Have Dragon Will Travel

Weekly Updates: No Love for Lag

2011-07-12T21:21:00.000-07:00

Just a short update for this week, since my RL is busy and I've also been having some difficulties with latency this week (again).

Aenur got 150 Marks of the World Tree, and managed to get the Shadow Wardens to join in the fight against the forces of Ragnaros in the Molten Front. Aedruyn is now Champion of Silvermoon and is now fighting on behalf of the Darkspear trolls - I may need to find another way to snag faction city reps and get him Exalted with Thunder Bluff and Silvermoon soon. And the rest is still business as usual... when there's no lag =(

Hope to be able to present a better update soon... and lag, please go away!

Weekly Updates: One week after Patch 4.2

2011-07-05T18:15:00.000-07:00

It's been one week since Patch 4.2 goes live, and I've had the opportunity to run both of my mains through the epic Thrall/Go'el questline. It's very entertaining, and except for the fact that Alliance seems hell-bent on flagging and trying to net a few Horde kills on various stages of the questline, the questline itself is pretty decent and the rewards are very cool.

I got Aenur started on the Firelands dailies since she has finished the grind with Hellscream's Reach and gotten both the land and flying mount. I'm still debating whether to make Aelyra do the same (she's close to the Hellscream's Reach land mount) or continue the grind for the mounts and go to Firelands later. If I do that, she'll be left behind quite substantially since she has to unlock quite a bit of progress later.

I'll have to think about this more =(

Aenur - Currently working on the Firelands dailies - at 93 Marks of the World Tree now. She currently has Mantle of Fury from the World-Shaman questline and the Fireheart Necklace from the Firelands dailies starter vendor. At the current rate of Marks, she should be able to unlock the next set of dailies in about 4 days.

Also, with the JP she currently has when the patch hits, she managed to snag a Reinforced Sapphirium Battleplate and a Reinforced Sapphirium Gauntlets, her first T11 items. Gotta love this new patch =)

Aelyra - Currently doing... nothing >.< But seriously, I have been so busy with Aenur I haven't taken Aelyra out for a spin until a few days ago. She still need another 40 TB Commendation to get that sweet spectral wolf mount from Hellscream's Reach, but I've been putting that off in favor of lots and lots of PvP on Aenur.

But anyway, with the new patch I have found a good reason to once again return to the Hunt! So after finishing the World-Shaman questline, Aelyra now has Mantle of Doubt and soon after unlocking the Firelands dailies, she should be able to get a nice +Agi ring from the Firelands dailies starter vendor. Afterwards? I'm not sure, lemme just think about it first...

The rest of the gang has done nothing much - Aedruyn is still grinding Argent Tourney stuffs, Aergor with his usual daily transmute, Aerdread with his two dailies a day (Fishing and JC), and Aerjin with his Cooking daily. I may run Aerhandor through the World-Shaman questline so he can get the epic cloak, but I probably will not push him to do the Firelands dailies soon.

Patch 4.2: Rage of the Firelands

2011-06-23T01:27:00.000-07:00

According to speculations, Patch 4.2 will become live on June 28th 2011.

So, what will this mean to me? Quite a lot actually.

When Blizzard implemented Patch 4.1, one of the changes that came along with it was that Honor points can now be traded for Justice points at the rate of 375 Honor = 250 Justice (you can also trade Justice for Honor but I'm not interested in discussing that today). What this means is that I can now do PvP for Honor, trade them in for Justice and then use those Justice points to buy better PvE gear from vendors! Which is wonderful news for me, since I'm unable to get Justice through standard means (instances and raids) ever since Cata hits... well, except for the one or two times doing normal Cata instances with guildies.

So now, outside of dailies I find myself doing a substantial amount of PvP-ing... and most of that is done in Tol Barad. On a good day Horde would OMGWTFBBQROFLSTOMP the Alliance and I'll be bringing home about 600-700 Honor... or usually Horde would get crushed by the Alliance and I'll only net about 300 Honor. Since doing this, I have accumulated enough Honor to buy the Bloodthirsty Gladiator's Vindication on Aenur and am now working to stockpile Justice points.

Why stockpile Justice, you may ask.

Well, this brings us to Patch 4.2. Blizzard has stated that the new patch will open up the next tier for everyone - new raids, new epics, more dailies... but most importantly to me: The current tier gear, Tier 11, will be purchasable with Justice points. Currently Tier 11 gear is only purchasable with Valor points, which everyone can get either by running heroics or Cata raids.

With Tier 11 being available for purchase with Justice points, and if the value for the pieces does not change, I should be able to get all three pieces of them with a full stock of Justice and Honor (4k Justice and 4k Honor). Which means that I'll finally be able to get my first epic Cata tier gear (sounds weird, no? Epic Cata tier gear...).

Here's to hoping for more Horde wins in Tol Barad - Fight better you lemmings! FOR TEH HORDE!!

The Return of BD

2011-06-20T00:44:00.000-07:00

It's been about seven months after my last post - and that is mind-boggling. It's like having a seven-months gap in your diary, or memory... or in this case, your adventures. All those excitement, the highlights and achievements missing. Sigh... that'll teach you not to slack off, BD.

Anyways, I'm back (in blogging, at least). To be honest, I didn't stop playing WoW all this time - on the contrary, Aenur, Aelyra and Aerhandor has dinged 85 with Aergor, Aedruyn and Aerdread following not far behind. My toon priority's been shifted around, but currently it looks like all the mains will remain as mains. Only the question of which alts deserve a better position and attention remains.

To be honest, Cata is a bit of a let down for me, and maybe for a lot of casual players out there. With instances being an intensive time-consuming activity with random strangers who may or may not be friendly and helpful, and with barriers all around epic gears and achievements, we are reduced to spectators and minor participants of the so-called "hardcore" and "elites". Do I mind? Not so much. It rankles a bit at times, though.

That did not stop me from trying though. I've reluctantly entered PvP with Aenur, trying to get better gear through honor and PvP instead of instances and PvE. It's working, but the stress of all those matches is horrible - like trying to eat a whole, unopened durian. Thankfully, once patch 4.2 hits I should be able to get some nice T11 gear due to Blizzard's new honor-to-Justice arrangement and due to T11 now available with Justice points instead of Valor points. Which then would mean the same grind with Aelyra... =(

As for the alts... I've been spending a lot of time with Aedruyn, making him go through the Argent Tournament so he can get his Argent Charger and Hippogryph - it's easier now that he's level 81 and armed with Cata greens, gems and enchants (he 3-shots most mobs now). Aergor is now level 82 and is doing the Org's Cooking dailies as well as daily Truegold/Living Elements transmutes. And Aerdread is level 82, doing the Org's Fishing and JC dailies. I will push Aedruyn out to 85 once he finishes the Argent Tourney objectives... if the others doesn't ding 85 first.

The rest of my alts are the level 37 Shadow Priest Aerjin, who I recently become fond of, and the level 20 deleted-then-rerolled Combat Rogue Aerlyn (previously known as Aeyrin). Not doing much with them other than the Org's Cooking dailies, which is a slow but steady way of leveling them.

So, that is in short my progress in WoW. With this post, I hope to kickstart my weekly updates as well as putting my thoughts and opinions of my adventures back into the blog. With a few bloggers already deciding not to continue their blogging forth, I feel compelled to at least light up my own candle against the night.

SQUEE!!

2010-11-30T00:48:00.000-08:00

... I haz mai Tauren Paladin! No one touchie - all mine!!

Imma name him Aedruyn, imma dress him all up in nice shiny armor and shoulder-cover, and imma give him the shiniest pointiest stick, and imma make him go kill some poor defenseless critter...

(I'd link the Polished Breastplate of Valor, Polished Shoulder-armor of Valor and the Reforged Truesilver Champion, but WoWHead is down for some reason, so no linkie atm... maybe later)

Squee!!!

EDIT: Link is up!

Weekly Updates: Last Minute Achieves

2010-11-15T19:09:00.001-08:00

With Cata only weeks away, I've been trying to nab what few easy achieves there still is for Aenur and Aelyra. The easier ones would be the lowbie dungeon achieves which is currently being pursued by Aenur, and Aelyra is doing all she can to get the Fishing and Cooking ones. I have Aerdread running the odd heroic or two and netting some achieves during the process, and Aerhandor is still running regular FoS once every day for the chance at the nice DPS staff from Devourer of Souls, and he's only a few Champion's Seal away from the Argent Pony - should be able to get it by Wednesday I think.

But on the whole these feels like fillers, something to fill my WoW time while watching the horizon for the inevitable arrival of Deathwing. I've done the Elemental Invasion questline on all available toons, including the lowbies; I've gotten the Feat of Strength on Aenur for closing the elemental rifts (almost got it for Aelyra too, but the darn Fire rifts just won't spawn when I need it)... so now it's just a matter of waiting.

And waiting, as the local saying goes, is torture.

Weekly Updates: New and Improved

2010-11-07T19:44:00.000-08:00

From now onwards, all posts regarding character and other updates will be titled "Weekly Updates: ". This is to better differentiate between normal, general posts and the updates, and also because I got tired of thinking of a witty "Of Something" title lately. Though I suspect that a lack of breakfast may have something to do with that today...

Anyways, I've got just a scant few things to mention in this week's update - most of it trivial, a couple are big though. Here we go:

Aenur - Has gotten extremely lucky to be able to get into a competent PuG that's farming Justice Points (or JP) at the time when I actually have nothing in the house to do and was set on doing a couple hours of WoW! So she tagged along for heroic UK, VH, Oculus and UP before disbanding after a successful HoS run. Got a Frozen Orb, a few blues and a couple of epics from the run plus she finally netted enough JP to be able to purchase the final T10 piece - the Lightsworn Legplates! At last, now she can step into Cata with a content heart and a complete tier set =D

...oh, and did I mention she's gotten her Bear Mount too? =)

Aelyra - Is skilling up on Fishing nicely (if you can call 278/300 "nice") and has also gotten her Bear Mount. Aside from that and the Cooking dailies, I don't feel like doing anything else... Okay, I 'fess - I'm thinking maybe I should try and do a few random heroics, get enough JP for the two cheaper T10 pieces (shoulder + handguard)...?

Aerhandor - Is now at the 123 Champion's Seal mark. Another 27 and he'll have his Argent Pony! And after that, the Bear Mount! And next... umm... well, actually... on second thought, I still need that staff from normal FoS, so maybe a few dungeon runs before I can actually be content.

Aerdread - Officially, I've given up on getting him the "Ambassador" title and getting Exalted with the relevant Argent Tourney factions at this point. Unofficially, I'm still trying to net that. But dailies' burnout are a serious obstacle now, and I'm not sure I can muster the inner will to push ahead. By rough calculation, even if I stick to the schedule it'll be at least 40+ days before I can accomplish this goal. And that's not even counting the effort needed to complete his T9 set.

I'm sorry Aerdread, but apparently your status as an alt has inconvenienced you =(

Impending Cataclysm

2010-10-31T20:07:00.000-07:00

First off, I would like to apologize for the long delay in getting a post up since my last update. A combination of several factors plus my own laziness has conspired to prevent this post (or any other post for that matter) from materielizing, and for that I believe an apology is in order.

Usually, whenever I had some spare time to play games I'd fire up WoW and get busy with alts or tend to my mains' pet projects. But early last month, I got a copy of Civilization V and since then has been lost in border disputes and resource wars - dang you, Gandhi and Bismarck! >=( And I've also been a victim of Facebook's Bejeweled Blitz, which almost everyone in my family being attracted to it. So, having to divert my time to these games have impacted my WoW time a bit.

Aside from that, the humongous Patch 4.0 also took almost three days to download thank to lousy local 'Net. And even after I managed to log in, the lag is still there occasionally and I still need to re-talent, re-gem, re-learn and re-evaluate all my toons... which costs me an additional two days. By the time I'm settling in, it's time to go off chasing achieves as Hallow's End dawns.

On RL, my baby boy Adam is fast learning to talk, explore and ask for stuffs he finds interesting - usually food and plastic bottles, though he's moving on to handphones and laptops quickly. Keeping up with him is becoming a full-time job, so I can only sneak in a couple hours of WoW when he's fast asleep during his afternoon nap. Also, a major reshuffling is in order where I'm working so I need to focus on jobs at hand for now.

As far as WoW is concerned though, I guess I'm almost at the maximum limit of pre-expac preparedness - both my mains are doing well, with about 95% of their main objectives completed, and the alts are nearing theirs. I'll detail them as follows:-

Aenur - Has almost completed her T10 set, with only the legguards remaining. I plan to run heroics for the points and also do VoA and see if I can get it from the pinata boss. Also, she's saving some gold for the Dal bear mount - I wanted the mount and the achieve before Cata hits. Aside from that, she has nothing else to work for - any further upgrades she obtains from now onwards will pretty much become obsolete in a month.

Aelyra - Is currently doing nothing except Fishing and Cooking dailies, which she started prior to Hallow's End. If she can get enough gold, I'll buy her the Dal bear mount for the achieves too.

Aerhandor - Is almost at the 150 Champion's Seal mark, at which point he'll be able to buy that Argent Pony and be done with WotLK. I've thought about trying to get the epic staff from Devourer of Souls in normal FoS, but so far no luck (it dropped once, but I lost the roll). Also, like Aenur and Aelyra, he's saving for the bear mount.

Aerdread - I originally planned for him to bear the title of Ambassador, but starting the Argent Tourney dailies so late in the expac he hasn't managed to get even a single Exalted home faction at the moment (only Revered with TB and Org, and the rest at Honored). To top it off, he's only got 3 out of the 5 pieces of DK's T9 and will have to work like mad if he wants the rest of the pieces. I'm pretty sure both would not be possible before Cata =( But I'm making him do it anyway - the gold and the rep may help come the expac.

Aergor - Stuck at level 75 in Borean Tundra, because I need to give more attention to Aerdread. I don't mind, since he's already established (with a complete Swiftarrow set waiting for him plus some nice weapon). I'll probably continue leveling him after the others have made it to 85.

Aeyrin - Is now level 51, and is waiting for Cata at SMC. Unlike Aergor, she'll be able to experience the new Azeroth's level 50-60 quests. I'm just not sure what to do after I hit Outland, though.

Aerander & Aezurin - Both bank alts will probably be stationed at their current location - Aerander in SMC and Aezurin in TB. I've read Tam's post the other day about getting his bank alt a mount to facilitate travel between AH and banks, and may just level Aerander to 20 to get his Charger and Blood Knight tabard.

Without access to the Cata beta like some WoW players, I cannot make any future plans for my toons. I'll be stepping into new Azeroth in the dark, like I did when WotLK arrives and I took my first few steps into Northrend. I don't have any worries about Cata though, but I do have one regret - I will regret not having the time, opportunity and skill to get the Paladin's T2 Judgement armor and Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros.

With Great Brewfest Comes Great Latency

2010-09-28T00:28:00.000-07:00

It's been one week since Brewfest began, and the lag I mentioned in my previous post has shown no signs of abating. I have been forced to run the Direbrew boss under 3k latency, do some of the easier dailies with 1.5k to 2.5k latency, and stare at the screen as the latency hits 5k at times. I wonder if the server's borked again...

I can only regret all those wasted Frosts from all those random heroics, weekly raid and VoA I've missed, and all those lost golds from dailies I can't reclaim.

On the other hand, I managed to complete the Brewmaster achievement on both Aenur and Aerhandor (with both of them obtaining the Swift Brewfest Ram from the daily keg) and net them the title. Also, after some debate I've relented and bought a couple of Primordial Saronite from the AH - Aenur used one to purchase Plans: Hellfrozen Bonegrinders. She still needs another 4 Primordial Saronite before she can craft one, though.

To while away the time until the lag goes away (I can't see that happening until Brewfest is over, though), I've re-rolled a few alts over on another server. Unlike a normal re-roll, I've created toons in the same order and looks as my main server - a Belf Paladin bank alt, a Belf Hunter and a Belf Paladin... with the same names too! Well, it's just for a temporary amusement I tell myself. I've levelled both the Hunter and Paladin up a bit, and tell myself if the situation with the main server isn't improving I might as well focus on these two until the end of the festivities. Also, whenever lag hits I can just switch to this alternative version of my toons.

And yes - no updates this time. Like I mentioned - bad laggy =(

Brewfest 2010

2010-09-20T20:49:00.000-07:00

It's that time of the year again... the time when all hell breaks loose and you can see almost-nekkid orcs and dwarves scattered in front of Orgrimmar and Ironforge.

It's Brewfest - let the virtual beer flow!

So instead of half-heartedly approaching this annual event, I decided from day one to try and get the Brewmaster title for Aenur and Aerhandor, maybe even Aerdread. I could include Aelyra in this venture, but decided there's always next year for her - she only needed to get the wolpertinger pet and she'll be done.

To accomplish my goals, I had Aenur rush all the way from Dal to Org (heh, only one portal away lol) and set her up for the festivities. Bad news hits first, though - along with the celebration came a heavy wall of 5k latency, making Brewfest laggy as hell for her. Five disconnects and one hour later, she got the wolpertinger pet plus all the achieves necessary for the meta except two: snuffing Coren Direbrew, and The Brew of the Month membership that costs 200 Brewfest tokens. Shuddering to think how to do the ram racing (and getting the tokens) in this kind of lag, I decided to make Aenur do the latter. And it was a very fortuitous decision.

Aenur queued for the holiday boss via LFG, and almost immediately the dungeon confirmation window came up. She found herself teleported into the encounter, starts to help out, killed the nasty Coren... but wait, what's this? Another requeue window? Apparently she had the good fortune to be grouped with the determined few who plans to farm Coren Direbrew for all the dwarf's worth. It was fun, it was intense, it was rewarding - almost 15+ encounters later and she had Ancient Pickled Egg, Mithril Pocketwatch, Brawler's Souvenir and the very nice Coren's Chromium Coaster. She also got the two Brewmaiden charms, which will be useful as part of her Prot off-spec. No mount drop, though - but you can't have everything I guess =)

When it's Aerhandor's turn, he got a bit less lucky - he's got the chromium coaster, but nothing else. It was, however, hugely compensated when he opened the keg he got as the daily reward - BOOM! A Swift Brewfest Ram!

It looks to be the start of a very delightful festival, this Brewfest 2010. I wish you guys all the best of luck - as best as mine, if I may say so ^_^

Of Quick Updates

2010-09-20T01:37:00.000-07:00

Normally I'd start with some short paragraphs trying to summarize the previous week's experiences, but I'm not feeling creative today and instead will just skip to the character updates. Sorry - I'll try and make it up... no promises though.

Aelyra - As expected, managed to finish the Quel'Delar questline and got herself the epic Quel'Delar, Cunning of the Shadows (plus achievement). It came with a bad experience though - the group that helped her get the HoR part down sadly did not manage to proceed past the final gauntlet and disbanded. But at least she's got the cool sword (with a +65 AP enchant slapped on it).

As an added salt to the wound, she also won a Barbed Ymirheim Choker during one of her random heroic runs... if you remembered, just last week I had upgraded her necklace to a Broach of the Wailing Night. The only logical response to this is a /facepalm.

Aenur - A weekly raid (which happened to be Flame Leviathan) earned her enough Frost to buy her third T10 piece, the Lightsworn Helmet. Put some gems into it, add a cool head enchant, and Boom! Now I'm really tempted to put all those T10 gear on and rush into ICC 10 mans. Oh, and I also upgraded her belt to the Belt of the Singing Blade (yes, more Triumph downgrades) from the previous Flame-Bathed Steel Girdle.

One worry though - with the upcoming expansion coming hard and fast, I fear that I won't be able to amass enough Frost to be able to purchase her next T10 gear. It's sad, since I really liked the look of the set and this is the furthest I've gone on my own to obtain a Paladin Tier set (since my very first Paladin, those many many years back).

Aerhandor - Short, sweet... but brutal update:- On Thursday, went to Dal and downgraded a few Triumphs to buy a Broach of the Wailing Night, following the footsteps of Aelyra. On Friday night, queued for a random, got heroic PoS... guess what dropped from the first boss and was won by Aerhandor? This - Barbed Ymirheim Choker. It was an epic "NOOO!!" moment.

Aerdread - Is now Exalted with the Sons of Hodir, courtesy of the bucketloads of Relic of Ulduar over on my bank alt. Bought the mammoth mount just for kicks, then moved him back to Dal - maybe do a few JC dailies before mustering enough determination to re-do the Aspirant/Valiant dailies @_@

Aergor - Has dinged 74, and almost finished with his Howling Fjord's tour of duty. But instead of moving him to Dragonblight for further questing, I may re-direct him to Borean Tundra and start some of the questlines there, especially the Kalu'ak and Wyrmrest Accord ones. I fancy some of the rep rewards from those walrus people and the drake mount from Wyrmrest for my upcoming Hunter.

Of Titles, Upgrades and Rediscovered Passion

2010-09-14T17:44:00.000-07:00

Note: Last weekend in Malaysia we celebrated Aidilfitri, or Eid-ul Fitr, the day of celebration after Ramadhan, a month of fasting. I originally thought I wouldn't have the time to play since we're visiting a lot of relatives (and being visited by them too!) - but my wife had to work the day after Aidilfitri, so I was stuck home taking care of our dear baby Adam. So I managed to play after all =)

Last weekend I was finally able to accomplish a number of objectives, as well as re-discovering the passion for running randoms. It actually began last week, as I was mulling over what to do with my DK and Druid. As I mentioned previously, I'm thinking about upgrading their gear - it wasn't dismal, but it's not raid-worthy materiel either. So I pushed Aerhandor hard to nab his achievement then moved him to Icecrown for the usual treatment of "doing-dailies-while-queueing-for-randoms". As for Aerdread, I'm still doing the Sons of Hodir dailies with him, and queueing him for a random regular (2 Triumphs per day, since I'm not yet comfortable playing a DK at this time).

As I ran a few randoms, it began to dawn on me that I actually miss doing this - the teleporting into dungeons, buffing peeps and then shredding mobs. I actually didn't mind the few times I had to switch mode into tank/healer to bail the group during emergencies, and I found that I love the feeling I get after successfully completing the run. Apparently, the saying "You never missed something until it goes away" is true O_o

So maybe in the near future, I'll be running more randoms - both to gear up my two undergeared toons as well as for that extra WotLK kick.

Anyways, here's the regular update:-

Aelyra - There seems to be a lack of 1h weapon (especially swords) fitting for a Hunter - the few that caught my eyes have some undesirable stats (Expertise, anyone? Darn Rogues...) and the ones that bear proper stats are too hard for Aelyra to access. So, I turn to the last option I had - I bought a Battered Hilt from the AH and initiated the quest for it. The end objective is to get Quel'Delar, Cunning of the Shadows to replace her aging Fang of Truth. At this time, I'm about to do the 'running PoS' part of it and I'm fairly certain I should be able to finish the entire questline by the coming weekend.

Just as an aside - did you know you could zone into PoS and collect all those Infused Saronite lying around the tents in the place without aggroing anything? It certainly helps, since I now only need to down Garfrost, loot his hammer and re-forge the sword.

Other than that, Aelyra managed to get into a VoA 25-man run, and a VoA 10-man run immediately after, got the achieves for both, and managed to get enough emblems to purchase a Broach of the Wailing Night to replace her Pendant of the Outcast Hero (yes, I had to downgrade a few Triumphs).

Aenur - Missed an opportunity to join a guild ICC 10-man due to oversleeping (late by 20 minutes) and ran a few random heroics instead. Her Frost count is nearly enough to buy her next T10 piece - I'll most likely go for the helm - and aside from that... nothing much. She's skilling up nicely on Cooking and Fishing on those Dal dailies, though.

Aerhandor - After a few weeks of running the Steamvaults...

...he's finally become a respected member of the Druid community - congratulations Aerhandor, Guardian of Cenarius!

In other news, I'm making him run more random heroics now to fund his upgrades and trying to position him as an alternative for Aelyra if in case I need to run a lower tier raid later (Naxx or Ulduar). For the moment, I'm parking him in Icecrown where he's contributing by doing dailies and trying to get his squire an Argent Pony.

Aerdread - Has finally managed to collect enough Triumphs to be able to purchase his first T9 piece, the Koltira's Shoulderplates of Conquest. But even with this upgrade, I'm still hesistant about getting him into heroics - the major reason? I feel I suck at playing a DK. I'm not certain about my rotation (I always end up with every rune on CD and only auto-attacking at some point) and the lack of Hit dissuades me from doing a higher dungeon mode. I guess I'll just stick with the 2 Triumphs a day until I get enough confidence to finally step into a heroic with him.

Aergor - Almost to 74 now, and I've been playing him whenever I have the time - doing a couple of randoms, a few quests here and there to inch him slowly to level cap. I'm still looking for a decent gun somewhere within his range, but the closest I could find is in heroics. Ah well, maybe when he's 80...

Of Icecrown Raids, and Miscellaneous

2010-09-05T23:32:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday, I logged in quite early in the morning - I was thinking about getting a few quests done on my lowbie Hunter before going off doing a number of chores that was planned yesterday. So imagine my surprise when Kragg was on Gchat trying to drum up some guildies for a ICC-25 man run with another friendly guild. At this time, my freshly awakened brain couldn't quite foresee the time investment needed for such a venture, so when Kragg asked me if I wanted to tag along all my brain could come up with is - "OK."

Aenur was there at Icecrown Citadel by the time the raid reached 19-strong. To pass the time, I ninja-AFK'ed and got some of the chores done... and after about half an hour, the raid went under way. I have to tell you, this is one of those sweet, sweet run - every boss up until Saurfang were one-shots and there was no wipe except for that one trash encounter at the Upper Spire (and I wasn't sure why we wiped though - all I see was a number of empty health bars suddenly cropping up before my own demise). However, just before Festergut, two of our raid members had to leave due to the time and the run was stalled. A number of attempts to seek out replacements failed, and the raid was called at that point. No phat lewt for Aenur though, but she did get a number of Frosts and earned enough rep to get her Ashen Band of Greater Might.

This run, coupled with the one I had the last few days, really peaked up my interest in doing the full ICC run. But like I mentioned previously, it's not "becoming a full raider" - just enough to run the place, get to feel the experince Blizzard has so painstakingly crafted for us and getting your money's worth. Something like what I did with the guild back in Kara =)

Anyways, here's the update on the rest of the posse:-

Aelyra - Still doing dailies (boy, don't you guys ever get tired of hearing that line over and over). However, with Aergor quickly coming up to 80, I'll need Aelyra to craft another Swiftarrow set for him... which means farming leather and some Eternals. I still have a number of Eternals stashed on the main bank alt, but there's no leather stock and it has got to be farmed. I may devote one or two afternoons farming in Sholazar this week and see if I can skin enough gorillas/sabretooth cats for use and storage.

Aerhandor - CE rep is now up to 16712/21000, and given enough time this week I may be able to make him hit Exalted. Too bad in the last run he barely found any Coilfang Armaments drop, otherwise he'd be sitting at around 17k rep by now. I've also decided that once his CE mission is done, he'll be back to Northrend doing some random heroics to improve his gear.

Aerdread - Is now Exalted with the Kalu'ak. Say hello to the penguin pet, Aerdread!

Now it's off to the Storm Peaks, where he'll be making friends with the Sons of Hodir by doing dailies after dailies and finally get his hands on that ginormous Mammoth of theirs. At the same time, I'm having a deep resentment with his current gear - maybe a few random heroics can lift my mood some?

Aergor - Ding 73! He's done a couple of random dungeons which has helped him a lot in leveling. And also, thanks to the enormous number of Infinite Dusts and Essences accumulated by Aenur, Aelyra, Aerhandor and Aerdread during their intensive random-dungeon-running, he's finally able to hit 381/450 in Enchanting. Pretty soon, I will have my own Enchanter that I can use to do some of those fancy enchants, muahahaha!

Of Distractions and... oooh, shiny!

2010-09-01T18:50:00.000-07:00

Again, my master plan for the domination of Azeroth has been distracted - I've been busy trying to save the galaxy from being overrun by the nefarious Zerg and their sadistic queen Kerrigan. Yes, after almost a month of waiting I've finally got an original Starcraft 2 game (which is hard to come by, since the local market for PC games is saturated by pirated copies). I've finished the entire campaign in late August, and worked through some of the more easier achievements before being satisfied and coming back to WoW. So please forgive my absence >.<

Not much has changed in how I run my toons these days - it's still mostly dailies and an occasional quest or two. The only issue is random heroics, since the queue time has now reached such phenomenal level that I can queue for a random and finish every dailies before the dungeon confirmation ever pops up. Now, I normally skip random heroics and focus on the dailies unless any guildies has a random to run.

I've also re-arranged toon priorities - I'm putting Aeyrin the Rogue on ice until Cata, Aenur has been relegated to Cooking daily in Dalaran only and Aerdread is getting pushed in to fill the gap.

Aelyra - Like expected, she's managed to get the 150 Champion's Seal required for the Argent Pony Bridle for her squire, and... is back grinding for more Champion's Seal. Well, not exactly the seals - I'm making her do the Tourney dailies for the gold. 80-100 gold in 20 minutes per day is a steady way to build cash reserves methinks. And even if it's not, my bank alts sure could use some Heirloom lovin'.

Aenur - Has the luck to log in right when my guild is prepping to do a 10-man ICC. Well, not actually, she missed the call by about 5 seconds. But Thau, bless his good heart, offered to sit it out and gave me the opportunity to go instead. So it was that Aenur got into an ICC run straight up until the Blood Princes. At this point, we just couldn't push it further and decided to call it. She got a couple of achievements from the run, too.

Ramaladni's Blade of Culling dropped from Blahbringer Sourpants and the raid expected me to roll on it. However, I'm just not an axe person (and Aenur hasn't trained axes) so I passed. That got the raid a bit aghast, but I assured them I really don't want it anyway since I'm eccentric that way. So it went to Kragg, who still tries to make me take it anyway (that's okay mate, I'll wait for a mace upgrade from LK lol). All in all, a pretty good run - Marrowgar, Deathwhisper, Saurfang, Lootship, Rotface and Festergut one-shotted.

Aerdread - Moving in to fill the vacuum left by Aenur, I have him doing the two Kalu'ak dailies for the cool 1,000 rep and 10 gold in 10-12 minutes per day. He still needs about 5k more rep to hit Exalted, then it's off to Storm Peaks to open up the Sons of Hodir dailies. At this time, all I want him to do is to gather rep and build a separate cash reserve, and so far it's working fine. Later on, I may slot him for the Tourney dailies just to build more rep and gain access to better paying dailies.

Aerhandor - Running SV for CE rep. Currently, I'm only able to do one or two runs per week due to a limited play time, but he's getting there slowly. He's currently sitting at 10235/21000, and each successful SV run nets him an average of 1.8k rep (not including the Coilfang Armament drops, which may contribute up to an additional 750 rep for a total average of 2.5k rep). I estimate it'll take another 6 or 7 runs to max out CE rep for him. And after that? I don't really know... maybe book him into an inn until Cata? More dailies?

Aergor - Has dinged 72, is now Exalted with the Shattered Suns Offensive, has the cool tabard to show for it, is now wet from swimming all the way from Quel'Danas to Howling Fjord... and is now waiting as I mulled over which option to choose in leveling him - the regular questing way, the random dungeon way or the bloody BG way? Anyway, I still need to look up some proper gear upgrades for him first - it wouldn't do to stride into a BG or random Wrath dungeon with some outdated Outland gears.

Of Rusty Warhammers and Dusty Bows

2010-08-09T02:04:00.000-07:00

Sooo... I found out that I'm not that rusty after all - I can still do most dailies out of muscle memory and a bit of quest text skimming, and my toons are geared enough to allow me to commit a couple of errors or compensate for my few momentary lapse of judgements (...wait, when did I map Serpent Sting to there??).

Good news: Due to diligently keeping both my bank alts in order, I have no problem sorting out out-of-date inter-toon item mails. And the heirloom items for my future Tauren Pally are complete and awaiting the creation of said owner =)

Bad news: Cash-wise, I'm broke. Between 4 level 80s and an upcoming level 71, plus one or two lowbie alts, I have at most 15k gold. With Cataclysm looming on the horizon, I'm tempted to work all alts equally hard to make enough gold to survive the expansion. Trouble is - I'm too lazy to work all alts =P

Onwards to toon updates:-

Aelyra - Is still going with the Tourney dailies. She now has 100+ Champion's Seal, and once she has enough to grab that Argent Pony Bridle, she's off to more exciting things - like raiding Ulduar. Yeah, you heard me right - Ztormy is trying to organize an Ulduar team specifically to do hard content and possibly Algalon, and I've put up Aelyra as my preferred toon.

Gear-wise in my humble opinion she still need a necklace upgrade, a main hand weapon upgrade and at least a trinket upgrade, but even without those she's rated at ICC level by WoW Heroes. So there should be no issue of her (or me, for that matter) performing in Ulduar, eh?

Aenur - Still need 3 pieces of T10 - the headpiece, the chestpiece and the skirt. And with her current Frost count at 33, it looks to be a long and boring road of random heroics and lucky VoA raids. Oh I wish I could magically turn those excess Triumphs into Frosts...

Aerhandor - In light of Cataclysm's impending approach, I've decided to forgo dailies by him and instead focus on getting something personal for him - the title of "Guardian of Cenarius".

The title, bestowed by the Cenarion Circle to druids who are Exalted with both the Cenarion Circle and the Cenarion Expedition, is quite a pain to get. To get to Exalted with the Circle, I had Aerhandor move to Silithus and farm Twilight mobs for their rep and also the Encrypted Twilight Texts (turn 10 of them in at Cenarion Hold for a beefy 500 rep). So far, he's halfway through Revered and should be able to hit Exalted in one week's time.

Cenarion Expedition is a different matter - the prospect of doing repeated Steamvault runs does not quite appeal to me, but I'll deal with it when I get there.

Aerdread - I was seriously thinking about shelving my Tauren DK a few days back, because there seem to be nothing I wanted to do with him in the long run. Also, I'm not particularly interested in re-doing the whole Tourney Aspirant/Valiant dailies again. Which is why I'm now in a quandary... should I go ahead with the plan to shelve him?

Aergor - Shattered Sun dailies. They've yielded some gold, some green items, loads of SSO rep (just hit Revered yesterday) and one level. All I care about here is the cool tabard and the extra Exalted faction count. Once he hits Exalted with the SSO, he's gonna grab the tabard and swim as hard as he can to Northrend.

Aeyrin - The neglected Blood Elf Rogue. Love the fancy heirlooms and cute face, just couldn't find the time... until last weekend.

I've unleashed the beast within that Rogue, and she's catapulted from 42 to 48 in a matter of two days. She's been Cheap Shotting and Pickpocketting and Sinister Striking and Rupturing and all I can see is that level bar climbing higher and higher. By the end of her session, she's up by 6 levels and her Lockpicking skills have also improved substantially. I may just clear up my weekends to try and see if I can slot another level 80 into my toon list?

Connecting... ... ... Connected!

2010-07-25T21:21:00.000-07:00

I was back in WoW yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately, there was no welcoming party or the like waiting for me when I logged on - just a simply "Heya" from a guildmate.

I feel so sad =,(

My good friend Red Latency is there though, smiling through all that 3k m/s of hers.

So, long story cut short - I'm back. Took Aergor out for a spin and ended up with leveling him from level 69.1 (9% XP) all the way up to level 70 and moved him to Isle of Quel'Danas. Did some dailies with Aenur, Aelyra and Aerhandor and re-initiated some assets arrangements between my bank toons. Thinking of seriously deleting another toon that I don't use much - either the Hunter bank alt or the Rogue. Maybe even the DK, if worse came to worse.

But first - I have definitely got to make a priority list >.<

Return of BD

2010-07-14T19:09:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm not dead yet (although I suspect most of you thought otherwise).

Since my game time ended somewhere around April 17th, I've not bothered to renew because of two reasons:-

1) The local game shop is simply atrocious in supplying WoW game cards. There'll be a few in stock when I've already bought one, however when I need one they just don't have any available. I've done some scouting and found another game shop in the area that sells it, but their record of supplying WoW game cards is similar to the first shop. So meh...

2) I've been cheating on WoW with another MMORPG. And her name is EVE Online. I've been playing the 14-days trial just after my WoW sub ended and was eventually hooked - I registered an account and am now on my way to making millions of ISK. The abundance of PvP however did get on my nerve, so I'm thinking of tuning it down until I can afford enough ISK to sustain a PvP lifestyle.

Two months without the company of my guildies is now beginning to gnaw at me. How are they doing? Did they down LK yet? Are they preparing for Cataclysm? How many alts did Shadow have now? And is Rage working on his 12th alt to level 80?

So, I decided to come back to WoW by the end of July, and maybe put EVE on autopilot for a while (training skills).

Azeroth, look out - (in best Terminator impersonation) "I'LL BE BACK".

Of Noblegardening... and Other Stuff

2010-04-14T19:22:00.000-07:00

...oh well, alright, just a short update - since I really really REALLY NO REALLY need to have my WoW progress and adventures well documented for history to analyse.

Aenur - Since it's Noblegarden last week, and since she already finished most of the easier achieves last year, I took some time off from her dailies and made her do all the remaining achieves, earning her the Noblegarden meta and the title "the Noble".

She also been in a few Wintergrasp matches, doing her best to grasp the situation and help the Horde win the place (a few wins, some losses) and getting into the 10-man VoA that forms afterwards if she's not saved. Doing these VoA is helping a lot with her Emblem of Frost farming, in addition of her daily Frost heroics and one or two weekly here and there.

Aelyra - Still with the dailies, but I've abandoned running Triumph on her since she already has adequate gear to move into ICC raiding. I may run ToC once or twice and see if I can nab Banner of Victory for her, but even if she doesn't have it I won't mind. I'm reconsidering extending the Tourney dailies on her to grab the bow heirloom for my lowbie bank alt Hunter, but I'm not sure if I wouldn't be bored of it halfway through.

Aerhandor - Is continuing his random heroics to nab enough Triumph for his T9 leggings. Previously, he got Chewed Leather Wristguards from a random heroic PoS and enough Triumph for an Idol of Mutilation, to replace his King's Square Bracers and Idol of the Plainstalker. O_o

Also, due to Aenur's success with Noblegardening, I made Aerhandor go through the same achieves. Even though he lacks Aenur's head start, he still manages to do all the achieves and get that title.

Aerdread - No change.

Aeyrin - I managed to add a couple of levels to Aeyrin during a few spare hours, so she's now level 44. I'm debating whether to continue like this (stop, level a couple of level, stop again, repeat) or seriously taking another look at my adventuring schedule and try to put her in, like what I did during BC with Aenur and Aerhandor (alternate leveling, Pally one day and Druid the next).

Aergor - Has moved out of that bird-infested Terokkar Forest into Nagrand. He's picked up most of the Garadar quest, so I'm letting him accumulate a level or two of rested XP before leveling him again. I'm estimating that I could either get him to level 69 or even 70 by the time I finish with the zone. Then, it's off to Isle of Quel'Danas to farm Shattered Suns rep and gold for his epic and Cold Weather flying before going to Northrend.

Been Having a Few Bad Weeks

2010-04-12T23:59:00.000-07:00

To misquote Darth Vader from Star Wars: A New Hope: "The Lag is strong in this one."

I was barely able to finish some of the dailies, but most of the time I simply can't take it anymore, log off and play Neverwinter Nights or C&C 3 instead. There has got to be a problem I overlooked somewhere for the lag to be this bad this long, right? Wrong - I've rechecked the connection, cleaned my WTF folder, ran anti-virus and anti-malware a couple of times and even shut off auto-update in hopes of making it go away. No such luck.

I'm left with the impression that it may have something to do with the US side data centre, but it's just a guess. Pretty soon, if situation does not improve, I may be forced not to renew my sub until Cataclysm (and my current sub expires this April 17th.).

Most of my adventurers aren't able to complete much of what they should - Aenur couldn't bring her devastating presence into Wintergrasp PvP... and during the times that she could, she did nothing more than stand like an idiot while that Fury Warrior cut her to pieces (ohaithar Mr. Lag, fancy meeting u here in WG). Aerhandor is six days behind in getting the Triumph needed for his leggings, and Aergor is barely leveling enough to make it to Northrend by the end of this month. To say I'm disappointed is an understatement - I was so frustrated that I almost wrecked my new keyboard in a fit.

Don't ask me how - I'm ashamed enough as it is.

So I won't be posting the weekly updates this time, even though there are a few tales that need telling. Suffice to say that my disappointment at the lag state far, far outweigh my desire to update the blog this week, for now.

Of... blearkh, Latency Issue Again

2010-04-05T20:27:00.000-07:00

For almost the entirerity of last week I've been hit with bad latency. There was sporadic moments when it subsides and I can finish a daily or two, but mostly I could do nothing (even Argent Dawn and Nagrand has the same issue). So, I got nothing much done.

Aenur is now at 135 Champion's Seal count, and at the rate of 5 seals per day she should be done on Friday. I've taken her to Wintergrasp occasionally and netted a few of the easier PvP achieves, and once weekend comes I'll switch her into full PvP endeavour - I just need to read up on the proper PvP gearing guides.

Aelyra has just gotten her Venomsaur mount, so I've parked her on Tourney ground and will grind Champion's Seal for her own Pony Bridle. I also need to upgrade her boots, her main hand weapon and both her trinkets without affecting her +Hit.

Aerhandor is still lounging around, doing a random heroic or two in order to get another upgrade by Triumph (at least his leggings and idol, I can probably overlook the trinkets and rings for now).

Aergor is now level 67, and about 35-40% away from 68. Once he hits that number, I'm bringing to to Northrend to upgrade his professions, then it's back to Outland for levelling until 70. Aelyra made him a complete Northrend starter gear (Frostscale Gear IIRC) which he won't be able to completely wear until level 73, so might as well push him to 70 so he can wear most of it by the time he hits Northrend.

Of World of Raidcraft

2010-03-28T20:23:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was quite an unexpected one.

Don had put up a weekend event in the in-game calendar for the weekly raid, which happens to be Marrowgar. And the timing is good too - it's scheduled for an early morning run for me. After making sure that all stuff in RL won't interfere, I signed Aenur up as a Tentative. I've thought about bringing Aelyra at first since I prefer to learn a place beforehand then bring in the favorite toon, but Aenur is the better equipped among the lot and so was the best choice for a foray into ICC.

In the days leading up to the weekly raid, I brought Aenur over into a couple of Wintergrasp matches for a taste and feel of PvP madness. I quickly found despite my incompetency with PvP, I managed to down quite a number of Alliance toons and secured a few achieves. Not to mention that afterwards I got her into a 10-man VoA that downed Toravon and Koralon (no loot for her, sadly). So in all, it appears that I've been bitten by the raid bug, and it feels... good.

Aenur - As mentioned earlier, she got into a 10-man VoA and downed two of the bosses with no loot awarded (darn rogue and SP leather drops) and then later in the weekend managed to get into a guild 10-man weekly raid, which happened to be Marrowgar in ICC. The run was exciting, and we manage to down him after a few wipes. It was Aenur's first time in ICC, so she had to learn fast and DPS even faster to ensure success. A few more runs and she should be able to survive and afterwards excel. Among the loot Marrowgar dropped was the Citadel Enforcer's Claymore, which is superior to her current hammer from Garfrost. It was won by Acid though (grats man!) so I'll wait for the next opportunity.

Not content with a single victory, everyone decided to push on to the next boss, Lady Deathwhisper. It was decided early on to try for the 'saving the Argent Crusade's Dara-guy' but that caused a wipe due to adds running around and also Aenur forgetting that she need to focus on one type of add and not the other. The second time, Krae switched arrangements - me and Acid gets to hammer the mana shield down while the rest of the group go after the adds. A healer was knocked out just as the mana shield is at 4-5% and we wiped. The final attempt, we got the encounter down and knocked Deathwhisper out.

Afterwards, I found that the forays into VoA and ICC had brought my Frost count up to 120 emblems, enough for my two T10 pieces. Immediately I went for the vendor, bought the Lightsworn Shoulderplates and Lightsworn Gauntlets, enchanted and socketted and gemmed 'em, and voila - instant power-ups!

...although to be honest, I've yet to wear them on Aenur because I'm waiting to assemble the entire set. What? I'm a sentimentalist, so sue me!

Aelyra - Due to the attention given to Aenur, I did not do much with Aelyra aside from doing the Venomsaur mount daily and the Argent Tourney dailies. She managed to get enough to buy a Polished Spaulders of Valor, the final heirloom for my future Pally, so now she can focus on getting something for herself.

Aerhandor - Has managed to get enough Triumphs for his fourth T9 piece, the Runetotem's Raiment of Conquest. That would leave his leggings for last, so aside from that the other things I needed to upgrade on him would be the trinkets, the idol and the necklace. His Champion's Seal count is 79 at the moment, and since he needs nothing from the Tourney aside from the Pony Bridle, I'll switch him someplace else when he's done.

Aergor - Is now level 66. I managed to grab a load of Unidentified Plant Parts from the AH at a cheap price, pushed Aergor's rep with the Cenarion Expedition to Honored and then do all of their quests at Zangarmarsh (excluding the ones leading into the Steamvaults). Also, he got into a Blood Furnace PuG and Legion Blunderbuss dropped. Since there's no other Hunter around, naturally it went to him (squee!).

Aeyrin & Aerdread - No change.

On a different note: I would like to hereby express my profound and express gratitude to all of you healers out there, be you Holy Pally, Tree, Resto Shaman or Priests of Discipline and Holiness. I humbly thank you most sincerely for every time I was healed by you and for every time you send a HoT my way.

I had this insane PuG run through heroic Gundrak last Sunday. A DPS apparently had dropped out of the group after the first few trash pull and Aenur got in to replace him. Thinking it should be an easy run, I went along... and just when we got to Moorabi things went south. Healer got killed and before I know it I was cornered into healing the group. And the same thing happened again during Galdarah. With my puny 6k mana pool and Judgement of Light, I frantically try to keep everyone alive long enough to get the job done. I blew LoH on the tank when I had to use Holy Light to heal the dangerously low mage, and had to quaff a mana pot in order to sustain my mana. Being in a healer's shoes for that long, agonizing 7 minutes have given me appreciation for those healers out there.

I salute you!

Would You Pay to Play With A Girl?

2010-03-24T18:50:00.000-07:00

Apparently there's a new topic flying around the WoW blogosphere, and it all seems to start from Pugnacious Priest's post here.

Out of curiosity (and a lot of boredom, since I'm at work and work is boring) I took a peek at her blog to see what the hullabaloo is all about - Klepsacovic was on the confession stand, Larisa was musing about her deadly curves - and after reading it, just can't understand it all.

I mean, here's a service being launched by a company, where players can sign up and for a fee play with a girl. I went, "Huh? Why do I have to pay for such a thing?"

Is it indicative of a sign of desperation among boy gamers? Is the stigma that boy gamers cannot bond with a girl that serious a corporation can come in and take advantage of it? Is this issue so dire that BD must step in and save the universe? Okay, maybe not that last part. But still, if you want to look between the lines, this speaks volume of the power of gaming industry - basically anything can be turned into profit.

Speaking for myself - I'm not signing up. I have a wife, a beautiful woman whom I courted and took to dinner and wooed under the moonlight (and sunlight) just to persuade her to spend the rest of her life with me. A wife, who for better or worse, still sat next to me when I'm doing my dailies and ask about the game sincerely even though her knowledge of WoW is equal to her knowledge in quantum slipstream technology (which is nil). That sincerity, to me, is worth more than knowing that someone is playing with you just because you paid her to.

Look at it strictly from a Goblin's point of view next: You pay real money for the experience of playing WoW with a girl. What did you spend? Real money. What did you get in return? Up to a couple of hours (depending on the money invested) of experience playing with a girl. Is there a tangible profit? If you're not raiding, you get some XP, a few tens of gold and some green items. Which is far more inferior than doing a single random heroic for half an hour or an hour of Tourney dailies. Gevlon would weep at this new foolishness of socials... maybe not, he'd probably set up the same service and milk those socials dry.

Now I would admit that there will be a few gamers out there who would purchase the service just to have fun with it. Maybe they'll giggle and laugh, have a few hours of fun and remember it as an episode in their life. But those that go back again and again and again just because they crave that sense of 'attachment' to someone definitely needs help.

Of Grinding the Same Stuff Over and Over...

2010-03-22T19:36:00.000-07:00

It's horrifying to see how much progress can be halted by a mere 400 ms increase of latency. It's devastating to watch how a 7.8k latency can assist Ulduar trash in pwning you. And it's sobering to know that today you are unable to do anything because when you log in, you're met with an awesome 23.0k latency.

I hate you, red latency. =(

All that latency-hate aside, I at least managed to get a few things done across all my toons. Most notable would be the Hunter and the Druid, which I will of course elaborate below.

The most exciting thing is the weekend Ulduar run by my guild. Instead of scheduling it in the afternoon/evening, Stormy set it in the morning - which, where I am, is early evening. Therefore I quickly put myself up as a Tentative, and on that fateful morning/evening/timezone differential FTL, Aelyra joined another 9 guildies at the entrance to Ulduar. It was fun, it was eye-opening, it was... laggy. I got hit with a 7.8k latency just before engaging the molten giants just outside Ignis's furnace, and the lag presisted until all Ignis's trash is out (I died twice on trash, if you must know). Informed the guildies I'm re-logging - reset the 'Net connection too while I'm at it - and everything went smooth again. I had to leave due to IRL just after we downed Razorscale, but came back for the tries against Hodir and later Freya. We didn't get past them, but maybe another day, eh?

Aenur - Inching her way so very slowly towards the 120 Emblem of Frost mark (she has 99 of them at the moment) and her two pieces of Tier 10. Also, once she got enough Champion's Seal to buy that Argent Pony, I'm yanking her out of the Tourney area and do VoA/Wintergrasp for a change. All those dailies are starting to suck the fun out of me.

Aelyra - Ulduar! No proper loot though - mostly cloth and plate drops. At least she got a few achieves and some badges!

Aerhandor - Made him run random heroics despite his gear not meeting my standards. I had no choice, since Goddess of Random Normal Instances seems hell-bent to send Aerhandor into HoR fail PuGs. After a whole two days of stressed-filled random heroics in which he dies a lot, the Druid finally got enough to get Runetotem's Headguard of Conquest. Unfortunately I bought the wrong meta (he has absolutely no gems required to activate it currently) so he had to be content without the meta for the time being. Now, onwards to the chestpiece!

Aerdread - Still with JC dailies (I bet you're getting sick with it, =D )

Aergor - Hits level 65, has finished all but one quest in Zangarmarsh (excluding quests that gives Cenarion Expedition rep), and is now prepped to start leveling in Terokkar Forest. His Enchanting proff is at a comfortable enough level, I may start to powerlevel it when he hits 70.

Aeyrin - Moving slowly. She's now level 42 courtesy of Dustwallow Marsh, and I expect her to be at least 90% into 43 by the time she's done there.

On other news (SAN-related):-

Aethrain - Is now level 10, has completed his pet questline and is the proud partner of a slightly miffed striped Nightsaber.

I don't see much happening if the situation with latency doesn't improve soon. I've already skipped much of the dailies and all the random heroics due to the lag factor, and when it gets worse at times I just switched the comp off and go play with my baby boy rather than attempt to play on an alternate server. I guess maybe it's a burnout effect - I hope not, since I'm determined to prepare adequately for Cataclysm since I never had the chance to in BC and Wrath.

Of Alts and Consequences

2010-03-15T01:45:00.000-07:00

Okay - so having a couple of alts on another server does have it's perks... Hydraxis was inaccessible to me for a few hours, so on a whim I hopped over to Argent Dawn and played my new Dwarf DK. Managed to finish almost all the DK starter quests, and looking forward to plonking him in the Plaguelands for that extra 2 levels before Outland.

Afterwards, when Hydraxis is available again, I continued doing the usual stuffs - dailies, a bit of rep grinding, an occasional detour or two, and some planning.

Aenur - Is up to 91 Emblem of Frost. Currently, her queue for random heroics is taking an average of 15-20 minutes to pop, giving her ample time to finish most of her dailies. Right now though, she doesn't have a solid reason to do them dailies - although that Argent Pony looks promising. She is now Exalted with every Northrend faction (except the Ashen Verdict) and has no need of Champion's Seal anymore. Basically she's doing it for the gold, which isn't used but diverted instead to the main bank alt.

So now I'm thinking about getting her back to Azeroth and grind out some of the old world's faction - maybe Timbermaw, or even the Thorium Brotherhood. It's just an initial thought, grinding rep while waiting for a random to pop sounds productive enough. I'm gonna sleep on it a bit.

Aelyra - Made another small upgrade: I swapped out her Dragonstompers with the Boots of Twinkling Stars, and put an Icewalker enchant on it. End result - slight increase in AP and crit while reducing the +Hit from 280 to 266. Not bad. I'm also queueing her up for more Triumph in order to net the Mark of Supremacy to replace an old, old, OLD trinket she's still sporting from her Kara days. She's still accumulating those Champion's Seals for the final heirloom piece for my future Pally - after that, it's off to the old world for her Venomhide raptor mount.

Aerhandor - Has paid the price for my lack of enthusiasm in gearing him. A few guildies were organizing a random heroic run last weekend and I volunteered to bring him with them, considering his acceptable performance in heroic VH previously. To make things interesting, I had pushed him to grind rep with the Argent Crusade to Exalted so he can get the Boots of the Neverending Path (enchanted with Assault). That, coupled with the Staff of Trickery he got, is enough to make him sit on 6k+ AP in kitty form... and snuggle comfortably with his capped +Hit. I figured he's set for random heroics now.

Boy was I wrong. We got heroic OK thrown at us - 3 druids (Feral, Boomie, Tree), a tanking DK and a new level 80 'lock - all proud, seasoned member of the guild. Aerhandor died 3 times... once at the stairs just after Prince Vampire due to lag, and twice on Herald Meanie. He simply did not have the power to punch through Evil Stormy's heals, and folded like a kitty rag =(

So now I need to prioritize getting him his tier gear ASAP.

Aergor - At level 63 at the moment, waiting for the right time to foray into Zangarmarsh for his next two levels. The one thing I'm worrying about is the Cenarion Expedition's rep - I don't want to start questing with them until I can get to Honored by doing the Unidentified Plant Parts repeatable turn-in, to maximize rep gain. And the AH (and my own bank) is fresh out of those items. Sigh... more grinding for rep...

Aerdread - Is still doing the JC dailies.

And now, onwards to my new minio- I mean my new adventurers, over on Argent Dawn!

Aethrain - My new Dwarf Hunter. It feels decidedly weird having to start all over again (and as Alliance to boot), with no sugardaddies/sugarmommies backing you up. Anyways, I got him to level 6 and parked him at that starter town just south of Ironforge until I can build a suitable reserve with...

Aerdread - ...my new to-be sugardaddy toon! Okay, okay, blame me for the lack of unique brand name for a Dwarf DK. What can I say? Aerbeerdread doesn't sound menacing enough, and any other name is simply un-Dwarf-ish. Right now he's almost done with the starter area, and I'm leveling him a bit until he's at a level where he can generate enough gold to sustain himself and Aethrain.

I have finished most of my target objectives for my toons - both my mains are geared enough to start raiding if needed, they've gotten most of the niceties of the Tourney (mounts, tabards, heirloom pieces) and are Exalted with about all of the Northrend factions (minus one or two). I'm giving a thought about re-doing a new target list, but I'm not exactly sure whether to go ahead with that or shelve the idea and focus on the routine to generate gold in preparation for Cataclysm.

Joining Single Abstract Noun (SAN-US)

2010-03-09T20:24:00.000-08:00

While browsing through the blogs over in PPI, a post over in Righteous Orb caught my eyes. Tamarind (affectionally known as Tam) is starting up a guild - Single Abstract Noun, also known as SAN - in Argent Dawn-EU for bloggers and blog readers to join, to meet each other in-game, and to provide a common platform on which all of them can enjoy outside their other WoW life. It was a good idea, but since I'm not on EU side server, I did not pay much attention to it.

A couple of days later something else caught my eyes - there is a SAN on the US side server too! Apparently Miss Medicina had also started the guild with the same name on US side, not wanting the US server players/bloggers to be left out.

Just as a note - SAN-EU is a Horde guild, while the US version is Alliance. Being a primarily Horde player, this presents an opportunity for me to experience mid-to-high level Alliance content.

So, after a brief thought, I made a couple of alts over on Argent Dawn-US. One was a Night Elf bank alt, which I ran over to Darnassus and parked him. The second will be my main on the server - a Dwarf Hunter by the name of Aethrain. I have not started leveling him yet, he's still a level 1 toon - so give me a few days at him before I start including him in my weekly updates, ya?

And that presents me with another issue - how on earth do I find the time to log on to him?

Of Fun and Borks

2010-03-07T17:35:00.000-08:00

So... welcome back to another edition of Have Dragon Will Travel. I'm BD, your host (or blogger, feel free to pick whichever) and boy do we have a new adventurers' update for you. Before we start though, let's look at a bad news that's been happening here in Azeroth.

My server has issues apparently. Yesterday, at approximately 5.30 pm local time it took a nosedive while I was out leveling Aergor in HP. Every attempt to log into the game would end up at the realm selection screen with Hydraxis being listed as "Offline" - the ONLY server with that status. I've heard from other guildies that this has been the case for the past few weeks, and Blizzard has yet to come up with a solution, an explanation or free cookies. So, as usual when stuff like this happens and I need a leveling fix, I switched to Nagrand, my old server.

Anyways, rants aside, here's a quick look at the updates...

Aenur - Since she's properly decked out and doesn't need more replacement gear, I've opted to go for two things: 1) Building a T9 or equivalent tanking set for old world soloing purposes, and 2) Farm Emblem of Frosts to get the T10 set. I'm having Aenur do one daily random heroic for both Frost and Triumph while doing her dailies (both the Sons of Hodir and the Argent Tourney) so I'll probably achieve both goals slowly but surely. Currently, she's sitting on 85 Emblem of Frost and two T9 tank pieces.

On Sunday, Grey organized a 25-man ICC rep run and asked around in Gchat for any interest. I was definitely interested, and besides the Ashen Verdict melee ring looks yummy. I went with the raid and had a blast doing the rep run. Now that I'm addicted, I may put an eye out for such runs in the near future. Got my first in-game look at the T10 pieces, too.

Later, Kraggar organized a guild group to do the weekly raid, which was Flame Leviathan. I volunteered Aenur to go with them since she's never done it and this would be a fine time to step into Ulduar (all overgeared and wide-eyed). Grey briefed me on the fight, I got into a siege vehicle with him, and off we go. The fight was cool, the bugger FL went down, and no death happened. She got her emblems, everyone was happy.

Aelyra - Sacrificed a few Frost and converted them to Triumph in order to get Windrunner's Legging of Triumph, her final T9 piece and the Dexterous Brightstone Ring, so now I only need to replace the main hand weapon, both trinkets and the boots. Aside from that, she's still doing the Argent Tourney dailies... until she can get the heirloom plate shoulders for my future Paladin. Then I'm finishing off any hanging faction rep before embarking on a new project.

Aerhandor - Sacrificed a few Frost and converted them to Triumph in order to get Runetotem's Handgrips of Conquest, his second T9 piece. Before that, however, there was a guild group looking to run a heroic random and he managed to secure a spot despite being slightly undergeared and having a poor +Hit rating (200+ if I'm not mistaken). It was a smooth run however and Staff of Trickery dropped. It's a sidegrade for me, so I rolled Greed like the rest. A guildie won the roll and I offered to buy it from him - instead, he gave it to me FOC. So I enchanted it, replaced my current weapon with it and now sit at a comfortable 6k AP. Now, to work on that +Hit...

Queued him up for a normal random for his daily Triumphs, the dungeon confirmation screen popped up, I clicked Accept... and facepalm myself when HoR loading screen came up. The run wasn't that bad, but as I expected the pursuit part broke the group. After three wipes the healer bails, the warlock blamed the tank's (supposed) failure to keep aggro, and I think we simply just have not enough DPS to get through. Ah well...

Aerdread - Daily JC, in and out. Also, he's accumulating the tokens and gold from the dailies instead of using them or mailing the gold to my main bank alt. Why? Just because I feel like it.

Aergor - Is doing fine leveling. He's now level 63 and should hit 64 by the time he finishes all the available quests in HP. The lack of certain gear and weapon at his level now did bother me a bit, but I figured he should have a nice replacement when he hits Zangarmarsh. The only thing I'm looking forward to now is hitting Honored with Thrallmar and getting him the Stalker's Chain Gauntlet.

As a side note - my Alliance Paladin is now level 69, courtesy of Hydraxis's nosedive. According to my estimates, he'll need at least two days of dedicated leveling to hit 70... which I might do if Hydraxis continues to act up.

General Notice of General-ness

2010-03-03T19:13:00.000-08:00

Stang, I can't believe it's been more than a month since my last entry.

I'm still here, and I'm still playing WoW - even though the past few days it seems the lag is getting from bad to worse. And it's mostly due to that lag that I can't finish much of what I wanted to.

The other reason is my baby Adam. Want to know why? Try doing your dailies while your baby is cooing and making cute baby sounds in his cot right next to you - and if you managed to entertain him and at the same time not fall off a Northrend cliff, I want to know your secret.

Rest assured though, BD is still here, and all my adventurers are alive and kicking. I hope the lag dies down soon so I can get some tales or updates or anything up ASAP =)

Of Being Fast, Furious and Confused

2010-02-01T18:17:00.000-08:00

Despite having faced an unexpected additional maintenance, two days of little gameplay (I was tired) and a less-than-responsive lag on Saturday, overall my toons are having a deluge of upgrades going their way. In fact, there's so many upgrades that I can't remember which of it is the upgrade and which gear they've been wearing all along.

At the moment, I'm still continuing to run both regular and heroic randoms, rotating to every toon to make sure they get their daily emblems and what-nots. My central bank account is slightly broke due to having to spend so much gold getting the new gear enchanted and gemmed, so I may need to run more dailies later in order to compensate. Champion's Seal-wise, I'm good - Aenur should have her Argent Hippogryph in a day or two, and Aelyra should be able to buy another heirloom at about the same time.

Aenur - Aside from doing the Argent Tourney dailies, Aenur's also doing two Kalu'ak dailies (one in Dragonblight, the other in Borean Tundra) to fill up the rep bar, and in order to get both the cute penguin pet and the epic fishing rod. Gear-wise, she's perfectly okay, so I'm thinking of using the Triumphs she's stockpiling to build a tank gear set (off-spec) and also getting her hands on any notable tank drops from her daily heroics. And once she's gotten the Argent Hippogryph, I'm moving her to Storm Peaks so she can work on her Sons of Hodir rep (lay off those sexual innuendos, peeps!).

Aelyra - Has gotten her Windrunner's Headpiece of Conquest and is now working to get her final T9 piece (the leggings). After that, she need to upgrade her main hand weapon, her boots, both trinkets, one of her rings and the neckpiece and she'll be set like Aenur is. Hmm... still got ways to go...

Oh, and due to running heroics while Wintergrasp is in Horde's possession, she's managed to save enough Stone Keeper's Shard to purchase the Reforged Truesilver Champion, to be kept in store until my Tauren Pally can come into play.

Aerhandor - Is the actual reason for the post title. In one week he went from a blue/green guy to 40% covered-in-epicness guy. He's finally got the ToC leggings - Leggings of Brazen Trespass, the Carpal Tunnelers from a random regular HoR and scraped enough Triumphs to buy his first T9 piece - Runetotem's Shoulderpads of Conquest. And all that while he's not even hit-capped!

I'm still debating whether to upgrade him to running random heroics since I feel he's not ready for it, but on the other hand running him through heroics will net him more Triumph, hence faster gear upgrades and better performance. We'll just have to see for the time being.

Aerdread - Has been parked in Dalaran doing the JC daily for the JC token. I'm also having him do the fishing daily if it's doesn't send him out of Dal. Aside from that, I'm having him do one regular random per day just as filler. I may ramp him up once both Aenur and Aelyra finish gearing and I have the time to burn, but that's still a long time in the future. I'm hoping I could save enough Triumphs on him by then to buy all the T9 pieces for him before actually doing a heroic - fat chance, eh?

Aergor - Has achieved the target level - he's now level 59 and questing in Silithus for that final one level before Outland (only 60% more to go). I know, I know - the level limit is 58, but I feel much more secure having that extra 2 levels with him. I may choose not to have Aelyra craft any OL starter gear for him and will go with quest rewards only, because I think the levels will fly pass too fast for that gear to make a difference. Instead, I'm stockpiling NR mats and crafting Aergor both the NR starting gear and the blue PvP gear and work from there.

Aeyrin - Is being parked for the moment so I can focus on Aergor.

Note: I'm currently reading up on how to solo MC - this has something to do with my ambitious endeavour to wield Sulfuras on my Paladin (originally, it was my original Pally, Aerander's wish, but now it's become Aenur's). All hints points to doing the place as Prot, which is why I'm starting to accumulate said gears on Aenur. I'm guessing 4-piece T9 tank set, some nice iLevel 245 tank helm, a couple of cool tank trinkets and the shield from regular HoR should be adequate, but I'm going for overkill and assembling the best rings, neckpiece, etcetera for this venture.

Of the Lamest Update Post Evarrr! ...for now.

2010-01-24T18:13:00.000-08:00

It's a common malady with me, I think. Every time I plan for something, inexplicably Murphy's Law will be in work. Take last week for example. I got Aelyra prepped and ready to go all out to get her fourth T9 piece... and ran headfirst into a wall. A lag wall, registering at OVER 9000... wait, it was only at 4.5k latency. Sigh...

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depends on your point of view) the lag stabilised around Sunday 5 p.m local time and I was able to complete all the dailies on Aenur, Aelyra, Aerhandor and Aerdread. Later that night I even managed to bring them all into random instances for their daily emblems. Too bad nothing substantial came out of it, though.

So, in lieu of toon by toon update, I'll just mention they got their dailies done, got their daily emblems, got some side activities done while waiting for the randoms to pop up, and end it there. Goshdarn it - Aelyra's at 33 Triumphs at log off yesterday, only needed about 4 more randoms for her T9 helm... sigh...

As for the lowbie alts, I tried leveling them but the lag totally messed up the rhythm - Aeyrin died at least 3 times, Aergor only once thanks to his pet defending him on several occasions... so they only got one level each (Aeyrin is now level 37 and Aergor is level 57). Projection for Aergor seems to be on track - I'm going all out on him this weekend and make sure he's in Outland by this weekend.

The Good, The Bad... and teh darn Ugly

2010-01-18T17:32:00.000-08:00

WoW-wise, there are days when you queue for randoms and got into a wonderful PuG, where everyone is nice and courteous and the run went smooth as silk, and by the end of the run everyone would be saying "Thanks for the awesome run" and "Excellent healing" or "Appreciate the run guys, see you later" and you'd be transported out with your loot, emblems and a warm feeling in your heart. Hell, maybe it's a commando run - silent, deadly, efficient, and you'd still leave with your sanity intact.

Then there are days when you seem to get the worst PuG. Tank or healer or someone bailed at instance start. Mismanagement of target priority and lost of aggro. The DPS who just wouldn't consider what he's doing when he jumps off the platform and dies, leaving the healer confused on how to rez him when we can't even see the body. And my personal favorite - "U dont noe wat ur doin!" from a scrub wearing blues and greens.

Yesterday however, I had the rare opportunity and misfortune to be in both a good PuG and an ugly PuG in one sitting.

Ugly PuG - I queued Aelyra up for a random heroic. It was her second or third random for the night after a successful previous run. As usual, right in the middle of her dailies the confirmation screen pops up, so she moved quickly to a safe location and hit Enter. Up came the loading screen for H HoS.

There was Aelyra the Hunter, a DK tank, a Mage and our healer (can't recall class, my bad). Then there's this Troll Rogue, let's call him Mr. D. So, after the initial hi and hello, DK tank asks if we're ready, then pulls when we've given him the green light. Trash packs went down nice and easy. Soon we were at the first boss, Krystallus. Now, in my experience I tend to die in about 75% of my encounters with him , due to his Shatter. So I was slightly apprehensive, but willing to give it a shot. We start, I pew-pewed, Krystallus roared, I pew-pe-KNOCKBACKSTUN SHATTER and I was dead besides our healer. Yeah, you heard me right - both me and healer was K.O-ed, leaving our DK tank, the Mage and Mr.D having a party with the boss man.

Amazingly, despite no heals (or maybe that's what I think) the DK tank continues to beat Krystallus down. Second Shatter, Mr. D bites the dust and I could only watch in growing horror at the unfolding carnage... wait, the DK is still at it!

Between him and the Mage, they managed to down Krystallus and saved the group from a complete disaster. By this time, the healer had run back and is starting to rez both me and Mr. D. (I hadn't released, yes I know it's bad, but I would've missed seeing our tank won the match). And immediately after being rezzed, Mr. D proclaimed, loudly and in caps - "STUPID DK USE UR DEATHSTRIKE U FAIL AT BEING TANK" or something very close to that. A moment of silence while Aelyra's recovering. Then Mr. D spoke up again - "Sry tat was my friend he thinks ur a fail tank and I do too".

Interesting - someone thinks the tank, who has successfully tanked the boss without the support of his healer and two of his DPS members, is being called a fail tank because of one DK skill? Then the DK spoke up: "I'm a Frost tank bub, I don't use Death Strike".

Mr. D apparently is not convinced. As the group moves towards the next trash pack he kept saying in party chat how the tank is a noob (actually he claimed his 'friend' is saying that, but he's concurring with every word the 'friend' says) and the tank kept defending himself. After hearing this going on for a few minutes, I spoke up, defending the tank and asking the now worked-up Mr. D to lay off. The argument actually escalated until we're right before the Maiden of Grief. Then the Mage DC'ed.

DK tank explains that he wants to wait a couple of minutes for the Mage, see if she's coming back or not. So to fill in the waiting gap, I typed a joking emote indicating Aelyra's charging like a mad Belf at the boss - and subsequently there was chaos as someone actually aggroed Maiden. The tank bailed during this period, we wiped... and Mr. D said to me, in perfect satisfaction - "Told u hes a fail tank". To be honest, I'm thinking my joke emote was wrongly interpreted by the tank as an actual attempt and being incensed by Mr. D's earlier picking on him, had decided this group is not worth it and bailed, leaving us to wipe. But seriously, I too had enough of Mr. D and dropped the group immediately - but not before saying to him: "He's a competent enough tank to live when some of us are eating the floor, matey."

Good PuG - It was quite late in the night, Aelyra had finished a few random heroics and by this time had enough Triumphs to buy her next T9 item. I was looking over the trade window, evaluating each gear and wondering which set piece I should prioritise when Rage (one of my guildie) asks in gchat if anyone is interested in running some heroics. I figured I may sign up for one so I can start stacking more emblems towards the next T9 item and said yes. Another guildie, Devastatior, also said yes. So there we are - two Hunters, a DPS DK, queued in Dungeon Finder.

Pretty soon (if you can call an average waiting period of 15 minutes 'soon') we were joined by a tank and healer, and got H DTK as our heroic. Initial buffing, a few short exchange, the Pally tank asks - the only time he's ever spoken in party chat, I found out later - "Rdy?". We said yes. So he starts the pull.

I was at first amused, then grew amazed, and finally was outright speechless when he pulls the first trash pack in that hallway, then move to the next (mind you, first pack is not yet dead) then the next, and the next... until we found that he's tanking the entire hallway's trash in one go. I had to resort to AoE-ing the whole group, then when he's done the same thing happened - chain-pulling the entire trash pack along the way and AoE-ing them down. Me and Rage were by this time full of amazement at this display of speed run. Managed to choke out a few strangled line in gchat too.

The only snag came during King Dred - I wasn't sure what happened, but Mr. Amazing Tank died during the fight and subsequently the group wiped. I think during the fear, he took serious beating and healer couldn't recover in time. It was at this time we discovered that he's only got 24k unbuffed health - only 2k more than Aenur. But again, he's shown that he can so tank - on the next try, King Dred goes down and the group continues the lightning run up to Tha'ronja. And win.

Mr. Amazing Tank leaves immediately after the boss dies, not even waiting for loot to be distributed. Since Rage wanted to do the Dra'kuru event, me and Devast waited until the end and had a quick discourse about that run. Rage was more contemplative than amazed, wondering if he could pull that stunt with his Druid tank.

Me? Well, I got the Triumphs out of this run - and not having any proper tank to work on, feel comfortable enough recording Mr. Amazing Tank (Poffa's was his name I think, can't recall his server) most memorable run with Aelyra.

Oh, and also - I got the T9 chest piece for Aelyra. Enchant it, gem it, and boom! Instant 100+ AP increase. I are happy nao =)

Of Loots and Stuffs

2010-01-17T19:03:00.000-08:00

Finally... after a couple of weeks of packed RL schedule, last week's ample free time was a breath of fresh air. I managed to do a lot of things across all my adventurers, even managed to accomplish some of the goals I thought weren't even possible given the number of activities going on.

First off - I am extending my hours up to 2 a.m. to compensate for my erratic starting time (I usually starts at 8.30 p.m., but these days I need to cover baby duties while my wife does houseworks during the evening so I get to start up WoW at 9.00 - 9.30) which gives me an extra hour to adventure. So I'm bringing Aerdread back into active duty and probably do something worthwhile instead of gathering dusts on the bench.

Second - my initial plan of making Aerhandor run ToC for gear has failed miserably. RNG has not been merciful and I could not even get his hands on an off-spec drop... BECAUSE THEY NEVER DROP! For crying out loud - I've been running the place close to 12 times a week with 2 items in mind (plus some 3-4 off-spec items) and not ONE of them dropped. So I'm calling him off that place and instead queue him up for a random regular for his daily 2 Triumphs. It's going to take a while before he can amass enough emblems to buy his T9 though... although he is in essence skipping the heroic instances level this way.

Lastly - there is a shortage of posts here other than my regular weekly update. I meant to post a guide on how I do stuffs on my toons, but being largely inexperienced with Blogger and the way my pics in post turns out, I may experiment a bit before publishing it. I'm doing one this weekend and see how that turns out.

Aenur - Has completed her T9 gear with the purchase of Liadrin's Helm of Triumph. Also, in one of her random heroics, she managed to obtain The Lady's Promise from HoR to replace her last blue item. And before that, I took the effort (and the gold) to procure a Titanium Spikeguards for her. And even way before that, she managed to snag from ol' Keri in H Nexus a Flame-Bathed Steel Girdle (it's a cheap item in comparison to her other gears, but an improvement over her Savage Saronite Waistguard). Socketed and gemmed and enchanted, she is still however short of the 5k AP (buffed) benchmark I've set. I may need to tweak or upgrade the gear make-up a bit more.

As a result of running so much heroics, she has accumulated quite a number of Stone Keeper's Shard, which I never noticed until last Saturday. When I did, I took her to Wintergrasp immediately to purchase her very own Black War Mammoth.

And since she no longer has any pressing need for Triumphs, I'm diverting her to Dragonblight to correct a small tactical error - her neglected Kalu'ak rep (early Revered at the moment). She's doing the rep grind, the dailies for Champion's Seal, and one random heroic per day for her Emblem of Frost now. Sweet.

Aelyra - Has been pushed to the head of the queue, and will be grinding Triumphs for her remaining 3 T9 pieces. She has no noticeable drop these last few days though, but her collection of emblems is growing.

Aerhandor - Frustrated with the way ToC RNG treated him, I'm having him do one random regular every day in addition to the Tourney dailies he's currently running. No noticeable drops so far, but the main focus here is the 2 Emblem of Triumphs per day. I'm considering any useful drops that comes his way as bonuses.

Aerdread - Has made improvements in various aspects. With patience and hard work, he has finally managed to get to 400/450 JC and can now prospects the huge amount of Saronite ore currently stashed in my bank alt. And now he can start to do the JC dailies and hopefully soon will be able to provide gems for my other adventurers.

Also, gear-wise, I've been making him do ToC runs (albeit irregularly). In one of his early runs he managed to get Drape of the Undefeated. Then after several runs with no DPS plate drops, suddenly last Sunday he managed to win Breastplate of the Imperial Joust and Gauntlets of the Stouthearted Crusader in one run. Actually, Helm of the Violent Fray did drop from last boss, but I figured I'd pass since the other plate DPS (Ret Pally) wanted it. As an addition, he's crafted his own Charged Titanium Specs to replace his older, blue-level googles. My only grouse right now is the lack of rare-level gems to socket in his gear - I'm not using epic-level gem to socket into these gears just yet.

Aergor - Is now level 56. Will find out if I can squeeze another 2 levels out of him by the end of this month.

Aeyrin - Is now decked in all the Heirloom items she needs to seriously start leveling with the final addition of Swift Hand of Justice, courtesy of Aelyra. Now, if only I can slot the time to level her...

Now, the bad news - I find that I'm growing increasingly disillusioned with playing a Priest, despite not having logging into Aerdanil for the past couple of weeks. Maybe it's my instinctive dislike of caster class. Maybe I'm too accustomed to more resilient toons and is bad at playing a squishy one. Whatever the reason, I finally decided to delete the Side-Project and write off the experiment as "Requiring further analysis". The heirlooms he's sporting is now under my bank alt's custody - I may one day find the drive to play one, and I'm not letting the tools to do it be thrown away. So there - no more Priest. No more Side-Project.

Of Summary Updates

2010-01-11T19:56:00.000-08:00

Again, apologies for the short and late updates - I've been busy IRL - my younger sister's getting married, my son is starting to roll, my wife has started working, office's been quite busy with a law case against a defaulting customer... you know the deal.

Aenur - Been in a lot of random heroics, got enough Triumphs to snag both the Mark of Supremacy and the Bloodshed Band. I'm saving enough for her final Triumph upgrade - the helm - before switching to the Hunter for gearing and will leave Aenur with dailies and her daily 2 Emblem of Frost. I'm still trying to get her a pair of ach in the process - the maxed Unarmed ach and the Master of Arms - but that final point in Unarmed is a b***h to get.

Aelyra - Has gotten her second T9 piece, the Windrunner's Handguards of Triumph. Now I'm making her do some sporadic randoms in order to get a running start in Triumph accumulation. I'm planning to get the chestpiece first, then the helm and leave the leggings for last. I'm also musing about replacing her main hand weapon with the Hunter's version of Quel'Delar - my chances of snagging one of those battered hilt is remote, but currently it's touted as one of the best stat-stick a Hunter can get. We'll see.

Aerhandor - Is sick and tired of ToC. An average of 2 runs per day for the past several days, and not even a decent off-spec leather drop. He managed to get Uruka's Band of Zeal, actually, but that doesn't count =( I've reconsidered doing ToC on him and instead switched to "do-a-regular-random-a-day-for-Triumph" routine beginning yesterday. I hate you, RNG.

Aerdread - Has done exactly what Aerhandor did previously - running ToC for gearing purposes. Almost got that same ring that Aerhandor did - but I left early before the loot could be distributed and lost it. I don't actually mind though - he's not doing anything other than counting dust specks on his shoulderplates and leveling his JC (which is 370/450 currently). If he gets geared, great! If not, well at least he'll bring home some disenchanted mats, a bit of gold and some loot when he comes home =D

One thing, though - I was fooling around last weekend and queued him up for a random regular. Guess what instance pops out? You may have guessed Oculus, but it's not - it's PoS. Managed to get through it without any wipes, deaths or taxes. Too bad nothing exciting dropped. Oh well.

Aeyrin - Pushed her to level herself and her professions hard - hit level 36 and got her Inscription and Alchemy up to Expert level (I think it's Expert... no?). The combination of double XP and Heirloom be praised!

So, until the next update, HDWT!

Of More Late Updates

2010-01-05T05:40:00.000-08:00

It's a bit later than I like, but I finally found some time to write down the progress that my adventurers have managed to achieve during the final week of 2009 and the first few days of 2010. The list is quite long, and there are several hilarious events that I am keen to touch upon, but I fear it would take up too much of the post so I'll be better off mentioning only the highlights.

***

Aenur - Has finally managed to obtain her Argent Charger and Red Drake mount. Doesn't she look regal, galloping around the Tourney ground on her Paladin-y horse? Oh, and running randoms day in and day out she's managed to snag Liadrin's Legplates of Triumph, making it her fourth T9 piece and finally getting that sweet 4-piece tier set bonus. Aside from that, she's also got the Libram of Valiance and used her Stone Keeper Shards to purchase a Heirloom sword for Aeyrin.

Her highlight of the week? Running reg HoR with a random PuG... with herself as Ret (DPS), a Prot Pally tanking, and a Holy Pally as the healer. This group composition got laughed at by the Warrior and Mage in the group, too - with 3 paladins providing CC, Oh-Sh*t abilities, 3 kinds of Blessings and Judgements the entire run was a fun filled exercise for all of us. No wipes, no death... but unfortunately no Plate drop either. We must've jinxed it >.<

Aelyra - Has begun doing a random Heroic per day in addition to her dailies. I hope to be able to garner enough triumphs to purchase her second tier piece by the time Aenur is done so she can start her randoms in force.

Her highlight of the week - Shortly after handing in her last daily for the day, a guildie of mine, Kraenok, who was out on a reconn mission in Storm Peaks for the Time-Lost Proto-Drake, called in over gchat announcing that he's found Skoll, the rare wolf Spirit Beast. Aelyra was quick to answer the call, hopping onto her drake and speeding all the way there.

Did I get it? Yes! Do I love it? Hell yes! I are proud owner of Spirit Beast, rawr! (although my heart is still set for Loque) Too bad I forgot to get a proper SS for this week's update.

Aerhandor - Has started running reg ToC once every day in addition to his dailies. I would rather not start him on ToC when he's only exalted with his own faction and still need to grind rep with the rest, but I am pressured to take advantage of the Dungeon Finder tool while it's still popular. Unfortunately his luck with loot is abyssmal - he's got the Gloves of the Argent Fanatic, which is a nice upgrade... but the rest of the drops are not as good as his current gear (I got Shoulderpads of the Infamous Knave drop twice, not as good an upgrade as Aerhandor's current Trollwoven Spaulders). Here's to hoping the trinket and the cloak drop - as well as the boots.

Aeyrin - Has gotten both Heirloom weapons - the Battleworn Thrash Blade and the Balanced Heartseeker, both enchanted with the Crusader enchant and ready to rock. Those, coupled with the Heirloom chestpiece and shoulders are enough to greatly help me level her. However, with Aenur, Aelyra and Aerhandor being busy as they are, it might take me some time before I can actually dedicate some time to do that.

***

There are other events that I should be mentioning in details, too - running with some guildies for triumphs, tanking exercises and healing practises, some fail PuGs I have the misfortune to join... but sadly my memory retention is bad at recalling stuffs over two seconds old, and so I regret that I cannot post them here =P

Maybe next time I should SS these events to help me remember things better, no?

2010: Year of Achievements

2010-01-03T17:51:00.000-08:00

First things first - A very (albeit belated) Happy New Year to everyone and may you have the opportunity and conviction to accomplish all that you wish for this year.

I should've post the new year greeting and well-wishing a couple of days back, but since the 'Net connection was so stable I just had to take advantage of it =D

Anyways, I will leave adventurers' update to a later post. Today, I'd like to muse over the thing almost everyone would be doing come a new year - New Year Resolution.

I know most people just love to make New Year Resolution - "I wanna lose weight!", "I wanna travel and see the world!" or "I wanna buy a BMW M3 GTR with blue background and silver stripes!". The thing is, I also make resolutions. I'm not going to hide the facts - sometimes I'm good at keeping 'em, at other times I just fail at it. But it's one way that I use to keep track of my progress throughout the year and at the end of it, judge myself whether the year has been a successful one for me or not.

In case of WoW, the weekly updates of my adventurers is my way of tracking their progress, or lack of it. At the end of every week, I can evaluate whether the week is very successful/profitable/enjoyable or vice versa. It's my way of actually seeing for myself whether my RM120 per 2 months is worth it or not.

So, 2010 is the start of a benchmarking process. I have a few targets that I need to achieve in this year, and only one or two are a tad on the impossible side. Nevertheless, here they are in no particular order:

1) Getting the Black Drake from OS +3 10-man
This would be the goal for Aenur. I've always been partial to dragon mounts and have gone to great efforts to try to procure Netherdrakes for all my level 70 toons pre-WotLK. And in WotLK, both my Pally and Hunter have either the Red or Bronze Drake as their primary flight mount. This year, I'm set on slipping Aenur inside one of the OS raids and winning that Black Drake. I've been wanting that drake color ever since they announce it O_O

2) T9 (at least) for everyone
At the moment I'm writing this, Aenur has 4/5 T9 and Aelyra has 1/5 T9 equipped. At my best estimates, Aenur should be fully tiered by the weekend and Aelyra will follow in about 2-3 weeks time. That leaves Aerhandor and Aerdread, and frankly speaking both of them still has a long way to go (Aerdread is not even close to Heroic standards!). I got Aerhandor started on some reg ToC 5-man to gear up, but I still need to prep a gear list requirement for him. I hope to be able to accomplish this goal by June/July, regardless whether Cataclysm hits or not.

3) Level Aergor and Aeyrin to 80
Aergor is at level 55 and Aeyrin the Rogue is at level 34. I've done a look-over on both of them and may decide to push Aeyrin first since she has the advantage of having Heirloom pieces with her. That, and the fact that I desperately need a high level Alchemist for transmutation purposes. I'm waiting until Aelyra can snag enough Champion's Seal to get the Heirloom haste trinket before starting to level her. As for Aergor, I'm doing him the old-fashioned way: Double XP and craftable gears... unless I change my mind =)

4) Make a Tauren Paladin and level him to 80
I have 3 Hunters on my active list and 2 Paladins. Taking out the bank alts, that would leave me with 2 Hunters vs one Paladin. And since I prefer playing a Paladin than a Hunter, the fact that I have more Hunter than Paladin leave me with no choice but to roll another Paladin alt (justifying altaholicism - I should write a book on this). But since my in-game character logistics are quite well-established, I'm planning to purchase a few Heirlooms in preparation as well as crafting items at certain levels for his use. By the time Cataclysm arrives I should have all the necessary resource to powerlevel him to 60 by year end. I'm still trying to decide on a name though... maybe Aeryastrasz? Aeradin? Aer-something?

Let see how much of these I can actually accomplish, ya? ^_^

Of Screwed Schedule and Forgotten Alts

2009-12-27T16:37:00.000-08:00

It's Christmas (or a few days after) - so "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year" to everyone! Hope all you got what you've always wanted from Santa, be it that brand new toy or that brand new epic loot =)

As for me, though, Christmas is a mixed-up affair. I don't really know the technical aspect of it, but every time I log in from Christmas Eve until last Sunday Hydraxis was hit by an unexplainable lag, ranging from 1.5k up to 4k latency which made it almost impossible to do anything I planned. I could still manage most of the dailies, but jousting and most importantly randoms are out of the question. Last Sunday was a different matter - I have just finished the last of Aenur's dailies when I DC'ed and was unable to log in... got the message "Error retrieving character list" at the character selection.

Weird thing is - I can still log on to my alts in Durotan US and Nagrand EU and play them without any problem. So I figured, meh, I'll get those alts up to speed then.

Therefore, a summary of my mains will have to suffice - Aenur, while missing out on a whole weekend full of emblems, is now only 10 Champion's Seal away from her Argent mount. I hope to get that and start working on the Argent Hippogriff next (which costs a whopping 150 Seals!). Aelyra managed to squeeze in one random on Thursday evening - it's a mostly guild run, so they understand when I die during one hectic boss fight - and got enough Emblem of Triumph to get the Windrunner's Spaulders of Triumph, her first Tier gear. She's still 4k rep away from Exalted with Undercity, the last faction she need for Crusader. And Aerhandor is still slugging away at all that faction rep as usual.

Aergor will not be making it to Outland as scheduled due to the lag problem - I had hoped to do an intense leveling session last Saturday for him. Managed to get him only to level 55 currently. And I did a quick leveling with Aeyrin the Rogue, got a level out of her - she's now level 33.

Since the lag affected my play so much, I decided to hop over to Nagrand EU and load up my old Paladin main, Aerander. With the time I have available, I managed level him up a lot and do what I initially had hoped - getting him to Northrend. Granted, he's only level 68, but the few early Northrend quest gear rewards vastly outshone his old Outland gear and did bump his stats up good. Having been to Borean Tundra primarily as Horde before has spoilt me when I came here as Alliance - twice I made my way halfway to Warsong Hold before I realized I'm Alliance now =D

Too bad Aerander's Blacksmithing skills are still too low to let him capitalize on Northrend craftable armor and weapons. He's at 326/375, and the lowest item a Northrend Master Blacksmith offers for training is at 350. So reluctantly I trucked him back to Shadowmoon Valley in Outland to try and squeeze a couple level and more Blacksmithing skills out of him.

And as a side note, something crossed my mind when going over my adventurers last Friday - I discovered that I lack the drive to continue playing the Side Project, and that I have one too many Hunter and too few Paladins in my line-up. I may end up deleting the Side Project to make way for that Tauren Paladin come Cataclysm next year... but we'll see.

Oh Yeah...

2009-12-23T01:18:00.000-08:00

***

Now I can finally sleep at night in peace. =D

The darn thing doesn't come cheap though... the first group splintered, first when the tank bailed without a word, then when the other two DPS followed suit. Me and the healer re-queued (him as DPS this time) and got another group within a couple of minutes. The letdown?

A Hunter among the newcomers (o_o") I checked him out - he's sporting the True-Aim Long Rifle. Hmm... maybe he's a gun-user and won't roll on the bow, I thought.

The run went quite ok, and RNG was kind - Crypt Fiend Slayer dropped. I asked if I could roll Need on the bow...

...just as the other Hunter hit the Need button. The others were silent - either oblivious or they don't give a damn. I was breathless - if my Need roll fails, I'm going to have to face the possibility of re-running HoR again and again! But... I steel myself and press Need. And hope.

I won the roll. And the other Hunter drop group without a word.

Of Rotten Luck and Bad Drops

2009-12-21T20:17:00.000-08:00

A slight rant is incoming. Are you prepared?

Yesterday evening, after finishing dinner and cuddling with my baby son, I fired up my PC and logged in to WoW for the daily dailies - and maybe a random or two. The dailies took longer than usual because I had to split my attention from the game to my boy who just couldn't bear to let me out of his sight =D

Anyways, by the time I finished all of Aenur's, Aelyra's and Aerhandor's dailies it's almost 10.00 p.m and according to schedule I only have another one and a half hour to go. Enough to squeeze in at least two randoms while doing a mining circuit around Icecrown, I was thinking. So I popped open the Dungeon Finder and registers Aenur for her first run - a random reg (for the pair of Emblem of Triumphs). In a few minutes, as she was mining a Saronite node - out pop the confirmation window. I press Enter Instance.

And watched in amusement as Hall of Reflection's loading screen came up.

The group assembled were professionals - all of them (except me) have done the place at least twice, and have nailed the encounters every time. Even so, I piped up in party chat saying I haven't done this fight, might die yadda yadda - but they said it was fine since it's the reg version. And then off we go. The fights were furious but under control: I noticed that no one had their health below 80% most of the time, the mobs are downed as per the tank's instructions (Priests first, then Mages, Mercenary and Footman last) and boss fights are a delightful event. Loot time - Ghoulslicer dropped, a nice 1h sword that I figured would be great on Aelyra... but I passed since she's far, far away. Little that I know the loot table is against me this evening.

And then, after a short skirmish with the bone commander guy we came up to see Arthas vs. Sylvanas in an amazing display of bladeworks. The tank spoke up - chase time: blast anything that has rotting flesh pronto.

And then onto the chase.

Boy, that was one fun pursuit episode - we were AoE-ing mobs right and left, Aenur was laying down Consecrates and DS-ing like crazy, flashes of flying ghouls passed before my eyes just to fall prey to our Mage's bolts of frost/fire/? and most of all, the Lich King in the background, slowly gaining ground. We made it pass the last barrier intact, got to see the short scripted event at the end, and Ding - I got the achievement, the emblems, and loot, and...

...What in the name of Darnassus - Crypt Fiend Slayer in my bag??

I took another look at the chat log - there. Apparently I won the Greed roll for the item (since there's no Hunter or enchanter in the group, everyone Greeded). I was stumped - I had planned to make Aelyra come and get the weapon this weekend ever since I learned about it... and Aenur got it on her FIRST run?? That bugger had an 18% drop rate according to Wowhead, for crying out loud. Why wouldn't Mourning Malice drop - that had a 24% drop rate! >_>

With that experience fresh on my mind, I logged off Aenur and switched over to Aelyra. Queued her up for PoS and hoped to be able to finish it so she can finally enter HoR and get that bow. With an awesome piece of luck, the group she was in decided to take on HoR after the PoS run for the extra emblem and loot. The HoR run went less smooth than Aenur's (we had one wipe due to a runaway Ghostly Mage who nuked the hell out of our healer) but eventually we got to the end of HoR intact.

And as far as loot goes - you know the saying, when you really want it, you won't get it? I can vouch for the truthfullness of that saying. No bow. I would definitely weep with frustration...

...if I hadn't, during the PoS run, won Scabrous Zombie Leather Belt from Ick.

Ah well, tomorrow is another day, eh?

A Little Bit of Nostalgia

2009-12-20T20:07:00.000-08:00

You may remember I mentioned something about being nostalgic in my previous post, right?

...no? You mean, you don't realize I mentioned it? But... I did ment- Oh well...

/sigh

I was out adventuring with Aenur when it happened, and it all began with the simplest action... and that action turns out to be a reminder and ultimately a revival of my past adventure. The action? Mining a Small Thorium node in Un'Goro Crater. The consequence?

Read on for that bit of nostalgia.

My very first toon in WoW is a Human Paladin over in Nagrand EU. He's the toon I committed a lot of noobish mistakes on - failing to buff during fights, using the wrong equipment on, pursuing an unprofessional interest at the expense of other, more valuable objectives... you know, that kinda stuff.

At about that time, my former guild was recruiting - they were a social, friendly guild looking for a few good people to play with. I applied, and was accepted. Thus began my short (but life-shaping) journey with Chronicle. Tyoril, the Druid tank GM, is a respectable goofball - he'd organize instance run and rope a few guildies in, and then proceeded to have fun with all of them during the run. I still remember one of the few runs I had - this was Uldaman, and we were about to face Archadeus (I think that's his name, the last boss of that place). We finished discussing about strategy, and was about to pull when he somehow botched the initial assault... as a result, the entire group ran helter-skelter as Archadeus aggros each and every one of us and poor Tyoril was running after him trying to establish aggro. It wasn't a wipe however, and we managed to complete the run alive.

Chronicle didn't last long. It wasn't dissention or progression that broke it, it was RL. Tyoril was leaving for a long time in order to pursue his education, and was unwilling to make us wait for him, so he told us about his decision and let everyone leave. Despite that, I was reluctant to leave this guild that I've grown to love - and eventually, on his last day online Tyoril had to kick me out (he sends a mail just before doing it, informing me of what he's about to do).

At that time, my Paladin was about to step through the Dark Portal at level 59. Although I've several other alts, none of them was remotely near him in any aspect. So since Chronicle was 'disbanded', I took the step through the Portal alone. The experience I had on Outland at that time was different - being without companionship (no gchat, no friendly banter, etc) made it like I was actually alone in this world. After only 2 levels in Outland, I broke down and left.

(This was the time I found out about my current guild, Ten Ton Hammer on Hydraxis US. I've been on TTH official forum for almost 3 months then, and have received an unofficial invitation from Ztormy - who will be later known fondly as Guild Mom - to come over to the guild. After much deliberation, I made the switch... and until today I am glad I did.)

Fast forward a few years...

I have been on and off the Paladin, usually after a patch, to update his talent points (out of sentimentality reason) and checking out for old friends. Over the years he managed to gain another 3 levels, but his equipment, skills and professions are untouched. One of the most heart-breaking aspect of him (to me) is his low Blacksmithing skills, which is 288/375. The main reason I couldn't level that up is the insane price on Thorium during his leveling days and how overfarmed the metal is - you cannot spot a Thorium node without it being ninjaed one way or another.

Last Saturday, on Hydraxis, Aenur was wading through swamp and mud to get herself poisoned by Venomhide Ravasaurs when I notice a couple of yellow dots on my minimap. Turns out those were Thorium nodes - ignored, no less - and she mined them. My curiosity was aroused, and I made Aenur do one full circuit of Un'Goro. By the time she's done, I had 4 stacks of Thorium ore, a couple of Arcane Crystals and a lot of Dense Stone. Realization dawned.

I hopped back to Nagrand once all my mains had done their dailies - my Paladin was still there, parked at Telaar. I quickly took him back all the way to Un'Goro. Sure enough, the place is deserted except for one level 48 Night Elf Hunter. My Paladin went on a mining craze - in about one hour, he has 210 Thorium ores and bagfuls of other items. By carefully making some Imperial Plate items, he has managed to hit 305/375 that day. Elated, I took him on a leveling trip - by the time I had to leave, he's 80% to 66.

I wonder though, if I could take him to 80 - and then it would be a grand achievement on it's own... a tale of one adventure, lost and was found again, and made anew...

"This is my first Alliance toon to make it to 80, and he is also my very first toon."

Of Gains and Losses

2009-12-20T18:13:00.000-08:00

Last week saw plenty of improvements on my mains - either gear-wise, achievement-wise or level-wise. The changes made by Blizzard over the year (since WotLK came out), culminating with Patch 3.3 only a few weeks ago, has got to be one of the best changes to happen to me and my toons.

However, behind all the elation and celebration of my toons during the weekend, something else happened that made me stop and look back - waaay back - at my first few baby steps in WoW. Specifically - my very first toon. I'll explain more on this after the usual updates.

Aenur - Has run more heroics and is now only one heroic away from netting the Northrend Heroic Dungeonmaster-thingie achievement. Her dedication to gearing up saw her trading more emblems for a pair of Tier gear - the Liadrin's Shoulderplates of Triumph and the Liadrin's Battleplate of Triumph. So, now she has 3/5 Tier 9 and got one of her set bonuses ^_^

And that's not all too - on one occasion, she got into regular PoS with a capable PuG and managed to snag Garfrost's Two-Ton Hammer to replace the Titansteel Destroyer she's been wielding since forever =P Also, in an amazing display of luck she finally managed to trade her one and only green item - Band of the Bloodletter - for the Band of Frosted Thorns from one of her heroic Nexus runs. Overall, this has improved her AP from 3900-ish to 4.3k (buffed). With further improvement in this week, I'm guessing she may hit 5k AP (buffed).

Also, out of sheer curiosity, I made her trek all the way back to Un'Goro to check out this new raptor mount some of my guildies was so keen about. I got her started on the daily and is now about 3/20 done. If this works, and the new mount is cool enough, I'm making Aelyra do it next.

Aelyra - Has finally hit Exalted with the Argent Crusade, and will soon be hitting Exalted with Thunder Bluff. One thing I've noticed is that her Leatherworking is still stuck at 446/450, and I will need to craft some purps to level that up and get a couple of final LW recipes off the trainers.

Aerhandor - Not much changes - he's still doggedly pursuing the Crusader title (not that he's ever going to use it). I have to say though, jousting with a Tauren toon and jousting with a Blood Elf toon is like heaven and earth: You get a big hairy lump of beef on a big leathery lump of kodo on your screen, and jousting pains will increase a hundredfold...

Aergor - Has been questing a bit, and is now level 55. I may have to amend his schedule since I'm a bit doubtful he'll make it to Outland on time. Honestly speaking, I wanted him to step through the Portal when he's level 60, not 58 - but at his current rate of leveling, I may have no choice but to go for it at 58. But we'll wait and see how things go.

As for the rest of the adventurers, no changes over the last week. This schedule thing is wonderful is keeping progress centered on select toons =P

Of Running Random Instances, PuGs and More Dailies

2009-12-13T20:15:00.000-08:00

The world will never be the same again... at least it won't for me.

Why, you might ask. Well, the answer is simple.

I have been PuG-ging through Dungeon Finder this last weekend, and I'm finding to my great horror (and hidden delight) that I'm actually enjoying it.

Wait! Wait, lemme 'splain...

After finishing up on the dailies on Saturday, I decided to give the Dungeon Finder a spin, to check out this 'nifty little feature', as someone put it. I queued up Aenur for a random LK instance, and while waiting for a hit took her on a mining route. Pretty soon, the confirmation window came up, and I hit the Enter Dungeon button...

...and was transported to this place called Occulus. And there, my enjoyment with PuGs began.

***

Aenur - Had a blast running instances after instances, be them with PuG or on-the-spur guild runs. She netted a number of achievements for completing those runs (Occulus, Nexus, VH, Hall of Stone etc.) being unable to run them in the first place due to me hesitating to PuG it before. It was such a blast that before I even know it, it was 3.00 am in the morning and I had enough Emblem of Triumph to finally purchase Aenur her first tier piece - the Liadrin's Gauntlet of Triumph, and socketed it with a +20 Strength and +20 Crit rating gem (she's an accomplished Blacksmith ^_^ ). Based on what I see, she may end up doing one random LK instance per day after her dailies so she can get enough emblems to get the whole T9 set (I want the chestpiece next! Or the shoulder - they're cheaper!).

Aelyra - Had a blast running instances after instances, be them with... well, you know the drill. Although, she hasn't done as much instances as Aenur did, she did have one she can boast that the Pally can't - Aelyra's been to the Forge of Soul, completed it, and got Heartshiver out of it as a souvenir. Equipping it against her current weapon will lose her some +Hit, so I'm keeping it as an option for now... besides, the other guys were a Prot Pally, a DK, a Shaman and a Priest =P. However, I'm not making her do random instances for now since her rep grind is not even decently done - I may change my mind depending on day to day situation, though.

Aerhandor - Is now only one day of dailies away from Exalted with the Ebon Blade. I already started him on the Argent Tourney qualification quests - the one leading up to you choosing the faction you're Championing - and will make him follow Aelyra's footsteps once he got that rep faction maxed. He also won the guild roll for a Nimble Climber's Belt - I may have Aenur make him an Eternal Belt Buckle so he can jam a gem in that. And I'm hoping once I get him to Exalted I can get him the Darkheart Chestguard from the Ebon Blade quartermaster to replace his aging Eviscerator Chestguard.

Aerdread - Had the fortune to run one LK instance (actually being the second of my toon to use the Dungeon Finder feature, after Aenur). The difference between them is that while Aenur use the 'random' option, I had Aerdread choose a specific instance - one I planned to make him do a long time ago: The Culling of Stratholme. With luck, he joined a group of excellent PuG-gers who are actually looking to get emblems and not gears. With even greater luck, both the items I'm after dropped - the Spiked Metal Cilice off Salramm and the coveted Dreadlord's Blade from the final boss. So now he only need the upgrade for the chest, legs and gauntlets (I still need to make him grind rep get that shoulder from SoH).

Aergor - I leveled him to 52 and managed to get to Honored with the Timbermaw furbolgs. Then stopped and switched back to my mains for moar instance fun. I do feel pity for him though - my mains had my full attention once again thanks to Patch 3.3 and now he's been relegated as filler alt. I still need to get him to Outland, hopefully before January.

Aeyrin - Aenur has bought her the second piece of her Heirloom gear, the Stained Shadowcraft Tunic and I had my secondary bank alt Aezurin put a +3 All Stats on it. She looks a bit cuter now... and a lot more deadly if Aelyra would only finish her darn rep grind and start getting Champion's Seal to buy her the Heirloom sword and dagger!

Like I mentioned, it was quite an enjoyable experience I had this weekend. Yes, to be honest, I encountered a number of fail PuGs but they were so few you can count them on one hand (I actually had two fail PuGs out of nearly a dozen overall). One group wiped at wave 7 on reg CoS and promptly disbanded - because only me and the healer had ever been there before and the rest got lost inside the Caverns of Time - and the other group disbanded after a fatal 'accident' with the first boss of Occ.

I'm hoping to do at least one random heroic and one random LK instance (for a total of at least 5 Emblem of Triumph and 2 Emblem of Frost per day) to be able to afford Aenur, and later Aelyra, their Tier pieces. Here's to hoping this plan works.

P/S:- It's been decided that I'm running Aenur, Aelyra and Aerhandor daily for my schedule. All of them are more or less capable of fast grinds and even faster gear progression thanks to maxed out Blacksmithing, almost-maxed out Leatherworking, and strokes of luck with equipment upgrades. So there - 3 circuits on 3 toons in 3 hours every day. Bada-dum-tish!

My Impression of 3.3, Part 1

2009-12-10T19:23:00.000-08:00

It's kinda hard for me to put into words how Patch 3.3 has affected me - I don't PuG very much, my adventurers are not yet sufficiently geared for Icecrown instances, and the changes to the UI, although very useful, are merely cosmetic IMO. I can do without the flashing words telling me I'm entering/leaving combat, what buffs/debuffs I'm having and when it's faded and the amount of damage/healing I'm getting... although to a new player, this may all be informative information that he/she might want to know.

I've taken a little time to detach Aenur to Dalaran to take up the cookie trail quest to ICC - you know, the one that points you to the Forge of Souls to meet Dark Lady Sylvanas - and I toured the place a bit. The looks are cool and stuff, but I've not gotten the urge to whip up a group (never did =P ) and thrash the place. On the other hand, Grey, Krae and Dharr apparently has run the place over and over and they've managed to snag their own Quel'Delar in the process (lucky b*stards... I envy them =D ).

Honestly, the change that I'm very much liking is the reputation tweaks. Aerhandor have started again on the Ebon Blade - he's halfway through Revered now - and getting 325 rep per daily instead of the 250 rep is very helpful. The original schedule estimates that it would take him 5 days to get to Exalted, but with the new estimate it would shave a day off. That means I can move him to Tourney dailies slightly faster, and would make Aenur's attempt at Exalted with the Wyrmrest Accord and Sons of Hodir more bearable.

I'll leave my opinion on the patch on 'Pause' right now, since I have an entire weekend coming up where I can finally test the ICC instances and maybe try the Dungeon Finder feature.

Of a Hectic Weekend

2009-12-06T17:28:00.000-08:00

Since this is my first weekend back in Azeroth, naturally I switched over to every single adventurer just so I can get a feel of where they were and where they're going later. Checking up on their professions, skills, talents, gears and so on. Apparently I was so engrossed in the "getting-the-feel" thing that a few levels popped up =D

So, here goes the weekly report:

Aenur - At last count, she has 34 Champion's Seal in her inventory. Another week and she'll be all set to buy the last Heirloom for the lowbie Rogue... then, I'm going to set her out to finally get that Argent Charger she so covets. Aside from doing the usual dailies though, I did not take her anywhere else - looks like she's glued to the Tournament.

Aelyra - I will spare the rep details, but in short the amount of grinding needed for her to get "Crusader" is hellish. She's halfway through TB now, and still need to acquire rep with two more cities (I think it was Org and UC). That's not all though - she's also halfway through Argent Crusade and still need the rep for The Sunreavers. The redeeming point? The dailies circuit she's doing now rewards rep for all those faction, and there's that gold, too.

On the weekends Iily started a run for some Heroics and I volunteered to bring Aelyra with them. Also with us is Tomori, Krae and Vev. We did Nexus (which was the daily) and then VH. Staff of Trickery dropped off Cyannie, and Krae wanted me to have it - but I surprised him when I refused (I DW'ed my Hunter out of preference). Vev took the staff for DE-ing. Both runs helps a lot with Argent Crusade's rep, but I wish there was another run so it can go much higher =(

Aerhandor - In a daring move that defies expectation, Aerhandor soloes Setthek Halls for the achievement, the Shadow Lab key, the Lower City rep (to Honored) and the Terokk's Legacy quest! Well... the only reason I pushed him to do all that is that so he can get the Heroic key to SH and finally attempt to get his Swift Flight Form done.

Then, elated by his achievement and his awesome Druid prowess, in a daring move that defies expectation Aerhandor soloes Hellfire Rampart for the achievement, Thrallmar rep (to Honored) and so that he can get the Heroic key to Hellfire Citadel.

Aside from that, he's been mining Adamantite ore for Aerdread for the whole of Sunday =P

Aerdread - In daring move that defies expectation, Aerdread soloes Setthek Hall... or at least soloes the place up until his demise at Darkweaver Syth's hands/paws/claws?/whatever. Lacking any manner of multiple mob handling (aside from DnD) his death at that arakkoa's minions was swift and painful. Learning his lesson, he went back quietly to Nagrand to contemplate his slow-growing hoofnails. And his slow-growing JC skills.

Aergor - After finishing Tanaris, Aergor flew to Felwood to establish some kind of diplomatic relationship with the Timbermaw furbolgs. He managed to get to Neutral, and to level 51, from sheer grinding. You go, Orc!

Aeyrin - Did some leveling with Aeyrin the Rogue in Stranglegank Vale. Managed to hit level 32. Managed to hit a brick wall, too - I'm parking her in UC until that Heirloom chest item comes through. >.<

One thing that bothered me - how come the Druid can muscle his way through SH without much pain, yet the (OP) DK is stuck during the first boss? Is it because of the gear? Hmm... this calls for an analytical post!

Stay tuned for the Druid versus DK analysis, coming soon to HDWT!

Note: I got the details, I got the general posting idea, but apparently I don't have the time to make the Druid vs DK post for the time being. I'm putting it on hold and maybe do it after Christmas, when there is a lot less demand on my time.

State of BD

2009-12-02T23:57:00.000-08:00

No, the title does not mean I own a state - it's about my current predicament over my adventurers.

At the moment, I'm having four level 80, one level 49, one level 31, one level 27 and two bank alts (at level 39 and level 10 respectively). Out of those toons, only three of them are actually active - the level 80 Hunter, level 80 Paladin and the level 49 Hunter. The rest are either in flux (which means I don't know what to do with them yet), or unable to adventure due to time limitation, or are permanently assigned in the case of the bank alts.

I've compiled a list of what I actually wanted for each of my toons, as well as fix a time period that I'll be playing for each day. Going over these things, I can actually visualize what I need to do and set a realistic objective over a certain period for achievements.

I'll go over the "Wanted" stuffs for my toons first:

Aelyra
Right now Aelyra's primary concern is to get the 'Crusader' title. Don't get me wrong, it's not really the title I'm after, but getting all those factions to Exalted and the chance to get Champion's Seal on a daily basis. I'm planning to have her collect enough Seals so she can purchase Heirlooms for my other alts and mounts that she'd like. Her secondary goal would be to finally corner and tame the elusive Spirit Beast Loque'nahak.

Aenur
Aenur has two things on her head right now - the Argent Charger and the Red Drake. Unfortunately, since she's the only toon capable of grinding dailies for the Champion's Seal at this moment, she's stuck having to spend those Heirlooms on the other alts. Yeah, yeah, I know - "BD, you should buy that Charger first, then concentrate on your alts!". So sue me =P And to think that her rep with the Wyrmrest Accord is still somewhere around Honored... /shudder

So I gotta get Aelyra up there pronto and let Aenur run back to Dragonblight for more grinding...

Aerhandor
When Aerhandor was a young Druid, he aspires to become well-known in the Cenarion's inner circle. To this end, he works hard to gain the Exalted status with the Cenarion Circle and the Cenarion Expedition. He managed to achieve the former, but alas the latter proves slightly harder than he anticipated. Short of soloing some BC instances, there is nothing he can do to improve his standing with them. Also, for reasons that cannot be disclosed, he still has not managed to finish his Swift Flight Form quest, hesitating to initiate that encounter with the Raven Lord even though he is now a full-fledged level 80 Feral Druid. Alas...

Aerdread
Leveling Jewelcrafting. You know how hard it is, right? So stop bugging me about it =P

Aergor (Hunter) / Aeyrin (Rogue)
I'm planning to at least get one of them into Outland before Cataclysm hit - so far, it definitely looks like Aergor will manage that. He should be 51 by this weekend, and maybe with a bit of luck hit the Dark Portal just after Christmas. Aeyrin still has a long way to go, but at least she's making progress in Inscription and Alchemy, thanks to herbs mailed to her by Aergor. Anyway, I'm guessing it wouldn't be too hard for Aeyrin to catch up with the rest of the gang once she has the full set of Heirlooms on her (weapons, armor and trinkets).

What to do once they're 80 then, you might wonder? I honestly don't know yet... I'm weird that way. Or an uncurable altaholic.

Aerdanil
The main reason for the Side-Project is not to actually have a Shadow Priest, but to have a high-level potential healer in my arsenal. Hence the "Side-Project" designation. As for tanking, Aenur already has Protection as her secondary spec, which leaves the healer side of things uncovered. I'm planning to level Aerdanil as Shadow all the way to 80, then get him Dual-Spec and procure a viable healing spec for him. Then I'm going to take the 'healer' out for some test runs and see how I like healing. I probably won't like it, but nothing wrong with giving it a shot, right?

The schedule:

After giving it some consideration, I decided that I have exactly three hours every week day to play - 8.30 p.m. until 11.30 p.m. Weekends are a different matter - I'm thinking of doing some Heroics/raiding only on them since I can't actually fix weekend play time in line with family demands... I'll play when I have the opportunity and time.

So that's it, three hours a day. Anything less and I won't have enough time to finish two circuit of dailies plus some leveling/questing/key activities, and anything more would impact my family time.

Now, the predicament.

With only three hours available daily, I will not be able to squeeze every toon into the schedule. At the very most, only four toons will make it. Two of them are vital - Aelyra and Aenur, my mains - but the rest is still open to debate. I wanted to level my lowbies just as much as I want my other high-end toons to finish their rep grinds. Even with the promise of better leveling experience coming in with Cataclysm, I still want another level 80 toon before the expac hits.

On the other hand, the expac is still some time in coming, and I may end up fulfilling everything I wrote on this post before the release date is announced (I sure do hope so). But realistically, I want to give 100% focus on the final selected toons. No more switching here and there in the middle of the week like previously.

So now I'm considering which of my other toons I should really focus on...

Of Return of the Kin- I mean Adventurers...

2009-11-29T16:59:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I went and bought the game card intending to reload my WoW account - and found out that Blizzard has offered me a 7 days free game time. So I registered for the free days and kept the game card for afterwards =D

The new PC and new 'Net connection are superb (at least for now). I had no DC at all during my 6-hours refresher, and the latency stayed at an average of 700 ms. Although the sound is a bit muffled in my opinion, the overall experience is a good one.

Anyways, on to the adventurers!

Aenur did some Argent Tourney dailies just for warm-ups - I had a slightly hard time accustoming myself to playing WoW again. No death though, just some silly mistakes: Not having a Blessing of Might up until about 3 dailies in, not using the Art of War procs to throw an Exorcism... things like that. Managed to clean the circuit in about an hour though - I still recall where to go and how to do the dailies, at least.

I had intended to take Aelyra out for her dailies, but decided to test Aeyrin the Rogue first. Got hooked playing her and went to take her from level 28 to level 30 in Ashenvale. I decided that the next heirloom would be one for her =p

Next up is Aergor. I was planning to take him to Tanaris to finish some quests and maybe move him into Un'goro, but a sudden insight hit me - maybe I can try Feralas? And that's how I managed to snag ten quests and a level (from 47 to 48). Still a lot to do, so I may let him stay here and finish the zone.

Oh - and I did let all my toons get their Onyxia Whelping and Chilly the Penguin from their mail. Managed to get the WoW 5th Anniversary achievement too - I thought I'd have to miss out on those. Lucky me ^_^

I will need to do a proper schedule after this - I'm not going to have so much free time as before, as I'll need to look after my son Adam too. Maybe a 3-hours a day schedule, where I'm going to focus on dailies and maybe one Heroic run, and the weekends will be leveling and farming. I'll be sure to note it down so I'll have a point of reference (and to avoid WoW becoming out of control =p ). But two things are for certain.

One, I'm attempting to go into regular Heroic/Raiding business. Two, I'm BACK! =D

...umm, hello again?

2009-11-23T19:54:00.000-08:00

I can't believe it's been almost three months since I last logged in - my, how time flies!

I have a very cute and quite healthy son now in my life, and my wife is doing fine after the delivery surgery (yes, it was a Caesarean). Work is piling up, but that's to be expected come year end - budgets to be looked into, rates to be reviewed, contracts to be renewed... On the other hand, I did manage to grab a brand new PC tailor-made to my request. Unfortunately, due to budget constraint at the time (coupled with the 'no WoW at the moment' thinking) I opted to not install the WiFi network card. She'll cook, but she'll not surf >.<

I was impressed with the stark difference in performance, to be honest. My old PC took almost 5 minutes to start (from switch on to Windows) and could not run some of my games at default video settings - I always have to turn them to Low.

With the new PC, it goes from switch on to Vista in less than a minute. I got to finally play Company of Heroes at home, I can play NFS Most Wanted with the graphic settings cranked to Very High, the older games were almost 'instant-start-up' and hassle free...

...okay, enough gloating, methinks =p

I'm planning to re-activate my WoW account some time in December, subject to situational changes in the house. My wife has no objection to it - with the compromise that I stay up during the night for diaper sessions - so it's a matter of getting a reload card and installing that WiFi network card.

So... here's to hoping that Aelyra, Aenur, Aerhandor, Aeyrin, Aerdread and the rest of the gang will be able to continue adventuring in Azeroth (and beyond) in a few weeks' time.

Important Notice!

2009-09-14T00:57:00.000-07:00

Due to some technical issues, I'm temporarily halting my WoW play with immediate effect.

...well, actually, I was forced to halt my play =P

The long version:- I have a seasoned PC of my own, from way back in 2004, that I used to play all manner of games that I bought (including WoW). However, as time passes the PC was unable to cope with the more modern game requirements, so I upgraded it in 2006 with additional RAM and a secondary hard disk. In June 2009, the power supply blew and I was forced to borrow my mother's laptop. I installed WoW on a portable hard disk and used it to play WoW on the laptop.

Last week, however, the laptop died - of a corrupted Windows. My mother, being slightly less than knowledgable of matters such as corrupted systems and such, blamed me and the game and decided that once the laptop is repaired (cost borne by me), I will have no more access to it.

Oh, and I forgot to mention - after my own PC died, I was planning to buy a new PC to replace it but my mother thinks it's a waste of money and rants about me not choosing the cheaper option (i.e: repair it). The old PC was an Intel P4 with 516MB RAM and a 250MB primary hard disk... post-upgrade. You would not want to know the spec pre-upgrade, trust me.

Sigh. And to make things worse, my gamecard subscription ends this month.

I had a quick chat with Mommy Ztormcloud (one of the guild officers, and the one I knew since day one in TTH) and planned to shift whatever resources/mats I have on all alts into the guild vault, so anyone can use them. Why? Well, I'm still positive that I can solve the PC-less situation, but with the baby coming soon I forecast that the PC will be arriving on the same time as the baby - which means BABY FIRST WOW LATER moments =)

TL: DR version:- RL stuff has hit the fan, so I'm taking a break from WoW effective today. BBL!

Oh, and sorry I could not make the story like I promised. >.<

Of Dailies, Tanaris and the Side-Project

2009-09-07T19:10:00.000-07:00

It was a long weekend - Monday was a public holiday here in my state - and I've had ample time to do everything that needed to be done. A story will be incoming (I'm still working on the draft, so hang in there) but as usual, let's see what further improvements have been made, shall we?

Aenur - I've decided to hold off on further spending of Champion Seals on Heirlooms, and instead focus her effort on getting the Argent Charger (the Paladin-exclusive mount from the Tourney). I estimate it would take her another two weeks to get it since she's only at the 27 Seal count as of yesterday. And no, no Heroics - it's Labour Day weekend in the US and most of my guildies are spending time with their families =)

Aelyra - As a note: Yes, I have nailed down the Champion jousting encounter with an unorthodox tactic suggested to me by a friend, and Aelyra is now Champion of Silvermoon and Sen'jin. She's already Exalted with the Trolls since before Wrath, so it's just a matter of accumulating enough Valiant Seals to unlock the Champion challenge. With the Argent Crusade Tourney dailies unlocked, she's a quarter into Revered with them now, and I expect her to be Exalted with Sunreavers, Warsong Offensive and Argent Crusade by end of the month. The faction cities would take slighly longer, though.

Aerhandor - Still moving through the Ebon Blade dailies. I did divert him to Tanaris for some farming expedition, but aside from that, no stories to tell. =(

Aerdread - Shelved for the time being. I did take him to help out Wong with a quest in Grizzly Hills (the one where you bash down the corrupted Bear God or something) but then got tired of doing the filler dailies. That, plus no time to actually finish the entire circuit with Aenur, Aelyra and Aerhandor in the same day.

Aergor - Leveled him from 45 to 47, increased his professions (especially First Aid and Cooking) and with Aerhandor's farming and Aelyra's Leatherworking, he's now fully decked in Tough Scorpid gear. I bought him a Guttbuster as an upgrade to his weapon, and maybe in a few days upgrade his axes. Most of the quests left for him in Tanaris is oranged, so I'm planning to take him to Feralas where he can get a level or two before returning to Tanaris and mopping it up.

Aerdanil - Here's where things got interesting: I took the Side-Project for an initial Heirloom testing foray and ended up so taken in by the Priest's skills and playstyle that I seriously leveled him from 23 to 27. I don't know the exact rotation a lowbie Shadow Priest would actually use, but mine went - MB, SW:P, Devouring Plague then PW:Shield when mob is meleeing then wand him to death. If the mob flees I use Mind Flay. Sure, the drain on mana is intensive, but I have the Rogue churning out mana pots like a factory so no trouble there. Aerdanil is now in Ashenvale, finishing up the Warsong Supplies and The Lost Pages quests and hopefully dinging 28 in the process. Afterwards, I'm making him head back into Hillsbrad to finish the Battle of Hillsbrad quest chain then further onwards to Arathi. I think I'm liking this Side-Project already =P

Aeyrin - The Rogue is now on hold pending Heirloom items delivery (which will be done by Aelyra). I'm making her craft up mana and health pots for Aerdanil - she has quite a large herb stockpile in the bank courtesy of Aergor.

I think that's about it. Oh - and don't forget about the story! I'm planning to finish the draft by tomorrow and posting it by this Friday, so keep an eye out for it. /wink

Jousting - Oh, How I Hate You So

2009-09-03T20:09:00.001-07:00

As expected, Aelyra dinged Exalted with Silvermoon City last night after handing in her dailies. So now it's time to take the jousting test again. I wasn't apprehensive at that point - I had done the Grand Melee quest over and over before, and I know how the Argent Champion NPC fights. And even though the comp's saying 1k latency and 11 fps, I wasn't daunted - I've done jousts under worst conditions, so I figured, "Meh, let's get this over with."

Equipped the lance, mounted the Hawkstrider, and away to Squire Danny I go.

And got my butt handed to me in all three matches (the first attempt, plus two subsequent attempts).

At first I was amazed - how could this be? Since when did the Argent Champion became godlike at jousting? Or had my own skills atrophied? But on the fourth attempt, when I closely observe the fight, it became crystal clear. He was CHEATING!! There was no other way to explain it - He was charging and throwing Shield-Breakers at point-blank range, while my Shield-Breakers were screeching 'Target was too close'. His skill cooldowns were non-existant, he can basically use Charge, Shield-Breaker and Shield within half a second from one another. He had me down to half-health and no shields while he's barely scratched! I was incensed - time to call in the cavalry! A guildie, Roywen, answered my distress call and came in all ready to Shadowbolt and take names - but when the fight started, the Argent Champion automatically ended the match. Wha...?

Turns out Blizzard had re-tooled the fight so that any outside interference would disqualify the attempt.

I would hereby state my official stand on the matter - This quest should be rated poorly. Whoever implemented this is doing so without taking into account the lag on the player's side, the difference between NPC skill CDs and the player's, as well as being buggy enough (NPC ran all the way out of the ring during the fight and claim auto-victory) that you cannot find the 'fun' in it. Heck, you can't even use any of the innate strength of your class to win - you are fully limited to 3 basic skills on your mount.

As of now, Aelyra is stuck on The Valiant's Challenge... at least until I find out that the latency has dropped and the connection is stable enough for me to at least stand on equal lag ground with the blasted cheating Champion. Until then, I would have no choice but to lose every against him and hear his mocking voice saying:

"You are not good enough to become Champion. Come back after you have more training."

Hah - easy for you to say, cheater.

EDIT: Finally nailed the encounter with an unorthodox but highly effective tactic - which took almost 5 minutes for a single joust >.< I would not mention the tactic here, because it gives me more dishonor points than being AFK during a BG.

Apologies for the Late Updates

2009-09-01T19:03:00.000-07:00

First of all, I would like to apologise for not updating the blog recently. My time was taken by several RL matters that cannot be avoided - the baby's coming, and preparations had to be made. It's also the fasting month here, so I'd be away from the PC during the night for fast-breaking and also for tarawih prayers. My young sister and her husband is moving into a new condo and I'd be pitching in to help with some furniture moving, and my wife still needs me to send her to or pick her up from the workplace. So there =)

But I still managed to complete most of what I planned for my travelers ^_^ So, like before, I'll summarize what they'd done during the week:

Aenur - She has diligently done her dailies day in and day out, collecting Champion Seals and sending every 100G she made off to the bank. She's helped purchase some Heirlooms for the Side-Project (more on that later) and... well, has not managed to run further Heroics due to my time constraint /sadpanda

Aelyra - Is working hard to try to get where Aenur is now, so she can help with the Champion Seal hoarding. Almost Exalted with Silvermoon though - may just ding it tonight, then start to work on the next faction (will probably be the Darkspears). She's also raking in Sunreavers, Argent Crusade and Warsong Offensive rep at the same time, which definitely helps in reducing the overall time needed to get the Crusader title. Also, no Heroics due to time constraint /sadderpanda

Aerhandor - The Druid is currently on a "if I can make the time" status. He's just hit Revered now with the Knights of the Ebon Blade, but since I'm focusing my efforts on both my mains, I only take him on dailies if I can make the time. He's still got a long way to go, though.

Aerdread - Doing the filler dailies, as mentioned previously. Revered with the Kalu'ak, halfway through Honored with Wyrmrest if I recalled correctly. Aside from that, not doing anything else. I may have to plan something for him, though... just to shake off the doldrums.

As for the rest of the posse, I did a lot of leveling and re-equipping and what-nots on the weekends during any available time. Gotta love low-level toons - you can work wonders with them in 30 minutes than with a full-blown level 80 =P

Aergor - Leveled him from 42 to 45, moved him out of Stranglegank Vale into Tanaris. Not much improvement in gear, since I can't find the time to farm the necessary mats to make him the Tough Scorpid set. I'll see if I can make the time this weekend.

Aerdanil - Leveled his Tailoring a bit. Received his second BoA - the Tattered Dreadmist Robe - and took him for a spin. Got him to level 23 before I ran out of time and had to park him again.

Aeyrin - Leveled her to 28, almost fallen in love again with the Rogue. Almost - almost - bought the BoA shoulder for her instead of the robe for the Side-Project. Maxed out her Alchemy at 200/200, continued leveling her Inscription with the Minor Glyph Research, and currently thinking whether to seriously level her or the Priest >.<

I think that's it for the updates. Since I have no additional plans for the weekends, I suppose I should start thinking what else to post besides updates and the occasional RL stuff, eh?

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

2009-08-23T19:02:00.000-07:00

So, the new WoW expansion has caught everyone by surprise - not to say that people are not expecting it, but the content has definitely blindsided everyone. And that includes me.

In my opinion, Blizzard once again has done a marvelous job. New races, new classes combination, new professions, and most of all the cataclysmic disaster that changed the face of Azeroth as we know it forever. No more empty Old World, no more deserted Azshara/Barrens/Desolace jokes, no more peaceful and tranquil old starter zones. It does bring out the nostalgic part in me. But the opportunity to explore contents that was once familiar does bring forth an excitement - what will we find? How has the land changed?

On one part though, I'm deeply saddened from a lore point of view. Previously, when Neltharion went missing after his defeat at the hand of the combined Dragon Aspects, speculations were abound about what he was up to, where is he and such. A part of me was secretly hoping that, like the Saronite Mine Slaves, he was merely tormented by the ancient whispers of the Old Gods and now that he has failed, they will discard him and move on to the next victim (like Loken). Freed from the grips of the Old Gods, he would be ashamed of what he has done and would seek redemption by returning to offer assistance to the war against the Lich King.

Sad to see that Neltharion has indeed return - but not as a redeemer, but as a destroyer inflamed by thoughts of vengeance.

More thoughts on the expansion later - I wasn't at Blizzcon, and so had to formulate my opinions based on information obtained from Wow.com, the Ten Ton Hammer forums and other bloggers.

Oh, and just for the record - Yes, my toons are active this past weekend, and yes, Aenur did get some good drops. No, I'm not posting anything about them, because I need to go through mountainful of stuff about the new expansion. Maybe in a couple of days I'll post something new. =)

My First Heirloom...

2009-08-19T21:33:00.000-07:00

...is the Tattered Dreadmist Mantle I bought off the Argent Crusade's quartermaster for 60 Champion Seals.

Aerdanil the Side-Project now looks cool wearing dead goat skulls on his shoulders - I may wait until I can get him the 'Skull on a Stick' before taking him on a spin to level 30!

Of Exalted, Transfers, and Blackouts

2009-08-16T18:53:00.000-07:00

Last weekend went pretty much as planned, except for the unexpected power loss to the housing area where I am when I was doing a PuGged normal Trial of the Champions - that 45-minutes of no power pretty much doomed Aerhandor's chance of getting in a group with those 4 people ever again.

This incident would've only annoy me... if it wasn't for the fact that on the previous Sunday the same housing area was left without power for 3 hours, right when I was in a guild run in a Heroic. What is it with the useless energy company? The blackouts are coming more regularly this year - I think there's been half a dozen incident on this area alone. Maybe I should start marking the incident and then write a public complaint =P

Anyway, rants aside - here's the updates. As I mentioned, it's pretty much what I've planned previously, with only a little adjustment.

Aenur's almost done maxing out the Oracles rep, which I estimate will take another two days at most, and her first Oracles egg yielded a Cobra Hatchling, which promptly went to Aerdanil the Side-Project (netted him an achievement in the process). Her Champion Seals' cache is growing, and she should be able to buy something in the following week. I made her run some Heroics with the guildies (we got Heroic version of Trial of the Champions, Utgarde Keep and Pinnacle, and Violet Hold down in one go) and that made her some Emblems of Conquests. She also got the Majestic Silversmith Shoulderplates and Gauntlets of Capture for her efforts.

Aelyra is now Exalted with SoH - got her Ice Mammoth too - and has begun training as an Argent Aspirant at the Tournament. She'll make it to Valiant this evening if all goes well. At the same time, she's following the daily circuit previously done by Aenur: Doing this dailies will net her rep with The Sunreavers, Warsong Offensive and Argent Crusade. Hopefully, by the time she's a Crusader she'll max out rep with all these factions.

Aerhandor has obtained the penguin pet after getting Exalted with the Kalu'ak, and is now officially in Icecrown, and has started on the Knights of the Ebon Blade's rep. I thought about upgrading his gear, which is uninspiring, which led me to join the afore-mentioned PuG... and which as you know, ended in disaster for me. Bleargh... I hate you, local energy company. Please record that for future reference.

The little adjustment in the setup came with Aerdread. With so much dailies among the four of them to cramp into an average schedule of less than 3 hours, I decided to make Aerdread do the filler circuit... and results immediately shows - he's now Honored with Wyrmrest and got the Fang of Truth for an option to dual-wield it with the Reaper of Dark Souls.

As for the rest of the gang - Aergor dinged 42 after some high-octane caffeine-filled quest running in Dustwallow Marsh. Aeyrin the Rogue and Aerdanil the Side-Project has no level advancement, but made up for that with steady increases in their professions. Oh, and Aerander the bank alt reports the accumulated level of money in the bank has now reached 12k. Booyah!

Musings...

2009-08-10T19:43:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about re-positioning my major toons, who are currently dispersed throughout Northrend trying to bring the forces of the Lich King to their knees. At the moment, this is the setup:

Aenur - Now parked at Sholazar Basin, doing the Oracles dailies for the achievement and immediately afterwards heading to Icecrown to do Argent Tourney dailies for the Champion Seals. Her purpose? To get enough seals to buy Aerdanil the Side-Project and Aeyrin the Rogue their Heirloom items. I'm thinking of making her dive into Heroics whenever possible, to accumulate enough Emblems and buy a Tier-class armor... which she still has none, poor girl. Aside from that, no changes.

Aelyra - She's hanging around K3 in The Storm Peaks, just a flight point away from her SoH dailies. She's about halfway through Revered right now - probably will make it to Exalted in about a week. I'm keen to finish it as soon as possible, since after that I will be sending her to join Aenur in my quest to accumulate enough Champion Seals for my nefarious purposes. And like Aenur, I'm thinking of making her do Heroics and get her Tier-class armor before the end of August.

Aerhandor - He's now doing what I call 'filler dailies circuit' - Kalu'ak and Wyrmrest - named so because of the relative ease of the circuit and the short amount of time in order to do it (4 dailies in 2 separate zones in under 25 minutes). He's about to get Exalted with the Kalu'ak, and once he does (and gets the baby penguin hehe...) I'm sending him to Icecrown to open up the Ebon Blade dailies and make him grind the rep all the way to Exalted. At the same time, I need to assemble the gear requirement for him because he's still in mostly Eviscerator PvP, which is not good enough for me. I'll need to get mats to make him his own Titansteel Destroyer, but at least with Aelyra's help he's now sporting a cool Trollwoven Spaulders and Trollwoven Girdle.

Aerdread - Now in Argent Tournament ground. Recently he hit 440 in Engineering. And that's it. Well... in truth he has been grinding Thunder Bluff and The Sunreavers rep, but being a DK he has a bit of a handicap with major city reps (not having done enough lowbie quests, hence most faction standing at Honored or below). So instead of making him slough through that, I'm deploying him to The Storm Peaks to replace Aelyra once she's transferred to Icecrown. Hopefully by the time he hits Exalted with SoH (and get that Mammoth) I will have new assignments for him.

In other news, levelling for all alts (including Aergor) will have to be suspended until the mains have their Tier-class armor (noticed how much I want them, yet? =D ).

3.2: The Weekend after da Patch

2009-08-10T00:17:00.000-07:00

Honestly, I was expecting the weekend to be a standard 'try-the-patch-experience' and then it would be back to levelling my alts.

I was wrong.

Saturday noon (would be around midnight in the US), Aergor was in Orgrimmar getting his 100% mount and riding skill after dinging 40 a few minutes before. We were inspecting the fierce Swift Brown Wolf Aergor had taken a liking to when something in Trade channel caught my eyes - "LF Tank & 2 DPS for ToC"

Interesting - I had wondered about seeing the new instance, but slightly apprehensive about the quality of the PuG (after reading so much about 'em anyway). But fate always favored the bold, no? So I whispered back, saying that I can bring my other Hunter in, and was promptly met with agreement. So I switched to Aelyra (by this time Aergor's whine had reached record level) and flew from Storm Peaks to the Tournament ground. The original advertiser is a Blood Elf Hunter, epicly geared, and they had a Undead DK tanking. Soon after, we're joined by a Tauren Shaman and Druid, which is our DPS and healer respectively. All were geared in epic, with the exception of the DK, who incidently has 80% epics and the rest in blues.

Only then did a few facts emerged - this is everyone's first time doing the Trial of Champion, and this is the DK's first time tanking. Apprehension turned into something colder in my stomach... even though the group leader announced that they'll be trying this in normal mode. Well, Aelyra and I are going to see first-hand whether fate really favors the bold.

Long story cut short - we wiped. On the encounter where we were automatically dismounted after the last Alliance Champion was felled. Aelyra got 3-shotted by the nasty Gnome mage and our healer by the nasty Human Paladin/Warrior. But since they reset afterwards, the following happened - we lined up for payback and wiped the floor with them. The following encounter - Argent Confessor Blondie and her posse - was a lot easier, even when she summoned the Memory. But on the Black Knight, again we wipe to his Ghoul Explosion (arrr, I r asploded). We managed to down him finally with the DK's DnD and some Volleys.

It was an exhilirating experience - a PuG that just wouldn't give up. We agreed to give the Trial another run (since most of the drops were healer materiel, our healer wants none of it and so it was rolled for vendoring) and this one goes smooth as... well, not as smooth as a perfect run, there were a few deaths, but we didn't wipe. And after that, finally getting the feel of the encounters, we did it a third time. Aelyra managed to grab the Belt of Merciless Cruelty, so her thirst for epic for the day was sated =D

On other fronts, Aerdanil the Side-Project Priest and Aeyrin the Rogue got their Riding skill and mount, Aenur the Paladin ran Heroic AN with fellow guildies Jalkatra, Rage, Oat and Kragg (although sadly that was cut short by a local power failure), some Seals and Emblems were collected and overall, it was a hectic yet productive weekend. I'm looking forward to the following weekend - I wanna try and trample the next Champion in the upcoming Trial muahahaha!

Patch 3.2's Arrival

2009-08-05T20:13:00.000-07:00

Honestly, I wasn't expecting Patch 3.2 to hit this early - I was speculating that the earliest the patch would hit was on next Tuesday. Heh... that shows how much I'm unfit to be a weatherman or stock broker, hehehe...

Anyways, back to Patch thingie.

The changes to the mount system has got to be the one improvement that I'm looking forward to. Now that the level requirement has been lowered to level 20, I can now manage to get both Aeyrin the Rogue and Aerdanil the Priest their mount and the skill to ride it. It was a great improvement, seeing the land zip by as you move from one area to the other. This will definitely make levelling a lot faster, and get those delivery quests done sooner. I'm appreciative of what Blizzard has done with this - GOOD JOB! ^_^

After that, I took Aenur out to see the completed Coliseum - which is quite astounding, IMHO - and tried out the new dailies that were implemented. The theory was simple, the execution was not. There's about half a dozen people already there at the quest location, swarming over the quest mob as soon as the bugger spawned. So I took a few minutes to scout the entire area, getting the overall picture into my head, and once most of the peeps are gone, I managed to snag the quest mob without opposition. Got Aenur the new Argent Crusade tabard (now with hearth options!) which definitely looks good on her - the gold borders add a royalty feel to the otherwise standard Argent colors.

Next - Aerhandor the Druid. The new Bear form looks awesome - I can almost touch the new shiny fur... but his Cat form borders on disaster. True, the form is cooler than the old model, but the coloration? Uugh... Guess I may have to get used to it, or if I can't, I'm gonna drag him to the Barber's Shop and dye him in something else.

Aerdread's talent points have been reset - luckily, I did wrote down his spec before the Patch hits, so I just assign points as per. Otherwise, I don't think I should change his spec without further testing.

The Coliseum new instances calls out to me - I know it. But being busy with work and preparation for the baby (shopping, etc.), I may have to postpone any run to the weekends. I hear there's jousting (/shudder), which I'm bad at. Oh, sure, the Valiants are pushovers when you get the rotation down, but the darn Champions cheat, and cheat a lot. So... if everything is alright tonight, I may just move Aenur and Aerdread to the Tournament ground and let them run the instances first (with guildies' help, of course).

Oh, by the way - I need to get as much Champion Seals as possible, those new Heirloom chests will do wonders for my levelling alts...

Of Moar Leveling

2009-08-04T00:16:00.000-07:00

After much deliberation, I finally decided that it's time to get Aergor out of the 'small league' and move him into the big boys' field. So last Saturday, I kept dailies on a bare minimum and focused on leveling the Orc.

I started off at Hammerfall, in Arathi Highlands - Aergor massacred boatloads of Syndicate mens, Witherbark Trolls (I think that's the tribe anyways) and Ogres. Then he massacred some Stromgarde defenders and some wild raptors and spiders before saying good-bye and headed off back towards Stranglegank.

In Stranglegank, the bloodthirsty Hunter finished off the Nesingwary circus quests, dinging 37 in the process. A visit to Booty Bay to pick up some quests (I got a maxed-out quest log, which surprised me since I have never gotten THAT message before) and then it's back to killing more stuff that moves, breathes or actually stand on it's own feet. I'm starting to wonder if Aergor has a personality of a psychopath in him...

After his ???? kills later - Ding 38! Off to Grom'gol to get some small, almost insignificant skills from the Hunter trainer and then it's back to more killing and questing...

...but honestly, all those bloodshed has made me a bit green in the face, so I parked him at the nearest inn and switched to Aerdanil the Priest. I goofed around Ghostlands a bit with him and before I know it, Ding 20!

Dear Blizzard, I know some people hated your guts for all those nerfs you made to their favorite class. I know some wicked souls have cursed you due to failure on your part to make Druid forms more lovable. God knows I sometimes threw flak at you for some perceived error I think originated from you. But know this - I'm grateful that you see fit to have double XP for all my rested toons.

Next time, I'm buying you a drink 8-)

Of Progress (or lack of it)

2009-07-26T20:59:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-19T20:32:00.000-07:00

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!!

2009-07-16T00:51:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-07-13T20:09:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-13T19:45:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-05T20:30:00.000-07:00

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

First Post: Introduction

2009-06-21T23:40:00.000-07:00

I've always wanted to post about my everyday adventures in WoW - be it about my characters' first baby steps in Azeroth, their first "Ding!", the first time they stepped through the Dark Portals... and after much contemplation, I decided to start a blog about it.

Mind you, this will not be a blog about min-maxing your characters. This will not be a blog telling you how to play your Death Knight or Hunter. No - this will be MY blog, telling you WHAT I did. So none of that "u r doin it wrong" nonsense. You want min-maxing, go to Elitist Jerks - they have enough to feed you and your ego.

Right - a little about myself. My name - as I would like to be known here - is Black Dragon, but you can call me Dragon for short. I'm from Southeast Asia and I would rather not name the country for fear of being stalked by paparazzi and anime fan-girls. I usually spend about 3 hours daily on the game, since the rest of my time is taken by work and my lovely wife... and soon, by a third member of the family ^_^

So... what can I tell about my style? I'm what you might call a casual player. I don't do much raiding (well, none since BC), Heroics are few and far between chunks of dailies, I fuss more on my characters' choices of mount and titles than their best-in-slot... oh, and I'm a terrible PvPer. I still remember how my level 70 Retribution Paladin got pawned by a level 70 Discipline Priest in AV...

I currently have 5 active characters - a level 80 Retribution Paladin (the same one mentioned above), a level 80 BM Hunter, a level 80 Feral Cat Druid, a level 80 Blood DK and a level 24 BM Hunter. My other characters are either bank alts or on cold storage at the moment.

You might have noticed that all my characters are DPS-oriented. That's correct - I play no tanks or healers, and the choice is actually taken away from my hand. Where I am, the 'Net connection is horrendous, and I get DC-ed at least once every 45 minutes. Imagine me tanking a Heroic boss, and DC-ing in the middle of the fight - guaranteed wipe. So, in order not to let that happen, I spec DPS... well, the Paladin does have Protection as his secondary spec, but I rather not test my 'Net reliability with 4 other persons' time investment.

I guess that would do for a first post - I'll do a dossier for each of my characters before going to the meat of the blog - my adventures in WoW.

Until then - Have Dragon, will travel.