Over a Year? What?

I pass by here every once in a while to look up something. I haven’t posted for a while as I thought I was just doing stuff that no one would want to know. Then I realized, hey, I would! This is what I’ve been doing for a year. Above is my Vulpera, a Rogue. I forgot that I forgot how to BE a Rogue. She’s dead most of the time poor thing.

Here’s my Kul Tiran poor girl, I don’t know how to Warrior either but thought I’d try. She’s getting tired of sitting around town.

Then I was SO upset I had to spend some time finding Blanchy so there was that.

I spend most of the year chasing pets or mounts and just goofing off. It was great.

Yeah no. I can’t find him. I can’t figure out who he is. Wow, how things have changed. It’s like I remember when people stopped caring about holidays in Wow. Didn’t pay them any attention. I remember thinking WHAT? I would never do that! Welp, here we are folks, I ignore holidays now.

And here’s my Colossal Wraithbound Mawrat who’s name I actually remember! I like him cause he’s tiny and gets into tight spaces.

Other than that I spend my time going to places that I especially love for the beauty of them and the music and in other cases for the story. Or memories of good times. Or, yes really. I visit NPCs. It’s great when I can go somewhere every week to do a dungeon or raid for a mount and there’s an old friend.

Mogu’shan Vaults for example. I love Lorewalker Cho. Every week I go there for the Reins of the Astral Cloud Serpent I meet up with him and we talk and laugh in between killing stuff. I never get tired of joking him about how it sounds like he’s saying, “these halls have not seen footballs for many years.” I laugh every time. If I ever were to have the mount drop I’d be a little sad. I guess I could still visit though.

Anyway, that’s my story. Looking for mounts and pets and visiting. Not a bad way to spend the last days of an expansion We will see what the next one brings!

Post WoW Goal Depression

I had never really thought about it but it appears I have some weird ideas about luck … or maybe it’s Cat … yeah, probably Cat. All my characters who can, have been helping Cat on her quest to get Mountacular. Yesterday we had three mounts to go. I could buy them but that didn’t seem right. Let’s keep trying.

Cat wanted to do Firelands as there’s also a Druid toy, Fandral’s Seed Pouch in there. She doesn’t really need it but she’s a toy fanatic. So we do Alysrazor and darn, we get the mount. Crap. We had that one.

Well Cat, we might as well leave, we’ve used up our luck.

No, I want to smack down Fandral for his pouch. Besides, it’s fun.

Fandral didn’t give up his pouch but we’re almost done, might as well finish it. Even though … you know … we’ve used up our luck.

Yeah, how weird is that. Cat couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t believe it. The Smoldering Egg of Millagazor dropped … even though we’d used up our luck. Damn. Who knew.

Well then, why stop now.

We headed to Zul’Gurub and yep, Armored Razzashi Raptor. What is going on? This is crazy! At this point we got ridiculous. We did the Voidtalon portal route, we did the Warbringer route. We even thought about going to Stratholme and we gave up on that place back when it was still hard to do solo.

We thought about it and decided that since three mounts had dropped, even though we already had one, buying the last wouldn’t be cheating. Cim bought that overpriced Riverwallow from those highway robbers in Stormshield. There. Done. Yay … sorta.

I did learn a valuable lesson about luck. I should have figured it out from the 160 plus times I ran Sethekk Halls for big bird. Sometimes you have none and sometimes it can strike three times in a row. Don’t try to second guess luck.

Anyway, now what do I do. That was supposed to last until Legion came out. Maybe I’ll check in with Ironsally … see if she’s feeling feisty.

 

Alani … Painless RNG

I know, I know. Your mileage may vary, but to me this grind was painless RNG. Yeah … last post I was whining about the RNG involved with the Burden of Eternity so I thought about whether there are times when RNG DOESN’T bother me. This was it.

Anyone who has spent time in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms has seen Alani circling high above in her shroud of protection. To pierce that shield you’ll need to collect 10 skyshards that drop from a variety of mobs but mostly those in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms. Nothing still in the game has a drop rate above 1%. They are very, very rare drops.

I found a comment I made on WoW Rare Spawns on December 10, 2012. At that point I had two skyshards. Yesterday the tenth dropped. Took me about a year. When you’ve collected ten skyshards you fuse them to make a Sky Crystal that you use to remove Alani’s protection and she becomes targetable.

Sasche did the honors as I think she collected the highest number of skyshards, it’s an easy fight and best of all the Reins of the Thundering Ruby Cloud Serpent are a guaranteed drop. GUARANTEED. That is painless RNG to me. When I tired of beating up Mogu I’d quit for a few months. Lately the thought of approaching Warlords made me feel that perhaps now was the time to take care of business.

Sasche and Cim are taking sea sickness tablets so they can ride around on their new mount. I hate to harsh their mellow but they are going to have to find a way other than Mogu to collect cloth now. Which could mean … THE FARM. Yeah, Warlocks think they’re above manual labor. They aren’t going to like it. Maybe I’ll give them one more day to savor their new mount before I break the news. It’s down on the farm for them.

Vial of the Sands! Hooray! Wait … What?

I wanted the Vial of the Sands from the first time I read about it, pre-Cataclysm. Obviously my reading comprehension leaves much to be desired as once Cata launched my Druid (leatherworker/skinner) started furiously leveling Archeology in pursuit of Canopic Jars. I think she was 525 before I read that you had to be a Alchemist to see the recipe.

It was going to be up to my Hunter, who doesn’t care about mounts, to level Archeology and get the recipe. There was a lot of muttering on her part about high maintenance Druids who were spoiled. She was level capped for a long, long, time before her first Canopic Jar. Second jar was the one and she immediately learned the recipe and said, “There, I’m outta here, no more Archeology EVER!”

It shows a certain lack of confidence on my part that I never really paid much attention to the mats required to actually make the mount. If I had, maybe I would have prepared, or not, hard to tell but I cringed when I said, “Um, Hunter? Fine on the archeology but you need a few more things to make the recipe.” WHAT?

– 29,000g To pay Yasmin the extortionist because she has the market covered on the mats we need from her
– 36 Pyrium Bar (Or 144 Elementium Bars + 144 Volatile Earth)
– 120 of each Volatile Fire, Volatile Air, and Volatile Water
– 96 Volatile Life
– 96 Azshara’s Veil
– 96 Cinderbloom
– 192 Whiptail
– 8 Albino Cavefish

“WAIT! WHAT? After enduring Archeology which I didn’t want to do you seriously want me to do WHAT!” Okay, there’s no need to go into what else she said, it’s enough to say she was displeased.

Everything but the 12 bars of Truegold went a lot faster than I would have thought but I sure hope her Transmutation Mastery kicks in on that, because after paying 29k gold for those mats I refuse to buy anything else no matter how much Druid jumps up and down and pleads.

My Hunter’s taking it all pretty well, but there’s a reason. She was in Hyjal looking for Azshara’s Veil when NPCSan went off. Magria! And she was prepared with a naked set because she’d read WoW Rare Spawn’s advice on every hunter pet she was interested in. That’s why she’s standing there in only a tabard, it’s not like her, she’s much more reserved than Druid.

So that helped A LOT with taking the sting out of mat gathering but I know she’ll be happy when Druid gets her mount and she can go back to her semi-feral lifestyle of living off the land and looking for new pets.

So be careful what you wish for because you might actually get it … and YOU ARE NOT PREPARED … like, um me.

My Horse Will Be Amazing!

I want to tell you something but you’ve got to promise not to laugh at me. I know it’s silly but this really bothered me. First, a little background. When I heard there would be playable worgen in Cataclysm I was giddy with glee. For you Twilight fans I’m solidly in Team Jacob, he’s the man. Well, actually Captain Tight Pants would be my first choice but I’m getting off topic here.

As soon as I was able I created my first worgen, she was a druid and I got her to level 20. As soon as I got Running Wild I deleted her. I made another worgen, he has survived and is sitting at level 18 not being played. The reason? Running Wild. I was excited about it when I first heard of it and I guess I imagined it would be like a shaman’s Ghost Wolf, you’d turn into a running wolf. The reality is well, undignified, you actually get down on the dirt on your hands and knees and run along with your giant weapon banging you in the butt looking like you’re giving your nephew a horsy ride, eeewww, I’m so not doing that. I mean he’s already in kind of a pissy mood because he has to wear dresses, so my worgen just sits there collecting dust.

When Blizzard announced that Gilnean Mounts would be coming in 4.3 I was once again giddy with joy, I can resume playing my worgen and still retain my dignity, yay, rejoice, you little worgen you. I’ll be dusting you off as soon as I can get you your horse. I don’t care in the slightest that it’s a bare horse, I’m fine with bareback riding, my worgen will be very happy with his bare horsy. He doesn’t need the art department to come up with some new, outlandish land mount for him, this will be just peachy.

Sheesh, all this horse talk has given me the urge to go watch Weebl’s Amazing Horse again. I mean they are kinda dressed like Gilneans aren’t they? And, yes, yes, it was a good excuse to play with the Pony Creator again, I just can’t help it.

Oh, and no, he’s not going to eat his pony, that’s just his worgen happy look, really.

Mysterious Camel Figurine or how I met Dormus

Since I noticed that the highest traffic posts I have are for the most part either mount or pet related I thought I’d post about that elusive Mysterious Camel Figurine. I started looking for the figurine as soon as I hit Uldum so I have probably been at it for over five months. I have a theory about how I finally found six of them, the last one didn’t crumble into dust!

For about four of those months I checked the map of spawn points at Wowhead and every time I logged in I would fly a route over most of the points waiting for NPCScan to alert. Nothing happened, ever. I finally got convinced that the Figurine would be like Deathwing, we’d never meet. So I got careless. I had never done the flight first thing in the morning as when I login at 5:30 or 6:00 a.m. I don’t have my contacts in and can’t see much of anything. Not a good condition to meet Dormus the Camel-Hoarder in but since I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be meeting him I wasn’t worried.

Long story short, in the last month I’ve found six figurines, the one yesterday transported me to the Steam Pools in Feralas. I found every one of them between 5:30 – 6:30 in the morning. Blizzard rewards early risers? Dormus only entertains visitors in the morning?

As for the fight, my poor Druid had to rely on my myopic vision but Dormus is a big target and even I could see him. I just got all my bleeds up and then ran around, then repeat. Dormus is big but not too tough with or without being able to see.

So now I have a lovely camel to add to my collection. I received the title “the Camel Hoarder” and it came as a surprise to me that you also get a Feat of Strength, Scourer of the Eternal Sands. So just remember the early bird catches the worm, or rather the Dormus.

Reins of the Phosphorescent Stone Drake

Aeonaxx, Mate of Aeosera, yes! But this isn’t a how-to post on camping Aeonaxx. The comments section on Wowhead has plenty of those which I hadn’t read as I wasn’t out to get him. I just knew the general area he spawned in and that you had to mount him. My brief period of trying to camp locations where Deathwing might appear to get Stood in the Fire made me realize I’m not made of the sterner stuff those ladies and gentlemen are. In fact after reading some of the posts describing weeks of camping I feel kind of unworthy, but hey I don’t know how many times I’ve done Strath and still no mount so I guess it evens out.

First thing in the morning with coffee but before I put my contacts in I login to do some dailies that are safe to do without being able to see and my miner and herbalist go to Hyjal and gather. I start with my druid who does the cooking daily, goes to Uldum to do the two Ramkahen dailies and then I go to Deepholm to see if Lost in the Deeps is available.

This morning as I flew out of the Temple of Earth NPCScan alerted almost immediately. I flew around and luckily he was big enough that I finally was able to see him, so I flew up and mounted him … that’s when it got tricky. Okay, first I was shaking so bad it was a little hard to do much of anything but hang on. When I came to my senses and tried to attack nothing was happening. I stuck my nose closer to the screen and saw my health going down and his at 100%. I could see I was in human form, ugh, if I couldn’t change to kitty things weren’t going to go so well. Luckily while my nose was pressed against the screen I noticed a message saying something like “you can’t attack while pacified” which is the message I get when I accidently hit any key while in bird form. Okay, although I saw my human form I must still be in flight form, yikes. I tried to change to cat form, couldn’t, then finally found if I first changed to human form and then to kitty, yay, now I’m in business.

During all this ridiculous near-sighted fumbling my health had dropped and I had no idea why as all he’s doing is flying around giving me a scenic tour of Deepholm. After I got him I looked him up and found that he spawns whelps that spit flames at you so that must have been why my health was going down but I didn’t see them so obliviously I never bothered to kill them. I finally got him, he fell to earth, I got a nice parachute ride down, looted and got my Reins of the Phosphorescent Stone Drake. If there’s a moral to this story I guess it’s if something is supposed to happen it’s going to happen whether you’re prepared or not, so maybe someday Deathwing will deign to kill me, I can only hope.

Just one other thing, if you plan on hanging out in front of the bank for all to see your new-found uber coolness don’t land. As you can see in the inset the little red glow is me kinda laying in the dirt and grime on the cobblestones since he insists on carrying me in his claws so it sort of ruins the whole uber cool thing, stay airborne!

Edit: I was looking at the blog stats and this post is by far the most viewed. From the search terms used to reach this post I realized people were hoping for some actual help in hunting down Aeonaxx rather than just one person’s experience. While there are probably more I looked around and found Find Aeonaxx a blog with a lot of useful information on hunting him down. Also be sure to check WoW Rare Spawn’s Aeonaxx post. Good luck to you!

Fossilized Raptor … Fossilized Hatchling

I know, I know, before December 7th all I wanted to do was read about and write about wow, now not so much writing more playing. My plan was to hit Blackrock Caverns at the appropriate level. I watched video walkthroughs and read all about it so I’d have an idea about what to expect. I kept waiting to queue until I had the time to do an instance without the chance of interruption, yeah right.

So I thought I’d just do a little archaeology in the meantime. Okay I did know it was leveling me but I thought I’d just keep and eye on it. BUT, then I got the Fossilized Hatchling project. I just had to finish that. Then I did a little more archaeology and got the Fossilized Raptor project. Are you kidding me, I so had to finish that one. And then just get up to 300 skill, and oh oh, Queen Azshara’s Dressing Gown, yeah need I say more. I’m 85 now and not one instance done but now hooked on archaeology.

Oh well, now it looks like I need a mountainous load of leather to get into some clothes to keep me alive in Twilight Highlands and I plan to get right on that after I do a little, just a little more archaeology, oh and bake cookies and finish wrapping presents and just a tiny bit more archaeology.

Have a great Feast of Winter Veil!