Of Progress (or lack of it)

Last week was given entirely to family matters, so I haven't managed to make any progress either in levelling or rep gains. Ah well, RL priorities should come first ^_^

I compensated on the weekends though - Aergor the lowbie Hunter dinged 36 and should be able to move to Tanaris next weekend. I also was thinking of having Aelyra craft some equipment for him before he hits 40. And Aerdanil the side-project apparently had a field day: he's 18 now, and has maxed out Tailoring for his level (the Expert rank needs him to be level 20 >.< ).

Which reminds me - how is it that wanding can be such a powerful tool? Aerdanil has discovered about wanding when he's level 12, and blasted through the next 6 levels using nothing but Shadow Word: Pain and his wand. What are the Mind Blast for - filler? o_O

Today it's gonna be back to rep grindings - but since time constraint is a factor, I'll be concentrating more on getting Aenur's and Aelyra's current faction maxed out. Once that's done, I should be able to focus on Aerdread and Aerhandor. Aside from that, I still have not formulate any long-term plan for the future.

Of Potter, Leveling, and Dailies

In a rare turn of event, my wife got her off day on Saturday - unusual, since normally her off days falls on weekdays. But rather than dwell on the "why", I take full advantage of it and suggested we enjoy ourselves by going to see Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince. For your information, I have read the book but my wife has not (she has poor English), so before the movie I thought to give her a few pointers - who is Harry Potter, the background of the story and what-nots. Armed with what scant knowledge of Hogwarts that I've given her, we went in.

An hour into the screening, and she's fast asleep.

But it was not something I'd be faulting her - there were times when I myself would wonder, "Why did I come here in the first place?". Honestly, in my personal opinion, the movie lacked the 'Potter' effect - where's the magic? The atmosphere? The enviroment of the movie was so stale and lackluster that I have a hard time relating it to the book. All I see was the Ron-Hermione thing and not enough Potter. The next installment better have TRIPLE the magic or I'm giving Rowling a piece of my mind (and maybe Grey would join in too - he's been disappointed about Peeves not making it into the movies).

On the other hand, progress in Azeroth has been exceptionally well (I sound like an evil mastermind planning world domination lol).

* Aergor the lowbie Hunter has arrived in Stranglegank - I mean Stranglethorn Vale, and has dinged 34.

* A totally side-project, Aerdanil the Shadow Priest, has dinged 15 after 3 wipes at the hand of the level 11 Elite Anok'suten.

* Aelyra has managed to get Revered with the Sons of Hodir after much spy hunting, horn blowing, helm polishing and scrap collecting.

* Aerdread is now working with the Argent Crusade and the Horde faction cities in order to get the Ambassador title - he's only just started, so it's a long road down.

* Aerhandor is back in Kalimdor (Silithus to be exact) and is working with his fellow Druids to get Exalted with the Cenarion Circle (which is his destiny :P )

I guess that would do for today... hopefully I'll have an even more comprehensive tale next post.

Lich? Which Lic---aaAARGG!!

A couple of days ago, Aenur finally hit Exalted with Thunder Bluff, and thus completing the last Exalted Champion achievement. And because of that, now she has no faction to grind rep with for the time being.

I was considering getting her to The Storm Peaks to try and make friends with the Storm Giants, but at the same time I hate to leave my Champion Seal count at 30-ish (I wanted to get the Hippogryph, after all). So I took another look at the Northrend map - and finally it hit me. The Oracles. Aenur had stopped grinding rep with the fish-people since level 78 due to her inability to solo the elite Lich Artruis the Heartless. Well, that was post Dual-Spec, and since Aenur's secondary spec is Protection, and she's level 80 now, I decided to pay a little visit. And maybe bring a houseload of divine vengeance on the guy. I thought about getting a guildie to tag along, but it was a tad too early and the only people available was Beefythighs (level 32 Feral Druid) and Deadnlovinit (level 67 Combat Rogue).

When I got to the cave, latency was at about 800+ ms... a bit on the high side, but still not enough to cause me worry. Aenur swaggered into the cave full of confidence, easily disposing the few undead skellies between the entrance and Artruis. Finally - the moment of truth. Aenur swapped her trusty Titansteel Destroyer for Reaper of Dark Souls and Titansteel Shield Wall, switched her spec over to Protection, and put on her Frost Resistance Aura. Now - to pull with Shield of the Righteous...

And all hell broke loose.

My latency choose the moment just before the pull to spike to 1.9k ms, and as a result Aenur got a faceful of Frostbolts before she can even register she's under attack O_O

I quickly try to get Aenur's acts together - Judgement of the Wise, Exorcism, Consecrate, and began to systematically solo-tank the darn Lich. But the lag continued to get worse - I found that Aenur was swinging at an empty spot while Artruis had already frozen her in place and moved away to Frostbolt her, her health drops at an alarming rate, I was panicking, her rotation went south, and all the while the actions on the screen was coming in sporadic bursts. I had Aenur blew a Lay on Hand to compensate and to try to regain the advantage, but Artruis was having none of it. A couple of Freezes and some Frostbolts later, Aenur's down to quarter health.

Curses, I thought, I should've brought a Priest. But still, Aenur still haven't even touched half her skills. Maybe we can still drag a win outta this.

I had Aenur bubble, then threw on some heals. Latency choose this moment to plateau, and we quickly go on the offensive - Artruis was hit with everything that wasn't on cooldowns... Exorcism, Judgements, Hammer of Righteousness, Shields, Consecrate... mana's low, chug a mana pot, moar Judgements, Exorcism... and before we know it he's barely clinging to life and summoning his assistants. Aenur quickly mow down the crazy wolvar and switches back to the now freaking Lich, ignoring the fish-guy's word of thanks and assistance. A minute later, and Artruis is nothing but a black dot on the floor.

Aenur was a bit miffed, though. "If it wasn't for that lag spike, Lich, you wouldn't even be able to scream when we jumped you." She bit out as she bandages herself.

As for me, though, I'm glad I got that Lich out of the way. I definitely can use less lag-spiked-during-elite-encounter in my adventures.

Exalted with The Oracles (and Green Proto-Drake), here we come!

Exalted with The Wyrmrest Accord!

Months of doing nothing but Wyrmrest Accord dailies has finally come to this moment...

I kan haz mount !!

It was a relief knowing that after all those hard work, I can finally let Aelyra soar to the skies in her very own Drake. And it was a wonderful feeling too knowing that she now earned for herself the 'Have Dragon Will Travel' achievement /wink

But at the tail of the excitement comes a new thought...

...which should be the next to attempt the dailies? The Druid or the Death Knight?

The Travelers: The Support behind the Scene

Note: This is the next installment ot my characters' background post.

What would a performer be without proper logistical support? Her make-up artist, her performing band, the manager, the slightly-trussled intendant? Hence, what would your main character be without his/her bank alt, his/her mule etc.? /wink

Aezurin

Aezurin is a level 39 Blood Elf Hunter who's made Thunder Bluff her permanent home. Stripped of almost all her basic provisions (pots, quest items, spare gear) she is now playing the role of being my mid-level Enchanter who DE stuffs and my other characters' link to the Guild Vault - in case I need to deposit or withdraw anything.

She wasn't always an assigned Gvault mule though... I remembered getting her the epic Bow of Searing Arrow and thinking "Imma make her a BG twink alt!!" But somewhere along the way the idea just kinda fizzled and Aezurin now just sat there in TB as a glorified bank alt :P

Oh, and she still has that bow o_O

Aerander

Aerander is a bank alt.

THE bank alt.

A level 10 Blood Elf Paladin who has a 4-tab Guild Vault to store the wealth (and junk) of every other character I have. For the record, I'm still amazed by the amount of junk - they outnumber the usable stuff by almost double >.<

Anyway - Aerander stores stuffs, AH stuffs, browse the Silvermoon City AH for stuffs, and generally buys stuffs to mail to other characters. He also stores gold mailed to him from other characters in the Gvault. (It's an obsession of mine to not have more than 100G on any character at any given time.)

Aergor

Aergor is not really part of the support crew. I made him (an Orc Hunter) because of the need to have a high-level Gatherer/Enchanter in the end-game.

So why not level Aezurin instead, you might wonder? Well, truth be told - my computer cannot handle the enviroment of Dalaran. Everytime any of my main step foot in Dal, I get 0 fps and have nightmares about moving from the Flight Master to the city portals, let alone the banks. So I need an alt to play the link between them and the Gvault. I haven't used the mains' bank slots since Wrath came out! Hence, Aezurin is my lifeline (for Gvault access).

So I leveled a new alt. Having played a couple of Hunters, I know the tricks to get them to max level, what I can or cannot handle, stuff like that. Aergor is level 32 now - I hope to be able to get him to 80 slowly but surely. ^_^

The Travelers: My Mains

Note: I've been trying to get some pictures of my characters in, but unfortunately my lack of experience with blog picture editor has made it not possible this time. Ah well, maybe when I'm more of a super blogger /wink

Previously I mentioned about doing a post about the identity of my characters that adventured through Azeroth - so, guess what? Now I get to introduce them! I considered only my Paladin as my main character, but the 'Mains' in the blog title is actually referring to my 4 most active characters, those that I play and tweak and adventure with the most.

So, without further delay, let me introduce to you:

Aenur the Argent Champion

This female Blood Elf Paladin is my main character. Being 80 now, she's currently tied with the Argent Crusade dailies in Icecrown, working on getting the last faction to Exalted and getting the Hippogryph mount. Her main mounts are the PvP Black War Wolf and the Bronze Drake, which my guildies help me get (much love to them!).

She's equipped for Heroics and entry-level raiding, but sadly since there's a big gap between the time zone here and my guildies (most which are Americans), I seldom got to run anything with them. Tried PuGs - didn't work so well most of the time. So aside from the dailies, I take her to go sight-seeing to places I never could before - Alliance cities, entrance of Kara, beat up Hogger, run some lowbie dungeons for fun, and generally enjoying myself.

Aelyra of the Shattered Suns

This female Blood Elf Hunter was originally made to be a support prop for Aenur - I would grind equipments, gold, mats, anything - and mail them to the Paladin for her use. But she grew so fast and so strong that eventually she became a stand-alone character deserving of her own achievements. Now at 80, she's currently on the last few rep points of Wyrmrest Accord - once she gets to Exalted and got her own Red Drake, I'm going to switch her over to Sons of Hodir. She's using the PvP Black War Raptor and the Violet Netherdrake at the moment.

Her equipment is a bit lackluster - mostly the PvP Swiftarrow set, but my guildies have been kind enough to take me and her to some Heroics so she has one or two epics adorning her. Since I don't really do much raiding with Aelyra, I usually have her farm leathers to help craft some equipment for my next character.

Aerhandor

This level 80 male Tauren Druid started out poorly - during BC, way before he hits level 20, I decided I hated the way Druids play, and shelves him. When Aenur and Aelyra had nothing better to do than doing Quel'Danas dailies, I tried leveling him again - with help from Aelyra's crafted items and generous support of my guildies. Finally, after much perseverance, I got him to 70... and found that once the initial leveling is done, Aerhandor isn't that bad. In fact, I've gotten better at playing a Druid that he now sports a Veridian Netherdrake after only two and a half week of Netherwing rep grinding/dailies. I'm still trying to schedule him into some PvP matches so he can get his PvP Black War Kodo, but for now he's stuck with the Swift Gray Kodo.

Aerhandor is dressed in almost full PvP crafted gear - the Eviscerator, since I don't usually utilize him for instances or raiding. And since he has Skinning and Mining, the only time I use him is for gathering raw mats for Aenur and Aelyra (who has Blacksmithing and Leatherworking, respectively). He's now just starting the Wyrmrest/Kalu'ak rep circuit, hopefully getting the Penguin pet and Red Drake afterwards.

Aerdread

Level 80 male Tauren Death Knight, originally made because of the Lich King Hero-class hype. I found that the ease of leveling him as well as the head start in level that he had, made a perfect opportunity to mould him into an adventurer for any purpose I want. Unfortunately once he got to 80, I forgot what that purpose was, so he's stuck doing dailies for the Ebon Blade and leveling his Jewelcrafting skills. Heh. He had the usual Archerus Steed as his land mount, but being an Engineer he uses the Turbo-Charged Flying Machine to travel.

The plan with Aerdread right now is to get him Exalted with the Knights of the Ebon Blade first, and later on maybe to try and get him better equipment - he's only using the PvP Savage Saronite Battlegear for now. Which entails getting into a few Northrend instances /shudder.

Next post:- The Travelers: The Support behind the Scenes