How I Hate You Big Love Rocket and Yet … I Want You

Yes, although I’ve repeatedly told Cat the odds are not in her favor she’s managed to recruit quite a few alts to her cause. At first I think I had about six characters bonking those Apothecaries every day but now depending on the queue she’s down to about two or three buddies who haven’t lost hope.

I’ve read that the drop rate for the Big Love Rocket is 0.03%. Aiiieeeee!!! Maybe if it weren’t for that good looking Zhevra hide interior we could let it go … but we can’t.

At least I’m glad that in spite of my desire for a Big Love Rocket I haven’t stooped to upping my odds by sending in the DK and Monk neither of which could fight their way out of a paper bag. Oddly my Hunter who I also have no real clue how to play well does the best damage in there. I think her pet covers up for her lack of skill. So faithful.

So let’s see, what else.

Um yeah, Luz the Paladin. Something’s not right there. We practically had a fight over her leaving Howling Fjord. I told her it was time to move on to an area more challenging, it was time to go. She didn’t want to.

She said she thinks the Vrykul are hot.

???????????

What? Look at him Luz! Does he look like he’s filled with holy light? Honestly, what’s wrong with you?

Here let me quote:

While they may adventure with others from different organizations, they will never knowingly associate with evil persons, nor continue an association with someone who consistently offends their moral code.

This just might be me Luz but the fact that he tries to kill you every time you come near him might, just might fall under the evil person with a suspect moral code don’t you think? Huh?

On one hand I’ve got Cat wandering into Ashran sightseeing and now Luz crushing on Vrykul. I don’t know what to do.

Maybe I  can talk someone into one last shot at that Big Love Rocket today. Take my mind off all the craziness … yeah … that oughta work.

Grinding, Pets, Toys and Taking the Initiative

Cat’s been pretty quiet because she FINALLY overcame her reluctance to killing Saberon for their claws. There she is sitting on her Bristling Hellboar.

I heard her yell, you’re safe now! I am never, EVER coming back … ever.

She does enjoy her new title, she briefly thought of changing her name to George … but then nah. She’ll probably change it back to insane and George the Insane doesn’t have the same ring to it.

She acquired Terky in Borean Tundra and then took him sightseeing. He’s been wonderful. She’s seen him dance quite a few times but unfortunately he usually did it while she was killing Saberon so she was a little distracted.

Must have been the blood lust in old Terky bringing out the dancing. Guess she’ll have to find someone else to pick on to get him dancing again.

Yeah … I think Cat hoped for something more, I don’t know, elegant from her Coin of Many Faces. Oh well, there’s always tomorrow.

Yes! Now that’s what I call taking a great tool and making it your own! You go, you inventive person! I hope they got some serious inquiries.

Yes! Yes, the moment I’ve been waiting for! Thalios gets to meet his doppelganger! Thalios was unimpressed. At present Thalios is pretty unimpressive himself. I was hopeful as he rushed to level 20 but I found out that was only because he had a broom he wanted to ride … since then, nothing.

Cat likes Hallow’s End. REALLY likes it. Some of my characters are more restrained, just one set of decorations. Not Cat, she’s got them all. And Terky, and disguises! Life is good!

There’s only one tiny, tiny, thing. She likes Deluwin, seems like an okay guy. What did he do to deserve this … unfortunate placement.

A Happy Hallow’s End to all! You too Del!

Goodbye Midsummer

I got home in time to catch the fireworks in Booty Bay. Druid wanted to view them there, to compare it with a shot from four years ago when she was a mere kitten. One of the few screen shots that survived a hard drive meltdown.

I like most holiday events, I almost ruined this one by forgetting to ONLY do things I find fun. I mean in real life there’s enough anguish and pain that has to be endured, so why in the world do things in game that cause anguish and pain. Picking at a hang nail again, so I stopped. Felt much better after I stopped queuing for Ahune and hoping for an Ice Chip.

Hopefully I won’t have forgotten come Brewfest. So now that the narrowly avoided Ice Chip burnout disaster has been averted I can get back to wrapping up bucket list items I don’t mind doing, and trying to make money.

Wrapping up old faction rep, I started with the Sha’tar as I also have Ogri’la to do but I hate doing that one.

Anyway while doing the three instances to get to exalted I’m finding so many great clothes I want to wear, but they’re never leather. All the leather drops have been so somber. I want to wear these.

Oh well, I did keep an incredibly cool plate chest but the odds of getting the Death Knight to transmog anything are pretty remote. All she does is mine, kill things, and keep her own council.

This week I won’t see much headway on my bucket list as my husband’s on vacation and all we seem to do is drive around putting the car in the shop, getting the truck inspected, and then eating somewhere … and then I come home and fling myself down and moan because I ate too much. I’ll have to go on a three orange a day diet to counteract this week, sigh.

And really, if I have to go on a three orange a day diet here, that certainly must absolve me from having to do the Ogri’la rep grind. Yay! There is an up side!

Stupid Ice Chips and Ersatz Poultry

Yeah, I’m beginning to think that whole Ice Chip thing may not be worth it. Stupid pet. Maybe I don’t even want it anymore. Okay, that’s a lie, I do want it but this is ridiculous. Maybe it’s the time of day I’m queuing, is there a good time of day?

The first couple of times no problem, which there really shouldn’t be but the last two times, OMG. My queues are usually around 25 minutes and I should have realized something was up when after only about fifteen minutes I was in. I guess someone lost patience with the group. They were all dead, well one was still alive with about 5hp left. I thought, okay, since I haven’t engaged I’ll just Shadowmeld back here til they’re dead too, and then I can Revive them.

Apparently that’s not an option because the freaking water elementals have some type of psychic abilities that allow them to sense things a mile away and stealthed, so alright, kill me already so we can get this show on the road. Okay we’re all dead now, happy?

When everyone was back I asked,”Does everyone know how this goes?” No answers. Okay, then they know it I guess. I GUESS NOT. No one seemed to grasp the concept of the frozen core being there at all. To them it was apparently just a fight to the death with water elementals or they were waiting for a giant boss looking thing to appear and walk ominously towards them. Phase two came and I’m the only one on the core, everyone else is kinda of milling around waiting for more elementals to fight.

I don’t know why this struck me so funny, hysteria probably, so I’m laughing and shredding and occasionally flying around in the air and wondering how many times this had happened before the other person dropped the group. Obviously I didn’t get Ahune down on the first go by myself and I started wondering how long I’d be stuck in this endless cycle of doom. For a chance at an Ice Chip. When he emerged again I attacked him with a single minded fury of someone possessed. I didn’t know if anyone was still alive and didn’t care, enough, enough, stop the madness!

I don’t know how many hours later, it was finally over. I bid adieu to my silent compadres. Still no Ice Chip. So I went back to Stormwind and Druid and I consoled ourselves by seeing how close to a humanoid Moonkin we could make her look. Not very it turns out. So I’m thinking of going to the Blizzard store and just buying a pet. Seems a more sensible course of action. Hey Ice Chip, look at him, he’s WAY cuter than you.

Yeah, I might try just one more time. Just one. Stupid little Ice Chip.

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.