A New Beginning

WOTLK arrived. Plenty of things to do IRL, so a hell of a time to keep it up.
Still, managed to lvl Netcownt to 72 and Tarithel to 71, with a Nexus run.






Started with Borean tundra. Most quests were boring as hell. Best pictures were taken from Nexus flybies and Warsong Hold, absolutely great fortress, much better than Valliant Keep.



Achievementwise, I'm Loremaster of Kalimdor! It nearly went unnoticed, though :(




I decided once and for all to concentrate my efforts on Lords of Midnight, gathering all my alliance chars in a single server and a single guild.

Net+Tari's guild had grown too much for a cozy place, and my goals were also the same of a lot of other ppl, so it would be hard to run Net through 25-men unless top geared (equal massive effort). Being a LOM founder, and as someone who doesn't really care about epic farming, I opted for a comeback to 10-runs that allows me to go through WOTLK in my small purposeful guild, while healing, dps or tanking, depending on the group classes.

As my pal João said, one can run through 10-men in greens, as long as everyone knows exactly what to do. Well, he did. Not that I plan to do that LOL

Another advantage is concentrating all my professions and gold on one server... an achievment of huge importance. Specially because Shareth the Heartstealer is now my 10th and last toon.. a Death Knight of course !

As Horde, I'll try Roleplay a bit, while still helping Fylgies to go through 10-men.

Target for 80's:
1 - Netcownt,Morkin, Tarithel. Tarithel alternates healing both.
2 - Matadora,Moonprince, Shareth.
3 - Clarabela, Cornelius or Patalogica, Cornelius, haven't decided yet.

Where's my WOTLK...

Amazon.UK is not being ASAP... I want my WOTLK here and now ;)

WoW is so well known nowadays, that even Publico, the maintream newspaper in Portugal is talking about WOTLK, here.

Commenting the news, it's nice to see I'm not the only oldie to play this game. I find it funny that other adults find weird when I talk about it... then they call it a child's game and go on with their lives.. and so do I... still, I think it's so sad to grow and discover that Santa doesn't exist, that money doesn't come from machines. One thing is sure , though... playing takes a lot of real time from your real life... and when you have 40, you have spent 50% of your real life... so.. why bother with a game when you can do it for real ? Something to consider..



Meanwhile, yesterday I bought the rest of the mount pack to get over the 50 mounts and I'm now the proud owner of an Albino Drake !

Pre-WOTLK fun : The AQ scepter quest line

This week I started doing something I've been wanting for so long, which was to complete the AQ scepter quest, while waiting for WOTLK.

There is a great guide on WoWWiki, so all you have to do is follow it.

The first step is getting neutral with the Nozdormu dragons. Pre-TBC I ended up as hostile, and also never got Broodlord's head as it was a single person drop for a 40-raid.
Well, recently, thanks to oldschool achievement runs, I was able to improve my rep to get the head and get "friendly"
(btw, I also finished BWL, I'm now a Classic Raider !).

So I was given the quest to talk to Anachronos, and the quest line starts.



The start is a nice script at the AQ gates showing Anachronos and Staghelm closing the AQ gates to block the Silithid pre-WoW invasion.

Basically there are three shards that recreate the scepter (so that we reopen the AQ gates and go down to kill C'Thun and stop all the silithid madness) that you need to get.

A- The green scepter shard line I still have to do.

B- The red scepter shard line I stupidly didn't do yet because I started one week later than I should ( I hope to do it!) and requires a 5-hour BWL run after talking to Vaelastrasz. Well, runs are now taking about 1-1.5 hours so...all you need is a tank with Onyxia cloak and 20-30 non-idiots that know when to hide behind Nefarian's throne when he lands.


C- The blue scepter shard line is the one I'm doing. It involves talking to Azuregos, Anachronos, Dirge and Narain Soothfancy in Tanaris.
They send us going to an off-map island south of Tanaris using a devious way to overcome fatigue (water walking will probably do that too but I did it the oldschool way). Then we must get Narain's Scrying Googles from MC, kill Dr. Weavil's elite monkey in Winterspring, and kill Lord Lakmaeran and farm his minions in the Isle of Dread. Then it get's harder.



The three items one must obtain for this shard are Narain's Scrying Goggles (got them !), 500 Pound Chicken (got it with the Recipe: Dirge's Kickin' Chimaerok Chops, the only epic WoW cooking recipe... afaik! I didn't sell it, ofc, but its value is over 1K gold, probably more now) and finally, assemble "Draconic for Dummies: Volume II".
Volume II is made of 8 chapters, each one hidden in a remote place in Azeroth.
Chap. I - Alcaz Island, must kill Dr. Weavil. I tried that once soloing him and no way, he minds controls you and that's it. Should be able to do it with healer and pet.
Chap. II - Blasted Lands elite fel/doomguards drop it. Farm farm farm (and these guys kick us hard.. enslaving is the way)
Chap. III - Hederine elite guys in Winterspring drop it. Same as above.
Chap. IV - Undercity.. hehehe it's going to be fun.
Chap. V - Stormwind.. bah.
Chap. VI - Onyxia drop. Got it !
Chap. VII - BWL on a table next to Firemaw. Got it !
Chap. VIII - Ragnaros drop. Tried to get it and........ failed !!!! And why ?

The story goes that chap. I/VI/VIII boss drops are white items. Therefore they are part of the round-robin loot table and cannot be master-looted.
So, you have to ask the raid leader to change the loot rule to 'Free for all', or, to ask every member to check boss' corpse even they don't have this quest. In the latter case, a single logged or HSed member may make your effort in vain.
Now, imagine what happens with a Molten Core 35-pug-raid with a bunch of idiots ? Of course no one's gonna loot it, some will not even be there, others will HS or leave party 1 sec after they get the stupid achievement...
I joined a raid, leader went d/c, someone got leadership, Strik, an idiot from Frostmane, I spent 1 hour summoning 30 guys into MC and in the end, when I asked him to set FFA, and explained why, and he said no. So I asked everyone to loot Ragnaros after fight... guess what happened.... of course the default looter never looted, so I got no item. Option 1, call him FILHO DA PUTA out loud, and possibily get banned. option 2, breathe slowly, think it's just a silly game, and try again, next time as RAID LEADER !!! My problem is that we're getting close to WOTLK and with "Saved instance" status, I only have Wednesday to try that. Afterwards, it might be hard to get a raid going, same thing with BWL 5-hour run. May be not, those creating DK's will want to go for oldschool achievements.

Well, the Scepter quest line doesn't end with the shards, but for sure the shards are the hardest part. Or may be not, the last part requires Elementium Ores from BWL. At 80 one may probably go with a 2/3-party to the 1st boss and farm the Technicians near Vaelastrasz. Buying from AH... nah, epics are $$$ (200g for a single one atm).

Don't miss the next episode, where I'm going to dualbox the Stranglethorn Arena during early hours to grab the Arena achievements.

ETA 7 days.. and counting

I've ordered my WOTLK from Amazon long time ago. Now I regret I didn't order a collector's edition for Netcownt. Screw it. I hope it gets here 1-2 days after the release at most.

I've decided to level Netcownt and Tarithel first to 80, going for the Seers title and 3000 quests done. The 800 I'm missing will be completed in Northrend.

As for horde, I'll move Cornelius and Clarabela to Burning Steppes server , where I'll try and go into my mate João's guild. Those guys did MC and ZA in greens.. this time, they r going for 10-dungeon server 1st kill. It'll be hard to level 4 in a row, but one will try.




As preparation, I've been focusing on leveling accomplishments for Netcownt, mostly in classic. I'm missing the oportunity to go heroic dungeons but... the boredom of going to Mechanar, Steamvault, and all those crappy design dungeons only for that.. is too much for me. I truly disliked TBC dungeons except Karazhan.

On the opposite side, I love classic raiding. I've been revisiting AQ40, AQ20, ZG, MC, only BWL to go, can't find a proper team, and when I find one.. I'm saved! I've downed Nefarian with Tarithel, but not with Necownt. /cryalot.



I've got ~2300 accomplishment points, atm, very few ppl have those, even those that downed most TBC raid bosses. Classic dungeon master, 15 exalted reputations, Ambassador, Hallowed. ~50K honor kills, Justicar and Classic raider are around the corner.




And as fun motto, on the profession side I've fished Lurker, alone in the middle of the SSC pool. LOL. Too easy. Ah, and Gazh'kanka in ZG, too. I've also got Old Ironjaw after ~50 catches. Now, for the harder fishing part, Orgrimmar is the way. Naked is the way to go !

I also got enough runes during the 2nd Scourge Invasion to get all the item from Argent Dawn (exalted already :-)), and all 4 cloth epics. I'm a true Argent Dawn knight ! I'm only missing the Baron's horsey.. but it'll come. My luck concerning mount drops is terrible. No brewfest ram, no headless horse, with over 20 tries.

Ah, nearly forgot. Retried Onyxia dualbox. Got the Phase 1 done in ~15 mins, but then entered a brainless stage for a few seconds and got myself killed in Phase 2. Must learn to avoid the fire bombs, and SoC the first dragonfly waves faster, all that while keeping the VW (with 15 K LOL) alive. So, it's doable. I'll try again at 70sh.. may be 72 as solo demonlock.

Ah, and Tarithel got AQ20's Ossirian's head. Yay !