Four More Artifacts

I am making steady progress getting through my artifact weapon quests. I generally have about three hours to play in the evening, which is time enough to do two of them a night and take my time about it. So here are the ones I got over the last two nights.

Skull of the Man’ari

This was appropriately full of demons and fel. As for the fights, well … since I’m still just getting started with the changes to the demonology spec, I was glued to my soul shards and pet indicators, trying to get everything in and buffed, and most of the fights were over before I knew it and I was standing there going ‘uh …’

Fists of the Heavens

This was the first one I died on. When I ran back, Li Li had pretty much finished off the mobs that did it. Do you know how embarrassing it is to have that tiny little girl panda showing you up, especially when you’re supposed to be a Grand Master? I think I know who I’m choosing as my successor.

There’s a pandaren in the cafe at the order hall that sings the most beautiful and haunting melody that I could stand there all day and just listen to him. Sadly though, for whatever reason, the monks’ order hall is not a rest area. I hope this is just a bug and it will be amended in a hotfix so that it will be like the others.

Blades of the Fallen Prince

Ok, wth? I mean, I used to main (ok fine co-main) DK and played all three specs, so I figured eh, frost DK, how hard can it be eh? Yeah I started on it Wednesday night and let me tell you, if you don’t know what you’re doing, which apparently I did not, you will have a hard time. I must have died a dozen times. I did make it to the final fight eventually, but it was clear that it wasn’t going to happen so I went to bed and spent part of yesterday studying up on my class.

I went back in last night with a couple of different talents and at least one ability on my bar that I had overlooked. (control undead is your friend!) I died exactly once. So .. yeah.

BTW, that right there is my new desktop background, to celebrate my victory over not knowing how to DK anymore. :p

Seeing Bolvar, er, the Lich King again was both cool and sad. But not NEARLY as shocking as the quest that came after I returned to Acherus with my new blades. I don’t want to spoil too much, so all I will say is that the Lich King wants me to raise a new set of Four Horsemen to be my generals or lieutenants or whatever. His choice for the first horseman blew me away. Like, whoa. Suffice it to say, Kaly jumped quite a few spots on my ‘play this toon first’ list because I can’t wait to see where this storyline goes (which I assume is part of the order hall campaign.)

Doomhammer

Gggrrrrrrrrrrrrawr! My Tirion dies, and Thrall goes off (again) to ‘find himself’? Are you kidding me???

Thrall aside, it was pretty cool seeing all of the other shaman we have quested with in the past. Nobundo, Rehgar, Erunak, etc. And best of all, I got to go back to one of my favourite zones of all time, with one of my very favourite NPCs because come on, who is more badass than Stormcaller Mylra?

This questline was the most fun so far, just because I love Deepholm so much. I got Pebble out while I was there so he could see his old home and hang out a bit. There was a lot more to kill for this than some of the other quests but I really enjoyed it. I’m liking enhancement a lot and will probably play her some more.

I’ll see how many I can get through this weekend. I’ll probably have to break them up into multiple posts next week. I still have 3 mages, 2 druids, the other DK (or 2, but maybe not because I don’t think Kirgra has a 2H in her bags. I might just have Arelin do the blood one, too), 2 priests … I think that’s it. OH! And 2 rogues. And 2 warriors. So yeah … it may be awhile before I do any actual questing, but I’m ok with that. I mean seriously, we’re only 3 days into the expansion, there will be many many more. 🙂

Rep Galore

The Draenor Dungeon bonus event went perfectly with the title of this blog. Even though Van is the one who has the most reputations already, since I’ve been maining Sanbec I stuck with him. Fortunately, a lot of people seemed to be doing them, because the dps queue was only around 12-14 minutes the entire week. I managed to get exalted with the Council of Exarchs, revered with the Steamwheedle Preservation Society, and honored with the Sha’tari Defense. He also got to exalted with two of the three Tanaan factions doing his quests there while in queue. These got me many pets and mounts.

Aside from that, I’m also still working on An Awfully Big Adventure and getting rep on the Timeless Isle. While Van was there this week, there was a lineup of people on Cloud Serpents waiting for Huolon to spawn. Since I still need that mount as well, I joined in the display.

Also this week marks the beginning of Brewfest. I haven’t really paid much attention to it the past couple of years, but this year they added a pet and toy, and there are at least two other toys that I don’t have, so I figured I might as well do some. It really takes no time at all to get 100 tokens, in fact you can do it in one day. Two of the items I need cost 100 and two cost 200, so I’m doing four characters … two of them only have to go for one day and get the 100 token items, and the other two have to kill Coren for a few days to get to 200. No big deal. It’s really faster this way if you have multiple alts to do all of the intro quests on instead of trying to earn all of the items with one character.

Of course, Karius had to stop for a selfie after killing Coren Direbrew.

This week’s bonus event is pet battles, so you can bet I will be out there leveling pets!

No More Tomes

Except for this one, because she’s awesome.

In this terrible screenshot, you can see me receiving the last Tome of Chaos that Sanbec needed to collect. That was also the last boss I needed to get the achievement for that wing, and it was nearly bedtime when we finally downed him, so I dropped out right after. What you cannot see is the 5 stacks of determination it took to down him. Although, from what I hear, it may take more than that to kill Archimonde, which I have saved because I’ve heard I will need to kill him for the next stage of the quest anyway. I didn’t even turn the quest in last night, I will do it tonight.

Now on to actual fun stuff!

Yep, I’m taking a screenshot instead of hitting Herald Volazj. I saw him so many times this past week I figured I’d earned a couple seconds of reprieve.

The bonus last week was Wrath Timewalking Dungeons. This was also the premiere of the badges that you earn in them. It takes 5000 to buy the super awesome horse that I absolutely must have. But I wasn’t going to get him in one week. I had other priorities, because you get a quest to turn in after finishing your first dungeon that awards 500 badges. With those badges, you can buy ilevel 675 gear for anywhere from 25-50 badges each. I figured it was a perfect and easy opportunity to gear up my other 5 max level alts. So they all did at least one dungeon. Karius was the lowest geared going in, not even able to queue for Draenor heroics, but since these scale you down to a set level, his actual ilevel didn’t matter one bit. Voila! Just like that and he is geared enough to queue for Hellfire Citadel … not like he’s going to, but he *could* if he managed to talk me into it. I think my two DKs are still one point off, but a little time in Tanaan would take care of that quickly enough if I cared.

Next time, I won’t have to gear up alts, so Sanbec can just chain run them. And what a good time they were. I did a few heroics at the end of BC, but Wrath is really where my true deep involvement in group play began. I will never love any dungeons as much as I love Wrath’s dungeons. Sure there were a few wipes along the way … people forget that you can’t pull too many things that fear or flamestrike. What was it with fear in those dungeons anyway? I think every single one has some in it.

Anyway, it was great fun and I am looking forward to the next Timewalking event.

I’m Flyyyyyyyyying

Of course, I don’t have a picture of it, because the only flying I got to do was from my garrison to my shipyard, since my fantasy football draft was last night. So here, have a shot of some old dragon bones instead.

There are many things in this patch to go with the flying … new areas in Draenor only reachable by flight that feature rares who drop pets, badges to collect from Timewalking dungeons with new transmog items and mounts to buy, and … I dunno, some pvp thing. And supposedly some catch-up quests for bro stones and elemental thingamabobs, although I couldn’t find them last night, but I only looked inside my garrisons. Perhaps I have to visit Mr. Khadgar.

Last week was also a big week for other Blizzard games, with both the release of The Grand Tournament in Hearthstone, and the beginning of a new season in D3. There’s not a lot I can say about TGT because I didn’t want to pay $50 for a card back and some packs that I can buy with in-game gold. I honestly enjoy collecting my cards pack by pack rather than buying in bulk. It makes each one more special. Of course, that also means I don’t have many cards from the set to evaluate yet, although I *can* say that a Warhorse Trainer combined with Mukla’s Champion and Muster For Battle can quickly give you an army of pumped up Silver Hand Recruits to smash faces.

In D3 of course, I made my new seasonal hero as soon as it opened. I was going to make a wizard this time, but then I saw the new Witch Doctor legendary mojo, Henri’s Perquisition, which is, well, a cat! so I had to make a WD instead. Here he is by the rainbow, taking his place in history beside my other D3 characters.

And, for those of you who are actually interested, here is the team I drafted last night:

QBs: Ryan Tannehill, Andy Dalton
RBs: Frank Gore, Doug Martin, T.J. Yeldon, Giovani Bernard, Danny Woodhead
WRs: Randall Cobb, Jarvis Landry, Martavis Bryant, Allen Robinson, Eddie Royal
TEs: Rob Gronkowski, Tyler Eifert
K: Chandler Catanzaro
D: Pittsburgh