Tuesday (19 Jan) - This and That

Tuesday (19 Jan) - This and That

It was a rough night Monday on the pvp front. We warmed up with EZ, Ando, and Lao taking on Warsong Gulch in a level 20s bracket battle, which we won handily.

Looking for more of a challenge, we raised the stakes and swapped to the level 70s bracket with Philly, Sin, and Narc. The three girls are quite low in the bracket, which covers 70-79 level pvpers, so we knew we would be targets, but at least Philly had no idea just how big a target she would be.

In our first match in Warsong Gulch the allies pretty much slaughtered the horde team, and when it became obvious the horde couldn't win the Allies started hunting down us low levels and farming kills. Even with Sin healing at max rate Philly only lasted seconds in any battle where a melee to could catch her. Worse, Philly could not even heal through the DoTs from the high level warlocks and shadow priests that would just cast the DoTs and then laugh as Philly basically bled to death. It wasn't a pretty sight, although we got in our licks when we could.

Narc had to leave after two hours. Sin and Philly decided to try Alterac Valley (AV), which involves much larger numbers of players and lessens the danger a bit of being a low level in this bracket. That worked out somewhat better. We were still crushed in our first battle. Philly wasn't that happy with her DPS in shadow spec, and for our second foray into AV she switched to DISC spec for healing. The second AV match was more evenly matched and Philly enjoyed the pitched battles that stretched across half of the large map. The horde managed twice to push the allies to the brink of defeat, but the allies made a number of rallies and held on to win in a very long match. We did enjoy one win, back in WSG, with both Sin and Philly healing. Sin took top honors as the #1 healer, and Philly came in a somewhat distant second behind him.

Philly was hoping to be able to level up through pvp much of the time, but was pretty disappointed with the amount of experience gained for the three hours effort. Winning matches greatly improves the xp, and the horde lost most of the matches, but still, Philly added only 3% to his xp. Philly had a great time despite the losses, but at that rate it will take a lot more than pvping to get her to level 80.

On Tuesday Philly headed for the Isle of Kel'danas, the level 70 hub of some nine daily quests that greatly aided JB in her trek to level 80. For less than an hour's work Philly added 12% xp and is now 15% of the way to level 71. The Isle will be on Philly's calendar every day.

Wild did his dailies for Kalu'ak rep (yes, Wild is back at that again) and after a couple of days off is signing up for the random daily dungeons again as well. Just as an aside, the Dungeon Finder has had some ramifications for Happy. Before the patch the enchanting material Dream Shards were a big part of Happy's profits. Not any more. Most of the gear that drops in those random dungeon runs are sharded, and a lot the result is dream shards. Happy used to sell them for 25-30 gold apiece. Now they sell for 5g each and the price is still dropping as the AH is constantly flooded with them. The silver lining is that Wild still has to buy a number of enchanting recipes that cost 10 dream shards each, something Happy wouldn't entertain until now while they are so cheap.

Wild also did a rather crazy quest. During Wintergrasp matches Wild and JB both would sometimes see quests pop up when another member of the raid would share them. Mostly they were related to the WG battle, but one kept coming up that baffled 'em both. It was called "Cluck!"

Seemingly unrelated to that quest, the MM raid that Wild is part of sometimes called out "Westfall chicken!" before a fight, and sure enough several raiders would bring out a pet chicken. It was a sort of good luck charm for the group. Wild didn't have a chicken, and my frog, or crab, or any of several other non-combat pets didn't seem to fit in with the chicken theme. So Wild decided to check it out.

Initially Wild learned that the quest "Cluck!" was an Alliance only quest, and that there was considerable trickery involved in a horde being able to acquire the quest and even more machinations to actually get the chicken from it. The quest is done in the low level alliance zone of Westfall, hence the chicken became known as the Westfall chicken.

I was busy planning how I was gong to manage getting that chicken from Westfall when, digging further, I discovered that in the last patch the same quest had been made available to horde in the low level town of Brill near the Undercity. So late Tuesday night Wild headed over there. It was near midnight when Wild got there, but the sleepy little town still had a couple of low levels doing stuff there. Wild buffed them, and then hoped they would ignore the craziness that was about to ensue.

Wild picked up the quest from the quest giver, an npc trainer that hangs out at the edge of town. Wild located a chicken, targeted it, and then started doing the chicken dance. Yes, there is such a thing as a chicken dance, which anyone can do by entering the slash command /chicken. The dance involves strutting around, waving ones arms like a chicken, and loudly clucking. It's funny when there are several doing it. Wild felt pretty foolish doing it all by his lonesome. The dance has to be done over and over until the chicken decides to notice how stupid looking you are. After a lot of foolish dancing, the chicken deigned to notice Wild, and "looked quizzically at Wild." Wild had bought some chicken feed from that same npc that gives the quest. With the chicken paying attention, Wild then Cheered the chicken with the /cheer command. The yellow "?" appeared over the chicken. Wild opened the quest, gave the chicken the chicken feed, and completed the quest.

The chicken laid an egg, and then walked away. Opening the egg, Wild got his Westfall chicken pet.

I'd recommend to anyone wanting that pet to hold on to the "Cluck!" quest if it's ever offered for share. If you already have the quest you do not have to do the chicken dance to get the chicken's attention. Unless you really like to chicken dance, that is.