Top Of The World

Back in December only a couple of months into the Mists of Pandaria expansion, I attempted to solo Tempest Keep. It was the one missing fragment from my days spent in the Outland. During the Burning Crusade, I was part of a 10 man casual raiding guild, the pinnacle of those days was Karazhan. This one raid kept us occupied for a long time, mostly due to the fact Blizzard decided the next couple of Raids should be 25 Man and then back to 10 Man for Zul'Aman (the original). It was a huge leap up and difficult to bridge without access to the next level of gear. It was a truly awful bit of design from Blizzard, one which they would rectify by having 10 and 25 man versions of all Raids after the expansion.

Tempest Keep was well and truly out of my range, and for some reason I used to get Tempest Keep and Black Temple confused, so if there any retro runs during Lich King, I would invariably miss them due to stupidity.

In December I was probably in the iLevel range of 450-460, but now that is 503. The gear/stat inflation means that I am probably at least twice as powerful now than then. Cymre wrote a post yesterday about obtaining the Ashes of Alar. This was my cue to go back and complete my unfinished business.

The rest of the story is a complete non-event due to the relative power of a juggernaut Hunter able to completely overpower the mind control effects of Kael'thas Sunstrider and his cronies. There was no need for special tricks or Tanking pets, just raw power and a wait for each of the phases to time out.

Another 30 points to my achievement total. Achievements are something that motivate and also turn me off. I like to do the achievements that are obtainable and dislike the ones that cause unnatural player behaviour. Something like "All 25 members of a Raid team must drop their pants and moon at the Lich King During the Tea Party Phase".

This is just a waste of time, but we do it because it is 10 Points and it is needed for the Larger Raiding achievement. It is no great Feat of Strength merely an annoying distraction.

There are just too many achievements that are merely not achievements or just plain annoying that I have stopped actively chasing them. On the flip side it is rude not to complete all the Raids even if you are 3 Expansions too late.

Undercover Of The Night

Last night was a change of pace from the usual Rep Grind. I thought it was about time I became best buddies with Lorewalker Cho. It was supposed to be a one hour to Exalted romp, but I am guessing that you already know that is not how it turned out.

I decided to use the WoW Insider guide, which contained all the information I needed but not necessarily in the correct order. The guide uses a map of the best route, but the co-ordinates are in story order not in flight order. The other major stumbling block was working out which sites I had already visited.

My first issue was that the co-ordinates on the on screen map work better if there are no quests outstanding in the zone. The only question mark was at the Arboretum in the Jade Forest, which it turns out was the prequests for the Order of the Cloud Serpent. I decided to tackle all the yellow exclamation marks and would stop when I got to the Dailies.

Next interruption was the nearby digsite, which resulted in the completion of the Spear of Xuen. These weapons are Bind on Account and can be used by multiple characters in the leveling process, I was very excited as a Hunter until I remembered that they don't use Polearms anymore. The only other user of a two handed agility weapon is a Druid, and I play balance. Disappointment all round.

Luckily I was able to concentrate on the job in hand and completed Explore Jade Forest, Fish Tales and Hozen in the Mist.

Moving onto Krasarang Wilds, I picked off the missing stories, but probably not in the most efficient manner possible. I struggled to find the cave, which is always a problem with co-ordinates and is one of the reasons for the universally hated Vashj'ir in the Cataclysm expansion.

Valley of the Four Winds created more distraction in form of the Tiller Dailies before picking up the story in the tunnel in between Mists in the Veiled Stair and Kun Lai Summit. Fortunately you can collect the story without getting off your mount. I have already been daft enough to traverse that tunnel on foot at Level 88.

In Kun Lai Summit, I paid a visit to the Temple of the White Tiger, were I picked up a quest to the do the new version Ring of Blood, Crucible of Carnage etc. This time it stuck behind a Scenario, so just out of curiosity I needed to have a sneaky peak at the Arena of Annihilation. I like the scenario concept and it makes sense to the Arena of Annihilation with 2 other people who want the same goal instead of dragging out a load of Guildies to complete a 5 man quest which most of them will have already done anyway. This is a great improvement for alts, and a nice iLevel starter weapon will come in very handy.

To round of the evening I picked up Explore Kun-Lai Summit and the achievement Ballad of Liu Lang. A very different evening but a real sense of progressive instead of trying to push up a rep bar by a couple millimetres.

By the way, is there anyway to shut Lorewalker Cho up?

Riders On The Storm

News from Blizzard and currently live on the Beta, are changes to account-wide mounts and achievements. The whole system is currently up for debate, but Blizzard are indicating their current direction for mounts, pets, titles and achievements, the plans at this stage seem logical and very fair.

The design philosophy as outlined by Ghostcrawler, "Overall, we never want you to play Character A instead of Character B because of achievement concerns." also, "Having alts is cool and working on achievements is cool, but we don't the two systems to work against each other". This design philosophy is achievable but is less snappy than previous edicts "Bring the player not the class" and "The Hybrid Tax".

The benefits of this system are many fold, as an Altoholic you could have a Rogue for PvP, a Resto Shaman for healing in Raids, and a Hunter for all other achievements. items such as Honor Kills, total money looted, dailies completed will become account wide totals. Does this have an adverse effect on Main character only players, possibly but why would want to do more than 25 dailies?

I personally will benefit greatly from this new design. In WotLK, I raided Ulduar, Trial of the Crusader, and Icecrown Citadel as a Resto Shaman, I PvPed as a Death Knight, and collected achievements on a BM Hunter. When MoP comes out I will collect a load of new account-wide achievements from this expansion. In Cata I have mostly raided, PvPed and achievement collected on my Hunter so there will be very little benefit.

Mounts will save altoholics a King's Ransom in gold. The main gold sinks of  Mekgineer's Chopper, Traveller's Tundra Mammoth, and Vial of Sands. will now be available to all your characters. In addition throw in the RNG mounts from the Holiday achievements and you are looking at Kodos, Rams, and Reins of the Headless Horseman. Of these I look forward to having a fiery flying stead on my Death Knight instead of a Paladin but then again thats why this is random loot event.

Now the 3rd type of mounts which is currently avaialble on Beta but probably will not make production are the profession only mounts, Flying Carpet and Roflcopter. The likelihood is they will appear in your stable of mounts but will be unusable without the required skill level.

The 4th type are the Class based mounts which are awarded to Paladin and Warlocks. What will happen to these mounts is as yet unclear.

What is clear is that Blizzard are attempting to give players more choices in game. How to play the game, and what we look like whilst playing the game (Transmogrification). I feel sorry for the x-mog fans as they have 5 more levels of constant gear changes in the upcoming expansion.

Achievements and More Pets

My standard Warcraft routine is Looking For Raid after the weekly reset and move round to Tol Barad and Wintersgrasp at the back end of the week. In between I will try to finish off some achievements. The easiest way to get achievements for me is to do legacy raiding. My main character has polished off Vanila and TBC (except for Tempest Keep ). Naxx is mostly covered but I changed to Shaman healer for the other 3 raids in WotLK. A 10 or 25 man Ulduar would uncover a plethora of achievements for me. These forays are few and far between so I often fill my time trying to get furry cuddly companion pets.

Blizzard armory made the job far easier for the average Joe by showing what pets are owned and which are not. Of the 4 pages of pets many are specials Collectors Edition, Blizzard Store, Blizzcon or Trading Card Game. These Pets are lost to me and unless I become a Diablo III millionaire I will never own them. The remaining obtainable pets are World Drop, Seasonal, Darkmoon Faire, and Argent Tournament.

World drop are a pain in the backside and I have no stamina for endless farming. The only pet I regularly try for is the Fox Kit. This can be done whilst killing spiders (lovely skinnable spiders) in Tol Barad for commendations.


Seasonal pets are mostly from Children's week. I missed the first 2 events and spend subsequent years chasing the pets. Every year they seem to add more, but hopefully I will catch up this year I am still missing 5, Curious Wolvar Pup, Legs, Peanut, Scooter the Snail, and Whiskers the Rat.

The Darkmoon Faire, is due to start this weekend. I have yet to make a dent on the pets here and still need to collect, Cub, Monkey, Tonk, Turtle and Zeppelin. I hope to obtain at least one this time round.
I am not lover of the dailies here, but I don't mind the profession based quests. Just wish I could do the fishing quest as a daily, 35 skill ups a month would save a lot of time. Yes I know I am anal trying to get all my secondary skills to max before the arrival of the Pandas.

On the subject of boring or just plain annoying dailies, you can't beat the Argent Tournament. There was nothing wrong with several of the quests, ie. go here and kill bad people come back and get reward. The big problem was ride a mount and try and knock someone off. The problem I found was that I could get a lead and then lose all my shields by going for the kill and not keeping a close eye on the defence, and then it was game over. This was like a chess match but it seemed to last for much longer. To get to become a champion takes some considerable time but with all those pets on offer, I might need to review my strategy.

Last night with very limited playtime I decided to the The 'Unbeatable?' Pterodactyl: BEATEN achievement. Everybody I know hates this quest and the Jousters fly like a gold brick, but it's only 10 very annoying quests to get through. I am currently 6/10 of the way through it. After this high octane excitement, it was off to the Molten Front. The reason for this legacy activity is to hope that one day Zen'Vorka will give me his cache and it will have something of use in it. At 30 Mark of the World Tree, this has not been a very happy exchange. This time was different the RNG gods shone down and awarded me Scorched Stone. The best bit is I now have no reason to do these quests again except on my Gnome Rogue Engineer who needs the recipes especially the Flintlocke's Woodchucker.