Archive for the ‘Achievements’ Category

It’s Midsummer Festival time, and I’m downtrodden. I loved this festival last year, but I’m just not getting up for it again this year for whatever reason. I – as Gav, of course – have however had a couple of interesting events occur in correlation with the occasion.

One quest, Unusual Activity, took me to Zoram Stand in Ashenvale, near Blackfathom Deeps. I’d never run the dungeon before, so I saw no reason not to run in and kill Aku’mai while I was there. No problems encountered, and I completed that particular Midsummer Festival mini-questline to boot.

I also hung around in Stormwind for about an hour last night, protecting our fire. I helped kill an Orc death knight, a Tauren warrior, and – most interestingly – a Blood Elf paladin. This paladin was being chased through the canals by a Dwarven hunter, but the hunter couldn’t finish him, mostly because of us pally’s legendary survivability. I joined in and chased him through the canals until he hit a dead end between the trade district and Old Town, where I cornered him and killed him. I got some congrats for my perseverance, and another human paladin and I grouped to hunt down hordies in the city. We found none, but it was good to make a sweep in case.

Am I being corrupted by PvP, or was this just an act of justice, with me doing my duty as part of the Alliance? I’m not sure. Maybe both.

Doing fishing dailies isn’t the key to riches, but it can be fun. It can also net you some neat fishing-related loot, like my new Weather-Beaten Fishing Hat. I’m able to use it for a fishing skill buff rather then having to lug around Bright Baubles or Aquadynamic Fish Attractors. This saves me a good bit of bag space.

In other news, Gav is now a Champion of Gnomeregan. Not an Exalted Champion (yet), just a champion. I’m five Champions Seals away from my sword now, too, so it’s within – at most – three days reach (I only do the Taking the Battle to the Enemy and Among the Champions Argent Champion dailies). Compare that new sword with my current club, and it’s a no-brainer, especially since I prefer swords, anyway.

I’m now officially Gavelier of Stormwind, exalted  champion for Stormwind in the Argent Tournament. I have a squire now, for god knows why, and I have the title to display to everyone now. That’s a good thing, I guess. My main goal is to nab a slew more Champion’s Seals to get a Claymore of the Prophet. In my battle with a champion to reach this rank, I started with no Defends stacked (apparently it’s timed and I took too long between firing them up and starting the battle), and quickly fell to a 48% HP to 88% HP hole. I fought back, though, and won with 13% HP left. Yes! You may notice my bright blue belt in this picture. It’s my new Icebane Girdle I picked up at the auction house a while back. It kinda stands out, huh? Oh, and with all of my battles in Wintergrasp, I bought a Deadly Gladiator’s Cloak of Victory at the Champion’s Hall in Stormwind for about 38k honor points. Speaking of Wintergrasp…

The other night I queued with the masses at the portal’s location in Dalaran to go assault WG. I got the last spot in the first raid, so figured I’d be in good shape, right? Well, the match started, and there was no portal. A minute passed, no portal. Finally, someone called out, “WE ARE NOW AN AIRFORCE! EVERYONE FLY IN!”. And so we did. We flew to the flight point on the eastern edge of the zone and began the attack. However, it seemed that we were to have all night to win. The timer broke as well, reading 00:00 instead of counting down. We quickly stormed up the gut of the fortress with little resistance and captured it in no time. I never died and nabbed about three killing blows – one of a troll who sat on his horse while I kicked his butt. He never responded, so i figured he didn’t care. lol A Tauren Warrior and I squared off head-to-head, and he almost won but I managed to bubble and heal, which caused him to look for new prey. So, another win, and an unorthodox one at that. Alliance FTW!

It’s time for the Noblegarden holiday in WoW, and I was going to pass it up. After all, I’d toyed with it on the PTR, so why rehash my work? Well, one of my guildies was doing the egg hunt and listening to him on guild chat got me started on it again. I got the first quests done in a heartbeat, and I’m now a Chocolate Lover and halfway to being a Chocoholic, and I got part of the Shake Your Bunny-Maker achievement by hitting the alliance race chicks in Kharonos. Well, all but the human chick but I figured I could get that one at any time. lol I guess I got lured back into the holiday, huh?

Oh, BTW… anyone want roast rabbit? I cooked some myself.

Burn, bunny, burn!

I was in Nagrand on my daily route through Outland when there was a message in guild chat asking for help to get a lvl 24 or so dude in our guild the Jenkins title. I was hesitant to agree, seeing as how I was in the middle of something, but I decided to help. I got back to Stormwind as a group of about 10 or so of us, some guildies, some not, were assembling. While we waited, a couple of Hordies were seen flagged for PvP in Elwynn Forest. I rode out with the other level 70+ members of our minor raid and we laid them out. We then set out towards Blackrock Spire and we noticed that our Warlock, who was to summon the lower level dude to the dungeon, had died. He got miffed and logged off. This left us skrewt. With no warlock, the whole thing was ruined since we were just running it for the one guildie. We broke the raid up and I mentioned that the warlock needed a reprimand after that, at which point one of the guild leaders (who had organized the whole thing) told me he was on his alt in guild chat, and told me to go ahead. I told him that he’d screwed us all out of what we were trying to do, and he seemed to understand. In the end, we never did get the job done, but maybe we will another night.

I finally got into WoW after four-plus hours of work last night. I won’t go into detail on it, because it’s not important. What I did want to talk about is my experiences post-patch.

First off, I immediately specced prot. I can’t afford dual specs yet, so I settled on prot for now. I hung out around the Ironforge practice dummies for a while and worked on my spell rotation, along with about ten or more other people. I also learned that I could hit the Heroic Boss dummy, whereas only a couple weeks (and two levels) ago I couldn’t hit the lvl 80 dummy. Alas, though, my DPS did dip, almost to half it’s original state. Anyway, I later I went to the Outlands for my usual daily run: The Multiphase Survey, Intercepting the Mana Cells, and Sunfury Attack Plans. I like that set of dailies because I can go from Shattrath to Nagrand to Blade’s Edge Mountains to the Netherstorm in a straight run. I was killing Sunfury agents for their attack plans when I saw this big blue dude come stalking through. Now, I’d been to this exact locale many times to get the attack plans, but I had never seen such a creature. I decided it would be a good test of my new spec. In no time at all, I had slain Ever-Core the Punisher, netting myself the Medium Rare achievement for killing a very rare mob. I scored his Arcane Loop for the deed, as well.

While I was in Ironforge earlier, I bought up a Titanium Weapon Chain and a unit of Jormungar Leg Armor. I’m now hunting for a blacksmith to make me Tempered Saronite Shoulders, which should put me in a good position, stat-wise.

I eventually found my way back to Dalaran. I nabbed a quick daily to find a Ghostfish, which will be easier for me now that Blizzard has relieved the level requirements for fishing. I also got asked to go find Hemet Nesingwary in Sholazar Basin. I took the flight offered, got shot down (which was part of the quest), and then helped Hemet and his crew out some. I helped put their Spirit of Gnomeregan plane back together, netting me another flight point. I also did the It Could Be Anywhere! quest, which was insanely easy for the 18.5g it nets you.

Lastly, now that I’m in Sholazar, I’m finding Saronite nodes to mine, which will hopefully help me get the gold I need to net dual specs. Here’s hoping!

Other then getting to see my UI for once, this picture is an important part of Gav’s history: I played my first Wintergrasp match. Actually, I was debating whether I wanted to try my hand at it, dallying around the portal’s location as a raid formed, when I got an invite. I just kinda dove in, and the rest is history. Someone commented in raid chat that “level 75s will die quick,” and I offered to give up my spot, but was coerced into staying. I’m glad I did! I quickly died, as I was warned, but after that, I never went below 60% health, due to the awesome healers on our side. We won, and I got credit for 59 kills and earned 1369 honor points. Yes! Another note is that one of my guild’s leaders, Chunkeylover, was in the raid, and another guildie, Dradeth, was in my actual group.

Now, in all honesty, I think I may have had a hand in one or two kills, max. I’m just lucky that my allies picked up the slack! We won in under ten minutes, earning me an extra achievement. For my part, I tossed my hammer of wrath around, used my Judgement of Justice to slow the Horde down, and hit some folks with heals. I’m not sure if I was of any help at all, but I do know one thing: I’ll be back.

Anyone who has read my posts here probably remembers my epic PvP Nightmare post. Well, I had another dynamic encounter with the Horde, this time in Westfall. Here’s how it all went down.

I was in the Burning Steppes, leveling my two-handed axe and two-handed mace skills, both of which were very low (sub-50 per). I was attacking numerous foes and just letting Gav swing away until I died. I got them both up to around 200 when a whisper came from a guildie, asking me to run them through Deadmines. I agreed, being the nice guildmate that I am, and boarded the nearest gryphon to Westfall. I got there to find out that I was leading a level 20 Night Elf hunter (the one who originally messaged me) and a level 8 NE priest. A level 8 priest!! No level 8 should be running Deadmines! However, when I got there, there were more pressing matters at hand.

A level 70 undead rogue was attempting to raid Sentinel Hill, so I killed him, netting me the Know Thy Enemy achievement. I killed him about three times, protecting my guildmates, when reinforcements arrived. However, they were for him, not me. A level 64 Blood Elf mage rode in, and her and the undead rogue tag teamed to bring me down. Once rezzed, a level 80 Night Elf Death Knight and I teamed up and killed them. Word came down that a Tauren druid was incoming, but he was only around level 60 and therefore was an easy kill. Lastly, a BE paladin, level 80, rode in and got in a staring contest with me, but they never flagged for PvP and left. Funny, if I were them I’d have tried my luck on a foe six levels below me, but they – even with their ally’s help – wanted no part of me. Funny. During this, the two guildies I was to run through Deadmines died time and again, so I told the hunter to run for the Deadmines while I protected the priest – who had to wait two minutes to rez after dying so often – and brought him over. After finally getting them into the Deadmines (the priest died about four more times, forcing us to wait constantly), the hunter and I opted to head in by ourselves. It proved to be a wise decision, because the priest went AFK instead of rezzing. We – or rather, I -  mowed through the many miners, mages and such, and I bumped off the bosses, no problem. The hunter snatched up the goodies and loot, since I had no use for them. We cleared the dungeon, no problem.

Quick note: I just looked up the rogue on the Armory, and he’s another noted PKer with 23k PvP kills and is nearly fully equipped with epics, including two Merciless Gladiator’s Pummelers. Compare my sword, a Forge Cobalt Claymore, and there’s no contest. More comparisons include him having 11% better crit chance,  60 more points in hit rating, and him having almost as much HP as me. The fact that he performed so poorly against me and my mostly green quest gear – I killed him 4 or 5 times, dying once, and that was only when ganged up on – may have played a part in the lvl. 80 BE paladin backing down. I’m baffled as to how I beat him around like I did… in theory, he should have pounded me. I’m more proud now then I was before. lol Go Gav! I guess what I was being told during while that undead rogue was slaughtering me back in Darkshore was right; paladins are a good match for taking on rogues.

Deadmines: Cleared. It was a rather simple task, of course. Nothing took even a hundred or so HP off of me. Well, Mr. Smites was a pain because he kept stunning me, but other then that it was a breeze.

Except…

Who the hell built those tunnels leading to the damned instance?! I had to look up instructions on how to navigate them to the actual dungeon, making them a dungeon in and of themselves. I followed every path *except* the one leaned to the shiny blue wall of the instance proper. Literally, it was two days of being totally lost. How the hell do you get that lost in a tiny cave?? I am now officially the WoW version of Ryoga Hibiki.

Having gone back to Northrend the other day, wanting to miss as little Litch King content as possible, I’ve decided to make my foray into the King’s domain through Howling Fjord. While there (and in between getting killed by Dragonflayer Vrykuls and the Litch King) I came across the above scene of two Shoveltusk Stag’s dueling. I kinda killed ’em both, so I hope that it doesn’t destroy the Fjord’s ecology.

Back to my untimely deaths, the Litch King killed me in a little spirit appearance, and it was so cruel of Blizzard to put him there! I was looking for something, and saw him, and he killed me without me being able to do squat about it. Unfair, says I.

In other news, I went back into the Stockades to kill Bazil Thredd for the achievement and was surprised at how little a fight anything gave me. I mean, I know that they’re all around a third my level, but wow. Oh well, 10 more achievement points for Gav. I’m thinking of trying to solo the Deadmines next. We’ll see.