The One Where My Toes Are Cold

Like everyone else I know, I’m loving this expansion. Also like everyone else I know, I’m addicted to my garrison. I want to do crystal dailies and heroics every day, but with all the garrison chores and missions and alts that need garrisons, I haven’t done them as regularly as I should have. But I haven’t ignored them completely either and I do have my ilvl up to a decent 623. Partially due to the fact that on Sunday my buddy More invited me and Grace to help him with a garrison invasion and not only did we get “Silver Defender” (yes, the screenshot shows Bronze but we got both) but I somehow got an epic 645 staff in my loot. Amazing. I’ve still got quite a few pieces around the 605 – 610 ish range, such as bracers and belt and chest which need to be upgraded. And that’s a bummer because what I’d really like to upgrade are my boots. They’re ilvl 630 which is okay for now but damn my toes are cold and I’m afraid they may not be too protected. Also, my new pet Nightshade Sproutling is freaking adorable.

The One Where I Finally Killed The Bastard

Whew. So happy this OCD chapter of my life is done. The elusive Ironfur Steelhorn is finally dead. No more slot machine fucking yaks. Now, I can get back to circling the valley for herbs and ore. Ooooh, or maybe finally login to the Beta. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do.

 

The One With The Crappy Screenshot

Aside

Absence may make the heart grow fonder, but it also makes a screenshot addict very rusty when it comes to capturing achievements. Yesterday I finally dinged 90 on my Night Elf Monk, making her my 4th level 90 (3rd as a Night Elf). I also got “Terrific Trio” because one of my 90’s is a dirty Horde toon. 😛

Normally I would have taken the time to zoom in the camera and angle it just right so that the minute the achievement popped, I’d have a nice clear screenshot of the moment to share. But I have gotten so out of the habit of blogging that even though I knew the quest turn in would cause me to ding, I didn’t give a single thought about the screenshot. This crappy screenshot you see here is apparently what happens when I stop considering myself a blogger (multi-shot addon automatically captures achievements for me).

Thing is, immediately afterwards I wanted to tweet about the ding and when I dug through the folder to grab the achievement picture it made me sad to realize I hadn’t put any effort into it and didn’t have a great photo to share. I knew I needed to sit down, write a post and remember how much I used to enjoy rambling about every silly little thing that happened in Elfi’s world.

I have not yet used my free boost to 90. My plan is to use it on my Dwarf Shaman once she hits 60 to take advantage of maxxed out professions on her. Currently she’s at 55 & now that the Monk’s journey has been completed, I should have a few hours this week to spend running her through LFD to get her to 60 and boost her. I’ve made a promise to myself to be able to share good screenshots of this when it happens. We’ll see if I can be bothered to follow through.

The One With Odds and Ends

Just some random pics of some random things that I’ve been up to this week. Because of the weather I have been working from home a lot, so of course I set my work laptop next to my pc. Don’t tell my boss. 😛 I obviously am working so I can’t do any questing or dungeons or anything. I’ve just been farming herbs and ore, killing rares I come across, etc. Speaking of rares, I am still not able to kill Eshelon in Townlong Steppes. I start out doing okay and then he casts Rain Dance. I cannot interrupt it for the life of me. As a Balance Druid I have tried Solar Beam (which honestly only seems to interrupt anything about 20% of the time so either it sucks or I’m doing it wrong) which didn’t work and I’ve tried Cyclone which works for 5 or 6 seconds but as soon as it drops he starts his cast again. Makes me rage. I either need some solid advice on how to handle him or just wrangle a friend into going out there with me to stomp him.

Anyway, here’s some of the fun stuff from the past few days.

The Archaeology Update Post: So This Happened

Good news, everyone! Well, good news for me anyway. Approximately 1 hour after posting about archaeology last Friday and talking about what a grind it can be, I got my second canopic jar and it contained the Vial of the Sands recipe. So maybe I don’t really dislike archaeology anymore. Between accomplishing the Sandstone Drake and getting lucky with the Ultramarine Qiraji Battle Tank, I’d say this mostly annoying profession has done me well.

I know some of you love flying around and digging and more power to you. I enjoy fishing even though a lot of people don’t. But for those of you who are still trying to gain some of the arch items and don’t love waiting for a dig in Uldum to spawn, I’d highly recommend just digging in Pandaria like I did and crating artifacts to turn in for Tol Vir crates. The continent you have to fly around is much smaller and while you’re going from digsite to digsite you can still gather current herbs & ore, watch for rares you haven’t killed yet, do some dailies for factions you might need rep with, etc. It’s a great way to work on arch while also staying in current content and doing current things.

Fun Times With Friends

Last month I was thrilled to receive an email from a dear friend who I don’t get to talk to very often these days. It was an email addressed to a group of a us that had all ran together back in the day on various servers, in various guilds & even in other games. She was suggesting we pick a night to plan to hang out together and catch up with each other and just have fun. What an awesome idea. To make things simple, after everyone chipped in some suggestions, it was decided we would do some sort of level 1 gnome race through Azeroth because even those of us who had left WoW for good could roll a new toon for free and participate.

December 14th was chosen as the date and Mumble server information was shared. I was so excited and couldn’t wait for the 14th to get here. I missed hanging out with this group of people and the occasional tweets and random gtalk chats with a few of the members just wasn’t enough. Being able to spend a couple of hours in Mumble would be brilliant. Unfortunately, as the date approached, my company holiday party ended up being that same night. Holiday party starting at 7pm, naked gnome race at 8pm. So I had to split my time a bit between the two and I went to the holiday party from 6:30pm (yeah, first one in the door trying to get my time in) to approx. 08:15 pm and then arrived back home and logged into WoW and Mumble to join the gang at about 8:30ish pm.

I had told them beforehand not to wait on me, so when I finally joined they had gotten their gnomes over to Kalimdor and were racing to the Dire Maul meeting stone. Most of them were in Stonetalon Mountains when I arrived so I ended up rolling a Night Elf real quick to sorta catch up and I headed that way.

Yep, I was the last to arrive at the meeting stone but they didn’t have to wait on me more than 10 -15 minutes or so. There wasn’t a lot of screenshots because there were so many deaths and different routes being taken not a lot of us were grouped up together. Especially me, bringing up the rear. But just talking to these guys in Mumble and laughing together and making fun of each other … it was awesome. It did my heart some good. It was a brilliant idea & I am very grateful I got the chance to participate.

Here’s a screenshot of some of us at the meeting stone. It should be easy to spot the beloved brat who initiated the email and was our fearless leader. Just like the old days. She’s so amazing she just hovers above us all. Lol. Good times. Great friends. Loved it.

Then on Sunday evening I happened to be in the right place at the right time and was invited to join my guildies Supp and Ulla for a little time spent working on specific achievements through Heroic scenarios. They were trying to complete specific ones they were missing & needed a warm body to queue. I have done heroic scenarios maybe only a total of 15 times and most of those were on my Troll, so I just followed along and didn’t worry about trying to complete certain objectives. Of course, when you’ve barely done anything and then you’re in a group doing very specific thing, achievements will happen. Thanks again for the fun times, Supp and Ulla. I really appreciate it.

The One Where I Do Something Classy

I had mentioned at the beginning of the month that I’ve been working on leveling a Night Elf Monk to help my guild earn the Stay Classy achievement. Well last night I finally got to 85. It’s been a really fun project in terms of seeing some new people around helping and being able to run some low level stuff with guildies. But it’s also been personally rewarding for me in ways I’m not even sure I can explain. Truly, I cannot explain it. I keep wanting to say something about proving I can set a goal and stick with it until completion … but that’s not something I have trouble with irl and I already have 3 level 90’s in game. So I’m not sure why this character makes me feel proud of completion. Hmm. Anyway, it was rewarding and I’m very proud of it for many unknown and/or ridiculous reasons.

The monk and I have had quite a journey & I am going to be sad when she hits level 90 and just becomes a profession mule for me. She was way more fun than the DK and I feel like I play the monk better than the DK. Maybe I’ll try to fit in dungeons and scenarios with her once or twice a week. I’m not even through leveling her and I feel like I miss her already. Lol.

But now the achievement is … uh … achieved… as far as my participation is concerned and I won’t be spending the majority of my time on her. I must get back to working on improving Elfi in the hope she may one day be a viable Flex option. So I want to use this space to leave a condensed version of the fun we’ve had together.

I started out so innocently in the forests of Teldrassil:

But I immediately ventured out into the world to offer my assistance & I was a pretty quick learner:

Eventually I got to where I was kicking a lot of ass:

And I can’t even count how many beautiful things I saw along the way:

I made sacrifices when necessary & stayed where I was needed:

I elbowed my way through the masses to make sure I got my fair share:

I’m proud to say I did not merely survive, but learned and gained and improved and contributed:

And now I have stepped foot onto new ground & though I will be slowing down a bit in my adventures, I know there are many wonderful things ahead of me:

It’s been a lot of fun. I am glad Business Time allowed me the opportunity to contribute. Now maybe I will convince myself to start seriously working on the handful of alts I have created and never touched. A monster may have been created…

The One Where I PVP

Tuesday night I decided to take a small break from leveling the Monk and do a bit of SoO LFR. This resulted in me accidentally earning 3000 valor (cap valor weekly? wut? I can’t do it in months :P) and completing the “A Test of Valor” achievement for Prince Wrathion.

Huh. Look at that. I accidentally advanced in the legendary questline. Might as well keep going, eh? So I decided to keep going. This is riveting stuff, yes?

Anyway, as you know, the next steps were to do some PvP battlegrounds and kill that one dude at Domination Point. My adorable friend, Grace, was just a tiny bit ahead of me in this questline so she had already killed him and when she saw I was at that point she immediately volunteered to meet me over there and help me get the kill. Which I was completely grateful for even though it made me stupid. Which means that I knew where Domination Point was but my brain hadn’t processed exactly who I was looking for. I’m someone who needs a few seconds to process. But instead I immediately headed that way so I wouldn’t inconvenience Grace by making her wait on me. Big surprise – the fact I didn’t stop to get it in my brain what I needed to do actually ended up being more of an inconvenience to her because I flew straight in there trying to hurry and of course I got shot out of the sky. Then it took me forever to work my way around and find my body. The more stupid I was in-game, the more panicked I became about being stupid which, of course, resulted in me being more stupid. I am not someone who experiences much anxiety but for some reason, trying to not be stupid in front of my friends and guildies in-game is the leading cause of anxiety for me. And it always backfires.

Moving on, Grace killed the dude for me. Lol. Next stop – the battlegrounds. I did Silvershard Mines that night and the Alliance won the first one I joined. Well that was easy. Can’t wait to do the Temple in the morning after work.

When I did queue for the Temple of Kotmogu the next morning, things did not go as smooth as the Mines did. The Alliance was sucking it up, big time. My 3rd time in we lost by 2 points which was extremely frustrating, but not nearly as frustrating as losing by 1000 points or more every other time. Ugh. It’s like no one understood the whole point of the battleground. Carry an orb around as long as you can. As soon as an orb is returned, go grab the fucking orb. I didn’t think it was that hard but most people seemed to be more worried about killing Horde rather than watching orbs at all. /shrug. Maybe I’m the idiot here. Either way, paying attention to the orbs got me several achievements as I ran the place over and over. Finally, on like my 35th visit, I got a team that dominated. We had all 4 orbs within the first minute and stood in the center bunched up with healer’s healing us while we kicked the ass of any one who came near. It was a flawless victory where the horde had less than 100 points. So weird how smooth that run went. And, it meant I had my victory and could be done.

Interestingly enough, I actually enjoyed the Temple a lot and I might consider getting some PvP gear and do that one when I get bored.

With that stuff out of the way, I completed “Chapter II: Wrathion’s War” and my journey towards the cloak continues. Now I’ve got to LFR enough to gather 20 Secretes of the Empire and spend some time on Thunder Isle to gain rep with the Prince.

But I’m going to put that on hold for now and get back to the Monk. I have 20 levels to go to do my part for the guild achievement. I still expect I’ll be the last to hit 85, but hopefully I’ll have it done in just a few days.