Noblegarden, Blizzard’s Revenge

When I realized Noblegarden was here my first reaction was … meh. I was shocked, I usually love holiday events and I couldn’t remember why Noblegarden got  that initial bleh reaction from me. Okay, now I do, it’s all coming back to me now. This is the holiday designed to bring all our nerd-ragginess to the forefront and it does it’s job well. I’m SO SURE this is Blizzard’s revenge for all the ungrateful ranting we do at them on the forums. I just know it.

I want the mount. It’s not very pretty, but damn, it’s a mount and I gotta have it. Pictured above is my Druid losing her mojo about half way through. That’s just the ONE bag of the wrong junk. I can not begin to explain the rage I felt each time another freakin’ Spring Rabbit’s Foot dropped instead of a chocolate, and what’s worse I deleted them all, didn’t pay attention I was so nerd raged, my alts might have liked them.

So yeah, you got the Druids that fly ahead of you to get the egg, you’ve got the campers, you’ve got the racy racy guys who use whatever means available to rush ahead of you and get the egg. Then you’ve got the ones on a giant drake mount flying around getting stuck in-between buildings. Then you have the ones that decide you stole an egg intended for them, so they follow you around for an hour trying to beat you to each egg … oh wait … that was me. My bad.

Now that I’m finished, because I didn’t want to tip them off before I was done, you have the Noblegarden Bunnies. Thank Elune for these guys, if it hadn’t been for them I’d still be out there. They kept rushing around missing almost all the eggs, I’d follow along picking up all the eggs they missed. Thank you guys, I couldn’t have done it without you. The only good thing I can remember is that some of the campers really did it with style. Set up a camp complete with Tol Barad Searchlight and Romantic Picnic Basket at that one place in Dolanaar where three eggs would spawn.

So yeah, it’s over. I got the mount. But I’m still having flashbacks today. Sorry alts, I can not do that again … just can’t. You win Blizzard, you turned me into a nerd-raging twit who still has a nervous twitch today, happy? No matter where in Azeroth I’ve been since then, I still see phantom eggs hiding in the bushes and have to stop myself from running off to pick them. So in an attempt to wash the memories of the gory egg battles from my mind my Hunter went to Netherstorm and tamed Nuramoc.

He’s been renamed Euphy, can’t imagine why … NO, no, Goblins are not food! Stop it! So that helped take my mind off eggs for a while.

And world traveler Navi is back! And you can imagine how jealous I was after I read that story! So anyway, while on her trip she posted pictures of many fine meals at posh places and I just couldn’t resist returning the favor as when I saw this, all I could think of was Navi’s lovely food pictures! Bon Appétit!

Lovely Charm Farming … oooh my …

Geez, I’m late today but I had real world stuff to do. I had to take my husband’s truck for an oil change and safety inspection. I hope the place I always go knows what they’re doing. I only go there because they have Wi-Fi which makes sitting there bearable. I had other plans for today too, not irl though.

So I wasn’t gone long and I login to find my Druid at the Darkmoon Faire eyeing a human male! Between Ironsally’s tantrums and my Druid’s taste in men, these guys are driving me nuts. “This is beyond all decency!” “He’s a level 22, you’re 85, he’s too young for you!” “Stop this nonsense at once!”

Okay now two of my characters are mad at me but really, she’s out of control with this human male thing. I managed to drag her away from the Faire to get down to the really important business of the day. I’d had enough! Although I will get my Swift Lovebird soon enough by just doing the dailies, I couldn’t wait. I needed one now, today. Tired of waiting. I need my 270 Love Tokens to buy my Swift Lovebird from a Lovely Merchant TODAY.

I had been grinding lovely charms in Icecrown from Converted Heroes but it gets crowded, I also spent some time in the Ruins of Ammon and you get some greens and cloth but it’s pretty slow. I needed FAST charm farming. Someone mentioned the Slags in the Halls of Lightning and a kind commenter pointed me to the Throne of Tides and the Unstable Corruptions.  I needed 600 more charms, so I alternated between Halls of Lightning and Throne of Tides for a change of scenery, oh and yeah, had my grinding music.

Ta Da!! Finally. She’s quite lovely; I took her to the Darkmoon Faire so she could visit her relatives. It really didn’t take that long, I should have kept track of time but I think it took about an hour, maybe a bit more. So, very productive day, time well spent!  And yes, yes, I did the real world stuff first; I have my priorities straight, kind of. Well, most of the time. I know my family thinks it’s a little strange when I rush to the computer on the Feast of Winter Veil to get my gifts but come on, it’s Greatfather Winter, I can’t miss that!

Apothecary Hummel Guide (unscientific and likely flawed)

Okay it’s all coming back to me now. I now remember that last year I had the same problem. Why does no one want to beat down Apothecary Hummel? I realize I have to queue for these things off peak hours but I don’t remember having any trouble getting into The Headless Horseman or Coren Direbrew in less than ten minutes at off peak hours. So what’s going on?

Admittedly, Coren and the horseman are pretty easy but so is Apothecary Hummel if you know what to do. Purely in my own self-interest I’m going to give you my McLonewolf’s guide to Apothecary Hummel. If like me, you only poke your nose out for holiday bosses, no problem, it’ easy. Just humor me and do this so I can get my chance at the Big Love Rocket, what do you say?

I downloaded TinyDPS as I remembered there was a lot of running about involved, being melee dps I wanted to make sure I wasn’t screwing everyone up trying to run around and bite those apothecaries on the butt. On seeing the meter after the fight I can only assume people don’t understand what’s going on. Cause I would have thought the caster would out dps the melee dps. No one was AFK, they were all running around doing SOMETHING, I just don’t know what.

So here follows Wolfie McLonewolf’s Totally Unscientific Guide to Apothecary Hummel. Probably shouldn’t pay too much attention to it but it works for me.

If old Hummel isn’t showing up as available in your dungeon finder, find a Steamwheedle Shyster Dungeonmaster. In Stormwind he’s right outside the bank. I haven’t verified this but I was told his Orgrimmar location is between the bank and Grommash Hold.

If you get in the instance and don’t have a bottle of perfume and a bottle of cologne, pick one of each up at the table on the left. MOST IMPORTANT STEP.

Apothecary Hummel does nasty purple damage so use the pinky purply perfume bottle if you’re in purply gunk.  Apothecary Baxter will do greeny damage so use your yellowy green cologne bottle if you’re being sprayed with or standing in green gooey stuff.

Apothecary Frye is the third and final guy who runs around willy-nilly tossing both purply and green gunk on the floor and attacking random people. Don’t worry, he can’t really hurt you. It’s the stuff on the floor that can, but yay! You have neutralizers! Just make sure to stand in purply stuff if you’re wearing the purple bottle and stand in green stuff if you’re wearing the yellow-green bottle. Or don’t stand in any stuff at all if you can manage that.

Yeah, there are some other things going on like Chain Reaction but just remember to wear the color coordinated perfume or cologne and then kill ‘em. Okay? Wowhead has a nice write up about it but seriously, do they really think anyone stops to discuss strategy in these LFD groups? I mean really?

So anyway, there you have it. I am not responsible for any deaths resulting from the use of my guide. Don’t try filing a civil suit against me at the Stormwind Courthouse.

Okay now please queue for Apothecary Hummel, all you all, go ahead, do eet. Pretty please?

Going to get me a Big Love Rocket!

Through some miraculous convergence of the stars, I woke in Azeroth to not one or two but three simultaneous events! Just saying a quick Hi! Got things to do, people to see. Don’t even know if I’ll have time to watch the Superbowl.

Oh, and a warning for the Fenris server.

Generally I try not to inflict my lack of groupery skills on the general population … as a courtesy. So … you know … no needless deaths. But Fenris, the stakes are too high today. For the possibility of a chance at the Big Love Rocket I’m sad to say that I find the possibility of your death an acceptable risk to take for this prize. Consider yourself warned.  I’m queuing for Old Apothecary Hummel right now, look out.

After that I’ve got to get 270 tokens for a Swift Lovebird! So I gotta go. And oh yeah, if you’re a fun sucking meanie in there with Apothecary Hummel I’m so going to whine about you here, just saying … watch out!

Grindgear Gorilla Manufacturers Recall

I felt kind of guilty; my header was implying that I would be talking about one game. NP, it’s fixed. Now I won’t feel bad if I talk about SWTOR too, you’ve been warned. And yes, I do mean talk. I don’t consider this writing; I’m talking with my fingers. Writing, on the other hand implies well thought out posts, countless edits, grammar, all that kind of stuff. So yeah, I don’t do that.

Today? Oh hell yes this is a WoW day. The Darkmoon Faire is back in town and I need a monkey. I mean a REAL monkey, not that half-assed Grindgear Gorilla. Do I sound bitter? Okay, could be. I killed that giant yeti I don’t know how many times and all I ever got was more Grindgear Gorillas, I have like a year’s supply. I mean he’s cute and all but he only sticks around for about 30 seconds or so. I’m really fed up with Smokywood Pastures inferior products and I think they should recall the Grindgear Gorilla. And really, I’m thinking of notifying D.E.H.T.A. about Smokywood’s inability to keep track of their reindeer. I don’t know how many times I’ve had to risk life and limb retrieving Metzen the Reindeer to find once again, they’ve let him get out of his reindeer pen or barn or wherever they keep him.  I don’t think they truly understand just how disgruntled customers who’ve been denied a Lump of Coal can get.

So anyway I went to see my homies at the Darkmoon Faire and they came through for me. Now this is a REAL monkey with a hat and everything. Take that Smokywood Pastures, I’m taking my business elsewhere from now on.

And oh, this is kinda SWTOR related. SWTOR, SWTOR, SWTOR. What am I doing? Well I generally don’t get a lot of traffic around here. I mean I know it’s probably because there’s a serious dearth of well … useful information about anything. My bad, I know. But since I’ve started talking about SWTOR, my traffic had tripled so forgive me if I insert a random SWTOR here and there throughout the post. I’m really enjoying seeing where all the traffic is coming from. Hi there Hungarians! Thanks for visiting!

Okay anyway, I keep asking my daughter for my son-in-law’s SWTOR server. She said it’s something with a K and has two words. I looked it up and that’s a PVP server, odd. So I then asked her if he rolled on a PVP server. O M G! My daughter has the ability to detach her eyeballs from whatever moorings eyeballs have and roll them expressively around … at me and probably her husband because we’re both big dorks, her words not mine. The expression “rolled on a PVP server” is what got her going. But all the eye-rolling aside I’m beginning to think he’s avoiding me. Maybe he doesn’t want to play with a terrible player. I am probably terrible, but hey I can be a lot of fun while I’m playing terribly, really. On the other hand he may not want to have anything to do with me because I have characters on the Empire side and HE IS a Jedi Knight so there might be some sort of moral conflict going on there, I don’t know.

Anyway, you know who you are and I WILL FIND YOU, muhahaha!!!!!!!! I’ve got big dork radar!

It’s Greench Time!

Ah, she’s so cute. She wants to tell Greatfather Winter that she killed that old greench but she’s a little shy. Thanks to The Harpy’s Nest I knew that it didn’t matter who killed the greench, the sacks would become clickable once the greench was dead to complete the daily, You’re a Mean One… and she would finally get the achievement, Simply Abominable.

I wasn’t too hopeful. It was just before 7:00AM but I thought I’d go check. He was there with a group of people standing around. I thought I’d help when I realized they were standing around because they were all either hunters or mages. I thought about offering to tank (thoughts of total carnage running through my head, no contacts in yet) when a horde warrior showed up and we all got our Stolen Treats.

She has other holiday business to take care of; she just needs the hat to complete her Winter Garb Set. According to comments on Wowhead it looks like the hat still drops from Grand Magus Telestra as long as you do it on heroic so she’ll be spending some time in the Nexus trying for that hat. If it drops she can finally get ‘Tis the Season done!

So much to do, so little time … what? Real life? Oh go ahead, throw cold water on my Winter Veil excitement. Yeah, I have even more stuff to do irl, but priorities, we all have our priorities and right now mine is running the Nexus for that hat. I’ll finish wrapping later, really.

Hallow’s End Cheer, and Slàinte!

Yup, my Paladin is full of holiday cheer, she’s got her mount AND a Sinister Squashling but I’m talking about the lack of holiday cheer. I don’t know if anyone else has had this experience but I’ve noticed it on all the holiday bosses. My experience has been that in the first few days a holiday boss is available, when you queue you’ll get a group that is very well geared, you get more greetings, and the whole instance takes about 3 seconds.

As the two weeks wear on this sort of just devolves into chaos. I can’t figure out why. I’m still trying to get that darn horse, did all the well geared people get it in the first two or three days? How’d they manage that? You know something’s up when my level 84 warlock in quest greens is the top dps. She doesn’t really care though as she has the horse, it’s my poor druid that’s still trying for it.

Yesterday my druid once again queued for the horseman hoping to find the reins in her pumpkin. If you don’t have a character high enough to have done the headless horseman let’s just say this is a very easy boss, I don’t think it’s possible to actually die here, you’d really have to work at it. Almost immediately I realized all was not well. My kitty seemed to have become the tank. I felt bad that I had pulled aggro, I thought that was supposed to be a thing of the past but hey, I’m sure it’s my fault. I decided I’d just change to bear when it looked necessary. I noticed no one was getting healed either, then I noticed the tank wasn’t even on the boss, he seemed to be doing some willy-nilly running about as far away as possible.

As it turned out I never needed to go to bear form and we completed the fight with a kitty tank. Everyone lived, all good. Well, apparently not.

Our initial tank seemed to be upset by the lack of healing so I guess that’s why he took a little break. I dispensed with my usually cheery “Thanks All” and just left before it got really ugly. Do people’s moods get nastier and nastier as days go by without the drop they’re after or what. I did notice that the non-healing healer was with a guildmate who rolled need on the drop so maybe he was trying to lessen the competition for him, lol. My druid’s feeling conflicted today, one more possible chance at that horse, worth the nastiness, she’s not sure.

Other than trying to get that horse I’ve been leveling my Paladin. I don’t know why this time the pally’s made it this far. Maybe the race/class combination. My husband thinks I’m overdoing it. I’ve started answering him with “aye” and told him I had to run to the store for “me” carton of milk. I also have an almost uncontrollable urge to see Riverdance when I play her. I think there’s a chance that she’ll be queuing for the Headless Horseman next year!

Muhahaha … Best Pet Ever!

Okay so I’m easily entertained, but this is the best companion pet ever! Hallow’s End (guide there if you need it) has always been my hands down favorite holiday event. I liked my new Feline Familiar to begin with, but this cat comes with their own ride, so we’ve been flying around while waiting in the queue for another attempt at getting The Horseman’s Reins.

Didn’t get it, instead my druid got the The Horseman’s Horrific Helmet which she’s kind of sad about because she’d love to be able to Use: Let the Horseman laugh through you. But it’s soulbound and plate so she can’t use it and no one else can but she hasn’t vendored it. She just won’t let it go. This girl has a problem, first the festival dumplings now this. No wonder I’m going to have to buy another guild vault tab.

She did A Time to Lose, as a druid she had no problem getting to the Wickerman undetected. I had hoped at 11:00 am there might be no one there defending it but there were. Unfortunately about six of them. I had promised myself if it was just one defender I’d make an effort to PVP instead of just standing there in shock but six, no way, I just went bear form so I’d live long enough to get somewhere where my corpse wouldn’t be camped. I need to take a remedial PVP class.

I wanted to get back at those horde for that but since I couldn’t actually get back at those particular horde players when I got back to Stormwind I stationed myself in stealth behind our Wickerman and took it out on anyone who tried to sneak in that way. See, Hallow’s End makes me crazy! PVPing no less. Except the warlock, I like warlocks so he got a pass. Oh yeah, well, to be honest there weren’t any other Alliance around when he showed up so I would have gotten my butt kicked.

After getting into the holiday atmosphere and ruining a few people’s attempts to complete their quest, as usual I felt guilty about it. I’d made my token attempt to defend Stormwind so that was enough. I also hate it when my side. whichever it may be, kills fishermen, ah come on, let ‘em fish.

Now I have to quickly level up my warlock to 84 and see if she can queue for the horseman. I had thought she’d be able to get in at 83 but no luck. I’ve read differing opinions on whether you can queue at 84 or you have to be 85 so might as well find out for myself.

Well, gotta go, lots to do, level my warlock and hit the candy buckets with my druid. I need 150 Tricky Treats for my next purchase the Little Wickerman! Happy Hallow’s End!

Edit: For anyone looking for information on the required level to queue for the Headless Horseman 2011, it is level 84.

Beware Brewfest Revellers!

It’s that time of year again. My druid abandons her solitary pursuits to once again risk the lives of four innocents. Their lives are wantonly gambled for the chance she’ll get a Swift Brewfest Ram in her Keg-Shaped Treasure Chest. I wonder if I’m the only one who does this. It’s been, well actually years since I actively participated in a somewhat organized group other than holidays, and solo killing is different than working as a team which I’ve pretty much forgotten how to do. I feel bad that those four other people are striding bravely to meet Coren Direbrew confident that everyone here knows their role.

That’s so not true. I guess it’s a little better this year. I get a little practice when I do The Protectors of Hyjal with my crew.  Unfortunately they’re not real so they don’t make me nervous and prone to mistakes. It’s nerve-wracking with REAL people. If I get nervous enough I can descend into that mindless Mangle spamming druid and totally forget about Rip and Shred.

This is why I try to stay away from unsuspecting groups. They probably assume I remember that cats can heal, they’d be wrong. Solo, I never heal myself as I wouldn’t live very long in caster form. I tend to read the words, resto druid and for a second I think, what class is … oh … it’s me. I could certainly rez you, if you were kind enough to remind me that I can indeed rez someone.

If the tank went down, I’d be more than happy to switch to bear. But the reality is, I’m probably I’m so busy mangling Coren’s butt to kill him before he kills some of my group-mates, that all four could be dead and I wouldn’t notice.

But, I’m sad to say for rewards this high, I yearly and gladly risk your life. You can’t imagine how many lives were lost to get me that Kodo.

What! I’m sorry but come on, Direbrew’s Remote, so worth it. I said I’d rez you.

Be careful out there.

The Warlock’s Evil Sparkle Pony

Everyone knows how the RNG likes to rub your nose in it. I had been fishing for months in the sewers for that sewer rat when someone came up beside me and got it on the third cast. I know people who have received the Reins of the Raven or The Baron’s Mount on their first try. But it’s the other law of wow that really hurts. It’s the “if you do something with more than one character whatever it is you want will drop for the character that can’t use it or doesn’t want it” law. I don’t know if anyone has come up with a name for it but they should.

For my druid I would really like the Reins of the Raven, if any of the others drop that would be great but that technicolor bird is what I want for her. Now my warlock is picky, anything she rides on must be sufficiently evil looking to maintain her standing among her minions and fellow warlocks. She would not ride a sparkle pony, she didn’t want a Brewfest Kodo but she definitely wanted The Baron’s Mount and she got it. I think this is the first time this has ever happened. I am flying around taking screen shots like crazy. She doesn’t care if her ring drops for the druid or she doesn’t get those 20 flimsy masks, yayyyyyyy, she got her evil sparkle pony!