7500, 100, Title, Pet

So, as everyone probably knows, today starts Brewfest! And, with Brewfest, comes achievements, violet proto-drakes, and pets! So this is probably the best day of the year for me. So I started with the two easiest achievements - eating and drinking!

I then continued on with another two easy achievements - since I already had three pieces of Brewfest Regalia from previous years, I just had to dance drunk in Dalaran, port to Shattrath and then jump off a bridge.

So I was left with just two achievements for my awesome Brewmaster title! First up, I defended the Brewfest grounds from the Dark Iron Dwarves and then we went to get even more revenge on them by entering into Blackrock Depths and defeating Coren Direbrew. And with that, What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been was complete!

And with that, I saw new mail, brought out my Argent Squire to get to my mailbox and retrieved what is probably the most beautiful mount in all of Azeroth, the Violet Proto-Drake. He's purple, flies at 310%, and is just downright amazing. Here he is in Netherstorm in all his beauty:

So with the proto-drake, I have now reached 100 mounts! And of course, with 100 mounts, comes a reward of a 101st mount! So I now sit at 101 mounts.

So there are my 100 mounts, however, before learning my 100th mount, I checked my achievement log, and there I sat, at 7500 points exactly. Such a beautiful number. But my 100th mount achievement takes me to 7510.

Of course, with Brewfest, comes an all new pet! My very own Pint-Sized Pink Elekk, my 121st pet. Just 7 elude me still. They will be mine!

97 Mounts

Got my Quel'dorei Steed last night. And yesterday I was wondering what would get me to 100 mounts. Well, I forgot about all this gold I've been hoarding. I can easily go buy a Grand Ice Mammoth, but I'd really like to save a bit more for the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth. But with Brewfest fast approaching, I won't have enough gold to buy the Mammoth and get 100 mounts on Sunday with the Violet Proto-Drake. I think I might hit up Vetarra or Aenador and see if I can dip into their cash reserves in exchange for a modest 10% return on their money. I only need 3,000g or so. And I could probably pay that back at about 1,000g a week (plus interest).

Either way, I just want to hit 100 mounts and get it over and done with. And then when the 100 pets achievement drops with 3.2.2 or 3.3, I'll already be there ready for that achievement.

99 Seals...

Two days ago I needed 23 seals for a new mount and since you get just 10 per day from the dailies, that meant 3 from the "bonus bags" would allow me to buy a mount. First day went well - I got my 10 seals from dailies and 2! of the four bags had seals in them. Unfortunately, yesterday, I got my 10 seals, but the bags held nothing for me. So the mount has been postponed until tonight. #97 incoming. I think I'm going to go with the Quel'dorei Steed. Then I can get back to work on the faction mounts.

Then this Sunday, Brewfest returns! The Violet Proto-Drake will be mine! #98.

I just have no idea what I'm going to get for #99. My egg hatches soon and maybe I'll get a Green Proto, or maybe I'll get lucky and figure out a way to get my Red Proto, but barring those two options, it'll just be another 10 days of dailies to get an Argent Tourney mount.

Either way, as you can probably tell from all my mount posts lately, I really want to get to 100!

Missing in Action

A couple things to quickly update.

1. The 10 Man Gold Team cleared Normal Trial in an hour last week. We then attempted the Northrend Beasts on heroic again. This time though, we killed them. We tried Jaraxxus a few times, but just didn't have the time or patience to kill him.

2. The 25 Man Gold Team took down the Faction Champions for the first time last week. I hear it was a one-shot. I was out of town. They then quickly took down the Twins, but didn't have time to get through Anub.

3. Just one week until Brewfest!! With it, a new mount. I'm currently at 96 mounts. I am still hoping to get my Red Proto Drake soon (97) then my Violet Proto Drake with Brewfest (98) and finally an Argent Tourney mount will be 99 in a couple days. Then, my special, super-secret mount will be revealed as #100.

4. We went into Naxx last night to get Undying. And, we did. It was not that hard and it took us just over 2 hours to clear all the way through. Not too shabby. Tiddlywinks the Undying sounds good. I do die quite infrequently (when not in raids - where my cloth armor does little to protect me).

5. I was roaming through Stratholme looking for another new mount. While in there, I found my new weapon to look pretty good. (click to enlarge)

95 and counting...

The morning started with a successful Wintergrasp battle with a 25 man Vault of Archavon group immediately afterwards. After 3 wipes on Koralon, we kicked two DPS that were unable to break 1300 DPS, replaced a healer that liked standing in fires, and we downed him. Though I ended up 4th on damage done due to a fire under my feet while he was spinning around doing his flame breath, but I was third on DPS done through the fight. A nice PvP piece dropped, but I lost the roll, however, getting my achievement was well worth the wipes.

After that, we quickly did Emalon and Archavon. On Emalon, my DPS was pretty amazing, putting out 1.42m damage and averaging 4909.1 DPS. On Archavon, not quite the same DPS, but still #1 atop the meters with 845k damage and 4695.1 DPS.

Later though, I found a bored guildie who had a level 80 horde priest and in exchange for a few gold, he let me kill him over and over again in Halaa. After I had enough Halaa Battle Tokens, I went off and farmed my last Halaa Research Token and then went back and was forced to bomb Halaa over and over again to take Halaa back for the Alliance. And with the battle and research tokens, Reins of the Dark Riding Talbuk and Reins of the Dark War Talbuk are mine, bringing my mount total to 95.

I expect to get the Red Proto Drake soon from the achievements, I'll get the Violet Proto Drake when Brewfest starts, and I'll be getting the Red Bearon soon as well. That brings me to 98 mounts. I also have 24 champion's seals right now so in 8 (or 7 days if I run the Trial of the Crusader a few times) days, I'll have another mount from the Argent Tournament. Then, 9-10 days later, my 100th mount. But I'm off to farm Rivendare's mount, so perhaps it will be sooner if I get lucky...

Normal Trial Clear

Last night, in an impressive outing, the 10 man Gold Team defeated Anub'Arak in record time. After quickly dispatching with the Northrend Beasts and Jaraxxus, the Gold Team miraculously one shot the Faction Champions! About half our team was new this week and had not seen the Twin Val'kyrs, so it took us two shots there and Anub'Arak took just three shots. And there it was...

I really enjoyed the Anub'Arak fight - it features many interesting fight mechanics and though the learning curve really isn't that high, the third phase is tons of fun.

On another note, I acquired the Leggings of the Demonic Messenger. I swapped them out with my last piece of tier 7.5. I then also had to take off my Shackles of the Odalisque for the Felspark Bindings I had been saving up. The switch of the two items nets me 22 stamina, 18 intellect, 37 spirit, 37 damage, and 20 crit at the cost of 7 hit, 17 haste, and 1 socket. Not a bad trade at all. Though I am now 5 hit rating short of the cap. But I should be ok nonetheless.

And of course, September 20th marks the start of Brewfest. And I...cannot...wait! With Brewfest, the achievement, What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been will be mine! And with it...the Violet Proto-Drake - a 310% flight speed mount. But with September, even though it isn't Brewfest yet, I got a small taste of it early this year with my newest brew and...

I also managed to get 100 champion seals this past week and picked up a Gnomeregan Mechanostrider giving me 93 mounts. With the Violet Proto Drake and the Red Bearon that will be arriving soon, I'll be at 95. At some point I'll get off my butt and get the Halaa mounts and maybe PvP some more to get to 100. It's coming soon. And I can't wait!

What a Morning!

It started out boring enough...just out doing my dailies, working on my Champion's Seals for more mounts when a couple guildies decided they wanted to go to normal Trial of the Champion to try and obtain a trinket. So we formed up, but decided, rather than Trial first, we'd do the daily heroic and daily normal at the same time in the Oculus. So off we went. And when we formed up, it was decided we'd go for the 20 minute timer for Make it Count. After quickly downing the first boss, I started the stopwatch and I never had a doubt that we'd make it. We tried a new strategy which I had never tried before and it worked wonders. Here's a quick overview:

• Make sure you know which drakes you want beforehand. We had 2 amber, 2 emerald, and a ruby. It doesn't really matter which you pick, but having 2 amber drakes makes it really easy switching back and forth on the channeled spell and high damage spells. Of course you want the ruby to keep aggro and the emeralds to heal.
• Once you know what drakes you want, immediately go up to the center platform. Previously, I had always been in groups that want to clear the outer platforms first. But no! Go to the middle. By clearing the middle, it gives you an easy way to go from outer platform to outer platform.
• Once you have the center platform clear, go back and then fly straight out to a platform with constructs. By flying straight out to it, you can then fly straight back after you have cleared the platform. Kill as few drakes as necessary to get to the edge of the platform, clear it by pulling the mobs to the edge, and then go back to the middle.
• Repeat for the second platform. Once you're back in the middle, fly around to the second boss and fly straight out to him. Clear most of the drakes above his platform so he doesn't call on them to help during the fight. Quickly kill him and then immediately fly up to the next section.
• Once you are on the next section, land directly on top of the image. He won't aggro until you hit him, so make sure everyone gets there, hit him, and clear the adds. Rince and repeat all around.
• Once you're ready for the third boss, again, land right on top of him and when you're ready, hit him and start DPS. When he lays down his first frost bomb, kite him behind the pillar closest to you. Now, if he lays more frost bombs, ignore them. Heal through them. When he teleports, you're already behind the pillar - wait for him to return and kill him.
• With the boss down, start killing the whelps. You need to get most of them down before engaging the boss as they can do stacking damage. Get ready to engage the boss and then go! You should have about 4-6 minutes left at this point. I think we had 5 minutes left and it took us 2.5 minutes to kill him. So down he went with 2.5 minutes to spare.
• When you're working your way up to the boss, don't worry about loot. Just have someone need it all and then distribute at the end. Every second counts (kind of - you have some leeway, but not much).

So after we quickly rolled through the Oculus, we headed over to the Trial to try and get Eleazarjr a new trinket. Of course, it didn't drop, but we steamrolled that instance as well and then went outside to try it on heroic. One quick run later, I ended up getting both Needy and I've Had Worse. Needy was a long time coming as since the patch, I've been "needing" everything. Since we can now trade soulbound items for 2 hours, I just need everything and trade it or disenchant it. A couple hundred items later, Needy was mine.

As for "I've Had Worse", here's a couple hints - during phase 1, kill the add right away. He only has like 50 or 60k health - so he goes down quickly. Phase 2 is where you'll most likely lose this achievement. It was pretty easy with two mages and two pallies, but this strategy should work for most - right away, start AOE. That's the only way to take all the ghouls down before he can have one explode. Both pallies immediately had consecrate down and both of us mages popped mirror image, dropped a flamestrike on the Black Knight and then used a Blizzard. Once the tank had to move to get out of a death and decay, I switched to arcane explosion to give greater mobile AOE. So all the ghouls went down and it was ours!

So after that, I quickly finished up the dailies I had started, turned in my daily dungeon quests, and was done for a bit. A very good morning. Plus, I got this nice achievement last night (it's pretty easy):

To get The Faceroller, take Eadric down to about 30k health. Make sure there's no DOTs on him and then stop DPS when you get under 20k. The tank shouldn't even be hitting him. Now wait for him to target someone to throw the hammer at. Dispel/trinket out of/spell reflect/grounding totem when Eadric starts to channel and the player targeted will be able to catch the hammer. Your action bar will change and you just need to hit "1" to throw the hammer back at him. This should finish him off and "The Faceroller" is yours!

Bullet Point Updates

• The Gold Team went into the Trial of the Crusade last night and after honing our strategy, finally took down the Faction Champions. They certainly are not a pushover. We had the boomkin, disc priest, healy shaman, warlock, rogue, and ret pally. Our original strategy was to take the shaman down first, but we found that bursting down the priest was easier. After him, we switched to the shaman and when he was down, the team was left without heals and could easily be killed. I think it took us about 7 or 8 attempts. Our first 2 resulted in no kills. We killed the priest on our 3rd try, and from there on, it was just a matter of learning the proper way to fear-bomb, CC, silence, and focus down the individual champions.
• After the Faction Champions, we had the Val'kyr Twins. We were a little wary of the fight since we had heard they were easy, but they had just been hotfixed.

  The following bug fixes to Val'kyr Twins were just deployed, and they will increase the overall difficulty of the encounter.

  • Surge of Light and Surge of Darkness were not being cast properly on Normal difficulties.
  • Light Vortex was doing less damage than Dark Vortex.

  Along with those two major bug fixes, we also increased the rate with which the Concentrated Light and Concentrated Darkness spawns.

  But we went on and downed them on our third attempt - our first was used to just learn the encounter. Our second attempt featured a couple of deaths as we still learned the exact way to take them down, and our third was perfect. So next week, we await Anub'Rekan and look forward to then tackling the Trial in heroic mode.
• I received Grunty from my Blizzcon goodie bag - unfortunately, due to a family vacation, I did not attend any of Blizzcon. However, Thursday night it was fun to meet up with many in-game friends at a local sandwich shop. Perhaps more on Blizzcon thoughts later.
• I finally received Snarly's Bucket from Old Man Barlo. This now completes my crocolisk collection!
• I spent countless hours on Monday camping Takk the Leaper. Then I realized my addon was misconfigured, so he probably spawned and I didn't even know it. I have it set up correctly now, so I should not miss a raptor spawn any time soon.
• Achievements have been on hold for the most part - but we might get some tonight in Ulduar as we will most likely be attempting some 10 man hard modes.