Weekly Updates: No Love for Lag

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

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.

The Return of BD

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!!

... 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

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

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

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.

Of Quick Updates

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

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

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!

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

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?

Of Noblegardening... and Other Stuff

...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.

Of... blearkh, Latency Issue Again

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

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!

Of Grinding the Same Stuff Over and Over...

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

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)

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

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.

Of Being Fast, Furious and Confused

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.