Achievements galore

This month, the only big big achievement I did for WoW was... to kill 500 goblins.

My Nemesis Garrison quest had been stalled since 6.1, because Ashran became an empty place. With the changes for 6.2 and the ressurrection of the instanced battle ground, I decided to give it a try.

It took an entire month, but I'm now ready for my last Nemesis, to kill 500 pandas.

And that's utterly impossible, without cheating.

It would take me six months, hours and hours entering and leaving Ashran instances to find a single Panda.

In all these months, a killed a few, looted a few, and never got the  Pandaren Hide to complete my Bounty Hunter achievement.

It's gonna cost me, but I am going to enable my multibox account, buy WoD (keys at 30€ nowadays) and buy a month, all legal and fine, for the sole (well, not quite, a few things come to mind how I can use my second account to speed up some other achievements, eheheh) purpose of boosting a Horde Panda to 90, get him into Dreanor and get him killed 500 times.

It's gonna take 3-4 hours, but boy, compared to the hundreds of hours that I would have to play in Ashran, without any other purpose (I'm full 730 PVP epic geared on my Warlock), I would have to go to Blizzard and ask for another

INSANE IN THE MEMBRANE II achievement.


Well, I was being too simplistic, a got a few more achievements, like:
- all Instances done in Mythic mode (being 700+ PVE ilvl helps, of course).
- Garrosh Mythic (got it yesterday, and boy, it's still VERY hard with less than 10 people, namely because of Phase 4 - add overwhelming until we learned about the Iron Star, or until we got 15 ppl to force brute it, and because of the MC on Phase 2-3 having a huge pool of health with not so many people interrupting causes... a wipe).
- All quests and exploration achievements in WoD
- Rumble in the Jungle achievement (the 5000 looted claws from Elites in Fang'rila). This one was very easy due to the +50(+9) Jungle green fire buff, together with a few buffs people can see on the picture, like the tent buff, flask buff, pet sacrifice buff, and having a Healing follower !

What remains to be done are of course, Challenges (will have to pay 250K gold for them, as I will NEVER do it with PUGs and my guilds are may be a little too casual for this), and Glory of Dreanor Hero dungeon achievements.

A raid night with Quies, pretty fun, we downed several bosses in BRF.

Me and my healing follower, hunting in Fang'rila

When I go home, the moon goes with me and my shadow follows me (Vangelis)

RIFT is in pause mode, GW2 in pause mode, LOTRO... oh yes, LOTRO, I did all the epic quests up to Osgiliath. The epic chain ends with a set of 3 3-man mini-dungeons. I did the first one, but tbh, cba doing the other two. May be one day...

I installed and tested Skyforge and ArcheAge, and liked both !

I also installed a single player "The Witcher 3", and then 1 and 2, just to test the GUI enhancements and.. oh dear, this game is FANTASTIC!

It's so fantastic I can't wait to play it on my TV. I've been trying to broadcast the game from my PC to my TV (DLNA), but the delay is around 1-2 seconds. I'm waiting for a dedicated Android box that I'll get in October, so that I can stream it from the PC to the Android box via VLC player, using RTP or UDP, which should lower the delay to 500ms or so.

Not ideal, but should be playable.

The Witcher 3 on 1920x10280 on a 55" TV... it's gonna be GREAT !

Last but not least, an amazing video from Ashmongold. I like the dude, and the subtle irony in this video is really hard to spot. Unfortunately, elitism does not come from WoW to RL, it goes from RL into WoW, through the dark path of frustration.

As Yoda put it, "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate.. to suffering"

Hundreds of hundreds

All classes at lvl 100 in WoW.

Warlock
Paladin
Warrior
Death Knight
Rogue
Monk
Shaman
Hunter
Mage
Druid
Priest

It's been fun. No achievement for this:)

Bloody night !

Yesterday I had a lot of fun with my Guild. Quies. I asked for help for Blood infusion, and the girls came to help. Blood infusion is a legendary quest part of the chain to get Shadowmourne, the ICC legendary. I thought about doing it on my DK, but my pala was a primal character, and I had a friendly guild, so I decided to get it for Moonprince.

The quest involves killing the Blood Queen in ICC after I bite three players. It seems easy, but after 1 minute, the players become mind controlled, so they have to die.

At first it did not go so well, because it was a bit hard to die, and inform 3 players of what to do. Once the Blood queen almost died, but the mind-controlled priest healed her so much, and I only had one minute to kill the Queen, her HP was still high so it didn't work out.

As it was time for raid, we decided to leave it for later, and went for Highmaul. The guild had killed all but two bosses the day before, a huge success, but they were hungry for more. Luckily I could join, so we went in and killed both bosses. I became so casual these days, I can't even memorize the name of the raid or the name of the bosses. Or may be because everything became kind of trivial, or deja-vu, I don't know.

Down Imperator Morgok went !

Guild Photo! Show-off with Sulfuras :-) 

Anyway, Quies cleared Highmaul Normal. Great stuff for some casuals. Well, some of us are not real casuals, they seem like ex-hardcore players having a nap, with experience and learning fast from mistakes. A few also knew the strategy so I wonder...

After that, the ladies and I returned to ICC, with only 2 helpers, a priest and a warlock, and the Blood Biting went fine, we were able to do it on the first shot.

Bloof infusion complete !

The strategy for me (Pala Retradin) + PriestHoly100 + LockDestro100 was:

1-  Equip the Shadow's Edge, the sword I'm infusing with Blood in ICC25 (TWO IMPORTANT STEPS!)
2- Enable righteous fury on retradin.
3- Priest and lock stay still, marks on their heads. Soulstone on Lock
4- Attack boss until 1/2 HP, wait for the 60s timer for biting to appear as debuff.
5- Ask priest and lock to loose 50% HP by standing on purple stuff or allow damage. If too low, the priest heals herself or the warlock A BIT.
6- When timer = 0, bite the priest.
7- Ask the priest to die fast. Proceed as before.
8- Wait for 60s timer
9- Bite the warlock.
10- Ask the warlock to die fast.
11-Wait for 60s timer. Around 5s left on timer, ask the warlock to ressurrect.
12-Bite the warlock.
13-Ask the warlock to kill boss fast, together.

In general, heal as necessary, and important, have "every man for himself" ready just in case the fear casted by the boss (when she goes up) occurs when it's time to bite.
If if helps, ask the warlock and priest to unequip a few items to get their HP.

Of course, if I was a DK, we could have done this with only the warlock.

A great success !! Everyone thought it was very funny a boss where people don't kill are asked to die, while getting bitten and asked to undress ! A very naughty boss :-)

After that I proceeded with Frost Infusion, took some time to get 4 breaths from Sindragosa and I ended the night taking a picture at the Frozen Throne and getting Field Photographer achievement on Moonprince.

The only mistake I did was kill Putricide&Co wing before going for Sindra, so I wasted 3 shards that I could have gotten to complete my next task: Get 50 shards out of bosses in ICC(25 I guess).

I'll be doing ICC25 HC runs weekly to get the shards, and have a shot at the Invincible mount !!!

Money for Nothing

Yesterday I missed a concert by Mark Knopfler, silly me. Well, actually yesterday it was Lionel Ritchie, but I had enough of him in '84.

Well, talk about money for nothing, that is WoW. I'm not paying these dudes one more dime I really need to. I continue to play with gold, using my professions to craft 6.2 upgrade items, so called essences, making about 80k gold a month or so.

The Tanaan jungle continues to suck, so much, I had to reinvent some silly things like Treasure Hunting, solo old Pandaria raids, etc.

Not all was bad this month, I was INCREDIBLY LUCKY and on the same week, got both the ILLIDAN LEGENDARY Warglaives and the LEGENDARY BOW Thoridal, from Sunwell.

Also, I'm doing PVP with my rogue, so I'm gearing both the warlock and the rogue, and I'm having a nice rating with the rogue, which surprises me, how much easier it is to play a rogue than a lock and "WIN".

On the social side, I met with my Silvermoon Guild, Quies. The GM and family came here on holidays, so me and Caev, my guild mate, went to greet them and I took pasteis de nata ! It was quite nice and fun.

GW2...I went back to the game, and noticed a totally revamped Lions Arch. I also noticed that having 16GB instead 8GB makes a huge difference in terms of game smoothness, specially in MPVP.

RIFT...I got to 65, YAY YAY, and completed the entire (3.2) Epic Quest chain. There's a new patch 3.3 and a new Epic Saga, and I'm doing it, while waiting for my two pals to slowly grind their way towards 65 (still 63).

LOTRO...I went back to the game, and found a new Epic Battle, Pelargir, part of the Epic chain. I won it (the last part was really hard !!!) and I'm now inside Osgiliath. I didn't have enough patience to do all the non-epic quests for Central and Eastern Gondor, it's repetitive like a Nighmarish Hell, and besides the area is quite dark. I had the idea it had something to do with Sauron presence nearby, so I went to check upon it, and it's called a "dawnless day". There's no brithgness, no sun, it's all very dark.

Just like the WoW Jungle, which is also so dark we never see the sun, it's more brown than green, and ugly.  Ugly like hell.

GW2 expansion is called Heart of Thorns, it's pre-buyable atm, but I think I'll wait a bit more. It's probably only coming out 2016.

Same as WoW, it seems next August 6th Blizzard will tell us about the new expansion, which means this silly nonsense, TBC revisited, will end, and all orcs, all this ugly place will be over soon.

I intensely dislike this place. Never liked the TBC ambience also, I hated those minaretes and Blood Elf pinnacles. I'm an Arthas fan, I love fire and ice, what can I say ?

Back to the Jungle

I was hoping Guild Wars 2 jungle would be ready by Summer time. Maguuma jungle, or so the say.

Unfortunately, it isn't. Actually, thre's no release date yet for the GW2 release.

So I paid 50K gold to get a free month of WoW 6.2 Tanaan Jungle.

It sucks. It's ugly designed, visually it's too dark, a mess of paths, quests of exploration with no sense of discovery, the three factions seem to be planted there just "to spend time farming". It's worse than the .. what was that Pandaria Island called, where the sun was fixed in the sky ? Forgot the name. Ah yes, Timeless Isle. It's worse. Way worse.

Oh wait, there's not just the jungle, there's shipyards too. Just when we thought our Garrison would expand and allow new achievements to be set, for barn, inn, etc... no, they just:

1) Went and created shipyards with missions that are 2-3 days long... I'm on my 7th mission and it takes 3 days ? Ridiculous.

2) Rendered garrison useless, by decreasing the amount of gold one can get. So I spent weeks creating an army of lvl 100, with an army of followers, with an army of treasure hunters and now... I don't need the garrison at all, except may be to sent followers on Oil Missions (as I got, as most players, capped resources at 10K). As to the rest, I noticed the Blood item is now a cheap commodity, since they also rendered it useless.. I didn't even bother how we can now upgrade our crafted items, but I'm sure it no longers uses Blood, or any garrison specific items.

Last night I tried Hellfire Citadel. Another bunch of bosses, another "cavern" with no sky/natural light. Dark as hell.

Guess it's a "must increase gamma" patch.

F2P month I

Mission accomplished, played for one month without paying 1 €.

During this period, 30 days, I earned a little over 100k gold, enough for 2 months.

I found the easy way !

1) Level alts to 100, letting them build Inns for free weekly Treasure Hunter trait followers. This way, every gold mission gets 2x, 3x, as much gold. Garrison lvl 3 is not needed, lvl 2 is enough, for both the garrison and the Inn. Do missions for each alt. No need to gear followers above 600gear. But get them all to 100, if possible. How many ? A few. A dozen or so. All of them are obtainable by leveling. 

I show half a dozen that I specifically get as they are way easy. The rest comes with questing.

Leorajh

Taylor

Tormmok

Blook

Illona

Ironfist

2) Craft items, specially weapons (2H, staffs), Hexweave bags and most important, Steelforged Essences/Weapon Crystals (also Burnished Essence/Hexweave Essence, but less important as they target armor upgrades). These items upgrade weapons from 630-->645, 645-->660, etc. The cheapest upgrade sells for around 10K, the next in line for 11-15K. 

There you have, a Gold factory getting you about 3K/day in less than 30 mins a day, with a single Mine, Herb Garden and Barn (for Savage Bloods).

I'll go for AFK now for a few weeks, holidays and all...

For the last day, I rushed a few achievements to get me above 21000 points on Netcownt.

Weeee !

Tokenizing

WoW went F2P !

Well, kind of. Blizzard enabled tokens, supposedly to attempt a few things:

1 - stop the leaving player base...from leaving, of course.
2 - make more money.
3 - replace gold sellers.

How did they do that ? They now sell a token for 20€. This token can be resold on the AH for gold ! Buyers will gain 30 days gameplay, meaning, they don't have to pay. So what it is doing is that the wealthier players will pay for those that don't want to pay to play (anymore, like me!).

Example:

Before...
Swedish player A paid 13€, and paid X for gold
Russian player B paid 13€.
Blizzard got 26€ every 30 days.
Gold sellers got X.

Now...
Swedish player A pays 13€ to play, and 20€ for gold (35K-45K gold in EU servers)
Russian player B plays for free!
Blizzard gets 33€.
Gold sellers get zilch!

Blizzard wins, because player B won't leave the game and they get 27% more revenue for the same player base !!!
Player B wins, because it now plays for free !!!
Player A wins, because it now knows what X=20€=[35K-45K] and can check the prices anytime, e.g. on https://wowtoken.info/
Gold sellers loose because they must now sell gold way cheaper for player A to use their services.

A few calculations using a multi-character account like mine, and I could make 2K-3K a day easily, partly using Garrison missions. So I reactivated my account with gold, for a month, see how it goes, while I level a few more characters to lvl 100 and have some fun.

For the first week, target has been reached. Legendary Fangs of the Feather, the Dragon Soul rogue daggers !