Again, I was farming. Well, actually, the last 2 nights we ran iCC-25. I brought the Druid and finally hit Exalted and got my “super-ring”. Other than that, nothing interesting dropped. We had pretty good luck with everything we tried other than the Lag Boss on the ship. First try on the ship we failed with what amounted to about 1% or less. This was all based on the lag getting onto and off of the ship, etc. For the second try, we did something a little different. Less people went over to the ship and the gunners just stayed where they were. Thus, when the canons came unblocked, they were able to continue immediately without having to wait to jump back over and get back in the guns. This strategy worked like a charm. Not only did we win despite the lag, we bested in them in record time!

Rotface and Festergut went down nice and easy too. You’d think we actually, finally knew what we were doing (oh, and the 5% buff probably helped). We moved on to the Blood Princes after dropping by the 1-badge mini-boss (skipping Putricide for now, we weren’t ready). We tried and failed a few times. We had a hunter trying to hold the Shadow DMG dealing Vamp but he was getting hit for 79k or whatever.. Think that one-shot him? Then our illustrious leader swapped over to his DK and did the tanking of that boss. We once again easily got past it. After that the raid was called, but all-in-all it was a successful run.

So, what’s with the title? I’m getting there.. Patience…

After the raid, I figured I would get back on Fellmara and finish up getting her to 375/375 so she was well prepared for Northrend. The Herbalism score was getting there, but I needed a lot of help with the Mining. I flew around and around and around Hellfire Peninsula and got most of my points there.. When Fel Iron got to the point when I wasn’t getting skillup from the more often than I was, I moved her over to Blades Edge and then Netherstorm to pick up Adamantite. Took quite a bit of time, but I finally did it.

As an aside again, selling all the ore and herbs picked up from this adventure netted me a very tidy sum. I’m generally pleased with the outcome of this experiment.

Ok. What’s this title all about? Well, I remembered, just before I was planning on logging out, that I could pick up the cold weather flying manual and send it to Fellmara. Ooops.. I could have done the first few quests I had, etc, much easier if I could fly (slowly, but it’s still flying). So I went and picked up the book and sent it away. She is now the happy owner of the ability to fly in Northrend which should make this whole leveling process much, much, much easier.

Tonight is the 10man ICC run. More rep for Fimlys and hopefully something good dropping. I might have to see if I can swap them out at some point and pull the druid into 10 and hunter into 25. Later all!

Post from: Asleep at the WoW

Up In the Air, Junior Birdman

The last couple of days I have been doing something somewhat “mindless” in the game.. Running in circles. Well, running in circles and leveling Herbalism and Mining. I figured, when I created the Warlock, that since I already had one of each profession (at least) I would give Fellmara herbalism and mining so she could pick stuff up while leveling, etc. Well, given the RAF bonus, she never really had a chance to keep caught up while leveling. So, after hitting level 69, I took her a-roaming.

Her herb and mining skills were somewhere around 100 each. They are now 276 Herbalism and 246 Mining.. I have to admit the mining fell behind by a LONG way at first, but then I spent a lot of time (and gold) in Ironforge smelting to level it up closer to the Herb score. I am hoping to hit 300 tonight before the raid so she can head into Hellfire and just run around finishing up the run to Northrend level. Then I’ll go back and level her while mining/herbing where I find ‘em.

I learned one thing with all this “low” level mining and herbing.. People are willing to spend an insane amount of gold on lower level mats. Some of the herbs, like Goldthorn, are like gold mines in and of themselves. I almost made enough back to cover the money I spent on ore to smelt. Also, all that ore I smelted.. The bars sell better than the ore did (for some of them).  For Iron I had to make it into steel, but it’s a profit after that.  Of course, this is all on Draenor.. Your mileage may vary.

Other than that? I got the T10 headpiece for my Hunter. It was a nice upgrade from what I had. Some dailies, etc. Normal stuff. Raids didn’t happen Sunday or Monday due to poor turnout (sad for a 10man, eh?) . Don’t know whether we are extending our lockout again this week or just going to re-clear. The 5% buff goes into effect as of now, so I suppose that will make things go a little faster all over.

That’s it! Game Over Man!

Post from: Asleep at the WoW

A Warlock’s Garden

Since we last spoke, some raiding has been going on. Our 10-man group (ICC) got the Blood Queen down without too much ado this time (although it wasn’t one shot). We also one shot .. or would you call that one healed .. the green dragon .. Valithria Dreamwalker.. Making our way down to Sindragosa we had the pleasure of the large room of spidery mobs and such.  I was trying to skin them when even more little spider dudes showed up! Run Run Run…

Anyway. We spent MOST of last night banging our heads against Sindragosa.. Well, maybe banging our heads against large blocks of ice that we had been encased in. The fight is actually not too complex once you figure it all out. Tankspot makes it look way too easy.. .. We didn’t get it down, but we did get to Phase 3 twice. Even got it to 25% health. It was tough trying to hide behind the ice blocks for a bit while trying to DPS the blocks and the boss.. Of course, I didn’t tell you that all but the first try we were running with 9 people. One of the healers had to go before the 2nd try.

There was talk by the RL that maybe we would extend the raid timer to enable us to, hopefully, get to the Lich King encounter.  I’m not sure if we are doing so or not. I am not sure I really care one way or the other. I think the main reason we are thinking about it is because, at least on 10-man, we end up sharding a bunch of the loot that drops anyway.. Of course, I can still use the rep and emblems..

Oh! And I got my Warlock to level 67. One more to go until I can leave Outland behind! I started doing the quests in Terokkar for a change from Zangermarsh (I still had quests there… Amazing). But the real secret to my success is the daily random dungeon. I get almost a half a level given my rested xp and 2 pieces of heirloom gear. I AM running out of rested XP now though, so I guess she will go on a small “hiatus” until it’s built back up. It gets more important, though, in Northrend.

I’ve still got way too many games and way too little time to play them, of course. We also recorded this week’s Polygamerous on Saturday instead of it being tonight, so don’t forget… No show tonight.. The next episode will be up sometime this week and we’ll be back to Mondays next week.

Well, have a good time and I’ll let you know, at some point, how we do tonight!

Post from: Asleep at the WoW

Zod’s Repeating Lootdrops

As many others are posting about, we’re starting to see a bit of a lull in the community.. Or well, at least from the bloggers/etc. that have been around a while. I know that new blogs pop up all the time and I’m very excited each time we read through the new blogs on TNB. I understand generally what is going on. What is there to write about? Most of the “guides” and “tutorials” and such will be obsolete within 8 months (ostensibly) when Cataclysm comes out. In addition, many people are finding that they just aren’t interested in whatever they can currently do in game. Whether it’s because their Guild is all taking a “hiatus” or they just don’t like dailies or instances or raids or whatever.

For some reason though, even if I have a ton of other games to try/play/etc., I still find myself drawn back into WoW. (And just can’t get into STO no matter how hard I try to do it) I put myself into the daily pug run. I run it on a bunch of my alts (this can take some time). While waiting for a group, I do a few quests I still haven’t done (Most of my alts have whole zones to do still). I leveled my Warlock to 65 now and while I’m not pushing very hard to move her up, I’d like to get her to 68 and OUT of Outland..

My Rogue is still 71 and I’d really like to see him at 80 prior to Cataclysm. Most of this is all because of the professions.  Right now, the Rogue is the only “main” crafter I have (one that has crafts maxxed that other toons don’t) that isn’t 80. Leveling him up will give me a bunch of enchanting mats and make doing the daily JC quest much easier. I have all these motivations to play!

Oh, and I’m still raiding. Our raiding group still has a long way to go. We’re getting there.. We still need gear it seems and some changeups of strategy maybe. I have a good time with the group (even though we are mostly silent on vent).. I’m trying to convince those without mics (or who refuse to use them) to use Ventrilo Text-To-Speech. I’ve set up some funny ones I pop at opportune moments during the raid.. I even made one for the Rotface fight that says “The Oozes are Coming! The Oozes are Coming! Run for your lives!” that I pop when the big ooze is gonna blow!

So, I think what I am saying is that, although there are definitely parts of the game I find stale, I can still get in and find plenty to do that I enjoy. Time still seems to fly by and I find myself wanting more of it for all the OTHER things I want to do.  But WoW keeps calling me back in. Take a break? I could.. I did that in Vanilla and missed out on raiding all together. No, this time I’ll stick with it and be ready when Cataclysm comes along.. 5 Levels on 7 toons? Easy peasy..

Post from: Asleep at the WoW

Lull-A-Bye

Ok.. Explain the title? There are too many games.. I have too little time… And I STAY UP TOO FREAKING LATE in order to TRY to play more of them. There you go.. It’s just amazing. I’ve been spending most of the time I haven’t been on raiding (or farming Frost Lotus.. grumble grumble), playing Bioshock 2. I love this game. I’m playing it on the PC and get annoyed at a few of the design decisions made for it, but all in all I am loving every minute of it. I think I am getting close to the end of the story and will be sad when it is over. I hope they, somehow, have DLC for it. I haven’t tried the multiplayer yet, but if you have it for the PC and want to give it a whirl, let me know!

But yes, I am still playing WoW. I’m playing wow to much in fact.   As usual. After transferring my Warlock back to my main account and back to my main server, I actually logged in an played her a bit. I used the random dungeon tool and she got into an Underbog run. Went pretty well. I remember wiping even on the normal Underbog back in the day… She didn’t do too shabby (who am I kidding). Remember when I said that mages had too many buttons.. I was wrong.. WARLOCKs have WAY too many buttons.. Anyway..

We’ve also been raiding as well. We still haven’t gotten any of the previously try limited bosses down in ICC. We’ve been working on it, but mainly doing the “lesser” bosses to gear up for the others. We also spent a couple nights wiping on Yogg+1.. I think it is more knowledge and practice that we need rather than gear, etc.

That’s about all that’s going on with me.  Remember Episode 12 of Polygamerous will be recording tonight at 8pm PST. Head over to the website for more information. If you can think of anything interesting we can talk about in the show you can email us at info@polygamerous.com . Have a good one!

Post from: Asleep at the WoW

Too Much, Too Little, Too Late

It was a pretty busy day, yesterday. New content was released including a new boss in VoA and a new wing, and the final encounter with the Lich King, in ICC. No, we didn’t get to see the Lich King.. But we did check out the new VoA boss. Not too shabby. Pretty easy fight, for us at least.. You have to kill little frozen balls that attack people in the raid. He also does some area wide freeze the floor and cause damage. But, in general, it’s just another tank and spank. You get 2 Emblems of Frost from the kill and I actually picked up a new PvP belt that was better (in most ways) than the PvE belt I was still wearing. I had just been eyeing the new belts in the Emblem of Frost store since my belt was one of my lowest level pieces of gear. So, I laughed when I got the PvP one which was an upgrade.

Next, we moved on to the main event for the evening, ICC10. We had no problems with the first wing, as usual. I got ANOTHER belt from one of these bosses and it turned out to be even BETTER than the PvP one I got.. Now I just have to buckle and gem it. When we got up to the ramparts where you pick up the ship we got a surprise. Some dude with a quest!! The quest we got was do kill this decaying frost giant on the other end of the ramparts.

We wandered over there and accidentally pulled him AND the group that was wandering by him at the time. After that wipe (yes, this guys is actually pretty difficult), we regrouped but while the RL was screaming at ppl to back up, we pulled him again , even before buffs. After running back in from THAT wipe, we finally got the strategy down and got HIM down too. One of the biggest things is that if you get the plague you need to go to someone who hasn’t recently had it supposedly. All in all, it was a pretty fun fight once you got the hang of it and you get 5 Emblems of Frost and a decent amount of gold for turning in the quest.

Otherwise we did pretty decently on Festergut (I don’t remember if we one shot or two shot him) and while RotFace took a few more tries, we got him down eventually. We took a couple shots at Putricide, but ended up calling it since people had to leave.

Tonight we might get a different weekly ICC quest since we’re going in 25 man instead of 10.. I say “might” because we might just get the same one again. Other than that, I am still playing Mass Effect 2 and the new podcast, Polygamerous is going awesome. We just pushed out our 10th episode and it’s a doozy!

Post from: Asleep at the WoW

Below the Belts

Spent Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday raiding this week. Tues and Thurs were the same ICC10. We spent all of last night (Thurs) wiping to Putricide. We had 1 more try left for the week and then we got respawns, so we quit. Wednesday was the 25man run. We did alright, but couldn’t get Festergut.

I’ve also been working more on my Mage. He is really moving along. I picked up the Triumph badge shoulders for him (replacing the heirloom ones.. lol), but still have a bunch of blues to replace. I’m getting close to enough Frost emblems to get something there too. Maybe I can convince some peeps to bring me to the weekly raid. That influx of Emblems would be great!

Of course, my non-raiding time in WoW might be slightly curtailed for the near future since I picked up Mass Effect 2 for the 360 and been playing that too. I’ve kinda put the Paladin on hold for right now to concentrate on only one up-and-coming toon at a time. I am having a lot of fun with the mage (I think I have decided I am DPS.. I can do healing and I “might” be able to do tanking, but at heart I am a DPSer. It’s just what I like to do best.

Star Trek Online also starts up today for the preorder folk (I’m one of em), but I might wait until Tuesday (real release) to start since I still have ME2 and other things to play. I don’t know how long I’ll be playing STO, but I’ll give it a shot.. At least get up to the part where everyone says it gets “good”. I also dug into Runes of Mana another MMO somewhat like WoW. They really went after much of the look and feel of WoW including the ability to use Addons. I am enjoying it so far though. If anyone else plays, I don’t know how friends work and realms, etc, but we can try to find each other I suppose..

That’s it for today. Everyone have a good weekend and don’t forget we are recording Twisted Nether LIVE tonight (1/29/2010) at 8pm PST at our UStream Page.

Post from: Asleep at the WoW

It Just Keeps Fester..ing

Last night we were supposed to continue our 25 man assault on Ice Crown Citadel. Unfortunately, too many peeps weren’t available and we didn’t want to “pug” the remaining. Soo… We decided do go pay a first visit (finally) to a new, um… Friend. Last time we were in Ulduar, one of our team got the last piece of whatever that he needed to get the key to the Planetarium.

Yeah, we spent an hour wiping over and over on Algalon the Observer. Yeah, I was tasked with killing the stars.. We did, at one point, have him down to 55% or so before we wiped.. It definitely is a big “strategy” encounter. Lots of stuff going on and situational awareness is a must. DBM only can help so much. Timing heading into the black holes.. Having the constellations tanked to some of them, but not all of them. Taking down the stars, but no more than one at a time and not when any other damage is happening.. Fun Fun Fun. If we were hoping that our “uber” geared selves (Somewhat ICC geared I guess.) would just mow through him, we were mistaken.

All in all, it was fun learning a new fight again. It is definitely more complex than some of the others out there but I’m sure given a few more weeks, we’ll get it down. I also spent more time on the Mage and even got another level on the Rogue (72 baby!).. I specced the Mage secondary to Arcane and enjoyed it very much in the random heroic I did. A few more Emblems of Triumph and I can pick up a nice shoulder.

In non-wow news. My copy of Mass Effect 2 for 360 is on it’s way! I should get it tomorrow and then, when I get a chance, I’m going to play it like CRAZY! Oh yeah, and we record Episode 9 of Polygamerous tonight! Head over to http://www.polygamerous.com for more information. If you haven’t listened yet.. DO IT! It’s so much fun.. Really.. I promise!

Post from: Asleep at the WoW

Observing An Hour With Algalon

We couldn’t get enough alts together (odd, eh?) to do the Alt ICC10 run last night, so instead we headed into ToGC10 (non-alt style).. I brought my Hunter with my new bow (I got that from ICC10). We one-shot all the bosses until the last. Unfortunately we were unable (in the time allotted) to get him down. During one try though, we got him all the way to around 170k before we wiped. It was really sad. It was also sad that we had all but the last boss down without deaths and were, seemingly, close to the achievement..

Ah well! Tonight, if I get on WoW at all, will be an early night. We’ve got Twisted Nether to record at 8pm PST and that generally means I can’t raid.

Did a respec of my Mage (still frost at this point for main spec). Was thinking of dumping the frostfire spec as secondary and switching to Arcane now.. Try it out. Anyone have a good Blog Post about Arcane spec and “rotation”? Still working on my professions. I got the JC to 450 finally (Yay Icy Prism!) and still have work to do on the Enchanting and Blacksmithing. But I think Blacksmithing is at 449.. Enchanting is lagging behind because I don’t want to just waste the mats ..

That’s about it. How have things been going with you guys? Are you enjoying the ICC patch? LFG tool? Let me know!

Post from: Asleep at the WoW

Trials and Tribulations

Ok, I have 5 … 5!!! Level 80s.. Two of them are what I would consider “well geared” for current Raid content. One is “decently geared” for older raid content (maybe ToC?) and two others are poorly geared or any raid but they can do alright in heroics.

The new LFG system, which many people have been talking about lately, has been a lot of fun for me, especially on those last 2 alts. It also is helping add a few more emblems to the other 3. Part of it all is also helping me learn these classes. I generally know how to play them, but am not as well versed in playing them in a group setting, etc.. I’m learning more and gearing up and it’s a blast. Would I prefer running through instances with friends? Yes, but I always feel, especially with these 2 toons, that they are merely dragging me through and I’m not really contributing enough. So, the LFG, for me, for now, is fun.

I could, of course, do without the waits, but it actually is getting me to do some farming too.. Which I need to do anyway.. I’ve been slacking so much on that. Anyway.. Other stuff that has been happening? I spent a little more time on the professions I had REALLY close to 450 to finally get them there.  My engineering is there now (of course, it’s a gnome so he can go to 265…) and I’ve been pushing JC and Enchanting too. Mainly it is just buying or finding the mats and picking the right recipe to do to get there.

I realized while I was on my rogue, flying to do the daily JC, that he doesn’t have epic flying…. OMG, it is soooo slow. So, my 6th (WOW) toon now has epic flying.. Chunking down the large money outlay was difficult until I realized I have spent this money 5 times already.. Imagine if I never got fast flying on any of my toons.. I would be rolling in it.. But.. I would be miserable flying around sloooooowly.. So, since I had the money, I picked it up and I think he is much happier now. Sooner or later I’m sure I’ll start leveling him some more. He is 1/2 way to 72 now, which isn’t bad.. Of course, I could just wait until Blizz makes leveling in Northrend easier just like they did for everywhere else.. Or not..

Anyway, new wing of ICC opens today and, more than likely, I won’t be possibly seeing it until tomorrow. But, If I remember, I’ll try to post my take on any of the bosses we get to. BTW, I want to thank Krizzlybear at Frost is the New Black for a great post that I think will help out my Frost Mage immensely..

Post from: Asleep at the WoW

Have You Hugged Your Pug Today?