Turtles, rats, weird, floating eye-balls..?

I wish I could be all sage and grown-up about it, but this will bug me. I've decided to not go for the For the Children-achievement this year, mainly because I can't make myself do School of Hard Knocks. My PvP-skills as a huntress are basically non-existant, and I can't work up enough energy to find a premade that would be OK with my nab-ishness.

While I know it's the best I can do in order to keep my sanity, the little OCD-part of me is going "WTF GO FOR IT!!! COMPLETE THE ACHIEVEMENT!!! KILL!!! KILL!!!", and well, I suppose I could complete it. But I wouldn't have fun, and that's ultimately what I'm after when playing the game.

Maybe I'll have had the opportunity to improve my hunter PvP-ing in time for next year's Children's Week, but for now, I'm happy with the pets. I'm a bit bummed we didn't get a Northrend version of the event, though :/

Anyway, a big, giant congrats to all the players who have gotten their Matron/Patron title, and a big, warm hug of encouragement to those still working towards theirs :)

OK, I'm off to get some lunch, and then my retired druid will be getting her Willy, and with him Veteran Nanny <3 (It might be just me, but that sounds awfully wrong. Still, leaving it as it is :P)

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!)!

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...

No more Brain? Or all Brain from now on?

I've been trying to load BRK for a while this evening, to read his farewell-post, but the server keeps timing out on me... :( When I first saw the title of the post in my RSS-feeder-thingy I thought it was just TJ saying bye and thanks after having done some guest posting, but then WoW Insider told me the harsh truth.

Oh well. Reading BRK's blog has been great for me as a new hunter-player, as a WoW-player in general, and in the end he's one of the funniest WoW-bloggers around - I'm most grateful, and will miss him! I hope he gets his RL-stuff back in order, and that maybe we'll hear from him again, sometime in the future.

Anyway, I guess the traffic is quite heavy on his site because of the "taking a break"-thing, or maybe he's simply shut it down? That would be weird, though, doing that so soon after the final post. Will have to check again tomorrow.

While we're on the subject of bloggers leaving the game, and shutting down their blogs: I'm a bit bummed I didn't read Resto4Life before Phaelia decided to stop posting. On the other hand, I wasn't really in the mood for resto druids before, so I probably wouldn't have been able to do anything constructive with it anyway, and since she's going to leave the blog up until further notice, I can read it now instead.

OK, I'm off to do some late evening questing in Duskwood and Ashenvale, and then it's bed time. A good night's sleep really helps in that thing one refers to as "real life".

Late Night Fishing.

I was up late last night, flying around Northrend to get all the fish and meat I needed to get 450 in cooking, and after learning and cooking the Fish Feast recipe, I went to Outland to do a couple of BC-dailies before heading off to bed. I'm slowly grinding Sha'tari Skyguard rep on Bunnyhop, so I headed up to Skettis, and on my way there, I fished out all of the Highland Mixed schools I could find, 'cause that's what I usually do when I'm in those parts. After finishing the Skettis quests, I see a yellow dot on the minimap as I head back down towards Alliance Stronghold, so I land, cast, and this happens:

Woot! As I have never caught one of those before, I could hardly believe it, but there it was! Then, after getting over the initial shock, I use my first wish:
Double woot!!! I've been trying to get one ever since I first heard about them, when my druid learned to fly back in 2007, and you could make some cash from Furious Crawdad. If it hadn't been so late, I would have gone looking for the Time-Lost Proto Drake, gold at the end of the rainbow or something like that :D

About the TLPD, I do keep my eyes open, and my finger scrolling the target macro whenever I'm in the supposed spawn/patrol area in Stormpeaks, but since virtually the whole server wants that fancy mount, my chances of getting the kill while casually looking for it are pretty slim. I have been thinking a bit about camping for it, but camping the books for the Kirin Tor Familiar for several days really got to me, and some people speculate that the TLPD shares it's spawn with Vyragosa, and that 9 times out of 10 Vyragosa spawns instead of the more sought-after, mount dropping TLPD, so it could end up being a ridiculously long camp. Also, some say the Vyragosa/TLPD spawn is on a 6-24 hour timer, so until further notice, I'm just hoping to get incredibly lucky. It worked with Loque - could work again ;) (Yeah, yeah, I'll get that mount when hell freezes over and Elvis kicks off the event by selling popcorn. (And no, I'm not insinuating that Elvis ended up in one place or the other.))

Need more hours in the day, srsly.

Lately my posting here has been quite infrequent, partly because nothing much WoW has been going on, partly because blogger has been acting up, screwing up posts I've tried to publish, resulting in me grumpily deleting and logging out. Anyway, here's a post!

My "other" hunter, Nysnö the night elf, is being leveled, as kind of a side project, almost solely because of her engineering skills. Thing is, I really want a Mekgineer's Chopper, and it would be cool to make it myself. Of course, I'd also like the Nesingwary 4000 for Bunnyhop, but I think I'll be able to scrape together the 1800-2000 g they cost on the AH way before Nysnö gets 450 in engineering (she's at 405 now...), so I'll have to settle for a gun made by a character called "Shadowretlolzdk" or something like that.

In reality, I probably won't be able to get that chopper anytime soon, unless mobile broadband turns out to be fabulous and stabile. I'm moving in less than one month, and have started getting boxes, filling out forms to change my adress, trying to remember to go to my gym to cancel my membership, and a gazillion other things, and it's all stressing me out a bit. My current plan WoW-wise is a bit fuzzy, but mainly I'm trying to have fun while playing. I'm also trying to get my bank organized, so I won't have to deal with that on the probably very limited playtime I'll have for a while in the near future.

I'd like to finish with a screenshot from last night, dancing my ass off while doing one of my favourite quests in Borean Tundra:

Big, blue, and kickin' ass!

The patch is downloading, and even though it's fairly small - 56 MB - it sure is taking its time!

Yesterday was another draenei huntress day, and I got around to unlocking the Sons of Hodir, as a faction, and as a flightpath. During the questline leading up to this, one gets disguised as a frost vrykul female - it works basically the same way as the fel orc disguise one gets while grinding rep for Netherwing - and while in disguise, one can use mounts.

When my druid did this, she looked a bit silly while flying, since you don't switch to flightform visually - your frost vrykul just starts swimming through the air! My huntress, on the other hand, has a mount. A majestic Snowy Gryphon. Behold:

Not feeling so majestic anymore, are we?

A WoW-blog Moment.

I've been laying low during the last few days, doing dailies, checking up on lowbie alts - nothing special. I was just doing just that, turning my hunter's slow flyer into Sholazar Basin, thinking I might aswell do a couple of quests I had left in the northern parts, when I casually thought to myself: "There's always the chance I'll find Loque'nahak in here, I shouldn't pick up my gorilla for farming - I'd hate to ditch Fonz" followed by a "yeah, right, the spirit beast is RARE, I'll probably never even see one in the wild". But, wait a minute, what's that?

Right there, at 36,30, my adrenaline went up to insane levels - trap, tame, presto! No name yet, but I'll get there. Sadly, Raquel the devilsaur is no more, but to be honest, she always was a placeholder. Off to play with freaky cat-like super beast!

IRL, my character's place would smell really bad.

Yeah, it's been a few days since my last post, but that's life for ya.

Anyway, I saw Guild Mum/Sephrenia had found new info on how the requirement for the new mini pet achievement has been lowered to 75, down from 100 - yay! None of my characters will complete the achievement anytime soon - as I think I've said before, my druid is leading the race with 63 - but 75 is definitely a much friendlier amount.

Now we'll just have to wait and see if anything happens with the 100 mounts achievement :) I have no idea what amount is possible, or if lowering from 100 to 75 would be a good idea - note: I'm not saying anything will happen, just speculating and keeping half a finger crossed! 50, for my moonkin, was cake - basically a matter of finances. That, and having done the attunements and/or grinds for the home cities, Kurenai, Ogri'la and Netherwing.

Even though I'm more into mini pets than mounts, I've been playing with the thought of getting tailoring and engineering on a warlock, and simply get a shitload of mounts on one character. I guess a pally would be OK too, but tailoring on a paladin... It's been done, but if I'm playing a class without any ranged attack, I at least want to be hot in plate. No mount crazy lock right now, though - I have my WoW-hands full with druid and draenei huntress (78 last night - tamed the Sapphire Hive Queen, since huge pets rock, and had to put her in the stables after a while due to a growing fear of getting seizures from looking at the huge, fluttering orange thing that took up most of my screen), and that will most likely be the case for a while.

A bit of catching up to do.

I got back from spending Christmas and New Year's at my parents' a couple of days ago, and am trying to get over the fact that I don't have a dishwasher :D

As I left here on the 23rd, and didn't get back until the 2nd, I totally missed out on the Winter Veil gifts, and couldn't really get the Merrymaker-title this time around. I do hope they'll change the achievement to include something other than Crashin' & Thrashin' next Christmas, though, since I'm quite sure I'll be able to take part in the festivities then. Who knows, in a few years one of my characters might even be flying around on a Violet Proto-Drake! But yeah, a few years, if ever. My druid's only missing the Hallowed Helmet for Hallowed Be Thy Name, though, and she's in the Brew of the Month club, so she's off to a good start, for a casual player!

The title of this blog is (as you can see) Druid in Denial, but the subtitle is quite important: I'm a casual player, but I have more alts than would be considered healthy by a lot of people. Also, I don't really have an ambition to change the history of WoW-playing with this blog. It's a trivial little thing I spend a bit of time on every now and then, and of course it's great if other people enjoy it too.
However, I just wanted to point out that I'm leaving all the "serious" stuff to others, who do it better. It's not that I don't read up on specs, gear, rotations and tactics when I need to, it's more about me loving the silly parts of the game, smelling the roses and whatnot :) And, RL changes recently and in the near future have left me with a lack of motivation for instancing and raiding. That may very well change in the future, when things stabilize, 'cause it's so much fun, but for now my play time is more or less a solo spring break.

My moonkin has been on something of a vacation lately, since I've been working on the new huntress for a while, but I think I'll take her out for a spin tonight - there ought to be some cool balance gear in Icecrown!

And ooh! A /wave to Negathle, who put me on her blogroll! Seriously, if you want the dish on MM hunters, and general opinions from a far more seasoned hunter than myself, her blog is, you know, it. I've read her blog (and Pike's and BRK's blogs) for quite a while, learning and laughing a lot, and while I'm not really after getting linked, it left me a bit excited, in a terrified sort of way.

OK, long, slightly incoherent post ends here. I'm off to find out if my favourite sushi place is open.

The Crazy Parade.

Today started out really good: I woke up all fresh from a night's good sleep, and had a quiet morning in front of the online papers, since my flatmate watched some alpine skiing event on TV in the other room.

Last night I got my draenei huntress a couple of new pets, since I realised a gorilla might be a bit annoying for everyone else if I use him for questing in Northrend, and quite stupid for general BM-hunter 101 activity in an instance. Not that I will ever give him up, though - I love him like crazy - but for precision work I'll probably be using another pet.

So, what's new in the stable?

First, I went to Winterspring, and picked up a Frostsaber Pride Watcher:

I really wanted to name him Sam Spandex, but that was a no go, so Spandex it is.

After that, I flew all the way down to Un'goro Crater (one would think I'd had enough of that place after camping for my gorilla, but no way!), to see if I could find another ferocious companion:

Lo and behold, the tamed version of that endlessly scary and annoying thing that squished you super dead around level 50 (the vanilla-WoW version of the Fel Reaver, I suppose) - a Devilsaur! This one doesn't have a name yet, but I'll get around to that.

A couple of days ago my huntress and her gorilla friend was in Zangarmarsh, kickin' some butt, and they stumbled upon Marshlight Bleeders, who give you a glowing debuff. The result?
Discorilla!!!

And yeah, he's got a name now - Fonzarelli. As in Fonzie, or The Fonz. If I ever find an even cooler pet gorilla, I guess I'm going to have to name him (or her) Arthur.

The dangers of working from home...

I just discovered it's Friday today. Whoops. Doesn't really make a difference in the long run, or the short run for that matter, but I was surprised, since I was convinced it was Thursday. I'm going to have to keep better track of things, so I won't miss the train on Tuesday :D

No, really, it would be dreadful to be stuck here - friggin' alone - during the holidays. Sure, I'd get my Winter Veil gifts, but that would be it...

Right now, I'm waiting for the oven to get warmed up, so I can make some dinner, and after eating, I plan to continue leveling my huntress. She's currently about half way into level 65, and I'm hoping to get her started in Northrend before the weekend is over. With the offline-time I have looming on the horizon (starting late Feb - early March, may go on for a while), it would be really nice to get her well on her way (maybe all the way) to 80 as soon as possible.

I'm still playing with the thought of trying out mobile broadband for a bit, once I've moved, to see if and how it works. If it does work, nothing much would change, WoW-wise. Time will tell.

My baby!

Guess who finally decided to show up?

I'm in love. Seriously. Haven't decided on a name yet, but the important part is done - in my opinion one of the coolest skins/colours in the game! <3

(For anyone interested: I started camping at about 1 AM this morning, then there was a break for weekly maintenance, and I logged on again at about 10.20 AM. Uhk'loc spawned at approximately 1 PM, I abandoned my old pet, cleared the three mobs that were in the way, did the trap->wait for cooldown->aggro->2nd trap->tame-routine, and there you go!)

Off to level my new pet, I guess :)

Not very exciting, no.

Guess what? I'm still camping the gorilla. No, I haven't camped constantly since last night - Wednesday is maintenance day in Europe, so the server went offline at 3 AM, and was back up when I decided to try and log in at about 10.20 AM. At that time, I was alone in Un'goro Crater, so I'm assuming no one has been here and snatched him away.

A lot of people suggest that one levels up fishing while camping in there, to fight the boredom, and that would have been great, if it hadn't been for the fact that my darling huntress hasn't fished a whole lot before. I think she's got about 52 in fishing... But I'll get it up, some day. So, instead of fishing, I melee down the handful of gorillas that spawn around the spot where I'm standing, slowly getting up the skill in 2-handed axes (and the defense skill, of course). I do kind of wish I had brought several different melee weapons, though. Also, this is a pretty good way to get rugged leather for the Winter Boots people should be wanting this season!

What's really important.

OK, so... I have a recently dinged level 80 moonkin, a bunch of level 70s just waiting to get moving in Northrend, the Feast of Winter Veil goin on, and what am I doing? I'm camping the spawn point of a rare gorilla on my level 64 huntress. Looking good, aren't we?



Sadly, my faithful Fonzie will be abandoned the moment Uhk'loc spawns, and I'm obviously keeping him on passive - it would be so dreadful seeing the blue-white beauty die from thunderstomp.

I'm hoping that a lot of hunters are either doing Winter Veil stuff, or are grinding to 78-ish to try and get Loque'nahak, so that no one comes along to steal my baby.

(Yeah, yeah, not the best screenshot, but the boring ss kind of illustrates how boring it actually is to camp one of these rare spawns. And he's only on a 5-8 hour timer! Luckily, I have a blog to mess around with.)

SWE???

Yes, I'm swedish, no, I'm not one of those people. And, most importantly, I don't feel obliged to talk to you just because you happen to live in the same country as me. When I hang with people online, wallowing in the swedishness we may or may not have in common is not my number one priority. The game, music, movies, food, general silliness - yes! SWE??? No. And no, I'm not going to help you simply because you're swedish.

/rant off

I believe this happens almost every time I decide to play my nelf huntress - Nysnö. I have brought her out of retirement for a bit, to level mining on her, instead of skinning (which is one of my new hunter's professions). Suppose I may as well get used to it, and keybind /dnd.

Other than this rather trivial issue, I'm kind of enjoying playing her again. My draenei huntress still kicks her ass, but the nelf has her charms too :)

What's with the creepiness?

Today my baby huntress dinged 47 (and 46 - gorilla pet rocks!), and I've been doing selected quests in Tanaris. Weird thing happened when I landed in Gadgetzan, by the way. I got on my mount, decided to head down to the "escort the turtle"-quest, and notice someone is following me. Another draenei hunter, a male, on an elekk. And yes, he seems to have put me on /follow, since he copies every twist and turn I make. Half way to my goal, I get a whisper: "were are u goin?". I'm a bit annoyed, so I answer: "very special places". A minute later, the guy is gone. What I'm wondering is this: What was the point of that? Mmo-stalking of a complete stranger? Jeez.

Anyway, I've had a cup of tea, and just about to finish a few quests in Hinterlands. No druid today, it seems - maybe I'll log on her just to do today's inscription research, but the dailies will have to wait until tomorrow.

Boo-yah!!!

OK, so I didn't start a new hunter the other day, simply because I didn't feel like sorting out the stuff I kept on the character I would have deleted. Instead, I leveled up my draenei to 32, and got her a fancy gorilla! His name is Fonzie, and with him, leveling is even more of a breeze.



Seriously, I don't think I ever had this much fun while leveling my nelf huntress - around level 35-40 she started pulling aggro off her cat, and it got a bit boring holding back. With this one, with Fonzie, I can take down 3-4 mobs at a time, no problem. Also, all other potential pets have gotten little special twists, making them all that much more fun.

And now, back to Thunderstomping stuff! Weeeeee!!!

Stupid brain.

Last night some deluded part of my mind thought it was an excellent idea to play WoW at 8 AM today, not realising that today is Wednesday. Frickin' maintenance day. Not that I wasn't getting up anyway, but I simply don't like plans that don't work out. Oh well, time for proper breakfast and studies, I guess. Was going to save that for about 11-ish, but yeah, we'll have to move that one around - thanks, brain!

Anyway, the reason that I was so excited to get up and play a bit before my work day starts, is a bit silly, maybe even slightly stupid. I'd kind of like another hunter. I know, I've got my hands full with my druid, and with leveling the draenei, my beautiful Bunnyhop, but this new one would probably be sitting somewhere at levels 1-12, until his/her time comes. Now, what would be so special about this hunter, you ask? Well, here it goes: It would be a dwarf! I have 2 accounts in my possession, and so far no dwarf has set his/her foot in there, at least not past the planning stage, and I have decided it's time to end this madness. Don't know if it will be a he or a she yet, though.

I'm quite familiar with the male dwarf sounds and animations, since my flatmate has a pally of that kind, but I have very little experience when it comes to female dwarves, so I might just check on Youtube to see if it might be possible to see some examples. I mean, seriously, people put up all kinds of crap there, so why not female dwarf animations? Still, I'm leaning towards a male, since I'd love to have a character with a real beard!

Flying, hunting, choosing.

I'm in the middle of trying to understand, and apply, the Learned Hand rule, and am getting a tiny bit frustrated, so it appears to be time for blogging.

Yesterday my druid regrew her wings by turning 77, and learning Cold Weather Flying, and I spent quite a bit of time exploring Northrend, until I got the World Explorer achievement - it comes with a title, and you get a tabard for exploring Northrend. The tabard is very meh, and I'll probably bank it as soon as I've made room for it (I save a LOT of junk), but the title's fun, even though it's quite easy to get. Not everyone feels like devoting a day's gameplay (roughly, and obviously not /played time :D) to traveling around all of Azeroth to find every little nook and cranny, and the completionist in me is mighty proud. Also, I'd love to get the Loremaster achievement done, but I need to do another 700 quests in Azeroth for that, a lot more Northrend, and some scattered quests in Outland, so that would definitely take a while. Also, I'd like to get her to 80 within the next few days, so I highly doubt that I'll be doing any quests that don't give me xp or cash anytime soon.

Also, yesterday I logged on to my draenei huntress, and did some easy going questing in Ashenvale. She's 28, and moving up fairly fast. She is a hunter, after all! Now, I do have a level 70 hunter - a female night elf - and she and I have had a bit of fun, but somehow I can't muster up any passion for her. A lot of people would say that a hunter is a hunter is a hunter, but that is so not the case. Not only does my draenei girl get extra hit rating and a HoT, but she also has a sleeker, cooler look, compared to her nelf sister. It's not that I have anything against female night elves as such - I wouldn't want my druid to be any other race (although, a gnome druid would be adorable) - but when it comes to hunters, they just don't cut it for me. The innate reclusiveness of nelfs works great for the druid, but I'd really like a hunter with a bit more "oomph!", and along comes Bunnyhop, and her fearsome boar Hurricane!

Of course, I wont be deleting my nelf huntress - I'll probably level up her engineering a bit, and maybe do some farming - but I wont be farming for Loque'nahak or Nuramoc with her - I'm saving that work for the draenei!

Back to the books, need to get this working in my brain before it's time for dinner.