Wednesday, November 25, 2009

If I don't get to ride in a van, it's simply not worth it.

Azeroth is a crazy place this week - turkey fever all over - and we're all running around looking like night elf mohawks:


Hmm. Yeah, yeah, Mr T is awesome, and of course I pity the fool, but I'm going to be incredibly relieved when this event is over. Seriously.

The night elf mohawk is just a minor thing, though, at least compared to the ongoing Pilgrim's Bounty holiday. I stayed up late last Saturday, after getting the adorable new pet, to check out the new, Thanksgiving-themed event. As I was really, really tired, I couldn't figure out how the tables worked, and neither could anyone else, so I ended up logging off to get some sleep.

After checking out a guide on Sunday, things went smoothly. A bit of traveling was involved, but nothing like during the Lunar Festival or the Midsummer Fire Festival, and the PvP achievement very much agreed with me - it's basically just about being there - no skill, gear, or understanding premades is required (I'm giving this one another try next year, though - that proto-drake is too pretty to give up on!).

I don't think it's a big surprise that the hardest thing was finding un-turkeyed rogues, but people have been bringing a lot of level 1 alts to Dalaran during the past couple of days, so even that one was fairly easy. Anyway, yesterday I got the title and the pet, which is all kinds of win! :)

I've been working on having only one main character during the fall - Delinda, my priest - and I think I'm making progress! Treating several characters as mains takes a lot of time and energy, and trying to complete holiday achievements on four or five characters was doing my head in, so I try to do things differently these days. If an event consists of "log on to get a pet + achievement" - you can count on me to do it on every alt - but if it takes more than five minutes, I'm only doing it on Delinda. Crazy as it sounds, this rule has been (and still is) hard to remember, and to live by, and I've had to mentally slap myself several times for starting to do holiday achievements on an alt.

So, this Christmas I'll be logging on to every single alt, just to get as many mini pets as possible, but only one will be a Merrymaker :P

Tonight I intend to continue to take advantage of the nice holiday buff: Spirit of Sharing. In case you've missed it, you get it from eating 5 of each dish at any bountiful table. Everyone gets 1 hour of the human racial, and I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the buff actually stacks with said racial! If you need me, I'll be in Nagrand, killing ogres.

Monday, November 16, 2009

Building A New Main.

I've spent the past few weeks doing a lot of new things, but also a lot of old things. It's been roughly a month since I first participated in a raid on Naxxramas - clearing the Arachnind Quarter - and about two and a half weeks later we cleared the Plague Quarter. Yes, a lot of the others had done the whole thing a zillion times before; no, I didn't survive the dance on Heigan, but ooooh, it was fun, and I learned a lot. And got some nice loot :)

However, when the guild advertised the regular Ulduar raid on the forums, I felt like too much of a scrub to sign up, and since those runs have seemed to fill up quickly in the past, I didn't feel obligated to do so. Then raid night came, they were lacking a healer, and since I was there, and actually had read up on the first few bosses, I got to go to Ulduar! Now, this isn't really news to anyone, but that place is huge!!! And there are shiny things, and a boss who does a bit of stretching while you're fighting trash, and a dragon (who one of the officers kept calling Moroes o.O) who kicked our butt all night long last Friday (the 13th - need I say more? Eh? Eh?). They cleared the bosses up to and including Kologarn on Saturday, though, while I had some real life to catch up on: TV and pizza is not to be underestimated :)

As I said, I've been doing a lot of new things, and the trips to Naxx and Ulduar are just that, along with a few trips into 5-mans, but there have been old things as well. One issue I'm having with the "new main"-thing is the fact that I've done a lot of things on my druid that I haven't (yet) on my priest. Some things I don't really plan to do again - Outland dungeons is one example, even though I wouldn't say no if the opportunity presented itself - some things I simply can't do again (Spirit of Competition and Clockwork Rocket Bot - I'm looking at you!) and then there are things I very much want to do.

The Outland "mount factions" is one major project I'm working on - still only honored with Kurenai, friendly with Sha'tari Skyguard, and only just started working on the Netherwing attunement questline. When looking up Ogri'la on WoWhead I was pleasantly surprised: Apparently you no longer have to go through the pain of killing all those sons of Gruul in order to get to do dailies for Ogri'la. You just fly up there and talk to them. Of course, if you want to become Queen or King of the Ogres, and neutral with all the other ogres in Blade's Edge, you still need to do the questline. I'm mainly interested in speeding up the rep grind to get Del access to more mounts and an awesome little pet, though, so making her Queen of the Ogres can wait a while.

There are a few things I'm planning, that I haven't done before, on any character. The big one is *drumroll* getting the Loremaster achievement! I've probably done most of the quests before, Alliance-side, but not all on the same character. There are also quests I haven't done at all, and with Cataclysm changing everything sometime next year(?), I really want to see things before they're gone.

As I've written earlier in this post, I've been doing a bit of healing. It's a lot of fun, and I have fallen hard for the priest class - my only problem is the game's lack of triple-spec :D Holy is lovely - Circle of Healing makes me all warm and fuzzy inside - and questing as shadow is the breeziest of breezes. But a couple of weeks ago I switched my shadow spec for discipline, and ooooh, do I want to learn it! Shiny, shiny bubbles and lazers? Yes, please! The problem is, I want to keep my holy spec, since it's awesome, and since I've so far only managed to grasp about 1% of it's versatility, and at the same time I still have a lot of the "harder" quests left to do in Northrend (and Outland), so getting rid of the shadow spec doesn't really work either. Hence, my plan is to do the high-level parts of Loremaster first, then trade in my face melting-skills for some bubbly ones.

OK, off to check some auctions, and then I'll try and get to work on that questing-project :)