Someone to watch over me.

Ever since patch 3.1 and it's features was announced, I've been pondering the question of tenacity pets. Bunnyhop has been sporting a gorilla since level 32 - she started out with Fonzie, a Mistvale Gorilla from Stranglethorn Vale, and traded him in for Fonzarelli at level 64 - initially because of Thunderstomp, an ability which used to be gorilla-exclusive. Fonzarelli has been with Bunnyhop through thick and thin, and even though he's that kind of "special looking" pet everyone has, I don't think I could ever give him up.

However, nowadays any tenacity pet can learn Thunderstomp, while Fonzarelli has gotten a new ability: Pummel. I haven't tried it out yet, and even though it should have situational uses in PVE (interrupting mobs healing themselves or something similar), it feels very much like a PVP-move. So, I'm looking into other tanking pets, trying to find one with a more "all-round" family ability. With three "permanent" pets in her stable (Juno the spirit beast, Leah the wasp, and said gorilla) Bunnyhop is left with two slots for testing.

As I've just started this little project, and since I've been leveling a new druid, I'm still on my first two "contestants":

Judy the turtle - can use Shell Shield when things get hairy. This should be useful when soloing old world raids, and hopefully when trying to solo the sons of Gruul (to unlock the Ogri'la faction).

Butter the crab - uses Pin. OK, this feels like a PVP-ability - keeping rogues in place and such - but it might come in handy when you need to keep a runner from pulling an extra pack. But most of all, I'm attracted by the idea of having a red crab. If only he sang - then he'd be my new tank for sure!

It'll probably take me a while, since I want to level them up to 80 for testing, but I'm not really in a hurry. Doing the Argent Tournament- and Ebon Blade dailies, and going for the occasional farming run in Sholazar should have them both leveled within a week or two.

OK, I'm off for a walk in the evening sun - I'll be taking the turtle out for a spin later, and have Rahamra finish up Zangarmarsh (level 64 - w00t!)!

More bunnies, please. No, really!

Noblegarden, from an achievement point of view the "easiest" world event" has been up and running for a bit more than a day and a half now. It's one of the easiest titles one can get - it seems to be possible for a level 1 to do it (with a bodyguard and portals, of course, and yeah, the character would level up from exploring and such) - and I bet everyone who wants it will have it by the end of the event, ie Sunday (I'm guessing it ends at 00.01, when Sunday starts, so Saturday will be the last day to do stuff). So far I haven't actually gotten the title on any character, but Bunnyhop and Rahamra have gathered all the Noblegarden Chocolates and merchandise they need to complete the meta. I'll probably try and do the whole thing on my mage and the semi-retired druid as well.

Now, the next world event will be quite a bit harder, achievement-wise. Children's Week starts on May 1st(?), and the meta associated with it requires you to complete School of Hard Knocks. I don't like it. Sephrenia feels that this is what stands between her and the Violet Proto, and I have to say it feels the same way for me. OK, the characters on which I'll be trying to get this achievement done are a hunter and a druid - not very squishy at all - and I bet a lot of people would go "QQ moar" if they heard me complain, but I still think this achievement is unnecessarily hard. A lot of people will be trying to do the exact same thing at the same time, and, well, BG:s often seem to bring out the worst in people as it is.

Once an Orphan (kill 10 players with their orphan out) was removed completely, due to it being politically incorrect, and that's something I can definitely sympathize with. However, I'd rather have an achievement along the lines of "win one of each BG:s with your orphan out", or a better version of School of Hard Knocks: Make someone's capture/return/assault count for everyone of the same faction within 15 yards or so from the "acting" player. That way, better battleground pvp would be promoted, we wouldn't have 30 people camping the flag in EotS, and healy clothies would be able to get Violet Proto's.

However, with the situation being as it is, I'm hoping for good, achievement orientated pre-mades, much like the "hey, let's kill the boss in normal Utgarde Keep enough times for everyone in the group to get the flowers"-pugs. Let's keep our fingers crossed there will be many patient, achievement-hungry non-regular-pvp:ers who can help each other out with this one! "Matron Bunnyhop", that'd be something.

Back to Noblegarden, though: I'd love love love to have a mini pet like the bunny you sometimes get turned into when opening the hidden eggs! Pink bunnies ftw :D

Click, click, click... Yay! It's true!

Just remembered one of my favourite aspects of the new patch:

Clam meat stacks again!

They made clams stack when WotLK came, I think, but for some reason this buff caused clam meat to not auto-stack anymore (I think it did before, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). Seriously, I celebrated the new patch by logging on to my young druid and open the two stacks of clams I had saved in her inventory ever since I heard of the buff to clams! Of course, I'd like a title for having played pre-clam nerf: The Clam Opener, but this stacking craziness is quite amazing in itself.

When I come to think of it, I really should have taken a screenshot of this exciting event, or even made a little movie!

A bit like Christmas, and things the trade-crowd doesn't get.

Easter has been over for a few days now, but then The Patch came, and I've been totally engulfed by it! OK, I'm not part of the Ulduar-going crowd (never say never, though - I'm leveling a healer, and I want to heal people, dammit!), but there are so many new features that just warm my casual WoW-heart:

• New fishing features: Fishing anywhere! New dailies! Cool turtle mount! New fishing rod rewarded by my favourite fisherman!
• The Argent Tournament is like a new and improved Shattered Sun Offensive-thingie - fun for a casual solo-player like myself, and you get quite a bit of gold from the quests.
• Dual spec! As I haven't bothered grinding cash for a while, I've only been able to get it on two of my characters so far - Bunnyhop, BM-huntress extraordinaire, and Rahamra, my baby tree (52 and counting) - but ooh, I love it! I was a bit annoyed before I realized I had to dismiss my pet before switching specs - if I didn't, the pet had its talents wiped, and I'd have to do them all over again... Dismiss first, then switch. Bunnyhop is sporting two different BM-specs atm, but I'm looking into MM and Survival as well, planning to explore those talent trees soon. Rahamra is a tree and a moonkin, as planned, and I love it. Being able to have a "real" healing spec, and still having an efficient solo-spec, all while leveling - its just so sweet.
• Improved quest tracking! By looking at the tooltip of a quest related mob, you can see the name of the quest, and your progress. Also, if you got a "use"-item when you picked up the quest, there'll be a little clickable icon next to the quest in the tracker by the mini map. Now, I've used addons that did these things, but 95% of the time I've gotten along fine without it, so it's really not necessary. But at the same time - why not? It's really annoying when you're grinding a certain type of mob for a quest drop, end up with nothing, and you check on Wowhead only to discover you should have killed the other type of mob. However, if Blizzard puts something like QuestHelper in the default UI, the game will be too casual even for me... I like reading the quests, taking in the stories behind them - if I want arrows showing me in what direction to go next, I'll go to IKEA.
• Lots of more stuff, probably - I just haven't taken it all in yet.

Now, a new patch isn't all hugs and puppies. The servers have been shaky, to say the least, and it usually takes a couple of weeks before things run smoothly again. Also, addons tend to get messed up by patches, and as a lot of addons are made by pure enthusiasts, not all of your favourites will get updated immediately, if ever. Yesterday I had to turn off Spammenot, since it caused my chat to malfunction, and sadly it seems like it won't be updated anymore :´( I do hope there's another way to filter out all the goldsellers and Dirge-spammers...

So, what to do if something in your UI isn't working correctly? You can't see whispers, your unit frames are weird in some way, your character keeps pulling bunnies out of hats for no reason (yeah, I made that up, aren't I crafty?) and so on?

First of all, try turning off all of your addons, just to make sure the problem is addon related.

Secondly, turn on half of your addons. If the problem appears again, you know it's caused by one of the addons you've activated, and you move onto the next step: Turn off half of the activated addons, check for the issue, and by doing this over and over, you rule out the innocent ones in chunks, until you've found the one causing you trouble.

I hope I'm making sense here :D It's a really simple, basic thing to do, but a lot of people in trade and general chat have been endlessly clueless and frustrated during the past few days - low fps, not being able to click links in chat, bunny issues - and they simply don't seem to understand the concept of the addons they are using every day: They are not an official part of the game, and it's not Blizzard's fault if they don't work.

If something doesn't work, turn it off for the time being, and wait for an upgrade. Or, if you're able and willing, write your own addons! But something tells me the people complaining in trade and general aren't equipped to do that :D

OK, I'll be spending my evening doing Argent Tournament-dailies on Bunnyhop, and on my old druid (temporarily pulled out of retirement, to check out the Icecrown-action), and hopefully I'll be able to get a level with Rahamra - I'm very much looking forward to taking her to Outland.

Not yet a tree, but we're getting there!

So, Easter is upon us, and hanging out with the family and such things obviously leads to less posting. Good food, candies and sunny weather - it's all good :)

There has been some druid leveling action, though - level 46 has been reached, and it may be because of the "first character ever"-clumsiness I suffered from with my first druid, but a healthy amount of points in the resto tree seems to make leveling a whole lot smoother. OK, so I've invested a few gold in a fairly nice staff with a decent enchant - 70 extra spell power is a nice boost at this level, and I'm counting on it to last until she gets to Outland - but seriously, I was able to solo this rare elite I found in Swamp of Sorrows, by alternating rooting, nuking, and throwing HoTs on myself, even though he was one level higher than Rahamra at the time!

I'm sure my first druid would've gotten her feathery ass handed to her, had she encountered this mob at level 44.

OK, she does need a respec - I'd rather take the two points from Naturalist, and put them into Master Shapeshifter, but still, as she doesn't yet have her Tree-form, the latter wouldn't be of much use to her anyway. There's at least a tiny chance one might get to benefit from the cast time-reduction on Healing Touch while leveling. But yeah, I'd like to get those "mandatory" points, so I'm looking forward to the promised free respec in the upcoming patch. Every time I've taken a new character to Hellfire Peninsula, I've been shocked by how much harder the mobs seem to hit, and I doubt this time'll be any different, so being able to switch between leaves and feathers (almost) whenever will be yummy. It changes the rules by a huge amount - suddenly one might be able to find quite a few characters with an actual healing- or tanking spec even at lower levels!

The Basics.

After something of a hiatus from druiding, I'm getting back into it, and slowly I'm finding druid blogs to read. I've already put The Daily Druid and Resto4life on my list, and that's a good start, but now I'm adding a new one, simply because it has exactly what I'm looking for at the moment: Druid Main is starting a basic, straightforward tree 101-guide, to help people prepare for dual-speccing!

I love it! We get to know about the healing spells, and when to use them, talents, glyphs and all that - really basic stuff, knowledge many healers seem to take for granted.

I've been looking for guides like this one so many times, and not only for resto druids, but for mages, moonkins, priests and whatnot, but a lot of the time Google just gives me 15 different discussions on how to heal some rather complicated 25-man raid. "But how do you do it in a 5-man, then? Oh, that's easy, you just roll your face on the keyboard." Yeah, right.

OK, I might be exaggerating a tiny bit there, but still, a lot of people who run something like 2 heroics and 1 raid every night have been through it all a zillion times, and the whole "do x when y if z" is simply a reflex to them. To me, a guide like this makes all the difference - a bit like learning which pedal is which in a car when learning how to drive.

Aww, you're gonna make me cry!

TJ has put together, and posted, a movie dedicated to our favourite dwarf hunter!

She advertised for people to contact her regarding a "top secret project" (stupid me, didn't do so, blaming RL), and it apparently consisted of people sending her pics/screenshots/video clips of themselves/their chars celebrating the awesomeness of BRK. She has put a whole bunch of these things together in a beautiful little movie, added music, and the whole thing brings tears to my eyes! Serious WoW-blog community love! I think I'll have to go play my dwarf hunter alt for comfort...

The List.

I'm not the most consequent blogger - sometimes weeks and months pass between my posts, for a number of reasons - but I tend to come back. I have so far, at least. However, a lot of blogs fade away, and this sadly seems to be the case of Incompetent Warrior. I've kept him on my blogroll for quite a long time, but now it's been 3 months since he last posted, and since I feel the list should be limited to active blogs, he's out until he starts posting again.

While I'm on the sudject of removing inactive blogs: BRK stays until he gets too outdated, even though it won't be updated anymore - his blog is still a great resource of information (and silliness). And oddly enough, I'm adding Resto4Life to the list, in spite of the fact that it's closed - it will get outdated eventually, come new patches and changes, but it still is a great read for druids. In short, I'm kind of breaking a rule I just made up. Simply because I can.

Want to see my slides from 30-40?

I've had the opportunity to experience the addon AchievementSnap in action - no biggies, but screenshots were made at the right moment. There's one thing that bugs me a bit, though. Well, it doesn't really bug me, but I'd like to be without it. For some reason, when ASnap screenshots my achievements, my /played shows up in the chat, posted immediately after "[charactername] has just earned the achievement [achievement]". Not that it really matters, but it's not a feature I'm after, and I'll try and find out if I can do anything about it.

(Browsing WoWInterface.com)

Hmm. Can't seem to find anything. Considering I have an array of addons installed, this may, of course, be caused by something other than AchievementSnap, but since it is the kind of feature I suppose a lot of people might be interested in, I'm assuming ASnap is doing it. The hunt for a solution continues...

Loving the addon in every other way, though - it really opens up for the possibility of having a long, boring post, comparable to those evenings when you're visiting your friend/aunt/colleague, and they insist on showing and commenting every single picture they took on their trip to Thailand/Mallorca/Turkey. But instead of "here's me and hotel plant no. 53", you'll get golden moments such as "here's my lock, getting her first tabard"! Sounds like a treat, right?

1. Put on Shoes 2. Go for Walk 3. ??? 4. Profit!

The background downloader is up, and due to my relatively slow broadband connection I'm very interested in downloading the patch in advance - 3-4 hours on patch day simply isn't fun - so right now I'm at 73%. Will probably take a break from downloading in a bit, to actually play, and then leave the computer running over night to get the rest of the file.

Today has been a nice, warm and sunny one, and I'm aiming towards at least getting a healthy beige tone this year. I've never been the kind of person who spends her summers frying on the beach, but I do prefer the slightly tanned situation, where people don't have to avert their eyes because my bikini-clad bod is a blinding shade of white. However, I haven't spent the day trying to get a tan, but I went for a walk in the sun - mens sana in corpore sano, and all that.

I'm hoping to get the opportunity to try out a newly downloaded addon soon: AchievementSnap. I found it via this WoWInsider article, and since I often find myself without a screenshot after having completed some achievement, even though I'd love to have one (for posting, or for sentimental reasons), it sounds like a nifty little thing. So, I hope it works.

Lunch FTW + my little friend

Just finished my lunch, so comfortably full. I've been doing some cleaning up in my Firefox bookmark list, reading up on blogs I haven't visited for a while, and browsing iTunes. The snow we had last week is way gone now, and yay, one can go outside without putting on the whole hat-scarf-mittens-mega moonboots of doom-extravaganza! Jeans, hoodie and sneakers is perfect - my kind of weather.

The state of my new druid:

Half-way through level 28,
half-way through the quests in Ashenvale,
in love with the idea of getting her a mount in less than two levels :) Spotted Frostsaber on the horizon!
A bit of a weird spec, but I refuse to respec her before 3.1, since talents will be reset when said patch arrives. I'm hoping to get her to 40 by then, so that I can kick off the tree/moonkin plan as soon as possible. So, keeping fingers crossed the "dual spec at 40"-thing makes it to the live servers - can't see any reason why it shouldn't, though.

Been poking around a bit on the PTR version of wowhead, and am very much looking forward to getting this cutie! Being the pet collector that I am, I'll be going for all of them, of course (a bit bummed I don't have a high level horde character, so I could really get all of the pets easily), but the thought of a tree druid with a tiny tree companion is almost too good to be true. Moonkin baby companion, that, on the other hand, would be too good to be true.

And finally, I'd love for the Frostsaber mentioned above to sport some nifty exhaust pipes and awesome flamez!