Coming back from the dead

If anyone is still following this, I've started a new blog over on altsetcetera.com. Hope to see you there!

/hugs

Lyrestra

So long and thanks for all the fish

For the first time in six years, I cancelled my WoW subscription. I thought I'd never see the day I'd have enough of WoW, but it seems the day has come. I'm not deleting characters, I'm not giving away gold and stuff. But I don't see myself wanting to play this game I know too well, and which has changed just a little too much for my taste over the years. Maybe it's time for something new.

To all of you who read this blog and commented (or not) I want to thank you. It's been a lot of fun. I wish you all the best.

And who knows, maybe I'll come back to this game I used to love so much, because after all, I can't make up my mind about anything, ever. 

Fish fingers and custard sounds good right about now

It's been almost a month now since I've last posted and I'm sorry about that, but the truth is I get dizzy and feel sick whenever I open the game. Because turns out morning sickness really should be called fuck-you-you're-gonna-feel-like-puking-24/7 sickness. 

On new year's eve I found out I'm pregnant and though I thought I should take advantage of those last couple months to play as much as possible, I just can't. I don't even feel like playing at all. I log on every day to do my daily with Nomi and then I log off for the day. That is the extent of my game time for the past month. And I'm almost exalted with Nomi now, so I probably won't even have an excuse to log on after the weekend. I don't expect there will be much action around here for at least another couple weeks. If the nausea ever goes away. 

Until then, I wish you all much fun in Pandaland!

You had me at "zug-zug"

Mad and Lyr, ready to kick some ass.

During the holidays, the BF and I enjoy creating new alts and playing them casually. This year, we picked a prot warrior and a resto shaman. Mad wanted to make an Orc warrior, like the one he used to play back in BC. So I decided to create an orc as well, something I've never done before. I must admit I'm starting to grow pretty fond of her. I already have two shamans, but I never get tired of leveling new ones. It's my favourite class to level, and I lost count of all the shamans I rolled throughout my WoW career. This is my first orc one, though.

Since I have no room left on our main server for new characters, I had to create her over on Rexxar, since all my heirlooms are there. (This might be the only useful thing about CRZ's, being able to quest with people from different servers.) Apparently though, when I shipped my heirlooms over, I didn't think I'd roll a resto shamy, because the mail caster items are the only ones I didn't send. Which is why my poor orc lady has to wear leather heirlooms. Oh, the shame.

Please disregard the leather heirloom pants.

After three days of playing on and off, our little duo is now level 43. Mad likes to tank by aggroing huge groups of mobs and keep running to get more like his life depended on it. Fortunately, I'm the one healing him, and most of the times, all I have to do is keep Earth Shield up on him and throw a couple Riptides from time to time. It makes for pretty smooth, quick dungeon runs, and lots of fast xp. It's been a lot of fun, but playing with my boyfriend always is!

Mad and Lyr morphed into gnomes,
being naughty by the Christmas tree.

We wish you a...

Image courtesy of cuddly boyfriend.

Quick Post:The only time I play a male toon, this happens

99% of my characters are female. The only exception is my warrior, which is a male blood elf. Tonight, while trying to finally get him to 90, I was questing in the Dread Wastes. I had to kill a named mob and loot an item from it's corpse. I saw the mob in combat with a player, so I charged in to get credit as well, and then this happened :

Quick Post: Farmer Lyr

5.1 only just went live and already, 5.2 is coming on the PTR in early january. Holy shit, are they on speed or something? Not that I'm complaining or anything. New content is always nice. Weirdly enough though, all I really care about is this:  

• Players that have grown attached to working the land at Sunsong Ranch can now purchase the land from Farmer Yoon. Once the farm is owned by a player, it becomes a rest point like an Inn, where the player can bind and instantly log out. Work orders will pour in to the farm from factions across Pandaria, and completing a work orders will earn a reputation boost with the issuing faction.
• Sunsong Ranch
• Seed bags have been added, that allow planting of crops 4 plots at a time.
• Yoon's Mailbox has been renamed to Sunsong Ranch Mailbox.
• The yield from special crops has been improved to make farming them competitive with gathering these items out in the world.
• Running the Master Plow across underground Virmen will cause them to pop out of the ground at 30% health and stunned.
• Wild Crops will now occur less often.

I suspect it'll cost a shitload to buy the farm, but that's fine. What is gold good for if not to spend it on fun (and relatively useless) stuff like this? To me, it's totally worth it. I log on everyday to fix my five max level character's farms, and some days, that's the only thing I do in game. Enigma and Snakeroot seeds have become my primary source of herbs and ores, so the buff to the yield from special crops really is making me happy. Also, less Wild Crops? Thank you sweet baby Jesus.

Quintessential Quintet

There, I did it! Last week, I finally finished leveling five of my characters to 90. I wanted to get as many toons to max level by the end of the third month into the expansion, which would be the 25th of december, so last week, I started getting busy. The shaman, hunter and mage were already max level, so I only needed two more for the achievement. The druid hit 90 Thursday night, and the Dk followed soon after, Friday night, scoring me the Quintessential Quintet.

The rest of my characters are not too far behind. The warrior is 88, while the paladin, priest and rogue are all at 87, gathering rested xp. The paladin should be a priority, considering I still need to get her to 89 so I can start working on Klaxxi reputation with her and buy the belt buckle recipe. But I suspect the warrior will be next, and then the rogue. The level 70 monk is still parked in Orgrimmar, along with the Bank Alt Warlock, which is still 85. I am in no worry to play the warlock though, as she's way too busy selling stuff on the AH and sorting through all the herbs and ores I've been farming and not using, trying to make it all fit in the guild bank.

There is such a thing as too much farming.

I also want to get my alliance shaman to 90 for the Double Agent achievement, but I still have so many horde character to level, I don't know when I'll get to that. It's a good thing I'm not raiding, or I wouldn't have time for none of that.

Alt love

This has nothing to do with anything,
but look at all those Golden Lotus! LOOKIT!

Out of my eleven horde characters, eight are level 87 or higher, (the other three are 70, 85 and 86) and parked in the Shrine of Two Moons. This is good. I really want to get at least these eleven horde characters to 90, plus possibly two alliance ones, and I figure it will take me a couple months. Which is fine.

In the last week, my druid made it to level 89 just by healing random dungeons, and I must admit I had fun.  I still kinda suck at healing, but I did a fairly good job, and almost never let wipes happen. I did lose a couple dps here and there, and even the tank once, but hey, battle rez is there exactly for that. For a while now, my druid had been balance, but I decided to try resto again. It's a nice change of pace, and even though it's probably slower to just do dungeons, I really needed a break from all the questing.

On the alliance front, I faction-changed a lonely horde shaman I had on a server I never play on. She went from a goblin to a panda and it made me want to play her again. It's weird to see the alliance version of the Pandaria quests, but it's fun to be doing something different. This new panda lady joined Stands in Bad last night for their Old School Monday and we roflstomped through ICC. The only casualty: me. Because I was the only level 85. Heh. It was a lot of fun, and I scored two tier tokens and a killer axe. I think some people got their drakes, too, so it was pretty great. I was glad to be there with them!

Quick Post : Paladin buffs are hard

I've been doing lots of dungeons lately while leveling my alts, and 90% of the time, something like this happens: There is a druid (or a monk) and a pally in the group. The pally gives kings. The druid/monk looks around, with a "what is this I don't even" look on his face. 

Now, in all fairness, I know it doesn't really matter. It's not a raid. We don't need every possible buff. But every bit helps when you have a clueless bunch of noobs new players in the group. More buffs usually means the mobs die a little faster, the healer gets OOM a little slower, and we just might make it out of there all in one piece. Just maybe.

There's only two paladin buffs now for crying out loud. There used to be a lot more of those, and they didn't last half as long as they do now. And you had to buff every single player individually. You guys don't know how easy you have it nowadays.

So for the love of God, please, pallies. Learn to buff.

Quick Post: I can haz serpent

Joining the ranks of the Cloud Serpent riders!

Today the mage did her last daily with the Order of the Cloud Serpent and hit exalted! It only took a couple days, not even a week, since the shaman has already bought the commendation when she reached revered last week. So now, the mage has her Azure Cloud Serpent which replaced her Twilight Drake. It felt weird, too, because she had been using the Twilight Drake since she won it in Obsidian Sanctum back in Wrath. But this dude is totally worth it.

This serpent is not amused.

Quick Post : Suddenly, I am 5 years old

I just went to the Darkmoon Faire to turn my deck into a trinket (item level 470 achieveved!) and I came across this :

How awesome is this?!

We get to ride a carousel! I didn't know until just now how much this was missing from the Faire. And the music is absolutely enchanting. The fact that riding this gives a 10% rep increase for up to one hour is just a bonus. 

And just like that, I want my very own mini-carousel vanity item. Please, Blizz, make it happen!

Scenario Night

Tonight was scenario night for me. When I read about Greater Cache of Treasures being awarded each time you complete a random scenario (and not just once per day), and that they could sometimes contain epic gear, I decided to give it another try. I say another try because the first time I tried scenarios, I didn't like it.  But this time around, I'm enjoying them quite a lot. They're pretty addictive, actually. I managed to get quite a few achievements in a couple hours, and it was a lot of fun. Next Saturday, I think the boyfriend and I will try to knock as many scenarios as possible, both for gear and more achievements. And maybe even a title!

I did score some useless blue items and even epic bracers! That gave my mage an item level of 467, one step closer to being able to queue for the Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring in the Raid Finder. I bought the serpent's deck for her for 8k the other day, which I thought was probably a bargain, considering buying the cards would have been more expensive, and I'm too lazy to farm mats/trade cards. Now I just need the Darkmoon Faire to get here so I can turn it into a nice trinket. With the neck I'll buy off the Klaxxi's next Tuesday, I think I'll be all set!

The Not Golden Hopling

A couple days ago, I read this post over at Big Bear Butt's blog. I always enjoy BBB's posts, but this one particularly intrigued me. I had no idea there were hidden things in the Stormstout Brewery. I guess that means I suck at exploring. That's ok, I'm good at other things. But after reading the post, I absolutely had to go in this particular dungeon and try it out for myself. I had to wait until just now for that to happen. I've been busy, what do you want from me.

As I zoned in the dungeon, I spoke to the lady standing right next to the portal and purchased five Ling-Ting's favourite tea. I waited until the dungeon was done, for all the bosses and trash packs to be cleared, and then I drank the tea and started looking.

I soon found my first of 30 Golden Hopling. It took me about 15-20 minutes to find them all. (Only reason I know is because the debuff granted by the tea only lasts 5 minutes and I had to use at least three teas. Maybe more.) I don't know what that says about me. The last one was cleverly hidden behind Uncle Gao's bar, or whatever that is he's standing behind in the last room. About midway through, it occurred to me that it might have been a good idea to count the Hoplings I found in order to know how much more I needed. Heh.

As soon as I got the achievement, I received some in-game mail!

BoP, of course.

 And I had a new companion pet to add to my collection!

How does searching for "hop" result in
Celestial Dragon and Stinker? /boggles

It's a blue quality humanoid pet, same model as the Feral Vermling, but in a different color. It was a very fun little "mini-game" and I wish Blizz put more of those things in game. Then again, maybe they do and I just don't know about them! This expansion is just full of surprises. 

Fun with the Anglers

This is so much cooler than water walking.

I've always been a big fan of fishing in WoW. Most of my characters have their fishing skill maxed out by the time they reach the level cap. I enjoyed it even back when your casts could miss 20 times in a row if your skill was too low for the zone you were in, and your fish could escape more often than realistically possible. That was also back when you needed to fish between 12 and 20 (if memory serves) to get one lousy skill point. Granted, I enjoyed it less than I do now.

Nowadays, fishing is easy and fun to level. One of the new Pandaria factions, the Anglers, offers three dailies  (from a larger pool of quests) that are quick and easy to complete. Once you do every quests at least once, you are granted an achievement.

The best part is that every daily gives a fishing skill point. If you aren't in a hurry to max out fishing, this seems like the perfect way to get more players to enjoy this profession. Once you are honored with the Anglers, you can buy a companion pet and a fishing pole. At revered, you get access to an even better fishing pole, as well as the raft shown above. For classes that don't have the luxury of a water walking ability, the raft really is an amazing item. Pools that were once out of reach from the shore suddenly become a lot less annoying. And at exalted, you get a nice tabard and a cool mount!

Those are all incentive to work on raising your reputation with this faction, if only to get the mount. Leveling fishing as never been so easy and fun, and I am grateful to Blizz for giving some love to this profession, it really needed it!

Quick Post : Tailoring Surprise

When I went to the Silken Fields to use my Imperial Silk daily cooldown, I was surprised to notice the icon had changed.

Instead of the Imperial Silk icon is now one of a cocoon!

When I opened the cocoon, there was an Imperial Silk in it,
but there was also and Imperial Silkworm! 

As you can see, this companion is NOT bound on pick up. 

I learned it this time, but subsequent Silkworms just might
 find their way to the closest Auction House!

This is a good day for altoholics

When I logged on today after the maintenance, the first thing I did was to visit the Tillers Quartermaster and purchase the commendation.

It costs 40 at exalted.

Then, I went to harvest my twelve songbells of the day.

The (+55.0 bonus) is a nice touch.

Harvesting now grants double the reputation, which is a nice boost, considering twelve times 110 rep equals 1320. which is more than what you get for doing ten Golden Lotus dailies. And that is not counting the dailies.

Yes, this'll do.

Each Tillers daily now grants 770 rep a pop, so with five dailies, it means you can get up to 5170 reputation each day with harvesting and dailies combined! This means that it is possible to go from revered to exalted in about four to five days. And that doesn't take into account the various quests you can get from the farmers as you gain with reputation with them as well, or the "<insert NPC name here>'s vote" quest you do as you gain more reputation with the Tillers faction. My characters benefit from the Mr. Popularity guild perk though, so your mileage may vary.

Of course, to be able to buy the commendation, you need to have at least one character at revered with a Pandaria faction. But it does mean that once you get there at least once with each reputation, doing it again on an alt (or more) will be twice as quick, and the last stretch from revered to exalted will be a lot less painful than ever before. I believe this is a great way to reward players with an altoholic tendency, and a convincing incentive to do dailies on more than one character. The Order of the Cloud Serpent is a great example of this, as you cannot use the mounts on alts once one of your characters reaches exalted with this faction. With this commendation system, it is now a lot easier to get your pretty dragon mounts on multiple characters!

For someone like me, with 10+ characters, this is very good stuff.

Thoughts on Patch 5.1

According to MMO-Champion, the Patch 5.1 is coming live this week (in a couple hours, really) and I wanted to highlight some things I'm excited about. Complete patch notes can be found here. My comments are in red. 

Classes

•  Hunter 
  • Aspect of the Fox has been removed.
  • Steady Shot, Cobra Shot, and Barrage can now always be cast on the move.
  I very rarely ever used Aspect of the Fox because I suck. I usually spam Arcane Shot when I'm moving, so this change is really awesome. 
   Monk (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
• The Tiger Power provided by Tiger Palm now reduces target armor by 30% with a single application and no longer stacks.

Not a big change, but if the buff ever drops, it'll take 2 less GCDs to apply it back.

Pet Battles

• A new item has been introduced that can be used to upgrade the quality of Battle Pets: Battle-stones. I have some uncommon quality pets who are really happy about this. 
  
• Pet Journal
  • Pets can now be filtered by name, type, rarity and level, and filters will remain in place each time the Pet Journal is viewed.
  • It is now possible to search locations in the Pet Journal. For example, searching “Westfall” will display all the Battle Pets that can be found in Westfall.
• Battle Pet tooltips will now display whether a pet is owned, and how many pets of that type are owned.
• Pet Quality is now displayed in battles, and will be visible on portraits, names and tooltips.
• The level of battle pets in a zone can now be seen on the map, and it’s now possible to see the strength of wild pets relative to your team at a glance.

Until now, I needed addons to do most of this. And have Warcraft Pets open on my second monitor. This will save a lot of time and effort!  

Raids, Dungeons and Scenarios

• Raid groups are no longer necessary to enter pre-Mists of Pandara raid dungeons. Enemies in these raids that previously required more than one player to defeat are now more easily dealt with by players battling alone.

Wonder how much easier these raids will be. The fact that we won't need to bother friends or guildies to form a raid just to enter raids is a nice plus.

These are only a portion of all the things that are coming tomorrow, so you should definitely read the complete patch notes. It's nice to be getting a patch so quickly after the new expansion's launch (almost exactly two months later, I think this might be a new record!) bringing so much quality of life improvements. 

I'm a bit worried though that I didn't see anything about reputations in those patch notes. I thought I had read somewhere that with patch 5.1 were coming new items you could buy once you hit revered with a faction that made gaining rep on all your characters easier. Maybe I'm mistaken, or maybe I missed them. Either way, fingers crossed!

Mage's first Panda raid

The mage hit revered with the Tillers today, so she started planting some Songbell Seeds to harvest Motes of Harmony! This is my third character farming Motes, which means I can get more Golden Lotus for transmutes, and that maybe I can start getting some Trilium ore and (re)start using my Living Steel cooldown every day. Not that I really need Living Steel at the moment, but it will come handy at some point to be able to craft Belt Buckles if I ever start raiding again.

Speaking of which, I have taken the mage in Mogu'shan Vaults over the weekend (the Raid Finder version)  and I still don't really enjoy it all that much. The Spirit King is kinda fun, with all the shit there is to dodge, and Will of the Emperor is chaotic enough to keep me on my toes. But the other bosses aren't exactly exciting. To me, anyway. Your mileage may vary. My dps was meh, but some of her gear isn't reforged or properly gemmed/enchanted. I know, this is terrible, and I would never go into an actual raid like this, but like they all say: "It's LFR, no one cares." But I didn't do as bad as I thought, even as frost. I tried to go fire but hated it with a passion. I've never been a big fan of fire, and while I did go fire for the better part of Dragon Soul, I didn't like it. Frost is a lot more fun, even more fun than arcane that I used to love like crazy. I picked Invocation as my last tier's talent point, and I run out of mana so fast, it's not even funny. Since it makes Evocation's cooldown only 10 seconds, it's not all that bad, but I don't like having to stop and use it 4 or 5 times in a raid fight.Then again, Rune of Power probably wouldn't be that much better, since I'd have to recast it everytime I have to move. I remember in Dragon Soul, especially on Madness of Deathwing, I had to use my mana gems and Evocation on cooldown, but it feels even worse now, on every fight. It seems it's just a thing we have to deal with now. Until we get better gear, I suppose.

I do enjoy playing my mage though, and the both groups I got in LFR this weekend were relatively good. In total, we've wiped only once on the last boss, Will of the Emperor, because the tank died early and lots of dps died before we could get him back up. I got some gloves I didn't need, and only got gold for every other boss. I have everything I need to craft an epic robe, but I'm waiting until I run MSV again tomorrow after the reset. I would really hate to craft something and replace it the same day. If it can last me at least a week, it's a bit more worth the mats.

Quick Post : Monk Awesomness

The bf and I used to play our monks together, but he completely lost interest in the class, so I can now level mine on my own. Our monks were level 48 when Mad decided he didn't wanna play his anymore, and now my little panda lady is level 60! I kinda enjoy the playstyle, now that I have most of my abilities. Handling the chi can be a bit tricky, but mobs die so fast, it's hard to tell what it's really supposed to be like.

First thing I did when my monk hit 60 today was to buy my flight license in Orgrimmar. Then, I picked up herbalism and mining and headed for Durotar.

Just as I had hoped, picking flowers and mining ore did not dismount me. (Even using my Hearthstone didn't!) Up until now, my rogue and druid were my dedicated herbalists, while my paladin was my miner. I also had my priest as my gatherer toon, which means she could both mine and herb, but I had absolutely no interest in leveling her aside for her professions. 

So now I have my solution. The monk is officially my new gatherer character!

Edit: It seems though that the Zen Flight is a lot slower than other actual flying mounts. I'll have to check it out further to see what's the deal with this.