5.2 Thoughts

While you wait for the second round results of the Transmog contest (sorry, work slipped in the way…I should’ve looked at the calendar when I set the round two dates), which will be up later today, I figured now is as good a time as any to share some thoughts on the next big patch.

Isle of the Thunder King
This interests me, though I have a long way to go before I get to it.  In the same context of the Isle of Quel’Danas, it’s the new Daily Quest Hub.  Alas, I think it’s still going to have a Molten Front feel to it and I know that’s not going to go over well with many players.  That one can choose whether to do PvE or PvP quests is a nice touch.  Also, parts of the island become available based on a Realm level rather than an individual one.  That has mixed potential, but we’ll have to wait and see. 

Blacksmiths
We still don’t have dailies for every profession, which I think is absurd.  However, the Smiths are getting some love.  Proceed far enough on the Isle of the Thunder King and you’ll come upon the Lightning Forge.  Apparently this will allow for the creation of some very unique items, including old weapons that I’m guessing have been removed from the game over time.  Oh, Moggers are giddy with anticipation…or just me.

New World Bosses
I’ve always liked World Bosses and I’m sure the folks farming the Sha would love something different. Two bosses will be coming in 5.2.  One is part of the phased island, but it seems Oondasta the giant armoured dino will be found north of Kun-Lai Summit right from the get go.  Also with this comes a slight change to the World Bosses themselves.  Blizzard refers to it as “Tap to Faction.”  If your faction tags the mob, so long as you take part you have a chance for loot -whether you were in the initial raid or not.  However, you can only earn said loot once a week (and the bosses will spawn more frequently).

Pet Battles
-Pet bandages are now bind to account…thank goodness.  This will most assuredly save me some bag space (they also stack to 25) instead of having several on several toons. 
-The Nether Roach will no longer die during an Apocalypse.  I mean, it was unique and fun that it was the one that could, but roaches be roaches.
-Players earn xp for pet battles as well, so long as the battle is within five levels of your highest level pet (so for most of us that would be any pet battle in the 20-30 level).
-PvP Pet Battles can also drop Battlestones now.  Interesting.  It would be more ruthless if you had a chance to win one if it was in your opponent’s inventory.  Stealing it outright would cause pandemonium, but being able to receive an equivalent to the one in their bags would be fun. 
-If you flee a battle, the pet you were fighting no longer disappears, but the fleeing squad will suffer some damage.  I like that.  Penalty for a tactical retreat and it makes sense if you’re running from the critter that it doesn’t disappear.
-Elite Battle Pets.  Oh my.  I know people where these will become the bane of their existence.  They spawn by themselves, too, so I suspect Pet Battlers are going to be in for one hell of a fight.  But, if you can beat them all you’ll receive a Red Panda pet (yep, the one up top there)

Buy The Farm
Even now that Tumunzahar has started questing out there, the whole farming thing does nothing for me.  Not even for potential gold profit.  Seriously, get it away from me.  Having said that, I know exactly how popular it is and the chance to own the deed for the land you’ve been cultivating is no doubt exciting to those indulging.

Notable Class Stuff
Pretty much every class (at least the ones I am familiar enough with) has some sort of notable changes going on.  I would suggest checking out the notes for what’s coming to your favourite role.  Warriors losing a 10% damage reduction for defensive stance is certainly one of the ones that jumped out at me. 

Green Fire!
Speaking of class stuff, Warlocks are dancing in the streets…if they’re into dancing.  The opportunity for Fel fire spells is finally coming to pass with the quest line now in-game.

Blogger By Passion, Huntard By Huntard

Gotta love the unexpected.  I’m traveling through Felwood with Siori, just upping a few pets and picking  a few herbs when I see a Tiger.  I notice it’s kind of cool looking and it turns around with flaming eyes.

Courtesy of Petopia…does not properly capture the eye flame animation.

Holy shit.  I have to have this cat.  How have I never seen this cat before?  It’s a fairly low rare…screw it.  Go get Liouxpold.  Oh goodie.  He’s hearthed in Pandaria…well, quick Darnassus port, hop the ocean via bird and then fly from Darkshore into Felwood where (Illidan bless TitanPanel and coords) I find the cat again easy.

Land.

Begin taming.

Duskcoat drops dead.

NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

Oh you stupid cat!  How did I forget to dismiss you?

Well, since he’s now gone, let’s look up the details on Duskcoat.  Oh, look at that…I’ve never heard of him because he was only added in 5.1 and speculation is a 28-hr respnawn timer.

edit: Wake up, log on…bam.

Chieves For A Non-Chiever

So as it seems I didn’t do enough with WoW yesterday, I kept myself busy into the evening.  Siori had flown down around the Caverns of Time (for no particular reason…and if she did have a reason, it wasn’t there) and I decided to check what her Keepers of Time reputation was at (since Exalted held one of the few Enchants she needed yet).  She was about 2k away so into Black Morass I went.  Wasn’t sure that even on Heroic I was going to get enough, to be honest.  However, my backup plan was just to run it again once or twice on regular to finish it off.  But, I didn’t have to:

Yeah, when you see people hitting 50 and 60 and whatnot, 15 seems kinda diminutive.  But then I usually only do the ones I really want something from (hence I never had any trouble offering my services to Wyrmrest Accord).  So I probably have plenty of characters at various stages of Honoured and Revered, but it isn’t often I hit Exalted.  I will say this, the Keepers of Time have themselves a rather spiffy tabard.

After that, I resumed my pet taming efforts.  Namely, I headed off to Outland with Tumunzahar (he’s got 310 flight, so it just makes sense…and mining).  I went out there on the premise of leveling some pets so that I could eventually get my Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdom Tamer achievements as all I have left for either one is the Cataclysm zones.  So off I went into Outland and a short while later…

Yep, I captured a Cat in the Netherstorm to get the achievement.  I’m still not certain what they’re doing out there.  I had a shot at a Nether Ray, but it whooped me.  However, when I got the Tamer achievement I decided to look close at Outland Safari.  I needed eight, and two of them were in Netherstorm.  I captured a Nether Roach easily enough.  They’re everywhere.  The previously mentioned Fledgeling Nether Ray is less often, but still there if you don’t mind flying around a bit.  Well, the first one kicked my arse, and the second one I trapped but then lost the fight.  That happened once more before I accidentally killed one.  Seems it was all for a good reason, as the next one was a Rare and it was tamed properly and the match was won.

Can I just interrupt my ventures to share something?  Words cannot be spewed vehemently enough to share just how tedious this scene is:

As I griped to Real ID folks, I do not understand it.  Tum faithfully needs five or six traps to catch a pet.  I mean, when it takes him less than four, I’m in pure shock. I have pets go from full health to dead in the time he fails to catch something.  You could cover something in beer and he’d still not get it.  My other toons?  They average 1-3 traps.  I know some will profess RNG, but I’m almost to the point where that seems shenanigans at best.

Where was I?  Oh, yes, safari.  So I tamed my Netherstorm ones and looked to see where the remaining half dozen could be found.  The Scaled Basilisk Hatchling and Skittering Cave Crawler were both in Blade’s Edge so that’s where I went next.  I found a spot where the Basilisks were everywhere.  As a Cave Crawler joined the first battle, I had tamed both in next to no time.  Four to go!

I circled down into Zangarmarsh and over to Sporeggar for the Sprout.  If you’re not familiar, these things spawn about every 15 minutes (the only saving grace for a zone that has nothing more than Toads and Snakes).  Of course, the area is also camped pretty good on average.  Well, I sat in the middle of the town and low and behold one spawned…and my stupid bird got caught on a mushroom.  I wish the Orc that swooped in was flagged…

Knowing I had fifteen minutes before another one I decided to venture off and catch something else.  The Warpstalker Hatchling was a piece of cake but there was no Flayer Youngling.  Back to Sporeggar I went and saw three Sprouts.  I zoomed in and went after one with relative ease.  Can I just say, when you get to Outland you really should go get a Clefthoof Runt because they’re adorable and hit like a tank.  It was one of the ones I grabbed first out there because I knew I wanted one and it proved to be a boon against pretty much everything else.  So I caught my Uncommon Sprout and was down to a mere two pets.

I flew over the ridge again and still no Flayers.  So out to Shadowmoon Valley.  The Fel Flame is so cool looking I was certain it would be a rare spawn.  I went into the fire area and sure enough there was nothing.  I flew north of the Warden’s Cage and began making my way along the river towards The Hand of Gul’dan when I saw one.  I had read they hit hard and were tough.  Well, not really from my experience.  Then again, might have been dumb luck but it was pretty easy to catch (4-5 traps and all).  So I flew back to Northern Terokkar and found nothing.

I was going to camp and decided to make another pass and sure enough I spotted a Flayer!  Swooped in and in true Amateur fashion I nearly killed the damn thing.  But, success was had!

Even better, was amidst my happiness (and knowing I was off to bed after my success) I only happened to notice blue text in the chat window.  I didn’t realize the Youngling was a rare.  Well, it wasn’t.  I actually had my first Battlestone drop…which I didn’t even know they did.  Having not done any research I figured they came from the Pet Trainer fights/dailies.  I was later informed it was both.

No, I haven’t decided which pet will be the lucky recipient.  Fluxfire Feline seems a strong option, as does my Spawn of Onyxia.  Heck, I’d even consider my Little Black Ram.  But, I’m in no rush.  I plan to hold on to it for a bit and widen the pet stable some more (208 Unique at last glance…I’m getting there) first.

A Rare Post Of Many Things

Too Sickly…Even For Me

Both Mrs. Amateur and myself feel like we’re lying in a pool of plague.  For me it started Friday, while I think she picked it up from me and woke up to it today.  The good news is, the wee one has still gone to a festive family function so things are a bit quiet around here.  That actually gave me a bit of time to WoW it up all relaxed (as relaxed as one can be in such a fatigued state of blech).

Amidst my puttering, I was pleasantly surprised when Navimie showed up on her Runetotem Dwarf.  I thought she would have deleted it, to be honest, but it occurs to me you never know when she’ll need to see me in person.  Seems this was one of those occasions…

Yet another lovely Winter Veil gift!  I didn’t even know what it was to be honest, other than a pet of sorts.  I shall pet battle it post haste!  It’s a bit low for Outland, which is where I’m plying my trade at the moment.  My focus for pets is to get the Zone achievements for battle locations and taming locations.  If I can pick up a few rare pets along the way, then bonus for me.  Now, while Navi and I had met up I decided to do a flyover past Gnomeregan to see if the Fluxfire Feline was spawned.  No such luck, and I should’ve realized she would have long ago had it anyway.  We got to talking about it and Navi mentioned getting hers by starting a lowbie Gnome and it was right there in the start zone.  Well, I was later camping the location and decided I would return to Ironforge and hop on a Gnome I have sitting in said start zone to see if my luck was any better.  However, just as I was leaving the area I caught something on my map.  I doubled back and landed immediately.

Hot diggity damn!  Oh, and let me just say…completely random location.  The battle screenshot should illustrate that:

Yeah, see that dude hanging out behind my Spirit of Competition?  That’s Mekkatorque himself.  Oh, and bet your ass I would shiv him in a heartbeat if he had stepped towards that cat.  Also, note the health on the cat at this point, when I nearly screwed up and killed it…which I’m getting notoriously good at.  Fortunately, I came out of it cat intact.  Poor quality?  Don’t care.

Speaking of poor, I’m once again back on the subject of CRZ’s.  Once again, what could be great is nothing but a pain in the rear end.  My buddy Syrynx messaged me today.  He wanted a party invite, not to be run through something, but because he was tired of his PvE panda ending up in flagged zones over and over. I keep hearing how “oh this shouldn’t be happening.”  The bottom line is that it is and it needs to be fixed, or give the players the option to turn them off.

On the flipside, I tried to actually take advantage of CRZ’s and help Magik get the Let It Snow achievement.  Repgrind offered to bring her Orc DK so he could snowflake her.  I used my Horde toon on the same server as Magik to group up with Rep.  No problem.  Magik flies into the area and we’re nowhere to be seen.  They both go to Dalaran, nowhere to be seen.  Basically it lead me to giving up on even trying to figure out how the zones work anymore.

To cheer myself up, I added a couple more weeks to the LBR schedule after another fun run on Saturday night.  We were actually full for Karazhan!  No mount drop there or in Tempest Keep -but let’s be honest, to expect it two weeks in a row would be silly.  What?  Yes, I would be that kind of silly.

Getting back to the LBR schedule, though, I’ve put up an Alliance Molten Core run on the 30th.  To have a little festive hilarity, the Winter Veil Sweater must be worn for the run!  If you don’t have one from last year, I suspect we may see it under the tree on the 25th again this year.  Can’t wait to see the gaudy looks.  Feel free to transmog accordingly!

Also, there has been a tonne of praise for Mrs. Amateur and how awesome she is.  This?  I completely agree with.  However, it stems from the 12 Days of Winter Veil I’m running here on the blog.  Well, as awesome as Mrs. is…I have to claim credit on this one.  While I’m writing it from the recipient perspective (a la the classic song), I’m the one giving the gifts to her…and might I add, thoroughly enjoying this little creative nugget I put together.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to calm my throat with some cranberry tea and see about pet hunting some more.

Adventures In Levelling

I actually had some time to commit to Azeroth after supper today.  Junior Amateur gets his Diego, I get WoW.  The two almost balance out…if there were an in-game Gnome named Diego that I could gank I would call it even.  Where was I?  Right.  Window of opportunity.  So, with that I decided to get a couple of Hunter levels.

First thing I did was hit WoW Rare Spawns to see what rares I could find close to my level.  After all, let’s hear it for easy XP.  After studying the ones Euphyley had mapped out, I flew to Tarren Mill and went hunting for Big Samras.  The joy of being a Hunter, I could confirm he was passed out on his mountain edge.  A short time later, he was dead on his mountain edge.  I gained about a quarter of a level.

Then a funny thing happened.

…too big.

I like big butts….

The Hunter saw a giant black bear and went hopping after it.  No reason other than appropriate level.  After it was dead, there was a discovery.  It would seem said Hunter has a fascination with superior posteriors.  Imagine how crazy he went when he saw Yetimus.   You don’t have to imagine how dead he went.

Fortunately Mrs. Amateur helped me out and the Hunter had the horns.  While following Yetimus’ patrol though, I noticed another rare was spawned.  I then ran up the hill to erm, “visit,” said kitten Mom.  Hunter dinged again.

Then it was just a matter of taking the couple quests I had and handing them in.  Oh, look!  Achievement! 

All in all, not a bad half hour!

Shared Topic: Wanting What You Can’t Have

As I mentioned, dragonray had this week’s Shared Topic over at Blog Azeroth.

What is in game that you want, but you can’t have? Is there an animal you want to tame, a critter you want to collect, a tabard that has the perfect design for a transmog set etc etc.

What is it you want, but know you can’t get your hands on and have to stare at longingly whenever you log in?

I’d love to say I contemplated this for a lengthy period of time because I’m not greedy or anything like that and couldn’t decide.  However, it was actually a no-brainer.  Two things, and both are for Siori.  The first, is to continue the Fangs of the Father chain.  I still need to pickpocket Hagara and my schedule hasn’t allowed for that.  I love my rogue.  We now have a legendary that’s relatively easy to obtain and yet I can’t manage to make it happen.

The bigger one, I honestly believe doesn’t even exist on her server.  I think the programmer’s overlooked some weird glitch that removed it from the game.  I’ve spent nearly three full days in Deepholm and I have never seen Aeonaxx.  Haven’t even talked to someone who’s taken down the rare…or, again, even seen it.

I’ll see this out my front window before Aeonaxx exists on my server.

Despite my clear-cut bitterness, I really enjoyed this topic.  It’s interesting to see what folks have on their mind when it comes to the idea.  Some are quite simple, some are much more elaborate or difficult.  Heck, I debated the idea of a harmonious player base, but I didn’t want to be completely unrealistic in my answer.

Spirit Lure

Want to get yourself one of the rare spirit beasts of Azeroth?  There’s apparently a sure fire formula.  Take one Amateur, put him on a dwarf, and send him out into the Runtotem wilderness.  I’ve made it clear the amount of times I’ve encountered Lo’que with Tumunzahar (and in the same exact spawn point).  Well, I was at it again earlier this afternoon.

Fireflint is grinding out some experience to hit 75, and thus boost his blacksmithing (he’s almost 74).  As I was in Grizzly Hills I figured what the heck…may as well see where Arcturis spawns.  I thought it was North of Grizzlemaw, and I was in that area.  Instead, it’s right outside Amberpine Lodge.  Meh, I’m headed back that way anyhow, so let’s just take a peak.

Once again, Liouxpold isn’t Beast Mastery.  In fact, he isn’t even a good Hunter but that is my own fail for another day.  So, Mrs. Amateur is logging on as I admire the beast and I suggest she get on her Hunter who is unfortunately in Stormwind at the time (and no Mage or Dalaran hearth to work with).  It seemed to take an eternity.  But, much like when I tamed Lo’que for her, she made it!  That’s two Spirit Beasts for her now (*bow*).  Of course, if I ever go Beast Mastery with a Hunter high enough, I know that I am never going to see any of them.