Back Into Naxx

Managed to get an invite to guild naxx-25 run last night, still as a non-raider though so could only bid minimum on drops.

It was a finish up run, so I think it was military quarter, razuvious, horsemen etc followed by Sapph (or whatever) and finished up with Kel'sobad.

Upgraded the necklace that I had only just got to a nice epic one and also won a T7 chestpiece token which I handed in for a Valorous Battle Tunic or whatever the fuck it is.

Upgrades still required:
Blue Kirin Tor Cloak -> Purple cloak
All rings and trinkets
Purple mail boots -> Purple Plate Boots
Blue Kal'uak Mace -> Purple mace

Still I was hovering around 5th or 6th on my healing meters, overtaken at the last moment by a ret pally judging light :P

Edit: Really need to upgrade healing meter; WWS says I was 2nd or 3rd on most bosses :)

That is all, hopefully the fuckers will promote me back to raider soon.

And More Heroics

Seems I'm getting into this healing heroics lark. After the foray into Nexus I picked up the daily heroic and went into Utgarde Keep.

Might I add I had to do all the hard work of getting the groups together, but at least I wasn't looking for a healer and a tank, just the tank!

Anyway, so into UK we went and had a couple of wipes on the Plunderer at the end but that was all, and only a few careless dps deaths on the way.

I really only wanted Annhylde's Ring (which didn't drop) but managed to pick up the Tattered Castle Drape for the tank set to upgrade my Gilded Thorium Cloak and Skullcage of Eternal Terror to replace my ret-set Thought-Purifying Protector.

Oh well, lets see what happens tommorrow.

edit: however, both those upgrade were BoE so I am going to sell them seeing as I probably will never get to tank or dps now that I am 80!!

Back in the Swing...

Well, the sun tan lotion is washed out of the shorts, the tan has all peeled away and it's back into the swing of work.

So what better way to celebrate than with a quick heroic?

Checking my gear I really need to upgrade my healing mace. I am currently running with the Kul'uak exalted Totemic Purification Rod, which is blue but it ain't bad, but if I'm going to get back into raid healing I want a purple mace :)

Heroic PUG
So off to heroic Nexus with a PUG - Oooo this could be painful!!

Took a while to get a tank. I was healer as I respecced last night and put some crappy enchants on as I was levelling EB's enchanting, so hit around 1600 SP - Lol.

Got a tank eventually and headed on in.

First Healer Outing
I haven't yet been specced healer since hitting 80 so spent most of the time getting used to keeping sacred shield and bacon of light up. But we did OK. We died a few times on Grand Magus thingy but got it down eventually.

We finally got to KerryKatona and took her out first go. Not bad for my first healing outing.

Bad Kerry
2 or 3 wipes and 3 or 4 random deaths. But no War Mace of Unrequited Love, the bloody flame girdle thing dropped :(

Shiny Upgrades
I did however upgrade my tanking shield from Bulwark of the Tormented God to Bulwark of the Noble Protector, grabbed myself a Frozen Orb and also upgraded my healing Necklace from Nadina's Pendant of Purity to Amulet of Dazzling Light.

I'm Back!!!

To my 3 followers and all the other imaginery readers I may have, I am back. I have been on holiday - YAY!!

Normal service will resume when I have got back into my stride and have something to say!!

Wednesday Achievement Ramble

Fish and Kungaloosh.
OK, so I went out and did a bit more fishing last night, I got myself a few stacks of nettlefish in ShoeBazaar Basin before starting the Nesingwary quests.

Why? Well I need the fish to make Fish Feast for the Northrend Gourmet (and also hopefully to swap for enchanting mats in the guild bank); as for the Nesingwary quests? Well you need to get as far into them as completing the first quests in the Panther and Rhino chains to open up the "Lemonade or Booze" chain from Mr Grimbooze. This chain when complete opens up a quest to get the final recipe required for Northrend Gourmet: Kungaloosh.

So having got that far, distilled his lemonade into some booze and tested it on the locals it's time for a quick HS back to Dalaran.

Piss-head Mage.
Off to visit the Washed Up Mage in the sewers who kindly taught me the Recipe for Kungaloosh. A quick trip to the mail box for some Glacial Salmon and Mussleback Sculpin, onto the bank for some Northern Spices and finally onto the "tree" vendor between the Inn and the alliance portal building for some berries and plums. Cook up a fish feast and some Kungaloosh and WHOOSH - Achievement: Northrend Gourmet!!

A New Title.
The next job of the evening was a quick flight into Crystalsong forest to explore the last 2 sub zones and KABLOOEY - Achievement: Explore Northrend followed by Achievement: Explorer!!

More Fishing.
So, now that the Northrend Gourmet is finally complete there is only one thing standing in the way of me and "Chef" and that is Captain Rumsey's Fucking Lager. You have to brew some up. Where do you get the recipe? From the fishing daily quest. Now, don't get me started on the fact that you have to have levelled the most annoying profession up pretty high to do another profession achievement. Cooking is pretty well linked to fishing already, that is annoying enough as it is :(

Sticking Point.
OK, some profession occasionally need materials from other profession, like Iron buckles from blacksmithing to make a certain leatherworking recipe. Several professions need alchemy potions to make things etc etc. But you can usually buy these relatively easily from the Auction House.

But you have to have a pretty high fishing skill to get the cooking Meta-Achievement? WTF Blizz? Bastards. Luckily, I am level 450 fisherman, and I was a level 375 fisherman pretty early on in TBC. I have been doing the fishing daily on and off since it appeared. BUT I HAVE NEVER HAD CAPTAIN RUMSEY'S FUCKING LAGER drop once!!!!

Oh, how this is pissing me off!!!

And Moving On...
OK, now that I have that rant out of the way, there's a few other achievements I am chasing. I just need the book from the Ledgermain Lounge for Higher Learning, I want to get one of the extreme rare spawns which is a Northrend exploration achievement, but is not required for the Explorer meta-achievement.

I have done the first of the squirrel loving achievements and started on the the second one and I have killed most of the pests required for Pest Control.

Achievement Macro's.
A lot of these have been made a lot easier by target macro's. The basic macro consists of somehting like:

/cleartarget
/tar mobname1
/tar mobname2
/tar mobname2
[noexists] stopmacro
/script playsoundfile("Raggy Insect Kill.wmv");
/s Need to Kill %t
/autoattack

^^ not a real macro :P

Actual macro examples coming in a future blog post.

Kinky Sadist Lovemaking. (That's gonna get the google rank up!!)
I ripped off some of these macro's from wowwiki, that's what it's there for after all; but I want to change the sound file that plays "DIE! INSECT!" to a slightly nicer one for when the achievement involves a /love

You've got to admit it doesn't really fit, unless you are some kind of sado-masochistic freak!!

I had a quick look around the game files but couldn't find any /wav files.

HELP - Anyone know how to mine the separate files from the distribution?

Euripedes Does it Again.

There is a reason Critical QQ is on my blog roll...

Here is another example.

450 Cooking

OMG, that was a pain in the ass. I suppose I could have blown half my stack of gold on mats but I decided I would farm the mats required to get to 450 cooking.

Pay Attention.
Luckily, as anyone who has been paying attention will know, I had already reached 450 fishing and have the very nice epic Kal'uak fishing pole and weather beaten hat, so getting the fish should have been easy!

Here Fishy Fishy.
As the mats for the small feast are quite similar to the Fish Feast that I am intending to cook and swap for enchanting mats in the guild bank, I decided Gigantic feast was the way to get to 450. Mammoths, Rockfin Groupers and Deep Sea Monsterbellies watch out!!

Only 25 skill points and 2 of each ingredient required. So 2.5 stacks of each.

Bugger!
4 odd stacks later and I'm still at 444 - ARGH!!

So another trip down to my favourite fishing spot in the Frozen Sea, 2 more stacks of each fish followed by a flight up to annoy those D.E.H.T.A. folks by killing all their mammoths and I finally hit 450 cooking. And Whoopee I still have 90 Northern Spices left!!!

Next?
Now I am going to sit in the Ledgermain Lounge until that god-damn book spawns!

Arseholes

WTF?? I logged on this afternoon to check what the raids were and nothing was appearing in the guild calendar thingummy.

Turns out I have been demoted to non-raider, so don't get auto invited to raids.

It's a long road to level 80.
Most of the guild leadership are aware of the personal issues I have had recently, and the reason it took so long to get to 80. But I got there retaining my Senior Raider rank.

Attendance.
Then, despite, ongoing personal stress I started raiding and signing for almost every raid; at least the 2 out of 3 required.

Gear.
I'm still sporting T6 neck and chest but all my other armour is i-level 213. I just need to upgrade rings and trinkets and maybe my Blue Mace (Kalu'ak exalted).

Knowledge.
I am also now fully au fait with Naxx-25 and Malygos-25 tactics.

Only NOW I am demoted to non-raider!!!!

It took all my self control not to go all emo again and do a dramatic /gquit. I'm not so self absorbed that I think I am indispensable :P

Non-WoW Entrecard

OK, so the latest Entrecard is not wow based. It's parent based. I'm a parent. I care about bringing my kids up properly so they don't turn into asbo brats. Deal with it. It's my blog after all.

Coming next on Entrecard? Making money on the Internet? WoW Gold farming? Who knows? :P

Goddam Computer

Yet again I find myself totally pissed off with my new PC. I got an invite to go to Naxx-25 again with the guild but I was disconnecting and lagging all over the place.

Vent is coolio
I was frequently at 9K latency but still with a frame rate in the 30s and then I'd freeze and crash out, but with no interruption to vent. Oh yeah, I forgot, we moved to vent from TS, it is soooo much better.

It was usually a boss fight that I'd crash out of in the middle of, but I'd usually manage to get back on-line to get some loots.

Thaddius
I managed not to crash out of the Thaddius fight, because I hadn't actually got to him when I DC'd!! When I got back on I managed to join with the right polarity and moved a few times with the pack but on about the third movement I was with the pack but still blew up the polarity bomb. So the lag screwed our achievement attempt :( thankfully a couple of others did it too!!

Looty Mc'Loot
So, after having to reconnect every couple of minutes it was a very tedious evening, made worse because I use an authenticator :P BUt anyway, I came out of there with 5 brand new shiny epics, all for minimum bid because I am still a non-raider - WTF???? Whose to complain? Lots of free/cheap epix:

Libram of Tolerance
Legplates of Double Strikes
Abetment Bracers
Waistguard of Divine Grace

I'm sure I got one other thing but cannot find it.

Bitter Sweet
So 5 phat epix lootz but a very frustrating evening of constantly having to logon again. With a bit of luck now that I have a good selection of Naxx-25 healing pieces and have shown up for a good few raids I will be able to get my raider rank back.

Achievements Update

So, when not moping around, dealing with insane amounts of personal crap or stowing away on heroic raids totally undergeared I have been working on some achievements.

Raids.
I have now got heroic Naxx and Maly :)

Exploration.
Cleared up another couple of Northrend zones. Only took, HF, BT, Dragonblight and half of Grizzly Hills to ding

Pest Control and Squirrel Loving.
Got the 1st half of the squirrel loving achievement done, just the Northrend half to finish now, and also the pest control.

Loremaster.
Way behind but, did put a few more Kalimdor quests behind me. Only a few hundred to go!!

Well Read.
Toured Azeroth and Kalimdor and read all the books while doing the above.

Dungeons.
Knocked Dire Maul and Scholo off the list of dungeons required while doing Well read and Loremaster. I also got invited to a guild/pug and downed Raggy, then helped some of the puggers get LBRS and UBRS then popped into the Depths to get my achievement ticked off

Fishing.
Getting there, Fishing skill hit 446 when I yanked up Old Crafty from behind a big rock in the Valley of Spirits - YAY. 375-446 fishing skill just trying to get one fish. Got the wreckage pools done at the same time as pest control and loremaster stuff done and dinged 450 fishing; then toured Northrend to get the northrend pools done and catch all the little fishies I'd need for cooking.

Cooking.
Got all the cooking achievements done for the meta achievement apart from Northrend cooking and Captain Rumsey's Lager. Turns out you get the recipe for this from the Shattrath fishing daily. So doing that whenever possible, but it never drops :( Cooking is floating somewhere between 425 and 450, I may even have hit 450. I just have to get the ingredients for those last 3 recipes and cook them and then go over to see Nesingwary's mate and do the quest chain for Kungaloosh and then I will be Chef.

Higher Learning.
Just need the Transmutation (or whatever book from downstairs in the Ledgermain Lounge and then I have my pet and achievement. Joining our /higherlearning channel was such a great help for that, but that last bloody book refuses to spawn!!

Pets.
Went and bought Pengu for the 10 pets achievement from the Kal'uak and got myself the epic fishing rod and the blue healing mace whilst I was there!!!

That's all I can think of for now. How are you guys doing?

Tagged

Thanks Alex :P

Well, on this machine my old WoW screenshots folder has all the images I have used for the blog, and the 6th image in the 6th folder was totally not WoW related and has appeared on this blog before. But in the spirit of not cheating and making up something interesting here goes:



So there you have it.

Anyway, tagged back is Random Ravings, Euripedes, TJ and Doofy. I couldn't tag anyone else cos I am work and all the other blogs I read without fail have already been tagged :P

Malygos 25 Down

Not been on Wow much and not blogged much in the last couple of weeks, family disaster :(

Naxx-25 Finish Up
So, anyway, logged on tonight and asked the raid leader if they needed a noobadin. Yes I am still retribution and sporting quite a few level 70 epics :P

I get invited along to the last 3 bosses in Naxx-25 and we clear them out with ease, netting me some level 80 replacements for my Crystalfoge (T5) shoulders and trousers as well as a very nice healing shield. Woot!!

Onto Malygos
So off we pop to Malygos. The guild has taken him down once before on 25 man, admittedly by the skin of their teeth and by the dots finishing him off, so this isn't a guaranteed kill. We wipe and wipe.

Jumpatron 3000
Several times I managed to get into the anti-arcane shieldy things but went from 100%-0% health anyway :S Turns out Euripedes may have an answer to that. I must try that!!

Crappy Macaroon Buttons
Most attempts got as far as phase 3 but I was usually dead by then!! By the time I survived into phase 3 I was worried that the pet control bar wouldn't come up. You see I have Macaroon as my button mob and it had created problems while questing before. Namely the exit vehicle button, but also the controls sometimes failed to appear.

I used to be able to click into macaroon config mode via the mini-map button and it would toggle the pet bar on, but I must have installed an update and the button was no-where to be seen. So no pet bar.

I managed to stay with the pack for most of the fight, even though I was useless and only died towards the end, at least I wasn't the first to die!!

Vanilla
Before the next attempt I did a quick relog and disabled Macaroon and also managed to survive to phase 3. This time I managed to get about 2 attacks off before I died!!! But we downed Malygos anyway!! Achievement: Heroic Malygos - WOOT!!!