Blingtron’s Feeling Festive

At least, that’s what I would like to think.  Most days he basically hands you a Thermal Anvil, or less, and send you on your merry way.  Today he seems to realize it’s getting close to Winter Veil and his usual gifts won’t compare to Greatfather Winter’s offerings (assuming they actually change this year).  As such, along with his usual paltry items, Blingy decided Zarahi’s been a good Troll so far.

The quest book is for the Brawler’s Guild.  It unlocks the Blingtron 3000 card from Card Trader Ami.  The Sky-Bo, to be honest, I had never even heard of (still out of the loop in many regards).  It’s the pet version of the ever popular Sky Golem.  I’ll be interested to see what it does.  First I need to level a few other pets just to defeat my blasted menagerie…

Brooding (Alysrazor Style)

It’s not very often some little item pops up that I think I have to have in the game.  A pet or a mount perhaps.  But they’re far and few between.  But a toy?  No, I just take those as I stumble upon them.  That was the case until yesterday when Tome talked about the new Darkmoon Faire daily.  I was instantly in love.

So off I went.  At first I couldn’t even find the bloody goblin…because I didn’t realize it was a daily.  Smooth on my part.  A short time later I had success.  Liouxpold got the Ringmaster achievement and so I stopped, brainfarting on what needed to be done to get the toy.  50, not 25.  So then I tried Tum.  Completely the daily, not even close to the achievement and didn’t feel like buying tokens with him.  Instead, I hopped over to Hartley, who the game apparently loves.

She picked up Lil’Bling, the Magic Broom, and the Pumpkin Bag in the span of a week.  In-game time it was probably an hour.  I don’t know what it is, but I have decent luck with her and the RNG.  So I figured if anyone was going to do it, it should be her. The first run I came out of the gate flying, no pun intended.  I made it to 42.  And then I got 3.  I had a few runs where I thought I caught the ring and it sure looked like I did…but the buff still wore off so I was out of luck.  I got fed up and even posted on Tome’s page that I didn’t have the patience to try and knock this off in the few remaining hours of the faire.  But I’m also a Taurus and decided that since I had bought the bag of coins, I would try my best.  So I devised an alternate route this time.  On the first crack, I got to 30-something and ended up at a dead end, but I realized it was because I grabbed an important ring at a time where I didn’t really need to.  Sure, enough, the next run was successful.

I have to admit, a Skeleton with blazing wings and a flaming skull for a shield looks pretty slick.  Oddly enough, this spot isn’t far from where you start and for what it is worth my initial strategy was to go right in front of me (which would be to the left in this shot), swing out along the water and curl in the south end.  What ended up working for me was going the other way, towards the tent you see there, hitting the rings around the fortune teller and turtle toss area before going into the woods, then shooting across the main entrance and out along the water.

Once you get a feel for the layout of the rings, I don’t think it’s a difficult achievement.  It’s just making sure you don’t accidentally miss a ring in the one instance where you have very little time between them.  I found what made the effort most frustrating was when you landed on the ground as far as possible from the quest giver.  But isn’t that always how it goes?

Ideas of March

My efforts thus far to get where I want to be for Warlords has been met with limited results.  It’s entirely my own fault as I’ve been spending my time Hearthstoning when free, usually in an effort to complete a daily each day.  Yes, reader, that one has its teeth sunk in but good.  Fortunately with some free time last night I finally got in some actually WoW time and took to my Gnome Warrior.  The Mrs. and I did some puttering around but actually got into a dungeon pretty quickly(!) and I picked up a couple of levels in Blackfathom Deeps.  After that she was kind enough to run me through Stocks before calling it a night.  Another Gnomeregan run this morning and she’s now 27, on her way to 28.  Go figure, as soon as I lament queue times, I have two occasions where it was less than 20 minutes.  But, now that I’ve actually been productive to some degree, I figure I can increase said productivity and give myself a proverbial kick in the rear to do so…by jotting down some goals for the month.

• Get Semblance the Warrior (27) to 35.  My original plan was 25, but I accomplished that quite easily yesterday.
• Get Paramita the Priest (41) to 45.
• Get Elcombe the Mage (68) to 70.
• Finally have Elcombe learn Alchemy, and then actually power level it to some degree.
• Max out Saintvache’s Herbalism, currently 310.
• Get his Enchanting (487) up over 500 as well.  Who knows, might even Max it as well.
• Get Junkshot the Monk (7) to 20.
• Clean up Claws of Nature Guild Bank.
• Get Liouxpold (85) at least one level in Pandaria.
• Reach 2,500 Daily Quests

Not a vast list by any stretch, and many of the goals are pretty simple to obtain.  I average about an hour and a half of free time a day, so I can’t be shooting for the moon.  If I get all of these accomplished then it will feel like I’ve done something and will push me on towards the next ones in April.  Let’s face it, many little things can add up to one big thing and in this case that one thing can be momentum.  It wouldn’t hurt for me to have some of that the closer we get to Draenor.

Dark Phoenix. MINE!

Your pets serve a greater cause…and it’s purple.

It shouldn’t have been that hard.  I was already more than halfway to Exalted with my Blade’s Edge guild.  So, more rep granting quests (such as Elders and dailies) and I would be there in no time.  When I got up this morning, I think I was actually about 75% of the way there.  So I figured I would knock off the Kalimdor Elders and see where that left me.  Turns out I missed a few.  It wasn’t a big deal, as there are plenty of ways to nab some quests.  I decided, for a change of pace, that I would head to the Isle of Quel’Danas and do those dailies.

I rounded them all up and handed them in…only to find those quests don’t actually grant any reputation outside of the Shattered Sun Offensive.  Hrmph.  So, off I went again.  This time I headed to the Darkmoon Faire and did the quests there.  When Saintvache was done there I was so close, yet so far.  So I circled and picked up a few more Elders and did some pet battle dailies along the way.

Must get rep. Must get rep.

At long last I was a single quest away and I had to head back and hand in a pet battle quest in Orgrimmar.  Huzzah!  Exalted.  Gimme my Dark Phoenix!…it’s not there.  Neither is the Scorpion.  Frustration begins to kick in and I inadvertently close the Guild Vendor window.  I whisper Repgrind for advice but she doesn’t know either.  Reopen the window and low and behold it’s there.  But I don’t have Artisan Riding, which is required.  Are you kidding me?  Off to the flying trainer I go…

I have flying, but need better flying for a flying mount. Just take the damn gold already.

Alright.  So, I’m Exalted.  I have Artisan Riding.  I…no longer have the gold on this toon.  Oh come on already!  Look at TitanPanel to figure out where my gold is.  Wonder why the hell my level 40 Warrior has 2,000 gold and proceed to shuffle most of it, and some from my banker, back to Saintavche.

Guild Rep?  Check.  Artisan Riding?  Check.  Money?  Check.  Hand it over.

Damn right.

90-2 (not 92)

Yes, Saintvache finally capped this morning.  As you can see I picked up a sexy set of achievements in the process.  Better late than never.  Despite a higher survival rate than Tumunzahar, I definitely found the leveling process to take longer.  Perhaps because there was such a hiatus in the middle of Tum’s go that it didn’t seem so bad. I will say, quite obviously, it improved when I ended up in a new guild.  The XP boost was nice.  But even so, I found 89-90 was smoother than the rest of Pandaria.  I think because even when I couldn’t really hop on and bang out some bubbles of experience, I could still take about 10-15 minutes and do three little quests to get me close to a million xp per day.

I would start with the Cooking Daily.  On Horde side, my personal preference is Thunder Bluff.  They’re all pretty simple and if you land Mulgore Spice Bread, you’ve really got it easy.  I will say a Fishing Daily will help even more, but few of my toons have fishing (two come to mind).  After that I took the Blasted Lands portal, where I headed to Karazhan for the Pet Battle Daily, and then back to the Blasted Lands to go through the Dark Portal and do the Pet Battle there.  As I said, three quests, almost one million experience.

 For what it’s worth, you need just over 18 million experience to go from 89 to 90.  If you did just this every day and used your time for other toons, you would ding in just under three weeks.  Sure, that still seems like a fairly long time, but not when you’re only popping on for 15 minutes at a time.  You’d be there before you know it (toss in the Darkmoon Faire around the same time for a couple of easy Profession Quests as well and you’re laughing).

So now what?  Well, I joined said Guild last Saturday or Sunday and thanks to the Lunar Elders and the rest of my ventures, I’m halfway to Exalted.  Since I helped them unlock the Dark Phoenix mount, I find myself beckoned to finish that rep and get said mount.  I’m sure part of that will come via the Timeless Isle.  Once again, it has more appeal as a class that can throw out some damage and survive, versus my Holy Dwarf.  Along with that, it’s probably time to start boosting the rest of the Amateur Army.  I know Liouxpold is on Pandaria, but I can go without the place for a little bit.

Faire-ly New Changes

The Darkmoon Faire ended for another month this past Saturday.  I managed to spend some time at the Faire last week…on Saturday.  It was just one of those weeks that included a brain fart the Faire was even going on.  Still, I made it with several toons and that’s what counts most.  In doing so, though, I noticed some changes.

I don’t remember creepy lady…

After the new welcome sign that genuinely feels like I’m violated just looking at it, it was off to the usual NPC’s.  I grabbed my profession quests and knocked them off and then headed straight to the Turtle Toss.  Let’s face it, it’s the only game at the Faire that is guaranteed to only take one token.  A moment later I was done, and…what’s this now?

I get a present now?  No more tickets?  Upon opening the present it turns out you do still get a ticket.  Emphasis one.  So if you pump a whole pile of tickets into the cannon now (and the teleport back), you may waste that money on gaining a single ticket towards your heirloom, pet, or whatever it is you seek to buy at some point.  Now, the good news is that you can actually get a pet in these presents.  The chances, like everything else, are pretty slim.  Mine were actually worse than slim once I logged off Saintvache.  The two he got were two more than my other toons combined.

I haven’t tried either one out just yet, though Mrs. Amateur says the Top Hat is fab-u-LOUS!  In the meantime I haven’t checked to see what else is possible from the presents but it’s definitely a big change to how things work.  Farming tickets just got a lot harder and will take a lot longer.  I’m not sure if it’s because pets and mounts are shared, and now heirlooms can be too, that they feel folks don’t need to be stockpiling the tickets as much.  If each toon focuses on something different to buy then you can still acquire things somewhat reasonably.  But for those that want things sooner than later, this will no doubt upset them.  I’m fortunate in that when I logged in, Saintvache had 89 tickets.  Once he picked up another ticket, I sauntered on over and got myself a monkey.  Named him Sallah (points if you get the reference).

Banana Chucking Surrender Monkey (And Other Thoughts)

I took Tumunzahar out last night for about an hour as I try to come back.  Aside from lowbies, he seems to be the one (class?) I still remember how to play pretty well.  I didn’t queue for an instance or anything, as I wasn’t sure what my window of opportunity looked like.  But, in that hour, I did come to a few conclusions:

• the auction house is as easy to make quick gold off of as it ever was.  I’ve played maybe 5-6 hours since coming back and made 5k.
• No, I’m not an auction junkie again, I just realize I left the game somewhat broke.  It was totally worth it though!
• The Ironforge cooking dailies are still simpler and faster than Stormwind.
• The chickens in front of Ironforge no longer run around like their head is cut off when you need to catch them.
• Oh Illidan.  The chickens sparkle.  Twilight jokes aside, it’s like they think the players can’t see that it’s a chicken, or might be confused that it might not be the right chicken.
• I still don’t like much of the Jewelcrafting dailies in Stormwind.  Oh, yay, look, back to Cataclysm.
• If it isn’t the goo, it’s no doubt the gems I don’t have and will cost 40g each on the auction house.
• Pet Battles are just as I remember them, and so is my affinity towards having one of each.
• I seriously need to remember to heal them first.  That or I need to level a lot more.  That might actually not be a bad idea, as I can see my son really liking that.
• They mark rares on your map now?
• There are a tonne of rares in Pandaria.
• There are a tonne of rares in Pandaria when there’s no one around to kill them.
• As a Holy Priest, I cannot kill very many of them.  In fact, I finally killed one on my own with Tum last night.
• It’s the Nannermancer up there.  I swear, Tum’s underneath him there quite alive and quite well.
• Yup.  The next rare I found slaughtered me.  The dog he summoned was doing more damage than I was.
• The Pandaren lore still doesn’t pull me in.  There are nuggets of interest, but for the most part it’s just “there.”
• In the rest of Azeroth, I’ve always wanted to read the quest text.  Now…*shrug*
• This game still has way too many “collect x of this, while killing y of these and activating z more of these things.”

Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed myself.  Smite spamming isn’t exactly my cup of tea, but Tum is 88 and at the moment I’d just like to get him to 90.  I’m in no rush, and will heal dungeons when I get the chance.  I’m just a bit too busy to commit to one without going “afk” more often than I would like.