Attempting Loremaster

Loremaster was one of those achievements that was in the back of my head as a someday kinda thing, would be nice to have but not too urgent. That all changed when Cataclysm was announced, suddenly all the quests were going to change and if I wanted to do it I now had a deadline.

One of the reasons for our faction change was to see the game from the Horde perspective, this included all of the original quests. So when the faction changes were available I said to myself this would be a perfect opportunity to complete the achievement and experience the other sides' questlines. Perfect ! However, I was in for a shock when I saw the numbers; I had lost so many quests that even starting the achievement seemed too daunting.

I eventually did start and managed to find quite a bit of time this weekend to complete a bunch of zones in Kalimdor. I finished Stonetalon, Desolace, Feralas, Silithus, Ungoro & Tanaris. Now, this was just the first pass, quests that are immediately available or can be picked up by completing chains within that zone. No quests that required leaving to do something and than coming back.

My plan is to do the first pass on all of the zones, than do the same in Easterm Kingdoms. I will follow that up with quests for all of the instances (which will have the effect of also getting the achievement for all of the instances.) After that I will start following questlines and tracking individual quests.

My life was made infinitely easier by a new feature that will be available in 3.3. A new command that Addon authors can use to query the game to receive a list of quests that have been completed. Finally, we will be able to get detailed information on quests we have completed. There is an awesome addon called Everyquest, which when used from day 1 can be used to track what quests have been completed and which have not. The author has now added the functionality (currently only on the PTR) to use the new function to get a list of quests you have completed. That is what I did, I transferred a character to the PTR, downloaded the client and got a list of what quests I have completed. I than transferred the addon database to the live client and had me an up-to-date list which I have been going off of.

On a side note, my Mysterious Egg was kind enough to gift me with a Green Proto-Drake Mount this weekend. If I ever receive a Proto-Drake Whelp pet I will be finished with the Oracles. Once I get to Exalted that is.

Catching Up

The trouble with blogging is when you fall off the wagon you tend to fall off pretty hard. My last blog post was written 2 days after my daughter's due date, so while she wasn't born for another 8 days I did have a lot on my plate.

Fast forward to now, almost 3 months later and quite a bit has changed. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail since I don't see the point, especially since anyone who is likely to read this knows about it already.

To sum up:

• Daughter born Aug 7, 2009 @ 1:00 AM MST, 8 lb. 13 oz. 21" , named Sadie Piper.
• Druid Sonar becomes new raiding main, Feral DPS spec.
• Most of guild and all of our raiding team faction transfers to horde side of Altar of Storms, new guild - Devolve
• Sonar becomes Tauren druid named Pinkshift

Current projects:

• Loremaster, currently working on Kalimdor in Stonetalon. I would like to complete this achievement before Cataclysm changes everything. I have a long way to go since the faction transfer dropped me by over a 1000 quests.
• Resto set, would like to be able to heal when the circumstance calls for it.
• Guild is currently working on HToC10, stuck at Faction Champions. Also working on Glory of the Ulduar Raider, stuck on Mimiron.

There, we are all caught up. Now I can go forward. Hopefully.

Last Week's Progress

Impending fatherhood still being just impending, I have found some playtime for Sonar in the last week. My primary goals have been:

• Improving PVE Feral DPS Gearing
• Progressing toward the Crusader title for the 3.2 tourney
• Levelling Engineering

I actually made some strides toward better gearing for Feral DPS which included:

• Spending 25 Champions Seals on the Alliance Staff (I believe the best weapon for ferals short of Naxx+)
• Purchasing BOE wrists using Emblems of Valor (Thanks Ellevis).
• Enchanting Weapon, Gloves, Wrists and Cloak
• Having Blue make me Trollwoven Spaulders
• Spending 15 Emblems of Heroism on Idol of the Ravenous Beast

Now I just have to try and replace the green/blue items and get some gems.

For the tourney I am now Champion of both Darnassus and Exodar and should be champion of Stormwind later today. I've been working on Argent Crusade rep through dailies and wearing their tabard during heroic runs. Next up is Argent Dawn rep thru multiple Baron runs, (and hopefully a mount ).

I got my engineering to 436 and now just need to make Army Knives until 450. This will cost me a fortune in Saronite but whatever, at least I can now make myself cheap bullets for Tax. I was also able to make myself 2 Sonic Boosters for my Tank set, yummy +81 Stam.

Egg Update: This week's Mysterious Egg yielded a White Tickbird Hatchling - Pet#20. (last week was Old Yoke).

A Necessary Slow Down

No posts of late, mostly due to limited play time on Sonar. With my impending fatherhood I've found time to raid once or twice a week and little else, and if I've had time I haven't had much energy. When I have had time and energy I've been working on Argent Tournament dailies. Sonar is a Champion of Darnassus and is ~halfway to championing Exodar. I would like to achieve the Crusader title or at least the requirements for it by patch time, but we'll have to see.

Outside the AT dailies my plan is to begin working on the Loremaster achievements, probably Kalimdor starting with the Dranei starting area.

Luck

A little background.

I started playing Wow in January shortly after the game's 1 year anniversary after getting bored with CoH/CoV. I tried out the 10 day free trial and was hooked very quickly and soon Wichita started playing with me. Now, as anyone who played back in the Classic Wow era, gold was not easily had, so in order to be able to purchase your mount at 40 you had to be careful with what gold you had. On top of that, Wich and I were extremely noobish and especially early on had little idea how the game worked. I would vendor all unnecessary greens and rarely purchased anything, especially not bags.

In this light, we had a little test. If a bag dropped for our characters in the first few levels, this was a good sign and the character was a keeper. If not, we should reroll. Therefore, any characters that I have that are from my early days would have all passed the luck test. Sonar is currently the oldest chracter that I have that I still play, transferred from Haomarush to AoS at level 35 and occasionally levelled and finally up to max level recently. Sonar would definitely be the only character I have on AoS that would have passed the bag test.

Now to the point. I mentioned the test because my current main Taxiderm would have failed miserably. I think she would have actually lost a bag somehow. Very infrequent drops and when they do I am almost guaranteed to lose the roll if I have competition. I really noticed when I started levelling Sonar again mostly because she is really lucky. Tons of green drops while levelling, quite a few blue drops (15+ from Level 60-80) and in the few instances she has run, good gear has dropped and cleaning up on the greed rolls. Last night in Heroic UP I started feeling bad because of how many rolls I was winning.

In some RPG's I have played there is a primary character stat called Luck that influences rolls for combat and feats and stuff. So I have to ask, is there maybe a hidden stat in Wow that influences loot rolls and drops and stuff ? I doubt it, but looking at the extreme difference between Taxiderm & Sonar I start to wonder.

As for Sonar's activities, last night I finished all but the last quest in the epic flight form questline and as soon as I get enough Lower City rep to get the Heroic key I will be able to run Heroic Sethhek for the Raven mount. I need about 450 more gold for dual-spec which I probably won't use at all till much later but still good to get out of the way. I got an epic belt in Heroic UK last night and I won the roll on a BOE Physical DPS cloak in Ulduar, so Sonar got that.

It figures as soon as I think "that would be good for Sonar", Taxiderm finally wins a roll.

The Flying ... She is Epic

So after a couple of nights of questing, completing both Zuldrak and now Sholozar Basin combined with actually trying to sell some of my green & blue drops on the AH instead of to a vendor, I now have my Epic Flight Form. Woot !!

God, what a difference. The last couple of quests in SB have quite a bit of travel around the zone to them, these were made quite easy with speedy birdy. I also began the daily quest grind to gain Oracles rep, it took me 3 tries to solo Heroes Burden, although I only died once (first try). On the second try I followed some advice from a poster on Wowhead who said I could Shadowmeld after freeing the NPC and let him tank for a while allowing me to heal up. Nope. Reset. @#$%^.

Now the next step in my plan will be to continue questing, of course. I now require 1000 gold in order to purchase dual-spec. I also have stockpiled a fair amount of green items that were scheduled for the AH but I think I will redirect them to my enchanter so I can start stockpiling mats for the inevitable enchants needed on gear. I think I will also start questing in Storm Peaks next so I can work on my Sons of Hodir rep for the Shoulder enchants. I have also began the Epic Flight Form questline in Outland so I can eventually do Raven mount runs.

Things are definitely going fairly well.

Ding ... 80 Plus Other Stuff

Having a couple of extra days off is really useful for getting some good levelling done, thus I managed to Ding 80 Friday night. It was rather anti-climatic since it was very late and almost noone was on, although I did get a congrats from someone on an alt that I didn't recognize, WTB notes on guild tabs.

I then proceeded to ... just keep on doing quests. I still need more gold for epic flying and actual questing is much more fun than just doing dailies, plus it increases my quest count and improves my gear, if only barely. Last night I finished questing in Zuldrak for the first time on any character, both times before I skipped Zuldrak so I definitely wanted to do those quests this time. I found the zone quite pleasant actually, the long storyline ending in the Gundrak quest was quite engaging. While questing in the zone I got a tell asking me if I wanted to run the Amphitheatre of Anguish group of quests, since I hadn't yet done them I was definitely interested, but it turns out they wanted me to tank, something I hadn't yet done although I am partially specced for it (my feral spec is a psuedo cat-bear spec designed for soloing elites as best as possible.) The run went surprisingly well, noone died and the 80 rogue only a couple of times pulled aggro and each time a quick growl got the mob back on me, yeah !!!

I also finshed the Midsummer achievements earning the title of Flame Warden, I ended up with enough blossoms to get all the achievements as well as the purchaseable pet and the dancing firey dranei thingy. Also during the Ahune run, which Ellevis was kind enough to help me with, the scorchling pet dropped and I outrolled him FTW, sorry Wich.

The plan going forward is to keep questing until I get epic-flying, than I shall quest some more for dual-spec. Than I shall keep questing until Northrend is done, moving on to TBC zones until they are done too, this should take me quite a while, lol. I also need to get better gear, I'm going to need some decent tanking gear for soloing old instances and I'll need resto gear for raiding (at some point maybe), feral and/or balance gear for faster questing. I think I'm going to have Taxiderm craft a bunch of leather gear for all sets and see how long that lasts me. Hope to get into some alt raids now that I'm 80.

So much work to do. Oh well, its fun though.

Ding 76

Wow, does levelling ever get tedious. When I began the long process of getting Sonar to 80 I was impressed by how non-tedious the Outland area was, I was expecting it to be much worse than it turned out to be. I am, however, now hitting the wall. I dread logging on for more levelling.

Hopefully, since I have now completed the Howling Fjords, (I hate questing in this zone), things will move quicker. Once I hit 77 and can fly, (I can afford Cold Weather Flying if not speedy flying), things will improve as well. I also think I can begin the Argent Tournament dailies at 77 which will be a nice change of pace. With those dailies as well as the remainder of the Midsummer quests I think I will ding 80 while questing or just finishing questing in Grizzly Hills.

Ding 75

Sonar dinged 75 last night, the last 50% done completely on Midsummer quests, and I still have more. It probably took me a lot longer to level that 50% but thats a bunch of quests that I will have left over at 80 for more cash. Also, Blizzard is going to be resetting the Midsummer quests done so that people who have finished them in previous years can do them again, this means I can get another 50% when I do them again, pretty sweet.

I also managed to steal Undercity's flame last night although I died in the process. I waited for ahile in stealth until there was only low levels around the bonfire but of course as soon as I unstealth a 80 Belf Pally comes through the portal from Silvermoon and spots me, go figure.

Oh well, 5 more levels to go.

Edit: It appears that my quest count has been rolled back (I'm assuming the midsummer quests) making for an amusing situation where I have 1492 quests done (for achievement purposes) but I already have the achievement for 1500 quests, lol.

74 + Pets #14, 15, & 16

Not quite as much play time this weekend as I would like but still managed to get some stuff done. Reached 74 questing in Dragonblight with Brooklynn and made it to Dalaran to make it my home base for now. With the onset of the Midsummer Fire Festival Sunday morning, I have been doing all the quests which give very good XP, and also save the Northrend experience for later which will allow me to do more quests after 80 for good money. I also managed to stealth up to Thunder Bluff and steal their flame, 3 more of those to go.

I picked up 3 more small pets the 2 owls in Darnassus (Hawk Owl & Great Horned Owl) & a Lifelike Toad. I've been Selling some inventory on the AH and have managed to net myself ~400 gold from that. I'm still well short of the 6000g needed for Swift Flight + Cold Weather but I will get there eventually.

Ding 73

Again, not a whole lot to report. Did a few quests in The Fjord solo last night and managed to ding 73. Then Brooklynn (raid leader/brother Ellevis' Druid alt) and I went to Stars Rest in Dragonblight and completed a few more quests. Still no further achievements completed, I'm saving those for Sunday when the Midsummer Fire Festival begins, an excellent time to make major headway into my explorer requirements.

Some interesting things happened while questing last night, PVP things. It began when Brooklynn decided (without informing me) to jump a 71 Tauren Warrior that was questing near us, this of course is no big deal; a quick Feral Charge and the Warrior is being double-teamed and goes down without hitting anyone. We move a little ways off and suddenly we git hit by a Typhoon, a Tauren Druid (obviously) had appeared and was apparently upset with our antics with the Warrior. The Druid was focusing on Brooklynn allowing to me to go to town shredding his backsides. The druid falls but not before he was able to take down Brook. Over Vent, Brook says "That must have been embarassing." I had no idea what he meant until he told me the Druid was level 80. Funny stuff, we were sure he would be back for revenge so we vamoosed but he left the area anyway. We finished a few more quests and finished the night by ganking a Death Knight that was in the area as well. Lol, love the Lazer Chicken - Kitteh smackdown !!

Update:

Level: 73.29
Gold: 1629g
Quests: 1409
Reputations: Valiance Expedition to Revered

Small Pets #11, #12, & #13

So after going through all my alts inventories looking for stuff to dump on the AH, I found some small pets without homes. The White Kitten, Father Winter's Helper and a Tickbird Hatchling have been added to the collection. A 14th pet has been spotted in Sonar's own bank account but will have to wait until probably level 74 when Dalaran becomes available.



Not much accomplished last night after raiding (where we downed FL+3, got the Disarmed achievement and the achievement on Thorim for noone getting hit by lightning); did some questing in Dragonblight and logged off.



Update:

• Level: 72.89
• Gold: 1592g (got an exact count last night)
• Quests: +27
• Pets: +3

Introductory Post

Since I have been levelling my Druid lately I have been trying to decide on a purpose for her. While there is the possibility that eventually (way eventually) she may take over as my raid main this is highly unlikely and not something I will work too hard toward unless it becomes necessary.

So my plan is to turn Sonar into a soloing/collecting Achievement whore with an eye towards attaining raid gear (alt runs, pugs, Vault, etc.) in case she becomes my main. Mmmm, tasty waffles. I will probably close down Taxiderm's blog sometime soon since I've only been posting raiding news and in all honesty, Honors does it much better.

So, time for the to-do list:

1. Level to 80. Currently at 72, ~halfway to 73. The plan is to solo in Howling Fjord (Borean is done.) and when Wich is on with his Druid we will quest together in Dragonblight.
2. Learn how to make gold. Mounts/pets/tradeskills and gear can be expensive and I will need all I can make. I am currently Skinning/LWing but will definitely be dropping LW. I will have to see if Skinning can create some income for me.
3. Rep grinds, rep grinds, rep grinds. Nuff said.
4. Farm for pet drops.
5. Farm old instances, the obvious one being Strat.
6. Old quests, leveled naturally through Vanilla but went through TBC after nerfs so many quests to do.

Initial Status:

• Level: 72
• Gold: ~1600 (will get exact figures later).
• Achievement Points: 530
• Quests: 1355
• Pets: 10
• Mounts: 1
• Reputations: Exalted - 1, Revered - 4, Honored - 8
• Skinning - 414, LWing - 250, Fishing - 0, Cooking - 0

That is all for now, will update as I level and as I come up with plans for more achievements.