Hearthstone - Rank 14

Tonight I made my highest rank yet in Hearthstone - rank 14!! Woot! I am going to leave it there until the end of the season and just play casual games tomorrow for the dailies.

This was achieved with the low cost mage deck I mentioned back here.

My gold is approaching 2000 so I will soon be able to buy another 20 packs. I like waiting to 20 and opening them together.

WoW - Legendary Quest Progress

Well that's another part done!

WoD Beta - First Impressions

The first night was insane trying to get anything to work with the Alpha/Beta.

First of all there was the waiting to get to playable. Then all kinds of errors involving reboots, deleting files and changing settngs and then waiting for the game to do anythign.

I eventually managed to get in and create some characters on Gilneas (US) including an Orc Hunter. I did some quests on him and checked out some of the new features.

The first thing I noticed in my bags was this ...

I think it just sorted stuff into rarity order. I'll have a play round and see if it does anything else obvious. Maybe it will sell greys to a vendor if you are stood by one.

I also noticed a Garrison Abilty in my spell book. Not entriely sure what that does either, it didn't seem to do much for me!

Next time - The Toy Box

WoW - Warlords of Draenor Beta Access

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After my last post I checked my attached email account and there is an email in there received at 08:00 this morning entitled "Warlords of Draenor Beta Invitation‏" and tells me to do stuff with the battle.net desktop app so it must be legit right?

Well, I go to my battle.net account and see that I actually do have Beta access to WoD on my account!!

YAY!!!

Weird that the battle.net desktop app still says Alpha, maybe I was invited to alpha (no email found) or maybe they haven't updated the desktop app.

Who cares? I am in WoD Beta Baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WoW: Warlords of Draenor Alpha / Beta Access

The #‎Warlords‬ of Draenor beta is now live! First wave of invites are on their way:http://ow.ly/ywpNA according to the WoW Facebook group.

It directs you to update your battle.net client and then In the Region/Account drop-down menu above the Play button, choose Beta: Warlords of Draenor (listed under In Development)

I thought I'd just have a look and see. It looks like I had Alpha access!!!!!!!!!!! WTF??? I am currently downloading a 26GB patch over a rubbish broadband connection. It will take me a while to find out whether a) everyone had the download option but not actually game access and b) whether Alpha access is still available and/or automatically converts to Beta access!!

WoW - Legendary - PvP Done

It has taken me weeks but I finally joined a battleground that was capable of finishing this battleground!!

And 10 achievement points too :)

Time to go kill the warlord in Krasarang!

RIP Eli Wallach

Eli Wallach, star of the name-sake(ish) of this blog, has died (aged 98).

He starred in the Magnificent Seven and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly along with many other films in the 50s and 60s and continued into the 21st Century; including one of my wife's favourite films 'The Holiday'.

Shamefully I never made the connection between Arthur Abbott in The Holiday and Tuco in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly!

Amazingly in 60 years he was never even nominated for an Oscar (apparently, as wikipedia would say, [citation needed]) and only got one Golden Globe (again - maybe!)

Check the story out on BBC News.

Hearthstone: Sorcerer's Apprentice

Last night I decided to rebuild my mage deck as it was the mage daily quest and my mage battles always suck.

So I went and did some net-decking (that's a term, go check out The Angry Chicken Podcast) and found this low budget deck. OK, I am missing a few cards and I haven't crafted them yet, so I had to shoe horn 4-6 other cards in but it is doing me very well at the moment. I think it makes me the Sorcerer's Apprentice!

I have been getting great win streaks and am up to rank 15. That's where I've stalled for now, I think it may be time to switch to a net-decked Hunter deck and see if I can get further.

After that the guys over at TAC podcast are suggesting that the current meta is for a hand lock deck. More about that another day.

WoW - Achievement Ain't Lost No More

Last night I had nearly finished getting all the Tillers up to be Best Friends. I just had Old Slackjaw and Fishy Fellweed to go.

The previous night I had been doing the noodle cart quests and realised that you can cook certain meals for the tillers for a daily reputation boost (that's tomorrows blog post!) - yes I'm a bit slow off the mark here! (If I ever write it at all!)

So, anyway, I had got Old Slackjaw to within 1 daily quest of being best friends and had a few thousand on Fishy to go.

Last night, I fed up Fishy and had another food to tip her over the edge today. I was reading her stories and then looked her up on Wowhead. It turns out once you get all the tillers to Best Friend you can kill the Giant Cattail Grouper in Cattail Lake and it will drop a quest item. This starts the quest The Old Map (see image).

Handing this quest in (as a human) gave my 19g and the next quest Just a Folk Story which takes you back to Halfhill market to talk to some people.

Once you've spoken to all the people with a white speech balloon above their heads you head back to Fishy and hand the quest in and get another 19g odd and the quest Old Man Thistle's Treasure which  takes you to the cave entrance just to the north west.

If you mouse over the rocks at the cave entrance you will get a cog, click and the rocks will disappear.

Now head into the Cavern of Endless Echoes and work your way round to the end being careful not to pull too many spiders at a time as they can soon overwhelm you.

At the end there is a big green spider with 1.1 million health but an easy kill. Once that is dead you can hand in the quest at the chest for another 19 gold and pick up The Heartland Legacy as well as Old Man Thistle's Treasure itself which contains 100 gold, some seeds and some blue gems! (Make sure Fish is present at the kill or you will not be able to be able to hand in and get the new quest.)

If the entrance is blocked when you leave you will need to Hearthstone out. One way or the other head back to Halfhill Market to hand in.

It can be a little difficult to find the hand in NPC. Shing Sing is in a little cave behind one of the huts.

Handing in the quest to her gives you your final 19 odd gold and the achievement Ain't Lost No More.