I Hate Summer

Blargh. Work is so busy and I want to post. Leave me alone, phone! Ok, I’ll make this short.

Last night I took Bar Fortress from the Poles. I figured since the not asking thing worked for Minsk it would work again. I patrol around the fortress for awhile and then Colonel Matviy Gladkiy’s flag appears over it. Hmmm. Ok. The Poles come and take it. (I leave and let them. It’s not mine, I’m not fighting 600 of them to defend it by myself!) Once they’re gone I take it back and again, don’t ask for it. And again, it goes to Gladkiy. I guess since Gladkiy owned it for a long time before they came and took it, he’s got rights to it. So maybe if I can get Minsk back, then it will be mine since it was before. Oh well. At least I got more siege practice in, and when I took it back the second time I also freed my favorite buddy Les’ Gritsenko and Colonel Ivan Sirko, who were being held in the prison there.

One other really cool thing happened. I was hanging out with Colonel Ivan Bogun and we ran into Skrzetuski. When he defeated me a few nights ago, he took some things from my inventory, including some of my books and my backup horse Teddy. When we defeated him, I got all my stuff back, including Teddy! I was very happy, especially since I had been unable to find another heavy thoroughbred with the same stats. Instead, I bought a lame troop horse on the cheap. So now I have a healthy troop horse that I don’t need. I guess I’ll just increase one of my followers’ riding skill enough that they can ride him, because I’d feel bad selling him back and taking a loss on him without him ever even being ridden.

I really need to get a fortress soon. Now that my renown is higher, my army size has increased to 140+, and the types of campaigns I am going on are tough without the more expensive soldiers from the mercenary camps. My funds are dwindling.

Oh, and since I promised something about WoW this week, here .. have a screenshot of Lyss and Kash hearthing away from me at the end of our alt raid on Saturday night. Lyss and Slice both came along! It was really awesome to get to raid with them again. :)

Facerolling

So, what do you do when there’s no new content and you’d kinda rather be doing anything else?

Alt raid!

Wait … what? Three days of raiding just isn’t enough I guess. But how can I say no when everyone else wants to do it? Of course, stupid me doesn’t just say ‘ok sure whatever my warlock is the best geared alt’ … nooooooooooooo … I have to be an idiot and volunteer to tank. Apparently I got my head bashed in too many times in previous tanking endeavors.

So I ran Kirgra through ToT as dps with tank as her loot choice, got a few upgrades, bought a valor trinket, got her gems, enchants, glyphs, flasks and food, and called her ready. Oh, and stole the heirloom 2H axe from poor Oslee. Ok, and got some tips and a new macro or two from Schriko because he rocks.

So, Saturday came, and off we went!

Oh, hey, look, Don is dead! It’s just like a normal raid!

This is the only screenshot though because, well, I was too busy pushing other buttons.

Prinnie came and healed along with Kash. Yes, just two healers, but Bombelina is pretty geared, and Shudal’s monk tank was tanking our normals for awhile so he is really geared. We got the first wing down in the two hours we raided.

I don’t remember how many times I died. I know there were plenty of times I came close, and we wiped once on Sha. That fight is a lot easier as tank than it is as anything else though. I think we wiped on Protectors once too. Yeah … that one I would rather be dps. So much things! I’m pretty sure I died on Norushen as well. I got warforged boots from Immerseus though so hopefully this week I will be more durable.

Progress on Something New

I didn’t get any leveling done this weekend. I got sidetracked by something. No, no, not a new game. Not D3 either.

Friday night I was running around with Averry. He wanted to go to MC and BWL, and I decided to take Van because he needs rep and also because the character that Averry was bringing couldn’t use 2 handers and I would cry if Ashkandi dropped when no one could mog it. Averry mentioned that it would be more important to have someone who can use the legendary drops in MC. I sort of scoffed at this. I mean, what are the odds of any of those dropping? I’ve seen one binding in all the years I’ve played. So of course, just to prove me wrong, the Eye of Sulfuras drops.

You can guess what I spent the weekend doing, right? I’m going to have to craft a Sulfuron Hammer to fuse with that Eye in order to get my legendary. So off I went to Wowhead.

I happened to have one Sulfuras Ingot in my guild bank, and Kirgra just happens to have a BS skill of 305, when 300 is needed to learn the pattern for the hammer. I also gathered the 20 gold bars, 10 truesilver bars, and 2 Star Rubies that were needed for her to learn to smelt dark iron. This all required two separate trips to BRD however, because I hadn’t even thought about the dark iron until after I went there to get the BS pattern.

So, the hammer requires 8 Sulfuron Ingots, 10 blood of the mountain, 10 Fiery Core, 10 Lava Core, 25 Essence of Fire, 50 Arcanite Bars, and 20 dark iron bars. I remember helping Hartbane gather these things way back when. Well, now it is my turn.

In one run through MC, Kirgra gathered all of the cores and essences. Those are the easy part. She got enough dark iron to craft 7 bars. That is the hard part. It takes 8 ore to make 1 bar. Ouch! And the nodes do not respawn. If I had more than one miner … *eyes Arelin but resists the temptation to transfer him*

Arcanite bars I wasn’t even going to mess around. I bought two stacks of Arcane Crystals and a bunch of Thorium bars on the AH and put Van to work transmuting. You want that hammer you gotta do some of the work, elf! Fortunately, he’s transmute specced, so I only had to buy two extra crystals past the two stacks.

So, what do we have left? Sulfuron Ingots and blood of the mountain. The ingots only drop off of … I should know his name without looking it up after so many runs this weekend. Maybe my brain is blocking it out because I never want to see him again? Oh yeah, Golemagg. Anyway, that’s a chance of getting one per week per character. Thanks to Averry and my many alts, I have 7 already. Blood of the Mountain can be had from mining dark iron nodes, OR can drop off of Molten Giants and Molten Destroyers. I managed to collect 6 of these.

Yes, I actually ran every single alt that is 85+ on Kargath-Norgannon through MC this weekend. Instead of leveling, they were working. AND the route I used to get to Blackrock Mountain was flying up from the Blasted Lands, so I made them all detour to Karazhan and kill Attumen. Obviously the horse didn’t drop or this post would be quite different. Anyway … this still gave me practice on the new classes. AoE practice especially, something I don’t do a lot of when questing (not counting the prot paladin, who pulls as much as he can.) Ok, maybe the balance druid didn’t need AoE practice. The rogue, he just vanished and ran away when he aggroed the packs of core hounds in Magmadar’s room. The shaman learned about fire nova (I didn’t even have it on my bar prior to this.) Adryen found a new respect for the Spinning Crane Kick that all of the other monk players I see use almost to the exclusion of any other abilities. Vorta learned to love Berserk … and hate the long cooldown on it. The prot paladin? Um … he couldn’t kill them. He tanked them all the way through the instance, clear up until Ragnaros died, and then just ran them all to the entrance and escaped out the portal. LOL! It was silly, I know, but I kinda of enjoyed having a wall of drooling monster dogs in my face the whole time. Hey, it gave me nonstop Avenger’s Shield procs! Good times.

Alt Week: DK

Late to the party here, but since this sounds like a fun project, I think I’ll join in! Most of you probably already know if you read other blogs, but World of Lae has proposed celebrating our alts one class at a time for 11 weeks, and this first week is DK!

This is a fun one for me because DK is one of my favorite classes.

Arelin

I wasted no time getting into DKs, making my first one the first day they came out, Arelin.

He was the first character I ever tanked on, clearing Naxx in Wrath, which was also the first raid tier I participated in. Then I … switched to playing Alliance for the rest of that expansion. But Shadow Rising was there on the horizon, dragging my troll mage through ICC right before Cata hit, and it wasn’t long into Cata before I was raiding on both sides. Thus, Arelin ended up tanking part of that first tier, including all of Bastion of Twilight, while I leveled my new main paladin on the side. Sadly, out of the DKs I will be talking about here today, he is the only one still stuck at 85.

Kalyon

On the Alliance side of things we have Kalyon.

He was originally a female Draenei but … I dunno, I just can’t play them. He made it to Northrend before I sent him to the surgeon and got him a makeover. He was the co-main throughout the last two tiers of Wrath, doing both tanking and DPS duties in both 10 and 25 man groups. His crowning achievement though, and still my best memory and most important event in my time in WoW, was tanking the guild’s first ever Lich King kill. He is and will forever be Kalyon the Kingslayer. I may be a healer now, but nothing will ever compare to the feeling of going toe-to-toe with the Lich King himself and coming out victorious after so many grueling months in ICC.

Kirgra

Last we have Kirgra.

Like Kaly, she isn’t the same as when she started out. But after a realm transfer, I decided that male troll wasn’t right for her, she needed a new start. So she became a female orc, which gave me an excuse to wear the slut plate that I’d been saving in the bank since Nagrand. She hasn’t done much, really, other than provide money, heirlooms, and mats to my army of alts on Kargath.

I have 5 level 90’s right now and 2 of them are DKs so … it’s pretty safe to say that I like playing the class. ^.^