death knight, and a 77 rogue. The run wasn't too bad. Telt needs more mana regen, and it was actually quite hard to keep the 77s alive. I learned later that was because the dk kept putting death and decay down in front of the pally's consecrate and kept getting aggro.

Screenshot or It Didn't Happen

We hopped into a Naxx25 pug tonight even though I'm not supposed to be raiding this week. I figure if work calls/pages me, I can bail on a pug.

Anyhow the raid wanted to do the hard part first and so Patchwerk it was. He dropped [Totem of Hex], yay! That piece of gear was all it took for Kuan to get the Superior achievement. And it drove his DPS up by a lot - he now has +165 on something he casts at least every 2 seconds instead of +110 on something he casts at most every 8.

Not that Kuan needs it anymore. He did roughly 4160dps against Patch.

No really. 4160dps. I credit Event Horizon, which is above the partly list in my UI.



It's unfortunate that the raid did not continue so well. They decided that on Gluth it should be mages kiting, and Kuan putting the Earthbind totem. But Kuan's totem now roots, so it was hard for the mages to gather the Zombie Chow together, and we would wipe. Once they had plate weared with threat talents kiting, all was well.

After that it was several tries per boss, and it dragged on and on and got called after only clearing 3 quarters. Maybe we'll finish it tomorrow.

BS!

Last night we decided to take Eeyan and Teltanara over to Scholazar to finish the Nesingwary quests. Damn Nesingwary is an asshole. Anyhow we toodled around, doing quests and mining mining mining.

Then I decided I had enough Eternals banked to get Eeyan up to 420 BS making [Eternal Belt Buckle]s. Clara didn't understand why that was so important, until she looked at my screen when the training-sound kept going, and going, and going...



Surely, I thought, out of all of that was something with lower mats that I could use to get him to 425. And there was: [Titanium Shield Spike].



Eeyan gave Telt a belt buckle for her patience.

I guess he needs to do a buncha dailies, now.

Fubar

I saw this in the change log.

Tagging as v3.6
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r22 | ckknight | 2009-04-17 16:04:30 +0000 (Fri, 17 Apr 2009) | 1 line
Changed paths:
M /trunk/.pkgmeta
M /trunk/FuBar.toc
D /trunk/LICENSE.txt

Does ckknight really think he can legally un-GPL Fubar?

Culling of Stratholme

Last night, after we were done with city raiding we swapped to Eeyan and Telt. They bopped around doing a few quests for the death knights of the Shadow Vault. Then we managed to find a group to run Culling of Stratholme. It went pretty well. Telt needs to have better mana regen but we went through the instance and she was the only one who died. (Bad pull, tank didn't pick up everything quick enough.) But considering all the chain pulling her mana regen didn't actually do too badly.

Sadly no upgrades for either Eeyan or Telt dropped but the quest reward from Chromie was pretty nice. And of course they were both wearing the correct tabards so there was nice rep all around.

Capital City Raiding

Last night Kuan and Viljo went with a full 40 man raid to kill the Alliance Leaders. We were partially successful. Varian, Tyrande, and Velen all died quite easily. However when we went back to go after Magni Bronzebeard we ran into opposition. It's rather annoying how it really doesn't take all that many defenders to knock out a 40 man raid, especially when the leader is whaling away at you all. :( We waited around a bunch but the Alliance did too. :( Ah well, another day.

sidecar

Our guildleader has a chopper with a side car.

Today in a Capital City raid I had occasion to be behind him. I noticed it had a license plate!

PWN

Reputations and Chaos Theory

Since Eeyan is big enough to run the endgame 5mans, and big enough to pick up the normal dungeon dailies, I decided he should be wearing a faction tabard. The one to go with for DPS melee is Ebon Hold so last night it was time to secure enough reputation to get the tabard.

The first order of business was to get to Ogrim's Hammer. After talking to the orc on Krasus' Landing in Dalaran they kindly sent Eeyan directly there in a mechanical flyer. Well, almost directly. Anyhow, Eeyan likes mechanical flyers. He hasn't forgotten he started out as an engineer.



Once there, Koltira sent him down to secure the Shadow Vault. It took longer than we would expect, as Teltanara came along, and so Eeyan was stealthing about picking pockets so she could get her own copy of Forbidden Love. But, we secured the Shadow Vault, Eeyan got his tabard, and Telt got her novel.

While this was happening a prot pally guildie was all "does anyone want to run something?" "why does nobody want to do anything?" "do you want to run vault or something?" I said "mebbe" to that last and he got all insistent, "yes or no," which I was disinclined to answer and which made me think he was young. But he did get heals and another DPS for Heroic Nexus so we decided we'd bring Kuan and Viljo.

We logged over, I cleared some bag slots for Kuan, and started flying to Coldarra. While in the air, he said "brb" and logged. We got there, and still no tank. 10 minutes later we replaced him and ran the instance.

The new tank was also a prot pally. He was pretty fun. He wanted to try Chaos Theory and since 4 of us didn't have it we were game. I'm an idiot for not screenshotting it. But we basically cleared all around Anomalus before starting and kited him all over the place. Good thing he's not leashed at all. There were so many rifts shooting lighting at us from everywhere it is certainly an aptly named achievement. But we did it... the druid healer really had his act together, nobody died and I only cast two heals during the entire thing.

Afterwards our tank wanted to run Utgarde Pinnacle. It was late, but sure. Our third DPS was a mage and he dropped out to deal with dailies and we replaced him with a ret pally. That was a very smooth run - Kuan took 0 gear damage - and even Skadi was dealt with - with two pallies that wasn't much of a problem. Somewhere in there Viljo got Winds of the North.

O yah. Our pally guildie who wanted to run something? Never did log back in. Sorta embarrassing, we'll remember that next time he's all "Why doesn't anyone want to run something?"

Anyhow, after all that, Kuan will hit Exalted with Kirin Tor today sometime. That's the last dungeon rep for him. I suppose it's appropriate that now Eeyan has to wear a faction tabard.

Patron

I am pleased to report that Clara and I have met pretty much all our goals for Children's Week! The hardest were left til the last minute last night: Getting Patron title on Kuanchichi and Viljo, and getting the entire set of Shattrath children's quests done on poor level-61 Tylara and Kairon.

We decided the title on Kuan and Viljo was more important, and set about to assault some towers in Alterac Valley. It appears that since the 3.1 patch, AV tactics have drastically changed! Instead of a race to the rather difficult-to-kill Van, we are now trying to outlast the other side, resource-wise. In otherwords, everyone after the towers and a massive brute-force battle. This makes me happy as I really love that.

Our particular battle went as long as these things can, and was mostly fought at Frostwolf. Of course given these conditions getting the tower assault in for the Children's Week PvP achievement was trivial. But the drawn-out brute force battle meant Kuan finally got Damage Control, ending the battle with something like 660k damage and 180k healing. We ended up losing the battle by running out of resources when Alliance still had 25 left. Viljo did more than a million damage, too.

Then, it was time for Warsong Gulch. Clara hates Warsong Gulch. But there it was, and we needed to recap a flag. So Kuan and Viljo got to go on D. Now Kuan has Storm Earth and Fire and I was pretty interested in trying its new root-capability out when on D. So I hid (sort of) and waited. And was too slow on the uptake and we got totally pwned 3-0 in the first try.

We had time for one more try and decided we'd do it again. This was a better group: 4 shamans and 2 druids. I hid again sort of and waited. Their priest would come, sheild, grab the flag. I'd root, run in front as Viljo did the arcane missiles of doom, and then I'd Thunderstorm the carrier back into our room. They dropped the flag and Boom! Patron Kuanchichi. Boom! Druid flag cap. Lather, rinse, repeat, Patron Viljo; lather, rinse, repeat, we won, 3-0.

...Clara doesn't hate Warsong quite as much anymore.

But then, it was 11:38pm. And Tylara and Kairon needed to visit Throne of the Elements with their Orphan! We logged over, had them eat, and it was Race of the Epic mounts across northern Nagrand. Wheee, we made it! Ran to Garadar, portal to Silvermoon, hearth, then portal to Orgrimmar and the long flight to Caverns of Time. We watched it turn midnight whilst in flight. O noes, will we still be able to complete the quests? Down to visit the dragon we went, and then it was tiem to turn in! And our hearths were of course still down.

Viljo to the rescue? Clara killed her game, then logged in Viljo and I added him to our group. He gave us a port to Shatt, and then she killed her game again and Kairon, who was still in the same party, coudl use the portal! And even though we were 10 minutes late, we still got to turn in and Tylara now has Peanut.

After that, we visited the orphanage. It's so cute! There are all little babies there in swaddling clothes. A couple gnome babies and trolls, a Tauren and a night elf. Funny, there aren't any undead ones.

A Steamy Romance Novel

Most of my characters keep a few things with sentimental value in the bank. In addition to the pieces of armor from older dungeons, this includes a few books. Viljo keeps the copy of The Horde's Hellscream that he received after his first Harvest Festival. Teltanara has a copy of Lament of the Highborne that she received after she heard Sylvanus's song.

When Teltanara was a much younger elf her friend Eeyan gave her a book. Who knows where he pickpocketed it from, but he thought that Telt would enjoy it. Since then Telt has kept A Steamy Romance Novel in her bank. She occasionally pulls it out to reread, but usually she just keeps it in her bank.

I have now discovered that there are 2 more romance novels: A Steamy Romance Novel: Forbidden Love and A Steamy Romance Novel: Northern Exposure. Telt really needs to have these.

And now for your reading pleasure I reproduce the text of all three Steamy Romance Novels. Copied from Wowhead and the novel in my own bags.

***********************************************
A Steamy Romance Novel

(Page 1)
As Nahni glided up, the grizzled warrior gave her a hard stare, "I suppose you're here to collect the reward for killing those murlocs?"

Her eyes wandered down to the glowing broadsword at his side. "That depends on what the reward is, Marcus." She twirled her hair playfully, pretending not to notice how he shifted uncomfortably in her presence "I may not want it."

(page 2)
Marcus stepped toward her, bristling with a mix of fear and anger, "The reward is not negotiable!" He paused for a moment while gathering his nerve, and pressed himself against her diminutive form. Their lips met hotly, melting her frost armor spell in a torrent of sweltering vapor.

"So, is there another step to this quest?" she teased, her eyes glittering with excitement.

<This goes on for several hundred more pages, without advancing the plot.>

***********************************************
A Steamy Romance Novel: Forbidden Love

(Page 1)
Ah'tush crept silently through the massive underground tunnel, nervously looking over her shoulder in anticipation of the fast moving tram. "Where is he..." she muttered angrily, stopping suddenly as something moved behind her. Her eyes narrowed dangerously as her dagger slid from its sheath.

A husky voice echoed in the hollow chamber, "I thought rogues liked to be behind their target." She spun quickly, driving her blade into a shield of impenetrable force. "And I thought paladins were supposed to be chaste." She replied with a confident smirk.

(Page 2)
Leaning forward she counted out loud until the invisible bubble dissipated with an audible pop. "Tweleve seconds? I know know you have abilities that last longer than that."

Bony finger worked effortlessly beneath his armor, unlatching his breastplate and exposing him to the cold air, "don't worry my sweet Marcus, that's not a finishing move tonight...I'm just getting started." He wrapped his arms around what remained of her waist, forcing an excited giggle as he nibbled at her neck vertebrae.

<The rest of the book has several sections that are apparently worn out from repeated readings>

***********************************************
A Steamy Romance Novel: Northern Exposure

The tiny gnome peered over the railing into the secluded Dalaran courtyard.
"The view from the balcony is amazing, you have to come see!"
Armor legplates creaked as Marcus walked over, taking in a deep breath as he absently scratched his scruffy chin.
"The Hero's Welcome is no slouch. And there's something in the room that might interest you."
Tavi bounded into the room, pausing only a moment before jumping on the massive bed. She turned to gaze at Marcus with her huge saucer-like eyes, narrowing them playfully and replacing her glowing smile with a diabolical grin.

"Interested in some company?" She purred as her hands weaved through a complex summoning ritual, stopping only when she felt the warmth of a new presence behind her.
All color drained from Marcus' face as he struggled to protest. "I... I don't think that's appropriate."
Confused, Tavi turned to see what was wrong. A hideous fel hound stood ready, drooling onto the floor as it stared intently at the half-armored paladin.
"No! No, that's not what I meant." She stammered as she dispelled the hungry demon. "I'm sorry, that's not really my specialization."

Marcus took both her hands in one of his and he reassured her. "It's fine. What is your specialization?"
Her head snapped up, eyes burning with renewed life as shadow energy channeled through her hands into Marcus, dropping him to his knees in agony.
"Affliction, actually."

<The remaining pages have a level 99 requirement to read.>
***********************************************

As you can see Marcus the Paladin gets around a lot...

Things I have learned today

When you play a melee class and you hit things with your weapons, the weapons lose durability! I hadn't ever realize this, having always played casters.

That is all.

Children's Week has started!

We were in Heroic Halls of Lightning when midnight, 1 May, struck. 5 minutes later guildies started dinging with Children's Week achievments. Ah well, we were in HoL.

Our 5man had wanted to run multiple heroics, so after we got out of HoL we all picked up an Orcish Orphan from Orgrimmar and then headed back into Utgarde Pinnacle to get the Hail to the king, Baby achievement.

Clara and I decided we will get whatever we can for Children's Week on all four pairs of toons, and since today was rainy weather we sank quite a bit of time into advancing that goal. I think we will get all the quests except on Tylara and Kairon. I am not so sure about the PvP achievement, those will probably just be Kuan and Viljo.

But - much to guildie annoyance - Kuan and Viljo did both get the Veteran Nanny achievement. :-)

Speaking of Kuan, I'm really doing the quests in order to push the counter closer to the 3000-quest Seeker title. As a side effect, the Children's Week all-Horde rep rewards have pushed him into Revered with Silvermoon City. Pretty amazing considering how much I tend to avoid BE quests with him. But since he's Exalted with the rest of Horde, all the other quests that reward Horde rep (i.e. the Argent Tournament stuff, which deserves its own post) are starting to build up his BE rep as well.

Rabbit!!

Rabbit!! Yay I got the rabbit!! I gathered 100 of those stupid chocolates. And now I can turn things into a rabbit!! Wheee!