Archive for the ‘Mounts’ Category

I was first to 81 in my guild. You all saw that. Unfortunately, I was third to 82, 83 and 84. Dammit. I came on on Saturday morning and was one of three or four level 84s. I was only about 12% through, so I opted to go to Hyjal, since I’d not been there and level my mining skill to 500. I ultimately got Coming Down the Mountain in the process and was over 70% of the way to 85. During all this I’d accumulated over 4k gold so I picked up Master Riding on my way to back to the Twilight Highlands. Finally I got there and picked up where I’d left off (after the beach quests with a certain dwarf who I’ll write about later). I quested like crazy and finally, at last, ding.

I had hit 85 first of all of my guild mates! I was so happy, and my guild master complimented me on it. So I got a completionist achievement in Hyjal, a Masters Flyers License, and I hit 85 first in my guild.

I’m all happy now.

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.

Hey, everyone, how are you enjoying Brewfest? Personally, it’s gone pretty well. I’ve run rams all around Dun Morogh and Ironforge for the last few days, but I finally got what I wanted: membership to the Brew of the Month Club. Yay! I also kill Coren Direbrew about every day. Today I ran a group with a druid tank who said, “everybody on Direbrew, make it quick.” Make it quick, huh?

Ok.

I put out  2k more DPS then the next highest player, almost hitting 5k (4.79k, actually). I think that qualifies as doing my job fast. I netted the Bitter Balebrew Charm to go with the Mithril Pocketwatch I got the other day. Pretty nice, but I want a Great Brewfest Kodo. That’s my ultimate goal right now. Onward, Gavelier!

It was a PvP morning for Gav. I joined a random battleground and ended up in Alterac Valley.

It was kind of sad for me because I followed a contingent to attack the Horde leader, and we did – and I died – but the Horde was just a little faster, and we lost. The next battle was Arathi Basin, where I’ve never won.

I want to point out that I went to AV as ret to try out my new axe, which failed miserably. I decided to go prot in AB, which made a huge difference.

I died once early on when I went into battle thinking I had backup (but I didn’t) and another time during a scrum near the lumber mill. Those were my only deaths though. Thanks to good durability, judicious use of my powers and superb healers, I pretty much locked down the farm. People came and left, but I held it down. A couple times I thought I was screwed only to be saved by the sudden appearance of a healer on our side. Thanks, guys! I ended the match with 2 deaths (least of anyone with at more then 1 kill), 5 killing blows (4th on our side) and 71 honorable kills (best on our side). Go Gav!

Oh, and thanks to running those dungeons last night, I got a mammoth reward.

My Black War Mammoth! Finally!

Bronze Drake! Bronze Drake, Bronze Drake, Bronze Drake! Finally, after countless runs through Heroic Culling of Stratholme, I got the drake. Yay! I was in a PUG that had a malcontent from the start. He finally quit when we ignored him, about two minutes into the run. Apparently an executive decision was made (i.e.  I wasn’t consulted)  to four-man the run. We did, and it was a breeze. We had a mage doing  4.5k DPS, our tank was putting out 3.1k, and I was kinda bringing up the rear at 2.8k. That plus a kick-ass resto shaman was enough to blitz the dungeon, 4-man style.

I’m back at last with a non-Cataclysm-related post. I wanted to catch folks up on where my characters are.

Lug and Pig are now level 29. I’m almost to my current goal, level 30! Lug still has those heirloom shoulders so leveling hasn’t been real bad. He’s been in the Hillsbrad Foothills allot lately, taking a break from Thousand Needles. That place is not allot of fun to me.

Gav was in Wintergrasp again today. I did ok, dying twice – once one-on-one to an Orc rogue, which never should have happened except that I was 90% asleep at the time. I had him dead to rights and couldn’t finish him off. Dammit. While running back after that death, WoW froze and crashed. When I logged back in, the battle was down to 45 seconds and everyone was just chilling in the courtyard. WTF happened to the Horde? No one was fighting, and I had been standing in one of the side areas of the fortress when my game froze and came back to find myself alive. Weird.

With the honor I earned in WG, I went to Stormwind and bought a mount I’ve wanted for a long, long time – a Black Battlestrider. I wanted one the first time I saw one but they used to cost Battleground tokens. No more! A mere 50k honor and it’s mine. Gav’s happy now.

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.

Today’s another big day in the adventures of Gavelier. I’m now able to be known to the world as Gavelier of Gnomeregan, as I’m now an Exalted Champion of Gnomeregan. I got to exalted status with the gnomes via the Draenei Argent Valiant dailies, actually, as the Draenei are now the only Alliance race I’m not exalted with. Of course, with exalted status comes mounts, so Gav finally has his Mechanostrider, as seen here.

Of course, since I’m now working on Leading the Cavalry, the achievement for 50 mounts, I bought all the available m-striders. That added up to almost 300g spent in a one stop (4x normal land mounts at 8g each – 32g – and 3x epic land mounts at 80g each – 240g – makes for 272g total). Fortunately, all the dailies I’m doing are making it easier for me to spend money on trivial things now. BTW, I’m now at 32 mounts, with six Elelks yet to earn and four more gryphons to buy. That would put my at 42, meaning I still need to find eight more somewhere. I really hate grinding rep with the Kurenai in Nagrand, but their Tabulks may be my best option, as there’s eight of ‘em.

In unrelated news, I’m about ready to swear off Wintergrasp. I’ve been really ineffective there lately, dying allot and not killing much of anyone. I actually resorted to healing in a recent match because no one would die for me. Geez, and I was doing so well for a while. What gives? I can only imagine that allot of other players have gear from Ulduar now, putting me even further behind the curve, with that Argent Tournament dungeon opening up soon to seal my fate. Oh, that and the Horde gets a ton of Tenacity every stupid match. That’s just not fair for me, since I’m already at a disadvantage by not running dungeons or raids. Like I said, I may just swear off Wintergrasp. It’s not everyone else’s problem, it’s mine, so I may just give it up rather then fight it.

Lastly, tonight I re-ran Scarlet Monastery: Armory (for a Scarlet Tabard) and Stratholme: Undead (for Rivendare’s Deathcharger), and came up empty on both counts. Dammit.

What’s the difference between a level 78 paladin and a level 80 paladin? Gear and experience. I learned this tonight when I put Artruis the Heartless is his place. You may or may not remember my frustrations with him, and how once I got help and killed him, I was stuck with the Frenzyhearts when I wanted the Oracles. Well, I was tolerant of that because the main reason I wanted the Oracles was for the chance at a Green Proto-drake Mount, found at a 2% or so clip inside the Oracle’s Mysterious Egg. At the time, I couldn’t have flown the thing if I’d gotten it, so I reluctantly moved on.

Times have changed. I now have my Artisan Flying Skill, and as such could take that Green Proto Drake for a spin, should I someday be lucky enough to get one. However, one obstacle stood in my way: Artruis. Like Luke Skywalker with Darth Vader, I had to face Artruis again. I decided to solo him, but with a new strategy. For one, I’m ret again, whereas last time I was prot. I simply couldn’t wear him down last time. For my second trick, I was going to use my Seal of Vengeance on him for it’s stacking damage increase, versus my Seal of Justice or Martyr (the former is useless since he can’t be stunned, while the latter simply wears down my health bar too much). Lastly, I knew this time going in that he was primarily a frost mage, so I used my Frost Resistance Aura to counter that. This, along with my Icebane Girdle gave me over 200 points of frost resistance. I fired up my Blessing of Kings, pulled out my Claymore of the Prophet (vs. the Savage Cobalt Slicer from last time), took a deep breath, and made the leap.

The result? He could hardly get me under 95% health this time. Hell, yeah! I wore him down in no time to the point where I had to pick my captive to kill. This is where I almost died, actually, since I was having trouble isolating the Frenzyheat captive in the scrum. With both of them beating on me, I dipped below 40% health before the Frenzyheart hoodlum was dropped. The Oracle captive covered for me while I tossed off a Holy Light spell to get myself back up to snuff. Not long after, Artruis was no more. I was so psyched, I almost forgot to accept the Oracle captive’s quest. That would have been a royally boneheaded move, there.

I feel redeemed now. I’ve fixed the biggest error in Gav’s adventuring career to date, and I did it by myself. I feel like I’ve accomplished something. Now, only four more days or so of doing their dailies until I can hit Revered and start entering the Proto-Drake lottery. It never ends, does it?

With some disposable income, now that my big purchase was done, I spent some gold on something I’ve been wanting: a bear mount.  Nice, huh? Nothing special this post; I just wanted to share my latest purchase.