79 Days

It's been exactly 79 days since patch 3.1 was released. 79 days of doing the daily fishing quest. 79 days of doing Argent Dailies each and every day, without fail. Never missing a day. And finally, after 79 days, Marcia decided it was time to reward my dedication...Strand Crawler is mine!

Now...Barlo, you still owe me two crocs.

New at the Argent Tournament

Blizzard today announced quite a few welcome changes to the Argent Tournament. Firstly, two new mounts for everyone! Woohoo. Granted, I still have a ways to go on my mount collection as the pets come first, but still, more mounts to get me closer to 100. Also a new pet at exalted with the Silver Covenant. Yay!

Also, new dailies for those of us who have earned the Crusader title, a tabard that will port you to the tournament grounds (which will free up my hearthstone once again), and an upgraded squire. You will be able to summon him just once every 8 hours, but he will be able to give you access to your bank, your mailbox, or a vendor. I'll really enjoy the vendor portion of it as I'll be able to go farming for rep grinds and such and be able to vendor items without leaving the grind.

Of course, everything is going to cost a lot of seals, so luckily there will be more dailies and therefore, more seals. I still need to get the five mounts at 100 seals each, the gryphon at 150 seals, and then I can work on getting the new squire for another 150 seals, and of course the new pet for (probably) another 40 seals.

It's been a while since 3.1 came out, but I have yet to miss a day of dailies. My seals are stacking up and I'm almost done with the horde pet trading, but I have a lot of seals to go. Oh, and curse you Marcia for not giving me a strand crawler. I've done your fishing daily EVERY day you've offered it and you still shut me out. Why??

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 -->).

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.

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.

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 :(

Salty Tiddlywinks

You know, I expected it to be a bit tougher. I had spent some time in the past working on One That Didn't Get Away, but I never really had the patience for it. Then, last week, when I won the fishing tourney, I knew I had to go back to that achievement. I did some research and found the best place to fish is in the starting areas of Elwynn or Mulgore, however, all you catch there are worthless fish. Why not fish in the Howling Fjord for the Dark Herring? All the other fish you catch there can be sold on the Auction House, so you can turn a nice profit while working on the achievement.

So I fished for a day there - about 3 hours - jumping from Fangtooth Herring school to Fangtooth Herring school (after all, only Fangtooth Herring can be turned into Dark Herrings). I didn't bother to have my cast land in the pool, but if it did, I fished it up, and if it didn't, I just hoped for a herring. When the pool was gone, I moved on. After no luck the first day, I sent the fish to my banker, ready for another day of fishing. Surprisingly, on my second day, there he was, the Dark Herring. I was only an hour or two into fishing (hint: turn down music and ambient sounds and turn sound effects way up - then you only hear the bobber) and I was quite happy to see him.


And there you have it...Salty Tiddlywinks. A couple more achievements done and a nice, shiny new title.

A Welcome Change

Previously I discussed the anticipated changes to the made class in the upcoming patch. Today, in a blue post, we get this possible change:

# Improved Scorch: In addition to the stacking crit debuff, will improve your critical strike chance with Fireball, Scorch or Frostfire Bolt by 1/2/3%.

Standard "no promises" caveat applies.

If this does come to fruition, it will be a very nice change. Instead of our standard 5% scorch debuff once the patch goes live, we'll get the 5% debuff raid wide to help everyone out and then an additional 3% to help our own damage. Very nice. Hopefully this change does come through and not be thrown by the wayside.

On another note, last night Vetarra and I snuck into Serpentshrine Cavern to fish up the Lurker Below. I was able to almost make it to his platform without any problems as I used invisibility to get by some mobs and was able to just walk in front of others since they're level 71 and me 80. However, those darn fish in the water made quick work of me, eating through my mana shield and just as I was about to make it to the platform, they killed me.

Luckily I had a stealthy druid there to scoop me up, and after one more hopping session, we made it. I fished up the Lurker on my third cast and with Vetarra shadowmelded, I popped invisibility. And while it saved me, his water blast took out Vetarra even though she was hidden. So she had to stealth back again, I threw up a portal to Shattrath, and she got to fish up the big fish again and we quickly ported out of there before he could get us.

So that leaves me with just one more achievement to go. I am coming for you Dark Herring!

Master Fisherman

The past few days, maybe the past few weeks, I've been working to rebuild my reputation with the goblins of Azeroth. To do so, I've been buying up tons of linen and silk off of the auction house whenever it's at a sane price and then turning them in to the goblins of Ratchet and Booty Bay. After 168 stacks of linen, I was working on silk and came up a stack short. So I went off to the west, slaughtered a few bloodsails (yes, they had to feel my wrath in order to have my reputation with the goblins restored) and I turned in the final stacks of silk and red dye at about 1:45 on Sunday.

Then, I was reminded by someone in Booty Bay that the fishing tournament was coming up at 2:00 so I headed out to the coast, staked out a spot and waited for it to begin. I started quite nicely in my own little cove with very few people bothering me while fishing up my Tastyfish. Eventually a few people wandered over, so when the pools were depleted, I headed south a bit. I found another nice cove which people weren't using (perhaps because it has one of those "unfishable" pools), and I was able to get some more Tastyfish at a quick rate.

As my quota of 40 fish was approaching, some more people moved in on my turf and I was forced to head north a bit. As I hit 39 fish, no one had won yet and I was amazed at my luck. I hadn't participated in the tournament for ages due to the goblins of Booty Bay attacking me if I got too close to their city, let alone turn in Tastyfish. So I sent out one more cast in a newly discovered pool that someone else had happened upon as well. Stranglekelp! Drats. I knew if I was close, there had to be many others close to 40 as well. Cast #2, I was thinking, "please let this pool not disappear before a fish bites..." and there it was, Tastyfish #40. I couldn't believe it. I had 40 Tastyfish and there had been no winner announced. I had been close in previous tournaments, but never this close. Quick, the hearthstone!

10 seconds later, I was back in Booty Bay. The fishing tournament is mine! I quickly exited the inn, blinked over to the tournament organizer and presented him with my 40 fish. Success! A new fishing pole was rewarded, my name was announced throughout Stranglethorn Vale as the winner, and a new achievement was mine for the taking! And then I saw him, a poor paladin of 76 seasons. He stood right next to me and was dejected. He had also just hearthed back to Booty Bay and was about to turn his fish in when I blinked by him on my way from the inn to the organizer. Perhaps next week he will be able to win the tournament. After all, he had probably used his Crusader Aura to travel from school to school, so it's only right that I could use my blink.

So here I sit, two achievements away from being Salty Tiddlywinks. I need to fish up the Lurker Below in Serpentshrine Cavern and I need to fish up a very rare fish. I've spent a few hours in the Howling Fjord already trying to get a Dark Herring, but he still eludes me. I figure once that Herring is gotten, I'll enlist my 10 man team to go clear the way to the Lurker, port them all out of the instance, and fish him up by myself to gain the new title. Then, there will be one last thing left to do. I'll have to fish up the one fish that still eludes me after thousands of casts...Old Ironjaw. I'm coming for you! You can't hide in that pool forever.

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.

Raider Tiddlywinks?

Last night was pretty fun. After clearing the four bosses in Zul'Aman on Wednesday, it was a nice change of pace to head into Ahn'Qiraj with the guild to earn the achievement Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj. I was also hoping to pick up my Band of Vaulted Secrets and Drape of Vaulted Secrets to go along with the Blade of Vaulted Secrets I already have in my bank with a wonderful glow from Potency on it.

After quickly blowing through AQ and getting Flamehelix his blacksmithing recipes, I took some time to do the Outlands dailies, earned a bit of gold, and then was summoned to finish Zul'Aman from the night before. We quickly annihilated Malacrass and Zul'Jin and I got the achievement, Zul'Aman. Two of the tougher raiding achievements down, quite a few more to go. I just have AQ40 and Ony to complete Classic Raider.

Tonight, I will get 1,000 Fish as I went to bed last night sitting at 999/1000. Still no Ironjaw for me though after well over 1,000 casts in Ironforge. Going to keep working on it though. I'm also at about 600g and plan on achieving My Sack is "Gigantique" once I have 1200g for the bag. I also hope to be able to complete Loremaster of the Eastern Kingdoms at some point this weekend after I run Uldaman and BRD (where I have about 10 quests through chains to complete). Then I'm not sure what I'll be doing - there's a couple low level dungeons to explore, and then some level 60 dungeons that Phosphorex and I want to conquer. Also, the drop rate on the Deathcharger's Reins have been increased, so Phos and I might be in Scholo quite a bit this weekend.

Achievements Galore!

Ok, notwithstanding the exploration achievements, I was able to get quite a few done tonight. I was able to cross off Razorfen Kraul, Razorfen Downs, Wailing Caverns, Ragefire Chasm, and I completed Leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeroy!

While working on Ragefire Chasm, I was also able to quickly fish in Orgrimmar, port to Stormwind, and complete the Fishing Diplomat. I had just one quest left for the Terror of Terokkar and with that one quest, I earned my Loremaster of Outland achievement.

I now stand at 1930 achievement points, 300+ since logging in on patch day.

I am at 609/700 of Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms and a measly 476/730 of Loremaster of Kalimdor. I finished Exploring Kalimdor and had Outland done when I started. Tomorrow I will finish the Eastern Kingdoms.

Finally, I have to work on my Lower City, Honor Hold, and Keepers of Time rep for the Burning Crusader and that will also get me to 25 exalted factions. Lastly, I picked up my Blizzcon mount today and now have 11 feats of strength.

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!

Happy Orphans

Well, as you can see by the count over to the right, I am now up to 65/79 pets. Children's week came and went, and along with some gold rewards, a little bit of Lower City rep, and the joy of showing an orphan around Azeroth and Outland, I got two pets.

This year, added to my collection were: Whiskers the Rat and Peanut the baby Elekk.

I keep fishing every day and have yet to see an alligator or crocolisk and I have run Magisters' Terrace a few times now without any luck (even on heroic) of finding the phoenix.

The hunt continues!

Lack of Updates

I know I've been slacking, there just hasn't been too much to write about. The Gold 25 Man Team went into Gruul's & Magtheridon's Lair and absolutely destroyed the place. With so much time to spare, we ventured into SSC, cleared all of the trash without any real effort (though nothing! dropped - no Marks of Illidari, Nether Vortices, patterns, nothing), and we got to the Lurker Below. We had just one shot at him, most everyone was new to the fight (I have seen it a few times, never seen it successfully done), and we got him down to about 70%. Next week he dies.

I had a chance to make it back into Karazhan after a few weeks off and picked up some badges. I'm approaching 50 badges now from Karazhan, Shattered Sun Supplies, and random bosses (Gruul, Setthekk Halls, etc.). So now I'm contemplating making more changes to my gear.

The one item I'm considering is the Boots of Incantations to replace my Boots of Blasting. It's a loss of 25 crit for a gain of 12 stamina, 1 intellect, 23 spirit, 4 spell hit, and 16 damage. I just need to get to 75 badges and I'll make the switch.

I'm also considering losing my Spellfire set, but I probably won't as I'd only upgrade two pieces and the stat changes don't really make too much sense at this time.

One other change I'm looking to make quite soon is to switch out Enchant Gloves: Spell Strike for Enchant Gloves: Major Spellpower. I'm pretty certain that with one more Great Lionseye, I'll be able to make the change. It's a huge upgrade as usually hit and damage are traded at a 1:1 ratio, so 20 damage for 15 hit is something I'll be looking into next week.

Should be interesting to be out of town this weekend. It's been a while since I haven't played at least a little on any given day. In fact Sunday will be the first day since the patch I won't be able to complete the daily fishing quest. That stupid quest is the bane of my existence. No good reward yet. No pets, no nothing. At least with the daily cooking quest I was able to get a recipe a week, whereas it's been almost a month now without anything good - no new line, no hat, no pets.

Badge Vendor, Come Out...

Sometime yesterday, the Badge Vendor was unlocked in Quel'danas. While I had enough badges saved up for my Scryer's Blade of Focus, I was 12 badges short of the Fused Nethergon Band. But luckily, when I awoke in the Scryer's Inn, I was invited to a Karazhan raid that had seen one of its members disappear without notice. It was a late start for the team as a whole, so we didn't get a full clear in, but I got exactly 12 badges as we breezed through 6 bosses. After disbanding, I ported to Stormwind to fish me up a baby crocolisk and then went back to Shattrath to turn in some quests I was just finishing up before I was summoned into Karazhan.

Then, off to Quel'danas. With 10 Large Prismatic Shards and 10 Greater Planar Essences in hand for Enchant Weapon: Spellpower (I have not saved up for Sunfire yet) and Enchant Ring: Spellpower, I was ready to find the vendor. Of course, there were many other people around me trying to do the same thing, but I managed to get his attention and purchase my items. I then went out on the island to do my daily quests with Mercreus. We breezed through everything except the Darkspine Myrmidion quest as they were refusing to drop keys for us, but when I returned to the questgivers, I hit exalted!

I immediately went and picked up a Shattered Sun Pendant of Acumen which replaces my Vindicator's Pendant of Conquest. But I think the Pendant of Acumen will be replaced with the Vindicator's Pendant of Subjugation once I have saved up enough honor points. With a Runed Crimson Spinel, damage is identical on the two, so it comes down to whether 21 haste is better than the proc on the neckpiece which theorycrafts into 25 damage or so (maybe less due to a hidden cooldown).

Scryer: [((333dmg + 367dmg) / 2) * (1 + 0.5 * 0.12)] / 50s = +7.42dps = 25.97 dmg

While out doing the dailies though, I definitely could see the boost in damage from the new dagger and ring. The nice thing about the ring is that it allows me to use the Icon of the Silver Cresent at all times and stay at the hit rating cap (with the Pendant of Conquest or Subjugation - I'm 8 under the cap with the Pendant of Acumen). However, if I find I like the Pendant of Acumen, two Great Lionseyes will get me to the hit cap rating exactly which I might do if I can find someone to purchase them from (I will certainly be watching the auction house for them this weekend).

Note: It has now been 2 weeks and 1 day since the patch - I have done the fishing daily quest every day and still nothing. No hat, no fishing line, and most importantly, no pets. And now that Nefernetcher has the Phoenix Hatchling, he's bringing it out whenever he can to rub it in my face...

No New Dagger...

Well, I had forgotten that the new badge vendor isn't available during the first part of the siege on the Sunwell Terrace. So even after buying 5 prismatic shards for my enchant, I cannot buy my new dagger. But that's ok, I had fun over on the Terrace, did some extra daily quests, gained 1600 rep with the Shattered Sun Offensive (yay, already over halfway to friendly) and did even more daily quests.

I did the fishing quest, but did not receive a pet today - but I'm sure I will soon. I then did the Nagrand and Netherstorm dailies, did the cooking daily, went back to Shadowmoon to do more dailies there and as of right now, I have done 13 of 25 possible daily quests. We're getting ready for Gruul's now, so I probably won't do many more, but it sure is nice to be able to buy 5 large prismatic shards and make 60g on top of that with daily questing.

Mr. Pinchy Was Not Kind

Today, after three days away, I returned to Mr. Pinchy ready to use my last wish. I summoned him from my bags and wished for a crawdad pet. Instead, he gave me a lame buff. And with that, Mr. Pinchy was gone. He was furious the first time I summoned him. Benevolent the second, and just buffed me the third.

So the hunt for him in his pools begins again. And with the hunt, begins the Furious Crawdad count again. Last time it took about 150 crawdads before I found Mr. Pinchy. I'm already up to 30 this time around. We'll see how long it takes.

The Furious Mr. Pinchy

Well, after fishing up about 150 Furious Crawdads, I got a Mr. Pinchy! Unfortunately, on the first use, he wasn't too happy about me fishing him out of his lake, so he attacked me. I now must wait two days to see what else he might give to me. With luck, he'll give me a Magical Crawdad Box. If he doesn't, I'll have to wait 2 more days and use my third wish. If he once again stiffs me, I'll have to fish him up again and then I'll be mad. But I will get my pet crawdad. One way or another, it will be mine!

Crawdad Count

Another night of fishing for Mr. Pinchy has gone by. I collected 40 more Furious Crawdads, bringing my total to 100 caught thus far. The count will continue until I get my Pinchy!

However, in Ironforge, as I was posing my crawdads for auction, I found a great deal on Enchant Weapon: Potency. It wasn't cheap, but it was the best deal I've seen in a long time (just shy of 600g). One step closer to to all my enchants!

Also on the auction house, another pet I did not own for a reasonable price! The Dark Whelpling is mine! I now sit at 58 of 79 pets collected. I am waiting for my Rocket Chicken to arrive from Booty Bay, and I will hopefully soon have my 60th pet! Will it be the chicken or Mr. Pinchy? Only time will tell...