Happy Halloween!

Or Samhain, or All Hallow's Eve, or Candy Day!

Raid day again yesterday this time for the 10 man team.

We decided to do a fresh run and managed to kill the first four bosses in an hour! Considering the trouble we had been having with those previously that was a massive achievement! Plus I got a trinket!

So all went well and we headed towards Galakras. Couple of wipes later and it was dead!
Much cheering was heard. I even remembered a kill shot!

So we decided to head and have a look at Iron Juggernaut, using same tactics as we have been in our Flex raids. Couple of wipes later and once again, we downed it!And also remembered another kill shot!

We decided to leave Dark Shamans until Sunday but it should be good!

Liberators of Orgrimmar (Sort Of)

So last night we finally killed Garrosh on Flex and a few of us even got an heirloom weapon (me included! :D)

However it seems that we are not worthy of the achievement and title to say we did this, you only get the title and achievement that goes with it on Normal or Heroic.

However, much fun was had by all, and after a particularly bad wipe, we pulled it together and got him down \o/

Today shall be dedicated to Celestials and Ordos on my million alts then LFR (wish me luck xD)

Day 2 of Operation Sell All the Things!

Following on from yesterday's blog post, I have indeed emptied my rather neglected Bank Alt's Guild Bank and proceeded to throw it all at the Auction House.

Some of the Timeless Isle gear got shipped off to my Shaman who has become my 12th level 90 (yay!) so she is swimming in lovely epics.

She was having a whale of a time on the Isle last night, and I even managed to get together enough coins to buy her a nice new weapon from the vendor (for only 10,000 timeless coins which I thought was fairly easy).

I'm toying with the idea of doing the legendary quest line on her (yes from scratch, no I haven't gone insane) and making her my main healer.

But back to my original point - i'm currently sitting at roughly 2k gold profit from what I've sold so far, and am yet to strip the army of alts of things that should have already been sent to the banker for off loading. I also still have roughly half the stuff from my guild bank to sell, some of which will be vendored by the end of the week if it hasn't sold (I've decided to be ruthless!)

So this leaves me with 5 empty guild bank tabs that I need to decide what to fill back up with.

Enchanting mats will be a fairly safe bet and I have an abundance of those over my two enchanters so they will be shipped over come the end of the expansion.

Cloth used to be a pretty good bet but with the overabundance of Windwool cloth this expansion, its worth has pretty much tanked and I doubt it will be worth much more in future. I'm afraid that I also am very bad at doing my daily cooldowns so my tailor has very little http://www.wowhead.com/item=82447 and hasn't even learned how to make the new http://www.wowhead.com/item=98619 but as these are BoP I'm not overly worried about resell values of those.

Herbs are generally a good overall seller and I'm still selling a few of these currently, but I will be going on a farming session soon and stockpiling some of them for use further down the line, as I shall be for ores, however my engineers also need these so shall be sending a few out rather than just stockpiling I feel.

All in all though, it's a start and is more of a plan that I usually have! Roll on Blizzcon! :)

A Preparation of Sorts!

After doing some catching up on blog reading, I have decided to sort out my characters' bags and banks in preparation for what ever may be to come!

On many of my alts I'm already running out of space so today shall be dedicated to sorting out what can and can't be put in Void Storage, and shipping the rest off to the bank alt to see what profit can be made with the rest.

If all else fails, I may clear out the stash of Lootistics Island gear I have and once "used" vendor the results on each char for a tidy sum! (Though I may just farm more and do this anyway for fun and profit, and more coins towards that mount!)

This is how my bank alt's bags and banks last looked:

As you can see, apart from a ton of Timeless Isle gear, I have a boat load of not very useful stuff.

So the goal over the coming weeks/months shall be to rid myself of the clutter that I no longer need/have use for, and to start hoarding various trade materials that will likely still sell quite well in the coming weeks/months. Then I will actually remember to log on my banker occasionally and even list some auctions!

With the help of a friend actually looking after gold for me at the end of Cataclysm, I managed to come into Mists with a nice sum of gold behind me, so much in fact that in the time it took me to hit 90 I had enough for my Grand Yak. However this time round I need to do this on my own.

I've always had a bit of a lazy attitude when it comes to gold, i generally have enough on each character to cover their repairs if needed and buy food etc, but generally not massive amounts. As an example most of my alts generally run around with roughly 200 gold on them.

Even my "main" character generally doesn't have much more. In fact I possibly have around 5000g overall currently, and that includes low level alts.

Gold making has never been a priority for me, and I find that if I do end up with a large chunk of gold, I tend to spend it quite quickly on companion pets, gear for the alts, things I don't need but look fun, so its a very fluid commodity for me with me generally spending slightly more than I make back in any one session.

However this has never impinged on my enjoyment of the game and I always have enough for the things that my characters need at any given time. No I may not be able to go out and afford the latest craftable gear, but my characters will always be gemmed and enchanted from my small army of alts that have all of the professions covered. I've even levelled up a second engineer, but I did it the old fashioned way by going out and mining all the ores that I needed until I had enough to proceed further with my training.

Ideally, I would like to have a stash of around 50k by the time the next expansion hits, but with so many mounts that I can buy for gold that I still don't own because of the cost (I'm looking at you http://www.wowhead.com/item=85262, and you http://www.wowhead.com/item=89304, not to mention http://www.wowhead.com/item=44235 and all the JC crafted mounts!)

So my aim is to make gold, but also to try NOT to spend it!

I think I need some luckydo!

A Day to Remember!

What a day I had yesterday!

Firstly, I actually managed to get all the 90s their Celestials kill (a feat unheard of before!). The warlock got her 2 set tier bonus courtesy of some new gloves, and the rogue got tier legs. All the rest got double gold.

I also managed to get my last three runestones for my cloak with minimum fuss, though I did end up doing the last part of Throne of Thunder twice as I had to go back for Lei Shen's heart.

However it was then raid time so I didn't have time enough to finish it before hand.

So we headed into raid with three healers this time, which was a brilliant change. We've been struggling for healers so far so when we have managed to raid have usually only scraped together two healers, which our team isn't quite skilled enough at staying out of bad stuff for yet.

So in we went, killed first boss with almost no issues (though I spent a large part of it dead due to an unlucky swirl spawn right on top of me!). We have first two bosses on farm though so I expected no issues there. I did get some shiny new boots though which was nice!

We headed to the Protectors, and got these down quick enough, and some people got some more shiny loot.

Then we headed towards Norushen, which we'd been having issues with for a couple of weeks - and proceeded to one shot it!

Obviously having an extra healer made a world of difference (and our usual healer is a bit more vocal on vent now and used to lead a heroic team, so his guidance was fantastic as I'm not very good at raid leading myself).

I even remembered to take a screenshot!

Full of good cheer and confidence we headed into the room for Sha of Pride - and proceeded to wipe on the trash like the pro raiders that we are xD

After much laughter and hilarity we settled down to kill the Sha of Pride - and again one shot it! I'm seriously never letting the healers that came go, they are our good luck charms it seems!

Some very shiny loot dropped including a http://www.wowhead.com/item=105223 which was won by our lovely monk DPS (curse you! :p) and one again I forgot to take a kill shot!

We had a few good tries then on Galakras but I think tiredness was getting to us then and we wiped a few times before calling it for the night. An excellent evening for my little team!

So I then headed off to visit the four celestial temples and get their blessing, before having to double back as I went to the wrong temple for the ranged DPS challenge (like a pro!)

After reading a few comments on Wowhead beforehand to prepare myself I found the challenge itself easy enough. Got my epic 600 ilvl cloak and headed off to the Timeless Isle to see about getting the legendary part.

A few other people were on the same bit as me so we all stuck around and killed the Celestials one after the other until we finished our quests, and then headed to the Seat of Knowledge and huzzah! My first ever legendary!

Now if only I could figure out how to turn off the annoying vanity proc!

So a very productive day indeed!

Now on to flex and hopefully we shall kill Garrosh this week!

Downfall!

Well we ventured into this part on Flex last night, and boy did we wipe!

I think we wiped at least six times on Siegecrafter and Klaxxi! We gave Garrosh a couple of attempts before calling it as people were tired, but I can't wait to get him down too!

There is a lot of stuff to remember in the Klaxxi fight, and luckily we do have an excellent raid leader for our Flexi runs. I wouldn't have a clue what I was supposed to be DPSing otherwise, even after reading up on the fight.

The night was also successful as I got new bracers and a Kovok pet! I'm currently in two minds whether to keep it or sell it as it is going for a nice amount on my server. I listed it last night and will let the gods of random selling decide - if it sells yay gold! If not, woo new pet :D

I believe we are planning to go ack up against Garrosh on Saturday so I shall spend some time in LFR this week familiarising myself with the fights I think ^^

A Milestone of Sorts

Apparently, this is my 100th blog post!

It seems I have managed to find things to write about (or post screenshots about!) for one hundred posts, which I never thought I would manage to do when I started this blog.

The plan I generally had when I started about what things I would write about has definitely gone out of the window, and I find myself just waffling about my day to day playing instead of trying to give my opinions on things in the wider WoW world.

The main reason for this is, I just go with the flow the majority of the time. I am not one of the people who reads every patch note and is up to date on all the things that are going to change in upcoming patches.

I much prefer to sit back and wait to see what will come :)

I don't mind reading the odd thing on twitter or other people's blogs, but I like to have some surprises in store for me when these things go live.

So this is why you won't get many speculation posts from me, though I do write a few when the mood takes me.

But thank you for reading my one hundred posts of waffle, and here's to the next hundred \o/

Another Brick in the Wall

Or should I say another alt to 90!

The rogue finally reached level 90 yesterday! It has taken me five years of trying but I've finally figured out how rogues can be fun and managed to level one to max level!

Yes, I have actually been trying to level a rogue for that amount of time. I would usually get one to around 20 and then give up, same with warriors actually!

Thanks to Lootistics Island, she is almost geared enough for Siege of Orgrimmar LFR, and has dabbled a bit in Throne of Thunder last night (until I hit a group so bad I just had to leave for my own sanity!)

Here she is in her "grown-up" transmog:

I'm in two minds about the legs, but they shall do for now! All I need to do now is get her some nice new daggers to replace her two http://www.wowhead.com/item=86519 and she'll be laughing!

Next on the list is the shaman!

The Emotional Side of MoP

As I've been levelling yet another alt recently, I've realised that the storyline of this expansion has quite a lot of emotional hooks in it, especially once we hit Siege of Orgrimmar territory.

There are NPCs who have cropped up over and over as our characters level up, progressing along with us, and then meeting nasty points in the story.

We see it with Ji Firepaw and Aysa Cloudsinger. If you've levelled a Pandaren to the point of choosing a faction, you see the relationship between these two develop, then stop as they are separated by our factional divide, then the sadness surrounding the circumstances of them reuniting in Siege of Orgrimmar when Ji is close to death and Aysa takes him out of there (if you're lucky enough to be in a group that pulls the adds torturing him anyway).

It is the story lines like these that tug at the heartstrings that have made me realise why I love the way the Blizzard tell us the story of what is happening, and I feel that we have been involved on a more personal level this expansion than before.

If you play as horde, you will have encountered Nazgrim quite a few times before finally having to kill him in Siege of Orgrimmar.

You first encounter Nazgrim in the cold north of Northrend:

He is only a Sergeant there, but it starts a journey. You interact with this same NPC throughout Wrath content, Cataclysm content and then Mists, and you see how he progresses also.

We have fought alongside this NPC through a large chunk of our playing history, and then we have to kill him. Granted we also have to kill the Klaxxi, but they warned us which side they would choose should it come to it. Nazgrim is just a casualty of his own honour, he made a vow and he is sticking to it, regardless of the outcome.

Many of us ignore NPCs in our mad dash through storylines and to get gear, but Blizzard have made a point of placing certain NPCs throughout our journey to defeat Garrosh that should tug at our heartstrings - Gamon the joke of Orgimmar, Nazgrim, Aysa and Ji - I salute you Blizzard in making me care about your NPCs as much as any one else!

And I'm sorry Nazgrim that we had to come to this.

When I was a Young WoW Noob

I decided to do a sort of continuation of my last blog.

There is a lot of speculation at the moment about what might be announced in Blizzcon, what details we might get of a new expansion, if there will be a new class etc.

Those of us that have been playing a long time have seen so many changes coming and going in the game, that we wait more with a sense of dread than of excitement part of the time I feel. Wondering what new imbalances there will be, if there is a new class how OP they will be at first before the inevitable nerf bat kicks in (Death Knights anyone?)

As I mentioned in my last blog, I had no idea what I was doing when I first started playing.

My friend used to despair of me and every now and again check my gear and give me some new things from the AH and tell me that spirit was no good to me (which I ignored as everyone knows spirit increases mana regeneration!) This was when hunters still used mana of course.

At the time I can remember thinking that the higher the armour number, the better the gear. My friend did briefly tell me that green gear was better than white, and blue better than green - however, he didn't explain that this meant the name of the gear being the different colours. I spent a long time thinking he meant the actual colour of the gear, so had a nice green outfit going for a while, even if half of it was strength and intellect gear!

I also had no idea what a "dungeon" was. As I wasn't very good at the questing part (or more the "finding" of the quest objectives) I tended to ride around exploring a lot. This was before they even brought in achievements for doing so, I just wanted to uncover the map. On a few occasions I would be met by a swirly portal, and having no idea what these were decided to investigate, then got promptly killed. My hunter levelled purely by questing and didn't do any dungeons until Wrath when a kind guildie explained what they were and the gear that could drop.

As we enter new expansions, or even as we pick up a new class for the first time, we all briefly return to that time when it was all new and exciting. We just need to learn to hold on to that feelin a while longer and we will all be much happier for it :)

The Importance of Community

I've been quiet the last few days, mainly as I've finally worked out how to enjoy my rogue (she's level 74 and still going!) but also because I've been trying to catch up on my blog reading (something I'm still attempting to do!)

As usual my inspiration has come from something written by The Godmother - she touched back on the topic of patch notes that she wrote about back in August, and how it is assumed that a lot of the information is just something people should know.

I remember when I first started playing the game, I had no idea what to do. I spent a lot of time lost in and around Auberdine, just killing things as I had no idea where I had to go to finish the quests I had picked up. I still have memories of my friend starting a new character and coming to help me, leading me up and down the beach to the dead animal corpses that gave me a quest, that I had no idea even existed.

Those of us that have been playing for a long time seem to forget how steep, and long, the learning curve was for us.

I remember being really happy when someone told me about Quest Helper (my very first add-on!), and then someone else told me about Allakazam, and Thott bott!

On my own, I had no idea that these things existed, it took friends and people in the community to tell me they were there.

Granted, these are (were) fan based sites and as such not something that Blizzard created, so there shouldn't necessarily be in game links to the current ones (Wowhead, Wowpedia etc), but I do like the idea of patch notes, and current location of gear vendors etc being on the notice boards in game.

I'm sure we have all tutted and rolled our eyes when someone has asked what seems like an obvious question in guild chat or in an instance, and wondered why they don't just look it up themselves. Maybe we should all just stop assuming that people know where to look :)

As a Community, the WoW is a large and multi-faceted one, with people of all ages, backgrounds and skill level. Those of us who have been around a little longer should have some more patience with those just starting on the curve, and remember that we were once WoW-noobs too ^^

A Late Birthday Present

So on Thursday, I got given a rather late birthday present, my birthday being on the 23rd September.

However, I was fine with this as I had known it was going to be late, due to how long it took to make.

I got given a fantabulous gift by the lovely Buv: a Skygolem!

I also made him a Pierre as I felt this mount was way too awesome to be given as a birthday present ^^

Now I'm not clever enough to work out how to record me flying in it, but it is so awesome, and for a brief moment I was one of the first on my server to have one which was nice :D

The Day I Thought I'd Never See!

I've done it!

I've actually managed to level a Warrior to end level, and I even learned how to enjoy playing it!

You may remember me mentioning my Warrior previously and saying how she was level 81, and likely to remain that way forever as I just could not get my head around how to play them and enjoy it.

Well thanks to some tips from Buv and other guildies, I have learned how to play Arms, and enjoyed every second. The Warrior is now 90! (Yes, another level 90!)

Here is how she looked when I first started my blog:

Yes, that is a shield. I was half toying with levelling as Prot.

Here is how she looks today:

A much happier, healthier looking Warrior, I'm sure you'll agree!

Since dinging 90 on Tuesday she has been busy on the Timeless Isle (the Celestials even gave her tier legs!), and is sitting at a heady 487 ilvl already!

All I want to do now is get her properly geared, and maybe pick up a tank set ^^

#Altappreciation Week - Priest

Late again ^^

As promised though, here is an introduction and a bit about my priest.

My priest was made back in Wrath, not long after my hunter had hit 80. She is my second ever character, and despite being deleted once, is still going strong!

Originally my priest was a Draenei called Arafia

I had chosen to make her Draenei as I really liked their cast animations:

Even if I wasn't a fan of their stupid mounts:

I learned to love healing on my priest, levelling her exclusively as holy (and this was back when holy didn't have a DPS "chakra" and before dual spec).

I healed every dungeon I could access as I levelled, and did a fair few quests as well (questing as holy in Zangarmarsh was painful!) Thought she did get the coolest looking outfits:

Eventually I got the priest to 66, and was in Nagrand (which I hate, I just get so bored and want to give up when I have a character there). This led to me playing the priest less and less, and eventually deleting her in favour of my new druid.

Roll on quite some time later (I would even hazard a guess as to about a year, but not entirely sure) and a ticket to Blizz later my priest was restored!

She learned Dual Spec and switched from Holy to Disc, and a Shadow offspec. She even race changed to Night Elf, and now, she is a Panda, and back to Holy again :)

I'm even enjoying healing on her again!

I have a second priest who have been levelling (though have been slacking on her lately) who has been levelled purely as holy again, but with the new DPS Chakra!

It has been a much faster journey and the DPS isn't even bad!

She's stuck in Uldum atm, but will eventually join her sisters in Pandaria!

The One Where I Ragequit Hearthstone Temporarily

So yeah, finally got a Hearthstone Beta invite, and have just ragequit after being beat by the Hunter practice deck four times in a row ^^

I shall go back to it eventually, but I quite enjoyed the small taster I have had this morning :D I shall unlock the other practice decks, oh yes!

In WoW related news, I have managed to miss yet another alt appreciation post in relation to priests (but mine is rarely played atm so I'm not too bothered ^^ although, I may make one soon just because she is my second oldest character).

Recently, I have been mostly playing my warrior. Yes, you heard me right, a class taht I've always struggled with and given up on, and do you know what? I'm actually enjoying it! A lot actually!

I've gone from never managed to level a warrior above level 40 to having one currently at level 89! (Granted there may have been some slight cheating in the fact that she was a free level 80 I got from a Scroll of Resurrection when they first came out but shhhhh!)

After some coaching and advice from a guildie (and a fantabulous weapon find - http://www.wowhead.com/item=86523) I am having loads of fun levelling as Arms. Hopefully, she will hit 90 today and then I can gear her up on Lootistics Island (TM by The Godmother) and get her a Prot offspec as well!

Yesterday she jumped from 87 to 89 and had some fun on Darkmoon Island as well

So Happy Hearthstoning to those others lucky enough to be in the Beta and see ya soon! \o/

#Wowscreenshotaday Days 6 and 7

Day 6 - 8 o clock:

Raid o clock \o/

Day 7 - What You Saw Today:

#Wowscreenshotaday Days 2 - 5

Day 2 - Light:

Day 3 - You Today:

Day 4 - In Motion:

Day 5 - Afternoon:

The Week That Was

My apologies for the radio silence over the last week! I have been struck by a rather nasty bug that meant for the most part I didn't feel up to sitting at my computer so I have been mostly cuddled up in my duvet feeling sorry for myself (though occasionally feeling better enough to drag myself to a guild flex raid!)

Suffice to say, I am feeling a whole lot better (and may even manage to keep some food down today \o/) so I shall be back to normal service asap.

The guild bumbled along without me, and Buv led my 10 man group on Wednesday for me (which was super awesome of him!) and they downed Immerseus again! :D Hopefully we can move forward now :)

Flex on Thursday and the guild spammed through parts one and two with no problems! The bosses we struggled with before seemed to just all fall over in front of us this week and we were ready to try The Underhold last night.

I was a bit nervous as I hadn't managed to look up any tactics through the week, but our fantastic guild leader explained everything as we went and the first boss fell quite easily with no deaths.

Spoils of Pandaria caused us a few issues - what a bizarre fight that is! Opening just the right amount of boxes and surviving the mechanics with the group in two separate rooms is an interesting fighting technique. We blew up more than a few times!

We then made our way to Thok the Bloodthirsty (after getting ourselves turned around and running back in the opposite direction ^^)

We didn't quite manage to get him down but we got close! I think we got him down to around 1% at one point, but we didn't quite get there. Hopefully we are going to work on getting some more upgrades for people over the next few days and head back in Tuesday night and get him down!

So how has the week been for the rest of Azeroth while I've been otherwise engaged? :)

#Wowscreenshotaday October 1st

Something colourful: