Archive for the ‘Northrend’ Category

Gav was in Northrend on Monday for a while. He mined up almost 90 pieces of Saronite Ore – with not a single Titanium Ore among them – and generally stopped by a few places he’d not been for a while and may never come back to. One of those stops was Sholazar Basin and the Oracles camp. I bought one last egg from them, for old time’s sake. It cracked open this morning and voila! Instant Green Proto-Drake! Times like this make it feel like the game doesn’t hate me personally.

Then I get screwed on quest drops for an hour and remember, oh yeah – it hates me. Bad.

I queued for a random heroic last night for the first time in I can’t tell you how long (wait a minute, yes I can – 16 days ago) and wound up in Hall of Stone. I dislike the Ulduar heroics for their difficulty. Aside from the Ice Crown Citadel heroics, they’re as hard as heroics come these days. In particular, I dislike the Tribunal of Ancients event in HoS. The mobs inevitably get loose from the tank in the chaos and attack me, attack the other DPS, attack the healer, and attack me (that’s worth mentioning twice). This time it was fairly straight forward, with us kicking the invaders asses left and right. Our party was doing massive damage (sorry, I didn’t have my DPS meter on so I don’t know exactly how much), but our resto druid was the big hero. Our timber-riffic healer kept everyone topped off with aplomb. After that, Sjonnir the Ironshaper was a breeze. No loot, but that’s no big deal. I got my gold and two frost emblems and that’s what I went for.

Well, I’ve been playing on-and-off again, and gotten Gleave to level 70. Here is in the Temple City of En’Kilah. Or whatever that icy dead-filled fortress is in north east Borean Tundra. He’s on his way to 71 now, and is doing pretty well so far. Gav’s on ice at the moment. I just don’t have the drive to keep running dailies and whatnot with him all of the time.

Sorry I’ve not been around, but I’ve been busy leveling Gleave, my Death Knight to reach Northrend. He hit level 68 the other morning in Area 52 in the Netherstorm.  He promptly went to Ebon Hold to train and then to Stormwind Harbor. There, he boarded a boat with two other players en route to Northrend for the first time. We acknowledged each other and promptly went to the flight master at Valiance Keep in Borean Tundra -  always the first stop in a new zone, right? Now I’ve got two toons in Northrend! Gav is going to bum some gold off of Gleave (who surprisingly has more then Gav) to buy Gleave a book as a welcoming gift. Welcome to the frozen north, Gleave.

It’s been an interesting evening so far for Gav. For one, I was test driving the nUI interface overhaul mod, and I disliked it. I actually came to hate it after it got me killed by a Blood Elf paladin in Sholozar Basin when I couldn’t find my powers to save myself after getting jumped. Why was I PvP in the first place? I actually came to the rescue of a Night Elf death knight under attack by said BE paladin. We killed it, but while fishing for the Ghostfish, the BE jumped me and I was unable to fight back. I promptly unloaded the mod.

In other news, I spent the last day or so with Gav in the Outlands, leveling my cooking skill, ultimately to level 350. I took that to Dalaran for a break when I noticed a blue “!” mark that I’d never seen before. I checked it out, and it was Katherine Lee, grand master cooking trainer, and questgiver for the cooking daily. Sweet! I promptly took up Cheese for Glowergold, and had it done in minutes. I can understand how that quest could be a pain in the ass sometimes, with people running all over each other to collect wine glasses that are sitting out, but it was easy this late at night when I was about the only one doing it. I got a bag of spices, as well as my first ever Dalaran Cooking Award. I was stumped as to what I was supposed to do with the award, but I ultimately found out that I could buy more recipes, Northern Spices, and a goofy chef’s hat. Not too exciting, but whatever.

Finally, I did complete the Ghostfish fishing daily, and of all things I got the Strand Crawler vanity pet. Not bad.

I forgot to post this yesterday, but I hit 1000g yesterday morning and bought cold weather flying, so the ol’ Rattle Bucket is back in the air! Blizzard actually made these things more obnoxious in patch 3.1, changing the sounds to be even more grating. Smooth move, Blizz. In other random news, I was doing a fishing daily (which happened to be in Lake Wintergrasp) with about ten other Alliance players when the Horde showed up. They didn’t attack us at first, just standing around taunting and posing. A hunter for our side opened things up, taking the first shot at a Tauren warrior on a Mechano-hog, which drew two Blood Elves out of hiding. A quick scrum ensued, with us killing the BEs and the Tauren running for the hills. We promptly went back to fishing, and I caught the 10 Terrorfish I was there for. I didn’t net much outstanding in the Bag of Fishing Treasures, just more Deviate Fish and Pygmy Oil. Later, all.

Some nice person (ok, so it wasn’t a person, it was a goblin) leant me some Gryphon Reins while I was at K3 in the Storm Peaks, and you can see the results above and below. They only work in Sholazar Basin, Icecrown and the Storm Peaks, but that’s enough for now. After flying deeper in Storm Peaks to complete an Argent Tournament quest for stone, I flew over to Skybreaker, the Alliance’s flying battleship in Icecrown. I was very, very impressed.

This was a magnificent sight, but it did bring up a quandary: when I do scrape togethe 1000g, do I spend it on dual specs or Cold Weather Flying? I’m leaning towards the flying now, but we’ll see once I have the money.

I appear to have made my decision on what to do come patch day (which is confirmed for tomorrow): I’m gonna give prot a try. I bought a Saronite Defender from the AH and had a blacksmith make me a Savage Cobalt Slicer. I also trained my one-handed sword skill from around 50 or so to almost 380 this evening, which means I must be pretty set on going prot. Going this route also means that Shield of Righteousness is no longer a lost spell. Now, if only I could scrape together 1000g to use dual specs and keep ret.

In other news, I roamed into Sholazar Basin the other day, and  was completely lost. It  was like a nightmarish reenactment of my first foray into Stanglethorn Vale, with a little Un’Goro Crater thrown in. It was never posted here because it happened well before this blog started, but I had a heck of a time my first trip in to STV. I knew Booty Bay had to be down south somewhere, but I was only level 30 and most of the mobs I crossed would have eaten me alive, so I ran non-stop from Duskwood to Booty Bay, chugging potions and using Divine Protection to survive. My family was around at the time and laughed at me as I ran from cats, raptors and gorillas. Now, it just so happens that the same thing happened in Solozar Basin, except that I had no idea where a safe area with a flight point would be. I circled the zone twice, panicked by crocolisks, rhinos and giant bugs. Of course, I had witnesses again. Fortunately, this time I had my charger and Crusader Aura. All I kept saying to myself was that as long as I was on my horse, I was going to be fine. I finally found the flight point near the River’s Heart, did a quick quest, and then hearthed back to Dalaran for safety.

Ah, Dalaran. I’ve reached my latest milestone in Gavelier’s adventuring career – I’ve made it to Dalaran.  Gav dinged 74 this morning in Grizzly Hills and promptly undertook a quest to take him to the Magical Kingdom of Dalaran. Nice place, I must say. However, while wandering the streets, I got hit by a trespassing debuff and was warped for reasons I don’t yet understand. I saw some Horde banners, so that may be it. Anyway, I like Dalaran much more then Shattrath, personally. It has a more… homey vibe then the Outland’s capital sanctuary. I immediately set my hearth stone here, so I can get back ASAP and use it’s portals to any of the other majors cities I want to visit. Yay!

Beware in Howling Fjord, for there be flying Swift Stormsabers! Seriously. What, you don’t believe me? Look at the pictures I’ve got! I was in the northern mountains of HF when I decided to take a quick bound for the hell of it. When I did, my Stormsaber shot into the air and slowly floated to the ground. I was freaked out at first, but got the hang of it and loved it. This happened some four or five times on my way down the mountain. Gotta love that thin mountain air! More pics after the break.

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