Weekend (17 Jan) - Here Come the Floods

Weekend (17 Jan) - Here Come the Floods

The SoCal weathermen and women are reporting that there is going to be real weather to report all this week. If their dire (and smilingly gleeful) predictions are true then we are getting more rain this week than we've seen in the past decade. We had light mist on Sunday (that counts for rain here in southern California) and cloudy skies with occasional sprinkles so far today (Monday). But we're told a lot more is coming.

We have suffered our own sort of flooding at the house this weekend as we discovered on Saturday what is likely a slab leak from our hot water system. Nothing like having a nasty plumbing problem over a holiday weekend with an NFL playoff game here in San Diego on Sunday (which was a miserable event all on it's own, so it's starting to look like the biblical plagues around here). The insurance company should have someone here today.

The Wild Family took a back seat to football for most of the weekend but a few things did get done, not the least of which is that Philly DINGED! to level 70. She got her first 21% of experience getting there doing Arathi Basin and Alterac Valley pvp. The even bigger news, though, was that Philly had a surprise visitor for the last AV battle. The now legendary Sinstar, the one and only original toon in the family of DER, Ando, and others, made an exciting dual crossover - from her original server to Silvermoon server, and from the Alliance faction to the Horde. For the Horde! Our leader, Thrall, cheered at getting a new convert, and of course Sinstar was welcomed into the guild. We now have a team of level 70+ toons: Sinstar (druid healer/moonkin); Philly (undead priest healer/shadow priest); and Narcissus (warlock). The pvp battlegrounds will never be the same again.

Philly got the rest of her xp getting to level 70 in the Howling Fjord area of Northrend, and later picked up her swift flight form (paying a 5,000 gold bill) from the Flight Master in Warsong Hold. Philly can only use her new swift flying mount in Outland, not in Northrend. She will have to wait until level 78 to be able to fly in Northrend. There is an accounting trick that can be used so she can fly in Northrend immediately, but for right now I'm leaving things as they are. It involves moving a toon between accounts, and I have done that twice already and don't really want to do it again.

And yes, Wild did get invited to the guild's second night ICC25 raid on Friday night. Wild was impressed with the progress they'd made on Wednesday - I thought they had only killed the first boss, Lord Marrowgar, which was a nice accomplishment all it's own. But they also killed the second boss, Lady Deathwhisper, and then defeated the third encounter as well, called Gunship Battle, which sounded really fun.

That meant that Wild joined a group that was about to engage the fourth and final boss in the Lower Spire wing of ICC. That boss was Deathbringer Saurfang.

We got a late start, and it took a long time to lay out the strategy for the fight, with a lot of changes and instructions in between attempts. It was a lot to assimilate, and we struggled learn our roles and assignments and positioning. Not wanting to confuse anyone with inaccurate advice, I'll hold off on the specifics until we get a better feel for the fight. We made three attempts, showing slight improvements each time, and then called it when it looked like we couldn't get any further, at least not on this night. Our best attempt was our final one, getting Saurfang to 63%. There was also some tension between the raid leader managing the strategy and the hunters, who couldn't seem to satisfy the raid leader on the positioning of the hunter traps that were a key element of the plan. Wild's now seen three of four encounters in the first wing of ICC now in either 10 or 25 man, leaving only the Gunship Battle as an unknown, so I'm getting at least a little practice on those bosses.

Wild also detoured from his Kalua'ak rep grinding to another faction grind called Sons of Hodir. Shoulder enchants have been a special problem for Wild, since he has to rely on faction rep to get them. Frankly, what he can get sucks (it's from pre WotLK). The faction Sons of Hodir has very nice shoulder enchants, but that faction was one of the most difficult of them all to earn rep for. When WotLK came out Wild took one look at what it would take, and said never mind. That changed with one of the recent patches, and on Sunday night Wild embarked on a mission to grind rep for Hodir. The long, involved quest line was a huge amount of fun and I'll recount that in another post. Wild still has a couple more steps to take, but I'd recommend going after rep for this faction as it's both fun and profitable for the rewards. Note that the quests take place in the highest level zone of Northrend, Storm Peaks, and the mobs there are in the 78-80 level range. A flying mount is also a must.

Ok, that may be the plumber guy at the door. And I think the rain has arrived.