Scepter of the Endless Sands

I reached Neutral with the Brood of Nozdromu earlier this week, and started the quests for the Scepter of the Endless Sands.  Yesterday, I finished the Red Shard & Green Shard quests with the help of my guild.  I also want to thank Jinfive, the Tauren Druid for helping out when I summoned Eranikus on top of him.

Now I need to finish up collecting the sections of the book for the Blue Shard, and I'll finish up the questline before Cataclysm hits.

Edit:  Ran Molten Core tonight with my friend, Brian to get the the chapter of Draconic for Dummies vol 2 from Ragnaros.  Now i just need to hit up Onyxia for the chapter, she has and I'll be done with this portion.

Alchemy Humor

I'm leveling Alchemy on Ksenjia, my Priest, and I see that the elixir of detect undead is made from Arthas' Tears.

It's a little funny to that the main ingredient in this potion is named after the Lich King.

Elemental Invasion Part II

The second set of quests for the Elemental Invasion has appeared.  The Alliance get 3 new quests, while the Horde get 2 new quests.   The 1st quest is finding and defending a courier delivering a mysterious package from Northrend.  The courier is next to the southwest Zepplin tower for the Horde, and near the docks on the left side of the harbor in Stormwind.  You defend the courier from a elementals summoned by a Twillight Cultist riding a black drake.  You are given 3 new abilities to counter the elementals summoned.   These abilities make it so charcters of any level can complete the quest.  Just keep an eye on the three portals to see what elemental spawns, and use the appropriate ability to banish them.  Once done, you take the tablets back to Orgrimmar or Ironforge.  The 2nd quest is to pacify 20 elementals in Ironforge or Orgimmar.  I found that this quest was a lot quicker on Horde side. The extra Alliance quest is a feeder quest from Stormwind, sending you to Ironforge where you get the 2nd quest.    


All in all another fun set of quests to do as Catacylsm approaches.  You get some XP and money, and exposure to the developing storyline.  


Have fun and see you around.

Elemental Invasion begins

The elemental invasion has begun.  If you don't know what's going on, there is a great post about the event at:  http://ravenholdtmanor.blogspot.com/ 

You can also find info over at Wowhead and Wowpedia.  

Go out and see what is leading up to the world changing.

A Note of Caution, finding the elemental rifts can be a pain, they spawn at random times at one of several points in the various zones.  If you destroy a rift in a zone appropriate for your level, you can get a daily quest from the mysterious object that appears when the rift is destroyed, which is turned to an Earthern Ring emissary in one of the capital cities.  Also if you destroy a rift of each element, you will get a Feat of Strength.

The Dreamer Awakens

In the new fanart posted to the Blizzard Gallery, there is an excellent image of Ysera in her Night Elf form:

http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/community/fanart/index.html#1139

Speaker of dragons, I've been working on the rep for Brood of Nozdromu, finally got out of hated,  Couple of AQ40 runs, and the rep quest, and I'll be able to work on the Scepter of the Shifting Sands questline.  I'm going to try and finish it before patch 4.0.3 hits.

Horseman falls Again

Strumwulf acquired the Headless Horseman's Reins on Monday, so both my 80's have the mount now.

The Horseman Falls

Yesterday, Yekaterina picked up the Reigns of the Headless Horse, and now rides the skys on the Headless Horseman's Mount.

Patch 4.0.1 Suggestions.

So far, so good.  I tried out a few of my characters, and here are some suggestions to help you get your characters up to speed.

1) Get your glyphs.  Review all of the glyphs for your class and see which ones you want to use based on your spec.

2) Visit the class trainer.  No matter what level you are, you probably have at least 1 new skill to learn.

3) Review all your spells and abilities.  A lot of spells and abilities have had some type of change done to them.  Your are playing a whole new class essentially.

4) Respec.  All of your talents have been zeroized and all the trees are brand new.

5) Be patient.  If your performance is not at the level it was before the patch, Blizzard will see this and make adjustments.  You can also post on the offical forums and describe what you are seeing.  Make sure you include as much detail as possible.  What you were doing, what abilities you used, etc.   Just saying you are doing less damage, for example, will not be very helpful.

6) Have fun.  Everything is changing. Take some time and learn the game anew.

Welcome to a new world

Patch 4.0.1 drops tonight, and almost everything changes.  All the class, profession, equipment mechanics change.  Sometime between Thanksgiving and Dec 7, we'll see patch 4.0.3 drop which will change the appearance of the world and redo all the quests.  Anyway, I'm looking forward to trying out all my characters with the new class abilities, and talents.

Character progression -

Strumwulf has reached 350 in engineering, and is starting on the Northrend recipes.
Ksenjai is learning Inscription, and is rocketing through it with the help of Kiriann, who is leveling and picking herbs along the way.
Paksenarrion has joined the Scryers and is working on her leatherworking and enchanting.
Greigol has become Yekaterina and still plugging at at the Dalaran dailies.
Karmag has reached level 71, and Honored with the Kulak.


Hope everyone has a good night, and fun adventuring on the morrow.

Bad Girl III

An excellent pic of Valeera Saguinar by Shiramune.

http://shiramune.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d17ko3e

Achievements

I've picked up several achievements for my characters this weekend.  Strumwulf finally made it into Zul'Gurub and took down Hakkar for the Raid Achievement and finished up Classic Raider, as well as defeating Malygos to earn his Champion of the Frozen North title.  He also made his way through the Scarlet Monastery, Wailing Caverns and Ragefire Chasm to earn the Classic Dungeonmaster achievement.  He's 370 of 700 quests into earning the Kalimdor Loremaster.

Paksenarrion reached level 60, and Karmag, my new Orc Death Knight reached 70.   I'm working on getting Karmag to level 75 so I can finish the Echo Isles event before it goes away.

Greigol fished up a Giant Rat from the Dalaran Sewers.

Have fun and exciting travels.

Bad Girl II

From the Blizzard Fan Art Page.

http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/community/fanart/index.html#1116

A Dark and Stormy Day

I live on Okinawa and this week started out with a Tropical Storm hitting the island.  So as the storm hit the island, I got to stay home from work.  Since I couldn't go anywhere, I spent the day playing WOW, and watching season 1 of Eureka.  Great Show by the way,  go watch it. Anyway, I've managed to finish Loremaster of the Eastern Kingdoms on that day.   I'm going to start working on the rest of the Kalimdor quests soon (300 of 700 completed).

I also did a lot of raiding this week,  I completed Magtheridon's Lair, Gruul's Lair, Zul'Aman, Molten Core, Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj, the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj, Karazhan, as well doing some heroic Icecrown citadel (10-man). 

I also finished up questing in Hellfire Peninsula, giving me the first step for Loremaster of Outlands.  I've also been busy working on professions and their associated acheivements.  I got cooking up to 350, so I could start the Dalaran cooking dailies, and got Chef d'Partie, the Dalaran cooking Reward, Grand Master Cook, Skills to the pay the bills, & as a side note picked up Ultimate Triage, dropping a frostweave bandage on guild member after a duel.  I dropped Inscription a couple of weeks ago and started working on Engineering.  I really like the different items I can make, and I'm really looking forward to the changes coming to Engineering in Cataclysm.  The changes coming to Inscription look interesting as well, so I need to decide if I'm to go have one of my alts relearn the proffession before Cataclysm or just wait and have my Worgen learn it. 

I finished up the coin fishing achievements done on Greigol, my Paladin, so he now has his Titanium Seal, and working the jewelcrafting dailies to get all the cuts, very slow going.  Paksenarrion, my warrior, reached level 56, and completed the Black Rock Depths achievement yesterday.  A problem with the LFD system, especially in dungeons they split up like BRD is letting the party know which boss they need to find and kill to get the bag.  Leveling enchanting has been slow going, but I've gotten into the Outland enchants now and it's starting to go faster. 

Wrapping up the Fires

Well, I finished the Midsummer Fest achievements on Strumwulf.  Paksenarron reached level 50 and managed to extinguish all the Horde Fires in the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor.  I managed to gain a level on my shaman, Sialina, but she didn't get to see very many fires or places along the way.

Strumwulf also got the achievements for 2000 quests, completing the quests in  Sholozar Basin & Nesingwary's Northrend quests. As well as completing all of the Frenzyheart dailies.  I should reach exalted with them in about 2 weeks, then I switch to the Oracles and starting trying to get the green proto-drake for Strumwulf.  Strumwulf acquired the pony for his Argent Tournament Squire and picked up a Ring of the Kirin Tor.   This should make working on the Eastern Kingdom and Kalimdor Loremaster a bit easier.

My Week in WoW or Fun playing with Fire

Been a busy week both in game and in real life.  In game, I've been working on getting all my low-level characters (they range from level 16 to 48) through Midsummer Fest.  My warrior and priest have completed Honoring the flames of the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor, and my mage has completed the Eastern Kingdoms.  I'm going to try and get my Hunter and Shaman done this week.  Strumwulf, my Death Knight, has completed Honoring the flames of Azeroth, and hit the Northrend fires as well.  He has also stolen all the Horde capitol city fires.  Just need to get the rest of the Horde fires for the Holiday achievement.
In working to get the capital city fires, I tried using the zeppelins and had the guards knock me off the boat with their attacks.  Also, I couldn't use the teleporter between Silvermoon City and Undercity.  I don't remember if this was possible for Midsummer Fest before, but I know for Brewfest, you could buy the clothes you needed for an achievement, go do the achievement and then sell them back to the vendor and get you tokens back.  That is not possible for this Midsummer Fest.

On the raiding side of the game, I got a look at 10-man Lich King.  We managed to get the phase 2, before wiping.  I'm sure in the next couple weeks, Keepers of the Mushroom will figure it out and take Arthas down.

Meeting Flameheart

A small RP Scene I put together to explain how Strumwulf acquired his Blazing Hippogryph.

Strumwulf walked through the portal from Dalaran to Darnassus to enjoy some downtime from the assault on Icecrown Citadel. After checking on the sale of ore, weapons and armor, he had collected in his latest excursion into Icecrown, Strumwulf headed down to Rut'theran Village to head over to the main land. There was always someone asking for some task to be completed, and even if he couldn’t use most of the rewards, he usually found something interesting about the people living in an area or who used to live there. On occasion, he encounter something or someone who would spark a memory from his life before Arthas’s service.


As he walked past the Hippogryph stables, Erelas rushed out to meet him. “My young friend, come speak with me for a bit. I have something for you.”


Since he was in no hurry, Strumwulf decided he would see what the Night Elf wanted and followed him back to the stables. Erelas enthused, “I’ve just finished the training of the latest group of hippogryph hatchlings, and one of them has a quite rare appearance. Since you have helped me so much with retrieving the eggs from the ogres, I decided you needed a better reward than those trinkets that Curgle gives out.”


“Does this hippogryph have a name?” Strumwulf asked.


“His name means Flameheart in your tongue.” Erelas replied.


With that, Strumwulf took a look inside the stables to see this hippogryph that had Erelas so excited. There were several different hippogryphs in the stable, ones with the coloring of the Cenarion Expedition’s & the Argent’s Crusade’s War hippogryphs, as well as the hippogryph’s used to fly between the areas that the Night Elves controlled. At the end of the stable stood a hippogryph with dark red and yellow coloring and its hooves and the tips of its tail feathers were aflame.

Strumwulf walked up to Flameheart, then looking into its eyes gave a small bow. After a second, Flameheart returned the bow and walked up to Strumwulf and ran it’s beak through his hair before nuzzling him.

After a few seconds, Strumwulf said, “Come on Flameheart, let’s see what you can do,” as he lead the hippogryph outside. Once outside, Strumwulf climb onto Flameheart’s back, and then with little urging the pair was skyborne and heading for the top of Teldrassil with a trail for flame behind them.

Achievements in Warcraft.

     Still working on the Eastern Kingdom and Kalimdor Loremaster Achievements, between quests in Booty Bay and the raceway in Thousand Needles, Strumwulf has raised his goblin reps up to honored.  He's also completed the Frenzyheart/Oracle quest chain and choosen to go work for the Frenzyheart tribe for the time being.
     Raiding has been slow for the last few weeks, but I got into a 10-man ICC run with my guild last night, and completed the Blood and Plague Wings, and attempted Sindragosa.  We also did Heroic Gunship.
     Been working on raising Strumwulf's cooking skill, as well as leveling  Ksenja's alchemy, Paksennarion's Leatherworking and Enchanting, and Kiriann's Herbalism and Tailoring.  Modrun's been working on his engineering, but I need to do some leveling on him so I can advance his skill.  Strumwulf and Greigol have been working on getting the remaining recipes for Inscription and Jewelcrafting respectively.
     Strumwulf has been hitting the Argent Tournament dailies as well, so he can get the pony for his squire.  This will help as i get further into Loremaster and doing classic dungeon runs.

Acheivements

I working on Eastern Kingdoms Loremaster, and finally reached Exalted with the Gnomes.  With that, I earned Exalted Champion of the Gnomergan, Exalted Champion of the Alliance, and Exalted Argent Champion of the Alliance, as well The Diplomat.  Anyway back to the questing, 400 to go to finish Eastern Kingdoms, then I head over to Kalimdor.

Progress

Yesterday, I finished up the quests to get Shadow's Edge, and one of my guild's 10 man teams downed Sindragosa and made their first attempt on Arthas.

Guild Progression Update

Tonight, I was part of the 25 man ICC run that took Professer Putricide down.  This is the 2nd time for the guild and my first.  So grats to everyone there, and thanks for helping me finish the Plagueworks achievement. This puts us at 9 of 12 bosses down, leaving the Blood Queen, Sindragosa and Arthas to defeat.