It turns out I can post using the Opera browser available on my new Wii game console. I don’t expect it to ever happen again. Unless I get too lazy to get up off my dead ass and walk over to a computer. Now that I think about it, could sombody bring me my laptop? Hello!?
I had two different WoW experiences this weekend. One last visit to Razorfen Kraul, and a duo with Mike in Hellfire Peninsula - Burning Crusade.
I thought Razorfen would be easy peasy. Most of it was except for a gruesome wipeout not far from the entrance. We pulled two, one ran and pulled two more, another ran and pulled two more. I think there were at least three Shaman and six totems. We couldn’t do enough damage to kill anybody. Eventually, we wiped. More from lack of ideas than anything else.
The rest went smoothly. We picked up bat guano, and tubers for quests. Getting the tubers was interesting. We activated little gophers that found the tubers. Our job was to wave a stick at the gophers to get them moveing, and to keep them alive as they wandered the cave. We lost a couple gophers to the pigs in the area, but we each had a case of gophers.
Some rare spawn was up that Mark has been looking for. Plus, we took out the Big Pig again on spec. I don’t remember the loot, I think Mark got an Axe out of the deal.
I’ve poked around Burning Crusade with my Hunter a little. The quest loot is great and, though dangerous, it’s not impossible to solo there. Not for a Hunter anyway. Mike and I took our 60 Mage and Warrior Saturday. I haven’t played Warrior for a year or so. I was a bit rusty. We did well, saw some new content and got some great new stuff.
We entered the first instance, Hellfire Citadel. There were two level 60 elite guards just inside. Looked like a great place to visit. We didn’t do anything. I try not to belabor Marks lost account, I don’t want him to feel any worse than he already does, but we all lost. I’m sure we’d be progressing in Burning Crusade if things were otherwise. It’s such a pisser, and the main reason we’ll be heading to Vanguard very soon. We might not stay, but we’ll give it a hell of a try. Great expansion Blizzard. Where’s Marks account?
Ouch, we had one of those instance runs that just don’t make sense. Our third visit to Razorfen Kraul was crazy weird. Everything was twice as hard as it should have been. Some easy fights took forever. The Mage, that’s me, died once, for no reason. We had a simple fight go bad, then good, then bad again. Mike’s Priest ran out of mana twice on that one. There was no way we were going to pull it off, but we did - some how. We were all surprised. Mark, the Warrior, had over 2000 latency for a while.
It was a great night. With all that trouble, as hard as it was, we had fun. We went through hell and won. What more could you want?
Everybody who plays WoW is writing about Burning Crusades. I’m going to write about Razorfen Kraul. How cutting edge is that?
We’ve gone in twice with our latest three toons. We died our first try against Overlord Ramtusk. Our plan was to sheep one of his friends and take Ramtusk while tanking his other friend. That would have worked if we hadn’t died first. Actually we did kill Ramie one moment after our tank when down. I checked the loot and it was a two-hand sword – something a Mage can’t use. Luckily, he and the sword were still there when we returned from the graveyard (that’s a long run, btw). We killed his two friends just because we could.
On our next visit we planned to sheep one and tank Ramtusk while killing his friend. That didn’t work either. We took him out on our return. His loot was a mail hat. We have a guaranteed plan for our third try which will work. He only has two major drops, the sword and the hat. So, we’ll just pass him by.
Our first run, we tried and failed at Big Pig and ran out of time. We got him the next trip. He dropped something leather. I screwed up and forgot to share a Vengeful Fate quest with Mark so when we killed Razorflank he couldn’t loot the head. We’ve got to do him again. That quest gives some nice stuff.
There is a bunch more content in there, but we all dinged 30 last time and I’m not sure how much longer we’ll be going in. I think Monday or Friday may be our last run. It’s getting about time to visit Gnomeregan. I figure we’ll be ready for Burning Crusade by 2008.
I created a Taurn druid when we moved to this server. He was my first Auction House (AH) mule and I made a few thousand gold with him. I took him out for solo runs occasionally and found I liked it. Eventually, I moved all my AH duties to a different mule and have been soloing the Druid, off and on, since. He’s been stuck at level 38 for a while. In the last two weeks I started pushing him to 40 so I could buy him a mount.
I hate playing solo, it’s such a bore. I watch moves or listen to podcasts, whatever. Anything to get past the terrible boredom. I’ve been wandering zones looking for the right spot, but haven’t found anything that suited me. Checking the WoW Druid forum for ideas on weapons, I found a list of leveling places. It suggested Rock Elementals in Badlands for my level. I flew over to Kargath to give them a shot.
My perfect solo grinding spot has four criteria:
1) It’s got to be very close to a zzz rest area - I often play for just a short time. I don’t want to travel far.
2) A quantity of stationary mobs - I don’t want to hunt.
3) Single pulls - I’m grinding not looking for excitement.
4) No runners - I hate chasing fleeing mobs.
I’ve been fighting in bear form since way back when. I’ve read often that cat form was the way to go when soloing, but I’ve always thought I took too much damage in cat. Time for an experiment. I did three Rock Elementals in bear – 4 minutes, 20 second, and three in cat – 3 minutes, 1 second. That included healing in both forms. It comes out to 43 per hour in bear and 60 per hour in cat. I now fight in cat.
The Rock Elementals worked perfectly. I didn’t have the spot to myself always. It can handle two players of the right levels. If there were more than that, I camped and came back later. I dinged 40 and hearth stoned to Orgrimmar. A short ride to Thunder bluff and my new spells, then down to Bloodhoof Village for my mount.
I’m not expecting to take him further for a while. I’m going to start a Horde Pally, like everybody else, and see where that takes me.
It was a dumb way to start. Mark thought we could run past all the mobs in the entrance-cave of Blackfathom Depths. We didn’t make it. I think with some practice we might. Who has time to practice entering a dungeon? It’s a long run back from the graveyard. We fought the rest of the way in the old fashioned way.
Our only problem, working our way to the temple, was staying awake. We three are all level 28 and that stuff is just warm-up for us now. It’s a time for joking around and trying new stuff. It’s a long way though. We aren’t that funny, we didn’t need that much warm up and we ran out of new stuff a long time ago. It was boring. We’d bypass it if we could.
We had a fluke death in the Temple. There are four clickable pots that trigger mobs you must kill to open the door. Mike and I were too close to the turtle wave and took some major damage. Mike didn’t notice he was in bad shape and went down. That’s happened to me as the Priest. You are so focused on the others health you don’t notice you are taking damage. Mark and I made it through the fight, just barely.
In some instances the walking mobs re-spawn after a time. They hadn’t in Blackfathom. We didn’t know that until we ran all the way to the entrance to meet Mike.
We took three-headed Aku’mai. I don’t know what everybody else was doing. I focused on generating as much damage as possible. I had just ran out of mana, and switched to wand when Aku went down. We came for the sword he drops. Instead, he dropped a leather belt. Mage, Priest and Warrior don’t use a lot of leather. I would be willing to go back again for the sword. No one seemed interested when I made that suggestion. It’s probably time to move on to the next big challenge. I like Blackfathom.
Mark came up with an idea that, once stated, seemed so obvious. We are all close to dinging 28. Why not solo to there so we’ll have our new spells and what-not for the next trip into Blackfathom. That’s why we put Mark in charge of all our major thinking.
I don’t have much experience soloing a Mage. My last attempt at 20ish didn’t leave me warm and fuzzy. I was a bit concerned for my safety. I decided to head down to Thousand Needles. I didn’t have the flight path so it was a run from Camp Taurajo. I killed a few things along the way, just for practice, and that went well.
After picking up the flight path in Freewind Post I fell off the lift heading down. It had just started lowering so I made a jumped. I started doing the stuff around the Post when I got back from the graveyard. Damn near died again to one of the flying things, they are casters. Had a few close calls with the half horse guys also, some of em are self healers. I only needed four bubbles to ding. It didn’t take that long.
I hearth stoned back to Ogrimmar to buy spells. I decided to re-specialize also – a little less Arcane a little more Fire. My biggest damage per second seems to be fire so I’m leaning a little more in that direction. I was trying to balance damage and mana-conservation before. After our last loss, I realized my job is to do massive damage NOW.
I could be wrong. I try to get ideas from the forums, but they are so full of junk. I’m just going with what feels right until it doesn’t feel right any more.
Back into the breach and blackfathom depths we go. We’ve been inactive for almost a month. We lost a little of our uber skills. I forgot that, as the Mage, I was required to sheep adds. It came back quickly, shortly after our first add.
Lucky for us, there was an alliance group clearing everything going in. We didn’t have to fight anything until after entering the instance. At 27 we had little problem for the first hour and a half. The true fighting didn’t begin until we reached the temple. For loot, I picked up a replacement back, and received a new stick from the big guy inside.
We were doing so well we considered making training videos and selling them on ebay. I found it hard enough turning off the interface and take still pictures. Making videos would probably be worse.
We reached the three headed Aku’mai. Our luck to that point had lulled us, just a little, and he killed us when we had him down to %25. We were shamed, but nobody could see us so we figure we can live with it. Next time, we’ll all ding 28 before we get to him. Although we won’t have our new spells and such, hopefully 28 will be enough.
Unfortunately, when next time will be isn’t clear. We all three have RL things going on. Ok, Mike and Mark have RL things – I’ve got nothing. Look for our video on ebay, “Small Group Tactics.” Killing Aku’mai will be on our next video, “Take that you punk.”
It’s been a long time since we played EQII. We gave it a try when it first came out, but left when WoW released. It just didn’t capture us. I’ve picked it up a couple times since then, just for light recreation, including my recent Fae experience.
Mark, for no good reason, purchased Echoes of Fadwer and almost immediately had buyer’s remorse. I certainly understand that. I did the exact same thing. Last night he created a Fae character and we teamed up for a couple of hours.
I took my level 14 Illusionist to the newbie area. He created a Wizard and gained level 2 before I arrived. I was standing there looking at the map trying to guess where he’d be when he found me. I followed him around till he dinged level 3 - not long. It took us a while to figure out the mentoring system. Once we did it worked excellent. My Illusionist was able to go down to Mark’s Wiz level and we could fight as equals. He received an extra 25% experience, being mentored, and I received a minus 95%. We worked our way through Mark’s quests and he gained level 8 with less than two hours played.
Illusionist and Wizard team well together. I could lock them down, over there, and together we blew them up - the mobs just exploded. We had a few problems with my sleeping adds being woke up. We could work that out if we played more. It would have been nice to have a little healing as I got the crap beat out of me a couple times.
While interesting it didn’t light my fire. I’m not sure if it was because I’d already played through that content or what. It just wasn’t that much fun. Which is basically how I’ve always felt about EQII. Good looking, great mechanics, a very strong game, not that much fun.
Mike should be returning soon from vacation and we’ll jump back into WoW - a good thing. I haven’t played WoW for the last three weeks. I miss it. What do we do next? Burning Crusades is coming mid month and Vanguard at the end of the month according to the rumors I’m reading. I’ll be pre-ordering them both soon.
This Guild Wars is getting crazy. I can’t imagine where it will end. We returned to Laktenda Bog with an escort mission which failed when the guy we were escorting got himself killed. He died the second time as well so we headed off on a different quest at the very bottom of the zone.
It was a regular crawl until close to the target. We ran into huge groups and started dieing over and over. Eventually, we developed a method of targeting just one guy and taking him out before we went down. The resurrection shrine was right over there so it wasn’t too bad, with a short breather and retarget between fights. We found -60% is as bad as the death penalty goes. We got enough of them down where we could take the rest, at least until the next big group.
It became even crazier with guys descending from the trees and larger groups. Our multi-dieing technique worked on them as well until we reached the target. We ran into an even larger group, but this time, when we resurrected, it was at a different shrine on the other side of the target, smack in the middle of bad guy central. It was quite hectic as we were dieing and resurrecting in the same spot. It looked like we might have to quite the game to get out of the loop, but we worked out a system of targeting while waiting for rez. I didn’t time the fight - it felt like half an hour. That wasn’t the end of our adventure. Another large group at the target, then a long escort through the whole zone with a re-pop just waiting for us.
At first it was annoying dieing repeatedly. Then we managed a groove different from any before. It became fun though tiring after a while. I don’t normally enjoy games that simply increase the number of mobs you face each level. Though this was much like that, it was entertaining for a one night stand.
Somewhere in the middle, we popped over and gained First Spear. It was a surprise to learn that the max size of your group is based on the zone you are in. Back in the lower city we could only have 4. Mark and his heroes were kicked from the group. I thought it was based on our levels. Wrong again. We gained a level and a half and the satisfaction of a job poorly *done*.