Yesterday was the first day of Brewfest - so I diligently logged in despite it not being a Thursday raid night, queued up for Direbrew, and headed over to Ironforge thanks to the breadcrumb quest I picked up in Dalaran. I saw a few quests offered to me, quickly took down Direbrew, came back, turned in the other quests and quickly reached 100 coins. With my 100 coins, I rode over to the vendor to buy my yearly stein and...what? The 2009 Green Brewfest Stein!
What a crock! They couldn't be bothered to put in a new stein like they had done in 2007, 2008, and 2009? They couldn't have taken the time to do some basic maintenance and give us something new this year? No, so now everyone who wasn't here last year can get 2009's achievement. Just really disappointing and quite frankly, lazy on Blizzard's part.
Sep 21, 2010
Sep 10, 2010
And...we're back! (aka 2 down, 1 to go)
The Gold Team is back. Two weeks ago, after taking two months off due to various scheduling issues, vacations, and general malaise, we reformed and continued on our quest to complete Glory of the Icecrown Raider. Many people had various smaller achievements they needed, but the main reason for raiding was to get down the two last heroic bosses - Sindragosa and Putricide.
After we all re-learned everything we had forgotten over the past two months, we finally took Sindragosa down in heroic mode (we had been working on her for a couple weeks prior to our vacation). The next week Putricide was our target - plus we needed some of the achievements from Rotface and Festergut for some raiders who were absent when we did them the first time. We got to him and gave him a good four attempts before we had to call it a night, ready to reconvene the next week (yesterday).
So we were ready. We all downloaded the Plagued addon which announces via /yell that you have the plague the Professor throws out and how many seconds are left before someone needs to come and get it. This was a huge help to us since that was pretty much the only part of the fight we were having issues with in our earlier attempts. We quickly took him down on our third attempt and made our way over to Valithria Dreamwalker to get the Portal Jockey achievement. It was almost too easy to get this achievement and heal Dreamwalker on easy mode, so we then pushed on to once again face Sindragosa and try and earn All You Can Eat.
For this achievement, it really takes a lot of raid coordination, and we had no problems getting to the second phase (or third phase depending on how you look at it) for the achievement. However, we kept having some poor luck with ice cube positioning and healers getting blocked, but we worked around it, figured out a strategy, and eventually we completed the achievement.
So that left us with just Been Waiting a Long Time For This for our meta achievement. After reading up on a few strategies and figuring out positioning, on our last attempt of the night, we finally got the stack over 30, however, the tank went down at the last second due to the Lich King's stacking buff, and in the scramble to get him up, we lost another player and the chaos was just too much to recover from. Luckily, we'll have all the time in the world next week to work on it and I am certain we can get this fight down. What's tough about this achievement is that the achievement is done right at the start of the fight, so even if you manage to get the stacks to the required amount, you still have to defeat the Lich King (which our group has done only once). So it should be a good challenge for us next week.
While it's nice to be back and amongst friends, I'm still only logging in on our sole raid night. There's just nothing else to be done in the game and I am waiting patiently for Cataclysm to come along. Until then, I'll be content to raid one night a week with my friends and play other games while I wait.
After we all re-learned everything we had forgotten over the past two months, we finally took Sindragosa down in heroic mode (we had been working on her for a couple weeks prior to our vacation). The next week Putricide was our target - plus we needed some of the achievements from Rotface and Festergut for some raiders who were absent when we did them the first time. We got to him and gave him a good four attempts before we had to call it a night, ready to reconvene the next week (yesterday).
So we were ready. We all downloaded the Plagued addon which announces via /yell that you have the plague the Professor throws out and how many seconds are left before someone needs to come and get it. This was a huge help to us since that was pretty much the only part of the fight we were having issues with in our earlier attempts. We quickly took him down on our third attempt and made our way over to Valithria Dreamwalker to get the Portal Jockey achievement. It was almost too easy to get this achievement and heal Dreamwalker on easy mode, so we then pushed on to once again face Sindragosa and try and earn All You Can Eat.
For this achievement, it really takes a lot of raid coordination, and we had no problems getting to the second phase (or third phase depending on how you look at it) for the achievement. However, we kept having some poor luck with ice cube positioning and healers getting blocked, but we worked around it, figured out a strategy, and eventually we completed the achievement.
So that left us with just Been Waiting a Long Time For This for our meta achievement. After reading up on a few strategies and figuring out positioning, on our last attempt of the night, we finally got the stack over 30, however, the tank went down at the last second due to the Lich King's stacking buff, and in the scramble to get him up, we lost another player and the chaos was just too much to recover from. Luckily, we'll have all the time in the world next week to work on it and I am certain we can get this fight down. What's tough about this achievement is that the achievement is done right at the start of the fight, so even if you manage to get the stacks to the required amount, you still have to defeat the Lich King (which our group has done only once). So it should be a good challenge for us next week.
While it's nice to be back and amongst friends, I'm still only logging in on our sole raid night. There's just nothing else to be done in the game and I am waiting patiently for Cataclysm to come along. Until then, I'll be content to raid one night a week with my friends and play other games while I wait.
Jul 21, 2010
It Is Done
It's been a long time coming, but thanks to some wonderful guildmates, a little bit of luck, and lots of perseverance, I have finally done it...9,000 achievement points.
I got that little push I needed a week ago when our 10 man was very short on players, so we decided to do a 5-man Naxx run. We ended up finding a few more than 5, but while we were there, we finally did And They Would All Go Down Together. Which finally...FINALLY completed my Glory of the Raider. Oh, and just for the hell of it, we did Spore Loser too.
But with the Glory of the Raider putting me so close, I had to seek out other achievements that I was close to completing - like Me and the Cappin' Makin' it Happen. I was at 46/50, so I just queued up for a few Arathi Basin fights, used my blink to beat everyone to the first flag every time, and even won a few games. This one really upset me though:
I didn't have the most damage, but you can clearly see I was atop the leaderboards - why? I didn't die. I had 44 honor kills and 19 killing blows (which I had no idea about until the end of the game). Otherwise I would have gone out and gotten Wrecking Ball. Oh well, them's the breaks.
So as you could see in my first picture, I got It's Over Nine Thousand! by completing Wintergrasp Ranger. I'd like to say I feel sorry about how I got it, but I don't. I could never get any hordies to come down and fight me fairly (I did try), so I had to wait for a mining node to spawn and then fight them when they tried to mine. So I easily killed this poor warlock once this way and he came back and then just flew around for 10 minutes, before finally thinking I wouldn't kill him again. But as he landed to collect some fire from a gas cloud, I once again blew him up. This time, he tried to put up a fight, but to no avail. So thank you Veroarth.
I got that little push I needed a week ago when our 10 man was very short on players, so we decided to do a 5-man Naxx run. We ended up finding a few more than 5, but while we were there, we finally did And They Would All Go Down Together. Which finally...FINALLY completed my Glory of the Raider. Oh, and just for the hell of it, we did Spore Loser too.
But with the Glory of the Raider putting me so close, I had to seek out other achievements that I was close to completing - like Me and the Cappin' Makin' it Happen. I was at 46/50, so I just queued up for a few Arathi Basin fights, used my blink to beat everyone to the first flag every time, and even won a few games. This one really upset me though:
I didn't have the most damage, but you can clearly see I was atop the leaderboards - why? I didn't die. I had 44 honor kills and 19 killing blows (which I had no idea about until the end of the game). Otherwise I would have gone out and gotten Wrecking Ball. Oh well, them's the breaks.
So as you could see in my first picture, I got It's Over Nine Thousand! by completing Wintergrasp Ranger. I'd like to say I feel sorry about how I got it, but I don't. I could never get any hordies to come down and fight me fairly (I did try), so I had to wait for a mining node to spawn and then fight them when they tried to mine. So I easily killed this poor warlock once this way and he came back and then just flew around for 10 minutes, before finally thinking I wouldn't kill him again. But as he landed to collect some fire from a gas cloud, I once again blew him up. This time, he tried to put up a fight, but to no avail. So thank you Veroarth.
Jun 22, 2010
Ulduar Achievements
A couple of weeks ago, Ashielle decided to put together some 25 man Ulduar achievement runs. I missed out due to other engagements, but was able to make it this last Friday and Sunday.
So on Friday, we started with a fresh instance, and because they had done Orbituary the week before, we instead tried for Dwarfageddon and Shutout. I already had Shutout, but it was nice to get Dwarfageddon. We then went to Razorscale for one of the more tedious achievements, Iron Dwarf, Medium Rare. We got 18 dwarves on our first run through and quickly got the other 7 on our second try with the kill.
So we went on to XT-002 and got Must Deconstruct Faster, Nerf Gravity Bombs (already had), and Nerf Engineering (already had). We then went to Kologarn and after a few attempts, got With Open Arms. That was certainly interesting since you can't kill his hand, you can't break out more than 3 or 4 groups when he picks them up and it turns into a DPS race against those that die in the hand.
We then back-tracked a bit to the Iron Council and did the hardest of the three kill modes (and the only one I still needed): I Choose You, Steelbreaker. And with that awesome run done, we called it for the night.
We gathered up late Sunday after everyone had celebrated Father's Day and started on Auriaya. We quickly got Crazy Cat Lady after an accidental pull/wipe and then we went over to Hodir. After a few attempts with people learning the fight (yes, we've been doing this with people who have never seen Ulduar), we got I Could Say that This Cache Was Rare and I put out 18,000 DPS for the fight. Woo.
Last up for the night were some attempts at Thorim. On our first one, we got Siffed since that one is pretty easy to accomplish. Beating him with Sif down is another thing. But on our last attempt of the night, past our scheduled quit time, we got Lose Your Illusion. So another hard mode down. And not only that, we had our little mind controlled Dark Rune Warbringer, we all got Who Needs Bloodlust?
I'm looking forward to the 25 man run again this weekend as we'll get Orbituary (another 40 points as I have not done Flame Leviathan with any towers up) and hopefully the Ignis speed kill (skipped since they did it the week prior). Then we'll move on and hopefully get to Freya and maybe (gasp), the hardest of them all, Firefighter...
So I'm a happy gnome sitting on 8820 achievement points. I really need to get back into the BG's and get some more points there, but I've just been taking a break from Warcraft so no BG's for me as of now. Ashielle is also putting together a 10 man Ulduar group with people that have the drakes, so we'll be going for the other achievements that aren't part of the meta which makes me happy too.
Lastly, it's the Midsummer Fire Festival right now, so I'm working on getting another pet, the Frost Chip. Unfortunately, you only have one shot at him per day, so I will be really upset if he doesn't drop from the bag in the 14 attempts I have at him over the next two weeks. Yesterday, in my first bag though, I got the Frostscythe of Lord Ahune which is really cool, but ultimately, just takes up another spot in my bank.
So on Friday, we started with a fresh instance, and because they had done Orbituary the week before, we instead tried for Dwarfageddon and Shutout. I already had Shutout, but it was nice to get Dwarfageddon. We then went to Razorscale for one of the more tedious achievements, Iron Dwarf, Medium Rare. We got 18 dwarves on our first run through and quickly got the other 7 on our second try with the kill.
So we went on to XT-002 and got Must Deconstruct Faster, Nerf Gravity Bombs (already had), and Nerf Engineering (already had). We then went to Kologarn and after a few attempts, got With Open Arms. That was certainly interesting since you can't kill his hand, you can't break out more than 3 or 4 groups when he picks them up and it turns into a DPS race against those that die in the hand.
We then back-tracked a bit to the Iron Council and did the hardest of the three kill modes (and the only one I still needed): I Choose You, Steelbreaker. And with that awesome run done, we called it for the night.
We gathered up late Sunday after everyone had celebrated Father's Day and started on Auriaya. We quickly got Crazy Cat Lady after an accidental pull/wipe and then we went over to Hodir. After a few attempts with people learning the fight (yes, we've been doing this with people who have never seen Ulduar), we got I Could Say that This Cache Was Rare and I put out 18,000 DPS for the fight. Woo.
Last up for the night were some attempts at Thorim. On our first one, we got Siffed since that one is pretty easy to accomplish. Beating him with Sif down is another thing. But on our last attempt of the night, past our scheduled quit time, we got Lose Your Illusion. So another hard mode down. And not only that, we had our little mind controlled Dark Rune Warbringer, we all got Who Needs Bloodlust?
I'm looking forward to the 25 man run again this weekend as we'll get Orbituary (another 40 points as I have not done Flame Leviathan with any towers up) and hopefully the Ignis speed kill (skipped since they did it the week prior). Then we'll move on and hopefully get to Freya and maybe (gasp), the hardest of them all, Firefighter...
So I'm a happy gnome sitting on 8820 achievement points. I really need to get back into the BG's and get some more points there, but I've just been taking a break from Warcraft so no BG's for me as of now. Ashielle is also putting together a 10 man Ulduar group with people that have the drakes, so we'll be going for the other achievements that aren't part of the meta which makes me happy too.
Lastly, it's the Midsummer Fire Festival right now, so I'm working on getting another pet, the Frost Chip. Unfortunately, you only have one shot at him per day, so I will be really upset if he doesn't drop from the bag in the 14 attempts I have at him over the next two weeks. Yesterday, in my first bag though, I got the Frostscythe of Lord Ahune which is really cool, but ultimately, just takes up another spot in my bank.
Jun 3, 2010
ICC 10 Achievements
Tonight, after a little over an hour working on Sindragosa in 10 man hard mode, we lost one player for a while. So while he was gone, we decided to head over to attempt The Orb Whisperer for the couple of us that had missed it previously. We unfortunately kept having little mistakes crop up, but once our missing player returned, we easily got it. Then, on to Blood Queen to get Once Bitten, Twice Shy. It wasn't my turn this time to get it, so instead I got bitten and just did DPS for the run. But we got 2 more people in our 10 man the achievement and I should get it next week. With just 25 minutes left in our raid time, we almost called it, but then decided to go try the Rotface and Festergut achievements.
First up was Flu Shot Shortage on Festergut. Piece of cake. We actually got really lucky. The first two spores landed on each of the two mages, so we had nothing to do and could just run the rest of the fight as normal. So we quickly one-shot it and headed over to Rotface. We weren't quite sure of the correct strategy to use for Dances with Oozes. We originally were thinking we would use three tanks and just have two large oozes up at all times and just have the small oozes combine with them, but losing a DPS for a third tank just didn't make sense. So what we wound up doing is having our standard one tank on the large ooze but he would only combine that large ooze with another large ooze. When the large ooze combines with another large ooze, it only gains 1 stack of it's buff, so we could continually combine large oozes with the main large ooze until it had 4 stacks. At that point, we did have our boomkin shift to bear and taunt a large ooze while the small oozes just stayed on the individual players and didn't combine with anything until we burned him down.
So, all in all, it was a pretty great night. We still didn't get Sindragosa down in hard mode, but we got a bunch of achievements done and we're that much closer to the Icecrown meta achievement, Glory of the Icecrown Raider.
First up was Flu Shot Shortage on Festergut. Piece of cake. We actually got really lucky. The first two spores landed on each of the two mages, so we had nothing to do and could just run the rest of the fight as normal. So we quickly one-shot it and headed over to Rotface. We weren't quite sure of the correct strategy to use for Dances with Oozes. We originally were thinking we would use three tanks and just have two large oozes up at all times and just have the small oozes combine with them, but losing a DPS for a third tank just didn't make sense. So what we wound up doing is having our standard one tank on the large ooze but he would only combine that large ooze with another large ooze. When the large ooze combines with another large ooze, it only gains 1 stack of it's buff, so we could continually combine large oozes with the main large ooze until it had 4 stacks. At that point, we did have our boomkin shift to bear and taunt a large ooze while the small oozes just stayed on the individual players and didn't combine with anything until we burned him down.
So, all in all, it was a pretty great night. We still didn't get Sindragosa down in hard mode, but we got a bunch of achievements done and we're that much closer to the Icecrown meta achievement, Glory of the Icecrown Raider.
May 27, 2010
Master Cook
It's been a while since my last update, but in the mean time, I've completed Glory of the Ulduar Raider (10), Gurubashi Arena Grand Master, and done a couple PvP achievements, but I finally did the 8 or so hours of grinding necessary to get my Brood of Nozdormu rep up to Neutral. Which means...Scepter of the Shifting Sands questlines.
Which also means...Dirge's Kickin' Chimaerok Chops! I now know every recipe in the game for cooking (except the rogue-only Thistle Tea). So I'm a happy gnome.
Current stats:
Achievement Points: 8,615
Mounts: 117
Pets: 141/144
Which also means...Dirge's Kickin' Chimaerok Chops! I now know every recipe in the game for cooking (except the rogue-only Thistle Tea). So I'm a happy gnome.
Current stats:
Achievement Points: 8,615
Mounts: 117
Pets: 141/144
May 7, 2010
A Return to ICC 10 (Heroic)
Last night, the intrepid folks from Golden Aegis once again braved the horrors of Icecrown Citadel and defeated the abominations Festergut and Rotface in 10 man heroic.
It started out like any other night, cleared the first four with no problem, doing Lady Deathwhisper on heroic this week instead of going for the hard mode achievement like last week, which in turn rewarded me with Heroic: Storming the Citadel. We then were torn - Dreamwalker or the Plauge Quarter? We chose the Plague Quarter and 2-shot Festergut and 1-shot Rotface during our first time stepping into that quarter on heroic. We then attempted Putricide, made great progress, but decided to instead do Nausea, Heartburn, Indigestion so we could then go complete the Crimson Hall on heroic again.
Unfortunately nothing dropped for the mages last night, but the warrior and shaman in our group are now 4/4 sanctified after three more token drops for them. So congrats to Avielronis and Taalani. Next week, I'd like to work on Putricide more, but I think the healers want to try their hand at Dreamwalker. Either way, we're making great progress in 10 man heroics and I'm very proud of the whole team.
It started out like any other night, cleared the first four with no problem, doing Lady Deathwhisper on heroic this week instead of going for the hard mode achievement like last week, which in turn rewarded me with Heroic: Storming the Citadel. We then were torn - Dreamwalker or the Plauge Quarter? We chose the Plague Quarter and 2-shot Festergut and 1-shot Rotface during our first time stepping into that quarter on heroic. We then attempted Putricide, made great progress, but decided to instead do Nausea, Heartburn, Indigestion so we could then go complete the Crimson Hall on heroic again.
Unfortunately nothing dropped for the mages last night, but the warrior and shaman in our group are now 4/4 sanctified after three more token drops for them. So congrats to Avielronis and Taalani. Next week, I'd like to work on Putricide more, but I think the healers want to try their hand at Dreamwalker. Either way, we're making great progress in 10 man heroics and I'm very proud of the whole team.
Apr 30, 2010
ICC Update
Last week, because I wanted to watch something on TV, I missed our usual Thursday night raid. Because of that, I wasn't around as the team worked through the first wing on heroic mode after our first downing of the Lich King. But they couldn't get Saurfang down, so we finished him up after our normal Sunday night 25 run. Well this week, I was ready to go kick some butt, and that we did.
It started with a very easy kill of Lord Marrowgar on heroic, netting me a very nice upgrade in the form of Frost Needle. We then continued on and opted not to do Deathwhisper on heroic, but instead go for her "hard mode," Full House. It took us two tries, but we got it. So on to the Gunship. For this one, we decided to challenge ourselves by doing I'm On a Boat in heroic mode. And it was eaaaaasy. And I got what I craved most of all...Muradin's Spyglass.
So we were three bosses in and I had three huge upgrades. We took two tries on Saurfang heroic mode (we love those tokens that drop) and then continued on to the Crimson Halls. We opted to do the Blood Council in heroic mode and after a couple of wipes using a mage as the Keleseth tank, once we switched to a paladin, we killed them. And wouldn't you know...they drop an upgrade for me too: Cerise Coiled Ring. It replaces my Runed Signet, so I lose my teleport to Dalaran, but I'll just use reagents now and not worry about it. After them, we went to Blood Queen. We wiped once as we learned about the massive damage she does in the new heroic mode and then we killed her (despite me dying with a bite...I got a battle res, continued doing normal damage and we killed her right at the enrage timer). She dropped a nice wand that would be an amazing upgrade from my ilvl 232 wands - Lana'thel's Bloody Nail, but our awesome priest wanted it as well so I passed to him after winning the roll since I had already gotten three huge upgrades.
So I not only finished off The Crimson Hall (because I missed the week that our 10 man downed her originally), but also got Heroic: The Crimson Hall and once we go back and do Deathwhisper on heroic, I'll get Heroic: Storming the Citadel. We also attempted Dreamwalker in heroic mode, but that is a tough fight, so we still have some work to do there. all in all though, it was an amazing night and we completely rocked it and I got some awesome gear.
It started with a very easy kill of Lord Marrowgar on heroic, netting me a very nice upgrade in the form of Frost Needle. We then continued on and opted not to do Deathwhisper on heroic, but instead go for her "hard mode," Full House. It took us two tries, but we got it. So on to the Gunship. For this one, we decided to challenge ourselves by doing I'm On a Boat in heroic mode. And it was eaaaaasy. And I got what I craved most of all...Muradin's Spyglass.
So we were three bosses in and I had three huge upgrades. We took two tries on Saurfang heroic mode (we love those tokens that drop) and then continued on to the Crimson Halls. We opted to do the Blood Council in heroic mode and after a couple of wipes using a mage as the Keleseth tank, once we switched to a paladin, we killed them. And wouldn't you know...they drop an upgrade for me too: Cerise Coiled Ring. It replaces my Runed Signet, so I lose my teleport to Dalaran, but I'll just use reagents now and not worry about it. After them, we went to Blood Queen. We wiped once as we learned about the massive damage she does in the new heroic mode and then we killed her (despite me dying with a bite...I got a battle res, continued doing normal damage and we killed her right at the enrage timer). She dropped a nice wand that would be an amazing upgrade from my ilvl 232 wands - Lana'thel's Bloody Nail, but our awesome priest wanted it as well so I passed to him after winning the roll since I had already gotten three huge upgrades.
So I not only finished off The Crimson Hall (because I missed the week that our 10 man downed her originally), but also got Heroic: The Crimson Hall and once we go back and do Deathwhisper on heroic, I'll get Heroic: Storming the Citadel. We also attempted Dreamwalker in heroic mode, but that is a tough fight, so we still have some work to do there. all in all though, it was an amazing night and we completely rocked it and I got some awesome gear.
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