Weekend Round Up

What a fun weekend it was. Ok, maybe not. I already have abandoned my new year's plan of running a couple hours of PvP each weekend - but then again, I was exceptionally busy this weekend, so maybe next weekend. But, I did log on long enough on Saturday and Sunday to get my dailies done and do the random heroic. On Saturday, the day had finally come, after grouping with 4 random people, Looking For Multitudes was complete and the Perky Pug was mine! So there I was playing with my new Pug and I see a Cracked Egg sitting in my inventory. It had been there for a couple of days, just waiting to be opened, so, expecting some yolk, I opened it and...Reins of the Green Proto Drake is mine!

So now that I never have to buy a Cracked Egg again, maybe I should switch back to the Wolvar - at least it'd make me do more dailies each day to get back to exalted. Oh yeah, I knew there was something I forgot. I finally hit exalted with the Explorer's League. The Frostborn will be exalted soon and running Icecrown, hopefully I can get The Ashen Verdict up quickly, which will give me 39 exalted reputations and I'll struggle to get that 40th. I'm closest with The Scale of the Sands, but no one runs Hyjal any more so it'll probably be Ratchet rep that I'll grind out for #40 and then I'll work on finishing off the three other goblin reps.

It Came from the Pug

Welcome to 3.3 :) I know it's been a while since updating, but not much has happened in the past few weeks. Our 10 man continued a bit in ToC(H) and Ulduar working on Firefighter (I subbed in with another 10 man team for the Firefighter completion). Other than that, we were patiently waiting for 3.3 and Icecrown to arrive and now that it has, well...not much has changed.

I'm still logging on periodically to do my dailies, but mostly I'm logging on every day to complete the random heroic and get my two Emblems of Frost. I did the weekly raid last week as well and have done the daily heroic every day except patch day when servers were horribly unstable. I've also done a couple of the new 5 man instances - they don't interest me much since there's no gear in there - I just want the achievements from them.

On the achievements front, I passed 8,000 points, picking up some easy dungeon points, Looking for More, 1,000 Stone Keeper's Shards (finally - now to work on finishing the Wintergrasp meta), and on Saturday, Dylana and Gillen from my wonderful guild finally helped me finish The Burning Crusader by bringing my Lower City rep up to Exalted. I now sit at 36 exalted reps and a couple more should be coming soon. Hopefully I can hit 40 soon.

Other than that, I fished a bunch this weekend and still no turtle, bought two new pets from Breanni in Dalaran (working on the Pug), and no new mounts. Hopefully our forays into Icecrown this week will be fruitful and we can also go back and finish up the Ulduar hard modes and get a shot at the rusted proto-drake.

Old School Weekend

There wasn't too much happening this weekend so I worked on my Dungeon Set 2 and then got an invite to Molten Core Sunday morning. Needing more rep, I agreed to go and made out like a bandit with 3 pieces of Tier 1. We then continued to AQ40 where I racked up over 12,000 rep with the Brood of Nozdormu, picked up my yellow bug mount, and some other miscellaneous items. So that was a very nice end to my weekend.

Today, I did my standard daily quests (now up to 185 saved Champion's Seals) - will need 190 to get the two pets when 3.2 hits - and switched from Frenzyheart back to the Oracles. I really need to get that mount...I'll probably end up with a lot more yolk, but them's the breaks.

Two Rep Grinds Down

This weekend, I was able to strike two more rep grinds off of my list. First, on Saturday morning, a few of my guildmates and I decided it was time to cross Keepers of Time off of my list. A couple of them needed to get attuned, so we quickly ran normal and heroic Durnholde and then moved on to normal and heroic Black Morass, with the last run capping me out at 999/1000 Exalted. A shame there's no Keepers of Time reputation achievement, but it was my 35th, so I got 35 Exalted Reputations.

Later that day, with little to do, I decided against running battlegrounds and decided to head out to Desolace to work on my Gelkis Clan rep by slaughtering the Magram Centaurs. After an hour or two, I was done. Sitting at 11,999/12,000 honored. With no way to get revered. Oh well. At least the Gelkis know I am truly their friend.

4 Down, 1 To Go

Last night, I got my Exalted Champion of Darnassus title and luckily, for the fifth and final faction (Exodar - just because it's last in the row of NPCs), I will finish in 4 days. The key here is there are three random daily quests you can get from the factions - A Blade Fit for a Champion, A Worthy Weapon, and The Edge of Winter. Theoretically, you can earn 5 Valiant's Seals a day. However, when you turn in your 25 seals for The Valiant's Charge, you can then immediately pick which faction you are going to champion next. As long as that faction has a different quest of the three random daily quests, you can do it, allowing you to earn 2 extra seals on the day you switch factions.

The problem I ran into is that after finishing my first faction (the gnomes, of course!) I didn't get that extra quest, so I've been 2 behind people who got lucky that time. But just 2 seals back doesn't save you a day of quests. Luckily, when switching the next three times, I got the extra quest, so I'm 6 seals up right now and will be able to complete the last leg in just 4 days! So even if people got lucky each time they switched, they will be on the same timetable as me. All I know right now though is that I'm going to be up early Saturday morning to get my Exalted Argent Champion of the Alliance achievement and become...Crusader Tiddlywinks!

((And when I do get that, think of the achievement spam in Guild chat...Champion of Exodar, Exalted Champion of Exodar, Champion of the Alliance, Exalted Champion of the Alliance, and Exalted Argent Champion of the Alliance))

Also, this weekend, a grouping of the Gold Team and Group 2 went into 25 man Vault of Archavon and took down Emalon with ease. Unfortunately, no T8.5 for mages, but we had just one wipe due to a priest mistake within the first 15 seconds of the fight. We regrouped and essentially one-shot him.


In that Emalon fight, I was quite happy with my DPS. I've been experimenting with arcane and just haven't been able to figure out how to sustain high DPS with it. I ran arcane through the first half of our 25 man Naxx run last weekend and it just wasn't doing the damage I expected. I was using the right rotation and though it was tough to time my evocations properly, I did have minimal down time to regen mana. Yet each fight, my DPS seemed to be lower than what I could have gotten with Frostfire Bolt.

So I'm back to Frostfire Bolt because A) I think it does more DPS and B) I know the spec and rotations and know how to maximize my DPS with the spec. So here's where I ended on the Emalon fight.

Another One Bites the Dust

And down goes the Iron Council (or is it the Assembly of Iron?)...We got I Choose You Stormcaller Brundir just because he was the last one alive (all three have their own achievements) and with that, we called it for the night. Despite our lower-than-usual DPS, we still managed to blow through the Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, XT-002, and Kologarn as well in just under 2 hours. Not bad since a lot of the people there were still learning fights and/or strategies.

This morning I awoke a bit early and since I was just 3 seals away from 25, I quickly did those dailies. Earned 5 seals, and earned Exalted Champion of Stormwind. Just Darnassus and Exodar remain. I chose Darnassus, just because they were next in line, and got the frog-kissing quest and will be just 1 seal away in 4 short days. Hopefully when I get exalted, the Exodar daily quest will be a different one than the Darnassus daily quest so I will only have 4 days of seal collecting instead of 5. So at worst, I have 10 days of questing to go, at best, 9 days until I am an Exalted Argent Champion of the Alliance.

Also this Weekend...

I went to Blackwing Lair. It was a quick run, but what made this one different from previous runs is I was there at the start. Usually, I'll see people running BWL and join in in the middle or towards the end and I always miss the third boss, the Broodlord Lashslayer. Because of this, Only One May Rise has been sitting in my quest log for ages. And Sunday, I finally completed it. Which is good news, but also bad news.

Because now that it's done, I can work on The Path of the Righteous. Which means I can start bringing my Brood of Nozdormu rep up to neutral. When I finally raise it to neutral, I can begin work on the Scepter of the Shifting Sands questline which I am really looking forward to. I can't wait to finally get started with such an epic questline involving multiple dungeons, quests, and encounters. If only I didn't have to collect upwards of 13,000 Silithid Carapace Fragments that drop from the bugs in the hives at the rate of 1-4 per kill. Assuming an average drop rate of 2.5 per bug, that's 5,200 bugs to kill.

Current progress: 5,950/36,000 = 30,050 rep to go, divided by 500 rep per turn in = 61 turn ins at 200 fragments per turn in = 12,200 fragments left divided by 2.5 per bug = 4,880 bugs still to slaughter.

Faction Switch

I recently switched from the Oracles to the Frenzyheart after receiving all my pets from the eggs (still without the mount...). The switch was painless and I'm enjoying doing the Frenzyheart quests. At least it gives me some dailies with an incentive to finish other than the gold reward.

Total Oracle Eggs hatched: 15

#1: Yolk
#2: White Tickbird
#3: Yolk
#4: Tickbird
#5: Tickbird
#6: Cobra Hatchling!
#7: Yolk
#8: Cobra Hatchling
#9: Yolk
#10: Tickbird
#11: Proto Drake Whelp - FINALLY
#12: White Tickbird
#13: Proto Drake Whelp
#14: White Tickbird
#15: White Tickbird

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.

Random Thoughts

• The past few days, I've been hanging out in a channel on our server called Bookclub. With their help, I've been able to gather 7 of the 8 books required for Higher Learning. I even took lead of the channel for a while on Saturday night and Sunday as I kept the timers updated and coordinated camping of books by people in the channel. Suffice to say, I really haven't had as much fun outside of raiding for a while. The thrill of the hunt, the camaraderie, it was quite a fun experience. Hopefully tonight I can get my last book and my newest pet and while it'll be sad to leave the channel, I hope my contributions made over the past few days were helpful to the community.
  
• Today is patch day. And with it, I will be getting my Hail to the Chef and Chef de Cuisine achievements. Lately I haven't been sporting any title as they all seem to be pretty commonplace and boring these days. I'm hoping to get Champion of the Frozen Wastes this week if we can down Malygos, but if we don't, or at least until that point, I'll be Chef Tiddlywinks.
  
• Speaking of achievements, leading up to last weekend, I went 6 days without an achievement! SIX! I was stuck at 4,500 achievement points for the longest time. Luckily I've gotten back on track with some heroic achievements, some reputation achievements, some battleground achievements, and even some old school achievements. So now I'm up to 4,620 achievement points and with the Lunar Festival coming Saturday, I should blow by 4,800 with the holiday and profession achievements.
  
• Speaking of Old School raiding...last night we went into Tempest Keep for the achievement. I joined a little late, getting there just in time for High Astromancer Solarian and we easily blew through her and the trash up to Kael'thas before running into trouble. One of the main issues we ran into was our Death Knight tank and off tank. Neither can use a shield so the fireballs and pyroblasts were eating us up. Luckily we were able to make it through a couple times, but then he'd start throwing us around and just doing too much damage to the tanks. So we called in reinforcements. We added another 10 people to our group and with 21, we downed him (a mix of levels from 70-80). In the end, just 6 of us were standing and my heart was pounding like none other. Sitting there, trying my damnedest to nuke him down and get those last few points off his health...it's a shame my damage meter and timers broke during an update right before I logged in - it would have been interesting to see what my damage was like on that fight - I certainly love seeing strings of 10k+ crits. In the end, it was me and 5 others left alive that defeated him. And with that, I earned my acheivement, got Kael's Vial Remnant for The Vials of Eternity, and I should still have a shot at my Hand of A'dal title since I've been carrying around the quest for ages. I also screwed up the rolls at the end which I felt horrible for, but I did walk away with my first and only tier 5 piece, the Robes of Tirisfal.
  
• I'm a bit miffed with one of the changes in the patch today. They're going to be awarding full reputation gains for grey mobs. So what does this mean? Well, I've spent countless hours killing furlbogs, trolls, and undead to get my 32 exalted reputations. Now, anyone and everyone can go back to these old rep grinds and level them 5 times faster than I was able to. It will make all my hard work completely worthless. Even though I know I did the grinds before the patch, no one else will, and we'll suddenly start seeing a lot more people exalted with a lot more factions. On the bright side, I could probably finish up my Zandalar rep a bit quicker now with fewer gold invested in coins and bijous, but that's the only place it benefits me while everyone else will have easy grinds for the Argent Dawn, Bloodsail Buccaneers, Timbermaw, Zandalar, Kurenai, Sporeggar, etc.

Hello, my name is Tiddlywinks...

...and I'm an Achievement Junkie. Yes, that's right. I'm addicted to those little achievement points and I passed a nice milestone this weekend. It all started Saturday morning as I forced some guildmates to go to Drak'Tharon so I could finish up my Northrend Dungeon Hero achievement. And, it was done...


And while we were fighting the second boss (attempting an achievement), this nice little achievement popped up for me:


So that was a nice run. We continued on to the Halls of Stone so Phosphorex could get his Northrend Dungeon Hero (also obtained Northrend Dungeonmaster at the same time) and on the last boss we completed Abuse the Ooze, so we spammed guild chat with a LOT of achievements after that dungeon clear.

The next day, as I realized last week how close I was to 1,000 daily quests, I put in the time both Saturday and Sunday to do 20+ quests and I was able to achieve my 4,500th point with 1,000 daily quests.


So here I sit, with 4,500 achievement points. And tons to go. I started to work on some Arathi Basin achievements, but got frustrated and hardly made it through one game as the Horde were stomping us. It's just too hard to have fun in there unless you have a pre-made or get lucky and join a group who is semi-competent.

Silver Team Naxx

The Gold Team has apparently been rechristened the Silver Team and last week, we took our first steps inside of Naxxramas. Our goal was to clear the Spider Wing, hit up Patchwerk and then try Grobbulus on Wednesday. We quickly cleared the Spider Wing and took down Patchwerk after a couple tries (we had to learn those hateful strikes) and we went on to Grobbulus. We had just one try on him before our healer had to bail, so we were stuck trying to 9 man the place and it just wouldn't work. So we thought we could go hit up Instructor Razuvious, but we had issues with just two healers and we eventually called it a night.

We reconvened at 4pm on Sunday, ready to go. First things first though, the Obsidian Sanctum had to be cleared. Easy peasy, one shot Sartharion. Maybe next time we can leave a drake up. Who knows?

So after the Sanctum, we headed back to Naxx with an eye on the Military Quarter, Razuvious was a pushover with three healers, and we went on to Gothik. The weekend before, I had joined a quasi-guild/PUG team in Naxx and we were unable to get anywhere on Gothik. This time, with two awesome tanks and amazing healers, we one shot Gothik and had absolutely no issues. We decided to save the Four Horsemen for another time and went back to the Plague Wing.

Noth was pretty damn easy and we made quick work of him and went on to Vetarra's favorite fight in the game, Heigan the Unclean. We took a shot at him to let the team learn the Heigan dance and then had to take another shot at him after losing some healers before we finally got him down. However, we did it in a very unconventional way. After losing two healers to the dance, along with our two hunters, it was just me and a healer up on the platform, a shaman, pally, druid, and warrior down on Heigan. So yeah, we 6 manned him. Not that tough really, the only issue we had was people lagging and getting stuck during the dance. I'm really not sure how that happens, it's a fairly simple dance, but it did happen, though we managed to bring him down.

After that, we lost a couple of players and had to call it a night. We did a quick Utgarde Keep run afterward, and now I stand just 5 emblems short of my Heroes Frostfire Robe. My gloves didn't drop in the Sanctum, but we'll be doing that weekly and hopefully I can pick them up in there. I really need that two piece set bonus, it's just too sweet to not utilize - Improved Mana Gems.

For our first week in Naxxramas, we did pretty well. I believe next week we are not raiding due to the Holidays, but after that, I believe we're getting our DPS Pally and our Death Knight to join in. Then we will be bringing Dylana in for heals and we should have a pretty solid team and we should be getting close to clearing the place sometime soon in the new year. Then it's just a matter of finding another team to join up with for some fun 25 man raids.

All in all, a great start and even though there's really not that much gear in there for me to upgrade to, I love running the place and learning the new fights that I didn't get a chance to run even though I had hit up Naxx a couple of times in the Burning Crusade.

On a side note, Saturday, I hit exalted with both the Argent Crusade and the Oracles. Bringing my exalted factions up to 29 and also earning me the title 'The Argent Champion.' Right now I'm wearing my Wyrmrest Accord tabard in the heroics and I'm looking forward to some Sandals of Crimson Fury and a nice new mount - Reins of the Red Drake.

Sartharion 10 Man

Last night, after completing a couple dailies, I was asked to go to the 10-man version of Obsisian Sanctum. After completing the 25-man version just two days prior, I said sure, it can't be that hard could it?

So in we go, we easily clear the three drakes and our tank seems surprised at that fact. I guess he underestimated our awesomeness. There were three of us atop the DPS charts (both in overall damage and sustained DPS) - me, a rogue, and a shaman. Over the whole night we fought for the top spot and in the end, all three of us ended up with about 2,000 DPS on the night. Not too shabbby. I ended up atop the damage meters due to the fact that I didn't have to worry about Sartharion's fireballs or his cleave or his tail swipe as ranged, so the rogue dropped off a bit due to deaths.

But back to the fight. Since only two of us had seen the fight before, we had 8 people new to the instance and a couple of people picking up their first badges of Heroism. So the first couple tries were learning experiences - getting people to see the waves, know the gaps, focus DPS on the fire elementals, etc. That's fine, I can deal with those wipes.

However, it was the next 3-4 wipes that bothered me. We had people focusing DPS on Sartharion instead of the fire elementals, we had people getting caught up in the waves, even though they were all being called out on vent, and we had people getting cleaved or tail swiped even though it's really easy to avoid (yes, as a mage I was forced to stand within melee range and a couple of times had to mitigate my threat due to the 110% grab aggro percentage instead of 130%).

But eventually, we figured him out and had a couple of wipes just due to bad luck - bad positioning of the fire elementals during a wave, or a loose fire elemental hitting the tank during a fireball/cleave. And we just couldn't get him down even though we figured the fight out. Our healer told us we had on chance left before she had to call it a night. And we wiped. But, it was a quick wipe and we convinced her to stay around for one more shot and we got him. Finally! We finally took him down.

And wouldn't you know, he drops just one item I need in the 10-man version, the Gloves of the Lost Vanquisher. The first rogue rolls an 83. Drats! I roll...and 86! Yes, I've finally won a piece of T7. Oh wait...another rogue...95. FRICK! So there I sit with three badges, a 20g repair bill, and 10 achievement points, but no new gloves. I guess it's ok since the rogue that won them was not the rogue at 2000 DPS, but rather around 1300-1400 DPS. So she probably could use them the most. Just a frustrating end to a night where I had to constantly remind a few people to DPS adds instead of the dragon, watch out for the waves, and even helped our tank find the correct way to pivot the dragon during different waves.

In the end, I'm happy we got him down and I'm hoping to make this trip weekly, so I'll have more shots at the gloves. And now that we've done him once, future attempts shouldn't be so ugly. And what did I learn? The 10 man is much harder than the 25-man. We breezed through the 25 man with no deaths, quick pulling, and some great players. Even with some not-so-great players in a 25 man, you can down Sartharion without issues. With just 10 players on your team, if one person screws up, there's no room for error. You'll probably wipe. Lose a healer in the 10 man, you're done. Lose one in 25 man, who cares? The rest pick up the slack. So I'm definitely happy we got the 10 man version of Sartharion down and I'm looking forward to future attempts.

If only I had remembered to open my Oracles egg after the raid. It slipped my mind, I was done playing after the raid, and I logged off. Now, my egg is 12 hours overdue, and I've lost all this time that another egg could have been hatching. Drats again!

Some Updates

It's been a while since I updated anything here, but some big news last night. I finally obtained my Pengu and my Mastercraft Kalu'ak Fishing Pole. I'm now done running dailies for the Kalu'ak, as they were my 25th Exalted Reputation. Pretty happy to be done with them as their dailies awarded just 3-5g each. Now I can do more dailies in Icecrown and get rewarded properly.

I also spent all my money last night. I bought the Signet of the Kirin Tor for 7649g, and combined it with my Annhylde's Ring which gives me no ring upgrades until Wrath. I also completely updated my upgrades list which I will post about later and I now know every instance I need to run or every crafted Item I need to get ready for the end-game.

On a side note, last week, after picking up Lil' Smoky, I dropped Engineering and took up Mining. I hit 450 last night (hit 375 on Sunday) and now can mine anything I run across which is awesome. Just this morning, a quick run around Icecrown netted me 50 Saronite and 8 Titanium. I quickly smelted a Titansteel Bar and threw it up on the auction house, undercutting all others at 330g. It should sell today and I'll be back on my saving money for more outrageous purchases.

I've been running heroics on and off and slowly I'm getting my Kirin Tor rep up. I'm getting 150 rep daily from the cooking (and hit 25 Dalaran Cooking Awards last night). I'm also working on Sons of Hodir rep and the lovely Vetarra pointed out some places to find Frostfire Chips last night which should help my rep grind.

The Daily Circuit

Every day starts in Dalaran. I do the daily cooking quest and then venture out to find more dailies to do. My circuit starts at Moa'ki Harbor in Dragonblight where I do the Kalu'ak daily quest. I then fly over to Kamagua and help two sea cows find true love for more Kalu'ak reputation.

A quick trip up to The Argent Stand in Zul'Drak for Troll Patrol, and 900-1000 reputation, is next. And then a quick flight from there to Dun Niffelem to do the Sons of Hodir dailies. There's currently 5 for me to do since hitting honored which yields 1600 rep. From there I have a choice - either go to Icecrown for dailies or port back to Dalarn.

Usually, I'll port back to Dalaran to do the other leg of quests. I fly to Unu'pe for the last of the three daily Kalu'ak quests, and then fly up to Sholazar Basin to do my three Oracles quests. Once done there, then it's on to Icecrown for more dailies.

Upon arriving in Icecrown, I have 7 dailies left to do. I haven't quite figured out the dailies that I'm going to do on a regular basis, but there's plenty scattered throughout Icecrown to keep me busy. Also, in just 4 days, I'll be fully exalted with the Kalu'ak which will leave me with 10 dailies to do in Icecrown or, the alternative...

Wyrmrest Accord reputation. I figure on my way down to Moa'ki Harbor to start the day, I can stop in at the Wyrmrest Temple for a quick daily and then I after completing my loop, I'd port back to Dalaran and instead of going to Unu'pe, I can go over to Coldarra and do the Wyrmest daily there and then up to Sholazar Basin.

Either way, I'll be staying busy for quite a while. After my loop, without counting Icecrown dailies, I receive the following rep on average:

Argent Crusade: 900-1100 based on different Troll Patrol dailies.
Kirin Tor: 150 from the daily cooking quest.
The Kalu'ak: 1500 with just 4 days left until max exalted.
The Sons of Hodir: 1600 with quite a ways to go, but these are fun dailies.
The Oracles: 1700 with 12 days left until max exalted. I won't be switching to Frenzyheart though until I have all the pets that can be obtained from the Mysterious Egg

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.

Some Mounts Worth Aiming For

The fine folks at MMO-Champion posted a list of all the new mounts in Wrath and here are a few I think I'll be shooting for:

#1: Reins of the White Polar Bear - These drop from a reward you get for completing daily quests in the Storm Peaks. It appears the quests are level 79-80, so I might be able to go hunt them down tonight if I have some time to see what's going on out there.

#2: Reins of the Red Drake - An exalted reward from the Wyrmrest Accord. I'm pretty sure my rep isn't that high with them as I left Dragonblight soon after completing most quests. The drake is cool, but I'm not sure how long it'll take me to get to exalted with them.

#3 & #4: Reins of the Ice Mammoth and Reins of the Grand Ice Mammoth - Both available from the Sons of Hodir - a faction I have not yet encountered. One is available at revered for 2,500g, the grand ice mammoth is available at exalted for 10,000g.

Speaking of gold, when I ventured into Northrend, I left Shattrath with 3,200g. Upon hitting 71, I went to Dalaran and bought the brown bear for 700g. I was down for a little bit, but worked my way back up. Training First Aid, Cooking, Enchanting, and Engineering cost a few hundred gold. And then at 77, I trained Cold Weather Flying for 1,000g. And right now, I'm at about 3,400g. Yes, after spending well over 2,000g, I've made it back from questing and selling grey items. All green and blue quest rewards have been disenchanted (except for a couple weapons that sold for 10-15g each). So while leveling, don't leave anything behind, and just quest, quest, quest. You'll have plenty of gold for whatever you need. I'm hoping to have upwards of 5,000g by the time I hit 80 and then I can splurge a little on an Ice Mammoth.

Bah, Hydraxian Rep

I joined a group for a quick clear on Molten Core last night and just barely edged my reputation with the Hydraxian Waterlords up to Honored. Now I can pick up the quest Hands of the Enemy and from there I will be able to provide a Aqual Quintessence for future Molten Core runs. It'll be about four to five full clears to get to Revered and from there, exalted will take a good 20 runs. Not fun. I might never be able to hit Exalted, but it's worth going every so often when a group forms. Maybe some day I'll get lucky and get that darn Exalted status.

Finally!

Bloodsail Admiral Tiddlywinks



Pet #79, now #29 (as of this posting) on the Top 50.

What a Weekend

Wow, quite an action packed weekend in the world of Azeroth. The scourge invasion has been taken to another level with the appearance of floating Necropoli and Phosphorex and I had a great time battling back the invaders and looking for our Undead Slaughtering gear (unfortunately no cloth drops of the 6 we've seen). The best part of the Scourge invasion is the return of the Argent Dawn Quartermasters. And with those quartermasters returns the Tabard of the Argent Dawn. This puts me at 16 tabards, quite a nice count on my way towards 25.

Also this weekend, Tenris Mirkblood popped up in Karazhan so the Gold Team quickly assembled to bring him down. What a surprise to find a cute little Vampiric Batling on him! I had no idea he would give me pet #78, but I'm not complaining. I love the little guy.

When Phosphorex and I had a lull in our scourge killing, we quickly hit up Heroic Ramparts and Blood Furnace. With the help of a couple Honor Hold Favors, I have reached exalted with my 23rd faction and I was able to pick up a new enchanting recipe and a new tabard. Now I just need some more Lower City and Keepers of Time rep to achieve The Burning Crusader and 25 Exalted Reputations in one fell swoop.

The weekend also took me to Kalimdor as I work on the Loremaster achievement. Some work was also put in on fishing in Ironforge for Old Ironjaw. This evening, back to Kalimdor after doing my dailies and fight back the scourge when they appear.