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.
Apr 28, 2009
Apr 27, 2009
Another Busy Weekend?
Dang, going back through my screenshots and such, it's quite surprising what I got accomplished this weekend. It started Friday with the Gold Team going to 25 man Naxx. We quickly cleared it, but had some fun when we got to Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad. On Sapph, we turned off mage armor, frost resist auras, and anything else that would put our frost resist above 100. After one wipe due to the tank somehow dying, we came back in and quickly took care of him, earning Heroic: The Hundred Club.
We then quickly moved to Kel'Thuzad and thought we would keep our achievements going and proceeded to have the most hectic KT fight I've ever seen. We decided to go for Heroic: Just Can't Get Enough and though we lost one person during that, he was rezzed and we continued on. I unfotunately died somehow from a mana blast that hit me for 20,000 damage. I got rezzed (and it was a good thing they picked me up), since at about 20%, he Ice Blocked our paladin who was tanking two of the adds. So those adds got free and we lost a healer before the main tank, Aravic, was able to pick them up. So we had Aravic tanking KT and two adds for a while until the other add tank could peel one off of him. And we continued the fight like that. Then all hell broke loose. With KT and an add on him, Aravic went down. I immediately went invisible to drop all aggro. Let the healers die I say! I quickly returned from invisibility and DPS'ed with all I had. And we did it. Somehow, a few of us DPS remained and were able to take out KT without a tank. We had just enough to power through him as he moved from target to target one-shotting them. We would have gone to Emalon next, but the Horde held Wintergrasp so we called it an early evening.
Saturday took me back out to Icecrown where I became an Exalted Champion of Ironforge. The day also saw me get my 40th Champion's Seal which I used to quickly purchase pet #91, my Mechanopeep. I had hoped to get a 10 seal bonus like I did when I became a Champion of Gnomeregan, but no luck. Apparently you only get the 10 seal bonus on your first Championing, so it will be 8 days from Saturday (next Sunday) until I can get my next pet - I think it'll be the Elwynn Lamb - a nice change from your normal pet. With becoming an Exalted Champion of Ironforge, I also hit 6,000 achievement points.
Later in the day I was invited to the Black Temple, and after some struggles on the later bosses, we made it to Illidan. Unfortunately, coordination was poor and even though we got him to stage 4, we never got him down and after spending 5.5+ hours in there, I had to leave. It was just too frustrating, and in the end, they never got him down.
Sunday of course brought with it Noblegarden so out to collect eggs I went. I found a nice spot in Dolanaar that I was able to camp with 5 eggs within reach without moving. I quickly picked up over 250 and found everything I needed. I got my Tome of Polymorph: Rabbit for 100 chocolates, but found the Spring Rabbit's Foot in an egg and all the clothing except the dress in eggs. I then went out, did the other quests and quickly earned my title of Tiddlywinks the Noble. After doing my daily quests and taking some time off, I awoke late in the night and went to Azure Watch where I found very little egg competition, and on my 2nd egg, I found the dress and completed every Noblegarden achievement. Yay!
Apr 24, 2009
Master Looter
A post over at WowInsider titled Forgetting to Hit the Need Button reminded me about a post I put together back in December on My Upgrades Spreadsheet.
Since then, the spreadsheet has undergone a few changes, but not too many. But here's an updated list that is for mages which includes all known upgrades on Tiddlywinks. If you have gear that is worse than mine, it won't have all the upgrades that you need listed.
Here: Click
Since then, the spreadsheet has undergone a few changes, but not too many. But here's an updated list that is for mages which includes all known upgrades on Tiddlywinks. If you have gear that is worse than mine, it won't have all the upgrades that you need listed.
Here: Click
The Antechamber
With the Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, and XT-002 defeated on Wednesday, the Gold Team was left with a choice - continue into the Antechamber of Ulduar or finish The Siege of Ulduar...we chose the Siege! To Ignis we went. Our first strategy was to be the "normal" strategy whereby Aravic would tank Ignis in a circular pattern while Santorum would pick up the adds and, via Vetarra's roots, trap them in the fire until they became brittle, at which point I would blow them up. We tried this strategy quite a few times and it all worked well until Ignis would pick up Vetarra or Santorum and put them in his naughty bits bucket. Then the roots would be gone, we'd have extra adds, or they would have no tank and they'd run over the raid. So it was finally decided...ZERG!
The zerg strategy is quite a bit tougher, but really, the only way to complete Stokin' the Furnace - which we didn't even get close to, but perhaps with one less healer and more DPS we could get close. To zerg Ignis, you tank him right on the border of a pool so the Scorch he does doesn't leave pillars of fire. Meanwhile, Santorum needed to pick up the adds and just hold them while doing DPS to to the boss. It's a simple race against time in the zerg strategy. Because for each Iron Construct add left alive, Ignis gains a 15% damage buff. I believe at one point, he was doing 135% more damage, maybe even 150%. Our first attempt was a learning experience - trying to figure out where to place the Constructs, how to heal through the massive damage, etc. But after a couple of zerg attempts, Ignis went down, we received The Siege of Ulduar and a few of us got Hot Pocket.
With Ignis down, we gathered everyone up and prepared to enter the Antechamber of Ulduar. After getting past some trash in the antechamber, we were rewarded with a beautiful sight...
Ulduar truly is a spectacle of immense proportions. It's quite obvious that it was in fact built by the titans and they spared no expense. It's a massive, beautiful place to visit, until, of course, you encounter someone that wants to rip you limb from limb.
After learning the Kologarn fight, it took us 4-5 tries to defeat him using a strategy of blowing all cooldowns at the start to defeat the Right Arm, then having ranged DPS AOE down the adds while melee DPS continued to focus on the body. Ranged DPS then focused on the body when adds were down and everyone switched back to the arm when it was reconstructed. We found that defeating the left arm is not a good idea as more adds are spawned and the damage the arm does is inconsequential. Make sure you watch out for him when you enter his chamber, he does try his best to surprise you!
With Kologarn down, we considered continuing across his "bridge" to Auriaya, but decided to back track a bit to the Iron Council. At the Iron Council, we had 4 or so attempts before it was time to call it for the night. I'm quite certain we'll be able to get them down next week - we got close a couple of times but ran into healing or interrupting issues.
Next week I'm hopeful that we can get through the Iron Council and Auriaya to then have fun with the Keepers of Ulduar - I'm especially wanting to see Freya...go go Gold Team!
The zerg strategy is quite a bit tougher, but really, the only way to complete Stokin' the Furnace - which we didn't even get close to, but perhaps with one less healer and more DPS we could get close. To zerg Ignis, you tank him right on the border of a pool so the Scorch he does doesn't leave pillars of fire. Meanwhile, Santorum needed to pick up the adds and just hold them while doing DPS to to the boss. It's a simple race against time in the zerg strategy. Because for each Iron Construct add left alive, Ignis gains a 15% damage buff. I believe at one point, he was doing 135% more damage, maybe even 150%. Our first attempt was a learning experience - trying to figure out where to place the Constructs, how to heal through the massive damage, etc. But after a couple of zerg attempts, Ignis went down, we received The Siege of Ulduar and a few of us got Hot Pocket.
With Ignis down, we gathered everyone up and prepared to enter the Antechamber of Ulduar. After getting past some trash in the antechamber, we were rewarded with a beautiful sight...
Ulduar truly is a spectacle of immense proportions. It's quite obvious that it was in fact built by the titans and they spared no expense. It's a massive, beautiful place to visit, until, of course, you encounter someone that wants to rip you limb from limb.
After learning the Kologarn fight, it took us 4-5 tries to defeat him using a strategy of blowing all cooldowns at the start to defeat the Right Arm, then having ranged DPS AOE down the adds while melee DPS continued to focus on the body. Ranged DPS then focused on the body when adds were down and everyone switched back to the arm when it was reconstructed. We found that defeating the left arm is not a good idea as more adds are spawned and the damage the arm does is inconsequential. Make sure you watch out for him when you enter his chamber, he does try his best to surprise you!
With Kologarn down, we considered continuing across his "bridge" to Auriaya, but decided to back track a bit to the Iron Council. At the Iron Council, we had 4 or so attempts before it was time to call it for the night. I'm quite certain we'll be able to get them down next week - we got close a couple of times but ran into healing or interrupting issues.
Next week I'm hopeful that we can get through the Iron Council and Auriaya to then have fun with the Keepers of Ulduar - I'm especially wanting to see Freya...go go Gold Team!
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.
Tiddlywinks the Mercenary
Now wouldn't that be a great title? Unfortunately, I did not get it when I completed Mercenary of Sholazar last night. Now that it's done, I'm going to wait for Children's Week to come around to see what they'll have us do, then back to the Oracles to continue looking for the mount.
On a completely unrelated note, I love the Argent Tournament dailies. There's so much gold to be had for relatively quick work. The best part about it is you can do Valiant quests at the same time as Champion quests. For example, you can do A Valiant's Field Training and At the Enemy's Gates for Valiant's Seals at the same time as Taking the Battle to the Enemy and Battle Before the Citadel. So when you have to kill 15 scourge for a Champion's Seal, you automatically are done with killing 10 scourge for a Valiant's Seal. When you kill the Boneguard Lieutenants for Champion's Seals, you finish the quest for Valiant's Seals at the same time. You then go back and turn in each quest for the Valiant's Seals and receive 13g23s for each quest and then you turn in your Champion's Seals quests and receive 13g23s PLUS a Champion's Purse which has another 10g in it. Combine those with the jousting dailies, the Threat From Above, and any others that make you travel to SE Northrend and you quickly gain 5 Valiant's Seals, 5 Champion's Seals and you're up 132g61s. Love it.
Of course I do those dailies along with the new fishing daily and the old cooking dailies every day and I easily earn 150g a day just from 9 quick quests. Too bad most of it will go to repairs and consumables in Ulduar in the coming days...
On a completely unrelated note, I love the Argent Tournament dailies. There's so much gold to be had for relatively quick work. The best part about it is you can do Valiant quests at the same time as Champion quests. For example, you can do A Valiant's Field Training and At the Enemy's Gates for Valiant's Seals at the same time as Taking the Battle to the Enemy and Battle Before the Citadel. So when you have to kill 15 scourge for a Champion's Seal, you automatically are done with killing 10 scourge for a Valiant's Seal. When you kill the Boneguard Lieutenants for Champion's Seals, you finish the quest for Valiant's Seals at the same time. You then go back and turn in each quest for the Valiant's Seals and receive 13g23s for each quest and then you turn in your Champion's Seals quests and receive 13g23s PLUS a Champion's Purse which has another 10g in it. Combine those with the jousting dailies, the Threat From Above, and any others that make you travel to SE Northrend and you quickly gain 5 Valiant's Seals, 5 Champion's Seals and you're up 132g61s. Love it.
Of course I do those dailies along with the new fishing daily and the old cooking dailies every day and I easily earn 150g a day just from 9 quick quests. Too bad most of it will go to repairs and consumables in Ulduar in the coming days...
Apr 21, 2009
A Busy Week
Last week was pretty busy. It of course all started on Tuesday with the Argent Tournament, continued Thursday with 10 man Ulduar, progressed Friday with 25 man full clear Naxx and 2 attempts at Flame Leviathan, extended to Sunday with a Sunwell clear, and finished yesterday with more advancement in the Argent Tournament.
Back to Friday, we quickly gathered up and discussed what our next move would be. Would we concentrate on 25 man Ulduar, or continue for a few weeks in Naxxramas, continuing to gear up players and, maybe more importantly, get gear for secondary specs. It was decided we would stay in Naxxramas for 2-3 weeks and gear people up as the week before was our first time downing Kel'Thuzad (progress bars on the right updated). So we pressed forward and cleared Naxxramas in record time. The week prior, we had taken time on Thursday to clear the Spider wing, whereas on Friday, we cleared the whole place in under 3.5 hours - a very good time for us. We had two wings down in under 1 hour. So with our record time, we decided to head over to Ulduar to see what was going on there.
We quickly formed up, explained the first fight and promptly...wiped on trash. We just got too spread out, so on our next attempt, we stayed together and easily made it to the Flame Leviathan. Unfortunately, some people had issues with their vehicles and we also had problems picking people up after they had jumped on the Flame Leviathan. So we didn't get him down on the two attempts we had before we had to call it for the night. I'm looking forward to having more time in there - we should be able to easily take out the Flame Leviathan, but I can see issues with XT-002 already (it's a healer check) and I'm hoping Razorscale is a little bit easier on 25 man than it is on 10 man.
Then on Sunday, I see someone advertising a Sunwell run in trade chat. Bleh, I've been before and even at 80, unless your team has good coordination, you're not going to get past Felmyst or some other later bosses (which you can zerg as well). But then Aenador messaged me from the group and wanted to see if I wanted to go. With her and others from Familiaris Incursio in the group, I felt a little safer and decided to give it a shot. And I'm glad I did. It was quite fun and I got to finally see M'uru, the Twins, and Kil'Jaeden. I also won a piece of Tier 6 which makes me happy and earned another achievement. I just have the Black Temple left now. Here's some pictures from the run:
Which leads us to Monday. After quickly completing the daily cooking quest in my search for a Chef's Hat (I'm now over half way there), I headed up to the Argent Tournament ready to become a Champion! I quickly completed the dailies, bested a Champion in a joust, and earned my title. Tiddlywinks of Gnomeregan.
With the Champion title achieved, it was time to work for another faction. Ironforge just happened to be standing right there, so I went to work for them. He only had one quest for me on the day, so I headed over to the main tent to see what else I could do. Ah yes, the Black Knight!
I accepted the challenge, went outside and picked a steed and awaited the Black Knight. And what happened next? I demolished him. Pretty disappointing. I feel like this was a real opportunity wasted - so did my other guildmates who bested him yesterday. But hey, it's 10 more achievement points, upping my total to 5,860.
After that, it was time to work on getting some more Champion's Seals. The quests are getting a bit tougher this time around. The jousting opponents are much tougher and trying to work your way through the boneguards near the Citadel is a bit tougher. But all the quests were completed, even the group quest with the help of the wonderful Vetarra and I got my 5 seals, bringing me to 15. Just a few more days and I'll be able to get my Mechanopeep!
Back to Friday, we quickly gathered up and discussed what our next move would be. Would we concentrate on 25 man Ulduar, or continue for a few weeks in Naxxramas, continuing to gear up players and, maybe more importantly, get gear for secondary specs. It was decided we would stay in Naxxramas for 2-3 weeks and gear people up as the week before was our first time downing Kel'Thuzad (progress bars on the right updated). So we pressed forward and cleared Naxxramas in record time. The week prior, we had taken time on Thursday to clear the Spider wing, whereas on Friday, we cleared the whole place in under 3.5 hours - a very good time for us. We had two wings down in under 1 hour. So with our record time, we decided to head over to Ulduar to see what was going on there.
We quickly formed up, explained the first fight and promptly...wiped on trash. We just got too spread out, so on our next attempt, we stayed together and easily made it to the Flame Leviathan. Unfortunately, some people had issues with their vehicles and we also had problems picking people up after they had jumped on the Flame Leviathan. So we didn't get him down on the two attempts we had before we had to call it for the night. I'm looking forward to having more time in there - we should be able to easily take out the Flame Leviathan, but I can see issues with XT-002 already (it's a healer check) and I'm hoping Razorscale is a little bit easier on 25 man than it is on 10 man.
Then on Sunday, I see someone advertising a Sunwell run in trade chat. Bleh, I've been before and even at 80, unless your team has good coordination, you're not going to get past Felmyst or some other later bosses (which you can zerg as well). But then Aenador messaged me from the group and wanted to see if I wanted to go. With her and others from Familiaris Incursio in the group, I felt a little safer and decided to give it a shot. And I'm glad I did. It was quite fun and I got to finally see M'uru, the Twins, and Kil'Jaeden. I also won a piece of Tier 6 which makes me happy and earned another achievement. I just have the Black Temple left now. Here's some pictures from the run:
Which leads us to Monday. After quickly completing the daily cooking quest in my search for a Chef's Hat (I'm now over half way there), I headed up to the Argent Tournament ready to become a Champion! I quickly completed the dailies, bested a Champion in a joust, and earned my title. Tiddlywinks of Gnomeregan.
With the Champion title achieved, it was time to work for another faction. Ironforge just happened to be standing right there, so I went to work for them. He only had one quest for me on the day, so I headed over to the main tent to see what else I could do. Ah yes, the Black Knight!
I accepted the challenge, went outside and picked a steed and awaited the Black Knight. And what happened next? I demolished him. Pretty disappointing. I feel like this was a real opportunity wasted - so did my other guildmates who bested him yesterday. But hey, it's 10 more achievement points, upping my total to 5,860.
After that, it was time to work on getting some more Champion's Seals. The quests are getting a bit tougher this time around. The jousting opponents are much tougher and trying to work your way through the boneguards near the Citadel is a bit tougher. But all the quests were completed, even the group quest with the help of the wonderful Vetarra and I got my 5 seals, bringing me to 15. Just a few more days and I'll be able to get my Mechanopeep!
Apr 17, 2009
In to Ulduar...
Last night, the gold team formed up and headed into Ulduar for the first time. We weren't quite sure what to expect from the instance when it came to difficulty and so after getting into our vehicles, we were ready to tackle the gauntlet and the Flame Leviathan.
We quickly tackled the gauntlet and repaired our engines before engaging the Leviathan, and, he was EASY. Maybe a little too easy to start off Ulduar we were thinking. But we took our loot (I received a Lifespark Visage) and we continued on - or at least tried to.
We ran into an issue where we couldn't get out of combat, no matter what we tried, so in the end, we had to run all the way back to the start and out of Ulduar. Upon returning, we were able to take the teleporter to the Forge and we decided to see what Razorscale had for us. Unfortunately, not good news.
After multiple failed attempts, trying multiple different strategies, we gave up on Razorscale (his fireballs do a little too much damage for us apparently). We then went over to see how Ignis was doing and..umm..wiped a bunch on his trash. So yeah, that was a humbling experience right there. After finally getting those two molten colossuses (colossi?) down, we proceeded to then figure out how to get the rest of his trash down. We tried avoiding cyclones, but they kept going after the healers it seemed, so with healers down, we wiped a few more times. We finally got to Ignis, but it was getting late. Nonetheless, we got about 5 or 6 attempts in on him before having to call it for the night.
For those out there complaining that Ulduar is too easy because a couple guilds have downed Yogg-Saron, you're just wrong. Simple as that. Ulduar is fun, challenging, and exciting. I look forward to progressing further in the coming weeks.
We quickly tackled the gauntlet and repaired our engines before engaging the Leviathan, and, he was EASY. Maybe a little too easy to start off Ulduar we were thinking. But we took our loot (I received a Lifespark Visage) and we continued on - or at least tried to.
We ran into an issue where we couldn't get out of combat, no matter what we tried, so in the end, we had to run all the way back to the start and out of Ulduar. Upon returning, we were able to take the teleporter to the Forge and we decided to see what Razorscale had for us. Unfortunately, not good news.
After multiple failed attempts, trying multiple different strategies, we gave up on Razorscale (his fireballs do a little too much damage for us apparently). We then went over to see how Ignis was doing and..umm..wiped a bunch on his trash. So yeah, that was a humbling experience right there. After finally getting those two molten colossuses (colossi?) down, we proceeded to then figure out how to get the rest of his trash down. We tried avoiding cyclones, but they kept going after the healers it seemed, so with healers down, we wiped a few more times. We finally got to Ignis, but it was getting late. Nonetheless, we got about 5 or 6 attempts in on him before having to call it for the night.
For those out there complaining that Ulduar is too easy because a couple guilds have downed Yogg-Saron, you're just wrong. Simple as that. Ulduar is fun, challenging, and exciting. I look forward to progressing further in the coming weeks.
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