Around Azeroth

My Achievement Generator thingie is broken, and so is the Armoury: needless to say this evening I hit 45 Exalted Reputations by knocking Gilneas off my list. I earnt enough JP to make a pair of boots for the secondary hunter with the proceeds: you earn rep in ANY dungeon. That's sub 60's, TBC's or Heroic 80's (clearly the last takes the quickest) plus the various Gilneas questgivers scattered across the world. I earnt 250 Gilneas, for instance, by catching 4 Darkshore Grouper. If you want the new faction to Exalted, it's easily doable.

The weekend will be ramping up the Cookery/Fishing daily production line, more cash generation, a much-needed Bank clearout and more low-level quest grindage. Wetlands is almost done: next step Arathi and then onto the Badlands. I've been snapping on the way, and especially for one reader I show you the lapdancing club I found in the Swamp of Sorrows. BOY, have things changed... ^^

Goblin Girls do it on the table...

Gammerita in the Hinterland's is no longer 40-summat, but seems to have been eating well...

It's HUGE!!!!

I found myself doing some fishing in what remains of Loch Moden too, to have the willies scared out of me by a giant Loch Moden Monster swimming past. As a result, I felt duty-bound to kiel him...

Sorry, but I just HAD to...

What I'm loving so much about what's changed is the clear thought that's been put into making what was previously a monotonous process more interesting, engaging and ultimately fun to do. Plus, as MMO Champion pointed out in their latest episode, all this is effectively free. Hats off to Blizzard for raising the level yet again.

Meat and Two Veg

Today, I took a chance on a smelly crate and came up a winner.

The Crate of Tasty Meat costs two of the new Chef's Awards that are available in SW from the daily Cookery Quest giver Bario Matalli. My first thought, when looking at the selection of recipes available was to stockpile the awards and save for a selection come Cataclysm. Having seen inside this crate however, I have a slightly different plan.

You'll find inside a number of very useful items for preparing-to-level Cookery, including the following:

Delicate Wing
Toughened Flesh
Blood Shrimp
Crocolisk Tail
Dragon Flank
Snake Eye
Giant Turtle Tongue
Monstrous Claw

all of which are a requirement of one or several post 450 recipes. The great thing about this crate is that you don't need to have a maxxed cookery skill to buy it, you just need to earn two Chef's Rewards. So, I have set the alts to work: P will be saving her tokens from now on for recipes, whilst everyone else will be buying the crates every two days and stockpiling their contents. That's 66 tokens [*], which means a massive 33 crates. That should give me summat to start with :D

The added advantage to doing the Cookery Daily currently that it overlaps with the Fishing Daily, and both give a +1 to the skill which although it's not a lot, it's better than nothing. The rewards from the Fishing have so far been a bit disappointing, but it's early days. Who knows what my Bag of Shiny Things might contain?


[*] 11 toons are eligible for both quests on the Alliance side, which includes 2 bankalts ^^ Gives them summat to do!

Where Do I Begin?

We'll start with the old, shall we? Nice work, Guild \o/

Then, there's the new... it's like someone took my old knackered car, ripped out the engine and seats and replaced them with shiny new things that run faster, then gave it all a paint job and most importantly stopped it from leaking in the wet. It's familiar yet horribly new and confusing and I find myself with two weeks where all I want to do is play my Hunter and explore the Old World all over again from scratch. Which, let's be honest, is what's going to happen. Before I'm off to do just that, here's some highlights from yesterday:

Yes, it all appears to be burning...

Her I am, putting out fires at Ironforge Airport (!!!) with my fox. He's called Mulder ^^. I'll be emptying my four slots today for moar tameage as I travel through the old world: I've seen some lovely new crocodiles, monkeys with pickaxes in the New Old Deadmines, and mastiffs in EPL that tickle my fancy. So much to do, so little time...

You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!

She's buried in the Excavation site in Loch Modan. She's also a lot smaller than I remember ^^

Gilneas Tabard ftw!

I'll do a longer post on Achievements later, but for now it's off to do the cookery and fishing dailies in SW (cookery one rewards a new token for fabulous recipes you can already learn \o/) I may even get around to respeccing people today... oh, and before I go, two things. Number 1:

Gnome Priests FTW!

Number Two: turn your game music back on, even if it's just for a day in the Old World. Seriously, the new score rocks. Listen to it and fall in love with Azeroth all over again :D

I Don't Like the Way He's Looking at Me...

There's a new dragon on my loading screen and I'm not convinced we're going to be friends. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to kill him like the last one... ^^

./waits for servers to come back up...

Slideshow Updated

The Last Chance to See Old Azeroth slideshow has been updated for the first time today: I'll be sending people out to take more pictures this afternoon. It's currently 38 images but I hope to have at least 50 saved before the sun sets on Azeroth tonight for the last time in this old form.

Enjoy!

The Day Before You Came...

Somehow this seemed to be appropriate. Enjoy.

Bleurgh!

Long night last night, but SO worth it. One achievement away from my Rusted Proto Drake. More importantly though, and this can't be stated enough, I'm one boss away from finally finishing ALL the content [*] in Wrath, before the next Expansion launches.

Highlight of last night? Undoubtedly getting Firefighter in perhaps THE maddest fight I've taken part in for quite some time. I take my hat off to ANYONE who did that when it was a) relevant b) not nerfed by gear and talent increases coz frankly it's still utterly insane.

Deaths by standing in fire = Still 0.

Today will be punctuated by bouts of panicking. MUST REMEMBER TO MOVE PEOPLE OUT OF DALARAN. I also suspect I'll log on and find the seasonal bosses permanently on as last night they stayed about for close to 90 minutes and they remained, even as the the elementals spawned and despawned ^^ Gotta love borked events...


[*] Just don't mention Halion, ok? ^^

Revert to Plan J!!!

This little nugget on WoW Insider has thrown me for a loop, in reference to the updated Loremaster achievement that will be incoming Wednesday:

Instead of having one huge quest counter for each continent, patch 4.0.3a will introduce zone-specific quest achievements to the old world, similar to the ones that already exist for Outland and Northrend zones. Once you finish the zone-specific achievements for every zone on a given continent (minus the new Cataclysm zones, of course), you'll have the achievement. Even old-school Loremasters can get in on the action, as the zone quest achievements will still be available for them to complete.

Ooh blimey :O If this means achievement points for completing zones, that's the gnome whatever on hold for a while, I'll be forced to take P back to the start and do the lot before Cataclysm hits...

Ringing in the New.

First order of business: Race Changes.

To fulfil my desire to own one of every type of Alliance Hunter, the L50 Dwarf Hunter bank alt will be retired from her permanent role in STV, will transform to a Human and will be levelled 'at some point'. A L1 male Gnome replacement has already been sent to IF in anticipation. As already announced my L80 Draenai Priest will be undergoing some major surgery and will emerge a lot smaller but a fair deal cuter as a Gnome.

I have heirlooms standing by to level another Gnome through the new starting content. Current indications show this may well be a second priest to take advantage of the LFG system, but it could equally be a mage or a warlock depending on how I feel on Wednesday.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a Tauren Druid to push through Azeroth one last time for World Explorer...

Yes, It Is.

Patch 4.0.3a - The world ends this week on live servers!

MMO has all you need to know. Don't say I didn't warn you.

The Golden Turkeys

At least this guy won't try and turn me into a Turkey...

Today was all about cookery.

Pilgrim's Bounty for rogues is a bit depressing all told, and I intend to stay transformed as much as possible. For everyone else it's a wonderful opportunity to do 1-350 cookery for the minimum of outlay and to earn some cash to boot, so that's what I've done today on the Pally. I'd like to think I could max out the secondary professions on everyone in the last fourteen days (14 DAYS!!!) but it's going to depend on time, I think.

Next week: two days (I suspect) to finish off some World Explorer titles, to gather a bit of cash, to try and finish Ulduar before Blizzard forcibly reset it, and undoubtedly some mild panicking. It's getting very close...