Archive for the ‘Achievements’ Category

Wow, how long has it been since I’ve updated here? Oh yeah – almost two months, not counting my sporadic post last month. Well, I’ve been playing just about as much. Gav’s been sitting on the shelf recently, and none of my alts have gotten much burn either. However, I did log Gav in long enough to do the Midsummer Festival boss, Ahune.

Ahune = Dead. He wasn’t very hard (I’d researched him prior to the battle), and nary a word was spoke during the battle. Kinda boring. Actually, that’s kind of why I’ve taken time off from the game. The same old sterile dungeon runs have gotten old. I’ll certainly be in allot when Cataclysm hits, but as it stands right now, I have little drive to play. Oh well.

I ran Azjol’ Nerub tonight with a decent PUG, but the final boss gave us trouble. At one point our tank was dying and the healer (a dwarf priest) was struggling to keep up with the damage, so I pitched in with my Flash of Light spell. On another occasion, after a wave of mobs in that battle, our DPS warrior was down to 20% health. Our healer was busy doing who-knows-what (he seemed to think that healing the tank was his only job) so I was going to hit the warrior with a Sacred Shield and then a Flash of Light, but then the boss popped back up. With no time left, I fired off my Lay on Hands spell to put the warrior right. We then finished off the boss as I activated Avenging Wrath to lay the ‘smack down’, as they say.

This was after a Wintergrasp match where I notched a slew of kills and only died once. With a rather balanced match, the Horde had little to no tenacity, making the battles easier. The other day I was in Wintergrasp to see about buying some stuff with my Stone Keeper’s Shards when I was jumped by a Tauren shaman. He hit me with Thunderstorm and caught me off guard. When I finally realized what was happening, I was down to 40% health. Fortunately, I was still on my gryphon so I flew away to heal. When I got back, he was pulling the same trick on a few other players. I landed behind him, and it was Hammer of Justice, Crusader Strike, Divine Storm, Hammer of Wrath, game over. Seriously, it was one of those kills where it was over before the stun wore off. I hate those when I’m on the receiving end, but proud when I pull it off. This after whopping that Orc warrior in WG the other day. I think I can somewhat hold my own one-on-one with an average-skill or lower PvP player these days. Not bad, says I.

Oh yeah, and that PUG I mentioned at the start? I got a Pug for that PUG, thanks to an achievement. Nice!

Today I got my first holiday meta-achievement, Noble Gardener. I finally found someone in the Elegant Dress and got my last achievement I needed. While I’ll never come close to getting a Violet Proto-Drake for the year-long meta, this was fun.

I just spent three and half hours playing WoW, and still didn’t accomplish what I set out to do. My goal was to complete the Noblegarden meta, but I came up one Blushing Bride short. I thought that Dressed for the Occasion was needed for the meta, so I spent two-plus hours farming eggs around Kharanos, outside Ironforge. When I finally figured out it wasn’t needed, I’d gotten 275 chocolates, two white tux shirts, a pair of black tux pants, three spring circlets, four spring flowers, three blossoming branches and five spring robes, but zero elegant dresses. I had found my spring rabbit’s foot earlier, so I got that achievement, and I met some random dwarf priest out in Un’Goro Crater and we helped each other get hard boiled.

I then wandered back into Dalaran, and opted to go to Wintergrasp and see about maybe joining a Vault of Archavon raid. I didn’t, but while I was sitting peacefully in Wintergrasp Fortress’ inner sanctum, I was jumped by an Orc warrior. He got me pretty beat up, but I got to the transporter and  escaped outside the inner room to heal. I buffed myself up and then headed back in to face him one-on-one in a fair match. He was pounding on an AFK dwarven hunter, so I hit him with Hammer of Justice and promptly beat him down. Yes! The dwarf gave me a high five as he got back to his keys while I was finishing the Orc. With healing spells, a good stun, and strong melee powers (plus the ever-popular bubble), some days it’s good to be a paladin.

In what can be seen by some as ‘emblematic’ of the casual route WoW is said to be on, there’s a new Feat of Strength achievement to be had in patch 3.3.3: Emblematic. This is an easy achievement, and if you’ve done any dungeon delving in Northrend, you’ve probably got this one. Some would say that it’s too easy of an achievement to be a Feat of Strength, but may I remind them that there are Feats of Strength for just logging in. Argument over.

I spent a good hour-plus in Nagrand last night, grinding out the last thousand or two rep I needed with the Kurenai faction. I love Nagrand, the appearance and the layout… but I hate that damned rep grind. As I was winding it up, I had conflicting emotions. I would no longer have a reason to come to Nagrand, one of my favorite zones in the game, but at the same time, I would be done with those stupid ogres.

Well, I finally got it. After buying up a couple of their mounts, I got something else, too.

Yay! My very own Albino Drake! This made allot of that grinding worth it. Actually, this was why I was doing this in the first place; I was about four mounts short of my goal. and this – believe it or not – was the fastest way to get those last few mounts. I now have a handful of Talbuks, as well. Nice.

By the way, this is the only known pic of Beta’s Tauren druid. I’m not going to spill her name right now, because of privacy concerns, but I will say that Beta got it outright on her first try. Yes, it’s an odd one.

She’s not played since, but she’s also not been home much since. We’ll see if she ever tries the game again.

Tonight was my first random dungeon run, and it was with an all-guild group. We landed in Utgarde Pinnacle, and it was an experience. We didn’t do bad through the first part, but the first ‘gimicky’ boss was a trick. Skadi the Ruthless was tough, and I almost died twice; once via the ice his dragon spat on the walkway and once from his whirlwind attack. But hey, we kicked his ass. Onwards to the next and final boss, King Ymiron. He was a pushover of epic proportions. He ran through his four ‘boat’ abilities in no time and then died at our feet. Hence, we cleared the dungeon. No big deal. I didn’t do too bad, but I did almost get myself killed while walking to the group and accidentally aggroing a series of baddies. Not the best long-life plan, I know.

I’d call tonight a successful evening. Let’s rattle off the achievements I got tonight, in order.

1. Northern Exposure
2. The Winds of the North
3. 5 Exalted Reputations
4. Ambassador of the Alliance
5. Champion of the Exodar
6. Exalted Champion of the Exodar

In all, this netted me two titles (Ambassador and “- of the Exodar”), some Mammoth-Riding Boots for killing Tukemuth for Northern Exposure, access to the Mekgineer’s Chopper engineering plans, and one “Damn, you’re on a roll” from a guildie.  All in all it was a good night’s work.

Another day, another accomplishment I never thought I’d see. I was brought along by some of my guild to help with the Amphitheater of Anguish in Zul’Drak. However, one of our party members misunderstood and thought we were doing the Ring of Blood in Nagrand, so they hearthed to Dalaran and took the portal to Shattrath. Once we corrected her, she was in a pinch since her hearthstone was now down. She had to go from Shatt to Ironforge, and then to Menethil Harbor in the Wetlands to take the boat there back to Northrend. She got there and we completed the quests all the way up through Champion of Anguish, netting me Of Blood and Anguish since I’d already done the Ring of Blood almost 20 levels ago. We were interrupted by some Horde during our attempts, so when they tried to do it, we screwed with them. As my guild leader said, payback’s a *****. On a related note, I was near the top of the DPS charts for most of the battles.

Earlier in the day, I was in Storm Peaks when I got a whisper asking for help to kill one Sirana Iceshriek. I joined in with a level 77 paladin, a level 78 mage and a level 80 warrior. The warrior and I did most of the work, but the mage helped some. While waiting for the group to assemble, the paladin challenged me to a duel. You know how you hear about ret pallys killing folks in the span of one Hammer of Justice? It was just like that. I stunned him, judged Seal of the Martyr, and fired off a Crusader Strike – the end. He said he wanted a rematch someday, so I told him I’d see him around.

Lastly, I bought some Hateful Gladiator’s Scaled Gauntlets with my Wintergrasp-earned honor and a Pendant of Azure Dreams with my Champion’s Seals. Nice, huh?

My fears were misplaced. My guild’s second in command and another high ranking officer invited me along to do the Leeeeeeeeeeeroy! achievement at Blackrock Spire. Myself and the other newcomers were a little lost as to a strategy to achieve this (we just hacked away at the whelps like crazy), but with my senior guild members there we got it done. Here’s a pic of our success.

Pretty cool shot, huh? I announced that I was hearthing back to Dalaran for a pint, and invited whoever wanted to come with me. Both my senior guildies joined me and we drank to our success.

However…

We weren’t there long when a mass mammoth migration took place in Dalaran. See for yourself:

That’s just a handful of the mammoths parading around Dalaran. And of all things, one of my senior guildies – the second-in-command – joined in (you can see him here; he’s the gnome with the green hair)! This was one of those surreal MMO moments that reminds you that you’re playing with other humans. It was just too weird to script.