Whirly: good to go

I’m in Seattle on my way to London. I wanted to check out some Martin Guitars while here. I found a Guitar Centers close to my hotel. I’ve never been to a Guitar Center before. I found the high end acoustic-guitar room, not as many guitars as I would have liked, no employees around. Eventually, I took off my coat and picked up a Martin D-35.

I wanted to look at a D-18, D-28 and a D-35. I suppose it’s strange, but I’ve been playing for nearly 45 years and never played a Martin. While I have a couple of inspiring electrics, My Gibson acoustic, while OK, isn’t doing it for me. I purchased a beautiful hand made Guitar in the 80’s that played terribly. I traded that heartbreakingly beautiful, crappy guitar for the Gibson. It’s time to try again.

The D-35 had the lowest action I’ve ever seen on a guitar, lower than my Les Paul. I’m not sure that low action is a good thing on a flattop. It had a ringing tone to die for. I fell in love with that guitar.

The D-28 was a bit of a disappointment. It’s was a great guitar, but not substantially better than my Gibson. They did had an Adirondack D-28 that had a low, smooth, sexy tone I could grow old (older) with. It had a wider neck than I’m used to, I could get used to that though. I have a thumb using technique that could use some changing. My Martin nylon backpacker has a wide neck and it’s become one of my favorites to play.

I found no D-18s. I could get lucky buying a guitar online. It’s certainly better to sit with a guitar and let it choose me. It costs me around $1000 to come to the big city. It might be better to gamble on an online purchase. I’m not sure what I’ll do. I’ll miss that d-35 forever, but I’m headed to London. I can’t be hauling around a guitar. Plus, I’m still paying for a recently purchased Epiphone Elitist Broadway.

I wasn’t expecting anything special from the Slave Pens. On our previous visit we barely got past the first room. I figured, once we hit the wall, we could head to Ramparts or BloodFurnace for the rest of the evening. The “wall” turned out to be the boss ‘ Rokmar the Crackler‘ a couple of hours later - well past our regular camping time. We’d taken the boss Mennu the Betrayer earlier, it was a long fight, but once we got in the groove he wasn’t too bad. He has a lot of hit points and uses Shaman healing totems.

Rokmar the Crackler didn’t actually kill us all. When Mike and Mark went down, I ran. Once around the corner, I realized I had no place to run to as we’d jumped down from above. Luckily, Rokmar turned around. I went back and rezzed the boys. It was a fun night. I picked up ‘Princely Reign Leggings’ from Mennu. They aren’t much of an upgrade, but they have that circus-clown look that we’ve grown to love.

Rokmar the Crackler song

Words and music - Mike and Charlie

Rokmar the Crackler, as big as he could be. Rokmar the Crackler he killed us 1 2 3.

It’s a short song. We didn’t have much time.

We’ve been alternating between the Ramparts, Blood Furnace and The Slave Pens instances in Outland. We are all 63 and will probably make 64 Monday. Just a reminder, there are three of us - Warrior, Mage, Priest so we take a little longer to kill all the bosses in an instance than a full group. We’ve only killed the first boss in Ramparts so far. He is easy for us now and we are kind of farming him. Not that he has anything we need.

We’ve also killed the first boss in Blood Furnace, The Maker, though it was a complete fluke. We’ve tried him five or six times since. The best we’ve done was to get him down to 50%. The Maker mind controls one of us and that just screws everything. It makes for some interesting deaths, that’s for sure. Mike’s Mage blew me up once - Damn those Mage’s put out a lot of damage. The Maker controlled Mark’s Warrior sending him after Mike’s Mage while he beat on my Priest. A couple of times one of us survived the fight by being mind controlled when the other two died. The Maker resets to his home position, leaving one of us standing. I say “one of us”, but I should say one of them. I never survived.

We did take a little timeout to visit Stratholme and Scholomance. Two instance we’ve never been able to work with only three of us. Now that we are over 60 we can. It was interesting to see the zones. The loot and experience makes it a waste of time now. Still, different content is always welcome.

Burning Crusades isn’t quite working out for us. With our limited play schedule, it’s taking us about a month per level. That’s not bad, but running the same instance ten times is. We’ve poked around in the outside zones a little, it’s just not our thing. The outside stuff is geared towards solo players, you don’t need a group. Even our little group is overkill. There may be more that we are missing. None of us seem interested in doing any research so we continue with what we know. We soldier on, singing a happy tune. Except for Mark. He isn’t wild about singing. He does a pretty good Moooooo! occasionally.

We’ve never been in Scholomance. I spent part of presidents day doing the quests necessary to get the key. All except for killing Araj the Summoner (elite 61) which we went and kill as a group. Three 62s do well in Scholomance. The Chamber of Summoning gave us trouble with it’s unlimited supply of summoned skeletons, plus the mobs move around and aggro others - there were a few deaths on our side. Once past that room we had no major problems. We only made it to Rattlegore who we killed. It was fun enough that we are considering returning next time. I didn’t do any research on the place. It was an old-school crawl.

It would be easy to return to the two instances in Hellfire Citadel we are working, but it gets so boring doing the same instance over and over again. We need a little change-up occasionally. The old world instances we never did as just three 60s are a great alternative, though the experience isn’t quite as good. The drops, while ok, aren’t anything we can use. We’ll continue for a little while. Then, once we get closer to 63, we’ll head back to the better experience of Hellfire as the urge to ding overwhelms us.

Oh, I used that “Shadow Pain: Death” a few times. It’s a good damage dealer. I just have to decide if I can take the hit if it fails.

It never gets tiring writing about our trips into Hellfire Ramparts. Ok, it does, but it’s what we are doing, I got nothing else. We owned that place, this time, except for Omor the Unscarred - a group wipe out, and Vazruden - untested. We had to resort to tricks only a few times. Taking all but the largest groups straight up. We hoped Watchkeeper Garglomar would drop something other than leather, he didn’t. We were also hoping to ding 62, we did. It would have been nice if 62 made Omor doable, instead Omor found us doable. I’d cuss at him, but it was a fare fight, and our only wipe, though I lost Mark’s Warrior to dog poison once. I might have died once as well, I seem to have blocked the memory. Mike’s Mage picked up new chest armor. There were several other nice drops, but nothing we needed.

It was a successful evening if not all that exciting. Blood Furnace next time, maybe. Though it would be nice to get a usable drop off of Watchkeeper Garglomar after all the effort we’ve put in. I purchased my new spell - Shadow Word: Death. I’ve tried it on a few level 8 pigs around Orgrimmar, it killed them quick enough - instant cast 450-522 shadow damage. But, “If the target is not killed by Shadow Word: Death, the caster takes damage equal to the damage inflicted upon the target,” kind of gives me pause. I’ll try to find a use for it that doesn’t get me killed.

We made our first run at Blood Furnace. It went much better than expected. We made it a good ways in before we ran into groups we couldn’t handle. Multiple Warlocks and their multiple pets. You pull three guys and end up with a crowd, that didn’t work out very well. The experience was good. There’s a chance we will all ding 62 Friday.

What the? I just checked out my one and only 62 spell, Shadow Word: Death. Inflicts 450 to 522 Shadow damage to the target. If the target is not killed by Shadow Word: Death, the caster takes damage equal to the damage inflicted upon the target. Wow that sounds like something I’ll use seldom. Though I see other Priests saying it works well.

Things were different last night. We’ve been working Hellfire Ramparts for months. These mobs are well known to us. Strategy was a moments discussion of sequence. We talked computers, we sang songs, we paid little attention to the fights - little was needed, everybody did what was required. Soon we were clearing the area around, then fighting, the first boss Watchkeeper Garglomar. This was our first boss kill in Ramparts. He dropped Leather of course. We don’t use leather. We engaged and failed with both Omor the Unscarred, and Vazruden, but we killed everybody else, and we now know what to expect. With only three of us, this is our lot in WoW-life. We often can’t take the end bosses until the rest of the instance is trivial. Still, we take pleasures as they come. Last night was a pleasure enjoyed. We are level 61.

I had a dream last night as well. We had lost the big game, coach was pissed. I never played basketball in high school, so I have no idea where this came from. Coach had a young Shaq, who mysteriously was on my dream basketball team, explain life’s truth. Shaq turned it over to his little friend. I couldn’t understand a word Shaq or his little friend said, but I think the truth is - heroic greatness and failure lies in all of us, we choose which to live. I’m sure I could explain it better if I had understood what they were saying. Later, I started thinking, it would be easier to be a hero in basketball if you were seven foot rather than four. Shaq, could you call me. I’m not sure I got the message right.

Mike and I have been waiting for Pirates of the Burning Sea for years. Mike and Mark both played in beta. Unfortunately, although I got a beta invite, I was never able to get through their beta acceptance program. The reviews I’ve read haven’t been all that kind. I questioned Mike and Mark. They weren’t all that keen on the game either. I decided to take a look myself.

I’ve only played one weekend. I’ve reached level 8 as a trader. Everybody says PotBS has a steep learning curve - I’ll join them and say the same thing. There is a basic ‘how to walk and drive’ tutorial, but you come out knowing very little about how the game works. I knew that going in, so I was prepared to take it easy, fail, and have a good time. I’m very pleased so far. Yes, I’ve failed repeatedly. Yes, I spent money badly. Yes, I have no idea what’s going on. I’ve been sunk a few times, maybe more than a few. I have 200 stacks of wood and don’t know what to do with them. I am level 8 though, with a new ship I’m trying to upgrade. I purchased a new sword I can’t use for the next 9 levels. You can’t let those kind of minor things upset you. It’s the price you pay to learn the game.

You hear complaints about games being too easy. You hear complaints about games being too hard. I’ve purchased a lot of bad games over the years. Pirates of the Burning Sea isn’t one of them.

I was looking for something to do and somehow decided to start a Warlock - how crazy is that? I’ve made it to level 14 this weekend in little spurts and I’ll have to say it has felt good. This is not my first Warlock by any means, but I’ve never gotten past 20ish or around the time you get the succubus. It just didn’t seem worth the effort to continue once I’d gotten slappy. I call the pets sparky, big blue, and slappy.

A strange thing happened at the Cross Roads tonight. I’d just returned from two quests proud how easily I’d pulled them off with a 13 Lock. There were ten level 70 Alliance players laying waste to Cross Roads, including the guy I needed to finish my quest. No prob, I’ll just sit here on this shipping box and wait for it all to end. I’m listening to a podcast and surfing the web on my other computer, not paying much attention to the big fight, when out of the corner of my eye I see my pet, big blue, engage. Oops, that’s a bad sign. I didn’t even run. I returned from the graveyard flagged PvP.

Ok, I’ll just sit here on this box in ghost form. Later, I noticed I was no longer PvP. I hit the rez button, continued to listen to the podcast (python 411), and mind my own business on the box. I got killed again. This time without a pet. How somebody, who isn’t flagged PvP, can be killed in such a way is a complete mystery to me, but apparently it can be done. Again, no problem. I sat on the box as a ghost till they were all gone before rezzing. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Hellfire Citadel (Ramparts) is a mixed blessing, so far. The experience is incredible for the small part we can reach. The drop loot isn’t bad either. Unfortunately, with only three of us, our technique has been on the crappy side.

First two bridge guards, a walker, two more bridge guards - no problem. Next group of three we start mind controlling one to death and taking the remaining two. A walker with two dogs, another group of three, a couple more, then real trouble. About here is where we run into three casters plus a melee guy. Last night was our first semi-success with them. We mind controlled one caster to death then ran for the entrance. On our return, we mind controlled another caster and took the two remaining. It sounds easy here, but there were a few deaths on our side when things didn’t work out as planned. I’m using ‘planned’ loosely here. It’s really more a considered hope.

We saw the first boss, Watchkeeper Gargolmar, and his two friends. There was also a short lived view of them killing us. Oh well, it was time to call it a night anyway. Everybody should ding 61 Monday. I hope that will make a positive difference in out success in Ramparts. It’s been fun, though challenging. That’s why we came.