It’s Faire Time!

I really love the Darkmoon Faire. Everything about it … the games, the profession quests, the fairegrounds themselves … is such a huge improvement over what it used to be. I have all the pets and mounts, but I still go. I’m working on upgrading heirlooms next, I think.

The timing for this month’s Faire was just perfect for Madorsa, as she moved from Northrend to Cata. Her enchanting leveled right up with no issues, but I got bogged down on the tail end of Northrend tailoring. Seriously, just to get from 410 to 420 so she could do the quest at the Faire to finish it off, each recipe took 9 bolts of cloth from 410 to 415 and a whopping 12 bolts (plus 12 infinite dust of which she has a near-infinite supply) for each frostweave bag to get from 415 to 420. Averry helped out a lot, sending me every scrap of frostweave he could dig out of his alts’ banks, but I still ended up spending a good four hours over the course of three separate farming sessions on Kirgra to get enough to finish it. If I’d had to also get enough to get from 420 to 425 I think I would have had to break something.

And yes, you’re getting screenies of Dyle again because I am so in love with his transmog.

The Star of My Team

So … I’ve been doing the Fabled Pets daily … pretty much daily. I think I missed the first couple of days when I realized I’d have to kill the whole circuit each day, but once I got teams made up to deal with them and got a route firmly set, it’s not so bad. I ran it last night after raid with no stops for anything else (other than picking up an Ancient Jinyu Staff out of the Slicky Steam near the caterpillar) and it took about 35 minutes.

In making the teams, it seemed like, since we’re only fighting a single opponent, the best strategy is to just load up on a trio of pets who are strong against its type. This gives us three teams since there are three types of pets to face. I gave them appropriate, if unimaginative, names: Aquatic Killers, Beast Killers, and Critter Killers. One pet ended up on all three teams.

The Dragonbone Hatchling.

I put him as the anchor on each team, figuring there will be some battles where the third pet doesn’t even get called in, and then if I am fighting a different kind of pet for the next battle, I won’t have to heal in between since he didn’t take damage. This lets me use fewer bandages.

His placement on the aquatic team goes without saying. Flying pets are strong against aquatics. This is the team that it makes the most sense for him to be on.

(Um, yeah, sorry about the fuzzy screen there. I’d just fished up some Darkmoon Special Reserve over at Stormstout Brewery.)

But what about the other teams? Why would I use a flying pet on them?

Well, beasts are weak against flying pets, and I don’t have 3 mechanicals leveled. Most of the time, the Clockwork Gnome and Pet Bombling get the job done on their own. Gorespine, though, tends to put them down with the bleed, so my little buddy often comes in for cleanup on him.

For critters, I change out his first ability, replacing Slicing Wind with Thrash, which of course is a beast ability and is strong against critters. Nitun is a pain, but thrash can put him under quickly. As a bonus, Nitun’s abilites are .. beast abilities! So they are all weak against the flyer.

(Averry, don’t worry about Mortimer, he’s … resting, yeah … he ate too much and needed a nap. He’ll be fine.)

To get your own Dragonbone Hatchling, just head to Dragonblight. They can be found in large numbers on the plains surrounding Wyrmrest Temple. Other pets that share the same abilities include the birds from the parrot family, the mini jousters from Hyjal, or the Fledgling Buzzard from Redridge.

Now all he needs is a name, it seems silly to have him be so important to my teams and not have one. Any suggestions?

(Yes, I am showing off Kirgra’s almost-done transmog at the same time here) :p

Oh yeah, as for the results of all these dailies … I have gotten either a battlestone, a pet, or sometimes even both, almost every day. I think there have only been 3 days when I didn’t get either one. I have gotten 4 Snowy Pandas, 3 Sunfur Pandas, and probably 8 stones. I didn’t keep track and I should have. Oops.

Ready for Spring

Van got a new sword Wednesday night. I could have been lazy and just re-mogged the mace skin I was using over it and been done, but I decided I wanted to show it off. Unfortunately, its greenish-blue hue clashed with the royal blue set I had on, so I loaded up MogIt. What I ended up with is more of an UNmog because I think the only things he has on that are actually mogged now are his gloves and his cloak. (I could check that if I hadn’t logged out in ret. Doh.)

What really pulls it together is the Order of the Cloud Serpent tabard. Now he’s in all aqua and lavender, perfect for spring!

After that was done and I’d beaten all the elite pets, I headed out to Townlong to see what Shado Pan dailies were up and maybe go to Thunder Isle. Earlier in the day I had been reading about G’nathus … somewhere. Must have been at Warcraftpets. Anyway, since the dailies were up at Shan’ze Dao, I decided to go check him out. He’s just an elite, not even a rare spawn, so he’s pretty sure to be around. I found him, said oh 4.3M health I can do this, jumped in the water and got 2 shotted. Oh. That’s 43M health, no period. Heh. Oops?

Ok, let’s see who’s on. Oh, just Shirl and Zarm. Well … I got them to join, and roped Averry into coming to help as well. Zarm tried bear tanking in kitty spec … with the same result I had. I checked my list again … oh! Arv is on, he’s just on a non-SR toon. So he swaps over and now we have a real group, even though Zarm had to leave. It was pretty easy to talk people into helping, since he has a guaranteed drop of the pet Spawn of G’nathus. Shirl won the first one, and once I mentioned the 10 min spawn time (which might actually be 15 min but no one complained) everyone was game to stay and get more. Averry stayed too even though he wasn’t interested in getting one of the pets. He’s awesome like that. Shadeey logged on between pulls and we got her to come too, so that meant we needed four kills.

Yeah, he’s so big you can’t see him there, but he’s a giant purple eel. I had the priest NPC from the Shado Pan along with me since I was going to do the dailies. It’s kinda funny there seeing my ‘pet’ throw a 68k holy fire on him. Having Shadeey’s dps made quite a difference in how long it took us to kill him, too.

Between pulls, of course, Arv pulled toys out of his bag. He must have to get out his mammoth and sell junk every time he loots a corpse. Of course, my favorite is always the hitching post, so I had to get a screenshot on a pony. I posed next to Averry while he was taking his dog out … surprise! You’re getting posted on the blog. hehe.

I did fail to take a screenshot WITH the pet though. Uh … oops again?

After we finished getting the four pets I got those dailies done and hit exalted with Shado Pan. I didn’t screenshot any of that, though you will likely see me mounted on that onyx cloud serpent at some point. I still have only completed one NPC for Getting Around With the Shado Pan, and have mostly given up on Know Your Role, so I’m undecided on whether I will bother doing any more dailies for them or not. I guess I should pick up one of the hats though, huh?

Warglaives of LBR

I’m a terrible person. I showed up late for LBR .. when I’m supposed to be one of the persons doing invites! I blame Garrosh.

Anyway, I logged on 10-15 minutes late and whispered Flags … fortunately he was on and had gotten things going. Heck, they already had one boss down in Black Temple. Yay! After a quick glance at the raid makeup, I swapped to Dyle since there were no clothies. We had a warrior, paladin, hunter, and rogue. And my priest. I goofed around in shadow for a few pulls then decided that even though I hadn’t even touched the spec in months, I’d be better off playing with bubbles. That worked out pretty well; I think I did more damage with smite than I was doing as shadow.

I was hoping for some tier, and was not disappointed, as I got both the robe and the shoulders. I also got a cool wand and this other set of shoulders. (Hmm … do I have to have a wand equipped to mog a wand? I guess some of those restrictions change in the patch ya? I might have to check into that.)

We got to the end and that LBR magic kicked in.

Thankfully we had people along who could use it. It looks very good on Surriah, don’t you think?

The other people there are Taoiseach, Hornrook, Dyle (me) and Thunderhuf.

We also hit up SSC and that also went well.

Afterwards I did a bit of traveling to turn in my tokens and put him in a suitable transmog instead of the mishmash of rags he was in. I ended up using the non-tier Blood-Cursed Shoulderpads instead, because I found this Crimson Felt Hat and Barbaric Cloth Robe in his bank and decided it would look awesome, especially with the guild tabard.

It also looks pretty awesome with the umbrella, but I’m not sold on the mace he got in one of the first quests in Pandaria. It matches ok but I don’t really like the style. For now though, it will do. He definitely looks a lot better than he did before!

Hmmm those boots and gloves are all wrong though. Oh well. :p