Saturday, November 27, 2010

Mission: Impossible Turkey









11/27/2010

I was peacefully enjoying my friday night daily chores, when suddenly my Goblin iBrick beeped to tell me I had e-mail.

See, I'm a member of Wraith Flight, a super-secret Orgimmar organization, used only when missions are too dangerous for the Kor'kron Vanguard to handle. We're the best of the best, expected to get the job done, no matter what. It's not all bad though, we have access to all the best Goblin and Gnome engineering has to offer; the trick is to field-test extensively beforehand, so you don't rely on equipment that will explode every 5th time you use it.

The message read:
Shrike, I have a last-minute mission for you. Pilgrim's Bounty is almost over, and I need you to disarm some bombs we had inadvertently placed under Bountiful Tables in the enemy capitals. We'll provide you with a disarming device, but your butt needs to hit those chairs before tomorrow night, or we'll have another incident with the Alliance to deal with.

As always, should you or any of your WF force be caught or killed, the Overlord will disavow any knowledge of your actions. Good luck, Shrike. This e-mail will self-destruct in five seconds.

-Garrosh

Shaking my head, I put the iBrick down on a handy table, and stepped away. A few seconds later, a puff of smoke hissed from the device, and it melted into a useless puddle of goo. Damn, I had just gotten all my contacts into that one!

I hopped on my favorite ride, and headed up to Felwood, since 2 of my targets lay in that direction. If ONLY I had gotten this message a week earlier, it would have been a lot easier. See, Darnassus has a table in the middle of the city, and Exodar has its table just within the city walls. A few days earlier, a massive tsunami had ravaged that coastline, destroying the the Auberdine port which serviced both cities. Since that time, they had been on high alert, and also called out the city watch, which meant that the guards would be a lot more vigilant than normal.

Along the way though, I stopped off to buy a souvenir. Hey, business trips don't mean you can't take time out to enjoy yourself!

I had bribed one of my Alliance contacts for info, so I was able to plan out my route beforehand. I left from Darkshore's highest north-western point, and used a potion to book it across the sea to Rut'theran Village. After spending a few minutes on the non-moving boat at the eastern dock, I checked my notes, and found that I needed the boat at the western dock to get to Exodar. After approaching the middle of the dock, I hopped on, and rode to Azuremyst Isle. I circled around to the north, plunked my butt down, and headed back to Darnassus. I got around to the back of the portal, got into the city, got killed, but rezzed at the graveyard in Teldrassil. After the bomb was disarmed, I hearthed back to Orgrimmar, and considered my options.

I could take the portal in Cleft of Shadows to the Dark Portal in Blasted Lands, and then go to Stormwind. Or, if I had a teleport device, I could run from BRD to Searing Gorge, and go through the Stonewrought Pass tunnel to Loch Modan, which lets out into the Valley of Kings. From there it's an easy run to Ironforge. However, after checking our inventory, it seemed that one of other team members had the device, so I headed to Ironforge first.

Those city guards are buggers! I ran up the hill almost directly south of the gates, as there's a way up the hill that allows you to come out right where the tables are. However, the 2 guards there are intensely watchful, and it took at least 5 times to get the timing right to get into a chair.

Three down, one left. Hearthed back to Orgrimmar, then Blasted Lands, then rode to the gates of Stormwind. After all that, it was almost a letdown to see the tables unguarded, and easily accessible outside the city.

Man, the things I do for my faction.




TL-DR....check the comments on the last page for tips on how to do it. I had let it go until the last day, kinda QQ-ing Blizzard for having level 85 guards RIGHT on top of the tables, but figured I'd give it a shot. I was able to do it for some of my toons, but since I have things to do today, I won't get all of them done. Ehh, it's not part of the meta, so I can do it next year, when I've gotten them to 85.

And you Alliance only players can suck it! Orgrimmar - outside the gates. Thunderbluff - outside (apparently there's a great wall blocking Mulgore that you can ride around the right side of). Silvermoon - outside. UC might be the only place you might have problems. Check here for tips.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

The Shattered (Patch 4.0.3a)

11/24/2010

The Shattering hit servers today, to a lot of mixed emotions. New content, yay! Portals in Shattrath and Dalaran gone, boo! I had known they were going to be gone, but theory and practice are two different things.

The portals being gone are something that makes being an altoholic really, REALLY hard. Getting one toon to traipse around the continents for a holiday event can be time-consuming, but imagine trying to do 30 of them. With the portals in Dalaran, if I needed to travel to or around different capitol cities, I'd go to one directly from Dalaran, then hearth back and log out. Do the next toon, repeat. It was a time-saving technique that I had gotten used too, since by the time I was done with the 10th toon, the 1st toon would have their hearth back up.

If you have daily quests that will be used by max level toons, who generally have their hearths set somewhere in Northrend, why oh why would you have those dailies take place in Orgrimmar? The cooking tokens from the Orgrimmar cooking dailies will be used to buy level 450 and UP cooking recipes, which lowbie toons won't be making use of for a long time. So, it's expected for 70-80 toons to come back to Orgrimmar to do those dailies, every day, then get back to where they want to be, which is in Northrend or Deepholme or whatever.

Aaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!

Whew, enough venting. I also wanted to recap where I am with some toons. Bloodshrike missed out on Loremaster by only 13 quests in Zul'Drak, and all of Grizzly Hills. I should have kept more in the loop, but I was kinda excited by being able to gear up my newer 80's with the elemental invasion bosses. He also missed out on getting his Shen'dralar rep to exalted, along with Zandalar. I had plenty of librams and Pristine black diamonds, I just had slacked off on getting the BOP Blood of Heroes/Skin of Shadow/Frayed Stitching. I should have just let one day of dailies with my other 80's pass, and concentrated on that rep grind. I turned in about 22 librams in Dire Maul about an hour before the servers were supposed to go down, then headed to Zul'Gurub to try to max out my Zanzibar rep. Got there with about 15 minutes to spare, but the instance portal wouldn't let me in, even though I was in a raid group with another 80. "Instance could not be found" my ass! The instance is right in front of me!

Ah well, C'est la vie. I'm not going to let it worry me, instead, it'll be nice to get those librams out of my guild bank(s).
I figure I might as well do a recap on my servers, since this is a fresh start to the world.

Demon Soul
Bloodshrike - lvl 80 Troll Hunter
Bullkathos - lvl 80 Tauren Warrior
Thrillkiller- lvl 80 Orc Rogue
Bonescourge - lvl 61 Undead Warlock
Banesidhe - lvl 80 Undead Mage
Kukoshakaku - lvl 58 Tauren Shaman
Clockworknyt- lvl 72 Blood Elf Paladin
Morticide - lvl 45 Tauren Druid
Burizadokyan- lvl 48 Blood Elf Priest
Pallormortis- lvl 80 Orc Death Knight

Daggerspine
Clockwrkmage- lvl 63 Gnome Mage
Preyonyou - lvl 41 Draenai Priest
Tsuris - lvl 56 Draenai Shaman
Aosdanasaoi - lvl 54 Night Elf Rogue
Hangfire - lvl 48 Night Elf Druid
Panzergishi - lvl 55 Dwarf Warrior
Kishigishi - lvl 53 Human Paladin
Ryoushigishi- lvl 55 Dwarf Hunter
Gwiddonyn - lvl 53 Gnome Warlock
Doomslinger - lvl 42 Night Elf Hunter

Darrowmere
Bloodshrike - lvl 53 Blood Elf Hunter
Clockwrkmage- lvl 39 Blood Elf Mage
Psilentkill - lvl 41 Blood Elf Rogue
Didactylos - lvl 32 Blood Elf Warlock
Gavelofpain - lvl 34 Orc Shaman
Wartraveler - lvl 35 Undead Warrior
Misericorde - lvl 35 Blood Elf Paladin
Ghostflame - lvl 30 Blood Elf Priest
Gimmershred - lvl 34 Tauren Druid
Annihilus - lvl 31 Undead Rogue

Sunday, November 21, 2010

The Spirit of Sharing

11/21/2010

While I've seen some people complaining about having the Pilgrim's Bounty holiday in the midst of the Cataclysm ramp-up; honestly, they're probably also the ones that started complaining about the event screwing up Orgrimmar by the second time it happened.

But think about this for a second. Not only are there easy dailies for your alts to accomplish, with mats you can pre-make to hand in, there's another bonus for us achievement hunters.

Sitting down at the Bountiful Table and eating each dish 5x will give you the Spirit of Sharing, which is a HUGE bonus on some lengthy rep grinds. I believe you need about 80 + librams of rapidity/protection/focus to get exalted with Shen'dralar, which is 80 x 500 =40,000 or more rep. With 10% bonus, at 40 turnins, you're already at 22,000 rep, instead of 20k, putting you 4 librams/mats ahead of the game. So, this could make the rep grind only around 70+ librams, instead of 80ish. And when you're hunting for Blood of Heroes or either of the other BOP mats for the librams.....it could be your sanity on the line.