Monthly Archives: November 2012
Goodnight Terokk
I’ve spent the last couple of evenings somewhat brain-dead, for reasons related mostly to other people being on vacation. My WoW time has, therefore, been limited to easy, grindy things. In particular, hunting Terokk and his minions. I should have known that tonight was going to be serendipitous when I managed to pull off one of those annoying “do this weird thing really fast” achievements.
The trick is to find your next target while your bombs are on cooldown.
Thanks to CRZ (have I mentioned that “crazy” is an unfortunately fitting pronunciation of that acronym?) I didn’t have the area all to myself. In fact, at one point, I counted 6 different level 90 players all fighting for the same mobs. This meant that I didn’t even try for a Terokk spawn. I simply went about killing his enemies and his minions. Thanks to the 8th anniversary buff, I estimate that I cut my grinding by a few hundred mobs over the past few days (give or take, due to quest turn ins). 8% may not seem like much, but when you need it, it’s very worthwhile. Anyway, it became pretty apparent after about 20 minutes of the grind this evening that I was going to finish. That excited me a great deal, and sure enough, about an hour later, I was rewarded with not one, but two achievements related to reputations:
No smack talk about my rep grinds.
With those in hand, I headed for the quartermaster to get rid of junk and buy the mounts and pet. No, I never did get around to doing this grind previously. I had other things to do, like getting talbuks. along with my Nether Rays came another achievement…
I don’t suspect I can ride this instead, sir?
Real Life Fun and a pause in the Laid Back Dungeons
Yesterday, we closed on our condo. While this is absolutely exciting news, it means that the next few weeks (in between holidays) are going to be very up in the air, and full of things not related to WoW.
Because of this, I’m putting a hold on my organized play time; so there won’t be any LBDs or Dwarven Dungeon Crawls until after the new year.
This doesn’t mean that I won’t be playing WoW, nor that I won’t be able to come and hang out with you lovely people – just that I need to have more flexibility than I currently have.
The Light, the Dark, and Lady Vashj
Laid Back
Laid Back Dungeons ended up being a laid back raid instead last week. I wasn’t in the mood for current content; and am looking for only a few more pieces for my sword set for Gurdrid. Since she’s carrying a sword right now, it seems to be a good one to work on.
So Tyledres and Gurdrid stormed Serpentshrine Cavern. Hydross went down with almost no sploosh. The Lurker Below was dead fish pretty easily. Leotheras the Blind became Leotheras the dead. And then there was Fathom-Lord Karathas. Who killed Gurdrid, but not Tyledres. Much like the last time I was in SSC, where the raid killed him, but the tank died. After the Fathom-Lord, Morogrim Tidewalker was a walk in the pond. I don’t think we really needed to clear out his murloc minions first.
We were then at Lady Vashj, who has an annoying mechanic in phase two, where you have to pick things up off of mobs that have to be killed really fast. But we were one-shotting mobs, shouldn’t be a problem, right? Until the fear-masters (Coilfang Striders) came along and feared us all over the place. We attempted twice, the second time trying to ignore one side of the room so that we could get to the tainted cores faster; to no avail. Lady Vashj may have won, but next time I’m bringing a shadow priest with me.
Site Update
I think the site update is pretty well completed. Widgets are in, and I’m pretty happy. I have a page to write for the guild; but otherwise, I’m pretty satisfied with my new look. The blog name got shortened because of spacing issues. Now that little grey bar makes so much more sense. Also, the subtitle is more readable.
I’ll be trying to continue to work on my blogroll. I added both the Amateur and the Godmother to the page this evening.
I know I haven’t been the best at blogging recently; this is due in varying degrees to the site redesign; being at once too busy and not busy enough at work (it’s odd, I know); and an utter and complete adoration of Mists of Pandaria – so much so that I want to be playing, not writing. Also, there’s laziness and procrastination.
American Politics and a Site Update
Yesterday Americans went to the polls to vote for their leaders, including the president. If you’ll pardon the RL stuff for a moment, I just have to talk to someone, and we’re not allowed at work.
In Minnesota, where I live, there was a consititutional amendment initiative to ban same sex marriage. We became the first state in the nation to oppose such a ballot initiative. Democrats also swept through and took many state offices. Sadly (to me) Michelle Bachman is still in office. I couldn’t vote againt her, I don’t live in her district.
Edit: Also, as a nice segue into more WoW related news, a Maine Senatorial candidate; whom the GOP tried to slander by saying she plays WoW; won her seat! There is one of us publicly in office! Whoot! (Though she plays Horde, as I recall).
In WoW blogging news, I’m in the process of updating my site. If you haven’t been by recently, you might want to take a look. I think it looks brighter, and if you can’t guess where the background picture was taken, I suspect you’re new to the game. I’m still in the process of converting a few things, like widgets, but if you have any suggestions or comments, feel free to add them here. I’ll take them into consideration as I continue the update process.
An Excuse to Post Pictures
I do, honestly, take screen shots. Not very many, but still some. And IntPiPoMo seems as good an excuse as any to post them all! Not to mention, it might get me back into the swing of some regular posting.
I’m going to count yesterday’s two screenshots as my first two, since today is the second, and well, y’know how it goes… surely that’s a sign I ought to have done so yesterday, even though I didn’t know about it until today.
Here’s a shot I took when Sona and Shoryl were hanging out in Halfhill. Apparently, Shoryl’s black lamb is afraid of Nuts. (Do you blame him?)
Friends, Dungeons, and Drakes (oh my!)
Last night’s LBD started with three of us: Tyledres, Magik and myself. Since finishing off the Occulus for me, Tyledres and I have been making regular trips to Violet Hold, and never managed to see Hydross. This time, however, we were rewarded with the boss at the first opportunity. Quite exciting! We’d decided beforehand that Magik was going to handle the crystals, since he’s a caster and all. We kibitzed a bit about when to hit them, and decided on right after Hydross splits. Magik was pretty nervous he was going to stuff it up, as the Frostwolves would say; but he didn’t, and Gurdrid got Dehydration, and her protodrake.
Gurdrid’s a Hero!
When we were done, Flagsworth joined us. I could tease Magik and say that he brought his buddy along so he wouldn’t feel like we were hunting down more achievements just for him, or maybe it was just a guildie having fun, inviting his friend along. (At this point, I need to mention that it’s all JD’s fault I know these guys.)
We headed next to Gundrak to attempt to get Less-Rabi for both Magik and Flags. Having failed it the last time Magik was along for an LBD, we wanted to make sure we got it right, so we handed out interrupt assignments. I mentioned that I was going to open with a 3-second silence. I think he was dead in two. At most 4. Anyway, 3 90s and an 89 make short work of that one. Flagsworth mentioned in passing it was too bad we only had four, because he needed Share the Love; but Jelexie was on, and said she’d come to help with that one. So we summoned her when we got to Gal’Darah. And I went and stood on him. We were terrified, since this is such a random achievement, that even white damaging at 90 would cause a miss; so no one did any damage until Jelexie finally got impaled (tip: if the tank doesn’t start tanking until after they get impaled, it goes a lot faster.) I started to just taunt him as soon as I got impaled.
As Jelexie headed out, Magik thanked her, calling her “Jex”. Which she likes, so is therefore her new nickname. 🙂
After that one, we headed to Halls of Stone to pick up Abuse the Ooze – again for both Flagsworth and Magik. Strategy was explained, and implemented with perfection. Someone also picked up Brann Spanking New while we were in the Halls… I thought it was Flagsworth, but apparently not (according to the Armory). Sjonnir also dropped his belt for one of my sets.
Magik only had one achievement left, so we headed to Utgarde Pinnacle for a try at The Incredible Hulk. We were a little more nervous about this one, but once again, taunt tanking won the day. We also put a shot in on Skadi, to see if we could get the mount to drop, but alas, we didn’t.
Fancy Drakes
And here’s the four of us: Tyledres and Flagsworth in the back on their Violet Protodrakes, and Magik and me in front on our new Red Protodrakes.
That’s not all for Wrath, though. Should anyone come along who’s still looking to pick up their protodrake, we’ll head back out. If everyone has one, though, we’ll start in on Cataclysm dungeons. So far we’re not quite well geared enough to take on the heroics, but I’m sure with some time, and some upgrades, we’ll get there. (We could totally do it with a healer. Just sayin’.)
Tiny WoW Guild 
