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
Showing posts with label cooking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cooking. Show all posts
May 27, 2010
Jun 23, 2009
New Achievements
This wonderful list of changes between the last patch and this patch achievements illustrates some interesting stuff.
Of course, we have brand new achievements for the new dungeon - nothing special there. But we also have achievements for a brand new world event - Pilgrim's Bounty! It's a Thanksgiving themed event and looks like it will be quite fun with new achievements, a turkey pet, and a title of "Pilgrim." It also looks like we'll have a few certain days that award achievements - Day of the Dead (Halloween) and Pirate's Day (Maybe Sept. 19 - Talk like a pirate day?). Note: Pilgrim's Bounty also comes with a lot of new recipes as well.
A change I'm not too excited about is they're making the Rapid Defense achievement which I FINALLY got a lot easier to do - upping the time requirement from 2 minutes to 3 minutes. Pretty lame.
Also looks like we have the inevitable new Vault of Archavon boss, Emalon the Flame Watcher.
And my fears were confirmed - they are removing achievement points. In a very interesting move, they are going to take away all the achievement points you earned for 5, 25, 100, 1000 emblems of Heroism, Valor, Conquest, etc. and replace them with Loot 5, 25, 100, etc. Emblems of Heroism, Valor, Conquest, or Triumph. Hopefully if you have achieved 500 emblems of Heroism and 250 emblems of valor, for example, you'll start at 750 on the "Loot 1000 emblems of heroism, valor, conquest, or triumph."
Not too many other changes. They'll be adding Feats of Strength for certain items - the Winterspring Frostsaber, Black War Mammoth, Epic Brewfest Mount, Gurky from the 2009 Blizzcon, and...proud owner of an Onyx Panther?! Sounds interesting.
Of course, we have brand new achievements for the new dungeon - nothing special there. But we also have achievements for a brand new world event - Pilgrim's Bounty! It's a Thanksgiving themed event and looks like it will be quite fun with new achievements, a turkey pet, and a title of "Pilgrim." It also looks like we'll have a few certain days that award achievements - Day of the Dead (Halloween) and Pirate's Day (Maybe Sept. 19 - Talk like a pirate day?). Note: Pilgrim's Bounty also comes with a lot of new recipes as well.
A change I'm not too excited about is they're making the Rapid Defense achievement which I FINALLY got a lot easier to do - upping the time requirement from 2 minutes to 3 minutes. Pretty lame.
Also looks like we have the inevitable new Vault of Archavon boss, Emalon the Flame Watcher.
And my fears were confirmed - they are removing achievement points. In a very interesting move, they are going to take away all the achievement points you earned for 5, 25, 100, 1000 emblems of Heroism, Valor, Conquest, etc. and replace them with Loot 5, 25, 100, etc. Emblems of Heroism, Valor, Conquest, or Triumph. Hopefully if you have achieved 500 emblems of Heroism and 250 emblems of valor, for example, you'll start at 750 on the "Loot 1000 emblems of heroism, valor, conquest, or triumph."
Not too many other changes. They'll be adding Feats of Strength for certain items - the Winterspring Frostsaber, Black War Mammoth, Epic Brewfest Mount, Gurky from the 2009 Blizzcon, and...proud owner of an Onyx Panther?! Sounds interesting.
May 30, 2009
Randomness
1. Thursday, since we were unable to clear early bosses in Ulduar (10) on Wednesday, we cleared Leviathan, Razorscale, XT-002, Kologarn, Freya, Thorim and Hodir. No drops for me (I need that 2pcT8!).
2. Friday, Ulduar (25) made it to Kolo again, but still having healing issues and problems with beams (naturally, healing issues drive from extra healing of people hit by beams).
3. Tailoring is going well. On to mageweave now. Still a long way to go though. Silk was pretty easy to come by in the Armory of the monastery.
4. Marcia continues to deny me my strand crawler. I've done the fishing day EVERY day and nothing. However, fishing up the bloodtooths is fun when you get to be all read and piss off D.E.H.T.A.
5. Finally got my Chef's Hat. Been fun toting that around with my Chef title.
6. Farming mageweave from the pirates in Tanaris. I tried the ogres, but found the pirates have a slightly less drop rate but give nice rep (12.5 per kill). So it'll be the pirates for all my mageweave. While farming them, I had to go find Cuergo's treasure and on the way to his hiding spot, I found my new best friend, Winkey.
7. Finished off the 400g+5 seal mounts today from the Argent Tournament. Up to 82 mounts now (link will be outdated once I update it again - for the current listing, check the side panel -->).
2. Friday, Ulduar (25) made it to Kolo again, but still having healing issues and problems with beams (naturally, healing issues drive from extra healing of people hit by beams).
3. Tailoring is going well. On to mageweave now. Still a long way to go though. Silk was pretty easy to come by in the Armory of the monastery.
4. Marcia continues to deny me my strand crawler. I've done the fishing day EVERY day and nothing. However, fishing up the bloodtooths is fun when you get to be all read and piss off D.E.H.T.A.
5. Finally got my Chef's Hat. Been fun toting that around with my Chef title.
6. Farming mageweave from the pirates in Tanaris. I tried the ogres, but found the pirates have a slightly less drop rate but give nice rep (12.5 per kill). So it'll be the pirates for all my mageweave. While farming them, I had to go find Cuergo's treasure and on the way to his hiding spot, I found my new best friend, Winkey.
7. Finished off the 400g+5 seal mounts today from the Argent Tournament. Up to 82 mounts now (link will be outdated once I update it again - for the current listing, check the side panel -->).
May 7, 2009
Another Crazy Night
It all started out innocently enough. I picked up my fishing and cooking daily quests in Dalaran and headed up to Icecrown for the Argent Tournament Dailies. They were quickly completed and I went back to Dalaran to fish in the sewers for some Corroded Jewelry. It wasn't fun as there's usually 10 to 20 other people fishing down there so you can't just listen for your own bobber. So after about 10 casts I was getting antsy and annoyed with the whole process when finally I fished up the jewelry. But what came along with the jewelry?? A Giant Sewer Rat! Finally. After spending countless hours fishing by myself down there in the sewers without any luck whatsoever, I get the rat after spending just a few minutes while looking for Jewelry! Old Ironjaw, I'm coming for you next!!
So that left me with just a cooking daily to do. I sent some cooked rhino dogs over from my banker, only to find out they were Mighty Rhino Dogs. But time had run out. It was time for Ulduar. Luckily, on the way up to the Ulduar entrance, there's quite a few rhinos out there so I quickly picked up my four rhino meat and got ready to start a new ten man raiding week.
The plan for the night was to attempt Flame Leviathan and XT-002 on hard modes. So we got assembled, got into our vehicles, and headed out. We left just one tower up and proceeded to one-shot the Flame Leviathan earning us some nice Emblems of Conquest along with some nice loot, including Firesoul for my nice new main hand weapon.
After the Flame Leviathan, it was time to start working on XT-002 in hard mode. We were able to break his heart each time when trying, but his resulting "Heartbroken" mode is quite taxing. First you have adds to finish off before you can focus on XT, then you also have to worry about void zones left by gravity bombs and light sparks left by light bombs. On top of this, his tantrum hits for more damage and he also has a short enrage timer. After a lot of attempts (probably 8-10), we were really getting the fight down - knowing when to use cooldowns, where to drop void zones, if we should kill the light sparks or not (I think you have to, but focusing DPS on them makes it tougher to get the XT-002 down before his hard enrage timer). Eventually, we abandoned the hard mode. We might not have the gear at the current time to do it or we just need a lot more practice healing through all of his various attacks. We did learn one important thing though. And welcome to Tiddly's first boss fight explanation with drawing...
So here we have XT-002's room. You enter from the south where it says "Entrance" and have four scrap piles around the room. He usually stays near the stairs at the north side of the room. What we found is that if you pull him over and tank him between two scrap piles on the side of the room, he will only spawn adds from the two scrap piles furthest away from him (denoted by the incoming red arrows). During our multiple attempts, he spawned various levels of trash. During one attempt, he spawned one group of small bots (easily killed with one Blizzard). During another attempt, all he spawned was one bomb bot. But then during one of our last attempts, he spawned 2 sets of small bots, one bomb bot, and one pummeler. So your spawns will vary from fight to fight, but he will only spawn them from the two scrap piles with arrows. Never from the two piles right next to him.
So with this information in hand, and knowing we could take the heart down to almost killing it, we set out to see if we could get Must Deconstruct Faster. And the short answer is, yes, yes you can. We killed him in 173 seconds, well under the 205 required by the achievement. With adds spawning from only two scrap piles, I was easily able to take them down on each pass with our offtank picking up the pummelers and since we were able to do so much damage to the heart, we basically chained heart spawns. If you manage to do enough damage to his heart, it will immediately take him from 75% to 50% and spawn the heart again. You can then take him from 50% to 25% and so on. So yeah, 173 seconds. Not too shabby. But unfortunately, not hard mode.
We continued on, one shot Kologarn, headed to the Iron Council and two-shot them and then went over to Auriaya where we quickly one shot her. We had about 30 minutes left so we decided against going for Mimiron's trash and went back to take on Razorscale and try and get A Quick Shave. So yeah, one shot that. Not a problem there. We got him down to 67% on his first landing and easily got him under 50% on the second landing and destroyed him after he landed. So that didn't take the 30 minutes we had left. So let's go over to Ignis.
The first time we killed Ignis we zerged him. It's not a quick zerg, but you can do it - ignore the adds and just focus fire Ignis down. This time though, we thought it'd be a good idea to kill him the correct way. And...one shot. So that pretty much ended a great Wednesday "pre-clear" night. Our Wednesday night group is new and the sole purpose is to clear out the early bosses in Ulduar so our Thursday night Gold Team run can work on new content. For example, we have everything down right now up to the Tier 8 bosses. So tonight we'll probably work on Freya and then Mimiron with Thorim or Hodir coming next week. But even though we were done in Ulduar, we weren't done for the night. Not with the Alliance controlling Wintergrasp.
Let's go get some Tier 8! So we headed over, lost one player, picked up a pug mage (drats! competition on Tier 8), and quickly one shot Emalon. Tier 8 dropped for our healy druid, Dylana and he becomes the first in the team with any pieces of Tier 8. We then played around with Archavon who is a joke these days, got an offspec piece of Tier 7 for our pug mage, and I got a PvP cloak (because you know how much I PvP...).
And thus ended our fun night of raiding. In the end, I got a few great achievements, including Three Car Garage on our Flame Leviathan Hard Mode take down and I'm sitting at 6,420 points. Tonight, Freya and Mimiron are on notice and tomorrow the 25 man Gold Team makes our first foray into Ulduar. And then Saturday, Crusader Tiddlywinks. A fun few days coming up.
So that left me with just a cooking daily to do. I sent some cooked rhino dogs over from my banker, only to find out they were Mighty Rhino Dogs. But time had run out. It was time for Ulduar. Luckily, on the way up to the Ulduar entrance, there's quite a few rhinos out there so I quickly picked up my four rhino meat and got ready to start a new ten man raiding week.
The plan for the night was to attempt Flame Leviathan and XT-002 on hard modes. So we got assembled, got into our vehicles, and headed out. We left just one tower up and proceeded to one-shot the Flame Leviathan earning us some nice Emblems of Conquest along with some nice loot, including Firesoul for my nice new main hand weapon.
After the Flame Leviathan, it was time to start working on XT-002 in hard mode. We were able to break his heart each time when trying, but his resulting "Heartbroken" mode is quite taxing. First you have adds to finish off before you can focus on XT, then you also have to worry about void zones left by gravity bombs and light sparks left by light bombs. On top of this, his tantrum hits for more damage and he also has a short enrage timer. After a lot of attempts (probably 8-10), we were really getting the fight down - knowing when to use cooldowns, where to drop void zones, if we should kill the light sparks or not (I think you have to, but focusing DPS on them makes it tougher to get the XT-002 down before his hard enrage timer). Eventually, we abandoned the hard mode. We might not have the gear at the current time to do it or we just need a lot more practice healing through all of his various attacks. We did learn one important thing though. And welcome to Tiddly's first boss fight explanation with drawing...
So here we have XT-002's room. You enter from the south where it says "Entrance" and have four scrap piles around the room. He usually stays near the stairs at the north side of the room. What we found is that if you pull him over and tank him between two scrap piles on the side of the room, he will only spawn adds from the two scrap piles furthest away from him (denoted by the incoming red arrows). During our multiple attempts, he spawned various levels of trash. During one attempt, he spawned one group of small bots (easily killed with one Blizzard). During another attempt, all he spawned was one bomb bot. But then during one of our last attempts, he spawned 2 sets of small bots, one bomb bot, and one pummeler. So your spawns will vary from fight to fight, but he will only spawn them from the two scrap piles with arrows. Never from the two piles right next to him.
So with this information in hand, and knowing we could take the heart down to almost killing it, we set out to see if we could get Must Deconstruct Faster. And the short answer is, yes, yes you can. We killed him in 173 seconds, well under the 205 required by the achievement. With adds spawning from only two scrap piles, I was easily able to take them down on each pass with our offtank picking up the pummelers and since we were able to do so much damage to the heart, we basically chained heart spawns. If you manage to do enough damage to his heart, it will immediately take him from 75% to 50% and spawn the heart again. You can then take him from 50% to 25% and so on. So yeah, 173 seconds. Not too shabby. But unfortunately, not hard mode.
We continued on, one shot Kologarn, headed to the Iron Council and two-shot them and then went over to Auriaya where we quickly one shot her. We had about 30 minutes left so we decided against going for Mimiron's trash and went back to take on Razorscale and try and get A Quick Shave. So yeah, one shot that. Not a problem there. We got him down to 67% on his first landing and easily got him under 50% on the second landing and destroyed him after he landed. So that didn't take the 30 minutes we had left. So let's go over to Ignis.
The first time we killed Ignis we zerged him. It's not a quick zerg, but you can do it - ignore the adds and just focus fire Ignis down. This time though, we thought it'd be a good idea to kill him the correct way. And...one shot. So that pretty much ended a great Wednesday "pre-clear" night. Our Wednesday night group is new and the sole purpose is to clear out the early bosses in Ulduar so our Thursday night Gold Team run can work on new content. For example, we have everything down right now up to the Tier 8 bosses. So tonight we'll probably work on Freya and then Mimiron with Thorim or Hodir coming next week. But even though we were done in Ulduar, we weren't done for the night. Not with the Alliance controlling Wintergrasp.
Let's go get some Tier 8! So we headed over, lost one player, picked up a pug mage (drats! competition on Tier 8), and quickly one shot Emalon. Tier 8 dropped for our healy druid, Dylana and he becomes the first in the team with any pieces of Tier 8. We then played around with Archavon who is a joke these days, got an offspec piece of Tier 7 for our pug mage, and I got a PvP cloak (because you know how much I PvP...).
And thus ended our fun night of raiding. In the end, I got a few great achievements, including Three Car Garage on our Flame Leviathan Hard Mode take down and I'm sitting at 6,420 points. Tonight, Freya and Mimiron are on notice and tomorrow the 25 man Gold Team makes our first foray into Ulduar. And then Saturday, Crusader Tiddlywinks. A fun few days coming up.
Apr 22, 2009
What a Night!
So there we were, the Gold Team had gathered and we were just sitting around the campfire with nothing to do. The Argent Tournament quests were complete, the severed arm had been returned to Olissara, and Glowergold's cheese was safely in his hands again. So...what to do? Let's go to Ulduar!
We quickly formed up and decided that since we defeated the Flame Leviathan just after causing an overload last time, that this time we would NOT catapult our druid and shaman on top of him and just DPS him down. And so it would come to pass that the Gold Team would take down the Flame Leviathan in one attempt and earn the Shutout achievement. What next we wondered? Would we go and attempt Ignis and his flaming naughty bits or Razorscale and his breath of doom?
Since we had the most practice with Razorscale we decided she would be first. The first time through, we decided that we'd try and hold off on the harpoons until all of the watchmen and sentinels were down. However, they just kept spawning and eventually ate us up. We regrouped and adjusted our strategy to just make sure no sentinels were up when we used the harpoons and we easily took her out even though Dylana, our awesome healy tree went down really early. Eleazarjr and Jizo did an amazing job keeping us all up. And what should she drop for me? The Eye of the Broodmother! It's the second best trinket with only the Scale of Fates being better at this current time.
After Razorscale we once again assessed our surroundings. Flaming naughty bits or a spoiled robot? XT-002 it was. We quickly grouped up as Aravic had to return to Dalaran and took him on for the first time. We almost had him killed when some random enemies joined the fight and made quick work of us. We regrouped and then realized that we had not cleared the trash before engaging XT-002. We quickly cleared them, engaged XT-002 again and easily took him down. Utilizing a heroism on the first heart exposure enabled us to quickly get him down as when his heart was no longer exposed, he was already at half health and his heart was exposed again. When all was said and done, he rewarded us with two achievements - Nerf Gravity Bombs and Nerf Engineering! A pleasant surprise after taking him down in (almost) one shot (darn trash).
All in all, an amazing run. Tomorrow we shall gather for four more hours of fun. The Antechamber of Ulduar awaits us.
We quickly formed up and decided that since we defeated the Flame Leviathan just after causing an overload last time, that this time we would NOT catapult our druid and shaman on top of him and just DPS him down. And so it would come to pass that the Gold Team would take down the Flame Leviathan in one attempt and earn the Shutout achievement. What next we wondered? Would we go and attempt Ignis and his flaming naughty bits or Razorscale and his breath of doom?
Since we had the most practice with Razorscale we decided she would be first. The first time through, we decided that we'd try and hold off on the harpoons until all of the watchmen and sentinels were down. However, they just kept spawning and eventually ate us up. We regrouped and adjusted our strategy to just make sure no sentinels were up when we used the harpoons and we easily took her out even though Dylana, our awesome healy tree went down really early. Eleazarjr and Jizo did an amazing job keeping us all up. And what should she drop for me? The Eye of the Broodmother! It's the second best trinket with only the Scale of Fates being better at this current time.
After Razorscale we once again assessed our surroundings. Flaming naughty bits or a spoiled robot? XT-002 it was. We quickly grouped up as Aravic had to return to Dalaran and took him on for the first time. We almost had him killed when some random enemies joined the fight and made quick work of us. We regrouped and then realized that we had not cleared the trash before engaging XT-002. We quickly cleared them, engaged XT-002 again and easily took him down. Utilizing a heroism on the first heart exposure enabled us to quickly get him down as when his heart was no longer exposed, he was already at half health and his heart was exposed again. When all was said and done, he rewarded us with two achievements - Nerf Gravity Bombs and Nerf Engineering! A pleasant surprise after taking him down in (almost) one shot (darn trash).
All in all, an amazing run. Tomorrow we shall gather for four more hours of fun. The Antechamber of Ulduar awaits us.
Apr 15, 2009
Random Thoughts
On 3.1:
In all, other than the time it took them to patch the servers (which didn't matter to me since I wasn't available to play until 9 server), I was impressed with the patch. Most of my addons worked, only a few gave errors, and when I clicked through the errors, they all worked as intended. I started in Dalaran, did the daily cooking quest, and picked up the new daily fishing quest. It took me to Sholazar which was nice since I got my Frenzyheart dailies done at the same time. I then returned to Dalaran, turned in the quest, and then flew up to Icecrown for the Argent Tourney.
On the Argent Tournament:
Pretty darn cool. I easily breezed through the intro quests, picked up the other dailies, and quickly earned 5 tokens. The quest to obtain 15 tokens will be done on Thursday, so it should be nice to see what opens up after that. Dueling on horseback is pretty sweet and the dailies take you all over Northrend. The only issue we had was after starting the Black Knight quest line and going to Westfall, when we tried to hearth back to Dalaran, the Northrend server was down and I had to call it a night.
On WoWMatrix:
Yesterday, news was released that WowMatrix had been blocked by both Curse and WowInterface. I completely understand the reasoning behind blocking WowMatrix, and, ultimately, it was the right decision to make for both sites, however, the way they handled it was completely wrong. They waited until patch day to block WowMatrix. They had been planning for weeks (if not months) on blocking the application, yet they didn't alert anyone to that fact. They gave no one a chance to prepare for the application breaking. The kept all the end-users in the dark and waited until the worst possible moment for everyone to break a vital application.
Like I said, I understand why they did it. Simple economics. WowMatrix made it so you didn't have to visit Curse or WowInterface to get your addons and they lose income because of that. There is no other reason other than simple $$$. However, again, like I said, the way they broke WowMatrix was despicable. They chose to break the application without providing any viable alternative. The Curse downloader obviously only works on Curse and is quite gimped and installs addons you didn't choose to install. As for WowInterface's updater, well...they don't have one. They'll gladly shut you out of their network, yet provide no alternative. Kudos to you guys.
So they shut down WowMatrix, which was a simple, efficient way to download addons without providing an alternative and they do so on the busiest day of the year. And what happens? Both sites crash or slow to a crawl. Gee, who would have seen that coming? Both Curse and WowInterface reported bandwidth drops of 30% and up, however, both were unable to stay up as people who used WowMatrix flooded their sites looking for updates, and, in most cases, not finding them due to poor search results, slow sites, and outdated addon listings.
On Achievements:
On Monday a few of our regular raiding team got together to do heroic achievements. Still working on that red drake and all...we decided to try the spider lairs, Azjol'Nerub and Ahn'kahet. After repeated wipes on Watch Him Die, we skipped it and proceeded to easily get Hadronox Denied and Gotta Go!. Not too bad. Over in Ahn'kahet, we easily got The Party's Over (Phosphorex had to sit that one out) and Volunteer Work. Respect Your Elders took us two tries, but only because we had a slight healing issue in the main room, but we got it done. Volazj's Quick Demise will have to wait as that is a very tough achievement. I think we'll have to all go in as DPS as I had troubles getting the healer down in the madness portion.
Of course, last night I earned Argent Aspiration and Dual Talent Specialization. I was a little disappointed to see no new achievements outside the Argent Tourney and Noblegarden. There are some smaller ones like for Dual Spec and for the new fishing dailies, but nothing fun like in the last patch. Oh wells, I think the Argent Tourney and upcoming holidays will keep me plenty busy.
On Paladins:
On Monday, I met a fellow blogger in the game after she saw my spam in trade chat. Please take a second and go say hi to Platezilla. She has some very cool updates to read and an awesome story about her death knight Velanora.
Thus ends my rants, tonight, more Argent Tourney fun, and maybe some tries at the Emerald Whelpling out in the Swamp of Sorrows. Oh, and perhaps some manual addon updating since WowMatrix doesn't work :(
In all, other than the time it took them to patch the servers (which didn't matter to me since I wasn't available to play until 9 server), I was impressed with the patch. Most of my addons worked, only a few gave errors, and when I clicked through the errors, they all worked as intended. I started in Dalaran, did the daily cooking quest, and picked up the new daily fishing quest. It took me to Sholazar which was nice since I got my Frenzyheart dailies done at the same time. I then returned to Dalaran, turned in the quest, and then flew up to Icecrown for the Argent Tourney.
On the Argent Tournament:
Pretty darn cool. I easily breezed through the intro quests, picked up the other dailies, and quickly earned 5 tokens. The quest to obtain 15 tokens will be done on Thursday, so it should be nice to see what opens up after that. Dueling on horseback is pretty sweet and the dailies take you all over Northrend. The only issue we had was after starting the Black Knight quest line and going to Westfall, when we tried to hearth back to Dalaran, the Northrend server was down and I had to call it a night.
On WoWMatrix:
Yesterday, news was released that WowMatrix had been blocked by both Curse and WowInterface. I completely understand the reasoning behind blocking WowMatrix, and, ultimately, it was the right decision to make for both sites, however, the way they handled it was completely wrong. They waited until patch day to block WowMatrix. They had been planning for weeks (if not months) on blocking the application, yet they didn't alert anyone to that fact. They gave no one a chance to prepare for the application breaking. The kept all the end-users in the dark and waited until the worst possible moment for everyone to break a vital application.
Like I said, I understand why they did it. Simple economics. WowMatrix made it so you didn't have to visit Curse or WowInterface to get your addons and they lose income because of that. There is no other reason other than simple $$$. However, again, like I said, the way they broke WowMatrix was despicable. They chose to break the application without providing any viable alternative. The Curse downloader obviously only works on Curse and is quite gimped and installs addons you didn't choose to install. As for WowInterface's updater, well...they don't have one. They'll gladly shut you out of their network, yet provide no alternative. Kudos to you guys.
So they shut down WowMatrix, which was a simple, efficient way to download addons without providing an alternative and they do so on the busiest day of the year. And what happens? Both sites crash or slow to a crawl. Gee, who would have seen that coming? Both Curse and WowInterface reported bandwidth drops of 30% and up, however, both were unable to stay up as people who used WowMatrix flooded their sites looking for updates, and, in most cases, not finding them due to poor search results, slow sites, and outdated addon listings.
On Achievements:
On Monday a few of our regular raiding team got together to do heroic achievements. Still working on that red drake and all...we decided to try the spider lairs, Azjol'Nerub and Ahn'kahet. After repeated wipes on Watch Him Die, we skipped it and proceeded to easily get Hadronox Denied and Gotta Go!. Not too bad. Over in Ahn'kahet, we easily got The Party's Over (Phosphorex had to sit that one out) and Volunteer Work. Respect Your Elders took us two tries, but only because we had a slight healing issue in the main room, but we got it done. Volazj's Quick Demise will have to wait as that is a very tough achievement. I think we'll have to all go in as DPS as I had troubles getting the healer down in the madness portion.
Of course, last night I earned Argent Aspiration and Dual Talent Specialization. I was a little disappointed to see no new achievements outside the Argent Tourney and Noblegarden. There are some smaller ones like for Dual Spec and for the new fishing dailies, but nothing fun like in the last patch. Oh wells, I think the Argent Tourney and upcoming holidays will keep me plenty busy.
On Paladins:
On Monday, I met a fellow blogger in the game after she saw my spam in trade chat. Please take a second and go say hi to Platezilla. She has some very cool updates to read and an awesome story about her death knight Velanora.
Thus ends my rants, tonight, more Argent Tourney fun, and maybe some tries at the Emerald Whelpling out in the Swamp of Sorrows. Oh, and perhaps some manual addon updating since WowMatrix doesn't work :(
Mar 31, 2009
More Cooking Dailies
Recently, I haven't been doing the cooking dailies that often. Every once in a while, as I stroll through Dalaran, I'll check in and do the daily to get a cooking award or two along with some spices as my raiding food always needs to be kept fully stocked. After getting the 100 Dalaran Cooking Awards achievement and Hail to the Chef, there's really been no point to the awards...until now. Behold - the Chef's HAT!
How sweet it will be to walk around with this awesome hat on and my Chef title. Of course, after the patch, with new recipes added, the Chef title won't be as rare. Just like the pet fawn, since there's going to be more pets added, 75 pets won't be as hard to obtain. Everything gets easier, so I guess they'll just throw us little awards like this cool hat (which I don't have room for in my bank anyways) to show that not only did we buy every recipe with our awards, we can also buy the hat and are true chefs.
(Plus, I just saw there's an achievement as well. Time to start doing those dailies!)
How sweet it will be to walk around with this awesome hat on and my Chef title. Of course, after the patch, with new recipes added, the Chef title won't be as rare. Just like the pet fawn, since there's going to be more pets added, 75 pets won't be as hard to obtain. Everything gets easier, so I guess they'll just throw us little awards like this cool hat (which I don't have room for in my bank anyways) to show that not only did we buy every recipe with our awards, we can also buy the hat and are true chefs.
(Plus, I just saw there's an achievement as well. Time to start doing those dailies!)
Mar 7, 2009
Tiddlywinks the Seer
Just a week ago, I predicted:
And what do I read today?
Thanks Blizzard. Just keep on giving in to those that cry and whine on the forums. How many times have you stated since achievements came out that the Brew of the Year achievement WOULD NOT be removed from the Brewmaster meta-achievement? Yet you get enough people bitching about it and you just give in. Keep it up. How absurdly stupid. By the way, I think Sartharion with 3 drakes in 10 man mode is too hard. Can you just give me the achievement, the title, and the mount now? KK thx.
Hey, how about you make it easier to get the Chef title by adding a bunch of new recipes? Oh what? You're going to?
Gee, thanks. Now that achievement will be easy as cake to get and will require very little work. How wonderful.
I'm fairly certain they'll remove the 12 month requirement for the Brewmaster title, instead replacing it with an achievement to just buy the brew of the month membership rather than sampling all 12 brews. God knows people have qq'ed enough about it.
And what do I read today?
Achievement Changes
* Brew of the Year is no longer required for the Brewmaster meta-achievement.
* New achievement: Brew of the Month - Join the Brew of the Month Club - Required for Brewmaster.
Thanks Blizzard. Just keep on giving in to those that cry and whine on the forums. How many times have you stated since achievements came out that the Brew of the Year achievement WOULD NOT be removed from the Brewmaster meta-achievement? Yet you get enough people bitching about it and you just give in. Keep it up. How absurdly stupid. By the way, I think Sartharion with 3 drakes in 10 man mode is too hard. Can you just give me the achievement, the title, and the mount now? KK thx.
Hey, how about you make it easier to get the Chef title by adding a bunch of new recipes? Oh what? You're going to?
Professions Changes
Cooking
* A lot (20+) of cooking recipes have been changed to allow players to skill up to 450 with them.
Gee, thanks. Now that achievement will be easy as cake to get and will require very little work. How wonderful.
Jan 21, 2009
Chef Tiddlywinks...Finally
So last night, after finishing up my daily cooking quest, I went to buy the Worg Tartare and Fish Feast recipes thinking each would cost 3 dalaran cooking awards. Worg Tartare down, one recipe to go. What's this!? Fish Feast is 5 cooking awards? And it requires 450 cooking? Oh noes. I'm only at 437.
So off I went to hunt rhinos. After amassing 52 rhino meat (I had 24 Northern Spices, so I wanted to make 24 small feasts to hopefully earn those last 13 points, and I wanted 4 rhino meat left over for the cooking dailies), I then quickly fished up as many Nettlefish as I could in 30 minutes on three hooks. It was quite a few more than the 48 required which is perfectly fine with me since my raid food of choice is Nettlefish. Then to find some Arctic Salmon - not a problem. Fished up 48 of them and hurried back to the Ledgermain Lounge to look for the last book I need for Higher Learning. I quickly started cooking small feasts and earned the 13 points I needed in just 17 feasts. So there I sat - at 450 with 4 Dalaran Cooking Awards...
To prepare the the fish feast cooking in the morning, I then had to venture back out to catch some Mussleback Sculpins (luckily it uses Arctic Salmon and Nettlefish too, and I had those left over). I fished up the requisite amount, killed a couple of worgs for my Worg Tartare and went to sleep, waiting for the daily the next morning.
So early this morning I awoke to Infused Mushroom Meatloaf and luckily had just 2 chilled meats left, I gathered the mushrooms quickly, got my 5th dalaran cooking award, bought the recipe and was rewarded with Chef de Cuisine, and then cooked up 4 fish feasts for The Northrend Gourmet and, of course, Hail to the Chef!
Here I stand on the shore of a peaceful lake in Crystalsong forest with my latest pet, the adorable fawn (reward from Lil' Game Hunter achievement for 75 pets).
Yesterday I mentioned my trip to Tempest Keep, and not only did I win the Robes of Tirisfal, but I also won the Ethereum Life-Staff which you can see in the picture of me below:
As an additional bonus last night, while briefly perusing the lists of achievements, I found two new ones! Pest Control requires you to go around all over the world to slay pests such as maggots, beetles, spiders, and roaches which was quite time-consuming, especially since I couldn't find a larva for the life of me. I went into Naxxramas, but couldn't find one without going past some enemies, so I went back to the Ghostlands, where after about 10-15 minutes of running around searching for them, I finally found one.
The other achievement is a follow-up to To All The Squirrels I've Loved Before entltied, To All The Squirrels Who Shared My Life. Similar to the "loved before" achievement, you have to go around and /love a bunch of critters - most of them scattered through Northrend, but a couple in some more obscure places. After a quick loop of Northrend, I went over to the Swamp of Sorrows to find a toad and got the achievement. With the Chef achievements this morning, I hit 4,700 points exactly!
So off I went to hunt rhinos. After amassing 52 rhino meat (I had 24 Northern Spices, so I wanted to make 24 small feasts to hopefully earn those last 13 points, and I wanted 4 rhino meat left over for the cooking dailies), I then quickly fished up as many Nettlefish as I could in 30 minutes on three hooks. It was quite a few more than the 48 required which is perfectly fine with me since my raid food of choice is Nettlefish. Then to find some Arctic Salmon - not a problem. Fished up 48 of them and hurried back to the Ledgermain Lounge to look for the last book I need for Higher Learning. I quickly started cooking small feasts and earned the 13 points I needed in just 17 feasts. So there I sat - at 450 with 4 Dalaran Cooking Awards...
To prepare the the fish feast cooking in the morning, I then had to venture back out to catch some Mussleback Sculpins (luckily it uses Arctic Salmon and Nettlefish too, and I had those left over). I fished up the requisite amount, killed a couple of worgs for my Worg Tartare and went to sleep, waiting for the daily the next morning.
So early this morning I awoke to Infused Mushroom Meatloaf and luckily had just 2 chilled meats left, I gathered the mushrooms quickly, got my 5th dalaran cooking award, bought the recipe and was rewarded with Chef de Cuisine, and then cooked up 4 fish feasts for The Northrend Gourmet and, of course, Hail to the Chef!
Here I stand on the shore of a peaceful lake in Crystalsong forest with my latest pet, the adorable fawn (reward from Lil' Game Hunter achievement for 75 pets).
Yesterday I mentioned my trip to Tempest Keep, and not only did I win the Robes of Tirisfal, but I also won the Ethereum Life-Staff which you can see in the picture of me below:
As an additional bonus last night, while briefly perusing the lists of achievements, I found two new ones! Pest Control requires you to go around all over the world to slay pests such as maggots, beetles, spiders, and roaches which was quite time-consuming, especially since I couldn't find a larva for the life of me. I went into Naxxramas, but couldn't find one without going past some enemies, so I went back to the Ghostlands, where after about 10-15 minutes of running around searching for them, I finally found one.
The other achievement is a follow-up to To All The Squirrels I've Loved Before entltied, To All The Squirrels Who Shared My Life. Similar to the "loved before" achievement, you have to go around and /love a bunch of critters - most of them scattered through Northrend, but a couple in some more obscure places. After a quick loop of Northrend, I went over to the Swamp of Sorrows to find a toad and got the achievement. With the Chef achievements this morning, I hit 4,700 points exactly!
Jan 14, 2009
Cooking - Complete!
So, here I sit, with one Dalaran Cooking Award to my name and not a recipe to use it on (when I get 3). As we already knew, the Chef achievement is broken as it is impossible to complete The Northrend Gourmet. But I have done as much as possible right now and I look forward to the vendors having a couple new recipes for me in the near future.
To be prepared for those recipes, I'll just have to visit a vendor to make my Kungaloosh and I'll have to do some fishing tonight to be ready for the Fish Feast. I'll also need to kill some worg and gather some meat for the upcoming Worg Tartare recipe. The Kungaloosh recipe will be available from a vendor if you have completed The Taste Test (which I have) and the Fish Feast and Worg Tartare will be available for Dalaran Cooking Awards. So in 5 or fewer days, I'll have the requisite Awards ready for purchasing the recipes and I will be able to hit exactly 45 recipes for the Northrend Gourmet (I sit at 42/46 right now). I'm also at 157/160 for the Chef de Cuisine, so these three recipes will also get me that achievement. And as I sit at 66/100 Dalaran Cooking Awards, it will take me approximately 24 or so days to achieve 100 Dalaran Cooking Awards to completely finish the Cooking Achievements.
To be prepared for those recipes, I'll just have to visit a vendor to make my Kungaloosh and I'll have to do some fishing tonight to be ready for the Fish Feast. I'll also need to kill some worg and gather some meat for the upcoming Worg Tartare recipe. The Kungaloosh recipe will be available from a vendor if you have completed The Taste Test (which I have) and the Fish Feast and Worg Tartare will be available for Dalaran Cooking Awards. So in 5 or fewer days, I'll have the requisite Awards ready for purchasing the recipes and I will be able to hit exactly 45 recipes for the Northrend Gourmet (I sit at 42/46 right now). I'm also at 157/160 for the Chef de Cuisine, so these three recipes will also get me that achievement. And as I sit at 66/100 Dalaran Cooking Awards, it will take me approximately 24 or so days to achieve 100 Dalaran Cooking Awards to completely finish the Cooking Achievements.
Dec 10, 2008
A Busy Week
So normally, my day would involve doing my dailies, mining for gold, and then putzing around by fishing in the sewers or farming for pets. But lately, my days have been taken up by running as many dailies as possible before being called into heroics, and even a heroic Obsidian Sanctum run on Monday (both Gauntlets of the Lost Vanquisher and Illustration of the Dragon Soul dropped - both the best in slot in the whole game for me, and I lost both rolls - the gloves went to another mage who already had T7 gloves and didn't need the T7.5 as much as others, but with straight rolls, not much could be done).
But in other news, I've been getting quite lucky in heroic 5-man dungeons. Over the weekend, I went to a quasi-PUG Violet Hold and the Azure Cloth Bindings dropped. I lost the roll to our healer shammy which was fine with me - he did a great job and I got some new pants earlier in the run. But the very next day, we ran it again, they dropped again, and I was the only one who could use them. Currently there's only 3 upgrades for me and they all come from 25 man instances. Oh yeah, along with the bindings, the Mark of the War Prisoner dropped and I got that as well. I'm now using two trinkets that have spellpower "on use" abilities, so I can't stack them, but for now, they'll work for me. I'm not quite sure what other trinket I'd like to work on (other than the Illustration above). I think the Embrace of the Spider from 25 man Naxxramas is my next big upgrade.
Also, earlier in the weekend, while running heroics, I was sporting my Tabard of the Kirin Tor and I got to revered which rewarded me with the best one handed weapon in the game until 10 or 25 man Naxxramas, the Flameheart Spell Scapel. Combine that with the Ward of the Violet Citadel I purchased last night for 25 badges (the best off-hand in the game until Naxxramas 25) and I'm set for a while. Now I just need to upgrade my wand in Heroic Azjol-Nerub or Heroic Utgarde Keep.
On the crafting side, last night I purchased 4 Dragon's Eyes and had a Titanium Spellshock Necklace crafted. It is absolutely wonderful. There's only one upgrade in game right now and that's a BoE from Naxxramas, so I could watch the AH for it in the future. Also, over the weekend, a friendly gnome mage crafted a Deathchill Cloak for me. It took some gold, just like the Spellshock Necklace, but I'm making 500-1000g an hour farming ore in Icecrown and I could easily afford the mats that I couldn't make myself. Now, there's just one cloak upgrade available to me and that drops from Sartharion in the heroic Obsidian Sanctum with 2 drakes still alive.
So now my focus has shifted towards some more crafted items. Right now I'm looking for the Spellweave Gloves and Spellweave Robe which would both last me until I get my Tier 7 items. So I'm buying Spellweave when it's cheap and I'll have them crafted once I can find enough (only have one Spellweave right now).
My other major items that need upgrading are my hat, my shoulders (especially my shoulders), my feet (Wyrmrest Exalted is the next goal), and my wand. But all in all, gear wise, I've been doing pretty good. Right now, I think all I have left for the Superior achievement is my shoulders, my wand, my feet, and my gloves (the gloves are the first Spellweave item I will have crafted). So hopefully I can get some Heroic Nexus, Azjol-Nerub, Gundrak, or Halls of Lightning this coming week and weekend.
Oh yeah...yesterday I got my Ice Mammoth. Yay! I also got my 30th Northrend cooking recipe and thought I would receive the Chef title when I achieved Northrend Gourmet. But apparently I need the 45 recipe Northrend Gourmet for my Chef title and that is currently unobtainable. With the four Northrend recipes that are not properly taught when you complete the quest, there is no way to obtain Hail to the Chef or Chef de Cuisine. Hopefully these will be fixed soon so I can be Chef Tiddlywinks.
But in other news, I've been getting quite lucky in heroic 5-man dungeons. Over the weekend, I went to a quasi-PUG Violet Hold and the Azure Cloth Bindings dropped. I lost the roll to our healer shammy which was fine with me - he did a great job and I got some new pants earlier in the run. But the very next day, we ran it again, they dropped again, and I was the only one who could use them. Currently there's only 3 upgrades for me and they all come from 25 man instances. Oh yeah, along with the bindings, the Mark of the War Prisoner dropped and I got that as well. I'm now using two trinkets that have spellpower "on use" abilities, so I can't stack them, but for now, they'll work for me. I'm not quite sure what other trinket I'd like to work on (other than the Illustration above). I think the Embrace of the Spider from 25 man Naxxramas is my next big upgrade.
Also, earlier in the weekend, while running heroics, I was sporting my Tabard of the Kirin Tor and I got to revered which rewarded me with the best one handed weapon in the game until 10 or 25 man Naxxramas, the Flameheart Spell Scapel. Combine that with the Ward of the Violet Citadel I purchased last night for 25 badges (the best off-hand in the game until Naxxramas 25) and I'm set for a while. Now I just need to upgrade my wand in Heroic Azjol-Nerub or Heroic Utgarde Keep.
On the crafting side, last night I purchased 4 Dragon's Eyes and had a Titanium Spellshock Necklace crafted. It is absolutely wonderful. There's only one upgrade in game right now and that's a BoE from Naxxramas, so I could watch the AH for it in the future. Also, over the weekend, a friendly gnome mage crafted a Deathchill Cloak for me. It took some gold, just like the Spellshock Necklace, but I'm making 500-1000g an hour farming ore in Icecrown and I could easily afford the mats that I couldn't make myself. Now, there's just one cloak upgrade available to me and that drops from Sartharion in the heroic Obsidian Sanctum with 2 drakes still alive.
So now my focus has shifted towards some more crafted items. Right now I'm looking for the Spellweave Gloves and Spellweave Robe which would both last me until I get my Tier 7 items. So I'm buying Spellweave when it's cheap and I'll have them crafted once I can find enough (only have one Spellweave right now).
My other major items that need upgrading are my hat, my shoulders (especially my shoulders), my feet (Wyrmrest Exalted is the next goal), and my wand. But all in all, gear wise, I've been doing pretty good. Right now, I think all I have left for the Superior achievement is my shoulders, my wand, my feet, and my gloves (the gloves are the first Spellweave item I will have crafted). So hopefully I can get some Heroic Nexus, Azjol-Nerub, Gundrak, or Halls of Lightning this coming week and weekend.
Oh yeah...yesterday I got my Ice Mammoth. Yay! I also got my 30th Northrend cooking recipe and thought I would receive the Chef title when I achieved Northrend Gourmet. But apparently I need the 45 recipe Northrend Gourmet for my Chef title and that is currently unobtainable. With the four Northrend recipes that are not properly taught when you complete the quest, there is no way to obtain Hail to the Chef or Chef de Cuisine. Hopefully these will be fixed soon so I can be Chef Tiddlywinks.
Dec 3, 2008
Chef Soon
Looking over my achievements, I have just 3 more recipes to cook up to become Chef Tiddlywinks. I have one Dalaran Cooking Award on me, which means I need 5 more. At one per day (hopefully I get 2 one of these days), Sunday I will have what it takes to be called Chef! Counting down the days...
Nov 21, 2008
Old Crafty & Chuck
This morning, I woke up early and did my daily Dalaran cooking quest only to be whispered by a fellow guild mate that today's fishing quest was Crocs in the City (my guild knows I need to get my pets from that so they are looking out for me which is awesome). So I quickly ported to Shatt, got the daily quest and then ported to Theramore. Took a flight to Ratchet, hoofed it to Orgrimmar and easily made it past the guards, hit invisibility, and arrived at my fishing spot with nary a nick.
After about 10 casts, Old Crafty was mine! I ported to Ironforge, looking now for Old Ironjaw, but couldn't catch him in about 15 casts, so I took the Crocolisk, ported back to Shattrath and turned in the quest. Perhaps Old Man Barlo is in a better mood with fewer people visiting him, or he's lonely and wants me to visit more because not only did he reward me with Chuck's Bucket for returning the crocolisk to him, he also gave me Spun Truesilver Fishing Line. I'm going to save it for when I obtain my Mastercraft Kalu'ak Fishing Pole from the Tuskarr (currently at 5,000/21,000 revered).
So it was quite a nice morning for me with both cooking and fishing done. Last night I was finally able to get the Oracles to start giving me daily quests. The final quest in the line was bugged as the lich just stood there and refused to let us attack. After a couple of hours, a GM finally reset her for us and my pick up group quickly took her down twice as the first time the other four people wanted to help the Frenzyhearts out. Luckily they all stuck around and helped me complete her again as I wanted to get on good terms with the Oracles. So now my dailies consist of the Kalu'ak and the Oracles. I'm also just getting somewhere with Sons of Hodir, so they'll probably be on my daily sweep as they have the really nice new shoulder enchants.
After about 10 casts, Old Crafty was mine! I ported to Ironforge, looking now for Old Ironjaw, but couldn't catch him in about 15 casts, so I took the Crocolisk, ported back to Shattrath and turned in the quest. Perhaps Old Man Barlo is in a better mood with fewer people visiting him, or he's lonely and wants me to visit more because not only did he reward me with Chuck's Bucket for returning the crocolisk to him, he also gave me Spun Truesilver Fishing Line. I'm going to save it for when I obtain my Mastercraft Kalu'ak Fishing Pole from the Tuskarr (currently at 5,000/21,000 revered).
So it was quite a nice morning for me with both cooking and fishing done. Last night I was finally able to get the Oracles to start giving me daily quests. The final quest in the line was bugged as the lich just stood there and refused to let us attack. After a couple of hours, a GM finally reset her for us and my pick up group quickly took her down twice as the first time the other four people wanted to help the Frenzyhearts out. Luckily they all stuck around and helped me complete her again as I wanted to get on good terms with the Oracles. So now my dailies consist of the Kalu'ak and the Oracles. I'm also just getting somewhere with Sons of Hodir, so they'll probably be on my daily sweep as they have the really nice new shoulder enchants.
Nov 20, 2008
Level 80 and More!
Quite a busy day yesterday. First and foremost, ding 80!
It all started yesterday as I cleaned up the final quests in the Sholazar Basin. I had only about 30 more to do and quickly earned my Into the Basin achievement. But while completing my Sholazar Quests, another achievement I had been traking for a while finally popped up - I am now Tiddlywinks the Seeker! 3,000 quests completed (which also pushed me over 3,000 achievement points). After 3,000 quests and the Basin complete, I headed for the Storm Peaks. K3 was my next destination and after questing there for a while, earning the vaunted Mine Sweeper achievement, and having some fun up in the sky and the mountains, I hit 80.
So what to do next? Well continue questing of course. I'm going to finish off the Storm Peaks and then move to Ice Crown to get my Loremaster of Northrend achievement (unfortunately, Kalimdor remains unconquered). But after questing a little longer, I decided to go explore, and earned the title of The Explorer!
So now what? Well bright and early this morning, I earned my 10th Dalaran Cooking Award, and I have much reputation to grind with certain factions that reward pets. I also need just one more reputation at exalted to earn 25 Exalted Reputations and of course, I'm fishing for my Giant Sewer Rat and also for the coins in the fountain.
I also put of leveling engineering this whole time, but with stacks of cobalt going for 100g each right now, getting my engineering up will take quite a while when I finally decide the market has stabilized. However, I did raise First Aid to 450. Enchanting sits at 410, cooking at 415ish, and fishing at around 395. Last night with my Tabard of the Explorer, I also received my Tabard of the Achiever for having 25 Tabards.
There's so much more to do, so many more quests to complete, so many more achievements to seek out. I think I'll head back to the Storm Peaks tonight, fish a bit, and try and finish up the Oracles questline so I can start earning rep with them.
It all started yesterday as I cleaned up the final quests in the Sholazar Basin. I had only about 30 more to do and quickly earned my Into the Basin achievement. But while completing my Sholazar Quests, another achievement I had been traking for a while finally popped up - I am now Tiddlywinks the Seeker! 3,000 quests completed (which also pushed me over 3,000 achievement points). After 3,000 quests and the Basin complete, I headed for the Storm Peaks. K3 was my next destination and after questing there for a while, earning the vaunted Mine Sweeper achievement, and having some fun up in the sky and the mountains, I hit 80.
So what to do next? Well continue questing of course. I'm going to finish off the Storm Peaks and then move to Ice Crown to get my Loremaster of Northrend achievement (unfortunately, Kalimdor remains unconquered). But after questing a little longer, I decided to go explore, and earned the title of The Explorer!
So now what? Well bright and early this morning, I earned my 10th Dalaran Cooking Award, and I have much reputation to grind with certain factions that reward pets. I also need just one more reputation at exalted to earn 25 Exalted Reputations and of course, I'm fishing for my Giant Sewer Rat and also for the coins in the fountain.
I also put of leveling engineering this whole time, but with stacks of cobalt going for 100g each right now, getting my engineering up will take quite a while when I finally decide the market has stabilized. However, I did raise First Aid to 450. Enchanting sits at 410, cooking at 415ish, and fishing at around 395. Last night with my Tabard of the Explorer, I also received my Tabard of the Achiever for having 25 Tabards.
There's so much more to do, so many more quests to complete, so many more achievements to seek out. I think I'll head back to the Storm Peaks tonight, fish a bit, and try and finish up the Oracles questline so I can start earning rep with them.
May 22, 2008
Raid Consumables
Over the past few raids, I've been watching the Big Brother consumables chart quite closely. It always pains me to see people with no flasks or potions while we're fighting a boss. Even worse, I often see people without food buffs even after being reminded to eat something before the fight.Now I realize that not everyone is a master chef like I am, but it's just a part of being dedicated to the raid - and those that are unwilling to take the time to skill up in cooking or just don't want to buy food off the auction house are not team players in my opinion. Every raid I attend I have food in my bags. Often, food I can't even use (+Agility, +Strength). I try and hand them out when I see people are short on food - it happens to us all, but I have never run out of +Spell Damage food and I always have a few +Stamina/+MP5 fish sticks in my back pocket just in case. Yeah, it's annoying to carry all that food around, taking up bag slots, but it's something you just have to do when you're raiding Tier 5 content in my opinion. A +23 spell damage food buff is huge - that's 2 extra epic red gems in my case. You can't just ignore that boost. Add on top of that the spirit I receive to keep my mana in tip-top condition, and there's just no excuse to not be using food buffs.
Perhaps even more egregious is the ignorance of flasks and potions. A while ago I stopped using potions altogether due to the fact they don't persist through death. This last Tuesday night while we were taking down Magtheridon and Lurker, I had to pop two Flasks of Pure Death. Yeah, it's expensive, but it's +80 damage to ALL of my spells. Add that with a food buff, and that's +103 damage. Like Vetarra pointed out in raid chat a while ago, that's an extra piece of equipment. You wouldn't come into a raid without your gloves or boots. Why come in without flasks or food?
Ok, I realize that not everyone plays just one character like I do. I know that during the week you might not have time to do dailies, but the two flasks require me to outlay about 120g a week (usually just one flask if we go to Gruul and I can use a Blade's Edge Elixir) or even less if I get a Mark of the Illidari. But in a quick trip around the Outlands, I can easily do the Shattered Sun quests in Nagrand, Blade's Edge, Netherstorm, then head south to Hellfire Peninsula and then back to Shattrath to turn them in (sometimes with a stop to bomb in Skettis). All told, it takes maybe 1/2 an hour and nets me 100 or so gold. Pick up the fishing quest and cooking quest and you'll be in any zone required for those two quests while making your circle and they will also net you free food and fish along with even more gold. Excuses about not enough time to gather gold are worthless to me. You have time. You don't have to level that alt just now. If you're committed to the raid, you'll gather a few gold and pick up a couple flasks and if you're not a cook, buy some food.
As always, WowWiki has a great listing of flasks - find an Alchemist and have some made. I can usually get my Flask of Pure Death made for free if I provide the Fel Lotus and the Nightmare Vine (which I always have extras of to make Superior Wizard Oil with. So go do your dailies, level up your cooking, and show up to your raids prepared!
May 2, 2008
Recipe Progression
The wonderful Ackis Recipe List has kept me on top of my game and I finally got around to documenting how far I've come with my professions. We'll start with the easiest and best looking list of the four - first aid - 100%!
It wasn't too tough to get to 100% as there are only 15 recipes and most are trainable, but hey, I made it. Next up is cooking:
I've got a few recipes to go there and until I can organize a raid into Blackwing Lair, I will be unable to obtain the recipe for Dirge's Kickin' Chimaerok Chops. With a little more work though I should be able to get to 114/115 cooking recipes. Now, to tailoring...
As you can see, I'm at 88% of all tailoring recipes. However, this doesn't take into account that there are recipes I will not ever be able to learn (of course, without switching to exalted Aldor). There's a few recipes I still need to search down - some from Zul'Gurub rep, one in Karazhan still, and then just random other recipes from around the world. I still need to keep on raiding Knot Thimblejack's Cache and hope for some patterns from there as well.
For enchanting, I'm at 199/221 recipes or 90%. A few are from the old world, Ahn'Qiraj which no one raids any more and some others from Zul'Gurub reputation. And then there's just a ton that drop in Outland instances which I really don't want to farm, but will at some point. And the last ones on the list are really expensive rare drops which I'm still saving up for.
So there you have it. Not too shabby - 88% tailoring, 90% enchanting. Cooking should be close to finished soon and first aid is done. Next...on to pet completion!
It wasn't too tough to get to 100% as there are only 15 recipes and most are trainable, but hey, I made it. Next up is cooking:
I've got a few recipes to go there and until I can organize a raid into Blackwing Lair, I will be unable to obtain the recipe for Dirge's Kickin' Chimaerok Chops. With a little more work though I should be able to get to 114/115 cooking recipes. Now, to tailoring...
As you can see, I'm at 88% of all tailoring recipes. However, this doesn't take into account that there are recipes I will not ever be able to learn (of course, without switching to exalted Aldor). There's a few recipes I still need to search down - some from Zul'Gurub rep, one in Karazhan still, and then just random other recipes from around the world. I still need to keep on raiding Knot Thimblejack's Cache and hope for some patterns from there as well.
For enchanting, I'm at 199/221 recipes or 90%. A few are from the old world, Ahn'Qiraj which no one raids any more and some others from Zul'Gurub reputation. And then there's just a ton that drop in Outland instances which I really don't want to farm, but will at some point. And the last ones on the list are really expensive rare drops which I'm still saving up for.
So there you have it. Not too shabby - 88% tailoring, 90% enchanting. Cooking should be close to finished soon and first aid is done. Next...on to pet completion!
Apr 30, 2008
Gold Team 25 Man
We made a little progress last night as we continue our attempts in Serpentshrine Cavern. After quickly downing Maulgar, Gruul and Mag, we set off to kill the Lurker Below. We only had one shot at him the week prior, so we didn't expect to get him this week, but we got close.
After the first two attempts at him, everyone seemed to have gotten the hang of it and we were doing quite well on our third, and final attempt. We cleared two waves of spawns and were DPS'ing the Lurker quite well when all of a sudden a spout got the tank. He was submerged properly as the spout went by and came out of the water, only to get hit by the spout as it came by him the second time.
I am confident we'll get that damn fish next week though. Especially with the rate we clear through Gruul & Mag and the SSC trash.
On an unrelated note, this weekend I purchased Enchant Chest: Major Resilience. I took screenshots of my progression in each of my tradeskills, but keep forgetting to cut them down to size to post here. A nice progression I've made is I am now at 100% of all first aid skills. I purchased Manual: Strong Anti-Venom to round out that profession. Cooking is probably next, though I'm unsure when I'll be able to make it into Blackwing Lair to get Recipe: Dirge's Kickin' Chimaerok Chops.
After the first two attempts at him, everyone seemed to have gotten the hang of it and we were doing quite well on our third, and final attempt. We cleared two waves of spawns and were DPS'ing the Lurker quite well when all of a sudden a spout got the tank. He was submerged properly as the spout went by and came out of the water, only to get hit by the spout as it came by him the second time.
I am confident we'll get that damn fish next week though. Especially with the rate we clear through Gruul & Mag and the SSC trash.
On an unrelated note, this weekend I purchased Enchant Chest: Major Resilience. I took screenshots of my progression in each of my tradeskills, but keep forgetting to cut them down to size to post here. A nice progression I've made is I am now at 100% of all first aid skills. I purchased Manual: Strong Anti-Venom to round out that profession. Cooking is probably next, though I'm unsure when I'll be able to make it into Blackwing Lair to get Recipe: Dirge's Kickin' Chimaerok Chops.
Apr 6, 2008
Recipe Completion
With little to do last night, I scanned my recipe list to see which recipes I needed to acquire. In total, there were 11 cooking recipes I did not know. So I enlisted the help of a friendly troll shaman who searched out three of them and put them on the neutral auction house for me. I have a ways to go, but the rest of them just require more traveling. The one recipe I fear I will not be able to obtain, leaving me one short of every recipe is Dirge's Kickin' Chimaerok Chops. They require a kill of the third boss in Blackwing Lair, an instance I have not ventured into yet, and I fear I would need many skilled friends to accompany me. But perhaps there are others who would like to obtain that recipe and might join me.
Looking through my tailoring patterns, I realized there was one easy pattern I could obtain, so after killing overmaster Pyron three times, he finally dropped the pattern for Cloak of Fire. I also found an amazing deal on the auction house and bought Pattern: Vengeance Wrap for just 500g.
Looking through my tailoring patterns, I realized there was one easy pattern I could obtain, so after killing overmaster Pyron three times, he finally dropped the pattern for Cloak of Fire. I also found an amazing deal on the auction house and bought Pattern: Vengeance Wrap for just 500g.
Feb 12, 2008
Are Daily Quests Leaving Casuals Behind?
With the new patch coming out soon, a post at WoW Insider.com asks if the daily quests are leaving casuals behind. I left a long comment, but thought I would explain my daily questing rationale.
To begin, I usually log out in Shattrath - mainly due to the fact that I can port for free back there and then just start whatever I need when I log on and I can usually sell some enchants while standing around at the start or end of the day.
Since I'm in Shattrath, I'll pick up the daily cooking quest and check the daily battleground. If it's AV, I'll queue. If not, I'll evaluate my options based on the daily cooking quest.
If it's Kaliri Stew, I head to Skettis to get a Kaliri Wing while bombing and searching for the prisoner. If I don't find the prisoner while bombing, I don't do the escort quest. If it's Demon Broiled Surprise, I'll head to Skettis and do the bombing run and look for the prisoner. After bombing, I'll then take a free ride to Blade's Edge and finish the cooking quest while doing the four daily quests there. If the quest is Spiritual Soup, I'll again head to Skettis and bomb while searchinging for the prisoner and then head to Netherwing Ledge. While there, I'll pick up the quest to disrupt the twilight portal. I'll then head to Nagrand and cook up the soup and kill the 20 agents.
With Skettis finished and Blade's Edge done in one, I'll then head back to the Netherwing Ledge as the most money can be made there. I'll pick up all the daily quests there then head directly into the mine. Doing the two quests in there are the best way to start your farming - awarding 30g for a relatively small time requirement. Plus, the greys that drop from the mobs there usually vendor at the end for 4-5 more gold. Add to that the mobs frequently drop greens, blues, and I've also seen two purple BOE's (one pair of Leggings of Beast Mastery I found sold for 1000g on auction).
After that, it's a toss up as to what to do next. I might fly around a bit and booterang some mobs, if I haven't done Blade's Edge dailies, I might fly up there and complete those. More often than not, I'll gather Netherwing Relics as the mobs that drop them also supply me with netherweave or I'll head up to Netherstorm to collect mana berries if that is he daily cooking quest.
But once the Sunwell Plateau is opened to visitors, I will be spending the bulk of my time there working on rep and earning money through dailies.
To begin, I usually log out in Shattrath - mainly due to the fact that I can port for free back there and then just start whatever I need when I log on and I can usually sell some enchants while standing around at the start or end of the day.
Since I'm in Shattrath, I'll pick up the daily cooking quest and check the daily battleground. If it's AV, I'll queue. If not, I'll evaluate my options based on the daily cooking quest.
If it's Kaliri Stew, I head to Skettis to get a Kaliri Wing while bombing and searching for the prisoner. If I don't find the prisoner while bombing, I don't do the escort quest. If it's Demon Broiled Surprise, I'll head to Skettis and do the bombing run and look for the prisoner. After bombing, I'll then take a free ride to Blade's Edge and finish the cooking quest while doing the four daily quests there. If the quest is Spiritual Soup, I'll again head to Skettis and bomb while searchinging for the prisoner and then head to Netherwing Ledge. While there, I'll pick up the quest to disrupt the twilight portal. I'll then head to Nagrand and cook up the soup and kill the 20 agents.
With Skettis finished and Blade's Edge done in one, I'll then head back to the Netherwing Ledge as the most money can be made there. I'll pick up all the daily quests there then head directly into the mine. Doing the two quests in there are the best way to start your farming - awarding 30g for a relatively small time requirement. Plus, the greys that drop from the mobs there usually vendor at the end for 4-5 more gold. Add to that the mobs frequently drop greens, blues, and I've also seen two purple BOE's (one pair of Leggings of Beast Mastery I found sold for 1000g on auction).
After that, it's a toss up as to what to do next. I might fly around a bit and booterang some mobs, if I haven't done Blade's Edge dailies, I might fly up there and complete those. More often than not, I'll gather Netherwing Relics as the mobs that drop them also supply me with netherweave or I'll head up to Netherstorm to collect mana berries if that is he daily cooking quest.
But once the Sunwell Plateau is opened to visitors, I will be spending the bulk of my time there working on rep and earning money through dailies.
Feb 5, 2008
Festival Tailoring
After a quick run around the southern part of the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor, I amassed 20 coins and bought two patterns of Festival Dress and Festival Suit. I now sit at 257 known tailoring patterns. There are 301 possible recipes I could know. A nice 85% of all recipes. A lot to go though...and none that easy to find.
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